Lawrence wrote Apocalypse, his highly personal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, on his death bed. It was his last great piece of writing and he made every word count, more or less reducing what he'd been getting at over previous decades to its clearest, most concentrated essence. You could call it religion or philosophy, although both are arguably misleading in this case. This is how Lawrence saw the world, or more precisely what he thought was meant by the term.
As an analysis of Revelation, Apocalypse somewhat reveals what might be deemed the contradiction at the heart of Lawrence's view of the world, specifically his shunning the methodical, scientific approach in favour of the intuitive. This might seem to foreshadow today's internet pundits with their apparent belief that facts may often complicate or unduly bias an issue. Lawrence, however, insists on there being two essentially incompatible ways of seeing, and he favoured the materialist approach, giving precedence to that which is seen, felt, or experienced over abstract rationalisation after the fact. Therefore, as with Etruscan Places in which he writes about Italian civilisation before the Romans through aesthetic consideration of their art and architecture, Apocalypse deals in what might be deemed poetic truth rather than the purely historical. While this might seem akin to Erich von Däniken finding flying saucers in Ezekiel's wheels - a proposal facilitated by conveniently ignoring existing interpretations of the symbolism - Lawrence's intuitive method is itself a refusal to impose established patterns or methods of understanding upon the material - in other words an attempt to unravel Revelation entirely on its own terms. This approach is validated, I would argue, by its refusal to view the texts as the poorly formulated mumbling of primitives - actually the opposite of Erich's methodology, such as it is - and is additionally validated by the clarity and conviction of his testimony. For what it may be worth, his testimony here also reminds me a little of A.E. van Vogt, who wrote about rockets and mutants but took a similarly intuitive approach.
As for what Lawrence actually says, the whole point of the book is that the discourse loses definition and even meaning when summarised or broken down into symbols, but the main theme is that pre-Christian religion was not religion as we understand it today, and because of this we have lost our way as a people. He sets out a convincing and coherent argument for this view as well, but - as with Point Counterpoint - you really need to read the thing to appreciate it.
All of this being said, Apocalypse remains very much a personal view - although Lawrence resisted the idea that any of his pronouncements should ever be taken as the final word on anything - so additionally revealing his blind spots; and it seems particularly sad given that he spent so much time in Mexico, engaging with adherents to a pre-Christian belief system very much in line with much of what is described in Apocalypse.
Even to the early scientists or philosophers, 'the cold', 'the moist', 'the hot', 'the dry' were things in themselves, realities, gods, theoi. And they did things.
Yet, little if anything of this makes it into The Plumed Serpent with its fallen Indians performing a heavily befeathered summary of an actual living religion filtered through the grimmer aspects of Lawrence's Methodist upbringing. It was staring him in the face and somehow he missed it.
Nevertheless, for all the flaws one might find in Apocalypse, the strength of the main argument eclipses them to the point of irrelevance, and this was one hell of a swan song.
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