If Eternity Should Fail

Great song to open The Book of Souls

"Reefing a sail"... not "reef in a sail". That has no meaning.

The title sums up the meaning of the song. Reefing a sail means making the sail smaller, so the boat will move slower or more safely in rough weather. In the song they have reached the edge of the world, and oh shit, we're gonna fall and eternity will fail, so stop the ship. No land of plenty, only devastation and despair. It's a very dark and depressing lyric.

Is that Eddie talking at the end of the track?

I'll update it in short order so stay calm folks

Please someone put a meaning up to this song and what is the ending talking about sounds really creepy if actually listen to what it says.

Everything ends. Even eternity of our universe or our species will have an end.

Diciknson's illness made him to see Death is really awaiting...and...if the eternity should fail? The song is for his daughter and son. He is saying "I could maybe leave for sure...He is saying Good Bye to them...He says to them he has already rised them and teach them everything from his pure love from heart and soul and must use it well...in every aspect in life to make him proud Beyond eternity. It is very very very touching and reflexive MASTERPIECE.

Not really. The band had already finished recording TBOS when Dickinson found out about his illness.

I find it curious how this song seems based, although rather loosely, on Lovecraft’s “Cthullu Mythos”, evoking specially images from “The Call of Cthullu”. I’m actually surprised it took so long for Maiden to write a song based on Lovecraft’s lore — he’s not only considered the father of modern horror, influencing not only most of contemporary horror writers (Stephen King is the prime example) but rock bands and other artists, as also the father of Sci-Fi. You might remember the epitaph from Eddie’s tombstone in the cover from “Live After Death”, which is explicitly a Lovecraft quote:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.”

This meaningless but terrifying phrase features prominently in a couple of Lovecraft’s stories, specially the aforementioned short story. In-universe, it is attributed to the “mad arab” Abdul Azhared in his “infamous” “Necronomicon” (a Greekish word loosely meaning “Book of Dead Names”). The quote is, though, a reference to the fact I’ll explain shortly. The Cthullu Mythos is basically a cosmology with a “pantheon” of otherworldly extraterrestrial entities usually referred to as the “Old Ones” or “Outer Gods”, which would have come to Earth “When the world was virgin/Before the coming of man”. They would be originated from the Black Nebula, which is either or both in the centre of the universe or in a realm where laws of time (“For me, eternity is nothing but a short while”) and space do not apply. (“Eternal blackness/Beyond the stars”) According, once again, to the “Necronomicon”,”Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth…”. It is supposed to be the “father” of all the Outer Gods, and visually manifests as a mass of glowing orbs, with eyes or tendrils in some versions, and in others simply the orbs. It is heavily implied that Yog-Sothoth is omniscient, and is locked outside the universe, meaning he can know and see all of space-time all at once, which means there is no secret hidden from Yog-Sothoth. Its mate was none other than “The Great Mother”, Shub-Niggurath, a perverse fertility deity, said to appear as an "evil cloud-like entity", an enormous mass which extrudes black tentacles, slime-dripping mouths, and short, writhing goat legs. Small creatures are continually spat forth by the monstrosity, which are either consumed into the miasmatic form or escape to some monstrous life elsewhere. What is important is that they gave birth to the twins Nug and Yeb, the former birthing the aforementioned Cthullu possibly on Vhoorl, in the 23rd Nebula. He’s depicted as an octopoid Great Old One of enormous power who lies in a death-like slumber in his sunken city of R'lyeh beneath the Pacific Ocean. According to the story,

“They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape [...] but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.”

Cthullu would have come to Earth with an alien species which would have sprung all future life on Earth, including humans, and who worshipped him as a God. (“From a world of magma/To a cold rock face/The ascent of madness/And the human race//We are strange believers/All of us/There are stranger truths/In molten rust”) Cthullu, however, is considered only a priest to all the other Outer Gods, and several of them lived in the Cyclopean city of R’lyeh, which sunk into sea even before mankind was born. (“To God's illusion/Which I recall/Was our delusion/Before the fall”). But the cult of Cthullu survived through humanity, as is extensively depicted in the short story. (“We are strange believers/All of us/There are stranger truths/In molten rust”). It is unknown how large the throng of those who worship the dreaded Cthulhu is, but his cult has many cells around the globe. He’s depicted as having a worldwide cult centred in Arabia, with followers in regions as far-flung as Greenland and Louisiana. There are leaders of the cult "in the mountains of China" who are said to be immortal. Cthulhu is described by some of these cultists as the "great priest" of "the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky." He’s also worshipped by the nonhuman creatures known as Deep Ones, which appear in Lovecraft’s novella “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. All of them believe Cthullu will rise from his death-like slumber and bring forth a new age which will devastate Earth and humankind, but their worshippers will follow them to The Black Nebula (“Eternal blackness/Beyond the stars/We think our wisdom/Will get that far//At the master's table/The table's bare/No line of plenty/Devastation, despair”). Therefore, they’re all “Waiting in line for the ending of time”, for “when eternity fails”, that is, when Cthullu will awaken and bring forth the Outer Gods. (“We rise from slumber/It calls our name/Recalls our number/How bad we come”) Quoting once again “The Call of Cthullu”:

“When the stars have come right for the Great Old Ones, some force from outside must serve to liberate their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented them from making an initial move.” […] “[At the proper time,] the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume his rule of earth […] Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”

Needless to say these “Gods” loved blood sacrifices, specially human (“The Call of Cthullu” depicts it extensively, but it is prominently featured in the short stories “The Dreams in the Witch House” and “The Horror at the Museum”). (“Here is the soul of a man/Here in this place for the taking/Clothen in white/Stand in the light/Here is the soul of a man//Time to speak with the shaman again/Conjure the jester again/Black dog in the ruins is howling my name/So here is the soul of a man”) To complete the references, in the climax of “The Call of Cthullu”, R’lyeh rises from the sea and a group of ill-fated sailors finds the island and awaken the Cyclopean beast (“Reefing a sail on the edge of the world/If eternity should fail/Waiting in line for the ending of time/If eternity should fail”). Therefore, I believe the entity speaking at the end of the song is either Yog-Sothoth or Shub-Niggurath (grandparents of Cthullu), or even a blending of the three entities:

“My name is necropolis [R’lyeh] I am formed of the dead I am the harvester of the soul And I suck the lives from my bed

I own two sons [These would be Nug and Yeb], I gave them breath And I fill their living corpses with my bile [references the dead-like slumber of the Old Ones] What humanity I knew I have long forgotten [either a reference to their original worshippers’ passing æons before, or a statement that these “Gods” couldn’t care less about humanity]”

You might think I’m reading too much in a song lyric, but I think there are too many coincidences for Dickinson not to be at least loosely inspired on the Mythos when he wrote these lyrics.