Adult Swim
After Jerry’s trippy vision, Rick refers to it as “cosmic apotheosis” on Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 5. Is that a real word?
Here’s what we know.
“Cosmic apotheosis” is not a super common term, but it is used. The word “apotheosis” means “the highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax” or “the elevation of someone to divine status, deification.”
We can definitely see that happening in Jerry’s vision, but on a more cosmic scale. Going through the wormhole created some type of “cosmic” level elevation, where he temporarily reached the highest level of understanding. He felt like his consciousness was merged with Rick’s and the alien’s briefly. And it likely was.
But as Rick pointed out, that feeling wears off pretty quickly.
Of course, I had to do a bit of a dive on Google to see where else the term “cosmic apotheosis” is used outside of Rick and Morty. And I found a few interesting examples. It’s apparently a term that people do sometimes use to refer to an ultimate revelation or state of understanding.
There are far too many results to list them all, but here are a few examples.
- A fiction book called “Metal Sushi” uses the term here.
- In a book called “The Shadow of Creusa: Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature,” the author talks about how one book combines many themes and styles, ranging from “pedestrian grammar lessons to sublime cosmic apotheosis.”
- In another book, an author talks about Dante’s poetry and writes: “The introductory theme of anguish and prayer for the sake of the poem’s heroine and, on the other hand, her final cosmic apotheosis are interwoven with suggestive sound figures.”
As you can see, this phrase actually is real and not just made up for the show. And it’s used in literature and certain philosophies to describe an act of achieving a higher sense of self and reality, an extreme elevation of understanding to the cosmic level.
And that’s exactly what Jerry achieved. But apparently, this state doesn’t last very long in the Rick and Morty universe.
