2012 - Science Or Superstition?/Segment/8

The Long Count Calendar and the Galactic Alignment

JMJ: There are still daykeepers that are following in an unbroken way, the ancient Tzolk'in calendar. However, there is another calendar, the Long Count, that basically fell into disuse over eight centuries ago. This is the calendar that gives us the 2012 end date. In the Long Count calendar there are cycles, and the longest cycle is a period of 13 Baktuns, which is a period of 5,125 years. This 13-Baktun cycle was conceived of by the Maya as one world age. So it's a key to the Mayan doctrine of world ages that we find in the creation mythology. And scholars now know how to correlate the Maya calendar with our own calendar. We know that the 13-Baktun cycle end date falls precisely on December 21st of 2012. [Talk]

AM: The Long Count develops to a much greater degree in some sites, to lesser degree in others. Some sites will only utilise the 260-day count and most of their hieroglyphic inscriptions to not incorporate the long count. Other sites will develop more complex cycles, such as the 819-day cycle that Palenque developed. The calendar is manipulated and utilised in different sites to a different degree, but we can say that throughout the Mayan world that system was prevalent during the middle-to-late classic period, it being abandoned shortly after the decline and subsequent abandonment of some of these great sites. [Talk]

JMJ: Why did the Maya pick 2012 to end this vast cycle of 13 Bakuns? For the Maya, the important thing always happens at the end of the cycle. So at the end of the cycle you have this galactic alignment. Now, my approach to the galactic alignment has been to look into the Maya traditions, and try to understand how the Maya encoded this galactic alignment into their core traditions, such as the Maya creation mythology, the ballgame symbolism, other Maya traditions, such as the king-making ceremonies, and what I found is that the December solstice Sun and the Milky Way, and these different astronomical features that are involved in the galactic alignment. For example, there's a feature called the dark rift, the great cleft in the Milky Way. This is precisely where the December solstice Sun is going to be converging with the Milky Way - at the dark rift. These astronomical features are front and center in the Maya creation mythology. [Talk]

AM: For a long time already we've been aware that the fundamental aspects of the epigraphy and the writing system of the Maya involved calculations of time and those were determined to be related to astronomical cycles. So we understand that from a very early time astronomy was very influential in the creation of an ideology. [Talk]

JMJ: One of the ways that the ancient Maya encoded their understanding of cosmology including precession and including the galactic alignment was through mystery play. For example, the mystery play of the Maya creation myth. It has to do with the ballgame and how the hero twins must kick the ball into the goal ring. Well, the Maya populace could come to see the mystery play and they would observe that and could understand it in the literal way of the play unfolding before you, but to those who were sensitive to the deeper esoteric or symbolic meaning of the mystery they would know that the game ball is a symbol for the December solstice Sun, and when the hero twins are trying to kick the game ball into the goal ring - the goal ring being the dark rift in the Milky Way - the whole mystery play and the ball game is a story that encodes the galactic alignment process. [Talk]

AFA: It is true that when the Sun is at the [December] solstice, it more-or-less lines up in the direction of the constellation of Saggitarius, which is close to what we would call the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, which was not determined until even later. I stress this because when one wants to argue about precision here, I could say in a very general way that the [December] solstice Sun comes through that general area of Saggitarius, whether it's conceived of as the center of the galaxy or not - somewhere between the years 1900 and 2150. To dare to pinpoint it any more accurately is to suggest that the Maya did. Any I'll go back to what I always go back to: I've got to see the evidence. And I've got to see something more than just some interpretation of an iconography on a stela. I've got to see it in the codices, I've got to see it in writing, I've got to see the numbers. If the astronomers cared about that, they would have backed it up with numbers. So one does have such an alignment, but in the crudest possible sense you could imagine. [Talk]

LEJ: 2012 - Science Or Superstition?/LEJ/7 [Talk]

JM: I'm very much aware of all the prophecies and discussion about 2012, but then I also lived through 'the Russians are gonna kill us next week' in the cold war, the harmonic convergence, and Y2K and my first piece of advice to people is don't sell your house and move to the mountains because I think that there is every likelihood that in 2013 your bills will still be coming in. [Talk]

WC: 2012 - Science Or Superstition?/WC/5 [Talk]

JAW: 2012 - Science Or Superstition?/JAW/2 [Talk]

DP: For me, part of the essential shift in consciousness that we may be undergoing is this integration of empirical, rational, scientific thought, and intuitive, shamanic, and mystical knowledge systems. And for me, it's really as those two aspects come together, this next level of human consciousness is beginning to be formed and then to recognise itself. That's what I see as the archetype of Quetzalcoatl also indicating or representing as an archetype is the meaning of bird and snake - the feathered serpent, the meaning of Heaven/Earth, Spirit/matter, or it could be seen as the meaning of materialist-empirical thrust of western culture with the esoteric-mystical framework of indigenous cultures and eastern cultures. So for me, one thing that's really important that's been happening lately - in the last 50 years - is the integration of Eastern metaphysical thought into the Western psyche. You know, everywhere you go, in every airplane, people are reading [?], the Dalai Lami, Eckhart Tolle - the Power of Now, you know, that's philosophy re-expressed for the for the European/Western mindset. So people still tend to think of spirituality as a trend, in a way - I don't like the word 'spirituality' very much but I think it's much closer to being a profound, transformative shift in our psyche. So now, I think there's a second stage in the initiatory process that's going on for the Western psyche, but it's happening on a much more foundational level, because so many more people have made those kinds of connections and have had those kind of experiences and have integrated to a much deeper level. [Talk]

AV: The Inca, the Hopi, the Mayans, were all shamanic cultures. And they entered into altered states of awareness in order to access this body of wisdom, which is infinite. So to do that, they had to step outside of ordinary time, which is the opportunity we all have today as we come to the "end of time," to step into infinity, to step into this body of ancient wisdom. [Talk]

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GH: We can learn from ancient civilisations. And so, I hope I've played some part in re-introducing the wisdom of the ancient world to the modern world and helping people to open their eyes and open their ears and hear what then ancients have to say to us. And more recently also, the recognition that the shamans of tribal and hunter-gatherer societies around the world with their systems and techniques for contacting the spirit realm directly also have a great deal to teach us. And so, I would advocate a kind of reversal of the normal order of things. It's not we, in our scientific and technological world, where everything is rooted and grounded in a material and mechanistic view of the universe, it's not we who may place ourselves above civilisations of antiquity. We may not say that we are greater than, or better than a shaman in a small village in the Amazon. Those civilisations of antiquity and those tribal shamans today have a huge amount to teach us. And we can only recover the better part of ourselves if we are willing to listen to what they have to say. That's what I've tried to do, I've tried to say, this that came before, this knowledge of the spirit world the shamans still possess today, this is what really matters about us - let's listen to it. [Talk]

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2012 - Science Or Superstition?/Segment/8