The Mayan Calendar End-Date: 21 december 2012
21 December 2012
THE MAYAN CALENDAR END-DATE
Most of us are not archaeologists or astronomers, anthropologists or
astrologers. Yet the majority of what is written about one of the
most exciting and relevant subjects of our day - the approaching
Winter Solstice 2012 end-date of the Mayan Calendar - appears in
words aimed at specialists and couched in language that can be hard
to read. This article is written for the Everyday Earthling who may
be hearing a lot about the Mayans, their calendars, hieroglyphs and
mysterious temples scattered throughout the jungles of Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.
Let us begin with some questions. Why is there so much talk about
the"end of the Mayan calendar"And what does it mean? Is there
something significant we should know about the Winter Solstice date
of December 21, 2012? How were the Mayans able to track long periods
of time and why would they want to? Why should we care about the
Mayans today? Is there anything we can learn from them? I'll begin
by sharing how my own interest in the subject developed and go on
from there.
I first learned about the Mayans in 1987 from Jose Arguelles' book
The Mayan Factor. It was during the months leading up to the event
known as Harmonic Convergence that Arguelles, artist and visionary,
introduced me to the 20 Mayan daysigns and the thirteen Mayan
numbers - and to the wonderfully engaging and mysterious 260 day
Mayan ceremonial calendar, called the Tzolkin (pronounced chol-kin).
My pursuit of knowledge about pre-Columbian culture had begun.
A great deal of scientific and visionary research work has been done
about the Mayans, so I started reading. I learned that the Mayans
tracked cycles within cycles within cycles of time. Their calendar
acted as a harmonic calibrator, linking and coordinating the
earthly, lunar, solar and galactic seasons in an aesthetically
simple and elegant manner. The provocative simplicity of the
daysigns and the sheer harmony of the calendar drew me in. Then a
landmark article by John Major Jenkins appeared in Mountain
Astrologer magazine in 1994, revealing for the first time in our era
the true meaning of the end-date.
Is there something significant we should know about the Winter
Solstice date of December 21, 2012? Yes. On this day a rare
astronomical and Mayan mythical event occurs. In astronomic terms,
the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of
the ecliptic. The Milky Way, as most of us know, extends in a
general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the
ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to
travel in the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at
a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius.
The cosmic cross formed by the intersecting Milky Way and plane of
the ecliptic was called the Sacred Tree by the Maya. The trunk of
the tree, the Axis Mundi, is the Milky Way, and the main branch
intersecting the tree is the plane of the ecliptic. Mythically, at
sunrise on December 21, 2012, the Sun - our Father - rises to
conjoin the center of the Sacred Tree, the World Tree, the Tree of
Life..
This rare astronomical event, foretold in the Mayan creation story
of the Hero Twins, and calculated empirically by them, will happen
for many of us in our lifetime. The Sun has not conjoined the Milky
Way and the plane of the ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long
before the Mayans arrived on the scene and long before their
predecessors the Olmecs arrived. What does this mean?
Due to a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes, caused
by the Earth's wobble that lasts almost 26,000 years, the apparent
location of the Winter Solstice sunrise has been ever so slowly
moving toward the Galactic Center. Precession may be understood by
watching a spinning top. Over many revolutions the top will rise and
dip on its axis, not unlike how the Earth does over an extremely
long period of time. One complete rise and dip constitutes the cycle
of precession.
The Mayans noticed the relative slippage of the positions of stars
in the night sky over long periods of observation, indicative of
precession, and foretold this great coming attraction. By using an
invention called the Long Count, the Mayans fast-forwarded to anchor
December 21, 2012 as the end of their Great Cycle and then counted
backwards to decide where the calendar would begin. Thus the Great
Cycle we are currently in began on August 11, 3114 BCE But there's
more.
The Great Cycle, lasting 1,872,000 days and equivalent to 5,125.36
years, is but one fifth of the Great Great Cycle, known
scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic Year - the length
of the precession of the equinoxes. To use a metaphor from the
modern industrial world, on Winter Solstice CE (Common Era) 2012 it
is as if the Giant Odometer of Humanity on Earth hits 100,000 miles
and all the cycles big and small turn over to begin anew. The
present world age will end and a new world age will begin.
Over a year's time the Sun transits through the twelve houses of the
zodiac. Many of us know this by what"Sun sign"Is associated with
our birthday. Upping the scale to the Platonic Year - the 26,000
year long cycle - we are shifting, astrologically, from the Age of
Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The Mayan calendar does not
really"end"In 2012, but rather, all the cycles turn over and start
again, vibrating to a new era. It is as if humanity and the Earth
will graduate in the eyes of the Father Sun and Grandmother Milky
Way.
Why should we care about the Mayans today? Is there anything we can
learn from them? The trees give us oxygen to breathe and help create
the nourishing rains upon which we depend, sustaining life. We are
missing these rains in places where the trees have been cut down or
burned. Fires begin that nature can no longer extinguish. For the
Mayans, trees were intermediaries between the physical and spiritual
worlds, and absolutely essential to life. They believed that without
the tree man could not survive and that"With the death of the last
tree comes the death of the human race.”
The ancient carved stones and the stars themselves tell us we are on
the brink of a new world age. There is no reason not to take a leap
of faith into imagining what may be in store. We may trust that it
is time for humanity to awaken into a true partnership with each
other, with the Earth, and the Cosmos. By accepting this partnership
we may claim our birthright and become Galactic Citizens who care
for and sustain the planet, thus sustaining ourselves. This is
clearly the challenge of our times. Yet, arriving just in time and
on schedule is the Winter Solstice dawn on the day we may remember
that we are truly Children of the World.
THE MAYAN CALENDAR END-DATE
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