Mayan Calendar
Most people aren’t archaeologists or astronomers, anthropologists or astrologers, however the bulk of what’s written concerning one amongst the foremost powerful and connected subjects of our day – the approaching Winter Solstice calendar 2012 end-date of the Mayan Calendar – seems in words aimed toward specialists and couched in language that may be troublesome to visualize. This text is written for the Everyday Earthling who could also be hearing plenty concerning 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 pursue 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 start by sharing how my own interest in the field developed and run on from there.
I 1st learned concerning the Mayans in 1987 from Jose Arguelles’ book The Mayan issue. it absolutely was throughout the months leading up to the event called Harmonic Convergence that Arguelles, artist and visionary, introduced me to the twenty Mayan day signs and therefore the 13 Mayan numbers – and to the splendidly participating and mysterious 260 day Mayan ceremonial calendar, referred to as the Tzolkin (pronounced choking). My pursuit of data concerning columbia society had begun.
A great deal of scientific and innovative 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 dignified style. The provocative simplicity of the day signs 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.
Isthere one thing vital we must always realize the Winter Solstice date of December twenty one, calendar 2012? Yes. On now a rare vast and Mayan fabulous event happens. The Milky method, as most folks understand, extends during a general north-south leadership within the night sky. The plane of the ecliptic is that the method the Sun, Moon, planets and stars seem to maneuver within the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky method at a sixty degree angle close to the constellation Sagittarius.
The massive cross formed by the intersecting Milky Way and degree 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 position 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 result for many of us in our lifetime. The Sun had not conjoined the Milky Way and the degree of the ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long before the Mayans arrived on the performance 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 sway 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 grow and sink on its axis, not unlike how the Earth does over an extremely long period of time. One full rise and dip constitutes the set 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 future attraction. By using an device called the Long Count, the Mayans fast-forwarded to fix December 21, 2012 as the end of their Great Cycle and then counted backwards to determine 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 comparable to 5,125.36 years, is but one fifth of the Great Cycle, known scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic Year – the length of the precession of the equinoxes. To use a analogy from the modern industrial society, 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 short start over to begin anew. The present world age will end and a new world age will begin.
Over a year’s day 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 extent to the Platonic Year – the 26 long sequence – 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 take 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 Son 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 inspire and help shape 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 appear that kind can no longer terminate. For the Mayans, trees were intermediaries between the physical and spiritual worlds, and essential to life. They believed that without the tree people 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 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 stock. We may assume that it is time for people to awaken into a true partnership with each other, with the Earth, and the Cosmos. By accepting this relationship we may take our heritage and get Galactic Citizens who care for and conserve 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 sunrise on the day we may recall that we are truly Children of the World,
