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.