One of my grandsons asked for an article on 2012 so this is dedicated to him. He appears to have inherited the religious gene as did his father before him and as did I. That is unfortunate but there are worse (single gene) defects to inherit. The religious gene overstimulates the soul of a man. Those that are worse yet induce neurodegenerative processes or cancers or heart/kidney/lung/liver or bone/connective tissue disease and/or premature failure. These really deleterious gene defects leave you with the "spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" situation. And they rarely have a true cure, even in this modern age. The religious gene on the other hand seldom kills, at least in our day, and can pay an unexpected dividend, for it can lead to great material gain, over and above the spiritual riches for which it codes. Take as an example the pope of Rome, whose library, art collection, palaces, and clothing are the best. He also has a personal secretary who is qualified, diligent, and loyal; and the pope has his own private helicopter. He even has his own country. And the pope is only one of many, many religious professionals. You counter saying Jesus and His first pope, Peter the apostle, did not end up so well. True enough, but they were on a different track and the times were different then. Religion today is as big as the health care industry in our country and the president and congress have no plans to "fix" it. So Elijah, don't feel bad about your having inherited the religious gene. Try to make something good come of it. But back to 2012 which definitely has a religious element to it. I first learned of Mayan written materials when I was in the novitiate of the Jesuit Order. Common wisdom was that any written sources that the Mayans or Aztecs possessed were destroyed by the Spanish very early on. But even though some of the practices of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans were absolutely reprehensible and abhorrent to the Spanish soldiers, administrators, and clerics, you just know that not all books would have been destroyed. Some would survive for no better reason than that the pope and his curia in Rome would want to see what was in those books. And since there were no facsimile machines or copy machines five hundred years ago, materials had to have been bundled up and shipped out. Probably some of the materials would have been kept by native priests in hiding or surviving native nobles or just as souvenirs. Some surely ended up as booty and were destined to end up with courtly types who collect all kinds of books, most especially rare or exotic volumes. Well, I came to know of the existence of the book called Popol Vuh, at least in the form of a translation by Father Francisco Ximenez of the Dominican Order. Here is what he wrote for an introduction to his translation:
"This we shall write now under the Law of God and Christianity; we shall bring it to light because now the Popol Vuh, as it is called, cannot be seen any more, in which was clearly seen the coming from the other side of the sea and the narration of our obscurity, and our life was clearly seen. The original book, written long ago, existed, but its sight is hidden to the searcher and to the thinker."
It has always been rumored that Mayan volumes were hidden away upon the Spaniards' arrival and that they are presently either still safely stored or long forgotten. Even Father Ximenez did not have access to original works. But he gave us a translation and also wrote some asides. The asides hint at prophecy of end times while the body of the text is devoted to a history of the people and their gods. It appeared to me that Father Ximenez' early training was geared to his eventual immersion into the local culture of the native peoples in the Americas and not just to book burning and torture of the natives, as many or most historians have portrayed the Church's activities in the early years of the collision of cultures. Father Ximenez' book represents patrimony of the highest order and was part of the Dominican Order's library in what is now Guatemala until civil authorities looted the library and expelled the clerics. Later the book made a grand tour and finally came to rest in Chicago with the Newberry Library, thanks to a collector and patron. It is a minor miracle that it still exists and that we have it to study. See photograph above. Just as exciting as finding Mayan accounts of their history and tidbits of their prophecy was the discovery of their system of counting. They counted to huge numbers matched only very recently by educated, modern men and women--and they work in the US government accounting office! These huge Mayan numbers are reminiscent of Hindu numbers and hint at a theory of time that is different from our western view of the "arrow of time." We accept a time that is unidirectional and non reversible, even though Einstein's relativity theories suggest time is different from our popular conception of it. Mayan and Hindu ideas suggest a belief in circular and repetitive patterns of time. Karma is experiencing today the repercussions of what you did in the past, a sort of "what goes around, comes around" but on a personal level in cyclical and circular time. Well, I was studying this matter of the Mayan number system when I came across the Mayan calendars. These count toward a date and are so unlike our western calendars that counts from a date. For example, we have the date 1066 A.D. signifying one thousand and sixty-six years after or from the birth of Jesus, so anno domini. Before our present calendar of Pope Gregory we used the calendar of Julius Caesar. That one counted from the founding of Rome, or ab urbe condita. Cracking the code of the Mayan numbers opened the door to all this 2012 buzz. It turns out that the Mayans were counting toward a date that was rapidly approaching. And the date approaching was to be the end of an age, too. The Mayan fifth age of man, the Age of the Jaguar, began in 3113 B.C. and is counting toward 2012 A.D. The count of the fifth age runs out with the winter solstice of the year 2012, at 11:11 AM GMT. The fifth age began about when Pharaoh Menes united the kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt. I could not find any event in the new world that coincided with the beginning of the fifth age. But one would have to look at what happened when the first age began--or when the last cycle's fifth age ended--if this calendar system counts toward something. Well, when I got to work the following day I told my manager, Margherite, about this end date for the calendar. I said the age would end in 2012 (which was still a long time away.) Margherite asked when the age would end and "would the end include women?" I said I felt confident the Mayans intended it to apply to both men and women and that the age would end in 2012. She said "but when in 2012?" I said "winter solstice of 2012." She then asked when that would be, and I replied "December 21 most likely." Her response was "too bad, we'll miss Christmas." If this End of the Age does not go well, we will miss more than Christmas.
The way I see it there are five ages of man in Mayan mode and we are living in the last years of the Age of the Jaguar which is the fifth and final age of the current set of five. We are told this by the Mayan ancients who either figured it out by themselves even though theirs was basically a stone age civilization or who received this knowledge of astronomy and time from their gods (who are described in detail in books now hidden or destroyed, with the notable exception of the Popol Vuh, and in carvings on monuments). It appears that Mayan astronomers knew of the phenomenon of precession of the zodiac, which was known to the ancients in Mesopotamia, too. Given one degree of precession in seventy-two years of elapsed time, it is conceivable that this phenomenon of precession was observable within the life span of a single sharp eyed adept. A star's position would be one degree off after seventy-two years of observation; same day of the year, same star, same man who began observing the heavens at age eight and is now eighty years old and without significant cataracts or retinal disease. Good records and precise sight alignment systems would allow naked eye observations that in turn could be passed from one generation to another over hundreds of years and these in turn might lead to the development of a general theory of how our earth, solar system, and galaxy relate. It is almost easier to posit help from advanced alien visitors who lent their expertise and technology to the ancients in the new world and in the old than to believe that stone age people developed this technology and knowledge base by themselves, for this astronomy is quite advanced. And there is certainly no shortage of carved figures of gods playing prominent roles in the lives of the Mayans. Nor is there any lack of ritual or ceremony suggesting the presence of gods in the new world. By whichever method the Mayans acquired their surprisingly detailed knowledge of the movements of our earth, the solar system, and milky way galaxy there appears to be no question that they possessed and used that knowledge. And we today are left to wonder how and why. Their choice of five ages of man, presumably all equal in length, and their apparent knowledge of precession (caused by the planet's wobble about its polar axis) suggest to me that each of the five ages subtended 72 degrees of precession and was 5125 years in length. This makes for a full cycle of 25,625 years. This full cycle is 360 degrees of precessional wobble, and is a number that Mayans liked a lot, as did their counterparts in Sumer, and Babylon. Let each age of man be 72 degrees of precession. Five times 72 degrees is a full circle of 360 degrees. And, yes, a seventy-two year old will have seen one degree of precession in his lifetime. A modern man without suitable instruments is not going to observe any change in the sky pattern in that span. But the ancients likely could have done it. For a lot of reasons beyond the scope of this article. The Mayans were counting down to an event, but what event?
Well, after looking long and hard at likely foreseeable events having strong correlations with astronomy, but limiting the search to events that could be observed with the naked eye, I did find something that fit the bill. And one that the Mayans would likely have known to look for: our solar system's imminent passage through the mid plane of the galaxy. It appears that we are about to transit the mid point in our journey "side to side" in the radial arm of the Milky Way within which our star resides. This should take place on 12/21/2012 at 11:11 AM GMT when the sun's ecliptic will align with the mid plane of the galaxy. (High noon in the Galaxy and I plan to be in Paris to see it. And remember what people say: when God is on earth he stays in France.) We modern humans know that this event will occur on that date and at that time because we have an advanced knowledge of astronomy and possess sophisticated computer programs capable of displaying the sky patterns for any past or future date. We take for granted our knowledge of the earth's rotation , making a full turn every twenty-four hours. The ancients knew that, too. We know that it wobbles on its axis, leading to the effect we call precession. Apparently the ancients knew that, too. It circles the sun in its elliptical orbit. The ancients apparently knew that, too, and knew it millenia before Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. And, in addition to all the above mentioned celestial motions, our solar system moves from side to side within its radial arm of the galaxy, like a sewing machine needle moving through the (plane of the) cloth being sewn. We know that the entire galaxy rotates like a giant pin wheel with our solar system securely lodged in one of its radial arms. I do not know whether the ancients knew that. (One would need a telescope good enough to see Andromeda clearly for she is more or less our twin in this part of the universe; make a note of its pin wheel pattern, and conclude that it turns about its center, then extrapolate to our own condition in the Milky Way galaxy. (If the ancients turn out to have known that, I will be a believer in the Popol Vuh account of gods who helped mankind acquire advanced knowledge.) One can even go one step further to suppose that our Milky Way galaxy moves in some predictable pattern within a constellation whose name we will never know--one that some intelligent eye on the other side of the universe observes on clear nights on his/her/its planet.
Disclosure time: I am not an astronomy teacher. I am not even an amateur astronomer. I have never taken an astronomy course. But I am willing to go to ridiculous lengths to help a reader envision some of these astronomical phenomena. To see the mid plane of the galaxy envision a bagel as big as the Milky Way. Slice it into two halves as you would slice a bagel. The mid plane of the galaxy is where the knife passed through the bagel. Our solar system is passing through one half of the bagel on a course toward the mid plane and then on to and through the other side to an end point where it will stop and change direction to turn back toward the mid plane again, this time from the other direction--weaving and dodging back and forth in our radial arm, and all the while encountering more or less dense neighborhoods. Right now we are in a dense part of the arm and are most likely heading into a cloud of (dark) matter. For this reason our solar system is heating. Jupiter runs interference for the inner planets and is more affected than Earth or Mars. But we are certainly warming, too. When we rendezvous with the mid plane we will see in the sky above us the hole in the center of the galaxy and the river of the milky way will lead from the horizon to that center. This might sound mystical and poetic but is real, not astrology but astronomy. And it would have been very dramatic to ancient peoples who could observe it with the naked eye after having anticipated it for untold generations.
The bottom line for the 2012 issue: I see several possibilities for the end date. One is that the calendar runs out; we begin a New Age, the first of five in a new cycle; and nothing else of note happens. When our 2009 calendar runs out on 12/31/2009 we toss it and hang 2010. Might be the same with the Mayan calendar.
A second possibility is not so pleasant This one is suggested by the reported unpleasant endings of the four ages that preceded our Age of the Jaguar. These are said to have ended in floods, fires, and other dire circumstances. Our age might end with some rock from outer space hitting Manhattan island. Or the poles might shift, as they have done before in geologic time. Or the "rind of the orange" of our earth might slide around its core, as has apparently happened in the past. Or some malady too horrible to envision, or too much even to be made into a B movie will befall us.
A final possibility is that the gods whom the ancient Mayans credited with their creation and whom they thanked for their extraordinary knowledge of time and space return as promised and on schedule, and in time for Christmas. Let us hope that these gods are well intentioned and that we do not do anything untoward or provocative. I would not expect rapture or mass annihilation. Nor would I anticipate a two hundred foot tall, resplendent Jesus in the night sky. Spaceships maybe, benign hopefully, exciting definitely. And in our life time, too.
Mayans are not the only ones whose prophecies point to 2012 as a momentous time for humans. Closer to home we have the Hopi people who prophecy an end time very soon and call for a change of heart for all humans. A change of heart and other preparations might be in order: a bolt hole in the high ground reachable by automobile, with laid up food, water, whisky, arms and ammunition, and fuel. Some extra bedding and clothing, books, tools, crop seeds, and the makings of a small survivalist farm would be prudent. Even with all this scary talk, some of it dating back a very long time, hope springs eternal. Our species has survived extreme conditions before. Saving life and limb comes first and foremost. Preserving our accumulated culture, history, art, and technology should be a priority, too. Saving politicians ahead of ordinary people seems misguided. But you know full well that elaborate, fully stocked underground warehouses and splendid, fully furnished underground palaces are already prepared for the world's political elites and their staffs and patrons.)
I would like to see the federal government plan for a repository of records documenting our civilization with all its cumulative tragedies, accomplishments, science, technology, art, music, literature, commerce, dreams, beliefs, and history. Edgar Cayce described such an archive left in triplicate by the people of Atlantis. We should probably make ours easier to find. (But not so easy as to found by looters.) A high level commission that represented our global community would be needed to plan and implement such an archive, and there is not much time to accomplish this. If a global catastrophe is about to descend upon us, we need to lay away knowledge and wisdom for those who survive, or for others who might come after us. And this ought to be accorded a higher priority than Cash for Clunkers or More Cash for AIG. Let's at least look like we are prepared for the end of our age, whatever it brings with it. Maybe Sarkozy will call for a World Archives of Human Civilization. If so, I suggest he specify human civilization, since the next form of intelligent life on the planet might be arachnid or cetacean. Plant this time capsule/archive in advance of 2012 and then kick back and hope for the best. We'll have prepared for the worst. Oh, and prepare that bolt hole in high ground, and add good French wine to that long list of necessaries . . .
Read Cormac McCarthy's The Road for a dark view of this (post 2012) world. (Soon to be made into a movie with Viggo Mortensen in the lead role.
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