PART ONE, covering the Mayan calendar and Mayan cosmovision, opens with John Major Jenkin's "Mayan Calendar 101" primer. Well, primer for him, advanced graduate study for me. I was relieved when I got to the following:
"Although Mayan time-philosophy is a deep study that can get complex [no kidding!], for the purpose of understanding 2012 we only need to know that December 21, 2012 is the end of the 13-baktun cycle....the 2012 end-date is firmly established and is a true and accurate artifact of the Mayan philosophy of time."
Jose Arguelles is also a Mayan scholar but in his piece he talks less about the nuts and bolts of the calendar system and more about the Mayan principle of resonance, Harmonic Convergence, the Galactic Synchronization Beam and Galactic civilization...all of which he sees leading to a "major evolutionary shift" that will occur in 2012.
Carl Johan Calleman brings us back to the calendar big time but with an emphasis on the Mayan concept of the Nine Underworlds, and most importantly, the last level, the Universal Underworld. He sees each Underworld being associated with a different frame of consciousness, with all of the earlier Underworlds associated with dualistic consciousness and the final one signifying our transitioning into unitary consciousness. In this last Underworld (actually scheduled to commence in late 2011) the "dominance of the dualist mind will wither" and we "will be able to fully experience the unity with All That Is" and the following year, 2012 we will be adapting to the "new frame of cosmic consciousness."
I believe that this is akin to the notion of Ascension into which we will be delving much more deeply in future posts because, to my way of thinking, this is far and away the most intriguing and hopeful aspect of 2012.
This section of the book wouldn't be complete without a skeptic, and Robert Sitler fills the bill quite nicely. A more "traditional" Mayan scholar than the others, he finds very little in the record to support all of this 2012 hullabaloo, being so bold as to say, "The date is hardly, as some mistakenly claim, the 'end' of the Maya calendar." He sees "few substantive connections to the Maya world...." and notes that the date "only appears on a single occasion in the entire known corpus of Maya hieroglyphic text....not one of the thousands of other ancient Maya texts even mentions the date." Talk about a poke in the eye!
On the part of Sitler's website that deals in particular with 2012 he notes that:
The glyphs on the main page of this site come from Monument 6 found at the site of Tortuguero, Tabasco and represent the only known reference to the 2012 date in the ancient texts. Parts of the text are effaced or unclear and the passage as a whole is unclear. According to David Stuart, the glyph reads:
"Tzuhtz-(a)h-oom u(y)-uxlahuun pik (ta) Chan Ahaw, ux(-te') Uniiw. Uht-oom ? Y-em(al) (?) Bolon Yookte' K'uh ta (?). "
"The thirteenth pik will be finished (on) Four Ahaw, the third of K'ank'in. ? will occur. (?) the Nine Foot Tree God(s) to (?)."
Say what? That's what this 2012 stuff is all about?
And to add insult to injury, the above is uncomfortably close to a similar take in the Wikipedia article:
One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is generally agreed among Mayanists to refer to the 2012 date. It has been partially defaced; Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone has given the most complete translation:
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Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik
- The Thirteenth [b'ak'tun] will end
Uht-oom Ek'
-
Black ... will occur.
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Y-em(al) ... Bolon Yookte' K'uh ta-chak-ma...
It certainly does give one pause, doesn't it?
However, Sitler, who seems to have a long history of being on the ground in Guatemala and Mexico, associating with contemporary Mayan elders and spiritual leaders, does take an objective look at how they and others are relating to 2012. Then the picture becomes a little more complicated.
While he is able to dismiss some quasi-Mayan 2012 "experts," others he is not so sure about. It gives him pause when he hears respected and authentic spokespersons with impeccable credentials mention an imminent period "of severe difficulties....a period of epochal change.....a New Dawn....a new age of light," or "the regeneration of life with new ideas and actions."
And, perhaps most significantly, he himself has a book coming out in late 2010 entitled, get ready for this, The Living Maya: Ancient Wisdom in the Era of 2012.
Before wrapping this up I should refer to an Open Letter (and ensuing correspondence) from Geoff Stray to Robert Sitler in which Stray concurs on a number of points raised by Sitler but takes exception on others and ends with:
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My conclusion is that 2012 as a prophesied turning point, end-of-time, paradigm shift, or whatever you choose to call it, is not reliant solely on Mayan sources, but has been independently pinpointed by people all over the world....
- I believe that this pretty much sums up my position, too. Those early references to the Mayan calendar may have initially gotten the ball rolling (rightly or wrongly), but it is the mass of other material from an unusually wide variety of sources that has excited my interest. I hope that in the months ahead it will excite yours, too.
