As you may recall, I was so taken by Geoff Stray's chapter in The Mystery of 2012 that I devoted a whole post to it. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that I was happy to receive a review copy of his recent book, Beyond 2012 -- Catastrophe or Awakening? from his U.S. publisher, Bear and Company.
I was not disappointed. The sub-title says it all: A Complete Guide to End-of-Time Predictions. And complete it is.
It opens with the obligatory chapter on the Mayan calendars -- the ins and outs of which still baffle me with their haabs, tzolkins, tuns, katuns, and uinals. He then moves on to various tribal prophecies, not only of the Maya, but also the Inca, Hopi, Dogon tribe of Mali, Pueblo, Cherokee, and Zuni, among others. Needless to say, he finds common threads that run throughout -- all of which point to something momentous culminating in 2012.
For example, he mentions a Seneca medicine man, Moses Shongo, who 80 years ago predicted a 25 year period of purification leading up to the year 2012. And he quotes archaeologist Laurette Sejourne as interpreting the central work of the end of the Fifth Sun of the Aztecs as that of "freeing creation from duality."
He quotes Jay Weidner, who, in an interview in 2004, noted that Alberto Villodo:
...tells us that the Incan shamans believe that 2012 heralds what they call a pachakuti, or period of upheaval and renewal that occurs at the end of time, in which the world will be turned right side up again....a tear in the fabric of time itself, a window into the future through which a new human species will emerge.
I was especially taken with Stray's description of an ancient Maori prophecy which holds that at a point in time humankind would be so "busy, so distracted with fighting, greed, and lust...." that the gods would return and destroy everything.
The exact wording is, "Ka hinga te arai," which was historically translated as "the curtain will fall," thus signifying "the end of the world." But more recently a Maori elder versed in tuturu Maori, the "original Maori" language, has noted that a more accurate translation would be a "dissolving of the veil" (or "separator") between the physical and spiritual planes -- a much more benign interpretation and one that is more in keeping with my thoughts (or mere wishful thinking?) about the possible nature of 2012.
Stray takes a hard look at many of the astronomical phenomena predicted to coincide with 2012, including a return of Nibiru, Phobos flyby, galactic alignment, vacillation filtration, obliquity harmonics, photon belt, galactic core explosion and electromagnetic pulse wave. Needless to say, few of them bode well for humanity. But, not to worry, referring back to them in his conclusion he notes that most such theories "...are unconvincing because of errors and inconsistencies." Phew -- glad to hear that!
Stray also covers the work of the Russian scientist, Alexey Dmitriev, who posits that the coming earth changes "can all be attributed to the fact that the solar system is moving into a new energetic area," possibly a "magnetized band of plasma" containing "vacuum domains." According to Dmitriev this may culminate "in an evolutionary change that involves interaction with something beyond the three-dimensional world."
Although Stray devotes several pages to Nostradamus and a full chapter to crop circles, I didn't find anything especially persuasive there vis-a-vis 2012. Moving on to alternative archeology he briefly considers theories of crustal displacement, the return of the Phoenix, the pyramids, the Handaye Cross, alchemy and the Orion Prophecy.
While expressing some skepticism about Ken Carey's reported "transmissions," he still admits to finding Carey's description of the "Quantum Awakening process" fascinating. So much so that he quotes Carey at length, including the following:
There will be a great shift then, a single moment of Quantum Awakening.....An interval of non-time will expand....human beings will have...the time...to realize, experience, and remember full consciousness of their eternal spirits, and to recall the origin of their individuality in the primordial fields of being.
He notes that Joan Parisi Wilcox refers to a "cosmic transmutation" or "overturning of space-time." And the Q'ero speak of "a tear in the fabric of time itself," and "the end of time." In fact, an unparalleled shift in our experience of time is a theme that appears repeatedly in discussions about 2012. Being thoroughly embedded in the space-time continuum as we all are, it is difficult, if not impossible, for most of us to conceive of an existence in which time literally does not exist. However, the absence of time is frequently mentioned in reports from "the other side" and by those who have had a near death experience, so it is not a totally foreign concept to those of us who have delved into such areas.
Stray touches on a number of subjects in which I am extremely interested and to which I will be devoting the following posts, these include remote viewing, near death experiences, alien encounters and DMT (the "spirit molecule").
To be continued.......
