“2012: The End or a New Dawn?”
By Benjamin Ortiz, for Café Latino Lifestyle Magazine
September/October 2009
“Give yourselves up, my younger brothers, my older brothers, submit to the unhappy destiny of the katun [time cycle] which is to come. If you do not submit, you shall be moved from where your feet are rooted. Â… Sand and spray shall be raised aloft. The face of the sun shall be darkened by the great tempest.”
— “The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chuyamel”
Ancient Mayans imagined the Dark Rift at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy as a sacred portal and womb of cosmic birthing, through which Jaguar Priests voyaged in mystic fugues to receive messages from the gods and the divine essence of the supreme creator, Hunab Ku.
Contemporary science caught up in September 2002, discovering a massive black hole in the galactic hub, a place where stars are born. In 2005, astronomers and scientific institutes also noticed an unusual structure shaped like a loop, spanning across 20 light years, in the middle of the Dark Rift black hole, from which gravity and radio waves have strangely been emanating.
What’s more, the earth’s electromagnetic field has been weakening and becoming porous, with holes that leave us open to cosmic forces, portending a complete pole reversal. Meanwhile, the National Center for Atmospheric Research foresees extreme solar activity accelerating over the next few years, potentially threatening satellites, power grids, communication and data systems — and weakening the ozone layer while increasing global warming, mega-storms and cancer mortality from radiation, possibly even setting off geo-thermal catastrophe in a synergistic cauldron of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and deadly radiation.
By the way, the Yellowstone National Park volcano sits atop uranium deposits and is long overdue for a massive eruption that would rain immediate and long-term death onto the earth.
But that’s not all. Per Associated Press reports, a 2005 earthquake in Ethiopia opened a 37-mile-long crack in the continent that some believe might yet split Africa into pieces. And according to Russian geophysicists, the Solar System might be colliding with a pocket of interstellar energy that could exacerbate everything else going on. Some scientists are looking into the little-known effects of gravity and electromagnetic energy between planets and the sun, wondering what will happen when the Earth crosses the center of the galaxy in 2012 and enters the galactic equator, a zone of violent celestial activity.
The Mayans saw that coming, too. In fact, long before the blessings of European civilization arrived, the Mayans knew that the winter solstice on December 21, 2012, would bring a galactic solar eclipse, as the sun and earth line up with the Dark Rift. They also knew this would be a time of great upheaval and change, and you don’t have to be a mystic shaman to recognize the truth of that vision. But they also predicted that our way of life would end with a screeching, crashing halt in 2012, ushering in a golden age of the Sixth Sun, for those around to enjoy it.
Interest in 12-21-12 has become a full-force pop phenomenon (see “Mayan Doomsday Pop” sidebar). What makes this doomsday different is a wealth of concordance with astronomy, quantum physics and cross-cultural synchronicity (see “Mondo Apocalypto” sidebar), as well as the power of Mayan Cosmovision, a way of life based in stunningly accurate astronomical and mathematical calculations that put the Mayans in tune with galactic movements. It’s a bit of poetic justice for a people whose civilization collapsed just before the Spanish conquest, as their worldview and indigenous spirituality have returned with a vengeance.
MAYAN GROUND ZERO
Carlos MejÃa opens his cavernous garden apartment on the northwest side of Chicago and sets aside the dinner his comadre just handed him so he can talk about Mayan Cosmovision. He’s a marimba teacher affiliated with the Mayan Folkloric Organization and Casa Guatemala, and his humble abode is dominated by a few marimba boards, with spare books, Mayan trajes (suits) and a dreamcatcher providing the only décor.
He’s also a Quiché Maya guia espiritual (spirit guide) named Phal, for his ancestors, with roots in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. He uses a calendar produced by the Fundación Centro Cultural y Asistencia Maya (CCAM) to explain the significance of Mayan timekeeping: “Every day has meaning that connects you with the Cosmovision, with Mayan thought, so that you do not disconnect the human being from natural and stellar processes Â… This is the essence of life for the Mayans, and this is what humans lost when they socialized. They became materialists and divided the spirit from the mind from the physical realm, everything broken up.”
Despite the disasters that befell indigenous peoples under colonialism and then neo-liberalism in Guatemala, MejÃa speaks of an open and welcoming tradition. “Mayan thought is about mutually thriving and sharing, and that’s the tradition I impart through music to the whole world, Guatemalan or not.”
Spaniards destroyed much of Mayan material culture, but possibly as many as 20 hieroglyphic calendars survived, some held and protected by Mayan elders. With roots going back to 2000 BCE, Mayan civilization covered Guatemala, southern Mexico, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and the Yucatán. Their sacred texts included the “Popol Vuh,” the Quiché Mayan book of Creation, chronicling the “The Dawn of Life” in a mytho-cosmology based in their knowledge of the heavens. Using their texts and calendars, Mayans consistently applied their cosmological insights to urban planning (temples, observatories, pyramids) and understanding the body itself as a microcosm of the entire universe.
Calendrical information was coded into their entire way of life, and as science consultant and journalist Lawrence E. Joseph puts it in “Apocalypse 2012,” “Overall, the 2000-year-old Mayan calendar is believed by many to be more accurate than the 500-year-old Gregorian calendar we use today.” Their calendar is actually one timekeeping system with many interlocking pieces, all tapped into cosmic cycles spanning billions of years.
MejÃa explains, “If you are un-mindful [person] and [are] out of sync with natural processes, you will suffer, you will be lost. If you are mindful, it’s because you are living wisely and consistently with the universe.”
His CCAM calendar adds, “The Mayans do not talk about the end of the world. The only really important and relevant thing is the spirit on its voyage of evolution to superior levels. All of the prophecies seek a change in the mentality of man. So that humanity would expand across the galaxy, understanding its fundamental integrity and affinity with all that exists.”
But here’s the problem, according to MejÃa: “Instead of understanding Mayan Cosmovision, we are confused and fearful of 2012, so we are not prepared. Humans are self-destructing, and to try to remedy the situation at this late hour will be hard. There will be consequences.”
SELF-SHAMANIZING FOR A NEW WORLD
Over e-mail, neo-shaman and mystic Jose Argüelles says that Latinos “should take pride in the fact that the Mayan people had sages among them and prophets as well who could calculate such matters and know the future so well. This should remind us of our spiritual and mental heritage, and in anticipation [of 2012], we should turn to a more spiritual inclination of life.”
Of course, it’s easier (and often more entertaining) to focus on disaster and destruction than spiritual evolution, but Mayan thought would have you do the hard work of self-transformation first before you deal with global change or even try to change the world yourself. MejÃa adds that you don’t necessarily have to give up Christianity or any other religion in order to appreciate Mayan thought and benefit from indigenous ideas.
Chicago labor activist and first-generation Guatemalan-American, Jose Oliva sees “Mayan cosmology present in everything I do, but especially in my work.” As policy director for a national workers’ rights organization, Oliva thinks Mayan Cosmovision emphasizes human agency, and thus “our paths are completely malleable and even breakable Â…– I think of it as not simply a metaphor for our work in the [labor] movement, but an actual roadmap.”
At 36 years old, Oliva has soaked up Mayan thought from past teachers at Casa Guatemala, including Carlos MejÃa, and he calls 2012 “The New Beginning.” But MejÃa breaks down the path to wisdom into simple steps toward mindfulness, including meditation techniques and attuning oneself to insights that come from learning and following the Mayan calendar. This, he says, would be the basis for any hope of social justice.
Argüelles likewise advocates a calendar switch: “The Gregorian calendar is the calendar of history, colonialism and European conquest.” But he also enumerates some basic practices toward mindfulness that seem wise in any walk of life:
1. Submit to the will of God.
2. Eat healthy.
3. Be happy.
4. Change your frequency [of time from the old calendar].
5. Love everybody!
The CCAM warns of what will happen without fundamental changes: “If we continue on this negative course of hating each other, of environmental destruction, of fear and egoism, we will be diving headlong into destruction, into chaos and the disappearance of ourselves as a sentient species on this planet.”
With a smile and unquenchable warmth, MejÃa concludes: “What does 2012 matter? What happens, happens! What’s most important is that human beings live in mutual coexistence, that we wake up and come out of the darkness of our shadow. Then humanity would finally re-encounter its true self, its proper place in the universe. That would be beautiful, no?”
SHORT LIST OF 2012-RELATED WEB SITES
â— Apocalypse 2012: www.apocalypse2012.com
â— Galactic Research Institute: www.lawoftime.org
â— Mayans: tribes.tribe.net/mayawisdom
â— 2012 Predictions: www.2012predictions.net
SIDEBAR
MONDO APOCALYPTO
We’re born and bred on apocalypse in the United States — all those evangelical “Left Behind” novels are just the tip of the iceberg for a culture obsessed with The End.
But almost all cultures have an apocalyptic streak, some that eerily coincide with Mayan visions: Lord Krishna spoke of a golden age following world-wide destruction in the Kali Yuga time cycle; the Roman Empire’s Sybil oracle predicted that the last of all generations would begin in 2000 A.D.; anthropologist Terence McKenna found a “time wave” pattern in the I Ching oracle with an end-date of 12-21-12; the medieval Celtic shaman Merlin foresaw 21st century disaster, possibly including a polar shift; an Israeli mathematician cracked a “Bible Code” from the Hebrew Torah, suggesting a coming comet disaster; and the Hopi of the American southwest have long prophesied an imminent transition to the fifth world, initiated by rising oceans and the sun heating up.
Like the Mayans, ancient Inca shamans also predicted a time of reckoning consistent with the 2012 deadline — contemporary Peruvian Q’ero Indians, New Zealander Maoris and some Cherokee elders agree on the date, too. (And let’s not even get started with Nostradamus!) Our contemporary seer appears to be the Web Bot Project, a global cyber-oracle using Internet-spiders to tap into the collective unconscious — it supposedly predicted 9/11 and now sees a bad moon rising for humanity.
SIDEBAR
MAYAN APOCALYPSE GOES POP
Believe it or not, Mayan Cosmovision now dominates our thoughts and senses in a cottage industry of apocalyptic artifacts. Dismiss it as nonsense, but 12-21-12 is gathering cultural force in blockbuster pictures, documentaries, Web sites and its own subject-section at bookstores.
For starters, there’s “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to 2012.” Novelist Whitley Strieber, who wrote about his own alien-abduction experience, gets in on the action with “2012: The War for Souls,” slated for Michael Bay treatment in a Warner Bros. film coming next year. John Cusack and Roland Emmerich also use 2012 as fodder for big-screen catastrophe-porno in a November Sony release whose trailer already has popcorn falling out of mouths agape. And of course, the straight-to-video market is starting to crank out cosmic DVD B-fare.
A recent History Channel program on “The End of Days” provides more sober visual entrée, but a quick YouTube “2012” search yields a universe of disastrous delights and prognostications seeding the Web with Mayan-inspired images and ideas.
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