Contents

1. Stars on the end-time Horizon - Real-Sky Observations for 2012

2. Countdown to 2012 - Reflections on Kali Yuga, the Maya end-time, and the Western Narrative Spell

3. The Discovery of the Next World - Reflections Beyond the Maya end-time

4. The Party of Xolotl - Magic and Initiation Among the end-time Tribes

Stars on the end-time Horizon
Real-Sky Observations for 2012

5 March 2007

Flanders
 

I guess I began contemplating the 2012 end-time in the early 1970s, inspired by the publication of Mexico Mystique by anthropologist Frank Waters. I had been working with precession for some years, but tools and techniques were quite primitive back in those days.

I had no access to a computer, and there was not yet a lot of fancy calculation in print, either on precession or Mesoamerican calendrics. Anthony Aveni's Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico was not published until six years later. In the next decade, the 1980s, archeo-astronomy took off famously, with many books appearing at once. It was a heady time to be on the trail of ancient skylore.

It is worth noting that Waters' book appeared in 1974, the inceptive moment of the 1974-2012 interval centered on the nodal year, 1993. I have suggested that this 38-year interval marks the unique generation that will navigate humanity toward the Maya end-time. 1974 signals the initial conditions for the global perspective to emerge in the minds of that generation. Those who initialized the vision of planetary transformation (or whatever) in the 1970s will transmit it to the younger members of the generation, those who live at the post-millennial end of the interval. I believe that generational continuity is essential to the viability and coherence of end-time visions.

The wave of interest in archeoastronomy, and its legitimization as a scientific genre, falls neatly into the 1974-2012 interval. John Michell's cult classic, The View over Atlantis, went up like a signal flare in 1969, calling attention to sacred landscape and ley-lines. Peter Lancaster Brown's Megaliths, Myths and Men, still the best overview of the subject, came out in 1976. Sky/ground mirroring and the stellar orientation of megalithic sites (e.g. Graham Hancock, Heaven's Mirror) are recurrent topics of the end-time.

From megalithic astronomy we take instruction on the long view of civilization and the millennial parameters of cultural evolution.
 

The Path of Heart

Mexico Mystique was a revelation. I remember reading it in one long summer day and a short night, hunkered down in my little adobe house on La Vereda, just off Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, and trembling with excitement. It was a thrill to see end-time speculation treated seriously by a well-known anthropologist and specialist in the indigenous lore of the Southwest, especially Hopi tradition.

At the time, Frank Waters was the dean of Native American anthropology. He lived not far from me, up north in Taos, about an hour's drive along a spectacular route that (after Pilar) follows the course of the Rio Grande. That summer I visited him at Arroyo Seco. Tall and thin as a beanpole, he was an amiable and elegant man. We discussed the long-range parameters of cultural change and historical upheaval reflected in planetary and sidereal cycles.

There are some things in Mexico Mystique that do not stand up today, but much more that still bears consideration. Waters used the subtitle, "The Coming Sixth World of Consciousness," linked closely to the Aquarian Age. Although he worked equally with Maya and Aztec myth and calendrics, Waters emphasized the Aztec Ages or "Suns," and in particular the motif of Ollin, "movement."

He noted that the Fifth Age is not just another age in the sequence because,

"the Fifth Sun, or Sun of Movement, held for the Nahuas the added significance of being the unifying center of the four directional suns that preceded it" (p. 121).

Citing Aztec Thought and Culture by Miguel Leon-Portilla (a superb book, by the way), he added:

Within the Fifth Sun, world, or era, lay another synthesizing center  - the soul of man.

Writes Leon-Portilla:

"The profound significance of movement to the Nahuas can be deduced from the common Nahuatl root of the words movement, heart, and soul. To the ancient Mexicans, life, symbolized by the heart (y-ollo-tl), was inconceivable without the element which explains it, movement (y-olli)." (p. 121)

Waters saw in the heart-movement motif our challenge at the end-time: to find the path of heart for humanity, our species. He sensed that we might respond to that challenge by taking instruction from the myth of Quetzalcoatl. In his rendition of this myth, Waters noted that Xolotl was identical with Kukulcan of the Maya, a lightning god associated with Itzamna, the celestial serpent (Milky Way).

Maya and Aztec myth alike see in Xolotl the twin of the Plumed Serpent Quetzalcoatl, whose Mayan name is Gucumatz.

Mexico Mystique touches on both the cataclysmic possibilities of the end-time (oddly calculated for 2011), as well as its transformational prospects for our species, but Waters does not elaborate too much on the latter. He deemed it valuable (as do I) to reckon the full duration of the Long Count. To do so, he used the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation and a start date of August 12, 3113 BCE.

In his overview of the full 5124-year period, Waters discussed the Hindu Yugas and drew upon the work of siderealist Cyril Fagan, anthroposophist Gunther Wachsmith, Gurdjieffien Rodney Collin, all of whom attempted to construct a coherent model of the Zodiacal ages - alas, without much success.

The problem is, or was at that time, that none of these people had the complete astronomical picture that shows how the pattern of Zodiacal ages is structured according to an extra-Zodiacal factor: the galactic center.
 

The Galactic View

The solar system (* SS) in the spiral arms or limbs of the galaxy.

The third limb, counting outwards from the center, is called the Orion limb.

Distance from the SS to the galactic center (GC), about 24,000 light-years.

Full span of limbs, about 30-32,000 LY.

The view is foreshortened, making the outer limb look larger.
 

Today we have the advantage of knowing quite a lot about the galactic alignment of the Zodiac.

Many current discussions of 2012 assume this alignment to be the determining factor in the Long Count, considered astronomically, but, for some odd reason, the pattern of Zodiacal Ages is rarely factored into this perspective. The galactic alignment of the Zodiac gets a lot of attention, but the overall pattern of the Zodiacal Ages is ignored - a serious oversight in end-time astronomy.

Yet 2012 has been associated with the Aquarian Age.

The Zodiacal Ages (Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, etc) are measured by star-patterns on the ecliptic, a band of thirteen constellations of uneven size and extent. The stars in these constellations lie in relatively close proximity to the earth in the immediate region of the galactic limb we occupy, the third limb of four counting outward from the center. In their totality all the stars visible to us in all directions from the earth comprise about three percent of the stars in the galaxy!

Of this three percent, only a minute selection comprise the massive figures of the Zodiacal constellations. The maximum distance of these stars is not more than 1500 light-years, compared to the distance of 24,000 light-years to the galactic center.

The constellations of the entire celestial sphere, including the Ecliptic band of 13 figures and 75 extra-Ecliptic formations, are composed of near, naked-eye stars in the local limb, or arm. Because we are located within the arm, we notice the region of dense star population, the edge of the spiral arm, and on either side of that, constellations spread across less densely populated space. The lateral edge of the spiral arm, seen from within, is the Milky Way.

It intersects the band of Zodiacal constellations at two points, between Taurus and Gemini, and between Scorpio and Sagittarius.

The above map (Erlewine, Astrophysical Directions) shows the Milky Way as the shaded area. The path of the ecliptic where the sun moves through the sky (actually, the orbital plane of the earth) runs from right to left, crossing the Milky Way at an angle of about 65 degrees. Out of the 88 constellations in the celestial sphere surrounding the earth, the ecliptic traverses thirteen distinct star-patterns: Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer are shown here.

The Zodiacal constellations, or ecliptic constellations as they can also be called, stand apart from the extra-Ecliptic constellations, such as Orion seen here beneath Taurus. Orion, with his right arm raised up toward the horns of Taurus, seems to dangle off the Milky Way.

The Milky Way intersects the ecliptic at an angle of 65 degrees, as just noted. Erlewine follows astronomical convention and inserts a hypothetical median line or equator in the Milky Way, the so-called galactic equator. It runs from Perseus to Auriga, between Taurus and Gemini, down into Canis Minor and so on around the full celestial sphere. The region where the Milky Way and ecliptic intersect is visually remarkable because the horns of Taurus extend into the dense starstream of the Milky Way, and the feet of twins likewise dip into it. In naked-eye observation, these graphic details create a striking visual impression.

So, the entire celestial sphere we see does not comprise the galaxy, but a mere section of the local limb, the third from center counting outwards. All the stars around the earth fit into a "bubble of observability" crisscrossed by two bands, the band of the Milky Way, consisting of eighteen constellations, and the band of the thirteen Zodiacal constellations on the Ecliptic.

Other star-patterns are spread out over the expanse of the celestial sphere in all directions.
 

The Two Zodiacs

The best way to track the Zodiacal Ages is with a flat model that displays all thirteen ecliptic patterns in a circular format. Such models are extremely hard to find, however. Despite all that has been written on the Ages, you will not find a clear, straightforward illustration of the Zodiac in a circular format except, perhaps, among the little-known school of sidereal astrology. I developed the model that I now use at the start of the 1974 - 2012 interval.

The illustration below shows at the center a typical horoscope plotted on the grid of twelve astrological signs, and simultaneously, the real-sky constellations excluded from the horoscope.

Although it is difficult to make out the details, the central wheel consists of the twelve zodiacal signs (Aries, Taurus, Gemini) with planets in them on a specific date.

The sign Zodiac of popular astrology uses a division of the ecliptic plane into twelve equal slices, like a pizza. Planetary positions are measured on this uniform grid irrespective of their actual. observable positions relative to the surrounding stars. Beyond the sign Zodiac we see the shape and extent of the real-sky constellations that lie along the rim of the ecliptic; hence I call this model the "Rimsite."

The arrows extending outwards from the starless horoscope show how each planet in the sign Zodiac has another position in the star Zodiac. This is conversion to Star Base™, the graphic format of the real-sky constellations.

It is perplexing to learn that Sun sign astrology based on uniform ecliptic sectors ignores the stars, but this is an irrefutable fact. I have spilled tons of ink in the effort to sort out the two formats, sign Zodiac and star Zodiac, but that is not the issue here. The above illustration serves to show that the ecliptic plate with the full array of astrological signs - i.e., the horoscopic format - is independent of the surrounding constellations.

Astrologers locate planets in that format (the orbital plane of the earth divided into twelve equal sections of 30 degrees each) and totally ignore the irregular star patterns visible in the night sky. Astrology ignores the stars. We have to look to astronomical resources to work out any patterns of Zodiacal timing that may apply to 2012.

To track the Zodiacal Ages, we observe how the ecliptic plate rotates against the surrounding stars. Precession is mapped by a carousel movement: the slow rotation of the ecliptic plate with its array of twelve Sun signs, at the rate of one degree every 72 years against the background of the fixed stars. 72 X 360 = 25,920 years for the full cycle.

Precession occurs as the solstices and equinoxes (the four quarters of the starless astrological grid system) shift against the starry background of the constellations. The conventional marker for the Zodiacal Ages is the spring equinox or vernal point, abbreviated VP. This is the first degree of the astrological sign Aries.

It might be equated to the one-hour mark on a clock face. Imagine that the immense ecliptic plate is a clock face numbered 1 to 12 and divided into four quadrants, framed by a graphic display of thirteen mythical figures such as a bull, crab, scorpion, centaur, etc. The clock face rotates so that in one epoch of history the one-hour mark stands in front of the bull (Taurian Age: 4400 - 1850 BCE), but in another epoch, it stands in front of the crab (Cancerian Age: 7800 - 6150 BCE).

Precession, then, is the rotation of the ecliptic sign-carousel relative to the circle of environing real-sky constellations.
 

Real-Sky Graphics

The position of the sun against the background of the Star Zodiac on March 21 of any year shows the Zodiacal Age for that historical epoch. Currently, the VP stands in the constellation of Pisces, the Fishes, at the nine o'clock position in the model above. It is slowly shifting clockwise from under one of the fishes into the next constellation, Aquarius, the Waterbearer.

There are two ways to show the real-sky constellations, by composites or dot-to-dot patterns, as seen on astronomical maps:

 - and by graphics, presenting a visual or imaginary version of the star-pattern:

Any astronomical map will show the position of the spring equinox for a given date (VP: 1950), but traditionally, maps used for naked-eye observation depict the constellations graphically, e.g., the two fishes of Pisces in the celestial atlas of Elijah Burritt, 1835, based on the woodcuts of Albrect Durer, 1510. One of the fishes swims up and away from the ecliptic, toward Andromeda, the Chained Woman. The other swims westward along and above the ecliptic toward the neighboring constellation of Aquarius.

The second fish might be imagined to be swimming into currents that stream from the urn held by the Waterbearer. This is one way to visualize the transition from Pisces to Aquarius.

However you picture it, the VP has a long, long way to go before it enters the composite stars of Aquarius - at least eight hundred years. This is not a matter of speculation, but a simple astronomical computation.

Beta Piscium, the star that marks the nose of the fish swimming left to right along the ecliptic, has a longitude of 348.59 for the year 2000. This is 11.41 degrees from the VP, the zero point on the ecliptic. 11.41 X 72 = 822 years until the VP reaches that star and leave the Pisces composite. Technically, the VP does enter the composite stars of the constellation of Aquarius until 2822 CE!

The Fishes are joined by a thread that provides distinct visual separation from the neighboring constellation, the Ram. The VP coming from the Ram touched that thread around 120 BCE, when the Piscean Age began. Measured strictly in astronomical terms, the duration of the Piscean Age is about 2900 years. The Zodiacal Ages are uneven in length, because the star-patterns that designate them are irregular in shape and extent.

Unlike other students of cosmic timing, I reject the model of twelve Ages computed in uniform periods of 2160 years. It is far more instructive, I contend, to look at the timing of the Ages in real astronomical terms.

Every star in the ecliptic constellations can be precisely dated. The Zodiac is a star clock, a precision instrument for tracking the Ages. The graphic formations used to track precession belong to the observable Star Zodiac and have nothing to do with the starless, non-observable signs. Due to this situation, we require two sets of names to distinguish signs and constellations.

I prefer to the leave the well-known Greco-Latin names (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc) to designate the astrological signs, and to adopt pictorial, "story-book" names for the real-sky constellations: Ram, Bull, Twins, etc. Unfortunately, astronomical maps use the astrological names. In the astronomical map above I have supplied the pictorial names, Ram, Fishes, Waterbearer, in place of the usual Latin names.

Getting the habit of using the story-book names is not easy, but it helps hugely once it is acquired. We can then refer to sign and constellation simultaneously. Someone born, say, on September 26, has the sun in 4 degrees of the sign Libra on the ecliptic scale, and in the face of the Virgin in the graphic form of the constellations.

The placement in the constellation does not mean that this person, presumed to be a Libra, is really a Virgo. The real-sky placement of the sun, the moon, and planets does not denote personality, and does not yield a stereotype comparable to the Sun sign types in astrology.

It points to another dimension of human experience, the transpersonal realm.
 

Midnight Hour

To return to the question of how 2012 relates to the Zodiacal Ages: we noted that Frank Waters and other scholars were unable to determine this connection because they did not have the extra-Zodiacal factor that identifies the midnight hour of precessional timing. The VP goes around the Zodiac from one Age to the next, precessing against the natural or seasonal order of the constellations.

The Ages run in reverse:

• Geminian (6150 - 4400 BCE)

• Taurean (4400 - 1820 BCE)

• Arien (1820 - 120 BCE)

• Piscean (current, began 120 BCE)

This is the sequence of the Ages, but it does not reveal their pattern. We only discover the pattern of cosmic timing when we lock the complete cycle of Zodiacal Ages into an extra-Zodiacal framework so that the zero hour or midnight hour can be determined. The decisive factor outside the Zodiac is the galactic center.

The galactic center does not, of course, lie in the local limb where the Zodiacal star-patterns appear. It is situated at the core of the four-armed galactic spiral, about 24,000 light-years from us, eighteen times more distant than any star in the Zodiac. The core itself is not visible to us, but the direction toward it can be seen in the area where one Zodiacal figure, the Archer, comes together with another, the Scorpion. The galactic center, which is far, far beyond the stars of the Zodiac, can be located provisionally within the Zodiacal constellations, thus providing a midnight setting for the cycle of the Ages.

The full precessional cycle is called the Kalpa. When the VP aligns to the galactic center, the Kalpa "turns over," and a new precessional cycle commences.

Although the vernal point is the hour-hand of the Zodiacal Ages, it is not the alignment of the VP to the galactic center that determines the midnight moment. Calculations of precession, comparison of the World Ages in different traditions, and other details of astro-mythological lore have led most scholars (including myself) to conclude that the zero hour happens when the winter solstice aligns to the galactic center.

Currently, the position of the winter solstice, where the sun stands on December 21 each year, is about three degrees westward from the best estimate for the sightline to the galactic center: that is, 27 degrees of the astrological sign Sagittarius, or ECL 267. The position of the winter solstice is by definition at 270 on the ecliptic scale.

At 72 years per degree, there are three degrees or about 200 years to go before the Zodiac ticks down to the zero hour, the end of one full cycle of 25,920 years and the start of another. According to my studies of the Dendera Zodiac, an ancient artifact that shows graphically how galactic alignment defines the frame of the Zodiacal Ages, the exact date would be 2216 CE.

The start-date for the cycle then ending would be 72 X 360 (the full cycle) less 2216 years = 23,704 BCE. The full duration of the current precessional cycle (Kalpa) is 25,920 years. If you compare this period to a 24-hour day, we are living in the last eleven minutes of that day.

Michael's Erlewine's groundbreaking manual, Astrophysical Directions, was published by the Heart Center School of Astrology in Ann Arbor in 1977, three years after Mexico Mystique appeared. It clearly shows the location of the galactic center near the tail of the Scorpion, just above the sting. The neighboring constellation of the Archer appears to aim his arrow directly at this point - one of numerous cosmic directional signals encoded in the Zodiac and extra-Zodiacal constellations.

(Paul LaViolette, known for his cataclysmic cosmic ray theory, claims to have discovered that the Archer points to the galactic center, but Erlewine's book appeared before his work. In 1977 anyone looking at Michael Erlewine's detailed sky maps could have made the observation. I clearly recall discussing it with astrologer Ray Mardyks in a cafe in Santa Monica in 1978.)

Erlewine's map (detail above) clearly shows the galactic center (GC) at 0 on the scale of the galactic equator, an imaginary line running transversely through the local limb. The darkened region is the Milky Way, the lateral edge of the galactic arm we inhabit. We have already seen how the Milky Way intersects the ecliptic constellations of the Twins and the Bull in the northern reaches of the sky. Here, toward the south, it intersects the Scorpion and the Archer (the "story-book" names).

There is a distinct bulge in the Milky Way in this region, suggesting the bulge of the immense star mass at the hub of our galaxy. Toward the Archer we are looking at the hub, but cannot actually see it because, astronomers say, it is shrouded in a thick cloud of black dust.

In the constellation of the Archer (astronomical name Sagittarius, not to be confused with the astrological sign of the same name!), the star gamma, shown by the Greek letter resembling a y, marks the tip of the arrow aimed toward the Scorpion. The galactic center (GC) is a little above his line of aim. Close and sustained observation of these immense composites shows that the Archer aims at the star eta in the lower torso of the Scorpion. Yet the close proximity to the GC leaves the impression that his arrow points to that locale as well.

It is certainly remarkable that the distinctive pointing gesture of the Archer directs our attention on a sightline on the galactic center. Bear in mind that the Archer visualization is highly improbable, and does not intuitively come to mind. The composite of this constellation is often drawn dot-to-dot as a teapot, which it roughly resembles. It certainly looks more like a teapot than an archer aiming his bow! I would not claim that this constellation was designed to point out the galactic center, because, obviously, no star-pattern is a human construct.

But I would suggest that from time before reckoning people were taught to visualize the composite stars as an archer aiming his arrow in that way so that their attention would be graphically directed to the galactic center. Almost none of composites of the constellations resemble the graphics attached to them. They are deliberate devices of visualization intended to bring attention to specific astrophysical directions.

On the above astronomical map, the ecliptic is the line marked 240 - 250 - 260, running right to left. This is the path of the sun throughout the year. At 270 the sun reaches the winter solstice. With precession, the solstice point shifts west (to the right). Clearly the point of the solstice is close to alignment with the GC, but it has a way to go - around 200 years.

The infrastructure of the Dendera Zodiac confirms this timescale.

Detail of the Dendera Zodiac, showing how Axis E points
to the sightline for the galactic center, located at the tip
the Archer's arrow, above the tail of the Scorpion.

Starry Endowment

The constellations shown here, called by their story-book names, Archer and Scorpion, are not the same at the astrological signs, Sagittarius and Scorpio. Likewise for the Fishes, which is a real-sky composite not to be confused with the astrological sign Pisces. If you are a Pisces (February 20 - March 21), you do not have the sun in the star pattern of the Fishes, but in the star pattern of the preceding constellation, the Waterbearer.

Yet this is not exactly the case, either. If you are born in the last 10-12 degrees of the sign Pisces (i.e., after March 10), your natal sun is indeed located in the composite stars of the fish that swims along the ecliptic. Can we say, then, that in some cases a sign or part of a sign will coincide with a constellation? Not really.

There is no point-to-point "correspondence" between signs and constellations, and there never was a time when they coincided. The sign Zodiac and the star Zodiac are two distinct formats. This fact does not invalidate Sun sign astrology, but throws it into an entirely new perspective. I discuss this matter at length in my book, Quest for the Zodiac.

The formidable task of decoding the Star Zodiac reveals what I call stellar phylogenetics. I mention it here because it may turn out that phylogenetic transfer is one of the key revelations of the end-time. Rather than impose this notion as a pet idea of mine, I would like to see how it reveals itself over time, in the immediate future and the years leading up to 2012.

In Quest for the Zodiac, I explain that we all have two kinds of inheritance. The first is our universally recognized genetic inheritance from blood relations. This is the component of genetic replication carried in the chromosomes, where about 3 percent of our DNA is configured. The other kind of inheritance is a transfer to the individual from the human species as a whole - genomic, rather than genetic (chromosomal).

The genomic inheritance, which I call the endowment, can be decoded from the array of planets in the graphic constellations, Ram, Twins, Virgin, Scorpion, etc. Unlike the astrological signs, which present a set of twelve psychological types, the constellations of the real-sky Zodiac do not indicate consistent personality traits but transpersonal gifts and faculties inherited by each person from the experience of humanity at large: the genomic endowment of humanity's long-range potential.

Phylogenetic transfer is pan-species inheritance, the way humanity transmits its high-end learning assets from one generation to the next.

In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, John Major Jenkins writes:

"They [the Maya] used thirteen constellations rather than twelve. This fact would result in a different timing for the anticipated shift in World Ages, one that would not agree with the dawn of the Aquarian Age recognized in Western astrology"

(p. xxxvi).

Precisely so. The real-sky Zodiac of thirteen irregular constellations is not only the frame of the World Ages but also presents the "cosmic code" of phylogenetic transfer. It shows how the genius of the human species evolves over time by a genomic transfer of peak potential.

Jenkins says,

"according to Maya calendric science, the Great Cycle times our collective unfolding as a species, as well as the cycles of culture"

(p. 22-23).

The trick is, to understand how long-range changes in the human species come to fruition via self-actualized individuals living in a particular historical epoch.
 

Sophia's Correction

I seem to recall that Jenkins refers somewhere to the genius of the human species. His language for the Maya end-time points to that conception. In many ways Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, which appeared in 1998, is a parallel text to Quest for the Zodiac, published a year later. Jenkins based book on studies of the Maya calendar and cultural mythology of Mesoamerica, and I based mine on the Dendera Zodiac and comparative mythology.

The difference is in the way we each set up expectations for the Next Age. Jenkins asserts that precession is a model of evolution with each Age as a "growth cycle" comprised of particular parameters and lessons (p. 22). He assumes that with the change of the Age or shift to the "Next World," humanity as a whole undergoes a spiritual rebirth:

If precession is understood as a collective gestation of the human spirit, it requires a birth moment in which the cumulative achievements of the 26,000-year growth cycle come to fruition. (p. 324)

In this moment of fruition or "spiritual embryogenesis" (a notion derived from Oliver Reiser), Jenkins sees the Galactic Center "as the supreme sociopolitical organizing principle" (324), and he anticipates that the connection to the center will produce a massive catalytic effect upon humanity, shifting the attitude, if not the behavior, of our entire species.

For my part, I am far less optimistic about a collective shift, and more inclined to see a surge of genius potential in certain individuals. My efforts to decode the real-sky Zodiac have led me to believe that phylogenetic transfer is perpetual, and there is no key moment of collective shift into a higher octave of awareness  - although there are sudden cataclysmic moments of collective breakdown.

In the 2012 shift I see a moment when the surge of genius potential in individuals who realize their endowment can play over into collective life, inducing critical changes. To me the most fascinating thing about 2012 is how the surge parlays into a social and collective correction - or IF it does.

While Jenkins (and others) anticipate "the transformation of humanity into something completely new (p. xxxv)," I see novelty emerging through gifted individuals all the time, all through history, but in particular ebbs and flows that can be tracked (as Terence McKenna attempted to do with his timeline based on permutations of the I Ching).

Novelty is a feature of human expression carefully observed and nurtured in the Mysteries, as I explain in Not in His Image. Gnostics identified the singularity of the human species by the Greek word monogenes, which scholars translate as "only-begotten." I protest that "only-begotten" is a received concept reflecting bogus theological doctrines that have nothing to do with the educational insight of the telestai, the seers who maintained the Mysteries. The singularity of the human species - its capacity to continually express novelty - is a central theme in the Gnostic myth of Sophia.

I propose that novelty emerges as the peak potential realized by certain people in one generation or historical epoch assumes a new configuration in a later generation or epoch.

Phylogenetic transfer is ongoing and diachronic, with novelty possible at any moment, although there are certain moments when it surges. 2012 is one of those moments. Both Jenkins and I agree that this date is not the dawn of the Aquarian Age, nor the end of the precessional cycle. I propose that it is the moment when we acquire the navigational skills to get to the end. In this process, which will take about 200 years to unfold, the concept of the Galactic Center is of paramount importance. Jenkins makes this point several times, and I too insist on that emphasis, but with a different spin.

Additional to singularity, monogenes, the sacred narrative of the Old World Mysteries carries the themes of self-organization, autogenes, and correction, diorthosis. Self-organization, or autopoesis, is the property innate to all living matter, but according to the sophisticated parapsychology of the gnostikoi, we, the human species, can deviate from what is innate due to our preference for abstraction and model-making. We come to like our ideas about reality more than reality itself.

We cocoon in ideational and technological gimmicky, in models and memes. Doing so, we lose touch with the essential intelligence that informs all life, and we even lose our connection to humanity itself, becoming dehumanized, routinary, banal and predictable (as don Juan remarked to Castaneda in their conversation about alien intrusion by "the flyers").

In some manner that is not entirely clear in what remains of Gnostic writings, the ancient seers understood that our tendency to deviate from our true potential into artificiality was connected with a problem facing Sophia, the goddess who morphed into the earth and who is now the living intelligence of the earth, the planetary entelechy.

They taught that Sophia is involved in a correction by which she becomes aligned to the cosmic source of all organic life in our galaxy: the galactic core or Pleroma. We have seen that knowing the actual physical locality of the core is essential to plotting the cycle of Zodiacal Ages by the determination of a midnight hour based on extra-Zodiacal alignment.

Is this alignment, so far stated purely in astronomical terms, somehow related to the correction of Sophia by which she reintegrates herself with the Aeons in the Pleroma?

Exploring this question is, in my view, the leading challenge of the 2012 end-time.

I will continue to develop the notion of Sophia's correction in follow-up articles on real-sky lore relating to 2012. For now, I would like to wind up this article with a summary comment: The correction of Sophia, the planetary entelechy, is the single most important factor yet to be integrated into our growing intuition of the 2012 end-time and what lies beyond it. As far as I know, nothing in the current debate refers explicitly or even by implication to the role of the planetary intelligence in the immanent changes facing our species.

There is huge speculation about pole shift and the reversal of the magnetic fields, but these phenomena are not considered in terms of conscious orientation of the Gaian mind. As far as Gaia is concerned, the materialistic paradigm still prevails, and the assumption of blind, unconscious matter pervades the debate.

When do we start talking about the shift of the planetary mind, Sophia's correction, rather than a shift in the collective mind of humanity, and how do we establish the syntax for such a conversation?

2012 brings an opportunity to contemplate the mind of Gaia as the supernatural intelligence that complements human genius and engages singularity rather than the collective psyche or mass-mind mentality. It may be that Gaia-Sophia favors the gifted, those who fulfil the genomic endowment, and depends on them for her correction.

This is what the Gnostic teachings appear to indicate.

Back to Contents


 

Countdown to 2012

Reflections on Kali Yuga, the Maya end-time, and the Western Narrative Spell
January 2007

Andalucia

With the turn of the new year, I found myself reflecting on the proximity of 2012, the end date of the Maya calendar. Discussion of this timing has been escalating rapidly for a number of years now, and not just in New Age circles.

A great many internet sites and forums are dedicated to it. It is the main subject of Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl (which I have yet to read), and a dozen other speculative tomes. Currently, John Major Jenkins and Carl Johan Calleman are slugging it out to see who will be the victorious visionary of the 2012 countdown.

This may be the apt moment for me to weigh in on this arcane subject. Apart from a tentative essay for phenomenamagazine.com, I've kept mum so far. More and more of late, friends are asking me what I think about the "end-time" and what others like Jenkins and Calleman are saying about it.

Those who know something of my work in astral phylogenetics (Quest for the Zodiac), stellar mythology, the World Ages, and precessional timing (Dendera Decoded), are curious about my views. Having spent a good many years in the practice of skywatching and investigation into the Zodiacal timeframe and various schemes of long-term chronology - Hindu, Egyptian, Tibetan, Maya, Aztec, Persian, Mithraic, Gurdjieffian, theosophical, anthroposophical, and others I forget - I feel almost obliged to comment on this trendy topic.

I will dispense with a pungent Lashian overview of the World Ages (he says, barely restraining the urge to salivate heavily). What follows is a short description of the Maya Long Count, with some thoughts about what might be facing us in the countdown to the end-time.

Maya fresco thought to depict the Flood, with volcano
erupting in the background.

Thirteen Baktuns

The Maya calendar is a cultural artifact from the general category of the World Ages. Computing the long-term chronology of the cosmos was a concern in all ancient cultures from China to Peru.

The introduction of calendars to regulate civic life and agricultural planning was a long and complex process. In devising these systems, the calendar-makers did not limit themselves to time in the human scale, but extended their computations to countless thousands of years. In these permutations, they sometimes came up with remarkable figures.

The number 4,320,000,000 occurs in Hindu chronology where it is associated with the cosmological motif of the "Days and Nights of Brahma." This number caught the attention of Joseph Campbell, who observed that 4,320,000,000 years, or 4.32 billion years, is intriguingly close to the current estimate for the geological age of the earth, 4.5 billion years. (I apply the Hindu norm rather than the accepted geological estimate in my calculation of the age of Gaia.)

4320 is the base number that generates the four Yugas of Hindu cosmology. It also shows up in the chronology of prediluvian kings compiled by the Babylonian priest, Berossus, and elsewhere. It is an artificial norm (a sacred canonical unit, if you prefer) that also factors into various geological, sidereal, solar, lunar, and planetary time cycles.

Like the Hindu timescale, Maya calendrics runs into "nonillions" of years - the range of remote, unimaginable numbers. The mathematician-priests who devised the Maya calendar recorded exact dates of events, down to the day, but they also liked to extrapolate far backward and forward in time. The precision of their planetary, solar, and lunar tables is impressive.

They calculated the cycles of Venus and the Earth as accurately as we do today, down to four decimal points. This mastery of verifiable time-cycles commands respect, and obliges us to look closely at their long-term extrapolations. For the Maya and all other ancient peoples, verifiable and non-verifiable calculations were integral to a single system of sacred calendrics. I see nothing woolly-minded in granting some respect to their long-term timeframe, especially if something can be learned from doing so.

According to most experts, the Long Count dates from early in the Classical Maya era, 200 - 900 CE, although it may be much older in conception (possibly originating among the Olmecs in the 7th C. BCE).

The engravings that record the earliest dates are Chiapas de Corzo, Stela 2, 32 BCE, and Tikal Stela 2, 292 CE. The last date recorded was January 909 CE. The calendar uses a string of five units factored on a 20-base: k'ín (1 day), winal (20 days), tun (360 days of 18 winals), katun (7200 days or 20 tuns) and baktun (144,000 days or 20 katuns).

The stele or engraved stones with calendric glyphs record dates by hieroglyphs and dot and bar notations, showing the units by position. Scholars notate the dates in five placements, from baktun to k'in, like this: 9.16.0.2.0, equivalent to June 18, 751 AD. December 21, 2012 is written 13.0.0.0.0. There are three standards of correlation and, you bet, a lot of quibbles and fine tuning in Maya chronology. (Stela drawing from Beyond 2012, used by permission. See box below.)
 

The Long Count is backdated to August 13, 3114, and comes ahead to December 21, 2012. This is a total of 5126 years or 1,867,145 days. This interval is close to 13 baktuns of 144,000 days each, so the Maya Long Count is routinely called "thirteen baktuns." Not a terribly long period of time as sacred calculations go, but long enough to frame a vast historical perspective.

The Long Count of 5126 years is roughly one-fifth of the full cycle of precession of the equinoxes, 25,920 years. This fits the Long Count into a verifiable frame of astronomical timing, which is impressive. Because the Count is an increment of the full precessional cycle, it can be analyzed in parallel with the Zodiacal frame of precession.

The current debate centers on what is going to happen when the Count expires in December 2012, just five years and eleven months from now. I will be more precise: there was a new moon on the eve of the winter solstice, 21 December, 2006. This is exactly six years to the end of the Long Count. In six years there are 74 new moons (occurring on the synodic cycle of 29.53 days).

We can count down to the end-time by lunar intervals. As I write these words, we are in the 74th moon.
 

Making It Up

Before looking ahead at what the Maya end-time might signify, let's look back at the initial date. So far, this has received far less attention than the end date. But I would argue that outcome of the Count will be reflected, in some manner and some measure, in the initial conditions. If we are expecting something to end in 2012 CE, it might be helpful to know what began, what conditions prevailed, at the start date in 3114 BCE.

When scholars first worked out the correlation of the Long Count to the Julian calendar that we use - the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation, lately improved by John Major Jenkins - some esotericists loitering on the sidelines noted that the 3114 BCE start date is close to the Hindu date of 3102 BCE, said to mark the beginning of a cosmic cycle, Kali Yuga.

Hindu legend states that Kali Yuga, the age of darkness or decadence in which we now live, began with the death of Krishna on February 16, 3102 BCE. This is perhaps the most famous date in sacred calendrics. Hindu calculations make the length of Kali Yuga hugely longer than the Maya Long Count, but the coincidence of start dates is striking. This is the Hindu-Maya correlation.

In Dendera Decoded (unpublished), my study of the sacred calendrics of the Dendera Zodiac, I show that Axis D on the bas-relief at Dendera marks the date 3102 BCE, indicated by alignment of the equinoxes to the star Antares in the Scorpion. (Right now, the planet Jupiter is aligned to that star, the red giant in the heart of the Scorpion, making a lovely predawn spectacle here in Andalucia.)

In Egyptian myth, the date 3102 BCE designates the murder of Osiris, parallel to the death of Krishna. This gives the Hindu-Maya-Egyptian correlation. (For a short summary of my Dendera work, including the discovery of a fifth, hitherto unknown axis, see Colin Wilson, The Atlantis Blueprint, and the website:
http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/5.htm, and scroll down to item 38.)

What to make of the correlation between Kali Yuga and the Maya Long Count?

Buddhist and Hindu sources present quite a lot of material on Kali Yuga. In the Tantra of the Great Liberation, Shiva discourses to his consort Parvati on the deplorable conditions into which humanity will sink at the end of Kali Yuga. Many of the things he describes are now commonplace in our world. The prophecies of Padma Sambhava from Tibetan tradition also present similar predictions, ranging from trivial social customs (people will eat standing up, and even running) to technological inventions (the metal bird will cross the skies) to spiritual decadence (guides to enlightenment will be sold on street corners).

There is no such record of what the Classical Maya thought about the way the world would be at the end of the Long Count, or if they had anything like a prophetic conception of the last days.

Without evidence of what the calendar-makers believed, we are obliged to make up our own minds about the social, spiritual, and psychological aspects of the end-time. I may differ from other scholars in openly admitting that I am making up what I say about signs and prospects of the end-time. Others more qualified than I tend to claim that they draw their interpretations from ancient evidence, or follow what the ancients believed, even though there is no written account to tell us what the Maya believed.

What I make up may or may not be true, or helpful, or even interesting. The fact that I make something up - that is, devise interpretations from my own learning and imagination - may disqualify it as mere invention to some minds. Fine. I prefer to let you know how I operate, keeping my pretences right out in the open.

Take what you like and leave the rest.
 

Krishna and Osiris

The Hindu-Maya-Egyptian correlation provides some mythological clues for profiling the start date of the Long Count. The death of Krishna and the murder of Osiris represent mythogenetic moments (Campbell's term) when our species' intrinsic access to the Sacred was ruptured. Consequently, the cultural reflections and creative expressions of that access began to decay dramatically.

Here I do not read Krishna and Osiris as patriarchal icons, but prepatriarchal consorts of the Goddess. Krishna may be pictured as the divine teacher or male-guru-avatar of the Bhagavad Gita, but equally, and more anciently, he was the orgiastic love god who romped with the matron Radha and the gopis, cow-herding girls always ready for a roll in the hay. In this perspective, Krishna is not an empowered patriarch but more like an Asian version of Eros.

This view is consistent with the preponderance of Vaishnava scholarship. (See the anthology, The Divine Consort. Vaishnava is the name for cults dedicated to Krishna worship.)

Krishna and Radha, Gita Govinda series,
Pahari School, Himadel Pradesh, 18th C
 

Likewise, in the predynastic culture of southern Egypt, Osiris was the consort of Isis who was born at Dendera. The supreme mother goddess of predynastic Egypt was Hathor, to whom the temple of Dendera was dedicated.

Hathor was a female divinity without a male consort, except for her own offspring, Horus, who had no father. Her totemic animal was the vulture, said to be fertilized by the wind. The Hathor-Horus myth points to the time when men did not rule society and paternity was not the determinative factor in social status or organization. That is, pre-Osirian times.

The roof chapels at Dendera present the most complete account in hieroglyphic writing and iconography of the resurrection of Osiris, along with the sole intact model of a working Zodiac that survives from antiquity. Osiris, the grain-god in Hathor's cult, preceded Osiris the divine pharaoh of northern Egypt. In other words, there is a pre-theocratic Osiris in the goddess-oriented culture that left us the Dendera temple, a Ptolemaic construction incorporating some extremely ancient motifs.

In the Denderic context, Osiris was an epiphany of the trans-sexual regenerative powers of nature, specifically the phylogenetic code. Osiris represents the "ingrained" language or operating instructions of nature, the linga sharira ("long sheath") in Tantric terms, and Hathor was the ancient matriarchal guardian of his Mysteries. In dynastic times, the priesthood who ran Egyptian theocracy elevated Osiris to status of a divine avatar, and made him the deific model of the theocratic ruler, the pharaoh. Such is a typical theocratic script.

With this view of Krishna and Osiris - idiosyncratic perhaps, but based on well-known mythological material and matching the profile of predynastic times - I propose that the start time of the Long Count represents a break from goddess-oriented nature-wisdom, the co-optation of sacred biology for a theocratic agenda, and a consequent loss of contact with the Sacred immanent in the natural world, leading humankind into a dark age when contact with the Sacred is mediated by beliefs dictated by men who claim to speak for God.

Although the full historical picture would place its inception somewhat earlier, around 4400 BCE, the Age of Patriarchy can be synchronized with the Count along these lines... Since the dawn of that Age, communion with the intelligence of nature, embodied awareness of the Sacred, and reverence for the Divine Feminine, not to mention mortal woman herself, have all declined drastically.

With this decline, the human species lost its gender balance, its natural moral disposition to goodness and cooperation (widely recognized in Paganism, as I have explained in Not in His Image), and fell under the spell of patriarchal and theocratic narratives such as the Egyptian and Babylonian fables of divine kingship and, of course, the Old Testament tale of the Chosen People.
 

Nodal Moments

How does this interpretation of the start date of the Long Count play against the historical record? Well, here's a little trick: go to the midpoint of the Count by subtracting one-half of 5126 years from 3114 BCE. This comes to 551 BCE. The 6th Century BCE was the moment when the Yahwist narrative of Genesis came into rigid formulation under the reforms of King Josiah (ruled 640 - 609), lauded as the ideal ruler in that brutal manifesto of theocracy, Deuteronomy.

Between 587 and 537 BCE a large part of the Jewish nation was exiled to the city of Babylon. When they returned to Canaan, the Yahwist scribes who were writing the program of the father god merged their racial myth with Persian split-source dualism, a world view that attributes good and evil to the same super-human agency.

This model of cosmic conflict was worked into the Biblical narrative and determined all later variations of divine retribution and apocalyptic violence consistent with the crypto-fascist theocratic agenda, enacted in the global wars of religion that threaten the world today.

Obviously, I am not making this part up. I am simply connecting the events at the midpoint of the Long Count with my thematic overview of the significance of the Count. To do so, I use a method of computing nodal moments that I picked up years ago in anthroposophical circles: 3114 BCE > 551 BCE < 2012 CE.

This is as simple as it gets, yet it's amazing what kind of information this tool can generate, once you have a framing concept or heuristic phrase to tell you what to look for. In this case, the heuristic tool is the concept "goddess-based societies overthrown by theocratic agenda" or "nature-wisdom versus revealed religion." The nodal moments reveal pivotal historical events that make sense within the heuristically predefined frame.

Want to try another node?

Go to the midway moment between 3114 BCE and 551 BCE. This is 1832 BCE, the period assigned to the patriarch Abraham who was born, by some accounts, around 1812 BCE.

The Code of Hammurabi (b. 1810) is the earliest surviving example of a totalitarian, male-mandated social agenda. The transition into patriarchy gained huge momentum during the period when the vernal point shifted from the Bull into the Ram, Taurus to Aries, around 1850 BCE. (No causality implied here, folks: it is simply a matter of synchronal dynamics.)

In eonic studies of history - chronological plotting of events in the frame of the Zodiac and long-range planetary cycles - the Ram indicates the domain of patriarchy. In 551 BCE, the vernal point was transiting the head-stars of the Ram. In the time of Alexander the Great, two centuries later, it still in this region, and had been remarked by skywatchers for some time.

Egyptians called the Ram constellation Amon, and Alexander identified himself with Amon - that is, he deified himself. The priests at Siwa, who declared him the "Son of Amon" to appease the lonely boy's narcissistic fixation, disingenuously advised him to have himself pictured with ram's horns on coins. These priests would have been veteran skywatchers who knew that the horn motif matched the current Zodiacal picture.

Coming forward in time, midway between 551 BCE (midpoint of the Count) and 2012 CE (end of the Count) is 731 CE. Just at this historical moment the Moors were engaged in massive waves of invasion against Europe and extending into the Russian steppes. The 8th century saw both expansion and defeat of Islamic aggression on several fronts. Quite often, nodal dates are amazingly precise. Note that scholars designate 731 as the exact year when Classical Maya civilization peaked out, and began to decline rapidly.

Here is an example of how a simple time-factoring tool with no connection to the Maya calendar, and far removed from the complex computations usually applied to it, can generate discrete data-points consistent with the historical profile of the Long Count.
 

Printing Power

In Europe, the Battle of Tours on October 11, 731, marked the defeat of the 90,000-strong Moorish army that had invaded southern France under the command of the Yemenite governor of Spain, Abd-ar-Rahman. 741 saw the death of Byzantine Emperor Leo II who had successfully repelled the Arab invasion, as well as of Charles Martel, the key figure in resisting the Moorish advance into France (Gaul).

With the major power-players shifting, Europe became more vulnerable to Islam, the most virulent form of theocratic fascism on earth. The rise of Islam involved wide scale genocide, often committed by Arabs against other Arabs, as seen today in Iraq. In 750, Abu-Abbas al-Safah, a descendant of Mohammed's uncle, founded the Abbasid dynasty that would establish an Islamic empire to last for 350 years.

Doing so, he massacred the Umayyads, the competition surviving from the preceding dynasty.

The Moors occupied Spain from the middle of the 8th century until 1492, when they were expelled. The Islamic offensive against Europe was re-inaugurated with the call to return Andalusia to Islam, raised in the wake of the Madrid bombings of March, 2004. Will the 2012 end-time be marked by an intensified replay of the Islamic offensive of 731 CE?

According to the Eurabia theory of Bat Ye'or, an Egyptian-born British historian who specializes in the experience of non-Muslims in Muslim countries, this is precisely the case. (See Wikipedia for an excellent article on this debate.) In While Europe Slept (2006), American ex-pat author Bruce Dawer paints a frightening, thoroughly documented picture of the Islamic subversion of democracy in Europe, especially in Scandinavia.

Currently, Islamic imperialism in Europe is rolling like a shock wave across the continent. Moslems demonstrating against what they view as intolerance toward Islam are manifesting the very intolerance they condemn, but they are succeeding in their demands for special exemption of their religion from rational criticism. Islam presents the endgame formula of patriarchy and dominator religion, the stage where it wins or destroys itself trying (the parasite destroys its host).

The initial conditions of the Long Count culminate in the theocratic fascism of Islam with its program for rigid social control, blind submission to revealed authority, menacing intolerance, and sexual apartheid, all founded on a book attributed to the creator god.

Looking at historical precedents is one way to sketch out a "predictive" profile of events leading to the end of the Count. In fact, there is no prediction involved: one merely looks at the all-too-obvious consequences of recorded events. This is, however, not the way that 2012 diagnoses are usually conducted.

To summarize: the death of Krishna and Osiris around 3114 BCE indicates a sharp escalation in the agenda of patriarchy. Male domination gained momentum when sacred kings were no longer anointed in rites of sexual congress with daughters of the Goddess.

(I have repeated this point numerous times on this site, and I don't like to repeat myself, but I insist that this is a key historical insight we cannot afford to ignore. Read Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman.)

The suppression of goddess-oriented society led to the success of patriarchy, the domination of nature, and sexual apartheid - a pattern that can be traced in close historical detail, if one is so inclined. All this was accomplished by force and intimidation, of course, and by operating "by the Book."

The factual record of history - one damned thing after another, as Henry Ford remarked - is largely a side-effect of the writing of the patriarchal narrative. Emphasis on the ideological instrument of "the book" (or Holy Writ) fits the heuristic profile I am developing here. Indeed, it supplies a main motif that can be seen reflected in many specific events.

In the 8th century, Islam was spreading globally and Arabs battled with the Tang dynasty for control of central Asia. Moslems remained the dominant force in Transoxiana for 150 years. One consequence of the Arab-Chinese confrontation was the setting up of the first paper mill in the Muslim world. This happened in 751 (20 years off the nodal date) in Samarkand after two Chinese prisoners of war revealed the technique of papermaking to their captors.

Immediately, Muslim scholars began to use the new technology for translations of ancient Greek and Roman writings, but also to produce copies of their revealed scripture, the Koran, of course.

So, around the nodal moment 551 BCE, Yahwist scribes buckled down to composing the rigid doctrinal narrative of the Chosen People, the directive script for Judeo-Christian salvationism, and around the nodal moment 731 CE Muslim scribes acquired the paper-based technology to spread their version of the story, inscribed in the Koran.

The Holy Book (of whatever faith) is the main tool of indoctrination and behavioral control for the theocratic agenda of white male supremacy. The fact that Muslim women embrace and adore the Koran is no measure of their compliance, but an indication that they know their lives are at risk were they to do otherwise. If you are a Muslim, the penalty for dissenting from or renouncing the Faith is, according to the Koran, death. For women in Islamic societies, there are penalties worse than death.

The authority of Holy Writ is beyond human critique - quite plainly, Abrahamic religion is incompatible with a civil and democratic society that allows freedom of expression. Today, Moslems in Europe use the freedom of expression granted to them by the democracies in which they live to call for the repeal of that freedom, and no one tells them that's unacceptable. Figure it.

The Book is, and has ever been, the sovereign tool of behavior modification, off-planet imperialism, a potent catalyst to ecocide, genocide, and suicide. It is the mass-produced weapon of mass destruction par excellence.
 

The Narrative Spell

So, my expanded definition of Kali Yuga is: the age of darkness (ignorance) and decadence (moral and material derangement), due to the break from Goddess wisdom, the imposition of off-planet morality dictated by a father god, and the cancerous spread of faith-based religion operating on the theocratic authority of The Book (Torah, Bible, Koran).

Over the last 5000 years, the entire human species has fallen under the thrall of The Book. In Not in His Image, I propose the term narrative spell for the uncanny power of the salvationist script that encodes the beliefs of the three Abrahamic religions.

The mandate of the male-only creator god has a vast, fixating power based in fear and shaming. Those who adopt the Paternal Lie, or, more often, have it mindlessly imposed on them, live it out as if they are acting under post-hypnotic suggestion.

Those who are forced to believe in the story of revealed religion enact it madly and without critical reflection or restraint. What they have received mindlessly, without consent, they act out mindlessly, disregarding the free choice of others. They behave as they believe. What they are told to believe is inscribed in The Book (Torah, Bible, Koran).

The end of the Long Count plunges the entire world into the violent drama of the culmination of such behavior.

 

Mystic Confidence

If the ascent of The Book as a tool of mass-scale ideological programming fits the historical profile of the Long Count, as I have tried to show here, can we bring to the end-time the inspired will to challenge and repel that power? This is my suggestion for thinking constructively about the dangers and prospects of the Maya end-time.

Speculation about the meaning of the Maya end-time peaked briefly in August 1987 with the "Harmonic Convergence." In the debate at that time, Jose Arguelles played a central role with his declaration that the end of the Long Count indicated a moment when a beam from the galactic center would sweep across the earth and produce magical effects. If I recall correctly, the period of the beam matched the precessional cycle of 25,920 years.

Hence, Arguelles simply attached a fantastic interpretation to known phenomenon of astronomical timing. In The Mayan Factor, he claimed that Maya civilization disappeared by dematerialization when some of the population were teleported off the earth on that mysterious cosmic beam, and predicted that the same would happen for many people in 2012. His theories won him two minutes of fame on CNN.

I am not deeply enough involved in the current debate around 2012 to know if Arguelles's ideas are undergoing a revival, but I sense that others, a younger and more creatively inspired crowd, have taken over the discourse, and morphed it considerably. There may be a reprise of Arguelles' notion of dematerialization in some circles, but I would rather hope not. Calls for escaping the planet will not be tolerated on this site.

I am probably out of touch with the pulsations of the new crowd who are building expectation of 2012, but it looks to me like the best options for the Maya end-time are erupting from the orgiastic imagination of younger people in the counterculture, people who are ignited with all manner of erotic, cosmic, artistic, mantic, mythopoeic, and esoteric inspirations.

I have not sensed anything comparable to this excitement since the Psychedelic Revolution of the 1960s. There is true mania in the air, a hint of divine madness, a sense that fantastic things are possible in life and art, that the world itself might be transfigured by acts of imagination. (This is, of course, exactly what the Romantics believed and proposed, a couple of hundred years ago.) A multi-frequency surge of mystical confidence is spreading through some areas of the youth culture.

It would be extremely foolish to dismiss that possibility that the huge buzz around 2012 is the reflection of a collective psychic event of some kind. The question is, do the discussions, speculations, and predictions about 2012 point to that event, or do they merely draw attention to themselves?

So far, the discourse on 2012 has been dominated by claims about the evolution of consciousness making a huge jump, a paradigm shift. We will realize the noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin, for instance. I have a gut feeling that this kind of high-toned chatter might be distracting us from the genuine possibilities of the moment ahead.

This type of speculation could be off the mark if it does not offer a message of change that specifically addresses the terminal social and material conditions of the Kali Yuga. It is one thing to claim a quantum leap into cosmic consciousness, and support it with abstruse computations that go back 16 billion years (Calleman), and another, say, to rally against the social menace of revealed religion. The first is a mere hypothesis, glorious or not, the second is a revolutionary stance, involving a call for action and transformation.

I, for one, begin to wonder if the promise of a sudden, spectacular shift in the collective mindset may not be deviating or undermining the actual breakthrough that is emergent as the world lurches toward 2012. What if this breakthrough is about facing the human condition, rather than skateboarding at warp speed beyond it? If Sophia relies in some way on humanity to achieve her correction, as the Gnostics taught, the human condition will either contribute to that magnificent possibility, or impede it.

To accomplish the breakthrough, then, would depend on how we view the human condition, regarding both resistance to entering the correction, and the skill and inspiration required to enter it.

I sense that expectations of a paradigm shift attached to 2012 are contaminated by two distortions, concerning the scope and the manifestation of the shift. So far, I am not convinced that the notions circulating about 2012 offer a reliable preview either of what can happen, or the scale on which it can happen.

My main criticism of the speculation is that, although it may use historical references, as seen in the close correlation of the "thirteen hells" and "nine heavens" to known events, etc., in Calleman's scheme, this approach does not identify the prevalent pathological motif of Kali Yuga: the narrative spell of revealed religion, enshrined in the authority of The Book.

In fact, it may come down to substituting one lurid totalitarian scheme for another: instead of the apocalypse prescribed in The Book, we get blasted into cosmic consciousness, so says another book.

• But what if the breakthrough of 2012 involves breaking the spell of The Book?

• What would it mean to disempower the narrative spell?

• What conditions would arise?

• What kind of behavior would result?

• How would the human condition itself be changed, radically and permanently altered?

• The mystic confidence in the air is savory and palpable - but where is the new-born confidence located?

• In what do we, the human species, invest our deepest confidence?

Mental Scheming

As for the scope of the coming shift, there is talk of a sudden awakening in the mentality of our species, sweeping through a vast segment of the global population. As if millions of people around the world will wake up one day and see life in a totally different way than before. Such predictions of quantity are not helpful, I believe.

They set up false expectations.

Such a mass-scale shift could occur if it were to be triggered by an external event, such as the meltdown of the Greenland ice shelf, but not purely due to internal dynamics. Given a nuclear strike, a biological terrorist attack, or a geological upheaval that devastates a major urban area, the attention of the entire world would be affected, and people would collectively and simultaneously have to adjust their way of life to the new situation. Lacking such events, it is hard to believe that masses of people will suddenly change their minds about how we live on this planet.

You don't have to be a shamanic wizard to predict that catastrophic events and more terrorist mayhem will occur in the next six years. It is known that Israel will launch a preemptive strike against Iran in the spring, probably in April. This could escalate into nuclear war in the Middle East, into WW III - something that is bound to happen, sooner or later, if the current concatenation of historical events is not averted. In due time, there will also be another terrorist event in the USA, a biological attack on a major urban center.

All the experts say that it is not a matter of IF, but WHEN, and a large segment of the public are apprehensive, tensed for what is to come. Such tension can be expected to reach excruciating heights in the next six years.

What has all this frightful business to do with the Maya Long Count?

These awful events would be happening whether or not the Count was down to its final years. They are not the result of calendric determinism, but the cumulative madness of history. They stem from initial conditions going back some 5000 years. Elaborate breakdowns of the Count - the nine heaven periods and thirteen hell periods, for instance - are just exercises in mental scheming, ways to impose a comfortable sense of order on events, but such exercises do not prove the predictive power of the Count.

In my view, to use the Count as a tool for prediction is to misuse it. The question,

"What's going to happen?" is less helpful than the question "What is the behavior that most urgently needs to be changed in the immediate future, if we are to have a future?"

The Count can be an heuristic tool that allows us to frame events and learn something about the compulsive patterns of history, as I've demonstrated above. As such, it need not be taken for a mysterious oracle that has the power to bring about what it foretells.

The forces set in motion at the dawn of Kali Yuga are now playing out,

• their final stage

• the endgame of patriarchy

• the global showdown for theocratic fascism

It may not all end abruptly in December, 2012. More like than not, it won't die with such elegant brevity.

But in the way we approach the designated moment, mindful of the historical trajectory that brings us to it, something crucial to ending the lethal spell of patriarchy could be achieved.

 

Against the Book

In the first chapter of The End of Faith, Sam Harris makes two outstanding observations:

• first, "most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book"

• second, "criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture"

Of course, these are perfectly obvious facts of modern life.

The force of Harris's argument throughout the book consists in his stating the obvious in such a way that it looks at once novel and alarming. Once it is said, in just so many words, that most people believe God has written a book, the belief looks patently absurd. Yet we know this belief is universal, deep seated, and longstanding. It determines the way a good many of people on this planet behave.

Now, if suddenly countless numbers of people who hold this belief and adhere to The Book were to repudiate it, that would be an event worthy of Long Count expectations. That would be a paradigm shift to exceed the wildest prophecies of Jenkins and Calleman. It would also be the shift consistent with the historical profile of Kali Yuga sketched in the above paragraphs.

Recall that we identified two nodal dates, 551 BCE and 731 CE, when the composition of the patriarchal agenda was highlighted. These were key dates in establishing domination by The Book: the Bible in 551 BCE and the Koran in 731 CE.

• Does the moment 2012 portend the opportunity to disempower or even reverse those earlier moments?

• Are such massive trends in psychosocial behavior reversible?

The End of Faith may indicate what can really happen in the end-time better than any number of prophetic tomes that purport to describe what will happen, or what is hoped to happen, such as Jenkins' speculations in his books on galactic alignment. At least it may indicate what could optimally happen to precipitate a radical shift out of the down-spiraling madness of Kali Yuga.

But is this likely to happen? Consider the certainty of world-shattering events, such as terrorist biological attacks and geophysical catastrophes, and what do you conclude?

I would guess that when such events occur, most people are going to go scrambling for The Book, rather than chuck it away. The certainty of frightening events that will disrupt or even destroy social and personal security almost totally precludes the possibility that masses of people will opt to throw off the narrative spell. On the contrary, they are likely to hunker down into it ever more deeply. They will fall on their faith when the system fails. They will die with clenched hearts, believing rather than divested of belief.

Yet there will be some spell-breaking in the end-time.

The mass awakening of the human species may be a comforting fantasy to some, but others are perhaps more inspired by a different scenario in which a few people break through the spell that still holds the vast majority of human beings in thrall. Is this an elitist view of the end-time o