When I first went to the Yucatán, I did a little research on the Mayan calendar.
You might have heard the Mayan Long Count calendar predicts the world will end on 12-21-2012. Maybe I’ve been working in financial services too long, but to me that looks like the bank routing code on the bottom of your checks, which you have to supply if you want automatic bill payment from your checking account. You might want to make sure that date isn’t hidden within your bank’s routing code; I’m not sure you’re covered by the FDIC in the event of the bank’s disappearance in the Rapture.
Actually, according to one theory, the Mayans were not predicting the end of the world. Rather, they were counting to the completion of the process that started when the Big Bang created our Universe. Or perhaps better said, they were counting to the culmination of Creation, the achievement of its perfection in terms of the evolution of Life’s consciousness. Kind of like a wine being finally just right to drink.
Yes, a lot of shit probably has to get cleared away before perfection is attained. But I think it only need concern you if you’re, say, a psychotic Libyan dictator who’s been oppressing people for decades. Or maybe a corporate CEO and his politician bedfellows, siphoning obscene profits off the meager wages of everyday people. (How many former Goldman Sachs and Halliburton guys have held high-level posts in our government?)
I think the rest of us will probably be OK, along with Occupy Wall Street and our friends in Libya.
What is also questionable, according to this theory, is the enddate of 12/21/12 itself. Instead, proponents of the theory maintain that the date was actually 17 minutes ago, as I write this at 12:17 a.m. on October 29, 2011 — that is, 10/28/11. (Nothing much seems to have happened 17 minutes ago, although I did notice that I’d finished my vodka-on-the-rocks.)
There’s a justification for this “correction” of the enddate that has to do with another Mayan calendar, called the Tzolkin, a sacred count of 260 “days,” best pictured as two interlocking cogs of 13 and 20 “days.”
Courtesy the Starseed Network
The choice of October 28, 2011 has something to do with that date’s matching the enddate of a Tzolkin count called 13 Ahau. The Mayans had a third count called the Haab, a secular calendar of 365 days. Any given date is actually described using “days” from all three calendars. (If you’re ever embarassed that you can’t remember today’s date, just be thankful you’re not Mayan.)
The author of this theory is a Swedish toxicologist named Carl Johan Calleman. I’ve read his book, The Mayan Calendar. But I first encountered his theory through a random Netflix video I’d ordered before my trip.
In the video, a guy named Ian Lungold explains Calleman’s interpretation of the Mayan Long Count calendar. The presentation was filmed in what seemed to be a seminar in a hotel conference room somewhere. Ian was a very calm and centered presenter, though I had to get over the de rigueur new-age ponytail and that wink-wink tone of irony that truth-speakers use when talking with the initiated — that we-know, don’t-we? tone of voice.
Despite the new-age, wink-wink, Best Western ambience, I have to say I was riveted. My sister used to have a poster hanging on a door in her house. It was one of those grainy black-and-white photos that “proves” the existence of UFOs. And the headline on the poster was “I WANT TO BELIEVE.” That pretty much sums up my feelings on these things.
Lungold describes a 9-step countdown (or maybe I should say a “count-up.”) Each step or “underworld” is shorter in terms of years by a factor of 20. The first underworld lasts 16.4 billion years; the ninth, only 260 days. However, the same amount of evolution in consciousness is supposed to transpire in each one. (“If it’s your impression that things are going faster and faster,” Ian winks in the video, “you’re right.”)
Courtesy: preventdisease.com
Supposedly, the nine levels of the pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá represent the nine underworlds, with the temple to Kukulkan perched on top. Perhaps not coincidentally, the primary pyramid at Mayapan, another Mayan site I visited in 2010, has the same number of levels.
Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá
Pyramid at Mayapan
If you’ve ever seen a technology adoption cycle chart, which demonstrates how technological innovations have mainstreamed exponentially ever more quickly, this concept of increasing speed of evolution doesn’t seem so crazy. (Click on the image to expand it; then hit the back button on your browser to return to the blog.)
Courtesy: New York Times
Each ”underworld” is divided into 7 days and 6 nights of Creation. They correspond to the stages of development of a fruit-bearing plant from a seed. The days represent movement forward; the nights are reaction to or synthesis of the forward movement. There’s something special about the breakthrough of the 5th day and the subsequent reaction of the 5th night. For example, in the Fifth Day of the 4th Underworld, we harnessed fire. Then that night, we had an Ice Age. (Bear in mind, each “day” and “night” lasted 160,000 years at this level.)
In matching the Mayan calendar to dates in the Gregorian calendar, Calleman “explains” much of history in this template of evolution. Each underworld
is fully contained within the 7th day of the level below it, and they all complete on 10/28/11 — exactly one hour ago now, New York time, as I write.
If anyone’s interested, a young man has posted a video on YouTube of himself explaining the theory in a very clear and cogent way. (WARNING: The kid has an Afro, sits cross-legged on the floor in front of some kind of wolf wallpaper, and has a new-age flute playing in the background. But he does a really good job of explaining it, and I especially like his aside when he mentions the 7 days of creation.)
When I did this research back in 2009, I put an entry in my calendar for 10/28/11 just to remind myself about it. And I forgot all about it until a couple of weeks ago, when scheduling things, I noticed it.
Thank god I had a 15-minute alert set. And I’m glad to know I was “busy” on the last day of Creation, even though I wasn’t working. Here’s what I did:
1) I met my trainer at the gym at 9:oo a.m. for my usual workout.
2) I had an 12:00 Noon appointment with my chiropractor in the Village.
3) I got a haircut at Dop Dop salon at 1:00 p.m., so I wouldn’t be shaggy on my upcoming 2-week vacation.
4) On the way home, I stopped at Così for some lunch and then at Paragon Sporting Goods for quick-dry sock liners I wanted to take on vacation.
5) I took an hour’s nap.
My evening was a bit more appropriate for such a momentous time. I went to hear the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.
Kurt Mazur was conducting. He’s 84 years old, and his hands shake a bit, though often that was just him timing the music. He came onstage wearing a black silk tunic top with silver collar and cuffs over tuxedo pants. It looked a bit like he was halfway into his PJs after a night on the town. Watching him walk somewhat gingerly up to the podium, I was inspired by his resilience, particularly in the light of my aching arthritic knees as I walked around the city today.
The first part of the program was Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony in B Minor, two movements of beautiful orchestration. The program notes explained that Schubert died of syphilis at age 31 in 1828 when “the disease was then incurable, and the attendant treatments were dreadful and ineffective.” I was struck by the parallel to AIDS. His diagnosis in 1822 is offered as a reason for his never having finished the symphony he was working on at the time, though he went on to write other masterpieces.
The second half of the program was Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 in B-flat minor, Babi Yar, set to poems by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The poems were published and the symphony written in 1962, in the cultural opening that blossomed after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Five poems are the basis for the five movements of the piece.
The first, Babi Yar, commemorates the massacre of 33,771 Jews on September 29th and 30th 1941 in the Ukraine. Marched to the edge of a cliff at the Babi Yar ravine, they were shot in groups of ten, after being “relieved” of their valuables. Yevtushenko’s poem denounces anti-Semitism couched in Russian nationalism.
The second movement, based on the poem Humor, is about how humor is the unextinguishable release from tragedy.
In the third movement, the poet reflects on the resilience of Russian women, observed as they queue for groceries in a store.
The fourth poem, Fears, tentatively suggest that the time of fears in Russia is over; that now, one should be afraid of not speaking out.
And the final movement, to a poem called A Career, is the poet’s vow not to compromise his speaking of the truth in pursuit of a successful career. “I pursue my career/By not pursuing it!” he exclaims in the closing stanza. There is a lovely, hopeful melody played on a solo violin that floats throughout this movement. As I left Lincoln Center and headed home on the supposed last night of this Creation, I remembered that melody.
If we believe Dr. Calleman and his theory’s proponents, then today is the first day of the perfection of Creation.
The weather forecast in the Northeast is for a winter storm (what happened to Fall?) with a 2-5″ accumulation of snow. I assume it will be gone by the time my plane leaves Sunday night.
I intend to pack for my vacation — a two-week tour of Egypt, visiting the ruins of one of our civilization’s first great nation-states (formed at the beginning of the 6th underworld in Calleman’s explanation of the Mayan Long Count) and home to some other spectacular pyramids and ancient temples. Should I assume some coincidental connection?
I have two things on my schedule Sunday before I leave: a visit to the 9/11 Memorial and a deep tissue massage. Both appropriate, I suppose, if indeed we’re onto something new from here on out.
