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Will the World End on December 21st 2012?
This article provides a summary and bibliography of various views on the correlation between the Mayan and Gregorian Calendars and the significance of the so-called end date of the Mayan Calendar.
There have been significant changes in the world over the last five-hundred years, most especially in the previous twenty-five years, many of them anticipated by certain interpretations of the Mayan Calendar. The Mayan Calendar end date, most commonly thought to be December 21, 2012, is a crucial matter to understand since so much emphasis is being placed on this precise 24 hour period. Ultimately, common sense tells us that we will not know until December 22, 2012 what happens on the 21st.
It is important to note that December 21, 2012 is not a date in the Mayan Calendar. The Mayan date to which December 21, 2012 refers is often notated as 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Below you will find references to how the 2012 date is correlated to this unique period in the Mayan Calendar. Herein you may also discover for yourself that any assertion that the Mayan Calendar end date means that it is the end of the world is pure speculation, sometimes inspired by people relying on what others say without investigation of their own, and other times inspired by those who wish to monetize the fear that attends such a speculation.
I have read many of the scholarly books and contemporary researchers’ works, I have spent years with Mayan Elders, studied other Native American prophecies, and none of them point to a specific 24 hour period on a particular date that the world will end. In fact, once a person gets to know the immense wisdom of our native elders and ancestors, and how they relate to “time,” narrowing down anything to a specific day seems even more incongruent with their ways.
My personal view is that the Mayan Calendar describes the evolution of consciousness on planetary and, perhaps, even cosmic scales. If this is true, the fear around the Mayan Calendar end date does indeed play a vital role, as fear is always an obstacle to wholesome growth and personal or collective evolution. When fear is transcended by accepting the information it (fear) has to offer, we may finally deal with what is really there. In light of this, an appropriate question inspired by the “end date” controversy may not be “Who will Survive?” but “How can I transcend my fear and further my own personal evolution?” An evolutionary moment always occurs when we transcend fear.
I have written this article so that we may all settle into our normal but accelerating personal and collective evolutionary processes without any more fear than is necessary and healthy for moving through these challenging times. This does not mean that we can be lackadaisical or nonchalant about making changes in order to help usher in a new world. Indigenous prophecies, many of which seem quite accurate, tell us that it is time to clean up our personal and collective acts; otherwise a self-created calamity will befall us.
We are already suffering the consequences of our mal-alignment with nature and each other, and at the same time, this suffering is instigating a global awakening concurrent with massive positive changes in the world around us. Perhaps this is why the living Maya are eager to celebrate the new cycle, what they call a “Sun,” which inevitably must follow the ending of a prior cycle, a prior Sun. You will not find the Maya burying themselves in underground shelters waiting for the new Sun. You will find them in ceremony around the sacred fire asking what they can do to align with the wisdom of the ancestors and tapping their own insight so as to align with the energies of the new Sun. All this is in the now, not in some imaginary future. Our Mayan Elders, alive with us today, are inviting us to do the same.
Bibliography
1. Wandering Wolf’s Message and Year Zero – Shift of the Ages Article by Grandfather Cirilo
“So for us the time that is coming to us, is a time of change. And for us the Mayas, it is joy and happiness. They are saying in 2012 that this will end. So for us, the Mayans, if it were to happen in 2012, oh, how happy it would be. And our Creator, he will leave seeds from different regions for the future. So you, when that time comes, you will be prepared.”
Link to Tata’s article on sota site.
2. Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar – Wikipedia
“The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) calendar used by several Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar
3. The 2012 End Date – Wikipedia
“The 2012 phenomenonis a present-day cultural meme proposing that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur in the year 2012. The forecast is based primarily on what is claimed to be the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years and as terminating on December 21 or 23, 2012, along with interpretations of assorted legends, scriptures, numerological constructions and prophecies.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_millenarianism
4. Correlations between Western calendars and the Long Count calendar – Wikipedia
“There have been various methods proposed to allow us to convert from a Long Count date to a Western calendar date. These methods, or correlations, are generally based on dates from the Spanish conquest, where both Long Count and Western dates are known with some accuracy.
“The commonly established way of expressing the correlation between the Maya calendar and the Gregorian or Julian calendars is to provide number of days from the start of the Julian Period (Monday, January 1, 4713 BCE) to the Long Count's zero date or base date, which was 13.0.0.0.0 (the corresponding Calendar Round date was 4 Ajaw, 8 Kumk'u).
“Despite the publicity generated by the 2012 date, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that ‘We [the archaeological community] have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end in 2012.’ ‘For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,’ says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday event or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is ‘a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.’ ‘There will be another cycle,’ says E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute (MARI). ‘We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this.’”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar
5. Tortuguero (Maya Site) – Wikipedia
“Tortuguero (or El Tortuguero) is an archaeological site in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico which supported a Maya city during the Classic period. The site is noteworthy for its use of the B'aakal emblem glyph also found as the primary title at Palenque.
“Monument 6 from Tortuguero is currently generating discussion as it includes the only known inscription depicting the end of the current 13-baktun era in 2012.Grube, Martin and Zender have stated it refers to ‘the end of the 13th b’ahktun which we will see in the year 2012’ and as to what will happen, they say, ‘…utom,’ ‘it will happen’ followed by something that we cannot read and he ‘will descend’ yem. The last glyph begins with ta followed by something. However, this is not the end of the world.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortuguero_%28Maya_site%29
6. Lost King of the Maya – David Stuart and Nova
“David Stuart began deciphering Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions at the age of eight, and at 18 he became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur ‘genius grant.’ Now at Harvard University's Peabody Museum, he is a world-renowned expert on the written language of the ancient Maya.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/maya/copa_transcript.html
7. The TortugueroMonument 6 and the Mayan End Date – Carl Johan Calleman
“When I started my independent research on the Mayan calendar late in 1993 not a single inscription from the ancient Maya was actually known which would describe what would happen at its so-called end date. All that was known were the various descriptions of the beginning date of the Long Count, notably in the inscriptions in Palenque, which said that the First Father then ‘erected the World Tree’.”
http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/the_tortuguero%20_monument.htm
8. What Will Not Happen in 2012 – Stephen Houston
“Epigraphers await 2012 with trepidation. There will be ill-founded claims, bad Hollywood movies (one now in production), silly reportage, and much distortion of what 2012 meant for the ancient Maya. Every imaginable anxiety will apply to this key event in the Maya calendar.”
http://decipherment.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/what-will-not-happen-in-2012
9. Comments on the 2012 text on TortugueroMonument 6 and Bolon Yokte K'u – John Major Jenkins
“This essay will briefly discuss the symbolism, hieroglyphic placements, and various aspects of a Mayan deity called Bolon Yokte. His presence on Creation monuments has special relevance considering that he appears in the text of a unique monument that points directly to 13.0.0.0.0, December 21, 2012. I'll also suggest a possible early iconographic form of Bolon Yokte that appears on the murals of San Bartolo.”
http://edj.net/mc2012/bolon-yokte.html
10. The question of the Mayan calendar end date – Carl Johan Calleman
“For some time now there has been a discussion going on as to what is the exact end date of the Mayan calendar. This debate was recently fueled by the rejection by Don Alejandro Oxlaj, head of the council of elders of the Maya, of the December 21, 2012 date promoted by archeologists.”
http://www.mayanmajix.com/art2407.html
11. The Mayan Calendar and the Evolution Of Consciousness – Carl Johan Calleman
“The Mayan Time Science describes energy changes in Cosmic history and is our
most valuable tool for charting the future. This site outlines the underlying basis
for this calendar, the very foundation of prophecy.”
http://mayan-calendar.blogspot.com/
12. Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 – John Major Jenkins
“Over 2,000 years ago the early Maya formulated a profound galactic cosmology. They saw that the sun, on the winter solstice, was slowly moving toward the heart of the galaxy.”
13. Misconceptions about the Mayan Calendar and 2012 – John Major Jenkins
“More than four years after the publication of my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, two realities have come to my attention. First, generally speaking several misconceptions about the Maya calendar and the 2012 date persist. The misunderstandings occur in the general population of interested people as well as among academics.”
http://alignment2012.com/mc2012summary.html
14. 2012, Galactic Cosmology & A New World Age. Alternate title: Beware the 2012 Bandwagonistas! – Susan Rennison
“Since there is increasing focus on the approaching 21st December 2012 ‘End-date’ of various non-Gregorian Calendars around the world, principally but not exclusively Mayan, I have decided it now appropriate to apply some independent scrutiny. This is especially required as many are under the impression that something magical or catastrophic will happen on this End-date.”
http://www.susanrennison.com/Index_2012_Galactic_Cosmology.htm
15. Doomsday Scenario – Wikipedia
“A far more apocalyptic view of the year 2012 is represented by the History Channel which, beginning in 2006, aired "Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy", based loosely on John Major Jenkins' theories but with a tone he characterized as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism". It was co-written by a science fiction author.This show proved popular and was followed by many sequels: 2012, End of Days (2006), The Last Days on Earth (2008) Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2008) and Nostradamus 2012 (2008), together with programs recounting past doomsdays: Comet Catastrophe (2007), Noah's Great Flood (2008) and Journey to 10000 B.C.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_millenarianism
16. 2012 Wiki – Robert Blast
“The 2012 Wiki maintained by Robert Bast of Survive2012.com as an information center covering all aspects of 2012. Robert Bast also has a discussion forum, for all topics related to 2012. Bast believes that something bad might happen in 2012, would prefer something good to happen, and expects that nothing out-of-the-ordinary will happen (but it's best to be prepared, just in case...)”
http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page#2012_Wiki
17. Novelty Theory, Timewave Zero and the I Ching – 2012 Wiki
“Novelty theory attempts to calculate the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time. It is an idea conceived of and discussed at length by Terence McKenna from the early 1970s until his death in the year 2000. Novelty theory involves ontology, morphogenesis, and eschatology.”
http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Novelty_theory_%28Time_Wave_Zero%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnV25LWFQ8
18. Eschatology – Wikipedia
“Eschatology (from the Greek ἔσχατος, Eschatos meaning "last" and -logy meaning "the study of") is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what is believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world. While in mysticism the phrase refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and reunion with the Divine, in many traditional religions it is taught as an actual future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore. More broadly, eschatology may encompass related concepts such as the Messiah or Messianic Age, the end time, and the end of days.”
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