2012 apocalypse : Galactic Alignments in Ancient Traditions & the Future of Humanity
In March of 1987, I witnessed a dramatic all-day fire ceremony in the highland Maya village of Chamula, Mexico. I helped build a school in San Pedro, Guatemala. I delivered relief supplies to Quiché Maya villages in the Guatemalan highlands. Mesoamerican studies is a relatively young field. The Mayan hieroglyphic writing has only recently been decoded enough that we can reconstruct detailed histories of specific Mayan kingdoms. In researching and writing seven books, I have focused on decoding the ancient Mayan calendar and its associated cosmology, and I have been drawn to address one unanswered question: Why does a large cycle of time in the Mayan Long Count calendar end in the year that we call AD 2012?
Mayan scholars have spent almost a century deciphering the Mayan calendar’s relationship to our own. It is well known that the basic 260-day calendar was augmented by the use of another calendar,called the Long Count.
Utilising nested cycles of 20, 360, 7200, and 144,000 days, the Long Count culminates in a World Age cycle of 13 baktuns, which equals 5,125 years. After decades of interdisciplinary analysis, Mayan scholars Joseph T. Goodman, Juan Martínez, and J. Eric S. Thompson determined that the 13-baktun cycle of the Long Count calendar could be confidently located in real time, and its end-date would occur on 13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count, which corresponds to December 21, 2012. Because the end-date of the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar occurs on a winter solstice, I felt that the ancient Maya may have intended to indicate something with that
end-date. Fixing a time period by its end-date may seem counter-intuitive, but the Maya actually preferred this perspective.
For example, periods of time within the Long Count are named by their end-date; we are currently in the 4 Ahau katun of the Long Count calendar because the last day of this katun falls on 4 Ahau.
Generally, Mayan metaphors draw from nature. After nine years of research into the 2012 question, in 1998 I published my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 [available from New Dawn Book Service], presenting an astronomical explanation for the Mayan 2012 end-date. In 1998-1999 I was able to workshop my ideas at the Esalen Institute, Naropa University, and the Institute of MayaStudies, with affirming feedback.
This alignment is not something that happens in every era, for the precession of the equinoxes slowly shifts the position of the solstice Sun in relation to the “background” position of the Milky Way.
The precessional phenomenon that is responsible for bringing the solstice Sun into alignment with the Milky Way is caused by the slow wobbling of the Earth on its axis. Izapa – a progressive ceremonial site containing astronomical alignments and monuments portraying the Mayan Creation Myth – is evidently where the Long Count calendar was instituted.
My research shows that the ball court at Izapa is ground zero of the knowledge that a future alignment of Sun and galaxy would occur. Most significantly, according to calculations by the US Naval Observatory, it is in our era that the alignment of the December solstice Sun with the Milky Way galaxy culminates. This “solstice-galaxy” or “galactic” alignment has great significance within Mayan mythology and cosmology. In my books, especially Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, I show how this alignment scenario was encoded into basic Mayan institutions such as the Creation Myth, the sacred ballgame, and king accession rites.
My reconstruction of the true intention of the Mayan calendar end-date, though seemingly quite novel, gains support in my subsequent research, for I have discovered that such “galactic” concepts were recognised in other ancient cosmologies (e.g.,
Egyptian, Islamic, and Vedic).
My new book, Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness According to Mayan, Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions (Inner Traditions International, 2002 – available from New Dawn Book Service), examines evidence that the alignment of the solstice Sun
with the Milky Way galaxy (the “galactic alignment”) played a significant role in Old World and Eastern religious iconography and metaphysical traditions. Tracing the galactic knowledge back to ancient Vedic India, it appears that its manifestation in Islamic, Greek, Mithraic, Celtic, and Medieval Hermetic traditions is merely a nascent resurgence of a knowledge that is very ancient indeed.
It must be emphasised that this ancient “galactic cosmology” is based in empirical astronomy. The periodic alignment of the solstices with the galactic plane is basic astronomy, although discussion of it is largely absent from astronomy text books (Jean
Meuss’s 1997 book Mathematical Astronomy Morsels is an exception).
Much could be explored along the lines of how such an alignment is encoded into ancient mythologies and religious symbolism, which is the primary concern of my new book. However, its basis in empirical astronomy elicits a concern for whether the eschatological ideas of world transformation that inevitably attend an awareness of such alignments are empirically valid. This opens up an avenue of enquiry that modern thinkers who wish to integrate science and spirit should address. As a researcher of ancient traditions, I can point to certain interpretations and reconstructions that are implied or are even unavoidable given the facts – for example, I can say with confidence that solstitial alignments to the galactic plane were significant players in ancient traditions that addressed questions of eschatology, cosmology, human salvation, and the nature of time. For example, a chapter in my new book explores Oliver Reiser’s work that suggests the Galactic Centre is a major factor in the evolution of life on Earth. My own path of discovery suggests the following: Beyond the insatiable quest for empirical physical evidence lies the transcendent challenge of metaphysics, and our materialist paradigm
could benefit greatly from a serious look at the profound insights of traditional metaphysics.
I believe that many researchers are currently focusing overmuch on ancient technologies. This stance is clearly a projection of our own culture’s fascination with technology and
assumes that the presence of recognisable technology is the best barometer of how advanced an ancient culture was. However, my surprising discoveries of an advanced Mayan cosmological science suggest that what is more important to explore, and what speaks clearly to a void in modern values, is the spiritual insight we find in ancient traditions. Many of us have studied and practiced various spiritual disciplines derived from ancient Hindu, Mayan, or even Egyptian teachings. However, even with this as a foundation, new insights open up when we understand the galactic underpinnings of such traditions.
The ancient Mayan civilisation understood the universal
principles that create and sustain the world. These “first
principles” underlie the physical laws that modern science has used
to create technological miracles, but the first principles of Mayan
sacred science embraced a much larger universe in which human beings
were seen to be multidimensional and capable of traveling beyond
time and space, beyond the confines that limit modern science with
its “laws” that are valid only in the physical three-dimensional
plane. We are amazed by the ancient Maya and their baffling,
complicated calendar science, and how they built their huge stone
cities without using beasts of burden. Perhaps the value of ancient
civilisations lies not in a hope that they, at times, struggled up
to the same technological level that we recognise as evidence of
being civilised. The ancient Vedic civilisation is not particularly celebrated
for material achievements and yet, like the Maya, they enjoyed a
sophisticated understanding of celestial cycles as well as a deep
understanding of human spirituality. Modern historical investigation continues to push back the
dating of the origins of civilisations and the advent of material
technologies. The arguments of modern independent researchers for
advanced technology in ancient times is important, as it increases
respect for these ancient cultures among those who value these kinds
of achievements, but I believe it misses the point – it is like
celebrating Einstein because he worked in a patent office.
As with Shambhala, which faded into
invisibility as humanity lost the ability to see it, the Primordial
Tradition fades but reemerges in places conducive to discovering and
appreciating its profound depth and wisdom. This explains the
ancient Maya’s isolation and independent genius which nevertheless
had tapped into the same doctrines also found in ancient Vedic and
Egyptian cosmology. In part 3 of my new book Galactic Alignment, I explore the
metaphysical ideas of the Traditionalist school, in particular the
writings of esteemed scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy and symbolist
philosopher René Guénon. In the Vedic doctrine of World Ages, Kali Yuga is the final age,
the age of greatest spiritual darkness, and its end signals the
shift to a new World Age. Clarifying some undeveloped areas within
Traditionalist thought, and drawing from the insights of various
Vedic commentators, I identify the galactic alignment of era-2012 as
the key to the timing of this transition, anchoring the Vedic yuga
doctrine to a real astronomical event. What if ancient
civilisations were aware of the Galactic Centre and the precession
of the equinoxes, and that they believed that eras of galactic
alignment – like the one we are struggling through right now –
somehow contribute to the unfolding of consciousness on Earth?
It’s really about an open door, a
once-in-a-precessional-cycle zone of opportunity to align ourselves
with the galactic source of life. The larger
life-wave of humanity is at stake. Birth-growth-death-renewal – this process does follow a
universal law that appears “predictable” but if it’s part of the
natural cycles of change, then what do we have to worry about? The metaphor is about birth and death.
Unfortunately, few spend much time
reflecting on death – the Great Transformer. That teaching is encoded into the
Vedic theft of soma myth, and in pursuing its underlying wisdom
regarding the transformation of consciousness, all of the book’s
themes are integrated into the metaphysical importance of the
solstice-galaxy alignment.
This brief introduction invites readers to explore more deeply
the source material that contributes to my conclusions, including
studies in sacred cartography, Mithraic symbolism, the Chaldean
Oracles, Islamic astronomy, Vedic and Egyptian metaphysics, Hermetic
studies, South American traditions, Christian architecture and
iconography, and Mayan astronomy.5
For empirical scientists, astronomy is the central key that connects these questions to hard science, and the metaphysical concepts relating to these eschatological questions are, in fact, closely related to astronomy. Yet beyond empirical concerns, the role of galactic alignments in spiritual transformation is revealed as a core concept found in all of the major ancient traditions – in both the Old World and the New World. Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 and Galactic Alignment by John Major Jenkins are available from New Dawn Book Service.
Friendship
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