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21 December 2012 This was sent to me via E Mail from
a reader- I have tried to establish the source but I have not had much
success !! Most of us are
not archaeologists or astronomers, anthropologists or astrologers. Yet the
majority of what is written about one of the most exciting and relevant
subjects of our day - the approaching Winter Solstice 2012 end-date of the
Mayan Calendar - appears in words aimed at specialists and couched in
language that can be hard to read. This article is written for the Everyday
Earthling who may be hearing a lot about the Mayans, their calendars,
hieroglyphs and mysterious temples scattered throughout the jungles of
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Let us begin with
some questions. Why is there so much talk about the "end of the Mayan
calendar" and what does it mean? Is there something significant we
should know about the Winter Solstice date of December 21, 2012? How were the
Mayans able to track long periods of time and why would they want to? Why
should we care about the Mayans today? Is there anything we can learn from
them? I'll begin by sharing how my own interest in the subject developed and
go on from there. I first learned
about the Mayans in 1987 from Jose Arguelles' book The Mayan Factor. It was
during the months leading up to the event known as Harmonic Convergence that
Arguelles, artist and visionary, introduced me to the 20 Mayan daysigns and
the thirteen Mayan numbers - and to the wonderfully engaging and mysterious
260 day Mayan ceremonial calendar, called the Tzolkin (pronounced chol-kin).
My pursuit of knowledge about pre-Columbian culture had begun. A great deal of
scientific and visionary research work has been done about the Mayans, so I
started reading. I learned that the Mayans tracked cycles within cycles within
cycles of time. Their calendar acted as a harmonic calibrator, linking and
coordinating the earthly, lunar, solar and galactic seasons in an
aesthetically simple and elegant manner. The provocative simplicity of the
daysigns and the sheer harmony of the calendar drew me in. Then a landmark
article by John Major Jenkins appeared in Mountain Astrologer magazine in
1994, revealing for the first time in our era the true meaning of the
end-date. Is there
something significant we should know about the Winter Solstice date of
December 21, 2012? Yes. On this day a rare astronomical and Mayan mythical
event occurs. In astronomic terms, the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the
Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. The Milky Way, as most of us know,
extends in a general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the
ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to travel in
the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle
near the constellation Sagittarius. The cosmic cross
formed by the intersecting Milky Way and plane of the ecliptic was called the
Sacred Tree by the Maya. The trunk of the tree, the Axis Mundi, is the Milky
Way, and the main branch intersecting the tree is the plane of the ecliptic.
Mythically, at sunrise on December 21, 2012, the Sun - our Father - rises to
conjoin the center of the Sacred Tree, the World Tree, the Tree of Life.. This rare
astronomical event, foretold in the Mayan creation story of the Hero Twins,
and calculated empirically by them, will happen for many of us in our
lifetime. The Sun has not conjoined the Milky Way and the plane of the
ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long before the Mayans arrived on the
scene and long before their predecessors the Olmecs arrived. What does this
mean? Due to a
phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the Earth's
wobble that lasts almost 26,000 years, the apparent location of the Winter
Solstice sunrise has been ever so slowly moving toward the Galactic Center.
Precession may be understood by watching a spinning top. Over many
revolutions the top will rise and dip on its axis, not unlike how the Earth
does over an extremely long period of time. One complete rise and dip
constitutes the cycle of precession. The Mayans
noticed the relative slippage of the positions of stars in the night sky over
long periods of observation, indicative of precession, and foretold this
great coming attraction. By using an invention called the Long Count, the
Mayans fast-forwarded to anchor December 21, 2012 as the end of their Great
Cycle and then counted backwards to decide where the calendar would begin.
Thus the Great Cycle we are currently in began on August 11, 3114 BCE But
there's more. The Great Cycle,
lasting 1,872,000 days and equivalent to 5,125.36 years, is but one fifth of
the Great Great Cycle, known scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic
Year - the length of the precession of the equinoxes. To use a metaphor from
the modern industrial world, on Winter Solstice CE (Common Era) 2012 it is as
if the Giant Odometer of Humanity on Earth hits 100,000 miles and all the
cycles big and small turn over to begin anew. The present world age will end
and a new world age will begin. Over a year's
time the Sun transits through the twelve houses of the zodiac. Many of us
know this by what "Sun sign" is associated with our birthday.
Upping the scale to the Platonic Year - the 26,000 year long cycle - we are
shifting, astrologically, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The Mayan
calendar does not really "end" in 2012, but rather, all the cycles
turn over and start again, vibrating to a new era. It is as if humanity and
the Earth will graduate in the eyes of the Father Sun and Grandmother Milky
Way. Why should we
care about the Mayans today? Is there anything we can learn from them? The
trees give us oxygen to breathe and help create the nourishing rains upon
which we depend, sustaining life. We are missing these rains in places where
the trees have been cut down or burned. Fires begin that nature can no longer
extinguish. For the Mayans, trees were intermediaries between the physical
and spiritual worlds, and absolutely essential to life. They believed that
without the tree man could not survive and that "with the death of the
last tree comes the death of the human race." The ancient carved stones and the stars themselves tell us we are on the brink of a new world age. There is no reason not to take a leap of faith into imagining what may be in store. We may trust that it is time for humanity to awaken into a true partnership with each other, with the Earth, and the Cosmos. By accepting this partnership we may claim our birthright and become Galactic Citizens who care for and sustain the planet, thus sustaining ourselves. This is clearly the challenge of our times. Yet, arriving just in time and on schedule is the Winter Solstice dawn on the day we may remember that we are truly Children of the World. |
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