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The Mayan Calendar and the End of Time

  
  

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LVX23
23:03 / 16.08.05
...an amalgamation of the Rapture and Burning Man. A big T.A.Z. in the sky that will explode into being when the time is right.

Sounds good to me.
 
 
Skatche
21:15 / 06.09.05
Supposedly neither of [the McKenna brothers] had any knowledge of the Mayan endpoint, yet their manipulations of the I-Ching into a mathematical indicator of novelty managed to crash to infinity at Dec 22, 2012.

Strictly speaking, what they say in The Invisible Landscape is that they chose the end time of midnight, Dec 21st, 2012 (I think it was the 21st, not the 22nd) because this choice of end time made the timewave most accurately fit world events. They claim that they did not know until after that this is the end of the Mayan calendar.

I find this highly suspect. The McKenna brothers never mention their methods for determining novelty or lack thereof, nor even propose a reasonable definition of novelty. They certainly do not explain how they were able to pinpoint levels of novelty to within a day's accuracy. Also, using their Timewave Generator, I was not able to find a strong correlation between major world events and spikes or valleys in the timewave.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
05:23 / 27.12.05
something occured to me about the astrological calendar.

I was looking into the possible significance of December 21st 2012.

It looks like it's the Winter Solstice, and that the Sun is in Capricorn.
The Moon moves into Aries to start a new cycle.
Uranus settled into Aries after some retrograde action about a year prior.

Here's my speculation. I'm pretty sure that the Winter Solstice is the New Year's day for lots of folks dating back to unrepentant meddling with the timing system.

using a 13 month system, the solstice is off the calendar, and the remaining 364 days are divided into 13 months of 28 days (4 seven day weeks). the leap year day can be added to the solstice every four years.

What it suggests is that the New Year will be starting in Capricorn for 2000 years, signifying the end of 2000 years of Sagittarius and looking forward to 2000 years of Aquarius afterwards. (I was leafing through my ephemeris a few days back).

The precession of the stars (the big wheel of the starry night sky that rotates once every 26000 years due to a very slow wobble in the Earth's axis) has rotated us counterclockwise from Pisces to Aquarius.

or rather, it will. On Dec 21st 2012.

What this also suggests is that the new year begins the 10th cycle of 2000 years. If these 2000 year cycles began with Aries, and if we are only in the first cycle, then it started somewhere around 16000BC and will end at 10000CE.

I think that's somewhere around the end of the last ice age.

having compared the mayan calendar with this, there are many similarities, however, the astrological rounds divide the sky into 12 houses, whereas the Mayans use 13 for their time measure.

I'm wondering if there wasn't once a 13th astrological house. There is a nice spot for Cetus between Aries and Pisces, but perhaps there's not enough space.

if we break the sky into 13 houses, then Libra stands in the centre, in the 7th house, the inanimate fulcrum upon which the other two arms of 6 houses balance, Virgo and Scorpio on either side (mm).

all that aside, I think that December 21st 2012 is the date by which to set your calendars. We've noodled and played with and distorted them for so long that they're no longer elegant representations of the eloquence of the rhythm of the astral bodies, and the paths they describe in the sky as viewed from Earth.

Because the stars are so difficult to see, what with all the light pollution, then we may as well have some measure of what's going on in the bigger picture.

plus 13 months of 28 days is so regular that once we get used to it, we'll wonder why we ever abandoned it o so long ago...

happy new year
-not jack-
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
07:21 / 29.12.05
as serendipity would have it, this fell into place.

Dec 21 2012 11:11 UT is the Winter Solstice.
(I'll use this date when referring to 1000 years ago etc)

there are a few cycles beginning at that time.
the precession of the equinoxes, a 26 000 years during which the Earth's axis draws a circle in the sky.

It also means that the stars shift.

On 12-21-2012 the Sun enters Capricorn. It has been in Sagittarius for the past 2000 years. If we count back, the 2000 years of Aries began around 16000BC.

The Moon enters Aries, the beginning of her 28 days-ish cycle around the zodiac.

the most astonishing thing
on 12-21-2012
the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun) intersects the galactic plane. This happens exactly twice in the Sun's orbit around the galactic centre. Once on Dec 21 2012, and once on the opposite side.

This is the best day ever to set a calendar to. If you need a year 0 with a day 0 from which to count backwards and forwards, that's it. That's the greatest significance of the day. We can set all the calendars back to "0" and roll ahead as we look back, in synch.

On the Winter Solstice in particular, the Earth, Sun and Galactic Centre will be aligned, such that the Sun floats between. This is our Galactic Winter, the deepest depths of our darkness, as we coast to the bottom of the galaxy's circling arms.

earth -- Sun ------------------Galactic Centre (black hole?)

This will mark the ascension towards the light, over 110 000 000 years or so. When the ecliptic intersects the galactic centre again, if the calendar's still running, we'll know.

It all gets better from here.

The Vernal Equinox, March 20 2013, the Sun moves into Aries, beginning another cycle of annual drift. We have just moved out of 2000 years of Pisces.
The ecliptic, at Earth's equator, intersects the celestial equator which has just entered Aquarius after 2000 years in Pisces.
that's the Age of Aquarius.

March 20 2013 also marks the ecliptic crossing the constellation Aquarius.

however, something very interesting came out of this. I was looking at the 12 months, 12 hours, 12 animals (chinese & other asian calendars). The mayans swore by 13.

like 13 months of 28 days + 1 intercalary day (winter solstice).

what if there were 13 symbols for the zodiac?
what if that put Libra in position 7, with six symbols on either side?
what if the six symbols had to balance? they currently look like this:

Libra (air)
Virgo (earth) Scorpio (water)
Leo (fire) Sagittarius (fire)
Cancer (water) Capricorn (earth)
Gemini (air) Aquarius (air)
Taurus (earth) Pisces (water)
Aries (fire)

the two sides don't really balance evenly.
the symbols for virgo and scorpio are similar, virgo representing the feminine, scorpio the masculine. they look balanced, but both are feminine elements.
fire and fire?
water and earth
air and air
earth and water
fire

so, to balance it, here's what looks good (although, this may require remapping the heavens...)


Libra (inert)
Virgo (earth) Scorpio (air)
Leo (fire) Eagle (water)
Cancer (water) Sagittarius (fire)
Gemini (air) Capricorn (earth)
Taurus (earth) Aquarius (air)
Aries (fire) Pisces (water)

the two sides are balanced.
the elements
earth - air (feminine - masculine)
fire - water (masculine - feminine) etc
air - earth
earth - air
fire - water

the four cardinal signs are represented, each one symbol in from the end.

Taurus, the Bull
Leo, the Lion
Eagle, the Eagle
Aquarius, the Person

set your watches.
have a good new year, whatever that means anymore.

-not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
07:33 / 29.12.05
This also puts an interesting twist on the calendrical mythology we've inherited from the Romans.

the US went to war just as the Sun entered Aries, which is ruled by Mars, god of war. They had also been talking a lot about the planet just prior as well, as they were driving remote controlled cars around on it.

The empire, Roman, German, American, under the symbol of the Eagle, have spread across the globe over the centuries. The symbol of the Eagle has fallen out of the Sky at some point in our history, and we fell out of synch.

had the eagle been dragged from our awareness of the stars, and captured in a banner of war?

If our perception is shifting from heliocentric to galactocentric (please someone find a more poetic word), then it explains the lineage of our local astronimical deities.

The Milky Way is the Mother of God. The Sun is the Son of God, not the father. I think he has been burdened with demands beyond his influence, the youth taking on the mantle of an elder. they do not share the same pace or temperament.

we've misplaced the father. maybe he will return with the eagle. maybe he's the darkness that flows between the streams of the milky river of life.

near the juncture of Aries and Pisces, the beginning/end of the astrological cycle, is a constellation Cetus, the sea monster - devourer of worlds?

I've been obsessing on this since the Solstice.
I'm going to sleep.

--not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
07:38 / 29.12.05
one last one, then I'm really going to sleep:

the constellation most likely to be the Eagle (between Scorpio and Sagittarius):

Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer. healer and snake. cadeceus.

--not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
07:51 / 29.12.05
Mars in the news

and

Mars to come.

both the official calendars of the US and Israel were jostled around by Pope Gregory XIII in 1852.

The calendar we use today was finalised and used officially on October 15th 1852 (the day after October 4th).

-not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
15:35 / 29.12.05
got something else backwards.

the milky way isn't a lactating feminine, it's a generative masculine. the great galaxy of jizzum.

the feminine is the dark matter.

back to the dao.

-not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
01:37 / 08.07.07
--bump--

I finally found *something* relating to the Mayan End date which combines Oswald Spengler's Civilization model (from Decline of the West) with Jose Arguelles' description of the Mayan Great Cycle in the Mayan Factor.

Spengler describes the lifespan of a civilization, which in his terms lasts about 400 Years. He uses Hellenistic Greece, Gothic Germany, and Magean Middle East as key examples. Each of the civilizations forms around a fundamental idea, develops new mathematics, new art and so on, until it reaches its pinnacle, where everything becomes more and more codified, more removed from its origins into abstraction, until final dissolution and reformation.

the Mayan Long Count uses cycles of 360 Days instead of 365 1/4 as with the Solar Year, so it falls short over time, however, if we call them approximately the same, then the Mayan baktun lasts about 400 Years.

The Mayan Great Cycle lasts 13 baktun, which has me wondering about the 13 tribes of Israel and the 13 Colonies of the USA in terms of recurring archetypal ideas.

The Mayans also observed a Lesser Cycle which lasts about 260 Years. Each Great Cycle contains 20 Lesser Cycles.

Each Lesser Cycle represents the lifetime of a Dynasty, for lack of a better term. It represents a cycle of human social/political life. If we presume that 2012 ends a lesser cycle for the USA, then it would have begun in 1752 - this was the year the UK & its territories adopted the Gregorian Calendar, and in 1753 the Mayflower dropped off a boatload of Pilgrims no one in Europe could stand.

Spengler mentions that in the early stages, spirituality redefines itself, and emerges early on.

in the late stages, the culture becomes over intellectual & abstract, to the point where actions have no bearing on the actual repurcussions. Detachment from the earth and the foundation of the dynasty in question is symptomatic.

At the midpoint of the Great Cycle (747 BC to 353 BC), we have the lives of Pythagoras, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Zoroaster, & Aristotle.

In addressing the question of 2012, I suspect it's as Joseph Campbell suggested in "The Power of Myth," and it represents the true birth of a global culture. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
02:02 / 08.07.07

Dec 21 2012 CE is the end of the cycle of 20 lesser cycles of 260 years, each representing a political stage in the development of a civilization.

so, 260 years before

1752 CE - American Colonies & UK adopt Gregorian Calendar.
1753 CE - the Mayflower delivers the Pilgrims to the Colonies

260 years before

1492 CE - Columbus' business venture pays off
1493 CE - the pope grants the colonial rights of the new world to Spain

hmmm
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
05:12 / 15.07.07
except the Mayflower landed in 1620...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:31 / 15.07.07
And the first British colony was founded in 1607. In short, no.
 
 
Papess
00:45 / 16.07.07
Or, we could just do this.
 
 
EvskiG
13:18 / 16.07.07
English topographer Francis Blomefield died in 1752!

Can't you see that the Mayan calendar predicted that?
 
 
Papess
13:32 / 16.07.07
Actually, what is more interesting about that year are the missing dates, since the British Empire had switched to gregorian calendar.

September 1 - The Liberty Bell arrives in Philadelphia.

September 3-September 13 inclusive - These dates did not exist (see September 14below)

September 14 (Gregorian Calendar) - The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, making it necessary to skip eleven days (September 2 being followed directly by September 14 that year).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:42 / 16.07.07
And you know where those days went?

CROATOAN.
 
 
Papess
13:43 / 16.07.07
Really Haus? I thought they would be in your pocket.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
23:46 / 24.07.07
Looking back at North American history according to Mayan numerology, from 2012 backwards.

the baktun is a period of 394 years and change (360 Days x 400). However, 400 years brings us back to 1612, where in Virginia, the first tobacco plantation was being developed as a cash crop for the nascent colonial economy, and in a few years, boatloads of slaves would arrive to help it boom.

Spengler uses a rough period of 400 years as his basis for looking at the morphology of civilisation.

So, in reviewing North American History in hugely general terms, the Mayan end date of 2012 represents the end to the cycle begun with the development of a cash crop & slave labour colonial economy in 1612, as well as the cycle of history begun in 3113 BC. 2012 also signals the end to the cycle of 260 Years begun in 1752 when the British Empire and all its territories (including North American colonies) switched from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar.

these are as good as any other event in arbitrarily attaching significance to the events in a year.

the point isn't whether our facts line up with the mayan calendar. the point is to see what similarities lie between the lifespan of our civilisation, and those described by the mayan calendar system.

i think that the mayan calendar should be regarded somewhat as Newton's laws of Gravity when Einstein got a hold of them. The theories could be used to predict the behaviour of objects, however, they didn't explain what gravity was.

the mayan calendar may predict certain events (like the arrival of Cortez), but it doesn't offer an explanation.

time and the manipulation of its perception remains a fundamental aspect of magic (or at least of my practice). Serendipity becomes less and less surprising, and more welcome everytime i recognize it.

ta
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
04:45 / 25.07.07
the dates attributed to the Western half of the Roman Empire 44 BC to 476 CE is a span of 520 Years, which equals the span from 1492 CE to 2012 CE, the colonisation of the Americas by Spain & Christian Western Europe, eventually leading us to our current global mish-mash of, well, you know...

let's hope the coming end proves a gracious and hasty demise.

may the wheel ever turn in your favour.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:44 / 25.07.07
Not Jack: What does all of this mean to you though? What are you doing with this material? How does it impact on how you live your life on a day-to-day basis? What is the point of it, other than to sit back and think to yourself "that's a bit weird". I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but can you explain to me why this stuff matters to you so much?
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:59 / 25.07.07
not taking it as confrontation...

i developed the calendar as a tool for the world's population (call it the metric system of time measure). I use the calendar to schedule my own practice, and it ends up the calendar itself developed according to the schedule it describes (very meta-scheduling in a sense).

what i take from all these lovely dates and historical correlations, is that if we know the shape our civilization and cultures take, and the stages of development of their lifespans, then we could, conceivably, build & devise a civilisation with its eventual demise in mind.

Instead of creating a cultural empire one aspires to keep going forever, if we worked intentionally to create, develop, and eventually dissolve it during what we consider its lifespan, it may avoid all the cultural conflicts we continue to see.

So why build a civilisation to last forever? It's like trying to get the human body to live forever.

If our cultural periods are 260 years or 400 years (granted, a morphological view of history requires more research), then why not devise them with these periods in mind? we live our lives expecting to get 70 years or so out of them (no accounting for misadventure).

Any meaning I find in these correlations is that which I attribute to them. I find that the Gregorian Calendar adopted exactly 260 Years prior to 2012 a little more significant than other events that had taken place that year.

in the end, I can't say what all this is leading towards - personally, I'm hoping it will play a part in the theory of everything.

ta
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:03 / 26.07.07
Thanks for that. Makes this thread a bit clearer to me now.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
15:39 / 27.07.07
it's easy to get lost in the convulotions - there's a lot of ridiculous speculation, and unfounded presumption about the Mayan end-date.

in the end, whatever we experience around the December solstice in 2012, that will inform us as to the significance (if any) of the Mayan Great Cycle, and any sub-cycles.

>p
 
  

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