2012-20132012 On Easter Sunday, April 21, 1519, Hernando Cortez with a fleet of 11 Spanish galleons arrived off the coast of Vera Cruz (1 Reed Year, 1 Wind Day in the Mayan Calendar). The Easter Date is significant as one of those myriad 'co-incidences', or syncronicities, which integrate the stories. This date in the Mayan Calendar had been prophesied as the return of an important ancestor - the Aztec God Quezalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. Known as Kulkukan to the Maya, Quetzalcoatl is often associated cross-culturally with the Incan Viracocha, Hawaiian Lono, Egyptian Osiris, Hopi Pahana and a long list of other Savior and Teacher 'Son of the Sun' Gods. Including Jesus. But this Easter was not to be an immediately happy experience, for the prophesy counted this as a beginning of a period of nine 52-year 'hells' (Mayan 'half-centuries' were 52 years), 468 years in all, in which the people would suffer. In the Hopi version of the story, Pahana (Quetzalcoatl) would return bearing a cross. If the cross was inscribed in a circle - the 'straight-line' masculine held by the 'curved-line' feminine - then the people would be okay. If not, they would suffer. As indeed they did1. This period was foreseen to end on August 16, 1987, by our calendar - the day celebrated as the Harmonic Convergence, or 1st World-Wide Meditation. At that time, again by Mayan Time-Keeping, the World of the Fourth Sun ended. But the Fifth Sun would not begin until Dec 21, 2012. This is our 'Mayan End Date' period. PRECESSION The end date corresponds to an astronomic event called Precession of the Equinoxes, meaning that the earth, which spins like a top to give us our day-night exposure to the Sun, also, like a top, has a wobble in the spin - one which lasts approximate 26,000 years, a period sometimes referred to as the Great Year. During this time the Polar alignments circumscribe a Great Circle in the sky; for instance, we take for granted now that the star Polaris is our North Star; but go back 3 or 4 thousand years, and the North Star would have been in the constellation of Draco; go forward a thousand years, and there will be another North Star in the constellation of Cephei the Whale . But in 26,000 years, Polaris again will be the North Star. These angular shifts in alignment alter the energies being experienced by the planet; just as in the solar year the angularity of relation to the sun alters our experience of season. Dividing this Great Year into 12 parts gives us our present Zodiac, which divides the Great Year into 12 Ages. Twice during this period, once on the Summer Solstice and once on the Winter Solstice, the earth and the sun come into a direct line-of-sight alignment to the what the Mayans referred to as Xibalbe Be - the Center of the Galaxy.2 At those points our Solar System, which has been rotating on a plane called the Ecliptic against the backdrop of the fixed stars, intersects with the Milky Way (Galactic Plane), such that our fates are able to 'leap' from our local context into a deeper cosmic awareness, a kind of celestial 'Great Leap Forward'. That Winter Solstice alignment is what is referred to as the End of the Mayan Calendar. Just as, on a smaller scale, we throw away our yearly calendars on Dec 31, before picking up the calendar for the succeeding year. Which means of course, that 'a world', or stage of evolution, has ended; but 'the world' has not ended. Which is all the Mayans ever claimed. Note that astronomically, the actual most precise alignment may have occurred in 1999; the 26 year period from 1987 through 2012 being a kind of 'time out of time' or twilight - in a one-year to 1,000 ratio to the 26,000 year Precessional Cycle before we enter the era designated as the Fifth Sun.3 While we associate 2012 with the Mayan Calendar, there are many other forms of prophecy which point to this as a special time in many diverse traditions: The Fifth Sun, Precession of the Equinoxes, The Singularity, Time-Wave Zero, Point Omega4, Second Coming, The Maitreya Buddha, The Mahdi, etc. Going back roughly 13,000 years to the most recent Solstice Alignment - on a Summer Solstice, half-way through the cycle - we are returned to that period on the planet referred to in our myths and legends as the Great Flood, the Sinking of Atlantis, and other tales of disaster. And indeed it was at this point that the earth emerged from an ice age, and enormous 'earth changes' took place on the planet, including massive species die-offs, especially in the Americas. Indeed, Science has precisely dated the extinction of Mammoths, Mastodons, Saber-Tooth Tigers, Giant Sloths, American Horses and Camels and other species to 12,900 years ago.5 Argument continues over whether to blame primitive human hunters, the Clovis People - who, however, also disappeared from the historic record at about the same point; a meteor impact - but no crater has been found; or some other perhaps celestial phenomena, such as a shattered meteor strike. But what isn't under debate is the timing. Which, if indeed 'something happens' every 13,000 years, may be why disaster scenarios - from Global Warming, Pan-Demics, Nuclear Armageddon, food disasters from GMO's and monocrops, resource depletion, oceanic coral bed failure, etc. etc. become so popular. As one expression of folk wisdom in Saudi Arabia puts it: My father rode a camel; I drive a Mercedes; my son flies a Leer Jet; his son will ride a camel. The fundamental force of the disaster scenario based on Galactic Alignment involves the enormous 'Big Mama' Black Hole at the center of the Galaxy, which both births and devours stars. Normally our connection to Her is mediated by layers of local star clusters, and then the planetary system, which serve as transducers, or step-down currents, before the energies arrive at earth. As an illustration, try imagining running a line from your tv directly to the nuclear power plant. Without the intercession of all the transformers in between, the voltage would simply fry everything. Galactic Alignment works something like that, except that this is a current which 'pulls' rather than pushes or zaps. Thirteen thousand years ago that 'pull' gripped the surface of the planet and shifted the crust over the core - a pole shift rather than a pole reversal. Land was pulled up from the sea; land went under the sea (Atlantis); and great tidal waves swept the planet, producing the Great Flood (the '40 days of rain' was relatively incidental). So are we just warming up for another round? WHAT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME The difference, so my 'guides' - and my instincts - tell me is this big crop of humans presently on the planet, roughly 1,000 times more than 13,000 years ago. And the fact that a certain proportion of these humans - 'older souls', 'volunteers', whatever we want to call them - are doing a Spirit Walk. Which involves clearing the chakras (to whatever degree each of us is able to achieve it) and intercepting and grounding the energies just before they hit the planet - thus transforming the 'earth changes' from physical to meta-physical. In whatever area of service our inner voice impels, we govern and clear a territory, linking to one-another to 'survive the storm' and introduce new consciousness on the planet. That's our 'Fifth Sun'. At the last 'Change of Ages', or new months of the Great Year, roughly the time of the Christ at the beginning of the Piscean Age, the leading shift of consciousness for the planet was to move the energies from the lower chakras - survival, sex and power - to the Heart Chakra. Thus the primary symbols of the new period included the Fishes (Pisces), the Cross (or crossing of the vertical & horizontal axes of the body), and the Sacred Heart (at the intersection of the cross). This produced the experience and revelation of love as the primary constituent of the universe, and the realization that others exist in and of themselves, and not just in terms of how they affect us. But love is easily lost, and the press of events pushes the energy back into the lower chakras; the resultant back-and-forth between the heart chakra and the lower chakras is the time of suffering, or 'being-on-the-cross'. But note that the shape of the cross is the shape of a sword. When we are able to move the energies up to the Throat Chakra and hold it there, then the 'sword is pulled from the stone' (lower chakras), and becomes the two-edged 'sword of truth' which cuts out at illusions and lies in the world, but also in the self. We then become spiritual warriors in service to earth. We act without a plan or program in immediate response to the needs of the living energy which bonds sky to earth. This is the leading evolutionary edge of the new Aquarian Age, which occurs this time with the shift to the Fifth Sun. In terms of human evolution, this time is like the experience of an individual human being of moving from the teenage years to young adulthood. New privileges and possibilities open; but in taking responsibility for our own destiny, there is also the option to 'screw it up'. This is where humanity sits at present, and the ideas or even meetings which we now have with 'other star races' parallels that entry into the adult world. CHANGE OF SEASONS Just as the beginning of a new solar year is simultaneously the beginning of a new season - in our season and hemisphere, winter - so the new Great Year also marks a seasonal change. Looking back at the previous 3 'months' or Ages of the Great Year (which spin counter-clockwise to the progression of ages in the solar year), we find that we have passed through the Ages of Taurus, Aries and Pisces to arrive at Aquarius. The Taurean Age (in which the North Star was in the constellation of Draco) was a period of primarily collective consciousness - the tribe (which is why Dragons are essentially tribal totems; they 'drag-on' the collective energy from the past). In the Age of Aries, we began to individuate as souls and 'persons'. And in passing through the Piscean Age, we have discovered the necessity of universalizing: "we must all hang together; or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Thus, given our 'split' between matter and spirit, at the cusp of the Ages of Aries and Pisces, we found ourselves with two 'universal (Pisces) individuals' (Aries) - on the spiritual level, the Christ, on the material level, Caesar. Now, as we enter the Age of Aquarius, it is our task to integrate the disparate lessons of the last three ages into the 'new season' - to be able to align the freedom of the individual with the tribal or collective, and also with the universal - all tribes. As well as to unite spirit with matter - not rising to higher consciousness to 'escape' the earth plane, but drawing the higher worlds into the day-to-day experience of life on earth. To accomplish this a key aspect of the shift is the rebalancing of polarity between the sexes. In pre-his-story, the Feminine Principle dominated, as the mother dominates the early life of the child. His-story parallels the teenage years of rebellion against the mother and seeking individuation. The the masculine principle of separation (with it's extremes of domination and competition) comes to the fore. But to achieve a successful adulthood of 'meeting and mating', the Female and Male energies have to come into balance and appreciation for, and then fusion with, one another. Looking back farther into the past, Precessional Galactic Solstice Alignments regularly produce major shifts in the human experience on the planet. 13,000 years ago not only did the major species die-offs occur here in the Americas, but the last non-HS (Homo Sapiens) species of humans, Homo Floresiensis, sometimes called Homo Hobbit for their small stature, left the planet; they had been living in Indonesia. 26,000 years ago is about when the last Neanderthals left. 39,000 years ago, one-and-a-half precessional cycles, would correspond to the early appearance in Europe of the first 'modern' humans, or Cro-Magnon, designated as HSS - Homo Sapiens Sapiens, those who know they know. Roughly one hundred thousand years ago (4 precessional cycles) is about when HS (Homo Sapiens) first appeared 'out of Africa'. We're simply due for another major shift.6 At present the shift in consciousness from the heart chakra to the throat chakra also accompanies a shift from four-dimensional consciousness (3 of space, 1 of time) to 5-dimensional consciousness, in which what we now call time - past and future - will become co-present. Thus, 'the Ancestors', all the stages of our own development, will be available to us as present experience, as will our choices for the future. The Book of Revelations refers to this cryptically as 'the sea shall give up her dead'. CYCLES This year's Autumn Eclipse Season began on a Full Moon Oct 29, with Hurricane Sandy; it ended at Sag New Moon Dec 13, immediately followed by the Newton shootings at Sandy Hook School.* Why Sandy? Consider this line from Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man: "I know that evening's empire has returned into sand, vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping". Or these from Shelley's Ozymandias, written at the beginning of the 19th century: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert . . . and on the pedestal these words appear: 'I am Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." As we listen to the word 'sand', the opening sound is 'SA'. In the S we hear the hiss which reminds of what cosmologists call the background noise of the universe, the reminder of the Big Bang, or moment of creation. And in the A, or actually a phonetic Ah, the breath of the present being of the Universe. As in Allah, we are ALL AH. SA in sanskrit expresses the idea of creation. And in the Sikh religion, it is the first syllable of the primary chant of the Sikh's, SA-TA-NA-MA, usually translated as Truth is Your Name. But equally expressing the Four Seasons of a Cosmic Year: SA - spring, or creation; TA summer, or expansion; NA Fall, or decay; and Ma, Winter, death. Look at a T as an expression of a point of choice, or in the small t, a crossing point. Or enlarge the t in your mind to see the figure of the cross, with arms reaching out to encompass all; expressing in the language of physics the idea of the universe expanding. The NA then is the undoing, the Fall, the Universe beginning to contract again. While the MA is the winter, or quiet night in which the Universe lives only inwardly, dreaming but without THE LYNX, or LINKS When we speak of 'the Mayan', we refer of course to the Central American civilization we associate with the idea of 'Mayan Calendar'. But there are three other associations with 'maya' or 'mayan' which lie behind this one particular civilization. The first is the Hindu idea of 'maya' as 'illusion', the play of appearances. In this context, the suggestion might be that there is an underlying structure or temporal order to the flow of appearances or becomings, perhaps a series even of 'shadows' which cloak, or progressively uncloak, a deeper reality. An idea which would fit in with the second mythic rendering of Maya as the Mother of the Buddha: that enlightenment is born, or borne, out of the great womb of life. The final association is that Maya is one of the Seven Sister Stars of the Pleiades. Without judgment on any contention that 'the Mayans come from the Pleiades', it is certainly true that the Pleiades 'play' a major role in their time-keeping system. In 1983, long before I had heard of the Mayan Calendar or Mayan End Date, I had a series of Dream Visions in which I met my totem the Lynx. In these dreams the Lynx accompanied me in running through the southwest of the United States and into Central America, while also running backward in time, visiting ruins, cities, temples, villages. In one village in particular I remember being taken into a school room where languages were being taught - not simply the local languages, but Hebrew, Egyptian and Chinese! I was being given the message that the Central American culture which we call Mayan was actually an international culture. Later I was able to track down and verify the voyages of Chinese and Phoenician mariners to the Americas. In fact the Mayan Calendar itself may have come from the East; for instance, depictions of faces in the Javanese Tree of Life could easily be Mayan, and Mayan art. 'Mayan civilization' could thus have existed at 3 levels: As a specific culture with a specific temporal and spatial location; as an expression of a world-wide culture; and as a still deeper and wider expression of universal truths.  Note here that that the Mayan counting system is different than our own. They divide the 26,000 year Great Year into five rather than four seasons (for reasons which have to do with Venus cycles). During the 5,000 plus years of each of these 'Suns', a certain current or wave form moves around the planet. In terms of its effect, we could call it Empire or Dominance. So Empire began in China, moved through India, Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, England and now to the United States. Currently it's in the US - and centered in Chicago! But of course it's on its way West again (to the East!). Those of us not going to Central America for the event won't miss the energy; we've got it in spades right here in Chicago! CHI - the Life Force; KA - the Spirit-Soul; GO - the Game of Strategies. As one of the world's most multi-cultural city - less 'intellectual' than the East Coast, less 'airy-fairy' than the West Coast - Chicago is the place we have come to do our Earth Walk, and contribute to the spiritual shifts presently available to us on the planet. THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND 2013 Measured was the time in which they could know the sun's benevolence. Measured was the time in which the grid of the stars would look down upon them; and through it, keeping watch over their safety, the gods trapped within the stars would contemplate them. --- Chilam Balam (Jaguar Priest)7 They invented the art of interpreting dreams, and they were so informed and so wise that they knew the stars of the heavens and had given them names and knew their influences and qualities. So also they knew the movements of the heavens, by the stars - ." - Bernardino Sahagun, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España. As I have already stated in the first part of this paper, 2012 is not the End Date of the Mayan Calendar, but the End Date of a cycle within the ongoing Calendar - specifically, the end of a 26,000 year Precessional Cycle. The Mayan Calendar is more precise, and far more intricate in tracking the cycles of Venus, Mars, Eclipses, the Lunar Nodes and other celestial phenomenon, than our own present Gregorian Calendar, not to speak of earlier astronomical knowledge in the West8. The Greeks, for instance, are credited with the discovery of the Precessional Cycle, but their version was off by about 10,000 years per precessional cycle. Only the most recent science through our best telescopes are able to record time cycles which duplicate or exceed in precision that achieved by the Mayans. Yet at the same time, Mayan civilization was quite primitive. They had not discovered the wheel. They were unable to weigh a sack of corn. Why this glaring contrast? Because the Mayans, like the Aztecs after them, were only hosts to a science which had been entrusted and passed on to them by someone far more knowledgeable. In fact the civilization which preceded the Mayan, the Olmecs, a people whose art showed images of both Semitic and African faces, had the same calendar as the Mayans.9 A beginning is an ending. In this case the Beginning of the 'Fifth World' (of 26,000 year cycles). That would accord with the idea that Homo Sapiens Sapiens first appeared on this planet a little over 100,000 years ago - Four 'Worlds' back. (Note that the terms 'World', 'Sun' and 'Age' is sometimes used interchangeably in the Mayan-Aztec sense as meaning either complete Precessional Cycles, or Fifths of Precessional Cycles (in much the same way that music is divided into a cycle of fifths). The Mayan Calendar counting system is based on the sacred numbers (4x5=)20 & 13. Hence, 2012 is really about 20-13. The numbers we use are taken from nature. Twenty, for instance, is based on divisions of the solar year, and of larger cycles like the great year, into 4 parts and 5 parts. Four cuts the year into the four seasons we are familiar with, marked by solstices and equinoxes. While five, waiving the technical details for now, is extracted from Venus cycles which inscribe a five pointed star in the sky. Thirteen is the number of moons (months, or 'moonths') in two out of 3 years. For the Mayans, there were 20 aspects of creation (stages of reflection), and 13 intentions of creation (fundamental purposes). Here is a short list of significant numbers which correspond or approximate to multiples of 20 & 13:
2013 AND THE FUTURE One of the stories we can hope to see from '2013' is the reversal of the idea that Friday the 13th is a day of misfortune. The word Friday is taken from the Norse God Freya, who is the Roman Venus. Thus Friday is Venus-Day. While 13 reflects the fact that in roughly 2 out of every 3 years, there is either a 13th New or Full Moon. Before the dominance of the 'rational', left-brained Patriarchal religions, there was no split between 'church' and 'state', and tribal councils were circles of 13 (covens), with one person essentially responsible for the integration of the tribe with earth and sky, and with other tribes (including human, devic, angelic and totemic) during each moon period, and the 13th Priest-Priestess-Counselor for integrating the other 1211. As most cases of conflict, the strategy of the conqueror is to eliminate the leadership of the enemy, and, as with the witch burnings, it became 'unlucky' to have been one of the thirteen who governed by integrating cycles of Venus and the Moon. In other words, at least ideally, the 'witches' were also the 'astrologers', or those who sought to integrate 'above and below'. One of my favorite future dreams, which I have seen more than once, has been of organic cities, including underwater cities. Nothing is built of dead or inert matter, but flora and fauna cooperate directly in their oxygen-nitrogen exchange cycles, breathing into, or 'having sex with', each other. The fauna, including humans who in some of these potential futures have redeveloped amphibian capacities, provide the motility and adventure which stimulates the flora, which in turn provide the structures and context for the fauna. Another fun dream was of King Cockroach explaining the purpose of the Cockroach Totem, and why we could never kill all of these critters, as they had been awaiting their evolutionary culminatory purpose at the end of our own mechanization stage, when they will open new cellular potentials and consume the inorganic debris which we have left scattered around the globe. During the next Sun we will become increasingly transparent. Our shames, karmas, lusts, crimes, sins will all be shown, and wither as we help each other, for we will not fear the other whom we know as another version of self. So much is being said about the interaction of Man and Nature, and our race (in both senses) to integrate with our world before we destroy ourselves, that I will hold myself to one ongoing and hopeful example, right where I live: Lake Michigan. In the 1950's there were times when, as a teen, I visited the lake and the shores were stinky with dead alewives, an invasive species. At the same time, another invasive species, lamprey eels, invaded up the St. Lawrence seaway through canals and locks built to bypass natural obstacles like Niagra Falls. The lampreys were decimating lake trout and other larger fish in the lake. Pacific salmon were introduced into the lakes in the mid-60's and proved an unqualified success, consuming both alewives and young lampreys. With the lamprey reduction, the trout population of the lake also rebounded. Since then, new invasive species like zebra and quagga mussels, silver and bighead carp, and gobies posed dangers to the lake. Surprisingly, there were some positives to the changes, as the mussels seined the lake and kept it cleaner, drawing smallmouth bass into waters they had not previously thrived in; the bass fed on the gobies, and the cleaner water may be deterring the carp. The point is that the interaction between 'nature' and 'man' is an ongoing adventure in evolution, and not all choices made by Man are bad ones. We can learn. And the genetic process of mutation remains in play, such that our 'tinkering' may haave negative 'Jekyll-Hyde' aspects, as in the mono-cropping and GMO's which may be fostering so much of the prevalent growth of allergies, but may itself be a natural evolution of consciousness. One of the founding tenets of the Mormon Church, for instance, was the idea that we were in the process of evolving into gods. Corn is another example of the mysteries of evolution. At present, no predecessor plant has been clearly identified, and there is no 'wild corn' species capable of propagating itself. Many native traditions hold that corn was brought to this planet from a previous homeworld, usually identified as being in the Pleiades. Then corn was interwoven into the biosphere (as, according to this tradition, alien genetics were spliced into hominid genetics) in a system called the milpa, where corn stalks served as a standing planter for legumes to twine around, while subterranean crops like potatoes and yams were grown around the corn plant, and melons or squash on the surface. The collective milpa held all the sources of nourishment needed by humans. There is no one right direction for evolution other than it continually become more conscious of itself; the experiments we make as conscious beings then become self-correcting art forms, the intertwining dance of the music of the spheres with the spirit of the earth. 1 There are multiple versions of this story. For example, Message from Hopi Elders, www.thewildrose.net 2 Illustration from John Major Jenkins website alignment2012.com www.alignment2012.com 3 The best available estimates actually put precise alignment in 1998; I am taking liberties with the 1999 date in order to fit my own thesis http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Galactic_Alignment 4 The Singularity Is Near, Raymond Kurzweil; Timewave Zero, Terence McKenna; Point Omega, Teilhard de Chardin 5 Nova, Last Extinction 6 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html 7 The Chilam Balam texts were written down in the 17th & 18th centuries. Their authenticity as expressions of ancient knowledge has been debated, but some infra-textual evidence points to the pre-Spanish period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilam_Balam 8 The Atomic clock year, calculated from the cesium atom, rounds off to 365.242 days. The Mayan calendar year is 365.2422 days. Our Western Gregorian calendar year is 365.2425 days. 9 http://www.maya12-21-2012.com/2012olmec.html 10 More about this later. 11 This of course represents an 'ideal' or balanced council, and is not a claim that all ancient civilizations or tribes adhered to or realized this ideal.
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