Now the tale of the Mayan calendar from T Moorey The Millenium and
Beyond
THE MAYAN CALENDAR
Priceless wisdom, possibly from the dawn of humankind, has been lost
in the conquest of Meso-America. Small wonder that the Mayans wailed
as the bishops consigned their great fan-folded books to the flames,
as evidence of devil worship! The Maya were apparently obsessed with
numbers, which many philosophers have considered the basis of
creation, and they computed time and cycles in ways that can seem
complex. However, if you do not share this love of numbers you may
like to skim over some of the following passages! The complexities of
the Mayan calendar contain valuable secrets that are beginning now to
be revealed. During the nineteenth century, the writer and cleric,
Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg was able to clarify some of the
elements of Mayan time-keeping, demonstrating that, far from being
ignorant savages, the Maya were highly sophisticated.
Both the Aztecs and the Maya used two calendars. First, there was the
repeating cycle of 260 days, called a tzolkin; second, there was the
'vague year' of haab of 365 days, used for agriculture and practical
purposes. However, this wasn't so 'vague'for it was calculated as
365.242129 days and was probably more accurate than our own Gregorian
calendar of 365.2425 days. The tzolkin cycle was sacred and ceremonial
and is still used for magical purposes to this day by remote Mayan
tribes still extant. The tzolkin is based on the counting together of
20 day names With the numbers 1 to 13. This is not done in sequence,
as we do, but more after the manner of 1 January, 2 February, 3 March
and so forth. Each of the 20 day names had a unique and symbolic
meaning - for instance, the world was said to have been originally
created on the back of an alligator; thus the calendar was said to
have begun originally on 1 Alligator. 'Reed' synchronised cycles and
marked new beginnings, and after the Spanish conquest the calendar was
changed to begin with this glyph. 'Flower' is the last glyph, because
the end of the creation process is beauty The two cycles, haab and
tzolkin, coincided every 52 years, called the Aztec Century and some
sources say that the haab was brought in line with actual solar cycles
by a 13-day adjustment, every 52 years, instead of our system of Leap
Years. Mayan cosmology depicted 13 heaven and 9 hell realms, and the
calendar corresponded with this, for 13 of the 52-year cycles made a
cycle of Thirteen Heavens (676 years) followed by a Nine Hells cycle
of 9x52 (468 years). As we saw, the Nine Hells cycle started with the
arrival of Cortes in 1519. It ended in 1987, date of the Harmonic
Convergence and the Blue Star supernova, encountered in Chapter 4.
Haab and tzolkin were fine for short periods of time, but for longer
time periods they had obvious limitations so the Maya had, in
addition, a calendar called the Long Count. As part of this,
individual days were counted, as follows:
20 days = 1 uinal (20-day 'month')
18 uinals 1 tun (360-day 'year)
20 tuns 1 katun (7,200 days)
20 katuns = 1 baktun (144,000 days).
For many years it was impossible to align these dates with the
Gregorian calendar, and so the Mayan calendar was unanchored, until
earlier in the twentieth century when the esteemed Mayanologist Eric
Thompson identified the start of the present Mayan Great Cycle as 13
August, 3114 BCE. Such a cycle lasts for 13 baktuns (i.e. 1,872,999
days), which is 5,125.40 years and amounts to one-fifth of the exact
Maya reckoning of the Precession of the Equinoxes 25,627 years. The
end of the present age will arrive on 22 December, 2012.
The layout of Mayan architecture, in terms of orientation of buildings
and site of roof-combs, reveals that their astronomical knowledge was
sound and very sophisticated, marking the movements of the
constellations, especially the Pleiades, the planets and of eclipses.
The cycle of the planet Venus was of especial interest, and this
planet was called the Quetzalcoatl star. The current Great Cycle began
with an event called The Birth of Venus, when Venus rose just before
dawn with the Pleiades at the meridian. On 22 December, 2012, Venus
'dies' going down just before the sun, as the Pleiades rises over the
eastern horizon. This can be seen as the start of a new precessional
cycle and world age, and it coincides with the Mayan prediction for
the end of the last of the Five Ages. The extreme complexity of Mayan
mathematics and astronomy are interwoven with metaphysics and
mythology in such a way that it has been described as a possible
shorthand for a type of galactic science that goes beyond our present
physics and extends into other dimensions. The Maya may have had a
galactic masterplan of majestic dimensions that we are only just
beginning to glimpse. They may also have possessed scientific
knowledge about our sun that is highly relevant for us.
Another number emerges that is of paramount importance, identified in
a Mayan document called the Dresden Codex. The number is 1,366,560,
and it is composed of numbers of days in several ways:
260 x 5,256 (number of tzolkins)
365 X 3,744 (number of vague years)
584 X 2,340 (number of average cycles of the planet Venus)
78 X 1,752 (number of Mars cycles)
18,980 x 72 (number of Aztec centuries, i.e. 73 tzolkins/52 vague
years)
There seemed little sense to the system of baktuns, katuns, etc. until
the writer Maurice Cotterell, employing the same approach that had
yielded success with the Lid of Palenque, realised that the key lay in
what was missing (i.e. the all important 260-day interval). Using the
Mayan esoteric number 9, the following pattern emerges:
144,000 (baktun) X 9 = 1,296,000
7,200 (katun) X 9 = 64,800
360 (tun) X 9 = 3,240
260(tzolkin) X 9 = 2,340
20 (uinal) X 9 = 180
Total1, 1366,560
The above system, upon examination, appears complex, but it reflects a
highly developed knowledge of important cycles within cycles that
modern techniques are now revealing and corroborating, as we shall
discover.
ASTROLOGY, SUNSPOTS AND THE FUTURE OF LIFE
Mayan use of astrological ideas is evident from their buildings and
surviving texts. This is no surprise, for many ancient civilisations
used knowledge of the stars and planets as significators for their
lives. Today astrology is largely frowned upon by the scientific
establishment, but it continues to fascinate the man and woman in the
street and engages the minds of some fine and subtle thinkers. Is it
likely that something so enduring is of no significance? Many
astrologers will assert that whatever the explanation, or
non-explanation, behind the art/science may be, their astrology is
based upon observation, and it works. It was this attitude of
observation that engaged Maurice Cotterell, when he noticed that men
born under Fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) tended to be more
aggressive than their colleagues, born under one of the other nine
signs. Although the astrological signs are named after constellations,
because of a movement called 'precession' where the earth wobbles on
its axis, the signs and constellations no longer coincide, thus it is
the time of year that is of greatest importance.
Looking for a cause for this, Cotterell decided to investigate
sunspots. These are areas of relative coolness on the surface of the
sun and their frequency seems to follow a cycle of some 11 years.
Sunspots are thought to be caused by 'loops' of magnetism upon the
sun, created by the variable rotation of the surface of the sun and
its complex magnetic field. The sun is not a solid body but a ball of
plasma gas, rotating more slowly at its poles than at the equator. In
addition, the magnetic field of the sun is dipolar at the poles and
quadripolar at the equator. The sun throws off a constant stream of
negative or positively charged particles, called the solar wind, and
this gives rise to the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. Maurice
Cotterell gathered evidence for his theory that it was the cyclic
variation in the solar wind, affecting the earth's gravitational field
that caused astrological effects, although these effects were
operative at conception, rather than birth. The scientific
establishment ignored his findings, and it is to the credit of
astrologers that he was at least given 10 minutes to speak at an
International Conference hosted by the British Astrological Society,
even
hough his research threatened the basis of most modern astrology
(i.e. the significance of the time of birth, not conception).
Cotterell's later work did, in fact, progress to suggest that time of
birth is significant, for the foetus reacts to conditions created by
the solar wind, relative to those operative at time of conception, to
release the hormones that trigger birth. The effect upon human
genetics of sunspots and the solar wind had received attention, but
Maurice Cotterell was engaged upon further investigations concerning
solar effects. He found that there was an 11.49 year cycle for sunspot
activity, but also that there were longer cycles concerning the angles
between the magnetic fields of the earth and the sun. Every 87.4545
days the sun's equatorial and polar fields complete a 'cycle' and come
back to zero point. A period of eight of these cycles formed another
cycle, which he called a 'microcycle' and, in turn, six microcycles
made up a cycle of 11.49299 years. A longer period emerged of 187
years, made up of 97 microcycles, but whereas each of these
microcycles might have been expected to have been made up from eight
of the smallest cycles, as mentioned above, in fact five of them were
made up of an extra cycle, making 781 of the original 87.4545-day
rotational periods, not 776. Closer investigation revealed that this
anomaly was caused by the warped shape of the neutral sheet encircling
the sun's equator. Like all magnets, the polar field of the sun has an
area of balance, or neutrality but, because of the complexity of the
sun's structure, this area is kinked. The cycle of this neutral sheet
takes a total of 97 x l87-year cycles, that is 18,139 years.
The most interesting fact about the latter statistic is that it can be
broken down into five ages, which correspond with alterations in the
polarity of the sun's magnetic field and the movement of the warped
neutral sheet, as follows:
1,297,738 days (19 x 187 years)
1,366,040 days (20 x 187 years)
1,297,738 days (19 x 187 years)
1,297,738 days (19 x 187 years)
1,366,040 days (20 X 187 years)
These five cycles of time and magnetic interaction seem to correspond
with the five ages of the Maya. The number 1,366,040 seems too similar
to the Mayan special number 1,366,560 to be a coincidence, especially
as the difference between the two numbers corresponds to two of the
Mayan tzolkins of 260 days each (i.e. 520 days). At the end of each of
the time-spans the sun's magnetic field shifts, causing changes also
in the magnetic field of the earth and consequent climatic and seismic
upheaval. The interval of 13 baktuns (i.e. 1,872,000 days) mentioned
above is also significant for, although it contains an incomplete
number of sunspot cycles, it relates to a longer cycle and does, in
fact, draw attention, by mathematical process, to the cycle of
precession (i.e. the 'wobble' of the earth on its axis and the cycle
of the warped neutral sheet of the sun, which affects the magnetic
climate). Could it be that the 'primitive' Maya, who did not even use
the wheel, knew possibly more than we do about the solar fluctuations
and their effect upon life on earth?
ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE AND ARMAGGEDON
Periods of low sunspot activity tend to mark times of cultural
decline, seemingly linked to the effect that solar activity has upon
human fertility. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the
Maya anticipated their decline in the seventh century CE. The cycles
of Venus were used to monitor sunspot cycles. The Mayan Long Count
started with the Birth of Venus, 12 August 3114 BCE. The full cycle,
tracked by the movement of Venus, comes to the number 1,366,560 as
mentioned above, and this reaches completion at the time of Mayan
disappearance, when sunspot activity was low and solar magnetic shift
was at its centre. Solar magnetic changes may affect the earth's
magnetosphere, thus allowing greater penetration by cosmic rays which
would be felt more keenly in equatorial regions. Not only the shifting
phase of the solar neutral sheet but also the changing polarity of the
sunspot cycle affects human fertility, and this latter factor is
operative at the moment, perhaps causing more infertility than
pollution and other matters. In addition, we are already experiencing
climatic changes and, while these may be due to global warming, they
might also be a foretaste of the destruction in 2012 believed by some
to be foretold by the Maya. Although the sun is giver of warmth and
life, it can also deal death. No doubt a fear of solar power was
behind the unpleasant habit of the Aztecs, successors to the Maya, of
sacrificing many thousands of people to the sun, by ripping the
still-beating heart out of the chest of the victim, to placate the
sun's voracious appetite.
Mayan lore gives accounts of the destruction of the world at the end
of the former four periods, by water, wind and fire. Certainly it is
known that the magnetic field of the earth has shifted before, which
may explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs. If the earth were to
tilt on its axis, massive earthquakes would shake the globe, the
atmosphere and the oceans would continue to move in the usual fashion,
due to inertia, thus giving rise to massive tidal waves and hurricanes
of unimaginable ferocity. Lava would spew out over large areas,
mountains would be swallowed and lands rise up from the depths of the
ocean, as Atlantis is predicted to 'rise again'. From combined studies
of Mayan timekeeping and sunspot activity, Maurice Cotterell believes
that the prophecy for the end of the fifth age concerns a reversal of
the magnetic field of the earth, because of shifts in the magnetic
pattern of the sun and the cycle of the warped neutral sheet. This
cataclysm is due to occur in or around 2012. The complete account is
given in The Maya Prophecies by Maurice Cotterell and Adrian Gilbert
(see Further Reading).
CONCLUSION
Are we to expect the destruction of our civilisation and most of life
currently existing upon earth, early in the twenty-first century? Our
brief lives are little more than an eye-blink relative to the cycles
of earth and sun so we have the illusion that our world and its
rhythms are solid and unchanging. From a cosmic viewpoint they are
about as stable as a conker dangling on the end of a string. However,
there exist differing approaches to interpretation of Mayan records,
and we have by no means fully understood the scope of the Mayan
vision. Statistics can be in error and misinterpretation is always
possible. Cortes would have found the conquest of Central America much
more difficult, even impossible had he not had the awesome mantle of
Quetzalcoatl erroneously thrust upon him, because of a prophecy. The
Maya themselves appear to have held a fatalistic attitude, which may
conceivably have been a race memory of an earlier cataclysm and,
despite their knowledge, they do not appear to have been able or
perhaps motivated to prevent their own demise.
None the less, there are lessons to be learnt from the Mayan
prophecies. One of these is surely that we should approach ancient
records and relics in a spirit of some humility. Despite our
technology we may be dealing with remnants of civilisations that are
far in advance of our own and there is no reason why this should not
be so. Also, bearing in mind that global destruction is always
undeniably possible, from reversals in magnetic field to collision
with comets or meteorites, what on earth are we doing using our
developing knowledge to make more devices of mass destruction with
which to terrorise each other, when we should be using it to evolve
survival plans? The twenty-first century is a call for a global
consciousness, to unite our efforts,,to have a respect for our species
and a determination to preserve it. It seems to amount almost to this;
that we will succeed in preserving ourselves only if we merit being
preserved. The price of survival may be co-operation.
The final word here has to go to the Maya legends themselves, which
also seem to indicate a golden future that has images in common with
the latter part of the book of Revelation. This is extracted-from Tony
Shearer's Lord of the Dawn (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph, 1971)
Thirteen Heavens of decreasing choice, Nine Hells of increasing doom,
and the Tree of Life shall blossom with a fruit never before known in
creation. And that fruit shall be the New Spirit of Man.
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