 | Mayan Calendar: What is driving the evolution of consciousness described by the Mayan Calendar? - IIBy Carl Johan Calleman
How is the Mayan Long Count to be explained? Why did this ancient people, that were the most mathematically advanced of their day, choose to use a chronology that consisted of thirteen different periods of 144,000 days each, starting on August 11, 3114, BC and ending on December 21, AD 2012? On a more fundamental level three different types of answers have been given to this question, a materialist, a spiritual and what might be called a pseudo-spiritual, answers that are linked to different world views. In the materialist world view the astronomical, physical cycles are seen as primary to the spiritual whereas in the spiritual world view they are seen as secondary.
The Neglect of the Original Mayan Accounts of Creation
There are several serious problems with this interpretation. Firstly, Jenkins argues that the Great Cycle was based on an event targeted at its end-date, rather than by its beginning-date. The fact is however that the explanations we have from the ancient Maya, from the seventh century AD in the capital of Palenque, clearly do not describe events at the end of the Long Count, but explicitly around its beginning in 3114 BC. And if we listen to what the Maya had to say about this creation date it makes sense from what we know then actually happened in Sumeria and Egypt.
Already this highlights the strangest and most inexplicable omission in Jenkins work - the total neglect of the creation stories actually presented by the ancient Maya in Quirigua and Palenque. These describe creation at the beginning of the Long Count, in 3114 BC, as it was viewed by the ancient Maya. Thus, if we want to understand the meaning of the Long Count I feel that one of the first places to go is to the accounts of the Mayans themselves and that have been described in some detail by Schele and co-workers. But in Jenkins1 hypothesis the beginning of the Long Count lacks meaning - it is nothing but the last fifth of a precessional cycle - and therefore he places the attention elsewhere. Nonetheless, I do not feel that the description of creation in Palenque is something that serious research about the meaning of the Long Count can allow itself to overlook.
This omission is all the more serious as the evidence he presents to support his theses is mostly mythological, and myths are very shaky ground to build theories upon. In my own book I have presented very different interpretations of some of the myths that Jenkins use. We can however never be certain as to the meaning the ancients placed on myths, and I do not claim that my interpretations of Mayan myths are exclusively correct. Ancient myths often have several layers of meaning, and it may even be that the meaning of these has changed as the consciousness of human beings has evolved. A myth that meant a certain thing to the Maya of baktun 7 might have meant something entirely different to the Maya of baktun 10, not to mention the Europeans of baktun 12. Also, deep esoteric spiritual truths might have been popularized in materialist terms for broader layers of society to assimilate it (Something that, incidentally, also happens today as some seek astronomical explanations to spiritual cycles).
The ancients are not here to ask so it would seem that we will never know what their symbols and myths meant exactly. What is unique about the ancient Maya is however that they have helped us understand their myths through the extensive use of dates. While an ancient myth may be ambiguous by itself a date is not, and a date means the same to us as it did to them. I would like to exemplify this with a myth discussed by Jenkins, the Shooting of Seven-Macaw by the Hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. While I interpret this as the Seventh DAY of the Cultural Cycle being brought to an end by the new Yin/Yang polarity initiating the beginning of the dualist Great Cycle, Jenkins interprets Seven-Macaw as the Big Dipper which begins to fall from its north pole location in the sky some time around 1000 BC. Since anthropologists agree that the Maya identified Seven-Macaw with the Big Dipper it would at first seem that Jenkins has a strong case. But what if the fall of the Big Dipper from its polar position was just a way for popularizing the end of the Seventh DAY of the Cultural Cycle (I have already suggested that during NIGHTS the ancient Egyptians would be led into identifying the Seven LIGHTS of a creation cycle with seven stars, and there is no reason why the ancient Maya would not have succumbed to the same type of illusion regarding Seven-Macaw in the NIGHT of baktun 7). Thus, if Jenkins interpretation were correct we would expect that they would have dated the fall of Seven-Macaw to baktun 5, which is when the Big Dipper began to fall from its polar position. But in fact they do not. They date the fall of Seven-Macaw to May 28, 3149 BC, even before the present creation began with the First Father raising the World Tree. The neglect of the actual Mayan dates presented in the creation stories, in favor of his own interpretation of their myths tainted by the astrological Doctrine of the World Ages, is in my opinion a great shortcoming of Jenkins1 work, which has very serious consequences. To take another example of this, Jenkins interprets the rebirth of the First Father as a symbol of the midwinter sun being in the location of the galactic centre at the end of the precessional cycle. In Palenque, it is however described that this rebirth took place on June 16, 3122 BC, which is before the beginning of the Long Count, and not at its end (nor does it fall on a midwinter solstice).
Instead of basing himself on the actual datings and descriptions presented by the Maya regarding the beginning of the Long Count Jenkins devotes much space to argue that the Maya knew about precession, and there is, at least in my own view, really no reason to doubt that they did. In the Mayan cities pyramids and other buildings were often aligned with the rising of certain stars and as time went by they probably noted a precessional shift. But so what? Nowhere in the Mayan accounts from ancient times is a cycle of 26,000 years described. Nowhere! Is it then defendable to simply ignore their own accounts of creation at the beginning of the Long Count? Moreover, if no one has ever demonstrated that precession has an influence on human consciousness, is it then really meaningful to base a theory upon it?
What and where is The World Tree?
Another Mayan mythological concept that is important to discuss is the World Tree. Jenkins suggests that this is formed by the cross of the ecliptic (local planetary component) and the equator of the Milky Way (galactic). But this interpretation is impossible. The ecliptic and the galactic midplane are at an angle of about 60° in relation to each other, and in all representations from the Maya the World Tree is formed by the perpendicular arms of a cross, which give rise to the four geographical directions on earth. I have seen no exception to representing the World Tree as a perpendicular cross, and if the World Tree were formed by the sixty-degree angle of the ecliptic and the galactic midplane it could not be the source of the four perpendicular directions. Since our resonance with the World Tree is the very basis for our orientation in the world, a sixty-degree World Tree would leave us very disoriented. The four perpendicular directions are part of a worldview common to all Native American peoples (see Brotherston), and Medicine Wheel ceremonies are for instance always based on the four perpendicular directions.
As Schele and co-workers point out the ecliptic is, in the crosses of Palenque, instead symbolized by a snake twinned around the perpendicular arms of the cross. The same symbolism is incidentally present also in ancient Nordic mythology where Midgĺrdsormen (the middle area serpent) is symbolic of the ecliptic outside of the World Tree. It is not part of the World Tree. In reality, the true galactic cross is invisible (it has no material manifestations) and is formed by the galactic midplane and a line perpendicular to it. To realize this distinction between the double-headed serpent and the horizontal arm of the cross is crucial as it shifts the perspective away from our local planetary environment, of which the ecliptic forms part, to the true invisible cross, which is a galactic phenomenon. Here Jenkins neglect of the Mayan creation story surfaces again. This describes that the First Father raised the World Tree in 3114 BC, and I have shown empirical evidence from human history that its holographic projection on earth (which has 90° angles) becomes evident in the even-numbered baktuns of the Great Cycle, one of which began in 3115 BC. But with Jenkins1 interpretation of the World Tree as the 60° angle between the ecliptic and the galactic midplane the creation story in Palenque completely lacks meaning, and, as far as we know, nothing happened with the 60° cross between the ecliptic and the galactic midplane in the year 3114 BC.
The Geographical Bias of Izapa
But if the Long Count is not based on its end-date, but on its beginning-date, what is this latter date based upon? Well, the beginning date of the Long Count is the day the sun stands in zenith in Izapa, the location where the Long Count was most probably invented. It is well known that the day of solar zenith played an important role among the ancient Maya judging from the many shafts serving to determine solar zenith dates that have been discovered. In a tropical region it is very understandable that this would be a candidate for a day "when time began". It is thus simply an accident that the end date of the Long Count falls on a midwinter solstice, since this is where the end-date must fall if its beginning is set at the solar zenith in Izapa. Strangely, Jenkins is aware that the beginning date of the Long Count is the solar zenith in Izapa, but does not point out what a remarkable accident this would be if the Long Count was meant for targeting the end-date. After all, to compute the day of solar zenith some three thousand years into the past is feasible. We may understand how it could have been done given the level of exactness the Mayans had attained in estimating the duration of the physical year. To project the galactic location of the midwinter solstice two thousand years into the future, on the other hand, simply would not have been feasible. It is one thing to be aware of the effects of precession and an entirely different thing to compute its cycle or to make projections about its course a few thousands years into the future, and Jenkins provides no explanation as to how it could have been made. Even if such a computation may seem easy for people with astronomical software in their home computers, the fact is that even today1s scientists, using laser technology and satellite-based measurements of the earth1s movement, are uncertain as to the duration of the precessional cycle by a few hundred years (notably because the earth1s axis does not really describe a cycle and hence does not return to the same point) and would shun a task of pinpointing a precessional position a few thousand years into the future.
The Midwinter Solstice Sun does not Eclipse the Galactic Center in the Year 2012
A key question is however if the midwinter solstice sun actually eclipses the galactic centre in the year 2012. The fact of the matter is that the midwinter solstice sun will be closest to the galactic centre in the year 2219, far from the end date of the Long Count, and this both McKenna and Jenkins acknowledge. But the fact is that also the crossing by the midwinter solstice sun of the galactic equator, which Jenkins considers a more appropriate marker for the changing of the ages, occurred already in 1998. The logical conclusion from this would then be that we would already have passed into the new age, and, since the Mayan calendar was inaccurate there would be no reason to use it. Jenkins recognizes in a passage and in the footnotes of his book that the alignment occurs in 1999, and has confirmed this in contacts with astronomers with astrologers, who have noted this alignment. Yet, throughout his book he keeps referring to "the end-date alignment" as if this was a reality, when in fact, the midwinter solstice sun does not align with the galactic equator in the year 2012. It is not easy to understand how this is to be interpreted. Are we to believe in something we now know to be wrong because Jenkins thinks the Maya believed in this. He refutes those with exaggerated demands for accuracy in this matter. Well, I do not think we can be accurate enough. The thing is that the Long Count is coordinated with the tzolkin count, and if Jenkins precession hypothesis were true then this would mean not only that the Maya had made an error in calibrating the precessional cycle, but also by consequence that the tzolkin count used in Classical time would be wrong. Personally, I do not believe it is.
The theory presented in this book has however already disproved the precessional theory, in that it has shown that one of the major Mayan creation cycles, that of Thirteen hablatuns, goes back all the way to the Big Bang, to a time when no planets and stars or even galaxies existed. Hence, the tun-based Mayan creation cycles, of which the Great Cycle is one, describe a creation that is primary to all physical phenomena, and this includes the sun, the moon and the earth whose mechanistic relationship determines the precessional cycle. Thus the precession of the earth is not the basis for the tun-based calendrical system. If anything the tun-based system may explain the precessional cycle of the earth and it partly does, but this would be outside the scope of this article. Thus, divine creation is primary to matter.
Moreover, the theory presented here has demonstrated, to the extent that it is possible today, that biological evolution on earth is just an aspect of the evolution of consciousness in the entire galaxy. But if the evolution of the planet results from a holographic resonance projection of our galaxy, it can not depend on factors such as the masses of the earth, moon and sun, or the declination of the earth1s axis, which are particular to our own planet. Emphasis on precession thus limits us to a local planetary perspective and stands in direct contrast to a holographic, galactic model where the periodicity of the evolution of consciousness on our own particular planet is determined by energy changes taking place on a galactic level.
What about the Tzolkin if the Long Count is based on Precession?
There is a final point to discuss: As Jenkins himself points out the tzolkin is older than the Long Count by some 500 years. The Long Count, which was devised later, has then been developed so as to be in synchrony with the tzolkin, meaning that for instance katun endings always take place on Ahau days, creation days. Jenkins presumably shares the view of most everyone engaged in the Mayan calendar that the tzolkin is a sequence of energies reflected in its various combinations of numbers and glyphs (He has in fact written extensive and interesting material on the subject). But if the Long Count has been developed on top of, and after, the tzolkin in such a way as to be synchronized with it then the Great Cycle, too, must reflect a sequence of energies. And, of course, the progression through thirteen cycles, such as thirteen days or thirteen baktuns, reflects a growth cycle from seed to fruit. But if the days of the Long Count are locked in their positions by the tzolkin, which itself reflects creation energies that are real, how can the Long Count at the same time reflect precession, which is a mechanical movement? The answer, as I have argued, is that the Long Count does not reflect the precessional cycle of the earth, which according to the definition used by Jenkins would have ended on December 21, 1998. Not surprisingly, this date falls on 12 Cimi and is not an Ahau day in the tzolkin count.
Why then, we may ask, does the idea that the earth passes through an evolutionary 26,000-year cycle have such an appeal? Probably because there actually is some truth to it. The last 65 tzolkin units of the Cultural Cycle began 26,000 tun ago. An important change in human consciousness was indeed the result of the beginning of these 65 last units of the 260-baktun Cultural Cycle. In a sense this was the time when the earth became whole and as a resonance projection of this the human being became whole and attained a self-reflexive consciousness. We see this manifested in parallel ways at different hierarchical levels of the universe. On the level of the earth, we may note that the oldest undisputed date for inhabitants in the Americas (on the Los Angeles river) is dated to 23-24,000 BC, meaning in practice that we have reasons to believe that from this time and onwards the whole earth was inhabited by carriers of a human consciousness. On the level of the human being, the oldest human statuette discovered (in Bohemia) is dated to the same time, reflecting the emergence of a self-reflective human consciousness. These are holographic resonance phenomena so that at the same time as the whole earth would have been seen from the outside as covered by human beings, a statuette of a human being, thus also visible from all directions, was for the first time created by a human being. The beginning point of the 65 last baktuns of the Cultural Cycle thus brought self-reflective consciousness, and this was a very important step. Similarly, the beginning points of the last 65 katuns of the Great Cycle in AD 730 and the last 65 tun of the Planetary Cycle in AD 1947, brought changes in consciousness in line with the energy pattern of the tzolkin. It is only that this energy pattern and these points in time have nothing to do with precession.
The reader may wonder what is the purpose of such a lengthy critique of Jenkins1 work and the precessional theory. Does it really matter what we believe is the underlying mechanism of the Mayan Long Count? I think it does. I feel it is important, and maybe crucial to the future of humanity, because the precession and divine creation theories have very different consequences. Thus, in the precession view, the end of the Great Cycle represents nothing but the beginning of a new 26,000-year cycle of the earth's movement and the changing consciousness of mankind is then supposedly shaped by an endless line of such repeating cycles. In the precession view there is not necessarily a divine plan behind the evolution of human consciousness, since this seems explicable by the movements of matter. Thus, the precessional theory leads to a concept of time, which is both linear and materialist.
In the creation view, on the other hand, the energy changes are not explained by any material changes, but directly through divine LIGHT thus providing proof of the existence of God and the need for human beings to live up to such an origin. Because there is then a temporal hierarchy of creation cycles, the current acceleration of time becomes understandable. In the creation view the end of the Great Cycle means the completion of divine creation, and the liberation from energy changes of a divine origin shaping our path. Mankind will come off age to shape its own path at the end of time as we know it. But to arrive at this we may value a correctly calibrated calendar to help us surf on the waves of creation.
|
