The Mayan worldview of the universe portends that a new era begins in the year 2012

Last year, U.S. News & World Report published a cover story titled, "Is Ours the Only Universe?" Its contents were mind-boggling, to say the least. Among many things, some scientists posited the existence of multiple universes. These speculations remind us that not every culture views the nature of life in the same manner. Which leads us to the millennium.

The millennium is a Christian marker. For the Chinese, the year 2000 is actually 4697. For Jewish people, it's 5760, and for Muslims it's the year 1378. It also marks 5014 years from the start of the Mayan calendar. And for sticklers, it's actually one year shy of the third millennium.

In the Americas, using pre-Columbian calendars, the year 2000 is virtually meaningless. However, the year 2012 in the Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,200-year "sun," or era, and also the end of five suns, which make up a 26,000-year astronomical cycle.

Most indigenous peoples in pre-Columbian America used variants of the same astronomical calendars, and many held similar beliefs regarding the end of each sun, that each ended in cataclysms like earthquakes, fires, volcanoes and floods.

Many still use these calendars. What ancient Mayan scientists did was not so much prophesize as predict. Not surprisingly, the year 2012 figures prominently. Based on thousands of years of astronomical observation, a cataclysm is indeed predicted by indigenous elders, as opposed to "prophesized." No one is predicting that at the strike of midnight, December 20, 2012, the world will end. Instead, Mayan elders predict that the cataclysm can occur within a year or 100 years -- and the cause would be something astronomical as opposed to metaphysical.

Mayan scholar Hunbatz Men, in "Secrets of Mayan Science/Religion" (Bear and Co., Santa Fe N.M.), says that the Western world is not familiar with the Mayan view of the universe primarily because Europeans did everything to destroy all indigenous knowledge. Subsequently, Europeans set out to rewrite indigenous history through their own eyes. As a result, he says, to understand the Mayan worldview and vision of the cosmos -- which is quite complex -- we are "compelled to discard 99 percent of the material produced and used by official researchers, and resort to sources closer to our indigenous American culture." Those sources, he says, are indigenous elders and the thousands of ceremonial centers throughout the Americas that survive to this day.

Hunbatz Men believes that the Mayans are the original teachers of the world and that their ancestors traveled throughout the world to disseminate their knowledge. For instance, he says that the 300 B.C. Hindu writer Valmiki credits the Naga-Maya with bringing Hindus their culture in the year 2700 B.C. The Tibetans and Greeks have similar stories about being visited by the Cara-Maya in ancient times. Similarly, the Egyptian priest-historian Manetho also says the Mayax also visited Africa. He adds that people from all over the world visited the Americas in ancient times.

Don Alejandro Cirilo Pérez Oxlaj, a Mayan elder who spoke at a recent medicine conference, amazed the audience by not only confirming Hunbatz Men's ideas, but also by adding that the Mayans had received their original teachings from beings from the Pleiades star system, who visited them in ancient times in Yucatán, México.

Believing that the Mayans received their original instructions from beings from the Pleiades cannot be any less valid than believing, as Christians and Jews do, that Jehovah spoke to Moses on a mountain and gave him the Ten Commandments, or that Jesus and Mohammed ascended into heaven. It's certainly as valid as scientists speculating that there may be multiple universes, existing in different dimensions.

Cultural bias and military might are responsible for many of our societal beliefs. That, of course, does not make them right. We don't know what will happen in the next few days or in the next 12 years. What we do know is that it wouldn't hurt to listen to the words of Don Alejandro who said that on Dec. 20, 2012, Mother Earth will pass inside the center of a magnetic axis and that it may be darkened with a great cloud for 60 to 70 hours and that because of environmental degradation, she may not be strong enough to survive the effects. "It will enter another age, but when it does, there will be great and serious events. Earthquakes, maremotos (tsunamis), floods, volcanic eruptions and great illness on the planet Earth. Few survivors will be left."

Don Alejandro has been sent as a messenger from a council of elders to warn the world that we must change the way we live and take care of Earth. We hope his message resonates with people of all faiths and beliefs.

Most ancient civilizations found a way of marking time to predict changes that would affect their survival and destinies. These 'calendars' were often linked with one or more gods, who at some point in their progression, would return. Today, as human consciousness evolves in the age of healing, awareness, technology and reasoning, our attention is riveted to one calendar in particular, the Mayan Long Calendar, as something within its end time date, resonates for many souls. The date is December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count) as projected by Jose Arguelles and others. I have been taught that 13=4=closure or the end of linear time. 

Reality is a holographic construct create by the patterns of sacred geometry that repeat in cycles called linear time. Reality is myth, math, and metaphor. The movement of all consciousness follows a sequence called the golden spiral - the Fibonacci numbers published in 1202. 

There have been many calendars throughout history that do not necessarily correlate to our Gregorian calendar or the Mayan calendars. Therefore, how can one be sure that this date is the beginning of what some call a Golden Age? The term 'gold' takes us to alchemy now understood as a metaphor for the evolution of consciousness in the alchemy of time. It is something you feel within your soul, something that follows your life with synchronistic reminders that all is connected as consciousness moves through the gears, or wheels of time to evolve into something beyond the physical experience/experiment. 

Did the ancient Mayans know something that we don't? Are we meant to find and understand something as the date, December 21, 2012, comes closer? Look within your soul to determine a greater meaning. We are evolving, learning, and not by accident, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, as guided by the grids through which our consciousness experiences as our souls return 'home'. 

The Mayan Calendars
There were 3 Mayan Calendars: Haab', Tzolk'in and Long. 

The Mayan Long Calendar speaks of the end of one cycle of time moving into the next on December 21, 2012. 

The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) calendar used by several Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is sometimes known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar. Using a modified vigesimal tally, the Long Count calendar identifies a day by counting the number of days passed since August 11, 3114 BC (Gregorian). Because the Long Count calendar is non-repeating, it was widely used on monuments. 

Among other calendars devised in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, two of the most widely used were the 365-day solar calendar (Haab' in Mayan) and the 260-day ceremonial calendar, which had 20 periods of 13 days. This 260-day calendar was known as the Tzolk'in to the Maya and tonalpohualli to the Aztecs. 

Tzolk'in (Round) 

The Haab' and the Tzolk'in calendars identified and named the days, but not the years. The combination of a Haab' date and a Tzolk'in date was enough to identify a specific date to most people's satisfaction, as such a combination did not occur again for another 52 years, above general life expectancy. 

The Tzolk'in, the most fundamental and widely-attested of all the Maya calendars, was based in the 26,000-year cycle of the Pleiades, and was a pre-eminent component in the society and rituals of the ancient Maya. The tzolk'in calendar remains in use amongst several Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands. Its use is marginal but spreading in this region, although opposition from Evangelical Christian converts has erased it from some communities. 

The word, meaning "count of days", was coined based on Yukatek Maya. The corresponding words in the K'iche' and Kaqchikel cultures of Guatemala, which have maintained an unbroken train of observance for over 500 years, are, respectively, Ajilabal q'ij and Cholq'ij. The actual names of this calendar as used by the pre-Columbian Maya are not known. The corresponding Postclassic Aztec calendar, probably based on extinct central Mexican observance, was called by them tonalpohualli, in the Nahuatl language. 

The Maya used several cycles of days, of which the two most important were the Tzolk'in, or Sacred Round of 260 days and the approximate solar year of 365 days or Haab. The Sacred Round combined the repeating cycle of numbers 1-13 with 20 day names ... so that any particular combination would recur in 13 x 20 or 260 days; the day name and the number changed together: 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal ... as we might say Monday 1, Tuesday 2, Wednesday 3, and so on. 

Because the two calendars were based on 365 days and 260 days respectively, the whole cycle would repeat itself every 52 Haab' years exactly. This period was known as a Calendar Round. 

To measure dates over periods longer than 52 years, the Mesoamericans devised the Long Count calendar. 

The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from August 11, 3114 BC. Rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. 

The Long Count is not consistently base-20, however, since the second digit (from the right) only counts to 18 before resetting to zero. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, but rather only 360 days. 

Jose Arguelles
Jose Arguelles gained notoriety for his role in the Harmonic Convergence on August 17, 1987 and his mystical book about the Maya calendar, The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. Born of Mexican-American descent, the Mayan calendar became a childhood passion for him in the 1950s during the decade in which astronomers began to realize that Native Americans practiced a sophisticated astronomy. After more than 30 years of research, he is known as one of the world's foremost authorities of the Mayan calendar. 

The overwhelming evidence of Mayan prophecy in the last decade of the millennia supports the accuracy of the calendar and the Arguelles' interpretation of the Dreamspell and Time Shift of July 26, 1992. After perceiving the final sequencing of the Mayan calendar in 1987, the Time Shift in 1992 was an adjustment of the annual calendar's beginning to July 26, so that the Dreamspell New Year falls on that date each year. 

Since the Maya codices were destroyed during the European Conquest, the tables of dates and interpretations of codes were mostly destroyed. During the 500 years since the Conquest, Mayan tribes have adopted various new year dates and interpretations. In 1992, the University of Guatemala identified the July 26 date based on an eclipse of July 11, 1991 and the Dresden Codex. Arguelles interpreted that date as the new beginning of the solar year. 

In 755 AD, Mayan Priests prophesied that the total solar eclipse of July 11, 1991 would herald two life altering events for humankind - Cosmic Awareness and Earth Changes. Shortly after 1:00 PM, on July 11, 1991, the prophecy seemingly began to unfold.