Mayan Calendar: 2012 or 2011?

Carl Calleman claims the Mayan end date is October 28, 2011. Everyone else says it’s December 21, 2012. This has caused some confusion. So who is right? I looked into the arguments for both dates in order to get to the bottom of the issue.

Bottom line is that the Mayans had two concepts of time, a linear time recorded by the Long Count calendar, and cyclical or synchronistic time delineated by the Tzolkin and Haab calendars.

On 12/21/2012 the linear time calendar comes to an end, like a car odometer turning over after having passed 999,999 miles. But just as nothing special happens on the road when the odometer flips, so should nothing happen when the Long Count calendar flips back to its starting value. This is what Calleman believes, that the Long Count has no bearing on human experience and neither does its ending date. He does not dispute that 12/21/2012 is the end date of the Mayan Long Count, he only disputes the meaning people have given that date. So yes, the Mayan Calendar does end in 2012.

But they also had other calendars that don’t end on that date. The Tzolkin and Haab calendars describe cyclical patterns in human experience, patterns in what days or historical periods have certain synchronistic qualities, and therefore any meaningful end date ought to be based on those cycles. A calendar based on these synchronistic cycles will correlate with history, and thus its end point will be historically significant and reflect over into something we will experience.

Problem is that the Tzolkin ends every 260 days, and Haab every 365 days. Even their combination makes for a cycle that ends and repeats every 52 years, which is too short for its end date to be meaningful. Also, neither the beginning nor end of the Haab and Tzolkin match with the beginning or end of the Long Count.

Fortunately, Calleman has developed a super-calendar that hybridizes the synchronistic nature of the Tzolkin and Haab with the extremely long time scale of the Long Count. What is up for debate is whether this is purely of Calleman’s construction, or whether he reconstructed a system actually used by the Mayans.

In Calleman’s super-calendar, history can be divided up into nested segments, each with unique synchronistic qualities that say something about the nature of progress in that period of time. It spans everything from the beginnings of the universe to evolutionary biological cycles to phases in the modernization of western civilization. And it ends on October 28, 2011.

Calleman’s strongest evidence for this being the right date is that, if the date is so chosen, the calendar correlates with with beginning of the economic crash in November of 2007. However, I think there is enough variance in the date of when the crash began that Calleman could have simply picked one that fit his calendar; for instance, if you go by when the crash entered into mass consciousness and showed up in mainstream media, the date was in September of 2008, as that is when the stock market really started tanking along with real estate values. So in my mind, the November 2007 date that support Calleman’s calendar is not a strong enough correlation to assure its validity.

What I can confirm, however, is that if 12/21/2012 were chosen instead as the end point of Calleman’s calendar, none of the sub-segments line up with any significant trends or events in recent history. Therefore 10/28/2011 is a much better fit for his calendar than 12/21/2012, since at the very least it coincides with one of the supposed dates marking the beginning of our economic crash. Calleman cites a few other items of support for that date, and you may read his full explanation in the following two articles: Why the Creation Cycles do not end December 21 2012, but October 28, 2011, The risks of believing that the Mayan calendar ends December 21, 2012

http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/end_of_creationcycles.htm
http://calleman.com/content/articles/risk_of_2012.htm

Therefore we have:

1) 12/21/2012 signifying an end to the linear time calendar of the Mayans, but a date not associated with any synchronistic cycles and therefore may not reflect over to anything noteworthy in human experience. But the date is well-known, well-calculated, and well-anticipated. It is a certain date of uncertain significance.

2) 10/28/2011 signifying an end to the synchronistic super-calendar devised by Calleman. It carries the advantage of being based on cycles that correlate with human experience, that predict the timing of future phases of experience that can be tested. On the other hand, even if the principle of Calleman’s calendar is valid, the chosen end point is not absolutely certain. It is an uncertain date of certain significance.

Does the Long Count Still Have Meaning?

The Mayans chose a starting date for the Long Count calendar, which they viewed as the beginning of the world. Based on correlations between dates of events recorded both by the Mayans and Spaniards in their respective calendar systems, this date of creation corresponds to August 11, 3114 B.C. in our Gregorian calendar.

Calleman rightly points out that the Tzolkin/Haab values at the beginning of the Long Count are unremarkable: 4 Ahau (or 4 Ajaw), 8 Kumku. This simply means that the beginning of the world (according to the Mayans) was not in alignment with the beginning or ending of either the Tzolkin or Haab calendars. Thus, for the Mayans, the creation of the world was out of step with the higher synchronistic framework, and linear time is an inferior phenomenon useful only for recording dates of events. This suggests that whatever caused them to start their calendar in 3114 B.C., it was not something in harmony with divine order.

More interesting is the fact that the Haab is 365 days long, and that the 5 days at the end of the year, called the Wayeb, were ritualistically viewed as a time when the dark forces of the underworld are unleashed. These were like five days out of time, five aberrant days that should not be. Implying that the ideal should have been 360 days, corresponding to the length of a year during a golden age when the underworld forces did not yet intrude. Something happened to add those five extra days of darkness.

Further, when the Tzolkin and Haab match up again every 52 years, the Mayans performed a ritual of extinguishing all lights for a day before emerging out of the darkness back into the light.

It should be obvious from the above that the Mayans, or their predecessors from whom they derived their calendar and traditions, faced an ancient cataclysm that nearly wiped them out, and that what transpired became the symbolically incorporated into the culture and traditions of the post-cataclysm civilization.

The 5 “extra” days of hell unleashed represents 5 days beyond 360 added onto the year by a slowing of earth’s rotation brought about by some disaster. The 52 year cycle relates to a catastrophic cycle where for a period of time, destruction reigned every 52 years, which some researchers have linked to Venus being in an aberrant orbit and wreaking havoc on the inner planets (see Velikovsky). The Mayans were obsessed with tracking the motion of Venus.

The cataclysm introduced errors, skewings, darkness, disorder, and a “Fall” from a previous harmonious state, and this fallen world is the world we have known since 3114 B.C. Incidentally, this date correlates with the beginning of civilization and loosely matches the calculated Biblical date of the creation of the world around 4000 B.C.

If there are logical causes for such cataclysms, cyclical causes, then what does that say about the Long Count calendar reaching the same value it started on, in just a few years?

See, there are no historical correlation patterns within the Long Count, but there is a historical significance to its beginning point (the cataclysm, creation of world as we know it, and beginning of linear time). By speculative extension, there should likewise be significance to its end point. If the beginning involved a terrible cataclysm plunging the world into a fallen state enchained by linear time and disharmony, could the ending therefore mark the dissolution of linear time, destruction of the world as we know it, and the restoration of harmony?

Calleman says as much, though for different reasons based on his own research. He does believe that we are about to enter into an age of enlightenment. And I do think that a Golden Age will arrive — eventually. However, based on my research into the alien agenda, I caution everyone against thinking it will all be over with October 28, 2011 or even December 21, 2012. For all we know it could be the decades afterwards that function as an important transition phase, where any screw ups and bad choices made in that span (like welcoming the wrong alien factions and acquiescing our freewill to them) would make us fall even further.

Conclusion

If the date of December 21, 2012 has any significance, it is strictly in its relation to the events and circumstances surrounding the beginning of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Since the beginning marked the creation of the world, the beginning of linear time, and was accompanied by cataclysms, the significance of 12/21/2012 ought to be related to those. Maybe after that date, linear time will have lesser and lesser importance and the world as we know it will fade away.

In my view, Calleman’s super-calendar (which you can read about at his website) does have merit as far as predicting what time periods are marked by what energetic or synchronistic qualities. Its end date of October 28, 2011 that may or may not be correct; if correct we will see it and the earlier dates (Nov 2, 2010 and Nov 7 20009) correlate with shifts in human experience (world events, mass consciousness, trends in your own life, etc…). If not correct, fact remains that 2011-2013 covers all the theorized end points of the various Mayan Calendars and therefore, considering the non-arbitrary and historical/synchronistic basis of these calendars, we ought to see significant events materialize.

Appendix: How to Calculate the Long Count End Date

A Long Count date is written as five numbers separated by decimals. Each number has a specific name, each increments specific lengths of time, and each has a unique limit before rolling over to zero.

Format: 1.2.3.4.5

Names: [baktun].[katun].[tun].[winal].[kin]

Increment: [144,000 days].[7,200 days].[360 days].[20 days].[1 day]

Range: [0-13].[0-19].[0-19].[0-17].[0-19]

There is debate over whether the baktun range should be [0-13] or [0-19] — here it will be taken as [0-13] but there’s just as much reason to believe it goes [0-19] with “13” being a very special number in Mayan cosmology. Either way, this coming change of the baktun 13 is unlike any of the previous ones for the past five thousand years.

So the date 0.0.0.0.1 would be August 12, 3114 B.C., one day after the day of Creation. The date 0.0.0.1.0 would be 20 days after, 0.0.1.0.0 would be 360 days after, and so on. The Long Count date for September 29, 2009 is 12.19.16.13.1

The day of Creation was 13.0.0.0.0 and this will likewise be the end date. Thus to figure out the end date, one must start with 13.0.0.0.0 and advance forward a full round until arriving at that number again. This would be:

13 baktuns x 144,00 days each
= 1,872,000 days from August 11, 3114 B.C. = December 21, 2012 A.D.

Actually arriving at 12/21/2012 requires taking into account various calendrical quirks, but there are online date conversion sites and software programs that do it accurately and confirm 12/21/2012 as being that many days after the Mayan date of Creation.

Appendix: Galactic Center Alignment

This day also happens to be Winter Solstice. Which has spawned theories that on Winter Solstice 2012, the sun will line up perfectly with the galactic center, and that this alignment will open a portal that shifts us into a new dimension. See my article The Physics of 2012 for my take on that.

Now it turns out that the Winter Solstice already crossed the galactic center back in 1998. Calleman points this out, to show why putting stock in 12/21/2012 for astronomical reasons is misguided. However, that’s given the modern astronomical convention for where the galactic center is located; since the Milky Way is large and not well-defined, there’s still a chance that the real center could be where Winter Solstice will be in 2012.

There is another connection with the galactic center: the time it takes light to reach the galactic center from earth (and vice versa) is equal to the time required for Precession of the Equinoxes to complete a full cycle. Is this mere coincidence? Or is earth’s precession somehow coupled to the electromagnetic link between earth and the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way? Something to think about.

Appendix: Calleman’s Calendar

Calleman’s calendar has an end point of October 28, 2011. Reaching back in time from this endpoint are 13 baktun cycles. The earliest of these thirteen is called the “First Day”, the second is called the “First Night”, the third “Second Day”, fourth “Second Night”, fifth “Third Day”, and so on up to the “Seventh Day” which is is the thirteenth baktun. For more on the meaning of these Days/Nights, see Calleman’s article.

Altogether there are seven “Days” and six “Nights” comprising these 13 segments. Each one of these Days has a certain synchronistic, energetic, archetypal quality to it. Therefore the first baktun, or rather the first 144,000 days, hold the energy unique to the “First Day” archetype. And likewise for the other “Days” and “Nights”.

The same can be done with 13 katuns, tuns, winals, or kins stretching back from October 28, 2011. Obviously we haven’t yet reached the point in history where we start counting down with the last 13 kins. But we are within the last tun-based cycle:

13 kins = 13 days, made of Days/Nights of 1 day each.

13 winals = 13 × 20 kins = 260 days, made of Days/Nights of 20 days each.

13 tuns = 13 × 18 winals = 13 × 18 × 20 kins = 4680 days, Day/Nights of 360 days each.

So we can take October 28, 2011 and start counting back 360 days at a time, and doing that 13 times brings us to the beginning of the tun-based cycle of Calleman’s Calendar. The dates are as follows:

End of 7th Day: Oct 28, 2011
Beginning of 7th Day: Nov 2, 2010
…6th Night: Nov 7, 2009
…6th Day: Nov 12, 2008
…5th Night: Nov 18, 2007
…5th Day: Nov 23, 2006
…4th Night: Nov 27, 2005
…4th Day: Dec 3, 2004
…3rd Night: Dec 9, 2003
…3rd Day: Dec 14, 2002
…2nd Night: Dec 19, 2001
…2nd Day: Dec 24, 2000
…1st Night: Dec 30, 1999
…1st Day: Jan 4, 1998

When the 7th Day of the 13-tun cycle begins on November 2, 2010, that is when the remaining time can be divided into 13 winals, and when the last winal is reached, the remaining time be divided into 13 kins or 13 days. So starting November 2, 2010, every 20 days will see a new Night/Day within the winal-based cycle. You may use a convenient online date calculator to add/subtract days from dates.

Thus there is an implicit acceleration of time in this calendar, whereby the last 13 days leading up to October 28, 2011 ought to see as much change as the 13 tuns or 4,680 days leading up to it. Whether that is true remains to be seen.


http://montalk.net/notes/mayan-calendar-2011-2012