Page 40 - june_july_2009.qxd

May 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/05/2010 6:15 PM Page 40 40 Nostradamus and 2012 Nostradamus and 2012 two would be connected. "In 2012, the Earth will be in a condition Then there is the History Channel. of rapid, unprece dented evolution and change The following is taken from The Essential Discovering that its most successful shows were due to the enlightenment of the human species Nostradamus just published by Tarcher not the ones that delved into the saga of the for having returned to living according to the Kentucky rifle or the air tactics of the Third natural 13:20 cycles of time . . . . The oneness of If you were to take the years that have Reich, the net work began producing specials on human ity will be the result of the universal been earmarked as the due date for the End more exotic subjects such as Nostradamus and telepathy reawakened by returning to the natural Times, you would find few over the last two 2012. Here is the network's own write-up of its cycles. Because of this fact, there will no longer mil lennia that have avoided this peculiar honor. show Doomsday 2012: The End of Days: "A be any need of government, and humanity will The twelfth-century Italian prophet Joachim of surprising number of prophets from ancient have abandoned industrial technology for the Fiore contended that the year 1280 would mark oracles to contemporary Internet-crawling develop ment of spiritual, telepathic fourth- the dawn of the Era of the Holy Spirit, the dawn software 'bots' point to December 21, 2012 as dimensional technologies. Creature comfort of spiritual freedom for all. William Miller, a the End of Days." And for "Nostradamus 2012," needs will be supplied by applications of solar self-educated preacher in early nineteenth- we are told, "December 21, 2012 is bearing and telepathic crystal technologies. The human century New York state, predicted on the basis down on us with alarming speed. Whether or race will be living and fulfilling UR, the of his intricate scrutiny of biblical texts that not we are able to collectively heed the Universal Religion on Earth. The order of Christ would return sometime between March warnings and affect a course to avert disaster reality will be known as the Dominion of Time. 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. Although his may be the defining moment of the modern Everyone will be getting ready for the great mo - followers were disappointed, they regrouped to age." Pre sumably the "may" provides an out in ment of galactic synchronization, July 26, 2013, form the vari ous Adventist denominations that case we don't have to heed the warnings after Yellow Ga lactic Seed, the completion of the still survive today. In the late nineteenth all. telepathic construction of Timeship Earth 2013 century, Charles Taze Russell, a Pittsburgh These documentaries have, of course, and the advent of the Planetary Man itou, the haberdasher who delved into scriptural attracted critics. John Major Jenkins, author of galactic brain on Earth." mysteries, claimed that 1874 marked the 6000th Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, described the 2006 Arguelles urges the world to adopt the year of man's creation and would inaugurate the History Channel program Decoding the Past: Mayan calendar, which is based on a beneficent Time of the End. Leaving a forty-year "harvest" Mayan Dooms day Prophecy (for which he was "13:20" proportion -- the Mayan tzolkin cycle is period brought the target date to 1914. The interviewed) as "45 minutes of unabashed 260 days or 20 times 13 instead of the events of that year seemed at first to prove doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane pernicious "Baby lonian" calendar, based on a Russell right, but, at his death in 1916, the sensation alism." "12:60" rhythm (with twelve months in a year), Armageddon-like carnage of World War I was I doubt the History Channel will be which, he contends, has warped and damaged still continuing without any providential rescue. dismayed by such characterizations certainly human consciousness. After the war had come and gone, Russell's not as long as the ratings hold. I have appeared Argüelles's ideas do not necessarily followers, known as Bible Students, decided on some of these shows myself, and I can testify become clearer with further explanation. A that 1914 was the beginning of the end. The that the producers offscreen asking me the more lucid account is provided by John Major largest segment of these (renamed Jehovah's questions sometimes have trou ble keeping a Jen kins, who says that December 21, 2012, will Witnesses in 1931) later pointed toward a date straight face. be the day on which the point of the sun's rising of 1975, which their revised calculations All this said, these programs would not at the winter solstice coincides with the "Dark indicated was the real 6000th year of man's get such high ratings unless they met a need in Rift" of the Milky Way, a gap in the galaxy as creation. But this year passed without any the collective psyche. The thought of doomsday seen from the earth. The Mayans were aware of serious damage to the heavens or the earth. At generates a weird pleasure in those probably this "galactic alignment," as Jenkins calls it, and the end of the twentieth century, Nostradamus's including all of us who feel a deep ambivalence believed that it portended a renewal and trans - date of 1999 was greeted with some about advanced civilization. We are the formation of the age." apprehension, but, it too, proved to be like any creations of this civilization; we could scarcely Still another 2012 prophet is the late other year. survive for a week outside the shade of its Terence McKenna, who in the 1990s replaced New Age prophecy, which has retained umbrella; but it is so exacting and artificial that Timothy Leary as the pope of psychedelia. the habit of apocalyptic speculation while we often find ourselves hating and resenting it. Mak ing his own hypercomplicated calculations detaching it from the Bible, is now looking to - Fantasizing about apocalypse offers a way, even using the I Ching, he arrived at a date for the ward 2012. It's curiously appropriate that the if it is an unsatisfying way, of recon ciling these dawning of a historic "singularity" in mid- best article I have read about the 2012 contradictions in ourselves. November, 2012, but changed it to the Mayan phenomenon appears on a website called But why 2012? Popularizing this year as date when he learned of that. Cracked.com. Written by Luis Prada, it is a target date for apoca lypse (or universal These speculations dovetail with a widespread entitled "The Six Best 2012 Apocalypse spiritual renewal) was originally the work of expectation that we are entering the age of Theories (and Why They Are All Bullshit)." Valum Votan, or, as he is more commonly Aquarius, although the date of this oc currence is Prada writes, "You may have noticed a recent known, José Argüelles, the alleged "closer of far more tenuous. Again, it has to do with the trend of trying to fit every hackneyed doomsday the cycle and messenger of the new time." point of the sun's rising -- in this case at the prophecy into the same red- letter year of 2012. Argüelles is best known as the prophet vernal equinox. Over the last 2,150 years (this The theories are obtuse, their connections are of the Harmonic Conver gence of August 16-17, figure is vague, as is its starting point), the sun flimsy and the perceived consequences are 1987, which attracted tremendous attention has risen on March 21 with Pisces in the completely unsubstantiated. Un surprisingly, worldwide and is generally reckoned as the background. At some point it will rise, or has these prophecies are enormously popular." point at which the New Age entered mass already started to rise, with Aquarius in the Prada's number one theory is credited to culture an outcome that did not please background: that will mark the dawning of the Nostradamus. But Nostradamus makes no Argüelles. As he told me in a 1998 interview, "It age of Aquarius. The dates for this event are reference to the year 2012 in any of his was the beginning of the New Age as unclear because there is no clear line between prophecies. Fur thermore, when he does mention commercial marketing, which was anything but the zones of Pisces and Aquarius in the sky. dates in the future -- 1580, 1609, 1703, 1999 -- our intention." Dates I have seen range from a.d. 1600 to 2500; they are almost always years in which nothing At any rate, from his interpretation of C. G. Jung, in his work Aion, which deals in of any great moment occurred. Why, then, has the extraordinarily intri cate Mayan calendar (or depth with the symbolism of Pisces, suggested he been connected with 2012? There is, frankly, calendars -- there are apparently seventeen that it might begin in 1997, for intricate no good reason. It is simply that Nostra damus different ones), Argüelles contended that August astronomical reasons. has become associated with apocalyptic 16, 1987, marked the end of a "hell cycle" for prophecies as a whole as Prada puts it, "No one this planet and that the next five years would be Part II of else in history has caused more people to a time of cleansing in preparation for the Nostradamus and 2012 stockpile Spam in their bomb shelters" and so dawning of a new era on December 21, 2012. will be in the June 2010 Edition of has the year 2012, so it was inevitable that the Argüelles explains: The ’X’ Chronicles