Page 24 - 200911 - The 'X' Chronicles newspaper - November 2009

november2009_june_july_2009.qxd 23/11/2009 4:37 PM Page 24 24 The Great 2012 Scare 24 The Great 2012 Scare The Great 2012 predicted a "marvelous millennium of joy, Another book in 1975 also spotlighted The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare peace, prosperity." the Maya calendric roundup. Dennis and Doomsday Scare When Jan. 1, 2000, came and went with Terence McKenna discussed it in The Invisible nothing worse than ski-lift passes printing the Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I This guest article on 2012 was written date as 1900, the focus shifted to "5/5/2000" Ching. That book at least got the Baktun-13 end by E. C. Krupp, Director of Griffith several months later. Most believers in the date right: Dec. 21, 2012. It also noted that the date is the winter solstice, when the Sun will be power of planetary alignments forgot the failure Observatory in Los Angeles and is of earlier lineups to induce disaster. The "Jupiter "in the constellation Sagittarius, only about 3 reprinted with permission from Sky Effect" cataclysm predicted for March 10, 1982 degrees from the Galactic Center, which, also & Telescope Magazine. The publisher (named for the 1974 book about it by John coincidentally, is within 2 degrees of the and the author reserve all rights. All Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann) commanded ecliptic." The McKennas continued, "Because opinions are the author's own. headlines but never materialized. the winter solstice node is precessing, it is Throughout history, end-of-the-world moving closer and closer to the point on the movements missing their mark number in the ecliptic where it will eclipse the galactic center." The year 2012 is acting like a badly behaved celebrity. Frightful rumors and gossip "hundreds of thousands at the very least, says In reality this event will never happen, but it Richard Landes, historian at Boston University hardly matters. The McKennas linked the whole are spreading. Already more than a half dozen and director of its Center for Millennial Studies. arrangement with the concept of renewal and books are marketing, to eager fans, But people eager for the world to end are not to called 2012 a moment of "potential astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be be denied, and this time, of course, all will be transformative opportunity." Broader interest in 2012 caught on different. 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems beginning in 1987. In The Mayan Factor: Path designed to break all records for disaster The Rollover Beyond Technology, José Argüelles (an "artist, spectacles -- with cracking continents, plunging poet, and visionary historian" according to the asteroids, burning cities, and a tsunami throwing an aircraft carrier through the White What exactly is the Maya calendar about dust jacket) linked the 13-baktun period with an impalpable "beam" from the center of the Milky House. The movie's ominous slogan: "Find out to do? On Dec. 21, 2012, it will display the Way Galaxy. According to Argüelles, the Maya the truth." Two other major movies about the equivalent of a string of zeros, like the odometer knew when we entered this beam and when we 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the turning over on your car, with the close of would leave it, and set their 13-baktun cycle to works. something like a millennium. In Maya Anyone who cruises the internet or all- calendrics, however, it's not the end of a mark our passage through it accordingly. The night talk radio knows why. The ancient Maya thousand years. It's the end of Baktun 13. The beam, he asserted, operates as "invisible galactic life threads" that link people, the planet, of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is Maya calendar was based on multiple cycles of the Sun, and the center of the Galaxy. Neither about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the time, and the baktun was one of them. A baktun Maya tradition nor modern astronomy supports solar system into transcendental alignment with is 144,000 days: a little more than 394 years. the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into Scholars have deciphered how the Maya a belief in any such beam. It stemmed instead from Argüelles’s personal philosophy, which a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down calendar worked from historical texts and emphasizes "the principle of harmonic our alley for a strike. ancient inscriptions, and they have accurately resonance." Argüelles also concluded that the None of it is true. People you know, correlated so-called Maya Long Count dates however, are likely becoming a bit afraid that with the equivalent dates in our calendar. Just as planets are "orbiting harmonic gyroscopes" that modern astronomy and Maya secrets are indeed we number our years counting from a “play a role in the coordination of the beam," which advances the development of anything conspiring to bring our doom. If people know historically and culturally significant event (the with DNA. The year 2012, therefore, will bring you’re an astronomer, they will soon be asking presumed birth year of Christ), Maya times a rosy version of the apocalypse. you all about it. were numbered from a date endowed with If this sounds a bit familiar, you're right. Here is what you need to know. religious and cosmic significance: the creation date of the present world order. A Long Count In 1987 Argüelles and his followers predicted, Birth of a Notion date is the tally of days from that mythic startup. with worldwide fanfare, that Aug. 16–17 of that Birth of a Notion Most experts think the start point corresponds to year would bring a Maya-Galactic "Harmonic Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. Convergence." That event turned into a global We"ve had similar scares in the recent phenomenon, with thousands gathering at Most of the Maya calendar intervals past, but none quite like this. The last time the accumulate as multiples of 20. An interval of Earth’s “acupuncture points” to create a world got all worked up over the mystical 7,200 days (360 × 20) was known as a katun. It "synchronized and unified bio-electromagnetic turning of a calendar was the false Millennium takes 20 katuns to complete a baktun (20 × collective battery." Unfortunately, the date of Jan. 1, 2000. Never mind the actual Y2K 7,200 = 144,000 days). Although some ancient passed with nothing more than colorful computer-date bug. True-believer authors (and newspaper stories and a Doonesbury satire. (A their imitators) published scary and/or hopeful inscriptions turn 13 baktuns into an important character explains earnestly that that the reset milestone, others imply that the calendar books about the moment's prophetic potential to simply keeps running. For instance, it takes 20 alignment could bring either "mass unification catch an immense cosmic wave and change baktuns to make a pictun. of divine and earth-plane selves," or perhaps everything for either good or ill. Borrowing a No one paid much attention to the end of nuclear annihilation. "Either way there will forecast from Nostradamus, the 16th-century probably be a crafts fair.") French riddler, author Charles Berlitz predicted Baktun 13 until fairly recently. In 1975 Frank Waters, a romantic and speculative author, catastrophe in his 1981 book Doomsday 1999. devoted a brief section to the subject in his book (Continued on Page 25) Berlitz (fresh off books on Atlantis and the Mexico Mystique. He identified the 13-baktun Bermuda Triangle), warned that 1999 could interval as a "Mayan Great Cycle," inflict flood, famine, pollution and a shift of Earth's magnetic poles. He also spotlighted the overestimated its duration as 5,200 years, and equated five such cycles with five legendary planetary alignment of May 5, 2000, and eras, each of which ends in the world’s warned that it could bring solar flares, severe destruction and rebirth. There is no genuine earthquakes, "land changes" and "seismic Maya tradition behind any of this. explosions." In the 1990s an entire "Earth Changes" Waters also miscalculated the date when movement swelled into being as the end of the the calendar would supposedly pull down the shades. "The end of the Great Cycle . . . will century neared, with all sorts of Millennial occur Dec. 24, 2011 A.D.," he announced, when expectations -- earthquakes, plagues, polar axis the world "will be destroyed by catastrophic shifts, continents sliding into the sea, Atlantis rising and more. In England, the Sun tabloid earthquakes." Exact date aside, the doomsday ball was now rolling.