Page 6 - 201212 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - December 2012

The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare by E. C. Krupp, Director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles The year 2012 is acting like a badly behaved celebrity. Frightful rumors and gossip are spreading. Already more than a half dozen books are marketing, to eager fans, astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems designed to break all records for disaster spectacles -- with cracking continents, plunging asteroids, burning cities, and a tsunami throwing an aircraft carrier through the White House. The movie's ominous slogan: "Find out the truth." Two other major movies about the 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the works. Anyone who cruises the internet or all- night talk radio knows why. The ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is power of planetary alignments forgot the failure baktuns to make a pictun. about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the of earlier lineups to induce disaster. The "Jupiter No one paid much attention to the end of solar system into transcendental alignment with Effect" cataclysm predicted for March 10, 1982 Baktun 13 until fairly recently. In 1975 Frank the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into (named for the 1974 book about it by John Waters, a romantic and speculative author, a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann) commanded devoted a brief section to the subject in his book our alley for a strike. headlines but never materialized. Mexico Mystique. He identified the 13-baktun None of it is true. People you know, Throughout history, end-of-the-world interval as a "Mayan Great Cycle," however, are likely becoming a bit afraid that movements missing their mark number in the overestimated its duration as 5,200 years, and modern astronomy and Maya secrets are indeed "hundreds of thousands at the very least, says equated five such cycles with five legendary conspiring to bring our doom. If people know Richard Landes, historian at Boston University eras, each of which ends in the world’s you’re an astronomer, they will soon be asking and director of its Center for Millennial Studies. destruction and rebirth. There is no genuine you all about it. But people eager for the world to end are not to Maya tradition behind any of this. Here is what you need to know. be denied, and this time, of course, all will be Waters also miscalculated the date when different. the calendar would supposedly pull down the Birth of a Notion shades. "The end of the Great Cycle . . . will We"ve had similar scares in the recent The Rollover occur Dec. 24, 2011 A.D.," he announced, when past, but none quite like this. The last time the What exactly is the Maya calendar about the world "will be destroyed by catastrophic world got all worked up over the mystical to do? On Dec. 21, 2012, it will display the earthquakes." Exact date aside, the doomsday turning of a calendar was the false Millennium equivalent of a string of zeros, like the odometer ball was now rolling. of Jan. 1, 2000. Never mind the actual Y2K turning over on your car, with the close of Another book in 1975 also spotlighted computer-date bug. True-believer authors (and something like a millennium. In Maya the Maya calendric roundup. Dennis and their imitators) published scary and/or hopeful calendrics, however, it's not the end of a Terence McKenna discussed it in The Invisible books about the moment's prophetic potential to thousand years. It's the end of Baktun 13. The Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I catch an immense cosmic wave and change Maya calendar was based on multiple cycles of Ching. That book at least got the Baktun-13 end everything for either good or ill. Borrowing a time, and the baktun was one of them. A baktun date right: Dec. 21, 2012. It also noted that the forecast from Nostradamus, the 16th-century is 144,000 days: a little more than 394 years. date is the winter solstice, when the Sun will be French riddler, author Charles Berlitz predicted Scholars have deciphered how the Maya "in the constellation Sagittarius, only about 3 catastrophe in his 1981 book Doomsday 1999. calendar worked from historical texts and degrees from the Galactic Center, which, also Berlitz (fresh off books on Atlantis and the ancient inscriptions, and they have accurately coincidentally, is within 2 degrees of the Bermuda Triangle), warned that 1999 could correlated so-called Maya Long Count dates ecliptic." The McKennas continued, "Because inflict flood, famine, pollution and a shift of with the equivalent dates in our calendar. Just as the winter solstice node is precessing, it is Earth's magnetic poles. He also spotlighted the we number our years counting from a moving closer and closer to the point on the planetary alignment of May 5, 2000, and historically and culturally significant event (the ecliptic where it will eclipse the galactic center." warned that it could bring solar flares, severe presumed birth year of Christ), Maya times In reality this event will never happen, but it earthquakes, "land changes" and "seismic were numbered from a date endowed with hardly matters. The McKennas linked the whole explosions." religious and cosmic significance: the creation arrangement with the concept of renewal and In the 1990s an entire "Earth Changes" date of the present world order. A Long Count called 2012 a moment of "potential movement swelled into being as the end of the date is the tally of days from that mythic startup. transformative opportunity." century neared, with all sorts of Millennial Most experts think the start point corresponds to expectations -- earthquakes, plagues, polar axis Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. (Continued on Page 8) shifts, continents sliding into the sea, Atlantis Most of the Maya calendar intervals rising and more. In England, the Sun tabloid accumulate as multiples of 20. An interval of The ‘X’ Zone predicted a "marvelous millennium of joy, 7,200 days (360 × 20) was known as a katun. It New Year’s Eve Special peace, prosperity." takes 20 katuns to complete a baktun (20 × with Rob McConnell When Jan. 1, 2000, came and went with 7,200 = 144,000 days). Although some ancient 9 pm Dec 31 2012 - 1 am Jan 1 2013 nothing worse than ski-lift passes printing the inscriptions turn 13 baktuns into an important Listen and Watch date as 1900, the focus shifted to "5/5/2000" reset milestone, others imply that the calendar several months later. Most believers in the simply keeps running. For instance, it takes 20 www.xzoneradiotv.com