The End Time
May 21st 2011 came and went. A radio minister in the United States had promised listeners that true believers would be taken to heaven that day, a Christian event called the rapture, and those left behind would face earthquakes and tidal waves and destruction, the beginning of a great tribulation. May 21st came and went. It didn’t take long for someone to ask me the question. Actually, it was the next morning. “So,” they began, “I guess the Maya are next.”
I never meant it to be like this, but I never really pushed back either. Anyone who has read the book 2012: Under the Witz Mountain knows my view on this. There is no end of the world predicted, and never was, period. Still, I too have been guilty of turning a deceptive phrase in the name of marketing. The promotions promised ‘the end of the world was never so exciting'. And for 2 years on the website, the phrase “Mayan End Date’ was displayed over 2 stone skulls I photographed one day in Copan.
So what is an end date? What does it mean within the Mayan Cosmovision?
'End Date' is a term that refers to the last day of a particularly long cycle using an ancient calendar that nobody uses anymore. It had been out of common use for centuries when Europeans arrived in the Maya lands, and the Maya themselves are not in agreement about the dates. Many Mayan spiritual leaders will tell you the entire 2012 thing was made up by gringos and has nothing to do with them. The following statement was released by a group of elders, coincidentally on my birthday, 9 Q’anil:
The Maya Community categorically rejects misinformation driven by unthinking institutions and people claiming that 2012 is the final time, a time that will give total destruction. No Codex, and no account of time or Mayan tradition speaks of a time of death.
Some Maya say that the long calendar ended 60 years ago, and others say the calendar does not end for another 60 years. There are Maya who will tell you that 2012 is a year of transformation for the world, an opinion expressed in my book, and there are some who believe a Mayan boy, a Dalai Lama like figure, has been hidden in Mexico until he comes of age in 2012. They say he will be a catalyst for transformation. This belief was reported on this website in early 2010.
After I became a daykeeper (Ajq’ij) on 9 Q'anil, I received a written message from an Ajq’ij in Mexico:
Indigenous groups throughout the world, heirs to an inheritance of sacred spirituality, have decided to share knowledge with those ready to receive it. We are many, and together with them we are making a community that will resonate throughout the world. Of that there is no doubt.
The end date is the last day of a very long calendar that we call simply The Long Count, since contemporary Maya do not use the calendar and no one knows its actual name. The ancient religious and ceremonial calendar still used by modern Maya is the Cholq’ij, and is 260 days long. The Maya of course have a 365 day solar calendar used for agriculture. The Long Count calendar had been used in ancient times to keep historic records, and was over 5000 solar years long.
The fact that we can even estimate when the current Long Count might have began and might end is due to the work of non-Mayan archeologists. The current best-guess estimate is a combination of dates of post-conquest events thought to have been recorded in Mayan form, the dates of astronomical events recorded in ancient texts, and carbon dating. The idea that the current Long Count cycle began in 3114 (and ends in December 2012) is called the GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) Correlation after 3 non-Mayans, including the famous scholar J Eric Thompson and Mark Twain’s editor Joseph Goodman. The fact that the GMT Correlation ends on a winter solstice was a bonus that solidifies the estimate in many minds. Archeologist and epigrapher Michael Coe has written ‘there now is not the slightest chance that these three scholars were not right’. Others have questioned the correlation.
The assumption has been made that, since the Long Count began at the beginning of the current age of man, one Long Count cycle represents the length of one age. This view is not shared by most Mayans.
The May 21st Christian goof was the result of trying to read an ancient canonical text, the Bible, with mathematical precision, looking for codes and formulae between the lines of devotional history and metaphor. Similarly, reading ancient Mayan canonical texts like the Popol Vuh, and coming up with a linear conclusion that the ‘end’ of our current age will mirror the horrors of the last days of the previous age, is an exercise with no reasonable foundation or logical method.
So what are we to do?
The power of the Cholq’ij is in giving a living framework for understanding life, our relationship with one another within time, and our devotional relationship with the divine. The power of a calendar is not in determining when a cycle began or when it ends. The power of a calendar is in the structure it supplies on all the other days. The transition between cycles, cycles of hours (the days) or cycles of days and years, are opportunities to reflect on our lives, on the physical and spiritual cycles of life itself, and on the fruits and progress of our work.
Although the cosmic ETA ‘estimated time of arrival’ may not be certain, the desired destination was never in doubt. We rejoice in the diversity of the world, and in the diversity of human kind. We rejoice in the different races, the different languages, the different religions and creeds. The goal is to reach a place where we stand together, like, the ancestors said, ‘the fingers of the same hand.’ I’ll continue writing about the path so long as anyone is interested in listening.