The 13 Heavens
The 13 Heavens are the layers, or successive journeys, within the 5,125-year grand pilgrimage of our current Great Cycle, looked over, like all things Mayan, by 13 spirits influencing our evolution. Thirteen is a divine number, once called ‘the basic structural unit in nature.’ Twelve spheres can be gathered around a 13th central sphere, and this is the most compact configuration in 3-dimensional space: 12 apostles around a central Jesus, 12 knights around King Arthur, and 12 constellations of the zodiac surrounding the earth. There are 13 major joints in the human body. A lunar year is 13 months long, and the moon travels 13 degrees each solar day. The Celtic year was ruled by 13 sacred trees, and the Mayan Sacred Calendar is a combination of 13-day counts, or trecenas, and 20-day cycles. The 13 Mayan trecena days describe a 13-step process of growth, a unit of creation, represented by a planting cycle from sowing seed, through germination and flowering, to the harvesting of fruit.
The 5-125 Great Cycle is a count of 13 144,000-day Baktuns.
Our present age, the Great Cycle that is coming to a close in 2012, can be viewed as a succession of evolutionary leaps that are linked to the changes in the Baktuns, or Heavens, as we have progressed through this age. These 13 steps are analogous to the 13 trecena steps for the planting cycle, only the fruit we hope to harvest is the full potential of our own earth. This is the real hope for 2012. When someone says 2012 is about a big earthquake or solar storms, or an alien invasion, these are simplifications of a paranoid culture that cannot get its head around any other kind of movement on a global scale.
The evolution through the Great Cycle can be measured in both our intellectual growth and in the development of our consciousness and awareness of the divine. For those who do not feel we are particularly mature spiritually at this time, I would remind them that transitions between Heavens have been times of great instability in the past. The discussion that follows comes partly from Dr. Carl Johan Calleman’s The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, and I would recommend it.
The 13 Mayan steps or evolutionary leaps alternate between the light and dark. The spirits ruling odd-numbered heavens are female, creative and nurturing, and the spirits that rule even numbered heavens are male and warlike. As an example, the 9th heaven began in 40 CE (Common Era, analogous to AD) with the Apostle Paul beginning the mission of spreading a gospel of forgiveness over ‘an eye for an eye,’ the end of blood sacrifice, and the inclusion of all people, Jews and Gentiles, in God’s plan. The 9th heaven was ruled over by Quetzalcoatl, the god of light, who in human form preached peace and an end to human sacrifice, was himself sacrificed for his people and promised to return. The next and even 10th Heaven was ruled over by Tezcatlipoca, the god of darkness. This Heaven in Europe was known as the dark ages.
The idea of successive cycles and evolution, light and dark, positive and negative, is not unique to the Maya. Christian mystics have described the ‘mystic cycle,’ successive cycles of, in their terminology, consolation and desolation. Jainists, followers of the Jain Dharma religious movement in India, call these cycles ‘Utsarpinis,’ a progressive time cycle, and ‘Avsarpinis,’ a regressive time cycle.
The 13 evolutionary steps of the Great Cycle are 7 light cycles, expansive and progressive, separated by 6 dark cycles, which tend to be regressive. Dr. Calleman suggests that these are represented metaphorically by the 7 days and 6 nights of the creation ‘week’ described in Genesis. After all, what the Great Cycle is describing is a creation that is still an unfinished work. Likewise, the 7 candles of the menorrhea separated by the 6 dark spaces may represent this symbolically. The Maya represented this in 7-stepped pyramids, like the Pyramid of the High Priest in Chichen Itzá. There are 6 steps up, a top platform, or central heaven, and 6 steps down. The world’s first nation began at the onset of the Great Cycle, when the upper and lower kingdoms of Egypt were unified under the first Pharaoh in 3100 BCE. The oldest pyramid, and the world’s first monument built entirely of stone, is the Egyptian Djoser’s Step Pyramid, a pyramid with 7 steps.
Rapid, global change occurred abruptly at the onset of the Great Cycle. Egyptians considered the rapid beginning of their civilization a gift from God. At the beginning of the Great Cycle, people in Britain began building Stonehenge. The Hindu calendar starts in 3102 BCE, and at the beginning of the cycle Krishna was alive. Cultivation and agriculture began in the Fertile Crescent, and in Sumer (Chaldea) and Egypt, people began using written language for the first time. The stone-age ended, and people began using metal, first in Sumer and Crete. Another idea also arose among the Sumerians – a new idea for a new age. For the first time, people conceived of an omnipotent creator God, God with a capital ‘G.’
Many have equated the onset of the Great Cycle with the ‘Fall’ described in Genesis and the creation stories of other cultures. The Jewish calendar puts the expulsion from Eden at 3761 BCE. With the advent of writing we were leaving our life in the present behind and, aware of both our history and our future, became subject to the regret, pride, fear and hope that such awareness brings. The ability to live in the present, and find satisfaction there, was giving way to planning and the need for change. With the advent of agriculture came producing more than a family would need, and commerce, rates of exchange and business ledgers. With the advent of metal working came metal weapons and organized warfare, and kingdoms and the deified rulers who led them. Our thinking had changed on a fundamental level, and things would never be the same.
The events at top step of the 7-story pyramid are well known in the Jewish-Christian tradition. Even after recognizing a single God at the beginning of the Great Cycle, a pantheon of lesser gods and demigods continued to be worshiped. The turn of the 5th Heaven brought Moses, and a new understanding of the divine. God’s law became “I am your God; you shall not have other God’s before me.” Two Baktuns later, in the first year of the 7th Heaven (748 BCE), Isaiah received his calling as a prophet. This was the turning point, the top of the pyramid, exactly halfway through the Great Cycle. Isaiah rejected the belief that his God was a tribal deity of the Jewish people and recognized him as the God of all peoples.
Two Baktuns passed before the 9th Heaven began in 40 CE (AD). Christianity did not begin with the birth of Jesus, but with his death and the events that followed. The writings from that time are confused, with the man's followers trying to understand what they had experienced. After their leader was publicly executed he somehow continued to be part of their gatherings, speaking and eating with them. In 40 CE the mission of Paul to spread the message of forgiveness and ‘loving your enemy’ began, the end of blood sacrifice, the beginning of a liturgical tradition, and the acceptance of Jews and non-Jews equally into the movement.
The Christian mystics have a view of the mystic cycle that is 3-dimensional. Ever repeating cycles of consolation and desolation look repetitive and pointless in 2 dimensions, but when viewed from the side the cycle is, in reality, a helix, and is directed toward a goal. Likewise, the odd and even Baktuns move through the Great Cycle from a clear beginning to a clear end.
Dr. Calleman uses advances in writing to demonstrate this progression. The 1st Baktun began in 3115 BCE, and Egyptian hieroglyphic writing began around 3100 BCE. Every odd Baktun an advance in writing coincided with the Mayan calendar. At 2-Baktun intervals we record the first cuneiform writing, and first consonant alphabet, the addition of vowels, the first codex (folded-page) book and then the first book as we know them. Our own 13th Baktun (1617 CE) began the year before the world’s first daily newspaper was printed (1618). Last month I was on a mountaintop and used my phone to email a photograph to a friend of mine, a barrister in London. The mountain vista was printed and on her office wall in a few minutes. Where might this evolution take us in a new age?
Where might the evolution of our concept of the divine, becoming more inclusive through the changing Baktuns, take us in a new age?
We live in exciting times. We have climbed the pyramid and have come down the other side, our feet inches from reconnecting with the earth after more than 5000 years. Ancient people were obsessed with these few years we are now living through. If the pattern of evolutionary leaps we have experienced since the beginning of human civilization is more than mere coincidence, then the biggest leap of all may be very close indeed.