12-20-2012; Our Last Golden Sunset?

By R. S. Marshal

The End-Sate of the Mayan Calendar is rapidly approaching and many people sense it will bring change. Though most of the 2012 "prophets" see this change as the beginning of a Golden Age, there are many who see only doom and destruction coming on December 21st.

But did the Maya ever mention either of those possibilities? We will sift through the evidence from Mesoamerican myth as well as that gleaned from archeological digs. Though pious monks have destroyed much of the writings of the ancient culture, there is more being uncovered every year.

Examination of what the Maya were in the past and what they believed offers a wealth of clues to what their calendar was really about.

And it also reveals why the New Age prophets are erroneous in their pronouncements of the event coming at the end of 2012. It was never intended to warn of the end of the world or to usher in any Golden Age.

Still, the message is earth-shattering in many respects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martian Publishing
• Release date: Apr 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476105123

R. S. Marshal

Trained in statistics and raised by hippies... what a combination! Perhaps that lends the unique vision I have to the world and the repeating cycles apparent around us, all throughout history. Hence my interest in the Mayan Calendar and the furor surrounding the End Date coming at the close of this year, 2012. As I am just embarking on my publishing career, you can tell I don't put much stock in the world coming to an end this year, but that will become obvious to the readers of my study on the 2012 phenomena. That is also the subject on my blog, which I have been adding to since 2007. But that is not the only interest I have delved into over the years so if the Mayan Calendar is not your thing, perhaps my next book will interest you. Only time will tell where my pen will take me.

Book preview

12-20

2012

____________

Our Last Golden Sunset?

By R. S. Marshal

MARTIAN PUBLISHING

Copyright 2012 by Martian Publishing Company

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No portion of this volume may

be reproduced in any format

without the express written

permission of the copyright holder.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION - What's the Buzz?

PART I – THE BASICS

understanding the Maya has been a long time coming

Chapter 1 - The Maya and Their Place in the Sun

Chapter 2 - The Mesoamerican Calendar(s)

Chapter 3 - Parting Gifts

Chapter 4 - A Ray of Sunshine

PART II – THE HYPOTHESES

after Argüelles awakened the Beast

Chapter 5 - The Coming Golden Age

Chapter 6 - Doom and Destruction

Chapter 7 - Spin Cycle

Chapter 8 - Lost Worlds

Chapter 9 - Much Ado About Nothing

PART III – BACK TO THE BASICS

we are we really left with?

Chapter 10 - Removing the Lens

Chapter 11 - Into the Light

NOTES AND REFERENCES

APPENDICES

Extrapolation (by Mark Twain)

Mayan Calendars

Sitchin’s Nibiru

Velikovsky

Electric Universe

~~~~

FOREWORD

I began studying the cycles contained within the Mayan Calendar in the 1970's. The differing interwoven cycles they used intrigued me and I based a paper for my Statistics class on several of them.

One of the cycles I found most interesting was the one that ran more than nineteen years. It seemed that it nearly coincided with the twenty year curse for American Presidents. The Presidents elected in 1820, 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, and 1960 all had the misfortune to die in office. I thought perhaps the Mayan cycle could give me some insight into the pattern.

Sadly, it was inconclusive. But my interest in the calendar was born.

In 1998, I came across a new volume, The Mayan Factor, by Jose Argüelles. I had been toying with the idea of writing a fictional tale of the Mayans creating their calendar and the reasoning behind it. Perhaps the Argüelles book could help me in my understanding.

It opened a whole new world to me and I began to look into the 2012 phenomenon and all the talk going around about doomsday.

I thought the calendar – and the reasons behind it – were obvious enough that no one could really misunderstand what the Mayan were saying.

Boy! Was I wrong!

I read far and wide in the literature and found such a variety of predictions. Some rather bland, some rather far out there, and none even vaguely resembling what I understood the thing to be about.

And so, we have this present volume. Not intending to set everyone straight, I just wanted to point out my interpretation of what the Maya really intended for their calendar.

And to try and present such evidence that supports my interpretation.

~~~~

INTRODUCTION

What’s the Buzz?

I have a calendar on the wall in my office. Every year it reaches the end with nothing more dire than another round of New Year’s resolutions and the preparations for another season with the tax people. That and the bother of finding a new one to replace it… preferably one with some cute kittens or ferrets to make the coming year a little lighter.

So what’s all this fuss about the Mayan Calendar coming to an end? Can’t they just take it down and go to the local hardware or bookstore and get a new one? Well, unfortunately, their calendar covers more than one simple year; more like 5,125 years. Replacements like that are going to be pretty hard to come by.

What could they have been thinking when they devised such a thing? It seems strange in our hurry-hurry world to think that anyone would need to plan that far in advance for anything.

So, what were they thinking? The question is not intended to be rhetorical. Really, what were they thinking? Our calendar is designed to last one year for a purpose: we plan most everything in yearly increments – five or ten years at best. Were they thinking in five thousand year increments? And, if so, why?

It is possible, some tell us, that they were not actually planning that far in advance but simply passing along a message to us. Not exactly us specifically but perhaps they saw something in their future – the future of their grandchildren’s great-grandchildren’s grandchildren – that necessitated some means whereby they could convey the warning to them, and to us. But why should the message have been couched in such unspecific terms? Why the subterfuge? Why not just tell us what it is they saw coming down the pike?

I believe they did. They made the message as clear as they possibly could only it seems that we have forgotten how to read what they have left us. Somewhere between the literal and the metaphorical interpretations of their legacy lies the truth in the message.

How can we decide which path leads to the answers? A lot has been written about the Mayan Calendar recently and there seems to be plenty of confusion about what is really going on. Some see dire omens, others see a new enlightenment, and yet others see just another December 21st no different than any other.

A recent History Channel production, Mayan Doomsday 2012, consulted a variety of prophets throughout the past to describe the coming end of the world in 2012. Unfortunately, the only one that actually mentioned the year 2012 was the Mayan Calendar; the others simply describe a doomsday scenario. None of the others, not Nostradamus or Cayce, supplied us with the date. And that rapidly approaching date is the puzzle.

A lot of this confusion comes about because the Mayan End-Date has only recently been discovered and the decipherment of their language is still ongoing. Apparently even the modern Maya had forgotten about it as it took the researchers several decades to piece together the start and end dates for their calendar – the Maya seem to have forgotten this dire prediction. Today there is still some disparity on the precise End-Date but most scholars agree that the calendar began on August 11th 3114 BC and will end on December 21st 2012. (The less-popular interpretation starts the calendar on the 13th of August 3114 BC and ends December 23rd 2012.) One researcher claims the actual End-Date is October 28, 2011, but most agree on the Winter Solstice date.

What could have been going on around 3000 BC to warrant the Maya starting a calendar that would last for more than five thousand years?

Again, what could they have been thinking?

What’s a Calendar for, Anyway?

Calendars have a long and varied history. Presently, I believe they serve the same purpose as the census: a tax gathering tool. But the calendar did not start that way.

Some scholars think it was originally used to help with agricultural cycles, but I cannot see a culture living in tune with nature and the seasons – as they most certainly needed to be – require some numerical artifice to tell them when to plant and harvest; nature itself does that well enough.

It seems calendars were first devised to help honoring special days. Precisely why the solar anniversary of an important event was celebrated is unknown but it goes back to the misty beginnings of humankind. Perhaps it had something to do with our own birthdays.

But these special days were generally of religious significance. So the calendars were formed with religious overtones. The seven day week and the seven days of Creation from the Bible immediately come to mind.

Many early cultures used the Moon as the basis of their calendar rather than the Sun. This repeating cycle gave us the month, named for the Moon. The lunar cycle (about 29 days) falls just short of the modern month (30/31 days), so they would quickly fall out of alignment and the year measured by moons would end earlier and earlier each solar year. The Hebrews solved this by adding an extra lunar month every few years.

The length of the solar year seems to have undergone some adjustment as well. Some of the very earliest calendars have the length of a year set at 360 days and the lunar month at 30 days. These numbers led the ancients to devising the circle of 360° and the twelve astrological signs at 30° each. Historians think it strange that the ancients had such difficulty in counting the true length of a year. They marvel that the ancients did not notice the variance after a couple of years; in less than twenty years, the spring solstice would have moved an entire season!

Still, the ancients did make an adjustment. After many years, cultures around the world noticed the year was suddenly five days longer. Most simply tacked the extra five days to the end of their year in its own short month and considered them evil days.

Could it possibly be that the year in ancient times was only 360 days long? Could the Sun and Moon actually have been that closely synchronized? Historians mock the ancients for their obvious ineptitude, but considering the ancients’ careful concern for the movements of the heavens, another solution seems appropriate. And judging by the widespread belief that the year was shorter, I would tend to favor the eyewitnesses.

Though the movements of the Sun and the Moon became the building blocks for the year and month, the origin of the week is less certain. Some think it a measure for the various phases of the Moon but no one knows for sure. It has been around a long time as evidenced by its inclusion in the Book of Genesis. Since the Jewish texts have it as the metaphorical length of time it took for the Creation perhaps a metaphysical or esoteric interpretation may point researchers in the right direction.

So, we come to understand that most of the phenomena assigned to the birth of calendars are of celestial origin. So were the gods of the ancients. With the Sun, Moon, and planets deified, the basis for the calendar takes on even more religious overtones.

Heavenly Obsession

The ancients were obsessed with the heavens. Their gods were up in the heavens above – many were planets, for some strange reason – and they kept a keen eye on their movements and the portents above. As the planets are not visible during the day, this had to have been a nocturnal activity. They must have been insomniacs and there must have been some important reason for their sky-watching rather than some idle whim. The basic struggle to survive lent little time for such academic pursuits on anything but a modest scale. There must have been some worldwide pressing need to keep such a vigilant watch.

Again, historians aid our understanding by pronouncing it superstitious fear. They tell us Stonehenge was built for this reason: they feared the Sun was disappearing, going away southward, and needed some reassurance it was returning.

I don’t know where anyone got this notion. Surely the ancients, more in tune with their environment than most modern mankind, would have noticed that the Sun came back every year. And without the intercession of a priest. How could anyone convince them otherwise? Perhaps if they had just crawled out of some hole and never witnessed the seasons… No, probably not.

Obsessed, though, they were. They could see the planets moving independently of the background star-field and were able to plot their courses, predict their future positions, as if they had nothing better to do. Why go to the bother if there is no pressing reason?

Fear is a good motivation. Not some hypothetical superstitious fear but something tangible. For us, Friday the 13th is a symbol of bad luck; for the Templars it was a deadly reality. Many today still fear the 13th but it lacks the punch it had for the Templars.

We find it remarkable that the ancients understood precession – use it, in fact, as a standard for intelligence – but how important is it, really? How does it impact our daily lives? Most people would be hard pressed to define what it is and even fewer could say if it had any bearing on anything.

Precession is the by-product of the slow wobble in our planetary axis. Astronomers think the entire process takes a little longer than 26,000 years to complete the circuit. As this wobble progresses, the equinoxes (spring and autumn) appear to move backward through the signs of the zodiac. Hence the term: precession of the equinoxes.

Many think this slow progress through the zodiacal houses