The 2012 Story

upright, just as the texts described the World Tree being raised into the sky.

Maya scholar Matthew Looper defined the astronomical image-complex connected to the August 11, 3114 BC, Creation date in this way: “the critical event was the appearance of a turtle constellation (in Orion and/or Gemini) at zenith at dawn.”¹² The passage of Orion or Gemini through the “zenith at dawn” on that date defines a precession-specific era, which will be worth recalling when it becomes clear that my 2012 alignment theory is tied to a precession-specific era of alignment to the Milky Way. Scholars have come to see the three hearthstones as an archetypal structure that is suspected to refer to the 3114 BC Creation date anywhere it appears—in architectural arrangements of buildings, in non-date-containing inscriptions, or in sculptural assemblages.¹³ For example, Looper sees the three-hearthstone Creation paradigm of 3114 BC replicated at the site of Naranjo, in three groups of sculptures associated with three triangulated temples.¹⁴

The cosmic Crossroads of the Milky Way and the ecliptic is clearly a reference point for Maya Creation events. Scholars such as Karl Taube have noted that the cross symbol is used on thrones to designate the idea of “center,” and it has an additional connection with birth places.¹⁵ The connection of the cross symbol with the Milky Way-ecliptic cross in the sky is demonstrated among the modern Quiche, Yucatec, and Chorti Maya. It has been traced back to the Olmec, is present at Izapa, manifests in Sacred Tree symbolism in the Classic Period, and occurs in the Popol Vuh Creation Myth as the Crossroads. All of this demonstrates the deep interconnectedness of Maya astronomy and mythology. Some of Schele’s work has come under scrutiny and has undergone revision, but this one insight can be considered unassailable. It doesn’t in fact originate with her. It has a long history in Maya studies and is still accepted by many scholars, but she was its most recent and most compelling champion.

Other researchers took for granted connections between mythology and astronomy. In 1977, Eva Hunt examined a Maya myth from Zinacantan called “The Hummingbird” and traced its iconography back to the ancient doctrine of the four Tezcatlipocas, deities of World Ages who dance around the northern Pole Star. Since Tezcatlipoca was connected with the Big Dipper constellation, which revolves around the Pole Star, the myth thus preserved an ancient understanding of shifting seasonal positions of the Big Dipper caused by the precession of the equinoxes.¹⁶ In books and articles from the 1980s, Maya scholar Gordon Brotherston summarized his belief in a deep connection between the precession of the equinoxes and Creation mythologies, writing: “The great year of equinoctial precession emerges as the missing link between the local and political chronology of our era and the vast evolutionary philosophy so vividly testified to in the Popol Vuh.”¹⁷

In his intriguing book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, mythologist Joseph Campbell explored number systems used in many World Age traditions, including Hindu chronology, Old Testament patriarch lists, and Norse mythology, and repeatedly found key precessional numbers. The comparative mythologist in him couldn’t help but draw a connection, and after extensive research he took it as a basic truism that whenever you found a World Age doctrine in an ancient tradition you could bet that precession was lurking in the shadows.

These ideas are, in fact, found at a very early stage in Mesoamerican studies. In 1901, anthropologist Zelia Nuttall published a massive opus called “Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations” in the prestigious Peabody Museum Papers. She writes that she found “one, totally undreamed-of conclusion, concerning the law governing the evolution of religion and civilization. This leads me to think that, as I groped in the darkness, searching for the light, I unwittingly struck the key-note of that great universal theme which humanity, with a growing perception of existing, universal harmony, has ever been striving to seize and incorporate into their lives.”¹⁸ She was alluding to none other than the precession of the equinoxes, as the “key theme” that illuminated Mesoamerican civilization. She believed that the Pole Star was a key reference point for Mesoamerican cosmology, and its shifting position through the seasons, caused by precession, was recognized by Mesoamerican astronomers and defined, for them, the World Ages. Her insights inspired and informed Eva Hunt’s work much later.

Astro-mythology, astro-theology, archaeo-astronomy, mytho-astronomical ideation—however you phrase it, the connection between celestial cycles and cultural ideas on earth defines the highest insight of Mesoamerican religion, which can best be described with the Hermetic principle “as above, so below.” Sky and earth, subjective and objective realities, are interrelated, two sides of the same coin. We see this very tangibly in astronomically timed rites of Maya kingship. We also see it in city names and city planning, in which cities were oriented to astronomically significant horizons and reflected the structure of the cosmos.

The precessional basis of these profound philosophical ideas has, unfortunately, been misconstrued as a latter-day echo of Panbabylonianism, an interpretation of ancient mythology that arose among German historians of science in the early twentieth century. Alfred Jeremias was the best-known proponent of this school of thought, which believed that ancient civilizations knew about the precession of the equinoxes and all mythologies and religions are rooted in that knowledge. The claims of the most vociferous exponents of this doctrine met with the criticisms of a scientific community that couldn’t accept such sophistication in ancient cultures.

The Panbabylonians overstated their case and were duly chastised by consensus academia, but the core idea has proven resilient. In the 1940s it reemerged in Hertha von Dechend’s work with Polynesians who navigated by the stars. She found many pieces of evidence from many cultures that indicated an awareness of the shifting skies, and later teamed up with science historian Giorgio de Santillana to explore this neglected area. Together they wrote the book Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, published in 1969. Even before the book was released, Santillana, who was terminally ill as the book was being completed, wrote: “Whatever fate awaits this last enterprise of my latter years, and be it that of Odysseus’s last voyage, I feel comforted by the awareness that it shall be the right conclusion of a life dedicated to the search for truth.”¹⁹

And what was the “search for truth” fathomed in Hamlet’s Mill? Apart from the general idea that many later researchers have taken to heart, that ancient mythology and astronomy go together, there is a more specific thesis. It was clear to these respected authors that many ancient mythological traditions were describing the slow shifting of the heavens, the precession of the equinoxes, and certain alignments that occur within this cycle involving the bright band of the Milky Way and the shifting positions of the equinoxes and solstices. The “framework of the seasonal quarters” shifts slowly with precession and periodically aligns with the Milky Way. Readers familiar with Hamlet’s Mill may, at this point, be a bit baffled, as this idea is obliquely buried in the labyrinthine structure of the book. It must be inferred from seeds planted in several places. Yet it is, in fact, a first inkling of the galactic alignment concept.²⁰

This isn’t really the place to lay out the detailed assessment that Hamlet’s Mill deserves. Its disorganized presentation is an easy target for critics who dislike the implications of the evidence. Suffice it to say that its central idea is compelling: Many ancient cultures encoded an awareness of precession into their mythologies and religions. Research not connected with or inspired by Hamlet’s Mill has uncovered evidence in Egypt, Vedic India, and elsewhere. Vedic historian and astrologer David Frawley, for example, decoded precessional positions of the sun and full moon in the Vedic scriptures, allowing an early dating of those sacred texts.²¹ Without utilizing any data from Hamlet’s Mill, my own theory on the 2012 cycle ending argues that the ancient Maya hung their philosophy of time on a rare “galactic alignment” that occurs during the precession of the equinoxes, and this is the key to understanding 2012.

THE GALACTIC ALIGNMENT OF ERA-2012

The 2012 topic relates to many areas of Maya studies, embracing iconography, calendars, mythology, astronomy, archaeology, and epigraphy. Any attempt to understand 2012 must strive for an interdisciplinary synthesis, otherwise the whole picture will never be grasped. The lack of coherence resulting from an incomplete approach of a specialist will likely render potential insights unclear, anomalous, dismissible. An informed nonspecialist who values interdisciplinary synthesis has a better chance of making important breakthroughs. The steps that led to the galactic alignment theory are as follows.

Inspired by the work of Linda Schele and others, I pushed the investigation of Maya astro-mythology further and looked at the other cosmic Crossroads (the one in Sagittarius), noting previously unrecognized connections