The 2012 Story

Itza—aired in October of 2000 and depicted my galactic alignment work more or less accurately. Any author should expect such treatment, but over the next eight years my work was consistently distorted and abused in the nefarious doomsday agendas of the History Channel and other production houses. Likewise, my interviews for many indie film producers were selectively edited to bolster perspectives that I don’t agree with. It’s a trick of the trade, and I was tricked many times. In a supreme catch-22, Maya scholars note these distortions and conclude I’m a willing architect of the mass media’s stupefactions. There have been a few exceptions, which I’ll mention as we move through a decade that has seen an explosion of 2012-related manifestations, far more intense and busy than the period 1970-2000.

In January of 2000, I learned of a prophecy for 2012 offered by Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj, a Quiche Maya leader and day-keeper from the highlands of Guatemala. It was reported in a piece by journalists Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez called “The Mayan Worldview of the Universe”:

Based on thousands of years of astronomical observation, a cataclysm is indeed predicted by indigenous elders, as opposed to “prophesized.” No one is predicting that at the strike of midnight, Dec. 20, 2012, the world will end. Instead, Mayan elders predict that the cataclysm can occur within a year or 100 years—and the cause would be something astronomical as opposed to metaphysical.²

I’ve always agreed with the idea that, if any causal effects are to be credited to the astronomical basis of the Maya calendar, we should think of the 2012 end date as being a “zone” stretching over a period of decades. I don’t, however, agree with the above view that the end date is simply about an astronomical event. The interview continues:

We don’t know what will happen in the next few days or in the next 12 years. What we do know is that it wouldn’t hurt to listen to the words of Don Alejandro who said that on Dec. 20, 2012 Mother Earth will pass inside the center of a magnetic axis and that it may be darkened with a great cloud for 60 or 70 hours and that because of environmental degradation, she may not be strong enough to survive the effects. It will enter another age, but when it does, there will be great and serious events. Earthquakes, marimotos (tsunamis), floods, volcanic eruptions, and great illness on the planet Earth. Few survivors will be left.³

Thus, beginning on December 20, as stated, the events stretch over almost three full days (“60 or 70 hours”) through to December 22. The earth’s passage “inside the center of a magnetic axis” is a striking description that sounds much like the way I described the alignment in the last chapter of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012:

On the Galactic level, the Milky Way’s equator, like the earth’s equator, is a field-effect dividing line. As with a spinning magnetic top, the field effects on one side are different from those on the other, and Maya insights offer us the notion that a field effect reversal occurs when the solstice meridian crosses over this line.⁴

“Darkened with a great cloud” sounds very similar to how one might imagine the sun passing through the dark rift in the Milky Way. Notice, however, the difference between the prophetic conception of the earth being cast into darkness and my alignment description—where I describe it as the sun passing through the dark rift, as viewed from earth. I suppose Don Alejandro’s wording works fine; it’s just an interpretation that emphasizes where the “effect” is believed to be felt (on earth, ultimately).

This all sounded eerily familiar, like a folksy retelling of my galactic alignment theory, complete with references to a dark cloud (the dark rift), the sun’s passage through this dark cloud, and a magnetic axis (the Milky Way’s equator). I remembered that Don Alejandro had been interviewed by Morton and Thomas for their 1997 book The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, but didn’t recall his saying anything like this. My friend in England, Geoff Stray, had been tracking the 2012 phenomenon for a number of years, and I asked him for his comments. He had already assessed the Crystal Skulls book and noted that Don Alejandro’s comments were an echo of the ideas Arguelles had published in The Mayan Factor and in his Dreamspell system.

I then recalled that an acquaintance of mine, Ian Lungold, had traveled to Guatemala to meet with Don Alejandro in the fall of 1998. We had spoken on the phone several times at odd intervals since 1997, and Ian would occasionally send me e-mail updates on his travels and plans to market a day-sign place mat for restaurants. A skilled jeweler, he was producing fine miniature pendants of Maya art. In early 1999 he related to me how he had met with Don Alejandro and showed him a copy of my book, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, which had been released the previous year. He had had certain passages read to Don Alejandro by a translator.

Ian was inquiring about whether any of my work jibed with anything Don Alejandro knew about 2012, an inherently difficult approach for two reasons. First, as previously discussed, the Long Count system has been lost to the modern Maya. Second, Maya leaders are often threatened that foreigners are interpreting their lost tradition. A consequence of this is the uncomfortable position they are forced into when they are asked about 2012, not wanting to cite others on what should be a knowledge transmitted through ancestral lineage, but not having any real information at hand. A tendency to adopt and reimagine pieces of what comes before their consideration is a tactic of syncretism that the Maya have been engaged in for their entire history. It’s not just a response to the Conquest, or modern writers, but is a characteristic of flexible adaptation to new ideas and needs. It’s actually a sign of strength and fosters longevity, much as the willow tree flexes and survives the storm.

Ian told me that Don Alejandro received the information from my book with interest. Ian was also there to confirm, for himself, the correlation of the 260-day tzolkin count that I had presented and defended. He, like Swedish author Carl Calleman, had come out of the Arguelles camp, which supported a day-count placement that was at odds with the authentic surviving day-count in the highlands. The day-count Ian found in the highlands, verified by Don Alejandro, was indeed the traditional day-count I’d been advocating since my early books, especially in my 1992 book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies.

After Ian’s visit with Don Alejandro, an international gathering of indigenous elders happened in Arizona. It was a meeting of elders from many indigenous nations, and Don Alejandro was present. That’s when the reporters from Albuquerque interviewed him and received the oddly familiar prophecy for 2012.

If one suspects that Don Alejandro’s words represent an ancient lineage teaching, then we must account for his earlier interview with Morton and Thomas, which clearly echoed Arguelles’s work. These are complicated and sensitive issues, but I believe that truth and accountability are necessary if we are to stay as clear as possible with 2012 and its multifarious tentacles. We’ve already seen a tendency, in the connections between Jose Arguelles, Hunbatz Men, and Aluna Joy Yaxkin, for a reinforcing interplay to develop between writers and Maya elders, especially when a popular movement driven by temple tours and New Age gatherings is at work. But the truth does often surface, if given a chance. In fact, there eventually came a time in the late 1990s when, after many e-mail exchanges with Aluna Joy Yaxkin, she switched to the authentic day-count (the “True Count”) and began organizing tours to the Guatemalan highlands with Don Alejandro.

I was bemused as I reconstructed the sequence of events and reread my e-mails with Ian. It was clear that something of my alignment work had been adapted by Don Alejandro. I felt conflicted, because on one hand I imagined that if my work were indeed an accurate reconstruction of the ancient Maya’s understanding of 2012, then it should somehow be reintegrated into contemporary Maya consciousness. But for an outsider to offer this was difficult for the modern Maya to accept, having been betrayed by relations with outsiders in the past. If I played up Don Alejandro’s statement as independent confirmation of my work by an elder, my handlers at Marketing Central would be pleased but it would also be a deception. Nevertheless, the marketing world preferred that the galactic alignment prophecy for 2012 should be delivered by the Maya, as subsequent events made very clear.

As a result of Don Alejandro’s statements, I began thinking hard about the fact that the Maya lost their connection to the details of the ancient 2012 calendar system. I recalled my travels in the highlands, hanging out at the altar shrines of Momostenengo, reading of the Year Bearer ceremonies at year’s end, and I realized that the Maya still retained core beliefs about cycle endings, generally speaking, and these were very important. The fire ceremony and the sweat bath were both beautiful traditions that the Maya still retained, and they both involved the