The 2012 Story

humanity. By 2005 he was working with author Richard Hoagland, a regular on the late-night radio program Coast-to-Coast A.M. Hoagland adopted much of Wilcock’s work and organized several conferences under the banner of 2012.

Hoagland, like Wilcock, draws heavily from hard science—physics, atomic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on—but he was not particularly concerned with the ways that an ancient culture such as the Maya discovered and calculated the galactic alignment and incorporated the concept into their cosmology and teachings. His current 2012 rap involves a belief that secret forces inside the government are aware of 2012’s doomsday potential. Hoagland collaborated on a book with Mike Bera about dark matter in the universe. At a conference venue I shared with Bera in 2008, he claimed he and Hoagland were devising an experiment that would test the galactic alignment. He seemed to think, however, that the galactic alignment was an alignment of planets somehow connected to the idea that a lost planet, Nibiru, would be returning into visibility within our solar system in 2012. I asked Mike to elaborate on his work more clearly, but he has yet to send me anything and our e-mail exchanges became locked into a holding pattern. This may seem like hearsay, but I mention it because much in the 2012 discussion is built upon hearsay. Rumor goes down the New Age telephone line and, instead of degrading into even more nonsense than it was when it began, it gets elevated to the status of theory and, finally, Truth. For example, let’s look at the Nibiru-2012 connection.

The Nibiru (Planet X) idea comes from Zecharia Sitchin, author of the Lost Chronicles books now running up to some thirteen volumes, who based his radical ideas on ancient Babylonian astrological tablets.¹⁹ He believes that cuneiform references to an “invisible planet” that comes around (“appears”) every once in a while to cause havoc is proof that an unknown planet, Nibiru, orbits the sun with a great eccentricity, swinging far out beyond Pluto for millennia before it swings in again. He ties his theory to another idea—that beings on Nibiru meddled with human genetics in the distant past. In recent years, the timing of Nibiru’s return has been spuriously connected to 2012.

An examination of Sitchin’s work reveals an unfortunate literalized interpretation of ancient doctrines. The “invisible” planet that one finds often mentioned in ancient astrological texts is widely known to signify the moon’s node. This is an intangible (invisible) point defined by the intersection of the lunar and solar orbits. It defines where eclipses may occur and it precesses slowly around the ecliptic. When it swings around to conjunct the position of sun or moon in the sky, an eclipse will occur. All the factors are there to make Sitchin’s interpretation seem valid. The “invisible” point is made manifest after a long hiatus. Eclipses were fearful occurrences during which the sun was disrupted and earthlings were cast into darkness, changed forever. It’s scary. In regard to Sitchin’s notion of ancient gene splicers altering the species, eclipses symbolize the transcendence of opposites, which in many esoteric teachings triggers spiritual transformation, a new being coming into existence.

I read Sitchin’s theory with openness and discernment, and this is what I found. Sitchin offers a literalized interpretation of esoteric teachings, which appeals to the modern materialist mind-set as well as the tendency of modern Occidental religions to interpret scripture, and reality, literally. Sitchin’s work typifies the trap of the modern scientist interpreting ancient esoteric doctrines through the lens of materialism. So, instead of insights into the metaphysical teachings connected with the lunar nodes, eclipses, and transcendence, we get Niburian Annunaki fiddling with our genes whenever the Maya calendar says so. The situation is both absurd and hilarious.

For science-oriented researchers, the galactic alignment is a topic of interest but has often been conflated with the orbit of our solar system around the Galactic Center. This confusion indicates a breakdown of rational processing. Furthermore, despite the ideology of proactive spiritual transformation and renewal that the Maya applied to cycle endings, 2012 in the hands of pseudoscience fatalists becomes a literalized doomsday assaulting us from the outside. Spiritual self-actualization is replaced by materialist determinism. Reality gets inverted, concretized, in precisely the same way that Sitchin literalized the ancient astrological doctrine of the lunar nodes.

This unfortunate state of affairs is intimately related to what psychologist and rebirthing expert Stanislav Grof calls “the feeling of cosmic engulf ment and no exit” (Basic Perinatal Matrix II in his system).²⁰ For the person under the influence of this matrix, life appears meaningless and cruel, absurd, dangerous and frightening. Impending doom is perceived as an unavoidable certainty. The fatalistic fear and anxiety that are retained in the body and psyche as a terrifying birth memory gets displaced and projected onto the world, where it sticks on cycle endings because they are conceptually analogous to the intrauterine birth crisis. The dark rift in the Milky Way, instead of being a liberating portal to a new world, becomes the death-dealing receptacle of nefarious killing forces. Choose your metaphor wisely.

Patrick Geryl, a Belgian writer, published a book in 2005 provocatively titled World Cataclysm in 2012, followed by How to Survive 2012 in 2006. His work is about as reliable in terms of factual grounding in Maya tradition as the earlier Mayan Prophecies book by Cotterell and Gilbert. And it’s unrelent ingly, unapologetically alarmist, filled with doomsday visions stated matter- of-factly with absolute certainty. “At the end of 2012, an all-destroying pole shift is waiting for us,” he writes on his website. He describes a pole shift in 2012, and how he “came to the staggering conclusion that the Earth will soon be subjected to an immense disaster. The cause: upheavals in the sun’s magnetic fields will generate gigantic solar flares that will affect the polarity of the entire Earth. The result: our magnetic field will reverse all at once, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.”²¹ All of these statements confirm Geryl as the preeminent “predictator” of 2012ology (a predictator is one who asserts their predictions like a dictator).

Like so many other books, Geryl’s barely scratch the surface of what the Maya tradition is really about, but liberally reference solar sunspot theories and a veritable grab bag of doomsday scenarios and tack them on to 2012; the details don’t matter. The point is: Head for the hills! One might suspect, rightly so, that a book styled in such a way should be taken with a large grain of salt. But it’s the kind of thing that the media and scholarly critics love. It provides the easy straw man target, the thing to hold up and say, “See, this whole 2012 thing is a goofy joke.” As of 2008, Geryl is spending all his time forming survival groups and leading the call for everyone to leave Belgium and other lowland countries, for the seas will be quickly rising. You could buy the offered survival kits as well as land in South Africa. Hurry up, supplies are limited.

No less alarmist is The Horizon Project™, run by Brent Miller. According to its mission statement, The Horizon Project “relies on multiple sources for each piece of information from resources past and present. If any information does not agree with the rest, it is resolved by scientific committee with all known information. Never before has a research team with this level of effectiveness and capability been utilized solely for discovering answers to life’s most crucial questions.”²² The website offers a series of DVDs for sale, and lists Brent Miller, Dr. Brooks Agnew (a physicist), and Michael Tsarion (a “researcher with over 20 years of expertise in the study of lost civilizations and technologies”) as The Horizon Project’s primary researchers/experts.

Brent Miller, the host of the DVD series, is described as an “expert in ecommerce systems” who has “held executive positions in several New York- based Fortune 500 companies.” The first DVD in the series, released in August of 2006, was called “Bracing for Tomorrow.”²³ A four-minute trailer offers a teaser statement that the DVD “provides a conclusion that will realize humanity’s ultimate fear.”²⁴ The summary states that the DVD “begins with a frightening bang. Newly discovered scientific evidence shows that the world as we know it is about to come to an unexpected end; however, knowing what’s coming over the horizon is only the tip of the iceberg; understanding WHY presents a picture far greater than you could have imagined.”²⁵

As it turns out, an astronomical phenomenon that they call “the galactic alignment” is the reason behind this frightening “unexpected end.” They refer to the lost knowledge of ancient civilizations, and how they left behind “major clues that have just been recently discovered” and they “knew of the upcoming inevitable catastrophe… The knowledge that was once lost is the missing link that provides a clear understanding of how our world truly operates. Ironically, these clues also inform us that time is running out; sooner than you may believe.” The Horizon Project Research Team “will identify some of the signs that are scattered all over our planet and reveal a shocking truth!”²⁶

A clip of a Horizon Project DVD hosted by Brent Miller can be viewed on YouTube under the heading “Galactic Alignment in 2012 is Feared to Cause Pole Shift by 2008-2015.”²⁷ The term “galactic alignment” is used repeatedly, as is the “dark rift in the Milky Way,” the key centerpiece of my galactic alignment theory. Unfortunately, Miller defines the galactic alignment incorrectly, as being caused by the physical orbit of our