The 2012 Story

it was basically the only thing available that didn’t completely hammer the doomsday angle.

Sharron did present Native American wisdom “for 2012,” but it came from a non-Maya tradition. The wisdom teachings of the Inca, courtesy of Alberto Villoldo’s commendable work, were presented in the film. An Inca prophecy was attached to the Maya 2012 end date and was explained by Villoldo as his Inca shaman friends sat around a fire and did a prayer ceremony. The filmmakers, Rose and Weidner, had traveled to South America to acquire this visually compelling footage of Inca shamans doing rituals in the high Andes. It was apparently strategically difficult for them to visit Maya shamans and temples. Maya cosmology is deep and at times complex, and in my experience filmmakers often limit the story I’d like to tell on the integration of Maya science, spirituality, and mythology. They may use only the portion in which I define the astronomy behind the galactic alignment. Most viewers would likely conflate the Inca with the Maya, and there may be a universal wisdom that the Inca contribute to the ideas of cycle endings and spiritual awakening, but one hopes and expects that Maya teachings would be emphasized in a film about a distinctly Maya date.

In 2007, author and Unknown Country radio host Whitley Strieber published a novel called 2012: The War of Souls. He had written an article on 2012, which appeared a short time before his book came out, that made connections between Harmonic Convergence and 2012, drawing from ideas found in the Arguelles material. When his book came out, it was exactly what it seemed to be—a horror story flavored with Maya-sounding words and names but with no accurate Maya information at all. The title, “2012,” was clearly a marketing strategy. I found it humorous that I was mentioned, along with William Henry and Graham Hancock, as thinkers whom the aliens would have to take out immediately after they appeared on that fateful future day. An alien hit contract was thus put out on my life, at least in the realm of horror fiction. The co-opting of 2012 for a fiction book is not that surprising. What is surprising is that Whitley Strieber would thereafter be called upon to keynote 2012 conferences and speak with authority on 2012 in film documentaries.

Another writer, Steve Alten, wrote a science fiction book called Domain that liberally used my alignment theory while getting some of the specifics wrong. This may seem nitpicky, but ideas stick in the public consciousness, and confusion about a new idea such as the galactic alignment can easily be fueled by fictionalized treatments. When I was contacted in the summer of 2005 by 1080 Productions, under contract to produce a 2012 documentary for the History Channel, I was surprised to learn that Alten was on board as a script consultant and writer. I wondered why a science fiction writer who had fictionalized my 2012 alignment research would qualify as a documentary screenplay writer. I should have known that the project was going to be beset with disappointments, but I agreed to participate after getting assurances that the Maya Creation Myth’s message of transformation and renewal would get an equal and fair hearing.

On site in Chichen Itza, the film crew had set up for a night shot in the Temple of a Thousand Columns, a short distance from the famous Pyramid of Kukulcan. Local Maya youngsters had been hired to enact, so they believed, a dance drama. Alten and the director for 1080 Production were codirecting the scene as midnight approached. I listened to them discussing what they wanted to happen: A Maya girl was supposed to be abused, disrobed, and have her heart torn out. An altar was prepared and a fire was kindled. A man with a stone dagger would hover over the girl’s chest, flailing the knife downward while the camera picked up the shadow play against the wall. Blood could be added later in postproduction.

Alten pushed his vision of what he wanted to happen in the scene with little sensitivity, and I could feel the centuries of oppression and abuse experienced by the Maya getting replicated and projected onto the girl. It started getting ugly, and I asked if all this was really necessary. The Maya girl, resisting, started crying, and that put a quash on the scene. The half-finished footage was not used in the film. This shocking occurrence was charged with symbolism. The Maya youngsters had prepared a dance, but that wasn’t what the directors wanted—they wanted violence, a heart sacrifice, something horrific to underscore the barbarity of the Maya. But that’s not what the Maya were about. There they stood, perplexed, being forced into a little skit-fantasy dreamed up by sensationalizing drama kings.

Almost a year later, the film was released and I was surprised at how much of a doomsday message it had. It was as if they chose to emphasize the most salacious possible reading of the 2012 material, favoring fictionalized fantasies rather than straight readings of the Maya Creation Myth. My previous experience, six years earlier with the Discovery Channel, was pleasant by comparison. I immediately began receiving e-mail from viewers accusing me of being a doomsayer. This frustrating turn of affairs inspired me to write a review of the documentary, called “How Not to Make a 2012 Documentary.” It was bit sarcastic and cathartic, but right on target.⁴²

The History Channel had anticipated by a few months what would be fully fledged in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto movie. A fictionalized film, however, can take license with facts in ways that we don’t expect a “documentary” will. Still, I was aghast at the brutal portrayal of the Maya in the film as well as the many inaccuracies. Meanwhile, another mainstream film slipped into the theaters and went virtually unnoticed by the justified critics of Apocalypto. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain was framed against the backdrop of Maya themes, Maya astro-theology, and spiritual wisdom connected to the symbol of the Maya sacred tree. The movie struck me in three phases, following directly upon my first, second, and third viewings of it. First, I was intrigued and amazed. After my second viewing, I was impressed and awed. After my third viewing, I knew it was a masterpiece. It should be considered on par with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But it’s not for popcorn chasers—you will be rewarded by paying attention, for there is a very specific and clear message that the film conveys, one wrapped in a multilayered tapestry operating simultaneously on three temporal levels. I don’t know how he managed to pull it off, but Aronofsky worked a miracle. His message was true to Maya religion and is perhaps the most profound perennial wisdom teaching one can find in any spiritual tradition: Immortality cannot be won by living forever; it is experienced only when one fully embraces death.

In late 2005, a writer named Jon Behak sent me a manuscript for a novel he had written. He said he was a longtime reader of my books and had even acquired a rare copy of my autobiographical spiritual odyssey from 1991, Mirror in the Sky. He had written the whole thing in February that year, in a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. I was the thinly veiled main protagonist. This would normally be a cause for concern, but Behak handled complex issues deftly and wrapped them all in a multileveled mystery that I found very insightful. It reminded me of a cross between Um berto Eco and John Crowley. It was written and sent to me before The Fountain movie was released, but in retrospect they are oddly similar —a story operating on several different levels simultaneously, with profound teachings woven in between worldly travel adventures and relationship dilemmas. I’m helping him get it placed for publication.

Gregg Braden, an author who endeavors to integrate science and spirituality, produced a book on 2012 in early 2009.⁴³ An interesting voice in the self-actualization movement, and a really nice guy, Braden offers another system based on fractal time, a model of spiritual unfolding and history. I was a bit perplexed at his reference to the galactic alignment and magnetic pole shifts. It is reminiscent of math models devised by McKenna, Arguelles, and Calleman. How is it that all these systems operate differently and utilize proprietary concepts and intervals, yet are all believed to be true and accurate? Could it be that the number of possible systems that one could design are virtually unlimited, it’s just a matter of imagination? And if they all share with the Maya wisdom teachings a foundation in a universal law, mathematical principle, insight, or teaching, then why do we need to revise or update the Maya’s traditional system? Can we patent and claim proprietary ownership over variant versions of a cosmology that is, at its root, universal? This is in fact a tendency of the Western scientific mind-set, to attribute laws and principles to one “discoverer,” or name, or personality. Thus, we get Newton’s Theory of Gravity. Does he own gravity? Do his descendants get a royalty every time someone falls down? Is Dreamspell, or the Braden Law, McKenna’s Time Wave, or Calleman’s system sufficiently derivative such that no Maya copyright is violated? This isn’t simply about discussing or elaborating Maya calendar teachings, or reconstructing them as I attempt to do, but creatively relabeling them and calling them your own. Perhaps I should create an ornate new categorizing system, such that 1 would be written as an a, 2 would be a b, the % sign would replace =, and so on. Then I could rewrite Einstein’s mathematical formula for the Theory of Relativity and call it “The Jenkins Theory of Spacetime-Energy Non-Absoluteness.”

In 2007, Sounds True Publishing took the lead in producing an anthology of writings on 2012.⁴⁴ I was closely involved in consulting on this book, and I helped contextualize their contributions. I helped them fill the missing contribution from Arguelles, who was unreachable in Australia at the time, by suggesting they transcribe the audio interview they had made with him back in 1987. The 2012 discussion unavoidably ranges over a broad arena of approach. I was surprised that some contributors simply adapted