The 2012 Story

experience confers gnosis—a knowledge not limited to the statistics and data of surface reality but that embraces an integrative higher viewpoint conferred by direct inner realization, or illumination; aka, gnosis.⁵⁹

I wouldn’t expect Aveni to appreciate the scholarship and insights of the Perennial Philosophers, since Publishers Weekly correctly identified him as a writer who “presupposes a readership that embraces a scientific-materialistic worldview.”⁶⁰ It is surprising, however, that he misrepresents the widespread phenomenon of Gnosticism, since he wrote several books on the occult, the roots of astronomy in astrology, and magic. His approach to those subjects can be summarized as a belief that people fall prey to those subjects because of their human failings and unwillingness or inability to approach life responsibly and think rationally. This is similar to the scien tistic attitude that religion and spirituality were developed only after enough grain was stored in the tower for people to have time to ponder intangibles (i.e., to exercise their imaginations). The deck is so stacked against the in terdependency of subjective and objective domains that one wonders how anyone with this attitude can accurately represent cultures, such as the Maya, that are rooted in a nondual vision of the cosmos. Carl Calleman denies the physical realm of astronomy that can provide objective data; Aveni denies the spiritual realm that can provide direct gnosis. And never the twain shall meet.

On the precessional and sidereal-year calculations that Michael Grofe found in the Serpent Series of the Dresden Codex, Aveni asserted there is very little agreement that there are precessional calculations in the Dresden and he believes “such details are unnecessary in a talk about apocalypse.” This is a diplomatically cautious statement that lets him off the hook. Scientists are often in great disagreement about facts, how to interpret facts, and how many facts are needed in order to qualify as evidence. A lack of consensus among experts does not mean there is a lack of evidence. The evidence usually gets overlooked or marginalized for years, without critics ever once actually dealing directly with the evidence. This is clearly the case with Aveni’s unwillingness to assess Grofe’s work. Precession is, after all, a central issue in the 2012 alignment theory. Furthermore, the theme of the Tulane conference was 2012, not apocalypse. Aveni must see those two terms as being synonymous.

He stated that there was no evidence that the ancient Maya thought anything about the next creation (in 2012). Although this assertion was presented in no uncertain terms, it is a demonstrably false statement because of the text on Tortuguero Monument 6, which references 2012 as a Creation event and evokes the deities present at that 13-Baktun shift to consecrate a local building dedication. The building’s birth was anointed with a symbolic nod to the cosmos’s future rebirth. That is something!

Did the Maya know abut precession, about the galaxy? Aveni takes a scientific definition of the galaxy and says no. This is like saying ancient people didn’t know about sex because they didn’t know about the genetic code. He requires that they had a spiral dynamic visual concept of the galaxy on par with modern scientific models. He describes and defines the galaxy’s center and midplane (equator) with scientific concepts and terms, and assumes a much greater need for precision than my theory requires. He has said that the alignment could be seen to be valid for five hundred years; ignoring the more precise dark rift and the middle range of the Milky Way’s width that could indeed be extrapolated.

At one point, Aveni showed a composite photograph of our Milky Way and asserted that the nuclear bulge of the Galactic Center was not compelling at all for anyone looking up at it. He seemed to ignore the fact that the nuclear bulge region was already demonstrably significant for the ancient Maya, due to the fact that the Crossroads and the southern terminus of the dark rift are located within the bulge and play a significant role in the Creation Mythology. He also used a fairly poor photograph of the Milky Way to illustrate his point, which was quite apparent and should have insulted the intelligence of his highly intelligent audience—if they were willing to see through his ruse. His interest in dismissing the visual significance of the Galactic Center was revealed in this ploy. In the clear night skies near the equator, the Milky Way explodes with distinction and definition, many dark cloud features are readily apparent, and the nuclear bulge looks even more like a puffy, bulging, and pregnant serpent or other animal than it does when viewed from temperate latitudes. That’s why the Inca see a mother and baby llama in that area. Furthermore, Aveni did not entertain or apparently consider that the ancient Maya probably had a greater acuity of vision than do modern humans. Progressive Maya scholars such as Barbara MacLeod now see inscriptional evidence for the ancient Maya tracking Uranus, which the majority of modern people would not be able to pick out with the naked eye even if they were shown exactly where it is. The boundaries of the Milky Way, much wider in the nuclear bulge than on the opposite side of the sky, would have been obvious to them.

There are other good examples that reveal Aveni’s dismissive attitude toward 2012 and 2012 authors.⁶¹ The real clincher came at the end of his talk, in an exchange we had during the Q & A. After almost an hour, he had failed to address the most compelling first step that a rational investigator would take in examining 2012 (one that I had included in the six points I had sent to him and that he acknowledged receiving). I was surprised and disappointed, and realized I’d have to make a stand so that, at least in a thumbnail sketch, the audience members would have a chance to work with the facts of the matter.

Aveni completed his talk with a quote from Shakespeare, to the effect that we should look within for the solution to our problems, not to the stars. Eric Thompson used quotes from classical philosophers as epigrams in his books, a habit that bothered Michael Coe. I think it’s nice to use thoughtful philosophical sentiments to change the pace of thought. The similarity between Aveni and Thompson, however, is more than epigram deep. It seems to me that Aveni is the new Thompson, the new gatekeeper who will always insist on more evidence and never believe you have enough.

After the applause died down, the crowd was invited to speak. I asked my question: “Well, that was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be [laughter]. Apart from all the millenarian distractions, I think the most pressing question in this whole 2012 thing is: Is the 2012 cycle ending an intentional artifact of the calendrical tradition? And in one of your very first slides, you showed that the end date is December 21, 2012, which is an accurate December solstice. I’m surprised you didn’t revisit the idea first put forward by Munro Edmonson over twenty years ago in his Book of the Year, where he wondered, ‘Hmm, the 13-Baktun cycle ends on an accurate solstice… I really doubt that that’s a coincidence.’ So it suggests that there is some kind of intentionality built into the placement of the end date, and so how should we go about exploring how that manifests in Maya ideology and eschatology?”

Aveni: “Yeah, I agree with that, and I have noted that they started the Long Count on, or within a day or two of, the day of zenith passage… John Justeson’s looked at that. I don’t doubt that they might have done it.”

The placement of the zero date in 3114 BC on an accurate zenith passage date at a specific latitude does not require much in terms of astronomical calculation—it’s simply the observation of no shadows at high noon, and it doesn’t shift with precession. The end date’s location on the solstice, however, implies an accurate knowledge of the tropical year, to at least an impressive several decimal places.

JMJ: “I’m talking about the end date in 2012.”

Aveni: “I don’t doubt they may have placed the end date of the cycle on the solstice. The theory that they did is that pre-Classic sites are more solstitially oriented, so there’s nothing unique about Izapa, nor about its ballcourt in terms of its alignment…”

Izapa is the only ballcourt that points right at the December solstice sunrise, and Izapa is the only site that contains a coherent fugue of carved monuments that can be read with a high degree of comprehension as to their intended mythological and astronomical meaning. Aveni referred to a paper he wrote in 1990, which wasn’t published until 2000, which he said showed how the pre-Classic period “was the beginning of the calendar.” But in it he never stated that the solstice alignments of the early sites he examined made them a likely locus of the Long Count calendar’s origin.⁶²

Aveni: “However, I will not, and have no desire to, take that argument any further and bring in the galaxy—that’s where I totally push back, because I think this concept of what a galaxy is, is totally alien to Maya thought.”

He claims that some have accused him of “dumbing down the ancestors” and admits that he is “employing an idea [of the galaxy] that comes from Western science that doesn’t have anything to do with the Maya.”

JMJ: “But they were aware of the Milky Way, right?”

Aveni: “Sure they were.”

JMJ: “Well, that’s the galaxy.”

Aveni: “But it’s not a tree…”

JMJ: “Well, they didn’t have to have the same concept of it as modern science