The 2012 Story

THE MAYA PROPHECY FOR THE END OF THE CYCLE

As we explore the teachings and prophecy in the Creation Myth, we need to remember that the end of the Age, as scheduled by the Long Count calendar, falls on December 21, 2012. The Long Count is the calendar part of the World Age doctrine expressed in mythological terms in The Popol Vuh.

The Hero Twin narrative in The Popol Vuh contains several important characters. There is One Hunahpu, a primary solar lord. He has a brother, uncles, parents, and grandparents, who are all more or less organized around his adventures. Even his twin sons, the frequent focus of action in the myth, are really just his helpers or subidentities. They are on his side, part of his archetypal purpose.

Another main figure is Seven Macaw, a bird deity who squawks loudly, proclaiming he is the real lord of the world. His lesson involves the dangers of hubris. He has a son, Zipacna, who figures in his own vignette, but Zipacna’s lesson is simply a reiteration of Seven Macaw’s lesson, so the two figures merely symbolize the same persona. Similarly, all of the Lords of Xibalba belong to the category of characters that, like Seven Macaw, embody an energy of deception and limitation, and oppose the divine destiny of One Hunahpu. They aren’t called the Lords of Darkness for nothing.

The female figures in the myth are indispensable for the manifestation of One Hunahpu’s destiny. A Creator Grandmother models the first humans from corn dough. A maiden named Blood Moon is magically impregnated by One Hunahpu and becomes the mother of the Hero Twins. One Hunahpu’s mother provides the house and home where he, his brother, and his sons are raised. It provides the stable background to many of the events, a central “hearth-place” reference point.

There are supernatural deities, too. Heart of Heaven is an overseeing figure, suggesting the importance of the concept of “cosmic center” in the myth. A falcon deity serves as a messenger for Heart of Heaven and may represent the Aquila constellation. Called Xic (“hawk”) among the modern Quiche Maya, this constellation lies on the Milky Way, just north of the Galactic Center. A trinity of deities in another section of The Popol Vuh become lineage founders, the totemic figureheads of family clans among the modern Quiche Maya. They seem to represent three aspects of Heart of Heaven, special local “centers,” each being sovereign over his own domain.

Generally, amid the panoply of minor characters and side adventures throughout the myth, we can identify two sides: the characters helping One Hunahpu’s rebirth and installation as the new ruler, and the characters who serve deception and darkness, exemplified by Seven Macaw’s vain and false rulership. The chiefs of the two respective teams are clear: One Hunahpu and Seven Macaw. So who are these figures and what do they represent? One Hunahpu is a solar lord. Maya kings are solar lords who symbolically occupy the center of the cosmos. Their throne symbolizes the cosmic center. In Maya philosophy, they are earthly representatives of the higher wisdom that emanates from the cosmic center. As kings, they are responsible for the sustenance of the kingdom by protecting and channeling the energy and wisdom of the divine center. Their identity is interfused with a higher purpose. Their consciousness is centered in the soul’s essential nature, which is limitless and eternal.

Maya philosophy shares with many wisdom traditions the idea that the deepest identity of a human being is the supreme identity found in one’s eternal and infinite source-consciousness, the undying transcendent center from which the manifest world springs. In Hindu religion, for example, the eternal soul of the individual is called Atman, whereas the eternal soul and source of the universe is called Brahman. In a state of higher consciousness, of realization of truth, the Hindu yogi experiences the previously hidden truth that Atman and Brahman are one and the same. Maya kings have also been initiated into this knowledge, and One Hunahpu is the mythical archetype of this kind of awakened person.

Seven Macaw is a bird deity, a false sun, who proclaims his divine nature but is in fact something else. He is the ego. The ego identity centered in ego consciousness serves a purpose in the life of humanity, but should be held in right relationship to the eternal soul. The ego complex belongs to the individual self, the mortal and ultimately passing identity of this life. Many problems arise in the world when ego assumes the mantle of the eternal soul and projects itself as an invincible figure, all-knowing and indestructible. Ego is a mask, and the modern world confuses the mask with the real person. Seven Macaw squawks and deceives humanity, magnifies himself as the true sun, and tries to take the place of One Hunahpu (the eternal soul).

The drama in the story begins when One Hunahpu journeys to the underworld, encounters the Lords of the Underworld, is deceived and gets his head cut off. The meaning of this is profound, and is identical to the story of Quetzalcoatl’s fall among the later Aztecs.² The perfect divine being, the consciousness aware of its eternal source, loses itself and forgets its divine nature. A spiritual darkness then falls over the world. In the absence of the divine wisdom’s guiding presence in the world, ego gets a promotion, oversteps its proper place, and proclaims itself as the true self. Worldly power takes center stage and spiritual wisdom is handed a mop to clean up ego’s messes. Everything then becomes inverted and the world falls further into deception and ignorance. In the Christian tradition a similar insight is found in the myth of the Fall, when humanity forgets how to live in the egalitarian partnership and harmony of Eden where God’s presence is directly known. After the Fall, the eternal nature of the soul is forgotten.

Meanwhile, the eternal soul cannot really be killed, it can only be eclipsed and hidden by the ego, so One Hunahpu works behind the scenes to facilitate his own rebirth, his own reappearance on the stage of history. He magically conceives his twin sons, who later come to the underworld to retrieve his severed head and set things right. But first the Hero Twins must deal with Seven Macaw, whose self-serving vanity causes much suffering in the world. It is when spiritual darkness maximizes at the end of the cycle that Seven Macaw wields the greatest power. He’s perfected the deceptive techniques of controlling humanity through glittery distractions and fearmongering. But it’s all smoke and mirrors, a deception of appearances, for within he is rotting out.

The ego cannot survive being alienated from its source, the eternal soul, even though it has banished the eternal soul from its consciousness. It’s a paradox destined for disintegration or resolution. The twins feed him his own weakness, his own hubris and ignorance, reflect back to him his own falseness, and Seven Macaw is tricked. Unwilling to consciously sacrifice his illusions of supremacy, he must suffer the blows of fate, so he withers and fades into the background. Ego must ultimately learn to accept having a proper relationship to the higher eternal soul—to One Hunahpu.

Now the twins illustrate the power of self-sacrifice—the act that Seven Macaw could have done to save himself from so much suffering. They trick the Lords of the Underworld by throwing themselves into the fire, burning themselves up, having their bones ground up and thrown into the river. The Dark Lords, envious, imitate their amazing feat but are destroyed. The twins, however, become fish and are reborn as themselves. They had identified themselves with their eternal essence and therefore do not die; they can come back again fully aware of themselves. This illustrates how ego does not survive the transforming fire of eternity, but the eternal soul does. The eternal soul is the transforming fire of eternity. It all depends on what part of your nature your consciousness is located in.

Throughout these dramatic adventures the ballgame was being played with One Hunahpu’s head as the ball, the twins against the Dark Lords. The demise of Seven Macaw and the Dark Lords, and the illustration of self- sacrifice by the twins, is the precondition to One Hunahpu’s body getting reconnected with his head, and he is thus reborn. The eternal soul gets revealed as the true center and source, and One Hunahpu takes his proper throne in the center of the sky-earth, reunited with Heart of Heaven.

^{The fall of Seven Macaw at the hands of the Hero Twins, Izapa Stela 2. Drawing by the author}

This striking story encodes universal spiritual truths. And the prophecy for 2012 is, simply, this: As 2012 approaches, self-serving egoism will be ruling and ruining the planet, deceiving people. The world will be suffering because the consciousness of humanity is disconnected from its eternal transcendent source and root. Within the throes of egoism, consciousness resists opening to the transcendent perspective. Ego will usurp the role of the eternal soul and then everything becomes inverted, distorted, and increasingly degraded. Our world is indeed ruled by this situation. God is dead; we try to make bodies stay eternally young, science is the world’s religion, and individual personalities in the entertainment biz are elevated to godhood. They are, in fact, called stars, while the stars themselves have become products: Suburu is