The 2012 Story

findings of John Hoopes.

1975. The cycle ending is treated fully by Frank Waters in his Mexico Mystique, but he used Coe’s 2011 date. McKenna mentions 2012 in The Invisible Landscape. Arguelles mentions 2012 in The Transformative Vision.

1975-1990. Arguelles develops his Maya calendar system and associates Tony Shearer’s 1987 Harmonic Convergence date with a “twenty-five-year countdown” to 2012. McKenna is elaborating his Time Wave Zero model, now connected to December 21, 2012. Peter Balin mentions 2012 in his 1978 book Flight of the Feathered Serpent; Peter Tompkins mentions 2011 in his 1976 book Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids. Barbara Tedlock mentions 2012 in her 1982 book Time and the Highland Maya. Arguelles’s The Mayan Factor appears in 1987.

1988. Maya scholar Munro Edmonson writes, in his Book of the Year, that the solstice placement of the cycle ending in 2012 was unlikely to be a coincidence. For almost two decades after this other scholars asserted, when asked, that it must be a coincidence.

1992. John Major Jenkins publishes his book Tzolkin, which offered a method by which shifting seasonal quarters were tracked in the Long Count, suggesting how December 21, 2012, might have been targeted.

1992-1993. Linda Schele’s breakthrough work on hieroglyphic decipherments, Maya Creation Mythology, and astronomy.

1991-1995. Popular books on the Mesoamerican calendar, such as The Mayan Prophecies and Scofield’s Day-Signs, start appearing. Arguelles’s Dreamspell system released in late 1991.

1994. Jenkins publishes his 2012 alignment theory, connecting the era-2012 alignment of the December solstice sun and the dark rift to Maya Creation Mythology and astronomy. Research culminates in the 1998 relase of his book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, offering a full reconstruction of the origins and intention of the Long Count/2012 cosmology.

1998. Geoff Stray’s Internet site Diagnosis 2012 is founded and becomes an indispensable resource for reviews and insights on all things 2012.

2000-2009. An explosion of books, films, and websites devoted to 2012 flood the marketplace. Scholars, Maya elders, popular writers, the New York Times, and documentaries cover and comment on 2012.

2005. Geoff Stray’s book Beyond 2012 is published.

2005. Victor Montejo’s Maya Intellectual Renaissance is published. Discussion of the indigenous “Baktunian movement.”

2006. Robert Sitler publishes “The 2012 Phenomenon,” the first academic treatment of the topic.

2006, April. The 2012 text from Tortuguero is translated and discussed, with varying opinions on its importance.

2007. Michael Grofe completes his PhD dissertation, which argues convincingly for accurate knowledge of the rate of the precession of the equinoxes in the Dresden Codex.

2008. Barb MacLeod offers her “3-11 Pik formula,” detailing a precession-based mechanism in the Classic Period inscriptions used by Maya kings.

2009, February. The first academic 2012 conference takes place, held at Tulane University in New Orleans.

2009, February-March. New discoveries on dark-rift astronomy and 2012 connections at Tortuguero and Copan made by Grofe and Jenkins (see Chapter 7).

2009, November. Sony Pictures releases mass media 2012 movie.

The 2012 story is, of course, not yet finished. As of May 31, 2009 (a 4 Ahau day), there are exactly 5 tzolkin cycles (1,300 days) remaining to December 21, 2012. We might wish to recognize the 260-day time resonance countdown of 4 Ahau dates: May 31, 2009; February 15, 2010; November 2, 2010; July 20, 2011; April 5, 2012; December 21, 2012. Interestingly, the initiation day of contemporary day-keeper practice, 8 B’atz (8 Monkey), occurs on December 12, 2012, nine days before 13.0.0.0.0.

December 21, 2012. The cycle-ending date of the 13-Baktun period of the Maya Long Count calendar.

December 21, 2012 AD = 13.0.0.0.0 = 4 Ahau 3 Kankin

NOTES

1. Frontispiece poem: Jenkins, John Major. Shadow, Stone, and Green. Denver, CO: Four Ahau Press, 2008.

INTRODUCTION: AN UNSTOPPABLE IDEA

1 Tedlock, Dennis (trans.). The Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, revised edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, p. 70.

2 McKenna, Terence. “The Light of the Third Millennium.” Talk given in Austin, Texas, 1997. http://edj.net/mc2012/TM-Light.mp3 (at 35:10).

3 Fox news report with Dr. Michio Kaku. April 25, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hujQg2E_fDw. Dr. Kaku himself doesn’t assert this, but the banner beneath the report does.

CHAPTER 1. RECOVERING A LOST WORLD

1 Covarrubias, Miguel. Mexico South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947, p. 187.

2 Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, March 24, 2009. www.pnas.org.

3 Weatherford, Jack. Indian Givers. Ballantine Books, 1989.

4 de Landa, Friar Diego. Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, trans. by William Gates. Baltimore: The Maya Society, 1937. Also at Sacred Texts online: http://sacred-texts.com/nam/maya/ybac/ybac59.htm.

5 Goetz, Delia, and Sylvanus Morley (English trans. after the Spanish trans. of Adrian Recinos). The Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya, original trans. by Francisco Ximenez. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950, p. 6.

6 Tedlock, Dennis (trans.). The Popol Vuh, revised edition, 1996, pp. 22-25.

7 Perera, Victor, and Robert D. Bruce. Last Lords of Palenque. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982; Bruce, Robert D. Lacandon Dream Symbolism. 2 vols. Mexico: Ediciones Euroamericanas, 1975-1979.

8 Graham, Ian. Alfred Maudslay and the Maya, A Biography. Norman, Okla.: