χαίρε θεών μήτηρ άλοχ’,
Oύρανοΰ άστερόεντος!

Hail! Mother of the Gods,

Goddess of starry Heaven!

Reconstructing Ancient Cosmologies:
The Maya’s Galactic Cosmology Compared to the Primordial Tradition of Coomaraswamy and Guenon

John Major Jenkins / May-June 2000

The brilliant and complicated legacies of our ancient ancestors come down to us today fragmented, eroded, misinterpreted and degraded. These spiritual and cosmological belief systems draw from a profound realm of myth-making, as intuitive as they are compelling. And it is easy to assemble the unsolved mysteries of the past, set them out for all to see, and be contentedly entertained by the mystery of those wily Ancients. However, we are now being overwhelmed by an astonishing array of evidence and clear-headed interpretation that reveals a very definite fact about these archaic world-views: they were quite aware of our impending solstice-galaxy alignment and considered it to be the moment of spiritual opportunity for human beings on earth.

My work with these questions has evolved over an unbroken course of self-study from an early age. I look back upon this earnest search and recognize a chain of initiation into deeper understanding. I chose to focus on elucidating these galactic mysteries as I unraveled them in Mayan and Mesoamerican archaeoastronomy, and recently have opened to seeing the very same core ideas in Egyptian and Vedic esoteric tradition. And this new panorama of inter-related ancient systems of thought reveal to me nothing less than the archaic mono-myth, a galactic paradigm of immense genius and depth, formulated by brilliant human beings, our ancestors, next to whom we are but confused and bewildered hedonists.

The Story Behind Maya Cosmogenesis 2012

Since roughly 1986 I have been drawn ever deeper into exploring the unresolved questions in the growing field of Maya Studies. At the time, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, and worked the night shift in a factory to save money for a dream trip to Mexico and Central America. Twenty-two years old, single, reading Alan Watts, Carl Jung, Frank Waters and Barbara Tedlock's Time and the Highland Maya — my sole purpose was to get south of the border and spend some time with the living Maya. By December I was off, and the four-month-long trip was full of adventures and misadventures that I later recounted in my first book Journey to the Mayan Underworld (1989). Back in Boulder, I wrote and studied, read, explored books, exhausted the resources of CU Boulder's university library, had friends get me books through interlibrary loan, and returned to Central America in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1994 and 1998. During these years I tackled the core questions of Maya cosmology:

· The correlation of the Maya calendar

· Identifying the core principles of Maya time philosophy

· The meaning of the 2012 end-date

The first question involved determining "what day is it, today, in the 260-day Maya calendar?" It was very simply answered by taking a look at the academic literature, and I explored the question thoroughly in by 1992 book Tzolkin: Visionary Calendar Perspectives and Calendar Studies (published by Borderlands Science Research Foundation in 1994). However, while the answer agreed with the surviving count placement among the highland Quiché Maya, and revealed an unbroken continuity going back almost 3000 years, my support for this placement also put me at odds with the large sector of Maya calendar enthusiasts who were following the work of José Argüelles, as published in The Maya Factor and the Dreamspell system. Argüelles had determined to follow a daycount placement that was not consistent with the surviving, unbroken Maya daycount. My definitive conclusions on this subject had been published in my book Tzolkin (1992/1994). The ensuing sporadic exchange with various proponents of the Argüelles placement extended over several years beginning in 1991, and culminated in late 1995 with my controversial piece The Key to the Dreamspell Agenda, and the posting of letters on the Talis / resonate.org website in 1996. A less dramatic overview of the problem was soon thereafter posted on my website, called "A Manifesto for Clarity." I wrote this essay specifically for the Institute of Maya Studies in Miami Florida, where it was distributed freely during programs given in 1996. That's where I let the matter rest. To this day I am bemused that a matter so clearly resolvable to anyone willing to survey the pertinent ethnographic sources could be the source of such popular confusion and consternation. I responded individually to over three hundred letters from people bewildered by inconsistencies in the Argüelles/Dreamspell system — its correlation as well as other problems. The phenomenon is complex and, above anything else, seems to have brought up issues around clarity and control that needed to be collectively processed and resolved. On another level, the Dreamspell system also seemed to be a perfect filter to self-select seekers capable of seeing through hype, attractive rhetoric, and personality-driven charisma to the underlying truth, however painful (or boring) it might be.

The second question that directed my research was to identify the core principles of Maya time philosophy. The constant refrain in my research, beginning in 1989, was "what is at the core of the Maya calendar?" I'll spare the reader and abridge the story by simply saying that in research laid out in Journey to the Mayan Underworld (1989), Mirror in the Sky (1991), and Tzolkin (1992/1994), I identified three root principles which are identical to the three root-principles of Egyptian Sacred Science. Following the essays of Martin Prechtel and Robert Carlsen, I was able to show how two of these root principles correspond to the contemporary Tzutujil Maya paradigm of change called Jaloj Kexoj. This phase of my research culminated in the book Jaloj Kexoj and PHI-64 (1994), which I reissued with four new appendices in March of 2000 as Mayan Sacred Science.

Now we get to the central concern of my work, and my magnum opus, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. This is where we see the true meaning of the 2012 end-date of the Maya calendar and the central insight of the Maya perception of time. My research shifted to the end-date question in early 1994. To set the writing of this book in the context of my life, I'd like to share some personal whereabouts. Escaping Boulder's skyrocketing rental market, in 1993 I moved to Louisville, six miles east of Boulder. I soon took up residence in a remodeled garage, with electricity but no running water. A friend had offered this little hermitage to me, at a very reasonable rent, and I used the water/bathroom facilities of my friend's nearby house. I worked a part-time job to pay the bills. In early 1994 I returned to Guatemala, delivering relief supplies to a beleaguered Quiché Maya community in the western highlands. Throughout 1994 and early 1995 I wrote, researched, and formulated the essays that grew into the book The Center of Mayan Time (1995). In retrospect, this book was a preliminary effort, and did not include the detailed discoveries of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. However, the basic idea was there — that the Maya intended their 2012 end-date to mark the alignment of the solstice sun with the Milky Way galaxy, and the mytho-astronomical players in the scenario were One Hunahpu (First Father), the dark-rift Road to the Underworld, and the Milky Way Great Mother archetype. In fact, I had published these initial findings in the December, 1994 issue of Mountain Astrologer magazine. 1996 was an extremely productive year of research and discovery, staying up late in "the cottage," getting obscure books through interlibrary loan, tracking down the unresolved questions, and corresponding with Maya scholars. Everything snowballed towards November when I completed the Izapa Cosmos monograph. That's when I knew I had gotten it all through, that all the core discoveries were in place and now I only needed to assemble the pieces and streamline the manuscript.

I took a sabbatical and fell in love. For through all the years of research and hermit-scholar questing, I was nearing the end of my rope. I was holding out for the final insight, and the Izapa Cosmos chapter pointed the way. And so I produced a few spiral-bound prototypes and then let go. Ellie and I discovered each other in a flurry of healing, laughing, and crying. We were married some two years later, at midday in mid-May. This personal shift signaled a professional shift, for I was emerging from a cocoon of solitary study and writing and now needed to get my latest work published. By May of 1997 I had finished my traditional spiral-bound prototype, entitled Mayan Cosmogenesis 2012: Precession Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica. By July of 1997 I signed with Bear & Company (Santa Fe) — my second book "officially" taken up by an outside publisher. In August I gave a slide show presentation of my findings at The Institute of Maya Studies in Miami, and the response was excellent. I began giving local Denver-Boulder talks, and asked Terence McKenna to write the foreword to my book. November 1997 to March 1998 was an intense time of copy-editing, revisions, doing the two hundred illustrations, and so on. I quit my part-time job and by March it was pretty much complete. I flew to Mexico to speak at Hunbatz Men's spring equinox Maya Calendar Congress, where I shared my interpretation of the shadow-serpent event at Chichen Itza. Excerpts were published in various magazines prior to my book’s release — in Nexus Magazine (Australia), Towards 2012 (England), and Mayan Messenger (USA). The Laura Lee radio show interview (live) was taped in May just days before the first copies arrived hot of the press. My magnum opus was released in June of 1998; I count it as my fifth major book-length study, although poetry collections, articles, monographs, the Key to the Kalevala editing/translation project, and smaller booklets were also produced during this time. In his foreword, the late Terence McKenna called it "a revolutionary work of discovery and synthesis."

Summary of the Discoveries Set Forth in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012

A quality of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 that sets it apart from the majority of other books on the Maya — both popular and academic — is that it puts forward new breakthroughs. In addition, unlike mass-market books promising to identify the “Maya prophecies”, my work is rooted in and supported by careful source documentation, interdisciplinary synthesis, and rigorous adhesion to the best academic scholarship. Historically, it is to my knowledge the first in-depth, serious, and comprehensive exploration of the Galactic Alignment; in a sense, I broke the case. Here I would like to summarize the salient points of my new reconstruction that contributes a great deal to our evolving understanding of ancient Maya cosmology. We have entered a new era of understanding.

1. The Maya intended the 2012 end-date of the 13-baktun cycle of their Long Count calendar to target the rare alignment of the solstice sun with the Galactic Center of our Milky Way galaxy.

2. They encoded this alignment into their basic institutions, including the Creation Myth, king accession rites, and the sacred ballgame. I term this idea-complex the Galactic Cosmology.

3. Izapa is the origin place of the Long Count and the Maya Creation myth, which serve as the astronomical, calendric, ritual, and mythological foundation of the Galactic Cosmology.

4. An unrecognized astronomical message in the Pyramid of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza (where the famous shadow-serpent event occurs every equinox) involves the alignment of the sun and the Pleiades in the zenith. My reconstruction here is supported by evidence in Maya iconography, calendrics, and archaeoastronomy. I termed it the Zenith Cosmology.

5. In addition, I identified the New Fire ceremony and the Calendar Round as the systems used to track the alignment of the sun and the Pleiades in the zenith.

6. Thus, Chichen Itza was identified as a place that recognized not only the future 2012 alignment of sun and Galactic Center, but a future convergence (in the 21st century) of solar and Pleiadian energy.

7. Given that the Pleiades and the Galactic Center are roughly opposed in the sky, I proposed that the Maya understood the two alignments to occur in the 21st century (over Chichen Itza, at least) as an opening of the Evolutionary Axis that extends from the Galactic Center, through earth, and out towards the Galactic Anti-Center region of the Pleiades. The implications of this are profound, and embrace ideas in Vedic and Egyptian cosmology.

All of this is completely new, with no inkling of a precedent elsewhere. None of this is derived directly from the work of others; however, my findings did emerge from a comprehensive synthesis of academic perspectives and source studies. In the largest context of what seems to be implied, if not demonstrated here, the Maya were interested in two parts of the sky and two precession-caused alignment that occur in those directions. Both of those alignments are very rare and involve the entire frame of the sky rather than merely local conjunctions of planets. The alignments of our local solstice/equinox framework to the Galactic Center and to the Pleiades, incredibly, both occur in the 21st century. The Maya created an entire set of myths and deities to encode these celestial convergences. The former is the resurrection of One Hunahpu; the latter is the return of Quetzalcoatl. Astronomically speaking, we are aligning via the solstitial axis with the Galactic Center and the Galactic Anti-Center. In an end-note in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 I hinted at the implications of this, and in presentations given during the West Coast book promotion tour (October 1998) I explicated further on the meaning of this: A Galactic Chakra system can be envisioned, and the evolutionary energy (or shakti) is funneling through earth as a result of the alignments identified in ancient Maya cosmology.

Revised Approach / What I've Learned

What I just said about the Evolutionary Axis suggests a very compelling (and ancient) model of human spiritual evolution. One thing I learned from writing Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 and elaborating the ideas it contains is this: It is good to distinguish between the reconstructed cosmology of the ancient Maya and having to believe in it ourselves. The idea that periodic alignments to the Galactic Center stimulate consciousness on this planet is an intriguing and profound concept. What I have demonstrated clearly in my book is that the ancient Maya astronomer-priests understood the astronomy involved in this statement, projected foreword accurately to the next big alignment, and they believed it would signal the dawn of a new World Age. In addition, my greatest contribution was in that I did not make these claims without assembling a huge amount of interdisciplinary evidence from academic sources, showing clearly how the Maya encoded this end-date alignment concept into their core institutions. What I should not have done is argue for the mechanism that may or may not have been responsible for such alignments effecting life on earth. I only did this in the last chapter, in the interest of exploring possibilities. Today, I might point the interested empiricist in the direction of the works of Oliver Reiser (Cosmic Humanism and The Intent of Creation), David Bohm (see Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, David R. Griffin editor), Wilhelm Reich (Cosmic Superimposition) and Dr. Theodor Landscheidt (Cosmic Cybernetics). In the foreword to my book, Terence McKenna suggested that a resonant relationship between DNA molecules and the Galactic Center might be elaborated through the growing paradigm of chaos dynamics. This is without doubt the right track — resonant relationships rather than cause-and-effect “astrology.” However, my feeling is that any argument for an empirical, scientifically rigorous model might not be as important as:

1. The potential for spiritual and social transformation that the knowledge of our impending alignment with the Galactic Center (which is, after all, an empirical fact) might have for people.

2. The empirical invalidity of the model doesn't mitigate against my reconstruction of the ancient Maya cosmology, nor would it disprove the presence of these galactic concepts in other ancient traditions.

Must we believe in the details of ancient Greek political science or Vedic philosophy to study and appreciate its perspectives? The lingering unresolved suspicion here, of course, is that this ancient Galactic Cosmology does offer an insight superior to any suggested by our own cosmologists. Ironically, we might state this insight in a surprisingly simple way: our changing relationship to the larger galaxy changes the nature of life on earth. A third-grader would respond to this with a loud and exasperated "dahhh!" And yet something in this that is unsettling to the rational mind seems to be the lynch-pin of impatient dismissals of my entire body of work.

What else have I learned? One person commented that my Julian-Gregorian date conversion in Appendix 2 was off by a day in a few cases. Feedback on my book pointed out an overgeneralization in my use of the term Toltec. Technically, the Toltecs were specifically from Tula; I used the term to designate the larger Central Mexican tradition derived from Teotihuacan, but not equivalent with the later Aztecs. I should have used the term Nahuatl or Teotihuacano. Apart from this, there are no conceptual guffaws which challenge my reconstruction, even after I invited and received criticism on the scholarly email list called Aztlan. Or perhaps I should rather say that I was able to respond clearly and knowledgably to my critics, revealing that their perception of error on my part derived from their own faulty or incomplete understanding of the astronomy, ethnography, iconography, and calendrics involved. I'll detail some of these exchanges below.

I also learned, immediately after the release of my book, that other researchers were active on the galactic alignment question, although usually from a purely astrological viewpoint. In fact, I discovered, literally hours before sending off the final bibliography disks to Bear, an article in the May 1998 issue of Mountain Astrologer by Daniel Giamario on "a shamanic look at the turning of ages" suggested by the alignment. I found his research to be clear and his perspective interesting, so I quickly added the reference to the bibliography and dropped it in the mail that day. Related to the topic of other researchers, right after publication Jay Weidner called me, having seen my book, and I learned of his amazing collaboration with Vincent Bridges on a book called A Monument to the End of Time — released in August 1999. Their book is superbly argued and thoroughly examines the work of enigmatic French alchemist Fulcanelli and a monument in southern France that clearly encodes the galactic alignment as an "end of time" signal. Their work made it clear to me that the Maya's Galactic Cosmology might have a wider base; in other words, the same compelling insight was noticed by other civilizations around the globe. Weidner and Bridges’ work showed that it went back to Egypt. Subsequent research indicates it was a core process of the Vedic World Age doctrine and its metaphysical conception of spiritual transformation in general.

Responses To My Work and Correspondence Excerpts

Maya "mysteries" and other media biases

Magical Blend’s review and our response

Kindred Spirit interview and the

Idiot's Guide to millennial prophecies’ misrepresentation of my article

Don Alejandro’s newspaper article

Ed Krupp, Mayanist and Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, responded to essays I sent him in 1995-1996. His main objection was that a Mayan concept of a galactic equator could not be proven, and that no evidence indicated the “star fields of Sagittarius” as a creation place in Mayan cosmology. Regarding the first objection: The Milky Way itself is the galactic equator; degrees of precise measurement have enabled modern astrophysicists to narrow this down to an abstract dotted line extending through the precise middle of the Milky Way. In addition, the dark-rift is a narrow path along the middle of the Milky Way, extending north of Sagittarius and Scorpio, which the Maya recognized variously as a road, a mouth, and a birth portal. This was the Mayan’s conceptual equivalent of the galactic equator. Regarding the second objection: In Maya iconography, crosses denote the cosmic center and origin place. The Great Cross formed by the Milky Way and the ecliptic (in Sagittarius) has been recognized as a viable concept in Maya cosmology — a key concept in fact: it’s the Sacred Tree. Thus, the “star fields of Sagittarius” coincide with a location the Maya considered to be a creation place. Krupp’s comments were offered at an early stage of my research, based solely on essays I sent him; I was encouraged because I could respond to him clearly and with confidence.

Anthony Aveni kindly responded to some essays I sent him in late 1995, including the piece “The Stellar Frame and World Ages” that became chapter 10 in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. He did not agree with my World Age hypothesis, even though he had stated in his book Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico that ancient stargazers could have fairly easily noticed precession. Around this time I received a critique from Nikolai Grube in Germany, who was then serving as submissions editor for Mexicon magazine. I had submitted the World Ages piece to that journal; his response criticized my documentation style and did not address my main thesis.

In mid-1997, when I completed the prototype version of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, I sent out invitational letters to various scholars — Munro Edmonson, David Kelley, Linda Schele, Susan Milbrath, and the Tedlocks — offering to send them spiral-bound copies of my laboriously (and expensively) produced book. I sent one to David Kelley which resulted in an exchange, but he, like Antoon Vollamaere, was arguing for a completely different correlation and so was predisposed to not thinking anything significant might revolve around the 2012 date. The Tedlocks, who I met at Naropa Institute in Boulder in 1994 and 1995, were a mixture of support and indifference. Talking with Dennis at Naropa, he told me he was aware of the solstice-galaxy alignment but “didn’t know what to do with it” and considered any argument for an intentional connection with 2012 to be a case of misplaced concretism — because you will not actually be able to see the alignment (covered as it is by the sun). This, however, did not seem valid to me as the real point was that the ancient skywatchers could see, and could track, the slow movement of the solstice sun toward the band of the Milky Way. When I spoke to Barbara later (in March, 1998), she was not interested in giving me a written endorsement or review because my book was published by Bear & Company, a "new age" trade publisher. The impression I got was of encouragement, though mixed with a disinterest in seriously looking at my work. I greatly respect the work of the Tedlocks; recently I converted and edited Dennis's Breath on the Mirror for netLibrary, the largest ebook conversion provider in the world. A few telephone conversations with Dennis have not resulted in much direct discussion of my ideas.

In March of 1995 I journeyed via beat-up pick-up truck from Denver to Austin, Texas, for the famed Maya Meetings. Linda Schele would be there, and I hoped to talk with her. I opted to go to this event over the popular Chichen Itza gathering. In Austin, I met with Mark Valladares, an ex-Argüelles student who provided me with many insights into the preoccupations and activities of Dreamspell’s inner circle. His conscious scrutinizing of the group brought him and his partner Penny into contact with José in Mexico, and as a result they became disenchanted with the group’s motives, beliefs, and methods. Meanwhile, we attended the meetings; I was well aware of Schele’s 1992 breakthroughs demonstrating important relationships between Maya myth and astronomy. After the conference we attended the customary party at Linda’s house. I talked with her about Izapa, but within ten minutes she was distracted by others in her entourage. However, she directed me to one of her students who was studying Izapa. I then talked to her, but she was unable to discuss any of the monuments I mentioned, not seeming to have a working knowledge of Izapa in general. The contacts I made in Austin seemed promising, but subsequent attempts at correspondence were left unanswered. I traded my book The Center of Mayan Time with Barbara MacLeod for her Maya comic book. I talked with Michael Coe, but I didn’t realize it was him at the time!

Schele’s breakthroughs have since been criticized by rationalist apologists in Maya studies, claiming that as a result of her terminal liver diagnosis (apparently in 1992) she became “too metaphysical.” I find this to be disingenuous indeed, and it may be argued that a brilliant scholar who has long labored under the restricting biases and constipating politics of modern academia may have been freed in her final years to be more lucid and more clear. Giorgio de Santillana, one of the authors of Hamlet’s Mill, was near death as that masterpiece was being completed, and wrote of that ambitious and progressive study: “whatever fate awaits this last enterprise of my latter years, and be it that of Odysseus’ last voyage, I feel comforted by the awareness that it shall be the right conclusion of a life dedicated to the search for truth.” Perhaps Schele may have felt the same way. Her astronomical statements are at times unclear, and she might not have had a strong grasp of things like precession; however, her emphasis on the role played by the Milky Way / ecliptic cross finds precedent in the work of David Kelley, Susan Milbrath, Raphael Girard, Barbara Tedlock, Dennis Tedlock, and others. This is really the only area where my work converges with Schele’s, apart from her general emphasis that mythology and astronomy go together—a truism that I don’t think anyone questions.

Susan Milbrath responded to my letters. At the time she was working on her magnum opus, Star Gods of the Maya, recently published with The University of Texas Press. A careful reading of her incredible book provides enough evidence to convince one of the veracity of my own theory. And her presentation in September of 2000 at the Institute of Maya Studies brilliantly revealed three celestial crosses toward which the cross temples of Palenque were oriented. Unfortunately, Milbrath herself does not believe the ancient Mesoamerican astronomers tracked and calibrated precession, and her presentation de-emphasized the Mayan recognition of the Milky Way / ecliptic cross (for example, although the Sagittarian Thieves Cross is practically co-spatial with the Milky Way / ecliptic cross, that fact wasn’t addressed). She acknowledges precession was an astronomical reality, but I think she sees it as a potential complication to her own theories. I believe her insights are correct and aren’t threatened by precession; in fact, we can take her work to the next level if we admit that precession was incorporated into Mesoamerican cosmology.

One bright spot in this phase of my work was being invited by the Institute of Maya Studies in Miami to present my cutting-edge research. This was arranged by now-President Jim Reed, took place in August 1997, and was well-received.

I should point out that my early exchanges with scholars were based only on preliminary essays I had sent out. Disinterest in my research at that point might be expected. However, since that time I have amassed and assembled a huge amount of related evidence, and Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 was the result. My cordial invitations to Mayanists since that time have resulted in a series of interesting, if somewhat frustrating, exchanges. The area in which I engaged in the most telling and valuable dialogue on my progressive ideas was the Aztlan email conference, which generally sustains a high level of intellectual rigor and scholarship. Unfortunately, it is dominated by specialists seeking miscellania. Linda Schele was active on this list after its inception in late-1995; in fact, her comments on the 2012 end-date inspired a response from me, which I mailed to her at that time and later incorporated into Appendix 5 of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. I didn’t receive a response to any of my letters to Schele; understandable, I guess, given her prolific work at that time. It was only later, in the spring of 1999, that I rejoined the list and corresponded with various scholars and independent researchers; exchanges follow.

Lloyd Anderson took me up on my invitation and sort of introduced me to the larger circle of Aztlan listeros by being open minded. The body of my invitation, sent May 26, 1999, reads as follows:

Hello everyone,

My name is John Major Jenkins. I belonged to this mailing list when it first got started, and am happy to once again be involved.

I would like to invite all members of the AZTLAN list to comment on and/or critique my work with the Maya calendar and cosmology. My recent book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 abides by the highest standards of documentation to show that the ancient creators of the Long Count calendar intended the 13.0.0.0.0 date of December 21, 2012 A.D. to target a rare alignment in the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, that of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator (the Milky Way). Wait! Don't delete yet. My work is based upon ten years of interdisciplinary analysis, drawing from the latest breakthroughs in epigraphy, iconography, archaeoastronomy, and ethnography. I have presented my work at the Institute of Maya Studies in Miami, and am scheduled to give a workshop at the Esalen Institute this coming August.

MC2012 is my seventh book-length study of Maya cosmology. It contains a 24-page bibliography, six appendices, almost 200 illustrations and charts, and twenty pages of documentation and end-notes. The bibliography can be found at http://edj.net/mc2012/bibbb.htm. Reviews and endorsements can be found at amazon.com or at my website: http://edj.net/mc2012.

I am very interested in discussing the following ideas with the AZTLAN list; a few of the key ideas in my book are as follows:

1. The 13-baktun cycle end-date of the Long Count calendar coincides with a rare alignment of the solstice meridian and the Galactic equator. For ancient skywatchers tracking precession, this would look like the December solstice sun slowly approaching the bright band of the Milky Way.

2. This coincidence of two established facts is not coincidental; the ancient creators of the Long Count intended the end-date of the 13-baktun cycle to mark the alignment of the solstice sun and the Milky Way.

3. Evidence for this is found in the symbolism of the Maya Creation story (the Hero Twin myth), the ballgame, and king accession rites. Each one of these traditions encodes the astronomical alignment of era-2012.

My work is not about arguing for the efficacy of astrology, or for demonstrable "effects" that a solstice-galaxy alignment may have for human beings on earth, but is rather an attempt to reconstruct the ancient Maya worldview and beliefs about the big time-cycle ending of 2012 A.D. Here's an interesting footnote: by modern astronomical calculations performed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, the precessional alignment of the solstice meridian and the Galactic equator is due to most precisely occur in 1998, +/- at least 1 year. This doesn't disqualify the Maya; yes, they were some 13 years off in their forward precessional calculations, but it is clear they were intending 2012 to mark the solstice-galaxy alignment. Another footnote of import: The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, "discoverer" of precession, was using data that was only 170 years old.

The only potentially problematical point of my theory is how the ancient Maya astronomers discovered precession. However, this point is less controversial that one may initially suspect. Maya scholars like Anthony Aveni and Gordon Brotherston consider that, given the Maya's possession of a year-drift formula some 2000 years ago that enabled a calculation of the solar year to 2/1000ths of a day (1507 solar years equal 1508 haab), accurate precessional calculations would have been par for the course.

My work is being recognized as an important contribution to Maya studies. I welcome all comments. Unfortunately it is impossible to recapitulate a 450-page, thoroughly documented study into a brief email. More material, essays, and articles can be found on my website: http://edj.net/mc2012. I would greatly appreciate entering into a mutually beneficial dialogue with anyone willing to take up the challenge of critiquing my reconstruction of the Maya calendar cosmology. Perhaps we can begin with Point 1 given above. Best wishes . . .

This was the letter that generated a series of interesting comments. As mentioned, Lloyd Anderson asked some good questions and shared some of his own research. Then, Antoon Vollamaere, with his own axe to grind on the calendar correlation, called into question my use of 2012 as an end-date. I was thus required to formally summarize the vast body of work done by scholars over many decades that proved the 584283 correlation (beyond a reasonable doubt, at least). Of course, this was an area that I had thoroughly explored seven years earlier in my book Tzolkin, and it had little to do with the ideas in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. Vollamaere is among those who have argued for alternative correlations; generally, they focus on only one field of data, e.g., astronomy, to make their case, and ignore the important evidence of ethnographers. Well, this temporarily derailed my attempts to enter into serious dialog on the alignment. Soon, however, Andrew J. MacDonald surfaced, and I noticed he had an interesting model of early Maya cosmology that involved three axes of orientation. This intrigued me, because I had identified three axes and three cosmic centers at Izapa. We exchanged papers and came to a general respectful openness for each other's position; mine was certainly more "radical" or, I would say, specific in my references to the Polar, Zenith, and Galactic centers as the astronomical source of these anchor-points in Maya thought. David Kelley (the one in Japan) asked good questions about precession.

Three other Aztlan subscribers (Urquidi, M. Peach, S. Davies) questioned and critiqued an open letter I wrote in June (reproduced below) with disinterest in entering into serious dialog. This, unfortunately, exemplified the conclusions most typical of the linear, one-dimensional thinker. I responded clearly to all of their comments, but the dialogs dwindled into silence. I’ll illustrate shortly why this is really a question of two different approaches to analyzing ancient data — one of which is more limited than the other.

In late September (actually, while I was in England), Stephen Davies responded to the open letter that I had posted, which was designed to show how the Maya identified the region of the Galactic Center as a source (or birthplace) and a center. I responded to his critique after returning from England in early October:

From my Open letter: Among the modern-day Quiché Maya, the dark-rift is called the xibalba be. This means "road to the underworld."

Stevan Davies: OK. That gives us a fact from a particular time ca. 1970 from a particular culture, Quiché. What is true for Quiché language and legend today is not thereby true for classic Mayans of more than a millenium before. If it were the case that all, or almost all, present day Mayan languages called the dark-rift "xibalbe be" your point would be much stronger. As it is, it raises the question in my mind, why are the Yucatecs and Choltis and so forth not doing this?

John Major Jenkins: My argument is intended to show that the concept of "road to the underworld" was central to Mesoamerican ideas about emergence or birthing. We should not expect cultures speaking different dialects to be using the exact same term for the same concept. The Yucatec and Chorti Maya have concepts similar to the Quiché xibalba be; for the Yucatec it is the U hol Glorya or Glory Hole (Schele’s term), for the Chorti it is probably the Hol Txan be. It can also be shown that the "road or portal to the underworld" concept is represented in cave and jaguar symbolism going back to the Olmec. For example, the mouth of the jaguar was portrayed as an entrance to the underworld.

Open letter: In the ancient Maya Creation text, the Popol Vuh, this same feature serves as a road to the underworld and is also called the Black Road.

Stevan Davies: No. The Popol Vuh refers to red, green, white, and black roads. The black road to the underworld is taken. But where do you get the "also" from? There is NO connection made in the Popol Vuh between the black road and any astronomical feature whatsoever.

John Major Jenkins: By saying "also" I was showing that the dark-rift in the Milky Way was labeled by the Quiché as a "road to the underworld" and "also" a Black Road. You emphatically state that there is "NO connection made in the Popol Vuh between the black road and any astronomical feature whatsoever." Have you ever heard of Dennis Tedlock? As ethnographer and translator of the Popol Vuh, he has elucidated the astronomy within the Popol Vuh very carefully and clearly, specifically associating the Black Road taken by the Hero Twins with the dark-rift in the Milky Way. Before making emphatic statements, it may be more productive to ask for my sources. In this regard, my open letter is intended as a brief, concise summary. The interdisciplinary evidence I have assembled and interpreted can be found in my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. But let me direct you to the studies which demonstrate (if you read them) the larger millennia-long context of the "underworld portal" and the astronomy within the Popol Vuh: http://edj.net/mc2012/bibbb.htm

Open letter: Associated iconography with the "underworld portal" concept includes caves, monster mouths, and birthing portals. In general, the Milky Way was conceived as a Great Goddess and the dark-rift was her birth canal.

Stevan Davies: Whoa! This appears to be quite the non sequitur. I don't know where you get "birthing portals" for your first list, and cannot imagine what leads you to assert "in general the Milky Way was conceived as a Great Goddess," etc. [Do you mean] in general throughout the world? For the present day Maya? Classic Maya? What are you talking about here and what is your evidence for it and its relevance to your thesis?

JMJ: In Mesoamerican cosmo-conception. See Milbrath’s 1988 study of Aztec astronomy and goddesses in the website previously cited. The relevance to the open letter thesis is to show that the wider conceptual understanding of the xibalba be includes birthing. Caves, serpent mouths, thrones, and birthing portals were apparently conceptually related in the minds of Mesoamerican thinkers. In the Tzotzil language, Chen means both cave and birthing passage. Caves were entrance points to the underworld. Do you understand that we can approach a general understanding of the Mesoamerican "portal to the underworld" complex through this kind of interdisciplinary synthesis? Evidence that the dark-rift was conceived as a birthplace: The most compelling evidence comes from Izapa in roughly the first century B.C., the place where distinct episodes from the Popol Vuh are portrayed on dozens of carved monuments. Norman, Lowe, Schele and others have shown that a great deal of astronomy is on these pictographs. For example, Izapa's Group A alignments to the Big Dipper are compatible with Group A's pictographic content: Seven Macaw (The Big Dipper) is shown rising and falling. Notice that modern ethnographic information among the Quiché also associates Seven Macaw with the Big Dipper — a continuity of some 2000 years! Another example: Stela 25 contains a caiman-tree that symbolizes the Milky Way (this is similar to David Kelley’s model of the Milky Way with the mouth at the base of the tree being associated with the dark-rift in the Milky Way). Izapa Stela 11 has an upturned frog or toad deity, and a solar lord is being birthed from it. As Lowe pointed out, this appears to be a prototypal "upturned frog-mouth" hieroglyph, translated by David Kelley in 1976 to mean "to be born from." Here, the mouth of the caiman, frog, snake, or jaguar are loosely interchangeable references to the concept of the "road to the underworld", thus likely associating them in Izapan astronomy with the dark-rift in the Milky Way. Our scrutinizing and discriminating intellects might not like this kind of broad-brush association, but the Maya mind was more interested in conflating categories, in synthesizing the underlying meaning of different labels. (An example of this is the fact that the very same astronomical feature might have many different mythological identities.)

Another important factor at Izapa that supports the thesis is its alignment to the dark-rift, the solstices, the Milky Way, and the Big Dipper. Here observe that you are asking good questions, ones that I have already addressed in my book. I cannot rewrite that book, but I would direct you there if you want the evidence. And there is a great deal of it.

Open letter: This demonstrates that the Maya understood the region of the Galactic Center as a source-point or birth place.

Stevan Davies: If the "birth canal" statement above is valid, then it does demonstrate [this] as you say it does . . . tautologically, for the dark-rift is the center of the galaxy. This, however, makes it all the more important for you to show that the Galactic Center was a "birth canal" in the minds of the ancient Maya.

JMJ: The dark-rift POINTS TO the center of the galaxy. I’ve shown that the Galactic Center region of the sky was understood by ancient Mesoamerican thinkers as a birthplace, through the identification of the nearby dark-rift as a birthplace. The other factor in my open letter is the crossroads, providing another complex of symbols that indicate "center," thus supporting my thesis from an entirely separate direction. [Crosses denote “center” in Mesoamerican iconography.] One set of evidence might be dismissed as coincidence. But two?

Open letter: The cross formed by the Milky Way with the ecliptic near Sagittarius has been identified at Palenque and elsewhere as the Mayan Sacred Tree." Etc.

Stevan Davies: That appears to be the case. But I don't think a great many people have found that that identification has been cogently and convincingly argued to the point that one can say it is established. Rather, I think one can only say that the identification has been suggested.

JMJ: That’s because you aren’t aware of the larger body of evidence. The cross of the Milky Way and the ecliptic as a "cross" or "tree" is demonstrated in Girard’s ethnographic work among the Chorti. Related work by Milbrath utilizes the Milky Way-ecliptic cross as an important key to understanding astronomical information in the surviving Maya codices and in Aztec sources. Evidence likewise exists in the 16th-century Popol Vuh, modern Quiché ethnography, and even in Olmec symbology (see essays by Schele and others in The Olmec World, 1995). Ballcourt symbology, double-headed serpent bar imagery, throne crosses, and of course the clearest representation at Palenque. But it’s not just Palenque. Without trying to overemphasize, my book assembles all this evidence into a coherent whole. Or check out some of the sources at http://edj.net/mc2012/bibbb.htm

Stevan Davies: Frankly, I think your work cannot be proven correct. The Mayan calendar was in existence prior to 120 AD, the earliest recorded date (that I know of). So, whatever culture brought that calendar into being was the culture that would have designed it to end at 2012. What is the extent of our knowledge of the intellectual life of that culture? Zero. We do not know where or when or how or by whom the Mayan calendar was designed.

JMJ: These questions are answered. Long Count dates start appearing in the archaeological record during Izapa’s heydey — first century B.C. We know a lot about the intellectual preoccupations of the Izapan culture by way of its archaeoastronomical alignments, it’s carved monuments, its shamanism and local ecology. When you say "Mayan calendar" you need to distinguish between the Long Count and the much older 260-day calendar. Michael Coe has written that "it is quite clear cut that the Izapan civilization was instrumental in the development of the Long Count calendar." Other scholars agree. It's also a fairly straightforward probability when you consider that the Long Count calendar starts appearing in the archaeological record at the same time Izapa was experiencing it's heydey, and in the same region.

Stevan Davies: So even if the Palenque Mayans knew all about the ecliptic and thought it was a really really big deal and organized their principal artistic designs in reference to it (all of which I strongly doubt) that tells us virtually nothing about the culture that, hundreds of years earlier, invented the calendar.

Stevan Davies

JMJ: Well, I think that doubt is based in the limited view of Maya genius that has plagued Maya studies for a hundred years. Look at Izapa, the culture that invented the Long Count and carved the earliest distinct episodes from the Hero Twin Creation Myth, and you will find sophisticated astronomy. You will find the Milky Way-ecliptic cross and the dark-rift. If the sum-total of my work on these questions amounted to a two-page open letter, it would be easy to dismiss it as you have. However, that two-page letter was intended as a common-language summary of evidence showing that the ancient Maya conceived of the region of the Galactic Center in a way that is consistent with its true nature as a center and source. This was merely an assemblage of the evidence from academic sources. When I describe what is present in this data, very little of it is my own subjective argument; it's just setting the pieces out for all to see. This is what amuses me the most. It's based in factual evidence but the resistance among evidence-seeking scholars is the most extreme. And the reason for this, I believe, has to do simply with the implications. But the implications of assembled evidence, no matter how unsettling to the superiority complex of modern science, must be faced if we want to progress. It's 2 AM and I should be sleeping . . .

From my perspective, a large amount of data/evidence/information should result in similar conclusions—even among different thinkers— if common sense and reason are being applied. What I have observed in the response of Davies and others is resistance to drawing the appropriate common sense and logical conclusion. This step is not taken because the rationalist anticipates intractable admissions that must follow upon making the leap, namely, that the Maya calculated precession and were aware of the location of the Galactic Center. The full text of my open letter that Davies responded to (above), which developed during an exchange I had with an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, is as follows:

An Open Letter to Astronomers

John Major Jenkins / June 30, 1999

Did the Maya know where the Galactic Center is located?

Yes.

Now, brace yourself, because I’m going to show you how and why without resorting to speculation or guesswork. The question to ask is this: Did the Maya understand the region of the sky occupied by the Galactic Center in a way that is metaphorically and conceptually equivalent to what the Galactic Center is? In this way we can answer the related question of "did the Maya know where the Galactic Center is located?"

So, what is the Galactic Center? In most basic terms, the Galactic Center is:

1. A center

2. A source-point, or "creation place."

The first thing to recognize is that the region of the Galactic Center contains several features — all visible to the naked eye — that call attention to it as a unique place along the Milky Way. These are:

1. The Milky Way is filled with brighter stars and is wider in the region of the Galactic Center

2. The dark-rift, or Great Cleft, of the Milky Way extends to the north of the Galactic Center

3. The cross formed by the Milky Way and the ecliptic

Now we can assess established, academic (i.e., not my own), identifications in Mayan ethnoastronomy and starlore. Two factual indicators:

1. Among the modern-day Quiché Maya, the dark-rift is called the xibalba be. This means "road to the underworld." In the ancient Maya Creation text, the Popol Vuh, this same feature serves as a road to the underworld and is also called the Black Road. Associated iconography with the "underworld portal" concept includes caves, monster mouths, and birthing portals. In general, the Milky Way was conceived as a Great Goddess and the dark-rift was her birth canal. This demonstrates that the Maya understood the region of the Galactic Center as a source-point or birth place.

2. The cross formed by the Milky Way with the ecliptic near Sagittarius has been identified at Palenque, among the Quiché and Chorti Maya, and elsewhere as the Mayan Sacred Tree. In the Popol Vuh, it is the Crossroads. The cross symbol, according to accepted epigraphic and iconographic interpretation (e.g., on thrones), denotes the concept of "center" and usually contextually implies a "cosmic" or "celestial" center. The concept of "cosmic center" and the principle of world-centering was important to Mesoamerican astronomers, city planners, and Maya kings — kings who symbolically occupied and ruled from the "cosmic center." Thus, the Maya, via the Sacred Tree/Cosmic Cross symbology, understood the region of the Galactic Center to be a center.

Center and birthplace — understandings that are true to the Galactic Center’s nature. This is not speculation, but an assemblage of academic evidence. I repeat here the evidence available in my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, which contains 24 pages of bibliography and 20 pages of academic documentation in end notes.

I speak of "region" in referring to the Galactic Center because the visible "nuclear bulge" of the Galactic Center is not an abstract, invisible point, is not limited to the high frequency radio spectrum, but rather covers a large area or "region" in the visible night sky. Now, my book argues, as its primary thesis, that the Maya intended 2012 to mark the rare alignment of the solstice sun with the band of the Milky Way. In astronomical terms, this is the alignment of the solstice meridian with the Galactic equator — an astronomical fact. Notice that my thesis does not require knowledge of the Galactic Center in order for it to be accepted. Nevertheless, knowledge among the ancient Maya of the Galactic Center as a "creation place" and "cosmic center" is strongly implied, indeed demonstrated, by established Maya concepts, as outlined above.

Ancient Maya knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes is the hitch that most closed-minded scholars invoke to discredit my work. The evidence for precessional knowledge is found in the academic data, in archaeoastronomical realignments of temples, in the Creation monuments and texts, in the structure of the Long Count calendar, and in the work of respected Mayanists like Gordon Brotherston and Eva Hunt. Appendix 2 of my book surveys the evidence in the literature. Citations to the work of Brotherston, Tedlock, Schele, Smiley, Hunt, Aveni, etc etc etc are available upon request (electronically) and are also contained in my book. Important points that are demonstrated here, which will help us understand how and why the Maya knew where the Galactic Center is located:

1. We need to recognize that naked eye observation alone can identify the uniqueness of the Galactic Center region.

2. We need to compare ancient Mayan terms and metaphors with modern scientific terms and metaphors to determine if the ancient Maya had an accurate understanding and conception of the Galactic Center region. Clearly, without even using speculation but rather by assessing the available and accepted academic data, they did.

3. We need to separate unfounded accusations of my work as new age psycho-babble from the integrative, deductive, well-researched and documented approach that it is.

I am trying to establish here a foundation for astronomers to approach my material without judgment before the evidence I’ve assembled is assessed. I anxiously await further dialog, comments, and feedback.

The astronomer at Johns Hopkins could not accept this concise and brief letter, and simply stated emphatically that the Maya could not have known where the Galactic Center was located. So, the fact that in their mythology and cosmology they think of the region of the Galactic Center as a birthplace and a center must be a total coincidence. This is the least scientific position I could imagine. Other Mayanists with astronomical understanding, have simply refused to respond (e.g., I sent email to John B. Carlson in the summer of 1999, and he subscribes to the Aztlan e-list). Another Aztlan listero followed up my lengthy response to Davies:

D.M. Urquidi: The debate between Stevan Davies and John Major Jenkins was lengthy to say the least. With all the arguments presented, I am prone to agree, not with JMJ but with SD. It seemed to me that ALL arguments led to ALL symbols being the "road to Xibalba" or the "underworld" or the Galaxy "birthing canal".

I think it is a bit much. Every element of every symbol has its own nuance that tells us another aspect of something. but for all to refer to "road to Xibalba" or the "underworld" or the Galaxy "birthing canal" does not seem feasible. What does "death" mean to the Meso-Americans? What does "life" mean? Where are/were the dead buried? The answers we think we know, but do we? Where is the Cosmic Tree? At the junction of the Galactic and the Elliptic? Or is it somewhere completely different? Why is a bird connected with the tree and with the twins? Too many questions still to be answered. In the PV, the twins became stars and the 400 youths became stars? Who/what else?

JMJ: Many of these questions have been addressed and sufficiently answered to satisfy a healthy level of skepticism. And the answers are not all my own, but come from the wider context of studies previously referred to. While it is certainly easy to inappropriately associate iconographic and conceptual elements with one perceived reference, i.e., the dark-rift, it is also possible to push back a little our understanding of just how overarching the "birthing place" concept was to Mesoamerican thinkers. If we accept this, then the ubiquitous presence of the dark-rift reference in many Mesoamerican traditions will not seem quite as imaginary.

D.M.U. This would indicate that there was no poetry, no literature, no games, no thought in Meso-America, only religious astronomy and religious wars. Not a very likely occurance. The Mesos wanted the same things we want today. . . a good life, good food, a happy, healthy family and probably a quiet death. Where does the family fit into the picture? As the "birthing canal" symbolism in the Milky Way? Why? Why not lactation of the heavens instead. Humans do have to be fed as infants.

D. M. Urquidi

JMJ: I've been concerned with the astronomical level of ancient Izapan thought. This does not preclude the obvious reality that they were living, breathing human beings.

John Major Jenkins

Urquidi’s accusation that all of my arguments lead in a roundabout way to the dark-rift / birth canal motif is similar to Munro Edmonson’s comment (in personal correspondence, 1997) that my identifications were “free-floating” and could “land just about anywhere”, which was not his “cup of tea.” Here we encounter a basic difference between approaches to the data. My work, without compromising rational thought, has sought to identify parallels of meaning, an association of motifs by way of analogy and metaphor. We could call this comparative iconography. To me, this reveals the deeper associations that a cultural mindset might encode for a given motif. The linear rational/deductionist mind needs to find factual links for an association to be valid; metaphor and analogy have no place, and to approach the data with an eye to actually synthesizing the inner meaning would be heresy. The rational/deductionist mind would also gasp and criticize my use of the word “deductionist”. Any linguistically sophisticated intellect could easily understand my intention in using this “synthesized” word, but the uni-dimensional linear intellect balks, sputters, complains, freezes up and cannot proceed further.

Most interestingly, Edmonson’s critique of my approach, echoed by Urquidi, is exactly the same as Umberto Eco’s critique of René Guénon’s analogical/symbolist approach. In his introduction to Maria Pia Pozzato’s L’idea deforme (The Deformed Idea, 1979), Eco deconstructs Guénon’s book The Lord of the World, calling it a classic example of the “slipping away” of saying anything meaningful because everything is perceived via a relationship of analogy, unity, or similarity with everything else and so nothing meaningful can be concluded. In other words, the inter-related complex of ideas is free floating and so can apply to (or “land on”, as Edmonson said of my approach) any argument. This is a problem of differing approaches; we might call these approaches “analogical” versus “logical.” The analogical or “synthesizing” approach of myself and Guénon is clearly more capable of accurately languaging the deeper currents of the body of information being examined. For it is in the relationships between categories (categories kept separate in the linear/logical/specialist mode) that provides meaning. And understanding. In the foreword to Evola’s The Mystery of the Grail, H. T. Hansen addressed Eco’s “picking to pieces” of Guénon’s approach, and wrote:

In a scientific, semiotic mode of thinking, such traditional analogies naturally have no place. However, they do have they capability to move deeply. And if, as Jung says, reality is that which is effective, then myths are also reality. Here, of course, completely different definitions of reality come into play.

And so, I ask, if the ancient Maya participated more in the mindset of a Primordial Tradition than in the logic of the Western scientific method, then isn’t it more appropriate to interpret their doctrines with the principles and methods of their own mindset? In the end, I don’t even think that Guénon’s approach can even be accused of being anti-rational. In the prerational-rational-transrational levels of consciousness discussed by thinkers such as Ken Wilbur, the approach of the Primordial Traditionalists like Guénon is clearly trans-rational; that is, capable of rational interpretation — and going beyond it — without getting stuck in its limiting dualisms and misplaced allegiance to the superiority complex of modern scientific methods. Pre-rational interpretation characterizes much of the New Age literature; with its ineffective nonsense appealing largely to an emotional, pre-rational substitute for authentic spiritual experience. Or, might I add, the experiences may be authentic but the integration into daily life is lacking.

My dilemmas in engaging in productive discourse are based in these fundamental differences in approach. My detractors want to interpret through the filters of Western deconstructionism; I want to interpret and understand through the perspective of Maya cosmology itself. For example, in my open letter piece, I identified important (and widely accepted) elements in Maya myth and astronomy indicating that the region of the Galactic Center was conceived as a center and birthplace. None of that assemblage of evidence rests upon my own interpretations. The simple conclusion, as logical as it is threatening to the superiority complex of the Western Intellect, is this: The Maya thought of the region of the Galactic Center as a center and source point. They recognized the true nature of that part of the Milky Way. And their ideas were backed up by the fact that the Milky Way is very bright and wide in that region — empirical observation at its best.

Carl Calleman in Sweden, independently of the goings on with Aztlan, called into question my use of precession. I want to give his critique a full hearing, because of the time Carl put into corresponding with me, and because it documents an intractable conflict of, we might say, perspectives. Calleman and I both gave presentations in March of 1998 at the Maya Calendar Congress in Merida, Mexico. He is the author of several books on the Maya calendar, including The True Cross, and approaches the subject in terms of his theological model of spiritual transformation based on the Maya calendar. He has a theory proposing that the correct end-date is not December 21, 2012, but October 28, 2011, which in my opinion is unfounded and derived from arbitrary considerations and misunderstood facts. Nevertheless, despite his anomalous end-date theory, he has adopted the True Count correlation and has written clearly about the correlation debate; I posted an article he wrote on my website. Our email correspondence through 1999 culminated with a piece he wrote as an appendix to his next book. It was an argument against my methods, reasoning, and conclusions. I was surprised at his disagreement with my basic thesis that the end-date was timed by precession — a fundamental concept that I had argued for with careful documentation, accessing interdisciplinary scholarship to settle the question. Calleman sent his critique to me “for my knowledge.” For the record I felt obliged to respond to his points of criticism:

Hi Carl,

Yes, please feel free to critique my work. However, I'd like to provide some of my own responses that you may use to adapt your appendix if you like.

CJC: "Another example [of a pseudo-spiritual interpretation] is provided by John Major Jenkins’ book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, where the author seeks to ground the Mayan Great Cycle, and its changing energies, in the 26,000-year astronomical cycle that the earth undergoes because of precession. Both [Argüelles and Jenkins] thus seek to adapt the spiritual cycles to the astronomical rather than the other way around . . ."

JMJ: In MC2012 I sought to identify the underlying empirical (astronomical) reason why the Maya chose 2012 to end the 13-baktun cycle. Elsewhere in the book, and in previous articles and books, I explore and elucidate the spiritual and ceremonial dimensions of the tzolkin and Long Count. MC2012 had a focus — one book cannot be all things. Carl, your summation of my theory is accurate; your precession description is easy to understand.

CJC: "On a planet made from a non-bulging material (and hence no precession) no evolution could take place."

JMJ: Local gravitational influences may not be the sole cause of precession. Is it any coincidence that the Galactic Center is roughly 26,000 light years from earth?

CJC: "Jenkins has chosen the midwinter solstice, which seemed to fit the Mayan end date, but this is arbitrary too. Why not let the summer solstice determine the age?"

JMJ: I don't know, it seems to have been a decision of the early Maya cosmologists [i.e., December 21, 2012 is established].

CJC: "And, really, no one has proved that precession has an effect on human consciousness."

JMJ: If true, however, this possibility could, as with the rediscovery of the heliocentric solar system by Copernicus/Kepler/Galileo, stimulate a cosmological revolution. [Also, proof of this idea doesn’t invalidate my reconstruction of the ancient Mayan belief about it.]

CJC: ". . . this highlights the strangest and most inexplicable omission in Jenkins’ work — the total neglect of the creation stories actually presented by the ancient Maya in Quirigua and Palenque."

JMJ: These are Classic Period versions; I chose the Quiche Popol Vuh Creation Story, which has close associations with the original Creation Story portrayed on the monuments of Izapa. In fact, I did discuss the Quirigua creation monument in my 1994 book Jaloj Kexoj and PHI-64. These monuments usually read something like "On 13.0.0.0.0 the image is made to appear." The glyph for "the image" is a kan-cross, symbol of the crossroads and the sun. Notice that the date reads 13.0.0.0.0 rather than 0.0.0.0.0. I also discuss Schele's questionable use of the Palenque texts in an appendix in MC2012, "Response to Counter-Arguments."

CJC: "I do not feel that the description of creation in Palenque is something that serious research about the meaning of the Long Count can allow itself to overlook."

JMJ: In my opinion, spiritual politics at Palenque gave permission for rulers to place themselves into the older Long Count creation wisdom, adapting it when necessary to contemporary political needs. Palenque thrived 700 years after the Izapan culture created the Long Count. Compare Christianity of the 1st century with the corruptions of the 14th.

CJC: "This omission is all the more serious as the evidence he presents to support his theses is mostly mythological . . ."

JMJ: This is not true and I would serious advise amending this. Mythology yes, but mythology with established astronomical references. Also, I utilized calendrics (see reconstruction of the Izapan Calendar Round), iconography (rending the Izapan monuments readable), astronomy, archaeoastronomy, ethnography (ancient and modern), epigraphy (see upturned frog-mouth glyph interpretation of Kelley). This is the greatest and most argument-resistant aspect of my work — I didn't isolate the data, I synthesized data from a wide spectrum of different disciplines. Some data was considered irrelevant, with good reason. Please don't give the wrong impression here.

CJC: "They date the fall of Seven-Macaw to May 28, 3149 BC. . ."

JMJ: Who is this "they" — latter-day pundits at Palenque? Yes.