Maya Calendar and Cosmology
Maya Calendar and Cosmology
Maya Cosmogenesis 2012
Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies
Ongoing: Articles and Essays
The Matz Codex: An Unknown Aztec Codex
My work with Maya cosmology has developed several core insights into a full explication of the deep currents of Mesoamerican time philosophy. The evolution of this work can be traced in my books. There
are four major focal points, each of which presents pioneering new
interpretations. A great deal of introductory material on the Maya calendar systems can be found in The Old City.
1. The identification of three mathematical/philosophical principles
at
the heart of Maya time philosophy.
These three principle were decoded slowly
during my research and ultimately correspond to the three "root" principles
of Egyptian Sacred Science. The Eros-Logos-Dios trinity to which they
philosophically correspond also relates to my interest in Pekka Ervast's
interpretation of the Finnish Kalevala Epic, in which he identifies the
archetypal forces characterized by the three primary Kalevala heroes as
corresponding to emotion, intellect, and will. Two of the three principles I
identified within the Maya calendar system comprise a dual-principle
paradigm of change and unfolding that I called "PHI-64" (PHI = the Golden
Mean or square-root 5 principle; "64" = the doubling principle of
square-root 2). In early 1993 I met Martín Prechtel and read a paper he co-authored on a formal paradigm of the present-day
Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala called Jaloj Kexoj. Though strictly a
philosophical concept, Jaloj Kexoj corresponds perfectly with the PHI-64
system I had decoded as being at the core of the Maya calendar and Maya time
philosophy in general. These discoveries and parallels were documented and
recorded in my 1994 book Jaloj Kexoj and PHI-64, which I am planning
on re-issuing as Maya Sacred Science.
2. The Venus Calendar.
In
my book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies, I
endeavored to reconstruct and reinaugurate the 104-haab Venus Calendar that
is clearly layed out in the Maya Dresden Codex. The approach ended up being
twofold. First, I showed how the Classic-Period Venus Calendar evolved into
a more accurate and comprehensive one among the post-Classic Ixil and Quiché
Maya of Highland Guatemala. The proposed new Venus Calendar, developed
around 1250 A.D., brought the beginning point of the 52-haab Calendar Round
into alignment with the beginning point of the 104-haab Venus Round. The
synchronization of these cycles eventually is lost, due to the Venus cycle
being 583.92 days rather than the 584-day approximation used, and adjustment
mechanisms are necessary to make any system accurate in the long-term.
Secondly, one solution to the difficulties in reconstructing the adjustment
mechanisms of the Maya Venus Calendar, is to simply identify the next time
that a morningstar appearance of Venus corresponds with the traditional
tzolkin date One Ahau, which was known as the Sacred Day of Venus. One Ahau
traditionally began the 104-haab Venus Round period, predicting when Venus
would rise heliacally as morningstar. Toward this end, I identified April 3,
2001 A.D. as the next Sacred Day of Venus. This date is 4 days after
inferior conjunction of Venus (meaning that Venus will be technically in its
first morningstar appearance) and is also the tzolkin date One Ahau in the
traditional Maya calendar. This last point required deciding how the tzolkin
calendar corresponds to the Gregorian calendar, which necessitated sorting
out a great deal of academic and pop-culture misinformation on the
subject.
3. The Tzolkin Correlation.
Determining the correct placement of the tzolkin calendar through academic analysis has been another major
facet of my work. This draws not so much from my own pioneering ideas, but from summarizing the solid scholarship from decades of ethnographic study. Ultimately, the surviving tzolkin count still followed in
the highlands of Guatemala is the one we should use, because it has an
unbroken continuity going back 3000 years. The academic clarifications I
made have been fairly painless (see the Lounsbury paper in The Old City or
in my book Tzolkin). However, the response to my championing of the traditional Maya tzolkin placement and my persistant
pointing out that a "True Count" exists, has been met by many new age Maya calendar enthusiasts with scoffing
suspicion and narrow-minded dismissals. The truth is that an unbroken
calendar tradition survives in the Highlands of Guatemala; this tzolkin
count placement is the same one followed at the Classic Maya cities, and
makes December 21, 2012 A.D. equivalent to 4 Ahau in the tzolkin calendar.
It is also true that the daycount put forth by Dreamspell designer and
Harmonic Convergence organizer José Arguelles is currently 51 days out of
synchronization with the authentic traditional daycount, and ignores
counting February 29. I have sought clarity on this issue since 1991 and
only recently have the Dreamspell movement and the writers who have adopting
the Jose Arguelles count of days begun to acknowledge the True Count. Dialogue on this topic can be found at the Talis website. For a further clarification of the correlation controversy, see the "Manifesto for Clarity" essay I wrote form The Institute of Maya Studies, also published in the Wacah Chan newsletter.
4. Galactic Cosmology and the 2012 end-date alignment.
This has been a most
fruitful avenue of research in my continuing efforts to get to the heart of
the ancient Maya's cosmological wisdom. Since 1993 I have been building
evidence for the idea that the Maya were aware of our solstice sun's
impending alignment with the Galactic Plane and the Galactic Center, an
astronomical alignment that occurs only once every 13,000 years. I have
honestly documented my encounter with this idea and have gone deep into the
academic literature to decode how this end-date alignment scenario - what I
call the Galactic Cosmology- was incorporated into basic Maya institutions
such as the ballgame, king accession rites, and the Maya Creation Myth. Four
years of intense research along these lines, during which I wrote several monographs and a dozen articles, culminated in the publication
of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 in 1998. MC2012 has been lauded as revolutionary,
original, and pioneering by many respected cutting-edge thinkers of our
day.
Grand Theme: The Tree of Life
Finally, the theme uniting all of these searches has emerged for me
very recently. It is the tripartite unity of Eros-Logos-Dios, manifesting at
all levels of our multidimesional world. For me, the trinity principle is
beautifully portrayed by an image I call the Tree of Life, which also
symbolizes the alchemical churning that occurs at the end of the age to
percolate the energy necessary for consciousness to ascned to the next level
of spiritual development. The Tree of Life symbol was giving to me in a
vision in 1985. My bizarre experiences during this period of awakening and transformation are documented in my book Mirror in the Sky (1991). The "TOL" symbol has served as the
template of my gnostic search ever since, constantly revealing new
applications of its universal archetypal structure. For me, it is the
transdimensional object that fits like a key into all levels of our
multi-tiered cosmos.
These are the main ideas that I've worked with since writing my first
book on the Maya, Journey to the Mayan
Underworld, in 1989. That year launched my ten-year odyssey of exploration into the Maya material. In retrospect, the nineties have been an incredible decade of discovery and growth, during which my quest into the heart of the gnostic circle has revealed many core insights into the universal principles that contribute to the evolution of consciousness on this planet. May our countdown to 2012 be as fruitful...
The How and Why of the Mayan Calendar End-Date in 2012 A.D. This is the historic article, published in 1994, that first connected the end-date alignment with known concepts among the Maya. This is where I pointed out that the xibalba be (the dark-rift in Sagittarius) and the Sacred Tree (the crossing point formed by the Milky Way where it crosses over the ecliptic in Sagittarius) are essential keys to understanding how the Maya conceptualized the end-date alignment and encoded it into their mythic concepts.
Other voices on the alignment
1998, 2000, or 2012? The true alignment zone.