Certain aspects of the interlocking Maya calendar system
have filtered into public consciousness in the last
decade and a half. One of them is the prediction that
we will come to the end of a solar-planetary cycle in
2012. But what is this cycle exactly and why is it going
to end on the winter solstice of that auspicious year?
Is the world going to end as some people are forecasting?
The Maya conceived of time and human history
as moving in cycles, small and large. While
we use a single calendar to keep track of our annual
solar circuit and to mark all of the important days
within a year, the Maya used a variety of calendars.
The array included a 365-day solar calendar; a 260-day
sacred calendar and a Long Count calendar that operated
something like an odometer with a zero start date. Unlike
the other calendars the Long Count clocked linear time
and was programmed to stop after 5,125 years elapsed.
The Long Count was begun at the onset of this current
cycle, known as the 5th Sun, in 3114 BC. It will clock
the required number of years to complete a full cycle
of five suns on December 21, 2012. John Major Jenkins
has made the case that this date corresponds to two
major alignments, (one between the winter solstice sun
and the galactic equator; the other an approximate one
between solstice sun and galactic core) and it also
completes the Great Zodiac precession cycle of 26,000
years. I am not questioning this thesis however
I do wonder if that is all there is to the end of this
solar cycle- the 5th Sun?
The Maya began their Long Count on what they referred
to as the ‘Birth of Venus.’ Scholars have
never been able to determine what the Maya were referring
to and neither have alternative researchers. Nevertheless
their sacred calendar, the Tzolkin, placed the synodic
cycles of Venus in a central role. The 104-year ‘Venus
Round’ cycle (2 Calendar Rounds of 52 years each),
was a very important ceremonial event as this was the
point in time when the solar and sacred calendars realigned
with the cycle of Venus.
I need to insert an important numerical progression
at this point to provide a basis for the rest of the
article. The number thirteen was a root number
for the Maya. It is both a prime number and the eighth
number in the crucial Fibonacci series that is one source
of the Golden Ratio, 1.618.
If we use 13 as the root of the Mayan calendar system
we find the following sequence: 13, 26, 39, 52, 65,
78, 91 and 104, which are achieved by simply adding
13 to each succeeding sum. These are the key numbers
in the Mayan calendrics and they have a solid scientific
footing. Venus was the central component of the Mayan
cosmology. It is for good reason that our nearest planetary
neighbor is called earth’s sister planet. They
have a phase-locked orbital cycle that is based on a
13:8 ratio. That is derived from the fact that
Venus revolves around the sun 1.6 times faster than
Earth so that 13 Venus revolutions is equal
to 8 years.
Why is this important? By establishing Venus
as the key component of the sacred calendar they automatically
built the Golden Ratio (1.6) into the system since that
ratio defines the difference between the two planets
orbital cycles. By using 13 as the root number
they also included the crucial multiples, or powers,
of thirteen - 13,000 and 26,000 - or half as well as
the full number of years in the precession. We see that
the 5 Suns, each lasting 5,125 years, also add up to
the Great Zodiacal Year.
We can break these numbers down in different ways and
each will show that there was nothing arbitrary about
the Mayan system. We somewhat arrogantly disdain other
cultures for being superstitious until we come to the
number 13 and our own irrationality surfaces. But let’s
examine how deeply embedded this number - as well as
26, 52 and 91 - are in our own calendar. Our year is
divided into four seasons that are demarcated by the
equinoxes and solstices.
Each of the four seasons is 91 days or 13 weeks long,
which gives us a year of 52 weeks. We see the key Maya
13-base numerical progression reflected in our own calendar.
Half of a year is 26 weeks. It is beyond the scope of
this article to delve into all of the intricacies of
the Mayan calendrical and mathematical systems; they
were extremely adept in these fields.
What I have uncovered during my decades of research
into this topic are two crucial keys to understanding
the system: the ‘Transit of Venus’ and solar
output cycles. It just so happens that the 2012
end date corresponds to a Venus Transit cycle that occurs
twice in the next 10 years in 2004 and then in 2012.
As mentioned above Venus was central to the Mayan cosmology.
The Long Count began on what the Maya call the “Birth
of Venus” so it is perhaps not too surprising
that it ends on a Transit of Venus.
My research has revealed that a Transit of
Venus occurred in 1518 and 1526. This was the
period when Cortez landed on the shores of the
Yucatan and wound up conquering the Aztec empire.
The next transit was in 1631-’39. It was followed
by a complete stoppage of the sunspot cycle, which lasted
for 70 years (science has no explanation for this event).
The ‘little ice age’ occurred between 1645
and 1720. What do we find associated with the next transit
in 1761-‘69? We discover the birth of the American
Revolution.
There is no doubt that the Transit of Venus was an
important divinatory alignment factored into the Maya
calendar. We will not have to wait for long to test
this theory and also get a glimpse of 2012 during the
‘passage’ years. But in reality as Jose
Arguelles and others have pointed out the precursor
years began in 1987 and the final stages of this cycle
really kicked into gear in 1991-’1993. How do
we know? There has been a tremendous surge in the number
and magnitude of natural disasters and this was also
forecast as a harbinger of the 5th Sun’s demise.
13,000 years is a very important time period since
we know that the last ice age ended then. This
indicates that there is a periodicity to the solar output
cycle. There are short and long term fluctuations
in solar output and as a result great ice ages, little
ice ages and warm interglacials, which we are in nearing
the end of now.
The cyclical nature of the long range weather patterns
are well established is are the variable nature of solar
activity. We know that that is true since we have been
in a ‘global warming’ period for the past
300 years. The “little ice age” started
to thaw in the early 1700s when the sunspot cycle returned.
The level of solar activity has been increasing steadily
from that ‘zero sunspot point’ right up
to our recent sunspot cycles in 1989-‘90 and the
double peak in 2000- ’02.
Is it a coincidence that 2012 also coincides
with the next solar sunspot maximum? The actual
peak of this 300-year cycle of increasing solar output
occurred in 1960 when the number of sunspots exceeded
200, the usual peak is around 100-150. Now, what is
interesting is that during the first half of the 20th
century the Earth’s seismic and volcanic activity
were comparatively quiet.
Then after 1960 the level of seismic and volcanic
activity increases steadily to the point that the 1990s
can accurately be called the ‘decade of disasters’.
The surge in major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
radically departed from earlier decades. According to
the chief scientist for the world’s largest reinsurance
company Zurich Re, “since 1960 natural disasters
are a growth industry.”
I hardly need to mention “global warming”
since it is constantly in the headlines. However, the
truth is obvious for those that care to see it. The
Earth has been warming for 13,000 years with periodic
short-term cold spells. However, solar output
is the forcing mechanism behind global warming and the
5th Sun is intimately tied to that phenomenon.
What does the end of the 5th Sun really mean?
I take it very literally to mean that the sun’s
output is going to change. We are going to enter
the flip side of a new 13,000 year cycle. The earth
is overheated and so is the sun, the result being planetary
instability manifested in rising earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions and erratic weather patterns.
These will increase further starting in 2004. The volcanic
ash will create more and more cloud cover and that will
begin to cool the planet down. If my theory is correct
the Maya knew that the Venus Transit acted like
a circuit breaker switching off the sunspot cycle and
impacting the Sun-Moon-Earth-Venus system.
This appears to have happened just prior to the previous
two ‘little ice ages’ that were preceded
by what solar physicists call the Spoorer (1400-1510)
and Maunder Minimum(s) 1640-1710), periods of radically
diminished solar activity.
The Venus Transit will trigger the demise of
the 5th Sun and set the stage for the next cycle, the
6th Sun. That is the physical side of the Maya
5th Sun forecast. Unlike many predictions this
one is built into the Maya calendar and it can be verified
with some historical research. Is the world
going to end in a violent crescendo of natural disasters
and impacts from cosmic objects? I do not think that
is likely nor is it what the Maya predicted.
However, a prolonged period of change is on the horizon
that will be ushered in by the 2004 – 2012 ‘passage’.
It will culminate in the galactic alignment
and complete the precessional cycle at that point.