Fake rapture captured on video!

Here's a video which was making the rounds this past few days -- I had heard about it fairly soon after it was originally posted but didn't actually bother to watch it until after it was exposed as a hoax, at which point I became more interested in seeing what it looked like.  The video now has over 30 million views on YouTube, which is an incredible number of views.

The reason this is interesting is that the video demonstrates once again how modern technology enables the creation of an illusion that can fool many people into believing it is reality.  Earlier discussions of this same principle include the post about the radio broadcast by Orson Wells of the War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells in 1938 (which, interestingly enough, was estimated to have reached about 32 million listeners on the night of October 30, 1938) and the post about the very first Star Trek episode, the trailer originally entitled "The Cage" which was filmed in 1964.  

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the actual first Star Trek episode to be broadcast on television in 1966 (prior to either of the original "pilots" being broadcast) was called "The Man Trap" and it too featured an "illusion" theme, in which a salt-eating monster can project illusions into men's minds in order to influence their behavior (usually to lull them into complacency long enough to suck the life-giving salts out of their bodies, leaving them lifeless).

The "eagle snatches kid" video above was allegedly made as a film project by three students at a Canadian design studio called Centre NAD (the Centre NAD website has an article explaining that the eagle and the flying child were created using 3D animation).  Below is a pretty good explanation of some of the evidence of digital manipulation found in the film:




Personally, what struck me when seeing the video for the first time was the size of the eagle -- even though eagles can have wingspans of over seven feet (and golden eagles, such as this film's eagle is supposed to be, wingspans of almost seven feet), the eagle in the video appears to have a wingspan even bigger than that.  You can see in the image below that the wingspan appears to be larger than the full-grown man who is in the foreground compared to the eagle -- if he were to stand up in the image below, his height would be about equal to the distance between the wingtips, even though the wingtips are not even fully spread out  and even though the eagle is in the background relative to the man and thus should appear smaller.  In other words, when scientists measure the maximum wingspan of an eagle, they stretch them out even further than that, but this one has a wingspan much bigger than a full-grown man even before they are fully stretched out -- truly a formidable eagle!

It is interesting to muse about the subject matter of this very successful video, especially in light of all the "apocalyptic" media hype surrounding the Maya Long Count.  While the word "rapture" appears nowhere in the Bible, the idea of a "rapture" event became very popular in Bible interpretation in the early 1800s among certain Christian denominations -- especially those known as "dispensationalists," whose interpretation of the Bible remains very prevalent among many Protestant denominations in the United States to this day.

The word "rapture" means "snatched up" or "seized" and it is related to the word "rape" and "raptor."  Raptors are the large birds of prey who snatch up their prey in their powerful talons: eagles, hawks, falcons, ospreys, etc.  The word "rapture" is etymologically related to the Greek word used in 1 Thessalonians 4, ἁρπάζω harpazō and translated "caught up" in the King James and other English translations and rapiemur in the Latin Vulgate.

Thus, the video can be seen as depicting a "rapture" which fooled many into believing it was real, and which was later revealed to have been an illusion.  Of course, there is no evidence that the film's creators intended it to be a "fake rapture" reference (although they did choose to release it on December 18, 2012, just two days prior to the end of the Long Count).

However, it shows how easy it is for powerful images to elicit emotional responses in viewers, and how conditioned we have become to believing that what we see presented as "real footage" must have actually taken place, even when it did not.

This phenomenon is similar to the fact that most people believe in theories such as plate tectonics based on the authority of others, even though they have not seen the evidence of plate tectonics for themselves.  They are told by those "in authority" that plate tectonics explains the geology of the world around us, they view some convincing films with computer animation of plates drifting on molten oceans of magma, it looks fairly plausible, and they accept it as fact.

The same could be said about "National Geographic"-type videos about ancient human history, showing Egyptians erecting the pyramids with gangs of laborers hauling blocks up huge ramps with ropes, for example, or actors depicting ancient Maya holy men envisioning the end of the world in 2012.

It is unfortunate that we are so ready to cede our powers of reasoning to those perceived to be "in authority," or even to anything which appears on a video screen.  Anything that appears as a video on a television screen (or even a computer website) is imbued with strange powers to make us defer to it -- which is why many people suddenly find they are treated as celebrities after appearing in "reality" TV shows, for example, even though they are the same person they were before being shown on a screen in front of millions of viewers.

Illusions can be harmful.  Captain Kirk almost got his life sucked out by a salt-eating alien while his medical officer was under the influence of an illusion.

Erroneous theories about human history and even about the earth's history can also be harmful.  This theme is discussed in other previous posts such as this one and others.

Fortunately, the video above about a baby being snatched by an eagle is probably not harmful, even though some environmentalists are condemning it as harmful because they think it will lead to fear of eagles or even violence towards eagles (that seems to be a bit of an over-reaction by those well-meaning and eagle-loving individuals).  But all of these examples point to the importance of critical thinking and "due diligence" and thinking for ourselves rather than letting others think for us, and the importance of being alert to the power of illusion.

The staggering implications of the Maya Long Count

12  . 19   . 19  . 17 . 19

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The past few posts, of course, have been counting down to the end of the current Maya Long Count, and here in California (as in most of the world) the last setting of the "current Sun" has now taken place, although the first sunrise of the "new Sun" has not yet taken place here.  

The December 21 sun has of course risen in many other parts of the world that are adjudged to be "ahead" of California in relation to the international date line, although it is debatable as to whether the ancient Maya would have conceded that they have the new Sun already -- perhaps we should consider it a new Maya Long Count only when the new Sun begins to shine on the traditional land of the ancient Maya.

Two posts back we looked at the mechanism of the Long Count itself, as well as the terrible slaughter of the Maya during the 1500s and the deliberate destruction of almost every book or scroll upon which they had preserved their ancient wisdom, science, and traditions.

One post back we looked at the Galactic Alignment theory of John Major Jenkins, which asserts that the Maya Long Count indicated an understanding of the process of precession, and that it was counting down to the day when the Winter Solstice Sunrise (already a symbol of rebirth) would take place against the backdrop of the pregnant bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy (and the Dark Rift in the galactic path which the Maya saw as a celestial birth canal).  Thus, their count was anticipating a renewal of truly galactic proportions, we might say, with profound spiritual implications.

Mr. Jenkins finds many different lines of evidence to support his argument that the Long Count pointed to an ancient Maya understanding of precession -- the understanding that the action of precession would eventually "delay" the band of the Milky Way until it formed the backdrop for the rising Winter Solstice sun.  Among the evidence he points to are celestial aspects of the Maya Creation story in the Popol Vuh and other surviving ancient sacred traditions, stone depictions of the birth event at the Izapa Group F site, and the imagery of the Maya Ball Court, which is aligned with the Winter Solstice sunrise location at Izapa and which featured a ball being put through a ring -- symbolic of the sun passing through the birth canal and the "rebirth" of the sun (see the article by John Major Jenkins linked in the previous post for his broad overview of the Galactic Alignment theory and some of the powerful evidence supporting this interpretation).

I've created some "rough sketches" to help the reader envision the precessional forces at work in this theory.  They are generally adapted from the sketch provided in the article linked above (the sketch showing the Milky Way galaxy slowly being lower and lower in the sky on the morning of the Winter Solstice, until it finally aligns with the sunrise on that day of annual renewal).  

At the top of this post, you can see a rough sketch of the eastern horizon, as we wait for the sun to rise.  The Milky Way galaxy stretches up from the horizon and arcs right across the heavens, flanked on either side by the stars of Sagittarius ("left" of the galaxy and closer to the horizon) and Scorpio ("right" of the galaxy and on its way across the southern portion of the sky).

The large curved arrow indicates the direction that the Milky Way and the constellations appear to turn during the night (this is because the earth is turning in the opposite direction).  They will make their way up and then towards the west.  This means that the Milky Way will start from a more horizontal position and slowly arc towards "the right" of this rough sketch above, sort of like a door swinging on a hinge (in this case, a hinge that is located a bit below the horizon).  The Milky Way and the two important flanking constellations shown above, in other words, will arc across the sketch in the direction of the arrow as indicated, and then sink down in the west.

The image below shows the Winter Solstice sunrise on an imagined day in the far-distant past, when the Winter Solstice sun was rising in the space "below" the constellation Sagittarius.  

In other words, this is the situation on the morning of a Winter Solstice around the end of the Age of Aries and the beginning of the present Age of Pisces (see previous post which has two diagrams at the bottom showing what this means).  The "Age of Pisces" takes its name from the sign in which the Spring Equinox sun appears to rise, so that means that the Winter Solstice sun would rise in Capricorn (the sign behind Sagittarius).  

However, as we have discussed in previous posts and as I've also explained in a video using a helpful "analogy of a dining room," the action of precession delays the background constellations and stars over the ages.  This means that over time, Sagittarius (and the Milky Way and Scorpio ahead of Sagittarius) will not be "as far" on their path when the sun comes up.  Sagittarius will be "delayed" and be lower and lower in the sky, until the sun is actually rising "in" Sagittarius instead of in the space prior to Sagittarius as depicted above.  The diagram below illustrates the "delayed" Sagittarius and the sun rising in that zodiac constellation:

Please note that, because of the "arcing" motion of their path (described above as a door swinging on its hinges), the Milky Way will "lay down" more horizontally as it is lower in the sky (closer to the horizon).  Thus, in the diagram above, it is laying slightly more horizontally than in the previous image.  This is because it has not "gotten as far" up into the sky before the sun rises on the morning of the Winter Solstice.

The above image depicts the situation during the Age of Pisces, when the sun rises in Pisces on the Spring Equinox and in Sagittarius on the Winter Solstice.  As the Age of Pisces progresses, the Winter Solstice sunrise will be ever "further along" in Sagittarius, creeping closer and closer to the Milky Way (or, seen another way, the Milky Way and the zodiac constellations will be delayed bit by bit, and will not get as far into the sky when viewed on successive Winter Solstice mornings over a period of two thousand years).

Somewhere towards the end of the Age of Pisces and near the start of the Age of Aquarius (that age in which the Spring Equinox sun rises in Aquarius and the Winter Solstice sun rises in Scorpio), the Winter Solstice sun will align with the brilliant band of the Milky Way galaxy, which rises dramatically between Sagittarius and Scorpio.  As described in the previous post and as pointed out by John Major Jenkins in his theory, this galactic band has a prominent "bulge" (the Galactic Center or Galactic Nucleus), which the Maya described as symbolizing the cosmic mother, as well as a prominent "Dark Rift" which the Maya associated with a birth canal (they called this dark path the xibalba be, or "Road to the Underworld").

The motion of precession would eventually bring the Winter Solstice sunrise in line with this cosmic symbol of birth -- a powerful conjoining of "rebirth" symbology (the Winter Solstice sunrise already symbolizing annual rebirth as the sun stops its southward journey and the days cease to grow shorter and begin again to grow longer).  This is what John Major Jenkins believes the Long Count was pointing towards.  It is depicted in the image below:

Note that this theory assumes a rather startling piece of information: the ancient Maya understood the subtle astronomical mechanics of precession.  This assertion is actually quite revolutionary when we consider that detecting precession is really not easy at all.  The motion of precession only delays a star by a single degree in about 71.6 years -- and that single degree is only between its location on any given day a full year apart, as in, one degree of difference from one Winter Solstice to another Winter Solstice 72 years later!

Thus, to detect precession requires the ability to measure a star's location very precisely, and then to record that location somehow so that it can be compared on successive nights over the course of many years, and even after 72 such successive years the difference would be very slight. It would really take hundreds of years in all likelihood to detect the change, meaning records kept for generations, passed on, continued, and studied carefully.  

Even then, when the change is perceived, there is no guarantee that those who perceive it will be able to determine the rate with any great accuracy.  Conventional academia attributes the first awareness of precession in the ancient classical world to Hipparchus (c. 190 BC - c. 120 BC), although (as many have pointed out before me, and as I discuss extensively in my own book as well as in previous posts) there is irrefutable evidence that the ancient Egyptians and other cultures previous to Hipparchus understood precession thousands of years earlier.  But, conventional historians still assert that Hipparchus was first, and it can be demonstrated that neither he nor his successor Ptolemy (AD 90 - AD 168) knew that precession delayed the sky by one degree every 71.6 years -- they only knew that it was "faster" than one degree every 100 years (giving themselves some margin for error).

The ancient Maya clearly possessed a much more sophisticated understanding of precession, then, than did either Hipparchus or Ptolemy!  Look at the precision of their Long Count calendar, and marvel at their superior astronomical science.

Also, note that the earliest Long Count date known at present (as discussed in this previous post) was inscribed in the year 67 BC by the Maya, at Chiapas.  That means that (if the Long Count anticipates a Galactic Alignment as John Major Jenkins demonstrates that it does) the ancient Mesoamericans understood precession to this astonishingly sophisticated degree no later than 67 BC.  Since Hipparchus lived from 190 BC to 120 BC, this 67 BC date for an early Long Count inscription does not automatically prove that the Maya knew about precession before Hipparchus did.  

However, think again about what it takes to even notice precession.  It takes many decades (and more likely centuries) of very accurate observation, position measurement, position recording, and then record comparison before one can even notice that it is going on.  It would then probably take many more years to come up with a theory for what is going on, as well as to make the measurements necessary to determine the rate of the precessional delay with any degree of accuracy.  The accuracy that the Maya seem to have possessed was extremely precise, indicating that their investigation of this phenomenon had been going on for centuries.  It is almost certain that their knowledge of precession predated Hipparchus, and yet conventional historians insist on attributing the first awareness of precession to him.

It is also probable that the Maya understood precession for some time (perhaps for hundreds of years) before inscribing the first text we have of a Long Count date.  It is ridiculous to assert that they discovered precession in AD 68 and inscribed their first text with a Long Count a year later in AD 67, for example.  Coming up with the Long Count would seem to be almost as involved as measuring precession, especially if (as John Major Jenkins finds ample evidence to believe) the Long Count was anticipating very accurately the alignment of a Winter Solstice sunrise with the birth canal of the Milky Way galaxy.

This information is something that really is staggering.  It upsets the entire conventional picture of the ancient timeline of human development.  It demonstrates a level of scientific achievement (and probably of spiritual awareness) at a far earlier date than conventional academia will admit any human beings possessed such capabilities.  

This amazing achievement of the Maya is completely overlooked in most of the hype and condescending media treatment of the renewal of the Maya Long Count on December 21, 2012.

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13   .   0   .  0  .  0   .   0

 

The Maya Long Count and Galactic Alignment: the work of John Major Jenkins

12  . 19   . 19  . 17 . 17

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As discussed in the previous post, the famous Maya Long Count is approaching that momentous point at which the final place rolls back to zero, increasing the place before it by one.  

In this case, that place before it also rolls back to zero when asked to increase by one, causing the place before it to increase by one, which again is already at the point at which it too will roll to zero when it increases by one.  This, of course, causes the place before it to also roll to zero, causing the first place in the five-glyph series to increase to 13, followed by four zeros -- the start of a new cycle.

As this is published, December 18th is just beginning here in California, and so the series of glyphs above shows a "17" (or two dots each representing a single tally and three bars representing five apiece) at the final space (this is the count for the 18th of December this year, according to most modern analysts of the Maya Long Count).  It can only go up to 19 before it rolls to zero and increases the count in the previous space -- it will reach 19 (four dots and three bars) on December 20th and "roll over" on the 21st.

Also mentioned in the previous post is my belief that the renewal of the Long Count has more to do with celestial renewal than with any supposed prediction of catastrophe, whether from being "cut off from the galactic center by the interposition of the sun" (as some have alleged to be the cause of impending disaster) or from the earth finally becoming fed up with supposed overpopulation and carbon emission (as others maintain).  

This assertion -- that the Long Count most likely commemorated the precessional cycles and anticipated the arrival of a new precessional dawning -- is also discussed in my 2011 book, and in the "Happy New Year 2012" blog message published at the end of December of last year.  The fact that the Long Count counting system described above appears to have been deliberately fashioned to incorporate certain precessional numbers (particularly 7,200) and to measure out roughly one-fifth of the entire estimated "Great Year" or "full circle" of precession appear to support the assertion that the Long Count points to precessional renewal (which, of course, can also point to both cosmic and individual renewal at all kinds of levels, based on the ancient teaching of the harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm).

As mentioned in other previous posts on this subject, I believe that the thorough and deliberate analysis of John Major Jenkins on this subject is extremely compelling.  John Major Jenkins has been studying the evidence related to the Long Count and its significance for nearly thirty years, including much time spent at ancient sites in modern-day Guatemala and Mexico and among the contemporary Maya themselves.  

His Galactic Alignment theory of the Long Count's celestial meaning (which he shows to have almost certainly had additional layers of significance relating to rebirth, renewal, and the transcending of the duality that many ancient wisdom traditions link to "the Fall") is perhaps best summarized in a 2001 article entitled "Izapan Cosmos: a brief survey of Izapan iconography and astronomy in the Group F ballcourt,"  which gives a short version of his theory and supports it with numerous diagrams, photographs and maps.

Using the evidence at Izapa, he shows that there are multiple reasons to believe that the Long Count was pointing to the time when the Winter Solstice sun (which is already a sunrise of annual rebirth, in that it marks the period in which the sun ceases its southern movement and shortening of days, and turns back towards the north and begins the lengthening of days) would rise against the backdrop of the Milky Way galaxy, and the Great Rift (or Dark Rift) in the galaxy near the bulge of the galactic center, which the Maya associated with birth (the bulge being seen as symbolizing an expectant mother, and the Great Rift as the birth canal).  

[Readers of this blog may want to go back and review the discussions of the sun's motion at Winter Solstice here, here, and here, and to check out the discussion of the concept of "heliacal rise" here and here].

Mr. Jenkins reviews the evidence in that article, which include the symbology of the monuments and the alignment of the Maya Ball Court (whose ball going through a circular goal almost certainly symbolizes the same solar rebirth, as Mr. Jenkins demonstrates), along with numerous photos and diagrams.  He expands on this evidence in much greater detail in his books (which can be found here on his website).

To understand the motion of precession that Mr. Jenkins is explaining, take a look at the drawing he includes right in the middle of the article linked above, just below his drawing of the Ball Court at Izapa and to the right of it Stela 60, and just above his full-color drawing of the dramatic Stela 67.  That drawing shows the rising band of the Milky Way galaxy in the east on the morning of the Winter Solstice sunrise at Izapa.  

The drawing shows the Milky Way drawn four times.  In the top position, marked as 6000 BC, the Milky Way band (with the galactic nuclear bulge and the Dark Rift or birth canal) is well above the horizon at Izapa as the Winter Solstice sun begins to rise.  However, as we have discussed in previous posts such as this one and this one, the mechanics of precession act to "delay" the celestial background over the centuries, such that the familiar landmarks slowly show up at a lower place in the sky on the expected day than they were before.  

Thus, as the drawing in the article shows, the Milky Way will be successively lower and lower in the sky on the morning of Winter Solstice sunrise, until it is lying along the Izapa horizon as the Winter Solstice sun begins to dawn.  This significant alignment, which the ancient Maya astronomers calculated to take place in 2012, creates a powerful astronomical picture of rebirth.  The Winter Solstice sunrise, already a symbol of annual rebirth, aligns with the birth canal of the galaxy.  It is such a powerful motif that we can understand why the ancient Maya were counting down towards 2012.

In another excellent article in which he summarizes and explains his theory, this time on the Graham Hancock website, John Major Jenkins says:

As I've been able to show through an interdisciplinary analysis of the academic literature, synthesizing material from ethnographic starlore, archaeoastronomy, linguistics, mythology, and iconography, the solstice-galaxy alignment was conceived as the union of the male principle (December solstice sun) with the female principle (the Milky Way's center). The region of the Milky Way that the solstice sun will unite with contains not only the nuclear bulge of the Galactic Center (which, by the way, is recognizable with the naked eye) but also a "dark-rift" feature caused by interstellar dust. The modern Maya call this dark-rift or Great Cleft the xibalba be- the Road to the Underworld. This feature is the key to understanding the rebirth metaphor of the 2012 end-date, for it was also conceived, in Maya symbology, as the birth canal of the Great Mother (the Milky Way).

The concept of Father Sun being reborn at the end of the age is very similar to the events in Maya Creation mythology (the Popol Vuh) in which First Father / One Hunahpu is reborn in the underworld ballcourt. The ballgame metaphor, too, encodes the alignment. If we look at accepted notions of ballgame symbolism, we learn that it is basically about the rebirth of the sun on the temporal levels of day, year, and World Age. The sun is reborn daily at dawn, yearly at the December solstice, and, in terms of World Ages, on December 21, 2012-when the December solstice sun aligns with the Galactic Plane, which is the precession cycle's "finish line." The dark-rift that lies along this plane is the "goal" toward which the December solstice sun, as the gameball, moves over many millennia. In this way, the Maya conceived of the gameball going into the goalring as a replication of cosmic time's end-game. Finally, yet another way that the solstice-galaxy alignment was encoded into basic Maya institutions involves King accession rites. Here, the king, as a shamanic journey, must be initiated into kingship my journeying into the "cosmic center"-something Siberian shamans have been doing for a long time. In the Maya tropical lands, however, the cosmic center is not the Polestar but the Galactic Center, identified by the nuclear bulge- the womb of the Milky Way mother toward which the "sun king" precesses. Precession reveals the king's slow procession to ultimate enthronement in the heart of time and space. But for the sake of kingship in local space-time, he makes an initiatory vision journey into the celestial heart to be anointed and given the power of rulership and sacred knowledge.

This is the core of how the solstice-galaxy alignment of 2012 was encoded by ancient Maya thinkers into their basic institutions. In my book I call this end-date idea-complex "the Galactic Cosmology."

The diagrams below may assist readers in further conceptualizing the mechanics that bring the December solstice sunrise into alignment with the glorious band of the Milky Way.   The first diagram shows the Age of Pisces, which is coming to an end (the exact end-year is a subject of debate and some disagreement). 

I have added a red line which indicates the constellation-signs in which the equinox sunrise takes place (again, remember the concept of heliacal rise -- a couple previous posts dealing with that concept are linked above).  The red letter "E" shown in Pisces (on the left) and Virgo (on the right) indicate that the equinox sunrise takes place in these zodiac constellations during the Age of Pisces.  For the northern hemisphere, the March equinox is the spring and gives the Age of Pisces its name.  During this age, the solstices (marked with a blue line) are in Gemini (at the top, marked with "JS" for "June Solstice") and Sagittarius (at the bottom, marked with "DS" for "December Solstice").  In the northern hemisphere, of course, the December Solstice is the Winter Solstice.

However, as the mechanism of precession slowly delays the backdrop of the heavens, the ages will finally shift as they have before, and the zodiacal constellation of Pisces at the Spring Equinox will be replaced by Aquarius (the "preceding" sign -- hence "precession"), ushering in the Age of Aquarius.  The situation will then be as shown in the diagram below:

Note that the red line of the equinoxes now indicates Aquarius (marked with a red "E" in the lower left) and Leo (red "E" at upper right).  The blue line of the solstices has shifted too, and now designates Taurus (June Solstice, upper left) and Scorpio (December Solstice or Winter Solstice, lower right).  

The important point to understand is that the Milky Way in the night sky rises between Sagittarius and Scorpio.  You can see these brilliant constellations in the stunning video linked at the top of this post: click on the image of the Milky Way lying almost horizontal above the eastern horizon.  This should help to imagine the celestial backdrop that John Major Jenkins is discussing in his articles, and which his theory maintains is the key to understanding the significance of the Long Count and 2012. 

Even if it is not yet the official start of the Age of Aquarius, you can now understand why the Maya understood the December Solstice sunrise to line up with a year in that transitional period in which we are shifting from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.  Because this shift brings the Winter Solstice sunrise from Sagittarius (in the Age of Pisces) to Scorpio (in the Age of Aquarius), that sunrise will pass through the band of the Milky Way (which rises between Scorpio and Sagittarius) at some point during that transition.  The Maya calculated it to take place THIS YEAR, on this December Solstice.

This discussion should help us to begin to understand the amazing significance of the Maya Long Count.  John Major Jenkins is to be commended for his diligent work in uncovering the evidence that supports this Galactic Alignment understanding of the Maya Long Count cycle.   Finally, this understanding of what the Maya Long Count may mean should also serve to raise our respect for the incredible astronomical and mathematical sophistication of the Maya who anticipated this event well over two thousand years ago, incorporating both a masterful understanding of the subtle motion of precession and also a profound awareness of the symbolic language of our earth, sun, and galaxy -- and the connections between macrocosm and microcosm spanning many levels of consciousness.

450 years

By now, most of the world is aware of the fact that the Maya Long Count, which consists of 13 periods of 144,000 days each (for a total of one million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand days) is coming to an end.  

Even if the ancient Maya (as most conventional scholars assert) were not actually counting from that start date over 5,000 years ago, the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica began erecting monuments with carved inscriptions which dated themselves from that start date as early as 36 BC.

There is a wall panel at Chiapa de Corzo in Mexico with a Long Count date of 7.16.3.2.13, which indicates that it was commemorating a date that was (starting from the number on the right of the series above):

• 7.16.3.2.13  this position indicates13 individual days (the furthest-right number rolls to 0 after 19, such that the second-to-the-far-right number indicates periods of 20 days), 
• 7.16.3.2.13  this position indicates 2 periods of 20 more days (this position rolls to zero after 17, such that each tick of the  third-to-right position indicates 18 periods of 20 days, or 360 days),bringing the total so far to 53 (two periods of forty days, plus 13 individual days),
• 7.16.3.2.13  this position indicates 3 periods of 360 days, in addition to the 53 days already indicated, bringing the total so far to 1080 days plus 53 days or 1,133 days (note that this position rolls back to zero after 19 ticks),
• 7.16.3.2.13  this position indicates sixteen periods of 7,200 days each, and it also rolls to zero after 19 ticks, so 115,200 days are indicated by this sixteen, which add to the 1,133 indicated so far, for a total of 116,333 days from the start of the count,
• 7.16.3.2.13  this final position indicates periods of 144,000 days each (because the previous place in the numeral system counted nineteen periods of 7,200 days each, such that the twentieth rolls the previous place to zero and moves this final far-left position up one tick, and twenty times 7,200 equals 144,000).  There are seven such periods of 144,000 days each indicated on the date at Chiapa de Corzo, which total 1,008,000 days in addition to the 116,333 indicated so far.  This brings the grand total of days from initiation on this inscription to 1,124,333 days, which Maya researchers believe indicates a date in the month we call December (in the calendar that most of us accept due to our schooling and the conventions in place in the business and political and academic worlds) in the year that we would call 36 BC.  The creation of the current age was held to have taken place when this count reached thirteen such periods of 144,000 days the previous time around.

The above date shows that this count has been observed for an enormous length of time -- at least since 36 BC and probably before.  According to most observers, we have now reached the final days that will cause the positions to roll up to 13.0.0.0.0 again.

The day that the calendars we have been taught designate as Saturday, December 15 would be designated under the above system as 12.19.19.17.15.  The final digit (the 15) is ticking upward each day, until it reaches 19, and after 19 it will roll back to 0, causing the digit to its left (already at 17) to tick upwards to indicate another 20-day period.  Since that place rolls over at 18, it will then roll to zero, causing the next place over to its left to tick upwards in turn.  Since that place is already at 19, it too will roll over to zero, causing the place to its left to tick upwards, but since that one is also at 19, it too will roll over to zero, bringing the first position from 12 up to 13, and thus the end of the count: 13.0.0.0.0.

The famous Stela C at Quirigua shows, on its eastern face, an inscription indicating the creation date of the current age, the last time the count was at 13.0.0.0.0.  You can see that numeral in the image above, reading from the top-left to the top-right, then down to the next row left-to-right, and so on.  The top-left glyph shows two bars and three dots (they look like squares), which indicates thirteen (each bar is five, and the dots go up to four before forming a bar, just like a typical tally system in which you make four vertical lines on a piece of paper and "cross" it on the fifth).  The next four glyphs show a zero.

The significance of this end of the current Long Count and initiation of the next one has been heavily debated and sensationalized, of course.  I have discussed the unfortunate media sensationalism and obsession with the "end of the world" in several previous posts, including this one, this one, and this one.

I am much more inclined to agree with the analysis and conclusions of longtime Maya researcher John Major Jenkins, who believes based upon his research and his extensive time on the site and among the Maya people themselves that:

There is ZERO evidence that the ancient Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012. The Maya calendar does not END in 2012. DOOMSDAY-2012 is a fallacious construct, a projection of exploitative and underinformed writers and Western nihilistic fantasy.

Instead, he finds that this rolling over of the count indicates a renewal and a new beginning, one long anticipated by those ancients who had been counting towards it for so long.  It was to be a renewal triggered by an alignment of the earth, the sun and the galaxy, and one that they anticipated based upon their incredible astronomical knowledge and foresight.  He writes:

Over 2,000 years ago the early Maya formulated a profound galactic cosmology. They saw that the sun, on the winter solstice, was slowly moving toward the heart of the galaxy. Naturally enough, with their uncorrupted intelligence intact, they suspected that the world would go through a transformation when the solar and the galactic planes aligned. They devised their Long Count calendar to target when the cosmic alignment would maximize, and that time is AD 2012. We are lucky that the brilliant skywatchers who devised the 2012 calendar left carved monuments for us to decode, and that they have survived the decay of centuries, so that we can know exactly what they prophesied and believed about 2012. 

Incredibly, at the early Maya site of Izapa in southern Mexico, the galactic cosmology and a profound spiritual teaching are preserved. Izapa speaks to us of the Galactic Alignment in 2012 as a transformative nexus in time, a still-point turnabout, inviting us to reconnect with our cosmic heart and eternal source.

The fact that there is so much confusion over the meaning of this incredible count, and the fact that it takes the dedicated efforts of careful thinkers such as John Major Jenkins to piece together what the ancient Maya were anticipating with their count should cause us to ask, "Why is there so much confusion about this whole subject?"   

The answer to that question is a heartbreaking answer, but it is one that should be meditated upon deeply as we approach this momentous 13.  The reason that so little is known about this ancient civilization and what they thought is that their records were cruelly and deliberately and almost utterly destroyed by violent men.   

You can read the heart-rending account in the words of one of those responsible for the destruction of these records, the Franciscan friar Diego de Landa (later a Bishop), in his account Yucatan Before and After the Conquest. Translator William Gates wrote in 1937 in introduction to that account that:

It is perhaps not too strong a statement to make, that ninety-nine percent of what we today know of the Mayas, we know as the result either of what Landa has told us in the pages that follow, or have learned in the use and study of what he told. [. . .]

If ninety-nine hundredths of our present knowledge is at base derived from what he told us, it is an equally safe statement that at that Auto de fé of ‘62, he burned ninety-nine times as much knowledge of Maya history and sciences as he has given us in his book. 

By '62, Gates means 1562, four hundred fifty years ago, when Landa and his forces tortured many Maya to death as part of his efforts to subdue and convert them.  During the same year, he admits to destroying a great number of the Maya texts.

In chapter 41 of his text (the chapters were probably divided and numbered later by someone other than Landa), Diego de Landa describes some details of the Maya calendar cycles, and then adds these terrible words:

These people also used certain characters or letters, with which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences; with these, and with figures, and certain signs in the figures, they understood their matters, made them known, and taught them. We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.  

In Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock writes of the above statement, "Not only the 'natives' should have felt this pain but anyone and everyone -- then and now -- who would like to know the truth about the past" (112).  On the same page, Mr. Hancock also describes similar depredations, such as those of Juan de Zumarraga, who in November of 1530 "burned a Christianized Aztec aristocrat at the stake for having allegedly reverted to worship of the 'rain-god' and later, in the market-place at Texcoco, built a vast bonfire of astronomical documents, paintings, manuscripts and hieroglyphic texts  which the consquistadores had forcibly extracted from the Aztecs during the previous eleven years."

How far could these ancient texts have gone towards shedding light upon the thinking of those who created the Long Count and who had been diligently keeping it so many centuries before the invasion of their land by these violent intruders!

How much more might the Maya themselves be able to tell us today if their ancestors had not been horribly murdered en masse and their culture forcibly erased at the point of a sword!

In chapter 15 of his text, Diego de Landa offers some samples of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon the Maya by the invading conquerors:

I, Diego de Landa, say that I saw a great tree near the village upon the branches of which a captain had hung many women, with their infant children hung from their feet. At this town, and another two leagues away called Verey, they hung two Indian women, one a maiden and the other recently married, for no other crime than their beauty, and because of fearing a disturbance among the soldiers on their account; also further to cause the Indians to believe the Spaniards indifferent to their women. The memory of these two is kept both among the Indians and Spaniards on account of their great beauty and the cruelty with which they were killed. The Indians of the provinces of Cochuah and Chetumal rose, and the Spaniards so pacified them that from being the most settled and populous it became the most wretched of the whole country. Unheard-of cruelties were inflicted, cutting off their noses, hands, arms and legs, and the breasts of their women; throwing them into deep water with gourds tied to their feet, thrusting the children with spears because they could not go as fast as their mothers. If some of those who had been put in chains fell sick or could not keep up with the rest, they would cut off their heads among the rest rather than stop to unfasten them. They also kept great numbers of women and men captive in their service, with similar treatment.   

These horrifying events are important to gravely consider as the Maya Long Count approaches 13.0.0.0.0.  It has been ticking its way towards this date for long centuries, but the culture and civilization of the people descended from those who started that count was violently interrupted along the way (four and a half centuries from the renewal point, if we count from 1562).

Now, as the count reaches its long anticipated end, it does so in the midst of an awful silence.





 

Respect and gratitude to Ravi Shankar for sharing his music with the world

Today the people of the world are paying their respects to Ravi Shankar, and extending their sympathy to his family and loved ones.

Here is the audio of a short remembrance which aired today on NPR (here is the written version of the same broadcast).  It contains some samples of his inimitable sitar-playing, as well as some recordings of his own perspectives on the music that he shared with the world.

The chosen quotations are poignant; in the first (beginning at the 2:32 mark) he says:

Well it sort of is a combination of shanta and karuna, which means the tranquility and also a sadness.  And this sadness is something which is like wanting to reach out, and not finding it -- whether for a lover, or for God.

Previous posts which have discussed something related to this subject can be found here and here.

In the second (beginning at about 3:20), he explains that his sitar guru taught him as the most important lesson:

that we have to earn our livelihood, and for that we have to perform and accept money.  But: music is not for sale.  The music that I have learned, and I want to give, is like worshipping God.  It's absolutely . . . like a prayer.

In the video clip above, we can see and hear a glimpse of that sentiment.  The music is evocative, but perhaps even more moving is the joy we can see in the expressive sitar master as he plays -- the joy in the music and in playing and communicating with his daughter as he plays.

It's absolutely . . . like a prayer.

Respect.

More on macrocosm and microcosm

The previous post discusses the interaction and interconnectedness of the macrocosm of heaven-and-earth, and the microcosm of the human body -- and the evidence that the ancients understood this interrelatedness and attached great importance to it.

As some readers may harbor some doubts regarding the reality of this harmony between the cosmos without and the cosmos within, here is a passage from a book by a master and teacher of esoteric Taoism, Mantak Chia (here's his website).  It comes from page 154 of his 2001 book Cosmic Healing II: Taoist Cosmology and Universal Healing Connections (with co-author Dirk Oellibrandt).  Under a series of diagrams illustrating the similarities of the structure and motion of our solar system to the structure and motion of atoms, molecules, and the double-helix of the DNA molecule (which you can see by beginning on page 149 in the book and then reading forward while looking at the diagrams, following this link) he writes:

 If we look at the paths the sun and the planets are making, as they move around the center of the Milky Way, we observe a very interesting spiral structure.  Because of the increasing rotation of the planets as we move outward through the solar system, the spiral structure becomes larger from Mercury to Pluto (rotation time for Mercury: 88 days, Pluto: 90,465 days).

The long stretched spiral shows a similarity to a DNA structure.  These structures belong to the most fundamental building blocks of the body cells and also contain a complicated transmitter and receiver system that pick up the continuous changes in the solar system, the Milky Way and the vibrational world.

If we compare the form of the spiraling Milky Way and DNA seen below, the shape becomes even more similar.

[. . .]  There's a striking relationship between the I Ching and the genetic structure, with the number 64 as the central aspect, illustrating the relationship between spiritual laws and genetic structure.

The diagram on page 152 of that book illustrates the double helix arising from the spiraling motion of the planets (again, it is worth visiting the book to see that).  The animation in the video above conveys the same message.  The connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm is powerfully evident.

In the passage above, Mantak Chia also points out the fact that the "four-letter alphabet" of the genetic code  arranged into triplets of three can create a total of 64 different triplets (called "codons").  He notes that this fact parallels the I Ching, which has 64 hexagrams (which are actually sets of six, and thus double the triplets of the genetic structure, while using an "alphabet" of only two possible "letters," which halves that of the genetic alphabet of four bases).  The 64 codons of the genetic material that make up all known living organisms are visually shown on this web page, particularly in Figure 2.

This harmony between the most cutting-edge field of medical research today (genetics) and the most ancient of the classic sacred texts of China is indeed striking. We have seen in previous posts that ancient wisdom that was once known in Egypt appears to have survived in China and other points east, while being forgotten or forced "underground" elsewhere.

It is also striking that the double-helix structure of DNA (only discovered by "modern" science in the 1960s) is prefigured in the caduceus symbol of Hermes (Mercury, Thoth), the ancient god who gave letters to mankind.  This symbol is of course associated with medicine and thus with the human body as well (the microcosm), while also being associated with the speeding planet closest to the sun (and the one which traces out a double helix most clearly if you watch the animation in the video above carefully several times).

You can also see a sort of double helix traced out by the graceful motion of the sun arcing sinuously above and below the celestial equator in the video embedded in this website and discussed in this previous blog post -- yet another connection between the macrocosm of the earth-and-heavens and the structure inside our cells that makes us who we are.

These are just a few examples which support the understanding of a powerful connection between the heavens and the "microcosm" of the human frame.  The question remains, "How did the ancients know so much about this?" 

The extra-zodiacal decans in macrocosm and microcosm

The previous post examined the assertion of John Anthony West that the most ancient teachings as found in the sacred texts of many different ancient cultures:

are all basically the same -- I mean they take it as a premise, as a given, that we human beings are not accidental glitches in an accidental universe, but that rather we have a specific role to play, which is the acquisition of a level of consciousness that we are not born with, but that we have the potential to reach, and this is what in Egypt is called the "Doctrine of Immortality" and what in other civilizations is called Samadhi or Nirvana or whatever -- I mean, different names for it -- but basically it's the same doctrine: that we're here for a reason, and that if we don't pursue that path, then we do so at our peril.

What "the acquisition of a level of consciousness that we are not born with" actually means in practice is, of course, a deep question beyond the scope of any blog post (or, in fact, any blog), but if all the doctrines of the ancients dealt with this subject, that might be a good place to look for guidance in that direction.

Previous posts have also discussed the work of Jeremy Naydler, another philosopher who, like John Anthony West, goes beyond the comfortable boundaries within which conventional academic thought seeks to confine ancient Egypt (and ancient mankind in general).  In his collection of essays entitled The Future of the Ancient World (2009), Dr. Naydler uses a phrase which seems to resonate with and help to shed light upon the concepts John Anthony West is exploring above.  In his essay "Ancient Egypt and Modern Esotericism" (based upon a talk given in 2003), Jeremy Naydler says:

The ancient Egyptians understood that to become enlightened one must become aware of that which is cosmic in one's own nature.  One must realize that there is something deep within human nature that is essentially not of this earth, but is a cosmic principle.  143.

This in turn points to the work of Santos Bonacci, discussed in this previous post, who has assimilated a vast amount of wisdom literature from ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern sources (many of the modern sources from earlier centuries in the "modern era") and presented it in a clear and systematic manner in his lecturesand diagrams.  Many of these lectures unpack the ancient teachings on becoming aware of "that which is cosmic in one's own nature," including the teachings that each individual is a reflection of the cosmos, that each person is in fact a microcosm, simultaneously containing an entire cosmos within the individual while reflecting and responding to the motions of the macrocosm of earth, sun, moon, stars, and planets around him (or her).

The diagram above is an adaptation of one of the many excellent diagrams that Santos uses in his lectures, this one depicting the relationship between the constellations in the sky and the microcosm of the human body.  It not only shows the constellations along the ecliptic path (the zodiac constellations, listed in red because the ecliptic was conceived as a ring of fire by the ancients, according to Hertha von Dechend and Giorgio de Santillana in Hamlet's Mill) but also the three "extra-zodiacal constellations" associated in esoteric wisdom traditions with each of the twelve zodiac signs.  These are shown in blue letters, and are arranged on either side of the red ecliptic plane (dotted red line) to indicate whether these extra-zodiacal constellations are located on the north or the south of the ecliptic.

The extra-zodiacal associations used in that diagram come from a book by Joseph Augustus Seiss (1823-1904) a Lutheran minister and theologian, and an author of many works now categorized as "pyramidology" by conventional academics.  Without agreeing with all of his conclusions and assertions, I have long been a fan of his Miracle in Stone, or the Great Pyramid of Egypt (1877).  

The extra-zodiacal associations shown above, however, are from a later work by Joseph Seiss, entitled Gospel in the Stars (1884).  He calls them by another ancient word as well -- "decans," because there are three of them for each of the twelve zodiac signs which divide the entire three hundred sixty degrees of the heavens.  If three hundred sixty degrees are equally divided by twelve signs, those twelve signs have thirty degrees apiece, so that a conceptual division of each sign into three equal parts would yield ten degrees each -- hence the term "decan."

As laid out in the Gospel in the Stars of Joseph Seiss (and shown in the diagram above), the decans or extra-zodiacal constellations associated with each sign are:

• Aries: Cassiopeia, Cetus, and Perseus
• Taurus: Orion, River Eridanus, and Auriga
• Gemini: Lepus, Canis Major, and Canis Minor
• Cancer: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Argo Navis (Argo the Ship)
• Leo: Hydra, Crater, and Corvus
• Virgo: Coma, Centaurus, and Boötes the Herdsman
• Libra: Southern Cross, Northern Crown, and the Victim of the Centaur (usually seen as a wolf, and also known as the constellation Lupus)
• Scorpio: Ophiuchus, the Serpent held by Ophiuchus (sometimes called the constellation Serpens), and Hercules
• Sagittarius: Lyra, Ara the Altar, and Draco
• Capricorn: Sagitta, Aquila, and Delphinus 
• Aquarius: Southern Fish (Piscis Australis), Pegasus, Cygnus
• Pisces: Cepheus, Andromeda, and the Band that holds the two fish of Pisces together

Together, this makes forty-eight different groupings of stars (the twelve zodiac constellations and the thirty-six extra-zodiacal decans).  Many stargazers know that there were forty-eight "ancient" constellations, most notably the forty-eight described by Ptolemy in his Almagest.

Ptolemy's forty-eight include the twelve zodiacal constellations plus twenty-one northern constellations (north of the ecliptic) and fifteen southern (south of the ecliptic), for a total of thirty-six extra-zodiacals.

These forty-eight are slightly different from those used by Seiss in his text, however.  As you can see from the diagram above, the decans described by Seiss number sixteen below the ecliptic and twenty above.  This difference can be accounted for by understanding that Seiss does not name as decans three constellations mentioned by Ptolemy -- Equuleus and Triangulum, as well as the Southern Crown which is close to Sagittarius and usually associated with that constellation -- but uses instead three different ones: the Fish-Band of Pisces, Coma Berenices (which is sometimes regarded as an early modern constellation but which was described as a distinct constellation in many surviving ancient texts), and the Southern Cross.

Santos Bonacci demonstrates the crucial importance of knowing these extra-zodiacal constellations for unlocking the ancient texts and stories which all aim to assist in the "acquisition of a level of consciousness that we are not born with" (in the words of John Anthony West), or the awareness of "that which is cosmic in one's own nature" (in the words of Jeremy Naydler).

He expounds numerous examples from ancient myth and legend, as well as folk tales and fairy tales, and of course from the Old and New Testament (as does Joseph Seiss).  He also references a modern minister, Bill Darlison of the Dublin Unitarian Church in Ireland, whose book Gospel & the Zodiac utilizes the same extra-zodiacal decans as those outlined by Joseph Seiss (whom he references), while coming to somewhat of the opposite conclusion as that reached by Seiss.

The understanding of the extra-zodiacal constellations is clearly a subject of the utmost importance, and their memorization well worthwhile.  It is hoped that the above discussion (and diagram) will aid readers in both these endeavors.