The 2012 Story

by John Major Jenkins

  Moira Timms, James Roylance, Daniel Giamario, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, and Nick Fiorenza were other astrologers and futurists who all mentioned, in one form or another, the galactic alignment. I recounted the process by which I came to understand the galactic alignment, and did my best to document the history of this idea, in an appendix to my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. It’s probably one of the most important ideas of modern times, one that is greatly distorted and misunderstood. Joscelyn Godwin observed that there is now a whole new genre of research by “Galactic Center theorists.”26 I certainly have offered my own theories and speculations as to the empirical nature of the galactic alignment, but for me that has been only a sideline. The most important work, and what I believe will outlast the craze that will pass when the date passes, has been the effort to uncover, document, and reconstruct how the Maya used and thought about this galactic alignment. After all, the 2012 date comes to us from the Maya calendar tradition.

  How the galactic alignment emerged into common discourse remains, however, an intriguing topic. Shamanic astrologer Daniel Giamario played an important role in his communications with European astronomer Jean Meeus, inviting him to calculate the alignment as accurately as possible.27 Meeus did, and published the results in his 1997 book Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, and that was the first mathematically precise calculation of the galactic alignment published. His calculation arrived at May of 1998, but no error range was offered. The apparent precision here is somewhat misleading. To place the precise calculation in May assumes an abstract interpretation of astronomical features that has no meaning for ancient naked-eye sky-watchers. Why? Since the alignment involves the solstice position, any proposed calculation for an alignment should occur on a solstice date. Science strives for precision when, in fact, the apparent achievement of precision has no real meaning for naked-eye sky-watchers. It’s like supplying a carpet layer with room dimensions down to 1/100,000th of an inch, and making sure he knows where the ceiling lights are.

  Given the potential vagaries in the location of abstract features utilized in the calculation offered by Meeus, such as the galactic equator, and the very slow movement of precession, one would expect at least a ± three-year error range. This range admits the possibility of 1/24th of a degree of error in precessional motion—2½ minutes of arc, which is less than one-tenth of the diameter of the full moon in the sky, a mere sliver. It’s likely that a greater error range can be expected for the 1998 calculation.

  In order to emphasize the fact that no precise year can really be identified, and that an alignment zone is the best way to think about the galactic alignment, I took the width of the sun (½ degree), noted that this equaled 36 years of precessional motion, and suggested a 36-year alignment window between 1980 and 2016 (1998 ± 18 years). This is thus the amount of time it takes the actual body of the sun to precess through the galactic equator.28 This zone was never meant to imply that “the big event” or “the changes” would therefore happen within this window of time. It merely suggests: (1) a minimal target zone that the ancient Maya astronomers might have shot for; and (2) a logically reasonable way that modern commentators, investigators, and critics can talk about it.

  My efforts were built upon a reasonable definition for the alignment that I had suggested in 1995: The galactic alignment is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the galactic equator (in Sagittarius). And since the sun is ½ degree wide, it is true to say that “the solstice sun” touches the galactic equator for all 36 of those years. This widening of the arc of the alignment carried with it an important acknowledgment that the sun has width—it’s a real body that ancient sky-watchers observed, not just an abstract center point that modern astronomers use to make calculations.

  That some astronomers have taken Meeus’s 1998 calculation and conclude that the Maya’s 2012 date could not have been a target for the alignment (because of the fourteen-year difference) reveals either a willful intellectual dishonesty or a disregard for addressing the context of what ancient sky watchers would have been tracking with the naked eye. There is no way to turn back the clock on the sequence of how this galactic alignment concept emerged as a key item of rational discourse. To a large extent it is still confused with other ideas, which are either mystically vague, factually inaccurate, or not related to precession. A clear understanding of the astronomy behind the galactic alignment happened for me very early on, and I’ve tried to lend some sanity to the discussion by providing careful definitions, caveats, and explanations. Maya scholar Anthony Aveni offered, at the Tulane 2012 conference, what many scholars consider to be the best critiques of the galactic alignment theory. They deserve a considered response, which I’ll offer in Chapter 6.

  * * *

  As I studied the source material it became clear that something profound was lurking, unrecognized by scholars, connecting the astronomy of the end-date alignment with core symbols and concepts in Maya mythology. To make a long story short, and to summarize the nub of what I’ve found as concisely as possible before elaborating on the details, I’d say this:

  On the end date of the 13-Baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count (December 21, 2012 AD), the winter solstice sun will be in conjunction with the “Dark Rift” in the Milky Way. This is actually a rare event, slowly culminating over a period of centuries and millennia, and is a function of the precession of the equinoxes. Beginning with another fact, that this Dark Rift in the Milky Way was known to the ancient Maya as the xibalba be (the Road to the Underworld), additional connections between astronomy and Mayan mythology present themselves. In looking seriously at what these simple facts might imply, questions arise…. Now, I take the unavoidable view that a profound and unsung dimension of ancient Mesoamerican cosmology is patiently awaiting recognition and further elucidation.29

  That was taken from the introduction to my book The Center of Mayan Time, written in 1995. Fourteen years have now elapsed. Soon after writing that, I found more evidence in many Maya traditions for what I suspected to be true. I worked out the details of this reconstruction over several years of intense research that culminated in my 1998 book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. Recently, more evidence from hieroglyphic inscriptions has been identified, and it revolves, as I suspected, around the “Black Hole” glyph in Maya Creation Texts representing the dark rift in the Milky Way. The dark-rift hieroglyph was frequently found in relation to king-making rites, cosmological Creation events, and the sacred ballgame.

  RECONSTRUCTING THE LOST 2012 COSMOLOGY

  The galactic alignment is caused by the precession of the equinoxes and occurs in era-2012. This congruence of astronomy and the calendar is striking, but it cannot alone stand as evidence that the ancient Maya intended their end date to target the galactic alignment. For that, we need to recognize the key astronomical features involved in the galactic alignment, and they must have been viewable to the ancient naked-eye sky-watchers. These include the dark rift, the Milky Way-ecliptic cross, and the solstice sun, all of which the ancient sky-watchers could have noted. It is a strong support for the thesis that these astronomical features are central to the Maya Creation Myth, king-making rites, and ballgame symbolism.

  My theory offers an answer to the question: Why does the Maya calendar end on December 21, 2012? Since it falls on an accurate solstice date, we should suspect that its location is not a random occurrence but was intentional. With this as a working hypothesis, we observe that the date is the end of a 13-Baktun cycle, a calendrical concept that appears occasionally in the inscriptions and dated carvings of the Classic Period, always in the context of cosmological Creation Mythology. The end of a 13-Baktun cycle, as recorded at Quiriguá and elsewhere, is the end of an Era, otherwise known as a Sun or Age. These Ages, or World Ages, belonged to a World Age doctrine that, as a mythological construct, is described in the Maya Creation Myth (The Popol Vuh). In this way we can see that the Long Count’s 13-Baktun cycle and the Maya Creation Myth are both expressions of an underlying World Age paradigm.
One is calendrical and the other is mythological, and as we will see they both encode astronomy.

  Where were these two traditions formulated? By whom, and when? As we explored in Chapter 2, the pre-Classic Izapan civilization, centered on the astronomically oriented site called Izapa, was involved in the establishment of these two traditions. The site contains sixty carved monuments, many depicting episodes from the Creation Myth (also called “the Hero Twin Myth”), some of the earliest such portrayals that are known. As for the Long Count, its earliest dated carvings appear within the sphere of the Izapan civilization, toward the tail end of Izapa’s florescence. Although no Long Count dates have yet been found within the exact boundaries of the site of Izapa, we’ll see that Izapa encodes the astronomical alignment that culminates in era-2012, and thus was the observational laboratory that led to the inauguration of the Long Count system, taken up in earnest at nearby sites. The appearance of early Long Count monuments trend southward from Izapa, showing up at Tak’alik Ab’aj and El Baúl, sister cities to Izapa.

  My work presents evidence that Izapan astronomers formulated a cosmology of World Age transformation connected to a rare alignment that would culminate, for them, in the distant future. They knew it would eventually happen, but couldn’t know the precise timing until they inaugurated the Long Count, whose 13-Baktun cycle ending was designed to target the alignment. In other words, the mythological paradigm came first, was depicted on Izapa’s monuments as an early version of the Hero Twin Creation Myth, while the calendrical and astronomical system (the Long Count) that would calibrate the future alignment was still being perfected. This happened by the late first century BC, and thereafter Izapa was frozen in time and preserved, perhaps as a pilgrimage site, but certainly as an honored place that couldn’t be destroyed.

  According to my theory, the key to understanding why the early Maya chose the solstice of the year our calendar calls 2012, to end a large World Age cycle, is found in a rare astronomical alignment called “the solstice-galaxy alignment” or “the galactic alignment,” and we’ve already explored the various issues and definitions connected with it. By the time I began examining and studying Izapa in 1994 I already suspected that the galactic alignment was the reason behind the 2012 end date. As such, I was alert to evidence at Izapa that would indicate a conscious awareness of the future galactic alignment. The first thing I noticed was the dark-rift symbolism of the frog’s mouth on Stela 11 out of which emerges a sun deity, facing the December solstice sunrise horizon. The second thing I noticed was that the ballcourt in Group F points to the December solstice sunrise horizon. Since the ballgame is going to be central to what follows, we need to take a brief detour here to concisely summarize the symbolism of Maya ballgame.

  It’s really quite simple. The ballcourt symbolizes the Milky Way, the goal ring is the dark rift, and the game is about the rebirth of the sun. The ball represents the sun, and some ballcourts are aligned with the solstice, proving that, at least for those ballcourts, the solar rebirth occurred on the solstice. That’s it. This symbolism was integrated with the Creation Myth, in which One Hunahpu’s head represents the gameball. Generally speaking, the ball represents the sun and the game is about the rebirth of the sun. The game was not so much about athletic prowess; it was performed as part of the Creation Myth. It was an eschatological mystery play depicting the transformation and renewal that happens at cycle endings. In this play, the goal ring was the place of victory and rebirth. Thus, the ball’s passage through the goal ring symbolized the sun’s rebirth, its emergence from the underworld and the victory of light over darkness. It is easy to see that the goal ring represents the meanings given to the dark rift in the Milky Way. A more general interpretation loosely connects ballcourts with the underworld. According to Linda Schele, Creation myths played out in the ballgame “happened at the black hole.”30 She clearly spelled out the connection to the dark rift, but didn’t pursue the implications. She wrote that the black hole toponym found in Creation Texts points to “the Black Road, through the Cleft in the Milky Way… from the ballcourts of the Maya to the Court of Creation in the Land of Death.”31 Her information for this assessment came from Dennis Tedlock’s observations on the role of the dark rift in The Popol Vuh.

  Scholars haven’t paid a lot of attention to the specific significance of the goal ring and have been content to simply see ballcourts as underworld places. This is generally true, but the specific role of the goal ring in the game ball’s rebirth is unavoidable. It is the place where the game ball, symbol of the sun, is reborn, thus ending the game that ends a cycle of time and begins a new one. Here we see the relevance of the December solstice in this narrative, and how the game ball likely symbolizes not just the sun but the December solstice sun, because it is the December solstice sun that ends a cycle and begins a new one. For the purpose of our 2012 theme, it would be best to try to identify the site and the ballcourt that was most closely associated with the origins of the Long Count calendar. As we will see, the situation is rich and complex, but as I pursued my studies in the early 1990s it became clear that Izapa is this place.

  Returning to the Izapa monuments, I read in the archaeological reports that the monuments were found in situ—as they were left some 1,900 years ago. On the west end of the ballcourt at Izapa, there is a throne with a head in the middle of the front edge, emerging from between two legs that indicate how a person would have sat on the throne. They would have sat facing down the lengthwise axis of the ballcourt, toward the December solstice sunrise. Behind the throne are six flat seating stones on a raised mound. People sitting on these seats would face the December solstice sunrise and would also be able to view the ballcourt over the throne. The sun reaches its farthest southern rise point on the December solstice, the day of greatest night, prior to the sun and the year being reborn to begin the return journey northward along the horizon. The Maya ballgame was about the rebirth of the sun.32 The head emerging from between the legs on the throne is a symbol of the sun, as well as the game ball. The game ball moving through the goal ring is a metaphor for the rebirth of the sun. Also, at one point in the Creation Myth, the head of the father of the Hero Twins, One Hunahpu, is used as the game ball. The ballgame and the Hero Twin Myth is a mystery play, enacted on the ball field, and is all about facilitating the resurrection of One Hunahpu.

  These things are well known in Maya studies and we are firmly inside the boundaries of status quo consensus here. But what do they tell us about the astronomical symbolism of the ballgame as it was played at Izapa? First of all, the solar rebirth that the ballgame symbolizes was apparently, for the Izapans, referential to the sun’s rebirth at the December solstice. This is not at all surprising, as most ancient culture saw the December solstice as the time of the sun’s rebirth, for obvious reasons. That’s pretty neat, and tells us something about how the Izapans thought about their monuments, symbolism, and astronomy. This is a “reading” of the iconography and structural orientations at Izapa that gives meaning to the otherwise mute stones. Scholars similarly “read” or interpret hieroglyphic writing, which is an abstract form of miniature iconography. Interpreting iconographic symbolism is no less rigorous an enterprise than epigraphic interpretation; in fact, it is perhaps more rigorous because, especially at Izapa, astronomical orientation is an additional interpretive aid that is usually not relevant in hieroglyphic decipherment.

  Throne monuments from the Izapan ballcourt. Transformation and renewal. Drawing by the author

  So we can say that the ballcourt at Izapa is telling a story about the sun’s rebirth on the December solstice. But something else is going on here. As I studied the many carved monuments found in the Izapan ballcourt, a cohesive story with more profound implications unfolded. On the eastern end of the ballcourt, opposite the throne, is a monument that shows the demise of the vain and false ruler Seven Macaw. A ballplayer, probably one of the Hero Twins, is standing over him as he has crashed on the ground (see figure below). This scene repr
esents a key episode from the Hero Twin Myth—the Hero Twins must do away with Seven Macaw, make him fall from his pride ful perch, before they can resurrect their father. This event happens at the culmination of the World Age, at the end of the cycle. The death of the false god must precede the rebirth of the true one. Importantly, we have a solar cycle at work here, but it is much larger than an annual cycle of some 365 days. Yes, this is a World Age context. The sun gets reborn every morning and every December solstice, but this rebirth happens on the level of the World Age.

  Earlier, we saw that the Long Count’s 13-Baktun cycle is a World Age, so we can expect that the Creation Mythology depicted in the ballcourt would have been conceptually connected to the Long Count’s cycle ending. As if to reinforce this deduction, yet another carved monument is found in the middle of the north wall of the ballcourt, halfway between the other two monuments. This is labeled Stela 67, and it contributes a key to understanding an important astronomical reference in this mytho-cosmic schema.

  Stela 67 and Stela 60 from Izapa. The demise of Seven Macaw and the resurrection of One Hunahpu in the Izapan ballcourt. Drawing by the author

  We see an Ahau Lord with his arms outstretched, holding what appear to be scepters of rulership or perhaps sighting devices. He doesn’t represent a historical figure, but rather a mythological archetype—the First Father deity who partitions and measures the cosmos at the dawn of a World Age. The arms-outstretched gesture, according to Maya scholars who have studied Izapa’s symbolism, is a “period-ending” gesture and testifies to this interpretation. He is seated or standing in the middle of a canoe. Maya scholars have noted that canoes in which Creation deities ride represent the Milky Way. Stela 67 is located in the middle of the ballcourt, and ballcourts were also symbols of the Milky Way. Here we have several different and accepted interlocking readings of the canoe symbol, connecting it meaningfully to the ballcourt and the Milky Way. Ballcourts were also evocative of earth depressions, entrances into the underworld where the Creation Mythology was to be played out. The “entrance to the underworld” concept is centrally important in the Popol Vuh Creation Mythology, and is explicitly associated with the feature along the Milky Way called “the dark rift.” Since the canoe is analogous to both the ballcourt and the Milky Way, then the seating declivity of the canoe in which the reborn solar lord stands or sits is most likely the dark rift in the Milky Way. There is no other feature along the Milky Way that fits the required function. This makes sense because the solar lord isn’t simply sitting or standing, he is being born, at the dawn of a new World Age.