The 2012 Story
Page 20
As a result, I suspect that either Carlos Barrios or his interviewer, Stephen McFadden, had lifted the idea without, perhaps, being aware of its true source. I confirmed this later on, and communicated with McFadden about the situation. He said he was aware of my work, apologized for the omission of correct citation, and graciously corrected the official version of the interview that is posted on his website.9 Nevertheless, uncorrected versions of the interview still occasionally sail around the Internet.
Barrios, like Erick Gonzalez, has perhaps inadvertently been accomplice to a way of framing my work in the marketplace that prefers to deliver it through the mouth of an elder. However, Barrios thereafter adopted the galactic alignment scenario as a true expression of one of the so-called Maya prophecies for 2012. He included it in his 2004 book10 and shared it with author Lawrence Joseph, whose book Apocalypse 2012 propagated and amplified the McFadden-Barrios debacle. Furthermore, as if unaware of the source of the idea he adopted, he said, “Many outside people writing about the Mayan calendar sensationalize this date, but they do not know. The ones who know are the indigenous elders who are entrusted with keeping the tradition.”11
Lawrence Joseph began writing a book about John Lennon within hours of his tragic murder. He boasts on his website that this book was “written, typeset, printed and distributed twelve days after John Lennon’s assassination.”12 To such an enterprising soul, 2012 must have been irresistible. How would one begin a book on 2012? Talk to Maya elders, of course. Joseph recounts in the early pages of his book how he flew to Guatemala to receive the Maya prophecy about 2012 directly from Maya teachers, the Barrios brothers, learning that “on 12/21/12 our Solar System, with the Sun at its center, will, as the Maya have for millennia maintained, eclipse the view from Earth of the center of the Milky Way. This happens only once every 26,000 years. Ancient Maya astronomers considered this spot to be the Milky Way’s womb.”13 Except for the fact that the Maya have not retained a continuity of this knowledge “for millennia,” this is a fairly accurate paraphrase of my theory, including my interpretation that the Galactic Center was mythologized by the ancient Maya as a cosmic womb, a creation place.
Armed with the Maya prophecy for 2012, handed to him by Real Maya Teachers, the author of Apocalypse 2012 then proceeds to concur with said Teachers to excoriate clueless outsiders, who don’t know how to read the symbols. I am mentioned by name as a “cultural imperialist.”14 While my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 was mentioned and wanly dismissed, its primary thesis (that the ancient Maya intended 2012 to target the rare alignment of the solstice sun and the Galactic Center) was left unsaid. Obviously, to mention it would have created a conflict of interest, as Joseph wished to give the impression that the goods were delivered to him by a Maya teacher. This contretemps reveals either a shoddy research ethic or intellectual dishonesty in a book that presumes to be “a scientific investigation.” I’ve now had the dubious honor of being plagiarized and excoriated at the same time.15
Lawrence Joseph subscribes to the old idea, put forward by Cotterell and Gilbert in The Mayan Prophecies, that solar flares will be going berserk in 2012. He frequently points to outdated scientific projections that 2012 will be a year of solar max, never clarifying that such solar sunspot maximums occur every 11.3 years and the one now projected for May 2013 will not be any larger than the one in the 1950s. He’s latched on to an alarmist interpretation of the galactic alignment, which he claims came from Barrios, in which the galactic alignment “cuts us off” from the life-force energy of the Galactic Center, like “the power being cut off from homes.”16 This interpretation, however, ignores the rebirth imagery that is associated with the alignment at Izapa. Joseph claims his book is not a doomsday book, that his publisher insisted on the title,17 yet writes the following in his book:
The next peak in the planetary tidal force, essentially the sum total of the planets’ gravitational pull on the Sun, will come late in 2012… The sunspot maximum, coincidentally also due in that year, will compound the situation, subjecting the Sun to maximum stress. The Sun’s magnetic poles … are also expected to switch in 2012, adding further volatility to the situation. The resulting synergy of gravitational and electromagnetic pressure on the Sun cannot help but distort and distend its surface, releasing megabursts of imprisoned radiation, quite possibly ones that are far deadlier than any the Earth has encountered since homo sapiens has been around.”18
Although he tries to conceal it when it is deemed inappropriate, his unequivocally nihilistic position is very common in the 2012 discussion, and shares company with Brent Miller’s Horizon ProjectTM, which I’ll assess in a moment.
This chapter could easily be expanded into a book-size treatment of these various manifestations, but space prohibits more than a mention of many of them. I can’t possibly treat them all in this book, and I’m not implying that all of these researchers play fast and loose with 2012 in the way that others have, nor am I endorsing them. The books of Sri Ram Kaa and Kira Ra, William Henry, Jay Weidner, and Vincent Bridges (The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye), Sharron Rose, Christine Page, Dr. Willy Gaspar, Gregg Braden, Patricia Mercier (just to name a few)—it’s a cornucopia. Geoff Stray’s website, Diagnosis 2012, is a comprehensive resource for reliable assessments. For our purposes here, I will discuss a few representative examples.
My book Galactic Alignment was published in 2002. The book’s very title presented a still vaguely understood concept to the public eye. Within the decade many books, theories, websites, and pseudoscience doomsday models would appropriate the concept, often confusing it with other ideas. David Wilcock began publishing his research and writings online around 1998. His treatment of the Maya calendar mentioned the galactic alignment as occurring in 1999, and drew from the work of Maurice Chatelain and many other writers, from Richard Hoagland to Edgar Cayce. Wilcock integrated many threads of science and ancient metaphysics into his work, and explored spiritual and paranormal phenomenon. As a dream analyst, he has asserted and tracked his own mystical connection to American prophet Edgar Cayce, resulting in a book published in 2004 which asserted that he was Cayce reincarnated.
Wilcock also developed a highly elaborated system of hyperdimensional physics, which he explained during the Global Shift conferences that I also spoke at. His system utilized many ideas, including the galactic alignment and material from the Ra channelings, to explain changes happening in our solar system and the consciousness of humanity. By 2005 he was working with author Richard Hoagland, a regular on the late-night radio program Coast-to-Coast A.M. Hoagland adopted much of Wilcock’s work and organized several conferences under the banner of 2012.
Hoagland, like Wilcock, draws heavily from hard science—physics, atomic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on—but he was not particularly concerned with the ways that an ancient culture such as the Maya discovered and calculated the galactic alignment and incorporated the concept into their cosmology and teachings. His current 2012 rap involves a belief that secret forces inside the government are aware of 2012’s doomsday potential. Hoagland collaborated on a book with Mike Bera about dark matter in the universe. At a conference venue I shared with Bera in 2008, he claimed he and Hoagland were devising an experiment that would test the galactic alignment. He seemed to think, however, that the galactic alignment was an alignment of planets somehow connected to the idea that a lost planet, Nibiru, would be returning into visibility within our solar system in 2012. I asked Mike to elaborate on his work more clearly, but he has yet to send me anything and our e-mail exchanges became locked into a holding pattern. This may seem like hearsay, but I mention it because much in the 2012 discussion is built upon hearsay. Rumor goes down the New Age telephone line and, instead of degrading into even more nonsense than it was when it began, it gets elevated to the status of theory and, finally, Truth. For example, let’s look at the Nibiru-2012 connection.
The Nibiru (Planet X) idea comes from Zecharia Sitchin, author of the Lost Chronicles books now
running up to some thirteen volumes, who based his radical ideas on ancient Babylonian astrological tablets.19 He believes that cuneiform references to an “invisible planet” that comes around (“appears”) every once in a while to cause havoc is proof that an unknown planet, Nibiru, orbits the sun with a great eccentricity, swinging far out beyond Pluto for millennia before it swings in again. He ties his theory to another idea—that beings on Nibiru meddled with human genetics in the distant past. In recent years, the timing of Nibiru’s return has been spuriously connected to 2012.
An examination of Sitchin’s work reveals an unfortunate literalized interpretation of ancient doctrines. The “invisible” planet that one finds often mentioned in ancient astrological texts is widely known to signify the moon’s node. This is an intangible (invisible) point defined by the intersection of the lunar and solar orbits. It defines where eclipses may occur and it precesses slowly around the ecliptic. When it swings around to conjunct the position of sun or moon in the sky, an eclipse will occur. All the factors are there to make Sitchin’s interpretation seem valid. The “invisible” point is made manifest after a long hiatus. Eclipses were fearful occurrences during which the sun was disrupted and earthlings were cast into darkness, changed forever. It’s scary. In regard to Sitchin’s notion of ancient gene splicers altering the species, eclipses symbolize the transcendence of opposites, which in many esoteric teachings triggers spiritual transformation, a new being coming into existence.
I read Sitchin’s theory with openness and discernment, and this is what I found. Sitchin offers a literalized interpretation of esoteric teachings, which appeals to the modern materialist mind-set as well as the tendency of modern Occidental religions to interpret scripture, and reality, literally. Sitchin’s work typifies the trap of the modern scientist interpreting ancient esoteric doctrines through the lens of materialism. So, instead of insights into the metaphysical teachings connected with the lunar nodes, eclipses, and transcendence, we get Niburian Annunaki fiddling with our genes whenever the Maya calendar says so. The situation is both absurd and hilarious.
For science-oriented researchers, the galactic alignment is a topic of interest but has often been conflated with the orbit of our solar system around the Galactic Center. This confusion indicates a breakdown of rational processing. Furthermore, despite the ideology of proactive spiritual transformation and renewal that the Maya applied to cycle endings, 2012 in the hands of pseudoscience fatalists becomes a literalized doomsday assaulting us from the outside. Spiritual self-actualization is replaced by materialist determinism. Reality gets inverted, concretized, in precisely the same way that Sitchin literalized the ancient astrological doctrine of the lunar nodes.
This unfortunate state of affairs is intimately related to what psychologist and rebirthing expert Stanislav Grof calls “the feeling of cosmic engulf ment and no exit” (Basic Perinatal Matrix II in his system).20 For the person under the influence of this matrix, life appears meaningless and cruel, absurd, dangerous and frightening. Impending doom is perceived as an unavoidable certainty. The fatalistic fear and anxiety that are retained in the body and psyche as a terrifying birth memory gets displaced and projected onto the world, where it sticks on cycle endings because they are conceptually analogous to the intrauterine birth crisis. The dark rift in the Milky Way, instead of being a liberating portal to a new world, becomes the death-dealing receptacle of nefarious killing forces. Choose your metaphor wisely.
Patrick Geryl, a Belgian writer, published a book in 2005 provocatively titled World Cataclysm in 2012, followed by How to Survive 2012 in 2006. His work is about as reliable in terms of factual grounding in Maya tradition as the earlier Mayan Prophecies book by Cotterell and Gilbert. And it’s unrelent ingly, unapologetically alarmist, filled with doomsday visions stated matter-of-factly with absolute certainty. “At the end of 2012, an all-destroying pole shift is waiting for us,” he writes on his website. He describes a pole shift in 2012, and how he “came to the staggering conclusion that the Earth will soon be subjected to an immense disaster. The cause: upheavals in the sun’s magnetic fields will generate gigantic solar flares that will affect the polarity of the entire Earth. The result: our magnetic field will reverse all at once, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.”21 All of these statements confirm Geryl as the preeminent “predictator” of 2012ology (a predictator is one who asserts their predictions like a dictator).
Like so many other books, Geryl’s barely scratch the surface of what the Maya tradition is really about, but liberally reference solar sunspot theories and a veritable grab bag of doomsday scenarios and tack them on to 2012; the details don’t matter. The point is: Head for the hills! One might suspect, rightly so, that a book styled in such a way should be taken with a large grain of salt. But it’s the kind of thing that the media and scholarly critics love. It provides the easy straw man target, the thing to hold up and say, “See, this whole 2012 thing is a goofy joke.” As of 2008, Geryl is spending all his time forming survival groups and leading the call for everyone to leave Belgium and other lowland countries, for the seas will be quickly rising. You could buy the offered survival kits as well as land in South Africa. Hurry up, supplies are limited.
No less alarmist is The Horizon Project™, run by Brent Miller. According to its mission statement, The Horizon Project “relies on multiple sources for each piece of information from resources past and present. If any information does not agree with the rest, it is resolved by scientific committee with all known information. Never before has a research team with this level of effectiveness and capability been utilized solely for discovering answers to life’s most crucial questions.”22 The website offers a series of DVDs for sale, and lists Brent Miller, Dr. Brooks Agnew (a physicist), and Michael Tsarion (a “researcher with over 20 years of expertise in the study of lost civilizations and technologies”) as The Horizon Project’s primary researchers/experts.
Brent Miller, the host of the DVD series, is described as an “expert in ecommerce systems” who has “held executive positions in several New York- based Fortune 500 companies.” The first DVD in the series, released in August of 2006, was called “Bracing for Tomorrow.”23 A four-minute trailer offers a teaser statement that the DVD “provides a conclusion that will realize humanity’s ultimate fear.”24 The summary states that the DVD “begins with a frightening bang. Newly discovered scientific evidence shows that the world as we know it is about to come to an unexpected end; however, knowing what’s coming over the horizon is only the tip of the iceberg; understanding WHY presents a picture far greater than you could have imagined.”25
As it turns out, an astronomical phenomenon that they call “the galactic alignment” is the reason behind this frightening “unexpected end.” They refer to the lost knowledge of ancient civilizations, and how they left behind “major clues that have just been recently discovered” and they “knew of the upcoming inevitable catastrophe… The knowledge that was once lost is the missing link that provides a clear understanding of how our world truly operates. Ironically, these clues also inform us that time is running out; sooner than you may believe.” The Horizon Project Research Team “will identify some of the signs that are scattered all over our planet and reveal a shocking truth!”26
A clip of a Horizon Project DVD hosted by Brent Miller can be viewed on YouTube under the heading “Galactic Alignment in 2012 is Feared to Cause Pole Shift by 2008-2015.”27 The term “galactic alignment” is used repeatedly, as is the “dark rift in the Milky Way,” the key centerpiece of my galactic alignment theory. Unfortunately, Miller defines the galactic alignment incorrectly, as being caused by the physical orbit of our solar system around the Galactic Center, above and below the galactic plane over millions of years. This process has nothing to do with the precessional basis of the galactic alignment, as defined on Wikipedia and in my book (which came out in 2002 and was titled Galactic Alignment). For many years I’ve had a page on my website called “What is the Galactic
Alignment?”28 If you Google “Galactic Alignment,” the first result is this page. I discuss the distinction between the galactic alignment and Brent Miller’s scenario in my book Galactic Alignment , on my “Misconceptions” web page, and in an interview I did that is posted on YouTube.29
The Horizon Project provides a list of resources used in their research, but, oddly, the book called Galactic Alignment (published in 2002, long before The Horizon Project was founded) is not listed. One would think that comprehensive research into the galactic alignment would have included a careful study of the one and only book called Galactic Alignment. In fact, none of their sources could provide clear information on the galactic alignment and only one dealt with the Maya calendar (an obsolete 1904 study by Cyrus Thomas). I’m starting to wonder if scientists were really at all involved in the supposedly science-based Horizon Project.
In the DVD, after wrongly defining and describing the galactic alignment, the narrator says: “The Mayans state that the end of each Age, which brings about worldwide devastation, is defined by the world sitting on the dark rift…. [I]t is very clear that we are talking about the same event, an event where the earth passes through the galactic equinox.”30 It’s frustrating to see the defining terms of my galactic alignment reconstruction being co-opted and distorted in this way. (Not to mention that “galactic equinox” is a meaningless term, apparently meant to indicate the galactic equator.) These distorted appropriations have been the cause of hundreds of accusatory e-mails I’ve received from people who believe that I, like The Horizon Project, preach a doomsday message.