The domain of “pop appeal” comprises 90 percent of the 2012 phenomenon. It’s not in service to elucidating the deeper, perennial content of Maya cosmology, philosophy, and the 2012 tradition, clearly expressing the core, essential, ideologies of 2012. This could be supported by Maya concepts of transformational renewal at cycle endings and by global parallels in other traditions. I feel it’s important to identify the shared metaphysics of spiritual awakening in all traditions, including the Maya, which are especially relevant for cycle endings. This can be done, with good results, if properly framed as an expression of the archetypal, universal level of Maya cosmology. That’s what we’ll dive into in Part II.
By the way, what is the modus operandi behind the 2012 film that Charlie Frost and the Institute for Human Continuity are in cahoots with? It preys on your Basic Perinatal Matrix II! As Stan Grof defined it, this is Sartre’s No Exit existential hell.47 It’s the high-anxiety stage of the birth process, when the secure womb of constantly increasing gross national product is disturbed by the increasingly intense contractions of unsustainable greed and consumption. There is no tunnel yet, thus no light to be seen at the end of it; just pressure, pressure, pressure, and certain annihilation! One can only hope that the sequel to 2009’s doomsday 2012 film will be based on Basic Perinatal Matrix III: The Rebirth Experience.
CHAPTER SIX
Doubting Scholars
While it may be ethnocentric to assert that the Maya were observing astronomical phenomena in the same way as their counterparts in the West, it is equally ethnocentric to insist that they were incapable of such observations, particularly when their observations and their unique system of tropical zenith astronomy appear to have led them to far more accurate calculations than those of any of their contemporaries elsewhere in the world. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that the Maya were observing precession because it was there to be observed, and because they were uniquely capable of observing it with remarkable accuracy.1
—MICHAEL GROFE
Official commentary on 2012 from academics has been long in coming. There was a small backlog of grudging comments from scholars, elicited by my persistent questions going back to 1991, but they mostly fell into predictably superficial runnels. Several published mentions of the 2012 date recorded on Tortuguero Monument 6 had appeared, going back to 1992, but they treated 2012 circumspectly without engaging the larger implications of that monument.2 We now know that, when the related inscriptions are considered, the implications of that monument are very great indeed. As we’ll see shortly, it records solar and lunar alignments with the dark rift in the Milky Way, in meaningful contexts suggesting a conceptual relationship between the birth of the cosmos and the symbolic birth, or dedication, of the building that housed the monument.
Beginning in 2006, unofficial comments on 2012 increased, resulting from questions forced upon scholars in online e-list groups such as Aztlan.3 These exchanges, which are archived and readily available, reveal several things. First, consensus trumps facts. On more than one occasion my statements were assailed at once by five or six critics, who called into question minuscule trivia that was laughable but distracting. For example, I referred to Tak’alik Ab’aj as an “astronomical observatory” (the term used by the archaeologists digging at the site), which was countered with the incorrect assertion that there was no evidence for that. Similarly, scholars have doubted the existence of evidence for astronomy in The Popol Vuh, as if they had never read Dennis Tedlock’s translation. The facts and evidence that I presented in order to engage a rational discussion were trumped by a tacit consensus to deny and distract, regardless of the compelling nature of the evidence I was presenting.
All of this can be tracked and examined in the archival pages of these online e-lists. It got to the point where it seemed a search-bot was waiting, ready to pounce on anything I said. Once, in a spirit of humor on a thread about the amazing complexity of the Nahuatl language, which builds long compound words that rival anything produced in medieval German, I offered my favorite Nahuatl knock-knock joke: “Knock Knock. Who’s there? Amat lacuilolitquitcatlaxtlahuitl.” (After considerable practice, I can pronounce this word fast.) The joke is, of course, funny before it’s even complete because the unsuspecting victim is dumbfounded. The only response to my humorous overture was a dry linguistic correction: “The third t is a mistaken insertion; ‘…itquica…’ is a so-called preterit nominalization of ‘itqui,’ meaning ‘to carry.’”4
Scholars armed themselves with one or two critiques that effectively halted further investigation, at least in their own minds. These stopgap critiques were simplistic and were endlessly repeated, despite my pointing out their fallacious basis. For example, does the fact that the end date falls on a solstice indicate intent? Scholars such as John Hoopes and John Justeson provided an argument for coincidence that plays with statistical fudging to make coincidence seem not as unlikely as one initially supposes. Justeson, for example, explained at a recent conference that a December solstice date is meaningful, but so would be a June solstice, either one of the equinoxes, a zenith passage date, your birthday, the date of your grandpa’s hernia operation, and a myriad of other potentially noteworthy dates.5
Justeson also said that if the end date was one or even two days off one of these meaningful dates, we would still be duly impressed and allow this measure of vagueness. He ran the stats on all these considerations and found that a 16.66 percent chance existed that a randomly generated end date would be within range of any number of significant dates. That’s a 1-in-6 chance, pretty good odds. This is much less than the slim 1/365 chance one assumes upon first glance. Thus, voilà!—the case for the Coincidentalists was improved.
Justeson’s argument ably applies a rationalist’s thought experiment but ignores several guiding contexts that eliminate other possible dates. To intentionally choose a December solstice date to end a large-Era cycle makes perfect sense, because the end date of a solar year would, by analogy, be an appropriate marker for the end date of a larger World Age era. That the December solstice ends the year is an almost universally attested doctrine around the world, but is especially so, and demonstrated, for the site of Izapa and other pre-Classic sites in the region of the Long Count’s origin.6
As regards the allowable vagueness, this disregards the fact that there is no vagueness in the de facto cycle-ending date. It does, in fact, fall precisely on a solstice. It may be that they accidentally got it right on target when their astronomical understanding of the tropical year would have only allowed them to calculate it within two or three days, but so what? Why inject uncertainty when the data imply none? The intentional effort to target the solstice still remains as the likeliest possible scenario.
The idea of “accidentally” getting a future calculation more precisely on target than their abilities could support is, however, intriguing. It may help explain the impressive accuracy of the end date’s relation to an astronomically accurate solstice-galaxy alignment defined in the most precise scientific way possible—based on Meeus’s 1998 date, accurate within 14 years, or 12 minutes of arc. If the Maya’s ability to calculate this alignment could only reasonably be limited to 100 years, they would still have a sense for the middle range of that zone, and getting it as close as they did may have been something like a 1-in-5 chance. So coincidence can be argued both ways.
Despite Justeson’s well-considered critique, the fact remains that, no matter how you fudge it, the solstice positioning of the end date is beyond statistical chance. His own final stats prove this. A 1-in-6 chance does not mean you can look away. And so rational scholars alert to the dictates of statistics should proceed on the evidence that it’s not a coincidence and begin an investigation that generates questions. This was the position I took twenty years ago, with interesting results. As a rational investigator, I’ve uncovered perspectives and evidence in support of the likelihood of intentionality—at Izapa, in the Creation Myth, in the structure of the Long Count, in rites
of kingship, and in the symbolism of the ballgame. I’ve presented it to scholars with a persistence that has gained me the status of honorary persona non grata, and they have largely dismissed it, usually without offering specific critiques. Actually, maybe not the honorary part.
After one particularly exhausting exchange with a bevy of scholars on the Aztlan e-list regarding, for the hundredth time, the relevance of the solstice placement in 2012, an important missive was sent to me privately from Maya epigrapher Barb MacLeod. The subject line read: “not coincidence!” She wrote: “I see the exchanges of the last couple of days as a prompt to share something with you of great importance and relevance from the epigraphic record. It’s something I discovered less than a month ago.”7 What she found is revolutionary and lends indirect support to my end-date alignment theory. Barb’s open-minded and progressive scholarship has been behind many breakthroughs including, as I mentioned in Chapter 4, Linda Schele’s astro-mythological ideas on the Maya Creation Mythology.
2012 BECOMES A TOPIC OF ACADEMIC CONSIDERATION
The first treatment of 2012 by a scholar in a journal that other scholars might recognize was Robert Sitler’s “The 2012 Phenomenon” in the academic journal Nova Religio. It appeared in 2006. He took the twofold approach of assessing the historical record and comments of the modern Maya, looking for references to 2012. He assessed the popular treatment of the 2012 topic in the marketplace as well as my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, calling it “by far the best-researched of the numerous books that focused on the 2012 date.”8 (By the way, Geoff Stray tells me that my book was the second book ever published that had 2012 in the title; the first was published in 1883, called Transits of Venus: A Popular Account of Past and Coming Transits from the First Observed by Horrocks A.D. 1639 to the Transit of A.D. 2012.)
Sitler wrote his article prior to the Tortuguero monument becoming common knowledge, so his article therefore did not treat it and followed the consensus view that there were no references to 2012. He thus didn’t see any explicit references to 2012 in the epigraphy of the Classic Period. However, Robert’s online “13 Baktun” resource has added the Tortuguero information and various updates from contemporary Maya voices, gathered on his recent trips to highland Guatemala.9 Upon interviewing modern Maya spokespeo ple, such as Don Alejandro, he found that whenever they said anything about 2012, it could be traced to modern authors such as José Argüelles. Geoff Stray pointed out this tendency in his 2005 book Beyond 2012, which Sitler called “a recent publication that promises to be the most comprehensive book on 2012 to date.”10 Sitler also pointed out that it’s not surprising that the Long Count information does not survive, even in traditional areas of highland Guatemala, since the Long Count stopped being carved in stone more than a thousand years ago.
Robert provided an accurate summary of my theory and wrote that “the lack of convincing proof the ancient Maya were actually aware of precession may prevent Jenkins’s ideas from ever gaining broader academic acceptance.” This assertion is slightly misleading, as there is in fact a great deal of evidence that the ancient Maya were aware of precession. The archaeological work of Marion Popenoe Hatch at La Venta (ca. 1200 BC) and Tak’alik Ab’aj (ca. 200 BC) shows that temples and stone sighting devices were aligned with certain stars and adjusted, through time, to account for precession. Scholars such as Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and even Anthony Aveni have argued and stated that precessional knowledge would have been par for the course. And today we have new findings, by Maya scholars Barbara MacLeod and Michael Grofe, showing precessional and sidereal-year calculations in the Classic Period inscriptions and the Maya’s Dresden Codex.
Geoff Stray registered corrections to Sitler’s essay, on the grounds that non-Maya sources of information—intuitive dreams, prophecy, and information from non-ordinary states of consciousness—have also pointed to 2012. A lively exchange between the two ensued, which illustrates how fact-based discussions can and should unfold. In the process, Geoff noted that “academics that are held in such awe often make errors that are repeated by researchers into the Maya calendars. Anthony Aveni’s end date of 8 December 2012 was calculated in the Julian calendar, but he failed to state this. This date is equivalent to 21 December 2012 Gregorian…. Aveni places the start at 12 August 3114 BC… this is calculated in the Gregorian calendar, which makes Aveni’s dates even more confusing, with the start and end dates calculated in different calendars.”11
Sitler’s look at Classic Period epigraphy suggested nothing directly relevant to 2012. What we seem to find in the Creation Monuments are exclusively focused on the 13-Baktun cycle beginning in 3114 BC. These monuments, however, from Coba, Quiriguá, Palenque, and other Classic Period sites, were carved at least seven hundred years after the Long Count was first committed to stone. They document a Creation paradigm involving the zenith passage of the three hearthstones, stars underneath Orion’s Belt. The zenith was thought of by the ancient Maya as a cosmic center, and the Creation of the current era was believed to happen in relation to this cosmic center, symbolized as a throne. It’s not that surprising that epigraphy doesn’t tell us a lot about ideologies current with the origins of the Long Count, circa 100 BC (or possibly centuries earlier), because mythology and cosmology in that era were conveyed with pictures, a complex iconographic code that epigraphers haven’t paid enough attention to.
When scholars look for “documentation” on Maya ideas, they tend to focus on epigraphy. (This was true for Mark Van Stone’s 2012 study, published in late 2008 with the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies.) But iconographic expressions, such as those found at Izapa, should also be allowed. They are, we might say, more relevant than the hieroglyphic writing that evolved centuries later, as they speak more directly for the time and place of the Long Count’s origins. Epigraphic texts of the Classic Period, properly understood, might also be a source for information on 2012.
One wonders about the dearth of direct comments on 2012 in the epigraphic record of the Classic Period. I’ve realized recently that the important information, like all the best in literature, is not overtly stated but is indirectly alluded to. If the devils are in the details, the angels are in the subtext. The solstice-galaxy alignment itself serves as the key to these references, which point to the 2012 date via the sun-in-dark-rift motif. This kind of secondary reference is a common feature of any language. I may talk about “my birthday” and never mention the exact date, but if the context of my words is understood, the secondary reference implies the precise date.
Robert Sitler didn’t pursue an examination of early iconography, but he provided a good framework of approach and sincere critique of, as his subtitle put it, “The New Age Appropriation of 2012.” He confirmed and explored the complicated interactions between modern authors and Maya elders, scenarios I had experienced firsthand years earlier with Erick Gonzalez, Carlos Barrios, and Don Alejandro. My own response to Sitler’s essay addressed “Maya statements” about 2012 and called for iconography to be included as “documentation” that could be read with just as much clarity as epigraphic writing.12 My intention was to emphasize, once again, Izapa and its carved monuments as important sources for understanding 2012.
TORTUGUERO MONUMENT 6
As 2006 waxed to fullness, Sitler’s pointed questioning of epigraphers uncovered a very important textual date from the Classic Period site of Tortuguero, near Palenque. Like the 3114 BC Creation monuments, it was dated 13.0.0.0.0 with 4 Ahau in the tzolkin position. But the Tortuguero monument had 3 Kankin in the haab position, rather than 8 Cumku. This meant that it referred to the current era’s cycle ending, on December 21, 2012, rather than the previous 13-Baktun cycle ending, in 3114 BC. It was thus the only known specific date reference to 2012. For many years scholars had been saying that we had no references to 2012 in the archaeological record. Since 2012 is the next logical cycle ending, based on the 13-Baktun structure of the Long Count, the point is somewhat moot. My work, for example, proceeded o
n the assumption that the 13-Baktun cycle represented a standardized era-cycle length for the ancient Maya, and thus 2012 was implied by the plentiful Creation Texts that referenced the 13-Baktun cycle completion in 3114 BC. Michael Coe, Sylvanus Morley, and other scholars had assumed the same; it’s simply a repeating structure within a cyclic time philosophy. But now Sitler had pushed the case with scholars on the University of Texas online forum, and epigrapher David Stuart revealed that a few scholars had indeed been aware of the Tortuguero date for some time. Why the date wasn’t offered up for discussion long ago, and had to be pried out of the archives, is complicated and fraught with misunderstandings. As events unfolded, I suspect it had to do with not wanting to add fuel to New Age fires. The lapse is not that important; things happen when they will.
13.0.0.0.0 text from Tortuguero, December 21, 2012. Drawing by the author
The 2012 Story Page 23