Hoopes has explained to me that my work is often confused with that of Argüelles or Calleman because we’ve all been published by the same publisher. Or my work cannot be taken seriously because I frequently speak at venues that have a New Age flavor. This is understandable but unfortunate, and it doesn’t mean that my work can’t be assessed carefully on its own terms, as I’ve been very patient and persistent in placing it before the eyes of scholars. One feels one must issue a disclaimer, such as “my presence as a speaker at this venue does not mean that I endorse the beliefs of its organizers.” Hoopes’s complaint makes sense from his experience as an academician, in which only a cautiously narrow range of ideation is allowed. If I were to give a talk on “metaphysics,” it would have nothing to do with the unsophisticated stereotype of the term that he seems to believe it represents. Suffice it to say here that it has nothing to do with the self-help pop metaphysics that is associated with supernatural phenomena in the New Age marketplace.
In late 2008, Jan Irvin interviewed Dr. Hoopes on his thoughts about 2012.28 Being aware of my own work on 2012, he then invited me to respond. So we ended up having a two-part debate with the potential of continuing. I had the advantage of being the second interview, able to respond to Hoopes’s points. But Hoopes was well aware of my theory and so could address my work with that prior knowledge at hand, so it was a pretty even field. Here are a few observations:
Dr. Hoopes addresses what he calls “the common myth that the Maya disappeared.” This choice of terminology betrays an attitude that myths are lies, which is confirmed when he later admits that myths may perhaps have some value as moral guidelines. But there was no consideration of the archetypal structure of myths that reveal deeper universal content, as Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Huston Smith have identified. A myth in Hoopes’s view, if it has any meaning at all, is merely in terms of ethical or moral guidance. He subscribes to the idea of discontinuity between the ancient Maya and the modern Maya. He says there were “two episodes when the knowledge was lost or changed,” referring to the Classic Maya collapse and the Conquest. In both cases, only the surface style of how culture was practiced was disrupted. The deep cultural traditions, which revolve around language, religion, and the 260-day sacred calendar, have been preserved up to the present.
Here we have a confusion of levels. The surface level is perceived by material archaeologists as the only real, empirical level that can be granted one’s attention. In the process called syncretism, the Maya adopted the surface details of European culture—seeming to adopt Christian gods, for example—but we’ve known for a long time that the old ways were preserved underneath. For some scholars, the concept of deeper currents reeks of the ambiguous and unprovable. This distinction between surface and depth again speaks to the original use of the term “Mayanism”—pan-Mayan ideas that we may call archetypal, shared, or universal. One of these, for example, would be the idea that sacrifice is necessary at the end of a cycle to facilitate a successful transformation of the old into the new. It’s a universal idea that you find throughout Maya history and different groups. In fact, it’s one of those universal ideas that you find at the root of virtually all of the world’s religious traditions.
Dr. Hoopes claimed that The Popol Vuh is an early-eighteenth-century document contaminated by Christian ideas. This does not appear to be the case, as The Popol Vuh’s translator himself, Francisco Ximénez, stated that his intention was to preserve the original sense as precisely as possible (see Chapter 1). He also made a complete transcription of the original documented from the 1550s, and recent translators such as Dennis Tedlock have been able to identify likely typos, but by all appearances it is an accurate copy. The infrequent addition of Christian elements does not affect the overall structure of the doctrine of World Ages in the Creation Mythology section. My assertion that The Popol Vuh expresses a World Age doctrine was the nub of my point, leading to our debate, which Hoopes tried to mitigate with his various criticisms. But we can see that they were deflections away from the core fact: The Popol Vuh preserves a pre-Conquest World Age doctrine of time. We shouldn’t suspect that this was introduced by Franciscan scribes and translators, since Christianity abides by a linear history that ends in the Apocalypse and the Second Coming. Yes, these are doctrines, Articles of Faith, with capital letters.
It was important that Dr. Hoopes, in his interview with Jan Irvin, identified the earliest source for the idea that 2012 is about a cataclysmic event. It didn’t come from Argüelles, McKenna, or Waters. It came from Maya scholar Michael Coe, writing in his 1966 book The Maya: “There is a suggestion that each of these [time periods] measured thirteen Baktuns, or something less than 5,200 years, and that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the thirteenth.”29 The use of Christian terminology to describe Maya eschatology is quite surprising. “Our present universe,” he continues, is “to be annihilated … when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion.”30 This is the kind of language that Maya scholars today find so offensive, and rightly so. As I’ve been saying for two decades, the Maya Creation Myth itself does not espouse an idea of a final cataclysmic end to the universe. In a cyclic time philosophy, it’s all about transformation and renewal.
ASTRONOMERS AND THE GALACTIC ALIGNMENT
In March of 2007, the New York Times contacted me about a piece they wanted to write about 2012. As usual, I provided guidance and observations about what was happening in the 2012 discussion. It was easy to explain the situation with scholars and New Agers. The scholars had barely cared to glance at 2012, and the New Agers were just playing fast and loose with Maya ideas. My own work occupied the unique position of offering new discoveries garnered over fifteen years of rational investigation, as well as a willingness to address spiritual and metaphysical teachings that scholars avoided like the plague. Ben Anastas was given the assignment, and he flew out to interview me.
The timing was good, for I would be introducing a new 2012 film at the Oriental Theater in Denver. The film was 2012: The Odyssey by Sacred Mysteries. I was interviewed for the film back in 2005. Although I had some issues with the content of the film, namely its lack of focus on the Maya material, it was, at the time, the best thing out there on 2012. Ben and I drove to Denver together and I was able to explain my work in great detail. Being an independent scholar of Maya studies turned out to be an angle they wanted to emphasize, so when the piece came out in July it treated my work accurately and favorably.
As was to be expected, however, they also provided dissenting views. According to Maya scholar and archaeo-astronomer Anthony Aveni, I was “a Gnostic” and I and other Gnostics “look for knowledge framed in mystery. And there aren’t many mysteries left, because science has decoded most of them.”31 My agenda, according to Aveni, is to mystify Maya teachings when academia is filled with conclusive answers. This was an odd critique, on two fronts. First, it betrays a complete lack of understanding of my work. Second, even if I were a Gnostic, one wonders by what prejudicial rule of thumb one’s religious orientation would disqualify one’s intellectual work. One might equally say that a professed atheist’s attitude toward Maya religion would be horribly biased. But Aveni did address my galactic alignment theory, albeit through the filter of a modern scientific bias. He said, “I defy anyone to look up into the sky and see the galactic equator.” His point acknowledges the precise definition of the galactic alignment that I have formalized in my work: “the alignment of the December solstice sun with the galactic equator.” My definition is useful for talking about the galactic alignment in precise astronomical terms, the galactic equator being an abstract dotted line running along the midplane of the galaxy. He then requires that the ancient Maya abide by the terms of this modern definition, and that they too should have thus had an identical concept of the galactic equator. This is an absurd position, and is easily exposed. The astronomical features utilized by the ancient Maya were those of naked-eye sky-
watchers. Thus, the dark rift in the Milky Way, which lies along the galactic equator, was the target in their end-date alignment cosmology. This distinction is abundantly clear in my work, including all my books and my website essays.
After the New York Times piece appeared, I clarified this point in a private e-mail to Aveni, on the Aztlan academic e-mail list, and in the pages of the Institute of Maya Studies newsletter, which I sent to Aveni.32 Yet he continued to assert his critique at a talk he gave in the fall of 2008 and again a few months later at the Tulane conference in early 2009, which guaranteed a few chuckles from his audiences.
The issues that astronomers have had with my galactic alignment theory are similarly facile and easy to counter. For example, Dr. Louis Strous, who teaches at the Sterrekundig Institute, University of Utrecht, in The Netherlands and maintains an astronomy website called Astronomy Answers, offered a loaded critique that rendered the galactic alignment completely meaningless. He first defined the alignment incorrectly, by leaving out the important specifying term “December solstice.” Then he wrote: “The Sun moves along the whole ecliptic in a year, so it passes through each of those two intersections every year, and not just once every 26,000 years. So, it is not remarkable at all that the Sun passes through those intersections in 2012.”33
It’s hard to believe that a professional astronomer would not understand the precessional significance of the correct definition. One wonders how he could misconceive the definition in such a way as to make it seem like the galactic alignment was not a real astronomical occurrence. This turned out to be a very common happenstance in my dealings with scholars and astronomers. I can clearly say “crab apples are bitter,” and someone like Strous will then paraphrase me as saying “apples are bitter” (leaving out the important specifying term “crab”) and thus make it seem as if the entire topic is a joke. I’ve documented similar discussions with other astronomers since 1999, including Stephen Tonkin, who ended up digitally screaming, “Enough! I have already wasted enough time on your drivel” and blocking my e-mail.34
From their vantage point, I’m not a scientist and therefore they barely deign to talk with me. And when I point out the fallacy of their analysis, they dig themselves in deeper but resist offering corrections. Author Jonathan Zap has explained to me that this is a classic psychological defense mechanism of debunkers, observing that
the identical attitude is found in the magazines Psycop and Skeptical Inquirer. A debunker is not a skeptic, but a true believer in a negative. Scientism is their religion, and they have a brittle, neurotic power complex that feeds off of this identification. They are the aristocrats of truth wearing a purple mantle and carry the imprimatur of science (in their neurotic imagination). Those who are representatives of the vast truths and areas of perception that their brittle and hollow neurotic persona cannot bear to engage are the subject of such comic shadow projection that, like a Medieval Monarch who cannot bear even the thought that a commoner should gaze at them or directly address them, the very thought of an actual dialogue with a member of this group makes them squirm with nauseated distaste. You have violated this man’s core psychic intentionality by daring to engage in a rational discourse with him (as they see rationality as their sovereign territory that those not part of their priesthood can’t dare to trespass on). You have forgotten what your role is supposed to be in their mind: Passive Straw Man. The esoteric person is supposed to make a series of absurd points, be a cliché or stereotype with no rational ability to engage challenges, and they are supposed to be the monarchs of objectivity, authoritatively casting down idols and buffoons for the general public.35
I’m also reminded of the travails of Galileo. He discovered celestial bodies revolving around Jupiter, and a world that knew everything revolved around the earth was shocked, not believing it could be true. He invited his critics—various intellectuals and Church officials—to peer through the new telescope and see for themselves, but they all refused. They were afraid they might be infected by demons.36
In 2008, I was interviewed on a New Hampshire Public Radio station.37 The guest prior to me was Dr. Phil Plait, a satirically self-confessed “bad astronomer” who maintained a website devoted to astronomical questions and fallacies. The interviewer asked him what he thought about 2012 and he responded with smug certainty that “I’ve looked at this a lot and I can say that it’s 100 percent garbage.” During my subsequent interview I pointed out that, first and foremost, 2012 is a true artifact of the Maya calendar system, so it is incorrect to say that “it’s 100 percent garbage.” Upon looking at Plait’s website I could see that he spent many years responding to inane questions about 2012 and the galactic alignment, every time posed in misleading and incorrect ways.38 His examination of the 2012 alignment was apparently limited to what his website debates generated, and there wasn’t one clear definition of the galactic alignment on it, by him or anyone else, although some tried to point him to my website.
Plait ignored several e-mails I sent in which I offered to discuss with him the galactic alignment and its role in Maya cosmology. He’s a good example of a shock jock-style Internet personality who is trying to carve out a career for himself as a scientific skeptic who can explain everything and debunk what he perceives to be unwarranted ideas. Yet, as with Aveni and other astronomers, he simply indulges in a biased attitude, unwilling to respond to the facts and engage in a rational dialogue.
Then there is the issue of how the galactic alignment gets confused with the orbit of our solar system around the Galactic Center, which I discussed in Chapter 4. I’ll add here that the sinusoidal orbit of our solar system above and below the galactic plane is ably described by Nassim Haramein in his online video clip “Crossing the Event Horizon,” but he, like many others, thinks that our passage through the midplane is occurring around the year 2012.39
I can’t emphasize this enough: This is a big problem with the 2012 material, and it is unfortunately muddying the waters for the integrity of the precessional basis of the galactic alignment astronomy. Geoff Stray and Zyzygy relate data from no fewer than nine different academic sources for the position of our solar system in relation to the galactic midplane.40 They found that on average the sources calculate that we are some 64 light-years above the midplane, moving outward, reaching the maximum distance at about 85 light-years. In comparison, our solar system is roughly 25,000 light-years, give or take 2,000 light-years, from the Galactic Center. (I explored the curious connection between this distance and the precession cycle of roughly 26,000 years in my book Galactic Alignment, and it was mentioned by Joseph Campbell in his 1963 book The Flight of the Wild Gander.)
What the galactic alignment is not: the sinusoidal orbit of our solar system above and below the galactic midplane over some 250 million years. Graphic courtesy of Jim Reed
MEET WAXAKLAHUN UB’AH K’AWIL
In the summer of 2007, Jim Reed and I led our second tour to Maya sites. Our group consisted of twenty-two hardy souls of all ages, and our plan was ambitious. We convened in Guatemala City, visited museums, and then struck out for Honduras to visit the ancient site of Copán. It was a five-hour ride in our chartered bus, driven by a good-natured crew of three Guatemalan guys who constantly helped us load and unload our bags throughout our eight-day adventure. For me, the border we crossed near Chiquimula was layered over with many memories, as I’d passed through it several times since 1988, mostly as an unwashed backpack-toting gringo.
Our group was hosted by Flavia Cueva at her family’s historic San Lucas Hacienda. That evening, Jim and I gave presentations and many locals showed up. It was a beautiful evening, looking over the Copán River with the ruins just visible in the distance under the glittering stars. The next day we visited the site and observed the famous full-round carving of Copán’s eighth-century ruler 18 Rabbit, whose real name is Waxaklahun Ub’ah K’awil. I explained the symbolism on the east and west sides of the carving, one depicting the ruler facing west, over the huge Ak turtle alt
ar. This side, I pointed out, faced the setting of the Ak turtle (located in Gemini) and the three hearthstones of Maya Creation Mythology, where the Milky Way crosses through the ecliptic in Gemini.
And on the other side, the ruler faces east and wears an ornate costume featuring an elaborate crocodile head draped down both sides of his body. It gave the appearance of the ruler standing within the jaws of the crocodile, a vertical pillar of authority growing out of the crocodile’s mouth. I pointed out the glyphs on the side of the carving, indicating the Long Count date of its dedication: 9.14.0.0.0 (December 3, 711 AD). I had noticed that on this date the sun was aligned with the dark rift in the Milky Way, the crocodile mouth rising over the eastern horizon. Clearly, the sky reflected the solar king’s stance within the cosmic maw of transformation and rebirth.41
People in our group roamed freely, as the Maya temples always draw people in different directions. Nearby, Copán archaeologist William Fash, who wrote Scribes, Warriors and Kings, was leading a tour. That evening we were hosted and surprised with a slide presentation by another Copán archaeologist, David Sedat. He lives in town with his wife and is known for discovering the tomb of the female ruler within the buried Rosalila pyramid. David and I had both appeared in the “Places of Mystery” program produced by the Discovery Channel, and it was a pleasure to have our entire group entertained and informed at his home. Some of us were able to experience a descent into the underworld, at night, with a ritual led by David in his Classic Maya-style pibna, or sweat bath.
The 2012 Story Page 25