Mayans Never Predicted World To End In 2012?

[DalTheJigsaw123]

PALENQUE, Mexico (Reuters) - If you are worried the world will end next year based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.

 

So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.

 

The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 21, 2012 which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.

 

Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.

 

"We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012," said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). "It's a marketing fallacy."

 

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans," the institute said in a statement.

 

 

In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.

 

Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.

 

"Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation ... it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present," he said.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/07/mayans-never-predicted-world-to-end_n_1126033.html

[Dainin]

The Mayan 2012 forecast is just the latest manifestation of an apocalyptic theme that has been repeating throughout recorded history. This book by John Michael Greer is worth reading:

 

Apocalypse Not: Everything You Know About 2012, Nostradamus, and The Rapture is Wrong

 

I think that Arguelles is the same person who popularized "The Harmonic Convergence" which was supposed to be something like the start of a "New Age" back in the 1980s. I remember that there were big crowds of people gathering in places like Sedona on a certain date waiting for something to happen...but nothing appeared to.

[Stigweard]

 

 

[julianlaboy]

That's probably very historically accurate! Haha!

[konchog uma]

The Mayans have been talking to outsiders about their calendar since 2007. Don't put stock in the musings of "mayan experts", there are really just authentic Mayan elders like Don Alejandro Perez and Hunbatz Men who are both calendar keepers, and there are scholars, who truly still don't have the first clue. There are people that have studied the mayan culture but they don't know about the calendar. Its a lot deeper than the end of the 5000 year cycle. That is one cycle of nine to end on 12.21.12. It is the national cycle, as you can see from this description

 

 

Arguelles is considered somewhat of a buffoon, yes, and the Mayans don't predict that the "world will end" in the sense that time will stop and we will be plunged into the darkness of the void, no. But nobody except Maya understand that calendar, so skip the BS musings of scholars and intellectuals, and read the works of the living maya. Don Alejandro has created video messages for the world regarding the actual Mayan understanding of these times.

 

Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj AKA Wandering Wolf, head of Mayan Council - video messages

http://www.shiftoftheages.com/wandering_wolfs_message

 

there is more information on that webpage than in a thousand scholarly journals about 2012 hype.

 

for the record, the Mayan long count predicts the dawning of a "new age" and they didn't make any prophesies about it that survived the Spanish conquest except one single written one, that Bolon Yokte would appear to the world as fully dressed in his finest regalia. Bolon Yokte was the mayan shiva, a god of destruction and recreation. So if these scholars had the imagination to speak in metaphor, they would clearly see that the mayans predicted a destruction and recreation, or emergence into a "new sun" or age presided over by new energies than the last one.

 

Don't believe the hype. Get information about the Maya from the Maya not from western scholars.

 

amazon.com search results for Hunbatz Men, mayan elder and daykeeper

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=hunbatz+men&x=0&y=0

[doc benway]

I think it is useful to look at the Mayan calendar in a fashion similar to the Hindu yugas. They are gross approximations which were not intended to be thought of as being accurate to the day, year, or even century. Nevertheless, there are always folks looking for things to get rich from or get worked up about, so knock yourselves out!

And if I'm wrong and the world ends next December, then the joke's on me...

[konchog uma]

I think it is useful to look at the Mayan calendar in a fashion similar to the Hindu yugas. They are gross approximations which were not intended to be thought of as being accurate to the day, year, or even century. Nevertheless, there are always folks looking for things to get rich from or get worked up about, so knock yourselves out!

And if I'm wrong and the world ends next December, then the joke's on me...

 

yeah i totally agree with all of that!

[Birch]

I wish I were smart enough to make bucks out of stuff like this. But do the people that do it really enjoy that fact? I don't think I'd enjoy it much. It's like the 'business cycle' people. Do they realise that lots of other people take them seriously and do stuff like kill themselves and their kids every time there's a technical recession?

[.broken.]

The mercy of love should never be underestimated. All things change - even deadlines

[Cat Pillar]

I wish I were smart enough to make bucks out of stuff like this. But do the people that do it really enjoy that fact? I don't think I'd enjoy it much. It's like the 'business cycle' people. Do they realise that lots of other people take them seriously and do stuff like kill themselves and their kids every time there's a technical recession?

 

Those in it for the money are looking at numbers, not people. Same for those 'business cycle' people. Their thoughts are rarely, if ever, about the human aspect. They see black and red, little else.

[doc benway]

I wish I were smart enough to make bucks out of stuff like this. But do the people that do it really enjoy that fact? I don't think I'd enjoy it much. It's like the 'business cycle' people. Do they realise that lots of other people take them seriously and do stuff like kill themselves and their kids every time there's a technical recession?

I've come to think that the principle of taking advantage of others for personal gain is insidious in our (international, in fact) culture and society. We preach that winning is not important, "it's how you play the game" but when did anyone celebrate the loser of the superbowl? We give plenty of lip service and teach our children about love and compassion but most of the behaviors they have the opportunity to model reinforce the importance of money, status, "success"... When I take the time to really look at this closely, it's incredibly deeply ingrained in us. I believe it can be transcended (in fact, I like to think that's exactly what many of us are doing here) but it ain't easy.

[Birch]

I've come to think that the principle of taking advantage of others for personal gain is insidious in our (international, in fact) culture and society. We preach that winning is not important, "it's how you play the game" but when did anyone celebrate the loser of the superbowl? We give plenty of lip service and teach our children about love and compassion but most of the behaviors they have the opportunity to model reinforce the importance of money, status, "success"... When I take the time to really look at this closely, it's incredibly deeply ingrained in us. I believe it can be transcended (in fact, I like to think that's exactly what many of us are doing here) but it ain't easy.

I never was told that just taking part was all that mattered. I recall that winning was the most important thing. Of course i didn't win all the time so I felt extremely inadequate in myself when I didn't. I didn't do anything I didn't have a shot at winning at. This makes for a pretty stunted and uncreative existence BTW. I don't recall learning that others had to lose out as a consequence of my winning though.

 

Ironically I took this same attitude with me into meditation practice. Big mistake. You can really hurt yourself.

[Shen Chi Jing]

From what I've learned, 2012 is related to a Baktun.

 

According to Samael Aun Weor, the real beginning of the end is related to a Katun, around 2040-2043.

Edited December 10, 2011 by Shen Chi Jing