from PlayasNation.com
There is such a buzz about the Mayan Calendar right now – when it ends, what it means, and which one to use. Since the Mayan Calendar serves as the foundation of the 2012 movement, I want to clarify some of the concerns surrounding it. In this post and the next three I’ll cover the basics of what you need to know to understand how the calendar shapes the whole 2012 picture and how it can provide value for you.
This need to clarify the Mayan Calendar arose out of an effort last week to write a post on how time is speeding up. As I started to write, I realized that time acceleration can most easily be explained by the Mayan calendar. With that in mind, I could see that I needed to lay some ground work about the Mayan Calendar as there is much confusion surrounding it.
So when we say Mayan Calendar, the first thing you need to know is that there is not just one Mayan Calendar. There are several. The Mayans had as many as seventeen calendars for many purposes such as crop planting, sacred ritual, to follow special planetary patterns, etc. Mayans were amazing timekeepers and were able to track time over long periods very accurately. They developed a complex set of calendars that go back many thousands of years and some experts feel as far back as the big bang.
For our purposes, there are only three you need to know about – The Long Count, the Tzolkin and the Haab. The Mayan Long Count Calendar marks a cycle of 5,125 years that ends on December 21, 2012. The Tzolkin is a 260 day sacred calendar that is woven into the Long Count. It consists of 13 repeating numbers and 20 day signs. You may be familiar with the signs which have names like monkey, serpent, jaguar, wind, etc. The Haab is the Mayan Calendar that has 365 days just as our Gregorian calendar does.
What contributes most to the confusion is that there is no agreed upon starting and ending time for any of these three calendars. Various experts have different ideas about the timing of each calendar. There are two end dates given for the Long Count although most people agree with the Dec 21, 2012 date. There are three versions of their 365 day calendar and none start on January 1. One starts on July 26 one on the spring equinox and the other one varies. Because the Tzolkin is tied to the other calendars, there are also three different start dates for it. So you can see there are no defined black and white lines here. By now you may be thinking that all of this sounds confusing and if experts cannot agree on one calendar, then why not chuck the whole thing! I urge you to take a different stance and be willing to look beyond the confusion to some of the amazing concepts the calendar presents.
Each version of the calendar has made a huge contribution to the understanding of what these changing times we are living in are about. A key concept that you’ll see repeated over and over in this blog is that we need to look at a zone of time in which the 2012 events are happening, rather that put so much focus on a specific date.
There are three main experts who have researched the calendar and I want to honor the work of each man. There is not agreement amongst them on many facets of the calendar; however each man gives us an important piece of the whole picture. As a way to model the new consciousness of the New Earth, I want to focus on the contribution each person has made and how that contributes to our awakening rather than try to resolve conflicting views or figure out the “right” date.
The three men are Jose Arguelles, who brought 2012 to the attention of the world. His calendar is known as the Dreamspell. John Major Jenkins is responsible for discovering the galactic alignment of 2012 and he works with the traditional calendar of the Quiche Mayan. Carl Johan Calleman’s work shows how the calendar measures, not just time, but the evolution of consciousness and how time is accelerating. He also works with the traditional Mayan calendar but uses a different end date. The one thing all three men agree upon is that the calendar does point to a major consciousness shift on the planet.
You may be wondering if there are Mayan spokespersons for the calendar and where they fit into the picture. There are three main Mayan elders that I see in the media from time to time – Don Alejandro Cirillo Perez Oxlaj, Hunbatz Men, and Carlos Barrios. Rather than focusing on a specific date, their main focus seems to be on the message that the calendar does not predict the end of the world, and on the bringing together of indigenous people for ceremony and sharing of knowledge.
In my next post, I will discuss the work of Jose Argüelles and the Dreamspell Calendar. The following two will be about the contributions of John Major Jenkins and Carl Johan Calleman.
In summary, I want to emphasize that there are several versions of the Mayan Calendar, all focused on a consciousness shift that is causing an awakening. And secondly, that what’s more important than waiting for a specific date for the shift to happen is to understand that we are in a zone of time right now in which the shift is happening. And lastly, that by working with concepts from the calendar, we can understand the unfolding of cycles such as our current economic situation, increase our attunement to nature and the universe, and be more prepared for the consciousness shift now occurring.
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