The 2012 Story (12 page)

The causes of the Classic Maya collapse were many, including changing weather patterns and erosion caused by deforestation and the burning of trees to make lime (used for plaster), as well as increasing greed throughout a proliferation of kingdoms and princedoms. Within the complex network of dozens of Maya cities of the Petén (northern Guatemala), a series of interrelated cascades, including environmental degradation, warfare, drought, and greed, began to take their toll. Populated by over two million people at its height around 750 AD, the Petén’s population dropped by two-thirds in the mid-eighth century. By 900 AD the Classic Maya civilization had ground to a halt. The last Long Count date was carved on the western periphery, at Toniná, in 909 AD.

But the Long Count tracking system did not end there; it just stopped being carved in stone. Just as time had “materialized” with the first stone carvings of the Long Count in the first century BC, it now dematerialized, relegated to the heads of day-keepers and perishable bark paper books. The collapse of civilization was much more severe in the Petén than it was in Yucatán, where Chichén Itzá, Mayapán, and other cities continued to thrive, although beset as usual by warfare and strife. Those cities, too, eventually were abandoned as a different style of culture arose.

It’s nevertheless clear that a healthy manuscript tradition developed in Yucatán. The fact is tragically apparent in the historical accounts of hundreds, if not thousands, of Maya books being destroyed during the Conquest in book burnings like the one at Mani in 1562. It is a sad and astounding fact that, given their prolific literacy we today have only four surviving Maya books. Fortunately, these remnants have provided intrepid researchers with enough information to reconstruct a great deal about Maya astronomy, religion, mythology, calendrics, and mythology. The bark paper books continued the Long Count tradition in Yucatán. But at some point after the collapse, the larger cycle of 13 Baktuns slipped into the background as a Short Count system was favored, emphasizing prophecy cycles of 13 Katuns. The new system was still congruent with the authentic, ancient calendar—there was no explicit break in the Katuns.

The Dresden Codex (one of the four surviving Maya books), believed to date to the eleventh or twelfth century but containing astronomical data going further back in time, contains an almanac called the Serpent Series. Research by Maya scholar Michael Grofe published in his PhD dissertation presents compelling new insights into how the distance numbers in the Serpent Series track very large astronomical periods.
²³
Grofe has determined that these distance numbers provide very accurate calculations for the sidereal year and the precession of the equinoxes. Subsequent research by Grofe and Maya epigrapher Barbara MacLeod has uncovered other precessional calculations connected to kingship rites in the inscriptions.

By the early 1500s a rich and elaborate tradition had tied the 13-Katun prophecy cycle (the Short Count) into rotating political duties, shifting power from one town to another over successive Katuns. This practice was not unlike the cofradia system employed by the highland Tzutujil Maya, in which different groups successively take their turns in charge of the religious customs.
²⁴
The 13-Katun prophecy system was fueled by the prognostications offered by the jaguar priests, the Chilam Balam (this name doesn’t refer to one specific person, but served as a title; there were many Chilam Balam from different towns). Many of these post-Conquest oracle books have survived and provide important information about the Short Count’s usage and survival through the centuries after the Conquest. They list years and Katun prophecies, and astute scholars have noted that they retain a continuity with the ancient Long Count.

For example, the Long Count date we previously discussed, 9.14.0.0.0, was the end of a “6 Ahau” Katun that ran from 692 to 711 AD. In the
Chilam Balam Book of Tizimin
we find a retrospective account that begins with this Katun, and sequences through the following Katuns with historical recollections of wars and rulers celebrated in the memories of the Itza people. It brings the accounting all the way up to the 6 Ahau Katun that began in 1717. The one right after this in the list is the 4 Ahau Katun, which began in 1737 and ended in 1756—exactly one 13-Katun prophecy cycle before the 2012 cycle-ending date.
²⁵

A festive ceremonial for the 12.0.0.0.0 Baktun ending in 1618 AD is recorded in the
Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel
. The Baktun 11 ending of 1224 AD was also recognized by the Yucatec Maya jaguar priests, so a knowledge of larger Baktun cycles was at least a footnote in the tradition, which nevertheless now preferred 13-Katun cycles over 13-Baktun cycles.
²⁶
One wonders if jaguar priests present for the 1618 Baktun ceremonial had the ability, or desire, to project forward one more Baktun to 2012.

I always found it interesting that the middle of the 13-Baktun cycle (6.19.5.0.0 = 550 BC) corresponds to the appearance of two pivotal historical figures, key avatars of Western and Eastern religion and philosophy—the Buddha and Pythagoras.

At any rate, it’s clear that all the Baktun endings during the 13-Baktun cycle were recognized in one way or another by the Maya. This includes retrospective calculations of Baktun endings in the distant past as well as projections to future ones, including the one in 2012. That the Yucatec Maya may have been aware of the overarching important of the one in 2012 is suggested by the language used in the various Chilam Balam books. British researcher and author Geoff Stray has carefully investigated this material and points out that Maud Makemson’s translation of the
Chilam Balam Book of Tizimin
infers a reference to a 13-Baktun ending, indirectly. It’s a passage often glossed as 13-Katun, but the original Yucatec phrasing cannot be translated that way. And the context is for a larger temporal period. Stray relates that “Four Ahau is the Katun for remembering knowledge and compressing it within annals” and explains:

Adding to this confusion, the continuity of the Short Count system was disrupted by a calendar reform in 1752. The pressures of acculturation, historical distancing from the origins of the calendar tradition, modernization—all these factors made this dislocation inevitable. Perhaps agents of cultural assimilation had infiltrated the ranks of the Maya calendar priests.
²⁸
For whatever reason, a new standard was implemented in which the 13-Katun prophecy cycle was altered. Now a 24-year period would be used. Why this was preferable is not clear. The impending completion of the 4 Ahau Katun in 1756 offered a perfect 13-Katun time resonance with the great 13-Baktun cycle ending in 2012, but divisiveness and confusion must have ruled the day. Whatever the motivations of the innovators, the result was clear: one more notch of dislocation for the ancient tradition.

Maya tradition in Yucatán during this time was experiencing other death blows. In 1761 a well-respected Maya leader and Christian theologian named Jacinto Canek led a short-lived uprising against Spanish landowners. He traveled the countryside and visited towns, observing the conditions of his people and their relationships with the Spanish overlords. He did not like what he saw. After a religious ceremony he spoke to the people:

Within days of this speech Canek was involved in a clash in which a Spanish merchant was killed. The Maya people rallied around Canek the same day and crowned him their king. Within a week an armed Spanish militia arrived and the Maya were overpowered, five hundred being killed in a fire set by the Spanish. Canek and some guards escaped but were soon apprehended. They were immediately condemned to death. Eight of his closest followers were hanged and dismembered, and their body parts were sent for display in outlying villages as a reminder of the price to pay for disobeying the overlords. Jacinto Canek was himself publicly tortured in the plaza at Mérida, his flesh ripped from his bones by hot pincers and his bones broken one by one with heavy metal bars. At some point during this torture, he died. His body was then burned. If anything symbolized the dislocation of Maya tradition in Yucatán, it had to be this event.

Continuity of the calendar after this period of time is dubious, possibly explaining why calendrical counting got more confused and why the 260-day tzolkin was eventually lost in the Yucatán. “Katun prophecies” in Yucatán (the
Books of Chilam Balam
) expressed a lingering legacy that has served as a germinal catalyst for modern prophets and visionaries, since it contains classic elements of prognostication and prophecy, much like the Nostradamus prophecies that Westerners know so well.

Only the barest fragments of the Long Count can be found today. Michael Coe wrote that the Yucatec Maya believe the current World Age is to end in the year “2000 plus a little,”
³⁰
but it’s unclear whether this information comes from modern sources or ancestral lore. In highland Guatemala, a Jacaltek Maya legend called “Man of Lightning” mentions the dire events of the Oxlan ben (Oxlan = 13; be = road), which Victor Montejo believes might be a reference to the end of 13 Baktuns in 2012.
³¹
But exactly
when
the 13th Baktun is to conclude was not preserved; the Long Count had slipped away.

The complete loss of the Long Count following its latter-day echoes in Yucatán brings us to the cusp of the rediscovery of the ancient Maya civilization. By 1800, just when the final glimmer of the accurately timed Long Count-Short Count faded out, an interest in the Maya grew among Europeans and Americans fueled by rumors that the jungles of Mexico hid a lost civilization. In 1839, Catherwood and Stephens mounted their expedition. Perhaps there was still time for the Long Count to be pulled back from the brink of oblivion and brought back to life. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

CHAPTER THREE

SEDUCTIVE SPELLS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve always been interested in how the 2012 meme first entered public awareness. We saw in Chapter 1 how it was floating around as something that could have been extrapolated from Goodman’s charts as early as 1905, when his correlation was published. It could have been easily extrapolated with Thompson’s incomplete table of 1927, and again with Morley’s 1946 appendix (in his book
The Ancient Maya
), but it wasn’t until Coe’s book
The Maya
, in 1966, that the end-date of the 13-Baktun cycle was actually computed and discussed, albeit briefly. Unfortunately, although Coe subscribed to the correct correlation, the date he reported was off by one year and three days. December 24, 2011, became the date adopted by other authors. The sad fact of the situation is that the popular treatment of the Maya’s 2012 calendar, misinformed at the very get-go, has been confused ever since.

In 1967 Tony Shearer, the great-granddaddy of the Mesoamerican calendar movement, self-published a pamphlet called
The Sacred Calendar
. Part Native American, Shearer abandoned a lucrative career in Denver’s news media and nurtured his deepening relationship with Mexico and its mysteries. In 1971, Sun Books published his
Lord of the Dawn, Quetzalcoatl: The Plumed Serpent of Mexico
. It explored the spiritual content, as he saw it, of the Aztec and Toltec Sacred Calendar of 260 days, the
tonalpohualli
. Shearer’s travels in the 1960s led him from Denver to Central Mexico and the state of Oaxaca, where he wandered the ancient Zapotec capital of Monte Alban and visited contemporary Mazatec Indians living in remote villages. He fell in love with a new life and nurtured an inspired poetic vision of the ancient calendar’s power to spiritually awaken and transform those who learned to follow it.