The 2012 Story (33 page)

Stray acknowledged that scholars weren’t necessarily keeping the information to themselves, but noted that their cliquish exchanges revealed their true feelings—John Hoopes’s mock comment, “It’s amazing how quickly word gets around the Web (It wasn’t me, honest!),” and Stuart’s reply, “Thanks, John. I’ll believe it wasn’t you!”
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Another well-known scholar elsewhere likened the 2012 people who actively interject their observations and comments on the academic e-mail forums to “a pit of vipers.”
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I wrote an article on the Tortuguero inscription, pointing out that the mere presence of Bolon Yokte Ku, a usual suspect in Maya Creation narratives, suggested that the Maya therefore thought about 2012 as another type of Creation event, analogous to the one in 3114 BC.
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I also pointed out that the deity may be present on the important San Bartolo murals recently found in the Petén and on one caiman-tree image at Izapa, both of which involve very early pre-Classic Creation Myth scenes.

More information about the importance of the Tortuguero inscription came two and a half years later from epigrapher Stephen Houston, although his new analysis was claimed to show that the 2012 reference “has nothing to do with prophecy or the supposed, dread events that await us in AD 2012. About that the Maya are notably silent . . . or, truth be told, a bit boring.”
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Of course, he was right on this assessment, but like Stuart he was interpreting whatever meaning might be attributed to 2012 through the filters of what New Age people believe it is about—some kind of “prophecy.” The implication, again, is that the Tortuguero 2012 reference doesn’t tell us much, end of story. This was a case, as events unfolded, of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Houston’s analysis, posted on the epigraphy blog he runs with David Stuart, showed that the 2012 date was linked by a distance number to the dedication of a building, probably the sacred enclosure that once housed the monument containing the inscription. Such a practice was common. The Maya would often invoke Long Count dates in the past or future, usually a Katun or Baktun ending, to be present to witness the building’s consecration and ritual birth. Deities associated with cycle endings in the Long Count had a special role, as they oversaw the end-beginning nexus that any cycle ending in the Long Count represented. Their ceremonial presence, being invoked for a temple’s inaugural birth, was both meaningful and logical.

I decided to reply to Houston’s post in the hopes of engaging a dialogue, and wrote:

The blog was silent until almost a week later another reader suggested that the Maya might have been interested in cycle endings happening in the near future, but doubted they would be interested in invoking cycle endings occurring very far off into the future. I responded:

I suggested that the established conceptual relationship between “house” and “cosmos” could help us understand why a 13-Baktun ending would be an appropriate reference point for a seventh-century building dedication. The analogy between house and cosmos would provide the needed meaning to correlate the “seating” and “creation” of the cosmos with the creation/ dedication of a building. In this light, the 2012 date apparently did have meaning for the ancient Maya—its associated deity (Bolon Yokte Ku) could oversee and consecrate the ritual birthing of sacred temple buildings. There’s nothing outlandish about this at all. My observations were apparently not something that Houston wanted to reply to, even though he himself had investigated the symbolic relationship between house dedications and cosmological Creation imagery.
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If I may state this delicately but bluntly: A logical deduction of great relevance was ignored, or withheld. These guys are brilliant, and I can’t believe that they simply didn’t notice it. Why they would want to forestall progress on understanding how the Maya themselves conceived of 2012 is baffling.

Instead of being “boring,” what the Maya were saying about 2012 on the contrary was rather extraordinary. It meant that 2012 was thought of as a cosmological Creation event worthy of being invoked for a building dedication. In our culture, freemasons played active civic roles and would often be called upon to dedicate a courthouse or other civic building. Often, a corner-stone was laid into the building containing the Masonic year (counting from 4000 BC), a reference to their own calendrical creation moment. What the Maya at Tortuguero were doing is thus not so surprising, except that they invoked a future Creation event, revealing that the 3114 BC and 2012 AD cycle endings were thought to be like-in-kind Creation events. These deductions are pretty straightforward.

The analogy between house and cosmos can also be applied the other way around. Building dedications are typically identified with the
och k’ak’
glyphs, meaning “his fire entered.” Bringing light and fire through the doorway into the building is the ceremonial rite that gives birth to the building. We can thus easily picture the analogy with 2012: the solstice sun’s light and fire enters the portal of the dark rift, giving birth to a new cosmos, a new era of 13 Baktuns. As it turns out, a complete reading of Tortuguero’s inscriptions, and understanding the role of its seventh-century ruler Balam Ajaw, leaves little doubt that 2012 was understood by the Classic Period Maya exactly as I’ve suspected—as a cosmological renewal signaled by the alignment of the solstice sun and the dark rift.

Yale graduate Dr. John Hoopes has been active on popular e-list discussion boards, such as the Tribe 2012 Yahoo group, which he now moderates. I’ve had many engaging debates and exchanges with Dr. Hoopes over the years, and he has had an active interest in all aspects of the 2012 phenomenon for some time. In fact, he has a particular interest in the popular manifestations of the 2012 meme, and was initially supportive of Daniel Pinchbeck’s book
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
as it was about to be released in 2006 (providing prerelease announcements on
2012.Tribe.net
). By that time he had already developed a friendship with Pinchbeck, a burgeoning pop icon, and had hung out with him at the Burning Man Festival. After Pinchbeck’s book came out, Hoopes wrote that it was “disappointing that Pinchbeck, who claims substantial research and journalistic skills, did so little homework on Maya scholarship. His extensive bibliography cites only three references by academicians on the ancient Maya.”
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The book was apparently not quite what he thought it was going to be. His conversations with Pinchbeck must have led him to expect more interviews with scholars and less hype. As it turned out, the book revolved largely around Pinchbeck’s own psychological adventures and quandaries, the dénouement featuring his Technicolor encounter with the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, during an ayahuasca vision.

Dr. Hoopes professes an interest in my research, and indeed has engaged me in discussions on many occasions. No amount of reasoned argument and presentation of evidence seems to sway him from his views. For example, he sides with Justeson on fudging the solstice placement to make it seem not at all that unlikely to be a coincidence. Encouraging me to publish something in a reputable academic journal, Dr. Hoopes believes I can make my case more plausible to scholars. This may be true, but my experiences with academic journals have revealed entrenched resistance, not to mention issues with the perceived implications of my work. The deck is stacked against progress offered by outsiders. The excoriating treatment of Whorf by Thompson is ample testimony to this tendency in Maya studies. Nevertheless, I’ll probably stick my head in this guillotine, if only to document, once again, how facts are treated if the implications are unwelcome.

Currently working on his own book on the sociological phenomenon of 2012, Hoopes has contributed to creating and defining an entry on Wikipedia called “Mayanism,” which he used to label 2012-related books and ideas that fall under a carefully elaborated New Age profile:

I am listed as one of the authors published by publishing houses who promote this Mayanism, and my work is discreetly and more or less accurately handled. His sociological approach provides a valid new framework for approaching the 2012 phenomenon, and the concise summaries of the various topics described in the Wikipedia entry are handled admirably, although I disagreed with the appropriation of the term “Mayanism” from its original context.

I called into question his selection of the term “Mayanism” for his purpose, which takes on a pejorative flavoring.
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Several years ago I was beginning to use the term in my own writings, following the lead of Victor Montejo, a Jacaltek Maya scholar who survived the death squads in Guatemala in the 1980s, eventually moving to the United States to receive an MA from the State University of New York and an anthropology PhD from the University of Connecticut. He now teaches in California. He had used the term for a pan-Maya identity that shared certain characteristics, universal traits and beliefs and practices that would thus define Mayanism. This proactive use of the term was consistent with the positive use of similar terms, such as “Hinduism,” “Buddhism,” and “Sufism.”

Hoopes had appropriated a term already in use, defined by an ethnic Maya scholar, and inverted it to mean something essentially negative, to corral the host of imaginative New Age doomsday theorists and those who recognize many forms of knowledge, including both that acquired by scientists through discursive analysis and that acquired intuitively as direct gnosis. A definition of gnosis from the vantage point of perennial wisdom teachers such as Suhrawardi, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, or Frithjof Schuon should probably be added to the Wikipedia entry, for as it stands it casts doubt on the merit of knowledge gained through shamanic or visionary means. This is a situation full of irony, since the ancient Maya kings themselves employed visionary shamanism to gain knowledge (gnosis) that conferred upon them the right to rule. Scholars themselves, however, rarely language these facts about Maya philosophy so bluntly, instead preferring to cloak the truth in abstractions. I registered my complaint on Aztlan and to Dr. Hoopes privately.
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If Wikipedia is the arbiter of reality in any sense, then Hoopes has been successful at co-opting and inverting the term “Mayanism.” The endeavor is laudable, but the choice of terminology is misleading and unfortunate.

Hoopes spends a great deal of time moderating many different discussions on the 2012 Tribe website. His interest in 2012 lies not with the possibility of reconstructing authentic beliefs connected with it in the Maya tradition—I doubt he believes there is anything to be found there—but rather he wants to track the 2012 meme as it is interpreted through the filter of pop culture. Thus his interest in “Mayanism” and how such a thing, as he defines it, is manifested in my work, Argüelles’s books, Calleman’s ideas, and particularly in the recent book by Daniel Pinchbeck.

This arena can be fascinating, and Hoopes has uncovered a very early reference to 2012 in a parody newspaper published by beat writer William Burroughs in 1967.
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Hoopes also has pointed out that the very first connection between the end of the 13-Baktun cycle of the Long Count and an interpretation of cataclysm appears in Michael Coe’s 1966 book
The Maya
. He sometimes slides into conflating my work with the nonsense that floods the marketplace, and I always take him to task for it, clarifying what my primary intentions really are. He seems to have reserved a special category for me—a kind of holding pattern until further notice. The term “syncretism” appears in his Wikipedia entry, but it is used in a way inconsistent with how syncretism has actually occurred in Mesoamerica. He sees it as a blending of two different worldviews, altering the essence of each forever. My comments to him are as follows: