The 2012 Story (53 page)

Kay Warren, in her cultural section of the Pan-Mayanism entry, notes that “indigenous activists have confronted powerful stereotypes” and in response “Mayan-identified activists have created hundreds of organizations and institutions in the 1980s—including research institutes, publishers, training centers, libraries, and training groups—to identify the vitality of indigenous language and culture.”
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Out of this process a Pan-Mayan identity is emerging, one that is predicated on shared beliefs, customs, and values among many different Maya groups speaking different languages. A truly universal level of Maya tradition has been found in this process. This Mayanism highlights the common values and goals of diverse Maya communities, based on the core elements they all have in common.

Some of these shared qualities and values are elaborated in Montejo’s article “The Road to Heaven: Jakaltek Maya Beliefs, Religion, and the Ecology.” While his Oxford entry on Pan-Mayanism focuses on political struggles, this article is much like a companion piece that explores folklore and religious beliefs. He states that the theories advanced to explain the “primitive religions” of indigenous people are unsatisfactory. Early anthropologists were likely to explain Maya traditions as a product of magical thinking and superstitions, a laughable belief in ghosts and protective prayers motivated by a fear of the unknown. This is the typical view of scientism toward indigenous practices, and Montejo rightly observes that “Western scholars have tried to explain indigenous religiosity from a Eurocentric point of view.”
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He identifies the reference point of
nature
as a common thread of indigenous Maya beliefs, one that might be considered the hinge point of Mayanism. Cycles in nature, patterns in the sky and in agricultural rhythms, life cycles of animals and plants and human beings were all joined under the unifying umbrella of nature, Mother Earth and Father Sky, or as the Quiché Maya say, “all the sky-earth.”
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“Earth and Heaven,” Montejo writes, are “the generators of life and happiness.”
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This viewpoint provides a reference point for a pan-Maya identity and a satisfactory framework for a correct understanding of the term “Mayanism,” stated in the work of a Maya intellectual and professor of anthropology who provides “an indigenous perspective,” arguing that a “concern for the natural world, and the mutual respect this relationship implies, is constantly reinforced by traditional Mayan ways of knowing and teaching.” Importantly, he formulates his thoughts on this pan-Maya basis of Maya spirituality in terms of what we could call a realized Perennial Philosophy: “For indigenous people, the environment and the supernatural realm are interconnected. This holistic perspective of human collective destiny with other living creatures on earth has a religious expression among indigenous people.”
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I interpret this as coming from the perspective, or value position, in which ego is already placed in right relationship with the unitary consciousness; Seven Macaw has successfully been transformed into One Hunahpu. The fourth point in Huxley’s elucidation of the Perennial Philosophy, in which the purpose of human life is to live in the awareness of eternity, has been achieved. Paradoxically, this can occur only when the full life-and-death whole is embraced, something indigenous cultures are much more adept at than Western Eurocentric cultures, which deny death and thereby drive their citizens less elegantly toward it.

Victor Montejo’s book
Maya Intellectual Renaissance
is an important resource for understanding the political, mythological, and social implications of a burgeoning Maya revival. He specifically suggests that the 2012 cycle ending is a critical component of this process. Framing the entire discussion within the emergence of a new Maya leadership taking the world stage (e.g., Rigoberta Menchú), Montejo explains “the present revitalization of the Maya culture in terms of its place in history, as occurring in the ‘pro phetic’ cycle of time, the oxlanh b’aktun.”
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The word “oxlanh” means 13, and “b’aktun,” or “b’en,” refers to the Baktun period of the Long Count. Montejo points out that the phrase “Oxlanh B’en” was found in a Jakaltek Maya folk-tale he documented and translated, called “El Q’anil: Man of Lightning”:

The context of the phrase makes sense, and Montejo believes it is a late reference to the 13-Baktun cycle ending. This is pretty interesting, but as for the literal meaning of the story, we should always take this kind of information with a grain of salt, not placing undue emphasis on it as a literal, inviolable prophetic utterance. Information like this gets filtered through a dozen storytellers over many centuries, and each adds and subtracts his own energy and thoughts. The idea of the final line, that “we will finish off the enemy,” takes on political urgency or threat to enemies of the Maya. Its metaphorical meaning seems to derive, however, from the scenario in
The Popol Vuh
when the Hero Twins defeat “their enemies,” the Dark Lords of Xibalba, at the end of the story, thus ushering in the new cycle and the rebirth of their father.

Historically, the Maya have often reasserted their self-determination at cycle endings in the calendar. The Caste War in the Yucatán, for example, was driven by a prophetic voice coming from the “Talking Cross” at Chan Santa Cruz toward the culmination of a Calendar Round. Today, as the end of the 13-Baktun cycle approaches, Montejo suggests that the Maya renaissance is a part of a millenarian phenomenon he calls the “b’aktunian movement.”
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This movement, which grows with the emergence of Pan-Mayanism, will inform and define the true Maya identity. I see this as a
true
identity as opposed to
new,
because the process seems to be more about a revival, an awakening, than the creation of something new. New elements, however, will unavoidably come into play as the Maya integrate themselves, as they always have, with new environmental and political realities, so a bit of both perspectives must be acknowledged. The
true identity
can be understood as existing at the essential core, while changing patterns of outer identities morph along the surface.

Change at the husk (the surface) and the seed (or core) is the essence of a beautiful paradigm of time that the Tzutujil Maya call
jaloj kexoj
. Spirit (
k’ex,
essence) and matter (
jal,
form) unfold in tandem. The priority of the seed-identity is necessary in the same way that spirit has priority in informing the ever-changing patterns of material forms. The Tzutujil Maya doctrine of jaloj kexoj goes hand in hand with another conception called “Flowering Mountain Earth”
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in which reality grows, like a flowering mountain, outward from the spiritual essence as it becomes all the many things of manifest existence. Mayanism is concerned with the collectively shared seed-identity, and the Baktunian Movement is concerned with reestablishing and maintaining correct orientation between ego and Self, between matter and spirit, between indigenous and colonial mind-sets, to empower Maya leaders. This formula is similar to the mandate obeyed by ancient Maya kings—establishing within themselves an integrated shamanic conduit between sky and earth, between this world and the other world, and through that role they were empowered as political chiefs.

Montejo writes that “Prophetic expressions of the indigenous peoples insist on the protagonist role that new generations must play at the close of this Oxlanh B’aktun (thirteen B’aktun) and the beginning of the new Maya millennium. The ancestors have always said that ‘one day our children will speak to the world.’”
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And, again, the role of 2012 in Montejo’s conception is clear:

Montejo’s observation not only helps us understand the concept of Mayanism (in which the spiritual values taught in
The Popol Vuh
are realized) but also helps us understand the indigenous attitude toward nature, one that is sustainable and diametrically opposed to the dominator style of colonial Western civilization. The Maya Renaissance can and should have a wider sphere of impact, one that speaks to the global crisis created by unsustainable, nature-destroying practices that need to be transformed at their roots in the collective consciousness.

Other scholars doing parallel work in elaborating the values of the “pan-Maya movement” include Garrett Cook and Robert Sitler. In his book
Renewing the Maya World
, Cook explored Maya rituals of renewal, identifying modern traditions as survivals of ancient rites. This means that, as I explained elsewhere in the book, the modern Maya do indeed retain ceremonial period-ending practices intended to facilitate transformation and rebirth. What Cook calls the modern “millenarian myth” of the modern Maya is simply another way of talking about the end of a great cycle, much like the role of the World Age in the ancient
Popol Vuh
. As such, Cook writes that “the millenarian myth depicts world transformation as a sunrise.”
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Importantly, the modern performances and ceremonies that are designed to depict and facilitate this “world renewal” are traceable back to the archetypal structure of
The Popol Vuh
. In his own comparative methodology, Cook outlines a five-step functional process in this Creation Myth, which is essentially identical to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey: engagement or contest; imprisonment; emergence or rebirth; reengagement; and defeat (of enemies).

I’m sure that my previous identification of Maya teachings as being part of a perennial wisdom tradition, or universal mythic pattern (Chapter 8), struck some readers as highly dubious. But here we can see a Maya scholar outlining the same position. This is a problem I’ve encountered frequently in academic work—the facts are presented but the obvious remains unstated. Cook writes: “The Twins’ Xibalba episode, read as a script for a performance, is the prototype for a major Quichean rite of renewal.”
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(By Quichean Cook means the modern Quiché Maya who preserve the perennial essence of the ancient
Popol Vuh
teaching.) At the end of the rite the Hero Twins sacrifice themselves, as Quetzalcoatl did, by throwing themselves into the fire. This self-sacrifice, as we will explore more deeply in the next chapter, is the key to successful transformation and renewal. Are these not central ideas within the Perennial Philosophy? These ceremonial rites are intended to be observed at cycle endings, and the primary metaphor is the sun, which moves through many cycles of birth and death on different temporal levels, from the day cycle to the year cycle to, by analogy, the larger World Age cycle. Clearly, these contemporary “millenarian” ideas could be mapped onto the 2012 cycle ending, and Victor Montejo has himself adopted this rather obvious approach.

Among Maya day-keepers, spiritual guides, and political leaders, this is a time of great debate and intellectual tumult. How do they think about 2012? Is it consistent with these rites of renewal, or do some speak of doom? Robert Sitler, professor of modern language and literatures and director of the Latin American Studies program at Stetson University, has had a passionate interest in the Maya since early adulthood. He has described a spiritual experience he had at Palenque with his future wife, June, in the 1970s, as the launching point for his career. It is rare for an academic scholar to have integrated his spiritual inspirations with his professional vocation. Robert was the first scholar to publish a detailed treatment of the 2012 phenomenon (in 2006), and he has continued to record and document contemporary Maya attitudes about 2012.
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Sitler’s work with the contemporary highland Maya reveals, not surprisingly, an entire spectrum of thoughts and ideas. My hope is that the voices which express ideas congruent with the ancient message of sacrifice, transformation, and renewal be elevated above all others because they retain a continuity with the ancient perspective. Anyone spewing unalloyed doomsday should be suspected of engaging in a cheap and easy knockoff of the ancient wisdom, in the same way that newspaper horoscopes don’t accurately reflect the profound nondual astrological principle of “as above, so below.” This is not to exclude statements that are tempered with warnings and observations about the crisis facing the world. That is inevitably part of the package, but notice that many of the following statements address both the dire situation at hand as well as possibilities for healthy change. Free-will choice is an implicit undercurrent. As Maya leader Don Alejandro points out, 2012 was prophesied as a time of change and a new dawn, but the “task to be finished” involves human engagement and choice: