Mayan Prophecies

One of the things Mayans have been best known for is their detailed prophecies, the most famous one marking the end of the world. I was lucky enough to find (well, okay, my mom found) an hour special on the History dealing with the Mayans. While most of it didn't deal with my topic directly, I really feel as though it has provided me with a much better understanding of who the Mayans were and how they lived. While the Mayans weren't too advanced in technology, they over-exceeded in astronomy and mathematics. Before telescopes were even invented, they were making observations and calculations about our universe that even surpass us today. An amazing example of this is the pyramid of Kukulkan, a structure truly like no other. Each year at 3:00 P.M. on the Spring and Fall equinox, a shadow forms a serpents body down the north staircase, connecting with a sculpted head the base of the pyramid. It can be interpreted as the serpent coming from the sky and entering the underworld. Some believe this to be one of many warnings Mayans showed to reflect the catastrophic event which has yet to come. But another amazing thing about this is that it is actually a 3-D calendar. There are 91 steps on each side plus the platform on the top (365 days).

One of the Mayans' most obvious awareness was their awareness of time. The Mayans created a brilliant system of calendars that scholars say is actually .001 of a day more accurate than what we use today. This calendar is actually made up of 3 calendars. The first (and biggest) is the solar calendar (Haab), which is most like our calendar today. It holds 365 days with 18 months of 25 days, plus 5 days which were considered unlucky. The second calendar is the ceremonial calendar (Tzolkin), which holds 260 days. The third calendar is in the Tzolkin and has 13 numbers assigned with 20 day signs. This calendar is used to understand dimensions of human experience. For example, it's made up of 260 which is roughly 9 months, the normal pregnancy. This calendar was used to unite the prophecies of Heaven and Earth. Anyway, these 3 calendars would combine to make the Calendar Round. It moved like a cog, each days lining up in a specific way, only repeating itself every 52 years, which was the average life span of a Mayan. See the connections? Just like the circle of life, the calendar had cycles. The picture I have here isn't in English, but it has the best diagram showing what the calendar looked like and how it worked.

Stay tuned, because it gets better. Mayans actually had another calendar called the Long Count. The Long Count begins with the mythological beginnings of the Maya and transcends individuals and kingdoms. Through collection of data, experts believe to have pinpointed date to beginning of the Long Count to be August 13, 3114 A.D. and the end to be December 12, 2012 (Doomsday!). The Long Count consisted of katuns, which took place of 20 years. Katuns were Mayan formulated prophecies that would repeat every 260 years. See, unlike the Mayans, we see time as more of a line, whereas they see it as a circle. They strongly believed that history repeated itself. A man named Chilam Balam wrote out what would take place between these periods of time (guess he had a lot of time on his hands). Many people have found eerie occurrences that have occurred in recent katun cycles.

Examples:

• Katun 13-"This is a time of total collapse where everything is lost. It is the time of the judgment of God. There will be epidemics and plagues and then famine. Governments will be lost to foreigners and wise men and prophets will be lost."--1520 when Spanish invaded Mexico--1776 when the American and French Revolutions occurred
• Katun 5-"A time for misfortune, rulers and their subjects separate-the people lose faith in their leaders. Leaders may be harshly treated, even hung. There is also an abundance of snakes, a great famine, and few births during this period."--1855 during Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln
• Katun 8-"A time of demolition and destruction among the governors, an end to greed, but much fighting. A time to settle in a new place."--during the Mayan times, their major city collapsed--1960's with the war and assassination of another president
• Katun 6-"A time of bad government and deceptive government. There is also starvation and famine."--Watergate--Iran-Contra Affair--crusade to end hunger in Africa
• Katun 10-"There is trouble in the land once again. This Katun brings drought and famine and is a time of foreign occupation, change, and sadness."--World War II--collapse of Mayan empire
• Katun 2-"For half there will be food, for others misfortunes. A time of the end of the word of God. A time for uniting a cause."--2012 with events yet to come
  

Currently we are in Katun 4 (1993-2012). This reads as a time of remembering knowledge and harrowing the start of a new age. It also states that a supreme deity will return to Earth at this time. The Mayan religion is not the only religion, as you may know, to believe that their deity will return once more at a time of great destruction. Also, as I may have explained, specific days on the calendar have explanations as well. On September 11, 2001, is was written to be a day representing change; the day the United States invaded Afghanistan represented a day to settle or balance.

Now, the ambitious side of me gets really interested and excited (and possibly a tad scared) with all this news. I mean, how many coincidences can you have, right? Perhaps the Mayans were really on to something here! Perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to ignore this "superstition". But the skeptic part of me knows that in reality, almost all these Katuns we could find examples for for all time periods. It's like when you read your horoscope and get really creeped out because it fits so well. But have you ever read any of the other horoscopes? We subconsciously pick out points in our day that could make the horoscope work. So I really feel that could be what's happening with the Katuns.

In any case, many scholars have been at work to try and figure out why Mayans pinpointed 12/12/12 to be the end of the world. Astronomers have found that in December of 2012, the sun will be lining up with the center of the Milky Way which only happens every 26,000 years. As I've said, in Mayan religion, they discovered a dark rift in the center of the Milky Way that they believed to be the entrance to the Underworld. This could very well be the reason they picked this day. My theory was that they spotted a meteor and calculated it to crash on Earth on that day, which I don't believe will be true (we can only hope). I suppose in this case, as they say, only time will tell.