Mayan Calendar and 2012: 7 Myths and Why it’s a Non-Event, Despite What The Exploiters Say

Remember “Y2K”? Consider the noise surrounding 2012 and the Mayan calendar to be similar.

The alarmists and poetic New Age opportunists who promote their tall tales while tugging at your heart strings with “heart-centered” communications will move on to other things in 2013.

Yet another correction in the financial markets will probably take place in 2012, along with extreme weather conditions around the globe and other calamities, but none of it will be any more out of the ordinary than any other year over the past several thousand. Even if E.T.s landed on the White House lawn in 2012, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the Mayan calendar.

Do yourself a favor and refuse to accept feel-good prose mixed with half-truths and outright myth as fact. Escapism and Hollywood-esque science fiction isn’t “spiritual,” it’s just a means for profit for the New Age snake-oil salespeople while taking you on a ride to nowhere.

We highly recommend fact-checking everything in films/books centered on 2012 and the Mayan calendar. Stories of catastrophe and doom sell and there’s a huge market for such misinformation.

The Mayan calendar is a perpetual calendar, it had to end/start over again at some point, and it isn’t the most accurate calendar when you compare it to others throughout history.

December 21, 2012 is merely the first day of the Mayan calendar 13th “b’ak’tun” (144,000 day cycle), and when a new 5,125.37 year (1,872,000 days) cycle begins. Just as we begin our modern calendar (which is a more accurate time keeping system than the Mayan calendar: http://tinyurl.com/yzqyxar) on January 1st, the longest cycle in the Mayan calendar starts anew every 5125.37 years.

7 Myths surrounding 2012 and the Mayan calendar:

1. The New Age 2012 authorities speak of “transcending many of the worst prophecies already…” (and if you buy their next book and attend their seminars, you can transcend the others too).

2. The “future of humanity” is not at stake and there is no “critical crossroads, evolutionary jump and shift in consciousness, and radical transformation,” in connection with the Mayan calendar and 2012.

Humans have always been spiritually progressing for eons, and everyone’s evolution is unique and transpires at various rates. For some, the year 2012 may be a very important year, for others not at all. And that goes also for the years leading up to and following 2012.

Additionally, as humanity moves beyond each decade, century, and millennium as reflected in our modern calendar, there always have been and always will be adjustments and shifts of varying degrees (e.g., year 999 to 1000 AD): they are gradual, and represent different things to everyone depending on their unique personal charts.

3. The Mayan calendar (Tzolkin) has not predicted “…every eclipse (and other astrological phenomenon),” as some 2012 exploiters claim.

4. There is no “galactic alignment, occurring for the first time in 26,000 years.” At this time, Earth is approximately 30,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Also, viewed  from Earth, the Sun will only appear to be in the center of the Milky Way, and this “alignment” happens every winter solstice (yawn).

5. Your “spiritual parameters” aren’t dissolving at this time (leading up to Dec. 2012) to allow you to “create the reality you want...” That’s just another false-hope-for-profit scheme.

6. “Everything” is not leading up to 2012 and things are not “coming to a head.” The magnetic fields aren’t weakening, the Sun has not “already lost its poles,” and the Earth’s poles aren’t melting any more than at any other time in recorded history.

7. The Mayans said nothing about disaster and doom, financial or otherwise in relation to 2012. The recent financial crisis has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar and 2012--it’s an extremely tenuous link.

Prediction is all about pattern recognition. In order to establish a reliable pattern you have to note every time there is a significant, regular juncture in the cycle. In this case, the Mayan calendar, it’s every 144,000 days (394.3 yrs. in our modern calendar), or every 5,125.37 years for the longest Mayan calendar cycle.

However, you must look at multiple cycles/indicators (Scott relies on over 500 in his systems of analysis) to get  reasonable accuracy rates, in particular how the universal cycles relate to you personally (personal cycles).

At the start of each 144,000 day/394.3 yr. Mayan cycle, you’ll find these years in our modern calendar (besides 2012), going back in time: 1618; 1224; 830; 435; 41, etc.

Notice that none of those years coincide with any of the most significant financial crises in recorded history, as outlined below?

*Tulip craze/collapse of mid 1600s

*South Sea Company craze/collapse early 1700s

*Railway mania bubble in mid 1800s

*Stock market crash of 1929

*Dot.com crash of 2000-2001

*Mortgage/credit crisis 2008/2009

(The Great Railroad Bubble is one of history’s worst financial collapses: Speculators in Britain spent more than 25% of GDP, the equivalent of $4 Trillion today.)

It could very well be that we’ll see another financial markets/credit collapse in the near future (e.g., 2016/2017); everything is cyclical, including boom to bust financial cycles, and they have nothing to do with the Mayan calendar.

The 2012 story-tellers who exploit an impressionable audience’s thirst for escapism should be seen for what they are: myth propagators and profiteers.

We believe that end of the world scenarios and Mayan "prophesy" that promises ruin and transformation for all of humanity are 100% entertainment. It’s deplorable that so much New Age content is full of fabrications and falsehoods. It’s just an opiate for the uninformed and adds to the colossal body of evidence that exposes the bulk of the New Age industry as a racket.

“…(the interpretation of 2012 as a doomsday or ‘cosmic-shift’ event is) a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” Sandra Noble, executive director of the Mesoamerican research organization

“There is no serious scholar who puts any stock in the idea that the Maya said anything meaningful about 2012.” David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Copyright © 2010 Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo