The Maya conceived of time and human history as moving in cycles, small and large. While we use a single calendar to keep track of our annual solar circuit and to mark all of the important days within a year, the Maya used a variety of calendars. The array included a 365-day solar calendar; a 260-day sacred calendar and a Long Count calendar that operated something like an odometer with a zero start date. Unlike the other calendars the Long Count clocked linear time and was programmed to stop after 5,125 years elapsed.The Long Count was begun at the onset of this current cycle, known as the 5th Sun, in 3114 BC. It will clock the required number of years to complete a full cycle of five suns on December 21, 2012. John Major Jenkins has made the case that this date corresponds to two major alignments, (one between the winter solstice sun and the galactic equator; the other an approximate one between solstice sun and galactic core) and it also completes the Great Zodiac precession cycle of 26,000 years.
The Maya began their Long Count on what they referred to as the ‘Birth of Venus.’ Scholars have never been able to determine what the Maya were referring to and neither have alternative researchers. Nevertheless their sacred calendar, the Tzolkin, placed the synodic cycles of Venus in a central role. The 104-year ‘Venus Round’ cycle (2 Calendar Rounds of 52 years each), was a very important ceremonial event as this was the point in time when the solar and sacred calendars realigned with the cycle of Venus.
An important numerical progression needs to be inserted at this point to provide a basis for the rest of the article. The number thirteen was a root number for the Maya. It is both a prime number and the eighth number in the crucial Fibonacci series that is one source of the Golden Ratio, 1.618.
If we use 13 as the root of the Mayan calendar system we find the following sequence: 13, 26, 39, 52, 65, 78, 91 and 104, which are achieved by simply adding 13 to each succeeding sum. These are the key numbers in the Mayan calendrics and they have a solid scientific footing. Venus was the central component of the Mayan cosmology. It is for good reason that our nearest planetary neighbor is called earth’s sister planet. They have a phase-locked orbital cycle that is based on a 13:8 ratio. That is derived from the fact that Venus revolves around the sun 1.6 times faster than Earth so that 13 Venus revolutions is equal to 8 years.
Why is this important? By establishing Venus as the key component of the sacred calendar they automatically built the Golden Ratio (1.6) into the system since that ratio defines the difference between the two planets orbital cycles. By using 13 as the root number they also included the crucial multiples, or powers, of thirteen - 13,000 and 26,000 - or half as well as the full number of years in the precession. We see that the 5 Suns, each lasting 5,125 years, also add up to the Great Zodiacal Year. We can break these numbers down in different ways and each will show that there was nothing arbitrary about the Mayan system. We somewhat arrogantly disdain other cultures for being superstitious until we come to the number 13 and our own irrationality surfaces. But let’s examine how deeply embedded this number - as well as 26, 52 and 91 - are in our own calendar. Our year is divided into four seasons that are demarcated by the equinoxes and solstices.
Each of the four seasons is 91 days or 13 weeks long, which gives us a year of 52 weeks. We see the key Maya 13-base numerical progression reflected in our own calendar. Half of a year is 26 weeks. It is beyond the scope of this article to delve into all of the intricacies of the Mayan calendrical and mathematical systems; they were extremely adept in these fields.
What has been uncovered during decades of research into this topic are two crucial keys to understanding the system: the ‘Transit of Venus’ and solar output cycles. It just so happens that the 2012 end date corresponds to a Venus Transit cycle that occurs twice in the next 10 years in 2004 and then in 2012. As mentioned above Venus was central to the Mayan cosmology. The Long Count began on what the Maya call the “Birth of Venus” so it is perhaps not too surprising that it ends on a Transit of Venus.
This research has revealed that a Transit of Venus occurred in 1518 and 1526. This was the period when Cortez landed on the shores of the Yucatan and wound up conquering the Aztec empire. The next transit was in 1631-’39. It was followed by a complete stoppage of the sunspot cycle, which lasted for 70 years (science has no explanation for this event). The ‘little ice age’ occurred between 1645 and 1720. What do we find associated with the next transit in 1761-‘69? We discover the birth of the American Revolution.
There is no doubt that the Transit of Venus was an important divinatory alignment factored into the Maya calendar. We will not have to wait for long to test this theory and also get a glimpse of 2012 during the ‘passage’ years. But in reality as Jose Arguelles and others have pointed out the precursor years began in 1987 and the final stages of this cycle really kicked into gear in 1991-’1993. How do we know? There has been a tremendous surge in the number and magnitude of natural disasters and this was also forecast as a harbinger of the 5th Sun’s demise.
13,000 years is a very important time period since we know that the last ice age ended then. This indicates that there is a periodicity to the solar output cycle. There are short and long term fluctuations in solar output and as a result great ice ages, little ice ages and warm inter-glacials, which we are in nearing the end of now.
The cyclical nature of the long range weather patterns are well established is are the variable nature of solar activity. We know that that is true since we have been in a ‘global warming’ period for the past 300 years. The “little ice age” started to thaw in the early 1700s when the sunspot cycle returned. The level of solar activity has been increasing steadily from that ‘zero sunspot point’ right up to our recent sunspot cycles in 1989-‘90 and the double peak in 2000- ’02.
Is it a coincidence that 2012 also coincides with the next solar sunspot maximum? The actual peak of this 300-year cycle of increasing solar output occurred in 1960 when the number of sunspots exceeded 200, the usual peak is around 100-150. Now, what is interesting is that during the first half of the 20th century the Earth’s seismic and volcanic activity were comparatively quiet.
Then after 1960 the level of seismic and volcanic activity increases steadily to the point that the 1990s can accurately be called the ‘decade of disasters’. The surge in major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions radically departed from earlier decades. According to the chief scientist for the world’s largest reinsurance company Zurich Re, “since 1960 natural disasters are a growth industry.”
There is hardly the need to mention “global warming” since it is constantly in the headlines. However, the truth is obvious for those that care to see it. The Earth has been warming for 13,000 years with periodic short-term cold spells. However, solar output is the forcing mechanism behind global warming and the 5th Sun is intimately tied to that phenomenon. What does the end of the 5th Sun really mean?
This can be taken very literally to mean that the sun’s output is going to change. We are going to enter the flip side of a new 13,000 year cycle. The earth is overheated and so is the sun, the result being planetary instability manifested in rising earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and erratic weather patterns.
These will increase further starting in 2004. The volcanic ash will create more and more cloud cover and that will begin to cool the planet down. If my theory is correct the Maya knew that the Venus Transit acted like a circuit breaker switching off the sunspot cycle and impacting the Sun-Moon-Earth-Venus system. This appears to have happened just prior to the previous two ‘little ice ages’ that were preceded by what solar physicists call the Spoorer (1400-1510) and Maunder Minimum(s) 1640-1710), periods of radically diminished solar activity.
The Venus Transit will trigger the demise of the 5th Sun and set the stage for the next cycle, the 6th Sun. That is the physical side of the Maya 5th Sun forecast. Unlike many predictions this one is built into the Maya calendar and it can be verified with some historical research. Is the world going to end in a violent crescendo of natural disasters and impacts from cosmic objects? This is not likely to be the disaster anticipated nor is it what the Maya predicted.
However, a prolonged period of change is on the horizon that will be ushered in by the 2004 – 2012 ‘passage’. It will culminate in the galactic alignment and complete the processional cycle at that point.
Source: Diagnosis 2012
