THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE BEHIND THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE SHIFT OF WORLD AGES
Miguel A. Sague Sobaoko Koromo
Beike Bo
Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle
Mayan Calendar and the prophecy of the Five World Ages
In this series of posts I intend to present our understanding of the
Mayan Calendar's prophetic meaning and its relationship to the
changes occuring in the present time.
To understand what is commonly referred to as the "World Age Shift"
of the year 2012 one must understand the version of the ancient Mayan
calendar system now known by the name "LONG COUNT". The Long Count is
only one of several different day-counts that the ancient Mayas
maintained in order to derive sense and meaning from the continuous
passing of time. It was used in unison and in combination with
several other systems of measuring time and was seen as a part of a
harmonious whole, composed of many individual parts.
The basic most fundamental element of the Mayan counting system was
the 24-hour period we know as the "DAY". The ancient Mayas called
it "kin" (pronounced "keen").
Days were perceived to run in cycles of twenty, and each one of those
twenty days in the cycle had a special name that imbued that day with
specific symbolic power and potential. In the Yucatec variant of the
Maya language the twenty named days were called Imix, Ik Akbal, Kan,
Chicchan, Cimi, Manic, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men,
Cib, Caban, Eztnab, Kauac and Ahau.
As I said earlier, the ancient Mayas maintained several different
counting systems. In each one of these counting systems the order of
the named days was slightly different. In the counting system now
known as the "Long Count" the twenty days were always counted in a
cycle that began with the one that the ancient Mayas called "Imix"
(Imix was assigned the position of "First Day") and ended with the
one called "Ahau". In the Long Count, these periods of twenty days
were called "uinals".
In other time-counting systems used by the ancient Mayas the
beginning named day would be a different one each year. For example,
in the system known as the "Haab" the sequence could start on any one
of four special named days that were considered New-Year's Day. This
means that on a specific year every twenty-day cycle of the Haab
system would start with the day Ik and end on the day Imix. On a
different year the twenty-day period might start with the day Manic
and end on the day Cimi, and so on. In at least one counting system
that the ancient Mayas maintained, a system now known as
the "Tzolkin" they did not seem to recognize any one of the twenty
named days in particular as a "beginning" day, viewing the cycle as
more of an endless circular sequence with no beginning and no end.
This particular counting system combined a series of 13 numerals
depicted in the form of dots and bars, with the aforementioned
sequence of twenty named days. This combination yielded a cycle of
exactly 260 days.
As I mentioned earlier, the ancient Mayas understood all time to be
composed of cycles. These cycles were organized in such a way as to
be grouped. Small cycles were grouped together to form middle-sized
cycles and middle-sized cycles were grouped together to form large
cycles. In some ways the organization of Mayan time cycles in the
Long Count system resembled the Gregorian system of twelve months to
a year, 100 years to a century and a hundred centuries to a
millennium.
Aside from the obvious fact that the Mayas thought in terms of
twenties instead of tens and hundreds, the other difference between
the Gregorian system and the Mayan Long Count was that the Mayas
believed that when each cycle ended the humans who were counting
these cycles actually returned to a psychic or phenomenological place
synonymous or equivalent to that experienced at the very beginning of
the cycle. Endings of cycles were perceived as a kind of return to
the beginning where things could be done over and a better result
could be attempted. They saw these as a kind of "second chance". They
also saw beginnings of cycles as a kind of "death-birth" process,
much in the same way that the Gregorian year-end is seen as the "old
age" or "death" of an "old year, and the New Year is seen as
the "baby". The big difference between the Gregorian and ancient
Mayan perception of cycles is the fact that in the Gregorian it is
all seen as a long linear process in which there is always forward
progress from cycle to cycle, with one cycle ending and the new one
taking its place. The ancient Mayan perception of a cycle was very
literal, and circular. They actually perceived the end of a cycle as
an actual return to the beginning. The death of one cycle was not
seen to portent the beginning of a new and different cycle. It was
rather seen as the event that preceded a "resurrection" of sorts of
the same cycle. The old cycle itself (not a separate successor) was
expected to be reborn, begin anew, and make the journey all over
again. This was a process that went on and on, repeating
indefinitely. In a sense, humans also were seen as a kind of re-
incarnation or resurrected manifestation of their dead ancestors,
making the life-journey yet again as the ancestor had done before.
This concept even applied to younger generations of divinities and
gods, who were seen as reincarnations or new manifestations of older
gods.
Most of the basic time elements into which the ancient Mayas
organized their days or "kins" were cycles that for the most part
were based on multiples or factors of the numbers twenty and
thirteen. These two numbers held extremely powerful symbolism to the
ancient Mayas and they cropped up time and again in their sacred
numerology.
In the Long Count, the kins were initially grouped into a cycle of
twenty units called a uinal (as mentioned earlier). These uinals were
grouped into the only cycle in the Mayan Long Count system that did
not utilize either the number twenty or the number thirteen, or any
of their multiples or factors. This cycle was called a "Tun". It only
contained 18 uinals, which yields a period of 360 days. This is
almost certainly designed so that its length approximated a solar
year of 365 days. That's why I sometimes like to call the tun a "near-
year" and I sometimes refer to a period of a hundred tuns as a "near-
century".
Twenty tuns constituted a cycle called a "Katun". Twenty katuns
constituted a cycle called a "Baktun". A sequence of thirteen of
these huge quantities of time (baktuns) was perceived to represent a
great cycle now popularly known as a "World Age". The World Age was
made up of exactly 5,200 tuns and is reckoned to be in the vicinity
of just a little over 5,100 years in length. The present Mayan World
Age began on the date August 11, at a time reckoned by the Gregorian
Calendar as the year 3114 B.C.( a day considered by the Mayas as "Day
One" of the first Baktun) and is scheduled to end on December 21st in
the Gregorian year 2012 ( the last day of the thirteenth Baktun).
But the ancient Mayas saw this enormous 5,200-tun long period of time
as a segment in yet an even larger sequence. This larger sequence was
a cycle composed of five of these World Ages, about 26,000 years.
There is very strong evidence that the concept of these five World
Ages perceived as a combined unit of 26,000 years was arrived at by
reckoning the amount of time it takes between the approximate date in
one era on which the Winter Solstice sunrise appears to conjunct
exactly with the dead center of the Milky Way Galaxy in the eastern
horizon, and the next era in which this same astronomical phenomenon
occurs again. It turns out that this occurrence was discovered to
repeat almost exactly every 26,000 tuns, almost 260 centuries. That
is equivalent to a little over 25,000 years and is associated to a
phenomenon now known as "Precession of the Equinoxes".
Coincidentally, there are several other facts concerning the Milky
way Galaxy that relate to this enormous period of time. It takes
approximately 260 centuries for light emitted at the bright glowing
center of the Milky Way Galaxy to reach the earth. Moreover, it takes
approximately 260 centuries for the Milky Way Galaxy to complete a
full revolution upon it axis.
It takes roughly 260 centuries for light emitted at the bright
glowing center of the Galaxy, to reach Planet Earth. The light that
arrives on Earth from the Heart of the galaxy (The Heart of Heaven)
is a vehicle transmitter of important cosmic/spiritual information
which originates at the very center of the Universe itself. This
information is most likely coded in binary language. It is understood
by some researchers that this binary-code information is further
translated and decoded by passing through the solar orb. That can
only happen at moments of alignment when the galaxy, the sun and the
Earth are perfectly in line with each other. At those rare moments
there is a concise focusing and perfect interpretation of the vital
information originating at the Center of the Universe which is being
transmitted through the heart of the galaxy and from there through
the center of the sun and then finally to the earth. An alignment of
this kind is scheduled to occur on the Gregorian date December 21st
in the year 2012. This kind of Winter Solstice alignment only takes
place once every 260 centuries.
This huge length of time is equivalent to exactly five Mayan
Calendar "World Age" cycles. The ancient Mayas almost certainly
noticed the auspicious numerological parallel between the product of
the two sacred numbers 20 X 13 = 260, and the macrocosmic equivalent
in the length of the Precessionary process, 26,000 tuns, which in
effect is 260 tun "centuries" long. Because the number 260 is the
product of twenty and thirteen it is just as sacred a length of time
as the two individual numbers themselves that make it up. Furthermore
all of these numbers had symbolic significance associated with the
measure of humanity which made them very spiritually relevant to the
ancient Mayas. Twenty is the number of the fingers and toes in a
complete human. In fact, the word "uinal" is associated with the
word "uinic" in one dialect of the Maya language. The word "uinic"
simply means "a human being". Thirteen is the number of joints in the
human body. 260 is the number of days it takes for a human embryo to
gestate in a human womb, nine months. That is the reason that the
number 260 is very closely associated with fertility, birth and re-
birth. In terms of the Long Count the 260 centuries present a broad
macrocosmic gestation period. In that respect, this enormous period
of time represents the gestation of an epoch in the history of
humanity, in other words, an "Evolutionary Cycle".
Installment# 2
Mayan Calendar and the prophecy of the Five World Ages
It turns out that the beginning of the present 260-century
Evolutionary Cycle of five World Ages began during the Ice Age in
human pre-history, at around 24,000 B.C. At the time that it began,
humans as a species found themselves scattered over the whole surface
of the habitable planet. People at that time lived in small nomadic
family or clan units. They wandered over the primordial landscape
making their living primarily from the hunting of large Ice-Age
animals, most of which no longer exist today. The human species, had
expanded out of its original homeland and spread itself out, over a
long period of time, so widely over the surface of the earth that
most individual groups lost track of each other. The far-flung
species began to evolve into different varieties, each suited to the
lifestyle in the continent and habitat that it had populated.
Physical adaptation to different environments caused variations in
race. By the year 24,000 B.C. the human species had evolved into the
wonderful multiplicity of different colors and features that is its
global hallmark today. Prolonged geographic isolation of individual
groups from each other, and of individual races from other races
created wider and wider variations in physical characteristics and
cultures, producing not only differences in the way the bodies of
different people looked, but also in the way they dressed, the food
they ate, the languages they spoke and the traditions that they used
in their daily lives.
By the year 24,000 B.C. humanity had become such a successful species
that population groups were increasing in size. This increase in
number made it inevitable that the various widely dispersed human
groups had to eventually begin to bump into each other. Radically
different cultures began to meet by chance in remote areas where
their territories came together. These meetings, most likely were
dramatic, perhaps even traumatic, because it is most likely that
before meeting their long-lost human cousins, each group probably
believed they were the only human beings in existence, and that all
other living things were animals or plants. This belief in their
uniqueness as humans had, long ago, moved each tribe to give
themselves tribal names that essentially identified them simply as
humans, as opposed to a particular group of humans among other
humans. For example the tribal name for the North American indigenous
Cheyenne nation "Tsistsistas" simple means "Human Beings". The tribal
name for the Navaho "Dine" likewise means "The People" and so forth.
There is an irony to the phenomenon of ancient human groups meeting
each other for the first time after thousands of years of
evolutionary separation. It was a grand re-union of long-lost
relatives, to be sure, but it was also so traumatic that it
inevitably led to conflict. It is very likely that after the novelty
of the first meeting wore off, different tribes may have begun to
face off across the racial-cultural divide as enemies and may have
begun to skirmish with each other with lethal consequences. My guess
is that Ice-Age conflict probably amounted to nothing more than an
occasional, brief fist-fight, or even a knife-fight or club-fight
involving no more than a handful of men at a time, and very small
loss of life. Daily life was still quite a scramble at that point in
our evolution and the struggle to stay alive probably made any
concerted dedication to real organized warfare impossible. And so the
process of re-agglutination or re-unification of the species had
begun in earnest after many thousands of years of separation and
isolation, and this process promised to be a relatively peaceful one,
in spite of the occasional human inclination to resort to violence
and to abhor that which seems different.
Humans in the year 24,000 B.C. were just beginning to take their
first firm assertive steps into the realm of practical spirituality.
This supernatural and intellectual endeavor manifested itself in
ritual behavior, behavior that externalized metaphysical
understanding and attitudes that had probably been experienced
internally, privately, and on an individual level by the pre-human or
proto-human precursors of these Ice-Age people for eons before this.
The important difference between these was that, previously, all of
these attitudes were almost exclusively internal, private and
individually experienced, because of a lack of ability to express
them effectively to each other, or to share them. All humans
experienced this reality in isolation as private, internalized,
individualized metaphysical emotions. They were not fully aware, or
did not fully understand the fact that others felt the same urges and
experienced the same feelings. The unique spiritual powers that could
be derived from these experiences could only be derived by one person
at a time, privately, in isolation, and could not be shared. The
combined, coordinated wisdom of the human community could not be
taken advantage of to its maximum potential by humans. In terms of an
intensely social species such as humanity, this kind of isolated
individualistic experiential state was a distinct disadvantage. Even
if the pre-human or proto-human ancestors of these Ice-Age people
attempted to communicate these feelings to each other using the
medium of the spoken word, it is likely that their rudimentary
vocabulary lacked the appropriate flexibility to do justice to the
complexity of human spiritual experience.
A new and unique system of communication was needed to establish a
communal spiritual experience. When that system finally emerged it
emerged in the form of the human activity called "Shamanism".
Shamanism was the most effective outward expression of internal
spiritual thinking. It was behavior that externalized strong inner
urges and motivations. It materialized in the form of a collection of
behavioral patterns and emotional attitudes that allowed any given
individual in the human community to express the hither-to, long-
hidden inner knowledge of spiritual reality to other individuals. In
a way, this new development amounted to a form of "publication", the
act of externalizing in a very public and demonstrable way the
spiritual inspirations of the individual inner self. Because the
metaphysical elements that one individual was externalizing were
instinctively shared in common, in one way or the other, by all of
the members of his or her community, and each member of the community
was able to recognize in it a reflection of his or her own personal
experience, the externalization and publication of the experience
became a group endeavor.
The new tradition of spiritual "publication" that emerged in the form
of a collection of external behavioral patterns was fresh and
innovative. One indispensable aspect of this collection of behavioral
patterns eventually evolved into what we now call "The Arts". The
Arts manifested as part of a series of ritual and symbolic actions
and activities that eventually came to be associated with all
spirituality. It also became associated with almost every important
aspect of a person's life-cycle and accompanied each important
transitional life-event including birth, adulthood initiation and
even death.
Originally, artistic expression was shamanic expression. There was
never a distinction between the two. There was no such thing as "Art
for Art's sake". The Arts were strictly the handmaiden of
spirituality. All art was sacred art. Art was always produced in
association with ritual and spiritual behavior. They were always an
external representation of the inner spiritual reality and they
provided the individual with the most effective medium for expressing
that reality to the broader community.
All of the arts were part of this continuum. Music, Dance, Poetry,
Drama, and of course the graphic and plastic arts of painting,
drawing and sculpture were included in the sacred mix. The artist,
the individual who surfaced as most talented and most capable in the
ability to produce Art, became the first spiritual guide, the first
shaman. Highly skilled dancers, singers, musical instrument players,
dramatists, story-tellers, and those who could produce paintings,
drawings and carvings were singled out as shamanic facilitators of
the community. Into this company also entered those who had the
capacity to observe nature for curative natural elements, and acquire
from the natural environment through the power of refined
observation, the proper materials that could be used in the
concoction of medicines. Because artists often have acutely refined
sense of observation, these same individuals often-times managed to
develop the ability to produce the desired healing.
It is obvious that shamanic behavior and its concomitant partners,
ritual/artistic behavior, and the human commitment to a covenant
between the human species and the Earth Mother with her promise of
life and fertility began during the period of the last Ice Age,
around 260 centuries ago, a time period associated with the beginning
of the first 5200-tun-long World Age of the Mayan Calendar Long
Count. The production of shamanic Art that began around the year
24,000 B.C. was prolific. Once the process began, not only did those
early humans, over a span of almost three full 5200-tun Mayan
Calendar World Age periods, leave a large body of extraordinarily
compelling artwork in the form of spiritual and shamanic paintings,
drawings and sculpture, but some of this artwork seems to represent
tantalizing hints of other less durable forms of ritual artistic
expression such as dance, music, and dramatic storytelling. One
remarkable drawing shows a man dressed in an animal disguise of some
kind, complete with a set of deer antlers on his head. This man
appears to be crouching in a kind of dance pose, not unlike magical
dance poses and postures assumed even today by shamanic dancers who
impersonate animals.
The fact that humans began expressing their spirituality in an
extroverted, communal manner during the beginning of the great 260-
century period means that this point in time was a moment of dramatic
innovation in the history of the species. Art and its accompanying
complex of shamanic-ritual expression afforded humanity with a new
and very much improved vehicle for the development of philosophical
reasoning and sharing. The birth of "Spiritual-philosophical
publication" catapulted the human species unto a long and eventful
cyclic journey of consciousness evolution. The production of shamanic
Art and accompanying shamanic ritual behavior was a deeply spiritual
experience, but the wonderful fact about this phenomenon was that the
consumption of the Art was also deeply spiritual. Even as the shaman-
artist became released of ordinary reality and was allowed to
transcend to the level of non-ordinary reality by the profound
experience of his or her creative activity, so his or her fellow
community-members also were equally caught-up in the magic, equally
transported and freed to transcend ordinary reality as they consumed
the product of his or her labor. They shared in the creative process
of the artist-shaman and therefore the producer and the consumer of
the magical activity were bonded into one powerful spiritual unit. It
is important to note here that much of the Art was consumed in more
than just a passive observational manner. This Art was not a museum
piece that the consumer had to refrain from touching and had to watch
in deferential silence. An exquisitely decorated musical rattle,
created by a skilled artist for another person was actually used by
its non-artist owner in communal ritual and ceremony, and the power
of its esthetic magic influenced the value of the owner's spiritual
experience. Esthetics was at the heart of the shamanic experience,
and the power that a skillfully executed piece of artwork, whether it
was a well-performed song or dance, or a breath-takingly monumental
wall painting became the very essence of that experience. Faint but
persistent echoes of that ancient reality remain in the modern-day
experience of a person who enters an Art museum and is confronted
with a piece of artwork so emotionally compelling that he or she, no
matter how culturally removed from the ancient shamanic relationship
between Art and magic, has no choice but to exclaim: "That was a
religious experience!" and in fact, it was!
It is important to note also that human metaphysical/spiritual
expression, as manifested presently in the species, is fundamentally
a product of this process which began developing around 260 centuries
ago. The reason for this is that the process continued to develop
relatively uninterrupted and stable for a period of three full 5,200-
tun long World Ages. This amounts to almost 15,600 years of psychic
evolution within the framework of a Divine Covenant between humans
and the Spirit of Mother Earth. At the end of that period of time the
Ice Age slowly melted away and humans began to evolve into the
creatures that we are today. As a result of the amount of time that
our distant Ice-Age ancestors remained under the stable influence of
the spiritual covenant, we humans inherited a powerful inclination
for adherence to that covenant. Deep down inside we are still
fundamentally a product of that early 15,600 years of Ice-Age
development. Throughout that whole period of evolution, humans
enhanced and perfected the system of spiritual expression called
shamanism and created of it an almost perfect vehicle for the
communal "publication-sharing" of the spiritual mind. Through the use
of music, dance, painting, drawing, sculpture, drama, poetry and
story-telling, shamanism became the first form of media and its
message was the content of the profound covenant that had been forged
between humanity and the sacred spirit of Earth Mother in the year
24,000 B.C.
We know that the beginning of this process took place at the
beginning of the 260-century journey of what the ancient Mayas
identified as this present Calendar Long-Count Sequence. We know this
because the Art of that remote era has survived to this day, has been
scientifically dated, and it gives us a dramatic glimpse at the way
in which those early ancestors manipulated that Art to create of it
the powerful communal spiritual publication medium that it eventually
became. The product of that revolution demonstrates to us that humans
at that time enthusiastically charged into areas of technology and
invention that had never been explored before. New tools, materials
and supplies had to be invented to create and maintain the new
shamanic Art. Ingenuity and innovative spirit were at a premium.
Durable paints were chemically concocted by painters grinding special
powders and dyes and mixing them skillfully. Carving tools were
invented by sculptors. Innovative, scientifically-based acoustic and
imaging strategies intended to enhance the visual/auditory experience
of a dramatic presentation were developed by story-tellers,
pantomimes and dramatic dancers. Malleable modeling substances had to
be adapted from raw natural clays and the technique for their
elaboration had to be technologically perfected by ceramicists who
experimented skillfully with firing temperatures and clay types. New
musical instruments were produced by musicians who became experts at
manipulating sound through the use of manufactured acoustic objects.
It was all new and inventive and the technological process itself was
as stimulating as the aesthetic end-result of the process. We still
see exciting examples of the way in which this process was shaped in
the contemporary activities of modern-day shamanic Earth-based
societies such as the K'ung tribes-people of the Kalahari Desert of
South Africa, the Indigenous nations of the Amazon River basin and
the rainforest dwellers of the New Guinea interior.
It is interesting to discover that at this present point in time,
here at the very end of the 260-century cycle. Humanity is undergoing
a similar revolution. The present-day explosion in accessible media
and communication has brought the means of publication and
information dissemination back into the hands of the philosopher and
the metaphysical explorer, the present-day shaman. Whereas this
access to media had been limited for centuries to a privileged few
with dubious or outright malevolent agendas, it now is again
accessible to those for whom it was originally meant. This revolution
is almost identical in character to the one that happened 260
centuries ago. Again, as in that distant Ice-Age era, the means for
publishing the genuine internal human spiritual experience, the means
of sharing that powerful essence of the soul which all humans need to
share is accessible to those who are most fit to work with it. It has
happened through a revolutionizing of technology, very much like the
revolutionizing of media technology that took place in 24,000 B.C.
I believe that shamanic inclinations and the committed adherence to
the covenant between the various human groups and the Earth Mother,
combined with the on-going preoccupation with survival may have
helped to control the human inclination to become selfishly
aggressive, and may have kept cross-cultural and interracial
hostilities to a minimum as individual ethnic groups continued to
come together more and more across the globe.
The process of global re-agglutination of the species seems to have
continued progressing at that rate and at that relatively peaceful
pace for thousands of years. Then something happened and the process
of metaphysical publication was taken out of the hands of the
spiritual dreamers and it was transferred into other hands.
Two complex questions surface here: "When did the process of shamanic
publication drift away from the hands of the dreamers and magicians
who first created it?" and "How and why did this sad event take
place?"
We can add to those two questions a further query; "What is the
significance of the fact that this access to publication has returned
to the reach of those for whom it was originally intended, now,
roughly 260 centuries after it was initially instituted?"
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March 2008 News Reports
Last updated on March 13, 2008