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Religion
2012: What Does It Mean?
By Devon Bates
There are many ready to share theories
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There is growing interest in the year 2012, or, more specifically, December 21st, 2012. The date appears in popular media often, described as everything from a potential paradigm shift to the "Mayan Apocalypse." There are consequently many people newly interested in learning more about this odd date and some are drawing conclusions based on the first things they stumble across about it, however accurate or inaccurate these may be. What does the date really mean? Persons I know who are skeptical of mainstream media and consider themselves open-minded are beginning to get involved in this new new-age belief system with apparently little awareness of what is involved and what it entails. I'm personally fascinated that a large, ancient cycle is coming to an end, but I remain agnostic as to what is implicated by it. I confess that I have a particular interest in the cycles of large spheres whooshing about space. This may have started when my mom borrowed from the Vancouver Public Library the National Film Board's Mirrors of Time, an educational animation about the history of the Gregorian Calendar. Recently I stumbled across The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth: Discovering the Sacred Geometry of the Ancients, by Robin Heath and John Michell. This book documents the mathematics involved in the design and location of Stonehenge and other stone monuments in the United Kingdom. The calculations required indicate humans knew thousands of years ago the size and shape of the Earth, as well as precise calculations of the length of the solar year and lunar month. This makes me think about how much information is lost over time. Whether by accident or by intentional destruction, scientific knowledge of the ancient peoples of Europe has been degraded by colonialism just as it has been for the first peoples of the Americas. What remains is difficult to study and disinformation surely ferments where real information is not prevalent. There is something distasteful in even well-intentioned people making up myths and claiming authority on ancient knowledge after coming to only a partial understanding of traditional histories greatly damaged by centuries of suppression. In particular, I am personally frustrated by the confusion surrounding the "13 Moon calendar," as opposed to the original Mayan calendrical cycles. It should be noted that the official website of the 13 Moon calendar does state that it is not the Mayan calendar but that it simply integrates “the ancient patterns and codes found in the Mayan Time Science." This doesn't stop others telling me about the "Mayan calendar," eager to look up my "Mayan day-sign.” I was interested in the 13 Moon calendar as well, until I learned about it. One unfortunate flaw is that it has only 365 days every single year. In one solar year, there are about 365.24218967 days. Various civilizations have compensated in different ways, and our culture's Gregorian calendar deals with it by having a leap year of 366 days every 4 years (with occasional exceptions). If there are always only 365 days counted off in a year, after four years it is about a day out of place with the sun, and after three decades it is more than a week off. One website about the 13 Moon calendar suggests I should let go of my attachment to February 29th and the idea of a leap year as it isn't real because time is a concept. This statement is really quite ironic, as the 13 Moon calendar is mainly flawed precisely because it can't let go of February 29th. More problematic than the 365 day year is the method of reckoning of 13 Moon calendar "day-signs" as they relate to the Gregorian calendar. A "day-sign" is one of the 260 signs the 13 Moon calendar borrowed from a Mayan calendrical system. It is composed of 20 “things” and 13 attributes. The 260 cycle is generally regarded as one of the oldest Mesoamerican cycles. Some speculate it may have been invented by midwives, as 260 days is about the average amount of time between the first missed menstrual period and birth. Have you ever entered a non-existing date into some online form, say June 31, only to have it end up as June 30? This is because the form was coded to ignore erroneous dates. Three quarters of the time, February 29th is an erroneous date, but every four years it is a valid date and a well-written program should reflect this. However, it seems whomever wrote the code for the converting of Gregorian dates to those of the 13 Moon calendar didn't take this into account, and as a result every four years two consecutive days have the same "day-sign": February 28th and February 29th. I've asked people, if each day-sign is unique and significant and worth tattooing yourself for, why does the same sign appear twice due to the workings of the very calendar you're trying to reject? Why is someone born February 28th, 1999 ("White Lunar World-Bridger") going to have a different "kin" from the person born the day after (March 1, 1999, "Blue Electric Hand") while someone born February 28th, 1992 ("Blue Galactic Monkey") will have the same "kin" as the person born the day after (February 29th, 1992, also a "Blue Galactic Monkey")? I've tried asking others on message boards about this, as well as why the extra .24218967 of a day shouldn't count. Mostly, it wasn't encouraging. I once got a reply to the effect of, "Well, when 2012 comes and we all harness our mental energies to stabilize the rotation of the planet, there won't be a leap year." It's hard to discuss things further with reasoning like that. This may not seem like a big deal. After all, who cares what people believe in? What business is it of anyone else if someone wants to be a "Red Planetary Skywalker" or "White Self-Existing Wizard"? It is crucial that a society foster freedom of belief. However, I also find it disquieting when a system of beliefs with glaringly obvious flaws begins gaining popularity, especially when these are flaws in things as objective as math and evident as the sun's apparent movement. When people willingly accept such obvious errors, one wonders what other premises they may accept without question. If we’re going to open our minds to new ways of looking at and doing things, why close it again when we come across questions like, "How the heck does this thing work if it only has 365 days?" I encourage people to research the actual Mayan calendrical cycles and not hope to find immediate answers. If you're just sick of the Gregorian calendar, check out the very practical Persian calendar, or look up on wikipedia the "solar term" of traditional East Asian lunisolar calendars. There is more very intriguing calendrical information and links on my website, devon8.com, for those wanting to look deeper.
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