Three Mayan Calendars Confusion

That the ancient Maya used three calendars is, at first, very confusing. You want to say, “Why couldn’t those people have had one simple calendar like we do.”

The three calendars of the ancient Maya are:

1. The 260-day ceremonial calendar which we call the Tzolkin (It was referred to as the ch’olk’ib (or day count) in Spanish colonial document.) No one knows what the ancient Maya called it. The Tzolkin kept a record of all the ceremonial religious days of the year. It was composed of 13 groups of 20 days.
2. The Haab calendar of 365 days is the most closely similar to our present 365 day year – 366 days in a leap year. The Haab consisted of 20 months of 18 days plus five extra “evil” days which were spent in fasting and penitence.
3. The Long Count Calendar represents an era of about 5,125 years. Correlated with Western calendar dates, our present era began on August 11, 3114 B.C. and will end on December 21, 2012. On December 22, 2012, the Long Count Calendar will start on day 1 again in the same way our centuries last for 1000 years and start on day 1 again.

Carol Chapman

The Nine Underworlds of the Maya

In his article “The Nine Underworlds,” Swedish researcher Carl Johan Calleman, Ph. D., says that the three most important pyramids of the ancient Maya were built in nine levels to represent the nine levels of the Mayan underworld.

The three most important pyramids he refers to are:

1. The Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque
2. The Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal
3. The Pyramid of Kukulcan in Chichen Itza

In the article, which is printed in The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities, he says that the nine levels represent nine different creations. Even the Maya today reenact ceremonies in which they honor previous creations, for example, a previous world in which monkeys, not man, had prominence.

Carol Chapman

Are You Translucent?

I feel so encouraged and full of hope after reading  Aruna Ardagh’s article,“The Clock is Ticking,” in The Mystery of 2012. Ardagh is the author of The Translucent Revolution which reminds me of the pivotal 1987 book The Aquarian Conspiracy in which author Marilyn Ferguson relates her delight in discovering that all over the globe people who may be isolated from each other are, nonetheless, conspiring, in the sense of “breathing together,” toward a realization of oneness with each other and with the world.

Ardagh goes further by similarly revealing that people all over the globe who may be isolated from each other and unaware of the other person’s experiences may, nonetheless, be experiencing not only realizations but also an awakening of oneness with all life. He calls these people “translucent” because the light within them shines through them. This awakening goes further than a mental understanding. It heralds a physical and mental awakening to the spiritual.

The translucents live life with a knowing that they are not separate from others. And, many people in all walks of life and in all areas of the world, are experiencing this awakening.

A lovely article and very hopeful. Do you know what Ardagh is talking about? Are you feeling it too?  Are you “translucent?”

Carol Chapman

Ancient Maya of Classic Period Not Atlanteans

In yesterday’s post I said that American’s great psychic Edgar Cayce had said, in trance, that the ancient Maya had come from Atlantis. Since Atlantis had been destroyed by 9,000 BC according to Plato, the Maya of the Classic period, from about AD 350 to 800 could not have been the ancient Maya Cayce referred to.

Carol Chapman

Ancient Maya Came From Atlantis

According to the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce, the ancient Maya were Atlanteans who traveled from Atlantis to the stable lands of the Yucatan before Atlantis went down into the sea.  

Therefore, their amazing astronomical abilities and their very accurate calendar system, including the Long Count Calendar,  originated in the technological prowess of the Atlanteans.

Carol Chapman

Did the Ancient Maya Disappear?

According to many researchers, the big mystery about the ancient Maya is that they appear to have disappeared from their cities which have now become ruins. Some believe they left their cities and simply walked into the jungle. Others, of a more esoteric bent such as Jose Arguelles, believe the ancient Maya were extraterrestrials who returned to their starry homeland.

In the third episode “Hunters of the Caribbean Sea” of the DVD Spirits of the Jaguar: The Definitive Portrait of the Land, Wildlife and Peoples of Central America,  the writers of this DVD claim that the ancient Maya decreased in population due to wars fought over territory.

They had denuded the food-rich natural lands around them to such an extent that they were immersed in territorial wars over their dwindling natural resources. They had farmed lands to depletion and had cut down jungle to where they had no more undeveloped land to expand into.

Sound familiar?

Carol Chapman

Precursors of the Maya

The DVD “Hunters of the Caribbean Sea,” which is the third episode of a BBC Atlas of the Natural World production entitled Sprits of the Jaguar: The Definitive Portrait of the Land, Wildlife and Peoples of Central America explores the Taino, the people who were in the Yucatan Caribbean lands when the Maya arrived.

Modern-day researchers believe the Taino came from South America, traveled in dugout canoes to the Caribbean Islands, and from there, to the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, now known as Riviera Maya.

I found this documentary interesting because of visiting Dzibulchultun, a Zona Archeologica, in the northern Yucatan Peninsula. The ruins there are supposed to date from a time before the prominence of the Maya and were likely made by peoples in Yucatan before the Maya arrived. Would these have been the Taino?

Carol Chapman

The Natural History of the Maya’s Land

In the DVD Spirits of the Jaguar: The Definitive Portrait of the Land, Wildlife and Peoples of Central America,  I learned that the Islands of the Caribbean originally  came from the Pacific and drifted eastward until they were stopped by the Bahama Bank.

At that time, North and South America were not joined together. Where Central American now resides, there was open water. The islands that made the Caribbean Islands drifted through this space between the continents.

Land masses drifted in to the space between North and South America from the Pacific Ocean. These land masses became Central America. All of this happened millions of years ago.

Carol Chapman

Ancient Maya DVD

I just learned from “The Lost Cities of the Maya,” a series of segments on informational DVDs called Secrets of Archaeology that the ancient Maya made their books from the bark of fig trees. The bark was flattened and folded like an accordion.

These are the books that the Bishop of Landa burned in the Yucatan town of Mani during a kind of Spanish Inquisition of the Americas. His aims was to wipe out the centuries of Maya culture and belief which he considered heretical.  

By burning the books, he also destroyed the history of these people. Afterward, he regretted his actions and spent years rewriting the books based on his memories of what they contained.

Carol Chapman

More from Jose Arguelles on 2012

As I said a couple of days ago, Jose Arguelles discusses the upcoming reset of the Mayan Long Count Calendar on December 23, 2012 in an article in The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies & Possibilities. He says that the ancient Maya were aware that we are in a galactic beam that started in 3113 BC.

He makes the analogy that this beam is like a wave approaching the shore. Since 1987 the wave has begun to crest. By 2012 the cresting wave will have broken and crashed into shore. At that time, we will no longer be in the vibrational beam which began in 3113 BC. As a result, we will begin a new evolutionary step.

He correlates the development of humanity with the Mayan Long Count Calendar with extends for 26,000 years or one cycle of the precession of the equinoxes–the time it takes the earth to make a complete circle against the distant stars. Evidently the beginning of your year falls in a slightly different place compared to the distant stars every year until it makes a whole circle.

The galactic beam which started in 3113 BC is one-fifth of this 26,000 year cycle. Arguelles shows how 26,000 years ago correlates with the beginning of humanity. Therefore, he believes that at the end of this cycle, we must experience an evolutionary change.

Carol Chapman