Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Izamal

Another fantastic day working on the Yucatan Travel Video. I love remembering my visits to the wonderful colonial town of Izamal where the town’s people, modern-day Maya, live among the ancient Mayan ruins . Alas, an overzealous Spanish bishop, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, dismantled one of the pyramids and used its stones to construct a convent. Obviously, the location is a powerful sacred site. As it turns out, the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at this convent is attributed with having been an apparition because legend has it that the statue could not be moved from the convent. When we were there in December, the town had a huge celebration on her behalf complete with a carnival, a procession, and refreshments stands. Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimmage to the site.

December 21, 2012 Date Uncertain

As I’ve said before in this blog, and as I say in my lectures on, “2012, Edgar Cayce and the Maya,” the December 21, 2012 date has changed a number of times.

The change in date is the result of developments in the translation of ancient Mayan glyphs, the written language of the ancient Maya. The Mayan glyphs have only recently been translated by archeologists and linguists.

Modern-day Maya do not know how to read the ancient Mayan glyphs. Although many modern-day Maya speak their traditional language, they virtually lost their written language when Bishop Diego de Landa, fired with Spanish Inquisition zeal, burnt all of their books on July 12, 1562. These books were one-of-a-kind, meticulously transcribed codices written by shamans similar to scrolls produced by monks. They were irreplaceable . . . and they are all, except for 3 codices and parts of a fourth, gone.

It has taken modern scholars a long time to decipher the unusual ancient glyphs. Once they had the dates translated, they had to correlate the dates they discovered with the dates of the calendar we use, the Gregorian Calendar. In the process, the date for the end . . . and subsequent beginning of the new . . . Mayan Long Count Calendar has changed a number of times.

At the present time, December 21, 2012 is the agreed upon date that has been correlated with the Gregorian calendar as the date was that translated from the ancient Mayan glyphs.

But don’t hold your breath. That date may yet change again.

Carol Chapman