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John Major Jenkins in conversation with Doghead Cola “In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, Jenkins has shown that this precessional alignment of the winter solstice sun with the galaxy is the phenomenon in nature to which the ancient Olmec/Maya anchored their great calendar. Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 sets the stage for us to ask the deeper question: ‘Why?’ This would be an interesting question under any cicumstances; for us in these times it is doubly interesting, for we, by chance or design, actually live in the end time anticipated by the ancient Maya shaman-prophets. Their bones and their civilization have long since gone into the Gaian womb that claims all the children of time. Indeed, their cities were ghostly necropoleis by the time the Spanish conquerors first gazed upon them, five hundred years ago. Yet it was our time that fascinated the Maya, and it was toward our time that they cast their ecstatic gaze, though it lay more than two millennia in the future at the time the first Long Count dates were recorded.” Terence McKenna from his introduction Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 In recent years, John Major Jenkins has come to be renowned as one of the leading independent researchers investigating ancient Mesoamerican cosmology. His latest effort in that study, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calender End-Date, from Bear & Company Publishing, specifically explores the Mayan end-date which has emerged as a point of Apocalypse for some New Age doomsayers, and remains a fascinating enigma to serious researchers. Jenkins isn’t new to the subject of Mayan calendrics and culture, having authored 4 other books on the subject previous to his most recent outing, including Journey to the Mayan Underworld, Mirror In The Sky, Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calender Studies, and The Center of Mayan Time. I caught up with John in the RadioValve studios for a lengthy wine-laden, tobacco-hazed conversation about Mayan cosmology, the academic and underground tour circuits, his books and adventures in Mexico, and other bits of verbal bandering about. This interview represents the first in a two-part series which will conclude in the next issue of The Deadly Type... Doghead Cola: So let’s just sort of talk about the orientation of where this book has come from. I know you’ve written several other books previously, and uh, I remember that the first night that you and I met, you ended up meeting Terence McKenna... |
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Why did the Maya pick 2012 to end this vast cycle of time? And why did they believe the years around 2012 would be a time of great change and great transformation unprecedented in human history..? |
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John Major Jenkins: Mm-hmmm. Yeah, I remember that; that was back in 1996, actually the first time I met Terence in person. [Shortly after that] I participated in an event that he did up at the Gold Lake Mountain Ranch up in the mountains west of Boulder. At that time I was very much engaged into this research that I was doing into the Maya Calender... And, uh, my interest in the Maya stretches back to 1986 when I first visited Guatemala, and I was really amazed at this Maya civilization, and the fact that the Maya people were still around certainly was important to me, and uh... Upon returning from that first trip south of the border, I really started looking into the unanswered questions in the ancient Maya thought and civilization. As many people are aware, there’s this intriguing date in the Maya system of time that is December 21, 2012 a.d. And this is the end of a large cycle of time called the 13 Baktun Cycle. It’s never been clear in the academic literature or the popular literature about what this date is about. Why did the Maya pick 2012 to end this vast cycle of time? And why did they believe the years around 2012 would be a time of great change and great transformation unprecedented in human history, at least as far as we know. And I kinda took it upon myself to do some research at the university library to track down some of these questions, and the biggest unresolved question in Maya studies is ‘Why 2012?’, what’s the big deal? Y’know, is it just some random artifact, or is there some empirical reason behind it? And the answer to my question actually came pretty early on in my research. Back in 1993 I already had a couple of books under my belt, and um, this 2012 enigma was very present for me. Through some of the writings of Terence McKenna I encountered this idea that we are approaching this time when the December Solstice sun will be lining up with the center of the galaxy. It’s an astronomical fact. It’s caused by the precession of the Equinoxes, which is the slow wabbling of the earth on its axis. And, uh, this seemed to be the reason why the Maya picked 2012. I didn’t want to sort of rest with that as a statement, and, uh, I wanted to go deeply into the information of the Maya, mostly drawing from academic studies, to demonstrate how the Maya incorporated this concept into their basic institutions, such as the Ball Game, and King of Session Rites, and so on... Um, but yeah, a lot of my interest in the Maya developed from trips that I took to Mexico and Guatemala, stretching over 5 or 6 years. I basically returned almost every winter and lived and worked among the Maya in the highlands of Guatemala. Very traditional groups of Maya people, different groups of Maya—Cakchiquel, Ixil, Quiché Maya. Basically there’s 6 groups of pure-blood Maya living in the highlands of Guatemala, and many, many of the ancient traditions still survive. I felt that the Maya of today are heir to a very profound understanding of the cosmos; a very profound understanding of the cosmological forces that contribute to and stimulate the evolution of consciousness on this planet. This idea of the solstice sun lining up with the galactic center—the center of the Milky Way Galaxy— seemed to be a very profound thing that should be looked at more closely. Not from just, y’know, a very popular point of view, but also from the standpoint of science. There seemed to be a real science behind this. We can call this alignment a Galactic Alignment. The cosmic center is the center of our Milky Way Galaxy; it’s the center and the source of the galaxy of which we are members. In a sense we can think of it as that place in the sky out of which everything, in the local galaxy at least, including us, has come. So this work, in trying to decode the galactic alignment and its presence in the ancient Maya system of thought was really what I took on. And I lived in Boulder for many years, and sort of led a maverick, independent-scholar lifestyle living in a small garage—actually at the time I was living in Louisville—and, um, I set up my life so that I would have a lot of free time to do this research. And it was really an amazing time of discovery for me. My work with the Maya and the Maya cosmology has sort of been my own gnostic path to understanding some deep principles that have to do with the situation that we are in today as a civilization... Oh, let’s see, what can we sort of... There’s a lot to talk about here, really, yeah... DC: Right, because clearly within all of civilization right now we’re at a head with a lot of systems which have been proven to be archaic in many ways. Um, war-driven, economically-driven, that have very little to do with the substance of who we are, and how, and why we’re here, and what it means to be alive. I mean, obviously, like, being alive means that you’re constantly on a path towards death. And you can look at that in a negtive way, or you can look at it in a positive way—
DC: —and be, uh, generating energies, y’know, towards that... It seems like, in a sense, the calendrical studies that you’ve become involved in seems to reflect that idea—that we’re moving towards a death and a rebirth of this state of civilization. |
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I think we need to understand this from the point of view of systems-dynamics. What we’re approaching is Year Zero. But Year Zero in what? |
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DC: —by the Nixon campaign to discover the “secret” VC encampments within Cambodia. And so that’s kind of a model that we can work with in terms of total devestation of a society. So I’m curious, in terms of this Year Zero potentially being a new beginning, is there anything in the calendrical system that kind of fortells of things that may come beyond that. Y’know, is there a set-up for calendrical ideas that also deal with community that transcend the 2012 date? JMJ: Yeah, I can’t be really specific about predictions. I think we need to understand this from the point of view of systems-dynamics. What we’re approaching is Year Zero. But Year Zero in what? Um, a little background on this concept, um...The 13 Baktun of the Maya is this period of 5,200 years, and in the Maya doctrine of World Ages, there’s 5 World Ages—there’s 5 periods of 5,200 years. So 5,200 years times 5 is 26,000. 26,000 years is the cycle of precession, it’s the cycle of the earth’s wobble. This is a very, very important concept. It’s been neglected in scientific discourse. In many, many ancient traditions including Egyptian cosmology and Vedic cosmology—the doctrine of the Yugas—this 26,000 year cycle is recognized as a vast period of human spiritual gestation on this planet. So even in the western astrological tradition, you have the 12 Zodiacal Ages, and, y’know, we’re supposedly entering the Age of Aquarius, and all that, and um... The Maya divided up this 26,000 year cycle into 5 periods whereas the western astrological tradition divides it into 12. Also, the western astrological tradition is not very clear on where the beginning point of this gestational cycle should be. I mean, if it is a gestation, there must be a birth moment somewhere. Well, the Maya information provides that, and it’s the birth moment, our collective birth moment into the next phase of our collective unfolding as a species is the moment, or the era, in which the December solstice sun is lining up with the galactic center. It kinda makes sense too, just from the point of, y’know, understanding that the galactic center is that point in the sky that is very, very energetic. I mean, it’s a place that is dense with radiowaves, it’s a place where quasars are found. In fact, astrophysisists believe that there’s a black hole residing in the center of our galaxy. This, this, uh, trans-dimensional portal that can move us into other dimensions. So in the Maya material, they provide us with an answer to the question of when the 26,000 year cycle of human spiritual gestation ends and begins anew... So it’s really hard to be more specific about that in terms of predictions. It’s sorta funny because it’s sort of analogous to understanding the yearly cycle. It’s like, we as human beings—and our consciousness is evolving—we’re struggling to grasp these larger cycles of time of which we are a part, of which our species is slowly unfolding through. Imagine 20,000 years ago, 30,000 years ago, when human beings did not have the capacity to conceive of the yearly cycle. Y’know, their time-concept was limited to the task at hand. And probably some intrepid shaman came along and said, ‘Hey, if we put these seeds in the ground now, they’re going to sprout in 6 months, or 8 months,’ or something. Basically, it was an enhancement of the time-concept of human beings to the level of the year so that we could anticipate. And then they could say that, y’know, let’s say that today it’s like spring-time, right. Well, human time-concept became enhanced to the point that they could project forward and say that ‘in 6 months, it’s going to be cold.’ They could anticipate and plan for events that would be taking place in the future. Well, that’s just a very short yearly cycle. Now we’re dealing with this vast great-year cycle of 26,000 years. And we have to start seeing ourselves as beings that are participating in a life-wave. The life-wave of humanity, a life that is beyond our own individual lives. And the amazing thing is that we are the ones who live in this time of great transformation. It’s almost like we are the ones who can plant the, uh, concept-seeds that can come to fruition 26,000 years from now. DC: And certainly some of the things that we’re discussing here plug in with Terence McKenna’s concept of Timewave Zero, and previous to this interview you and I have talked about that to a degree. Um... JMJ: Anywhere you wanna go. DC: Yeah. [laughter] Um... JMJ: I’m not even sure it’s a question of what we can do or what we can expect. I think getting back to the idea that we’re approaching this birth-death nexus... I’m mean, the imagery of the sky, this area of the sky that contains the galactic center, there’re features along the Milky Way... For example, there’s the Dark Rift caused by intergalactic dust clouds that runs along the Milky Way. You can see it if you’re out there on a dark mid-summer’s night. That area of the Milky Way that contains the galactic center is very bright and very wide. And that is how the Maya were able to recognize and understand that part of the Milky Way as what they call the Cosmic Womb. They conceived of the Milky Way as the Cosmic Mother, the fertile road of light. And that bulging, wide part of the Milky Way that contains the galactic center, they called that the Womb of the Cosmic Mother. Which is a real good label for it. I mean, the galactic center is that creation place in the sky. What’s interesting to me is that a real understanding of the mindset of the Maya sort of has congealed in this research. They were basically shamans, and they were engaging in psychedelic journeys into the full multiteered levels of the universe. And as shamans, of course, they were accessing psychoactives—sacred mushrooms, DMT extracted from the Bufo marines toad species—there’s evidence for all of this in the pictographs of the Maya. Well, that’s really fascinating then, because it seems that the Maya thought is much, much in advance of the most cherished notions of our own science. And because of that, it seems like we could learn a lot from the Maya.
Uh, it’s really strange to me. It’s almost analogous to the density that the powers-that-be had in relation to Galileo and his telescope, y’know. DC: Sure. JMJ: He pointed his telescope to Jupiter and saw moons revolving around Jupiter, and said ‘Hey, look, proof that there are things out there that are not revolving around the earth!’ And the Church responded to that with excommunication and just a horrendous attack against Galileo. DC: In fact, one of the most humorous facts about that story is that, uh, he spent pretty much the remainder of his life from that point on in imprisonment because of his ideas. And on his death bed was given his last rites, and was offered a chance to confess. And just before he died he said, ‘Of course, it’s actually more true my way.’ [laughter] Which is a funny story, y’know, it’s a great way to approach your last rites— you’re no longer excommunicated, you now go into the Heaven of doctrinal Christianity, and then at the last minute you bail out, y’know, before you kick off your last breath. JMJ: Right. DC: You and I had been talking earlier about all the different levels of dimensionality according to our modern science and quantum physics and chaos theory, and it’s clear that there’s all these varying aspects of what we term “reality” that are at work, and that are mathematically supported. How does that figure in with some of the mysticism of the Maya, and also more specifically, um... In various conversations I’ve heard these things which have to do with the manifestation of the 4th Dimension—how that’s becoming more of a solid part of our reality now. And I don’t really know much about that, and I’m wondering if you can sort of correlate some of the Maya beliefs with that. JMJ: Yeah. Well, we are really multidimensional beings who have settled for a lot less. The current momentum of history is derived from a pretty linear and limited perspective of science. I think that the reason why the Maya material is resonating with a lot of people today, like from our generation [2535 years of age] is because a lot of people, just recently—I mean, we tend to forget that the psychedelic revolution really can be traced back to the ‘60s, which was not too long ago... But now, everybody and your sister has had experiences with the vast, multi-dimensional cosmos which is inside of us. The Maya had a facility with these dimensions. The Maya actually as shamans utilized these consciousness-enhancing substances to gain an understanding of the true structure of the cosmos. And coming back from those journeys, they endeavored to model it. A system like the Long Count calender that points to this, uh, this amazing time in which we’ll be lining up with the galactic center, um, it’s sort of a psychedelic cosmology, but it’s also a mulit-dimensional cosmology. And we’re beginning to understand that mulit-dimensional cosmology better because we have had our own experiences with that. Y’know, it’s said that science progresses funeral by funeral. It’s because the standard-bearers of science are very antiquated in their notions, and for science to progress, it must open itself up to larger ideas. The way that the material relates to the other concepts today—yeah, Terence McKenna has a very interesting theory called Timewave Zero, and he has also pointed out that this alignment of the solstice with the galactic center could have something to do with, um, what he calls the manifestation of the Transdimensional Object at the end of history, the Eschaton. I derive my interpretation of this event more from the astronomy of it. It seems like the fact that we’re coming into a situation of resonance with the galactic center means that all dimensions from the source and heart of creation up to us are going to be clear. It’s almost like the veils between the dimensions are coming down, and so you get all these sort of phenomena happening, like, uh, trans-dimensional entities being channeled, and semi-real manifestations of UFOs appearing in the skies, and these kinds of things happening. Let’s imagine that the galactic center is like the central sun. And the alignment is opening us up to the energies of the galactic center. And, like the sun, these energies can be stimulating and lead to growth, but they can also be destructive. So that’s kind of what we’re confronting—an increase in energetic dynamics on the planet. And it’s how we integrate these energies into our lives and into our institutions that is going to decide what the next phase of human development looks like. DC: Well, it’s clear that there’re a vast array of institutions which should be destroyed, for various reasons because they perpetuate the institution, they have nothing to do with supporting the community structure which they were originally intended to help support. In that way, it’s almost like looking at the dance of Shiva, which, y’know, in Hinduism is considered simultaneously a positive and a negative energy, because for every element of destruction that Shiva unleashes, like ripping out these old roots, there’s always new seeds that are planted. And for every death, there’s a beckoning for rebirth in a cycle. Which is very natural and which is obviously a part of how civilization is developed. Through evolutionary history we continue to adhere to the idea that the “survival of the fittest” is what maintains this substructure, right? And so that can be reinterpreted on many levels, especially when you consider that the survival of the fittest is not necessarily what is always going to work forever in the best way, but works the best for that time. We’re at a point now where people of our generation, we don’t really have much that’s tangible to protest, in terms of political protest, military protest, whatever. Because we have this vast interweaving of a network that draws energies from so many different sources. And so we have what’s going on in Kosovo, but of course people aren’t being drafted, so there’s no real resistence to that by the American public. The same happened, y’know, with Noriega and drug traffiking. And there’s all these things which have become deconstructed within our own society for our own generation to the point that we have popular American Hollywood films which just, uh, outrightly depict that the assassination of someone like John F. Kennedy was something of a constructed conspiracy—on whatever level it may be. But of course, growing up in that kind of generation, then, from the outset of the information we’re being fed, we’ve already suffered an ego-death that our parents before us and our grandparents have never experienced. And then you introduce psychedelics on top of that, and you introduce all these different kinds of levels of inter-dimensional experience, and as you’re saying, the veil starts to come down. The way we perceive everything starts to change... continued next ish! |
2012:What Does it Mean?
JMJ: Hmmm.
I try to share this material with astronomers and with straight Maya scholars, but had a really hard time convincing them that this alignment is important, and that many, many ancient civilizations have recognized this alignment that we are in right now as the transformative moment for Earth.