12/20 – the sequel

Well, it has been an interesting year since “the end of the world” or something like that.

Many of the Maya prophets were expecting the “actual end” to fall on the end-date of the tzolkin in which 12/20/12 occurred, which would have been March 31st, 2013.

But nothing happened then either.

So the end of the next tzolkin was looked at and that would be yesterday, the first-aversary of the original end-date.

The day is over and it certainly does not look like anything untoward happened.

As much good work as the Maya put into their wonderful calendar, it seems to have proven to be flawed in some regard. And as a predictive tool it is found to be a bit short in effectiveness.

No Fooling!

Well, it appears the anticipated “eclipse” of sixty-to-seventy hour duration promised by Don Alejandro and the Mayan Council did not appear on the scheduled day.

As I had anticipated in my book, the Mayans themselves have lost a sense of what the end of the calendar referred to and when exactly it was going to occur.

The event predicted so many millennia ago may still be waiting in the wings to make its appearance but we are left without any good options as to when it is coming.

Although the ending of the next tzolkin will be on December 16th this year… echoing the 21st of December date last year… but that would only be an uneducated guess.

It would also be interesting to find out if the Maya have started their next long count calendar already or are they waiting for the event that actually signals the birth of the New Sun?

We may never know – in our lifetimes – unless the present Sun does actually end.

It seems the Long Count may have been abandoned, as I mentioned in the book, because it had gotten off track and no one knew how to fix it.

The academic matter of determining the precise cycles leading to the creation of the calendar would be instructive but the problem cannot be corrected at this juncture until we know when the event occurs.

At that point, perhaps someone can recurse the data and determine how it got off track. Then, perhaps, predicting the next event in the sequence will be easier to do.

That is, if there is any interest in the subject at that time.

Don Alejandro and the 31st of March 2013

I see there is some interest in the Mayan predictions for the end of March this year.

After the build-up to the 21st of December last year – and nothing happening, I might add – most people have abandoned the subject.

Still, several astute students noticed that the Long Count ended in the middle of the tzolkin, the Maya’s 260-day calendar. And some have realized that perhaps the final day of that calendar might be of interest.

Actually, the Maya mystic, Don Alejandro, spoke about this date as early as the mid 1990’s as a very special day. He said the Sun would experience an eclipse.

But not just any eclipse.

This eclipse was supposed to last 60 to 70 hours not the several minutes usually allotted for this phenomenon.

Some people do not understand what this “eclipse” thing has to do with anything. Readers of my volume 12-20-2012; Our Last Golden Sunset? (posted on this blog in December 2012) will know the answer to that question. It is at the heart of the entire Mayan corpus concerning the Sun Ages.

Yes, “Sun Ages”. Not “New Age” or “Golden Age” as many writers on the subject would have you believe.

When they wrote about the New Sun – the ending of one and the birth of a New Sun – they meant exactly that: the death of the Sun… and the birth of a New Sun.

This is the simplest way to describe what they saw happen in the past and what they predicted for the future. The Sun will seem to go dark for a time before it is reborn as a “new” Sun.

I am not certain where Don Alejandro got the duration for the event as the ancient Maya indicate the previous time it happened the Sun was dark for a considerably longer period.

Still, will it happen on the 31st of March?

Maybe so.

If our calendar is correctly aligned with their tzolkin, it might be so.

But we really won’t know for sure until the 31st of March.

Or perhaps not until the next day, commonly called “April Fool’s Day”.

And that is not intended as a joke.

Free Book Giveaway

I had hoped my volume about December 2012 would have been published before 2012, but that didn’t happen. Still, it was released with eleven months to go before it becomes obsolete. And there may even be people who will want to read it after 2012 to find out why the end did not come.

Whatever.

Anyway, the publisher – Martian Publishing – is having a book giveaway and offering all their books for free through Mothers’ Day.

All their publications are in digital format and can be downloaded in several different formats (all at no additional charge) so you can read my book on your computer or a myriad of hand-held devices.

If you are interested in a free copy of my book, 12-20-2012 – Our Last Golden Sunset?, go to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/martianpublishing, and view a free sample of the volume or click “buy” and enter the coupon code: BF53R.

The giveaway lasts through Mothers’ Day, so you’ve got a bit over a week to get the volume for free. After that it returns to the outrageous fee of $4.99.

They have other books being given away as well and if you are interested in any of those novels, there are free coupons listed on the publisher’s blog here at WordPress: A Different View (http://twaynemartn.wordpress.com/).

I only ask that you make some comment on the book but that is not anything I can enforce.

At the very least, I hope you find the volume entertaining.

Under the Wire

I started toying with the idea of writing a novel about the Mayan obsession with time while I was in college. Being in statistical studies drew me to their use of cycles and, naturally, to study their calendar.

Years later, after raising a family and getting established in my career, I had time to turn to that subject again and I started looking for research materials for the novel.

That’s when I first encountered the “2012 Phenomenon”.

Astonished, I went through the books by Argüelles, Jenkins, Calleman, and a couple of dozen other writers and could not believe the interpretations they were giving to the Calendar, its End-Date, its purpose and the motivations of its creators.

It seemed as if they were studying something completely foreign to me, so I delved deep in the subject for a time until I understood a bit better about what was going on.

Then, naturally, I thought I should write a book about it and show a different perspective on the subject.

Well, that did not seem to go anywhere.

That was in 2007 and I started blogging about the subject, moving over to WordPress in 2009 and continued. I landed a radio interview three years ago and several nibbles from literary agents.

Apparently, even Bear and Company – who published most of the books on the 2012 Phenomenon – were not interested in anything other than the spiritualistic view of the Mayan Calendar.

Then 2012 finally arrived and my volume was still sitting on the shelf, awaiting publication. When a book is sold, it generally takes 12-18 months to reach the market. And my volume was beyond the point of being “marketable” because of the timing.

Self-publishing was an option that I could not consider because it took money and I don’t have superfluous resources lying around. But then I heard of Kindle. Digitally self-publish.

And so, my volume is finally done and on the market over at Amazon.

And, no, I don’t expect it to be any sort of bestseller. I don’t think the other writers in this field have made any substantial amount of money from this niche market either.

Still, it was something I thought needed to be said, and it is out there if anyone is interested.

And now I have time for other things.

Hmm, maybe I’ll write that novel now…