Author John Major Jenkins signs his new book "The 2012 Story" at the Boulder Bookstore on Pearl Street Thursday. The book addresses the myths and truths surrounding the day the Mayan calendar ends, a date some believe will be the end of the world. Jenkins strongly disagrees, arguing that it is the end of an age and the beginning of a new one. (CU Independent/Lauren Walter)
R.E.M. once wrote, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Apparently, author John Major Jenkins never got that memo.
Jenkins held a book signing Tuesday at the Boulder Bookstore on the Pearl Street Mall for his new book, “The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History.” At the signing, Jenkins spent more time clarifying the fallacy of the idea that the world is going to end apocalyptically than he did promoting his book.
When explaining his interest in Mayan culture, whose calendar ends in 2012, Jenkins said his “entire rap on [2012] does not have anything to do with Doomsday… that’s just the marketplace, it’s showbiz.”
Jenkins said he almost found it humorous that the media was trying once again to make a buck off of impending peril.
“It’s going to be Carnival 2012, step right up and buy your survival gear… they think doomsday sales,” he said.
Jenkins said the Mayan calendar, which the 2012 apocalypse myth is based on, is actually a series of different interlocking cycles. The biggest of these is the World Age Cycle which last 5,125.36 years. Like all the other cycles, the World Age Cycle is based on astronomy. The end of the latest World Age Cycle is in 2012, which is also as far as the Mayans ever took their calendar. This is why some think 2012 is when the world will end.
In one of the books Jenkins has collaborated on, “The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies & Possibilities,” he wrote, “Mayan time is cyclic, and it should go without saying that time continues into the next cycle… we speak of the ‘end of the day’ but we don’t expect time to stop at midnight.”
Jenkins expressed his frustration with the misunderstanding of Mayan Culture at the signing.
“The tendency has been to attribute 2012 to new-age hacks, but no, it’s an actual artifact of the Maya culture… nobody was actually looking at the ancient tradition,” he said.
Instead of December 21, 2012, being the end of time, Jenkins explained that the Mayans believed it would be a time for humanity to cleanse itself of its egotism and materialistic ways in a rebirth.
“It’s highly ironic that our world right now is going through a crisis of ideals,” Jenkins said.
The fact that the world is currently in such a state of disarray plays right into what the Mayans were trying to explain would happen around 2012. The rebirth of which the Mayans spoke about goes back to their ancient creationism myths. According to “The Mystery of 2012,” at the end of the World Age Cycle, “the old World Age of delusion and deception draws to a close, and a consciousness renewed and elevated by rebirth in a higher light takes center stage.”
The idea of the world ending in 2012 is viewed as a morbid escape by Jenkins.
“It absolves of us any responsibly,” he said.
To Jenkins, 2012 is a time when there will be an extremely rare alignment in the galaxy, involving the December solstice and the Milky Way. According to the ancient Mayans, this alignment happens once every World Age Cycle when an old god dies and a new one takes his place.
For non-believers, Jenkins said he believes it is a time for old priorities to become obsolete and new, selfless ones to take hold.
“The key to this prophecy is free will, for what we actually experience depends on our choices- whether we cling to fear in familiar illusion or open up in love and trust to the great mystery that seeks to transform and elevate us,” he wrote in “The Mystery of 2012.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Halie Noble at Halie.noble@colorado.edu.
1 comment
• Hi folks.. I have read about Jenkins and to be honest, he is full of mistakes regarding Astronomy. He is spreading false news, some people are gullible and don’t do their research. Jenkins claims in his website( http://alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm ) the galactic alignment occurs only once every 26,000 years. He is completely wrong!. Galactic alignment occurs twice in a cycle of 64 million years. In other words, galactic alignment occurs approx every 32 million years. Other big mistake is, he claims that it will take sun 36 years to precess through the Galactic equator. This is false information and very irresponsible. He should go back to school. It’s pure and simple maths and one doesn’t have to be Einstein………..Logic and common sense is all you need. so Let’s see Jenkin’s assumption whether it makes sense.
The sun’s speed is 495,000 miles/hour. Sun’s diameter 870,000 miles and 36 years equals 315,360 hours. The sun covers a distance of 4.3 billion miles a year.
Therefore, in 36 years the sun should cover a distance of aprox 155 billion miles. According to Jenkin’s sun, it moves a distance of 24,160 miles a year!!! and it means that Jenkin’s sun has a speed of 0.05 miles an hour!!!. Jenkins wants to tell me that from the time the tangent ( galactic centre )touches the circumference of the sun, till the time it exits touching at the other end of the circumference,it will take 36 years!!!. What a hogus bogus my God. These are false prophets and people belive them. These people are conspiring to keep humanity in darkness and asleep. The reality is very different..
I go with facts and science, not with some kind of colored mayan wheel and artifacts. This is what I know regarding the solar system. The sun’s motion along the galactic plane, it’s an expanding and helicoidal motion, describing a sinusoidal pattern. A lot scientists say the sun moves in a circular motion and I think they are wrong because a spiral is not a circle and viceversa. This helical motion of the sun is characteristic of an electric charged and magnetized universe. This magnetic-electric universe creates vortices and which in turn relate to each other through plasma. The universe is not a vacuum, is teeming with life(protons, electrons, neutrons, plasma, magnetism). Maybe some scientist’s brains are in a state of vacuum, to which I will concur. Our solar system is crossing the galactic equator towards the north side. This side of our galaxy generates a shock wave that exposes the Earth to high-energy radiation every 64 million years or so. Our Solar System has just passed the mid-plane of the galaxy; more cosmic rays will be hitting Earth, more that these energetic particles could possibly cause various problems such as changes in weather, climate, damage DNA within humans and other animals, in other words, a massive extinction. We are moving in the direction to the Virgo constellation, which is located toward the northern part of our galaxy. (at a speed of about 200 kilometers per second). So, when the Earth’s solar system is on the north side of the Milky Way’s plane, we are being bombarded by more cosmic rays from the Virgo constellation. The southern side of the galaxy is safer for our solar system, because we get protection from this deadly cosmic radiation by the galactic plane that acts as a shield. The galactic centre is a very dense area; it’s where cosmic dust, gamma rays, plasma ejected from the blackhole, comets and asteroids are located.
Eocene-Oligocene extinction event 32 Mya. Two asteroids hit earth. One in Chesapeake bay (north America), left a crater 80 km in diameter and 1 km deep. The other hit in Siberia forming what is called the Popigai crater. The impact left 95 Km crater and it’s said that the ash, debris were scattered all the way to Europe, to the Adriatic, Aegean and part of Mediterranean sea. Global cooling
Cretaceous/Tertiary (K-T period) 64 Mya. Dinosaur, marine and fauna extinction. Asteroid struck earth in the peninsula of Yucatan (Central America). It was a major extinction event. Volcanic activity, Global cooling
The Cenomanian-Turonian boundary 96Mya. It was an extinction event. Sudden climate change, violent cataclysmic events.
The Triassic-Jurassic 200 Mya. Major extinction event. Volcanic activity, Global cooling, glaciations period. The sun has a cycle of 64 My and crosses the galactic disc approximately every 32 My and not what some new agers claim. They spread false information by saying that our sun crosses the galactic plane every 26000 years; this is wrong and completely false. 26000 years, is the amount of time it takes to the earth to precess or rotate around its axis to complete a 360 degree period. New agers they say that once the earth crosses the galactic centre, humans will be transformed into beings of light with a higher form of consciousness. Read Isaiah 24:1-6 regarding polar shift and the asteroid wormwood of Revelation 8: 11. Bible contains a lot of information if one knows how to read it. I confronted the new agers with their false information and they didn’t like me telling the truth. All these above mentioned events, what they have in common is that they occurred more or less at the time our solar system was crossing the galactic centre. Right now as I am speaking, our solar system is crossing the galactic equator. It’s going to be a nightmare and a rough ride. We are going to be crossing all those dense cosmic clouds of the spiral arms. Frequent explosions happen there, which will send loaded shockwaves with gamma rays toward earth. These phenomena plus other possible events such as encountering hot plasma ejected from the blackhole of our galaxy, it could destabilize our solar system, in particular the Oort cloud where huge asteroids could be knocked out of their orbit and hurl toward earth. Intense volcanic activity is expected, intense earthquakes, tsunamis, global cooling. Solar flares could knock down satellites and everything that depends on it such as internet, cellphones….etc will be affected. It will be a pandemonium and that is why the governments have been preparing in secret since the 40’s in secret for such event. Martial law will be declared. The Vatican closed their library in 2007, they catalogued all the most important books, manuscripts and they are buried in salt mines. They will open at the end of this year 2010. Hadron Collider is a Tesla weapon and inside the perimeter is where will be buried all the big guys treasures. Possible eruption of Yellowstone caldera in 2011 God Bless Everyone…….