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New Age Sympathies and ScholarlyComplicities: The History and Promotion of

2012 MythologyJOHN W. HOOPES

Abstract

The notion that the ancient Maya used as

tronomical and/or astrological observations to

prophesy that December 21, 2012, will bring

physical catastrophes, a radical transformation

of human consciousness, or other changes to

effect the beginning of a "New Age" is an

unanticipated and unintentional consequence

of speculation about ancient Maya cosmology

by credentialed academic scholars. The 2012

phenomenon (Sitler 2006) has also grown as a

result of its interpretation through the lens of

speculative metaphysics by individuals with

both academic and nonacademic backgrounds .

This article provides a historical review of key

ideas and authors who contributed to the emer

gence of mythology about 2012.

Resumen

La nocion de que los antiguos mayas usaron

observaciones astronomicas ylo astrologicas

que profetiza el 21 de diciembre de 2012 traera

las catastrofes ffsicas, una transformacion

radical de la consciencia, u otIOS cambios a

partir del comienzo de una "Nueva Era" es

una consecuencia imprevista y no intencional

de especulaciones sobre la antigua cosmologfa

maya por los academicos acreditados. EI

fen6meno 2012 (Sitler 2006) tambien ha au

mentado como resultado de su interpretacion

a traves dellente de la metaffsica especulativa

por parte de personas can las formaciones aca

demicas y no academicas. Este artfculo brinda

una revision hist6rica de las principales ideas

y autores que han contribuido ala aparicion de

la mitologfa alrededor del 2012.

Assertions about ancient Maya prophecies asso

ciated with the supposed Long Count "end date"

13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in and its correlated

Gregorian date, the winter solstice on December 21,

2012, have resulted in a windfall industry of publi

cations, documentaries, popular films, workshops,

conferences, and self-help seminars based on beliefs

that this date will correspond to a literal catastropheor a metaphorical transformation . Despite regular

assertions to the contrary, these have little basis in

either archaeology or astronomy. While it is tempt

ing to attribute doomsday claims to the ravings of

crackpots and charlatans, the reality is more compli

cated. In fact, the origins of the "2012 phenomenon"

(Sitler 2006) can be traced to statements by respected

authorities and credentialed academics as well as

John W. Hoopes is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He received a SA in archaeol

ogy from Yale University under the tutelage of Michael Coe and Irving Rouse and a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University under

Gordon Willey. He specializes in the archaeology of southern Central America and northern South America. He is the author of dozens of

articles and the coeditor of The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995)

and Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia (Dumbarton Oaks, 2003). Hoopes teaches courses on archaeology, criti

cal thinking, Mesoamerica, the ancient Maya, the Central Andes, Central America, and shamanism at the University of Kansas, where he

was the recipient of a Kemper Award for Teaching Excellence (2008). He is married with two teenage children.

© 2011 by the University of Texas Pre ss, PO Box 7819 ,Austin , TX 78713-7819



speculative writers. The stories begin with myths

about the New Wo rld that preoccupied early explor

ers and missionaries and evolved into contemporary

mythology: narratives whose principal purpose is to

communicate subjective moral messages. This my

thology thrives on a reluctance to discard theories

that have been disproven but still have emotional orspiritual appeal (often accompanied by commercial

value). Popular myths about 2012 reveal a significant

conjunction of astrology and culture in the guise of

assertions that reference archaeology and astronomy.

It is easier to find in them Western preoccupations and

beliefs than truths about ancient Maya cosmology.

Ongoing promotion of 2012 as a time of a

significant astronomical/astrological event with im

plications for worldwide change has been fueled

by amateur speculation-especially from New Age

writers. 1 The concern with Maya astronomy and/orastrology represents the culmination of a long history

of the projection of Western beliefs onto indigenous

cultures. This has been aided and abetted by inadver

tent complicity when academic scholars have either

consciously or unconsciously made references that

were interpreted out of context by occult, esoteric,

or New Age audiences. The 2012 phenomenon, a

consequence of pseudo archaeology (Fagan 2006),

is an example of unintended consequences of well

intentioned research in which statements by respected

scholars have been misinterpreted and used for spe

cific ideological ends. Its analysis requires attention

to "fringe" literature that serious academics typically

ignore. Some aspects represent what scholars of re

ligious studies refer to as the "pizza effect," what

happens when what are claimed to be a culture's

authentic traditions are actually imports from foreign

sources (Bharati 1970). Other aspects represent the

"invention of sacred tradition," what happens when

beliefs asserted to have been ancient are actually

recent inventions (Lewis and Hammer 2007). The

2012 phenomenon offers a case study in the intersec

tion of culture and astronomy. It also offers an object

lesson in the potential consequences of what can hap

pen when scholarly speculation on topics relevant to

archaeology, astronomy, and archaeoastronomy has

ideological and commercial value beyond the realm

of academia.

184 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

A Spiritual Y2K

The 2012 phenomenon has been defined as a New

Age appropriation of an ancient Maya calendar

(Sitler 2006). This has occurred for both ideological

and commercial ends. Just as concerns about Y2K

fueled massive investment in software development,

underwriting the dotcom bubble of the late 1990sand contributing to the emergence of the World

Wide Web, the 2012 phenomenon has created a

social and economic bubble in New Age metaphys

ics? As such, it can be characterized as a kind of

"Spiritual Y2K." While doomsday fears fuel a duct

tape-and-ammunition survivalist industry, there has

also been explosive growth in business ventures that

promote and thrive upon astrology, the paranormal,

ETs, UFOs, and alternative medicine including "sha

manic" healing. According to mythology of the 2012

phenomenon, the ancient Maya predicted that the endof a 5,200-year-Iong cycle in their calendar would

bring either a global catastrophe-the end of a "World

Age" -o r a "transformation of consciousness" that

would usher in a long-awaited New Age. Predictions

include "earth changes" such as earthquakes, a global

flood, eruption of the Yellowstone supervo1cano, a

dramatic magnetic or physical shift of the Earth's

poles, the arrival of Nibiru (also known as Planet X)?

These myths include visits from extraterrestrials, an

increase in telepathy, and a shift in negative atti

tudes about the benefits of spiritual revelations from

dreams and other "visionary" experiences , including

ones induced by psychedelics (Jenkins 2009; Joseph

2007; Pinchbeck 2006; Stray 2005).

At present, there are over 1,500 books in print that

address the 2012 phenomenon (Whitesides, this is

sue). There is even an/diot's Guide to 20/2 (Andrews

2008). However, despite a thoughtful Master's the

sis (Defesche 2007), until recently there were only

two scholarly articles (Hanegraaff 2010; Sitler 2006)

and only four books from academic scholars with a

decidedly skeptical tone (Aveni 2009; Restall and

Solari 2011; Stuart 2011; Van Stone 2010). These

have been augmented by contributions to a sympo

sium at a meeting of the International Astronomical

Union in Lima, Peru, in January 2011 (Callaway

2011; Campion 2011; Carlson 2011; Carlson and Van

Stone 2011; Grofe 2011; Hoopes 2011; MacLeod



2011; Van Stone 2011). It is fair to say that the verac

ity of ancient Maya prophecies has not been a topic

of compelling academic interest. Not so the cultural

fanfare accompanying the approach of the fated date.

The notion that the ancient Maya had predicted a

specific future date for Armageddon or the New Age

was first popularized in the mid-1970s. However,

the idea remained quiescent until recently. To use a

term from Malcolm Gladwell (2000), the 2012 meme

"tipped" in the public consciousness sometime be

tween 2006 and 2007 with the publication of Daniel

Pinchbeck's book 2012: The Return oj Quetzalcoatl

(2006), the release of Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto

(2006), and the publication of Lawrence Joseph's

book Apocalypse 2012 (2007), as evidenced by an

article in the New York Times Magazine featuring

amateur research on the topic (Anastas 2007). The

winter solstice of 2012 had been the topic of dis

cussion in New Age circles since the mid-1980s,

especially during the 1987 Harmonic Convergence.

Its renewed interest in "counter culture" (Roszak

1969) discussions - fueled in large part by the World

Wide Web-became evident by the time of an infor

mal teach-in led by Pinchbeck in the Palenque Norte

camp at the Burning Man festival in 2003, where

the central icon stood atop a Mesoamerican-style

pyramid before its own apocalyptic incineration.4An

increasing number of films such as 2012: The Odys-sey, Shift oJ the Ages, 2012: Science or Superstition,

and 2012: Time Jor a Change have tied 2012 with

a metaphysical "transformation of consciousness ,"

with hints that it will be accompanied by encounters

with extraterrestrials, the Earth shifting on its poles,

or other paradigm-shifting experiences. Allusions to

catastrophism -especially solar activity, destruction

of the "lost continent" of Atlantis, and the Great

Flood of the Bible-were key elements of the plot

of Roland Emmerich's blockbuster disaster movie

2012 (2009). The prophetic message is that, justas a mythical ancient civilization was destroyed in

a catastrophe, so shall ours be, but the dire conse

quences can be avoided or diminished if we mend

our ways. The tone of most of the independent films

has been one of hope and the harnessing of human

willpower to bring about positive change. As such, a

new mythology surrounding the Maya calendar and

its supposed "end date" has become a vehicle for

motivating self-improvement, spiritual growth, and

political activism in a "Mayan Prophecy Movement"

(Campion 2011) that has little to do with anything

conceived by the ancient Maya themselves. In a

fashion similar to the exotic Orientalism of the nine

teenth century, a contemporary "Mayanism" (Hoopes

201la) frames pre-Hispanic cultures of Mexico and

Central America as holding esoteric keys to resolv

ing problems of the present day.

However, there is a downside to this approach.

The 2012 phenomenon is accompanied by rhetoric

that is as antiscience as "scientific creationism." Pro

moters draw upon a relatively small fraction of what

scientific investigations have revealed about physics,

geology, astronomy, and ancient Maya culture while

ignoring or rejecting a huge body of careful scholar

ship that is perceived as irrelevant or hazardous to

ideological goals of transforming consciousness. In

one sense, 2012 has been to a "Spiritual Left" what

intelligent design has been for the Religious Right: a

denial of the ability of science to provide answers to

the questions about which people really care and an

assertion that revelation and prophecy provide more

meaningful and useful truths. However, just as cre

ationism and "intelligent design" have been baffling

to those unfamiliar with the belief systems in which

they appear, 2012 mythology can be equally mystifying. Where does it all come from?

Med ieval and Early Modern Roots

Roots of the 2012 phenomenon can be traced to the

revival of astrology by the Roman Catholic Church

in the late medieval period, especially in the es

chatology of Bishop Pierre d' Ailly (Smoller 1994).

His work influenced Christopher Columbus, whose

Libro de las proJecfas cited sources from antiquity

and ecclesiastical scholarship in an attempt to prove

that his prophesied discovery of "most remote land"would precipitate the reconquest of Jerusalem, the

Second Coming, and end-times events described in

the book of Revelation that he predicted would oc

cur sometime in the eighteenth century. "Columbus

turned to the writings of Pierre d'Ailly in order to im

prove his understanding of the connection established

in Christian eschatology between the imminent last

VOLUME XXIV 2011 185



days of the world and a providential view of history.

His aim was to locate his own enterprise within this

scheme" (Columbus and Rusconi 1997:21).5

A preoccupation with Edenic origins and apoc

alyptic revelations has always been a part of

Americanist thinking . Columbus was compiling this

"Book of Prophecies" on his fourth voyage in 1502,during which he encountered a large canoe off Hon

duras and interviewed a local cacique. The name

"Maia" as applied to the people of Central America

first appears in European records of this occasion

(Academia de Geograffa e Historia 1952). The Maya

were therefore associated with eschatological my

thology from this initial encounter, soon followed by

the introduction of Western millenarianism first to

the Antilles and Panama and subsequently to Maya

converts in the Yucatan .From a Western perspective,

there has always been "New Age" thinking about the. M 6ancIent aya.

Discarded Hypotheses of the

Nineteenth Century

The mythology behind the 2012 phenomenon has

roots in academic hypotheses, some discarded

long ago and some not. Scholarship on the ancient

Maya has had more than its fair share of imagina

tive speculation, usually the result of earnest efforts

to connect Maya culture with Western civilization.

For example, in his Vues des cordilleres et monu-ments des peuples indigenes de l'Amerique (1810),

geographer Alexander von Humboldt suggested that

Maya priests had been survivors of Noah's flood or

the dispersion following the destruction of the Tower

of Babel. Edward King, Lord Kingsborough (1830-

1848), commissioned extraordinary facsimiles of

Mesoamerican codices and reprinted previously ob

scure descriptions of ruins motivated by a belief

that the Maya and other indigenous people of the

Americas were the Lost Tribes ofIsrael . This specula

tion, occurring in tandem with assertions about a lostrace of "Moundbuilders" in the eastern United States

(Silverberg 1968), influenced the Book of Mormon,

reportedly transcribed from golden plates found in an

ancient mound by Joseph Smith Jf. and now the sa

cred text for over 16 million members of the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Assertions of


connections between the ancient Maya and ancient

Egypt were influenced by the diffusionist thinking of

Godfrey Higgins and his Anacalypsis (1965 [1833]),

in which he sought to trace all religions to a common

source. They were fueled by the millenarianism and

racism of Josiah Priest, who wrote popular books

about Christian eschatology (Priest 1828) and asserted that the mounds , pyramids, and other ruins

throughout the Americas had been built by just about

anyone other than the ancestors of Native Americans

(Priest 1833). Assertions by all these authors - tested

and rejected long ago by mainstream scholarship-

survive today in works of "alternative history" due to

their emotional and ideological appeal.

The French priest Charles Etienne Brasseur de

Bourbourg (1857, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1866, 1868)

(Figure 1) was an influential scholar, the first to offer

a course on ancient Mexico and Central America atthe Sorbonne.As the discoverer of the Popol Vuh, the

RabinalAchf, and Bishop Diego de Landa's Relacion

de las cosas de Yucatan (Landa and Brasseur 1864)-

ultimately the Rosetta stone of phoneticism in Maya

FIGURE 1. Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg

(1814-1874).



epigraphy (Coe 1992) - he was one of the leading au

thorities of his day. However, he was also a romantic

who engaged in unwarranted speculation. Brasseur

was influenced by references in the Papal Vuh and

Landa to periodic catastrophes and by the end of

his career had become convinced that the Maya had

come from the lost continent of Atlantis (Wauchope

1962; Williams 1991). However, the flood stories

that persuaded him may have been introduced by

Franciscan missionaries, an early example of the

pizza effect in which what were interpreted as an

cient Maya beliefs were actually syncretic blends of

indigenous and Christian eschatology. The postcon

tact Maya may have been influenced by speculation

concerning a "Second Great Flood" predicted for

1524 (Pankenier 2009), decades before the docu

ments Brasseur was studying had been collected.

The distortion was compounded by the fact that his

publications were illustrated by lean-Frederick de

Waldeck, a romantic era artist who had sketched

remote ruins firsthand but who reconstructed Maya

reliefs as if they were Greek and Maya pyramids as

if they were Egyptian, leading readers to incorrectly

believe the ancient Maya were classical or biblical

in nature.

End-of-time stories from Maya contexts have been

reviewed by Thompson (1970). It is clear that there

was little uniformity in historic narratives, which

may reflect ancient diversity (Van Stone, this issue).

Many show evidence of syncretism with Christian

beliefs. Despite the well-documented accounts of

the destruction of the "Fourth World" by floods in

the Leyenda de los sales of the Aztecs (Carlson, this

issue) and of the "rain of resin" and "flood" that con

cluded the second attempt at creating humans in the

Papal Vuh (Tedlock 1996:71) and Huichol accounts

of a deluge (Lumholtz 1900), it is not at all clear that

stories of "universal" floods (past or future) have

preconquest Maya origins. All of these stories were

collected well after Spanish contact and even long

after 1524. The earliest version of the Leyenda de los

sales dates to 1558, while the earliest version of the

Papal Vuh probably dates to around the same time

(Tedlock 1996). There are undoubtedly indigenous

elements, but both accounts include elements from

biblical teachings. Given the arrival of Columbus

in the Antilles in 1492, there was sufficient time for

eschatological rumors and predictions carried over

by the Spanish to filter through Caribbean informa

tion networks even before Cortes made his landing

in Veracruz or the first direct encounters between

Spanish and Yucatec settlements. As noted above,

Columbus himself was preoccupied with eschatol

ogy. I f any information was transferred between the

Spanish and popUlations in the Antilles orin southern

Central America or within seagoing communities in

the Caribbean, there was a period of several decades

before the collection of these accounts during which

relatively early syncretism could have taken place,

resulting in European-influenced content that was

repeated back to Spanish missionaries who thought

they were recording nonsyncretic accounts - the

pizza effect at work.

Several nineteenth-century scholars claimed au

thority on the basis of scholarship, discovery, and

firsthand knowledge. However, there were many

wrong theories. Explorer and photographer Desire

Charnay (1885,1887) suggested that the Toltecs were

Aryans who had migrated to Mexico from the Hima

layas (Evans 2004). Augustus Le Plongeon (1881,

1886, 1896), the first excavator of Chichen Itza and

discoverer of the Chac Mool, traced the roots of Free

masonry through ancient Egypt and Atlantis to the

Yucatan some 11 ,500 years ago. His work inspired

Ignatius Donnelly to trace the history of not only

the ancient Maya but all civilizations to a supposed

"lost continent" with the publication of Atlantis: The

Antediluvian World (Donnelly 1882) and Ragnarok:

The Age of Fire and Gravel (Donnelly 1883), both

of which invoked catastrophism. The assertions of

these scholars were systematically tested and evalu

ated against the evidence, and their theories were

discarded soon after they were proposed. However,

discarded theories of the nineteenth century have

enjoyed a life of their own in occult, esoteric, and

counterculture circles. Le Plongeon and Donnelly

were cited as authoritative by Madame Blavatsky

(1877, 1888), one of the founders of the Theosophi

cal Society, an organization based in spiritualism that

revived interest in astrology, alchemy, mediumship,

and other "occult" preoccupations (Albanese 2006;

Horowitz 2009).7




These Victorian era fantasies provide a solid back

drop to popular mythology about 2012. However,

theories rejected by academics persisted in the con

text of a separate, esoteric tradition of scholarship

that has paralleled academic Maya studies. The goals

of this nonscientific or-a t worst-pseudoscientific

scholarship are metaphysical, spiritual, subjective,and directly counter to Western traditions in the gen

eration of scientific knowledge. In this sense, esoteric

Maya studies are to Maya archaeology what astrology

is to astronomy (Campion 2008) - the preservation

and embellishment of archaic forms of "knowledge"

that have validity in New Age counterculture but

not in the objective science of the academy. When

reputable scholars-the experts of their time-make

statements that inadvertently support this alterna

tive tradition, discarded theories are revived. In the

twentieth century, an intellectual lineage of academicassertions about Maya eschatology that ran from

Ernst Forstemann to Sylvanus Morley to Michael

Coe fueled popular mythology about 2012.

The Maya long Count and the

Dresden Codex

The basic workings of the Long Count calendar

had been published by Joseph Goodman (1897),

who also provided detailed tables of 1,897 ,OOO-day

bak'tunob, which he asserted were conceived in a

73-unit "Grand Era" that included the fifty-thlrd beginning on 13 .0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Zotz (now correlated

to April 1, 8239 BCE), the fifty-fourth beginning

on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Cumku (August 11,3114

BCE), and the fifty-fifth beginning on 13.0.0.0.0

4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in (December 21, 2012). However,

Goodman did not project future Gregorian dates and

made no associations of Long Count dates with ca

tastrophes or prophecies .

Mayanist Ernst Forstemann (Figure 2) was the first

to assert that there were references to the destruction

of the world in the Dresden Codex, a pre-Hispanicdocument collected at the time of the Spanish con

quest.8Referring to page 74 of the codex, Forstemann

wrote: "This page can denote nothing but the end of

the world" (1906:266). He used the term "apoca

lypse" (1906:264) and concluded his discussion

with mention of a "cataclysm." Forstemann's ideas


FIGURE 2. Ernst W. Forstemann (1822-1906).

were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley

(Figure 3), who directly paraphrased him and added

embellishments, remarking, "Finally, on the last

page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction

of the World.... Here, indeed, is portrayed with

a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm"

in the form of a great flood (1915:32).9 Morley re

peated these ideas in The Ancient Maya (1946 :214)

while at the same time appropriating uncited details

from Alfred Tozzer's English translation of Landa's

Relaci6n (Landa and Tozzer 1941)-a document thathad also influenced Brasseur. Morley's description

of the Dresden image concludes: "The whole picture

vividly symbolizes the destruction of the world and

mankind by water, in agreement with the tradition

reported by Landa" (1946:214). As had Brasseur,

Morley conflated pre- and postconquest stories



without acknowledging syncretism. In his discus

sion of "modern" beliefs he relates (without citation)

a specific story collected by Mayanist Alfred Tozzer

near Valladolid about the successive destructions by

floods of three previous worlds (Landa and Tozzer

1941: 136n633). Morley adds a paraphrase of Tozzer:

"This last deluge was followed by the present, or

fourth world, peopled by a mixture of all the previous

inhabitants of the [Yucatan] peninsula," cryptically

adding, "and this too will eventually be destroyed

by a fourth flood" (1946:215). This last account con

cludes the paragraph about what the "modern Maya

of northern Yucatan believe," not what the ancient

Maya believed . However, the concept of a universal

destruction as ancient Maya thought was reified in

the work of Joseph Campbell , whose conclusion to

The Hero with a Thausand Faces (1949), titled "End

of the Macrocosm," quoted Morley 's interpretation.

Significantly, the Dresden Codex makes no clear

references to the future 13-bak'tun date, and inter

pretations of page 74 as a cataclysmic event are now

suspect (Carlson, this issue) .

The 19505

The 1950s ushered in a period of intense specula

tion about the ancient Maya, some of it prominent

and some of it obscure. The first scholarly mention

of the turning of the thirteenth bak'tun was made by

astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson (1951), who

interpreted a passage in the Book of Chilam Balam of

Tizimin, a collection of prophetic texts from northern

Yucatan recorded in the eighteenth century. She was

the first to associate 13 .0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in

with end-of-the-world prophecies . Makemson noted:

"The completion of a great cycle of thirteen baktuns

would indeed be an occasion of the highest expecta

tion" and translated one passage to read: "In the final

days of misfortune, in the final days of the typing

up of the bundle of the thirteen katuns on 4 Ahau,

then the end of the world shall come" (Makemson

1951: 30,31). However, her correlation erroneously

dated the prophesied event to 1752 (Makemson

1951:31), and her translation received a scathing

review (Thompson 1951). Makemson therefore in

troduced the 13-bak'tun date to a general audience

amidst significant error and confusion.

FIGURE 3. Sylvanus G. Morley (1883-1948) at Copan,Honduras, ca. 1912.

Maya stories of collapse and destruction entered

the counterculture with Beat writers in the 1950s.

Both William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg were

fascinated by the ancient Maya, Burroughs studying

Maya writing at Mexico City College in 1950 and

Ginsberg spending months at Palen que and other

ruins at the beginning of 1954. They were among

a wave of tourism to Mexico after World War II

that resulted in a ready audience for Maya studies.

Mexican scholars responded to a growing interest

in Maya religion. In 1953 Domingo Martinez, a

Mexican philosopher of Yucatec ancestry and pro

fessor at the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de

Mexico (UNAM) , published an article asserting that

the ancient Maya had the concept of monotheism

as exemplified by the concept of Hunab Ku (One

God). He subsequently expanded on this theme in

two books. The first asserted that the ancient Maya

had understood basic concepts of Freemasonry and

that Hunab Ku and an associated symbol of "squar

ing the circle" represented esoteric knowledge of

the Great Architect (Martinez 1964). The second,

whose title boldly asserted EI Popal vuh tiene raz6n

(Martinez 1968), or "the Papal Vuh is right," offered

a strong polemic against atomic energy while assert

ing that the ancient Maya understood the workings




of the atom as well as other elements of modern

physics and astrophysics. Published the same year

the Olympic Games were held in Mexico City, it

became especially popular in Chicano circles in the

United States .lO

His book linked powerful themes of

indigenous resistance with an antinuclear message.

Significantly, it promoted the concept that the ancientMaya understood the universe-from atoms to gal

axies - better than modern scientists.

The 1960s and 1970s

In 1966 Michael Coe (Figure 4) was the first to cal

culate and publish a Long Count date in the future,

at the same time associating it with the concept of

universal annihilation .

The idea of cyclical creations and destruc

tions is a typical feature of Mesoamerican

religions, as it is of Oriental. The Aztecs, for

FIGURE 4. Michael D. Coe (1929-) excavating at San

Lorenzo, Mexico, 1967 .Photo courtesy of Michael D. Coe.


instance, thought that the universe had passed

through four such ages , and that we were now

in the fifth, to be destroyed by earthquakes .

The Maya thought along the same lines, in

terms of eras of great length, like the Hindu

kalpas . There is a suggestion that each of

these measured 13 bak tuns, or something

less than 5,200 years, and that Armageddon

would overtake the degenerate peoples of the

world and all creation on the final day of the

thirteenth. Thus, following the Thompson

correlation, our present universe would have

been created in 3113 BC, to be annihilated on

December 24, AD 2011 , when the Great Cycle

of the Long Count reaches completion . (Coe

1966:149)11

Although he did not make specific reference to the

Dresden Codex, part of Coe's "suggestion" echoesForstemann and Morley. Coe's passage also hinted

at references that some readers undoubtedly made,

either consciously or unconsciously. One was the

conflation of Aztec with Maya beliefs. Another was

the reference to Hindu mythology.12 The wording

evoked Cold War fears. Significantly, the apocalyptic

pop song "Eve of Destruction" by P. F. Sloan (sung

by Barry McGuire) had reached number one on the

Billboard charts in late September 1965.

The reference to Armageddon and its repetition

with slight variation through eight editions (the mostrecent in 2011) have fed the 2012 meme for four

decades. The Maya, which initially sold for $2.95,

was the first paperback text ever published on the

subject. Publication of the first edition was especially

timely. The 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City,

which drew masses of tourists, highlighted ancient

Mesoamerica in world consciousness. Part of the

impact of Coe's words was due to its audience. The

December 24, 2011, date became fodder for rampant

speculation in the context of the zeitgeist of the late

1960s and early 1970s.Massachusetts Institute of Technology historian

of science Giorgio de Santillana and his colleague

Hertha von Dechend fueled 2012 mythology through

a combination of astrology and comparative my

thology in Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and

the Frame of Time (1969). Its central premise is



FIGURE 5. Terence K. McKenna (1946-2000) . Photo cour-

tesy of Dennis McKenna.

Mexico. The result was Mexico Mystique: The Com-

ing of the Sixth World of Consciousness (1975) , a

speCUlative work that revisited the myth of a white,

bearded Quetzalcoatl; discussed the lost continent ofAtlantis, UFO sightings, and visits from extraterres

trials; and identified December 24,2011 (a date taken

from Coe's book), as one on which there would be a

remarkable transformation of the human experience.

It was not clear whether this date would be one of

catastrophe or awakening, since both possibilities

were mentioned.

Also in 1975 Terence and Dennis McKenna

published The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Halluci-

nogens, and the 1 Ching , which included discussion

of a computer program based on ancient Chinesedivination that identified the time around the year

2012 as the conclusion of a 4,300-year cycle . They

also asserted that mushrooms and other potent hallu

cinogens could provide valuable revelations. Wouter

Hanegraaff (2010) has attributed Terence McKenna

(Figure 5) with initiation of 2012 mythology. Since


he does not consider Coe or Waters, this is inaccurate.

The McKennas, like Waters, emphasized cosmol

ogy and observance of precession. Citing Hamlet's

Mill, they pointed out that "the relation of a time

of renewal to the conjunction of the solstice nodes

and the galactic center has been noted by others"

and suggested that "the transition from one zodiacalera . . . to the next" (i.e., the transition from the Age of

Pisces to the Age of Aquarius) would be "hinged on

the conjunction of the solstice node and the galactic

center" (McKenna and McKenna 1975: 189). They

also suggested that it would be "useful" to identify

a solar eclipse on a winter solstice during the period

when the solstice node was transiting the region

of the galactic center, presumably for identifying a

mythologically significant date.14

In the first edition of The Invisible Landscape , the

McKennas mentioned the year 2012 in associationwith a model based on numerical sets associated

with the I Ching that had been revealed during

an intense "experiment" with psychoactive mush

rooms they had performed in a remote rain forest

of Colombia. They called this "Timewave Zero," a

series of "nested cycles" that-when plotted accord

ing to a computer program - "graphs the ingression

of novelty into our own epoch, from 1945 to 2012"

(McKenna and McKenna 1975:174). They claimed

their study of ancient Chinese divination predicted

accelerating metaphysical changes that included thefirst use of the atomic bomb in Japan and would cul

minate in an "eschaton" experienced by the whole

world in 2012.

In 1975 Jose Arguelles (Figure 6), who had been

a founder of Earth Day in 1970, a student of astrolo

ger Dane Rudhyar, and a heavy user of psychedelics

(South 2009), published The Transformative Vision:

Reflections on the Nature and History ofHuman Ex-

pression. In an endnote he mentioned 2012 as having

been significant for the ancient Maya, implying that

it would be a date of "transformation." Argi.ielles 'scredentials included a PhD in art history from the

University of Chicago and a faculty appointment

at Princeton. He had intended his book as a schol

arly contribution. However, as with Hamlet 's Mill, it

was panned by academic critics . Arguelles's schol

arship and environmental activism, undertaken in



FIGURE 6. Jose A. Arguelles (1939-2011) speaking at the

Whole Earth Festival, University of California-Davis,

1969. Photo courtesy of the Foundation for the Law of

Time.

the context of a long history of substance abuse and

alcoholism (South 2009), failed to bring him either

tenure or secure employment but provided the basis

for a career in writing, performance art, and New Age

spirituality.

As noted by Whitesides (this issue), 1975 was also

the year that Alan Landsburg produced The Outer

Space Connection, a made-for-TV program narrated

by Rod Serling that built upon the "ancient astro

nauts" theories of von Daniken (1969) and identified

December 24, 2011 (the erroneous date taken from

Coe 1966), as a date prophesied by the ancient Maya

for the return of extraterrestrials who had brought

them advanced technology. An accompanying book

(Landsburg and Landsburg 1975) as well as the

books by Waters, the McKennas, and Arguelles help

highlight 1975 as an especially significant year for

the publication of 20 12-related mythology.15 Shortly

afterward, popular speculative literature by Peter

Tompkins (1976) and Robert Anton Wilson (1977)

emphasized Coe's date and the McKennas' "Time

wave," respectively. Collectively, these works laid

a firm foundation in metaphysics for subsequent in

terest in 2012 that represented a reinterpretation of

scholarly speculation-much of which was wrong

in the context of an even more highly speCUlative,

psychedelic-driven counterculture and "fringe" lit

erature that ultimately proved to be highly influential

on popular culture.

The 1980s and1990s

The first correlation of 13.0.0.0.0 as December 21,

2012, was calculated by Robert Sharer and appeared

in the fourth revised edition of Morley's classic The

Ancient Maya.16

This date became known soon af

terward by Terence McKenna, who in 1983 noted

the proximity of his original November 2012 "es

chaton" to the Maya "end date" on the 2012 winter

solstice. He communicated this coincidence to

Arguelles at a New Age conference of the "Coun

cil of Quetzalcoatl" at the Ojai Institute in April

1985 (Whitesides, this issue) , after which ArgUelles

turned his attention to the significance of the Long

Count, the I Ching, and prophecies from the Books

of Chilam Balam in the context of his psychedelic

experiences. These resulted in his preoccupation

with planning the Harmonic Convergence, a New

Age event timed to coincide with the imagined

intersecting cycles of the Maya calendar and West

ern history first noted by poet Tony Shearer (1971,

1975). They also led Arguelles to make assertions

about a December 21, 2012, "end date." Through

the 1980s, McKenna, Timothy Leary-a champion

for psychedelic use-and Arguelles-a psychedelic

inspired New Age mystic- were prominent speakers

at counterculture events.

Arguelles's book The Mayan Factor: Path beyond

Technology (1987) was published several months

in advance of the Harmonic Convergence. In it he

suggested that the ancient Maya had received knowl

edge of the galaxy from extraterrestrial beings and

that on December 21,2012, the Earth would come in




FIGURE 7. Linda Sehele (1942-1998) at the University of

Texas at Austin, ea. 1992.

contact with a beam of energy from the center of theMilkY 'Way that would usher in a time of metaphysi

cal transformation and spiritual peace. Arguelles

identified himself as the 'reincarnation of the spirit

of Pacal, an ancient king of Pa1enque whose sar

cophagus lid provided evidence of ancient mysteries.

Among other things, he predicted a visit from "ga

lactic ambassadors" in 1992 and 1993 CAlli 1987).

They have not yet arrived, though Erich von Daniken

(2010) now asserts they are coming in 2012.17

A large part of the 2012 phenomenon today results

from a merging of a New Age subculture representedby Arguelles and his followers with academic asser

tions that emerged from the "Texas School" of Maya

studies that grew up around epigrapher Linda Schele

(Figure 7), a professor of art history at the University

of Texas at Austin. This work was highly collab

orative, bringing together linguists, art historians,


archaeologists, and ethnographers in a heady time

of truly exciting discoveries in the decipherment of

Maya hieroglyphs (Coe 1992). Schele-a former art

instructor who had become enchanted by the study

of Maya writing af:er a visit to Palenque in 1970-

encouraged her stLdents to read widely in the areas

ofcomparative religion. She , her students, and her

collaborator, archaeologist David Freidel, were par

ticularly influenced by the work of Mircea Eliade, a

preeminent historian of religion at the University of

Chicago. It emphasized the "myth of the eternal re

turn," a desire to return to primordial, archaic belief

systems of the distant past that seemed to be echoed

in Maya iconography. Eliade, who had written his

doctoral dissertation on yoga after years of study in

India, had undertaken a search for Christian roots

in pagan belief systems of ancient Europe and Si

beria. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy(Eliade 1964) defined the topic .Under Sche1e's guid

ance, attention to shamans, vision quests, and the

interpretation of complex symbol systems produced

a controversial vision accompanied by real break

throughs in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic

writing. It also resulted in speculation on ancient

Maya cosmology that appeared in a series of publica

tions, including A Forest ofKings: The Untold Story

of the Ancient Maya (Schele and Freidel 1990) and

Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Sha-

man's Path (Freidel et al . 1993) . Sche1e and Freidelasserted that ancient Maya rulers were shamans

whose principal acts included dramatic performances

staged in the contexts of celestial phenomena. The

central hypothesis of Hamlet's Mill- that deities and

imagery in world mythology are metaphors for heav

enly bodies and celestial events - was also a central

theme of Maya Cosmos (written between 1990 and

1992), in which "every major image from Maya cos

mic symbolism is a map of the sky." This concept

resonated with contemporaneous New Age thought.

In 1991 astrologer Bruce Scofield (1991) offered aninterpretation of "Native American astrology" that

was a synthesis of Western and Maya concepts, while

astrologer Raymond Mardyks (1991) asserted that

the winter solstice would align with the galactic

plane in 1998/1999, an event that "only occurs once

each 26,000 year cycle and would be most definitely



of utmost significance to the top flight ancient as

trologers." Mardyks emphasized the importance of

the constellation Ophiuchus and its proximity to the

galactic center, noting that "the year-and-a-half pas

sage of the Moon through the Serpent Holder's area

of the sky will happen again starting January 2011

and continue through 2012, the dates given for the

conclusion of the Maya calendar!" (1991:4). That is,

New Age authors were making assertions about the

significance of the cosmos for the ancient Maya at

the same time Freidel and Schele were writing. When

Maya Cosmos appeared, it was read in different ways

by academic and New Age audiences.

Although Eliade was mentioned only once in the

book (Freidel et al. 1993: 12) in the context of an

incorrect citation, his influence is pervasive.18

The

concepts of the Milky Way as World Tree, an axis

mundi that represents the middle of the cosmos and

connects a three-layered universe within which sha

mans travel, and the shaman's journey (referred to

in the subtitle of the book) are central to his work.

The authors (probably inadvertently) included re

marks that would have meant very specific things

to esoteric and New Age audiences. Maya Cosmos

presented a narrative of discovery that was also one

of revelation and self-awareness, including elements

of spirituality. Specific language was interpreted as

cues by audiences familiar with esoteric references.

For example, the authors note: "Looking up in to the

sky, we showed you how the Maya book of Creation

is inscribed in the stars. Bey ti' ka'an, bey ti' lu'um,

'As is the sky, so is the earth,' says John Sosa's sha

man teacher in Yalkoba" (Freidel et a1. 1993:391).

This is instantly recognizable as the Hermetic dictum

central to astrology, "As above, so below." Maya

Cosmos unintentionally reinforced beliefs about

myth and astronomy already well known to New

Age readers, inadvertently promoting archetypes

from a variety of esoteric traditions. The books by

Schele and Freidel, which combined fictional inter

ludes, narratives of personal revelation ,and allusions

to spiritual insights, represented a departure from

scholarly style. The attempt to bring complex schol

arship to a popular audience produced confusion.

Sharp critiques by McCutcheon (1997), Stigliano

(2002), and Sedgwick (2004) illustrate additional

hazards associated with Eliade's politics and uncriti

cal application of his models . For example, Stigliano

(2002:37-38) cites Eliade s involvement with fascism

and warns of New Age appropriations of archetype

based monomyths in the creation of mythologies

with fascistic overtones .

An imaginative combination ofHamlet's Mill with

elements from Waters, Arguelles, the McKennas,

Edmonson (1988), Mardyks, and Maya Cosmos in

spired John Major Jenkins (1994a, 1994b, 1994c,

1996, 1998, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2011), one of the

most prolific proponents of 2012 mythology.19 He

became fascinated with the notion that the creators of

the Long Count calendar had been able to predict at

its inception a winter solstice conjunction of the Sun

with the intersection of the ecliptic and the galactic

equator, a small area located near the astronomically

determined center of the Milky Way galaxy. Jenkins

interpreted the "precision" of this conjunction - as

serted to have been calculated when use of the Long

Count calendar was initiated ca. 355 BC-as evi

dence for ancient Maya knowledge of precession.20

Archaeoastronomers remain unconvinced (Aveni

2009) . The winter solstice date could be a coinci

dence, and the position of a "galactic alignment"

(which, as noted by Mardyks [1991], actually oc

curs each December over a span of years) is poorly

defined. Jenkins has also reasserted the suggestion

initially put forward by Malmstrom (1973, 1978,

1997) that the Long Count calendar was invented

at the site of Izapa. This assertion is problematic,

as is the assertion that the origin date for the Long

Count calendar was calculated backward from a win

ter solstice date in 2012. The dearth of academic

acceptance for his speculative theories has not kept

Jenkins (2009) from asserting the "truth" about the

Maya calendar. However, the 2012 phenomenon is

essentially an astrological event, not an astronomical

one. Apart from the winter solstice and the proximity

of the Sun to the galactic center of the Milky Way

(something invisible to the naked eye that has been

occurring every December for over a decade), there

is little of astronomical significance that happens on

December 21,2012 . However, it has come to be as

sociated with deep spiritual significance, "visionary"

experiences, and powerful motivations.




Many of the principal promoters of the 2012 phe

nomenon have been individuals with long-standing

prior interests in astrology and/or New Age metaphys

ics, a large percentage of whom have claimed insight

from experiences using psychedelic substances . The

McKennas, for example,are well known for a psychic

"experiment" conducted near Putumayo, Colombia,that involved a multiday experience of the effects of

Psilocybe cubensis (formerly Stropharia cubensis)

mushrooms to which Terence McKenna attributed

his Timewave Zero model (1993; McKenna and

McKenna 1975). Stephanie South's 2009 biography

of Jose Arguelles details the role of hallucinogens

and ecstatic visions in his metaphysical insights.

Jenkins found motivation in a dramatic vision of

a "Tree of Life" that resulted from "a regimen of

meditation, yoga, fasting and chanting" while camp

ing in Florida in 1989 (1994b:6). He also attributeshis own insights into 2012 iconography to the use of

mushrooms and especially "a good dose of quality

LSD" in a sensory isolation tank (Jenkins 2009:396) .

Daniel Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Return of

Quetzalcoatl, was identified by Rolling Stone maga

zine as the leader of the "new psychedelic elite" after

his previous book (Pinchbeck 2002) detailed vision

ary experiences on iboga (an African hallucinogen),

ayahuasca (an Amazonian hallucinogen), and con

centrated DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine), which

he describes first trying during a conference on psychedelics at Palenque that featured presentations by

Terence McKenna. In a subsequent ayahuasca ses

sion, he channeled a "transmission" from the Aztec

deity Quetza1coatl (Pinchbeck 2006:367-370) that

announced his return as "an avatar and messenger

sent at the end of a kalpa, a world age, to bring

a new dispensation for humanity - a new covenant

and a new consciousness" (Pinchbeck 2006:367) .

This vision inspired him to write about messages in

crop circles , alien abductions, psi phenomena, and

Graham Hancock's (1995) theories about a foun dational "lost civilization" that had been destroyed

in a cataclysm.

This is not to say that all theories about 2012 are

drug-inspired. A notable exception is that of Frank

Joseph (a.k.a. Frank Collin), a former neo-Nazi and

convicted child molester who led an infamous march


through a Jewish community in Skokie, Illinois, in

1977. In his book Atlantis and 2012 (Joseph 2010),

he offers a follow-up to his theory that the Ark of the

Covenant-which held a crystal power source from

lost Atlantis - was stolen from the Great Pyramid

by Moses, rescued from Jerusalem by the Knights

Templar, and eventually hidden in a cave in southernIllinois that was sealed by the New Madrid earth

quake (Joseph and Beaudoin 2007) . Joseph predicts

it will be discovered in 2012.

Other voices promoting 2012 as a metaphysi

cal watershed include several authors with doctoral

degrees. Carl Johan Calleman (2004,2009), a phar

macologist with a PhD in physical biology from

the University of Stockholm, has created a new

cosmology based on the Maya calendar. Semir

Osmanagich (2005), with a PhD in anthropology

from the University of Sarajevo, has used it to promote interest in the spurious Bosnian "pyramids."

Robert Sitler (2010), who has a PhD in Hispanic

literature from the University of Texas, also writes

from a New Age perspective, invoking psychedelic

induced visionary experiences and personal growth.

Conclusion

The 2012 phenomenon is the culmination of ideas

that have been unfolding in the context of our own

world, not something that was ever of any great

importance to the ancient Maya (Stuart 2011) . Onescholarly interpretation suggests that at most it

may have been the occasion for a religious festival

(Gronemeyer and MacLeod 20 10; MacLeod 20 11 and

in this volume). A single inscription suggests it had

astrological significance for an eighth-century Maya

king. The only known ancient Maya "prophecy" for

13 .0.0.0 .0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in-on Tortuguero Mon

ument 6 - appears to be about the investiture of a

deity possibly associated with cycles of creation and

rebirth (Gronemeyer and MacLeod 2010; MacLeod

2011). I f it were a date of profound importance tothe ancient Maya, why is it all but absent from the

epigraphic record? Why has extraction of this "most

important" date required so much uncritical cherry

picking and speculation to make it seem "real"?

The 2012 phenomenon is both amusing and dis

concerting. Science, because it is not religion, has cast



doubt on many claims regarding metaphysics and the

supernatural. We have scientific facts of past catastro

phes - for example, the Chicx ulub crater and planetary

devastation 65 million years ago (Schulte et al. 2010) .

We even have some good ideas about present ones ,

such as oil spills and global warming, even if our

plans for avoiding these in the future remain murky.

However, scientific understanding of consciousness,

neurophysiology, and cognition remains inadequate

for explaining the causes of revelations-including

those under the influence of powerful hallucinogens

that seem "real." The public's perception of scholars

has been colored by a string of individuals who pre

sented themselves as scholars yet nonetheless favored

ideas that were either poorly supported or totally off

the mark. The case of Immanuel Velikovsky provides

a classic example of theories perceived in radically

different ways by an uninformed public and by sci

entific experts (Velikovsky 1950; Ginenthal1996). In

the 2012 phenomenon, we have John Major Jenkins,

among others, who tell stories with a sureness and

conviction that are often far more accessible and ap

pealing to an uninformed public than the changing

and nuanced interpretations that are the coin of the

realm in academic Maya studies. By creating new my

thologies, pseudoscientists offer narratives that can be

intuitively appealing to many with anti-authoritarian

agendas. They echo Theosophical rhetoric that in

vokes Hermetic philosophy and offers interpretations

of the "unexplained" in ways that alternately promote

and allay human fears of the unknown.

Nicholas Campion's scholarship on the history

of astrology (1994,2008; Campion and Eddy 1999)

helps us to understand what it is that makes astrology

seem "real." 2012 presents other related mythologi

cal themes that also merit consideration, among them

what it is that makes the past as presented by science

seem "real" or not. As with creationism, there is a

rejection of the "official" narratives about the an

cient Maya and with them the rejection of academic

authority. Just as astronomers know little and care

less about the power of astrology, archaeologists

have similar attitudes about contemporary mythol

ogy regarding lost "archaic knowledge" and "ancient

wisdom," at least from a metaphysical perspective.

As a result, they are not always mindful of the ways

in which their assertions about the past will be inter

preted . The selective appropriation of scientific facts

for the construction of nonscientific belief systems

never ceases. Ironically, in creating detailed maps

of the physical universe, astronomers provide a new

generation of astrologers with sophisticated tools for

ever more elaborate star charts.

At the very least, the 2012 phenomenon has made

a huge audience aware of complex Maya calendrics.

However, its study brings to mind a vignette from

the journals of Eliade. During his participation at a

conference on the history of religion in Switzerland

he wrote: "22 August [1950] . . . [psychologist Carl]

Jung told [Henry] Corbin that he is grief-stricken

over the real existence of ' f l y i n ~ saucers.' Always

he believed in the symbolic significance of the circle

and the circular, now that 'the circle' seems actually

to be 'realized,' it no longer interests him. It seemed

infinitely more real to him in dreams and myths"

(Eliade 1990:113). As with flying saucers for Jung,

the 2012 phenomenon may be far more interesting

as a window into our contemporary culture-espe

cially how our scholarship is consumed in ways we

intend or not-than for anything it reveals about the

ancient Maya.

Should we discount hypotheses about 2012 sim

ply because they resulted from substance-induced

psychedelic visions? Of course not. Hallucinogens

and fascination with the cosmos have gone hand in

hand since the first person entered an altered state of

consciousness and looked up into a night sky filled

with stars. There's a reason why drug use and "spaci

ness" are associated. Psychedelics generate a sense

of other worlds, which is why their users are often

drawn to thoughts about other dimensions, alterna

tive universes, separate realities, and extraterrestrial

intelligence.

Should we be less critical of hypotheses proposed

by individuals with doctoral degrees and academic

appointments? Of course not . The history of schol

arly speculation and complicity in inspiring and

motivating thinking that contributes to the 2012 phe

nomenon, whether intentional or not, is complex.

From early experts such as Brasseur, Fbrstemann, and

Morley to authoritative scholars such as Makemson,

Coe, and Schele to the many pseudoscience writers

VOLUME XXIV 201 1 197



with PhDs, testable theories about the ancient Maya

must be subject to rigorous analysis and must stand

or fall on their own merits.

In the practice of good science, the sources of

testable hypotheses are irrelevant. They can come

from dreams, religious inspiration, and even psy

chedelic epiphanies. What is essential is that it bepossible to test them using the standards of scientific

practice. The bottom line is that we can discount un

supported hypotheses about 2012 exactly the same

way we discount those about ghosts, Atlantis, ancient

astronauts, UFOs, ley lines, crop circles , Bigfoot,

pyramid power, alien abductions, crop circles, and

psi phenomena: Occam's razor and the absence of

persuasive scientific evidence.

Acknowledgments

This article has benefited from countless discussions

with friends and colleagues, especially participants

in the Year 2012 discussion forum on Tribe.net

(http://2012.tribe.net).Myinterest in the 2012 phe

nomenon has benefited from interaction with many

individuals, including Anthony Aveni, Dylan Aucoin,

Nicholas Campion, Michael Coe, Sacha Defesche,

Joseph Gelfer, Jan Irvin, Barbara MacLeod, Daniel

Pinchbeck, Dennis McKenna, Timothy Miller, Laura

Smoller, Geoff Stray, Jay Fikes, John Major Jenkins,

Raymond Mardyks , Kevin Whitesides , Matthew

Restall, Robert Sharer, David Stuart, and Robert

Sitler. I am especially grateful to John Carlson, Kevin

Whitesides, and Mark Van Stone for their boundless

enthusiasm and careful attention to detail. My wife,

Lauren, has been a constant source of inspiration and

support. I am especially thankful to my children for

their patience with this project. They have a bright

future long after 2012.

Notes

1. "New Age" is used here in the sense proposed by Lewisand Melton (1992). For histories of New Age thought in the

United States, see Albanese (2006) and Horowitz (2009).

2. This has been documented in detail by Kevin Whitesides

(this issue).

3. The phrase "earth changes" was coined in the early

twentieth century by psychic Edgar Cayce and associated

with the destruction and reemergence of the "lost continent"

of Atlantis.


4. The Palenque Norte camp was named for a series of

discussions in the late 1990s on the theme of psychedelics

and consciousness featuring Terence McKenna at a hotel

near the ancient Maya site of Palenque , Chiapas.

5. Columbus made special note of a passage from

Seneca's Medea, published for the first time in 1491: "During

the last years of the world, the time will come in which the

Ocean sea will loosen the bounds and a large landmass willappear; a new sailor like the one named Tiphys, who was

Jason's guide, will discover a new world , and then Thule

will no longer be the most remote land . ... [Columbus]

wanted , moreover, to clinch the argument that these events

were part of a larger eschatological perspective .Toward that

end, in a margin of the letter to Ferdinand and Isabella in the

manuscript of the Book of Prophecies , he wrote the same

rubric that precedes the Latin lines of verse and placed a sign

indicating that in the final version of the letter a paragraph,

inspired by those verses , should be inserted before the one

identifying premonitory signs of the final days of the world

found in the Bible" (Columbus and Rusconi 1 9 9 7 3 4 ~ .6. Columbus employed apocalyptic imagery associated

with astronomy in his interaction with indigenous people,

using the prediction of a lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504,

to intimidate natives of Jamaica into provisioning his ships

(Morison 1942:653-654).

7. The phrase "New Age" was first used in association with

a coming Age of Aquarius in an 1899 pamphlet published by

the Theosophical Society on the eve of the twentieth century.

It revived a concept that originated in Baghdad in the ninth

century : astrologer Abu Ma 'shar, writing on the precession

of the equinoxes (a phenomenon known in the Mediterranean

since the second century BC), foresaw a future shift from

a Piscean to an Aquarian Age (Bochinger 1994; Hammer

2001:73-74). This concept was revived by astrologer Dane

Rudhyar in San Francisco in the 1960s.

8. This fact was first pointed out to me by astrologer

Raymond Mardyks.

9. The imagery of the Maya 's watery end may have come

from Morley's youthful reading ofHeart oj he World (1895),

an adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard . This book inspired

Morley to investigate the ancient Maya (Coe , personal com

munication 2010).

10. It was subsequently excerpted in translation in Aztlan:

An Anthology oj Mexican American Literature , edited by

Luis Valdez and Sam Steiner (1972).

11. This paragraph was subsequently repeated, with onlyminor alterations, in each of the eight ectitions of the book ,

the most recent of which appeared in 2011 . The erroneous

date of December 24 , 2011, was corrected to January 11,

2013, in the second edition (Coe 1980) and then to Decem

ber 24 , 2012, in the third edition (Coe 1993) .

12 . Yet another was his use of the term "kalpas," which

for some readers would have been evocative of the follow

ing passage from Th e Dream Quest oj Unkn own Kadath, a



novella by fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft: "Then in the slow

creeping course of eternity, the utmost cycle of the cosmos

churned itself into another futile completion, and all things

became as they were unreckoned kalpas before . Matter and

light were born anew as space once had known them; and

comets , suns and worlds sprang flaming into life, though

nothing survived to tell that they had been and gone, been

and gone, always and always , back to no first beginning"

(1964:406).

13. The term "Time Zero" in de Santillana and von

Deschend's phraseology is echoed in the "Timewave Zero"

concept of the McKennas (1975).

14. In the second edition of the book, this passage was

followed by the observation: "When this is done the most

likely heliacal rising of the galactic center with the solstice

sun occurs on December 21 , 2012" (McKenna and McKenna

1994:196). This comment is one that focused John Major

Jenkins on the winter solstice of 2012. Jenkins's reference in

a footnote to his 1994 article in the Mountain Astrologer to

remarks by McKenna about "the galactic center in the year2012" suggests Jenkins was using the 1994 edition of The

Invisible Landscape. Astrologer Dane Rudhyar (1975) also

focused on the astrological significance of the Sun and the

Milky Way.

15. Tony Shearer (1975) originated the ideological founda

tions for the Harmonic Convergence , a 1987 New Age event

organized by Arguelles.

16 . The first two editions of The Ancient Maya were

written by Morley. The third edition (1956) was revised by

George Brainerd and the fourth (1983) by Sharer. The cor

relation was the last date that appeared in the revised table

of Long Count dates. In the third edition, the table provided

K'atun correlations to 12.5.0.0.0 (April 14, 1717). Sharer(personal communication 2011) felt there was a need for

completing the table to the end of the thirteenth bak 'tun.

It never occurred to him that the end of the current great

cycle had any relation to an "end of the world" scenario be

cause, as he understood it, a new bak'tun cycle would follow

the current one. Sharer, favoring the traditional Goodman

Martinez-Thompson correlation, used a 584,283 correlation

constant.

17. Arguelles succeeded in associating speculation about

2012 with specific images and iconography. One example

of this is a symbol that has come to be known as Hunab Kli

(Yucatec for "one god"). This symbol, originally reproduced

in Zelia Nuttall's facsimile of the Codex Magliabecciano(1903; Boone and Nuttall 1982), was also used by Hanson

Booth-in combination with a swastika-to decorate the

cover and pages of The House of the Dawn, a work of ro

mantic "women's fiction" by Marah Ellis Ryan (1914) set

in Mexico. Arguelles undoubtedly found it appealing both

because of its similarity to the Taoist yin-yang symbol and

because it evoked the form of a spiral galaxy. In making the

latter association , Arguelles followed the work of Hunbatz

Men (1986,1990), who claimed that a Mexican motif in the

form of the letter G was an allusion to a spiral galaxy. The

design as it appears in Ryan's book was subsequently repro

duced on the cover of a book by Jenkins (1994b).

18. Eliade's work is cited as "Archaic Ecstasy," although

this is not the title of his book (Eliade 1964). No publication

by Eliade is cited correctly or included in the bibliography.

19. Jenkins writes, "I drew from academic as well as

'fringe' sources, Tony Shearer Jose Arguelles, Frank Waters,

the McKennas, Richard Luxton, J. Eric S . Thompson,

Barbara & Dennis Tedlock, Martin Schbninger, James

Sexton, Gordon Wasson and countless others provided my

manna" (1994b:7) .

20. The correspondence of the date with a solstice was first

noted by Edmonson, who credited Victoria Bricker as having

pointed out to him the fact that 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in

fell on "an astronomically correct winter solstice: Decem-

ber 21, 2012" and concluded, "Thus there appears to be a

strong likelihood that the eral calendar, like the year calendar,

was motivated by a long-range astronomical prediction , onethat made a correct solstitial forecast 2,367 years into the

future in 355 B.C." (1988:119) .

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hoopes new age sympathies and_scholarly_complicities)

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