Hope in Action

What the Mayan Elders are Saying About 2012 by Carlos Barrios

    Carlos Barrios is a Mayan priest, historian, anthropologist, researcher, and an expert in the Sacred Maya Calendar. Carlos was born in Guatemala.  After studying with traditional elders for 25 years he became a Mayan Ajq’ij, a ceremonial priest, shaman, and spiritual guide and member of the ‘World Council of Mayan Elders.

    Carlos initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars circulating. Carlos along with his brother Gerardo studied with many teachers and interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen their scope of knowledge.  Carlos found out quickly there were several conflicting interpretations of Mayan hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, Sacred Books of ‘Chilam Balam’ and various ancient text. Carlos found some strong words for those who may have contributed to the confusion:

    Carlos Barrios: “Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”

The hope is that the meme of transformation spreads to as many people as possible. The world will only be transformed if enough people lend themselves to this task. Mr. Barrios seems to imply that the transformation will occur on December 21st, 2012.  The transformation has been afoot for some time already, but the process of transforming imperial civilization into a sane planetary culture is a work of indeterminate length.  December 21st, 2012 marks only the formal end of the Maya Long Count Cycle and it has the potential to be a mega-historic event in terms of a ritualized mass social observance with planetary scaled sociocultural implications.

    “We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.”

The Myth of the Fifth Sun is derived from an Aztec creation story that says that the world has been created and destroyed 4 times and that we are presently in the 5th Sun or world. But Mr. Barrios says we are in the 4th sun going into the 5th.  The most widely accepted version of the Aztec creation myth is that we are in the 5th Sun.    The Aztec creation myth is a clear reference to a cycle of some sort, but it is unclear as to how long each creation cycle is?  Each creation cycle starts with one of the Tzolkin calendar’s 20 archetypal signs, but again we don’t have a reference to a specific time period(s).

Whatever the case we needn’t interpret the creation myth in literal terms.  The most important cycle to the Aztecs was the 52 year cycle. And they did indeed observe each transition with rituals symbolic of destruction and subsequent regeneration. In many cases they do go so far as to destroy and rebuild significant temples.   Interestingly the Aztecs were not tracking the Maya Long Count cycle that ends on December 21st, 2012. So it is very curious to see Mr. Barrios mixing uncomplementary aspects of Aztec and Maya calendrics.  He acknowledges the woeful human-planetary condition as a sign that we have reached some sort of potential turning point. “Earth changes” is a popular term used among the New Age community as a reference to changes supposedly consistent with the age of transformation. Currently any cataclysmic event is considered as an “earth change” event even if such events have been present since time immemorial.

    He continues: “Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human. We are living in the most important era of the Mayan calendars and prophecies. All the prophecies of the world, all the traditions are converging now. There is no time for games. The spiritual ideal of this era is action.”

Here we have his reference to “prophecies” and as always the case the authors fail to mention what they are or at least where we may find them. I pointed out in my last article that the ancient Mesoamericans were not in the practice of issuing prophecies because they didn’t need to nor can anybody know the specifics of what will happen in the future. I wrote that ‘Implicit in the closing of a cycle is the notion of transition. Transition implies the extraordinary changes that concur with such times”  His mention of the “spiritual idea of the time as action” corresponds to my proposal to encourage people to realize events in honor of the zeitgiest or spirit of the times and with the specific intent to…

    to catalyze Global participation toward the co-creation of a better world !

    to inspire hope in action, co-creation and collaboration on a scale never before seen !

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