2,012 by 2012?
The "Impending Apparent
End" of the "2012" Publishing Phenomenon
KEVIN A. WHITESIDES
Abstract
In expectation of an imminent millennial shift
(apocalyptic, utopian, or otherwise), nearly
1,500 books have been published to date draw-
ing attention to the year 2012 and (usually) the
Long Count calendar of the Maya. More than
1,000 of those books were published in the last
five years alone. From its earliest glimmers in
the mid-twentieth century to its full explosion
in the present, the "2012" publishing phenom-
enon presents a useful avenue of analysis to
the larger cultural phenomenon as a whole .
"2012" authors have created a seemingly un-
ending patchwork of utopian invitations for
readers to engage, remix , and repackage as
they develop their own individualized ver-
sions of a rapidly evolving millenarian meme
that is beyond the control of any single author.
Resumen
Hasta la fecha se han publicado casi 1500 li-
bros sobre el afio 2012, generalmente, sobre el
calendario may a y su Cuen ta Larga, a la espera
de un inrninente cambio milenarista (apocalfp-
tico , ut6pico ode otra clase). Solarnente en los
ultimos cinco afios se publicaron mas de 1000
de estos libros. Desde sus primeros destellos,
a mediados del siglo XX, hasta la completa
explosion en el presente, el fen6meno editorial
referente al "2012" presenta una vfa util de
Kevin A. Whitesides earned his BA in religious studies at Humboldt State University, where he was awarded the Outstanding Student
Award for the presentation of his research on the 2012 phenomenon at a meeting of the American Academy of Religion. His interest is in
religious hermeneutics and the development of new religious memes, especially those that involve the appropriation or expropriation of
the "other" into American countercultural spiritualities. He is currently writing a master's thesis on metaphysics in the 2012 phenomenon
at the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.
© 20 I I by the University of Texas Press, PO Box 78 I 9, Austin , TX 78713-78 I 9
1
analisis de un fen6meno cultural de enormes
proporciones como un todo. Los autores que
ban escrito sobre el "2012" han creado un
mosaico aparentemente interminable de narra-
tivas, invitando a los lectores de forma ut6pica
a quedarse enganchados al tema, intercarnbiar
ideas y volverse a reenganchar al desarrollar
sus propias versiones individualizadas de una
rapida evoluci6n milenarista de los memes
que esta fuera del control de cualquier autor
individualizado.
2
"2012" Publishing: Where Are We Now?
However true these beliefs may be, the role of Atlantis
in world mythology cannot be ignored or politely side-
stepped . . . . The myth of Atlantis has about it something so
compelling that it has endured for over twenty-five hundred
years. Some three thousand books have been written about
it, comprising an established Atlanteanology. If its physical
reality has not been established, the myth about it is a psy-
chological reality of prime significance.
- Frank Waters, Mexico Mystique
Ironically, since much of the appeal of Native religion is its
supposed ly ancient, timeless quality, many of the symbols
and themes of the new synthesis are very new indeed, and
their origins can be traced back no more than a few decades.
- Philip Jenkins, Dream Catchers
In the world of contemporary publishing, thousands
of years are no longer required to develop a significant
corpus of literature around a topic of popular interest
(Figure 1). Though claims about the antiquity of its
origins are central to the rhetoric of many of its pro-
ponents , scholars have been unable to trace what has
become known as the "2012 phenomenon" (see Sitler
3
2006) farther back than a few decades . The earliest
documented reference to expectation of an imminent
millennial shift associated with the closing of the
thirteenth Bak'tun of the Maya Long Count calendar
only dates as far back as 1966 (Coe 1966:149). From
that earliest mention to the present, at least 1,452
books have been published contributing to the spread
of the "2012" phenomenon. Where it took two and a
half millennia to amass over 3,000 titles on Atlantis,
a significant increase in human population and ease
of publishing has allowed "2012" literature, in less
than 50 years , to climb nearly halfway to the same
mark. In 2011 alone more books have been published
discussing "2012" than there have been days in the
year (196 days vs . 263 books as of July 15, 2011).
4
My interest is in the spread of "2012" as a meme.
In that regard , I have undertaken a running tally
of books that draw attention to expectations of an
imminent millennial shift (apocalyptic, utopian, or
otherwise) in the year 2012 (occasionally 2011) and
usually connected to the Maya Long Count calendar.
A book need not be entirely devoted to "2012" to be
included and can even be quite critical of it. Even
a book with a very minor mention can be impor-
tant to note in that it contributes to the spread and
interpretation of the meme in some subsection of
readers. Nonetheless, at least 600 of the books in
my tally make explicit reference to "2012" in the
title alone. Thus , even with fairly loose criteria that
allow for inclusions of material deemed only tan-
gential, the number of books specifically marketed
around "2012" is still very high. I have been care-
ful to eliminate books that discuss the year 2012 in
contexts other than those of interest to this present
study, including those that discuss other major events
in the year such as the London Olympic Games or
the United States presidential election. Undoubtedly,
there are many books that have eluded my search
attempts. Even so, I am quite confident in the overall
picture that emerges from the data I have collected.
Since the history of "2012" publishing between
1966 and the present covers a period of many decades
and nearly 1,500 books, a detailed analysis of the con-
tent of any particular book is beyond the scope of the
cun-ent study. Given the telescoping rate of "2012"
books published every year (see Figure 2), we may
indeed see 2,012 titles by the time the anticipated
hierophantic moment finally arrives on December
21 , 2012. What that hierophany is expected to look
like for proponents of "2012" varies from book to
book, and any individual perception of "2012" most
likely consists of a syncretic patchwork from a mul-
tiplicity of sources. From total annihilation to instant
enlightenment and an endless array of apocalyptic ,
utopian, and dystopian scenarios in between, the
range of possible interactions for engagement with
"2012" is astounding. The following titles represent
only a small slice of the range of approaches to the
topic available to the contemporary reader:
Galactic Alignment: The Transformation
of Consciousness According to Mayan,
Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions
Armageddon 2012: The La,st Major Conflicts
between Scientific Truths & Religious!
Scientific Myths
2012 in Bible Prophecy with Shadow Mayan
Tradition Clearly Cast behind It
The Ascension Guidebook: Pleiadian Guides
Reveal the Four Energy Activations that
Prepare Earth Beings for Ascension in 2012
2012 End of the World: Totally Awesome
Guide to Surviving 2012 Disaster Stuff!
How to Survive 2012: Tactics and Survival
Places for the Coming Pole Shift
2012 Atlantean Revelations: Becoming a
Mystic in a 9 to 5 World
2012: The Zombie Apocalypse
VOLU ME XX IV 2011 207
 2'01 "~~m, ru
,~ant
~(l~

v~,~~s
tfi' -C<l1t\f!¼
T~
,~ ar tfii. ~anb

FIGURE I . A small sample of nearly 1,500 books that have contributed to the spread of the
"2012" phenomenon.
 Number of Books Published
"2012" Books Published by Year
400
350
o L~........................................................~~:!!!:::::~--+----+--+--l
1966 1970 1974 1978 1982
FIGURE 2. Number of books published mentioning "2012" for each year from 1966 to 2010.
The Purposeful Universe: How Quantum
Theory and Mayan Cosmology Explain the
Origin and Evolution of Life
2012: Profiting from the End of the World
2013: How to Profit from the Prophets in the
Coming End of the World
2012 and the Cabala
Transforming Human Awareness: Buddhist
View of2012 and Beyond
Qurandroid: Surviving the Conceptual 2012
via Spiritual Teachings of the Quran
And here are three of my favorites, the hopeless
We're All Going to Die Tomorrow: A Guidebook for
the End of the World & a Compendium of the Many
Ways in Which We Are All Totally Doomed, the inde-
cipherable Fulfilling the Sacred Ancestral Prophecy
1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010
of the Triple Nine: Unveiling the Prophetic 2012
Meltdown of the Lost and Astray Pale State of the
Mind, and the utterly simple What's Up with 2012?
Though the preceding list may seem long and
somewhat overwhelming, it represents only slightly
more than 1 percent of the number of books avail-
able, just 17 out of nearly 1,500.
Although the dispute over the possible metaphysi-
cal significance of "2012" is incessantly debated,
what the final days of 2012 will bring for the "2012"
publishing phenomenon and the individual authors
who have marketed themselves around that meme
is another matter. While a long history of failed
millenarian prophecies would seem to indicate that
the utopian hermeneutics of "2012" -like thought
will continue on long after this particular date of
millennial interest comes and goes, the specific
ability to market "2012" appears to have a built-in
eschatology of its own. We may reach 2,012 "2012"
books by the end of 2012, and there may be a short
VOLUME XXIV 2011 209
publishing window for scholarly reflection and cog-
nitive dissonance-relieving retrojective explanation
by proponents whose predictions failed to pan out,
but the window of opportunity that drives an ever-
increasing book publishing rate is closing rapidly. 5
The Early Days of "2012":
The 1960s and 1970s
In his 1966 book The Maya, Michael Coe claimed
that the ancient Maya expected that at the closing
of the thirteenth Bak'tun of their Long Count cal-
endar "Armageddon would overtake the degenerate
peoples of the world and all creation" (1966:149).
Though a respected Mayanist, he had miscalculated
the date as December 24, 2011. Nearly a decade later,
in 1975, Coe's mistaken date would be echoed, re-
packaged, and expanded upon outside of academia to
accommodate both popular and esoteric countercul-
tural interests. The popular appropriation followed
on the heels of the "ancient astronaut" craze initiated
by Erich von Daniken's 1968 book, published in the
United States in 1970 as Chariots of the Gods?
Narrated by Rod Serling, The Outer Space Con-
nection (1975) was the third in a series of television
productions by Alan Landsburg exploring the ques-
tion of whether the gods of old were really advanced
extraterrestrials. The film introduced December 24,
2011, to an audience of millions as the potential
date when the extraterrestrials would return to "seek
the fate of the colony left on Earth" (Landsburg
1975). The mass-market paperback of the same name
that accompanied the program reiterated this mes-
sage and confirms Coe as the source (Landsburg and
Landsburg 1975:164-165).
Though Landsburg's films and books reached a
large audience, the inclusion of the Long Count was
something of a concluding afterthought to his more
salient goal of presenting "evidence" to bolster the
ancient astronaut theory. The full esoteric appropria-
tion of Coe's apocalyptic reading of the Long Count
and its development into a more encompassing pro-
phetic cosmology came later the same year.
Frank Waters's Mexico Mystique: The Coming
Sixth World of Consciousness (1975) deserves due
credit (or due infamy, as some may see it) as the first
book entirely devoted to delineating metaphysical
210 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
implications of the Long Count and its cycle ending,
which he also identified as December 24, 2011.6 In
the book one finds the same themes that run through
the "2012" phenomenon up to the present. Given the
popularity of Waters's earlier books (especially his
Book of the Hopi) and the ten years between its writ-
ing and any other significant title fully devoted to an
esoteric interpretation of the Long Count, it seems
fair to identify Mexico Mystique as the first major
event in the life of the "2012" phenomenon to come.
Waters spends considerable effort attempting
to demonstrate that the astrological alignments on
December 24, 2011, auspiciously corroborate his
esoteric interpretation of the meaning of the Long
Count. However, since the date he borrowed from
Coe was in error, his astrological forecast no longer
addresses a date of interest to contemporary crowds
who have more recently tended to focus instead on the
winter solstice of 2012. Waters was able to develop
elaborate astrological support for the way he wanted
to interpret the meaning of the Long Count based on
an erroneous date. Later "2012" authors attempted
similar astrological contortions but using a new date,
indicating the flexibility of astrological "prediction."
Considering the emphasis in Mexico Mystique
on the "coming sixth world of consciousness" that
would attend the conclusion of the Long Count, the
two other mentions of "2012" published in 1975
were very minimal indeed. In The Transformative
Vision the bulk of Jose Arguelles's discussion of
indigenous prophecy is devoted to Tony Shearer's
eclectic re-visioning of Aztec calendar cycles and
the dates August 16-17, 1987 (which Arguelles later
co-opted and named the Harmonic Convergence).
A single comment in an endnote merely points out
that there is another Mexican cycle, the Maya Long
Count, that ends in the year 2012 with no specific
date indicated, concluding: "What this may signify
in relation to the information given by Shearer ...
is yet to be worked out. Obviously, time will tell!"
(Arguelles 1975:304). For Arguelles, time did tell.
As will be shown later, he eventually fuses the two
dates together to give them the appearance of pos-
sessing a coherent meaning.
Also published in 1975 was The Invisible Land-
scape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, which
detailed the development of a mathematical abstrac-
tion from an ancient Chinese divination system
(the I Ching) that the authors, Terence and Dennis
McKenna, claimed to be a "valid general theory of
time" that "chart[s] the future course of novel ingres-
sions into space-time" (1975:168, 151). Importantly,
the map of time that they developed, which they
called the Timewave, had a specific and climactic
end date. After several early failed attempts at pin-
pointing end dates , which they did not publicize
(Dennis McKenna, personal communication 2009),
they settled on an end date in 2012 (like Argi.ielles,
they mention a year only and no specific date) for the
7
publication of The Invisible Landscape .
A few other books in the 1970s repeated but didn't
do much to expand upon the groundwork laid by Coe,
Waters, and McKenna. In a chapter titled "What
Caused the Collapse of the Maya?" in a popular Ameri-
can Heritage anthology, Mysteries of the Past ( 1977),
archaeologist Brian Fagan ( 1977 :295) compounded
the scholarly influence on the development of the
"2012" phenomenon by repeating Michael Coe's as-
sessment of a decade earlier. Mysteries of the Mexican
Pyramids by Peter Tompkins (1976) briefly reiterates ,
without elaboration, Waters 's astrological information
and Coe's erroneous date. He also includes extended
claims of Maya connections with the Old World,
including Freemasonry, and connects 2011 with ex-
traterrestrial battles over the establishment of a "world
government" (Tompkins 1976:286, 362, 399). Final
Secret of the Illuminati , the first volume of a trilogy
titled Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson ( 1977),
devotes a few pages to a concise description of the
McKenna Timewave in the context of several other
theories of "time acceleration," including those of
Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, and Alvin Toffler
(Wilson 1977:214-218). The Flight of Feathered Ser-
pent (1978) , though predominantly a guide to Peter
Balin's Maya-inspired Xultun Tarot deck, enigmati-
cally places the end of the Long Count on December
21 , 2011. Though Balin's bibliography lists Mexico
Mystique, it is difficult to tell where Balin gathered
his supporting information for the assertion that the
"Mayas believed that most of the destruction will take
place between December 21st, 2011 , and June 6th,
2012 [when a Venus transit will occur]" (1978:29).
To recap, between 1966 and 1978 nine books were
published in the life of the "2012" phenomenon.
The first book by Coe (1966) provided a veneer of
academic legitimacy for attributions of imminent
apocalyptic expectations to the Maya that was com-
pounded in a chapter in a popular book by Fagan
(1977) . Landsburg (1975) connected the date to
expectations of returning ancient astronauts, while
Waters (1975) developed an astrological account of
cycles of human consciousness that wax and wane
with cycles of world destruction based on the move-
ments of the planets. Tompkins (1976) offered a
further platform for and extension of Waters's ideas,
both authors having already established strong
reader bases in the counterculture with prior in-
fluential books. Argi.ielles (1975) barely makes
mention of 2012 or the Long Count, seeming to
forget about them entirely for another decade. Mean-
while, McKenna and McKenna (1975) established an
influential 2012-oriented transhumanist eschatology
that was developed by means unrelated to the Maya
or the Long Count, given further audience by another
popular countercultural writer, Wilson (1977). And
Balin incorporated the Long Count into the philoso-
phy of his Maya-inspired divination system (1978).
The Meme Marinates: 1980-1993
While the origins of the "2012" phenomenon can
be found in the Cold War worries and psychedelic
syncretism of the 1960s and 1970s, it was the evan-
gelical ambitions of Jose Argi.ielles and Terence
McKenna during the 1980s and early 1990s that
kept the meme marinating in countercultural and
"New Age" circles worldwide. Since the focus of this
article is "2012" book publishing , it is worth pointing
out that McKenna's major influence in the 1980s was
not as an author but as a prolific lecturer at "fringe"
conferences and at workshop retreats such as the
Esalen Institute and the Ojai Foundation. Though
his footprint in the literary world does not reappear
until the early 1990s, his influence (especially on
8
Arguelles) was significant.
Arguelles made no further mention of the Long
Count or "2012" in his books up through the end of
1984, including The Art Planet Chronicles (1982) ,
EarthAscending(I984a),andEarthShaman(1984b).
VOLUME XXIV 2011 211
Following a meeting at the Ojai Institute in April
1985, however, where he saw Terence McKenna
give a presentation that mentioned the end of the
Long Count on the winter solstice of2012 (McKenna
1985), he quickly included this as a central feature
of his vision (Argtielles 1987:40-41). At the time,
Argtielles had been impressed by North Atlantic
Books and especially the company's journal Io be-
cause it had "published North American star maps
and lunar calendars in the Ethnoastronomy issue"
(Grossinger 2010:12) . He arranged a meeting with
North Atlantic Books founder Richard Grossinger
to pitch the manuscript-in-progress that would be-
come The Mayan Factor (1987) . "Jose introduced
me to Mesoamerican prophecy," says Grossinger,
who, at the time, remained unconvinced. "I didn't
want to embarrass my guest, so I made the worst of
all possible compromises, turning down his actual
'harmonic convergence' manuscript but offering to
publish three chapters of it in a forthcoming issue
of our journal lo: Planetary Mysteries, introducing
Richard Hoagland's 'Face on Mars,' my prized col-
lectible at the time" (Grossinger 2010:12, 14) .
Argtielles had introduced North Atlantic Books
to the topic of "2012" prophecy, and the company
would later become one of the predominant inde-
pendent publishing sources of "2012" literature . In
the meantime, Argtielles wrote The Crystal Earth
Papers ( 1985) under the banner of his Planet Art
Network as a preparation manual for the approach-
ing Harmonic Convergence. In it, he finally made
the link between the 1987 and 2012 dates that he
only hinted at momentarily in The Transformative
Vision (1975). In early 1986 North Atlantic Books
released Planetary Mysteries edited by Grossinger
with three chapters of The Mayan Factor in progress,
but Argtielles was still left without a publisher for
the final product. When he found Barbara and Gerry
Clow, the editors of Bear & Company, another major
step in the life of the "2012" phenomenon took place:
"So there I was in the 1980s, working as a publisher.
. . . [T]he Lakota teacher Tony Shearer informed
me how important August 16-17, 1987, would be
for indigenous people .. . . I didn't follow the Aztec
calendar, but I sensed this was important. Soon there-
after, Jose Arguelles came to my office with The
212 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
Mayan Factor . .. . Bear & Company quickly got it
ready for publication by early 1987, while I studied
it diligently" (Clow 2007:26).
The Harmonic Convergence event anticipated
in The Mayan Factor required that 144,000 people
simultaneously (harmoniously) meditate at desig-
nated "sacred sites" around the world.9 Arguelles
suggested that the event could be experienced "as
another Pentecost and Second Coming of Christ"
and that the result would be to (re)activate "long-
dormant archetypal memories and impressions ...
[which would] create the impulse toward the new
order and lifestyle . . .. Earth will be but a single
synchronization away from entry into the Galac-
tic Federation" ( 1987: 169-170). Argtielles expected
that next "synchronization" to take place in 2012,
when "the closing out not only of the Great Cycle,
but of the evolutionary interim called Homo sapiens"
will take place (1987: 194).
Ever since the Harmonic Convergence, Bear &
Company has become the largest independent pub-
lisher of "2012" literature and arguably the most
influential source for "authoritative" information and
10
perspectives on "2012." To date it has contributed
at least 31 titles to the "2012" discussion by the
most well-known "2012" authors: Jose Argtielles,
Barbara Hand Clow, Terence McKenna, John Major
Jenkins, Carl Calleman, Barbara Marciniak, Maurice
Cotterell, Paul La Violette, Geoff Stray, Ervin Laszlo,
Hunbatz Men, and others . But all of that publish-
ing was yet to occur. In fact, every single book
published between 1978 and 1993 (with the excep-
tion of those written by professional Mayanists; see
Table 1) was either written by, contained an article
with, or discussed "2012" in the context of either
Jose Argtielles or Terence McKenna. The two ex-
ceptions are Return of the Thunderbeings by Iron
Thunderhorse and Donn Le Vie Jr. (1990) and the
11
FASA Corporation's Shadowrun (1989). The for-
mer is the first Bear & Company book on the subject
not written by Argtielles or Clow. The latter brought
the Maya calendar meme to the world of popular
role-playing games (think Dungeons & Dragons),
creating another avenue of popular penetration into
the culture at large. Interestingly, Shadowrun used
Frank Waters's "sixth world of consciousness" and
Table 1. Books Mentioning "2012" Published between 1983 and 1993

Book Title Author Publisher Year

The Ancient Maya

Sylvanus G. Morley Stanford University Press 1983
(revisions by Robert Sharer)*
The Crystal Earth Papers Jose Arguelles Planet Art Network 1985
Planetary Mysteries Richard Grossinger (editor) North Atlantic Books 1986
The Blood of Kings* Linda Schele Kimbell Art Museum 1986
All Rites Reversed?! AnteroAlli Falcon Press 1987
The Mayan Factor Jose Arguelles Bear & Co. 1987
Earth Ascending, 2nd ed. Jose Arguelles Bear& Co. 1988
Surfers of the Zuvuya Jose Arguelles Bear& Co. 1988
The Book of the Year* Munro S. Edmonson University of Utah Press 1988
Shadowrun FASA Corporation FASA Corporation 1989
Heart of the Christos Barbara Clow Bear & Co. 1989
Return of the Thunderbeings Iron Thunderhorse and Donn Le Vie Jr. Bear & Co. 1990
A Forest of Kings* Linda Schele and David Freidel William Morrow & Co. 1990
Dreamspell: The Journey of
Jose Arguelles Chelsea Pacific 1990
Timeship Earth 2013
Breaking the Maya Code* Michael D . Coe Thames and Hudson 1992
The Archaic Revival Terence McKenna HarperCollins 1992
The White Hole in Time Peter Russell HarperCollins 1992
Trialogues at the Edge of Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and
Bear & Co. 1992
the West Rupert Sheldrake
Signet of Atlantis Barbara Clow Bear& Co. 1992
Eds. David Brown and
Mavericks of the Mind Crossing Press 1993
Rebecca McClen Novick

Note: Titles followed by an asterisk were written by academic Mayanists.

the date December 24, 2011, as the starting point of
its intricate futuristic cyberpunk world: "What we
know as the Year of Chaos was actually the end of the
old age and the beginning of the new, the dawn of our
12
Awakened World" (FASA Corporation 1989: 14).
Utopian Audiences:
Authors as Readers-an Interlude
We need more emphasis on utopian readers and the processes
they use to transform authors' "temperaments" and their
words into personalized guides and inspirations.
Kenneth M. Roemer, Utopian Audiences
Kenneth Roemer's book Utopian Audiences: How
Readers Locate Nowhere is, in part, a plea to scholars
of utopian literature to give the audience a central
focus in an arena that he sees as having been domi-
nated by studies of specific authors. Roemer, who
was president of the Society for Utopian Studies at
the time, offered this as a "functional approach" that
elevates the place of the reader in academic studies of
utopian literature: "Texts invite the creation of mean-
ing, and readers give meaning to the texts (meanings
that may or may not coincide with the invitations);
before , during, and after the reading experience, this

VOLUME XXIV 2011 213

process of meaning creation is constrained, guided
and encouraged by powerful cultural, historical and
personal situations and forces . . .. Readers can ac-
cept, reject, ignore, or transform the invitations, or
they may be completely oblivious to some of them"
(2003:3-4) .
While Roemer's own definition of a literary uto-
pia is partial toward fictional utopias, he begins to
acknowledge the suitability of expansion into vi-
sionary and prophetic literature with his own brief
analysis of "the 'Great Vision' chapter (20-47) in
John G. Neihardt's and Nicholas Black Elk's Black
13
Elk Speaks (1932)" (2003:65-68). Prophetic lit-
erature , by projecting its visions of humanity into a
future time, can act very similarly to fictional utopias,
which project their didactic imaginings into distant
times (both future and past), alternative presents,
the far reaches of space, and a variety of imaginary
realms where alternative realities can be explored
and contemporary realities contrasted. Utopian lit-
erature invites both a critique of the modern situation
and an invitation to participate in something better by
providing what Roemer refers to as an "unhinging
experience that leads to new perceptions and possi-
bly changed behavior" (2003:67) . "The real utopian
drama," Roemer suggests, "becomes not whether
readers will accept the given-gospel of the text, but
how they will respond to and use the potentially un-
hinging experience of reading a utopia" (2003:63) .
While there is no way that I can hope to explore
in this short space even a small variety of reader re-
sponses to "2012" literature,! would like to suggest a
fruitful avenue of analysis that considers the "2012"
author as, more fundamentally, a "2012" reader who
is also responding to, mixing, and adapting the in-
vitations of earlier authors. As author Ursula K. Le
Guin pointed out in a personal letter to Roemer when
he spotted her simultaneous role as "a daughter, a
reader, and a writer" in borrowing material from her
anthropologist father, "I had a kind of advantage
over my father-he couldn't use my book, but I
could use his" (Roemer 2003:59). Each successive
"2012"-themed book represents a borrowing of in-
vitations from earlier authors and an incorporation
of those invitations in ways unique to each author 's
own distinctive frame of meaning-acquisition.
214 ARCHAEOASTRON OM Y
For example, Jose Argiielles's encounter with the
Shadowrun role-playing game inspired his own at-
tempts at alternative means for spreading his "2012"
message: "Jose was perusing a comic book shop and
discovered Shadowrun (1989) , a near-future science
fiction comic with a Harmonic Convergence/2012
plotline. Tuning into the alternative reality depicted
in the comic, Jose thought some type of role-playing
game might make the Galactic Mayan time knowl-
edge more accessible. This inspiration resulted in the
'Starcraft Operator's Manual,' the predecessor of the
14
Dreamspell" (South 2009:257). With this passage
Stephanie South-Arguelles 's biographer-demon-
strates some of the ways that textual invitations can
be taken by a reader and woven into an alterna-
tive authorial narrative. We can trace this memetic
lineage all the way back to invitations given by
Michael Coe in 1966. Some of Coe's invitations
were accepted by Frank Waters, who adapted (and
greatly expanded) them to his own goals as an au-
thor and spiritual seeker. The authors of Shadowrun
then took a very small portion of the invitations of-
fered by Waters and tailored them to suit their own
goals within their own genre. Argiielles's reading
of Shadowrun resulted in his own "2012"-themed
game with an extensive guidebook. And Stephanie
South (Argiielles's fourth wife) then had her own
agenda, while writing a hagiographical account of
her husband's life, for using language that implied
Shadowrun had been influenced by her husband when
in fact it drew from earlier, independent sources that
had also influenced Arguelles.
Innumerable examples of these chains of author/
reader feedback can be delineated in the life of the
"2012" phenomenon. Another potent instance of
this sort of invitational cross-fertilization is Judith
Bluestone Polich's Return of the Children of the
Light: Incan and Mayan Prophecies for a New World
(1999). Developed in the effl.orescing period of
"2012" publishing discussed in the next section, it
presents a particularly condensed "2012" syncre-
tism, especially given its still relatively early date.
In 136 pages Polich managed to develop a vision
of "2012" that remixed the majority of significant
"2012" theories to date at that time, including a rec-
onciliation of conflicting dates.
 The Mayan calendar ends in 2012 on De-
cember 21, the winter solstice. The current
world-age, the fourth sun of the ancient Maya
(the fifth sun of the Inca) is waning. The
5,125-year period that began in 3112 B.C ....
is drawing to a close. The Maya predict that
this cycle of time ... will end in great earth-
quakes - a notion that could be a metaphor
for great cultural changes .... [T]he simul-
taneous conjunction of the solstice sun with
the galactic center offers a potential for great
spiritual transformation and rebirth .... [A]
very rare planetary alignment will occur on
December 24, 2011, one year before the Maya
15
calendar ends. • •• [T]he Maya foresaw this
alignment. ... [T]o them, the year 2012 was
far more than the end of a precessional cycle;
it was a major galactic event [Polich 1999:94).
The Efflorescence: 1994-2005
During the period already examined, from 1966 to
1993, approximately 30 books contributed to the
development of the "2012" phenomenon. From
1994 to 2005, a period of less than half as long,
more than 200 additional titles appeared. The lit-
erature of 1994 was a significant addition to the
"2012" canon. In that year, HarperCollins published
Terence McKenna's stranger-than-fiction autobiog-
raphy, True Hallucinations, which documented the
Amazonian "experiments" that led to the Timewave
theory described in The Invisible Landscape, a book
that Harper simultaneously released in a newly re-
vised edition. Two books by John Major Jenkins
(who would later champion the "galactic alignment"
aspect of "2012" thought), Tzolkin: Visionary Per-
spectives and Calendar Studies and Jaloj Kexoj and
Phi-64, brought detailed attention to a variety of eso-
teric accounts of "Mayan Time Philosophy" (Jenkins
1994b). 16 Bob Frissell's Nothing in This Book ls
True, but It's Exactly How Things Are (1994) became
North Atlantic Books' second foray into "2012"
thought via its Frog Books imprint.
With 1995 and 1996 came more titles by Barbara
Hand Clow (The Pleiadian Agenda [1995]) and Jose
Arguelles (Galactic Human Handbook, Entering the
New Time [1995] with Sheldon Nidle, The Call of
Pacal Votan [1996],and The Arcturus Probe [1996]),
but also brought two significant new voices to the
"2012" "meme pool." Graham Hancock's Finger-
prints of the Gods added dramatic flair to the idea that
the Maya anticipated the world's destruction in De-
cember 2012. In a literary sleight-of-hand, Hancock
(1995:100, 231) manipulated Frank Waters's astro-
logical predictions for December 24, 2011, to apply
to December 23, 2012, for the closing of the Long
Count, a date that he had obtained from Michael
Coe's alarming epilogue to Breaking the Maya Code
(1992:275-276). Roland Emmerich would later use
images of destruction described in Hancock's book as
the central basis for his blockbuster 2009 film 2012.
The Mayan Prophecies (1995) claims success in
"decoding the complex Mayan astrological prophe-
cies" that "tell of the catastrophes to come in 2012,"
attempting to support the "shattering revelation" that
"the rise and fall of world ages and civilizations co-
incides with sunspot cycles" (Gilbert and Cotterell
1995:dust jacket). Recall that Waters had claimed
that rise and fall to coincide with planetary astrol-
ogy. Gilbert and Cotterell's book had a significant
impact on the later apocalyptic ideas of others like
Patrick Geryl and John Jay Harper, introducing wor-
ries about sunspot cycle-related disasters into the
"2012" lexicon.
At this point, three decades after Coe (1966),
fewer than 50 books had appeared in print that pro-
vided any attention to "2012." By 2000 that number
had more than doubled to over 100 despite the much
more central cultural focus at the time on the mil-
lennial moment of Y2K. The closing moments of
the year 2000 saw publication of the first of Carl
Calleman 's "2012" books, Solving the Greatest Mys-
tery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar, in which he
attempted to reorient the focus of esoteric aficiona-
dos of Maya calendrics to his own unique date, one
that will already have passed by the publication of
this article: October 28, 2011. Given his selection
of an earlier date than other proponents, Calleman's
theory, though influential, was assured a shorter pub-
lishing window.
By the end of 2005, works discussing "2012" had
risen to at least 246 titles. Authors who first contrib-
uted works during this period included David Icke
(2001), Gregg Braden (2002), Patrick Geryl (2002),
VOLUME XXIV 2011 215
Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges (2003), Wynn Free
and David Wilcock (2004), Geoff Stray (2005), and
Paul La Violette (2005). There were also further
titles by Clow, Arguelles, Jenkins, and Calleman.
The books that had appeared by this time represent
the vast majority of significant contributions of ideas
central to "2012" thought up to the present. However,
they represent less than 20 percent of the total output
of books to date.
The "Cambrian Explosion" of "2012"
Memetics: 2006 to the Present
The remaining 1,000+ books, which represent more
than 80 percent of the total output, were written in an
amount of time that corresponds to about 10 percent
of the total life span of the "2012" phenomenon. For
researchers, this mass of literature corresponds to
a chaotic and unapproachable range of adaptations
of "2012" memes, expanding into what appears as
an unending variety of suitable cultural niches: a
veritable "Cambrian Explosion" of "2012" memet-
ics. It is important to remember that a meme does
not require accuracy for its survival, only replica-
tion. Contemporary media technologies have aided
this process greatly by providing an exponentially
greater number of available niches and avenues for
replication and mutation .
Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quet-
zalcoatl (2006) , the 270th book on my list, did little
to innovate but a great deal to popularize "2012."
Pinchbeck and his books were brought wide pub-
lic attention via interviews on the television show
The Colbert Report and in Rolling Stone magazine
(Grigoriadis 2006) as well as at psychedelic confer-
ences and popular countercultural venues such as
the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black
Rock Desert. Pinchbeck has recently undertaken a
new project with North Atlantic Books to develop
an imprint called Evolver Editions (named after the
Evol ver social network website he helped to develop).
The imprint "will publish books by writers known in
the spiritual counterculture as leading voices of the
transformational movement" (Andriani 2010).
Another book that received an abundance of
media attention and contributed to the wide propa-
gation of "2012" memetics was Lawrence Joseph's
216 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
Apocalypse 2012: An Optimist Investigates the End
of Civilization (2007). Presenting a facade of scien-
tific legitimacy, Joseph outlines a frightening array
of disaster scenarios that he suggests will almost
certainly occur around 2012. By the time the book
was reprinted (with a new epilogue) only a year later,
Joseph had apparently lost even the veil of optimism
that existed in his original title, renaming the book
Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civiliza-
tion's End.
The number of books published each year from
2005 through mid-July 2011 (shown in Figure 2)
shows a significant pattern of increase in each suc-
cessive year, which reflects an even more significant
increase in the diversity of ways that authors (and
readers) have developed "2012" to suit their own
conscious and unconscious goals. Those goals may
be appropriate to the acquisition of meaning, of
money, of attention, or of whatever forms of social
and personal commodity are relevant in the environ-
ment of a recipient of a "2012" memetic invitation.
This recalls Roemer's comment that such memetic
invitations are "constrained, guided and encouraged
by powerful cultural, historical and personal situa-
tions and forces" (2003:4) . The constraints, guides,
and encouragements that have shaped reader and au-
thor responses to "2012" memes are a major part of
the selective features under which the larger meme-
plex of the "2012" phenomenon has evolved. Book
publishing, of course, is only one facet of that larger
complex of memes. As a variety of interdisciplinary
perspectives contribute to the conversation, we can
continue to develop clearer understandings of this
contemporary, burgeoning phenomenon, which, in
the meantime, can only be examined in a state of
motion-blur as its many varieties continue to adapt.
Conclusion
The life of the "2012" phenomenon has not been the
product of a single auteur or even several distinct au-
thors but rather has resulted from the collective and
unconcerted efforts of a diverse multiplicity utiliz-
ing a complex array of feedback mechanisms . Even
within the output of a single publisher, such as Bear
& Company/Inner Traditions, there is no consistent
message about what is expected in 2012 and how
Table 2. Top "2012" Parent Publishers
(Current) Parent Publisher
Self-publishing
Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. Imprints
Red Wheel/Weiser Imprints
North Atlantic Books Imprints
Penguin Imprints
HarperCollins Imprints
Macmillan Imprints
Llewellyn Imprints
Simon and Schuster Imprints
Note: The self-publishing number is a combined total; the most
prolific individual self-publisher is Createspace with at least 152
relevant books .
people should comport themselves in relation to it.
Books from the same editors , publishers, and authors
are often internally contradictory. "2012" readers are
left, as are "2012" authors , to their own devices (con-
scious and unconscious) when it comes to responding
to any of the individual authorial invitations they en-
counter. The ease of self-publishing in recent years
has empowered readers who would not normally
have found themselves published through more tra-
ditional avenues to contribute their own voices to
the evolution of "2012" memetics. Table 2 shows
that self-publishing companies, like Createspace
and Authorhouse , have (even if only recently) vastly
outproduced even the most prolific independent pub-
lishers of "2012" literature . One effect of this new
empowerment to authorship is to ensure a burgeon-
ing supply of available cultural niches from which
readers can pick and choose to personalize their own
individual "2012" experiences .
"2012" authors have adapted their messages to
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, New
Age , agnostic, and popular audiences, among others.
They have adapted fictional accounts to adventure,
fantasy, science fiction , romance, horror, comedy,
political fiction , historical fiction, role playing, and
spiritual or occult genres . They have written non-
fiction as inspiration, history, handbook, guide,
biography, autobiography, hagiography, philosophy,
travelogue , almanac, creative nonfiction, self-help,
survival preparation, and even peer-reviewed and
Books popular works by scholars. To date, only four of
nearly 1,500 books have been full treatments by
569 scholars (Aveni 2009; Van Stone 2010; Restall and
36 Solari 2011; Stuart 2011), of which only one (Aveni
28 2009) is the product of a university press. Greater
26 interdisciplinarity would shed light not only on what
20 the Maya may (or may not) have thought about the
19 upcoming closing of the thirteenth Bak'tun of their
15 Long Count calendar but also on the numerous ways
13
that the current "2012" phenomenon speaks to and
about our complex contemporary situation. One of
8
the goals of the present article is to provide a use-
ful data set for other researchers to begin to explore
the topic more deeply. As I hope to have shown, the
pool of resources available for academics to begin
examining this modern and fertile millennial meme
is functionally endless.
Acknowledgments
Deborah Addington and Kathryn Chapman provided
invaluable editorial assistance prior to submission.
Rosalind Whitesides assisted with formatting the
chart in Figure 2. Ian Ford-Terry came up with the
title "2,012 by 2012." Thanks to Dennis McKenna
for permission to cite from our personal communi-
cation, to Richard Grossinger for discussing North
Atlantic Books and sharing resources with me , and
to John Hoopes for providing a very helpful sound-
ing board for ideas and for final editorial assistance .
Notes
As of the publication of this article, the count of books has ,
indeed, exceeded 2,012 titles.
1. During Terence McKenna's Alien Dreamtime perfor-
mance , he refers to 2012 as "the impending apparent end of
everything" (Spacetime Continuum 1993).
2. Throughout the article I use "2012" to designate a con-
stellation of imminent millennial expectations affiliated (in
most cases) with the presumed closing of the cycle of the
Maya Long Count calendar. I use 2012 (without quotation
marks) to indicate the year in the Gregorian calendar (e.g .,
a book about "2012" and a book that takes place in the
year 2012).
3. It is important to acknowledge, as has been well docu-
mented by John Hoopes (this volume) , that the Western roots
of millenarian interest in Mesoamerica can be traced back
V OLUME XX IV 2011 217
several centuries prior to the contemporary "2012" phe-
nomenon with its (predominant) interest in the Long Count
calendar and its expected cycle ending around the year 2012.
4. Dawkins (1976) introduced the term "meme" as a cul-
tural analogue of the gene ("memetics," then, would be an
analogue of genetics). Memes evolve by a similar process of
selection, mutation, and adaptation as they are copied from
host to host. A meme is an aspect of human culture that can be
copied from one individual to another (a language, a concept,
a behavior, etc.).
5. There will, of course, be those who simply claim that
the accepted correlation dates between the Long Count and
the Gregorian calendar are incorrect, and some scholars are
already providing plenty of fodder for future millennialists to
eventually reinvoke the Long Count. For instance, Gerardo
Aldana (2011) at the University of California Santa Barbara,
in a widely publicized article, suggests that the generally
accepted GMT correlation (between the Long Count and
Gregorian calendars) could be off by 50 to 100 years or more.
6. The bibliography shows Coe (1966) as his source.
7. In 197 5 the McKennas made no mention of the Long
Count. They arrived at the year 2012 by adding 67 years (a
period inherent in their I Ching calculations) to the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 (McKenna 1985; McKenna
and McKenna 1975:174, 184).
8. More than a hundred recordings of McKenna 's lectures
prior to his death in 2000 have been widely circulated as
bootlegs and are sold by companies like Sound Photosyn-
thesis in Mill Valley, California, as well as aired on podcasts
like Lorenzo Hagerty 's Psychedelic Salon.
9. Argiielles derived the number 144,000 from the number
of faithful souls saved in the book of Revelation 7: 1-8 and
14: 1-3 and from the number of days in one Bak'tun, noting
that "the number symbolism of the Book of Revelations pos-
sesses a profoundly Mayan overtone" (1987:132).
10. That these books are typically viewed incredulously by
academics has apparently not impeded Bear & Company's
book sales. Ownership of the company traded hands in 2000
when, following the death of their son , the Claws sold Bear
& Company to Ehud Sperling as an imprint of his successful
Inner Traditions publishing firm . For North Atlantic Books,
see "The Business Philosophy and Esoteric History of an
Independent Publishing Company" on Richard Grossinger's
personal website (http://www.richardgrossinger.com/2010
/03/ta b Ie-of-con ten ts-the- bu sines s-ph ilosoph y-and
-esoteric-history-of-an-independent-publishing-company/) .
11. Since writing this article, I have encountered two more
fairly early books that mention "2012." The first is The
Starseed Transmissions by Ken Carey (1982), which briefly
indicates the Maya and the year 2011 as a millennial mo-
ment. The second is Time among the Maya by Ronald Wright
(1989), which critiques the countercultural appropriation
of "2012 ."
218 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
12. John Hoopes has recently brought to my attention the
fact that Ken Carey 's book The Starseed Transmissions
(originally published in 1982) contains a very briefrepetition
of the idea that the Maya pinpointed a millennial moment
in 2011. Our source is the 1995 edition (page 20) , and we
have been unable to confirm whether the line was in earlier
editions. Carey 's book, which was influential on Argiielles,
should be kept in mind for this period.
13 . Roemer defines a "literary utopia" as "a fairly detailed
narrative description of an imaginary culture-a fiction that
invites readers to experience vicariously an alternative real-
ity that critiques theirs by opening cognitive and affective
spaces that encourage readers to perceive the realities and
potentialities of their culture in new ways" (2003:65).
14. The false attribution to Shadowrun of having a "Har-
monic Convergence/2012 plotline" when in fact it drew upon
Waters's earlier work is typical of the historical misattribu-
tions in Stephanie South 's hagiography of Arguelles.
15. This "alignment" (actually a configuration) was dis-
cussed by Waters (1975) based on its asserted astrological
significance and the assumption that it coincided with the
end of the Long Count.
16. This galactic alignment was already noted in McKenna
and McKenna (1975:189-190, 1994:197) following invi-
tations from Santillana and von Dechend's influential but
academically panned study in astromythology, Hamlet's
Mill (1969).
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