The Mayan Calendar

written in 2011, 2011 elenin.org

Scientists recently discovered that we are actually late immigrants to the Milky Way! The long held belief that we are citizens of the Milky Way appears to have been debunked with the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy in 1994 by Rodrigo Ibata, Mike Irwin, and Gerry Gilmore. Further studies and voluminous amount of data from the infrared telescope Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) by researchers from the University of Massachusetts revealed that the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, our home galaxy, is in the midst of concluding a process that begun millions of years ago a process of integrating themselves into the 10,000 times bigger Milky Way galaxy. This process explains why the Milky Way always appears to be slanting sideways in the night sky instead of ecliptic, and why there appears to be a dark depth in the center of it. The orbit of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy and the Milky Way, plus to a much smaller extent, the wobble of the earth caused by its spinning along its axis coincides with the planet dipping above and below the center of that dark depth, which is also referred to as Galactic Equator. Now, how does this relate to the Mayan prophesy, you rightly wonder. Well, lets start in the beginning. The fundamentals of the Mayan calendar and sky charting were borrowed from the Olmec civilization which started their stargazing approximately in 680 BC. The Mayans extrapolated and refined the Olmecs system to assist them in the more mundane aspects of existence, such as crop plating, the appointment of a Sun-God and stuff like that. Eventually, they created their own calendars paying close attention to the movement of the stars and planets that were marching across our sky. One of their most popular calendars was called the Tzolkin. The Tzolkin consists of eighteen 20 days month (Uinals), where each of the twenty days is accorded a symbolic significance (a more complicated version of the modern astrology). The eighteen month totals up to 360 days, which is referred to as a Tun year. The sum of 20 of these Tuns is 19 years, eight months and 15 days, or a Katun. A Baktun meanwhile, equals twenty Katuns, or 394 years and 4 months. Now, 13 Baktuns gets you one Great Cycle, or 1,872,000 days, which is approximately 5,125 years; the equivalent of one Mayan Great Cycle. Since the Mayan folklore stipulates that the universe was created on August 11, 3114 BC, it stands to reason that the end of the cycle will happen exactly 1,872,000 days later, which falls on 11:11 GMT, 21 December 2012.

So, how did the Mayans came to the 5,125 year equals one Great Cycle conclusion, again, you rightly wonder? Elementary, my dear Watson. Its the wobbling stars in the sky. The movement of the stars across the night sky is often accompanied by wobbles in move-ment that corresponds with the solstices of both the earth and the sun. The wobbles, which coincidentally sounds like a childrens TV show, is caused by a minor realignment of our planet along its axis as the gravitational forces and the recently discovered phenomena of the dark energy exerts its influence on earth. A simple (Okay, its not simple at all. Its hard, like rocket science hard) calculation reveals that our movement and the suns, in relation to the Galactic Equator, will see the intersection of the Suns path across our skyline (the Elliptical) and the Galactic Equator. This intersection can only occur every 5,125 years (and the Mayans didnt even have a scientific calculator to help with the counting then a great many volunteer toes were probably required then)! To be fair, the Mayans did not prophesize what exactly will happen to the galaxy, which they referred to as the Sacred Tree, then. It could be a simple display of aurora borealis, it could be a period of rebirth or, seeing that the Mayans consider the sun as a representation of their God, Kukulkna, it could also imply (as many seem to be in favor of) a cataclysmic extinction level event. So you sigh in silence, exasperated, wondering yet again as to the link between Elenins arrival in September-October 2011 and the Mayan prophesized Armageddon in December 2012. To be as brief as possible, the solar dating system that is the Gregorian calendar that you swear by, inherited a number of flaws in them. The most obvious one would be of the missing day every century, owing to the rounding up of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45.25 seconds to 3651/4 days in the Julian calendar that was used before the Gregorian one, which by the 16th century, saw to the disappearance of 14 days! In addition, Pope Gregory, who authorized the conversion to the Julian calendar in 1582, shifted the calendar by 11 days, which saw the calendar leap from March 4, 1582 to March 15 the next day. In addition, the new calendar is still losing 30 seconds from the solar cycle annually. Add to the fact that the Julian calendar that was adopted by, who else, Julius Caesar in the eight century made a leap of 67 days to sync with the solar cycle, and upon his death, there were confusions with the methodology involved, with the most damaging being the three years leap years (instead of the now common four). Recalculating the Great Cycle in its entirety against the modern calendar, taking into account the faults and adjustments incorporated into it would reveal that the prophesized date would in fact be on Oct. 28, 2011 within weeks of Elenins projected perihelion, and more alarmingly, within 12 days of its forecasted perigee (closest orbital distance to the center of earth).