2012: The End of the Mayan Calendar:
December 21, 2012, 11:13 am GMT

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Part I: The holistic sun signs:

1. How to use this book

2. Understanding the astrological tools for enlightenment
The history of the astrological tools for enlightenment
The planetary rulerships of the days of the week & the hours of the day
Planetary rulerships of each sign
Ideas for the practical use of the astrological tools for enlightenment

3. Holistically understanding the zodiac:
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces

4. Enlightenment using the astrological tools for enlightenment of the other signs

Part II: Stairway to enlightenment in the years 2009-2012:

5. Why 2012? The Mayan calendar made easy & the concrete meaning of ascension

6. The prophecies of John of Jerusalem (1042-1120)

7. 2009: Delineation of the chart of the sixth day of the Mayan calendar (November 13, 2008 - November 7, 2009) & the planetary configurations in 2009.

8. 2010: Delineation of the chart of the sixth night of the Mayan calendar (November 8, 2009 - November 2, 2010) & the planetary configurations in 2010.

9. 2011: Delineation of the chart of the seventh day of the Mayan calendar (November 3, 2010 - October 28, 2011) & the planetary configurations in 2011.

10. 2012: Delineation of the chart of the end of the Mayan calendar (October 29, 2011 - December 21, 2012) Ascension chart (December 21, 2012) and the planetary configuration in 2012

11. The Mayan calendar & the signs:
2009-2012 for Aries and/or Aries rising
2009-2012 for Taurus and/or Taurus rising
2009-2012 for Gemini and/or Gemini rising
2009-2012 for Cancer and/or Cancer rising
2009-2012 for Leo and/or Leo rising
2009-2012 for Virgo and/or Virgo rising
2009-2012 for Libra and/or Libra rising
2009-2012 for Scorpio and/or Scorpio rising
2009-2012 for Sagittarius and/or Sagittarius rising
2009-2012 for Capricorn and/or Capricorn rising
2009-2012 for Aquarius and/or Aquarius rising
2009-2012 for Pisces and/or Pisces rising

12. Practical steps to enlightenment:
Lexigrams: ascension / enlightenment / master
Practical checklist for enlightenment
Around-the-house checklist
The survival backpack
Books, music, card decks & web sites that support enlightenment

About the author

Comment:

This is a book on the End of the Mayan Calendar, coming up in only a few years. It's the first such book that I have seen, though I doubt it's the first book of its type. So let's first cut to the chase. What will happen, according to Ms Karen?

The concrete meaning of Ascension
....In 2012, all our cycles of incarnations come to their natural conclusion. The year 2012 could be likened to a final exam in school. Some of us will be expelled, others will have to take the class again, and some of us will graduate with honors.... (pg. 199)

Those who will be expelled
....The Earth is a living entity. In her need to heal, she will now only accept those who heal with her. Those who insist on perpetuating lies, violence, fear, negativity, destruction, and hatred will not be allowed in the new world we are creating. This is why we could witness catastrophes that, in a few hours, wipe thousands of people off the planet. (pg. 200)

Those who will have to take the class over
Some who woke up too late but still want to change will be given the opportunity, in a parallel reality, at a slower rate, until the end of the next big evolutionary cycle.

Those who will graduate with honors
Those who are awake & actively doing their best to heal themselves, others & our planet will reach enlightenment. We do not individually have to wait for 2012 for this to happen. It could happen anytime between now and 2012....

Those who prefer a world of fear, war, and lies will reside in that dimension of destruction, while those of us who refuse to that creation will not have to live in that hell. These two worlds will exist simultaneously without ever meeting. (pg. 200)

....

"But what about my work, my wife, my husband, my house?" you ask. If in those relationships there is mutual support, growth, enrichment, freedom & happiness we shall continue evolving together. But if they are a constant source of friction and pain.... it will naturally dissolve, leaving space for a partnership that is more conductive to higher growth & happiness. (pg. 201)

....

We are ascending with, and in, our bodies, not without them....

All living creatures as well as the Earth also are ascending. Bees are not going extinct. They have already ascended, waiting for us in the parallel reality that all of us who reach enlightenment will move into naturally... (pg. 205)

Offhand, it sounds a lot more like Revelation than Central America. If it's of interest, the Spanish burned all but two or three of the Maya codices, ie, the books that might actually tell us what the Mayans themselves thought about the end of their calendar. Notably, Karen makes no direct reference to actual Maya writing.

Going back centuries - to 1666 in the 17th century, in particular, there have been other "critical days". But the world has resolutely ignored human efforts to jump-start a new planetary existence. Nor have we ever seen the slightest evidence for "divine intervention" on a massive scale. Why would it be different this time?

The Survival Backpack (pgs. 401-3) looks fairly dire. Perhaps enlightenment won't take immediate hold, or perhaps the early enlightened days will be a bit crude. Suggestions for the backpack include plastic sheets, duct tape, Swiss army knife, flashlight, warm clothes, toilet paper, cup with lid, valid passport, insurance information, vaccination papers for your pet. Notably missing from the list are medicines & prescriptions. It is not clear if this is because we won't be needing such things anymore, or if only the healthy are to be enlightened. Among recommended books are the Kama Sutra & Mantak Chia's books on sexual energy, but, notably, the backpack omits birth control. An oversight, or sly moralizing? You decide.

There are forecasts for each of the signs of the zodiac. These run from 2009 to 2015, some of them out to 2025 or so. Surprisingly, for the important date in question, there are no specific marching orders for the twelve signs. (And it would have been easy enough, too: Aquarians as the master brains, Geminis in charge of communication, Pisceans as telepaths & sensors, Taurus in charge of finances, Leos for leaders, etc.). Instead, there are delineations like this, for Libra:

April 4, 2011 - August 3, 2011 (Neptune in Pisces)
February 3, 2012 - January 27, 2026 (Neptune in Pisces
During these periods, your body is shifting at a cellular level. Its sensitivity to environmental conditions is so finely tuned that if you listen to its natural wisdom, you will be guided toward the optimal foods for your well-being. As your body is getting ready to integrate more and more light, what is denser is being gradually removed. This could cause some discomfort, which is best treated holistically (homeopathy, acupuncture, reflexology, massage, flower essences, acupressure). It is likely that you will want to wear organic fibers and practice a form of exercise in harmony with your natural energies, such as tai chi or yoga. You could also be drawn to work in the healing arts, including color, sound, crystals, and flower essences. The shifts that are occurring in your work and body are so subtle that you may not be able to define them until much later.

During these months, the enlighenment tools of Neptune (Pisces) help you bring light to your health. (pg. 326)

I'm not a great fan of 2012, but I am trying to give it its best shot. "Ascension" sounds a lot like the Christian "Rapture", where people are to jump out of their clothes & float upwards to a welcoming God of some sort. Judging by the contents of the Ascension backpack, after the Christians leave, there's going to be a shortage of all kinds of things, hence the backpack; stressful conditions, hence the Kama Sutra to get the juices flowing; and a need to generally repopulate the planet, hence the lack of birth control. So far as medicines are concerned, there isn't going to be any more of that, so if you're dependent on medication, you're just, well, out of luck.

So it looks like the end of the Mayan calendar, combined with Rapture, with a bit of economic depression thrown in for good measure, will be grim. But never mind! Michelle Karen's book is cheerful! Happy! Get this book and BE PREPARED!

What do I, personally, think is coming in the near future? I, personally, think we are rapidly entering a new Dark Age. I personally think the New Age, where the old Piscean Age was to supercharge the incoming Aquarian Age, resulting in earthly paradise, to have failed. And that was critical. My research shows that Aquarius, left to its own devices, is a nasty age. So far as I can tell, while there may be good times & bad times in the decades & centuries ahead, the next chance for a global shift will come towards the end of the next Piscean age, roughly 25,000 years from now. So settle in, do your job as best you can, and be patient.

Atria Books, 416 pages.

Contents:

Foreword, by Drunvalo Melchizedek
Introduction

1. Wheels within wheels
2. Searching for the truth
3. Four corners revelations
4. Indigenous prophecies
5. The Age of Light
6. Pluto & Saturn meet the cross of matter
7. Uranus meets the Aries point
8. Mapping the aspects
9. Jupiter conjuncts Uranus at the Aries point
10. Chiron
11. Chrion enters Pisces
12. Shifting poles
13. The dating game
14. Neptune, Pisces, and the post 2012 paradigm
15. The return of the ancestors

Appendices:
Charts
References
Endnotes
About the author
To our readers

Comment:

The Introduction sets the premise:

I fell in love with astrology when I was sixteen years old - and it wasn't too long after that before I became preoccupied with the End Times. If you study astrology from an astronomical perspective you soon find out that all of the smaller solar & planetary cycles are part of what is known as the Grand Cycle, or the movement of the entire solar system through time & space. If the perfection of this universal mechanism impressed me at sixteen, what impressed me even more was the fact that the world happened to be at the tail end of a 26,000 year process that was due to reach its climax during my lifetime....

As I began to explore the prophecies, I discovered that most of the people who claim to be experts on the subject have never had access to the Original Teachings or any of the oral traditions that are kept by the Elders. . . . If I had gone into this book thinking that I knew anything about how the Indigenous teaching filtered into the astrology of the End Times, it would have limited my ability to examine the connections objectively. Aside from that, it would have been both presumptious and premature, because what the Indigenous People have to teach us has yet to be fully revealed. (pgs. 10-11)

Which, as I sketched in the introductory notes (above), is the usual appeal to an Ultimate Authority. Native ramblings are always an iron-clad source in this regard. They're Native, for heaven's sake. No need to bother our heads with actual thought. Note also, the author has no sense of the past, even the immediate past. Native prophecies have been in existence for a good long while now. The author presumes they were waiting just for her. It seems she never troubled herself to ask if anyone else had been down this road in earlier years.

Having established our Authority, we then go looking for evidence to support it. On pg. 15, we are informed we entered a dark part of the Grand Cycle about 13,000 years ago, the cycle itself being 26,000 years, which is close enough to the Great Year (precession of the equinoxes) that I need not trouble with that number. But no evidence whatever is given to support the theory that we are at a beginning, or an end, or that the mid-point is, or can be, known. Prophecies say we are living in interesting times, therefore those times must be End Times. This is confirmed by the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Chiron & such like. The mere discovery is enough. The End is Upon Us. End of story.

The book is full of inanities. A few to demonstrate:

From what I could gather, the indigenous tribes' people understood the precession of the equinoxes better than anyone else - and if they understood it from an astronomical and mathematical perspective, it could be presumed that they had a full understanding of how those calculations might translate into real-time events. (pg. 35)

I'm not aware tribes north of the Rio Grande had number symbolism sufficient to enable multiplication & division. Cultures in central America presumably had reasonably good numbers, because you can't build big buildings without them, though high math functions were unknown, even to the Maya. Those big buildings prove they had accurate positions for the sun & planets, and a very accurate calendar. Precession, on the other hand, is a very subtle thing. The Greeks, who were at least equal in all respects, only barely seemed to understand it.

For reasons I can't explain, the outer planets have begun to move faster in the last forty years. Pluto's twenty year cycle is now twelve years long and it has held steady at that rate since 1971. (pg. 55)

Uranus & Neptune, two of the three outer planets, are moving no faster now than they've ever been. Pluto's speed is set by its orbit, which is eccentric. Which was plotted with reasonable accuracy shortly after it was discovered in 1930. Every ephemeris ever printed that had Pluto in it, has accurately forecast its position. Which in recent decades has never "held steady" at all.

On pgs 66-67, we learn that the US fired a "Billion million volts" into China from a station in Alaska, thus triggering an earthquake, magnitude 8.0 in Sichwuan Province on May 12, 2008. In retaliation, the Chinese promptly attacked the US, resulting in, As of July 20, 2008 the entire Bread Belt was underwater at the peak of the growing season. This is absolute rubbish. The floods of 2008 were nothing in comparison to the floods of 1993, which I saw first-hand. No more than a tiny fraction of the wheat fields that stretch from northern Texas, to North Dakota, have ever been underwater, nor could more than a tiny fraction ever be underwater. The Missouri is virtually the only significant river in the entire region. I grew up on the plains of Kansas. By July 20 of any given year, only the northernmost wheat fields are still to be harvested. If the author meant "corn in Iowa", she should not have used the word, "bread". Outside of Mexico, bread is wheat.

But all this and more are part of the author's attempt to establish the reality of the prophecies she believes in. Let's move to Stage 3: The forecast.

But rather than the payoff we crave, the author rambles. The magnetic poles will shift, that is certain, but how is unexplained. Some particular combination of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and/or Chiron will be the trigger. If not one, then some other. Certainly by 2013. Most likely - most ideally - before the end of 2009. Or summer 2010. Like all the others I have read, the author is blissfully unaware that poles will not shift without external forces (mere transits won't do it), and such a shift would destroy a good deal of the life on the planet anyway.

I would like to quote the author, but there is a point after which quoting becomes unfair use, a copyright infringement. So I will paraphrase.

The most powerful point falls in a two-week window, late July of 2010. If Saturn & Uranus feel extremely tense at that time, we get cataclysms (pg. 94). Since we already know the exactitude of the opposition, I am uncertain why the author would be uncertain about the level of tension. Page 95, If Saturn refuses to bow down & mankind wakes up out of sorts ("wrong side of bed"), then Uranus & Pluto will respond with ultimate weapons. Which are unspecified. The author leaves unstated the fact that modern astrologers believe Pluto rules nuclear weapons & that Uranus has a hair trigger. So we could reasonably deduce the author believes nuclear war is a possibility between July 22 and August 2, 2010. Could this be the magic key that shifts the poles? Heck, why not?

But it won't only be the magnetic poles. Bottom of page 95, after the collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, its axis - that is, the axis upon which the Earth rotates - will be way off kilter. By definition, such a shift will displace the Earth's oceans by as many miles as the Earth's axis of rotation in fact shifts. Tsunamis are calculated from that starting point, and we get ocean waves thousands of feet high. Since the result will be that we are all now either drowned & dead, or gasping for mere sustenence, the point of this book - that there is a happy ever after, or that we should "be prepared" is lost. When the nuclear bombs fall, when the poles shift, all preparations are futile as civilization itself vaporizes & we are mostly dead. Prepare to meet thy maker, all that stuff. I am left with the conclusion that such books always give: That the author has not the faintest idea what she is talking about. If she did, she would be far too depressed to write a word of it.

The ultimate result?

Return of the Ancestors
In the beginning, it was foretold that, at the end of this time cycle, the people of the Earth would come together again, and that there would come a time when each of the four races would stand before the Creator and have to account for how well they had preserved his original instructions. (pg. 191)

Last Judgement. Doesn't sound very cheery to me. The Hopi, being the Heros of the book, are going to come through with flying colors. The rest of us, not so much. This obedience to instructions I positively hate. No great monarch has the slightest interest in such rubbish. In an obscure novel, Marianne in Ecstasy, which I glanced at briefly in a bookstore in Brooklyn in 1991, Marianne is a devout nun in a convent who one day sees Jesus Christ standing before her. She immediately prostrates herself before him, but when no response is forthcoming, she timidly peers up. She can see that his lips are moving, but cannot hear the words. Slowly, fearfully, tremblingly, she approaches closer and closer, until finally her ear is almost touching the great man's lips. Only then does she hear the magic words, Surprise me! To my intense regret, this book, in which I learned the greatest of all secrets about God, has utterly disappeared. Its author is unknown.

Casually glancing through Garrison's book, I can find NOT ONE WORD on the current economic crisis, NOT ONE WORD on the bloated American military & its murderous wars, NOT ONE WORD about Barak Obama. And this, even though most of the book was written in 2008. The author has her fantasies, she has had them since she was a girl, long, long ago. She has no need of reality.

Weiser, 213 pages.