2012
"Either brace yourself for elimination, or else your hearts must have
the courage for the changing of the guards ... Peace will come
with tranquillity and splendour on the wheels of fire."
Bob Dylan, The Changing of the Guards, 1978
The cosmic countdown
Geoff Stray, the UK's foremost expert on the 2012 prophecy, has written a new book, 2012 in your Pocket, which boasts, justifiably, "everything you ever wanted to know about 2012".
A little book with big implications, it's a level-headed, objective look at the "slow train coming, up around the bend".
Whatever is in store for us in 2012, we are at "the climax point of human history", says Geoff, pictured, adding somewhat sardonically: "Enjoy the ride!" It remains to be seen, of course, whether "enjoy" is the correct word.
Geoff, whose home is at Glastonbury, is author of the indispensable Beyond 2012, published in the UK in 2005 and with a new edition out in the USA in 2009, and also The Mayan and other Ancient Calendars, published in 2008 by the award-winning Glastonbury-based Wooden Books.
The growing obsession with 2012 is evidenced by the fact that, in 2008-2009 alone, a hundred new books (many of them novels) were published on the subject, and in 2008 there was the movie 2012: Doomsday.
This mood has been intensified with two more films - the Hollywood blockbuster 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), depicting the Earth's destruction, and the low budget (by comparison) and faith-based 2012: Seeking Closure, directed by Kevin Tan from the novel by Gregory Bernard Banks, set three hours before the end of the world.
A little book with big implications, it's a level-headed, objective look at the "slow train coming, up around the bend".
Whatever is in store for us in 2012, we are at "the climax point of human history", says Geoff, pictured, adding somewhat sardonically: "Enjoy the ride!" It remains to be seen, of course, whether "enjoy" is the correct word.
Geoff, whose home is at Glastonbury, is author of the indispensable Beyond 2012, published in the UK in 2005 and with a new edition out in the USA in 2009, and also The Mayan and other Ancient Calendars, published in 2008 by the award-winning Glastonbury-based Wooden Books.
The growing obsession with 2012 is evidenced by the fact that, in 2008-2009 alone, a hundred new books (many of them novels) were published on the subject, and in 2008 there was the movie 2012: Doomsday.This mood has been intensified with two more films - the Hollywood blockbuster 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), depicting the Earth's destruction, and the low budget (by comparison) and faith-based 2012: Seeking Closure, directed by Kevin Tan from the novel by Gregory Bernard Banks, set three hours before the end of the world.
Why no attempt yet to make an optimistic 2012 movie concerned with spiritual enlightenment and expanded and higher consciousness? Well, it's the old story: bad news sells, good news doesn't. Recently, Geoff was involved in a 2012 documentary - Philip Gardiner's 2012: Odyssey of Time - which was put under pressure by an American production company "to make it totally catastrophic".
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Geoff said: "The media love the negative aspect to this. But it will bring the whole subject to people's attention and they will be able to look into it themselves without being too influenced by the fear factor. After these films come out the whole thing is going to hit the headlines in a big way."
Geoff, who believes 2012 will bring great environmental and psychic changes, has studied an enormous range of scientific, archaeological and esoteric evidence, and says latest research, when published, ought to convince sceptical academics about the advanced astronomical knowledge of the Mayans.
Geoff said: "The media love the negative aspect to this. But it will bring the whole subject to people's attention and they will be able to look into it themselves without being too influenced by the fear factor. After these films come out the whole thing is going to hit the headlines in a big way."Geoff, who believes 2012 will bring great environmental and psychic changes, has studied an enormous range of scientific, archaeological and esoteric evidence, and says latest research, when published, ought to convince sceptical academics about the advanced astronomical knowledge of the Mayans.
Esoteric pointers to global change in 2012 ...
* ancient teachings - the Chinese oracle, the I Ching, and Buddhist, Hindu, Greek, Egyptian, Biblical and Islamic texts all speak of it, as do Native American, Inca, Aztec, Zulu and Maori tribal prophecies.
* psychic and near-death experiences, and other altered states of consciousness related to the psychedelic chemical DMT, the so-called "spirit molecule", produced in the pineal gland deep inside our brains and linked to mystical experiences.
* claims made by those who say we are being monitored by extraterrestrials.
* the astrological indications of significant change foreseen in the solar eclipse on May 20, 2012, when the zenith sun conjuncts with the Pleiades star group over Chichen Itza (an ancient centre of the Mayan civilisation), and a transit of Venus across the sun's disc on June 6 that year.
And the scientific ...
* a galactic core explosion could cause an electromagnetic pulse wave, of unknown intensity, to hit the Earth. On December 21, 2012, the solstice sun aligns with the centre of the galaxy, from where the pulse would come.
* the Earth's decreasing magnetic field could lead to a reversal with unknown but possibly devastating consequences - the average time between reversals is 250,000 years and, with the last one 780,000 years ago, we are well overdue for another.
* solar cycles will bring a sunspot maximum which could wreak electromagnetic havoc on Earth, although the next peak is now forecast for 2013.
* studies of comets and asteroids approaching the Earth's orbit and which could be on a collision course.
* the build-up of a plasma cloud - ionised gas found in the sun and stars - affecting the solar system as it moves through space could be responsible for changes in the Earth's climate and weather, as well as affecting people's minds through a widespread "switching on" of DMT. All the planets in the solar system are experiencing atmospheric and magnetic changes.
Geoff foresees many more people having visions and out of the body experiences in the next couple of years, in addition to the general increase in changes we are seeing anyway, in climate and geophysical catastrophe. It has been estimated that there has been a 600 per cent increase in the incidence of the latter - floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and so on - in the last 40 years
* psychic and near-death experiences, and other altered states of consciousness related to the psychedelic chemical DMT, the so-called "spirit molecule", produced in the pineal gland deep inside our brains and linked to mystical experiences.
* claims made by those who say we are being monitored by extraterrestrials.
* the astrological indications of significant change foreseen in the solar eclipse on May 20, 2012, when the zenith sun conjuncts with the Pleiades star group over Chichen Itza (an ancient centre of the Mayan civilisation), and a transit of Venus across the sun's disc on June 6 that year.
And the scientific ...
* a galactic core explosion could cause an electromagnetic pulse wave, of unknown intensity, to hit the Earth. On December 21, 2012, the solstice sun aligns with the centre of the galaxy, from where the pulse would come.
* the Earth's decreasing magnetic field could lead to a reversal with unknown but possibly devastating consequences - the average time between reversals is 250,000 years and, with the last one 780,000 years ago, we are well overdue for another.
* solar cycles will bring a sunspot maximum which could wreak electromagnetic havoc on Earth, although the next peak is now forecast for 2013.
* studies of comets and asteroids approaching the Earth's orbit and which could be on a collision course.
* the build-up of a plasma cloud - ionised gas found in the sun and stars - affecting the solar system as it moves through space could be responsible for changes in the Earth's climate and weather, as well as affecting people's minds through a widespread "switching on" of DMT. All the planets in the solar system are experiencing atmospheric and magnetic changes.
Geoff foresees many more people having visions and out of the body experiences in the next couple of years, in addition to the general increase in changes we are seeing anyway, in climate and geophysical catastrophe. It has been estimated that there has been a 600 per cent increase in the incidence of the latter - floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and so on - in the last 40 years
Doomsday or new beginning?
More than 1,500 years ago, the Mayan people of Central America were in possession of a sacred calendar which completes a "great cycle" of 5,200 years on December 21, 2012, and they predicted that the times we are now in would be crucial for the human race and involve a global shift of some kind. The year 2012 has rapidly become the focus of our fears about the way our world is heading. As David Douglas says in his The Mayan Prophecy 2012, one of the latest in a long line of 2012 books in recent years: "People all over the world are now talking about 2012, like a spectre coming out of the fog of the future."
It's said it will mark the end of one way of existence and the advent of another, the moment when the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl, the "Feathered Serpent", returns, bringing with him an ancient, although to us wholly new, way of existence.
Most people today will find it incredible that a non-technological and superstitious civilisation such as the Maya could have developed a system of knowledge more advanced than our own. But there is more and more evidence that this was the case.
Incredibly, as shamans and astronomers, the Maya, whose civilisation peaked in about 500AD, were able to chart and log billions of years of evolution. They developed models of the universe and calculated the orbits of the Earth, sun and moon, with calendars for each.
Naturally, I don't like to think the Mayan end-date of 2012 is about the end of the world. The time is prophesied as one of renewal, and the estimated two million Maya indians living in Central America today don't seem to be preparing for doomsday. I do believe, though, that there's a parallel between the Maya and the much earlier builders of Stonehenge and other ancient monuments, in terms of a vital message which has been left for us to decipher.
What we don't, and can't, know is whether 2012 implies planetary disaster, say, a sudden comet or asteroid strike, movement of the Earth's axis or magnetic field, massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as some are predicting, or a change from our rationalistic, technological civilisation to a more intuitive, holistic one, with 2012 then representing a psychological tipping point rather than a date with global destruction.
I think 2012 is best seen in the context of an accelerating consciousness – something reflected in the estimated annual £65 billion global personal and spiritual development industry and in other significant developments worldwide: environmental, political, technological, economic, social and religious.
This change has not been unheralded. Indigenous peoples all over the world, including the Aztecs, Incas, Maoris and Native North Americans, have spoken of this time, through their myths and histories, as one of great transformation. It's implicit in the Chinese I Ching and the Bible Code, too.
However, as if the 2012 end-date was not enough in itself, we will, in that year, witness the conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the equator of the Milky Way and the ecliptic, find out if today's scientific forecasts of potentially devastating solar flares are accurate, see the end of the 26,000-year Platonic Great Year, and the end of the 225,000,000-year Galactic Year.
On December 21, 2012, for the first time in 26,000 years, as the Mayan astronomers knew, the sun will eclipse the centre of our galaxy, disrupting cosmic energies that normally flow from that direction – and no one knows what the outcome of that will be.
Of course, the frisson for us Brits is that in 2012, the Olympic Games will be held in London. But remember the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984. In that year, a number of planets lined up across the solar system and it was feared the combined gravitational effects on the sun would cause havoc on Earth, including the triggering of the San Andreas fault in California - and nothing happened.
Whether or not you believe in the implications of the Mayan calendar, it does concentrate attention on the possibility of a seismic cultural shift of some kind.
Many people around the world are emerging from a materialistic paralysis and experiencing strange reorientations on mental, emotional, spiritual and physical levels.
To attain a sufficiently intensified state of consciousness that can address the environmental, military and demographic crises besetting us, I feel we need to integrate empirical and rational thought with the intuitive and shamanic modes of cognition known to ancient tribal cultures.
Certainly, if we are to pull back from the brink of an abyss, we need a more spiritual response, a more organic way of living, in the face of the dangers inherent in the technological society and the shallowness of modernity. But unconscious forces unleashed by millennial dread, including the whole of the "New Age" phenomenon and 2012 omens, must be shaped by and applied with a certain practicality if they are to be of any use to us in this time of great psychic change.
We find ourselves in transit between two stations - in the Scorpio decanate, to give the astrological term - leaving behind the confused emotions of the Piscean Age and travelling towards the traditional age of wisdom and enlightenment, that of Aquarius, the sign of humanity and brotherhood, of vision and unity, whose symbol is the phoenix.
Sandwiched between the two, we are undergoing all manner of crises and revolutions which, threatening the very foundations of our civilisation, are the trademarks of the passing of one age and the birth of the next. What the ultimate cost of arriving at the coming age is likely to be, possibly in terms of human anguish and planetary disruption, remains to be seen; indications are that 2012 symbolises, if not signifies, a final crisis of unprecedented proportion in the near future.
These are strange days indeed.