Homeless in Arizona

Mayan prophecy sparks dread, celebration worldwide

Associated Press

Associated Press Tue Dec 11, 2012 2:35 PM

MEXICO CITY — The clock is ticking down to Dec. 21, the supposed end of the Mayan calendar, and from China to California to Mexico, thousands are getting ready for what they think is going to be a fateful day.

The Maya didn’t say much about what would happen next, after a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count comes to an end. So into that void have rushed occult writers, bloggers and New Age visionaries foreseeing all manner of monumental change, from doomsday to a new age of enlightenment.

The 2009 disaster flick “2012” helped spark doomsday rumors, with its visions of Los Angeles crashing into the sea and mammoth tsunami waves swallowing the Himalayas. Foreboding TV documentaries and alarmist websites followed, sparking panic in corners of the globe thousands of miles from the Mayan homeland of southern Mexico and Central America.

As the big day approaches, governments and scientists alike are mobilizing to avoid actual tragedy. Even the U.S. space agency NASA intervened earlier this month, posting a nearly hour-long YouTube video debunking apocalyptic points, one by one.

The Internet has helped feed the frenzy, spreading rumors that a mountain in the French Pyrenees is hiding an alien spaceship that will be the sole escape from the destruction. French authorities are blocking access to Bugarach peak from Dec. 19-23 except for the village’s 200 residents “who want to live in peace,” the local prefect said in a news release.

“I think this tells us more about ourselves, particularly in the Western world, than it does about the ancient Maya,” said Geoffrey Braswell, an associate professor of anthropology and leading Maya scholar at the University of California, San Diego. “The idea that the world will end soon is a very strong belief in Western cultures. … The Maya, we don’t really know if they believed the world would ever end.”

As the clock ticks down, scenarios have mounted about how the end will come.

Some believe a rogue planet called Nibiru will emerge from its hiding place behind the sun and smash into the Earth. Others say a super black hole at the center of the universe will suck in our planet and smash it to pieces. At least two men in China are predicting a world-ending flood. They’re both building arks.

Lu Zhenghai has spent his life savings, some $160,000, building the 70-foot-by-50-foot vessel powered by three diesel engines, according to state media.

“I am afraid that when the end of the world comes, the flood will submerge my house,” the 44-year-old ex-army man was quoted as saying.

China’s most innovative ark builder, however, may be Yang Zongfu, a 32-year-old businessman in eastern China.

His vessel, Atlantis, a three-ton yellow steel ball 13 feet (four meters) in diameter, is designed to survive a volcano, tsunami, earthquake or nuclear meltdown, according to the state-run Liao Wang magazine.

Jose Manrique Esquivel, a descendent of the Maya, said his community in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula sees the date as a celebration of their survival despite centuries of genocide and oppression. He blamed profiteers looking to scam the gullible for stoking doomsday fears.

“For us, this Dec. 21 is the end of a great era and also the beginning of a new era. We renew our beliefs. We renew a host of things that surround us,” Esquivel said.

In fact, anthropologists aren’t even sure whether the end of the Mayan calendar falls on Dec. 21, or whether it’s already happened or is still to come, Braswell said. The date is mentioned in only two known cases, including an etching that says nine gods will descend from heaven to Earth. The verb describing what the gods will do is illegible in the etching.

“It probably was a ritual of some sort, and even if we had the glyph we wouldn’t understand what it is,” Braswell said. “What we know for sure is there’s no discussion of the end of the world on that date.”

The mystery isn’t only inspiring dread: Some are whipping out their yoga tights and meditation cushions and joining a global counter-movement promoting the date as the start of a new era of hope.

Thousands of New Age adherents are expected to fill ancient sites across Mexico in the days leading up to Dec. 21, while their spiritual brethren party in hotspots as diverse as Culver City, Calif., and Byron Bay, Australia.

One of the biggest movements is Birth 2012, which is using the Mayan date to launch what it hopes will be a global spiritual reset. Some 40 events around the world will mark the change.

“We’ve activated this campaign for three days of love,” said movement co-founder Stephen Dinan. “Let’s have generosity and kindness be the operative fare, rather than people hunkering down in fear.”

In Mexico’s Mayan heartland, nobody is preparing for the end of the world; instead, they’re bracing for a tsunami of spiritual visitors of the terrestrial variety.

Hotels near the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza have been sold out, with many rooms booked a year in advance. Volunteers at the Kinich Ahau center — dedicated to spreading the “authentic wisdom of the Maya” — were busy chopping resinous wood to mix with incense for a sacred fire ceremony to greet visitors from around the world. Mass tribal drumming, circles of energy and ritual dancing were also planned.

For Esquivel and other modern-day Maya, Dec. 21 is a chance to raise awareness about rescuing the planet, not prepare for its demise. People all over the world need to focus on the very real damage people have done to the Earth, he said, and sound the alarm about growing catastrophes, such as climate change.

“We’re putting in danger the existence of our world,” Esquivel said. “It’s our goal for this date to create consciousness about our Earth. We want to say to everybody that the Maya live and we want to gather our strength to save the Earth.”

"I survived the end of the world party"

"I survived the end of the world party"

Minder-Binders Restaurant
715 S McClintock Dr
Tempe, AZ 85281

(480) 966-1911

Just so the Homeland Security goons who routinely spy on me and read this web site won't feel left out or unwanted we have reserved a table for for you at this party.

Same goes for Sheriff Joe's goons, along with the local Tempe, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale and Peoria cops who also routinely spy on me and read this web page.

You creeps will also be welcome at the table we are reserving for the Homeland Security goons.

Just so you government goons can be spotted easily please don't forget to wear your sunglasses and penny loafers shoes.

And remember don't pay for your liquor with your government credit card. It's not only illegal but it's morally wrong to stick us taxpayers with your drinking tab.

And of course the George W. Bush wing of the Arizona Libertarian Party is also welcome.

Well not welcome our our table. You guys can share the same table we are reserving for the Homeland security goons.

I wonder will David Dorn take me up on this invitation?

For those of you who are not Libertarians, the George W. Bush wing of the Arizona Libertarian Party thinks they are Libertarians who are going to save the world.

But they don't believe in the NIFF principle. So they are pretty much clones of the Democratic and Republican parties.

You know, the old "Do as I say, not as I do" rubbish.

What the Mayans were wrong about end of world?????

Mayans mistaken, but hey, it’s not the end of the world

By Mark Stevenson Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 12:04 AM

MERIDA, Mexico -- The crystal skulls have spoken: The world is not going to end.

American seer Star Johnsen-Moser led a whooping, dancing, drum-beating ceremony Thursday in the heart of Mayan territory to consult several of the life-sized crystal skulls, which adherents claim were passed down by the ancient Maya.

The skulls weren’t the only inheritances left by the ancient civilization that have been making waves this week: The supposed end of the Maya long-count calendar on Friday has prompted a wave of doomsday speculation across the globe.

“This is not the end of the world, this is the beginning of the new world,” Johnsen-Moser said at a gathering of hundreds of spiritualists at a convention center in Merida. “It is most important that we hold a positive, beautiful reality for ourselves and our planet. … Fear is out of place.”

The supposed 5 a.m. Friday doomsday hour already had arrived in several parts of the world with no sign of the apocalypse.

The social network Imgur posted photos of clocks turning midnight in the Asia-Pacific region with messages such as: “The world has not ended. Sincerely, New Zealand.”

A new age

In Merida, the celebration of the cosmic dawn began with a fumbling of the sacred fire meant to honor the calendar’s conclusion.

Gabriel Lemus, the white-haired guardian of the flame, burned his finger on the kindling and later had to scoop up a burning log that was knocked out of the ceremonial brazier onto the wooden stage.

Still, the white-clad Lemus was convinced that it was a good start, as he was joined by about 1,000 other shamans, seers, stargazers, crystal enthusiasts, yogis, sufis and swamis at the convention center about an hour and a half from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.

“It is a cosmic dawn,” said Lemus. “We will recover the ability to communicate telepathically and levitate objects … like our ancestors did.”

Celebrants later held their arms in the air in a salute to the Thursday morning sun.

“The galactic bridge has been established,” announced spiritual leader Alberto Arribalzaga, who led the ceremony. “At this moment, spirals of light are entering the center of your head, … generating powerful vortexes that cover the planet.”

Few here believe the world will end Friday; the summit is scheduled to run through Sunday. Instead, participants say, they are here to celebrate the birth of a new age.

Events at the conference

A Mexican Indian seer who calls himself Ac Tah, and who has traveled around Mexico erecting small pyramids he calls “neurological circuits,” said he holds high hopes for Dec. 21.

“We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy,” he said.

Terry Kvasnik, 32, a stunt man and acrobat from Manchester, England, said his motto for the day is “Be in love, don’t be in fear.” While he didn’t know exactly which ceremony he would attend Friday, he guaranteed with a smile: “I’m going to be in the happiest place I can.”

Set up in the conference’s exhibition hall were dozens of booths, where in addition to having your aura photographed with “Chi” light, you can buy mandalas, get a shamanic cleansing, develop your “golden light” and buy sandals, herbs and whole-grain baked goods. Cleansing here is done studiously and repeatedly, and usually involves have copal incense waved around one’s body.

Visitors also could learn the art of healing drumming with a Mexican Otomi Indian master who calls himself Dabadi Thaayroyadi and says his slender, hand-held, plate-sized drums are made with prayers embedded into them. He said the drums emit “an intelligent energy” that can heal emotional, physical and social ailments.

During the opening ceremony participants chanted mantras to the blazing Yucatan sun, which quickly burned the fair-skinned crowd.

Violeta Simarro, a secretary from Perpignan, France, took shelter under a nearby awning and noted that the new age won’t necessarily be all peaches and cream.

“It will be a little difficult at first, because the world will need a complete ‘nettoyage’ (cleaning), because there are so many bad things,” she said.

Warning of ‘mass psychosis’

Not all seers endorse the celebration.

Mexico’s self-styled “brujo mayor,” or chief soothsayer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, warned followers to stay away from all gatherings on Friday, saying, “We have to beware of mass psychosis” that could lead to stampedes or “mass suicides, of the kind we’ve seen before.”

“If you get 1,000 people in one spot and somebody yells ‘Fire!’ watch out,” Vazquez Alba said. “The best thing is to stay at home, at work, in school, and at some point do a relaxation exercise.”

Others see the summit as a model for the coming age.

Participants from Asian, North American, South American and European shamanistic traditions amiably mingled with the Mexican hosts.

“This is the beginning of a change in priorities and perceptions. We are all one,” said Esther Romo, a Mexico City businesswoman who works in art promotion and galleries. “No limits, no boundaries, no nationalities, just fusion.”

Gabriel Romero, a Los-Angeles based practicant of crystal skull channeling, was so sure this isn’t the end of the world that he scheduled a welcome ceremony for the new age at dawn Saturday morning, with plans to erect a stele, a stone monument used by the Maya to commemorate important dates or events.

Still, organizers of Yucatan’s broader Mayan Culture Festival saw the need to answer the now-debunked idea that the Mayans, who invented an amazingly accurate calendar almost 2,000 years ago, had somehow predicted the end of the world. The Mayans measured time in 394-year periods known as baktuns. Anthropologists believe the 13th baktun ends around Dec. 21, and 13 is considered a sacred number for the Maya. But archaeologists have uncovered Mayan glyphs that refer to dates far, far in the future, long beyond Dec. 21.

Yucatan Gov. Rolando Zapata, whose state is home to Mexico’s largest Maya population and has benefited from a boom in tourism, said he too felt the good vibes.

“We believe that the beginning of a new baktun means the beginning of a new era, and we’re receiving it with great optimism,” Zapata said.

He confirmed that thousands of tourists and spiritualists are expected for Friday’s once-in 5,125-year event.

The Yucatan state government even invited a scientist to talk about the work of Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, to debunk the idea it could produce world-ending rogue particles, a concept popularized by author Steve Alten in his recent book “Phobos, Mayan Fear.”

Alten suggests the rogue particles — “tiny black holes” — could unleash earthquakes that might cause a huge tsunami, but acknowledges that linking such events to Dec. 21 “is author’s license.”

“It’s science fiction theory, I’m a science fiction writer,” he told The Associated Press.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, however, has listed a number of odd subatomic phenomena — “magnetic monopoles,” ‘’Vacuum bubbles” and “strangelets” — that could play a role in the next apocalypse scare.

All of it amused Mexico City-based tourist Deyanira de Alvarez as she snapped a photo of the countdown clock mounted in the Merida international airport showing just over two days left to “the galactic alignment.”

“My grandmother says that people have been talking about this (the world ending) ever since she was a little girl,” De Alvarez said, “and look, grandma is still here.”

----------------------

Spiritualists expect a fresh beginning for world, not an ending

About the Mayan calendar

Organizers of Yucatan’s broader Mayan Culture Festival saw the need to answer the now-debunked idea that the Mayans, who invented an amazingly accurate calendar almost 2,000 years ago, had somehow predicted the end of the world.

The Mayans measured time in 394-year periods known as baktuns. Anthropologists believe the 13th baktun ends around Dec. 21, and 13 is considered a sacred number for the Maya. But archaeologists have uncovered Mayan glyphs that refer to dates far, far in the future, long beyond Dec. 21.