2012 and the 360 day calendar?

[SaggyBalls]

If this explanation of the Mayan Calendar as a timeline/schedule is correct, we're in a period that cycles at the same rate as a few old historic/ancient calendars

http://www.360calendar.com/

http://www.ancient-world-mysteries.com/360-days-earth-year.html

Aside from an astonishing coincidence, I wonder if this is significant.

Is anybody into this enough to have any related info/links to share?

[Thorgnor]

I have few links but Graham Hancock has some stuff related to this and if I'm not mistaken there's an alignment with old Norse calendars, Egypt, Babylon, Stonehenge, Machu Pichu and the Olmec heads as well as Easter Island/Rapa Nui, Angkor Wat and the "sunken pyramids" of Japan (if you buy that).

Wandering around www.fusionanomaly.net for a while gave me some interesting ideas about all this.

Edited April 21, 2010 by Guest
That said, I'm not so worried about the "end of time" anymore.

[Tungsten Gruvsten]

A good related read is The Invisible Landscape by brothers(and ethnopharmacologists) Dennis and Terrence McKenna...back in the 'pschedelic daze' I used to be a huge Terrence McKenna fan and saw his lectures a couple of times and followed all of his work(unfortunately this meant listening to the techno act 'the Shaman' as well) This book touches on Novelty theory and and a certain sequence of the I-Ching....a very cool mathematical graph (Timewave Zero) plotting positive and negative novelty as it corresponds to historical events throughout time has it's points cross the Zero line at only one point - which is the end of the Mayan calendar...

There is a blurb on the 2012 wikipedia page about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon#Timewave_zero_and_the_I_Ching

This is the book -

http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Landscape-Mind-Hallucinogens-Ching/dp/0062506358

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Am I wrong, or aren't we just genetically predisposed to self-select striking bits of coincidence to make sense of an otherwise random and impersonal universe?

Way I always figured, based on all the old Joseph Campbell that I used to read, was that the folks (Sumerians, by all appearances) who came up with base-12 math (where we get our 360-degree circle from) had tallied up the days of the year to be pretty much 365, correlated that to a spatial equivalent of 360 degrees (close enough, and base-12 is handy to work with), carried the remainder into a ritual space (ziggurat/pyramid with its 5 points), and then worked up all sorts of elaborate mythologies to justify their lock on authority about the cosmos, its order, and all the power that went with it (there's all the stuff about the precession of the equinoxes, too, which is mathematically nifty, but in the end neither here nor there). And all that translates pretty well from culture to culture. I mean, sheesh!

[Davey Boy 2.0]

'The Georgia House Judiciary Committee took up a bill last week that would "prohibit requiring a person to be implanted with a microchip," and would make violating the ban a misdemeanor. The Journal-Constitution reports that things started getting weird when a woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County told the committee: "I'm also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip." Apparently no lawmaker took this as a warning sign, and she was allowed to continue her testimony.

"Microchips are like little beepers," the woman told the committee. "Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission." "Ma'am, did you say you have a microchip?" state Rep. Tom Weldon ® asked the woman. "Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area," she replied. No one laughed. State Rep. Wendell Willard ®, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked her who had implanted the chip. "The Department of Defense," she said.

Willard thanked the woman for her input, and the committee later approved the bill' - Talking Points Memo.com

[Thorgnor]

Am I wrong, or aren't we just genetically predisposed to self-select striking bits of coincidence to make sense of an otherwise random and impersonal universe?

Way I always figured, based on all the old Joseph Campbell that I used to read, was that the folks (Sumerians, by all appearances) who came up with base-12 math (where we get our 360-degree circle from) had tallied up the days of the year to be pretty much 365, correlated that to a spatial equivalent of 360 degrees (close enough, and base-12 is handy to work with), carried the remainder into a ritual space (ziggurat/pyramid with its 5 points), and then worked up all sorts of elaborate mythologies to justify their lock on authority about the cosmos, its order, and all the power that went with it (there's all the stuff about the precession of the equinoxes, too, which is mathematically nifty, but in the end neither here nor there). And all that translates pretty well from culture to culture. I mean, sheesh!

So the Sumerians went on over to South and Central America to tell them about this? Or are we going with the hundredth monkey now?

Wouldn't whether or not the "precision of the equinoxes" is important to a culture then be a little more important than "neither here nor there"? Wouldn't the recognition of "Base 12" math be a pretty big cultural deal? Don't those kinds of insights generally stem from our ruminatiopns on the "nature of things"?

If knowing about the "base 12" thang is more than just politics, if it is an "insight" into the natural, then shouldn't we pay a little more heed to warnings coming from alternative epistemologies/ontologies? Or what about those equinoxes? genes, eh?

Edited April 22, 2010 by Guest

[Schwa.]

I'll have a coke.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Hee hee .

Thorgnor, I'm inclined to be a diffusionist, based on the idea that catchy ideas spread, and there are plenty of centuries in that spread of time for them to do so, but to be honest, I'd have to know more about ancient Central/South American math to want to put my neck out any further.

I'm not trying to indict civilisation per se or anything (though I certainly want to often enough, since the whole thing seems set up, pun partially intended, as a big pyramid scheme that's left everybody trying to sort it out ever since it was invented). I'm just saying that, nifty as they can be to weave mystery into, these kinds of myths can be really distracting. They've got a certain beauty to them, in the same way that a well-cut gem can. It's just that things like the obsession with precession of the equinoxes laid a pretty good foundation for the cultural bureaucracy that gave way to organised religion as we know it. And that's "religion" in Freud's "obsessional neurosis" sense of the term.

In the same way, you can't knock how those kinds of studies also paved the way for natural science, which is also pretty nifty, but look what all the horrors science has brought us, too.

Six of one, half-dozen of the other, no doubt.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I need a synonym for "nifty".

[d_rawk]

I need a synonym for "nifty".

wicked-awesome?

[edger]

apt is apt

[Davey Boy 2.0]

neato

[SaggyBalls]

nifty? neato?

niiice.

The thing with the 360 day calendar is that it requires a different understanding of what a calendar is. We base our 365 day calendar on a planetary year - one run around the sun - and the seasons match up perfectly and it all 'runs smoothly' but a calendar is really a schedule and setting the man-made schedule separately from the planetary calendar opens up our perceptions of time and could serve to have us truly understand coincidence on a 40 year cycle.

Instead of running on a Hamster wheel/treadmill, year in and out, people were lucky to see one rotation of a cycle.

I think that in many ways a 360 day year (with leap months) would be a far better thing to have, as the seasons keep rolling without us qualifying them with our 365/366 day years.

That's my take on it, without getting into the reading suggested here yet.

It's only "six of one, half dozen of the other" if you have 2 options. This perspective adds a nice 3rd dimension to the subject.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

:chug:

[Thorgnor]

Point taken DB

and beer opened.

[SaggyBalls]

Chug it.

[SaggyBalls]

If knowing about the "base 12" thang is more than just politics, if it is an "insight" into the natural, then shouldn't we pay a little more heed to warnings coming from alternative epistemologies/ontologies? Or what about those equinoxes? genes, eh?

Who ever said that this is a WARNING?

It's up to us whether or not we assert 'disaster' to 'end'.

Keeping in mind that the codices that we have that deciphered Mayan Heiroglyphics were extremely limited and the rest of the culture was either murdered or dispersed.

I think it's dangerous to expect the worst.

It's just that things like the obsession with precession of the equinoxes laid a pretty good foundation for the cultural bureaucracy that gave way to organised religion as we know it.

Which is interesting that we're in the period that is particularly NOT 365 days or many of our years and that more people than ever before are particularly interested in cultures and mysticims that are on the 360 day/leap months schedule?

Do you find it curious that we're in a time of upheaval in regards to religion, bureaucracy, and power structure, and are in a time of flux?

[d_rawk]

Do you find it curious that we're in a time of upheaval in regards to religion, bureaucracy, and power structure, and are in a time of flux?

True of all times, I think. The now just feels more immediate than the past because of .. well .. the obvious.

[CyberHippie]

If your interested in 'mayan astrology' 13moon is a cool site. Lots of interesting info.

http://www.13moon.com

The 13 moon, 28 day, natural time calendar makes more sense to me. The mayans also had a 365 day calendar, but it was the business calendar, because as noted it syncs the seasons, or more importantly the harvests. Somewhere along the way we went all business all the time, pulling us out of sync with the natural world.

I notice the chart in the first post is pulled from mayanmajix which is the late Ian Lungold's project. It's definitely worth watching one or more of his presentations on google video. I've been meaning to go back through a few to look at his predictions for 2007 till now.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=ian%20lungold&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=vid:1&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv

Also... There's a doc that covers some of the synchronicities between the mayan calendar, timewave zero, and what the 'web bots' are predicting. I can't find it right now, but I'll keep digging.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Do you find it curious that we're in a time of upheaval in regards to religion, bureaucracy, and power structure, and are in a time of flux?

True of all times, I think. The now just feels more immediate than the past because of .. well .. the obvious.

That's what I'm talkin' about!

[Thorgnor]

If knowing about the "base 12" thang is more than just politics' date=' if it is an "insight" into the natural, then shouldn't we pay a little more heed to warnings coming from alternative epistemologies/ontologies? Or what about those equinoxes? genes, eh?[/quote']

Who ever said that this is a WARNING?

It's up to us whether or not we assert 'disaster' to 'end'.

Keeping in mind that the codices that we have that deciphered Mayan Heiroglyphics were extremely limited and the rest of the culture was either murdered or dispersed.

I think it's dangerous to expect the worst.

...

Do you find it curious that we're in a time of upheaval in regards to religion, bureaucracy, and power structure, and are in a time of flux?

I didn't say I expect the worst, I said "warnings" and "insights into nature". I was saying not that the end is near, but that we should perhaps examine, through the vision of 'other' peoples, our own "epistemologies/ontologies". If a people spend a long time in an environment they likely will learn some things, I'm suggesting we listen. I am specifically referring to the Ki'che arguments against deforestation, strip and pit mining and violence against the people who have looked after the environment for a long time. It's not that complicated to say that if the rainforest is destroyed we're gonna be kinda SOL. We have heard that our practices were "bad" from aboriginal and indigenous peoples, the Maya spoke up too.

I take a little offence to the idea that the Maya are "either murdered or dispersed" already so these people who live throughout Central and northern South "America" and who claim to be Maya aren't authentic "Maya" (and we can tell the difference). That kind of logic has pervaded race wars from Mexico to Guatemala.

The Maya are living right now and unless you prefer the idea that Indians should stay in the past and therefore in the museum (and I know that you don't), their culture has survived with them, changed, but survived.

"We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism." — Rigoberta Menchú, 1992.

BTW, wiki says -

"In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya used a base 20 (vigesimal) and base 5 numbering system (see Maya numerals). Also, the preclassic Maya and their neighbors independently developed the concept of zero by 36 BC. Inscriptions show them on occasion working with sums up to the hundreds of millions and dates so large it would take several lines just to represent it. They produced extremely accurate astronomical observations; their charts of the movements of the moon and planets are equal or superior to those of any other civilization working from naked eye observation.

In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya had measured the length of the solar year to a high degree of accuracy, far more accurately than that used in Europe as the basis of the Gregorian Calendar. They did not use this figure for the length of year in their calendars, however; the calendars they used were crude, being based on a year length of exactly 365 days, which means that the calendar falls out of step with the seasons by one day every four years. By comparison, the Julian calendar, used in Europe from Roman times until about the 16th Century, accumulated an error of only one day every 128 years. The modern Gregorian calendar is even more accurate, accumulating only a day's error in approximately 3257 years."

...

"Each god was literally just a number or an explanation of the effects observed by a combination of numbers from multiple calendars. Among the many types of Maya calendars which were maintained, the most important included a 260-day cycle, a 365-day cycle which approximated the solar year, a cycle which recorded lunation periods of the Moon, and a cycle which tracked the synodic period of Venus."

So there seems to be conflicting information as well no?

My "real" gist was that if we don't listen to the people they in a way cease to exist for us, they become ghosts. Ghosts haunt for a reason. They haunt to re-mind us of a violent past. If a "ghost" tells you a story about the environment, or the future, you owe it to yourself to see if it really is a ghost, and if there might be some violence we could avoid. Naming is a big deal, and to "call" a land makes it so, to remove those who do the hailing is to disempower their connection to the land. A "self" based on a greater recognition of the deep social engagement with the land that certain forms of resource extraction conjure. In short, the roar of the 'dozer is drowning out the voices of the forest. That's why we can't talk to the animals and hear that they are not coming back to participate in "social" relations with us anymore. We have broken the real social contract.

But it seems that if you listen to the Maya then Sam was right. A change gon'come.

No end of time stuff. But maybe an end to a particularly nasty way of life if we choose some other options that people like the Maya are opening to us.

that was windy.

:bonghit:

[Thorgnor]

Oh yeah. The base at Angkor Wat is 54 I think. Not a very "natural" relationship to 12 methinks. (4.5?)

Edited April 23, 2010 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Oh yeah. The base at Angkor Wat is 54 I think. Not a very "natural" relationship to 12 methinks. (4.5?)

I'm guessing that they ran into contract disputes with their material suppliers.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I think the basic problem is that we can try as hard as we like, but there's no getting back to the way that the peoples of the past actually thought about and saw the world - not to mention that we could hardly expect unanimity among those peoples, nor have any reason to respect the authority of those in charge of the culture that is left for us to interpret.

All we've got, in other words, is some raw historical material, and our inability to do much besides project our own current needs on it.

[Thorgnor]

Or find effective ways to make re-membering the past into productive engagements rather than arguments about authenticity and accuracy.

Truth games are about finding liars to blame.

Untrustworthy Indians, Hysterical Women, the insane and uncivilized, you'know, the usual.

Calling out a liar is so much less about the "fact" of the events and so much more about who fact-ors into the decisions.