The Mayan Calender
Speculations about a new time
In western New Age groups, 21-12-2012, was a magical date on which a new world would start and by the film ’21-12-2012’ the Mayan calendar became a hype among the great public and the end of the world would be a fact by a number of catastrophes of an unprecedented order. The original calendar of the Indians tells something else though.
21-12-2012. I am at the Mayan temples of Tikal, Guatemala. By night, at 4.00 am., we headed in a long line, candle in the hand, to the central square, where, between the temple of the sun and the temple of the moon, was taking place a big ceremony. In a fire herbs and incenses were burnt. The fire lightened the contours of the temples and a strong odour filled the air. Television and radio were present to broadcast the happening worldwide.
After this impressive ritual we went to another temple where we held our own ceremony. ‘We’ are the ‘Unificación Maya’, a ceremony group of Guatemaltecan spiritual guides with a group of mainly North American and Canadian youth. They had gathered already for ten years in a preparation for the great event: slowly but steadily, we glided into the new ‘Baktun’ (a period of 52.000 years, the Mayan calendar consists of cycles: 13 cycles of 20 days make out a Mayan year, the years fit in a bigger cycle, that fits in a yet bigger cycle, until you have a cycle of 52.000 years), with the words of one of the indigenous spiritual guides directed to his wife: “from now on it are the women who determine and the reason for this, is that they want peace, harmony; they pacify the men, do them burry their weapons… That there may reign peace on earth!”
So, not a new time in New Age sense and even less an end of the world as Hollywood suggested, but simply a new period of time in a century old running and maintained calendar. The Mayan indigenous people think in cycles, or, let’s say, spiral-wise: slowly, we ‘advance in circles’. The Indian culture is about harmony and harmony with nature is an important aspect of this. One feels that harmony when being in Mexico and Guatemala. They have managed to keep their (spiritual) nature despite of 500 years of ‘discovery’. Mexicans and Guatemaltecans are no ‘second Spaniards’, but Indians: a spiritual people that waits for the moment that the white man will see who they really are. Their brothers who can temper somewhat the exaggerated activity of the white man and as such, to live in harmony with the earth, nature and each other…
I don’t know how this last piece is perceived by the reader, as an ‘open door’ or an ‘eye-opener’. In every case, it is a fact that Latin America is often seen as a backyard of Europe or the US, a subcontinent where one can do what one wants: a beautiful play garden… The term ‘Latin America’ itself tells enough. It was invented by French scholars and politicians who feared a hegemony by the Anglo-Saxons. For the Indians, though being the original inhabitants, no space at all. For this reason my observation to start seeing them, appreciate and respect them with all that is part of that, so among others the ecology, which, as known, already goes in the right direction.
