2012 and the Mayan calendar of thirteens

I just finished this fascinating romp of a read by a very human Daniel Pinchbeck - 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. The image is artist Andrew Jones' take of this mystical creature the Mayans called Kukulcan. This segment from page 240 gives a taste of this psychically juicy book, which was a gift from my sister Martha. Thank you Martha!

In The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, the Swedish biologist Carl Johan Calleman, a cancer specialist and former adviser for the World Health Organization, raised the discourse on the ancient time-science of the Maya to a new plateau. According to Calleman’s thesis, the nine levels of the most important Mayan pyramids—the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, the Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal, and the Pyramid of Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl) in Chichen Itza—represent a model of time, from the origin of the universe to the upcoming phase-shift, in which each step, or “Underworld,” is twenty times more accelerated in linear time than the one preceding it.

“The nine-story Mayan pyramids are thus telling us that consciousness is created in a hierarchical way and that each Underworld stands on the foundation of another,” writes Calleman. The initial level, starting thirteen hablatuns or 16.4 billion years ago, proceeds from the inception of matter in the “big Bang,” through the development of cellular life on Earth. During the second step, beginning thirteen alautuns, or 820 million years, ago, animal life evolved out of cells. The third underworld, starting thirteen kinchiltuns or 41 million years ago, saw the evolution of primates and the first, rudimentary use of tools by human ancestors. During the fourth underworld, beginning thirteen kalabtuns or 2 million years ago, tribal organization began among the ancestors of Homo sapiens. During the next underworld, starting thirteen piktuns of 102,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged, developing spoken language. The sixth underworld comprises the Great Cycle of thirteen baktuns, beginning 5,125 years before the approaching birth date, when we created patriarchal civilization, law, and written language—Calleman calls this the National Underworld. The seventh step, dubbed the Planetary Underworld, thirteen katuns or 256 years, beginning in AD 1755, introduced industrialization, electricity, technology, modern democracy, gene splicing, and the atom bomb. Our knowledge became Faustian power over the physical world. The eighth level—the Galactic Underworld—thirteen tuns or 12.8 years, began in 1999, with the development of the Internet into a global communications infrastructure. The final step, thirteen uinals or 260 days, will lead, Calleman believes, to the attainment of “nondual cosmic consciousness” across the Earth. By the end of this Universal Underworld, humanity will have crossed the threshold of the abyss, confronting the shadow projections of the Apocalypse, to become conscious cocreators of reality.