2012 Astronomical Alignment

As a brief review of the some of the most basic of these natural cycles, we will begin with the rotation of the Earth on its axis. Because the Earth rotates one complete revolution every 24 hours we observe the reoccurring periods of day and night.

Unfortunately there are surprisingly large numbers of people today that still do not understand that this daily cycle is caused by the motion of the Earth and not by anything the Sun is doing. This could somewhat be explained by the fact that our linguistic customs lag centuries behind our scientific understanding, and we continue to speak in terms of sunrise and sunsets.

Be that as it may, the next cycle we will look at is based not on the motion of the Earth but of the Moon. The Moon revolves around the Earth every 29.5 days, giving us the concept of the month as it appears in its different phases from New Moon to Full and once again back to New.

Then there is the observable cycle of the year, as the Earth dances around the Sun in an elliptical orbit taking 365.25 days to complete one revolution.

As people continued to observe the heavenly bodies they also began to notice that some of the bright lights in the sky moved while others stayed relatively stationary. These wandering bodies we have come to know as the planets, and various people all over the world took a special interest in their particular movement and cycles, spawning a huge number of stories, myths and legends.

To those early astronomers who kept records of the movement of the Sun, Moon and Planets one of the greatest mysteries that they observed was the fact that every year they would wait for the Sun to appear on the Spring Equinox or Winter Solstice at a specific place on the horizon signaling the New Year.

Over time they were dismayed to find that the Sun no longer appeared in the same place it did just 70 years before, but had moved one full degree (the equivalent to the diameter of the Sun - times two). This slow movement, called the Precession of the Equinox, causes the Equinox Sun to appear to slip backward against the backdrop of the stars.

Astronomers have now managed to figure out that the Earth is not a perfect sphere by any means. It’s actually a bit flattened at the poles and has a bulge at the equator. As a result, the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun exert an uneven influence on the Earth. Their gravitational forces try to pull the equatorial bulge toward them. Because the Earth is spinning these forces make the axis of the Earth wobble, shifting ever so slowly. Gradually the polar axis that was at one time aligned with a particular star begins to shift until it is aligned with another star.

Right now the Earth’s axis at the North Pole points to the star Polaris – which appropriately we call the Pole Star. But 5,000 years ago the north celestial pole aligned to the star called Alpha Draconis. Eight thousand years in the future the pole star will be Vega.



This Precessional movement then is the same motion responsible for the shift of the location of the Equinoxes and the Solstices. The ancient astronomers detected the long term Precessional motion of the Sun through the back drop of the constellations and calculated the length of this Cycle to around 25,600 to 26,000 years.

This means that the Sun that marks the Spring Equinox which now appears in front of the background of stars in the constellation of Pisces, in about 500 years will rise in the constellation of Aquarius. It will continue to shift backwards through the various constellations Capricorn, Sagittarius, etc., until in about 26,000 years it will arrive back to the exact same point in Pisces.

The understanding of this Precession of the Equinox then gave rise to the many myths and legends of the different World Ages. As the Processional movement continued to shift the Equinox into a new constellation, various cultures perceived this as a New Age or New World. As the Spring Equinox Sun appeared to rise in the constellation of Taurus, people perceived this as the Age of the Bull; the Age of the Ram as it rose in the constellation of Aries; the Age of the Fish as it rose in Pisces and so on.

At one time many civilizations on Earth were aware of this natural cycle of the Earth and incorporated it into their cosmologies and concepts of Time in various ways. Each one reflecting a slightly different interpretation and meaning, but in their different ways they all held the Precessional Cycle as involving nothing less than the Cosmic process of Life’s evolution, subtly influencing all of Earth’s Life Forms to move to higher levels of organization and complexity. It came to symbolize the Spiritual Process of Unfolding Consciousness on our planet.

What is important here is that this belief was actually based on an observable astronomical cycle: every 72 years the Solstice and Equinox Sun appeared to move backward through the constellations one degree - as a hand on a clock indicating the hours of the day. In this Cosmic Clock however, the hand or marker in motion is the specific location of the Equinox or Solstice Sunrise, while the face of the clock is represented by the relatively stationary constellations of the stars.

With this in mind then, we will now turn our attention to how this Precessional Cycle became incorporated into the Mayan Cosmology and how it relates to their long count calendar and specifically to the year 2012.

Perhaps more than any ancient culture that we are aware of at this point, the Mayan people were obsessed with Astronomy. Not only were they able to project their astronomical calculations thousands of years forward and backward in Time, but developed a recyclable Venus calendar that was accurate to one day in 500 years and a table of eclipses that still functions today. They also accurately calculated the solar year out to four decimal places. To accomplish these impressive computations they created a sophisticated system of mathematics utilizing place value and the concept of the zero. And all this while Europe was still wandering around in the Dark Ages.

In a complex culture such as we find with the Maya and considering it spanned a period of almost a thousand years, it is important to remember that there arose different belief systems at different times, some of which were coexisting at the same place. Just as if we were to look at the demographics of say modern New York city, we would find Jews perhaps living besides Moslems, Protestants and Catholics - all entertaining different belief systems.

And so it’s appropriate here to limit our considerations of the Mayan culture to only those beliefs that lend meaning and significance to the auspicious date indicated in their long count calendar - Dec.21, 2012.

As we more sharply focus in on this date, we find that one of the indicators to its probable significance is that it specifically designates the Winter Solstice. As this is our starting point in our analysis then, let’s take a closer look as to what this might mean.

First of all it is good to be aware that around the world in various past cultures, each one designated a specific time to mark the beginning of their New Year. In ancient Sumeria and Babylon the New Year began with the Spring Equinox. In Israel the New Year was gradually shifted to the Equinox in the Fall, while in Northern Europe, New Year was celebrated at the time of Winter Solstice. We still observe this particular New Year tradition, but add a few extra days so that now our New Year begins on January 1st.

In the context of this tradition then, the Winter Solstice on December 21 was celebrated as the Sun’s birthday. It is the longest night of the year and therefore the shortest day of the year. It represented the ultimate power of the dark forces of Nature: the long winter night when things appeared to be dead and still. And out of the depths of this longest night the new Sun was born. From this point on, the power of the light grows in strength and the days slowly begin to grow longer.