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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Tue, October 20, 2009 - 7:39 AMThis past month has been wonderful for checking out Jupiter for those that do skygaze with telescopes... Most people think the brightest planet in the sky is venus but all this past month and this month also the predominant planet has been Jupiter and seeing all the moons and the lines run across the planet has been really great...
Anyone else an amature telescope buff?
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Wed, October 21, 2009 - 8:37 PMA letter I just wrote to the editor of S & T:
"Thank you for the informative article by E.C. Krupp ("The Great 2012 Scare," November issue, p. 22). I agree it is critical for astronomers to be prepared to answer questions correctly regarding spurious interpretations related to this hoax. I would like to correct a few errors in the article. Krupp correctly notes that Frank Waters elaborated on the significance of December 24, 2011 in Maya Mystique (1975), but it was not Waters who miscalculated this date. He had obtained it from Michael Coe’s book The Maya (1966), also the first source to associate Baktun 13 with “Armageddon.” Krupp correctly notes that the McKennas mentioned 2012 in their The Invisible Landscape (1975). However, they only mentioned the year, not the specific day or the position of the Sun on the winter solstice. Reference to December 21, 2012 only appeared in the second edition (1993) after the authors had learned of its significance from José Argüelles in 1985. Argüelles had also noted the significance of the year 2012 (but December 21) in association with the Maya calendar in The Transformative Vision (1975). The idea of the “Harmonic Convergence” was originated by the late Tony Shearer, who published small books about it in 1971 and 1975. A key work that inspired Waters, Argüelles, the McKennas, and Jenkins was Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Panned by critics, it nonetheless became the basis for endless speculation, including hyping of 2012." -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 11:22 AMI remember we had discussed this a bit before, but do you have any clear evidence that McKenna learned about Dec. 21, 2012 from Arguelles in 1985. I remember this was your theory when we last discussed it, but you didn't have any direct evidence at that point to back it up. It is very hard for me to imagine that this is true (at least from my research). Did you listen to those "Invisible Landscape" talks from Ojai in 1985...(which are different from the "Under the Teaching Tree" recordings). It seems pretty clear that McKenna already knew about the date before he met Arguelles (note that the Timewave Zero software was completed before the Ojai meeting). I am assuming that it was probably you who posted this tid bit on the 2012 Phenomenon Wikipedia page, as well, yes? I'd love to know if you ever actually found any direct evidence of this or whether it is still just a supposition. -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:04 PM"do you have any clear evidence that McKenna learned about Dec. 21, 2012 from Arguelles in 1985"
I need to track down the specific recording, but I think it was you (?) who told me that there is an audio recording of the initial encounter between McKenna and Arguelles at a conference at the Ojai Institute in 1985 at which Arguelles tells him about the December 21 date.
It's my own theory--still undocumented--that Terence McKenna first learned about at least the "December 24, 2011" date for "Armageddon" from Michael Coe's 1966 book "The Maya."
However, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd refined it to December 21, 2012 long before meeting Arguelles. In fact, I suspect they both got it from the same source (whose identity remains a mystery, at least to me...) That would have been sometime between 1975 and 1985, perhaps at some place such as Ojai, Esalen, or Naropa. It may even have come out if the Maya Meetings at Texas, for all I know.
No, I don't think it was I who posted this tidbit on the Wikipedia page. I don't think the Timewave Zero pinpointed December 21, 2012 until after 1985. That would have been around the time Arguelles was writing his book "The Mayan Factor," published in 1987. -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:29 PMBTW, I'd be very grateful for any any solid references to:
1) Mention of the specific date of December 21, 2012 in association with the Maya calendar during or before 1985, and
2) Mention of the specific year 2012 in association with the Maya calendar *before* 1975.
I suspect the earliest example of the second is to be found in one of the tables of Joseph T. Goodman's correlations of the Maya calendar that were made in the first decade of the 1900s, but I haven't yet tracked it down.
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:29 PMOk...well, here is my (always updating) version of how some of these things happened.
The recording that I mentioned, called "The Invisible Landscape", is from Ojai in 1985. In it, it seems pretty clear that both Arguelles and McKenna already have their separate eyes set already to Dec. 21, 2012 (SEEMINGLY independently of one another's influence). And, I'm pretty sure I remember that the recordings reveal Dec. 21, 2012 to already be selected as the end-date for the Timewave Software. He discusses this at some length in the recordings. You should be able to get them here: erocx1.com/TerenceMcKenna.aspx
McKenna definitely at least knew about the Maya and had decided upon Dec. 21, 2012 by 1983 (and I'm pretty certain we can find evidence of earlier knowledge) as you can see in this interview with Ralph Abraham called "Dynamics of Hyperspace": www.scribd.com/doc/133628...-Hyperspace
I can find very little reason to doubt McKenna's version of the story that the original placing of the Timewave over 'history', utilizing Hiroshima as the instantiation of the final 67 years period, simply happened to land the end-date in Nov. 2012. A few years later (supposedly) when he learned of the supposed Maya end-date, he made the switch. The reason that this seems particularly unlikely to be a fabricated story (to me) is that it is not very flattering to the theory (in my mind), the idea that the date can be changed around willy-nilly like that....not to mention that the change means that the start of the period doesn't correspond to Hiroshima anymore. -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 7:18 AMAs for when McKenna and Arguelles first learned about December 21, 2012 (as opposed to just the year 2012), the short answer (which I got by going across the street to the library) is that the correlation of 13.0.0.0.0 as 21 December 2012 first appeared in Table B.2 on p. 603 of the 1983 revised 4th edition of Sylvanus Morley's classic book "The Ancient Maya" (published by Stanford University Press).
It was undoubtedly calculated by archaeologist Robert J. Sharer (or one of his graduate students), who may have revised the table in response to the confusion resulting from Michael Coe's erroneous correlations, first published as "December 24, AD 2011" (in the 1966 1st edition of "The Maya") and then "11 January AD 2013" (in the 1980 2nd edition). The 4th edition was a major update, since the previous 3rd edition of Morley's book had been published in 1956, long before major breakthroughs in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing.
Coe himself finally corrected the date to December 23, 2012 in 1984 (the 3rd edition of "The Maya"), while Sharer continued to give it as December 21 in the 5th (1994) and 6th (2006) editions of "The Ancient Maya."
In the table in the 3rd (1956) edition of Morley's book (as in the first and second, respectively dated 1946 and 1947--Morley died in 1948), the last Gregorian correlation is for 12.5.0.0.0 (April 14, 1717). Morley probably ended his table here because the 18th century date was relevant to the correlation question and he wasn't a believer in astrology or divination.
I'd be very surprised if either McKenna or Arguelles calculated out the December 21, 2012 date themselves before 1983. If you find any evidence of that, please let me know!
Oddly, although it seems likely that Arguelles got the date from the 1983 revised 4th edition of "The Ancient Maya," the edition that he cites in the bibliography of "The Mayan Factor" (1987) is the *1956* edition. Was he intentionally obscuring Sharer's 1983 contribution or was he just being sloppy? Furthermore, while Arguelles at least cited the 1956 edition of "The Ancient Maya," the McKennas don't cite Morley's book in the bibliography of their 1993 edition at all! (Therefore leaving the mistaken impression that it was somehow the result of their Timewave Zero calculations or Arguelles' scholarship rather than something that had been calculated a decade earlier by an archaeologist.)
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:45 PMOne of the questions for me is where did Arguelles get the "2012" date from for reference in "The Transformative Vision"? He must have had a source other than Coe. I wonder if it was a literary source or a word-of-mouth source. I don't recall if this is addressed at all in his hagiography (I don't think it is). -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:47 PMArgh! The 2012 Phenomenon Wikipedia page is partially locked and won't let me edit it at all...
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 7:23 AM"One of the questions for me is where did Arguelles get the '2012' date from for reference in 'The Transformative Vision'? He must have had a source other than Coe."
That's a good question for which I don't have an answer. Frank Waters apparently got the date he used (December 24, 2011) from Coe, but Arguelles has it as 2012. It's possible to use the information from Morley's 1956 edition of "The Ancient Maya" to project forward in time, which may be what Arguelles did. Interestingly, Tony Shearer (who originated the idea of the Harmonic Convergence) also published a small book in 1975. However, in it he makes no mention of either 13.0.0.0.0 or 2012. It appears Arguelles got the 2012 bit from somewhere other than Shearer (his source for the August 16-17, 1987 date for the HC). -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 7:35 AMOn second thought, if Arguelles had calculated forward using the table in Morley's 1956 book, he probably would have come up with a specific day (not just the year 2012).
The most parsimonious explanation is that, for his 1975 book, Arguelles simply tumbled the December 24, 2011 date forward into 2012, a year with a nice round number. When Sharer's revised table in 1983 revealed the correlation to be December 21, 2012, it was fortuitous synchronicity. -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 7:36 AMWhat's important to keep in mind is that the ancient Maya didn't assign much importance to *years*. Their calendar system was based specifically on counts of *days*.
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 8:53 AM
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 12:48 PMalso...it's hard to tell from your wording and the parenthetical, but does your reply suggest that Arguelles mentions "Dec. 21, 2012" in "The Transformative Vision". The passage I found in the notes for Chapter 1 only mentions the year 2012, but not any specific date. Do you know of some other reference in the book that I am missing (or am I misreading your reply)? -
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Re: 2012 in Sky & Telescope
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 12:54 PMSorry, I left out an important word:
"Argüelles had also noted the significance of the year 2012 (but *NOT* December 21) in association with the Maya calendar in The Transformative Vision (1975)."
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