Five years and counting: Will the world end in 2012?
The end is near. Well, more specifically, it's five years from this Friday: Dec. 21, 2012 — or so the doomsayers would have you believe.
Others believe we're five years from an unprecedented spiritual awakening. Whatever you believe, there's no denying that the 2012 movement has become a hot topic. Just take a walk through the non-fiction aisle of the nearest bookstore. Joseph Lawrence's "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End" and Daniel Pinchbeck's "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" are some of the more popular titles filling bookshelves these days.
Most recently, Louisville-based Sounds True, a publisher of spiritual books, audio programs and DVDs, published the book "The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophesies and Possibilities," an anthology featuring many of the leading scholars on the topic, including Pinchbeck and John Major Jenkins, an independent researcher who has studied 2012 for more than 20 years and discussed the anthology at a Dec. 6 book signing at the Boulder Book Store.
The big question these books are trying to answer, of course, is what's going to happen in 2012 — in particular on the winter solstice, Dec. 21.
Here's what is known: The ancient Mayan long-count calendar — a calendar that spans more than 5,000 years — comes to an end on Dec. 21, 2012. This coincides with a galactic alignment in which the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy, an event that occurs once every 26,000 years, which could have potentially catastrophic consequences. The galactic alignment has the potential to create a shift in the Earth's poles, which would cause disastrous environmental events.
Many view this, in conjunction with the end of the Mayan calendar, as a sign of the end times. Viewers of the History Channel should be familiar with this theory, as the channel has featured the doomsday scenario in numerous programs.
But there is another theory, led by the likes of Jenkins, who makes his home in Windsor, and has spent much of the past two decades living and working with the traditional Maya in Guatemala. For him, 2012 is not the end. It's a chance for an unprecedented spiritual awakening.
"It's an opportunity for human life to understand our true natures," he says. "There will be a great awakening to the greater potential that human beings have."
The doomsday theories, though, have captured the public's imagination and have often overshadowed Jenkins' work.
"It's a little disappointing to see the carnival aspect of 2012 on the upswing," he says. "Because of the large interest that 2012 is generating ... a lot of people will be distracted by the carnival barkers selling snake oil."
There could be something positive in this, however, for at the very least the doomsayers have drawn attention to the topic, Jenkins says.
"That just means, relatively speaking, that more people will be able to navigate their way through the labyrinth to get into the heart of the information."
People are talking. A year ago, if you had asked someone their opinion about 2012, they likely would have responded that it was their favorite Rush album. Not anymore. In July, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature on 2012, and competing theories concerning the winter solstice of 2012 have gone from the fringe to the mainstream as the rival streams of perennial philosophy and apocalyptic prophecy have met at the confluence of popular culture.
"We're just seeing more titles. It seems there has constantly been one new 2012 book in circulation for the past year now," says Arsen Kashkashian, inventory manager at the Boulder Book Store, which has hosted 2012-themed readings by Pinchbeck and Jenkins in the past four months. "They used to be fringe things. They're being put out by the big publishers now."
As Dec. 21, 2007 draws near, it may be time to write up one final five-year plan. But should they be plans for the end of the world or just the end of the world as we know it? It depends on whose book you read.
