Will the world end in 2012?

MANILA, Philippines—The Mayan calendar predicted the world would end Dec. 21, 2012. Is this true?

Yes, the world, as we know it, will definitely end on that date, but it will not be the end of the world.

I hesitated to write this article because I did not want to scare people. But I was told by an angelic being that I must.

This article began on my way back to Manila from Poland. In a big book and electronics store at the Amsterdam airport, two titles caught my attention: "The End of Time, the Mayan Prophecies Revisited" by Adrian Gilbert and "Building Your Mental Muscle."

The mysterious Mayan civilization flourished in meso America then disappeared without a trace. It left fabulous temples, pyramids and other strange monuments with stranger writings.

The Mayans always fascinated me. The amazing calendar they left behind traced the precise movements of the planets and the stars without using any instruments. It described the present earth cycle from Aug. 11, 3114 BC, to Dec. 21, 2012.

Back in Manila, I got a copy of an article by novelist Benjamin Anastas about the Mayan prophecies, reprinted from the New York Times, from my neighbor Ricky Gonzales, a management consultant. I was struck by the coincidence.

Escalating phenomenon

The article tells about the growing interest in recent years about doomsday scenarios as predicted by the Mayan calendar.

"The Mayan calendar," according to the article, "is at the center of an escalating cultural phenomenon, with New Age roots, that unites numinous (spiritual) dreams of societal transformation with the darker tropes of biblical cataclysm. To some, 2012 will bring the end of time; to others, it carries the promise of a new beginning; still to others, 2012 provides an explanation for troubling new realities—environmental change, for example, that seem beyond the control of technology and impervious to reason."

Predictions about the end of the world is nothing new. Ancient Gnostics, for example, predicted the arrival of God's kingdom as early as the first century. Christians in Europe attacked pagan territories in the north to prepare for the end of the world in the first millennium.

The Shakers believed the world would end in 1792. The Jehovah's Witnesses have set the end dates from 1914-1994.

"Any religious movement with an end-time prophecy is certain to attract followers," says Anastas.

In the Philippines, a religious cult believed the world would end Dec. 31, 1999. Its members went inside a cave in Tagaytay wearing helmets and waited for the end that never came.

A few years before that, a retired military officer predicted the world would be destroyed and two-thirds of the population would perish. The other one-third would be taken by UFOs (unidentified flying objects) through a beam of light.

Different

With all these failed prophecies, why is the Mayan calendar prediction attracting a growing following even in the scientific community? Is there something different about it?

Yes, according to experts.

John Major Jenkins says the Mayan lineage goes back to 2000 years. He argues that the ancient Maya "calendar priests" charted a 26,000-year astronomical cycle, called precession of the equinoxes, with the naked eye.

The 2012 end-date coincides with the "galactic alignment" of the winter solstice sun and the axis that modern astronomers draw to bisect the Milky Way, called the galactic equator.

Adrian Gilbert, in his book "The End of Time," says, "Not only is the night of 21-22 December the longest in the year, but because of the precession of the equinoxes it corresponds with the day the sun stands exactly at one of the star-gate crossing-points of the elliptic with the median plane of the Milky Way."

Gilbert names this position the "southern star gate—its counterpart, the northern star gate being placed exactly over the up stretched hand of Orion."

Precession refers to the "slow movement of the axis of a spinning object around another axis." Equinox is "the time the sun crosses the celestial equator, when day and night are of equal length."

Gilbert says this means on Dec. 22, any person observing the sun will also be looking toward the core of the Milky Way, the place astronomers say has a black hole with a mass some three million times that of our sun.

Gilbert believes what was prophesied in the Book of Revelations is already happening, coinciding with the Mayan calendar. "This moment," says Gilbert, "when the sun is located at the southern star gate and Orion, with its northern star gate, is dominant in the night sky, will signify the termination of the tribulation prophesied in the Book of Revelation and the true beginning of a new age."