"Jaguar Prophet of Our Time" sinks his teeth in.

 

Carl Calleman, the self-appointed "Jaguar Prophet of Our Time", has recently vented some sour grapes to the Diagnosis2012 webmaster about his invented version of the Maya Calendars not being included on the Diagnosis2012 website. He was told by the webmaster that his inventions were just confusing people who want to understand about the genuine Maya calendars, and is already covered all over the internet, and is being spammed everywhere. He has now vented again:

 

"In my view the most absurd of these interpretations is probably a book that sets out to prove that this is the day when the world will come to an end because of a pole shift and there is nothing we can do about it (The Orion Prophecy). For someone who does not have a scientific training and background its purported « mathematical proof » for this may even seem impressive. Those supporting the December 21, 2012 date, such as www.diagnosis2012.co.uk, prefer such depressing rubbish to an analysis of the evolution of consciousness, simply because it is consistent with the end date they propose."

 

This is disinformation, because it implies that Diagnosis2012 supports the conclusions of the authors of the Orion Prophecy, whereas, a complete review of the book at http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/orp.htm showed that the theory is seriously faulted. When we covered the Calleman - Jenkins debate, I was just about to review Calleman's book, but held off in order to keep the site impartial while holding the debate. I just offered my anonymous response on the "Responses" page at John Major Jenkins' site: Responses from readers (see response from "G"). To remedy the situation, and show that Calleman's ideas are also seriously faulted, here is the review of Calleman's book, The Mayan Calendar: Solving the Greatest Mystery of our Time, that appears in Geoff Stray's Beyond 2012 (which evolved from Diagnosis2012).

 

The Calleman “Solution”

 

Swedish researcher Carl Johan Calleman noticed that since the tzolkin can be used as a map of the 13-baktun cycle, it could theoretically also be applied to the larger cycles that have been found on a few stelae, (a stela or stele is an upright lab or pillar with an inscription or sculpture and the plural form is stelae) such as stela 1 at the Coba – a ruined Maya city in the forest sixty miles east of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. Then he noticed that if this is continued upwards, a cycle is discovered that is close to the scientifically accepted age of the universe. To explain this further, we must first look at the extended version of the Long Count calendar.

 

Twenty kin or days is one uinal (20 days)

Eighteen uinals is one tun (360 days)

Twenty tuns is one katun. 7,200 days (about 20 years)

Twenty katuns is one baktun. 144,000 days (about 400 years)

Twenty baktuns is one pictun. 2,880,000 days (about 8,000 years)

Twenty pictuns is one kalabtun. 57,600,000 days (about 160,000 years)

Twenty kalabtuns is one kinchiltun. 1,152,000,000 days (about 3.154 million years)

Twenty kinchiltuns is one alautun (about 63.08 million years)

Twenty alautuns is one hablatun (about 1.26 billion years)

Twenty hablatuns is about 25.2 billion years

 

What Calleman realized is that thirteen hablatuns would be equal to about 16.4 billion years, which is close to the usual estimate given for the age of the universe; about 15 billion years. If the pattern of the 13 x 20 Sacred Calendar or tzolkin encodes larger sacred cycles, such as the 13-baktun cycle, he reasoned that a whole cosmology of 13-unit cycles, rather than twenty-unit ones, could be represented in a nine-step pyramid form, such as the Pyramid of the Jaguar at Tikal, Guatemala, or the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, Mexico (the one that conceals the tomb of the ancient Maya ruler, Pacal). In this way, the top or ninth level would represent a 13-uinal period, while the bottom or first level would represent a 13-hablatun period.

 

 So, the topmost layer represented the 260-day tzolkin of thirteen uinals. The next level down would be a 260-uinal cycle of thirteen tuns. The next level down would be a 260-tun cycle of thirteen katuns (this is a cycle normally known as the Short Count). Under this would be a 260-katun cycle of thirteen baktuns (this is the familiar 13-baktun cycle). Below this would be a 260-baktun cycle of thirteen pictuns, and so on. In this way, we would have a nine-level pyramid, where each layer is structured like the tzolkin, but twenty times larger than the layer above.

 

This is a very intriguing idea, showing how the development and evolution of the universe could be encoded into the structure of the Maya calendrical systems, from the creation of the universe until its final consummation at the end-point of 13.0.0.0.0. At the junctions of each level of the pyramid, humanity gains another “frame of consciousness”, and although Calleman says that speculation on the consciousness that will be accessed at the “summit of the pyramid” would seem to be “almost pointless”, he does indulge the reader a little. It will be an end of time, in which no more calendars are needed:

 

“…the attainment of a time-less cosmic consciousness, and an experience of unity with All-That-Is in its fullest sense, a disappearance of the line dividing life from death. Although many that live today have had temporary experiences of such a cosmic consciousness, these have only been temporary, due to our limiting frame of consciousness. At the end of Creation this may no longer be so and the eternal life may in fact manifest as a time-less cosmic consciousness.” 41

 

If this sounds quite similar to other interpretations we have covered, maybe that is because it is based on “several ancient scriptures” that turn out to be mainly the Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation. Anyway, you might wonder what it would imply for the Long Count notation, if there were cycles larger than the 13-baktun cycle. The Maya usually just used the last five positions; in fact, stela 1 at Coba implies that all the larger cycles have already reached thirteen, so you might think the 13.0.0.0.0 date should actually be written as 13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0. in Calleman’s system. However, when you look closer, the logic breaks down a little. In fact, stela 1 at Coba shows cycles that are longer than the thirteen hablatuns since the start of the universe at the time of the theoretical Big Bang. The full Long Count (plus tzolkin and haab) date on the stela is written as:

 

 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0
4 Ahau 8 Cumku

Calleman says 42 this stela implies a hierarchy of creations, i.e. his multi-layered pyramid, but this Long Count date actually signifies a time span equivalent to about 6.5 x1022 years. This is trillions of years longer than the age of the universe; or in other words, the current universe is about the four billion-billionth universe of 16.4 billion years each! Calleman’s pyramid would need twenty-four levels to show this. These larger cycles could, however, be a mythic representation of four previous eras (at a push).

 Although the “Creation” date in 3114 BC is theoretically written as “0.0.0.0.0”, wherever it is referred to on a stela it is written as “13.0.0.0.0” 43 and most Mayanists have thus concluded that every time we get to the end of the 13th baktun (which is baktun number twelve, since the first one was baktun zero), we reach a new Creation date and the count of baktuns, katuns, tuns, uinals and kin go back to zero (the day after 13.0.0.0.0 is 0.0.0.0.1). Since there are no known inscriprtions referring to the first baktun in the current era, some Mayanists, propose that the first baktun would have been recorded with the 13 throughout the whole baktun, not just the first day. In this case, the day after 13.0.0.0.0 would have been 13.0.0.0.1 and so on, until the following baktun - 1.0.0.0.0 - commenced. ( (A recent study has ascertained that it is almost certain that the 13-baktun cycle WAS numbered between 1 and 13, like all 13-fold cycles, while 20-fold cycles were numbered between 0 and 19... see UPDATE below). A record on a temple stairway at Yaxchillan 44 is said to show eight levels above baktun, and they are all still at “13”:

13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.9.15.13.6.9
3 Muluc 17 Mac

So, the implication of the Coba and Yaxchilan dates above, means that on the 4 Ahau 8 Cumku Creation date, the full Long Count date turned over from the previous day's date of 13.13....13.12.19.19.17.19 ...or that all the higher cycles clicked up to 13 on that date. However, Eric Thompson's work with many inscriptions showing dates in these higher cycles shows that the full Long Count date for the 4 Ahau 8 Cumku Creation date would be expressed as 0.1.13.0.0.0.0.0.0 ...(or with the first baktun expressed as 13:0.1.13.0.13.0.0.0.0), thus the previous day would have been 0.1.13.0.12.19.19.17.19 . So the Coba and Yaxchilan inscriptions do not tally and Mayanists usually try and explain them by saying they must be simply depicting mythic time and underlining the importance of the Creation dates. UPDATE: A new in-depth study has resulted in an explanation for these Coba and Yaxchilan inscriptions... read it HERE: http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/13baktunversus20.pdf

 Calleman supports the True Count, as opposed to the Lounsbury correlation, but he realised that his theory would be much neater if only the Long Count had ended on the day 13 Ahau in the tzolkin, instead of 4 Ahau. Incredibly, he decided that the Maya had got it wrong, and says that although he still agrees with the True Count of the tzolkin, the correlation between the Long Count and the tzolkin was wrong. This is something nobody had questioned before, since there has never been any doubt of the tzolkin – to- Long Count correlation; it was set by the Maya and wherever a stela shows the Long Count, it shows the relevant tzolkin date. Previous arguments had concerned how the calendars relate to the Gregorian calendar, not how they relate to each other. Calleman criticized Arguelles for creating his own New Age Dreamspell count, 45 yet has not seen the parallels to his own creation. In fact, he says in reference to later "invented" tzolkin correlations, "Such disregard of the calendrical knowledge of the Classical Maya is not likely to lead to truth" 46, but this applies equally to his own invented Long Count correlation. The result of the change in correlation means that Calleman sees the 13-baktun cycle as starting on June 17th 3115 BC and ending on 28th October 2011. 47

 

There is a problem, however, because dividing by twenty works fine until we get to the level beneath the summit of the pyramid, when we find that thirteen tuns is 4680 days, and a twentieth of this is 234 days, not 260 days. Calleman admits this, where he refers to “The short universal cycle of 2011, probably totalling only 13 x 18 = 234 days, but possibly 260 days…” 48 Two diagrams on p.77 of Calleman’s book differ on the length of this last cycle – one says 13 x 20 days (260) and the other says 13 x 18 days (234). If the tzolkin level (the Universal Underworld) is shortened to 234 days, so that the pattern (of each level being a twentieth the size of the one above) is retained, then the tzolkin as the key 260-unit “filtration pattern of divine light” is unable to form the top level of the pyramid. Alternatively, if the 260-unit tzolkin is retained as the top level of the pyramid, so that each level consists of 260 sub-units, then the top level will be only an eighteenth the size of the level below, whereas all other levels are a twentieth the size of the level below. Since both solutions lose the symmetry of the pyramid, Calleman is clearly undecided as to which is correct. This brings the validity of the whole pyramid construct into question.

 

Fig.19.4: Calleman’s 9-level pyramid model of the nine evolving states of consciousness illustrates that if we retain the 20-fold pattern up to the top, we lose the pattern of 260 components, but if we retain the 260 components, we lose the 20-fold pattern.

If Calleman had stuck with the Maya Long Count correlation, the idea would have remained an interesting concept, but the idea that the tzolkin “ends” on the day 13 Ahau and “begins” on the day 1 Imix is, in fact, “based upon a misconception of the tzolkin calendar49 due to modern conventions in representing it, according to John Major Jenkins. Therefore the alteration to the Long Count was not necessary, and Calleman could have presented the idea without resorting to inventing his own correlation. Calleman now has quite a following, and supporters are presenting his theory as “The Mayan Calendar” or saying, “The Maya say when they should say, “Carl Calleman says…” His book is titled The Maya Calendar: Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time, but his solution is being taken as the genuine Maya Calendar, when it is an attempted explanation that got out of hand and ended up “massaging” the facts to fit the explanation. Amazingly, José Arguelles has written the introduction to Calleman’s sequel book, just as several websites are attempting to combine the theories of Arguelles and Calleman… and even Jenkins. It seems that people are so wary of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that they have poured all the water into one bath, inadvertently drowning the baby.

For further analysis of Calleman’s theory, see the Jenkins-Calleman debate on the Diagnosis2012 website, (see site map: http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/sm.htm in which each author simultaneously submitted a series of three articles to the debate. 50 or go straight to the first article in the series: http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/jmj.htm

See the ongoing debate with Treefrog: 2012.tribe.discussion

and Jenkins & Calleman Elders and 2012 Exchange

 

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