An Island in Time

Editor’s Note: Carlos Cedillo was unable to write his column today due to a computer breakdown, but we hope to have him back next week. You can review Carlos’ most recent columns here. In his place, we’re offering you this refresher on Mayan calendar basics by Eric, originally published Dec. 6, 2002. — Amanda

By Eric Francis

The other night Carol Burkhart showed up to help out with the annual horoscope and we wound up in a discussion about the Mayan calendar, my first in any depth. The discussion led straight to Wednesday morning’s total solar eclipse in Sagittarius. The eclipse — as of this writing [in 2002] — has actually happened, but we are still under its intergalactic graces.

The sphere of influence in immediate terms for how we experience almost all eclipses is usually a month on either side. But in reality, their energy ripples out much further in time in all directions, and we can even see and document their effects years later. So, if you think you’ve missed the main event, you can relax. We are still deep in the vortex.

What I learned from Carol is that this eclipse has occurred in what’s known as the core days of the Mayan calendar year, at the very center-point of the year’s backbone. The Mayans took time seriously, and conceived of the year as a spiritual framework for life in a way that is much more direct and structured than we are accustomed to.

That this eclipse occurs at the midpoint of the year emphasizes the quality of ‘one side or the other’ that is already so prominent in this event. The suggestion is that we are at some kind of dividing line in time, or more accurately, a threshold into a new era, great or small.

The Mayans, a not-so-ancient but vanished empire once based in southern Mexico and Guatemala, produced great mathematicians, architects and astronomers (not to mention warriors) and were among the builders of pyramids. It was a society on par with our own. Like the Cherokees and other cultures, their purported stellar ancestry is a nearby system called the Pleaides. Then they vanished. And it was not known, until recently, what happened to their civilization. But some of their knowledge was left behind in artifacts (mostly stone writing) and a few scattered descendents of their people have maintained some of their traditions.

Their calendar system turns out to be simple enough to explain in a few paragraphs, but obviously has greater implications. On the most basic level it’s a 260-day cycle that is their equivalent of our year, though one that’s not timed to the four seasons. We try to fit our year into one Earth orbit around the Sun; the math is tricky, since a year is really 365.242199 days and, since we don’t want the seasons and the months to get out of whack, we have a lot of rules to compensate for the odd decimal places (leap year and a wide variety of exceptions for when and when not to have leap year).

The Mayans (according to Geoff Cornelius) were aware of the 365-day year, but their calendar works around the fact that one Earth orbit of the Sun is not evenly divisible into a whole number of days, and that the seasons and the natural months (the lunar cycle) are out of sync.

The Mayan calendar is a 260-day floating island in time. The seasonal and astronomical landscape changes around it. My sense is that it’s based on a cycle we don’t know about, maybe one not directly involving our star system. It may be an imported product. Or, it may be the result of their mathematical prowess, combining several cycles into one, a kind of harmonic. This 260-day structure is not the total system; but it is the hub of the system. There are other day counts of much greater duration, including a count of 144,000 days, and the long-count, which takes time in nearly 5,000-year portions. By whatever means they attained it, these people had the long view.

The Mayans had discovered the wheel, but did not use it for transportation or labor because they considered the circle to be a sacred symbol. To them, time itself was a religious or mystical entity, not merely a consumable commodity like it is for us. For the Mayans, the wheel and time were connected; time was not perceived as a line, but considered in circular, spiral and cyclical terms. At its essence, time was a mystical transportation device and certain days in the rhythm were used as points beyond the normal grid.

The 260-day Mayan year is divided into twenty, thirteen-day ‘time pulses’ which are equivalent to our week. Their days are named. There are 20 possible names for a day, and 13 possible numbers. The cycle of 20 days is called a ‘solar cycle’ so there are two concurrent cycles within the year, both based on 13 and 20. Days have a name and a number. In our system, a Monday (one of seven possible names) can have any of 31 possible numbers. There is a similarity, but that’s about as far as it goes.

The whole calendar fits on one sheet of paper (or a small stone tablet) and it’s the same every year. The names of the days go down the left side of the chart, and to the right there are a bunch of numbers in a grid pattern. Some of those numbers are highlighted in black and others in red, creating a visual pattern that’s always had a haunting familiarity to me. The black days are ‘galactic activation portal days’. The red ones are the ‘core days’ of the year. As I mentioned, we are now in the core days — at the very center.

The basic grid looks like this.

Reading down the chart, the year starts at the top left, on 1 Imix, and then the second day is 2 Ik and the third is 3 Akbal and so on. When you get to the bottom of the list of days (a ‘solar cycle’, since the last day is Ahau or Sun), you go back to the top and start working down the next column of numbers in a new solar cycle and the day count continues at 8 Imix, 9 Ik and so on.

The beauty of the system to me is that the cycles move beautifully within one another, and at the same time, it’s so off kilter from everything we expect. A time pulse has 13 days but there are 20 possible names for days, so every pulse is a little different. Our natural lunar cycle is based on the approximately 14 days between the new and full moons, but their time pulses are 13 days — so the their calendar is always a beat ahead of the Moon. Their year is always beginning in a different season. And so on. But within the calendar itself, all the days and numbers and time pulses have mystical implications, like Tarot cards. Not a bad idea at all. It’s kind of like astrology: astrology is all about the study of cycles and the meaning of time.

Midyear, the solar cycle in center column in the grid, is called the ‘core days’. We now happen to be in the core days, which are in solar cycle which began Monday, Nov. 25 and ends Dec. 14. And — what got my attention — is that the total solar eclipse in Sagittarius that took place at about 2:33 am New York time Wednesday morning and 7:33 a.m. GMT, is at the very heart of the calendar, on the day 13 Oc (just take a look at the link above and see for yourself, though the conventional calendar date is not indicated in this chart).

So if you imagine that the Mayan year is an island in the mystical ocean of time, this eclipse is like a volcano on the center of the island that erupts right when we’re standing there. So don’t forget your umbrella.

Now, I know we’re all tempted to ask, BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I’ll tell you. It means GEE FUCKING WHIZ.

As I have said before, I am the founder of the Gee Whiz school of astrology. We don’t need to know what everything means; meaning is a big distraction a lot of the time. We just need to wait till our mind looks at something and says Gee Whiz, and groove on the mystery of it all. Well, this gets a little extra whiz. This fine example of a major total solar eclipse, with both the Great Attractor (an intergalactic point) and the Milky Way’s galactic center both directly aspected, is a rare event, indeed, one of a kind, and turning on Sagittarius like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, with Pluto, Saturn, Chiron, Neptune, and many other planets involved in the energy pattern. With more asteroids than there are rocks in the University of Utah Geology Dept. collected around the lunar nodes. Right smack in the core days. Gee whizzz.

We could be standing on the very threshold to anywhere. It could be that anything we think or take action on is magnified a zillion times, like when you do a ritual in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid while chewing gum. I have always viewed eclipses as times to set intentions and then take action on them. That’s how eclipses work. They are the bonus moments, the triple-word score, the big moment of clarity. Do something to improve your life. Do something different. Solve a problem and make it a big one. Call a politician and tell him to make love, not war. Hey, while you’re at it, make love, not war. The Mayan calendar seems to be emphasizing the point that big stuff is possible right now, and those people knew a few things we don’t.

(They also didn’t know a few things we also don’t, but that’s another essay.)

And now — some quinoa for lunch.