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.