Well, it's 2012 at last - the epic year many of us have been waiting for. Personally, I've been anticipating it since 1999. When most of the world was caught up in the paranoia that Y2K, or the Millennium Bug, was going to cause the entire global system to come crashing down because of a worldwide computer failure due the rollover from 99 to 00 (but caused mainly, I think, by people hoping their credit cards debts would get erased), I was skipping ahead 12 years.
I had just discovered the Mayan calendar and preferred the positive, new-agey forecast that came along with it over the doom and gloom of the Y2K hype, which, incidentally, was immediately looked back upon with disdain after we all rolled peacefully into the new millennium.
Since then, at least one other major doomsday prediction of global magnitude comes to mind. How can we forget the American Christian radio host who gained worldwide media attention with his predictions that the world would end on May 21, then Oct 21, 2010 - and was obviously wrong on both accounts? Interesting to note that his reasoning was derived from a quote in the Bible - when God said to Noah in the Book of Genesis, "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."
In Biblical talk, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," so when God said seven days, he actually meant 7,000 years. And 7,000 years after the big flood - which reportedly occurred in 4,990 BC - was 2011.
We humans do love our numbers.
And now with the advent of the end of the Mayan calendar, another numbers game is at play. According to the calendar, a 5,125-year-long cycle comes to an end on December 21, 2012.
Why the interest in this particular calendar when others, such as the Muslim calendar, are in current use and the Gregorian, or Western, calendar is internationally accepted as the status quo?
As far as I can gather, it has to do with the scope and sophistication of the Mayan civilization, and Native American traditions generally, before European contact. In their heyday, Mayan cities were some of the largest in the world and the Mayans developed the most advanced mathematics and astronomy of their time. Not just a system to mark the passage of time, the Mayan calendar was understood to be prophetic in nature and a gateway to the world of human consciousness.
Essentially, time had a different meaning to the Maya than it does to use with our more materialistic world view.
Western interest in the calendar began percolating in the early 1970s when several New Age authors maintained the end of the Mayan cycle would mark the beginning of a new era - one that would see a shift in global consciousness whereby all of Earth's inhabitants would undergo a positive spiritual transformation. So although the 2009 disaster movie "2012" which included references to the Mayan calendar portrayed 2012 as cataclysmic, Mayan experts around the world are assuring everyone this is a year of celebration because it signifies the beginning of a new and improved era.
Seems promising. And the numbers game doesn't end there.
Twenty-twelve is also a leap year - every four years an extra day is added to keep our Gregorian calendar on track so this year February will have 29 days - as well as the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar, which operates on a 12-year cycle still used by many Asian cultures for holiday and astrology purposes.
In Chinese astrology, the dragon is significant because it's the only animal of the Chinese zodiac that isn't real. The mythical dragon is the ultimate protector, keeps evil spirits away and is the mightiest of all the Chinese signs, and its year is marked by unpredictability, exhilaration and intensity.
Ultimately, the convergence of a 5,125-year, 12-year and four-year cycle may not end up meaning anything at all by the time we flip over into 2013, but the concept of divine protection and luck during a time of positive global transformation is, at the very least, worth contemplating.
