Still, if this calendar was indicative of their level of workmanship, lets just say I won’t be buying any Mayan products for a very long time.

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If you’re absolutely sure the world is going to end on a specific day, and it doesn’t, what do you do? How do you explain it to yourself? What happens to your faith in God? Can you just scrape the bumper stickers off your car, throw away the t-shirts, and move on?

Followers of Ronald Weinland may find this article of interest in the days and weeks ahead.

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The air?  Not charred with ash, at least in my neighborhood.

Jesus?  Haven’t seen ‘em around.

So it appears the Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God‘s May 27th Doomsday prediction didn’t pan out.

All eyes are on you now, Mayans…

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I wish I had a rocket ship.

Do you think Satan’s going to be the tough-but-fair kind of boss, or is he just going to be a real dick?

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Holy crap…that’s this week!

So what’s the man up to?

Weinland has to be disappointed already, in that his prophecy is getting some minor nibbles from local (Cincinatti-area) media outlets this week, but nothing approaching the maelstrom of coverage fellow Doomsday-date-pinner-downer Harold Camping received just a year or two back.  Even Weinland’s own web properties don’t seem to have been updated to reflect the fact that…hey…it’s kind of a big week here.

For readers looking to learn more, please check out our previous coverage of the COG-PKG and their May 27th Doomsday prophecy:

• Read about their history as a splinter sect from the late Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God.
• Discover the suite of websites through which Ronald Weinland shares his doom-laden prophecies.
• Find out which other Church of God splinter groups oppose him.  B-i-t-t-e-r-l-y oppose him.
• See what doubters and deniers of a May 27 Armageddon think about about all this.

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• Mayan civilization was pretty neat as far as civilizations go.
• They utilized three different calendars for telling time – and their long-count calendar says our time is about up.
• Those inhabiting the Mayan ancestral homelands are anxious to cash in on the worldwide interest.
• UFO enthusiasts, New Age types, and the ultra-religious are the most likely to truly believe Dec. 21st will bring Armageddon.
• A dude is making a documentary claiming an alien/Mayan connection, and he is also claiming to be late actor Raul Julia’s son, which may or may not be true.
• How exactly do we know so much about what a long-gone civilization believed, anywho?

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But it raises the interesting question of just how we know so much about the Doomsday prophecies of these ancient people.  Below, we’ll examine four of the main written sources of information that have been passed down through the ages:

The Chilam Balam

When was it written? The nine-to-twelve (depending on who’s counting) books that are recognized collectively as the “Chilam Balam” were written between the 16^th and 18^th centuries.

What’s it about?  There’s a bit of a Farmer’s Almanac quality to the Chilam Balam (although that’s a pretty dated reference.  Maybe a Wikipedia quality?).  They span topics from recipes to popular stories to historical accounts and ancient prophecies, and they mix both Spanish Catholic and ancient Mayan traditions.  Modern historians are interested in the Chilam Balam for the later – as we know plenty about Spanish Catholic lore, but these books contain some of our only surviving knowledge about the ancient Mayans.

Who exactly wrote it?  It was written by descendants of the Mayans in the Northern Yucutan peninsula in the centuries following the Spanish conquest.  The book tells of the fulfillment of ancient Mayan prophecies about the coming of the Spanish – but, as it was written AFTER the Spanish came, who knows how selectively they were remembered prophecies?

What does it say about Doomsday? Plenty.  But it depends where you look.  Perhaps this eerie passage describes our fate:

There will be scarcities of corn and squash during this katun and this will lead to great mortality. This was the katun during which the settlement of Chichen Itza occurred, when the man-god Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl) arrived. It is the katun of remembering and recording knowledge.

Or maybe it’s this chilling prophecy:

Unattainable is the bread in Katun 13 Ahau. The Sun shall be eclipsed. Double is the charge of the Katun: men without offspring, chiefs without successors. For five days the Sun shall be eclipsed, then it shall be seen again. This is the charge of Katun 13 Ahau’.

But, then again, what about this syncretic Mayo-Christian passage:

But when the law of the katun shall have run its course, then God will bring about a great deluge again which will be the end of the world. When this is over, then our Lord Jesus Christ shall descend over the valley of Jehoshaphat beside the town of Jerusalem where he redeemed us with his holy blood.

The Popul Vuh

When was it written?  The text as we have it now was supposedly put down in 1558, asterisk asterisk asterisk.  Each of those asterisks are interesting enough to be worth relating the story in full.  The Mayan legends contained in the Popul Vuh were passed down over the generations in books and artwork.  But when the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they took a negative look at any art that wasn’t pictures of the Baby Jesus and writings that weren’t the Bible, and they destroyed a good deal of what they considered idolatrous Mayan art.  For a few generations, oral history became the only transmission source for these legends.  In 1558, a native who learned Latin transcribed the legends into the Popul Vuh.  For 150 years, that manuscript kicked around the local area, and a Spanish priest discovered it in 1701 and translated it to Spanish.  It was then lost to history for ANOTHER 150 years, when librarians found it in 1854.

What’s it about?  The Popul Vuh tells us the creation story of mankind, and stories of early mythic heroes of the K’iche’ Mayan people and their genealogical lineages.

Their story of how man came to be is particularly cool as far as creation stories go.  It starts as most entrants in this genre do – nothing but a blank calm sea; then a confab among gods who decide to create a world.  The gods first made animals, but found the dumb beasts lacking in intellect.  So they decided to make mankind to cap off creation.  In their first attempt they made men out of mud.  That didn’t go well.  Next they tried wood.  Even worse.  Finally, they settled on a solution:

This the Forefathers did, Tepeu and Gucumatz, as they were called. After that they began to talk about the creation and the making of our first mother and father; of yellow corn and of white corn they made their flesh; of cornmeal dough they made the arms and the legs of man. Only dough of corn meal went into the flesh of our first fathers, the four men, who were created.

So – yes!  You and I and everyone we know are essentially corn-meal, per the Popul Vuh.  Bet you’ll never look at tortilla chips the same.

Who exactly wrote it?  This is a key distinction.  The Popul Vuh was written in the 16^th century by the K’iche’ Mayans, who lived mainly in the highlands of modern-day Guatemala.  So as any half-competent historian would gladly point out, it’s not exactly primary source material from the mouths of the ancient Mayans themselves – it’s an account by some distant relatives of theirs, off in the hinterlands, hundreds of years in the future, whose culture had likely fuzed in a lot of Aztec and European beliefs as well.  You’ll often see the Popul Vuh referred to by Mayan-Doomsday enthusiasts online as “the Mayan’s holy book” – but that’s only true with the above qualifications.

What does it say about Doomsday?  Directly?  Not much.  But the end of every story depends on having a beginning, and that is where the Popul Vuh comes in.  It is from its account that we know mankind is now living in the Fourth World, after the gods destroyed the previous three (the mudman world, the treeman world, etc.)  And it is from the Popul Vuh‘s account that we know the previous world ended on the 13^th b’ak’tun – the Long Count Calendar date that will hit this December 21^st.

The Dresden, Paris, and Madrid Codices

When were they written?  The oldest codex dates back to the 1200’s.  The Dresden, Paris, and Madrid codices (named for the cities whose libraries they ended up with) are the among the very, very few surviving books from America’s pre-Columbus past.

Admit it - you'd read more if all books were as cool-looking as this.

And yes – that means the Mayans made their own books (neat!).  They used the innards of fig trees to make bark-cloth books they called “huun,” off a technique they developed sometime in the fifth century.  Historians believe they wrote many, many, many books, but time was not kind to them in those hot rain-foresty jungles, and the Spanish were even un-kinder.  As such, most of the Mayan’s favorite literary genres – true crime, romance, sci-fi, po-mo, local history, self-help, business, and humor – are lost to history.  Only the three (maybe four – the Grolier codex was discovered in the 1970’s but is doubted by many historians) books survive.

What are they about?  The codices are mainly about astronomy, divination, rituals, and calendars.  One is all about tracking the motion of the planet Venus.  Scintillating stuff.

What do they say about Doomsday?  From what I can find about them – nothing.

Steles, Tablets, Temple carvings, etc.

When were they carved?  Mayan times!  I don’t care what the official rules to “rock paper scissors” say – if you want your writings to survive more than a few hundred years, rock beats paper, every time.  As such, there are many, many more surviving hieroglyphs in stone format than in huun paper form.

What are they about?  Like most statuary throughout history, lots of them are platforms for warlords to brag to future generations about how many heads they successfully severed from enemies.  Otherwise, it’s mainly the Two Topics Even the Mayans Knew You Shouldn’t Discuss at Dinner Parties – politics and religion.

What do they say about Doomsday?  Most of the recent interest has centered around the Tortuguero tablet, found in the spicy and delicious Mexican state of Tabasco.  The tablet describes the return of the god of creation Bolon Yokte at the end of the 13^th B’ak’tun – aka, December 21^st, 2012.

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But it’s worth asking…does anybody today actually put stock in their Doomsday prediction?  Or is it more that we all love a good story?  Are there people out there who truly believe the world as we know it will be gone by December 22, or is it all just jokes?  Like this fella’s:

World-ending cataclysm, or just an excuse to collect a few gullible “mints?”

But in fact, searching around the web reveals that several people do seem to take the end of the Mayan long-count calendar seriously.  Here are the three big thought-buckets into which most fit:

• UFO Believers
  

The basic belief of the UFO-conspiracy crowd goes as follows.  The Mayans were able to predict the end-date of the world with such accuracy because they were in contact with an advanced species of extra-terrestrials.  The aliens came, struck up a friendship with the Mayans, (I guess they found the Normans, Persians et al. too prissy) and told them one night over a few beers that the Earth was a project with a set beginning and end date.  The Mayans dutifully transcribed the aliens’ warning about 2012.

• New Age People

Networks of Doom might do a whole week covering these guys – as their end-times worldview is a fully-formed ideology of its own.  But it definitely has relevance to the Mayan calendar.

Their basic belief is this: the Mayans were dead-on right about the 2012 date, because they were attuned to the same “cosmic vibrations” that these modern-day astrologers are feeling.  They say that what is going to happen by the end of this year won’t be a Armageddon scenario, but actually something quite good – a “cosmic shift” or “consciousness shift” to a higher vibration.

Per their theory, the universe has been sending a lot of bad vibes the Earth’s way for the past couple millenniums (which manifested in humans as a lot of war and disease and unhappiness).  But come December 21, 2012, there is going to be a shift in the heavens, and we’re going to start receiving pure-grade good-times happy vibes.  Boring old Earth will be transformed into a “one hundred times…more harmonious, Utopian world, where things like time travel, levitation, instant telepathy, instant healing, telekinesis are as common and as everyday as breathing.”

• Doomsday Christians

This may seem an odd pairing – as I’m pretty sure the Hebrew God’s Rule #1 was a fairly strict “no gods but me” policy.  That shoulda kept His followers from raiding the myths of other cultures.  But of course, there is an extremely strong Doomsday current within Christianity, and some are looking for any connections they can to pin a firmer date on Christ’s return.

As the deliciously “why aren’t these band names” blogs thejesusalien.com or mayanjesus.com document,  perhaps the Mayan god of creation and war Bolon Yokte was actually Jesus (or an incarnation of Jesus).  There are a number of similarities between Mayan writings on Bolon Yokte and prophecies in the Book of Revelations (examples: the number 9 has symbolic implications for both; both are referred to as a tree or branch, etc.).  So if the Mayans believe Bolon Yokte is returning on December 21…maybe they had a prophetic insight worth taking a look at.

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