©Copyright 2004 by Dr. Strange. All Rights Reserved
In the history of humanity´s evolution, the role of the shaman has always been the definition point of the avant-garde, the leading edge of change itself. This proclivity for interior, extra or ultra sensory experience, and the subsequent ability to describe those experiences, is arguably the true indication of self consciousness, that which makes Handy Monkey into Smart Monkey and beyond, down to our current stage, Monkey Too Smart For Its Own Good…
Back in the Good Old Days, you know, the long golden age of the Neolithic, specialists in this type of experience developed into key members of the community. The Neolithic sense of dwelling within and cooperating with nature, as opposed to being in conflict with it, was the cornerstone of this first, and so far the longest, period of human development. The shaman, as seen in the great painted figure deep in the cave complex at Lascaux, was the fountainhead of that golden age culture. As far back as 37,000 years ago, soon after Very Smart Monkey, us, appeared on the scene, and the last time the comet NEAT, the close approach of Mars and a Venus Transit coincided with a galactic alignment, an advanced magickal culture was flourishing, as can been seen in the magnificent art of Chauvet cave in the Ardeche region of France.
Now, if the Neolithic culture of the Rhone valley was this sophisticated so very long ago, why shouldn´t it have developed, over a period of tens of thousands of years, into an even more advanced civilization? Apparently thats just what happened, because in just a few millennia, Very Smart Monkey had become a global animal, reaching from Western Europe to Siberia, Alaska to Argentina, Africa and India all the way to Australia. After a long and progressive evolution, this proto-civilization reached its peak roughly 15,000 years ago in several large enclaves scattered around the globe.
We can identify a number of these by ruins and legends: The Nile Valley – the Egyptians left records that fit the basic chronology rather closely – the highland lakes of Peru, the high plateau of Central Asia, the Indus Valley region and the northern river valleys of China. These five basic cultures were apparently a part of a larger global civilization whose center was the Andean hidden kingdom mistranslated much later as Atal-antis, or rather Atlantis. When a galactic superwave swept through this region of the solar system, roughly 13,000 years ago, Atlantis disappeared under a massive tidal wave, and civilization collapsed, plunging humanity into its longest dark age yet.
It is hard to account for the fact that humanity had taken several steps backward from the Neolithic sophistication during what is called the late Stone Age, roughly from 10,000 BCE to 6,000 BCE. Climate changes are indeed to blame, but it is difficult even for the academic commentator not to mention the collapse of the Neolithic communities as some sort of disaster of civilization. That we are left with artifacts that seem primitive to our sensibilities does not mean that levels of sophistication did not exist, simply because they left no trace in the midden pile. And if we absolutely need artifacts, then we have some that are actually in plain sight, the Sphinx and its temple at Giza for instance, not to mention the ruins of Tiahuanaco in Peru, where an Andean elephant, extinct from 13,000 BCE, can be seen carved on the Doorway of the Sun, dated by precessional alignment to roughly 15,000 BCE.
The failure of the late Stone Age can be seen as the failure of its shamans to adapt to the changed conditions after the collapse of the global civilization. The disaster itself, while it may have had one defining point, such as the tidal wave that destroyed Atlantis, occurred over several hundreds if not a thousand years as the climate changed and reacted to the effects of the superwave on the sun and perhaps even gravity in the sense of tidal effects and the orbit of the Moon. By the time the Ice Age this upheaval had created began to lift, humanity itself hovered on the edge of extinction.
But amazingly enough, a miracle happened. Humanity, while never to be same as before The Fall, was saved and transformed, given the opportunity to rise above a slow and brutish slide into extinction and become, in a new and different way from the Elders of the Neolithic Golden Age, masters of a global advanced civilization.
How this miracle happened, which we will get to in due time, is something of a mystery, but from archeology and anthropology we do have a fairly clear picture of what happened. Roughly 5,000 years ago, within a few centuries of the start point of the Mayan calendar in 3,114 BCE, eight great cultures were seeded around the planet, from North America to China. Some were in the same old areas, Egypt, northern China, the Indus valley, but others were new, such as the northwest coast of Europe, the MeCong delta region of south east Asia, the northern coast of South and Central America, the Ohio valley of North America and of course the river valleys of Mesopotamia.
Looking at these eight cultures in detail, we see an amazing wealth of diversity and approaches, with a few intriguing commonalities. Leaving aside Egypt as a somewhat special case, the other seven have two prominent qualities in common: the culture is organized around a large scale geomantic project and the tools from which the culture is built are perceived as coming from outside in the form of Culture Heroes who deliver the gifts of civilization. From Oannes the fishman of the Mesopotamian cultures to Fu Hzi in northern China, from the Indus Rama to the Jade King of ancient Ohio, the same pattern of culture bearing outsider is repeated again and again. And, as these Heroes establish their cultures, mounds, ziggaruts, pyramids and standing stones soon follow.
Accident, perhaps, or just coincidence? Maybe it´s a common human archetypal motif for such events… Or maybe, just maybe, it was planned? Could human civilization have been restarted according to a larger, perhaps cosmos-centric, pattern?
Consider this: One of these cultures, the Chauvin of the north coastal highlands of South America, managed to retain and transmit to its descendents, most notably the Maya of Central America, a calendrical system, based on observable cycles of local planets and other celestial events, that supplies a clue as to why the resurgence happened just when it did.
If the superwave from a galactic core explosion passes through this region of the galaxy every 26,000 years or so, then the importance of the Great Year of precessional motion, also roughly 26,000 years, becomes apparent. Very Smart Monkey, humanity as we know us, evolved in the wake of such a superwave disaster roughly 40,000 years ago, and this Elder civilization was destroyed by another superwave 13,000 years ago. It only makes good sense that any civilization that survived such a disaster would find a way to calculate, very precisely, the timing of the next cycle of destruction, and that is just what the Mayan calendar was designed to do.
Basically, the system works by inter-relating two constants, the vague solar year of 365 days, the Haab, and a planetary constant, derived from ratios of the cycles of Mars and the Moon, of 260 days, the Tzolkin. Every 52 Haab, or years, 73 Tzolkin would wrap up, making a complete Calendar Round. The Calendar Round was related to the cycles of Venus, and again, Mars and the Moon for a connection to the planetary constant. Because of its connection to the cycles of Venus, five Calendar Rounds equals 365 Tzolkin and 260 Haab years, reversing the original arrangement. This number was known as the May.
Precession in the Mayan system was counted in terms of May, 100 such cycles formed the Great Year of 500 Calendar Rounds or roughly 26,000 years. Every 20 May, one for each of the great day seals, an elemental age of 5200 Haab/years, 100 Calendar Rounds and 7300 Tzolkin was concluded. Within this cycle, four May, 20 Calendar Rounds, coincided with 10 Venus rounds of 104 Haab/years, giving us 50 Venus Rounds per elemental age.
The starting point of the Mayan calendar, 8/11/3114 BCE as it is most commonly agreed upon, is exactly 1/5th of the Mayan Great Year, or 20 May, from the most likely end date, 12/21/2012. Human civilization was restarted, and brought to the brink of extinction or enlightenment, all within a single arc of the precessional spiral.
More coincidence? How many coincidences does it take to make a pattern or a design?