No … the World WON’T End on December 21st!
The Mayan 2012 end of the world “prophecy” is scaring the pants off numerous children and suicidal teeangers. CBS News Detroit reports today:
Thousands of students will have an extra long holiday break after school administrators in at least three Michigan counties decided to cancel classes because of talk surrounding the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and rumors connected to the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world.
Five districts in Lapeer County and 20 districts in Genesee County posted announcements Wednesday evening cancelling classes Thursday and Friday.
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Rumors connected to the Mayan calendar predicted end of the world on Friday have also surfaced,” a letter from Matt Wandrie, Superintendent of Lapeer Community Schools said.
1-in-10 people believe that the Mayans have prophesied the end of the world (and see this). A Google search for “Maya 2012″ currently brings up hundreds of millions of hits (and see this and this).
In China, some people are buying Noah’s Ark type survival pods to weather the 2012 “apocalypse”:
The U.S. and Russian governments are hitting the airwaves to tell people that the world won’t end in 2012. And the Chinese government is arresting people spreading doom and gloom.
But the truth is that the Mayans never said the world will end in 2012.
Archaeologists recently found a cache of Mayan calendars which goes thousands of years past 2012.
And current Mayan elders say that the world ain’t ending this year.
For example, Tz’utujil Mayan elder Tata Pedro Cruz says that the world will not end in 2012:
Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly “running out” on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it’s not the end of the world.
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Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists.
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Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
Mayan elder and priest Carlos Barrios – who has extensively studied the Mayan calendars – says:
Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”
Ricardo Cajas – president of the Collective of Native Organizations of Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala – said the date did not represent an end of humanity or fulfillment of the catastrophic prophecies, but that the new cycle “supposes changes in human consciousness.” (Translation).
Pedro Celestino Yac Noj – a Mayan sage living in Cuba – says:
The 21st is for giving thanks and gratitude and the 22nd welcomes the new cycle, a new dawn.
Rather than being the end of the world, Mayan priest Jose Manrique Esquive believes that 2012 may bring a transition to a better time for humankind.
And Don Alejandro Perez Oxlaj – leader of the National Mayan Council of Elders of Guatemala, Day Keeper of the Mayan Calendar, and 13th generation Quiche Mayan Spiritual Leader – says that the world will not end in 2012:
While Oxlaj certainly warns about man-made problems, he says that December 21, 2012 is not the end of the Mayan calendar:
Contrary to popular belief the living elders of the Maya do not agree that December 21, 2012 is the end of their calendar. A new “Sun” represents the beginning of a new Long Count cycle in the calendar system of approximately 5,200 years, which they say may not happen for many years.
(And a brand new film called “Shift of the Ages” tells the Mayans’ beliefs in detail … confirming that December 21 is not some apocalyptic date.) Click to watch:
Postscript: Given that numerous end of the world prophecies have come and gone without incident, and that the Pope has declared that – due to a miscalculation – we are currently in AD 2016, not 2012 – it is smart to take all predictions with a spoonful of cynicism.
