by Samuel Jones

Created on: April 23, 2008

The predictions of the Mayan Calendar have lately become an obsession for people the world over. It is generally understood that the Mayan Calendar uniquely records time as a countdown towards zero. "The Long Count" as it is known, divides a period of 26,000 years into a series of "bak'tuns", or periods which accelerate progressively, becomming shorter with each progression towards the end of the era.

Quite what the ancient Maya believed is laegely a mystery; while many researchers and commentators talk with authority on the subject, much of the first-hand research remains in sealed boxes at Harvard University, untouched since its arrival in the USA. Much of the mythology quoted as 'Mayan' is in fact conjectured from Aztec, Nazcan and Toltec similarities to Mayan architecture. All that is truly known is that the Maya possessed an advanced mathematics and superior undstanding of astronomy and geometric alignment; the Long Count is among the most accurate calendars ever constructed by man, and gives the end of this current Bak'Tun as December 21st, 2012.

It is a strange concidence that the Precessions of the Zodiac, an astological system owing nothing to the ancient Maya, also marks the end of the Age of Pisces and the dawn of the Age of Aquarius on Dec 21, 2012. To New Age thinkers, this speaks opf an awakening in human consciousness, the end of an old order and the start of a new chapter or the human race.

To Christians, 2012 has been offerred as a possible date for the 'second coming'; it is another strange coincidence that Jesus is often represented as a fish, the sign of Pisces. The end of the Long Count and the dawning of Aquarius has been conjectured to foreshadow a literal 'kingdom of heaven' or else the coming of a new messiah with a new message for mankind.

Contemporary astronomers offer startling confirmantion of the accuracy of the ancient Maya; Physicist Brooks Agnew explains that our galaxy is formed by the stars and planets caught up in the whirlpool of a massive black hole. Due to the enormous gravitic forces at play, black holes gradually flatten out, becomming an infinite disc of progressively weaker gravity the further one travels from the centre. As a result, our galaxy exists largely on a single plane, a spiral disc of stars rather than an orb or a ball. Being a disc, the galaxy has a definable 'up' and 'down', a galactic 'north' and 'south'. Dec 21 2012 marks the momment when the Earth crosses this galactic equator, moving from the northern

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