Customer Reviews

2012: Mayan Year of Destiny

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I was disappointed in this book. By the title I had anticipated a book discussing at length the end date of the Mayan calender in 2012, giving differing viewpoints and speculations. What I got was a history lessen about the Mayans and Aztecs. There is only one chapter devoted to discussion of the 2012 at all...at the end of the book. Two-thirds of the way, the book gets into discussion about Atlantis, Egypt, aliens from outer space, and in such rambling tones that it completely removes all veracity from the book. The book ended on a doom-and-gloom, the-sky-is-falling note. Though the history is interesting (if you can believe the author's research after his segue from that topic into the whole Atlantis, alien, Egypt stuff, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone wanting to read about 21 December 2012.

Gilbert's book covers Mayan archeology a lot and talks about the year 2012 sometimes. Finding out the significance of Mayan writings, symbols, and calendars is like a giant intellectual puzzle which scholars try to figure out. Gilbert makes scholarship look like the most noble and exciting calling on earth as he tells of all the scholars who have made sacrifices to find out the truth about the Mayans, including one nobleman who ended up in debtor's prison, but managed to publish valuable books on Mayanology.

Gilbert's account of the history of Mayan archeology is mostly straightforward, except for a few new age twists. He keeps exploring taboo questions that orthodox academics reject such as "Was there an Atlantis? What did the psychic Edgar Cayce say about Atlantis? What will become of us on December 22, 2012? Will we experience a catastrophe or a transformation or both? Was there contact between the Americas and the rest of the world before 1492?" Sometimes he sounds silly when we mentions that the people studying Mayanology today may have been Mayan priests in their past lives. But he comes to no sensational conclusions in the end, such as whether we will all be levitating after 2012. He does advise that we store up 2 years worth of food for any catastrophes that might happen.

Gilbert talks about the Mayans and Aztecs and their obsession with the stars, astronomy, and calendars, despite being cruel and barbaric societies in other respects. At one time, scholars believed that the Mayans were peaceful philosophers, but now they are leaning toward the evidence that shows that they practiced human sacrifice. The Mexicans don't like this interpretation of history though. (You can find the same sort of denial in Europe with the fact that the Druids practiced human sacrifice.)

Before the Spanish arrived with their oppressive rule, the Indians were oppressing themselves by warfare and capturing enemies to serve up their beating hearts to the angry gods so that the world would not end, according to their beliefs. The Indians actually welcomed Spanish rule over Mayan and Aztec rule. The Spanish Christians promptly put a stop to human sacrifice and destroyed most of the books and monuments of the Indian religion. A few monuments and documents have survived and now scholars are trying to see if there is something valuable to be learned from this religion. --Strangely, even Christianity features a human sacrifice to end all sacrifices. The blood and flesh of Christ are consumed metaphorically during communion, which is a really weird ritual when you think about it.

The author presents his ideas well and supports his theories with examples. Enough pictures and explanations to decipher the confusing stone carvings.

While interesting in the background and historic sense, some improvements could be made in the writing. Phonetic spellings of the Aztec and Mayan names would be a great help. The reading is slow and drawn out. The author takes way to much time to explain or make a point. While very interesting information, it's a bit to "text-booky" and difficult to read.

Extracts from the diagnosis2012 review (dotcodotukslashgildothtm):

Adrian Gilbert's new book, 2012: Mayan Year of Destiny. It was published in the UK with the title: The End of Time: The Mayan Prophecies Revisited. The sub-title on the UK edition is: December 21st 2012 - Is This the End of the World as We Know It? Gilbert's bestseller, The Mayan Prophecies, co-authored with Maurice Cotterell, was published eleven years ago in 1995. John Major Jenkins pointed out in his unabridged review, (see alignment2012 website) that the detailed graphs in the book don't actually show significant termination points at the end of the 13-baktun cycle. Also, the explanation given in The Mayan Prophecies for the abandonment of the cities - a fertility drop due to solar radiation - actually corresponds to a time when the Classic era civilization was at its height, 200-300 years before the cities were abandoned. A third fault of the book uncovered by Jenkins, was the statement that the start-point of the 13-baktun cycle coincided with the Birth of Venus - Gilbert presumed that Venus was rising after its period of invisibility, having apparently seen it on his Skyglobe astronomy software. However, Venus was actually approaching the end of its 263-day period of visibility and was five days away from its heliacal set - a fact that I checked myself on two different astronomy programs. Another fault I found was that the figures given for the rotation periods of the solar equatorial and polar magnetic fields vary significantly from published figures, resulting in a 1,000-year error in the graphs (see Beyond 2012 p.294, note 7). All these errors mean that The Mayan Prophecies fails as an explanation of the Maya calendars and prophecies.

This is a bad start for a book that is a follow-up to The Mayan Prophecies. However, Gilbert admits (p.18 and note 1 p.319), that he regrets the inclusion in The Mayan Prophecies of Cotterell's theories on the Lid of Palenque, in which secret codes were said to have been found on the lid of Lord Pacal's sarcophagus, by sliding transparent acetates around on each other, which had sketches of the lid printed on them. He says this damaged the credibility of the sunspot cycle theories. He also says that in the period since the publication of The Mayan Prophecies, he has read up on more recent archaeological findings, including the work of Linda Schele, and he admits that "there were also undoubted weaknesses in our approach" (p.17). unfortunately, Gilbert does not address the errors pointed out to him by John Major Jenkins, (though he does avoid mentioning those parts of the theory) nor does he mention Jenkins or reference him in the text. He does mention Jenkins' book, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 in the bibliography, and refers many times to the Galactic Alignment event (referring to it as the opening of the star-gate), that Jenkins showed to be behind the timing of the 13-baktun cycle end-point, but he doesn't seem to have read all of MC2012, because his analysis of the Pyramid of Kukulcan is rather unremarkable compared to Jenkins' revelation of an encoded Pleiades-zenith conjunction.

The End of Time, like Gilbert's other books, assumes that Edgar Cayces' prophecies are correct, and that the destruction of Atlantis was at the end of a previous world era - a destruction that is due to be repeated at the end of the current era, targeted by the Maya at 2012. However, the doom and gloom has been tempered by input from Carlos Barrios, J.J.Hurtak and Jose Arguelles. since the SOHO satellite was launched, after the publication of The Mayan Prophecies, and it has become apparent that solar activity is ramping up considerably, Gilbert takes this as a sign that he was on to something with his Sunspot/Maya calendar theory, but fortunately, spares us all the dodgy graphs, charts and number crunching, which he included in that book.

Apart from the travelogue, the repetitions from The Mayan Prophecies, and long quotes from the Plato dialogues, what else is in this book? There is a detailed account of the discoveries of early explorers, the map of Teotihuacan as another terrestrial version of Orion's belt (like the pyramids of Giza, Egypt), as previously revealed by Morton and Thomas in their Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, plus the recognition that the ancient Britons also constructed Thornborough Henge as a terrestrial Orion's belt (see Beyond 2012 p.209-210 and p.262). The main item of interest is the discovery, from reading Linda Schele, that the Maya had a creation myth in which the three stones of creation (represented in the house by three hearth stones) were laid at the start of the current age in 3114 BC, and that these were represented in the sky by one of the belt stars of Orion, and the two below, forming a triangle. There is another creation myth (apart from the one in which One Hunahpu is reborn in the mouth of the jaguar-toad, representing the dark rift of the Milky Way), in which One Hunahpu, the solar deity (who also has a form as the maize god), is reborn from the back of a turtle. This turtle has three stars on its back and is located in Orion (some sources say Gemini). This is close to the other star gate, as Gilbert calls the intersection of the ecliptic with the Milky Way, which he centres on the hand of Orion (Jenkins discusses this on p.116-119 and p.284-285 of MC2012). What Gilbert finds amazing is that, as he pointed out in The Orion Mystery, Osiris is associated with Orion, and is a god of corn. From this, he deduces that there was extra-terrestrial contact between the Egyptians, and gods from Orion, and that the same thing applies to the Maya. From his contact with J. J. Hurtak, he concludes they traveled in soul form in a Merkabah, since the stars of Orion are between 65 and 545 light years away. The same is concluded for the builders of Thornborough Henge.

Gilbert concludes that the Maya calendar was given to the Maya by intelligent spirits who visited the earth from outer space, and that they probably plan to return in 2012.

There are one or two interesting anecdotes in The End of Time - one of which concerns the Davenport Stele - a calendar stone found in a burial mound in 1874, which is inscribed in three scripts - Egyptian hieroglyphs, Iberian-Punic and Libyan, and is evidence of early transatlantic contact. However, these are widely thought to be fakes - see link in online review). Another interesting sequence was a transcription of Gilbert's second visit to Don Jose Diaz Bolio, who gave Gilbert some Crotallus durissus skins, and there is a photo comparing the skin to a pattern on a Maya pyramid showing the undoubted origin. Bolio pointed out that the rattlesnake changes its teeth every 20 days, which gave the Maya the Uinal period. However, Uinal also means man, so the 20 fingers and toes theory still holds water.

For a list of errors, see the online review at diagnosis2012 website.

In conclusion, there are a few interesting bits in the book, and its not a bad read, but it doesn't contribute much that is new to the 2012 question....

By the way, the "tips for survival" advertised in the blurb amount to this: put some tinned food, pasta and grain in your loft and avoid living in low-lying areas.

The Mayans saw how the World as we know it ending but not as we think it will. It's the start of a new age in 2012. This book explains how they saw and predicted what is foretold as the beginning of a new World for us. Regardless of your beliefs this is worth reading.

The review of the archaeology is good, as far as it goes. Ditto to much of what "customer" said above, regarding the sketchy prophetic content and the gloom-and-doom element. With all due respect to the strong technical content, the gee-whiz references to Cayce seem almost pasted in, in deference to the publisher. What is most disappointing is the lack of even a passing reference to David Wilcock (see his e-book The Divine Cosmos). Considering that this would throw light on the otherwise vague referenes to a stargate event, and would bring a more positive aspect to the prophecies, this is almost puzzling. I say almost, because David has discussed his encounter with A.R.E. in the 90s in some detail. He was regarded first as a curiousity because of his striking physical resemblance to Cayce right down to bone structure. (The natal charts of the two have a one-in-a-million resemblance as well.) He came to be regarded as an embarassment to the Cayce family and the A.R.E. leadership because of his earlier drug use and a general sense of culture clash. He has done some revisionism on the earth changes prophesies of his (alleged) former incarnation, in which he says Cayce's source later in life was a trickster entity, hence the unfulfilled cataclisms that were supposed to happen by now. Another good supplemental source would have been William Henry. Adrian Gilbert seems most at home in the technical material, the astronomical and archaeological analysis. On the subject of prophecy he writes like a stranger in a strange land.

Sorry, but I am not as yet able to review this book; I ordered it for my daughter, and she has not yet read all of it (maybe I can borrow it from her at a later date).

The book arrived at my door very promptly, before the estimated delivery date, and in excellent condition. Would definitely order from this seller again. Thanks!