152 of 161 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, February 28, 2001
This review is from: Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date (Paperback)
The Earth spins on an axis. Like everything else that spins, it wobbles. That wobble is technically called precession, and it explains why Earthlings have seen the sun rise against different constellations over the centuries. In his latest book, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date, John Major Jenkins explains how the Maya mapped the movements of the Earth, including precession, and incorporated their measurements into their calendars.
Jenkins, who has researched Mesoamerican cosmology and calendrics since 1986, has written five other books and numerous articles about the Maya. In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, he ties together Mayan mythology and astronomy in a scholarly discussion of the source and meaning of "end date" indicated by the Long Count calendar.
He supports his theories with nearly 200 line drawings, and provides extensive appendices, end notes, and a comprehensive bibliography.
Each "wobble" (or precessional cycle) lasts 25,800 years. Researchers believe that the current precessional cycle will end in the year 2012. This date is known as the "End-Date" in Maya calendrics. At that time, the Earth will begin a new cycle in the opposite direction.
Jenkins says his focus is "on how the precession of the equinoxes was mapped and calibrated among the ancient civilizations." He adds that his book "is devoted to exploring the Maya's understanding of the 2012 end-date and the philosophy and cosmology that go with it. This is a book about cosmogenesis, the creation of the world. The Maya believed that the world will be reborn, in a sense 're-created,' in the year we call 2012."
What does all that mean? Will humans survive cosmogenesis? Jenkins thinks we will. He says the end-date marks the beginning of a new and better world. He believes that "what looms before us is a great opportunity for spiritual growth, both individual and planetary." Others, of course, disagree, and foresee a time of cataclysmic destruction.
Regardless of whether they see the predicted end-date as a non-event, as destructive, or as an opportunity for growth, readers will find Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 a fascinating book. Astronomers and students of cosmology and mythology will especially appreciate Jenkin's research and thorough documentation.
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48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Needs some TLC from a good editor, August 8, 2006
This review is from: Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date (Paperback)
This book seems to hold lots of promise when skimmed, but when I actually sat down to read it, I got bogged down in it very quickly. The first chapter seems like an extended foreword. The author makes some references to his travels in Central America, and some anecdotes from his travels might have livened things up quite and made the book more engaging, but no dice. The author seems to repeat himself a lot to no apparent end, and, most frustratingly, he does not provide a big picture before starting his slow slog through the details.
I think a readable book lurks between the covers of this title, but it needs a good editor to bring it out. Readers looking for something which engages the imagination like the works of Terence McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Jim DeKorne will probably come away disappointed.
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36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
2012: Celestial Cataclysm or Mayan Metaphor for Change?, September 28, 2000
This review is from: Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date (Paperback)
Are we linked in some way we do not understand to the greater cosmos?
Your daily horoscope is unlikely to tell you. Yet, the ancient Maya,
builders of stone monuments that intricately measured the movement of
the heavenly bodies and thus the passage of time, surely thought
so. Following the lead established in Giorgio de Santillana's HAMLET'S
MILL, Jenkins reaffirms the importance of the Precession of the
Equinoxes, the stately sliding and displacement of the morning risings
of the constellations of the zodiac -- each reigning for 2,160 years
-- until a "Great Year" of 25,920 has elapsed, and the
Precession has come full circle. Unlike Santillana, Jenkins
establishes the Maya, not the Sumerians, as the most ancient of
astronomers. And his hero is not Gilgamesh but the Hero Twins of the
POPOL VUH, the creation myth of the Maya. Jenkins believes that the
act of one of the twins, Hunahpu, in shooting the heavenly ruler,
Seven Macaw, from his throne, was in fact the removal of the reign of
the polar regions of the galaxy, and the reestablishment of the
galactic center. Jenkins views the falling from the sky of Seven Macaw
as a metaphor for a change in the way we view the cosmos, not as an
actual falling of a star, or a comet. Similarly, Jenkins views the
2012 end date for the current Mayan Age as a time when, "All the
values and assuptions of the previous World Age will expire, and a new
phase of human growth will commence." His vision of the
individual's connections to the galactic center owes much to Jose
Arguelles' THE MAYA FACTOR: PATH BEYOND TECHNOLOGY. It is a hopeful
look, but so, eventually, is the view of cyclical periods of
destruction and regeneration.
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