Review rewritten on 09-APR-2009
Mr. Callemans books are thoughtful and include original ideas. It would take your finding a copy of The Mayan Factor from Joe (aka Jose) Arguelles of 1987 to realize that Mr. Calleman has expanded those concepts and put them in a much more understandable framework (with somewhat less hyperbole).
Apart from John Major Jenkens and Barbara Tedlock most other sources on the Mayan calendar are either academically dry or mainly fantasy. This book in particular provides a road map for the conscious evolution of humanity over the next few years. This evolution is guided, in part, by energetic eminations from the center of the Milky Way. The Mayans call this source the HUnab Ku. This concept is clearly Arguellian,
The book does need to be read carefully and with meditative reflection. There is much here that you will not get if you approach just with the rational mind. This book is a serious treatise of many concepts and not all of them are Mayan. It requires you to approach it as a new human being to be able to understand what it is saying
Calleman provides a general timeline for this period in the years leading up to 2012. He appears to have been correct about energy moving from the West/USA to the East/Asia. His writings on Mayan Fifth night during 2008 and it's portend for the world economy appear to have been an accurate prediction. However, as things worsened in 2009 I began to wonder whether Calleman's correlation of the end date of the Mayan Calendar at Oct 2011 was off by a year and that Dec 21 2012 was indeed the authentic end date.
After spending time in April 2009 reading the 1999-2001 exchanges between Calleman and John Major Jenkins I am leaning more towards the standard 2012 interpretation for many reasons. When I asked Calleman in 2007 about how he arrived at the end date of Oct 28 2011 he referred me to his first book on the Mayan Calendar. The evidence and argument in that book for his end date is brief, sketchy, and unconvincing. You can check out the posts at the alignment 2012 website of JMJ for more information on why the Calleman correlation does not hold water.
Calleman's own synthesis of a world view (and galactic view) containing Mayan elements has merit. But the various elements presented in the book were not clearly distinguished and delineated for the reader as Mayan versus Calleman. You have to be very careful reading his material to know what is Mayan and what is Calleman.
If you have an interest in the Mayan Calendar and 2012 AND you are a very observant reader with some metaphysical leanings there is much you can glean from this book.
-----------
Update on 27-FEB-2011
Looking back on this book five years later, I can say this book continues to grow as an enigma. On the one hand Carl has gotten himself into a corner by going head-long against any traditional or alternative Mayanists by sticking to his 'end' date of Oct 28 2011 and provided no proof for his date correlation that can be verified. You can read interesting exchanges between Carl and John Major Jenkins (JMJ). Carl, in his later book,
The Purposeful Universe: How Quantum Theory and Mayan Cosmology Explain the Origin and Evolution of Life changes his prophetic model again away from this book to something else (echanging 20 for 18 in the last number period). Johan Normark does a pretty conclusive job of showing how Carl has left himself way out with no basis in Mayan historical source at all and that the latest number schema from Carl can't even any longer contain the full long count timeline.
Picking up this book in the past few days I am struck by something that didn't stand out before. This book is very poorly organized. For example, if you wanted to read about the dreaded 'Fifth Night' in Carl's invented (non-mayan) 13 periods (7 days/6 nights) you would have to jump around to a few places. If you read this book straight through you can get what he is saying. But if you are going back into the book looking to drill down into certain points you will be frustrated because of the poor organization of the book.
And now for the crux of the enigma of this book. This book, coincidentally or not, was one of the few sources to clearly predict the financial meltdown in the West/US in 2008 (clearly within the 5th night). How could someone, if they had jury-rigged the Mayan Calendrics, have more than a few 'hits' in terms of correspondences defined in their material is the question. And if Carls projection holds for his last Tzolkin 260 day round which ends on October 28, 2011, then the period of August 10-30 is also a fractal resonance for the fifth night as well. If you look for 'The Calleman Matrix' on the Internet you can find copies of the chart from this version of the book. Interestingly his theoretical last 260 day round before Oct 28 2011 started on Feb 11 2011, a revolutionary period, also the day that Mubarak was ousted from the Egyptian presidency.
But I suppose only by January 1st 2013 will we really know whether Carl and/or the other 2012ers were onto something. If not then maybe our collective apocalyptic neurosis will latch onto another date for some other reason.
