Beginning a Tzolkin Round Today

The following is written by Carl Johan Calleman:

I have got so many emails from people asking about February 11, 2011 versus March 9, 2011 that I feel it is necessary to write a special note about this particular issue, where I am largely responsible for the confusion myself. The question is: What is the beginning date of the Ninth wave? To address this I need to backtrack somewhat.

When I started my independent work on the Mayan calendar late in 1993 I already suggested two things that seemed controversial and unorthodox: One was the proposal that there were not only one, but nine waves, (underworlds, supports, levels of evolution, long calendars) of different frequencies of different durations that were creating the universe. A second was the proposal that the end date of the True Long Count is October 28, 2011. Naturally both of those assumptions came under attack by various people who had concocted suggestions as to what would happen on December 21, 2012, without foundation in Mayan texts. I however argued that the use of the Mayan calendar had undergone significant changes over the ages and the only criterion we could apply when it came to finding its true form would be that this actually would explain evolution in all of its aspects and would be useful for making predictions.If it was not reasonable useful for this why take an interest in the Mayan calendar to begin with? Such a criterion of rationality would have to be applied also to the Universal Underworld, which however at the time seemed to be far into the future and thus not completely clear to me.

Regarding the beginning of the ninth wave I thus wrote in my first book in English Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar (Garev 2001): "The short Universal Cycle of 2011, probably totaling 13 x 18 = 234 days, but possibly 260 days..." leaving an opening to the orthodox answer that it would just be another traditional tzolkin count starting February 11, 2011 (which has the added appeal of being an amazing palindrome date (11.02.2011 in international notation)). This quote reflected a vacillation or uncertainty on my own part not certain whether I could introduce a third unorthodoxy such as the return of the nine day count. Before taking such a step I wanted to feel a little more secure that my overall model of nine levels all completing on October 28, 2011 was true (that is to say accurately described the evolution of consciousness and the emerging paradigm shifts). In the Mayan calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear and Co 2004) I place more emphasis on the final 260 day tzolkin round as the duration of the ninth wave (and so did, I think, always Ian Lungold who did so much to spread my work). Nonetheless, also in this book I wrote ("or possibly, if it is one twentieth of the Galactic Underworld, 234 days; I cannot tell yet," page 216). The point here is that there is nothing that has changed, but rather a vacillation on my own part that has now come to an end. In the early nineties, when these notions were first developed, I had a much less certain view of how the Mayan calendar was going to evolve.

February 11, 2011 (1 Imix) thus remains the beginning of a tzolkin round and may for this reason be a cause for celebration for anyone following the traditional Mayan calendar. It is only that on my own part I tend to think that the experience of its inherent rhythm will be broken up by the ninth wave starting March 9, 2011, in which days and nights are each 18 = 9+9 days long. The tzolkin I believe will remain an undercurrent of energies whose power will however come to be superseded by a 18 = 9 + 9 day rhythm. It was Robert Gunn who through a manuscript he had sent me prompted me to lean over to these 234 days as the duration of the Ninth Wave. But generally, you might say that the fact that the two earlier mentioned unorthodoxies have now been verified, or at least given tremendous additional support, gives me the confidence to place the emphasis on the March 9 date as the beginning date of the Ninth wave. What I am referring to here is partly the support from the Tortuguero monument, which in no ambiguous terms states (http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/the_tortuguero%20_monument.htm) that indeed we are up for the simultaneous manifestation of nine waves (and not just one Long Count) and partly the verification of the October 28, 2011 date through my predictions about the Fifth night of the Galactic Underworld in the Mayan calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. To the latter should be added the arguments that are presented in my interview in three parts on YouTube with Mayanist Mark van Stone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSu-SWJILQU) that December 21, 2012 cannot be the end date of the true Long Count (it is the end date of the Izapan Long Count, which is another matter) and that the ancient Maya who developed this calendar system were not at all interested in solstices (which is more of a thing for the currently dominating northern cultures of our planet).

If you ask me today I would then say that February 11, 2011 is the beginning (1 Imix) of a new tzolkin round of 260 days, but that March 9, 2011 is the beginning of the 234 day long ninth wave or the Universal Underworld. Naturally, some may react to my earlier vacillation with surprise, but the fact is that an explanation to the Mayan calendar is not cut in stone anywhere. Even the Tortuguero monument can only be made sense of with a background of all cosmic evolution in its entirety and when I started my work this monument was not even known. You also have to see such a monument in the right perspective and use your critical faculties in trying to make sense of such an archaic text.

To uncritically just take over a date or concept from the ancient Maya without further verification is much like saying that something is true just because it is written in the Bible. Clearly ancient peoples did see a lot of things we mostly are not able to see and so they may guide us, but in terms of overall factual knowledge the modern world is vastly ahead of the ancient world. Despite this knowledge basis whatever view we endorse regarding the Mayan calendar our models will always involve assumptions and interpretation that will require our best judgment (and putting our own egos aside). In doing so I feel that there are a few rules that we need to follow. One is not to base any aspect of the calendar on a personal (such as your own birthday) or local (such as the solar zenith in Izapa) agenda. Another is that the calendar should be able to describe the evolution of consciousness and the paradigm shifts through which this is expressed. Most importantly we need to follow a model that is process-related that accurately describes the processes that we want to co-create.