My new novel, 2012: the War for Souls, has just been bought
by Warner Bros. for a movie, so I thought I?d write a little
about why I wrote it and what I think about 2012. First,
it?s a story about the journey of the soul, and the deep
denial we are in about our souls. Most of us say we believe
that we have a soul, but we live as if we don?t really
believe that at all.
In my story, which takes place in a triad of 3 parallel
earths, the negative side of the triad understands the soul
(knowledge belongs to the dark side) and, as the approach of
2012 causes the gateways between universes to open, they
swarm out into the positive side of the triad, attacking
them and attempting to take their world from them. The
harmonizing side of the triangle becomes involved, when a
man there has to balance between dark and light in order to
take the whole species to a new level.
The reality of the soul as I understand it from my own life,
from the Bible and from the statements of the Master of the
Key animates the novel. One of the things the book does is
to illustrate how dangerous it is to be soul-blind, or in
soul denial. We ignore the way that our lives affect our
souls at peril.
The book also speculates that there could be a technology
that affects the soul, and may once have been such in the
past. I think we have lost a great deal of knowledge, and
I?m very interested in the odd dichotomy between the way the
past looks archaeologically and the way it looks in its own
narrative.
The prime example of this, of course, is the very limited
archaeological evidence for the biblical narrative. Why
would that be? And the enormous difference between the
archaeological record as we understand it and pre-Columbian
America. I really don?t know whether findings are more
important than narrative, but I do feel strongly that
Eurocentric archaeology has made a mistake not only in the
way it ignores narrative, but also in the way it understands
what it does not ignore.
However, there is one particular area in which that has
recently and quite dramatically changed, and that is the
relationship between the end of the last Mayan age and the
last great catastrophe to befall this planet. Whether or not
that newly discovered confluence means that the next change
of age, which is unfolding now, should be taken seriously as
a warning is worth discussing.
In my novel, the change of age literally opens doors between
worlds that coexist in the same space. It made for a
terrifically exciting writing experience, and I hope that
it?s as interesting to read. But there are also things in
the book that echo the dark past of our own world, and
possibly disclose elements of a future that is rushing
straight at us right now.
In recent years, a number of geologists have recognized that
something quite extraordinary befell this planet about 5,200
years ago?in other words, at the exact turn of the last
Mayan age. There is evidence that there were upheavals
across the entire planet, and they were fearsome.
3,100 B. C. was Year 0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Calendar. At that
time, also, the rising civilization in Sumer collapsed. It
was nothing like the grand culture that would follow there
and in Egypt, but there was a marked decline from organized
city states into a mix of loose agrarian and hunter-gatherer
culture. It?s not clear that the legends of the flood date
from this period, but the first recorded flood story, the
Epic of Gilgamesh appears in written form about a thousand
years later, and Gilgamesh himself, who is believed to have
been a historical figure, lived within a few hundred years
of 3,100 B. C.
A prominent researcher with the Byrd Polar Research
Institute, Prof. Lonnie Thompson, has offered convincing
evidence that earth?s climate was dramatically changed right
around 3,100 B.C. He sees this as a worldwide event, with a
very sudden onset and effects that have lasted to this day.
To summarize some of the evidence, at about this time
temperate zone plants in the Peruvian highlands were frozen
in a matter of minutes, and ended up at the base of glaciers
that are intact to this day. The freezing process was so
fast that the plants? cell walls were not destroyed, as they
would have been, say, in a freeze that took an hour. The
temperature plummeted in minutes. And whatever awesome thing
happened, it has stayed low ever since.
In the Tyrol, the ice-man, Oetzi, was moving through an
alpine meadow at about the same time when he became trapped
by a snowstorm. It was not until 1991, over 5,000 years
later, that the snow that fell on that day melted
sufficiently to uncover his body during a glacial retreat.
Thompson has commented that something happened then that was
monumental. The human world was not well organized enough to
reflect it in detail, but it is worth considering that the
Maya might have started their calendar then because an age
did indeed end at that time, and a new one began.
There were cultural responses around the world. In England,
Stonehenge and New Grange were constructed, possibly as a
response to a radical climate shift from temperate to much
colder. In Egypt, the Osirion was constructed over a well
that had quite possibly become sacred due to the extreme
drought that befell the whole of North Africa. Around the
world, in fact, there was a sudden outburst of monumental
construction, and, in many places, the collapse of the few
more extensive civilizations that existed.
Commentary in the Mayan narrative called the Popul Vuh would
suggest, as does the Epic of Gilgamesh and so many other
narratives?including the Bible, with it?s archetypical flood
story?that the catastrophe was remembered vividly.
So, did the Maya date their calendar from the catastrophe
and just assume the cycle based on their own astronomical
mythology, or did they somehow know that the catastrophe is
cyclical?
The way you answer that question places you on one or the
other side of a huge divide.
Conventional archaeology would say that the Maya or their
predecessors could not possibly have known about such a
cycle, and they simply invented it as a way of explaining
the catastrophe in terms of their own primitive
understanding of reality.
However, events that are unfolding now are beginning to
suggest that their calendar is unexpectedly accurate. For
example, not only is there substantial evidence that
greenhouse gas emissions are in the process of inducing
sudden climate change, completely unexpected changes in the
way the sun is functioning are adding, as it were, fire to
the fire.
It has been observed that the Martian polar caps have been
growing smaller for the past few years. There is nothing
that could cause this but an increase in solar output. In
addition, scientists are predicting that the next solar max
is likely to be among the most intense ever recorded, and
that, after it ends, the sun will begin a cooling phase.
For the past 20 years, the number of meteors entering the
atmosphere has also been on the rise, suggesting that we are
entering a ?dirty? area of space. Did we pass through such
an area 5,200 years ago, and did the Maya know when we would
go through it again?
If so, or if they understood the sun well enough to predict
its activity far in advance, or knew anything about the
population cycle that would lead to global warming?well, the
past is completely, radically and utterly different from
what we now understand.
I would be very surprised if they had anything like such an
extremely advanced science. In fact, there is little
evidence of any advanced civilization in Mesoamerica as
early as 3,100 B.C., let alone a culture with an
extraordinarily advanced science.
I am not so sure, though, that they did not know far more
about our world than we can possibly imagine. After all,
somebody with incredible engineering knowledge and
construction skills built the great pyramid at Giza, the
enormous platform at Baalbek in Lebanon, the fortress at
Sacsayhuaman in Peru, and so many other extraordinary
artifacts and structures.
Not only that, the people of the deep past had very
substantial geographic knowledge as well. As Jim Alison says
on his website,
Prehistoric Alignment of World Wonders, ?Easter Island,
Nazca, Ollantaytambo, Paratoari, Tassili n'Ajjer and Giza
are all aligned on a single great circle. Additional ancient
sites that are located within one tenth of one degree of
this great circle include Petra; Perseopolis; Khajuraho;
Pyay, Sukothai and Anatom Island.
?Near Ollantaytambo, Machupicchu and Cuzco are within one
quarter of a degree. The Oracle at Siwa in the western
Egyptian desert is within one quarter of a degree. In the
Indus Valley, Mohenjo Daro and Ganweriwala are within one
quarter of a degree. The ancient Sumerian city of Ur and
Angkor temples in Cambodia and Thailand are within one
degree of the great circle. The Angkor temple at Preah
Vihear is within one quarter of a degree.?
Because they are both undeniable and do not fit a
Eurocentric and modernist worldview, the undeniable reality
of these alignments are unremarked in conventional
archaeological literature. And yet, the measurements are
straightforward enough. Somebody, working over thousands of
years, chose to place these sites in this particular way at
a time when we presently believe that human beings were only
rarely traveling by sea, let alone communicating across the
vast distances that would be necessary to place these
monuments as they have, in fact, been placed.
So, are we the confused and still-reeling remnant of a great
scientific civilization, or did our ancestors, perhaps,
possess some sort of exquisite instinct that has gradually
been replaced by knowledge? If so, perhaps that is the real
meaning of the story of the garden of Eden, which records
nothing less than man?s discovery of his humanity. Prior to
our eating of the tree of knowledge, did we act in some high
instinct? What have we lost, then?
Whether the precise date of December 21, 2012 means anything
or not I do not know. But I do know this: just as the Maya
predicted, an age is indeed ending now. No matter what
happens, in 50 years, this world is going to be a radically
different place, and the time that this change has become
undeniable is now, just a few years prior to the predicted
end of the age.
