http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== You are here: world-mysteries.com » strange artifacts » aztec and mayan calendars Aztec and Mayan Calendars Introduction The photograph below is the Aztec Calendar, on display at the / Museo Nacional de Antropologia / in Mexico City, Mexico. The original object is a 12 feet, massive stone slab, carved in the middle of the 15th century. Many renditions of it exist and have existed through the years and throughout Mexico. * Aztec Calendar * You can use this image as your FREE Desktop Wallpaper : First, follow the "wallpaper" link, next,* *right-click on the image and select "Set as Background". You can also download the image: right click on the image, save it to your hard drive, and then select it as your wallpaper. Historically, the Aztec name for the huge basaltic monolith is Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl, but it is universally known as the Aztec Calendar or Sun Stone. It was during the reign of the 6th Aztec monarch in 1479 that this stone was carved and dedicated to the principal Aztec deity: the sun. The stone has both mythological and astronomical significance. It weighs almost 25 tons, has a diameter of just under 12 feet, and a thickness of 3 feet. On December 17th, 1760 the stone was discovered, buried in the "Zocalo" (the main square) of Mexico City. The viceroy of New Spain at the time was don Joaquin de Monserrat, Marquis of Cruillas. Afterwards it was embedded in the wall of the Western tower of the metropolitan Cathedral, where it remained until 1885. At that time it was transferred to the national Museum of Archaeology and History by order of the then President of the Republic, General Porfirio Diaz. AZTEC VS. MAYAN CALEDARS <#top> The Aztec Calendar was basically similar to that of the Maya. The ritual day cycle was called Tonalpohualli and was formed, as was the Mayan Tzolkin, by the concurrence of a cycle of numerals 1 through 13 with a cycle of 20 day names, many of them similar to the day names of the Maya. Where the Aztec differed most significantly from the Maya was in their more primitive number system and in their less precise way of recording dates. Normally, they noted only the day on which an event occurred and the name of the current year. This is ambiguous, since the same day, as designated in the way mentioned above, can occur twice in a year. Moreover, years of the same name recur at 52-year intervals, and Spanish colonial annals often disagree as to the length of time between two events. Other discrepancies in the records are only partially explained by the fact that different towns started their year with different months. The most widely accepted correlation of the calendar of Tenochtitlan with the Christian Julian calendar is based on the entrance of Cortez into that city on November 8, 1519, and on the surrender of Cuauhtzmoc on August 13, 1521. According to this correlation, the first date was a day 8 Wind, the ninth day of the month Quecholli, in a year 1 Reed, the 13th year of a cycle. The Mexicans, as all other Meso-Americans, believed in the periodic destruction and re-creation of the world. The "Calendar Stone" in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City depicts in its central panel the date 4 Ollin (movement), on which they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed by earthquake, and within it the dates of previous holocausts: 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain, and 4 Water. The Aztec calendar kept two different aspects of time; tonalpohualli and xiuhpohualli. Each of these systems had a different purpose. The tonalpohualli was the 'counting of days.' It originated by ancient peoples observing that the sun, crossed a certain zenith point near the Mayan city of Copan, every 260 days. So this first system is arranged in a 260-day cycle. These 260 days were then broken up into 20 periods, with each period containing 13 days, called trecenas. Each period was given the name of something that was then shown by a hieroglyphic sign, and each trecena was given a number 1-13. Each trecena is also thought to have a god or deity presiding over each of the trecena. They kept these counts in tonalamatls, screenfold books made from bark paper. The Aztecs used this as a religious calendar. Priests used the calendar to determine luck days for such activities as sowing crops, building houses, and going to war. The xiuhpohualli was the 'counting of the years.' This calendar was kept on a 365-day solar count. This was also the agricultural and ceremonial calendar of the Aztec state. It was divided into 18 periods, with each period containing 20 days, called veintenas. This left five days that were not represented. These were called "nemontemi." These were the five transition days between the old and the new year, and were considered days of nothing. This was a time of festivals. People came to the festivals with their best clothes on, and took part in singing and dancing. This is also when the priest would preform sacrifices, most of these sacrifices were human, but others were preformed on animals and fruit. The solar year was the basis for the civil calendar by which the Mexicas (Aztecs) determined the myriad ceremonies and rituals linked to agricultural cycles. The calendar was made up of 18 months, each lasting 20 days. The months were divided into four five-day weeks. The year was rounded out to 365 days by the addition of the five-day nemontemi (empty days), an omnious period marked by the cessation of normal activities and general abstinence. The correlation of dates in the Gregorian calendar is uncertain, although most authors on the subject affix the beginning of the Aztec year to early Febuary. A variety of sources were consulted in developing the following chart of some of the ritualistic activities associated with each month. Many of the Aztecs' religious ceremonies, including frequent human sacrifices, were performed at the Great Temple, located in the center of their capital city of Tenochtitlan. Every 52 years the tonalpohualli and the xiuhpohualli calendars would align. This marked what was known as a mesoamerican "century." Every one of these centuries was marked by xiuhmolpilli - Binding Up of the Years or the New Fire Ceremony. This was a festival that lasted 12 days and included fasting as a symbol of penitence. At the beginning of this festival all the lights in the city were extinguished - people let their hearth fires go out. Then on midnight of the 12th day of the festival, a prisoner was taken to the priest. The priest would watch in the night sky for the star of fire to reach the zenith. Once it did, the priest would remove the heart of this man, and replace it with a piece of wood, that was laid on a piece of turquoise. This is where the priest would start the new fire that would once again light the city. The tonalpohualli (count of days) was the sacred almanac of the Mexicas. This ritual calendar was registered in the tonalamatl (book of days), a green-fold bark paper or deerskin codex from which a priest (called tonalpouque) cast horoscopes and predicated favorable and unfavorable days of the cycle. The almanac year comprised of 260 days, each of which was assigned a date by intermeshing one of 20 day-signs, represented graphically with a gylph, and a number from 1 to13, represented by dots so that no two days in the cycle could be confused. The almanac year was thus made up of 20 13-day weeks, with the first week beginning on 1-Crocodile and ending on 13-Reed, the second week running from 1-Ocelot to 13-Deaths' Head and so on. A god or goddess was believed to preside over each day-sign. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE MAYAN CALENDAR <#top> The Classic Mayan civilization was unique and left us a way to incorporate higher dimensional knowledge of time and creation. By tracking the movements of the Moon, Venus, and other heavenly bodies, the Mayans realized that there were cycles in the Cosmos. From this came their reckoning of time, and a calendar that accurately measures the solar year to within minutes. For the Maya there was a time for everything and everything had it's place in time. The priests could interpret the heavens and calendar. As the result they could control the daily activities of the populace. Knowing when to plant, when to harvest, the rainy and dry seasons, etc. gave them total power and control. Their comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles was immense. The Maya understood 17 different Calendars based on the Cosmos. Some of these calendars go back as far as ten million years and are so difficult that you would need an astronomer, astrologer, geologist, and a mathematician just to work out the calculations. They also made tables predicting eclipses and the orbit of the planet Venus. The calendars that are most important to beings of earth are the Haab, the Tun-Uc and the Tzolk'in. The Tzolk'in is the most important and the one with the most influence. * *The Haab* is based in the cycles of earth. It has 360 + 5 days, totalling 365 days. The Haab uses 18 months with 20 days in each month. There is a 19th month called a Vayeb and uses the 5 extra days. Each month has it's own name/glyph. Each day uses a sacred sun/glyph. * *The Tun-Uc* is the moon calendar. It uses 28 day cycles that mirrors the women's moon cycle. This cycle of the moon is broken down into 4 smaller cycles, of 7 day each. These smaller cycles are the four phases of moon cycle. * *The Tzolk'in * is the Sacred calendar of the Maya and is based on the cycles of the Pleiadies. The cycle of the Pleiadies uses 26,000 years, but is reflected in the calendar we are using by encompassing 260 days. It uses the sacred numbers 13 and 20. The 13 represents the numbers and 20 represents the sun/glyphs. The Tzolk'in has four smaller cycles called seasons of 65 days each guarded by the four suns of Chicchan, Oc, Men and Ahau. There are also Portal days within the Tzolkin that create a double helix pattern using 52 days and the mathematics of 28. This sacred calendar is still being used for divination by the traditional Maya all over the Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize, and Honduras. The Tzolkin calendar was meshed with a 365-day solar cycle called the "Haab". The calendar consisted of 18 months with 20 days (numbered 0-19) and a short "month" of only 5 days that was called the Wayeb and was considered to be a dangerous time. It took 52 years for the Tzolkin and Haab calendars to move through a complete cycle. Archaeologists claim that the Maya began counting time as of year 3114 B.C. This is called the zero year and is likened to January 1, 1 AD. All dates in the Long Count begin there, so the date of the beginning of this time cycle is written 0-0-0-0-0. 13 cycles of 394 years will have passed before the next cycle begins, which is in year 2012 A.D. (13-0-0-0-0). Mayan Calendar Basics <#top> The Mayas used three different calendar systems (and some variations within the systems). The three systems are known as the *tzolkin* (the *sacred calendar*), the *haab* (the *civil calendar*) and the *long count* system. The tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days and the haab is a cycle of 365 days. The tzolkin cycle and the haab cycle were combined to produce a cycle of 18,980 days, known as the calendar round. 18,980 days is a little less than 52 solar years. The "Calendar Round" is like two gears that inter-mesh, one smaller than the other. One of the 'gears' is called the tzolkin, or Sacred Round. The other is the haab, or Calendar Round. The smaller wheels together represent the 260-day Sacred Round; the inner wheel, with the numbers one to thirteen, meshes with the glyphs for the 20 day names on the outer wheel. A section of a large wheel represents part of the 365-day year - 18 months of 20 days each (numbered 0-19). The five days remaining at year's end were considered evil. In the diagram, the day shown is read 4 Ahua 8 Cumka. As the wheels turn in the direction of the arrows, in four days it will read 8 Kan 12 Cumku. Any day calculated on these cycles would not repeat for 18,980 days - 52 years. Thus the Mayas could not simply use a tzolkin/haab date to identify a day within a period of several hundred years because there would be several days within this period with the same tzolkin/haab date. The Mayas overcame this problem by using a third dating system which enabled them to identify a day uniquely within a period of 1,872,000 days - approximately *5,125.36 solar years.* To do this they used a vigesimal (i.e. based on 20) place-value number system, analogous to our decimal place-value number system. The Mayas used a pure vigesimal system for counting objects but modified this when counting days. In a pure vigesimal system each place in a number is occupied by a number from 0 to 19, and that number is understood as being multiplied by a power of 20. Thus in such a system: 2.3.4 = 2*20*20 + 3*20 + 4*1 = 864 11.12.13 = 11*20*20 + 12*20 + 13*1 = 4653 and 1.3.5.7 = 1*20*20*20 + 3*20*20 + 5*20 + 7*1 = 9307 When counting days, however, the Mayas used a system in which the first place (as usual) had a value of 1, the second place had a value of 20, but the third place had a value not of 400 (20*20) but of 360 (18*20). (This may have been due to the fact that 360 is close to the length of the year in days.) The value of higher places continued regularly with 7,200 (20*18*20), 144,000 (20*20*18*20), etc. In such a system: 1.3.5.7 = 1*20*18*20 + 3*18*20 + 5*20 + 7*1 = 8,387 and 11.12.13.14.15 = 11*20*20*18*20 + 12*20*18*20 + 13*18*20 + 14*20 + 15*1 = 11*144,000 + 12*7,200 + 13*360 + 14*20 + 15 = 1,675,375. A Maya long count date is a modified vigesimal number (as described above) composed of five places, e.g. 9.11.16.0.0, and interpreted as a count of days from some base date. There are many long count dates inscribed in the stellae and written in the codices. Calculation of the decimal equivalent of a long count yields a number of days. This is regarded as a number of days counted forward from a certain day in the past. It is the number of days since the day 0.0.0.0.0. The obvious question is: What day was used as the base date? This question has two aspects: (1) What day was used by the Mayas as the base date? (2) What day was that in terms of the Western calendar? We shall return to these questions below. Just as we have names (such as /week/) for certain periods of time, the Mayas had names for periods consisting of 20 days, 360 days, 7,200 days, etc., in accord with their modified vigesimal system of counting days. A day is known as a /kin/. Twenty kins make a /uinal,/ 18 uinals a /tun,/ 20 tuns a /katun/ and 20 katuns a /baktun./ Thus we have: 1 kin = 1 day 1 uinal = 20 kins = 20 days 1 tun = 18 uinals = 360 days 1 katun = 20 tuns = 7,200 days 1 baktun = 20 katuns = 144,000 days The numbers at the five places in the long count are thus counts of baktuns, etc., as follows: baktuns . katuns . tuns . uninals . kin Thus, for example, 9.15.9.0.1 denotes a count of 9 baktuns, 15 katuns, 9 tuns, no uinals and 1 kin, or in other words, 9*144,000 + 15*7,200 + 9*360 + 0*20 + 1*1 days, or 1,407,201 days. It is a count of days from the Maya base date of 0.0.0.0.0. Most of the long count dates which occur in the stone inscriptions have a baktun count of 9. The period 9.0.0.0.0 through 10.0.0.0.0, the period of the Classic Maya, is now thought by scholars to coincide with the period (approximately) 436 A.D. through 829 A.D. There are, however, some strange anomalies. Morley deciphers two long count dates (found at Palenque) as 1.18.5.4.0 and 1.18.5.3.6 (14 days apart) which are some 2,794 solar years prior to 9.0.0.0.0. Since there is no evidence that the Mayas existed before about 500 B.C., what could these early long count dates possibly be referring to? We would expect that the next higher unit after the baktun would consist of 20 baktuns, and it appears there was such a unit, called a /pictun./ However, no long count date occurs with a baktun count of more than 12, except that 13.0.0.0.0 occurs. A widely-accepted school of thought holds that in the Maya long count system 13.0.0.0.0 marks the beginning of a new cycle, and so is equivalent to 0.0.0.0.0. In this view, 13 baktuns make up a great cycle or, Maya era, of 13*144,000 = 1,872,000 days (approximately 5125.37 solar years). The date 0.0.0.0.0 is equal to year 3113 B.C.. The date 13.0.0.0.0 is equal to year 2012 A.D.. *Sacred Calendar - Tzolkin dates* The tzolkin, sometimes known as the sacred calendar, is a cycle of 260 days. Each tzolkin day is denoted by a combination of a number from 1 through 13 and a name from the set of twenty (in the order: Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan ....): Imix Cimi Chuen Cib Ik Manik Eb Caban Akbal Lamat Ben Edznab Kan Muluc Ix Cauac Chicchan Oc Men Ahau The days cycle through the numbers and through the names independently. The sequence of tzolkin days thus runs: 1 Imix 2 Ik 3 Akbal 4 Kan . . . 13 Ben 1 Ix (here we repeat the cycle of numbers) 2 Men 3 Cib 4 Caban 5 Edznab 6 Cauac 7 Ahau 8 Imix (here we repeat the cycle of names) 9 Ik 10 Akbal . . . There are 260 elements in this sequence. That is because 260 is the least common multiple of 13 and 20. Thus the cycle of (13) tzolkin day numbers combined with (20) tzolkin day names repeats each 260 days. In order to explain this 260-day calendrical cycle some have speculated that the Mayas chose this number of days because their allegedly advanced astronomical knowledge revealed to them that a period of 260 days fits well with certain astronomical periods, such as the eclipse-year. A more prosaic explanation is that there were originally two branches of Maya society, one of which used a 13-day cycle of numbered days and the other a 20-day cycle of named days. (There is a set of thirteen Maya gods, which may be the origin of the 13 numbered days, similar to our week.) Then at some point in early Maya history the two groups merged, combining the two calendars so that neither group would lose their method of day-reckoning, resulting in the 260-day cycle as described above. *Mayan Civil Calendar - Haab dates* The Mayas also maintained a so-called "civil" calendar, called the "haab". This was similar to our calendar in that it consisted of months, and within months, of days numbered consecutively. However, unlike our calendar, the haab cycle is made up of eighteen months of twenty days each, plus five days at the end of the year. The eighteen names for the months (in the order: Pop, Uo, Zip ...) are: Pop Xul Zac Pax Uo Yaxkin Ceh Kayab Zip Mol Mac Cumku Zodz Chen Kankin Zec Yax Muan The five extra days formed the "month" of /Uayeb/, meaning "nameless". The five "nameless" days were considered unlucky. One did not get married in Uayeb. The haab cycle thus consisted of 18*20 + 5 = 365 days, the integral number of days closest to the mean solar year of 365.2422 mean solar days. The sequence of days from the first day of the year to the last thus runs as follows: 0 Pop 1 Pop ... 19 Pop 0 Zip 1 Zip ... 19 Zip 0 Zodz ... 19 Cumku 0 Uayeb ... 4 Uayeb For most of Maya history the first day of Pop was denoted by 0 Pop and the last by 19 Pop. However, on the eve of the Spanish conquest the first day of Pop began to be numbered 1, and the last day 20 (except for Uayeb), so that the year began with 1 Pop and ended with 5 Uayeb. There is some uncertainty as to whether (what has usually been taken to be) the first day of each haab month (e.g., 0 Zip) is really the last (i.e., the 20th, or the 5th) day of the preceding month (Pop in this case), or in other words, whether the last day of each month was actually written as "the day before the beginning of (the next) month", where the glyph translated as "the seating of" was used with the meaning of "the day before the beginning of the next month, namely ...". 0 Zip can be interpreted either as the first day of Zip or as the last day of Pop, but unfortunately the classic Maya are no longer here to tell us how they understood this date. *The Maya calendar round * The tzolkin and the haab are each cycles of days; the former is a cycle of 260 days and the latter is a cycle of 365 days. When specifying a day the Maya usually used both the tzolkin date and the haab date, as in 4 Ahau 3 Kankin. For the Mayas these two cycles ran together and concurrently, as shown by the following sequence of days: *Tzolkin date * 10 Ben 11 Ix 12 Men 13 Cib 1 Caban 2 Edznab 3 Cauac 4 Ahau 5 Imix 6 Ik 7 Akbal 8 Kan ... 12 Imix 13 Ik 1 Akbal 2 Kan 3 Chicchan 4 Cimi 5 Manik 6 Lamat 7 Muluc ... *Haab date* 11 Kayab 12 Kayab 13 Kayab 14 Kayab 15 Kayab 16 Kayab 17 Kayab 18 Kayab 19 Kayab 0 Cumku 1 Cumku 2 Cumku ... 19 Cumku 0 Uayeb 1 Uayeb 2 Uayeb 3 Uayeb 4 Uayeb 0 Pop 1 Pop 2 Pop ... * * Since 260 = 4*5*13 and 365 = 5*73, the earliest that a tzolkin/haab date combination can repeat is after 4*5*13*73 = 18,980 days, or just short of 52 solar years. This cycle of 18,980 days is called the Maya calendar round. Maya long count dates are often given in association with the corresponding tzolkin/haab date, as in: 8.11.7.13.5 3 Chicchan 8 Kankin 10.1.19.15.17 12 Caban 0 Yax 10.3.8.14.4 6 Kan 0 Pop 10.6.2.0.9 9 Muluc 7 Yax 10.6.10.12.16 3 Cib 9 Uo A particular tzolkin/haab date recurs every 18,980 days, whereas a long count date (assuming that the long count starts over at 0.0.0.0.0 on reaching 13.0.0.0.0) recurs every 1,872,000 days (once in 5,125.37 years). The combination of a long count date and a tzolkin/haab date occurs only once every 136,656,000 days (approximately 374,152 years or 73 Maya eras). *DATE CONVERSION APPLET* If you have a Java-enabled browser, you will see an interactive calendar converter routine below. Fill in the Gregorian Date in the top fields (day, month number, year) and press `Convert' to find the Maya calendar date corresponding to that. Please note that the order is *day, month, year*. /You don't seem to have a Java-enabled browser.. Here's what the converter looks like:/ /Please note that this is just a picture.. you need a Java-enabled browser./ *Note: *This Java applet uses the 584,283 correlation. If you prefer the 584,285 correlation, you have to subtract 2 days from the date you want to convert. For instance: Jan 1, 1996 would become Dec 30, 1995. Check out these Mayan Calendar Conversion Tools ------------------------------------------------------------------------ OTHER CALENDAR SYSTEMS <#top> *Julian dates* The Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., is the basis of our modern calendar. It consists of a system of twelve months, January, February, etc. (although New Year's Day has not always been January 1st). If the number of the year is divisible by 4 then February has 29 days, otherwise it has 28. A date in the Julian calendar is termed a Julian date. The Romans identified their years as a number of years supposed to have elapsed since the founding of Rome (which we now date as having occurred in 753 B.C.) Following the merger (under Constantine) of the Christian Church and the Roman Imperium years came to be numbered with reference to the year of the birth of Christ (now regarded as actually having occurred in 4 B.C.) In this system the year immediately before the year 1 A.D. is the year 1 B.C. Astronomers use a system, which is also used in */Mayan Calendrics,/* in which the year prior to the year 1 is the year 0. Thus 1 B.C. is the year 0, 2 B.C. is the year -1, 3 B.C. is the year -2, and so on. More generally the year n B.C. in common usage is said by astronomers to be the year -(n-1). (See more on this in section 7.) According to Aveni [5], p.127, "the serial numbering of the years as we know them did not actually begin until the sixth century ..." Thus dates prior to 600 are always uncertain. The Emperor Augustus also tinkered with the lengths of the months during his reign, introducing a further element of uncertainty, and it is also possible that the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) readjusted the calendar by a couple of days. *Gregorian dates* The average length of a year in the Julian calendar is 365.25 days, differing from the value of the mean solar year by about .0078 days. This resulted in a slow shift of the Julian calendrical year with respect to the solar year (i.e. to the solstices and equinoxes). By the 16th Century the Julian calendar was seriously out of synch with the seasons and Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar. This involved three changes: (a) The day following October 4, 1582, was declared to be October 15, 1582, thereby excising ten days from the calendar. (b) A year was declared to be a leap year if (i) it was divisible by 4 but not by 100 or (ii) it was divisible by 400. (c) New rules for determining the date of Easter were introduced. The Gregorian Calendar is now commonly used throughout the West and is the /de facto/ international common calendar. There have been numerous suggestions for replacing it with a more "rational" calendar, but old habits die hard and any change would be expensive. *Julian day numbers* Astronomers use a system of dating days known as the /Julian day number system/, in which a day is identified as that day which is a certain number of days before or after the day -4712-01-01 (January 1st, 4713 B.C.) in the Julian calendar. Thus, for example, the day whose Julian day number is 584,283 is September 6, -3113 in the Julian calendar, 584,283 days after January 1st, -4712 J. This day is also August 11th, -3113 in the Gregorian calendar. By 2001-01-01 G we will have reached the day whose Julian day number is 2,451,991, by which time nearly two-and-a-half million days will have elapsed since -4712-01-01 J. CALENDAR SPIRALS Sequences and cycles are readily described as spirals in the Dreamspell and sacred geometries. The numbers of the Pythagorean Lambdoma are 1, 1, 1, 1 an 1, 2, 3, 4. This is an obvious sequencing that can be understood in cycles. The Fibonacci spiral is fundamental to all life forms. The Fibonacci is a simple matrix that starts with 1 then adds 1 to get a sum of 2 the adds the previous number back into itself to get a sum of 3 (I +2=3) then repeats that sequence to get a sum of 5 (3+2=5). Primary numbers of the Fibonacci on the number 1 carried to 13 places are: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233. Solar systems are designed by nature in Fibonacci spirals as are human hands, sunflowers, and shells. This sequencing is a fundamental design tool of Creation. Spectacular patterns are found by applying the Fibonacci spiral to key numbers of the Mayan calendar: 20, 13 and 18. The sacred calendar (Tzolkin) uses 20 and 13 The civil calendar (Haab) uses 20 and 18. The common denominator of both is 20. If you apply the Fibonacci sequence to the number 20 and carry the sequence out to 26 places, then multiply each number of the sequence by 13, then divided it by 18 you will discover that the results of these factors shifts and starts new internal sequencing at the 13th place in each sequence. The 12th place comples a sequence and the 13th starts a new sequence internally. The 12th glyph of the Dreamspell is 'Human' and the 13th glyph is "Skywalker". The sacred calendar is 260 days and the civil calendar is 360 days with 5 unlucky days that are not counted. The Maya were well aware that a solar system is 365 days but chose to memorialize the number 360. Their simultaneous use of two calendars with astrology arrayed sets of ratios and sequences yet accounted for each day of the year in a way utterly foreign to the European calendar. The number 360 symbolizes space in a 360-degree circle or sphere. When a 360-day civil calendar symbolizing space is arrayed with a 260-day sacred calendar symbolizing fourth dimensional time, time-space ratios (coordinates) are discovered. The civil and sacred calendars synchronize every 52 years, so 52 is a central fractal of the calendars. The number 20 used in a Fibonacci matrix and factored with 13 and 18 produces internal sequences and cycles in the 12th and 13th places. With 12 solar months to 13 lunar months, the 12:13 relationship is part of nature's planetary design. END DATES There have been many projected dates for the ending of the Mayan calendar, ranging from 1957 to 2050. The 2012 end-date was defined by the Thompson Projection. Thompson's projection used a day-by-day count to cross -reference the Mayan to the European calendar rather than a count of years. This bypassed the problem of year names in the Gregorian system. Jose & Lloydine agreed with Thompson's 2012 date. More importantly, the 2012 date works with the hard facts evidenced by the accuracy of the July 26, 1992 Time Shift. Terence McKenna and Peter Meyer's Timewave Zero software that graphs time as a fractal demonstrates by graph the accuracy of the winter solstice of 2012 as the correct end-date of the Mayan calendar with graph anomalies appearing in the months of July. SIMILARITY OF WORLD CALENDARS Beyond the stargates of this planet and solar system lies a cosmic scheme of underlying order in which the earth's flow of history unfolds in patterns of time. Galactic travelers have long traversed the corridors of time and space, and periodically visited this solar system. The evidence of archaeological ruins are mute testimony to the presence of intelligent builders in now ancient history. The evidence is clear. Someone with advanced knowledge of astronomy has visited peoples of this planet and left calendars as a signature note. This is discovered in correspondences of world calendars: Mayan, Tibetan, African, Vedic, and Hebraic. Similar calendar schemes are found in each of these cultures. The European calendar mandated by Pope Gregory in 1583 is the only world calendar that did not intercalate at least two celestial cycles. The Hebraic calendar acquired by Enoch after he was translated in a beam of light intercalated solar and lunar cycles in a fashion similar to the Maya. The Dogon in Africa were given four calendars by visitors from Sirius B: Solar, lunar, Venusian, and civil. The Tibetan calendar is so similar to the Mayan that traditional scholars now speculate that they share a common origin. The Vedic calendar is based on cosmic cycles, or Yugas. An ancient Hindu astrology used 27 houses of 13 degrees 20 minutes, which are key numbers in the Mayan calendar. These calendars provided a time management tool that synchronized planetary cycles with visits from the stars. The Dogon calendar identified the 12 or 13th Century as the date of last visit; the Mayan calendar identified July 11, 1991, as an upcoming date of visit. Both of these dates coincided with significant planetary cycles. The cultures visited by the Galactic Maya were shamanic. Ancient Hebraic instructions for building altars and using precious and semiprecious stones are identical to those used by Native Americans. The ancient Tibetans were shamanic. The Dogon and Maya are shamanic. The Galactic Maya were shamanic. Ancient Hebraic instructions for building altars and using precious and semiprecious stones are identical to those used by Native Americans. The ancient Tibetans were shamanic. The Galactic Maya were shamans of planetary sciences, Cosmic Shamans who understood and utilized the cosmic flow of events. Their secrets were left with shaman in cultures who held the keys of their sciences. Until now the shaman's craft has appeared as superstition that scattered before the power of European-based science. But that same science has now brought planet to her knees in destruction of the biosphere. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *The Best Astronomy Software* If looking up at the sky on a clear night has always held more than a bit of curious fascination for you, Starry Night Pro is the perfect tool for you to explore your intergalactic interests. The application is packed full of information to delight the backyard stargazer, while being powerful enough for the serious student. View the stars from your exact location on Earth (or any other location on the planet), or travel throughout the solar system to see views not possible until now. If that's still too close to home, Starry Night can produce views from anywhere within 20,000 light-years of the solar system. 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