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Calendar Reform and the Future of Civilisation
Part 3
The debate on calendar reform as it had occurred up to the Second World War reflects a total immersion in the lens of the Western (Gregorian) mind. The argument that calendar change is a threat to religion is posed only by the religion whose calendar is the object of the calendar reform debate. That the accident of history placed the Vatican’s calendar as the world standard only hardened the position of its defenders. That the principle objection to the calendar reform was the inclusion of a day outside of the weekly cycle (henc,e assuring four equal quarters of 91 days or thirteen seven-day weeks each) is astonishing in light of the harmonic regularity that would be obtained by such a reform.
The very notion of an unbroken succession of seven-day weeks since the beginning of creation is actually a profoundly linear conception of time. The argument that a break in this succession would cause worldwide chaos, barbarism and the decline of religion, pales when one contemplates the actual course of events since the Second World War or even during the entire 20th century: never has there been more war, more violent death,and the proliferation of more weapons of mass destruction than at any other time in history. Could this be because the human populace is in the grip of a calendar whose actual measure defies harmony and whose proponents have safeguarded its reform by regulations which defy the possibility of any real reform?
In 1956, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations adjourned debate on the matter of calendar reform indefinitely. The cumulative inertia of the dogma of the Gregorian Calendar held sway, and with it, the dominance of the civilization which had grown up in its shadow. We must assert that the concept of an unbroken succession of the weekly cycle is a Western provincialism. The notion of the seven-day week is not shared by the calendars of many other civilizations and cultures. Are we to say that the only true way is that of the seven-day week in unbroken succession as maintained by the Gregorian Calendar? No, for this would be to fall into a type of chauvinism and imperialism by which the Gregorian calendar came into prominence in the first place.
While the debate on reform of the Gregorian Calendar, the world’s civil calendar, had fallen dormant, the problems of the Cold War only increased, compounded by the unimpeded path of global industrialization. The result was not only the escalation of nuclear terror, but the negative effect of unbridled industrialism on the global environment. In such a complexity of social and technological forces, calendar reform seemed remote and irrelevant.
In 1987, a book called the Mayan Factor was published. For the first time a comprehensive effort had been made to understand the system of thought produced by the ancient Maya of Central America which was focused on a calendrical mathematics and astronomy that was unique to the history of the Earth. By the process of history, this book could only have been produced when it was, for only by this time was enough known of the ancient and contemporary indigenous Maya.
The later Maya civilization was crushed by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. In 1562, a Catholic priest, Bishop de Landa, burned all the books he could find, and smashed as many sculptures and works of art as he could, while he had the great pyramid temples of the Mayan pilgrimage center of Izamal taken down stone by stone to be reused for the construction of Christian churches and cathedrals. The auto-da-fe of Bishop de Landa caused him to be called back to Europe to report to his superiors. In 1572 , the very year Gregory XIII came to power and called for the Calendar Reform ten years hence, Bishop de Landa published his book on the knowledge of the Maya whom he had either destroyed or converted. Apart from Bishop de Landa’s book, knowledge of the ancient Maya was now left to time and the jungle, awaiting "discovery" centuries later by teams of archeologists who would try to piece together the forgotten story.
While the Mayan Factor accounts for the persistence of modern Maya survivors known as "day keepers," who continue work with the Tzolkin or sacred 260-day calendar, the author, Dr. José Argüelles, plunged into mathematical and historical analyses based on the Tzolkin, which demonstrated it to be more than "just a calendar." What the Mayan Factor really pointed to is the elaboration of a point of view about time and the existence of a calendar or actually, system of calendars, totally apart from either the Gregorian calendar or the lunar calendars of the Old World. Indeed, according to a contemporary Mayan thinker and ceremonialist, Hunbatz Men, the Maya actually operated with at least seventeen calendars in the prime of their civilization, thirteen hundred years ago. Ironically, at Kitt Peak Observatory, outside of Tucson, Arizona, where the Vatican has its astronomical observatory, there is a mosaic mural of the Maya civilization with a statement asserting that the Mayan calendar was more accurate and scientific even than the Gregorian calendar!
Two years after the publication of the Mayan Factor, the author and his wife, who had long since begun an experiment living according to the cycles of the Mayan calendar rather than the Gregorian, found themselves in the Museum of Time, Geneva, Switzerland. Because of their immersion in another, "outside" view of time, the Argüelles were able to make an astonishing discovery which was to profoundly affect the course of calendar reform. This was the discovery of the 12:60 and 13:20 timing frequencies, the basis of what they later came to call the Law of Time.
What the Argüelles saw in the Museum of Time was actually the history of the mechanization of time. Incorporated into the Gregorian calendar, which had the same historical root in the metric division of space as the mechanical clock, the combination of mechanical clock and irregular calendar had produced an artificial timing frequency whose unconscious acceptance by and grip of the human mind had caused the human species to deviate farther and farther from the cycles of nature. This timing frequency the Argüelles identified as the 12:60, in contrast to what they now knew was the natural timing frequency,13:20. This 13:20 frequency is derived from the Tzolkin, which they also referred to as the harmonic module, a permutation matrix of 13 x 20 = 260 units. The singular nature of the use and proliferation of so many calendars by the ancient Maya they now understood to be the result of the Maya knowing the actual timing frequency of the universe, 13:20, something consciously unknown to all other people’s of the Earth.
From their discovery, the Argüelles immediately perceived that the cause of the human imbalance with the environment, the reason for the proliferation of industry and new technologies, and the human population "bomb," were all one and the same: the adoption to and acceptance of a timing frequency at deviance with the laws of nature.
Knowing nothing whatsoever about the earlier efforts at calendar reform, the Argüelles’ first conclusion drawn from their discovery of the 12:60-13:20 timing frequencies was to change the calendar. Instinctively they knew that the thirteen month 28 day calendar was the appropriate solution, as well as the first step to be taken by the human race to conform again to the natural cycles and thus, save itself and its biosphere from destruction. From their knowledge of the different Mayan calendars they also knew that the Maya possessed a thirteen moon calendar, the Tun Uc or Moon count. Following the Chilam Balam prophetic tradition of the Maya, and in accord with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the synchronization or New Year’s date of the new calendar was set at July 26. July 25, therefore became the Day-Out-of-Time (same as "null day"), which the Argüelles’ also referred to as galactic freedom day or Green Day, and which was for the purpose of forgiving debts and sins and wiping the slate clean. The Argüelles also perceived that while in the 12:60 system "time is money," in the 13:20 system, "time is art."
With the Thirteen Moon Calendar as the basis of their investigation of the Law of Time, the Argüelles forged ahead creating a "tool kit" of the new time called Dreamspell, the Journey of Timeship Earth 2013 (1991). Already a whole systems thinker, Argüelles had identified the unique Mayan vigesimal mathematical system with the mathematics of the fourth dimension, the cause of a radical revisioning of the modern physics of time. In his study of the relation of the human within its environment, Argüelles came to study the works of the Russian biospheric scientist, Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945). It was in Vernadsky’s final work, Problems in Biogeochemistry II (1944) that Argüelles found what he was looking for: a statement confirming Argüelles’ perception that modern (Gregorian) science had totally misperceived the nature of time by applying the metrics of space as measurements of time, thereby obscuring altogether the actual nature of time. In other words, time is a dimension totally apart from, or grater than space, and, according to Vernadsky, from the point of view of time space is an infinitely locatable point.
On this basis Argüelles was able to write "A Treatise on Time Viewed from its own Dimension" (published as The Call of Pacal Votan, 1996). The conclusion to this text considers what Vernadsky calls the biosphere-noosphere transition from the perspective of the analysis of the fourth-dimensional timing standards. According to this analysis, the contemporary human Earth civilization is already in the midst of this transition which augurs a radical shift in operations and evolutionary advance into what Vernadsky calls the "Psychozoic Era." Argüelles was convinced that the Thirteen Moon calendar change was the most intelligent and only peaceful way for humanity to change its frequency and participate positively in this climactic evolutionary change.
The Argüelles also perceived that due to the unconscious mental effects of the Gregorian calendar, the contradictions inherent in global society are greater than the capacity for their resolution,while the problems created for the environment are far greater than nature’s capacity to restore and regenerate itself. Something dramatic had to happen. In his continuing efforts at decoding the ancient Mayan hieroglyph, on July 26, 1993, something dramatic happened to Argüelles. He began decoding the stone sarcophagus of the tomb of Pacal Votan (603-683) of Palenque, and was thunderstruck by the prophecy of the Thirteen Moons. This prophecy is known as the Telektonon and states succinctly: "Telektonon is revealed to you, God’s plan for peace on Earth, the last and only hope for spiritual renewal and salvation: immediate acceptance and adoption of the 28-day, thirteen moon way, the calendar Telektonon." From this was born the World Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement.