As we approach the year 2012, one date has captured the world’s attention like no other. And it isn’t the day of the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics!
December 21st, 2012 has loomed large on the calendar ever since believers in Mayan, Hopi, and Nostradamus prophecies have identified that day as one of rare, and possibly catastrophic, significance. At its most mundane, the day will mark the Winter Solstice that year in the Northern Hemisphere; or otherwise seen as the shortest day and the turning point towards Springtime. It is also a mere 4 days before the Christian holiday of Christmas.
The 2012 phenomenon is one which is gradually scooping up believers like a collossal tidal wave. Movies have been made recently, but in the past ten years it is the books of researchers such as John Major Jenkins that have begun to gather the attention of those with more than a casual eye on the future of the human race and planet Earth.
Jenkins asserts that the Mayans believed that the coming end to the 13th era, or b’ak’tun, on their Long Count Calendar is one of extreme significance for not only them, but the world’s population. He puts forward the notion that a galactic alignment between the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, our Sun, and the Earth, was foreseen by them to be a harbinger of a climactic event, one in which the very future of the planet would be undermined.
The Hopi Indians of North America, too, have prophecies of a coming end to life as we know it, and the similarities of many observations of theirs seem startlingly close to our time now. War machines, famine, and most spectularly of all, a web covering the Earth which allows human thoughts to fly through the air in an instant.
And finally Nostradamus and his Lost Book, discovered recently, has been interpreted to contain signposts to the galactic alignment on December 21st 2012.
If all of these prophetic sources actually are telling us of an impending life-changing event in 2012, then the implications are profound for us. However, if this date is being conveniently inserted into the analysis, similar to knowing a formula’s result but not knowing the variables, then this pours cold water on any assumptions being made.
Regardless, there will be many who watch the date with extreme interest. As with the Y2K bug and the pessimistic outlook before that, will people overreact to, or actually be prepared for, what ends up happening?
Will this day pass us by uneventfully, save for the naysayers sniggering at those who fully believed something would happen?
Or will December 21st 2012 herald a new dawn for man or a sunset for the human race?