One in 10 of us is said
to be anxious that 21 December marks the end of the world. The Ancient
Mayans predicted this doomsday, and the press is eating it up. But where
are all the believers?
That the world will end in 2012 is the most
widely-disseminated doomsday tale in human history, thanks to the
internet, Hollywood and an ever-eager press corps.
Recent hurricanes, unrest in the Middle East, solar flares,
mystery planets about to collide with us - all "proof" of what the
ancient Mayans knew would come to pass on 21 December 2012.
According to a
Reuters global poll, one in 10 of us is feeling some anxiety about this date.
Russians have been so worried that the Minister of Emergency Situations issued a denial that the world would end.
Authorities in the
village of Bugarach in the South of France have barred access to a mountain where some believe a UFO will rescue them.
And survivalists in America - many of whom use the term "prepper" - have been busy preparing for all manner of cataclysm.
So I set out to find people who believe 21/12/12 is D-Day.
It was harder than I imagined, despite seeking out preppers, bunker builders, and even a Mayan shaman.
Eventually I turned to Morandir Armson, a scholar of the New Age and Esoterica at the University of Sydney, Australia.
"If you told me there were more than 5,000 people who
genuinely believed the end of the world was coming rather than just
having vague fears about it, I'd be surprised," he says.
Armson adds that those people are probably "in the wilds of Idaho, heavily armed, and won't talk to journalists anyway".
The heightened fear around this date is, in his view and that
of other experts, almost entirely due to the internet. More
specifically they blame the blogosphere.
It is not how the whole 2012 phenomenon started.
In 1987, Jose Arguelles, a man who devoted much of his life
to studying the Mayan Calendar, organised what was called the Harmonic
Convergence, a sort of post-hippy Woodstock. It attracted tens of
thousands around the globe.
The event was an attempt to "create a moment of meditation
and connection to the sacred sites around the earth," says Daniel
Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Year of the Mayan Prophecy.
It was also the beginning of what many in the loosely-defined
New Age movement regard as a process in the transformation of our
consciousness - a transformation that goes into full effect at the end
of this year.
Pinchbeck calls 21/12/12 the "hinge point" of the emergence
of a new, more enlightened age - not an ending point for all
civilisation.
"It is quite clear that the Mayan system envisages a new
cycle of the calendar beginning on the 22 December 2012," says Graham
Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods, and something of a rock
star in the world of ancient mysteries enthusiasts.
He says the ancient Mayan culture was a
shamanic one. Those who left us the calendar were visionaries who were
providing clues to this ending of one cycle and the beginning of
another.
That is not to say that New Agers do not see catastrophic events as necessary in some way to this new birth.
In fact they tend to embrace eastern faiths and native
cultures with their cyclical views of time. In these visions, the world
has been and will be destroyed - to some degree - and we start anew.
Accordingly, some believe the Mayans were sending us a warning for 2012.
"We may see a lot of destruction," says Pinchbeck. He points to Hurricane Sandy, which recently hit his home city of New York.
Many, including the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg,
linked that hurricane to global warming, which tends to be seen by New
Agers as the main threat to our planet.
However the New Age movement is full of optimists. Crucially, they say we have a choice in how this story ends.
"We do not have to step over the edge of the
abyss into darkness and destruction," Hancock says, calling this point
in time a "cusp moment."
"It's up to us. It's totally up to us."
Morandir Armson, the Australian scholar, says the belief that
2012 marks a positive shift is one also shared by UFO groups, such as
the Ashtar Command and the Ground Crew. These groups have no
headquarters but for internet sites.
He says they refer to themselves as "lightworkers" who believe a fleet of alien space ships hover around our solar system.
"By doing good works on earth [they believe] you can speed up the consciousness of our humanity," says Armson.
In many ways, they emphasise the more positive aspects of the
traditional Christian Apocalypse. The fire-and-brimstone part gets
downplayed in favour of the glorious Kingdom to come.
Some 20% of Americans believe we are in the end times, and that they will see the return of Jesus Christ in their lifetime.
This month marks Advent in the Christian Calendar, during
which Christians are encouraged to read from the Book of Revelation, the
apocalyptic vision of St John the Divine.
"It's full of gory and grotesque detail of how the wicked are
going to be punished," says Ted Harrison, author of Apocalypse When:
Why We Want to Believe there Will Be No Tomorrow.
The twenty-first of December, however, is not on the biblical
calendar and few, if any, believers in the traditional Book of
Revelation are attached to this date.
The supposed date of the coming apocolypse, 21 December, also
marks the Winter Solstice, symbolic in many cultures of the end of
darkness and the renewal of the light.
It might, suggests Harrison, focus our minds on how we have
been treating the planet and those on it, and how we could mend our
ways.
In this respect, he says, "It might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's one hope. A remote one, but it is one hope."
Ahmedabad: Riding on a
pro-incumbency wave amid talk of his moving to Delhi in 2014, Narendra
Modi is set for third consecutive victory. As per Gujarat Election
Results 2012 trends available at 1.35 pm, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) is leading/has won in 120 seats of the total 182 seats, the
Congress is doing well only in 56 seats.
