More Than Apocalypse: The Deep Cultural Prophecy of Richard Grossinger’s “2013”

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class=* * *“center”
For all the fuss about it, the twenty-first of December, 2012,
is hardly an exact calibration. By scientific measurement, the
gun-sighting of the Earth’s solstice Sun to Galactic bull’s-eye
began in 1998 but because of the half-degree width of the Sun,
it takes thirty-six years for full passage, hence 2016 is the midpoint
when the Sun clears the Galactic Equator in 2034.

What exactly is supposed to be lining up? According to Geoff
Stray, the actual “Galactic Center is invisible due to interstellar
dust but has been pinpointed by radio telescopes. When [some]
people speak of the Galactic Center, they mean the bright central
or nuclear bulge; others mean the central part of that bulge
and others mean the radio-telescope-defined center. The ecliptic
(the path traveled by the Sun, Moon, and planets, which is the
plane of the solar system) crosses the Milky Way close to the
fattest, central part of the bulge, just below the dark rift, but the
size of the Sun is such that it would touch the dark rift.… [T]he
radio-telescope-defined center of the galaxy is just off the ecliptic,
and the Sun will be closest to that in 2219 AD. The Galactic
Alignment process described here involves the intersection of the
ecliptic with the Galactic Equator, or, alternately, the intersection
of the winter solstice meridian with the Galactic Equator.…”

Just as the experience of seasonal transition from winter to
spring to summer to fall is spread across days and weeks, so
are millennial cusps of Great Time periods spread over years
and decades. There are roughly twelve zodiacal “years” of 2150
Earth years each in a Great Year of 25,800 years, so precision
down to a matter of days is like trying to separate one millisecond
from another. Plus, the vingesimal acceleration factor built
into the Mayan 5120-year Long Count makes for an exponential
curve that goes right off the chart on any given day, as per
McKenna’s Timewave or Fractal of Time, breaking the illusory
linear structure and crashing over itself in a sequence of increasing
complexity and recursiveness until the past and future
come together—Mesolithic bog-dwellers and Babylonians and
Druids with biotech scientists and virtual-reality surfers. This is
Timewave Zero, at the pivot of all time.

It is worth turning again to McKenna for clarification. During
his 1998 talk in San Francisco, my friend David Ulansey
asked him a point-blank question. Knowing that I was writing
this introduction, David loaned me a DVD recording of the
legendary evening (the source as well of the long McKenna extract
above). I will abbreviate David’s query here in a form that
is still quite long:

“You have said that at a date in 2012 an event will take place
of tremendous or even infinite novelty. You also say that your
Timewave Zero and the Mayan calendar synchronistically point
to the same date. And you say at that time also an astronomical
event will take place, namely the conjunction of the winter
solstice with the Galactic Center, an event that only happens
roughly every 26,000 years. The last time that happened, our
ancestors were painting bison on the walls of caves. It’s a long,
long cycle that brings the winter solstice around the circle of
the zodiac every 26,000 years, and you say that this is going to
happen again in the year 2012.

“As you know, the Galactic Center is not on the ecliptic, is
not on the zodiac, but it is above it. So the Sun of the winter
solstice will never be in conjunction with the Galactic Center—
but an event which is linked with that, and I think far
more precise and significant, is the fact that, not in the year
2012, but right now as we sit here, the winter solstice is moving
into conjunction with the place where the Galactic Equator
crosses the zodiac. This is happening now, 1998 and 1999. So I
wonder why you look to the year 2012 and the imprecise conjunction
of the Galactic Center rather than the more precise
and remarkable return of the winter solstice to the Galactic
Equator where it was 25,800 years ago when the first bursts of
self-consciousness were occurring in our species.”

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