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Does anyone have interest in or follow one of the 260 day Mayan/Mesoamerican calendars?
Alot of new age stuff has gotten mixed in with it, you have to becareful what your following but it is interesting. I have been reading a bit a bout it. There is very very little authtentic Maya culture and religion left, but it is cool that some of it has survived in some form.
i do not, but i think it is important to recognize that there are "other calendars." for the same reason people talk about the importance of learning or hearing other languages, visiting other countries and realizing that not all cultures are the same. It broadens a person's perceptions and understanding and awareness and respect for other ways of living and being.
i remember having a co-worker who would talk about dates and ceremony and honoring on a different calendar (the one from her culture) and i found myself feeling a yearning and envy. i wanted that. this was strange for me to observe this. the feeling persisted, it felt like something essential was missing that was important for me to have. later in my life i found out i have a religious identification that i did not know about and as i learned and put this practice into my daily life, sure enough it includes its own calendar. I was so happy!
other calendars indicate there are other histories and other perspectives and other stories (my grandfather used to say "that's what history is, 'his story' the person telling the story." ) calendars are a window and a map of other timelines, and i have always loved that and been fascinated by it, like a parallel universe that is revealed and charted by the calendars, revealing the holidays, the holy days, the celebrations, the significant markers, the events, the reminders, when it starts, why it starts, what it relates to, what it signifies, when it starts over and why. it is beautiful.
so in the secular calendar today is June 26 in the year 2020. in the religious calendar of my religion it is 4 Tamuz in the year 5780.
The Mayan calendar began 5134 years ago. The Anagnu people perhaps the oldest continuous culture known on our planet, have been at Uluru (in Australia) for over 60,000 years.
it is said (and remains to be seen if this will happen) that since humanity has passed a specific marker (Dec. 2012) without destroying ourselves, that we are entering an era that will be characterized by peace and compassion, and as this emerges over generations, that there will come a time when humanity will "reset the calendar" and start it over, and anything before 2013 will be seen as "the barbaric years" because of our propensity for war and killing. this unfolds slowly, as "ages" or "eras" do. the Mayan calendar recognizes this. the "long count" Mayan calendar is roughly in 5,100 year cycles or ages. it also recognized the significance of the Dec. 2012 marker, winter solstice specific to the 26,000 year cycle that charts the "wobble of the earth" or precession of the equinoxes.
an even larger cycle is the amount of time it takes for our solar system (or any object in the Milky Way galaxy since it all rotates around the center at the same rate all together like cookies on a plate all turning at once) to make a single circuit or orbit around the center of the galaxy, that is about 225 million years. blink of an eye in the sweep of eternity.
interesting topic.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 06-26-2020 at 08:07 PM..
"time" keeping is a matter of logistics. so long as two trains don't collide and the car is traveling at a reasonable speed for the conditions it doesn't matter what we call the intervals to me.
Does anyone have interest in or follow one of the 260 day Mayan/Mesoamerican calendars?
Alot of new age stuff has gotten mixed in with it, you have to becareful what your following but it is interesting. I have been reading a bit a bout it. There is very very little authtentic Maya culture and religion left, but it is cool that some of it has survived in some form.
It's actually not new age. The ancestors studied and documented the skies with mathematical precision.
It seems rather a topic for the history or anthropology forum. The only possible relevance to this is Prophecy and as far as I know, the Mayan calendar prophecy went the way of all the others. I for one am heartily sick of prophets and doom -mongers coming up with end of world scenarios no matter how often they fail to happen.
It seems rather a topic for the history or anthropology forum. The only possible relevance to this is Prophecy and as far as I know, the Mayan calendar prophecy went the way of all the others. I for one am heartily sick of prophets and doom -mongers coming up with end of world scenarios no matter how often they fail to happen.
of course it is a topic for this forum. Calendars used by different cultures are directly tied to the religous and spiritual systems of the culture. Even the secular calendar that is in use today (which puts us in year 2020) is a direct reflection of historical events related to a religious figure and religious world events.
the view of "prophecy and doom and end of the world" has nothing to do with the opening post. if you are "sick of" something and have an aversion to it, then why talk about it at all? particularly when it is irrelevant to the opening post and thread topic. if you want to not talk about "prophecy and doom" then go start a different thread where you can talk about what you are sick of.
I did a cursory review of the subject on Wiki, and it does indeed seem that the calendars are directly related to the mythology of the people and have much more to them than simply the end-of-the-world business we heard so much about a few years ago.
So, if the OP or others want to expand on the details, the thread can remain. It could make for an interesting and different subject.
I did a cursory review of the subject on Wiki, and it does indeed seem that the calendars are directly related to the mythology of the people and have much more to them than simply the end-of-the-world business we heard so much about a few years ago.
So, if the OP or others want to expand on the details, the thread can remain. It could make for an interesting and different subject.
Yes sorry I should posted more info about the calendar.
There are/were several Calendars used among the Maya. The calendar I was talking about was the sacred 260 day calendar, commonly known as the "Tzolkin". In this calendar there are 20 day names and they run in a cycle of 13 days to make 260 days. The religous part comes in because a lot of every day life revolves around the calendar. Each day has a different omen, some good some bad. Certain days guide when people will marry, which day will be good to make a purchase, plant crops etc etc. There is a lot of divination around the calendar. It is highly linked to mythology.
Some of the calendar day names (most are the same or similar) and interpretations differ from region to region, but the structure of the calendar is the same throught out mesoamerica, from the Maya region to the Aztecs. The Calendar is called the Tzolkin in Mexico, Cholq'ij in highland Guatemala, Tonalpohualli in the Aztec region and Piye in the Oaxaca region.
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