July 8, 7:00-9:00pm

With 2012 imminent, believed by many the end of the Maya calendar, images of catastrophe are projected.  A true understanding of Maya calendrics shows that there is no final “end” of calendars, but a rolling over into the next cycle.  The Maya counted time billions of years into the past, and their counts continue into a vast future.  To the Maya, time is cyclic, repeating indefinitely, small cycles embedded in exponentially greater ones.

These cycles of time have recurring patterns that change as cycles end.  The Maya marked cycle ends with exotic rituals and erected carved stone monuments.  They knew what to anticipate during the coming cycle, based on its previous patterns. Larger cycles, the Maya Great Cycle of 5200 tuns (5125 years) and the Pleiadian Sun Cycle of 26,000 tuns (25,626 years) were associated with upheavals in the natural world and major transformations in the spiritual domain.

Now we are concerned about earth changes causing global disasters, while many believe we are moving into a new age with a huge shift in human consciousness leading to worldwide peace and harmony.

How does the Maya calendar instruct us about these events? Using sophisticated cosmological understanding, the ancient Maya created many calendars based on cycles of planetary, solar, stellar, and galactic systems.  These calendars served higher purposes than simply timekeeping; they synchronized the lives of humans and societies to the great cosmic pulsation, the rhythms of seasons, planets and stars.  Maya cities were built to resonate with and amplify celestial emanations; pyramids in particular created and transformed energies.

In this program, Maya Solar Initiate & Fire Woman Leonide Martin unlocks esoteric understandings of Maya calendars.  She compares indigenous views with those of popular Maya calendar experts, explores different concepts of 2012 and reveals the huge disparity in calendar dating systems.  She answers these questions:

• Is the 2012 end date a figment of Western imagination?
• What is the significance of the December solstice sun-Milky Way dark rift alignment?
• What do the Maya believe about the ending of Great Cycles?
• Where are we in the present Maya Great Cycle?

Leonide (Lennie) Martin, DrPH, author, researcher and teacher, trained with Itza Maya Elder Hunbatz Men as a Maya Solar Initiate and Fire Woman.  She wrote Dreaming the Maya Fifth Sun: A Novel of Maya Wisdom and the 2012 Shift in Consciousness in 2006. A Priestess of Isis and certified Archetypal Consultant, she gives Maya programs in the U.S. and Yucatan, Mexico.

www.mayafifthsun.com