JOSEPH GELFER

Some comments from John Major Jenkins about 2012: Decoding the Countercultural Apocalypse (to which he contributed):

http://www.update2012.com/Gelferanthology.pdf

I’ve said this before, but my 2012 book will soon be out: I know this for a fact because I’m now in receipt of the typeset pages: it is no longer (finally) some mythical beast residing in the hands of an Equinox Publishing copyeditor.

One of the odd things about this book taking so bloody long to see the light of day is that citations to it are popping up even before it is out, such as in 2013!: The Beginning Is Here edited by Jim Young and papers by John Major Jenkins (Astronomy in the Tortuguero Inscriptions and Calendrical Patterns and Tortuguero Monument 1).

This week sees a clutch of new short papers on 2012 from Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union including:

• The 2012 phenomenon: Maya calendar, astronomy, and apocalypticism in the worlds of scholarship and global popular culture by John B. Carlson and Mark Van Stone
• It’s not the End of the World: emic evidence for local diversity in the Maya Long Count by Mark Van Stone
• Cosmogony and prophecy: Maya Era Day cosmology in the context of the 2012 prophecy by Carl D. Callaway
• Lord of the Maya Creations on his jaguar throne: the eternal return of Elder Brother God L to preside over the 21 December 2012 transformation by John B. Carlson
• Measuring deep time: the Sidereal Year and the Tropical Year in Maya inscriptions by Michael J. Grofe
• The God’s Grand Costume Ball: a Classic Maya prophecy for the close of the thirteenth Baktun by Barbara MacLeod
• A critical history of 2012 mythology by John W. Hoopes
• The 2012 Mayan calendar prophecies in the context of the western millenarian tradition by Nicholas Campion

Expect things to ramp up over the coming year, but I doubt scholarly research on the matter will really come into its own until well past the big day.

The above is the view from my hotel in Cancun, Mexico. I was there last week for a 2012 conference. You could be forgiven for thinking that Cancun is a rather unlikely location for a gathering focused on the evolution of human consciousness, and indeed it is. The conference provided an interesting opportunity to meet some of the more significant 2012 writers such as José Argüelles, Daniel Pinchbeck and John Major Jenkins (who is contributing to my own 2012 book), as well as a number of other speakers addressing various aspects of consciousness.

A cynical interpretation might suggest the conference was a neat way to gather some middle-class Americans to combine their interests of spirituality with having a beach holiday, and selling some books on the side. There was certainly some of this going on, but there were also lots of interesting attendees of various nationalities. Indeed, the attendees were more interesting than the speakers, and perhaps this is the point and value of such an occasion: a quick shout to friendly individuals (whose details are immediately at hand) such as Bruce Fenton, Candia Sanders, Sharon Allen and Hannah Janulewicz who, along with numerous others, countered my typically healthy dose of scepticism with an equally healthy dose of optimism.

And where to next? Apparently there are other conferences in the pipeline for Canada, Spain and Cuba. It’s a good life if you can get it.