Читать книгу Apocalypse 2012: An optimist investigates the end of civilization - Lawrence Joseph E. - Страница 20

For a moment during lunch with Carlos and Gerardo at Arbol de Vita, I caught myself wondering if maybe the whole 2012 apocalypse thing weren’t some sort of sneaky Mayan revenge hoax on the North. Lord knows they have their reasons. Sitting in the same restaurant where Sonny and Cher had actually once dined, it struck me that damn near every winner of every Academy Award, Emmy, Golden Globe, Grammy, People’s Choice, you name it, had had their children raised, their homes kept, and/or their gardens tended for a comparative pittance by labor, legal and illegal, provided by Mexicans and Central Americans of Mayan or other indigenous descent, none of whom had ever received so much as one of those thank-yous that gush like cheap champagne throughout the award show proceedings. It’s macabre, the dichotomy of how famous are Hollywood glitterati and how invisible are these people who hold the stars’ lives (frequently very messy) together.

The Barrios brothers shrugged at Hollywood’s condescension but boiled when I brought up the subject of archaeologists, who are a pet peeve with the Maya and many other indigenous cultures. Gross inaccuracies, cultural biases, self-aggrandizing personal agendas—the litany of complaints against archaeologists is endless, though in truth these are more criticisms of bad archaeology than of the discipline itself. For example, the image that emerges from centuries of “scholarship” on the ancient Mayan ball game, where two teams kicked a latex rubber ball up and down the field and attempted to put it through a hoop, is that the game was bloodthirsty, because it ended with the execution of certain players. In truth it was rather civilized. Instead of going to war over key trade routes, feuding parties would field their best teams. Losers would be sacrificed, preventing a much larger bloodbath on the battlefield. True, there were times when slaves were forced to play, and the losers killed for no other reason than blood sport, but that was an abuse of an otherwise reasonable war substitute.

There were also times when the winners met their death. For major celebrations, such as the end of a sacred fifty-two-year cycle, it was not unusual for Maya to volunteer themselves for sacrifice. What a way to go! In Tikal, for example, throngs of extravagantly clad citizens would fill the plaza, sitting before the steps of the pyramid of the Giant Jaguar, where priests dressed as animal and mythic entities performed rituals that taught basic Mayan precepts of cosmology and morality. The possibility of being sacrificed as part of this festivity drew more hopefuls than could be accommodated, so the candidates were divided up into teams that played the ball game. The winners got their reward.

What rankles deeper is the archaeologists’ presumption that they are rediscovering “lost” cultures. How insulted would the average Italian person be if it were generally assumed that the fall of the Roman Empire meant that all of its linguistic, cultural, and technological accomplishments were lost by descendants too ignorant or careless to preserve the legacy? The Maya do a slow burn when self-impressed scholars elbow their way past native elders filled with the wisdom of the ages to foist their own interpretations on ruins and hieroglyphs.

The cultural imperialists’ need to discover something that they are sure all indigenous sages have somehow overlooked can be vexing. For example, John Major Jenkins, author of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, a dogged freelancer who, by sheer dint of will, has thrust himself into the debate over Mayan history and culture, believes that Izapa, a little-known ruin just across the Mexican border, was the center of an empire that eventually gave rise to the Maya. Jenkins deploys page after page of complex and frequently far-fetched calculations using maps, calendars, and sky charts to bolster Izapa’s prehistoric legacy. The Barrios brothers politely acknowledge the scholarly interest but strain with ennui when told by outsiders that Izapa is their true Vatican.

Archaeologists are impertinent. They compare cultures, and rate them on scales: technological development, legal codes, governance structures, and health and sanitary systems. Under the Mayan column, there’s no check in the box marked “invented the wheel,” a very touchy subject. Although the Mayan ancients grasped the concept of circles, cycles, and orbits more thoroughly than any of their contemporaries and in some ways better than we do today, they never translated that concept into actual, tangible wheels. Neither did any arches grace ancient Mayan architecture, roughly covering the two-millennia span from 100 BCE to 1000 CE, millennia after other cultures had discovered the beauty and utility of the curve.

All too often, archaeologists become lightning rods for a culture’s insecurities. The Barrios brothers’ feeble rejoinders that wheels wouldn’t have worked so well in the jungle are easily dismissed when one visits the massive Mayan temples and wonders whether those diminutive slaves whose job it was to hoist 110-pound stone slabs might not have appreciated a few wheeled carts and a ramp. Then again, treatment of slaves is not a debate we Americans really want to get into.

Carlos shook his head wearily when I asked him about the band of Mayanists who believe that the big date is not 2012 but 2011. Led by Carl Johann Calleman, a cancer researcher associated with the World Health Organization who for years has dedicated himself to Mayan scholarship, these folks believe that the Mayans have miscalculated their own calendar. That’s Calleman’s hook, his scholarly identity. The mix-up is reminiscent of the dispute over calculating Y2K, and whether or not the millennium would turn on January 1, 2000 or 2001. Carlos, who is fond of Calleman, patiently explained that the Fourth Sun (Age) will end 12/21/12, on the winter solstice, which, as it happens, is expected to occur at 11:11 UTC (Universal time, formerly known as Greenwich mean time).

The First Sun, according to Carlos, began approximately 20,000 years ago, was dominated by female energy, and related to the fire element. The Second Sun was characterized by male energy and related to the earth element. The Third Sun was characterized by female energy and related to the air element. The Fourth Sun that we are just now completing has been dominated by male energy and related to the water element. On 12/21/12 we will enter the Fifth Sun, in which the energy is balanced between female and male. Related to the ether element, the Fifth Sun brings with it a subtler wisdom.

Fire, earth, air, and water are all known elements and together constitute pretty much the totality of physical life. But what is ether, exactly? Air you can’t breathe? Thoughts? Even though I don’t exactly understand it, to me the prospect that ether is the thematic element of the new age we are entering seems only good news. Unlike, say, fire, which lends itself to holocausts, or water, which can bring ice or floods, ether seems, well, ethereal—hardly the stuff of which apocalypse is made. However, it is the impending transition into such nothingness that causes consternation.

THE FEATHERED SERPENT and the Black Jaguar, which is how I thought of Carlos and Gerardo, devoted the prime of their life to revitalizing the Mayan network, to assisting elders in need, and to recovering codices and other artifacts. By heritage, training, and sheer dedication, they stand as the preeminent authorities currently writing and speaking to the outside world on Mayan culture, science, and prophecies. But as Gerardo ran down the elders’ who’s who on his laptop, I gather that, though he and Carlos have comparatively high-profile, well-remunerated positions interfacing with outsiders and the press, within the Mayan spiritual hierarchy they are midlevel at best. Quite in contrast, for example, to the Roman Catholic Church, where salary and benefits rise steadily from priest to pope, a Mayan shaman’s spiritual stature has little to do with his or her material standing. Their kingdom, as Jesus might observe, is not of this world.

The 2012 prophecies, however, are very much of this world, space, and time. Despite the Barrios brothers’ sugar-coating and caviling, done as much out of a fear of igniting a panic as a survival tactic to reassure themselves and their loved ones, the coming of 2012 does indeed portend catastrophe and dislocation on a global scale. The more time I spent with Carlos, the more open he became about his fears for that year. What really scared him was when an elder whom he especially reveres declined, during a sacred annual ceremony, to give his usual talk. The silence meant that there is nothing more to be said about 2012 and the dangers it holds.

It wasn’t really until my final forty minutes in Guatemala that Gerardo opened up. It was 5:30 AM at the Guatemala City International Airport, and we were sitting cross-legged, me very stiffly and in pressed white pants, on the very dirty floor beneath a utility staircase. Gerardo had graciously come by to give me a farewell astrological reading. He handed me a soft little bag and instructed me to blow into it four times, once for each of the four directions and for the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. A soldier/security guard with an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder took a sudden interest in our proceedings; I think he wanted to make sure I was exhaling, not inhaling. Gerardo paid him no heed, took back the bag, and tossed out its contents—red beans, jaguar teeth, various crystals—onto the multicolored cotton mat on the floor between us, and then studied them for a moment. Subject: my divorce. Response: philosophical.

My parents had separated when I was eight, and for the next two years I tried shuttle diplomacy to get them back together, but then my father died in a car crash. His car skidded on ice into an oncoming truck. I guess he was driving too fast because he was late to sell a man asphalt to cover his driveway. So I have tended to get death and divorce mixed up. Now, facing my own divorce, I couldn’t seem to stop my internal life from orienting toward death. Didn’t want to stop, in fact. Rather fond of the idea. Except you’re not allowed to feel that way when you’ve got two young kids. Gerardo had picked up on all this and with his red beans and crystals and jaguar teeth somehow showed me the calm, not just resignation but true peace, that comes with accepting that death—of oneself, a loved one, one’s marriage, the world—is not in one’s control.

“Are we headed for divorce? From Time, from Nature, from our civilized lives? Is that what the 2012 prophecies are about?” I asked suddenly, catching him off guard with my question. Like the elders he revered, Gerardo declined to speak.

Black jaguars are the only cats that swim under water. They can stay down for quite a long time, but sooner or later they come up for air.