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.
I once was jilted for Mr. Spock, the supremely logical Star Trek character from the planet Vulcan, by Barbara Wetzel, the prettiest math whiz Junior High School 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, had ever seen. Barbara, who lived with her aunt and her sister in an apartment above an embalming parlor, and who had the faint, sweet scent of formaldehyde in her long blonde hair, informed me that she had lost all interest in human men.
I continued to watch Star Trek, though now in the way that my father used to follow the New York Yankees, rooting for them to lose. The best hope of seeing Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk, and all their cohorts fry was if the starship Enterprise came under ferocious attack when its protective shields were down. This did happen from time to time, with Klingons, Romulans, and all manner of other angry aliens pounding away, though invariably by the end of the hour crew and ship escaped intact. The difference, of course, is that spaceships can fly. We landlubbers have no choice but to stick around and take our beating.
The great white shark’s breath was so bad I could smell it under water. Or maybe it was the divers on either side of me in the cage, puking their guts out. The scarred-up shark, a two-ton thirteen-footer with huge double rows of blood-stained steak-knife teeth, had the crazed look of a predator that hadn’t evolved during his 400 million years terrorizing the oceans. It bonked its hideous snout against the dented-up cage, then chomped down on the bars. The image of Ulysses, lashed to the mast, listening to the sirens’ insanely beautiful song, did not flash through my mind. But there was that kind of thrill, a moment stolen from the gods.
Good practice, I mused, for gazing into the maw of 2012.
I was off the southern coast of South Africa and was scheduled the next day to visit the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, where geophysicists are examining the California-sized cracks that have been opening up in the Earth’s protective magnetic field. Next stop was Johannesburg, to meet with 123Alert, a group of psychics who have an impressive record of forecasting earthquakes, volcanoes, and the like. My little adventure on Shark Lady was just for larks, until I looked inside those great white jaws.
For the first time in the year or so since I had been researching the horrors of 2012, I stopped and gave thanks, in this case for the bars on the cage. My life had been so safe and healthy
