It's bad.
It's ushering in the end of the world...
Let's hear it for 21/12/2012!
So. There's a baker's dozen of theories flying around this date. Everything from the world is going to split in two to the veil is going to arbitrarily collapse and allow paranormal energies to be fully brought into this realm.
Firstly, let's look at the history behind the date:
The Mayans are an old, old civilisation. Yes, they don't exist anymore, but they did. For quite a long time. And they decided to go and invent themselves a calendar that was based on a rather convoluted system of numbering.
The largest set of numbers that I know the name of referred to the age, or b'ak'tun. A single b'ak'tun was basically a crapton of days (144,000 to be precise) and going on down through k'atun (7,200 days), tun (360 days) winal (20 days) and finally k'in, a single day.
The calendar was called the Long Count and was a calendar designed to just keep on going.
Three times, the number of b'ak'tun hit the number 13 and the Mayan Gods remade the world. This time, the fourth circuit, the Gods decided that they'd finally done a good job and gave us a sky. They only bothered to create a sky for their world when they were happy with the result; talk about perfectionists.
And now, the theory:
So, as it stands, on 21/12/2012, the number of blak'tun is going to hit 13 again. The Long Count Date will read 13.0.0.0.0 and we hit what is known as the "Age of the Jaguar", which means the outermost ring of the calendar disc ticks over one space and the pretty picture is a jaguar instead of whatever it's been for the past 144,000 days.
But wait! Isn't it on 13.0.0.0.0 that the Gods finally decided to restart the world?
This ring here is a ring for the b'ak'tun alone... and as you can see, there are a few more than 13 pretty pictures. In fact... this is a cyclical calendar, designed for 19 b'ak'tun - which then ticks over and causes a 1 for the rank above b'ak'tun (It has some horribly unpronounceable name) and the Long Count goes back to 0.
The calendar itself holds no doom prophecies. Instead, on 13.0.0.0.0 the Mayans were going to throw the biggest party in the whole goddamned world, celebrating the fact that they were alive when their arbitrary calendar ticked over on that date.
It's kinda like how modern people went apeshit over our equally arbitrary calendar ticking over from 1999 to 2000 - apart from the Y2K bug loopies, Earth was basically one big party for a day.
The Apocalypse Conclusion:
The Mayan's calendar was arbitrary. They picked some numbers out of midair and designed their calendar around that. There's even records found that show them referencing dates well into the 13th and 14th b'ak'tun, well after the apparent expiry date stamped on Earth. Every b'ak'tun, the Mayans simply threw a party and then went on with their lives.
And before anyone brings up Nostradamus, secret messages in books, or anythnig of that nature... No. You can scan through a book - any book - and design a code that will make it tell you exactly what you want it to. Just like the people obsessed with the idea of hidden codes in the Bible; while there may be, most of the codes, messages and whatnot that they have found are a result of them selectively picking numbers to give them an answer they like.
So, armageddon's out. What's next?
"Spiritual Awakening"
The History:
Fluffies, New Agers and people who like eating well have all encountered the 2012 prophecies, and like most intelligent people, have realised that the world is probably not going to blow up on that date.
However, people still believe something will. Perhaps our collective subconscious will awaken, our souls will all ascend, maybe it's the date of the Second Coming. Whatever God had planned for us, he'd stamped a "deliver on 21/12/2012" onto the package. And it will be uplifting, it will separate the gifted from the giftless, and those of us with power will rise above the rest, etcetera etcetera.
The Theory:
So. It's NOT the date of geocide, but something is going to happen there. Why? Because everyone believes it will, that's why!
The New Agers referenced the Long Count as the date-setter; "It's ancient, therefore it must be mystical. Therefore it is right."
Or they referenced Nostradamus' works. A mystical book, discovered recently and written by the man himself!
Or, if technologically minded, they referenced the Web-bot.
The Flaws:
No.
Mayan Long Count is just a calendar. It tells the date. No records written by the Mayans anywhere foretold of anything happening in the Age of the Jaguar. There were some rumblings about Jaguar being the "age of chaos and change" but nothing specific like "Divine powers" or "delimitations" or anything. In all of their history, in all of their written works, not once do they mention the world comnig to an end in B'ak'tun 13.
Something may well happen in the next 144,000 days... but that's not hard to predict. It's four centuries long. Predicting something chaotic is going to happen in the next four centuries is like predicting that the sun will come up tomorrow.
Nostradamus' book was only discovered twenty eight years ago and was allegedly written by a prophet from four hundred years back. It also contains about four different handwriting styles and references "solar and lunar eclipses" occurring in a certain pattern... that happened approximately 10 times in the past hundred years - not once causing the world to end or for us to all spontaneously ascend.
And Web-bot reacts to information it finds on the internet. So it trawls the 'net and finds a hundred billion sites full of panikcy people wondering about 2012... so it decides something must be happening then.
No.
Why, then?
It's simple.
$
Yes indeed.
Think about it. You have a world of people craving for knowledge about what's going to happen on 21/12/2012, a date already decided upon by some stoner in the eighties (arbitrarily, I might add) and you have the "degree" to say that we will all become conduits for the power of spirits and will be able to fly with just our thoughts. We will live among spirits and life will be awesome.
Suckers will buy it because it's better than blowing up.
The fact is... the date has, with all the research possible, go no actual scientific, spiritual or paranormal basis for being the end of the world. Every piece of information stating it is has been anecdotal evidence, misreading and misinterpreting of a giant stone wheel, or looking for and finding information that wasn't there in a book that may or may not have been written by a New Ager wanting to set the world on fire with his "revolutionary discovery".
I have lived through three dates that were apparently "The end of the world" or "The awakening of the spiritual form". All were random dates picked out of thin air and all were equaly wrong.
And frankly? I think 2012 is going to go the same way.
