Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice
Another take on the end of the world. Embrace it. A website I saw suggested that the world did end on the 22nd. The Mayan long count, 12 Baktun*, did roll round and stop.
But. Only to start over again. 13 Baktun started on the Winter Solstice according to the article cited below.
So, we have just begun a new cycle of 394.26 tropical years. This Winter Solstice was closer to the millennial transition than either New Year’s or even the turn of a century.
How will your life be different in the 13th Baktun? Like me, you’ve lived all of yours in the 12th. Those of born before 2000 are in a unique position in that we have lived through a centennial transition, a millennial transition and now a Baktunal transition.
Of course, if you’re a die hard rationalist you’ll note that one Baktun is like any other. Well, maybe so, but they do give us, these chronological inflection points, opportunities to look back and assess and to look forward and hope. Not a bad thing.
Why not give it a shot? In my case I can look back over the 65 years spent in this last Baktun, my whole life, and consider its arc. I can look forward to spending all the remaining years of my life in the 13th Baktun. That means my aging will occur in a brand new chunk of time. A chunk of time that I can influence as an elder, perhaps give it a positive shove before I return my atoms to the universe.
And, yes, I also embrace the circular, never-ending, achronological great wheel in which the seasons come and go talking of Michelangelo. On the great wheel of my life I have just passed Summer’s End this year, moving into the great fallow season. There too my task is to prepare the ground for the next spring, that spring when I am a memory.
What will you do with your next Baktun?
*Wikipedia. A baktun (properly b’ak’tun, English pronunciation: /ˈbɑk ˌtun/[1], Mayan pronunciation: [ɓakʼ ˈtun]) is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. It contains 144,000 days, equal to 394.26 tropical years. The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current baktun started on 13.0.0.0.0 — December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation.
