The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Speaking of stories you might miss if you don't spend enough time on Facebook and Twitter, I wonder why there's so little serious analysis of what seems to me a fascinating and obviously sociologically significant phenomenon--the rising cult of December 21, 2012. Anyone familiar with Cohn's study of medieval millenarian cults will recognize the pedigree of these ideas, although there are some important innovations in them. (In describing this as a cult, I mean no disrespect to Ricochet's Mayan-Doomsday-Mystic Wing. So long as you're a right-of-center Mayan Mystic Doomsdayist, there's room for you under this big tent.)
Anyway, it seems to me that when a very significant number of otherwise modern people subscribe to ideas like this, it's an important sign of something. What it's a sign of, I don't know, but if you're a sociologist looking for a dissertation subject, look no further.
I don't know what percentage of Americans are 2012 Mayan Doomsday Mystics, but I have a feeling it's much more than commonly recognized. A search on Google Scholar suggests very little academic curiosity about the phenomenon--why not? Wouldn't you think the rise of an authentic millenarian cult like this would really fascinate sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars of comparative religion?
Please note that I didn't mention Ashton Kutcher in this post, even though the name Ashton Kutcher would have been wholly relevant
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Dec '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
I guess that people are just bored, Claire.
Sep '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
There seem to be a number of people who are so bored with their own lives that they must live vicariously through others. People who care what celebrities like Woody Harrelson or the hilariously named Canibus fall into this category but so, in my opinion, do name dropping social climbers. I suppose this phenomenon could be described in ugly polysyllabic terms that sound scientific but the fact is that we still know not from whence the wellsprings of human emotion come. The end has been near for a very long time. I expect it always will be.
Jun '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
How many "Twelvers" understand that to gaze into the heavenly vault at night is to look into the past? We are looking at the apparent positions of the stars, not their actual positions in the present. If the Mayans had an appreciation for the speed of light and were able to predict the actual positions of the heavenly orbs, I'd be impressed. Indeed, some of those points of light might already be extinct, their light reaching our eyes today a mere epitaph. And the left argues that the right is anti-science! You gotta love the irony.
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
If the academics start studying the 2012 millenarians now, the grant money could run out in 2012. If they wait until afterward, there's no reason for it to stop flowing.
As a junior high school math teacher, I can confirm that the 2012 winter solstice is an extremely popular topic with kids who want to know why they have to master the Pythagorean theorem, as they obviously will not be alive long enough to study trigonometry in high school.
If Obama Democrats are stripped of executive and legislative power in the elections of November 2012, and the recounts conclude by December 21, 2012, might not their minions try to trigger an electoral crisis using the abominable but highly effective tactics perfected in Kenya in 2007 and 2008? That crisis ended the world early for at least 1500 people, and the world for Kenyans still living in Kenya has not been the same since. Done on a large enough scale, it might just make the Mayan priests look pretty smart.
Great. Now you've got me doing it...
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
The more I read about this, the more I think this is just such an interesting phenomenon. Here they are in Southwestern France--just where they've always been! How many of them, I wonder, are aware that they're the inheritors of the Cathars? Is it totally unconscious?
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Claire, can you suggest a source of information about Cathar millenarianism? I'm not as familiar with that aspect of the heresy as I am with its Manichaean aspects.
Thanks.
Sep '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
It occurred to me recently that these Mayan calendar geeks plotted out the stars and simply found winter solstice 2012 as a convenient place to stop... they had other things to do and that was far enough in the future for them. And they were quite right, they could have saved themselves some work.
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Louie Rhett: Claire, can you suggest a source of information about Cathar millenarianism? I'm not as familiar with that aspect of the heresy as I am with its Manichaean aspects.
Thanks. · Jan 16 at 5:29am
It's a little self-promoting of me to suggest it, but you could have a look at chapter 7.
May '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
This is going to turn into a bad Dan Brown movie, isn't it? Everyone on the FB is excited to get their new astrological symbol, and I can't help but blame the Mayans. Like Juan Williams, they make me nervous in airports.
Working title: The Thirteenth Sign.
Nov '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
What it signifies is that, in all times and all places, a certain percentage of people are as dumb as a box of rocks.
A calendar is nothing but a human artifact — an attempt to divine some sort of pattern in the movements of the heavenly bodies. But the stars, moons and planets are indifferent to humanity and its calendars. Their orbits and perturbations follow the pulse of a great Cosmic Heart that is essentially unknowable to Man. In the universe at large, each passing second has no more significance than the billion billion seconds that preceded it, or the billion billion seconds to follow.
December 21, 2012 will be a day like any other. The sun will come up, the sun will go down, and life will go on. The Mayan Doomsday Cult is merely another chapter in the Persistence of Folly. It will be followed by many others.
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 5:54amSep '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
I just hope it is not as bad at that Y2K catastrophe. Remember how we all had to barter with whatever we had, because the financial systems broke down? Whew!
Many years from now, my grandchildren will not believe that there was a time when I could enter my birth year with only two numbers. After 2012, who knows.
Oct '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Well, there will be a solar minimum (or was it maximum?) that will have nasty (if hardly world-destroying) effects. NASA has some information on this.
Personally, I think the Mayans predicted a sun cycle, and never intended to imply the whole world would burst into flame (just old power lines). Supposedly 2012 marks the end of an era, or something, and the beginning of a new one. Or something like that, I can't remember the details. Hardly Armageddon.
Nov '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
It's a little self-promoting of me to suggest it, but you could have a look at chapter 7.
For a general understanding of this nonsense, I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1453690298/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295187177&sr=1-1
and especially:
http://www.amazon.com/Fads-Fallacies-Name-Science-Popular/dp/0486203948/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295187300&sr=1-1
Martin Gardner's book should be required reading for anyone who wishes to retain a healthy skepticism.
May '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
No, really people. Facebook is abuzz with this supposedly new astrological sign. They joke, but they're throwing salt over their shoulders when they think nobody's looking. My sign says that I'm shallow, arrogant and witty. Which just proves astrology is bunk, right? (touch wood)
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Louie, that pretty much defines the end of the world right there, doesn't it? In any event, I can't wait to see Chris Matthews take it all in.
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
My point here wasn't to start a debate about whether the Mayan-Doomsday-Mystics are right. I mean--come on. It's to note what seems to me an under-reported story (the extraordinary prevalence of this belief, which immediately some of you are confirming anecdotally), and to ask, what on earth does it mean that this is spreading like wildfire in modern, industrialized, developed societies? I don't find the answer, "They're just dumb" especially satisfying. There are lots of ways of being dumb, why this way? Why now? Has anyone studied the people who believe this in any rigorous way--what kind of people are they? Urban, suburban, upwardly-mobile economically, downwardly, educated; do they have close family ties, what else do they believe? I have no idea, and suspect the answers would be interesting.
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
This isn't to say, LadyK, that you're wrong to bring up MacKay. But take that as a given. The question I'm asking is the next one--why a particular kind of madness in a particular place and time, and isn't it weird that this one has so much in common with these medieval cults--and yet that no one participating in them seems to understand the intellectual inheritance involved? What do we conclude from that? It obviously isn't a coincidence. Does this stuff reside in the collective unconsciousness somehow? If so, how?
Oct '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Claire, people are trying to explain the unexplainable. Science does not explain most of our daily lives. We all know this; none of us wants to admit it. Sometimes we buy into crazy theories like this, since we know science can't answer questions we desperately want answered.
Jun '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
No, it's a manifestation of collective ignorance combined with a loss of faith in our religious institutions. The latter should be more troubling than the former. Pop mysticism will sometimes result in a small suicide cult. The loss of our Judeo-Christian morality will doom us as a nation. This is a job for clergy.
Dec '10
Re: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
I thought Quetzalcaotl was Aztec. Off to Google.
Revision: I guess I was wrong. Mayans worshipped him too.
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 7:00am