If you are worried the world will end next year based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.
So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.
The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 12, 2012 [sic] which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.
Author Jose Arguelles called the date “the ending of time as we know it” in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.
“We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012,” said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “It’s a marketing fallacy.”
The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. “The West’s messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans,” the institute said in a statement.
In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.
Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.
“Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation … it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present,” he said.
Of the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012, the Institute said.
“The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or predict the poles would fuse together,” said Alfonso Ladena, a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. “We project our worries on them.”
The orbit of the Moon around the Earth is not round it is elliptical and therefor sometimes it is nearer and sometimes it is farther away. When the Moon is at it’s nearest to Earth it is in perigee and when it is at the greatest distance from Earth it is in apogee. A supermoon is a full or new moon that coincides with the Moon in perigee.
Some have speculated that if the Moon is powerful enough to affect the oceans then a supermoon must be capable of moving the Earth itself. That’s right. There are people out there who think you can predict earthquakes by looking at a lunar perigee chart.
Many are in a panic over the coincidence between the impending supermoon and Japan’s recent devastating earthquake. Those who believe the two happenings are related think more damage will come when the supermoon will be in its full phase, on March 19. Many think a supermoon will cause climate chaos.
Scientists say, however, that the supermoon did not cause the earthquake in Japan, so all those worrywarts should stop panicking.
The amount of extra pull on the Earth during the supermoon will hardly affect the tides much less the tectonic plates of the Earth.
The sun was shining on the Santa Cruz Mountains. The freeway from the San Francisco airport to San Jose was still buzzing in my ears when I stepped into the parking lot of an unassuming church and the most famous exorcist in America walked up.
“Hello, I’m Father Gary Thomas.” At 57 years old, he has an easy smile, an abiding love for the Giants and strong convictions about the nature of evil.
“You believe there is a devil?” I ask him as we settle in at a small, beautiful chapel near the church.
“Yes.”
“You believe that this devil acts upon people?”
“Correct.”
He says it with the certainty that I reserve for answers to questions like, “Did you bring your lunch?” but that’s no surprise. He has faced skeptics many times and never more than now, because his life and training as an exorcist in Rome are the inspiration behind the Hollywood film “The Rite.”
Indeed, at the premiere, as the cameras swirled around the star, Anthony Hopkins, Thomas walked the red carpet alongside him. This movie, like salvation, is something the priest believes in.
“First of all,” he says, “it was very emotional for me. I found some of those scenes very riveting. I found some of them very profound. They’re very accurate. That’s what I’ve seen in real life.”
That’s saying something. “The Rite” is chock-full of heaving, cursing, ranting characters, who, according to the screenplay, are possessed by Satan, people who one moment seem fine and the next are raging against all that is holy.
And yet, Thomas says people who fear that very fate come to him constantly. “Well, often times they’ll begin the conversation with ‘Father, I need an exorcism.’ And my answer back to them is, ‘I don’t do them on demand.’”
But he does think a lot more of them need to be done. It is all part of a push by the Vatican to make more exorcists available to the faithful. Some in the Catholic Church believe the world is facing a rising tide of demonic activity, particularly in America, where millions are moving away from traditional faiths and looking for alternatives.
“A lot of folks dabble in the occult, or they will be involved in practices that … classical Christianity at least would consider to be idolatrous. People can get themselves involved in Wicca, or people will go see some sort of fortune-teller, or people will go to a séance, or they can go and they can learn how to channel spirits. …”
A vision of politician Christine O’Donnell fills my head and I interrupt. “But a lot of people would tell you up front, ‘I’m just playing around.’”
“Right. Absolutely. And it’s not,” he says, noting that those who feel adrift from the church and from others of faith are more likely to be drawn in. “Demons are always looking for human beings who have broken relationships.”
Simply put, Thomas believes just as surely as a person can summon God through prayer, through other rituals, the devil can be called, too.
Thomas says an exorcism usually takes from 45 minutes to two hours and involves reciting prayers, reading scriptures and using sacramental objects such as crucifixes and holy water. Of course, that’s like saying surgery involves a knife and some sponges.
It is vastly more complicated. Before the rite is even considered, there must be psychological testing by professionals, extended consultations and questions about drug and alcohol addiction.
Thomas says fully 80% of the people he meets claiming demonic possession have actually suffered some kind of abuse. An exorcism, he says, is the last step in a long process.
“I have a particular situation now,” he says, “where I think this particular person is suffering from a very unique psychological disorder, but she’s also been exposed to satanic cults, and I want to make sure that what we’re dealing with … is satanic or if it is psychological.”
Even when an exorcism is prescribed, it often must be repeated. Judging from Thomas’ comments, it takes something of a trained eye to decide whether it is even working.
The movie, to be frank, complicates this whole discussion. Not “The Rite.” Thomas says he likes that one, and found Anthony Hopkins a “delightful” man.
But rather the movie from 1973. “The Exorcist” captured America’s imagination about demons taking over a person’s body and profoundly shaped the public’s perceptions about the process of throwing those devils out. It was lurid, violent and unforgettable.
It was also based on a real exorcism in Washington, which was far less dramatic than the film. Thomas will tell you emphatically there are no spinning heads, spewing pea soup or levitating bodies.
But he has seen manifestations of possession. “Sometimes the person’s head will begin to move in very rigid ways. Sometimes their eyes will roll. Sometimes there will be epileptic-like seizures,” Thomas said. “Occasionally people will take on kind of a body language of a serpentine look, and they’ll begin to stick their tongue out and use their tongue in ways that would look snake-like, and they’ll coil up in a snake-like position.”
“And these are things that you have seen in real life?” I ask.
“I have seen that,” he said with a wry smile.
I’ve seen it, too. A few years ago I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to report on a Protestant exorcist who was holding a session in a hotel meeting room. Several dozen people filed in while, no kidding, “The Devil Inside” by INXS played on a stereo system.
Suffice to say, there were plenty of eye-rolling, seizure-like eruptions in the crowd as people cried out and the exorcist confronted them, pressing his Bible against their heads, and demanding that their demons reveal their names.
We talked to some of the participants before and after, talked to the exorcist, too. For all their heartfelt expressions of belief, I can’t help but ask Thomas the same thing I asked that night: Couldn’t all these folks just be acting?
“I don’t think they’re acting out in a conscious sense,” he says, “because many times … they don’t remember the experience itself.”
What’s more, he says, occasionally the person will do something that defies explanation. “Sometimes the person will begin to speak in a language in which they have no competency in.”
Meaning, for example, someone who knows no German might start speaking precisely and accurately in that language. Thomas says he has witnessed that, too.
I stopped by the Pew Center in Washington, where some of the best research on religion is done, to ask about all this. Allison Pond is a charming young researcher who kindly sat me down before delivering some startling news: A Pew survey found more than one in 10 Americans have witnessed an exorcism, and when you narrow it down to Pentecostals it’s about one in three.
“Forty percent of Americans said they completely believe angels and demons are active in the world,” she told me, “with 28% telling us they mostly believe this.”
That is the kind of information that needs more than a priestly explanation, so I roamed over to Georgetown University to talk to Ori Soltes, a theologian. The problem, he says, is that we can’t know for sure what people mean when they say they’ve seen an exorcism. Was it a formal ceremony? A personal revelation? A changed way of life?
Still, he has no doubt that claims of demonic meddling are high, because, after all, the year 2000 rolled around less than a dozen years ago, and at every millennium fears of the devil’s influence rise.
“My sense is that we are still in the backwash from the millennium,” he says, “but then you know … events have helped to proliferate that: 9/11, the war in Iraq. And now as we approach 2012, suddenly everyone is very interested in the Mayan calendar and how we interpret the idea that the apocalypse is coming in December of 2012 at the time of equinox … all that sort of stuff.”
So maybe it’s no wonder that Thomas is getting calls for exorcisms from not only Catholics, but also from followers of other faiths.
“How often?” I ask.
“I would say probably one out of 10.”
Thomas says there are about 50 Catholic exorcists in the United States, and that’s not nearly enough. He’d like to see one exorcist in every parish. But until that day, he does not mind explaining over and over what exorcisms are really all about.
“It’s a healing ministry. It’s not hocus pocus. It’s not smoke and mirrors. It’s not magic. But I think if we don’t respond to people who come in their very troubling moments, I think it diminishes us as a church.”
Despite all that Hollywood has done to mythologize exorcisms, he still believes in the power of this rite, a power born not of fear, but of faith.
We understand that there may be a few malingerers still digging their fallout bunkers in anticipation of the End Of The World which has been rescheduled for 2012. For that reason, here is a video snippet of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talking to attendees at the 2010 World Science Festival about where he stands on the issue and why we might want to stand in the same spot:
The Bermuda Triangle (also, Devil’s Triangle) is a huge triangle formed by the islands of Bermuda and Puerto Rico, and the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is said to be an area of profound danger for anyone or anything venturing into it. It was first so designated by a writer for Argosy magazine.
The whole legend began in December 1944 when five Avenger bombers of the U.S. Navy were lost while on a routine training mission out of the Fort Lauderdale air base. A sensational 1974 book by Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle, brought this supposed mystery to the attention of the public.
The Berlitz book, written thirty years after the loss of the bombers, contained invented details, distorted and exaggerated figures and descriptions, and even fabricated radio conversations that were claimed to have taken place between the naval pilots and the Fort Lauderdale air base. The event was not that unusual, if the invented details are ignored, and as evidence for any sort of mystery in the triangle, the Avenger bombers matter is a very poor example, but it remains as the event most quoted by the believers.
Other ships that are said to have vanished in the area either did not exist, or sank or capsized in other areas——even in the Pacific or Mediterranean——or went down due to perfectly ordinary and well understood causes.
The Bermuda Triangle, an area subject to violent storms and rough seas, does produce problems, but no more than any other similar area anywhere in the world. There is no need to ascribe supernatural or even unusual causes to any losses that occur there. Unless, of course, you want to sell lots and lots of books.
Near-death experience (NDE), refers to a broad range of personal experiences associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations including detachment from the body; feelings of levitation; extreme fear; total serenity, security, or warmth; the experience of absolute dissolution; and the presence of a light, which some people interpret as a deity. Some see NDEs as a paranormal and spiritual glimpse into the afterlife.
These phenomena are usually reported after an individual has been pronounced clinically dead or otherwise very close to death, hence the term near-death experience. Many NDE reports, however, originate from events that are not life-threatening. With recent developments in cardiac resuscitationtechniques, the number of reported NDEs has increased. Many in the scientific community regard such experiences as hallucinatory, while paranormal specialists claim them to be evidence of an afterlife.
Popular interest in near-death experiences was initially sparked by Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life After Life and the founding of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in 1981. According to a Gallup poll, approximately eight million Americans claim to have had a near-death experience. Some commentators claim that the number of near-death experiencers may be underestimated, mainly because some such individuals are presumably afraid or otherwise reluctant to talk about their experiences.
People who claim to have felt such experiences describe them as life flashing before their eyes, feelings of peace and joy and supernatural encounters.
An “NDE” is usually an experience described by someone who has been declared clinically dead or appears very close to death.
Improved resuscitation rates mean more NDEs are being reported but the causes for them are not known.
Many scientists put them down to hallucinations while psychics or religious groups are more likely to consider them as evidence of an afterlife.
A number of studies have been undertaken over the years but this is the first one that has taken carbon dioxide levels into consideration.
Slovenia-based scientists studied 52 patients whose hearts had stopped, using questionnaires to determine whether or not they had had an NDE.
Eleven patients reported NDEs, with more incidences among those with a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the breath and arteries, the study published in Critical Care, said.
Zalika Klemenc-Ketis, who led the research, told Sky News Online: “Our study pointed out a possible effect that carbon dioxide has on the provoking of NDE.
“But we cannot say that this is the only factor that provokes NDE, we have just found out that carbon dioxide is associated with NDE.
“Some theories talk about the role of carbon dioxide in the NDE, because it has been known that in other cases, for example in people at higher altitudes, carbon dioxide might provoke some sort of hallucinations and visions, that could be described as NDE-like experiences.”
When asked if the study would rule out paranormal activities, she said: “I don’t think that, based on our study, we can say that paranormal believers are wrong.
“We have simply found out that one of the factors that could play a role in provoking the NDE, is carbon dioxide. But a lot still has to be done to totally explain this phenomena.”
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same talk show as head of the Indian Rationalists’ Association — the country’s self-appointed sceptic-in-chief. At first the holy man, Pandit Surender Sharma, was reluctant, but eventually he agreed to perform a series of rituals designed to kill Mr Edamaruku live on television. Millions tuned in as the channel cancelled scheduled programming to continue broadcasting the showdown, which can still be viewed on YouTube.
First, the master chanted mantras, then he sprinkled water on his intended victim. He brandished a knife, ruffled the sceptic’s hair and pressed his temples. But after several hours of similar antics, Mr Edamaruku was still very much alive — smiling for the cameras and taunting the furious holy man.
“He was over, finished, completely destroyed!” Mr Edamaruku chuckles triumphantly as he concludes the tale in the Rationalist Centre, his second-floor office in the town of Noida, just outside Delhi.
Rationalising India has never been easy. Given the country’s vast population, its pervasive poverty and its dizzying array of ethnic groups, languages and religions, many deem it impossible.
Nevertheless, Mr Edamaruku has dedicated his life to exposing the charlatans — from levitating village fakirs to televangelist yoga masters — who he says are obstructing an Indian Enlightenment. He has had a busy month, with one guru arrested over prostitution, another caught in a sex-tape scandal, a third kidnapping a female follower and a fourth allegedly causing a stampede that killed 63 people.
This week India’s most popular yoga master, Baba Ramdev, announced plans to launch a political party, promising to cleanse India of corruption and introduce the death penalty for slaughtering cows. Then, on Wednesday, police arrested a couple in Maharashtra state on suspicion of killing five boys on the advice of a tantric master who said their sacrifice would help the childless couple to conceive.
“The immediate goal I have is to stop these fraudulent babas and gurus,” says Mr Edamaruku, 55, a part-time journalist and publisher from the southern state of Kerala. “I want people to make their own decisions. They should not be guided by ignorance, but by knowledge.
“I’d like to see a post-religious society — that would be an ideal dream, but I don’t know how long it would take.”
His organisation traces its origins to the 1930s when the “Thinker’s Library” series of books, published by Britain’s Rationalist Press Association, were first imported to India. They included works by Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin and H.G. Wells; among the early subscribers was Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister.
The Indian Rationalist Association was founded officially in Madras in 1949 with the encouragement of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who sent a long letter of congratulations. For the next three decades it had no more than 300 members and focused on publishing pamphlets and debating within the country’s intellectual elite.
But since Mr Edamaruku took over in 1985, it has grown into a grass-roots organisation of more than 100,000 members — mainly young professionals, teachers and students — covering most of India. Members now spend much of their time investigating and reverse-engineering “miracles” performed by self-styled holy men who often claim millions of followers and amass huge wealth from donations.
Police running scared from drug gangs in one of Mexico’s deadliest cities are using bizarre rituals involving animal sacrifice and spirit tattoos to seek protection from raging violence on the U.S. border.
In secret meetings that draw on elements of Haitian Voodoo, Cuban Santeria and Mexican witchcraft, priests are slaughtering chickens on full moon nights on beaches, smearing police with the blood and using prayers to evoke spirits to guard them as drug cartels battle over smuggling routes into California.
Other police in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, tattoo their bodies with Voodoo symbols, believing they can repel bullets.
“Sometimes a man needs another type of faith,” said former Tijuana policeman Marcos, who left the city force a year ago after surviving a drug gang attack. “I was saved when they killed two of my mates. I know why I didn’t die.”
Violence has exploded along the U.S. border since President Felipe Calderon set the army on drug cartels in late 2006. Turf wars have killed 19,000 people across Mexico over three years.
Badly-paid Mexican police have long prayed to Christian saints before going out on patrol in Mexico, the world’s second-most populous Roman Catholic country after Brazil.
Cops are part of a messy war between rival trafficking gangs and the army as cartels infiltrate police forces, offering officers cash to work and even murder for them or a bullet if they say no. More than 150 police are among those killed in Tijuana and the surrounding Baja California state since 2007.
Army raids on homes of police working for cartels have found ornately adorned Santeria-type altars covered with statues and skulls stuffed with money paying homage to gods and spirits.
“We all know that guns and body armor are useless against the cartels because they are well-armed and can attack any time. But this is something we can believe in, that really works,” said a Tijuana-based policeman called Daniel.
BLACK MAGIC
A battle between top drug lord fugitive Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman and the local Arellano Felix drug clan has wrecked tourism in Tijuana and shuttered manufacturing businesses.
Small groups of police in the city started turning to strange rituals about 18 months ago, a practice spotted when municipal cleaners found a trail of dead chickens on beaches.
Priests and police say the animal sacrifices release life to rejuvenate spirits that will shield officers against hitmen. They believe the effects are intensified on full moon nights.
Many police see a need to shield themselves from witchcraft used by drug gangs who mix Caribbean black magic and occultism from southern Mexico using things like human bones, dead bats and snake fangs to curse enemies and unleash evil spirits.
Others worship the Mexican cult of “Saint Death”, a skeletal grim reaper draped in white and carrying a scythe.
The rituals are carried out by sometimes shadowy Mexicans who have menial day jobs and are priests by night. They claim to be trained in Voodoo, Santeria and other religions from time spent in the Caribbean and in Mexican towns like Catemaco, a center for witchcraft on the Gulf of Mexico.
Police have the quiet support of their superiors.
“We know some agents use charms, saints and other methods for their protection,” said Baja California federal police chief Elias Alvarez. “They look for something to believe in.”
Mexico’s often poorly armed police are intimidated by hitmen with automatic rifles, grenades and rocket launchers and despite low wages of around $300 a month some pay up to $160 for a tattoo of a Voodoo spirit like the three-horned Bosou Koblamin who protects his followers when they travel at night.
The British government has notified Mexico that a handheld device widely used by the Mexican military and police to search for drugs and explosives may be ineffective, British officials said.
Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat has spent more than $10 million to purchase hundreds of the detectors, similar to the “magic wands” in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, for its antidrug fight. Although critics have called them nothing more than divining rods, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. At the military’s National Drug Museum, one of the devices is on display, with a plaque that describes its success in finding hidden caches of drugs.
Mexican military officials say the black plastic wands, known as the GT 200 and manufactured by the British company Global Technical Ltd., are widely used nationwide at checkpoints to search for contraband inside vehicles as well as to canvass neighborhoods in drug hotspots for drug and weapons stash houses.
As of April 20, 2009, the army had purchased 521 of the GT 200 detectors for just over $20,000 apiece, for a total cost of more than $10 million, according to Mexican government documents. Police agencies across Mexico have made additional purchases, records show.
“We’ve had success with it,” Capt. Jesús Héctor Larios Salazar, an officer with the Mexican Army’s antidrug unit in Culiacán, said recently. “It works with molecules. It functions with the energy of the body.”
But the British government, which is considering legislation to stop exports of the device, notified Mexico and other countries around the world last month that it may not work. That followed reports in The New York Times and on BBC that a similar product used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ADE 651 manufactured by ATSC Ltd., another British company, was considered ineffective.
“Exports to Mexico have already taken place, and the most urgent task was to warn the Mexican government and military, which we have done,” Katy Reid, a British diplomat in Mexico, said in a statement on Friday. “It is now up to the Mexican authorities to take whatever steps they think appropriate.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington said it did not use the handheld detectors. And the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, which does testing for the Defense Department, has not found such devices to be effective.
Mexican defense officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. E-mail messages and calls to Global Technical and to Segtec, the Mexican-based importer of the GT 200, were not returned.
Controversy over the GT 200 has played out in recent months in Thailand, where the army has said it will continue to use them even though testing by government scientists found them far less effective than specially trained dogs. “I respect the scientific tests, but at this stage there is no banning order by the government, so the army will continue to use it,” Gen. Anupong Paochinda, the Thai Army chief, told reporters.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement in February calling on the Thai government to stop arresting people based on evidence gathered using the GT 200, which it said “performs worse than a roll of the dice.”
Informed that Mexico was using the same unit, the human rights group said Friday: “It’s troubling that Mexico is using this ‘magic wand’ technology given the serious doubts that exist about its reliability. And if people are actually being arrested and charged solely on the basis of its readings, that would be outrageous.”
Promotional materials on the Internet describe the GT 200 as a high-tech unit that enables law enforcement agencies to search large areas quickly. Using special cards provided by the manufacturer, the detector can supposedly detect all types of narcotics and explosives by homing in on their molecules from afar.
The device is so sensitive, the manufacturer says, that it can detect not just stockpiles of illegal drugs but people who have used cocaine or heroin as far back as two weeks before.
After the critical reviews in Thailand, Global Technical released a statement on its Web site defending the detector. “We can say that previous tests carried out by independent bodies, and the experience of the large number of users of this product all over the world, confirms that the GT 200 is effective and because of this, we would ask that you treat with caution any reports to the contrary,” the company said.
In Culiacán, a city in Sinaloa State where Mexican drug traffickers have a strong presence, the military showed off the GT 200 in December. Canvassing a residential neighborhood, soldiers walked up and down the street with a GT 200 waiting for the antenna to point toward a suspicious residence. There were no discoveries.
But the soldier trained to operate the detector walked by one of the army’s armored vehicles and the antenna swung quickly toward the high-caliber machine gun sticking out the top. He took several steps back and walked by again. The antenna pointed again toward the gun.
“See?” he said.
But in November, at a checkpoint on the highway leading from Mexico City to Monterrey, the same device pointed at a Volkswagen containing a man, a woman and a child. Soldiers surrounded the vehicle and a search was conducted for illegal drugs. But all they found was a bottle of Tylenol — evidence, the soldier operating the device said, of how sensitive the GT 200 was.
