Twenty years ago, in April of 1995, I recorded and released a series of my articles in an audiotape I titled “Mayan Cosmogenesis 2012.” It was sold through my Four Ahau Press mail-order catalog and the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation catalog. This audiotape can be considered the first publication of the breakthrough discoveries diagnostic of my “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012” reconstruction work. The audiotape included an 8×14” fold-out page with 11 diagrams and 8 notes (from the essays). The essays I recorded are:
1. Introduction (to The Center of Mayan Time, 1995)
2. Thesis (regarding the astronomical meaning of 2012). 1994.
3. Maya Cosmogenesis (Cosmic Ma & Pa Do It). 4-1995.
4. Mayan Creation: The Stellar Frame and World Ages (March 1995)
5. “Dirty Laundry” (from Journey to the Mayan Underworld, 1989)
6. Hunab Ku (poem). October 1992.
I have re-recording the first five pages of the essay “Maya Creation: The Stellar Frame and World Ages” (track 4) in April of 2015, for the 20th anniversary of this first publication (in audio form) of the body of research conceived as “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012.” The new audio reading is here: http://www.thecenterfor2012studies.com/MayanCreation-thestellarframe-02louder.mp3 and the associated end-notes are here: http://www.thecenterfor2012studies.com/MayanCreation-thestellarframe-notes-01.mp3.
“Maya Creation: The Stellar Frame and World Ages”: This article became Chapter 10 in my 1997 self-published version of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (Four Ahau Press, May 1997). It was written in March of 1995, and its core focus was how the ancient Maya were tracking the precession of the equinoxes. A PDF of the original article is here: http://www.thecenterfor2012studies.com/StellarFrameWorldAges1995-2.pdf.
Although this was written at an early stage of my research, the core elements of my reconstruction are there. How the ancient Mesoamericans were tracking precession is now being seriously explored in recent scholarly publications (e.g., Archaeoastronomy and the Maya, 2014), although “2012″ itself is still often alluded to with suspicion or derision. The connection between 2012 and the precession of the equinoxes is still an oddly taboo topic among scholars, for several reasons that I explored in my 2009 book The 2012 Story and my book of 2012 titled Reconstructing Ancient Maya Astronomy (Four Ahau Press). It will be interesting to witness in the coming years how academic consensus begins to shape itself toward a position on 2012 astronomy that reflects my own pioneering work. And my early work, such as this article, could be cited for early precedence in the effort to present evidence and argument as to how the precession-based solstice-galaxy alignment of era-2012 was encoded by the Maya into their core traditions.
No one prior to my work had performed this task, although a few thinkers suspected a connection. If the actual narrative sequence of discovery and publication were honored in forthcoming academic publications, my early work would be cited. But that’s not how it generally happens within the back-alley ego-politics of academia, despite my conversations with scholars, my work being presented in cite-able academic venues (e.g., the Institute of Maya Studies, 1997; the 75th SAA conference in April 2010), and the direct email exchanges I’ve had with Maya scholars.