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The world will not end (I hope, though a lot of people are doing their darnedest), but the age we live in will. The Mayan Long Count calendar started on August 11, 3114 BC and ends on the winter solstice of 2012, December 21. On this day a rare astronomical and Mayan mythical event occurs. In astronomic terms, the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. The Milky Way extends in a general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to travel in the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius. The cosmic cross formed by the intersecting Milky Way and plane of the ecliptic was called the Sacred Tree by the Maya. The trunk of the tree, the Axis Mundi, is the Milky Way, and the main branch intersecting the tree is the plane of the ecliptic. Mythically, at sunrise on December 21, 2012, the Sun rises to conjoin the center of the Sacred Tree. The Sun has not conjoined the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long before the Mayans arrived on the scene and long before their predecessors the Olmecs arrived. Due to a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the Earth's wobble that lasts almost 26,000 years, the apparent location of the Winter Solstice sunrise has been ever so slowly moving toward the Galactic Center. The Mayans noticed the relative slippage of the positions of stars in the night sky over long periods of observation, indicative of precession and by using an invention called the Long Count, they fast-forwarded to anchor December 21, 2012 as the end of the cycle and then counted backwards to decide where the calendar would begin. This period, known as the Great Cycle, lasting 1,872,000 days and equivalent to 5,125.36 years is 1/5 of a Great Great Cycle, known scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic Year - the length of the precession of the equinoxes. Over a year's time the Sun transits through the twelve houses of the zodiac. Many of us know this by what "Sun sign" is associated with our birthday. Upping the scale to the Platonic Year - the 26,000 year long cycle - we are shifting, astrologically, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The Mayan calendar does not really "end" in 2012, but rather, all the cycles turn over and start again, shifting to a new era.
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