Farel Footman Does the Mayan calendar, which some say ends on Dec. 12, 2012, predict the end of the world, the transformation into a new age of enlightenment or simply the start of a new astronomical cycle?

Farel Footman of Ojai, a student of the Mayan culture, talked about the scope of Mayan calendar interpretations at a presentation sponsored by the Healing Tree Apothecary and Tea Bar in Thousand Oaks on Jan. 7.

The Mayan calendar was designed to record dates over a long period of time, from 3114 B.C. to 2012, or more than 5,000 years.

Footman based her discussion on the work of author Carl Johan Calleman, a scholar who has studied the calendar and believes the end date will usher in a new era of consciousness for people who "are ready."

In the glossary Footman passed out to guests, she said the "ancient Maya left no inscriptions about the ending of the long count (calendar) or any other cycle." Footman said that Calleman believes the October end date is more likely because all the planetary cycles will ascend at the same time.

"Earth is ascending," Footman said. "We're moving into another dimension."

A calendar's function is more y

n than a measurement of time, she said. In Footman's view, the Mayan calendar provides a "description of the whole divine plan."

In January 1999, humanity entered the eighth of nine "galactic underworlds," Footman said. Underworlds unfold according to the 13 holy steps of creation, and each underworld "evolves consciousness," ultimately ending with a new age of consciousness. Cosmic consciousness, however, is not an end. Footman believes the Mayan calendar accommodates physical and spiritual evolution, and consciousness will change every 20 days starting in mid-February 2011.

Another aspect Footman touched upon at the meeting was that there will be an alignment between the winter solstice sun and the equator of the Milky Way, or the galactic equator. Some believe that this alignment will cause magnetic changes in the earth that will either open up new connections with the universe or shift the earth off its magnetic axis, thus causing cataclysmic changes in weather patterns and planet alignment.

A history professor's view

Marie Francois, associate professor of history at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, agreed that the ancient Maya were "remarkable."

Francois discussed her views on the Mayan culture and calendars via e-mail.

"Their calendars are as accurate as the Western calendar and still used by indigenous people in Mexico and Central America," she said. "When I talk about the Mayan and time to students, my emphasis is on calendar systems and their interaction, not 'a' calendar, with interaction between earth (and) agricultural cycles and sacred cycles."

In Mesoamerica, Francois said, time is seen as cyclical, not linear. In some respects Francois agrees with Footman that an end of one cycle will usher in the beginning of a new cycle, although what the new cycle will bring is anyone's guess.

"I do not know that the idea of a doomsday fits into Mayan cosmology at all," she said. "Monumental changes are expected at the junctures—and these could be spiritual or symbolic or behavioral or an 'awakening of consciousness'—as well as physical and real world, but not as a catastrophic end to life."

Ultimately, the study of Mayan culture and their calendars is as complex as it is intriguing. Francois recommends works by Mayan scholars, including "Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path" by David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, and Michael Coe's book, "The Maya."