Mayan Blowout?

My previous post (from 12-17-12) collected such intriguing comments that I thought the subject would reward closer inspection. As friend Willie knows, I am probably not the ideal person to do this. It was he who introduced me 7 or 8 years ago to the Mayan Long Count prophesies through a long-running discussion between his friend, Professor Hoopes, and  Daniel Pinchbeck. I became also slightly acquainted with Terrence McKenna's cosmological abstractions and with José Argüelles' artistic and philosophical efforts to devise a correct and biologically accurate calendar for the whole planet. 

I suppose it is unavoidable for researchers who freely share their findings to be appointed willing or unwilling pontifices of speculative subcultures. The calendric year is said to have started at some remote point in the past with the appearance of the Pleiades asterism in the east just before the dawn light, so there has been ample opportunity for this enthusiasm to assert itself. It  develops, after all, in response to mystery.

This collection of essays, Trainride Of The Enigmas, concerns itself with mysteries. Why? Because we need them. Voltaire said, of God, that if He did not exist we would have to invent Him. Indeed, as humans learn the language of the universe --Nature-- it follows we need to form some idea of its personality, what it expects of us and we of IT. This is invention and it is a very big deal. A Mysterium Tremendum --or some other skull-thumping thunderclap a phrase-- can round things off well enough but getting through life, quantum navigation, wants more detail than thunderation.

We need the little everyday mysteries by which we learn, learn to read, to do, to read the expressions of others. We need them for the next round of greater mysteries which, in solving, guide us into love, conscience, duty, and --as ALL diarists and bloggers discover-- an understanding of those forces that shape our lives. Then, and only then, can we examine tremendous mysteries to any useful depth.

These are the mysteries to which we apply our whole minds and give our minds meaning. And to those who are disappointed tomorrow, there's a spare in the trunk.