Aztec Sun Calendar

[Contestant #3]

www.dayofdestiny.com (http://www.dayofdestiny.com)

Tells me that according to the Aztec Sun Calendar, August 13th, 1999 has been forecast for centuries by the ancient Aztecs as the beginning of a new world order (or something along those lines). To quote from the site:

"the Aztecs, or the Mexica, will rise from the ashes of their broken condition to create a new Aztec empire and our entire world will come together in way that's never been done before..."

Is this just a bunch of crap? Or are the Aztecs onto something? Maybe E1skeptic has some insight for us...

I'm gonna listen to the Art Bell program tonight because John Mini is a guest and an expert on this topic.


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Contestant #3

[ChrisCTP]

I don't know how much I believe in prophecies and foretellings and whatnot, but I love reading articles and watching programs about it all. I hope you see this response in time to tell me what time and station that show is supposed to be on. Go ahead and email me. Thanks.

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Veni, Vidi, Visa ... I came, I saw, I bought.

[Contestant #3]

Chris,

You've got mail

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Contestant #3

[E1skeptic]

As far as I'm concerned, all this Aztec Solar calendar predictions are nothing but a bunch of crap. Like the ones from Nostradamus, Jeanne Dixon, Paco Rabane, et al.

I don't have any more comments on this.

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Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire

[Contestant #3]

Frankly I'm surprised that you'd thumb your nose so readily at the culture of the Aztecs.

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Contestant #3

[nayaran]

Tells me that according to the Aztec Sun Calendar, August 13th, 1999 has been forecast for centuries by the ancient Aztecs as the beginning of a new world order (or something along those lines).

This Friday? I always knew there was a reason why I don't like my brother, now I know his 11th birthday will be the end of the world!

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"Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."--Dennis Miller

[E1skeptic]

C#3, do me a favor: learn to read!!!!

I never said anything about the Aztec culture. And for some reason, I guess I know much more about it than you. What I said is that the predictions you mention, are a bunch of crap. Ok?

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Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire

[Contestant #3]

Crap to you E1, serious stuff to the Aztecs and most certainly part of their culture. You must be part of the spanish-blooded ruling class rather than having a native Mexican heritage. My mistake.

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Contestant #3

[E1skeptic]

If you could only speak spanish, you moron!
I just visited the stupid website you posted, and it's almost as moronic and ignorant as you!

They (and you too, it seems), claim to know about a supposed aztec legend, but never make it clear where did they get all that info from. Am I supposed to believe some idiotic fantasy made up by a crazy "gringo" who can't even translate his webpage to spanish properly? How do you know this guy is not just CREATING a legend as most hoaxers do?

This Mr. Mini says that he lived in México, probably among some natives of aztec descent, and he calls the "médicos-brujos" (witch-doctors) shamans!!!!!. Just for your information, NO ONE uses that word here!

He claims to know a lot about my country and what's going on here, without our knowledge. Yeah, sure! Do you really believe all that shit? Geeeez!!!

If you really want to learn something, go here:
http://azteca.culturnet.com.mx/azt-cals.htm
The only problem is that you would have to learn Spanish first, and that could prove to be next to impossible.

Read my signature... please!

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Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire

[Guy Propski]

Well, there's one way to settle this little brouhaha--wait 'til Friday.

See you on Monday, C#3. Unless that interview I had with Azteca, Inc. comes through and I start my new job....

[David B]

E1Skeptic said:If you could only speak spanish, you moron!
E1, please cool it with the attacks or take it to to the Pit. You could have made all of your points without resorting to an attack.

[David B]

Whoops -- the above message should have been "signed" with the following, showing it was an official message:

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David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator

[Contestant #3]

David,

Give E1 a break. He's right, I cannot speak or read the Spannish language. Besides, his little comment was mild compared to the stalking that I get from Slythe (brother-in-law?)...

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Contestant #3

[David B]

Let me get this straight. You complain when I moderate you. You complain that I don't moderate others who haven't acted in a way needing moderation. But when I do moderate somebody who has insulted you, you complain about that, too? I think I see a pattern here...

But, even with your "defense," my message to him stands. If you want to insult people or be insulted by people, take it to the Pit.

If you have any more questions, please send them to me in e-mail so we don't clutter up this thread any further.

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David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator

[E1skeptic]

Hey, Dave, you're right. I shouldn't have let my emotions get in the way, but C#3 started it: "Crap to you, E1..." he said. Isn't that as "bad" as calling him a "moron"?

I think C#3 was defending me because he likes a "rough" debate, and he didn't really feel offended by my post.

Anyways, I'll cool it down, no problem.

[E1skeptic]

You know they spoke only náhuatl, that is, before Cortés. Unfortunately, after the conquest, Spanish was imposed on everyone, and náhuatl was relegated and almost banned. I wish it was taught in schools regularly.

Regarding my misunderstanding, I see it now. Sorry. But if IIRC, you are the one who introduced the "crap" thing (not directed to me, though, I admit) in your OP:Is this just a bunch of crap? Or are the Aztecs onto something?

Anyways, tell me something, C#3, did you listen to the Art Bell's interview of Mr. Mini? Was there any interesting, credible information said in the program? Being in México there's no way I can tune in to any radio station where Mr. Bell's program is broadcasted, and I'm curious.

Also, have you read the entire info given on the website you mentioned? I have the utmost respect for the Aztec culture, although this doesn't mean that I think it was the "most advanced" civilization there was. They were pretty much advanced in some ways, but they were also very cruel and supersticious (the spaniards were no less cruel and supersticious, BTW). What pisses me off is to see that someone like this Mr. Mini can come up with a bunch of lies, and tell the world that the Aztecs did this, and knew that, with no evidence whatsoever! All he has is his word about strange feelings, teachings he received from supposed aztecs, information about the government being "panicked" by the 13 de agosto profecies, wonderful technologies mastered by the Aztecs (he never says in the site what those are), etc. And in the end, he says that he doesn't know what is going to happen!

What a bunch of... well, crap!

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Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire

[Contestant #3]

E1,

If you have access to the internet (which it appears that you do), then you have access to listen to Art Bell. His program is broadcast over the internet. Just go to www.artbell.com (http://www.artbell.com) and follow the appropriate links. You will neeed RealPlayer and if you don't have it, you can download it for free.
All Art's programs are archived, so it's not too late for you to listen to the Mini interview yourself.

Since you asked though, the technology he spoke of had to do with the Aztec's understanding and use of electromagnetic wavelengths.

He claims that the Aztec Sun Calendar predicts a confluence of events that will change the world as we know it. A new world conciousness will emerge, orignating from Central Mexico. He says that this is a pivitol time and that the actions we (as humans) take now will seal our future fate...etc...etc...etc...

He claimed that the Aztec Sun Calendar had successfully predicted some important happenings in the past, like the date of the arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of the Aztec civilization.

Listen for yourself and let me know your thoughts please.

P.S. RealPlayer and www.broadcast.com (http://www.broadcast.com) have greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the internet. It's given me the ability to listen to sound clips, archived and live radio programs, audio books, etc... Good stuff.



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Contestant #3

[David B]

C#3 said:He claims that the Aztec Sun Calendar predicts a confluence of events that will change the world as we know it. A new world conciousness will emerge, orignating from Central Mexico. He says that this is a pivitol time and that the actions we (as humans) take now will seal our future fate...etc...etc...etc...So did he provide any hard and fast predictions, or just vague "entering a new age" kind of stuff? If the latter, then his claim of a prediction is pretty well untestable (if nothing happens on Friday, he can always say, "Ah, but it did happen -- we are just not yet aware of it."). If the former, it would amaze and astound me.

[E1skeptic]

C#3, thanks for the tip on Art Bell's. I'll check it out. Now, regarding the Aztec's supposed technological advancement (understanding and use of electromagnetic wavelengths), Mr. Mini is not specific about what kind of devices the Aztecs had (besides their own eyes) to make use of their knowledge. Is he?

I'll listen to the interview, and let you know my thoughts.

[C K Dexter Haven]

David, you skeptic you, every morning brings the dawn of a new age.

[Strainger]

Hmmm... I have to fly to Chicago this Friday, the 13th.

Oh crap.

[David B]

CKD: I dunno about that. I'm beginning to think every morning brings the dawn of old age. ;)

[E1skeptic]

C#3: I am (as I write this post) listening to the interview with John Mini, whom I'm not calling "Mr." anymore, and the words that come to my mind are definitely not suitable for the GD board (see, Dave, I'm behaving :)). All his gibberish about the Aztecs, and his "experiences" among them are one of the BIGGEST pieces of misinformation (in lieu of a nastier word) I have ever heard about the Aztec culture.

It is a shame that this was broadcasted coast to coast in your country, giving an ABSOLUTELY wrong idea about the wonderfully interesting culture of the Aztec people to your people. It's New Age propaganda in it's full splendor.

I'm really disappointed, and a little angry, but, hey, everybody is entitled to blatantly lie, oops, sorry, I mean, ...to express their opinions and (mis)educate others, right?

Shame on John Mini (and all the others like him)!!!

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Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire

[Contestant #3]

E1,

Thanks for your feedback.

Hey, at least it wasn't a total loss...you gotta admit that the RealPlayer/broadcast.com stuff is pretty cool! Right?

Hey did you hear that weirdo that called in and said that he was the second son of the second son and that he had recently been released fron San Quentin? LMAO!

Also, did you happen to listen to the beginning of the program (prior to the Mini interview) where they were talking about the Sun? If you did what did you think about that? I thought that part was MUCH more interesting!

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Contestant #3

[tracer]

Let's see ...

The world didn't end on Dec. 31, 999, as some doomsayers claimed it would.

The world didn't end in 1917, when the Jehovah's Witnesses said it would.

The world didn't end 7 years after the signing of the Middle East peace accord during Jimmy Carter's administration, when Hal "Late Great Planet Earth" Linden said it would.

Why should this alleged Aztec prediction of doom be any different?


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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[David B]

Thanks, E1.

In reference to what C#3 said, he did say "Crap to you" but that was only half of the phrase. The entire phrase was:Crap to you E1, serious stuff to the Aztecs
In other words, he wasn't using it as an insult, but saying, in other words: "These claims may be crap to you, but they were serious stuff to the Aztecs."

Hope that clears it up.

Thanks again.

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David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator

[Contestant #3]

E1,

You misunderstood the "crap to you" phrase that I used.

Previously you had written:

"What I said is that the predictions you mention, are a bunch of crap. "

So, you see, it was you that introduced "crap" into the conversation. My response was: (It may be) crap to you, but it's serious stuff to the Aztecs...

...get my drift?

You were correct in that I was in no way offended by your comments. I am (on the other hand) offended by David's brother-in-law Slythe...I wish David would correct him!

P.S. The Ancient Aztecs didn't speak Spanish did they?



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Contestant #3

[Guy Propski]

Didn't they speak Aztecisteinian? Aztecish? Azteclia?

[E1skeptic]

Actually, C#3, I didn't listen to anything else. The new Real Player is cool, though. Thanks. Regarding the part about the Sun, I might give it a try later.

Right now I'm getting ready to see the eclipse online. I betcha' that's going to be much more fun and interesting! Try this site:

webevents.broadcast.com/exploratorium/solareclipse/ (http://webevents.broadcast.com/exploratorium/solareclipse/)

Saludos.

[nayaran]

The world didn't end on Dec. 31, 999, as some doomsayers claimed it would.

The world didn't end in 1917, when the Jehovah's Witnesses said it would.

The world didn't end 7 years after the signing of the Middle East peace accord during Jimmy Carter's administration, when Hal "Late Great Planet Earth" Linden said it would.

Why should this alleged Aztec prediction of doom be any different?

Because C#3 said so?

One of my favorite quotes goes something like this: "The worst thing about a doomsday prediction is the misfortune of living until it is proven false."

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"Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."--Dennis Miller

[Contestant #3]

Because I said WHAT???

Defend yourself.

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Contestant #3

[Czarcasm]

I believe the implication is that you don't have the "b.s." filter and have a tendency to pass along unproven theories that have no basis in science and/or history, usuallu preceded by the phrase"I read somewhere.."
If I'm wrong, nayaran, just let me know.

[Contestant #3]

Implication my asstec!

He implies that I said doomsday was coming.

1. No, I wrote that I read that the dawn of a new age was coming (according to the Aztec Sun Calendar)

2. I didn't agree or disagree with it, but rather asked what others thought of the information

3. Butt out Troll

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Contestant #3

[Czarcasm]

Same as always, C3. Just waiting for the 3-count.

[nayaran]

I wasn't implying that you created this prophecy, C3. I just was mentioning that you were the first to bring it to our attention. Of course, the prophecy itself is as much BS as that of the Aztecs' closest neigbors, the Mayas, who say that the world will end in December, 2012 (?). Besides, I like paranoid people like you. They are definitely the most fun people in the world.

With that, I give you slythe...

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"Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."--Dennis Miller

[nayaran]

One more thing, #3, the statement was meant entirely as a joke, like my first post about the end of the world coinciding with my brother's birthday. Only after I sent the trollish statement did I realize that no one around here watches the WWF...

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"Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."--Dennis Miller

Ten-To-One C3 will start raving about "pyramid power", or something else from the Seventies, like pet rocks.
Just to anticipate the inevitable load of...... psuedo-intellectual nonsense, the Aztec pyramids were built over 2500 years after the Egyptian ones. So if the big bad spacemen helped them , they sure took their time about it. The two forms of monuments aren't even created for the same purpose: the Aztec pyramids were temples, the Egyptian's were tombs.
Hey C3! Since you didn't want the UFO transmission part or the Bigfoot carcass, how 'bout a gen-u-ine Jersey Devil call? It looks like a kazoo, sure. But blow it three times in the dark of the moon while dancing naked on the lawn of the Govener's Mansion, and the Jersy Devil WILL APPEAR! Yes, it may be disguising itself as a firefly [in summer] or a snowflake [in winter] but I sure that this will be as convincing a form of evidence [to you at least] as all the other stuff you post. $15 billion in Confedrate cash will get it delivered to your door!

[tomndebb]

I'm not sure where the the espousers of the 08/13/1999 date came up with it. I remember a similar question regarding the Aztec calendar on the AOL/SDMB last year, but the terminus date was December 12, 2008 (or 12/23/2013) or something--I'm doing this by memory). One of the recent cycles did begin on August 12, 3114 BCE, but that was not, specifically, an Aztec cycle.

The Aztecs had, actually, a multiple calendar system that tracked a 365 day solar year, a 584 day cycle of the orbit of Venus, a 260 day "reconciling" calendar that brought the other two calendars together in a 52 year cycle, and a 26,000 year cycle of the sun to which they assigned periods of legend. The last of the 26,000 year cycles that they had calculated ended early in the next (Gregorian) century. Several people have used this calculation to claim that the Aztecs predicted the end of the world on that date. However, my memory of the scholarly research on the subject was that that great turning was simply the point at which hey expected the cycles to begin again. (Since we know from the histories of the Olmecs, Totltecs, and Mayans that the Aztecs were not even around for the first several 26,000 year cycles, there is no real reason to believe that they were expecting the world to end at the end of their calculations.)

The next time I'm on AOL, I'll see whether the links I found the last time are still in the "favorites" folder. (I haven't always kept the favorites between my two ISP's synchronized and I haven't found the two web sites I used the last time.)

As to the general reliability of Aztec predictions (as opposed to their skills in calculationg calendars) I will note that they pretty well missed any relevant clues regarding Cortès.

[C K Dexter Haven]

::: opening door slowly, looking outside cautiously, holding out hand to feel for rain ::::

Hmmmmm. Doesn't feel like a New World Order.

[tomndebb]

OK. While not completely shot, my memory was hardly perfect. The following is the question and my reply on the AOL/SDMB. The most notable error is the fact that I was answering a question about the Mayans, not the Aztecs. On the other hand, some research on the EB and on the web leads me to believe that the Aztecs simply adopted the Mayan calendar without adding anything of their own calculations to it, changing a few gods and legends, but leaving the actual calendar just as they received it from the Maya.
{{{ In history class, my teacher was showing us a movie about the Mayans. The Mayans had a two wheel calender system which predicted how each day would be, and it was usually right. What bothered me though, was that the movie said that their calender predicted that the end of the world would come to an end on december 23, 2023 or something. Are they right?}}} HyPerSpiN7

As you have probably noticed from the other responses to this thread, most thinking, skeptical people dismiss this sort of silliness out of hand. On the other hand, the real story is prety interesting in a rather perverse way.

The Mayan Calendar was based on a 260 day year that fell within a cycle of months and years that did map closely to various astronomical phenomena. In other words, despite having a "short" year, the overall calendar could be used to predict the position of various stars,constellations, planets, and eclipses at any point over a several thousand year period. (The Maya got away with a short year because, unlike the Egyptians they had no flooding of
the Nile that they needed to predict and they had no regular winter-summer phenomenon that would have made them think that 260 was too few days for a "year.")

Coincidentally, the several different cycles of the Mayan Calendar that can be traced back to 3114 B.C.E. come to a close on December 21, 2012. This is not a prediction that the world will end. It is simply a turning point to begin the next series of cycles. This simply means that if there are 260 days in a "year" and there are so many days in one kind of period and a set number of "years" in another kind of period, there will come a point where
all the different cycles of days and years and periods actually wind up at the same point to start over.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's (when a lot of people had decided that Western Civilization had gone down the wrong path and that certainly some non-Western society had found the real Truth--only to be destroyed by white European society) several people decided that the Maya was the society that had gotten it "right". One nice feature about the Maya is their spectacularly accurate calendar. If your typical technophilic American wanted to
dismiss the ancient wisdom of the peyote-chewing Indians, chanting Tibetan monks, incense-burning Indian gurus, or whoever, that modern American *had* to be impressed by the mathematical abilities of the Mayans and their calendar.

And if that calendar *ended* on December 21, 2012 (by Gregorian reckoning), then maybe there was some special knowledge to be had from the Mayans.

Of course, being crackpots, they couldn't quite get it right. There is a big controversy between archaeologists and the true believers regarding the exact date. The more far out advocates of special Mayan wisdom hold that the cycle will roll on December 23, not December 21. They also decided that since the calendar "rolled" on that date, and since the Mayans had no astronomical predictions after that date, then that date must indicate the end of
the world.

The Mayan predictions related to their calendar have to do with planetary alignments. The Mayans did not predict the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, the two World Wars, or the atomic bomb.

The Mayan Calendar is fascinating. There is at least one fairly good web site devoted to it (there are probably many more):
The Goto.com search engine has this to say about it:
"The following links relate to the Mayan Calendar and/or Cosmology as interpreted by various non-Maya, mostly north-of-the-border, folks. Some of these interpretations are pretty out there but you might find them interesting nevertheless. "
http://www.netshaman.com/MayanCosmos.html

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Tom~