Good evening.
I'm Jeffrey Quilter, director
of the Peabody Museum.
Welcome to our last
talk of-- well,
we think it's just the year.
[LAUGHTER]
And given the fact that there
are apocalyptic concerns,
we decided to invite
one of Harvard's
own to talk to us about it,
Mesoamerican specialist,
to boot.
David Carrasco is a
Mexican American historian
of religions and
the Neil Rudenstine
professor of Latin America,
holding positions in both
the department of anthropology
and the divinity school.
He has a particular interest
in religious dimensions
of human experience, especially
mixed with Mesoamerican cities
as symbols, immigration, the
Mexican-American border lands.
He studied with Mircea
Eliade, Charles H.
Long and Paul Wheatley at
the University of Chicago,
who inspired him to
work on the question,
where is your sacred place?-- on
the challenges of post-colonial
ethnography and theory, and
on the practices and symbolic
nature of ritual violence
in comparative perspective.
Working with Mexican
archaeologists,
he's carried out 20
years of research
in the excavations and
archives associated
with the sites of Teotihuacan
and Mexico Tenochtitlan.
He's participated in
spirited debates at Harvard
with Cornel West and
Samuel Huntington
on the topics of race, culture,
and religion in the Americas.
This has resulted
in publications
on ritual violence and
sacred cities, religion
and transculturation,
the great Aztec temple,
and the history of religions in
Mesoamerica and Latino/Latina
religions.
Recent collaborative
publications
include "Breaking
Through Mexico's Past,
Digging the Aztecs with Eduardo
Matos Moctezuma: and "Cave
City and Eagle's
Nest, an Interpretive
Journey Through the Mapa
de Cuauhtinchan Number 2,"
gold winner of the 2008
PubWest Book Design
Award in the academic
book, non-trade category.
He was also recently featured in
the "New York Review of Books."
His work has included
a special emphasis
on the religious dimensions of
Latino experience, [INAUDIBLE],
the myth of [INAUDIBLE],
transculturation,
and the Virgin of Guadalupe.
He's co-producer of the film
"Alambrista, the Director's
Cut," which puts a human face
on the life and struggles
of undocumented Mexican farm
workers in the United States.
And he edited "Alambrista and
the US-Mexico Border-- Film,
Music, and Stories of
Undocumented Immigrants."
He is editor-in-chief
of the award-winning,
three-volume
"Oxford Encyclopedia
of Mesoamerican Cultures."
His most recent publication
is a new abridgment
of Bernal Diaz del
Castillo's memoir
of the conquest of
Mexico, "History
of the Conquest of New Spain."
Carrasco has received
the Mexican Order
of the Aztec Eagle, the highest
honor the Mexican government
gives to a foreign national.
And it's a pleasure to know
him personally as well.
So would you please
join me in the end
of the world but the
beginning of David Carrasco?
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
We've had our first snafu.
There's supposed to be
images on both sides
in these other screens.
That doesn't mean
it's an apocalypse,
but it means something.
And perhaps the technician
will come back and fix this.
So I'd like to express my
thanks to Professor Quilter
for this introduction and wish
him well in his new leadership
here at the Peabody Museum.
The Peabody Museum,
in my view, is
one of the real treasures
of the Harvard campus.
And people don't realize
that just because it's
an old building doesn't
mean that there's
old thoughts going on here.
And I think that
Jeff and the staff
here have to be given
special recognition
for the everyday
work that they do
to make the educational
experience at the Peabody
Museum really top
notch for students.
And I think they deserve all the
support that we can give them.
I'd like to also
thank the Peabody
for inviting me to be part of
this divination lecture series.
And I'd like to thank Pamela
Gerardi and Faith Sutter
for their support along the way.
Almost 30 years ago, the
world-famous historian
of religions and
novelist, Mircea Eliade
gave a standing-room-only
lecture in the Glenn Miller
Ballroom at the University
of Colorado entitled,
"Waiting for the Dawn."
Apropos of our
topic tonight, here
are the opening
words of that lecture
given in October of 1982.
Eliade said, "It
has been remarked
that one paradox characteristic
of our postwar period
is the coexistence of a
tragic, neurotic pessimism
with a robust, almost
candid optimism.
A great number of scientists,
sociologists, and economists
draw increasing attention the
imminent catastrophes which
menace our world-- not only
our Western type of culture
and socio-political
institutions,
but mankind in general and
even life on our planet.
On the contrary, other
authors, less numerous
but equally energetic, exalt
the great scientific discoveries
and fantastic
technological conquests
accomplished or underway
in recent decades."
Eliade said, "Although
they approach subjects
from opposing positions,
these thinkers
illustrate different aspects
of the same cultural process,
the conviction that we are
witnessing the end of our world
and are thus on a threshold
of some decisive event, either
a total extinction or the
beginning of a new creation."
Eliade, the author
of such great works
as "The Myth of Eternal Return,"
"Sacred and Profane," "Myths,
Dreams and Mysteries,"
"Shamanism,"
as well as "Yoga, Immortality
and Freedom," as well as
the novels "The
Forbidden Forest"
and "Isabel and the
Devil's Waters,"
went on in the 1982
lecture to give
numerous examples, in his
time, of apocalyptic thought
and action.
He spoke of American and
European youth's exaltation
of rock music, the
Blue Oyster Cult,
and "Don't Fear the Reaper," Bob
Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind,"
and "A Hard Rain
is Going to Fall,"
the Doors, the
French group Magma,
science fiction writing, a plan
to save the tropical forests,
Robert Heilbroner's "An Inquiry
into the Human Prospect,"
where he talks about the
dangers of overreaching
the thermal limit
for the atmosphere.
And Eliade read the terrifying
sentence from the plan
to save the tropical
forests that
went, "the tropical rainforests
are the world's rich gene
banks.
And as they start
to disappear, so
do our options for the future.
It is just like
walking along a plank
and starting to cut away at
the wood behind us with a saw.
If a culture sins
against the forest,
its biological
decline is inevitable.
60 million years of
evolution is being
converted into worthless
paper packaging," he wrote.
He also referred to the
great theologian Teilhard de
Chardin and his conception
of the cosmic Christ,
where Chardin said, "Love
is the affinity which
links and draws together
the elements of the world.
Love, in fact, is the agent
of a universal synthesis."
He also spoke, Eliade,
in his lecture,
of Arthur Clarke's
prediction of encounters
with extraterrestrial
beings, the construction
of a world brain, and man's
immortality by the year 2100.
At one point in the lecture,
Eliade quoted this passage
from Christian Vander's
group Magma in a cut
called, "Mechanic
Destructive Commando."
"The creatures of
rage-- the choirs,
the music of iron and
ice, the shrill shrieks
which sketch the
inextinguishable apocalypse--
these creatures of rage who come
to smash the earth to powder
and sweep away the multitudes.
And the Immeasurably
putrid chaos of our world
is delivered up to
the angels of darkness
who come to punish the insane
pride of the earthlings."
That certainly sounds
like angry people to me.
[LAUGHTER]
I introduce this
lecture on apocalypse
with ample comments from Mircea
Eliade to make two points.
First, human concerns and
fears of the end of time,
or apocalypse,
have, for some time,
been a widespread, ever-present
concern among human beings,
and not only in
the Western world.
If you go back 30 years before
Eliade's lecture to 1952,
we find that in that
year, President Truman
revived his ratings with a State
of the Union speech focused
on the claim that America
was in its greatest
peril from the
communist aggressions
all around the world.
If you go back 30 years
before that to 1922,
you find that, well, the
apocalypse was everywhere
for someone.
A typhoon hit Shantou,
China, killing
more than 50,000 people.
If you go back 20 years
before that to 1892,
the Sierra Club was formed
by John Muir in San Francisco
for the conservation of nature.
A mine explosion killed 100
people in Krebs, Oklahoma,
and black people, trying to
help rescue white survivors,
were driven away with guns.
If you go back and back, you'll
see that apocalyptic fears
about nature, race,
and the economy, well,
they're always with us.
The second point in bringing
Eliade to us at the beginning
is to say that the fear
of apocalypse soon,
or waiting for the
dawn, always seems
to fluctuate between a
fearful, negative view
of the immediate future and
a hopeful, positive view
of the immediate future and
the world we live in now.
We can all identify, I
think to some extent,
with the natural disasters
of Hurricane Sandy
and its impact on our
consciousness, the tsunami that
hit the Japanese islands,
and Katrina, and some of us,
clearly a small majority,
expressed a sense of renewal
with the recent election
of Barack Obama.
Of course, some will say that
it means the end is ever closer.
In what follows,
I want to lead us
on a tour, a comparative
discussion of apocalypse now,
a tour of apocalyptic
and millennial themes
and movements found in
three traditions, Native
American or
Mesoamerican traditions,
but I want to make it
clear that in doing this,
I'm not favoring the
so-called Maya prophecy.
This is the closest I
can get to divination
and the Maya calendar.
This lecture is in a
series on divination.
And so here you see a moment
of divination showing up.
And I think this
is about as good
as the scholars and
the popular people
have gotten to divining that
the Maya calendar actually
predicts an end of the world.
Because I think what we know now
is that none of that is true.
And we'll talk about
that during this lecture.
I want to talk about another
culture that, in fact, does
have cosmology that did
project the end of the world
repeatedly over and over
again through a discussion
of the Aztec calendar stone.
And I certainly want
to talk about where
apocalyptic language and
interpretation comes from,
which is from the
Christian tradition,
the Jewish Christian
tradition that is found
in the Book of Revelation.
Here you have an
image from El Greco
of the opening of the fifth
seal of the apocalypse.
And moving into an
area where people
don't think of
apocalyptic thinking,
I want to, if I have time,
talk about the apocalypse
in Buddhism and especially
the concept of Mappo,
or the declining age, that
we are all living in now,
according to some people
in the Buddhist tradition.
At the end, I want to talk about
a new book, a children's book
that my daughter and I have
written as a kind of rejoinder
to all of this talk
about the Maya apocalypse
in a book called "Mysteries
of the Maya Calendar Museum."
And that should be a lot of fun.
But as a way of
trying to help us,
I'd like to talk
a little bit first
at the beginning about
an apocalyptic pattern.
You have all this language
going on in academia and also
in the public sphere
about apocalypse.
But what is apocalypse?
What does it mean?
Well, historians of
religions, like Eliade
and many anthropologists, have
studied these kind of movements
all over the world.
And they've come up
with a kind of pattern
that can help us understand what
could be meant by apocalypse
an apocalyptic movements.
And I'd just like
to talk about them
a little bit so that when we
look at these other traditions,
we can sort of evaluate
them from a kind of protocol
to see if, in fact, we do
see evidence of apocalypse,
or is something else going on?
So people who have looked
at these different types
of movements and
these texts will first
of all say that, in
order for it to really
be an apocalyptic
movement, there's
got to be a message
that has appeared
in a vision or a dream.
It's usually given to
a prophet or someone
who becomes a prophet.
You're not really talking
much about apocalypse
unless there's this
vision, until there's
this moment of a dream.
This vision usually communicates
that there's a transformation,
and it's coming very soon.
As a matter of fact, if
you believe in the Maya,
it's 23 days from now.
So you better get things
straight in your own life.
So the message is that there's
an imminent transformation,
and the imminent
transformation is this-worldly.
It's going to affect
us on this world,
on this level of the cosmos.
It's going to be terrestrial.
It's going to affect
your everyday life.
And the signs of it are usually
that this world is in decline.
There's all kind
of signs around us
that the world is in decline.
There's danger.
There's a high increase
in human suffering,
says the prophet who
has gotten the message
in a dream about an
imminent transformation.
It's very important
to understand
that in apocalyptic movements,
the transformation is
understood to be a
total transformation.
It's not just a transformation
over there in East Boston.
It's happening everywhere.
And the idea, that
the prophet tells you,
is that it's not just
your neighborhood.
It's the whole universe.
And so there's this
sense of urgency.
There's a sense of totality.
And there's also a
sense that the message
has come from another
level of reality to us.
It's very important, I think.
Because when I read some of
this literature in preparation
for this lecture on the
so-called Maya Prophecy,
even among some of the
scholars, I don't think
they really understand
what prophecy means.
Prophecy doesn't mean a
prediction in the future.
To get a prophecy means you
have received a message that
comes from outside of you from
another level of the world,
and it's come into your mind.
And you're not
making a prediction.
You're carrying
forth a message that
has come from the gods, the
ancestors, spirits, animals,
or some other place.
And what they claim is that
there's a total transformation.
On my scholarship, I always
like to focus on the city.
And so what you'll see in a
number of these traditions,
in fact, all of the ones
that we look at tonight,
is that there's
always an emphasis
on a city as the concrete
example of the place
where the transformation
is taking place,
where there has been
this message delivered.
It doesn't always
have to be a city,
but often the city
is emphasized.
This is another thing that's
really interesting when
you look at apocalyptic
movements around the world,
is people have got
all these numbers.
And you'll see those
numbers showing up tonight.
And it's not just the Maya who
have all these many numbers.
The Christians have the numbers.
The Buddhists have the numbers.
The Aztecs have the numbers.
And these numbers are viewed as
sacred numbers, as themselves
a part of the revelation,
a part of the message.
And it allows people
in the community
to go around and
detect where there
is a sign or a moment where
these numbers are showing
themselves.
Often it has become that
there's a catastrophe.
Now, the catastrophe
for some people,
especially in
minority communities
who get involved
in these movements,
they'll say, look, the
catastrophe already happened.
The catastrophe happened
to us because we're black
and we were slaves.
Or the catastrophe happened
to us because we were Jews
and the temple was destroyed.
And then some say, well, there's
another catastrophe coming.
And the catastrophe
that's coming
is going to get the people
who gave us our catastrophe.
And it's not only
going to get them,
it's going to be a
total catastrophe.
Now, not all
apocalyptic movements
push the catastrophe hard.
But it's very
interesting to see how
different versions
of a catastrophe
are part of this message of an
imminent transformation that
is this-worldly, total, that you
can detect by numbers, and then
in fact leads either to a golden
age or a period of travail.
So let's really
begin where we should
when we talk about apocalyptic
thinking in the Western world.
This is John of Patmos, who
was the author of Revelation,
has a great vision.
But while many of
us in this room
will think of "Apocalypse
Now" or apocalypse soon
in terms of Francis Ford
Coppola's great film
about the US involvement
in Vietnam, few of us
know that the word "apocalypse"
is from the Greek apocalypsis,
which originally meant-- and
this is very important in terms
of why I have such
a problem with some
of this so-called Maya
apocalypse thought.
The word means uncovering
some sort of hidden meaning.
It means a revelation,
a revelation
of a highly enigmatic
or a mysterious message
that's often brought
or interpreted
by a charismatic figure.
It's a revelation
of something hidden.
It's an unmasking.
It's an unmasking of something.
We think the world
as we know is real.
That's the mask.
And all of a sudden, this
mask is taken off in a dream
or in a vision.
And the person
comes to understand
what's behind the mask.
And what's behind the
mask is really what's real
and what's in the future.
This is what the word
"revelation" means.
This charismatic
figure, he may not
have been charismatic
before he got the vision,
but after he gets the vision
and becomes charismatic,
a prophet, a seer, a shaman, he
warns of the end of the world,
of judgment day, of the
reversal of cosmic order.
One of the big symbolisms
in many of these movements
is reversal, the reversal
of the status quo.
Or the low becomes high
and the high becomes low.
Those who were on the left will
be on the right, and so forth.
This is the way that
it's often thought of.
One of the persons who has
written a great deal about this
recently is Elaine Pagels.
And in talking about this Book
of Revelations in the Bible,
it would be interesting.
Let me ask.
How many people here
have actually read
the Book of Revelations?
OK, some of you.
It's not a great
record, but it's OK.
But it's all right,
because according
to Elaine Pagels, quote,
"It's the strangest book
in the Bible."
It's the most controversial.
She writes, it's a
book of furious images
of wonder, violence,
nightmares, darkness,
and sleep, of interior dreams."
And all of that, for this Jewish
community that really produced
the Book of Revelation, all of
that was a source of thought,
not just a source of fear.
All of those dreams
and nightmares
and nighttime worryings
becomes a resource for thinking
and a resource for theology.
Theology just doesn't come
out of university studies.
They often come out of these
troubled times within people.
And she's talking
about it in this way.
I like this image by
El Greco because it
shows a very important point
about the Book of Revelation.
And that is, even though it
was a strange book, weird book,
really, the last book
to get into the Bible,
it's had a tremendous
influence through history.
It's had a tremendous influence
through history, Milton, Yates,
James Baldwin,
films and painters.
Here, El Greco is
showing you a moment
in the Book of Revelation,
and you get a sense here
of what I mean when I talk
about this pattern of some sort
of vision or so forth.
Here you see this opening, and
you get a sense of the light
and the sky, the fact that
people are appearing nude
and they've been reduced
to their basic humanity.
There's this sense
of wonder and awe.
There's a child who appears.
New life appears at the
opening of this fifth seal.
What Elaine Pagels says in her
study is that up until now,
people, perhaps not
those of you in the room,
claim that these visions
are being fulfilled
before their very eyes.
And she says, quote,
"The popularity
of the Book of Revelation
speaks to something deep
in human nature.
It always feels very
relevant to who we are."
The other thing about
this book that's
very important in terms
of apocalyptic movements
is that the Book of Revelation
is about these marginal folks,
these outsiders.
At the beginning of the
story, they're persecuted.
They're losers.
They're people on the periphery.
But it's a story about how
this vision and their community
eventually becomes
the insider religion,
becomes the successful religion.
So even though it's not
an apocalyptic reversal,
over time this
message works its way
into the official documents
of the new Christian tradition
and the empire that it becomes.
Today, as we know,
the word "apocalypse"
is commonly used in reference
to any prophetic revelation
or so-called end-time
scenario and to the end
of the world in general.
And this book set
the pattern, both
within the Christian tradition
and the Jewish tradition,
and in many other
traditions, especially
in colonized communities,
where the book was taken.
What often happened
in Africa and Latin
America and some other places
when the Christians came in
with this book and they
came in with the story,
local people would pick it up,
people who weren't Christians,
who were becoming Christians.
They'd pick up, and they'd
often turn to this book,
as Roberto Mata is showing
us in his research.
They'd often turn
to this book because
of this revolutionary,
wild kind of story
that the world could be
transformed and turned
upside down, where the
outsiders, through their anger
and through their fury and
through their commitments,
could somehow bring about
a change in the world.
What I'd like to
do is to just show
you one passage from
the Book of Revelation
so you can get a sense of how
this pattern that I opened up
with is present there.
And you can also
get a sense of how
some of the language from
the Christian apocalypse,
the Jewish Christian
apocalypse, how this gets
picked up and becomes
attractive to us.
So here's some
lines from chapter
21, where you have
this notion of, I saw
a new heaven and a new earth.
Now, what is impressive to me
about this is he's not saying,
I thought about a new
heaven and a new Earth.
He's not saying,
I dreamed it up.
He says, I saw it.
In other words, it
was an experience.
It was something that my
body took in to itself.
And what I saw was amazing.
It was a new heaven
and a new Earth.
And "the first heaven and the
first Earth were passed away."
And these are very
important if you
want to talk about a real
apocalyptic movement,
because you've got to have
the energy through your vision
to really bring about
and claim for a change,
not that you think
about or ponder
or, I'm going to
write an exam about.
No, I saw it.
And it was a new
heaven and a new Earth,
and the other one was gone.
Now of course, he's seeing
something in the future.
So he's seeing it in the future.
Now, that's a lot
of good seeing.
He's not just predicting it.
He's seeing it.
It's a tactile experience,
something that's there.
And here comes that city.
And it says, "I,
John," what did I see?
Oh, I saw a city.
I saw a new Jerusalem,
a holy city.
Not just any city,
I saw the holy city,
the city that today--
today-- is the focus
of our Islamic community,
of the Christian community,
of the Jewish community.
This is the center of the world.
He saw the center of
the world coming down
from God out of heaven.
So he's seeing an amazing thing.
This is what I mean
by what a prophecy is.
This is the vision.
And it's a radical vision.
And it's very interesting
that you immediately
have a notion of a
kind of a family,
of a husband and a
wife, of a new union
of a hieros gamos of the sky
and the earth coming together.
So this is the kind
of vision that you
have that's apocalyptic.
And throughout the
Christian art, you see this.
Here's an image of
the city of Jerusalem
coming to Earth from heaven.
Again, my city, it's a place.
So this idea of an apocalyptic
emotional transformation,
there's always this notion
of a place, structures,
buildings themselves where
people can dwell, architecture.
There's an architecture
to this particular vision.
And again, you see it
here with the walls,
the angel itself giving John
of Patmos the message of this.
It goes on.
It says, "And God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes,
and there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow,
nor crying."
So what's this about?
Well, it's about
a lot of things,
but it's about human suffering.
This is why it appeals
to so many people,
because it's about
human suffering.
It's the end of human suffering.
So what's the apocalypse mean?
This is not what you're
hearing about the Maya.
It's about the end
of human suffering.
And how will it end?
God will wipe it away.
God himself will take
away this suffering.
He'll wipe away these tears, and
there shall be no more death.
Even death will be
overcome and sorrow.
Now, this is from a community.
This is from a community
that's been suffering
a lot of death, more death
than it needed to renew itself,
more sorrow.
And you can imagine
the appeal of this
to people in
colonial situations,
as well as any of
us, because there
will be no more pain, no
more pain in the future.
"And he said upon
the throne said,
Behold, I make all things new.
And he said unto me"-- this is
very important in terms of what
you're going to see in all of
these traditions that we look
at tonight-- "Write."
Write the vision.
Write it down.
In other words, spread the word.
This is not a
vision just for you.
It's not even one
just to be preached.
It's something that's
got to be written down,
because these are
the true words.
These are the faithful words.
This is scripture.
So this man has received this.
And what you've got to do is
you're got to write it down.
And it's very important, because
you'll see in many traditions
the role of scribes and the
power of writing in this.
And then you get this very
famous phrase, "It is done.
I'm the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
I will give unto
him that is athirst
of the fountain of the
water of life freely."
And "I will be his
God, and he shall
be my son," two things here.
In other words, you
don't need anything else.
I'm the beginning,
and I'm the end.
This is the total
transformation that I'm
giving to you that is imminent.
And then you have this notion
of, again, family, father
and son.
Before you have a marriage.
Now you have a father and son.
So it also speaks to this
kind of social situation.
I'm not saying every
apocalyptic movement has this,
but it's important
if we're going
to talk about apocalypse
that we also at least pay
some attention to this.
And there are some other
scholars in the audience,
some colleagues of mine from the
divinity school who can help us
with this in ways that I can't.
Now, one of the things I
wanted to let you know about
is, how does this come to us?
Well, it comes to us,
this vision of apocalypse
comes to us certainly
through the Christian church
and many of its
teachings and preachings.
But this is a figure
you ought to know about
if you want to consider
how some of these ideas
have made it into secular
and religious thinking,
leading up until today,
Joachim of Fiore,
this very important monk,
a very important writer,
who is living
during these years,
called the most singular
and fascinating figure
of medieval Christianity.
He appears in Dante's
"Paradise" as a figure
that Dante looked
up to and revered.
He lives at a time
that scholars have
called "the turning point,"
which was the 12th century.
This was a time of the
Crusades and the conquest
of the Normans.
In other words, this
is another element
about a lot of apocalyptic
thinking, at least
in terms of the Judeo
Christian tradition.
It's often about warfare.
It's in the time
of war, and it's
in a time that is almost a
kind of warfare literature.
So during the time
of Joachim of Fiore,
who takes this
apocalyptic tradition out
of the Judeo Christian
tradition and moves it forward
in history, you also have a time
of great upheaval and schisms
in the Catholic
church, so Joachim.
Now, he's part of
something I think
shows up in the Aztec and
Maya communities, certainly
in the Buddhist
community as well,
and that is a lot of this
comes out of monastic life,
comes out of these monasteries.
And this monasteries,
during the time
of Joachim of Fiore and
Bernard of Clairveaux,
these are the people,
both men and women,
but in this case men, who
were spending a lot of time
reading the Bible.
And when they're
reading the Bible,
they're finding themselves
having these little whammy
experiences with
reading the Bible.
And they're talking
to one another.
And Bernard of Clairveaux
develops this method
called the Lectio Divina.
And this is something we'd
like to see our students feel
a bit more of.
When you read a book, it's
not just for the information.
The idea is that it's alive.
It's alive on the page.
And you've got to
be able to read
between the lines for the
life that is in the page,
because what's in
the page is really
this divine word, this message
for anyone who can see it.
And so this abbot here picks
this up, and here comes
some of the numbers, and he
develops a tremendous sort
of vision of history itself.
All of history has been
in three stages, really
Christian history,
been in three stages,
big numbers showing up here.
First of all, this
Age of the Father.
He reads the Bible, and
he sees that there's
this Age of the Father
that is now passed.
And this is when people were
obedient to the mankind,
to the rules of God.
There's another age that
he discovers in the Bible.
This is the Age of the Sun
that's between Christ and 1260,
because he thinks in 1260.
that's the big here.
That's the big year.
That's his big year.
And up to that
point, human beings
really were the son of God.
But now we've entered the
age of the Holy Spirit.
And the reason I'm
telling you about this
is because this guy's
ideas get picked up
big time in European society,
not just by religious people,
but many secular people.
This tripartite view of history
gets picked up in Marxism.
It gets picked up in a number
of other social theories.
Even though they
may not be talking
about the religious
meaning, they pick up
on Joachim of Fiore's notion.
And the notion is that
just around the corner,
we'll be in direct
contact with God.
We'll reach the total
freedom preached
by the Christian message.
And throughout his writing,
numbers are real big.
He used symbols to lay out the
theology of history, the number
1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 12.
What's left?
It was also used to
organize everyday reality.
But he's saying, in my lifetime,
just around the corner,
is going to be this big
change in the world,
and we are going to really
experience God's presence
through us, especially
if we can get
people to read the Bible this
way, says Joachim of Fiore.
And he's an artist.
He writes this.
He paints it.
Here's the three
stages of history,
and you can see that they're
all intertwined in some way.
They're connecting.
But as you move toward this
period of the Holy Spirit,
where people are really going
to know God face to face,
they are still connected
to the other two.
But you really want to
be in that third one.
There's also this number
seven, and what he does is he
lays out something
that's also very
important in apocalyptic
thinking-- the adversary.
You're really not going to
have an apocalyptic movement
anywhere unless there's
an adversary, something
else rather missing in
this Maya discussion.
There's always an adversary in
this real apocalyptic thinking.
And this is the
seven-headed serpent.
And actually, each of them is
related to one of the popes
or someone else in Catholic
history that he's against.
So the seven is not
just a vague number.
Specific people, institutions
are getting picked on,
are getting noted
in order for people
to understand what
we're up against
or to bring about
this great change.
Now, all of this--
and of course,
there's a great deal more.
All of this prophecy of
the Book of Revelation,
and also Joachim
of Fiore, this is
very important in terms
of how people in Europe
came to see the
Maya and the Aztecs.
Because this vision that
I've been laying out for you,
it comes to Mexico and
it comes to the Caribbean
with the very first
Franciscans who arrive.
Because they're coming right
out of this tradition of Joachim
of Fiore.
In a wonderful book called
"The Millennial Kingdom
of the Franciscans
in the New World,"
John Leddy Phelen lays this out
in a chapter called "Apocalypse
in the Age of Discovery."
And what you find is that
when Europeans came to Mexico,
especially from the
church, they were carrying
with them this apocalyptic
thought, that somehow
the third age was
them in the New World.
And if they could just get
the Aztecs and the Maya
and these other people to be
baptized with their saliva,
to genuflect it this way,
to become Christians,
at least baptized as
Christians, then in fact,
there could be this
apocalypse that would
be a wonderful apocalypse.
And in fact, Jesus
would come back.
And if you read
this book, you can
see I'm not talking about
a minority of these people.
I'm talking about
the majority of them
were perceiving
indigenous priests,
these indigenous
people in this way.
So I wanted to make sure
that when we move now
into the Native American
people in the Americas,
I wanted you to
get a sense of what
apocalyptic language means.
And also, this is
what impacts it.
This is what comes to
them, and some of them
begin to see themselves,
that is, indigenous people,
in this way as well.
So Part 2-- Maya
Apocalypse-- Not Soon.
In preparing for this
talk, I looked at a lot
of cartoons, a lot of cartoons.
And it's going to freak
somebody out someday.
It certainly is
freaking them out now.
Here's another one. "Literally
translated, it says,
we're toast in 2012."
They look over here.
So here we are at the time of
the so-called Mayan Prophecy.
We've had Anthony Aveni
come here several times.
We've got T-shirts you can get.
Dates, numbers are showing up.
These numbers are
very important.
But to me, this
cultural fascination
with the Maya
ending date reminds
me of a similar fascination
with the death of God movement
in the 1960s.
"Time" magazine got
caught up in this
and put the question
on one of its covers.
A handful of Protestant
theologians-- they were mainly
Protestant theologians--
made a big splash
by interpreting the postwar
shifts in church attendance
and theological thinking
as signs that God
had died in Western culture.
Insightful commentators noted
that what was coming to an end
was what Paul Tillich
called the Protestant Era.
People had confused
the weakening
of the cultural influences of
Protestantism with the notion
that God was dying.
It was a particular god or
people's conception of God
that was undergoing reduction
of power and influence.
And the "New York" came up
and said, well, maybe it
means that America
is dead in some way.
Of course, Neitzsche
years before
had said that God
was dead, but it
looks like God got
the last word when he
said that Neitzsche was dead.
[LAUGHTER]
And so the question is, who
wins in these apocalypse?
You have to be careful
when you go around claiming
that God is dead.
But let's just say a
little bit something
about the Maya, because
I know some of you
are here to hear that, although
other people have given better
lectures than I can
give on the Maya.
We know that research has taught
us that the Maya, well, they
had many calendars,
but there were
three calendars in particular.
There was this Tzolkin, that
divinitory calendar, 260 days.
There was the Haab, the
administrative solar calendar
of 360 days with five dangerous
days, which was very important.
But the one that's got
everybody freaked out
is the Long Count,
this cumulative.
And the Long Count
really is a count
that imagines a cosmic creation
that happened long ago.
On the date it's calculated
as August 11, 3114 BC.
Long Count means
that since that time,
there have been 13
cycles of 144,000 days,
with the 13th ending in 23 days
from now on December 21, 2012.
Now does this constitute or mark
an apocalyptic moment or event
in either Maya
thinking or prophecy?
That's the question.
And there have been conferences
all over the country
about this.
And all the scholarship says no.
All the scholarship
says that there
was no prophecy in any of the
surviving glyphs or documents
that suggest that the Maya
thought that this was going
to be some sort of
catastrophe in their world
or anybody's world.
But today, there's more
than 1,500 books that
can be purchased online or
from local bookstores claiming
that the Maya prophesied an
apocalypse-- more than 1,500
of these books.
It's been well researched.
A recent publication from "The
Journal of Archeoastronomy
and Culture" has shown this.
John Carlson, one of these,
writes in harsh judgment,
"The public craving for
esoteric apocalyptic secrets
and millennial visions, ranging
from catastrophic Armageddon
to the dawning of an enlightened
"new age" are being fed"--
and here's a pretty
good phrase--
"by a virtual army of
these 'feathered snake-oil
salesmen' as many await the
return of the Plumed Serpent,
Quetzalcoatl," the Maya
K'uk'ulkan, on December 21,
2012."
Now, this group of
scholars who really
have very good
Maya scholars have
decided that they
would have a conference
and they would
try to figure out,
how did this rumor that the
Maya had an apocalypse in mind
or an end of time in this
significant, heavy way in mind
when they were alive, when their
culture, the classic culture,
was really going.
And what they came up with
was that we have no record
or knowledge that
the Maya would think
the world would come to an end
in 2012, says Susan Milbrath.
Wyllys Andrews says, "There
will be another cycle.
We know the Maya thought
there was one before this,
and that implies they were
comfortable with the idea
of another one after this."
So this group of
scholars who went back
through the scholarship
for the last 50 years
to try to find out
what did the idea first
come that the Maya
themselves thought
that there was going to be this
apocalyptic change in 2012.
And they found out where it was.
The offending passage appears
in Michael Coe's first version
of a book called "The
Maya," published in 1966,
which you could
buy then for $2.95.
He was comparing the
Maya sense of time
with the expansive
notion of Hindu kalpas.
And he writes, quote, "There
is a suggestion that Armageddon
would overtake the
degenerate peoples
of the world and all
creation on the final day
of the 13th baktun.
The universe will be annihilated
on December 24, 2011."
In another edition,
he changed it
to what is the more correct
date, December 21, 2012.
So what they've shown is
that-- Michael Coe, by the way,
is a top-notch, very fine
scholar, young at the time.
He's trying to interpret
this for people.
It's a really a
trade book almost.
What he decides to
do is to suggest
that the Maya
themselves were thinking
about Armageddon at the
end of this calendar cycle.
And what's been shown now
is that it just is not true.
And the more I look at this,
there's just so evidence.
But one of the most
impressive possibilities
is this particular page from the
"Dresden Codex," which people
have looked at where you
have the sky serpent,
and he's pouring out all
this water onto the Earth.
And so people are saying,
oh, this is the great deluge.
This is the end of the
world and so forth.
And in fact, in a very fine
article by Eric Velasquez
Garcia, he really is able
to contextualize this page
and to show you that, in
fact, in Maya thinking,
in Maya communities, they
were concerned periodically
about cosmic changes,
floods, earthquakes
and so forth, as I'm
going to show you
in a minute in the Aztec case.
But there's no association of
that with this particular date.
And the only other piece of
evidence that is possible,
and I'm sure some of you
have heard this before,
comes from this
Tortuguero Monument
6, where you have a
text over here that
is one of the few texts,
one of maybe the two texts,
that mentions the end of
the Long Count in 23 days.
And at one point, David Stuart,
who is a very fine scholar,
wrote an article
years ago where he
used the idea of a prophecy
in relationship to this.
And a lot of people
picked it up in popular.
And he writes now,
"Upon more reflection
and after looking at a number
of comparative examples,
I now can lend my full support
for Steve Houston's analysis,
as well as his assertion that no
prophetic statement about 2012
likely exists in Monument
6 inscription," which
leads me to say that it's
amazing how much mileage has
been gotten out of this
particular passage that
came from Michael Coe and
has been picked up really
much more in the popular press.
But another scholar who
looks at this, John Hoopes,
says, "This text appears
to be about the investiture
of a deity, possibly
associated with cycles
of creation and rebirth."
Now, compare that with what
I gave you from the Bible
about a real
apocalyptic thinking,
and I think you can see why
I both find this interesting
but also I find it
to be not where we
should be putting our time.
It looks like the next
prophecy may come from this.
The chief says, "Just
take it to 2012.
That's when we switch to
the Dilbert calendar."
[LAUGHTER]
And then this one.
I want to make a
transition here.
You'll notice in all of
these Mayan examples,
they're using an Aztec
stone in cartoons
about the Maya
calendar end time.
So right here in
the corner, "Stick
in something about
a company in 2012
named Facebook that releases the
most successful IPO of all time
just to play with their heads."
[LAUGHTER]
But what they're looking at
is an Aztec calendar stone.
He says, "How come it
ends 2012?" "Taxmaggedon."
[LAUGHTER]
So people are reading themselves
into this and very well.
Part 3-- the Aztecs did
have Apocalyptic cosmology.
Here you have a reconstruction
of the very famous Aztec sun
stone, called the
calendar stone.
And on the calendar
stone, you really
do have a cosmology that
talks about catastrophes,
one after another, and
one coming in the future.
I put this up here
because I wanted
to pay honor to Carlos Fuentes,
who passed away recently.
I love this photograph of
Carlos, this great writer,
himself a visionary, in
front of the calendar stone
to also give you
a sense-- and this
will be something happy to
see by the archaeologists
in the room.
We look at the size and the
magnificence of the work
here that these people put
into not a calendar stone,
but a story of mythology, a
story of the different visions
that they had
understood had been
received by their ancestors
over and over again.
And here we find in the central
part of Mexico, which is also
somewhat apparent in the Maya
case, that time itself was
understood as accounted in the
Codex Chimalpopoca, which gives
us a written account of
what's written in about
the 1550s, what's on
the next calendar stone,
that in fact, they did
understand the universe to have
gone through four very
powerful ages, the Age of When,
the Age of Jaguar, the Age
of Fire, the Age of Rain,
and so forth.
But here's the point
that stands out to me.
In the Aztec cosmology,
each of these cosmic eras
is named after the
force that destroyed it,
not after the force
that created it.
Now, I wonder how
many times you could
find that in other communities
and other religions.
But each age that the
world has passed through
is named and emphasizes
the destructive force,
the force of jaguars
that came and ate us,
the force of wind
that blew us away,
the force of rain that flooded
us, and the forces of fire.
It seems to me here you do
have a cosmology, a theology.
So the first age was
called Sun for Jaguar.
And what you have here
is a kind of conflict
between adversaries.
You have Tezcatlipoca,
lord of the smoking mirror.
And he's the one in
charge until Quetzalcoatl
comes and kicks him out, and
there's a period of chaos.
So the period of
order is now caused
by a fight between
divinities, and it
leads to a period of
chaos and darkness
until the second age is created.
And that's named after the
force that destroys it.
Quetzalcoatl himself
is in charge,
and Tezcatlipoca
makes a comeback.
And he's destroyed.
And the world goes into chaos.
Thirdly, you have
the third, which
is the reign of fire,
where Chalchihuitlicue,
one of the great
goddesses, is in charge.
And then Tlaloc comes
and Quetzalcoatl,
and they run her out.
And there's another period.
So here you have a real emphasis
upon repeated apocalypses
and destructions.
Each age is named after the
force that destroyed it.
The fourth stage
is a Sun for Water.
But the question
becomes, in terms
of how apocalypse can be
managed, is in the fifth age,
because on the calendar
stone, there's a fifth age.
That sacred number
comes back to us
where the gods gathered in
the darkness in Teotihuacan.
And here you see a
city coming back again,
the great Teotihuacan.
The myth says that the gods
gathered in the darkness
after these four
previous destructions,
and they gather in the
darkness in Teotihuacan,
and they try to figure out how
can they recreate the universe.
What they do is
they build a fire.
And two of the gods
vie for one another
as to which one will throw
himself into the fire,
because the belief is that
out of that self-sacrifice,
the sun will rise, and there
will be order in the universe.
The two guys vie
for one another,
muy macho, and then one
of them, the weaker one,
throws himself into the fire.
And when he throws
himself into the fire,
the other god then throws
himself into the fire.
And what happens
is that they know
that the sun is going to rise,
but they don't know where.
And Quetzalcoatl appears,
and he points the way.
He says it's going to
appear in the East,
so all the gods rise up,
and they face the East,
a place of orientation.
And the sun appears, but
when it appears in the East--
this is what's really
interesting-- it
wobbles from side to side.
Can you imagine, for those
children in the audience, a sun
that appears above
the horizon, and it
wobbles from side to side?
And it wobbles from side to
side, because what is needed
is more sacrifice.
There's more sacrifice
and blood that's needed.
And so what happens is
all the other gods then
throw themselves into the fire
or cut each other's throats.
And then the sun moves
across, and a new system,
a new solar system is
created, a new order.
And in each of these,
there is an actual date
with numbers that shows
when this will take place.
One of the first things that
appears in the new world
is a Jaguar warrior
and an eagle warrior.
Here's the great
eagle warrior that
was excavated in Mexico City
that's part of this new world
now, representing again the
idea of the city in war,
are a very important
part of this.
The age we live in
now, say the Aztecs,
is the Age of Earthquake.
Because we will also be
destroyed by earthquakes.
We will undergo this type of--
because the destiny of life
is to have order,
disorder, order, disorder,
order, disorder.
And the only way
we can hold it off
is through effective sacrifices,
the offerings of blood,
because the gods gave us blood,
their blood in the beginning,
to create the world
in the first place.
And so we have to
give it back to them.
Very quickly, Apocalypse
and Other Traditions.
So, look, it's
been a crazy year.
A lot of us have been
to these conferences.
So I was invited down to Penn.
And the Penn said, look, we
can't just do the Maya thing.
We've got to do other things.
So they had Simon Martin, and
he talked about Maya cataclysm.
They threw me in as a token.
And then they had
somebody do the Inca.
Somebody had Book of Revelation.
Here's a guy who did the
Antichrist and Medieval.
And then we had
one on the Hindus.
It's one thing about
the Mesoamerican,
especially the Mayan,
is over the years
they love to compare
themselves to the Hindus.
I went to these
conferences years ago,
and David Fidel
was talking, and he
was talking about how the Maya
and the Hindus-- and that's
fine.
But you ought to know
something about the Hindus
if you're going to
talk about the Hindus.
But what was left out of
this conference was Buddhism.
And let me just say a few
things, because I wouldn't want
you to go away thinking that
apocalypse is really just
a Western kind of thinking.
It also appears in Buddhism.
And it appears in Buddhism--
there's some people here
who know more about
this than me--
in the conception
of Mappo, this age.
The Buddhists got numbers,
and they got cycles of time,
and they got ages also.
And they didn't get them
from the Western Europeans.
They didn't get them
from the Europeans.
They thought themselves up.
Here you see one of
the great images of one
of these apocalypses or
one of these destructions.
Now, just to give you kind of
a short introduction to this
in terms of how in Buddhism
the idea of apocalypse
might show up, I
want you to take
a look at this small
fragment from one
of the great Japanese
poets, Saigyo,
in which in very
compact ways and lines,
he is referencing the
idea of apocalypse
and also how to deal with it.
He says, "Even in
an age gone bad,
the lyrics way stays straight.
Not seeing this in a dream, I'd
have been deaf to the truth."
So in an age gone
bad-- that's it.
That's the idea of
what we're calling
the idea of the degradation
of time, the end of time.
He's saying, I live
in a time where
the teaching of the
Buddha is no longer
effective in the community.
And therefore, the Dharma,
that is the law of nature
that the Buddha
taught, is no longer
being effectively communicated.
We're in a dark time.
But there's a way
to deal with it.
And the way to deal with
it is through language,
written language,
poetry, the lyric's way,
a certain type of poetry, a
certain way of using words.
An effective way of
using words is the way
to fight back against this
dark period of history.
But then he takes us back
to that very early model
I put up here for you, "Not
seeing this in a dream."
In other words, I had to see it.
It had to appear to me.
I didn't just think it up.
It appeared to me in the night.
And if I haven't
seen this in a dream,
I would have been completely
deaf to the truth.
So the time had gone bad.
The vision is received.
The truth of how
to know the Dharma
is the artful use of writing.
The scribe comes back.
And so what you have in
the Buddhist tradition
reflected in that poem is
this idea of cosmic cycles.
They got their
own cosmic cycles.
There's three ages of
Buddhism, three divisions
of time following the
Buddha's passing--
the Former Day of
the Law-- sounds
very much like Joachim
of Fiore, but it's not--
the Middle Day of the Law,
the second thousand years;
and the Latter Day
of the Law, or Mappo.
That's the concept that's
very close to this notion
of apocalypse.
Then as time goes on
in this third period,
the Buddhist teachings
deteriorate, leading eventually
to a long period of general
misery and social unrest,
in some views.
So what you have in
some of this literature,
in some of this poetry, is a
sense by the poets, hey, man,
we live in a wretched time.
Things have gone wrong.
We live in a bad time.
And there's images like this,
where in the cities, the cities
themselves have
terrible leaders.
There's fires that break out.
There's hurricanes that come.
There's cyclones.
And these are all signs,
not just of bad weather.
These are signs of this cosmic
pattern where both humans
and nature themselves have
slipped away from the Dharma,
from the teaching, from
the pattern of the Buddha.
So Buddhism and the
decline of the times--
what William LaFleur, in
this wonderful study that he
did called "Awesome
Nightfall," he
says that in the 12th and 13th
centuries of Japan's history,
people were deeply
absorbed in a debate
as to whether the entire world
had just entered a necessarily
evil era called Mappo, the final
epoch of the current Buddhist
cycle.
Many have calculated
that as the year 1052.
They got their year, too.
The correct understanding
and practice of Buddhism
had been virtually nonexistent.
So if Buddha's teachings
were no longer working,
this is the time
of greatest danger.
And some thought
that the year of 1052
was a big year, except one,
the great zen master Dogen.
He argued against
the Mappo theory
and held that the possibility
of understanding and practicing
Buddhism was as good
as it had ever been
and that the theories
such as that of Mappo
were merely mental contrivances
by which shallow understanding
and loose practice
were rationalized.
That's what we've got to
remind our students here.
[LAUGHTER]
When they come and tell
me, I can't take the exam.
It's just you're
a lousy teacher.
Well, that's a contrived--
shallow understanding,
shallow understanding.
[LAUGHTER]
And what happens
in some, not all,
is that there's this
whole relationship, again,
between the city
and where you've
got to go to get
your enlightenment,
where you've got to go to
get your apocalypse, which
is a vision.
Where are you going
to get the revelation?
And in some cases, you
can't get it in the city.
You can't get it in the city,
as it appears in the Hojoki.
The city itself has become
polluted, so you go here.
You go into the mountains and
you build a 10-foot-square hut.
And in that square
hut, you meditate
and you think and you
dream and you open yourself
to the teachings and the
true meaning of impermanence
as revealed not in the
crazy impermanence here,
but in the patterned
impermanence of the hills,
where you can get your vision.
"The dust was as thick as
smoke and the roar of wind
so loud that none could
hear the other speak.
I suppose the bitter wind of
karma that blows us to hell
could not be more
savage or fearsome,"
said the writer of the Hojoki
before he went to the mountains
to receive his revelation.
And the hope is,
in this dark time,
they also have a salvation,
that the Buddha of the future
will arrive.
In some traditions,
the name Maitreya
is the Buddha of the future,
derived from the Sanskrit word
meaning that we wish we had
this loving-kindness-- it's
like Guadloupe-- which
in turn is derived
from the noun in the
sense of "friend."
So in the future in
this dangerous time
the Buddha of the future
will appear as a friend
full of loving-kindness.
And finally, I just
want to tell you
at the end about a book project
written for children that
really comes out of the
imagination of my daughter
Leanna, who has lived part
of her life in Mexico,
has visited Guatemala.
And two years ago
when she was hearing
all of this stuff about
the Maya Prophecy,
she discovered two
things, number one,
that it wasn't true, and number
two, that children were already
getting anxious about it.
She had been anxious as a
kid, I think, when the year
2000 came around
and other things.
And she said, I
wanted to write a book
for kids that would, number one,
give them some good information
about the Maya calendar.
And secondly, it would
also ease their fears
so they don't have to be afraid.
So in this story, that is
here beautifully illustrated
by Marlo Garnsworthy--
Leanna and I
helped-- it's about two Mexican
American kids, 12 and 9, who
are visiting their
grandparents in California
during the Christmas holidays.
And they notice on
the streets there
used to be an old,
rundown, beat up old house,
has kind of been
magically transformed
into a museum called the
Maya Calendar Museum.
And there's a rainstorm,
and they run up
to see what it is, because
they can't imagine this thing
just magically appeared.
And watching them,
they don't know,
is this guy called Mr. Muscles.
And run up, and this guy Mr.
Muscles jumps out and grabs
them and he says, look,
don't go to this museum,
because you don't realize
that the Maya that prophesied
the end of the
world, this guy said,
you're teaching
that's it's not true.
It's all false.
You gotta join my movement.
And his movement is called
The End of Days Pact.
So the kids get afraid.
They go home to their
grandparents' house.
And they say, hey, what's this?
And the grandfather says, oh, my
friend Senor Julio, he actually
built this museum so
that kids themselves
could learn about the true
meaning of the calendar end
date.
So they go over to the museum,
and they meet the granddaughter
of the man who owns the museum.
And they're all
three Latino kids.
And here they are looking at
some objects that were really
inspired by Jose Querer,
[INAUDIBLE], visit here
last year when he worked
with some of the flutes that
were in the Peabody Museum.
And she's teaching
Carlos and Lucia--
this is Julia-- about them.
And out in the street, you
see out there a protest
by these people who are arguing
that the end of the world
is coming.
And this is a really
interesting character.
This is a guacamaya
by the name of Tavio.
That's my daughter's brother,
but she put him in as a parrot.
[LAUGHTER]
And he's there, and he squawks,
and he says some secret things
throughout.
She begins, Julia, begins
to teach the two visitors
about the Maya calendars.
And they're learning
about the Maya calendars.
And we put in it this image
here, which is actually a copy.
The idea in the story is that
the Peabody Museum allowed
this [INAUDIBLE] to make a
copy of one of the objects
in the Peabody Museum.
Because we wanted to highlight
the museum collections here.
This is actually an
Aztec calendar wheel
that's here in the museum.
And so the idea is that
they're looking at this
and learning about these
patterns that I've taught you.
And meanwhile, they learn
about these symbols, the symbol
of darkness and of [INAUDIBLE].
And of course,
there's the guacamaya.
He's got to be on everything.
He's there looking at it.
And meanwhile, what happens
is one day while they're
learning about this leading
up to 21st, a woman comes in.
This is Ms. Elizabeth
from Pittsburgh.
And she argues that
Pittsburgh is really
the origins of the Maya.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this actually happened
a couple years ago.
I had a phone call from the
main newspaper in Pittsburgh.
And they said, look, there's
a whole bunch of people here
that say that where
the three rivers meet,
that's the origin of the Maya.
Is it true?
[LAUGHTER]
I said, I don't think it's true.
[LAUGHTER]
Let me tell you why.
Well, there was a big
article in the paper
that Carrasco said no.
But that didn't stop them.
So my daughter
worked this in, where
Ms. Elizabeth comes in
from Pittsburgh and says,
oh, you don't understand.
This is all about Pittsburgh.
This is where it's from.
And so what happens is they
discover, through the girl
who's the granddaughter,
that in fact, they
believe that the grandfather
and the granddaughter
believe that there's a
portal back to the Maya world
and the museum.
And so they have a sleepover.
And in the sleepover,
the host, the girl,
she's got these
obsidian mirrors.
And she said, look, the Maya,
if you look into this mirror,
you can see where the portal
is back to the Maya world.
And so on the door, there's
always been this poster.
And this poster says,
Secret Maya Worlds on it.
And what happens is as
the kids are looking
into the little obsidian
mirror, they kind of get drowsy,
and they fall asleep.
But they don't know
they're asleep.
And what happens is they
get swooped into this tree,
and they fly back to Chichen
Itza in the eighth century.
And when they arrive back
in the eighth century,
they meet a Maya kid who's
kind of loafing that day.
He's playing.
His name is Smoking Frog.
So Smoking Frog is actually
an historical person.
Smoking Frog talks to them.
Somehow they can
understand each other.
In dreams, you know, you
can understand each other.
And what happens is they ask
him, is the world going to end?
Is it really going
to end on this date?
And he says, no way.
What are you talking about?
He says, but my uncle
is Smoking Parrot.
and he's the great day
keeper, so he'll know.
So let's go see him.
So they go see him.
And they ask him.
And he says, look, let
me sing you a song.
And he sings this
song, which he lays out
the Maya calendar is not going
to bring the end of the world.
But they just kind of
don't quite believe it.
And so they keep asking him
until he gets frustrated
with them and kicks them out.
And when they come out,
there's an eclipse.
And the other Maya who
have seen them think,
well, these guys have
caused the eclipse.
So they chase them, and
they run for their lives.
And they just barely
make it back to the tree.
And they arrive
back in the museum
on the morning of December 22,
and the world hasn't ended.
And they realize that they've
all had the same dream
and that dreaming
itself is the portal.
The way you go back to the
Maya world is through a portal,
and that's it.
And throughout
the story, there's
been a refrain,
which Ben Leeming,
who's here from the
River School, which
is using this book in some of
his classes, he really liked.
And the refrain is simply the
one that the guacamaya says,
the beginning is in the end.
It's not the end that is coming,
but it's a new beginning.
And so the book is
really about this.
And the book itself is
something that we enjoyed doing.
We've gotten a lot of support
here from the Peabody.
Joan O'Donnell and
others-- Andy up
there-- have helped us think
about how this book could
be produced to speak to
children and their families
so that they could go
through this experience,
learn about the Maya,
and also come to feel
some hope in the future.
It's also, finally,
this whole story
has been picked up by a
group of students and actors
over in East Boston,
a place called Zumix.
And they have produced a
play based upon the book.
Only what they did is
they made the guacamaya
the narrator of the play.
And this play is going to
be produced on December 9.
Everybody's invited
to this play.
I'm actually in the play itself.
I'm one of the actors.
So you want to catch me.
And some people
from Zumix are here.
So the book that
kind of grows out
of this here at
the Peabody Museum
has shown the Peabody Museum's
interest in the community.
Because over the last
10 years, this museum
has been very active in
the Latino community.
And this is another
example of how
the community is giving back.
And so we're very
happy about that.
And I want to thank you
all for your patience.
I hope you've learned something
about the different views
of apocalypse.
And we can live on until
the year 6000 AD CE.
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
