As December 21, 2012, approaches, more and more people are showing interest in the predictions for the year.
Some predict an apocalypse-type scenario, and others believe that 2012 will bring a new age, a transformation of some kind.
The year 2012 comes from the Mayan calendar, a complex system that are used together in order to determine events. The Mayan calendar is considered the most accurate calendar developed - its intricate system depicts time in cycles.
The cycle relevant to the 2012 date is the Great Cycle at 5125.36 years. December 21, 2012, marks the end of the current 5125.36 year cycle. 2012 also marks the end of a longer 26000 year cycle. It is also the last date accounted for in the Mayan calendar. As a result, 2012 is presumed to be the end - of everything, or everything as we know it.
Among the apocalyptic predictions for 2012 are natural disasters like geomagnetic reversal - one such prediction was attributed to the Celtic shaman Merlin, who said that when people in different countries could speak to each other in a "stone," then the seas and winds would rise and the world's paths would change.
A geomagnetic reversal is actually overdue in terms of the earth's geomagnetic cycle, or which could be caused by a solar flare. There is some debate whether a geomagnetic reversal will affect much more than electromagnetic instruments, however.
There is also a prediction that a large planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth at that time. Astronomers refute this claim by saying that any planet that would collide with us so soon would be visible.
The 2012 date also crops up in novelty theory, also called Timewave Zero. Thomas McKenna theorized that interconnectedness, also known as organized complexity, in the universe is determined by an ebb and flow that will culminate to the December 21, 2012, date. At this time, all things possible or conceived will occur at once.
There are end-of-the-world predications from the Hopi Indians and the Cumean Sybil that the 2012 date would end in global catastrophes such as the sun growing unbearably hot, the seas rising, a great war breaking out, ashes covering the sky, and earthquakes adding to the destruction.
The Book of Revelation holds similar imagery for the end of the world, the Last Days during which the world as we know it is finally destroyed to bring about the new utopian millennium.
A prediction attributed to the Mother Shipton, an English oracle, says that when men are able to do things better than anything natural, such as fly faster than birds, when pictures move, when ships move under the sea, then the world will end in blood.
Nostradamus predicted that the October before the 2012 would see the skies turning black before earthquakes, wars and other extreme events.
Many end of the world scenarios do envision destruction with this kind of similar language, and the 2012 date or dates close to the end times according to the Mayan calendar seems too coincidental.
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