Drunvalo Melchizedek, author of The Flower of Life and The Serpent of Light, has just released a new video, available in 14 parts on Youtube. The Maya of Eternal Time claims to reveal new information about prophecies held by the indigenous Maya of today. Broadcasting from a futuristic-looking set, Melchizedek says he received permission from Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez, the leader of the Mayan council of elders, to disseminate this material. According to this program, somewhere between now and 2015, magnetic pole shift will be followed by a physical one in which we will go blind for thirty hours before all of humanity attains a higher state of consciousness.
In my book Beyond 2012, I sought to separate fact from rumor in regard to the end of the Long Count Calendar of the Classical Maya. Watching Melchizidek’s production, I found a number of factual anomalies and points to question. These are enumerated below, and below that, I offer my review of The Serpent of Light, which was similarly riddled with inaccuracies and seeming exaggerations.
The Maya of Eternal Time
1. Melchizidek quotes from the recent book, The Chaos Point, without mentioning its author, Ervin Laszlo.
2. The Aztec Sunstone is not the Mayan calendar; he connects it to the Precession of the Equinoxes, but this is meaningless — precession may be on the outer dots according to Professor Gordon Brotherston, but not where Melchizidek said.
3. The waffle about Fibonacci didn’t connect to evolution or 2012 — he must have been thinking of Smelyakov’s Auric Time Scale, but didn’t know enough to make sense.
4. The precession cycle does not have an apogee and perigee — these are the nearest and furthest parts of an elliptical orbit.
5. If comet Holmes is the Blue Star, why haven’t the ceremonies ceased as predicted in the rest of the prophecy? (My friend lived on Hopi reservation last year and witnessed a ceremony in a kiva).
6. Cayce predictions — there are many errors, not just one. Many sites list them, for example, Fortean Times.
7. He implies that the Maya tracked Milankovitch cycles, but there is no evidence for this.
8. If the stars are not visible at night, this does NOT mean we have all gone blind . . . what about clouds, fog, smoke, volcanic ash??
9. Don Alejandro originally said 60-70 hours of darkness, not 30!
10. Why would Don Alejandro speak of Pachamama, when this is a Peruvian term?
11. He also paraphrased one of my favorite McKenna quotes, (comparing birth side-effects with Earth changes) but of course, he failed to mention its source, as he fails to mention any of his sources, thus impressing the impressionable.
I have a friend who related a detailed story about his meeting with archaeologists in Belize to a woman who was a friend of Drunvalo, and he later saw his story related online by Drunvalo in a publicity spiel for his Serpent of Light book, but the story was told as if Drunvalo was the person who met the archaeologists!
Let’s not forget, either, that back in 2003, Drunvalo was saying that 2012 is really 2003,
So why is he now saying 2012 is 2012? Ah yes, his 2012 book….
Serpent of Light
Drunvalo Melechizedek’s book Serpent of Light tells the story of the regular movement of the Kundalini earth current — every 13,000 years it moves to a new location. Having moved from Lemuria to Atlantis, to the Himalayas, it is now moving to the Andes in Chile and Peru, and is governed by the precession of the equinoxes (POE).
On page 9, Drunvalo says that on December 21 2012, the axis of the earth will “be on the edge of” the Aquarius constellation.
What actually happens on December 21 2012 is that on the day of winter solstice, when the sun lies between earth and the dark rift on the galactic equator, the earth’s axis will be aligned with the crossing point of the ecliptic and the galactic equator, which lies at 5 degrees sidereal Sagittarius. On spring equinox circa 2012, the vernal point (sunrise on spring equinox) will lie close to the Aquarius boundary (5 degrees sidereal Pisces), but this does not coincide with the alignment of the earth axis. See this page with diagrams and video for a simple explanation.
On page 21, Drunvalo actually says that on 21 December 2012 the equinox will precess into Aquarius (“…change of the POE into Aquarius”). However, this is the winter solstice, so the sentence is nonsense.
On page 17, Drunvalo says the “Troano document” is “an ancient stone document found by archaeologists in the Yucatan, and it is now located in the British Museum. He says it was translated by le Plongeon and is estimated to be 3,500 years old.
The Troano Codex was actually the original name for the Madrid Codex, one of four surviving Maya codices. It is kept in the Museo de América, in Madrid, Spain, and is dated to the 15th century. The version that Drunvalo repeats was quoted on Masonic websites such as this.
It is a piece of disinformation that originates in a 1912 hoax newspaper article in which Paul Schliemann claimed to have read the Troano in the British Museum and translated it — he actually rehashed Brasseur de Bourbourg’s translation, (not realizing the Troano was in Madrid), which was done before anyone understood the glyphs. See the last two paragraphs of this article.
It is not made of stone, not 3,500 years old, and not in the British Museum, though it was mistranslated by le Plongeon.
On pages 23-24, Drunvalo says that “the Serpent of Light was blocked” and “the problem could not be solved until the Ceremony of the Eagle and the Condor was performed.” His explanation: “The Mayan calendar said so.” This kind of statement is one of the most irritating of all for those of us who want to check facts and are not starry-eyed disciples. The Mayan calendars did not say anything. This statement is presumably meant to mean that there is a Mayan prophecy somewhere that is tied in to a date in the Mayan calendar systems. However, Drunvalo avoids giving the source, so we can check up and see that this is actually not the case. The Eagle and Condor prophecy seems to be primarily an Ecuador prophecy. The Ecuador version says that one day the indigenous people will be liberated when the tears of the condor are united with the tears of the eagle. The Inca version seems to have originated by Alberto Villoldo connecting the Ecuador prophecy with an Inca prophecy of a Pachacuti (earth/time turn-over) every 500 years. The Inca prophecy does independently connect to 2012, but to say that “the Mayan calendar says so” is totally untrue.
On page 219, Drunvalo gives credence to the theory that Lord Pacal’s tomb lid shows “a Mayan astronaut,” as claimed by von Daniken in 1968, regardless of the fact that it depicts the soul of Pacal journeying up the world tree, according to the Mayan scholars.
Given that the author has shown misunderstandings, repeated a 100-year-old hoax from a website as if it were true, and fudged facts and avoided references, how can he expect us to believe him when he claims that the ancient Anasazi people disappeared into another dimension (page 134); that the driver of the tour bus to Antelope canyon was totally blind, and even his family didn’t know (page158); that ancient Maya would deliberately transfer their consciousness into a crystal skull, where it would remain for thousands of years (page 172); that heads of Maya priests appeared out of the ground when crystals were arranged in a circle round an altar, and then they emerged completely (page 206); and other far-fetched stories?
While there are some interesting ideas and anecdotes in the book, it is spoiled by treating the readers as if they are stupid — even going so far as to inform us that “life is organic” (page 11).
Geoff Stray is the author of Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Awakening (the original UK edition subtitle was Catastrophe or Ecstasy); 2012 In Your Pocket, and The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars. They are all available on Amazon. Geoff gives presentations internationally and his website is www.diagnosis2012.co.uk which was one of the first 2012 websites, running from September 2000. Stray has appeared in several documentaries, such as 2012: The Odyssey; Transformation 2013; 2012: An Awakening, and others. He lives in a converted milking parlour in Glastonbury, UK, and makes handmade footwear. He is currently designing some ascension boots.
Image by mike 23 courtesy of Creative Commons license.
