Since the Maya calendar and mythology are both based on the underlying astronomy, it can be very helpful to understand this astronomy. This is fun and easy to do as long as we take it a little bit at a time. It won't take us very long to lay out all the information yet you may find yourself pondering this subject more deeply for quite awhile. For me personally, the more I dug into this material, the more mind-blowing it all became. Perhaps you will have a similar experience.
The special event of 2012 is best understood in two steps. The first step is to learn about the unique galactic alignment that has already occurred. Yes, this much talked about but seldom understood alignment occurred on the winter solstice in 1998. We will use a pencil and a sheet of paper to make a simple 3-dimensional model of the actual astronomy of this event and you will clearly see the basic astronomy in motion right before your own eyes.
Then we will expand your understanding to include the special event of 2012, which is similar. That event will unfold during the entire day of the winter solstice of 2012 as follows. Beginning a few hours before dawn, the disk of the sun will start to cross the line in the sky made by the plane of the galaxy. Over the next 15 hours, the crossing will continue throughout the day in full view of the Maya until it finishes just a few minutes before sunset as seen from southern Mexico.
This crossing of the sun from one side of the galaxy to the other metaphorically represents for the Maya the sun moving from one world into another or a rebirth of the sun and it only happens like this on the winter solstice once every 26,000 years. This rare rebirth of the sun is only one aspect of what I call the sacred triple rebirth of the sun. The poetic beauty is breathtaking; the actual astronomy is profoundly precise!
