Remember the fizzled Rapture back in May of last year “(Here’s another story related to the “Judgment Day” note two days ago or ‘can you believe there are no animals in the hereafter?’ – ‘Entrepreneur offers care for pets after the Rapture‘)”?

Well, the world’s coming to an end this year again … get ready. This article from The Conversation tell you the story behind this apocalyptic end.

You may want to start hoarding supplies and making your end of world plans now – before it’s too late. Flickr/Necromundo

If you believe the doomsayers, the human race is not long for this earth. By the end of this year, our number will be up: the four horseman of the apocalypse will be upon us, fire will rain from the skies, the poles will reverse and the end will be, as so many have predicted for so long, nigh.

2012 has been feted for decades as the year the human race will be destroyed. But where did this apocalyptic vision come from? And why are we so attached to the date of our demise?

A conspiracy begins

Most people understand the 2012 end-of-the-world phenomenon to have something to do with the end of the Mayan calendar. In some ways, this is the case. The Maya used the long count calendar which dates back over 5000 years and is divided into b’ak’tun cycles of roughly 394 years.

We are currently in the thirteenth b’ak’tun of the Long Count, and this cycle ends (depending on your interpretation) around 21 December, 2012. But the Maya didn’t say much about what would actually happen when the cycle ends. To find the roots of the current apocalyptic spin on 2012 we have to look beyond the Mayan period, and to the modern interpretations of this ancient calendar.

The narrative began in the 1960s with a book called The Maya. In it, American archaeologist and anthropologist Michael Coe somewhat sneakily slipped in the following prophetic reference about what would happen with the closing of the thirteenth b’ak’tun: “Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day”.

And so began the 2012 phenomenon.

Most people who are interested in 2012, work on the assumption that the grand day will usher in a new form of human consciousness, akin to the Age of Aquarius. Those who interpret the calendar in this way are a diverse group following a spectrum of esoteric lineages, from borrowed indigenous traditions, to fantasy histories of Atlantis, to Theosophists and psychedelic counterculture.

Some of these spiritually-inclined individuals view 2012 as something that will happen whether we like it or not; others have a more proactive view, assuming any changes that occur around 2012 must be the result of our collective actions.

A smaller number of people interested in 2012 are catastrophists. These people propose all sorts of Earth-destroying scenarios such as pole reversal, mega-tsunamis and crustal displacement (as seen in the blockbuster movie 2012), through to a massive asteroid colliding with our planet.

(SOURCE: The Conversation)