Among the books tonight's guest Maurice Cotterell has written is a fascinating treatise called The Mayan Prophecies(1) (co-authored with Adrian Gilbert). When Cotterell was working as an electrical engineer at the Cranfield Institute of Technology, he developed a computation that correlated the relationship between the sun's magnetic field and the Earth. His calculations yielded the known 11.5-year sunspot cycle but he also discovered evidence of much longer cycles-- including one of 1,366,040 days. When Cotterell found that the Mayan Holy Number (1,366,560 days) nearly matched his number, he realized there could be a connection. He traveled to a Mayan ceremonial center in Palenque, Mexico to study their inscriptions. "Imagine my astonishment when I realized that my discoveries about the sun, and how its cycles affect life on earth, had all been discovered before; by the Maya more than 1,250 years ago," he wrote.
According to Cotterell, the Mayan Holy Number refers to the "birthdate of Venus," and is related to a time when that planet toppled on its axis around 3113 BC and "her brilliant light blazed across the cosmos." He writes that the Mayan calendar prophecies a similar fate for our planet and that we are nearing the end of a fifth age or "final sun." Their calendar ends on December 22, 2012, and Cotterell believes this could spell cataclysmic consequences for us.
--L.L.(2)
1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852309067/ref=ase_ctoc/
2. http://archive.coasttocoastam.com/info/about_lex.html