humanity entered 5,000 years ago. For Argüelles, since the artificial time frequency
of the 12-month Gregorian calendar and the 60-minute hour is arbitrarily imposed
(a paradigm of the ‘warrior hero, separation and fear’), the survival of humanity and
the avoidance of an environmental catastrophe are dependent upon our adoption of
a harmonic calendar based on the Mayan cycles.
For Argüelles, the end-times are chiming. On 11 September 2001, we received a
signal that history is ending. Ostensibly, the collapse of the World Trade Center
towers created a fissure in ‘the technosphere’ and opened up the noosphere: ‘Earth’s
mental envelope’. Such a disaster is thus apparently a sign of humanity’s progression
‘into the love based, artist hero paradigm of natural time’. But this is not the end of
the world, just the end of the world as we know it, part of a prophetic ‘time release’.
The approaching end-time is in fact the end of Time.^38
In the campaign for ‘the New Time’ a ‘major planetary consciousness shift’^39 is
propagated through contemporary techno-tribal networks. In September 2002, at
Portugal’s Boom Festival, the Planet Art Network’s ‘Caravan for the New Time’
created a ‘Natural Time Zone’: a 10.5-metre dome surrounded by a tipi village
where, amongst meditations, universal ceremonies to honour the directions,
Dreamspell play shops and galactic passport decodings, participants were able to
discover their own ‘galactic signature’. The annual Global Eyes calendar features a
‘Mayan natural time calendar’, and DIY ‘tribes’ have self-organized to spread the
message of ‘eco-techno-evolution’ through time shift: ‘We are now at the end of the
Dreamspell of history and at the beginning of the Dreamspell of galactic culture’.
Citing Argüelles, such is the belief of the Circle of Tribes, a Northern New Mexico
dance collective who choose to align their gatherings with the full moons and the
lunar Mayan calendar. Accordingly, ‘we are coming to the end of the belief in the male
dominant, warrior hero, fear and separation paradigm [a]nd we are preparing to
move into the love based, artist hero paradigm of natural time’.^40 Furthermore,
EarthTribe, a group of artists, DJs, filmmakers, ‘bioneers and dreamers’, have
undertaken plans for a multimedia project, Journey Through the End of Time,
documenting their adventures through North America and into the heart of Latin
America to build a self-sustaining eco-village in the Costa Rican rainforest.
Gathering knowledge and skills required to create a globally sustainable culture, the
EarthTribe aim to travel through Mexico to
investigate the message of time left behind by the ancient Maya. Visiting their
modern day descendents and sacred sites, they’ll engage in shamanistic rituals,
where the dream world and our own collide, discovering together what the
Mayans believe will happen as their calendar comes to an end in the year2012.^41
A transhumant collective of artists, DJs and promoters, Mycorrhiza, encourage people
to create their own Eden or Shambhala by returning to ‘natural time and natural
living’. Apostles of the Campaign for the New Time, they have focused on
establishing ‘a network of sustainable, conscious, harmonious 13:20 communities’.
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