If you study the Mayan calendar (technically the Long Count), you'll see that it ends after a 13-baktun cycle:
1 tun = 1 year (18 months of 20 days plus 5 days given over to the birthdays of gods)
20 tuns = 1 katun
20 katuns = 1 baktun
13 baktuns = approximately 5200 years.
The Mayans viewed the numbers 13 and 20 as sacred and mystical and they believed that humanity rose and fell in cycles of 13 baktuns (5200 years). The age that we are about to enter will be the 5th (or the 6th Sun according to the later Aztecs). They also believd that the last age was affected by flood. This corresponds roughly to the deluge myths of the Bible, the Sumerians, etc etc.
So it is thought that humanity will enter a new era of harmony and peaceful co-existence and this change will start around the end of the cycle (worked out to be roughly around Dec 21st 2012) and possibly marked by natural disasters. We're already having a huge amount of tsunami, earthquakes, etc and if we were to have continued with our polluting, Earth-destructive tendencies, who know what m,ay have happened. But it may be a case of averting disaster because it was foretold (the opposite to what RyuJin was proposing) - like the Millenium Bug, would it have happened if we hadn't put so many measures in place to prevent it?
The Mayans aren't then only ones with related prophecies:
Zulu tribes tell of the return of M-sho-sho-no-no (star with a very long tail) in 2012 which turned the world upside down thousands of years ago and will again (a comet? planetary polar shift?)
The Hopi tribe tell of a forthcoming \"great purification\" before the start of the \"5th world\" and have the \"Blue Star prophecy\" about all this:
www.december-21-2012.com/hopi-blue-star-prophecy.php
The Maori believe that Rangi (the sky) and Papa (Earth) will take advantage of mankind's quarrelling and come back together with devastating consequences, agreed to be in 2010.
Aztec seers predicted a period of \"hell\" of 9 lots of 52-year cycles after the Spanish Conquest (the end of their \"heavenly\" times). This would be followed by a 25-year cycle of purification before the 6th Sun and equates to February 2012.
Grandfather Moses Shongo of the Seneca Indians foretold the same.
The Book of Daniel mentions a prophetic dream in which Daniel overheard Jesus telling an angel that \"for two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings shall the sanctuary be trampled underfoot. Then it shall be restored to its rightful state. From the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he who waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and thirty five days, the end of days.\" Going on the common principle that biblical prophecies refer to years as days, the \"sanctuary\" will be trampled underfoot from the invasion of the Greeks in 333BC until 2300 years later, 1967AD. Add on the blessed \"extra waiting time\" of 45 years and the End of Days is predicted to be 2012.
Then there's St. Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes (given in 1139) that states that the current Pope is to be the last; Terence McKenna's Timewave Zero, an exposition of \"novelty theory\" that states that an Omega point of everything being possible all at once will occur in 2012; the relevance of the pyramid of Kulkulcan at Chichen Itza with regard to serpent energies and a solar eclipse (occurring in 2012), etc etc etc.
So there's a lot of prophecies and theories stating that something will happen in 2012 but what? Some say disaster, others say glory. It's entirely up to you what you believe. Personally I'm hoping for a shift in awareness that means there's more people helping than destroying. It may not even be apparent until years later that 2012 was when it started to happen. So make up your own mind, but isn't it worth rallying to an idea of global harmony and humanitarian support? That's the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that I'd like to see!
As the Maya-Aztec shaman Quetza-Sha said in 1991: \"The year 2012 is not the destruction of the planet, but is the transformation of the spirit, sexual energy, the energy of your heart and mind in all the dimensions of our existence in the solar system\".
MTFBWY