Doomsday Debacles: The Seekers and The Mayan Calendar (Numbers 10 and 9)

"Doctor Warns of Disasters in World Tuesday -- Worst to Come in 1955 He Declares."

How would you react if you saw this headline in your local newspaper? Well in 1954, citizens of Chicago, Illinois woke up and stumbled onto this headline in The Chicago Tribune. The doctor making this extravagant claim was Dr. Charles Laughead, a Michigan State College physician. He believed that voices in his head were telling him that aliens were going to save the world from God's wrath on December 20^th, 1955. He probably got these ideas from Dorothy Martin, aka Marian Keech, of whom he was an adamant enthusiast. Dorothy Martin, a 54-year-old Illinois resident, was the leader of The Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, a UFO cult that is also known as The Seekers. On Christmas Eve 1955 many of Martin's believers gathered in her home, believing that a world abolishing flood was imminent, a message that was allegedly beamed to Martin from the alien race on the planet Clarion. The few people who found Martin's ideas truthful, most of them having quit their jobs and sold their possessions, sang Christmas carols in wait of the salvation from the aliens of Clarion. After waiting for hours on end, Dorothy Martin claimed that her and her followers actions had such an influence on God, that he decided not to wreak havoc on the Earth. In fact, Leon Festinger wrote the book “When Prophecy Fails”, about the cognitive dissonance in the members of The Seekers minds in order to better understand apocalyptic cults.

On December, 21^st, 2012 I will be enjoying my third month in college at UW Eau Claire, on my way to becoming an educator. Or will I? Some people claim that December 21^st, 2012 is the day of the apocalypse, the day that the world will be eradicated. But why 12/21/12? The believers of this doomsday augury interpreted this date as THE day due to the Mayan “Long Count” calendar. The “Long Count” calendar was used by the Mayan people to document the historical events past what their shorter 52 year calenders could do. Since the Mayans produced this calendar in 1314 BC and the calendar spans for 5,126 years the first cycle is said to end on, you guessed it, December, 21^st, 2012. This date, ironically, is the same date as the winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere.  Many people infer that life as we know it will end on 12/21/12 in many different ways from a comet, a meteorite, or Planet X hitting Earth to the rotation of Earth reversing.  However, neither the ancient Mayans or decendents of the Mayans alive today predicted this prognosis. In fact, Mayan decendents believe that 12/21/12 is the start of a new age, in which humanity will evolve to better understand our place in the universe.