Review from

The Spartan Daily
The Online newspaper of
San Jose State University

January-Febuary 2007

Mayan prophecies explored in '2012 The Odyssey'
Quang Do
Issue date: 2/6/07 Section: Entertainment
*
The new documentary, "2012 The Odyssey," is a film that takes the audience on a well-researched journey across the United States in exploring the Maya Calendar, a sophisticated calculation of the stars by the ancient natives of Southern Mexico.

The film said the calendar proposes a prophecy that surrounds the date Dec. 12, 2012.

It quickly caught my attention when the film switched subjects from Armageddon to Judgment Day to end-of-time.

Then it became interesting when the film revived the Apocalypse in my mind, but these terms were merely intelligent observations of several speakers for what is to come by 2012.

The independent film from Sacred Mysteries Productions, written and directed by author Sharron Rose, has multiple interviews with experts on the subjects of spirituality, humanity, theory and history.

The film goes into explaining the currency value of earth's four natural elements: land, fire, air, and water.

The narrator in the film questioned whether the Mayans and other Indians of the Yucatan Peninsula were "noble savages," or they were seriously advanced with their creation of the ancient calendar.

Theories in the film suggested that the Mayans were magnificent mathematicians who based their calendar on astronomical interpretations that aligned the earth with stars and the sun for a universal connotation that could affect the cycle of generations by 2012.

The film noted that the United States' founding fathers, who were supposedly apart of the free masons, supported the calendar's end-of-time prophecy.

The film oversees that the Maya Calendar has been precisely calculated to a time when the earth completes the cycle in which North Stars, Vega or Polaris, it would point to, in the time coming.

The process is called precession and the film noted that happens every 26,000 years but according to SJSU Meteorology Professor, Thomas Rickenbach, earth changes its alignment with the north stars every 23,000 years.

The film mentioned earth's solstice system, the planet's orbital pathway around the sun that would reach a milestone in distance by the year 2012.

One of the film's interviewees said, the human perception of Armageddon has evolved into something more psychological and astronomical, replacing what people used to believe as biblical.

There were direct contrasts between symbols of the ancient past and the more recent prophecies that demonstrated the film's message, "(We're) not sure if it's an illusion or real, but something is happening."

The film had a speaker who said Jesus would return by the year 2012. There was even a reference from a holy priest that said human beings would become telepathic in the future, when the world is finally at peace once everyone's mind is networked together, like the Internet.

" The Odyssey" had an introduction where the narrator said humans today, in the United States, live in a "media-ocracy" society as opposed to a democracy where their lives are controlled by technology and driven by the economy.

" Leave room for nature," the film stated in the end, but nonetheless, it was a very captivating documentary for the soul and spirit with nature and science as the evidence.

Prior to prophecies for the year 2012, predictions in the recent past have been made about "Doomsday" at the pinnacle of fear during Y2K but to most people, nothing significant happened once the world entered the new millennium.