In the finest of the surviving Mayan books, the Dresden Codex, the beginning, of the Great Cycle on the 11th of August 3114 BC is referred to as the Birth of Venus. Since another ancient Mayan prophecy says that the new world of consciousness will be born on the occasion of the Venus Passage June 5-6, 2012 there are reasons to study the background to this and to describe what a Venus Passage is. Why did the planet Venus play such a predominant role in the cosmology of the ancient Maya? Two of four surviving manuscripts from the Maya deal with the revolution of our Sister Planet around the sun! They had determined the duration of the so called synodic revolution of Venus, that is the time between two conjunctions between Venus and the sun, with an accuracy of two decimals. It is of course relatively easily for everyone to count the average number of days between two such conjunctions and arrive at 584 days. But how would the Maya astronomers know 583.92 days without optical instruments? And above all, why was it so important to them? After all, there are so many other things you could do.

From the perspective of the Divine Plan Venus is the Sister Planet of the earth, something the Maya seems to have known, but we have forgotten. The movements of these two planets are directly linked. Venus could be said to be designed as a Cosmic Mirror to the earth, and it is from such a point of view that the dramatic importance of the upcoming Venus passages - i.e., conjunctions when Venus for about seven hours actually eclipses the sun - in the years 2004/2012, and the interest devoted to Venus by the Maya may be understood. While Venus conjunctions are frequent events, Venus Passages, when the light of the sun sends the energy of Venus, the planet of love and beauty, to the earth are rare events. This is because the orbital planes of Venus and the earth are at an angle to each other and Venus passages only occur in the window where they intersect.

What is now interesting is that the very first katun of the Great Cycle, the creation cycle that endowed the human beings with a national frame of consciousness, saw a Venus Passage in the year 3099 BC meaning that both the first and last katuns of this cycle witnesses Venus Passages. Not only that. Pairs of Venus Passages occurred also in the years 1761/69 and 1874/82. This means that Venus Passages occur in the First, Seventh and Thirteenth, i.e. the first, middle and last katuns of the creation cycle that began in 1755 and has created the planet as the frame of human consciousness. As we know, these numbers - One, Seven and Thirteen - are Holy in many spiritual traditions. Thus, as by accident, the pairs of Venus Passages seem to have come into phase with the creation cycles!

At the occasion of the Venus Passages in the years 1761/69 a project was developed to use these for estimating the distance to the sun. 151 observers, including Captain Cook who was then at Tahiti, scattered across the globe made observations with this aim. The fact that this was the world's first international scientific collaboration project attests to the fact that at that time a planetary frame of consciousness started to emerge. The study of the Venus passage was the most important items in the newly founded American Philosophical Society, the first issue of the Transactions to this event, which became the demarcation line for the international recognition of the quality of American science. It is questionable whether before these observations the various nations of the world had ever collaborated in a pursuit of knowledge or for any higher purpose whatsoever. Cosmic phenomena, when humanity jointly faces its attention outwards, are capable of unifying the people of the earth, by at least subconsciously creating the realization that we inhabit a common planet, and that we may collaborate and live in concert. This is the general background to the Venus passages in the years 2004/2012. These will complete the same creation cycle which was augured by this global collaboration project, and there is every reason to believe that they will be important in a similar way, probably more so than we may realize today.

What then makes Venus our sister planet, except that the two are of almost equal size, and how do we know that Venus was created as a Cosmic Mirror for us on earth? To understand this we should first notice that Venus rotates around its axis retrograde, in the opposite direction to all the other planets including the earth, and that it rotates very slowly - in 243 days compared to the 24 hours of the earth. The significance of this particular period of rotation is that Venus at conjunctions, including passages, always turns the same face towards the earth. This supposedly cannot be explained as an effect of gravitation, but apparently the movements of the two planets are linked in such a way that at every passage Venus mirrors the same face to the earth.

How did the Maya determine the synodic period of revolution of Venus (like the moon Venus goes through a number of phases and a synodic period of revolution may thus be described as the time between two "full venuses" as seen from ourselves) with such accuracy? A possible way to explaine this is that they exploited the opportunity of a pair of Venus passages, e.g. those occurring in AD 659/667, to accomplish this. As Venus makes 5 synodic revolutions, the earth makes 8 revolutions around the sun minus approximately 2 days (This is why the dates for the Venus Passages in 2004 and 2012 occur at 8th and 6th of June, respectively). The Maya knew the period of revolution of the earth around the sun with three decimals, and then by making observations through their precious black obsidian class of Venus crossing the disc of the sun, and determining, the time of day this happens on consecutive passages it would have been possible to make an exact estimate of the synodic revolution of Venus. That is it is mathematically simple, but to do this requires insights into the workings of the Cosmos that have been hidden for at least a thousand years. But to the ancient Maya this was simply the reality they were living, and possibly they knew the importance of these measurements for the people of the future. One more thing about this seemingly so specialized topic; The Venus passages follow two cycles, each with a period of 243 years (Thus, there are 243 years between the Venus passages 1761/67 and 2004/12 and 243 years between those 1631/39 and 1874/82). Since the time of rotation of Venus around its own axis is 243 days, the earth will then have revolved 243 times around the sun as Venus has rotated 365 times around its own axis. What this means is that in the time between two Venus passages, Venus will rotate 365 times, the number of days in an earth year, around its own axis! Of course we may dismiss this as a coincidence, but if we don't, what are we to believe? Explain this someone! Maybe this is a type of primal synchronicity which is linked to the fact that Venus has been created as the mirror of the earth, and maybe in the year 2012, as our consciousness has become more cosmic, this will simply be seen by us as self-explanatory.

Of course, the upcoming Cosmic Mirrors, completion events for both the Great and the Planetary Cycles, could potentially be used in a number of different ways. If no manifestation of unity occurs then this would also mirror (although in a depressing way) the level of spiritual evolution of our planet. What would be a more positive way of celebrating these occurrences would be to promote authentic experiences of many individuals of the One Reality and the One Truth and very likely the best path towards such an end is through collective meditation or prayer. Meditations have already begun to be held on a yearly basis in a number of countries on June 6th to prepare for large-scale global meditations some years into the future, the Great Rehearsal in 2004 and the attainment of an era of everlasting peace and harmony in 2012. Let us use the Cosmic Mirrors of the Venus Passages and the yearly build-up towards these for transcending all national, religious, ethnical, political or racial differences in the worship of the One God.

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GAIA 2012. Web-Master Elinda.