Popetastic II
2005-04-21,

Dear lord, but this day is trudging by slowly. It's only noon, and it seems like it's taken forever just to get here. Be that as it may, it gives me the time to ponder our brand new, Pope-based conspiracy theory! Well, not so much a conspiracy theory as it is a lingering view on conjunctive predictions, not to mention a prediction of our own.

Conjunctive, you ask? Between what? Why, Popes and Mayans, of course!

Okay, here's the deal.

With the haunting merging between the Pope John Paul II's death and 24-hour news coverage (a.k.a. Pope-O-Vision), lots of informational tidbits have emerged. For instance, it turns out that there was an Irish Saint from the 1100's - Saint Malachy, though the Gaelic name ' Maolmhaodhog ua Morgair' is much cooler - who predicted, among other things, who all of the Popes would be from his time on. And according to him, there will be a last Pope, from which we are but one Pope away.

Now, the one he predicted to follow JP II was what h called "glory of the olive." Benedict XVI is - not surprising by the name - part of the Benedictine Order, whose symbol is the olive (they're also known as the Olivetans). This would be a spookily accurate prediction if it weren't for the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. It wouldn't surprise me that the conclave deciding the next Pope were passing around the list of names and comparing it to the Saint's list from 900 years ago. After all, what inspires faith more than fulfilled prophecy? What better to instill a belief in God than by supporting a prediction that, by definition, preempts the concept of free will? I Love Duality!

Part Two of this conspiracy/prediction involves something particularly parallel to prophetic Papal picking: Mesoamerican calendars!

As we all know (ahem), the Mayans were awfully good stargazers. As a result, they were also really good with calendars. Gotta keep track of those heavenly events somehow. They used heavenly bodies to forecast events and applied a counting system, a round calendar that they called the Great Cycle. And, as with all round things, you end up coming back to where you started, the calendar concludes. As in, they didn't bother continuing the predicting. As in, it was the end of some sort of era, the significance of which people are still only guessing. The calendar ends at exactly 12pm on December 21st, 2012, the Winter Solstice. At that point, according to their myths, something of great consequence will happen. If they knew what that event was, they decided not to share it with us. Selfish Mayans.

Anyway, so what's my point? These have proven to be two pretty darn accurate, self-fulfilling or no. And both lists look like they have the potential to be ending at right around the same time. Throw in the fact that, considering the density of hardcore Catholics in the region, the next Pope after this may be South American and have the potential to have Mayan blood in his ancestry, it has the makings for, at least, a pretty good SciFi channel miniseries.

So that's the prediction part-- the South American Pope next time 'round. Oh, and that the 'event' on the Winter Solstice of 2012 will be a polar inversion (i.e. magnetic North becomes magnetic South and vice versa), which will really screw things up on this here planet of ours.

Meanwhile, I think there are a number of people who are readying themselves for the End Times and playing the world to facilitate it, more than likely including our illustrious born-again President. It just seems like there's a lot of things converging in the near future, and I think people, subconsciously or no, are feeling it, and not just because we just passed the giant Monopoly 'Go' space that was the millennium. And I can't help feeling that there's something happening in the undercurrent of society; some sort of... hardening, if you will. A polarizing, and not just here in the U.S. It seems like it's happening everywhere to some degree. Back on the pope angle, there's already talk that Benny will be driving a wedge between orthodox and progressive Catholics - or at least driving deeper the wedge that was already there. The man's going to really have to screw up to bring on some of those mid-millennium predictions about persecution of Christians and the razing of Rome (Vatican City) to pass that were mentioned in the link above. Of course, economic collapse might do it, since there's so much wealth tied up there. Hmm.

Happy thoughts for happy times. It's a wonder I sleep at all.

-- End Transmission --