Why are doomsday predictions for 2012 seen as incompatible with historical Maya mythology/religion?
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I think this was always regarded as an ending to a metaphysical era more than a physical ending within the Mayan calendar. I had this described to me as a cycle in humanity's heart beat as one beat flows into the next (claiming the world ends would be the equivalent of the heart ends after it beats once and not acknowledging that it exists to beat again). It is also easy to find references to 'stages of consciousness' or 'evolution of consciousness'. Websites like http://mayan-calendar.blogspot.ca/ will show that there is a belief that we are all different fingers of the same consciousness and this collective consciousness evolves according to the cycles of the Mayan calendar. This 'world end' is a reference to the ending of one spiritual collective consciousness and the evolution that will bring us to our next and has nothing to do with the end of the physical world.
from the wiki article:
Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world would end with the 13th b'ak'tun. Ricardo Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala, said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness." Martín Sacalxot, of the office of the Procurador de los Derechos Humanos (Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, PDH), said that the end of the calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012.
A similar exercise would be some distant future civilization discovering our ruins and calendar, then coming to the conclusion that we believed the world would end right after the age of Aquarius ends and the new age (Capricorn I believe?) starts. Just like the Mayan date, the astrological ages vary heavily...quote below on that from link here http://earthsky.org/human-world/when-will-the-age-of-aquarius-begin). As a side note, the dec 21 2012 date is also disputed, Oct 2011 is also argued as a potential.
But even if you equalize the size of the signs of the Zodiac, you need to consider when the Age of Pisces started to be able to know when the Age of Aquarius begins. Apparently, there’s no firm consensus among astrologers as to when the Age of Pisces began, either. And thus there is no consensus as to when the Age of Aquarius begins. In The Book of World Horoscopes, Nicholas Campion suggests that approximated dates for entering the Age of Aquarius range from 1447 AD to 3597 AD. Campion also reviewed published material on the subject, from astrological sources. He says that most writers claim the Age of Aquarius arrived in the 20th century (29 claims). The 24th century is in second place (12 claims). Campion, by the way, is director of the Sophia Centre and Course Director of the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales, Lampeter.
The majority of Mayan sources I see on the topic seem to state that using the Mayan calendar to calculate the 'end of the world' is no better than using these astrological ages (that most don't use and dispute any connection with reality) to say that we would believe the world was to end after the age of Aquarius. Ultimately this is a perversion of their calendar and culture.
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