Carl Johan Calleman

Carl Johan Calleman (born 15 May 1950, Stockholm, Sweden) is a toxicologist as well as an author and speaker on the millenarian New Age interpretation of the Mayan calendar known as Mayanism. He differs from professional Mayanists in seeing 28 October 2011 and not 21 December 2012 as a significant date. Calleman does not interpret the date as an apocalypse, Armageddon, or other cataclysmic event but a slow transformation of consciousness in which people experience a higher "unity consciousness."

Life Calleman studied toxicology at the Stockholm University in Sweden. He has had no professional training in archaeology or the study of the ancient Maya.

He first encountered the Mayan calendar on a visit to Mexico and Guatemala in 1979. He became fascinated with the concept of a calendar that had an "end date" and was influenced by the works of Michael D. Coe. His ideas represent a revival of theories of unilineal evolution.

Calleman disagrees that 2012 represents the point of an alignment between the Earth's solstice and the galactic centre which he says would be a purely local phenomenon unique to the Earth and which in any case already occurred in 1998. Instead he sees the Mayan calendar as describing the creation process of the whole Universe.

Within the logic of the Mayan Long Count, he says, an auspicious end would have to be on a day which is 13 Ahau in the tzolkin count. Since 21 December 2012 falls on 4 Ahau this is an unlikely end date. The 28 October 2011 is a 13 Ahau date.

Beginning with the Big Bang he believes creation has continued through a series of waves, each one a factor of 20 times shorter in duration than the one preceding it. Each wave has driven the structure of the universe to a higher level. The first wave drove the creation of physical matter, the second living cells, the third multicellular life, the fourth organisms living in family groups, the fifth, saw humans in tribal groups, and the sixth in national groups. The seventh wave encompasses human awareness of the whole planet, and the eighth awareness of our place in the galactic structure. The final wave, the ninth and shortest of all, began on 8 March 2011 and will complete along with all the others on 28 October 2011 sees awareness of the whole of the cosmos achieved. Rather than the series ending with an Apocalypse he describes it as the completion of the creation process of the Universe. The way will then be open to the full realisation of consciousness at its highest level which he terms "Unity consciousness".