La mistificazione delle Americhe. La cosiddetta “Profezia Maya” del 2012

Abstract

The fluidity of post-modern vision and interaction with the tourist market and mass media are leading to increasing mythification and commodification of Native American cultures. In this article, we provide some case histories revolving around the so-called 2012 Prophecy, for example Eugenia Casarin Limon, who in Mexico presents herself as a psychotherapist and member of an originally French neo-Hermetic organization, whereas in Italy she appears as a Maya priestess; or the better known Jose Arguelles, whose cultural background is entirely North American and European. Arguelles has made use of an ethnic Maya, Hunbatz Men, who however drew inspiration, not from traditional sources, but from a self-styled Gnostic movement, founded by the German adventurer Arnold Krumm-Heller; and the Mexican author Martinez Paredez, who inspired the symbolic work of Arguelles, was in turn inspired by a French Freemason, Augustus Le Plongeon. Application by Arguelles and others of the I Ching to the so-called Prophecy is especially interesting because of the changing meaning of this Chinese work to the West, from the times of the Jesuit missions to today's cyberculture. The Prophecy has much more to tell us about “Western” culture than about the Mesoamerican world.