John Major Jenkins (1964- ) is an American author, independent researcher¹, and advocate of naturally-occurring hallucinogens. He is best known for his ideas about the calendar systems used by the Maya civilization. His writings are associated with 2012 millenarianism and the development of Mayanism in contemporary and popular culture, as a part of the New Age movement.

Jenkins on Jenkins

John Major Jenkins calls himself:

…an independent researcher who has devoted himself to reconstructing ancient Mayan cosmology and philosophy.²

Jenkins on 2012

Jenkins can be harshly critical of the "2012 Doomsday" camp:

The trendy doomsday people… should be treated for what they are: under-informed opportunists and alarmists who will move onto other things in 2013.³

However, some of his own works attribute apocalyptic views to the Maya. More recently, he has said that the Maya only "suspected" that 2012 would be a time of transformation.⁴

Alternative Science

Jenkins appears to reject the conclusions of science, because it has abandoned its 'sacred roots'.

Modern profane science is the degenerate descendant of an ancient sacred science that long ago perceived and embraced many dimensions of reality, including supra-sensory realms that lead into a higher integrative consciousness that is not anti-intellect, but transcends the intellect and is within reach of all human beings⁵.

Use and advocacy of hallucinogens

By his late teens, Jenkins was already an experienced user of hallucinogens. He describes the LSD experiment that he conducted on himself in an isolation tank at age 19 as “an experience that reoriented my entire being, at a young age, and has led me along the path that is my life”.⁶

Jenkins had prepared himself for that experiment through fasting and diligent meditation. In addition, he had “lately eliminated mind-altering substances in deference to yoga practice, seeking clarity of mind”. As further preparation, he’d had four or five previous sessions in the isolation tank "without pharmacological help".⁷ Jenkins recalls that the session in which he used LSD lasted five hours.⁸ He later wrote that

The experience affected me deeply. It was completely different from the several psychedelic trips I had previously undertaken. I walked around north Chicago neighborhoods for a few hours to get anchored back into embodiment. My body seemed newly born, as did my mind and soul.⁹

Jenkins used psilocybin mushrooms extensively during the 1990s, during the period when he was doing the research for his “magnum opus”, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012.¹⁰ He appears to attribute to drug use, his “blazing new revelation[s] about how the Maya encoded the galactic alignment of 2012 into their various institutions”.¹¹

Jenkins maintains that with the aid of hallucinogens, the ancient Maya were able to perform feats far beyond humankind's present technology,¹² and to communicate with beings from other times and levels of existence. Therefore, Jenkins recommends that modern heads of state avail themselves of hallucinogens for decision-making.¹³

In his latest book, The 2012 Story, Jenkins draws a clear distinction between LSD and other hallucinogens. He says that all human beings should have some direct experience (with proper guidance) of "sacred plants", which he defines as "psychoactive tools of shamanism such as peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, [and] ergot".¹⁴ In contrast, of LSD he says, “I don't advocate LSD use or suggest that [his own experiment in the isolation tank] be repeated”.¹⁵

Jenkins' place in the 2012 phenomenon

In an article in the New York Times Magazine, author Benjamin Anastas called Jenkins "perhaps the most lucid figure in the subculture of 2012 prophets"¹⁶, and after having read some of the views of the other "2012 prophets"¹⁷, and while we agree with Anastas, "most lucid" is a relative term.

Up until recently Jenkins did not strike us as particularly deranged, or at least not as much as some of the other 2012 authors. He works hard at presenting himself as erudite and scholarly.

Publicly, Jenkins does not support the idea of an apocalypse in 2012. "Personally, I think it’s about transformation and renewal. It’s certainly nothing as simplistic as the end of the world.”¹⁸

However, recent information paints a different picture. Jenkins projects apocalyptic views upon the Maya that they apparently never held, and according to his own recollection, composed his Magnum Opus Maya Cosmogenesis: 2012 during a period of heavy usage of hallucinogenic drug use. He also apparently heaps abuse on people who disagree with him, referring one person to a "dream worker" for a diagnosis of "energy vampires" and "mind parasites".

John Hoopes, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, is more complimentary of Jenkins’s research, even if he doubts the validity of his major conclusions, including the galactic-alignment theory. “John Jenkins has done his homework on the ancient Maya,” he told me, “and he’s thought about their culture a great deal. Arguelles and Calleman largely disregard what we know the Maya believed.” Still, like most Mayan experts, Hoopes is not convinced that the Maya would have considered the end of a world cycle to be an apocalyptic event; one cycle could be subsumed into the next without a hiccup in the system, let alone a rupture in the count of days.¹⁹

Jenkins phrases it this way: “A lot of people ask me if the world is going to end in 2012, and I’ve come up with the best way to address that. The short answer is yes. The long answer is no.”

Publications

Some of Jenkins' publications include:

• Journey to the Mayan Underworld (Four Ahau Press, Boulder, CO: 1989)
• Mirror in the Sky (Four Ahau Press, 1991)
• Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, Garberville, CA: 1992/1994)
• Mayan Sacred Science (Four Ahau Press, Boulder, CO: 1994)
• Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (Bear & Company, Santa Fe, NM: 1998)
• The 2012 Story (Tarcher/Penguin, New York: 2009)

Further Reading: Jenkins and the Energy Vampires

Conclusion

John Major Jenkins publicly downplays the idea of apocalyptic events, but indulges in wild speculation that "transdimensional beings" will emerge in 2012, that the Maya thought of the 2012 date as "the end of time and space"