José Argüelles Passes On – January 24, 1939 – March 23, 2011
“José Argüelles was a world-renowned author, artist, and educator. He was the founder of Planet Art Network and the Foundation for the Law of Time. He held a Ph.D. in Art History and Aesthetics from the University of Chicago, and taught at numerous colleges, including Princeton University and the San Francisco Art Institute. He was the twin brother of poet Ivan Argüelles. As one of the originators of the Earth Day concept, Argüelles founded the first Whole Earth Festival in 1970, at Davis, California.
As a painter and visual artist, he has provided illustrations for numerous books, as well as mural paintings at different universities. After experimenting with LSD in the mid-1960s, Argüelles produced a series of psychedelic art paintings that Humphrey Osmond–who originally coined the work “psychedelic”–named “The Doors of Perception” (after Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book of the same name, itself a title drawn from William Blake’s 18th-century poem). In a 2002 interview Argüelles says of his artwork, “as fantastic as painting was, it was a limited medium in terms of audience.”
José Argüelles is known for his role in organizing the Harmonic Convergence event of 1987, and his book The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology, published the same year. In The Mayan Factor Argüelles devises a complicated numerological system by combining elements taken from the pre-Columbian Maya calendar with the I Ching and other esoteric influences, interspersed with concepts drawn from modern sciences such as “genetic codes” and “galactic convergences”. The book first popularized the Hunab Ku design as a symbol within New Age discourse, after altering its appearance from that originally presented by Mexican anthropologist Domingo MartÍnez Parédez ( 1904—1984 ) in his 1953 publication Hunab Kú: SÍntesis del pensamiento filosófico maya.
Argüelles produced “Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013” and a game/tool “Telektonon: The Talking Stone of Prophesy”. The former is the source of Arguelles’ 13 Moon/28 Day Calendar. This calendar begins on July 26 (helical rising of the star Sirius) and runs for 364 days. The remaining date, July 25, is celebrated in some quarters as the “Day out of Time”.
In his 2002 book Time and the Technosphere, Argüelles devises and promotes a notion that he calls the “Law of Time”, in part framed by his interpretations of how Maya calendrical mathematics functioned. In this notional framework Argüelles claims to have identified a “fundamental law” involving two timing frequencies: one he calls “mechanised time” with a “12:60 frequency”, and the other “natural [time] codified by the Maya [that is] understood to be the frequency 13:20”. To Argüelles, “the irregular 12-month [Gregorian] calendar and artificial, mechanised 60-minute hour” is a construct that artificially regulates human affairs, and is out-of-step with the natural “synchronic order”. He proposes the universal abandonment of the Gregorian calendar and its replacement with a thirteen moon, 28 day calendar, in order to “get the human race back on course” by the adoption of this calendar of perfect harmony so the human race could straighten its mind out again.”
Argüelles co-founded the Planet Art Network (PAN) with Lloydine in 1983 as an autonomous, meta-political, worldwide peace organization engaging in art and spirituality. Active in over 90 countries, PAN upholds the Nicholas Roerich Peace Pact and Banner of Peace, symbolizing “Peace Through Culture”.
The Planet Art Network operates as a network of self-organized collectives, centralized by a shared focus of promoting the worldwide adoption of Argüelles’ Dreamspell 13-Moon/28 day Calendar. The network upholds the slogan “Time is Art”, suggesting that time is a vehicle for our creative experience, instead of the familiar saying “Time is Money”.
He was currently director of the Noosphere II project of the Foundation’s Galactic Research Institute, inclusive of the First Noosphere World Forum, a project that involves creating a dialogue that unifies a network of organizations working to promote a positive shift of consciousness by 2012 with the vision of the whole earth as a work of art.” (Wikipedia)
2012 Circumpolar Rainbow Bridge by José Arguelles Part 1 of 2 on Youtube.com
2012 Circumpoloar Rainbow Bridge by José Arguelles Part 2 of 2 on YouTube.com