José Argüelles

José Argüelles (born Joseph Anthony Argüelles, January 24, 1939 – March 23, 2011) was an American author, artist, and trained art historian who became one of the most influential popularizers of a New Age reading of the Maya calendar.

After an academic career in art history, he turned to esoteric and visionary work, publishing The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology (1987), which reinterpreted the ancient Mesoamerican calendar as a map of cosmic time and human spiritual evolution.

With his then-wife Lloydine Burris Argüelles he founded the Planet Art Network in 1983. Argüelles is best known for organizing the Harmonic Convergence of August 16-17, 1987, described as the first globally synchronized peace meditation, timed to a planetary alignment he read as a turning point in a great cycle.

He later devised the Dreamspell, an esoteric thirteen-month, twenty-eight-day calendar inspired by (but distinct from) the historical Maya count, initiated in 1987 and released as a board game in 1990.

His work is foundational to the later “2012 phenomenon.” Scholars of the Maya regard his system as a modern New Age construction rather than authentic Mayan tradition, a distinction worth stating plainly. Presented as a sincere experiment, his contribution is a symbol-rich cosmology of time and synchronicity.