MERIDA, Mexico -- The celebration of the cosmic dawn began with a fumbling of the sacred fire meant to honor Friday’s end of the Mayan long count calendar.

Gabriel Lemus, the white-haired guardian of the flame, burned his finger on the kindling and later somebody knocked a burning log out of the ceremonial brazier onto the wooden stage, before he quickly scooped it up.

Still, the white-clad Lemus, like about 1,000 other shamans, seers, stargazers, crystal enthusiasts, yogis, sufis and swamis in a Merida convention center about an hour and a half from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, was convinced that it was a good start to the coming “New Era” supposed to begin around 5 a.m. on Friday.

“It is a cosmic dawn,” said Lemus. “We will recover the ability to communicate telepathically and levitate objects … like our ancestors did.”

These are not people who believe the world will end on Friday; the summit is scheduled to run through Dec. 23. Instead, participants say, they are here to celebrate the birth of a new age.

A Mexican Indian seer who calls himself Ac Tah, and who has traveled around Mexico erecting small pyramids he calls “neurological circuits,” said he holds high hopes for Dec. 21.

“We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy,” he said.

Terry Kvasnik, 32, a stunt man and acrobat from Manchester, England, said it’s the beginning of a new era, and his motto for the day is “Be in love, don’t be in fear.” While he didn’t know exactly which ceremony he’ll attend on Friday, he guaranteed with a smile, “I’m going to be in the happiest place I can.”

The summit is the kind of place where you can see people wearing T-shirts that read “Shiva Rules,” or get your aura photographed with “chi” light. In the exhibition hall you can chose from a number of crystal vendors and faith healers.

You can learn the art of healing drumming with a Mexican Otomi Indian master who calls himself Dabadi Thaayroyadi. He said that his slender, hand-held, plate-sized drums are made with prayers embedded into them and emit “an intelligent energy” that can heal emotional, physical and social ailments.

During the opening ceremony participants held up their arms and chanted mantras to the blazing Yucatan sun, which quickly burned the fair-skinned crowd.

Violeta Simarro, a secretary from Perpignan, France, took shelter under a nearby awning and noted that the new age won’t necessarily be all peaches and cream.

“It will be a little difficult at first, because the world will need a complete ‘nettoyage’ (cleaning), because there are so many bad things,” she said.

Not all seers endorse the celebration.

Mexico’s self-styled “brujo mayor,” or chief soothsayer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, warned followers to stay away from all gatherings on Dec. 21, saying, “We have to beware of mass psychosis” that could lead to stampedes or “mass suicides, of the kind we’ve seen before.”

“If you get 1,000 people in one spot and somebody yells ‘fire,’ watch out,” Vazquez Alba said. “The best thing is to stay at home, at work, in school, and at some point do a relaxation exercise.”