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2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

daniel pinchbeck

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Read Daniel Pinchbeck's posts on the Penguin Blog
Cross James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda -each imbued with a twenty-first-century aptitude for quantum theory and existential psychology-and you get the voice of Daniel Pinchbeck. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for the lucidity, rationale, and informed audacity of this seeker, skeptic, and cartographer of hidden realms.

Throughout the 1990s, Pinchbeck had been a member of New York's literary select. He wrote for publications such as The New York Times Magazine , Esquire , and Harper's Bazaar . His first book, Breaking Open the Head , was heralded as the most significant on psychedelic experimentation since the work of Terence McKenna.

But slowly something Rather than writing from a journalistic remove, Pinchbeck-his literary powers at their peak-began to participate in the shamanic and metaphysical belief systems he was encountering. As his psyche and body opened to new experience, disparate threads and occurrences made sense like never Humanity, every sign pointed, is precariously balanced between greater self-potential and environmental disaster. The Mayan calendar's "end date" of 2012 seems to define our present It heralds the end of one way of existence and the return of another, in which the serpent god Quetzalcoatl reigns anew, bringing with him an unimaginably ancient-yet, to us, wholly new-way of living.

A result not just of study but also of participation, 2012 tells the tale of a single man in whose trials we ultimately recognize our own hopes and anxieties about modern life.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4,2006

This edition

Format
416 pages, Hardcover
Published
May 4, 2006 by Tarcher/Penguin
ISBN
9781585424832
ASIN
1585424838
Language
English
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daniel pinchbeck

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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soYaaqo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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If Pinchbeck had managed to let his own ego get out of the way, this could have been a great book. Instead, it is meandering and irritating. I give it three stars primarily for some of the middle chapters, when he is doing serious self-work and seeking; those are four-or-five-star writing. I especially like the time he spends in England, researching crop circles and contemplating. However, the final chapters are just semi-prurient garbage. I think he was onto something worthwhile in the beginning, but somewhere along the way, he got detoured and just lost the thread entirely. Read only if you have deep interest in such topics.
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Radimo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Interesting but really fragmented collection of ideas. Some of it is really fascinating - I like the elements discussing the quantum nature of the universe (in language understandable to somebody as relatively scientifically illiterate as I am) and its relationship to spirituality, just as a lot of the ideas about egalitarianism in the face of increasingly oppressive socio-political machinations are always welcome.

The problems with this book are manifold, however. Pinchbeck relies heavily on the input of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, many of whom hold to some fairly unconventional belief systems. There's nothing wrong with believing in any of the things presented, but these sources are often taken at their word, which can sometimes be difficult to swallow for somebody who hasn't done the same drugs or hung out in the same crop circles. These ideas are somewhat messily arranged, and seem to fit more with the author's own experiences and revelations. This inchoate structure, coupled with the fact that what Pinchbeck reveals about himself often makes him seem like an insufferable jackass (I could tell he was an only child before it was ever mentioned) does his ideas no favors. Maybe it's just that I'm too immured in the sort of faulty reliance on empiricism that this book tends to shy away from, but I think that if the contents had been presented a little more clearly with a little less emphasis on the author's personal life it would've been a far more compelling read.

It is important, though, to consider what Pinchback states at the book's onset. The text works far better as an elaborate thought experiment and, even at his most out-there, the author's strongest moments are when he's approaching his subjects with some doubt. It is an interesting compendium of interrelated esoterica, one riddled with ideas worth implementing and pursuing. There's just a lot of distractions as well. Not a bad book, but one requiring the largest grain of salt imaginable.
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LxrdPrinceMe
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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One of the worst books ever written, possibly more so than Mein Kampf, and to cap it off Pinchbec once again proves his utter lack of familiarity with parts of his subject matter in regards to Christianity: in Chter 4 of Part 6 he describes Christ as described in the Bible as half-man half-God, which is not only untrue, but is heresy, for someone who is important enough for a mesoamirican god to use as a vehicle of transmission one'd thinnk he'd've heard of the the Third Ecumical Council, but th again when you pretend to have all the answers you don't ask any questions...
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beecorrea
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Actually, I am still reading this one, about 1/2 way through. Another fascinating Pinchbeck investigation. Thoughtful, yet conversational writing style I really enjoy...some may find him too verbose. Gives some interesting auto-biographical information about his background (parents, education, etc). Delves into the Ancient Mayan predictions for a major end of a Planetary cycle on Dec. 12, 2012. Correlations to this date by Nostradamus, Biblical references, as well. Consciousness shift? Major catastrophe? A huge end of a cycle & beginning of something completely new...but what? Got to read to the end to find out I guess.
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pietel
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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A personal journey in search of transforming consciousness with a little help from Mayan Deity Quetzalcoatl, just in time for the fireworks of 2012!

Pinchbeck applies his extensive literary craftsmanship to weave a lusciously layered multi-topic tome built on intertwining Fibonacci spiraling column chapters of poetically ruminating prose...
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tobi5797
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I'd give zero stars if it was an option. This was actually recommended by Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes. Love their music but Chris's reading tastes are for shit. This book was more atrocious than I can even convey. Terrible!!! Myopic!!! Stupid!!!
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NotReshi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Daniel Pinchbeck loses all my respect in this mysogynistic, drug-addled, masturbatory, new age pile of drivel. He asserts that the problems of the modern world are to be blamed on women and the feminine, and that in order to save ourselves we should have a big free-loving orgy, even if we've fathered a child we should be responsible for and loving toward. He also claims that he is channeling Quetzelcuatl, and that crop circles are speaking to him. He has had one too many sips of ayahuasca if you ask me. I wish I could slap him.
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mhussain
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Well despite how much I might want to like Dan Pinchbeck, his book leaves me unsatisfied. I agree that there are more thngs in heaven and earth than may be explained by simple material reductionism. I don;t even really discount his own subjective experience, after all, I've had a few of these kinds of inexplicable-any-other-way times myself. But not being one of these "end of the world is coming! All hail the great Serpent God!" people, I find it hard being worked up over this particular epismetology. Why the Mayans? Why not Glastonbury and Stonehenge, - who is to say where the "new age" begins, or began? Why crop circles and UFOs? Why not things that carry less "wingnut" baggage?
Which his part of the problem with this book... Rather than give his feminine participants names, we get "my partner" or "first and second priestesses." One wishes more intimacy had been involved in this depiction of a personal tale of evolution from skepticism to true believer. And it would be a lot cooler, for me anyhow, if folks like DP would spend less time working over the "shamanic" aspects of psychedelics, and spend more time trying to rescue them from the legacy of the 1970's witch hunts.
I still prefer Huxley's vision of all this to the modern (oh, should I say "postmodern?" oooh.)revanche oblique as regards the role psychedelics [might] play in our culture. He calls "tripping" an adolescent fixation. Well, good for him. But there's subjectivity everywhere and what is adolescent hedonism to one person is another's sincere quest. And no ban exists on mixing the two either; nor should one. So I felt uncomfortable at times reading this, however much I wanted to find things to agree about. The 'Burning Man' section -I found a lot there to agree with. But since I'll never bother with it (perpetual outsider) I wouldn't want to spoil their party. So I'll go.
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