2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

by Daniel Pinchbeck

Book Overview

The acclaimed metaphysical epic that binds together the cosmological phenomena of our time, ranging from crop circles to quantum theory to the resurgence of psychedelic drugs, to support the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585424838
• ISBN13: 9781585424832
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Tarcher
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Fascinating, well-written read.

I've been waiting for a book like this. Too often, I get "stuck" in books that are theory only. "2012" offers an engaging hybrid of very personal autobiography mixed with excellent, well-balanced dissertations on a variety of myths, theories, and occult phenomena. Pinchbeck's bravery at weaving his own story into these theories results in a deeply engaging work that's almost impossible to put down. For anyone who, like me, has been seeking a "way in" to some of the drier, more difficult-to-comprehend aspects of consciousness and its theories, this is an excellent open door. You won't think of anything quite the same (particularly "reality") once you've finished it.

2012 - A Must Read - Really.

I cannot recommend this book more highly. It distills into a beautifully crafted, readable prose, the ideas that are moving human consciousness forward on its evolutionary spiral. As someone who has read esoteric texts for the past 30 years, pouring over arcane manuscripts, wierdly written information, and downright garbage, this book is a godsend. As someone trained in scientific method, I find it is a good hypothesis to ponder. As a thealogian I state that this book moves multiple ideas that fuel religious and cultural myth into another realm entirely, and I think a better one. I do not advocate the use of drugs for psychic transformation (gigo) - and therefor the experiences of Daniel with regard to them are unimportant to me. What is important is that his impecabble use of logic, observation and a poet's sensitivity to the universe and its phenomena. Reading this text created a remarkable order for the mutitudes of factoids I have collected over the years. The information contained in this book is true to the best of my knowledge. The events and ideas are present in our consciousness and are spreading throughout our collective consciousness. To take this information, consider it, and to perceive its worth is a worthy aim for anyone seeking to develop their consciousness forward. It is all to easy to scoff at the New Age 'movement' with its collection of snake oil, charlatans, and partial knowledge. It is easier to dismiss UFO's at silly. Still - there are things that have been witnessed that cannot be dismmissed, and which need to be considered and integrated into our human experience - for better or for worse. Under the vast underbelly of consumer culture lies a rich flora and fauna of mythopoetic experience, myth, wisdom, healing possibility and possibility. Daniel Pinchebeck separates the wheat from the chaff in 2012, and the result will cause you to rethink, relearn and redeploy your Spirit. The future is literally dropping upon us - Mr. Pinchbeck's book may be a key to creating the world for which we have been longing. For me, it is.

Weird . . . Good Weird!

Daniel found himself in a "lion's den" of strangely attractive ideas, esoteric technologies, historical peculiarities and outright weirdness. Pinchbeck reports on these topics in a very integrated fashion, tying everything together with a journalistic style that is both objective and personal. Such a tour of ideas and phenomena that span from scientifically sound to outright New-Age ridiculousness is bound to rub different readers in different ways. I was delighted again and again, as I had been developing similar ideas, since the age of sixteen, about the pace of change, the Mayan correlations, trans-dimensional beings, and the evolution of consciousness. I was delighted that Pinchbeck presents these things with a mature skepticism that seems to say "yeah, it's ridiculous, I know, I don't believe it either, but look, it makes sense in a very interesting way, so let's just consider this crazy crap . . ." This style is very reassuring; it allowed me to be comfortable considering, for example, the worldviews of Jose Arguelles without fear that I would slide down a similar slippery slope of scientific sloppiness. If you have ever had gut feelings that modern and historical events are heading somewhere weird; that tryptamine psychedelics such as psilocybin and DMT are providing REAL experiences of REAL realities; that aliens and gnomes and fairies are not just in the head, but not fully objective either; that there is--or needs to be--a consciousness re-evolution/revival of spiritual perceptions--if you have shared any of these intuitions (or if you can't stand them and want to learn more about them to prove them wrong) then THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. A great introduction to the bizarre convergence of methods, ideas, and technologies that is happening today. The bibliography alone is worth it (although you can view it right here without purchasing! HA! ~Link

Interesting times

Daniel Pinchbeck has written a compelling and thought-provoking book about the significance of the year 2012 in the Mayan calendar. This subject naturally ties in with many other diverse and fascinating fields, including crop circles, possible visits by aliens and psychedelic visions. Some will inevitably, and in a predictably knee-jerk fashion, dismiss all of these topics as "new age," irrational or some other simplistic category that implies a lack of knowledge of these subjects as well as a closed mind. Yet, what this book explores is a surprisingly diverse and educated subculture of people who take such subjects quite seriously. Pinchbeck also connects these topics to environmental concerns about the near future, something that is all-too practical. Considering that more and more mainstream scientists are confirming that climate change, destruction of the rain-forests and other potentially catastrophic changes are imminent if not already happening, the prophecies of ancient peoples such as the Mayans about the end of a cycle do not seem so farfetched after all. Pinchbeck's approach is speculative and non-dogmatic, which may frustrate readers looking for definite answers. When it comes to esoteric topics such as psychedelic visions and crop circles, we might do well to be wary of people who claim to have the final word on the subject. In fact, some of the best writing in this book, at least in this reader's opinion, is related to the notions of ambiguity and paradox. Pinchbeck suggests that the intelligence(s) who communicate with humans through crop circles, alien visitations and abductions, and in plant-induced visions are akin to trickster gods who deliver their messages with deliberate ambiguity. He wonders if these "alien" messages are not trying to teach us something about the paradoxical nature of life. The god of the book's title, Quetzalcoatl is, among other things, a kind of Aztec Hermes, the Greek trickster god who was also a messenger between worlds. Pinchbeck, and others he speaks to in his journeys, believes that this may be an important clue to the way the universe operates -closer to art than linear science. Skeptics, of course, will insist that lack of scientific/rationalistic style communications from these "otherworlds" is evidence of their nonexistence. Pinchbeck also discusses the theories of some other popular authors, such as Jose Arguelles, whom Pinchbeck met and interviewed. Arguelles, who became well known for talking about the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, is trying to implement a lunar, Mayan-based calendar to replace the present, solar-based one. Also covered are the related theories of Carl Johan Calleman, who has his own, differing (from Arguelles) opinions about the Mayan calendar. What I like best about this book is Pinchbeck's cosmopolitan perspective. What I mean by this is that he does not write like a typical new age or human potential movement author. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the lat

A Frighteningly Plausible (and Very Entertaining) Book

Huck Finn has been reincarnated and he's back on a homemade mind-raft drifting down a Mississipi as wide as the world flowing free and clear through space and time with the ink black liquid of the Alchemical soul lit by the quantum glow of stars. 2012 is not a road novel or journalism or a work of philosophical speculation--although it borrows from all of these forms (and a little bit from Moby Dick too, with the tools of the whaling trade exchanged for a stack of esoteric texts, and the great white whale morphed into a flashing pinwheel mandala soul turning high in the sky of the universal mind)--instead it's a piece of literary performance art staged and performed by a scholar, madman, shaman, comedian, psychopomp, flawed husband and father, and, above all, a 21st century American writer, with the uniquely American self-honesty, courage, faith and innocence that lets him believe man's redemption is somehow still possible here on this earth, and that if we think, and believe, and try, we can make it into the gates of heaven, just a few steps ahead of the devil's pitchfork, like a sharp and narrow second hand on a clock, ready to stabb us in our collective butts at the stroke of midnight December 21, 2012. Do you believe? You don't have to. You can sleep. You can ignore the fantastically implausible plausibility of the artfully assembled and analyzed signs and prophecies. You can ignore the complete failure of the materialist world view to explain the essence of much of anything at all in this world that's worth explaining, and its near destruction of the world that we do have. You can laugh at the tabloid pseudo-science of crop circle studies and alien abduction research. You can take refuge in the cynic's safely sealed suit of armor that lets in no light or breath or life. You can survive as the zombie that you are. But if you want to find out just who and what you might be, as incredible as it seems (and maybe is, as our author candidly concedes) then listen to the ravings of this cast of misfits, loonies, temptresses, new age priestesses, philosophers, home-grown geniuses, poetesses and seekers that Huck meets and befriends along the river. And if you do, at the very least, you'll be rolling on the floor laughing your ass off, mightily entertained by the performance, and by the all-too-human spectacle of it all. But be careful, you may find in it more than that, much more.