Synopses & Reviews
A literary and metaphysical epic that binds together the cosmological phenomena of our time to support the contention of the Mayan calendar that the year 2012 portends an unprecendented global shift.
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 happened: 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 before: 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 age: 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.
Review
"Few things are more difficult to convey in writing than the epiphanic drug experience or the mystical vision, and it is to Pinchbeck's credit as a writer that he is able to articulate these visions so clearly and memorably." Los Angeles Times
Review
"Pinchbeck's reporting is fascinating and entertaining." Washington Post Book World
Review
"The author is not some hippy-dippy hedonist staggering down the road of excess but rather a skeptical philosopher of consciousness seeking the enlightened path." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"A daring and intriguing, sometimes deeply disturbing, very well researched and extremely readable book that puts an entirely new slant on 2012. From quantum physics to aliens, from crop circles to reincarnation, from shamanic hallucinogens to Rudolf Steiner, from the Amazon jungle to Stonehenge, from fragments of jaundiced autobiography to the ending of worlds, Pinchbeck takes us on a mind-bending, paradigm-rattling ride." Graham Hancock
Review
"2012 presents a compelling and complex teleological argument, weaving together the twilit realms of the human imagination and the harsh realities of accelerated global catastrophe. Its conclusions are surprisingly robust, original, and thankfully optimistic." Sting
Synopsis
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 contention of the Mayan calendar that the year 2012 portends a global shift-in consciousness, culture, and way of living-of unprecedented consequence.
Read Daniel Pinchbeck's posts on the Penguin Blog
About the Author
Pinchbeck lives in New York's East Village, where he is currently launching Evolver (www.evolverproject.com), a new media and membership organization, with offices in Manhattan and on the West Coast.