“2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” by Daniel Pinchbeck
I first heard about this book when author Daniel Pinchbeck guested on The Colbert Report to advertise the book. This was right around the time when I had just discovered a bunch of connections to all of this 2012 hoopla, mostly from the 2012 Wiki page. For this reason I immediately sparked interest, and wrote the title down on my ‘to read’ list.
It wasn’t until several weeks later that I came across it at a Chapters, recalling the interview I had seen previously, and decided to pick it up. Though I was really quite into it from the first night I brought it home and read a big chunk, I now have fairly mixed opinions about it.
The book is essentially a ’six degrees of separation’ of all things related to the Mayan calendar dilemma and the metaphysical links to the year 2012. Following the spiritual (and sometimes not-so-spiritual) life adventures of the author, it covers topics ranging from Jungian psychology, sociology, crop circles, hallucinogenic experimentation, and even quantum mechanics. It’s an amazing collection of subjects that will lead any reader to explore other books and other thoughts that they might not have known before.
The first half of the book graciously covers a lot of metaphysical topics, often quoting other well-known authors on the particular subjects, while Pinchbeck gives his own interpretation or relates his own life experiences. In doing so, Daniel really pulls together the meaning behind the deeper topics, usually relating previous topics and giving them meaning and sustenance where they might otherwise be lost in their wording. It is this portion of the book that I found the most interesting, but it’s also where I slowly started to become unintentionally mislead by the book. As I read further, I became less and less interested in his own personal experiences — most of which related taking obscene amounts of drugs amongst tribal cultures, taking part in ritualistic ceremonies, or about his rocky relationship with his wife and child.
Further and further on into the book, it became less about the topics and more about his personal experiences. I found myself becoming disinterested, but was eventually able to read past this as just an autobiography. His experiences of receiving ‘transmissions’ from the Aztec god, Quetzacoatl, which I would otherwise have shrugged off as the delusions of a drug addict, really seemed to have meaning as he tied it all together nearer the end of the book.
It’s definitely a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the topics. I feel a little bit unsatisfied with the 2012 Mayan calendar subject (which I originally thought was the meat of the book), but overall I felt inspired to further follow some of the subjects he touched upon.
Currently Reading: Death by Black Hole by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Up Next To Read: DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman
May 27th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
[…] Just like how I found out about “2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl” by Daniel Pinchbeck, I saw an interview with Neil on an episode of The Colbert Report, where he was promoting this new book, "Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries". I can’t recall how long ago the episode had played, but I immediately added it to my ‘to read’ list after watching it. It wasn’t until about two weeks ago that I found a copy in my local Chapters and started reading. […]
July 15th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
So how will WE write it? How shall it read when we look back on December 21, 2012? We certainly have the elements in place to destroy ourselves. The planet has experienced cataclysmic events in its history - polar shifts, ice ages, etc. No one really knows. What the Mayan’s meant with their End-Count calendar will always be up for speculation. It fires the imagination, for sure. SOooo let’s write it like we want it. That is what Chris Fenwick did in the #1 Visionary Novel: “the 100th human.” You choose…