I love Daniel Pinchbeck, but not in a sexual way…. I mean, the guy is so obviously intellectually superior to just about anybody—you can see it in his prose—and yet he continues to blast that magnificent brain of his (heroically, courageously, in the interests of science, for the good of all mankind!) with weird, powerful hallucinogenic drugs every fucking chance he gets.

It would be so cool to hang out with Daniel Pinchbeck, wouldn’t you think? Imagine how the conversation might go:

Daniel: “So, as I was saying, Ahriman (called Mephistopheles in Faust)... he's the being that drags us down towards the material world, the mineral realm, and death. Ahriman's goal is to enslave us in matter, while opposing him is Lucifer—the “light-bringer”—the being that draws us upward towards escapism, imagination, and fantasy.”

Me: “Far out.”

Daniel: “According to Rudolph Steiner, the goal of human evolution is to find a balance between those two forces and to—Jesus Christ, is that a Chupacabra?!”

Me: “What?! Where?”

Daniel: “Over there! On top of the bookcase! A goddamned terrible, bloodthirsty Chupacabra perusing my autographed copy of Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre!”

Me: “I don’t see anything… are you sure?”

Actually, Sartre faced similar problems in his later years, after he started getting loaded on mescaline to inspire the writing of his last few books. That freaky old existentialist ended up thinking he was being chased through the streets of Paris by an evil, albino lobsterman. Not even Simone De Bouvier could talk him down… but Daniel Pinchbeck could’ve, I’ll bet!

Daniel Pinchbeck, after all, is the man who found out—as he describes with great humility and tip-toeing trepidation in 2012: The Return of Queztalcoatl—that he’s the actual, living and breathing reincarnation of that South American deity formerly known as Quetzalcoatl. That’s right: the big, feathered serpent dude, who was like Jesus to the Aztecs—Quetzalcoatl!

I know… I could hardly believe it myself, but it’s true!

(In Jungian analysis, this process of identification with an archetype is called “inflation”—not to be confused with what’s going to happen to our economy if the Fed keeps buying Treasuries. Psychic inflation often results in a bloated ego, or worse. In rare cases, it can even result in a book with the scary number 2012 in the title [cf. Whitley Strieber for confirmation; also cf. "Monetizing the Eschaton"].)

You might think that being dubbed the latest and greatest incarnation of Quetzalcoatl would make it easy to score chicks, but on that count you would be sorely mistaken. Feathered serpent gods have their fair share of romantic disappointments, too, as Daniel is all-too-willing to admit. One day, not long after he was telepathically informed of his badass Quetzalcoatlness, he was just hanging out in a rain forest down in the Amazon, grooving on nature, when he met a young and very pretty lady shaman. (I’m paraphrasing from the book like crazy here, in case you couldn’t tell; Daniel describes the encounter in much more finely-wrought paragraphs—pages and pages of over-wrought … I mean, finely-wrought paragraphs.) Impetuously enthralled—and only recently divorced—Daniel decided that the lady shaman should fall in love with him. It just made sense: her being a pretty lady shaman and him being Quetzalcoatl and all….

Now, you may find this hard to believe (I know I did, and I know Daniel did…), but the lady shaman told him she only liked him as a friend. In fact, the very pretty lady shaman refused to give Daniel/Quetzalcoatl even so much as a handjob!

Just try to imagine his ancient Aztec indignation. Go ahead: Try! But try as you might, you’re bound to fall short, unless the savagely beating heart of a feathered serpent god resides in your breast, too, my friend.

Well, that’s about all I remember from 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. A long time has passed since I read that book. I vaguely recall being quite enthused about it when I first brought it home; I must have stayed up all night reading it. Just as with his first book, Breaking Open The Head, I’m sure that the mere act of reading Daniel Pinchbeck’s 2012 metaphorically broke open my own head in several very important ways, but broken heads are sometimes accompanied by amnesia, or so I’ve been told.

(Crop circles… I’m pretty sure there was something about crop circles in there….)

Oh, well. Kudos, Daniel! Well done! ( )

Am I the only person who thinks this dude is a total twit? His prose is boring and staggeringly unoriginal, everything he writes is informed only by his pomposity and desire to manipulate his "theories" (most often a murky composite pilfered from others) to justify his own behavior and desires. Also, though I am usually interested in hearing about the spiritual paths of others (epiphanic moments, etc) his regurgitations of his malcontent childhood and coke-snorting years just come off as self-absorbed and pointless. This dude is on a crazy ego trip. It's terribly unfortunate that he's become the de facto, or at least most visible (probably due to the publishing contacts he has from those frosted flake celebrity-profiler days) voice in support of entheogens of our time. He is an exemplar of how entheogens do not do the work of spiritual sublimation for you, they are merely a vessel, like yogic asanas, that take you wherever you decide to go. And used sacreligiously in a party context, they're only hallucinogens.

Anyway, he's a false prophet. Like Tim Leary and a succession of acid fascists and psychedelic capitalizers / exploiters before him, he was blessed with epiphany like so many but he lost the plot. For a genuine contemporary sage, try Ken Wilber.

I was hesitant to read this book because I assumed it would be another doomsday phrophesy trying to put fear into its readers, but I was completely wrong. This book was amazing. There are definitely parts that are hard to get through, however I found it to be quite enlightening. I certainly would not consider Pinchbeck a druggy by any means. I've done research on shamanism and I find that it is not about the high for most, but about the personal journey. I agree that there needs to be a higher level of consciousness and I think that that is one of the main points of this book. I am a big fan! ( )

So far I'll say I'm intrigued but not completely sold. Some of his, and the authors he quotes, ideas are interesting and some are too far out there. I'll have to see how it ends. ( )

After reading Pinchbeck’s “Breaking Open the Head” I was really excited to read “2012”. I enjoyed the first third of this book, but I’m sad to say the remainder became quite a chore and the ending was a let down. I kept going because I thought the final chapters would tie it all together. They don’t. The final chapters are just a continuation of the rest of the book, which is a mix of really interesting stories and weak conjectures that lead nowhere. Pinchbeck is a great writer when he’s got a clear goal in mind, and there are parts of this book where that happens. I thought the crop circle discussion (a major portion) was really interesting. He also references many other authors and ideas. This can be useful if you’re interested in reading additional books on the subject, but distracting when it occurs too frequently since he loses focus and goes off on grand tangents.

I highly recommend reading Pinchbeck’s “Breaking Open the Head” before “2012”. It’s shorter, more focused, and with much better writing. If you don’t like it I doubt you will like “2012”. ( )