Daniel Pinchbeck Not So Sure About 2012
Published on March 7, 2008 by Daniel Taylor · 7 Comments 
Despite being one of the foremost recent repopularizers of the idea that the year 2012, which marks the end of the 13th cycle of the Mayan Longcount Calendar, will bring about some sort of apocalyptic event, author Daniel Pinchbeck doesn’t seem so sure in a recent article posted to his Reality Sandwich website in which he calls 2012 a “useful meme:”
My view is that “2012″ is useful as a meme if it helps us to catalyze a shift in global culture and consciousness. Rather than fretting about what may or may not happen on that date, we should concentrate on the work that needs to be done now, on an inner as well as outer level.
Oh well. I wasn’t really looking forward to that kind of crazy shit anyway. Bird gods and all that.
Tags: 2012, Apocalptic, Daniel Pinchbeck, meme
Readers Comments (7)
RELATED STORIES
Based on that one reference you made, I doubt he’s waffling on the importance of 2012. Rather, he seems to be drilling down further on what many of us are saying and doing already.
Now is the time for preparation: whipping yourself into shape for this event closing in fast is more important than any one thing any of us can do right now.
Those that don’t find their footing and center now and clear the clutter from their lives (spiritually, emotionally, etc.) won’t be prepared to process and handle the forces at play.
Hey Daniel I have a few questions that I was hoping to get answered. First here are a few things about myself. I am 23 years old and picked up your book at my step dads house and found it facinating. I have alwasy been the type of person who looks for explanations to things currently happening to us as a culture and a race. I am looking to further myself as a person and want to illicit your advice. I want to know how I can best go about this???
Now let me tell you about a dream I had recently that really stuck out to me. I recently had one of my best friends die in december of 07, since his death I have had a few dreams with him in it trying to warn me. One of which was a dream that started with in my house and he walks in through my basement door where me and a few of my friends are playing pool. In my dream I am surprised to see him and I know that the only reason I can view him and talk with him is because I am dreaming. I tell him this in my dream and he acknowledges it in agreement. The dream continues and we start mountain biking and going off some jumps when kirk my friend who dies gets injured. I then take him upstairs to my bathroom and try and patch his wounds, but as I am walking up the stairs I feel something pulling me actually making it physically harder for kirk and I to get to the bathroom. As we round the corner we come face to face with something that I could only describe as evil or even the devil, but for some reason it looks like my mom but the face is all distorted and zombie like. In the dream we finally make it towards the bathroom and literally push with all our might while this demon is struggling to get in. We finally close the door and immediately I feel a sense of calming come over us. Then my friend turns to me and says that he knows the key to life. I then immediately say that I don’t want him to tell me and that I want to figure it out on my own. He looks at me disappointedly and we then leave the bathroom and go back down stairs where my friends are still there playing pool. I then tell them about our experience, when I feel the pulling from the devil thing again. Our view then changes and its standing at the top of the stairs. Instantly my friends and I start hurling pool balls at, the devil then reachs out its hands, palms facing us and hurls the balls back at us. Somehow we catch them. I then get the notion to join hands and in a group united I knew that we would have power over the devil. So kirk and I lead the charge and run up the stairs and pull the devil down with us through the basement door. Then kirk my friend who has been dead a good month or so prior to this dream reaches out and we together grab the devil and rip it in half and then in half again and throw it out into my yard where it disappears. Then kirk looks at me and says that he has had only one confrontation with the devil prior to this and tells me that he is sure that there will be more and tells me to be prepared.
Can any of you guys read this and give my your interpetation of it? For some reason the part that seemed most important was the part about the key to life.
Ryan Linehan,
In your dream your friend wanted to tell you about the key of life. You said you did not want to know yet. Ryan, this means that the answers to your questions will be given to you, all you have to do is to release any kind of doubt and be able to accept them. If you deny them the demon will come back over and over again. The signs might seem arbitrary with no synchronities to your life at first, but you will learn to read them in the way they are meant to be interpreted. It will make everything better.
Hello Daniel!
In the middle of 2012: the Return… My mind is expanding daily. Just spent 4 hours looking at new crop circles, getting crash courses in astronomy and “worlds within worlds” of meaning. The artists/creators are educating us, that’s for sure. I have a book titled “Bringers of the Dawn” that I am desperately trying to find…discusses your hypothesis about human emotions being valuable to existing/not existing entities. Except this book was written in the 70′s or 80′s and considered them extra-terrestrial and malevolent. When I find it, I’ll write again. Of course the night that I read that chapter, “Independence Day” was on the tube!
The prediction (when you wrote that chapter it must have been 2005) regarding the financial/resources crash becoming very apparent in 2008 made me stand up and start yelling for my partner to come and read!
Anyway, the synchronistic joke on us is that our son’s birthday is 12/21…and he’ll turn 17 in 2012!
Enjoy the journey
Dear Daniel,
I was given your book 2012 the return of Quetzalcoatl as a Christmas Present from my best friend. I have chosen to read it out loud along with my father so that he could assist me in comprehention. It has so far been very disscussion inspiring. We really enjoyed the personnal illustrates of your own life and of the language you used. Alot of really big words. but I can only envy the familiararity of your litterate background. My Dad was a bit confused when you discribed the existance of the …well… rat race (for lack of words)… that is so pressing on our society , as a “Danse Maquabre”. Having actually danced the story I was able to shed some light (It made me feel smart! Thank you)
The advocacy for hallusengetic substances that you portray in the book seem … well…I feel that I am losing my capacity to relate to your ideas some what now. You went down a physical road that I choose not to follow. Your experiences that you have had, are, quite revealing, and I thankyou for sharing you insights with me and sparing me that same path. I simply choose the road of personnal revelation in place of being dependant on such things that could possibly be missleading in a dissrepearable fasion. Besides I am a control freak and I love my freedom. I was totally elated in the ideas that you shared in the opening of your book though, of how in every story there is at least a grain of important truth not to be ignored. That all will very soon be brought to light that the entire story will be free for all to know in it’s completeness. I could see clearly how you book could have gone in that direction, and I still hope that it will yet. I am a dedicated follower Jesus Christ to help you understand alittle bit of where I come from. He has given me along with the teachings of my parents and everything else that has helped to developed my character (please forgive me for not being as discriptive) giving me the very pillars of which I stand on. There is first Agency Then there is !Charity (to describe the type of love that I intend to emphasize)! Then there is that all of us here on this earth are sons and daughters of God, a concept most precious to me. I do depend heavily on the personnal revelations and teachings that have given me these pillars. Of that I am admittedly guilty.There is something that I read that was very significant in opening the doors of exploration of different ideas developing the quest I have embarked on to see the marriage of Science and Religion, which I feel is emminent, and to the comming together the truths of all the stories into a universally recogognized story complete. Everyone being able to see and regionize their piortion and how thier portion fits with all the others. “For behold, the Lord God doth grant unto all nations, OF THIER OWN NATION AND TONGUE, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that He seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth councel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true.” Alma 29:8 What an exciting time we live in. I also sence a great awakening in people in thier interest for ideas, a real thirst for knowlege. I know that I certainly feel it. So Thank you, I am very excited to continue reading more.
Theresa
LOL!!!!
I feel Daniel Pinchbeck has seriously distorted the philosophy of the Mayan and Aztec. He certainly does not teach what their true beliefs were and are today. His book has seriously misrepresented the teachings of Tony Shearer. Tony Shearer was the true originator of the dates for the so-called Harmonic Convergence or August 16th and 17th, 1987. Jose Arguelles admits that he drew his inspiration from Tony Shearer’s books and teachings. Mr. Shearer was a college professor at the University of Colorado in Denver, Colorado who received very little recognition for his interpretation of the Nahautl Calendar (also known as the Aztec Calendar). According to Shearer, the Aztecs did not initially develop the Aztec calendar but drew on the calendar originated by the Toltecs. Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the 10th century ruler of the Valley of Mexico and also the ruler in the city of Tollan. Ce Acatl was not a Mayan but of the Nahautl civilization. Ce Acatl was like the modern day Dalai Lama – a priest king. He adjusted the Nahautl/Toltec/Aztec Calendar to the dates August 16th and 17th, 1987 as the ending of the Fifth Sun and the beginning of the Sixth Sun. The Mayan civilization had collapsed prior to Ce Acatl’s rule and, therefore, Ce Acatl’s 260 day count represented the most modern 260 day count in the pre-Columbian Mexico. The date December 21, 2012 is the Western academic date which was derived from Morley and Thompson – Western archeologists – who excavated in Mexico. The date originated from Mayan stelae archeological work they both did in Mexico. Perhaps the contemporary Mayans derived their dates from Western archeological sources. Certain contemporary indigenous peoples of the Americas no not subscribe to December 21, 2012 including a medicine man named Tlacaelel. Tony Shearer, of Lakota descent, presented an alternative viewpoint of the 260 day count that the Mayan calendar was archaic and the Toltec calendar (the Aztec Eagle Bowl) was more accurate. The round Calendar disc which is presented by the New Age Movement as the Mayan Calendar is not Mayan in origin. There is no mention of August 16th and 17th, 1987 by Mayan sources because the Mayans did not use the Toltec calendar.