Daniel Pinchbeck - Works and Activities

Works and Activities

Pinchbeck was a founder of the 1990s literary magazine Open City with fellow writers Thomas Beller and Robert Bingham. He has written for many publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 1994, prior to his interest in psychedelics, he was chosen by The New York Times Magazine as one of "Thirty Under Thirty" destined to change our culture through his work with Open City.

In Breaking Open the Head, Pinchbeck explored shamanism via ceremonies with tribal groups such as the Bwiti of Gabon, who eat iboga, and the Secoya people in the Ecuadorean Amazon, who take the psychedelic tryptamine brew ayahuasca in their ceremonies. He also attended the Burning Man festival in Nevada, and looked at use of psychedelic substances in a de-sacralized modern context. Philosophically influenced by the work of anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, through his direct experience and research Pinchbeck became convinced that shamanic and mystical views of reality have validity, and that the modern world had forfeited an understanding of intuitive aspects of being in its pursuit of rational materialism.

Drawing heavily, and somewhat controversially, from material shared on the Breaking Open the Head forums, Pinchbeck's second volume, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, chronicles Mayan and Hopi prophecies, and follows Pinchbeck's travels and travails as he responds to leads, both physical and intellectual, he receives via this forum. Examining the nature of prophecy, Pinchbeck investigates the New Age hypothesis of Terence McKenna that humanity is experiencing an accelerated process of global consciousness transformation, leading to a new understanding of time and space during this period. The book details the psi or extra-sensory perception research of Dean Radin, the theories of Graham Hancock, the phenomena of crop circles, and a visit to calendar reform advocate José Argüelles. Pinchbeck concludes with an alleged direct reception of prophetic material by the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, a claim which was enough to get the book dropped by its planned publisher, delaying its release for the greater part of a year. Pinchbeck alleges the voice of Quetzalcoatl began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to the Amazon in Brazil, though he has since become reticent over any further communications he may have received. At the time, he was traveling by boat on the Amazon between participation in ceremonies of the Santo Daime, a Brazilian religion that uses ayahuasca as its sacrament. Through its references to 2012 and the Maya calendar in the context of New Age beliefs, Pinchbeck's book has contributed to Mayanism.

In May 2007, Pinchbeck launched Reality Sandwich. He is the executive producer of Postmodern Times, a series of web videos presented on the iClips Network, and co-founder of Evolver.net, an online social network.