Terence McKenna
(1946-2000)
Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was an American author and ethnobotanist. He and his younger brother Dennis (born 1950) wrote “The Invisible Landscape: Mind Hallucinogens and the I Ching”. The book was first published in 1975.
Part One of “The Invisible Landscape” deals with psychology, shamanism, and biochemistry. In Part Two, entitled “Time, Change, and Becoming”, the elder McKenna explores the King Wen sequence of the ancient Chinese divination system the I Ching [pronounced “ee - JEENG”] – or “Book of Changes” – as an astronomical calendar based on a year of thirteen lunar months, a duration of time which is just under 384 (precisely 383.8978) days.
Being that the sequence described by the I Ching is made up of 64 hexagrams (hexagrams themselves being made up of six yao (lines) each), the total number of yao in the sequence is 384, the same number of days in a year of thirteen lunar months. McKenna observed that multiplying this approximately 384-day duration of time by 64 several times produces an interesting result.
Multiplying the 384-day duration by 64 once gives a product of about 67.2 years, which is roughly (within about 5.2%) the duration of three 22.4-year major sunspot cycles. Multiplying the 67.2-year value gives a product of roughly (within 0.3%) 4,305.2 years, which is twice the duration of a single 2,153-year precession of the equinoxes.
The duration of a single precession of the equinoxes is commonly known as a Zodiacal Age, as in the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Pisces, the Age of Aries, et cetera. Twelve of these Zodiacal Ages is called the Great or Platonic Year, which is the duration of the Milankovitch Cycle - the time that it takes for the Earth to complete a single axial precession (a full revolution of the orientation of the Earth’s rotational axis).
In his self-designed “Timewave Zero” computer program, McKenna graphed a hypothesized function which he named “the Eschaton”, meaning “the end of time”, or “the climax of history”. He described the Eschaton as “a universal and fractal morphogenetic field”, its purpose “to model the unfolding predispositions of space and time”.
The function was based on the number of changes in yao from one hexagram in the sequence to the next. That function was superimposed over a reversal of itself, because the sequence runs both backwards and forwards. This is due to the quality of the 64th hexagram as a pivot point at which three (half of the six) yao differ in comparison to both the 63rd and 1st hexagrams, and all six yao are different when one compares the 62nd hexagram to the 63rd, and the 1st hexagram to the 2nd.
The graphs of each the function and its reversal were doubled, and those doublings were tripled. The reason for doubling and tripling the functions has to do with the structure of the hexagrams of the I Ching as being composed of two trigrams each. Then, all six of these functions were superimposed upon one another, and averaged out.
Due to the emphasis on cycles in Chinese culture, McKenna envisioned the pattern of time as cyclical. This is not to say, however, that time repeats itself. Due to the Chinese emphasis on resonance, especially as the fundamental idea behind the I Ching, McKenna imagined that a point in time has a symbolic relationship with other points in time.
This is why McKenna describes the Eschaton as a logarithmic fractal. A fractal is a geometric shape which is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion. In terms specifically relating to the Eschaton function, this means that the wave which is mapped begins to repeat itself one sixty-fourth of its duration prior to its end point. Also, that final sixty-fourth of the duration begins to repeat itself when it reaches the final sixty-fourth of its duration, and the process repeats itself infinitely.
McKenna calls this end point “the Singularity”, and dates it to precisely the Winter’s Solstice on the morning of December 21st, 2012 C.E.. This date is the end of the Zodiacal Age of Pisces, and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, meaning that the sun, from the perspective of those living in the Northern Hemisphere, appears to be transiting from the vicinity of the Pisces constellation in the sky towards the vicinity of the Aquarius constellation.
To demonstrate the implication of the fractal in the simplest possible terms, any date prior to this 2012 date is considered to have symbolic historical resonance with many other dates, all of which share that same resonance with one another.
For example, let us take December 21st, 2011 C.E.; one year before the 2012 Singularity. Some of the dates which share resonance with this 2011 date include the date sixty-four times closer to the Singularity than it in mid-December 2012, the date 64 years prior to the 2012 end date, the date 4,096 (64 x 64) years prior to the Singularity, and the date 262,144 (64 x 64 x 64) years prior to the Singularity.
The 2012 Singularity resonates with an infinite number of dates which immediately lead up to it. The smallest practical duration of time with which it resonates is the date just under six days prior to it (December 15th, 2012), a date thirteen lunar months prior to it (December 2nd, 2011), a date about 67.2 years prior to it (September 15th, 1945 - just over five weeks after the end of World War II), a date two Zodiacal Ages before it.
The date two Zodiacal Ages prior to the Singularity is 2,294 B.C.E.. This is the end of the Age of Taurus and the beginning of the Age of Aries. It is 11 years prior to the end of the reign of the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty Pharaoh Pepi I Meryre, and it is the approximate date of the first use of metals in Northern Europe, i.e., the beginning of the Bronze Age.
Precisely how and whether these dates have symbolic historical resonance with one another is to be determined by subjective individual interpretation. McKenna once recounted the first time he realized this resonance as a historical event was unfolding; he discovered that the period during which the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-1991 was occurring roughly coincided with the lifetime of the 7th-century C.E. Islamic prophet Muhammad. He explains this by suggesting that both periods saw an increase in the self-expression of the people of Arabia and Mesopotamia.
McKenna also said that the end of the presidency of Ronald Reagan - whom was often described as having an imperial personality - coincides with a date about six years after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D..
Aside from the series of dates which resonate with the Singularity itself, the series of resonating dates which appears the most consequential – judging from McKenna’s attention to it – is the series of dates September 21st, 2011; November 23rd, 1932 C.E.; August 11th, 3,114 B.C.E.; and 325,988 B.C.E..
September 21st, 2011 will be the celebration of the annual environmental awareness day known as Zero Emissions Day, and it is also ten days after the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. The date in late 1932 is just several months prior to the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s reign as Chancellor of Germany in late January 1933, and to the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the President of the United States in early April of that year. Both Hitler and Roosevelt died in 1945, a date which resonates with the Singularity.
The 3,114 B.C.E. date is significant because it is the approximate date of the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the Early Dynastic Period pharaoh Narmer (or Menes). It is also the precise date of the beginning of the 13th and current 5,125-¼-year Mayan b’ak’tun (solar cycle). This date has a central role in the tzolkin (Mayan calendar system) because, just as in the principle of the I Ching resonance calendar, when you get twenty times closer from the 3,114 B.C.E. date to 2012 C.E., or twenty times farther away, the products and multiplicands that result are the most significant dates of the tzolkin.
McKenna provided his own interpretation of the historical symbolic similarities between the periods 1933 C.E. – 1945 C.E. and 3,114 B.C.E. – 2,294 B.C.E.: “Saying that Nazi Germany is a resonance of Pharaonic Egypt may at first sound counter-intuitive until you start thinking about it… Egypt invented the idea of the god-king leader. The word ‘pharaoh’ and the word ‘führer’ are thought by some people to have a common etymological root… The Egyptians were also the first people to really commit themselves to state-supported massive projects in the domain of tasteless architecture. This was something the Nazis were hugely into, and both used slave labor to build their massive, tasteless architectural constructions, and, amazingly enough, both leaned heavily on the Jews for this labor.”
Terence McKenna believed himself to be the first modern person to realize the similarities between the Mayan and Chinese calendar systems in the respect that both systems view the Winter’s Solstice of 2012 C.E. as significant dates, and that they both operate in fractal-logarithmic paradigms.
Notes: The outside level of the chart
depicts the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching.
The black and red graph, inside of the hexagrams level, represents the
ingression of novelty, based on the Timewave Zero charts from McKenna’s book The
Invisible Landscape. The colors in the spiral chart (the calendar) represent
the approximately 2,152½-year zodiac ages.
Post-script (written in early February 2012):
If there is any truth to McKenna's ideas, then we only have another 10 1/2 more months to use this image to make predictions; after that we can only use it to explain history symbolically in hindsight, and even so, through our own personal subjective symbolic interpretations of the relationships between historical events.
Referring to the image, we can see that the period between April and June 2012 (the time-frame during which the U.S. and Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and - according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor) has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982 (the Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war against Lebanon was in 1982), and both of those periods share resonance with the period between (roughly the 800s BCE and 1 AD (i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest).
Referring to the image, we can see that the period between April and June 2012 (the time-frame during which the U.S. and Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and - according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor) has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982 (the Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war against Lebanon was in 1982), and both of those periods share resonance with the period between (roughly the 800s BCE and 1 AD (i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest).
Post-Script, Written in February 2012:
If there is any truth to McKenna's ideas,
then we only have another 10 ½ more months to use McKenna’s calendar to make
predictions; after that we can only use it to explain history symbolically in
hindsight, and even so, only through our own personal subjective symbolic
interpretations of the relationships between historical events.
Referring to the image, we can see that the
period between April and June 2012 – the time-frame during which the U.S. and the
State of Israel will be conducting joint military exercises, and, according to Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta, the State of Israel may attack Iran's nuclear reactor –
has a symbolic historical resonance with the period between 1967 and 1982. The
Six-Day War was in 1967, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, and Israel's war
against Lebanon was in 1982.
Both of those periods share resonance with
the period between roughly the 800s B.C.E. and 1 A.D.; i.e., between the establishment of the Kingdom of Judea and the end
of the Second Temple Period, which ended with Roman conquest.
Post-Script, Written in May 2015:
Upon reflection, Novelty Theory – novelty
charted in red and black on the spiral calendar image – seems to be predicated
not only upon the idea that “the only constant is change”, but also that change
is literally a mathematical constant,
that can be plotted on a graph like a mathematical function.
Post-Script, Written in January 2016:
I would like to thank Eden Sky for pointing
out the possible relationship to the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, to the 64 codons
of DNA and RNA that make up genes (codons are sequences of three DNA or RNA
nucleotides, which correspond to a specific amino acid, or stop signal, during
protein synthesis).
I would also like to thank Lucas Lin for
pointing out the similarity in appearance of the spiral calendar to the
Ouroboros, the ancient image of a snake or serpent devouring its own tail. I
would also like to thank him for pointing out the relationship of the concept
of cyclical time to the idea of the “eternal return” or “eternal recurrence” –
that the universe and events recur in a self-similar form, an infinite number
of times – which has been discussed by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche
and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Originally Written in February 2011
Post-Scripts Written in Early February 2012, May 2015, and January 2016
Edited on January 16th and 22nd, 2016
Higher-detail spiral calendar added on June 10th, 2019
Higher-detail spiral calendar added on June 10th, 2019
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