Apocalypse's eternal return: hipster guru predicts: capitalism will destroy the world!(2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl) (Book review)

• Author: Doherty, Brian

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, by Daniel Pinchbeck, New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin, 416 pages, $26.95

DID YOU KNOW that the ancient Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl--the all-encompassing plumed serpent whose return has been prophesied for centuries--has decided to weigh in on politics? Here's an excerpt from his message for the world of mortal men: "The global capitalist system that is currently devouring your planetary resources will soon serf-destruct, leaving many of you bereft."

Quetzalcoatl has chosen to speak through the curious medium of Daniel Pinchbeck, 40, a former editor of the Manhattan lit-journal Open City. Pinchbeck has had a glowing reputation in hipster circles since his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head, a travelogue and treatise on exotic psychedelics, which transformed him into the 21st century's chief pop guru on the meaning and significance of altered states--a thought leader whose musings, no matter how offbeat, are considered worthy of review in publications as mainstream as The New York Times.

Pinchbeck's latest intellectual-spiritual journey, recounted in his new book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, has taken him on a globe-girdling tour of New Age fantasies, from crop circles to alien abductions to Mayan communication with ancient space brothers. It ends with him serving, he insists, as a medium for Quetzalcoatl, who dictates a message that sounds more like a zonkedout Inconvenient Truth than a traditional religious revelation.

Quetzalcoatl apparently has no idea or knowledge that was not already present in Pinchbeck, whose general sense of dread and dissatisfaction regarding capitalist modernity existed before his spiritual journey. Those sentiments are in fact nearly universal in the post-'60s counterculture for which he is a spokesman. Indeed, they're pretty common in mainstream intellectual culture as well; few literary intellectuals under 40 do not share them to some degree, though most refrain from claiming they learned them from a supernatural serpent with feathers.

Pinchbeck knows you'll think he's a bit of a freak for saying that he did just that. He openly acknowledges that seeing oneself at the center of a great cosmic drama is normally written off as a sign of mental illness. With that on the table, the reader can either give up or go along for the ride. Despite the zaniness, it's a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine...