Some of you may have read Pinchbeck's book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, which is the sequel to his 2002 opus Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.
Some of you may also be aware that Pinchbeck believes he was contacted by the ancient deity Quetzalcoatl in 2004 while working with Ayahuasca shamans in the Amazon.
We'll be getting back to Quetzalcoatl sometime in the near future (I shudder when I look at my in-progress queue) but I wanted to leap on this 2012 meme while the iron is still hot.
Longtime Secret Sun readers all know how everything connects back to The X-Files, and boy, does this story ever. 2012 is the big date in the XF mytharc, since that's when colonization begins (ie., the aliens take back the planet from the hairless apes). Longtime readers also know that entheogens/hallucinogens/psychedelics are at the center of the XF mytharc, starting with Mulder's Navajo deathtrip in 'The Blessing Way' on through the discovery of 'Dr. Sandoz's tablets' in 'Biogenesis' (which followed Mulder and Scully's own alien dreaming in the heart of a giant mushroom in 'Field Trip').
Well, right in the middle of this was a standalone named 'The Amazing Maleeni', which wasn't really an X-file, but a fun little heist caper about a down-on-his-luck magician named...
...Pinchbeck.
Who, as it happens, 'broke open his head'. Well - sort of. It's a long story.
But Pinchbeck also pulls this stunt -turning his around 360ยบ- in full view of a Ferris Wheel, which gets a lot of beauty shots in the ep. Which breaks open a whole new can of heads...
But in the context of Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre there's another interesting connection, vis a vis the world's most well-known Ferris Wheel...
The Millennium Eye, know officially known as "Merlin Entertainment's London Eye." That logo is something else- I'd love to know when it was designed. Why? Well, I'm about to get back into the Sirius meme, and that logo looks nothing else like a star map of Sirius A and B.
The Millennium Eye, know officially known as "Merlin Entertainment's London Eye." That logo is something else- I'd love to know when it was designed. Why? Well, I'm about to get back into the Sirius meme, and that logo looks nothing else like a star map of Sirius A and B. The Merlin group seems to have acquired ownership of the Eye in 2008, which as we know was the Year of Sirius (or maybe every year from here on in is the Year of Sirius, I don't know).
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that, especially in light of this fascinating factoid:
A predecessor to the London Eye, the "Great Wheel", was built for the Empire of India Exhibition at Earls Court in 1895. Construction began in March 1894[17] and it opened to the public on July 17*, 1895.Nor should we be surprised the London Eye was also featured in an episode of Doctor Who.
In fact, my real obsession with this show came after I began this semiotic/Synchronistic work in earnest, because it slapped me in the face every time I watched one of the reruns on TNT or SciFi (a ton of strong personal syncs hit me as well, I might add, which all took on new resonance when I was hired to write the XF book).
Given the psychedelic thrust of the show around this time it's tempting to speculate this Pinchbeck thing was a nod to Daniel and his entheogenic work, but Breaking Open the Head wasn't published until three years after this ep aired, and there's no obvious link to the subject matter or his work in any context. It all seems to have been drawn into the strange attractor of the Ten Thirteen Universe...
