Psychedelic Prophet of 2012 Doom Was Goofing! But For a Good Reason

It's the day before the doomsday, as supposedly prophesied by ancient Mayans. Scientific American has been dutifully mocking the prediction , while also cannily capitalizing on it by offering discounted subscriptions in an " End of the World Flash Sale ." Brilliant! I figured I'd take advantage of apocalypse fever by reprinting something I posted last June about a prominent popularizer of the 2012 meme, psychedelic scholar-entertainer-guru- Scientific-American -fan Terence McKenna. If the world does in fact end, I'm going to feel pretty silly, but I'm willing to take that risk to get some extra traffic on this blog. What follows is an edited excerpt from Rational Mysticism (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), which describes my 1999 meeting with McKenna and my attempt to find out what he really thought would happen on December 21, 2012. [More]