In 1971, while on psilocybin mushrooms in the Colombian Amazon, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna experienced a profound vision. At that moment, he believed he glimpsed something extraordinary: not just weird visions or fleeting hallucinations, but a grand pattern underlying the very nature of time itself. From this profound (some would say audacious) moment of insight sprang what would later be called “Timewave Zero,” one of the most sweeping and unconventional theories about history, progress, and reality’s unfolding that the late 20th century had ever seen.
Timewave Zero didn’t arise from the usual academic process, it was born at the intersection of psychedelic experience, deep dives into obscure texts, and leaps of creative reasoning. At its foundation lays the ancient Chinese divination system known as the I Ching. McKenna believed he found a hidden numerical code embedded in the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams, a code that, once converted into a mathematical formula, would reveal how novelty—defined as the emergence of increasingly complex and sophisticated forms—ebbs and flows throughout the entirety of time.
To some observers, this approach might raise an eyebrow: deriving a historical grand theory from a divinatory text is unconventional at best. But McKenna took this route seriously. He argued that what we view as random progress in history and evolution was actually following a fractal pattern, a waveform hidden beneath the surface of ordinary events. Just as fractals repeat their patterns at multiple scales, the timewave would, in theory, capture recurring rhythms of creativity and transformation, appearing in everything from daily life to eons of cosmic history. It’s a bit like claiming to see a cosmic “heartbeat” wherever you look—if you know how to read the data.
The Timewave Software
Working with programmer Peter Meyer, McKenna attempted to make this theory more tangible. Together, they developed software that produced graphs of the timewave for any chosen span. By plugging in the numbers derived from the I Ching sequence, they generated curves that supposedly reflected “novelty” levels across history. The goal was not just armchair speculation—they wanted something that felt empirical, a pattern that could, in principle, be compared against the historical record.
The results seemed striking. Major cultural shifts—like the dawn of agriculture, the rise of major religions, the explosion of technological innovation in the modern era—seemed to line up with peaks in the novelty graph. To skeptics, this was a classic case of cherry-picking data: start with a belief in hidden patterns, highlight events that fit, and conveniently ignore those that don’t. Yet for McKenna and his followers, these correlations felt like proof they were onto something. At the very least, it was a compelling story. One that revealed the hidden order beneath history's apparent chaos, suggesting every moment was a thread in a larger design
The Zero Point: December 21, 2012
The big finish of Timewave Zero was its predicted terminal date: December 21, 2012. According to McKenna’s calculations, this was the point at which novelty would reach infinity—an ultimate transformation, the mother of all paradigm shifts, a break from the familiar structures of time and reality. The fact that the Mayan Long Count calendar ended on the same day was more than a neat coincidence; to McKenna’s mind, it was a form of cross-validation. Different cultures, he argued, had stumbled upon the same cosmic endpoint, though by different means.
It’s worth noting that McKenna was never entirely specific about what would happen on that day. He suggested that time itself might “collapse,” that we might witness a leap in human consciousness, or perhaps a moment of technological transcendence. Or maybe something else entirely. Something beyond our current ability to imagine. This vagueness would later work both for and against McKenna’s theory. On one hand, it left room for interpretation, even after December 21, 2012, came and went without any dramatic apocalypse or sudden enlightenment. On the other hand, it provided critics with all the ammunition they needed to dismiss it as just another failed doomsday prophecy, dressed up in psychedelic clothes.
From the standpoint of mainstream academia, Timewave Zero never stood a chance. Historians and scientists alike found its methods baffling. Using the I Ching—a text designed for guiding personal decisions through symbolic imagery—as the foundation for a universal historical theory struck many as a leap too far. The complexity of human history, critics argued, cannot be reduced to a single mathematical pattern, especially one derived from a cultural artifact never meant to chart cosmic time.
Mathematicians pointed out that the theory wasn’t falsifiable. Without clear criteria for what would disprove the timewave’s claims, it was essentially insulated from critique. Historians noted that if you look hard enough, you can find “patterns” anywhere. After all, with thousands of years of events to choose from, it’s not difficult to match something—an empire’s rise, a prophet’s birth, a new invention—to a peak on the graph.
Some devotees have reframed the theory as metaphorical rather than literal. Perhaps the “infinite novelty” was not a single day’s event but a signpost indicating the broader acceleration we already kinda sense in our time. In that sense, the idea that we are spiraling toward an increasingly complex and unpredictable future feels oddly relatable.
header image source: Jon Hanna, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons