Cultures in central and southern America have a long established history of the use of psychoactive and psychedelic plants for the purposes of divination and healing. The Amazonian drink ayahuasca, for example, has a known history of usage that goes back at least 2,000 years.

Made from a combination of two or more plants that are only moderately psychoactive taken alone, the ayahuasca brew contains an endogenous brain chemical called dimeythltryptamine or DMT. DMT in this form is a powerful psychedelic. Users report visions that often feature animals representing spirits in experiences that can last between four and eight hours. Ayahuasca is widely used by a number of indigenous tribes throughout the Amazon as a sacred plant medicine. It is respected for its potency and is used to heal and also to relate to the spirits of the rainforest. In some cases, it has also been used for sorcery.

It was ayahuasca that the McKenna brothers, who are both enthnobota-nists, were searching for on their Amazonian expedition. They were particularly interested in studying a form of auditory hallucination that had been reported by users of the brew. This led them to create an experiment in which they took ayahuasca in combination with the psychoactive mushroom Stropharia cubensis. The result was a protracted and potent visionary experience that is detailed in the book True Hallucinations.

This experience inspired Terence McKenna to develop his timewave zero hypothesis. Like Calleman's pyramid model of the calendar, timewave zero also predicts an ever greater acceleration of time toward the Mayan calendar end date of December 21, 2012. In this case, the level of acceleration actually becomes exponential. If the timewave hypothesis is correct, we are heading toward an event in 2012 that will result in the creation of a temporal singularity. This would effectively mean an end to time as we know it.

Shamanism and the Galactic Alignment

Psychoactive plants may have helped others recognize the importance of 2012. Jenkins speculates that psychedelic plants could have led Maya kings and priests to the discovery of the galactic alignment. Many Meso-American tribes, the classic Maya among them, have a history of using psychoactive plants as part of their culture. These plants include datura, morning glory, tobacco, and psychedelic mushrooms.

Jenkins points to the ready availability of many plants that contain DMT in the Maya's bioregion. He also considers it possible that the Maya made use of toad venom from the Bufo alvarius toad. The toad secretes venom from glands behind its eyes and on the back of its legs. These glands can be milked to harvest the venom, which can then be dried into a white powder and smoked or used as a snuff. The psychoactive ingredients contained in this secretion are bufotenine and 5-MeoDMT, a form of DMT. The mouth of a toad is also a Mayan symbol for the entrance to the underworld of Xibalba. It is from this toad's mouth that kings and deities are born.

Jenkins's thesis is that the Maya gained their knowledge of galactic cosmology by taking DMT and going on visionary shamanic journeys to the galactic center. The Mayan understanding of the galaxy, he suggests, was not just a product of deduction or observation, but direct knowledge gained through shamanism. This would certainly help explain the development of the Maya's stunning calendar and astronomical sciences so early in their history at Izapa. McKenna points out that there is a recognized tradition in shamanism of exploring the furthermost boundaries of space and time. For a journeying shaman, the galactic center could provide an essential reference point to orientate toward in their astral voyaging to the center of time and space. For these interdimensional travelers, the junction of the galactic equator and the ecliptic would literally have been a crossroads, just as it is described in the Mayan mythology.