Doctor Saturno Checks In

-- photo stolen from the Bob Dylan Critical Corner


So far, so good for the Novelty Theory of those psychonaut psupremes, the brother-act Dennis and Terence McKenna: today Zimmy the Bobhead's new weekly gig as DJ for something called XM Satellite Radio was announced.

The Erk-ometer above little dynamo's bedstead -- there next to Elmo and the replica of George the Monkey -- clongs and thrings and a-tinkles and a-twangs constantinually, in its hopeless and pitiful effort to keep pace with the Weirdness drenching everything, here in this Night of The Expanding Man.

That Man is increasingly autistic, blooming both-ways, with plug-ins for determinism and teleology. Conserved in "nature" as shock troops, as rapid-deployment innovati, responders to crisis or great stress, they are walking Specialists First Class, intentional variants that introvert consciousness and refold time like a bologna sandwich.

Here's Wikipedia's summary of Novelty Theory:

That the universe is a living system with a teleological attractor at the end of time that drives the increase and conservation of complexity in material forms.

That novelty and complexity increase over time, despite repeated set-backs, in a process similar to

punctuated equilibrium in biology.

That the human brain represents the pinnacle of complex organization in the known universe to date.

That fluctuations in novelty over time are self-similar at different scales. Thus the rise and

fall of the Roman Empire might be resonant with the life of a family within a single generation, or with an individual's day at work.

That as the complexity and sophistication of human thought and culture increase, universal novelty approaches a Koch curve of infinite exponential growth.

That in the time immediately prior to, and during this

omega point of infinite novelty, anything and everything conceivable to the human imagination will occur simultaneously.

That the date of this historical endpoint is December 21, 2012, the end of the long count of the Mayan calendar. (Although many interpretations of the "end" of the Mayan Calendar exist, partly due to abbreviations made by the Maya when refering to the date, McKenna used the solstice date in 2012, a common interpretation of the calendar among New Age philosophers, although this date corresponds to such an abbreviation rather than the full date. See Mayan Calendar for more information on this controversy.)

OK, we will.

Oldest Maya Mural Uncovered in Guatemala

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID,

AP Science Writer

1 hour, 49 minutes ago [12/13/05]

WASHINGTON - Archaeologist William Saturno said Tuesday he was awe-struck when he uncovered a Maya mural not seen for nearly two millennia. Discovered at the San Bartolo site in Guatemala, the mural covers the west wall of a room attached to a pyramid, Saturno said at a briefing.

Doctor Saturno, Papatiempo's Baby Boy!

Kronus' Kid, looking into a past that stares right back at him!

In brilliant color, the mural tells the Maya story of creation, he said. It was painted about 100 B.C., but later covered when the room was filled in.

"It could have been painted yesterday," Saturno said in a briefing organized by the National Geographic Society, which supported his work and will detail the finding in the January issue of its magazine.

Saturno, of the University of New Hampshire, first reported discovery of the site in 2002 when he stopped to rest in the jungle, taking shelter in an old trench that turned out to be part of the ancient room.

Since then the west and north walls have been uncovered. The room's other walls had been demolished and used for fill, he said. The west wall was the centerpiece of the room, Saturno said.

The mural includes four deities, which are variations of the same figure, the son of the corn god.

[image below added]

As Saturno explained it: The first deity stands in the water and offers a fish, establishing the watery underworld. The second stands on the ground and sacrifices a deer, establishing the land. The third floats in the air, offering a turkey, establishing the sky. The fourth stands in a field of flowers, the food of gods, establishing paradise.

Instead of trinity a quaternity, with the Shadow or "dark matter" included, a la medieval alchemist Gerhard Dorn, or "analytical psychologist" C.G. Jung, who posited a hidden, psychoid fourth dimension, knit-together by purposeful novelty: a City of Synchron.

Another section shows the corn god crowning himself king upon a wooden scaffold, and the final section shows a historic coronation of a Maya king.

"Maya" is the Hindu/Buddhist idea of material illusion, and also suggests the pre-European sacrificial axis mundi or "May Pole," here found in Mesoamerica. (The symbol is widespread -- the Tarahumara, or Raramuri, native peoples of Northern Mexico, for example, use the ceiba tree as cosmogonic axis, especially in ancestral/fertility rites.)

Some of the writing can be understood, Saturno said, but much of it is so old it is hard to decipher.

Nearby, archaeologists led by Guatemalan Monica Pellecer Alecio found the oldest known Maya royal burial, from around 150 B.C. Excavating beneath a small pyramid, that team found a burial complex that included ceramic vessels and the bones of a man, with a jade plaque — the symbol of Maya royalty — on his chest.

If the McKennas' Novelty Theory holds up -- and so far, so weird! -- then no equilibrium of weirdness will ever be reached . . . just more revelations by Doctor Saturnos of Mayan godkings, and more God Shamgods hooping-it-up for the Wizards.

. . . Until finally, in 2012, the novelites are spent, the last scintillae is released, and time shudders to a stop like a gassed Caddy.

In the next handful of years, it apparently gets so ceaselessly rhomboid that even the Great Foozler in the Sky throws up his hands and gives.