Hyperstition describes the effects and mechanisms of apocalyptic ‘phase out’ or ‘meltdown’ culture. As a neologism it combines the words ‘hyper’ and ‘superstition’ to describe, in the words of the renegade academic Nick Land, “a positive feedback circuit that includes culture as a component.” According to Land, “superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions – by their very existence as ideas – function causally to bring about their own reality.” Like neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins’ concept of memes, hyperstitions work at the deeper evolutionary level of social organisation by influencing the course taken by cultural evolution. Hyperstitions, however, fall into a very specific category of eschatological ideas (or, rather ‘forcefields’), namely, they describe an “experimental techno-science of self-fulfilling prophecies.”

The sacred dance, in Maya cosmology, was represented in the sinuous curves of the Vision Serpent - a symbolic representation of the axis of communication between the human world and the numinous otherworld. It is a symbol of the world-tree – the roots of which extend into the past and the branches of which extend into the future. In Mayan temples, the vision serpent is often associated with the most sacred of trance-inducing rituals. These included public dancing or private blood-letting (if a king or his wife sought specific knowledge from the otherworld).