Timewave Zero 2

TIMEWAVE ZERO 2 — ABOUT

1. Origins

Novelty theory was developed by Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis McKenna and first presented in their 1975 book The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. The theory proposes that time is not uniform but structured — that the universe moves through alternating periods of novelty (change, creativity, complexity) and habit (entrenchment, repetition), governed by a wave derived from the King Wen sequence of the 64 I Ching hexagrams.

In the 1980s, programmer and philosopher Peter Meyer implemented the theory as a DOS application called Timewave Zero, making the wave computable and interactive for the first time. An archive of that original DOS program is available at the Internet Archive. Meyer’s work — including the C source code — remains the primary technical reference for the wave function used here.

2. The Sheliak (TW1) Variant

The original data set (sometimes called the “Kelley set”) was critiqued by Mathew Watkins, who identified arithmetic errors in how the 384 numbers were derived from the King Wen sequence — an issue that became known as the “Watkins Objection.” In response, physicist John Sheliak produced a mathematically corrected version of the data set in 1996, referred to as TW1or the Sheliak set. McKenna reportedly endorsed Sheliak’s revision as the preferred version of the wave.

This site uses the Sheliak (TW1) number set exclusively— 384 numbers derived from the King Wen sequence under Sheliak’s corrected methodology. The data set and wave function were taken from Peter Meyer’s TW_EN.C source code and cross-checked against independent references (see the Sources section below).

3. Honesty

Novelty theory has no empirical basis in physics, history, or any other established discipline. The correspondences McKenna identified between wave features and historical events are post-hoc pattern matches — the kind of connections that human pattern-recognition produces readily when given a wiggly curve and thousands of years of history to draw from.

This site is an art piece and an interactive model of a mathematical curiosity. It is intended as a respectful, honest recreation of a culturally significant piece of psychedelic-era thinking, not as a tool for prediction, planning, or any consequential decision-making. Do not use it to forecast events.

4. Credits

  • Terence McKenna — originator of novelty theory and the timewave concept.
  • Dennis McKenna — co-author of The Invisible Landscape (1975).
  • Peter Meyer — implemented the original Timewave Zero DOS program and published the C source code and data sets.
  • John Sheliak — produced the TW1 (Sheliak) corrected number set (1996).
  • Timewave Zero 2 — this reboot: a modern, open-source, static-web recreation of the original DOS program, built with Next.js, React, and Tailwind CSS.

5. Sources

  • Original Timewave Zero DOS program archive (Internet Archive, 2020 snapshot) — includes Peter Meyer’s executables and documentation.
  • fractal-timewave.com — Peter Meyer’s Timewave Zero site — the primary reference for the wave function, the Sheliak TW1 data set, and the mathematics of the self-similar fractal sum.
  • TW_EN.C (Peter Meyer) — the C source implementation of the timewave function. The 384-number Sheliak set and wave algorithm used in this project were taken from this source and cross-checked against the reference implementation. See src/chart/references/sheliak-algorithm.md in this repository for details.
  • McKenna, T. & McKenna, D. (1975). The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching.

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