Snake Venom and the Eve Theory of Consciousness

Discussion

A global Snake Cult at the origin of human consciousness ?

Andrew Cutler:

"My thesis is that women discovered “I” first and then taught men about inner life. Creation myths are memories of when women forged humans into a dualistic species. That sounds fantastic, but we have to have evolved at some point (and it must have been fantastic). Further, weaker versions of the idea are still interesting. For example, I hold that snake venom was used in the first rituals to help communicate “I am.” Hence the snake in the garden, tempting Eve with self-knowledge. Even if those rituals do not figure in human evolution or our discovery of consciousness, it would be extraordinary if a psychedelic snake cult from the Paleolithic is remembered in Genesis as well as by the Aztecs.

In several blog posts, I have developed what it would look like to discover “I, ” how it could have been communicated to others, why women would have been the vanguard, how it could evolve by degrees, and what sort of cultural and genetic marks such a process would leave. But these arguments are scattered across posts, and in the meantime, I’ve found more supporting evidence. For example, earlier, I mused that snake venom could have been used as a hallucinogen. It turns out that this is well documented in ritual settings, including among the architects of Western civilization.

This essay starts with a discussion of what it means to be human. This is essential to establish a common framework but, unfortunately, buries the lede. The most original research is on the worldwide Snake Cult.

...

"The expulsion of Adam and Eve was the result of natural law, not a capricious god doling out contradictory commandments. Once Eve perceived herself as an agent and the voice in her head as her own, she could no longer dwell in blissful ignorance. She became responsible for her actions and aware of her mortality. Others have offered this interpretation. Julian Jaynes even related it to identifying with the inner voice. But what’s with the snake?

If you took a time machine to visit humans at the cusp of recursion, could you teach them about “I”? What would you try? I would embed “I” into a horror ritual. An escape room where the only way out was in. This would pull on many biological levers, including psychedelics, given their ability to help change one’s mind. The acute effects include opening the mind and enabling novel thoughts. Particularly affected are functions related to introspection and consciousness.

It’s a bit odd that a class of drugs known most for ego death could be involved with ego birth. But the proposed mechanism is more a “brain reset” during which an initiate has many new ideas—hopefully including “I am”—followed by weeks of increased brain plasticity where those can be integrated. This is not my idea. Terence McKenna proposed the Stoned Ape Theory in his book Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge.

For McKenna, the relationship between consciousness and psychedelics was practical. When he tripped, he saw consciousness being constructed in his mind. One of his most eloquent expositions is on entities he described as self-transforming machine elves—fantastical creatures made of language. “I don't know why there should be an invisible syntactical intelligence giving language lessons in hyperspace. That certainly, consistently, seems to be what is happening.” Based on his schooling in hyperspace, he figured that language was fundamental to consciousness and that psychedelics could help in obtaining it.

McKenna argued the Food of the Gods was psilocybin mushrooms. But they only play a minor role in religious history. In fact, a much better candidate is in Genesis itself: snakes.Their venom is a psychedelic that contains large amounts of nerve growth factor. Not only that but they are worshiped as consciousness-granting globally and have been over evolutionary time scales. I propose the original Fruit of Knowledge was snake venom."

(https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/eve-theory-of-consciousness-v3?)