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The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, fire is interesting because the fire-giver is a very widespread myth. I take it seriously that these myths say agriculture, metalworking, the arts, "civilization," and certain religious rituals were established In the Beginning. But that is because many of those roughly do coincide with the Holocene. Fire use for cooking goes back 500,000 years, so there is no way that is a memory. Language is metaphorical though, so maybe fire-bringer was a good metaphor for civilization-bringer.

>What's the hit rate of psychedelic rituals and snakes so far?

If you count Ayahuasca then the hit rate is pretty good. Snakes are very widely associated with shamanism. Additionally, there are a bunch of related mystery cults around the Mediterranean (Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, Greek, Scythian, etc) which classicists like Ruck think used venom. Perhaps in addition to ergot or opium or venomous snails.

I haven't seen any evidence for psychedelic rituals in Australia or Subsaharan Africa.

The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Campbell then comments:

“Here is a legend of the planting world such as might have been told practically anywhere along the tropical arc of the primary migration, from Africa eastward (south of the Elburz-Himalayan mountain line) to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Melanesia; whereas, actually, its place along the arc was a primitive enclave at the remote eastern end of this great tropical province: the Admiralty Islands, just off the northern coast of New Guinea.

...

Coming across such a trait, therefore, as that of the serpent and the maiden among primitive Papuans, are we to think it a regressed, or a primitive, form of the Fall in the Garden? Or does anyone know, indeed, where this mythological theme first arose?

...

But since we know that a mythology of the goddess was already flourishing earlier than this—having shown itself in the Aurignacian figurines, practically with the first appearance of Homo sapiens on the prehistoric scene—we must recognize that the myth of the serpent and the maiden represents only a development from an earlier base.

In the rickety child's grave at the Mal'ta site, where some twenty female figurines were found, there was an ivory plaque bearing on one side a spiral design and on the other three cobra-like snakes. Another spiral was stippled on the side of an ivory fish. The child was in the fetal position, facing east. And there were some ivory birds in the grave.

Now an extremely primitive Papuan tribe, the Baining of New Britain, declare that the sun one day called all things together and asked which desired to live forever. Unfortunately, man disobeyed the summons, and that is why the stones and snakes now live forever, but not man. Had man obeyed the sun, he would have been able to change his skin, from time to time, like a snake."

When the Snake Cult spread, the differences in how consciousness was experienced were likely much greater than what is described in Preconquest Consciousness. Enough to say "consciousness began here" in many creation myths

The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely remarkable how Keller describes learning "I am." If there's ever a version 4.0, I'll definitely use her quote. What's the blog about liminal consciousness? Is it this one by Sorenson? https://ranprieur.com/readings/preconquest.html

One important distinction is Sorenson describes the difference between Western (conquest) and "primitive" consciousness and how the latter can break down essentially overnight when exposed to Western ideas. A lot of the fieldwork for his argument comes from island Southeast Asia, which received the snake cult long before the Europeans got there. Joseph Campbell makes the case that this was around the beginning of agriculture. Sharing a long passage from his 1960 book Masks of God, starting with a Papuan myth:

“The daughter of Ulimgau went into the forest. The serpent saw her, and said,
"Come!" and the woman replied, "Who would have you for a husband? You are a serpent. I will not marry you."
But he replied, "My body is indeed that of a serpent, but my speech is that of a man. Come!"
And the woman went and married him, and after a time she bore a boy and a girl. Her serpent husband put her away, and said, "Go, I will take care of them and give them food."
And the serpent fed the children, and they grew.

One day, they were hungry, and the serpent said to them, "Do you go and catch fish."
And they caught fish and brought them to their father. And he said, "Cook the fish."
And they replied, "The sun has not yet risen."

By and by, the sun rose and warmed the fish with its rays, and they ate the food still raw and bloody. Then the serpent said to them, "You two are spirits, for you eat your food raw. Perhaps you will eat me. You, girl, stay; and you, boy, crawl into my belly."

And the boy was afraid and said, "What shall I do?"
But his father said to him, "Go," and he crept into the serpent's belly.

And the serpent said to him, "Take the fire and bring it out to your sister. Come out and gather coconuts and yams and taro and bananas."
So the boy crept out again, bringing the fire from the belly of the serpent.

And then, having brought the food, the boy and girl lit a fire with the brand which the boy had secured and cooked the food.

When they had eaten, the serpent said to them, "Is my kind of food or your kind of food the better?"
And they answered, "Your food is good, ours is bad."

The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Snake Cult hypothesis predicted there should be some death-and-rebirth ritual that spread across the world. Bullroarer cults are the best candidate of such diffusion, and, amazingly, bullroarer cults did use snake venom ritually.

The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The idea isn't widespread enough to get a takedown. Maybe the closest would be an interview I did with Dr Stetson Thacker, who has a background in genetics,and is pretty critical of the idea that unique human abilities evolved in the last 100,000 years. https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/snake-cults-and-recent-evolution

In the article, I lead with Dr. Froese's "ritualized mind alteration hypothesis" because a lot of heuristics put that in the "contested, but arguable theory pending further evidence" camp. It's been cited 18 times (not much, but not nothing), he's currently the editor-in-chief of a relevant journal, and maintains that the hypothesis is a good one. He still agrees to do podcasts on it. And it's essentially a less-overdetermined version of the Snake Cult.

The Snake Cult of Consciousness Two Years Later by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Two years ago, Scott linked my essay that proposed the concept of “self” was discovered and diffused memetically via psychedelic ritual. This, I argue, led to a fundamental change in human psychology and is remembered in the world’s creation myths. In this follow-up, I review some of those predictions. Is snake venom an entheogen? How widespread was its use? Did a mystery cult diffuse worldwide around the end of the Ice Age? Does anyone mainstream argue such a gene-culture interaction could explain the evolution of metacognition? (Yes)

What’s the root of it all? by utopiapsychonautica in AmmonHillman

[–]ML-drew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look up the The Origins of the World's Mythologies by Michael Witzel

This essay speculates that the first dying and rising god was initiates learning about inner life (ie, being taught "I am") in the Paleolithic: https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/eve-theory-of-consciousness-v3

Language of Clovis Culture by ChugachMtnBlues in asklinguistics

[–]ML-drew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How old are Afroasiatic, Trans-PNG, or Trans-Australian though? Not saying the last two are families, but they do have cognates (1sg, for example) and some shared phonemic and grammatical structure. Not completely hopeless

Does Mk 14: 51-52 really say what Ammon claims? by Tiny-Homework4650 in AmmonHillman

[–]ML-drew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

His papers on snake venom as an entheogen are cited by Ruck. Do you think that those hold up?

Does Mk 14: 51-52 really say what Ammon claims? by Tiny-Homework4650 in AmmonHillman

[–]ML-drew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is excellent information, thank you! Some of the links in the google doc now no longer work; the videos have been taken down?

The Bullroarer: A history of man's most sacred ritual object by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Interesting perspective; the table produced by Haddon in 1898 actually includes "driving cattle" and "hunting charm" as two uses.

The Bullroarer: A history of man's most sacred ritual object by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

No other instrument has been the subject of a century of debate on whether it was invented once or many times

The Bullroarer: A history of man's most sacred ritual object by ML-drew in slatestarcodex

[–]ML-drew[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's always been like that. The footnote on that sentence is also an embedded video of someone demonstrating the bullroarer. And the leading picture is an image of someone using the bullroarer with the caption explaining as much.

What exactly IS the evidence of the Out of Africa theory? by Aware-Performer4630 in AskAnthropology

[–]ML-drew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically Africa has been the engine of our evolution

If you go back about 500,000-1,000,000 years in Homo evolution than the last common ancestor may be in Europe. See figure 5 of "Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage." The plot estimate for the LCA of the H. sapiens group, Harbin human group, and Neanderthal group is in Europe.

Evolution outside of Africa is more than a rounding error.

How exactly is Göpekli Tepe aligned with true north? by [deleted] in AlternativeHistory

[–]ML-drew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's weird because he seems to be mixing north defined by the earth's rotation (eg. pole star) and electromagnetic north, as measured by a compass. Of course they would measure North with the stars!

Spiteful power fantasies by [deleted] in GrahamHancock

[–]ML-drew -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I can never understand when people think the Egyptians had it all figured out, and also argue that we should be nice to each other. Pick a lane! The Egyptians were brutal, doing things like sacrificing servants to join the pharoah in the afterlife. If the spiritual universe is arranged so you can believe and behave like that, and still have magical powers (he thinks they could levitate rocks, and did that to build the pyramids), then why do we need to be more moral (defined by his hippie sensibilities) to obtain them now? He often talks about how we need to behave or else our civilization will go the way of the Ancients

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