4 Comments
User's avatar
Jon Cutchins's avatar

Question: You talk of snakes and venom very generically but I would suppose that it is certain venoms that are psychoactive and that rutin and other anti-venoms are effective against certain venoms and not others. Have you considered how the geographical distributions of such snakes and such anti-venoms might play into your theories?

Expand full comment
Andrew Cutler's avatar

Great question! There's been a lot of work to identify specific egyptian mythological snakes with possible biological counterparts. For example: https://www.livescience.com/animals/snakes/ancient-egyptian-papyrus-describes-dozens-of-venomous-snakes-including-rare-4-fanged-serpent

Of course the most important is a cobra, the symbol of the Ureaus. They were also associated with the temple of Isis (debated if they were actually housed there), and may have even been how Cleopatra committed suicide.

In general, I'm happy just presseing the point that venoms are entheogens and are overlooked in the Stoned Ape Theory. I read one paper which noted that snakes, spiders, and scorpions were all clustered together on a pillar at Gobekli Tepe, and the group was explained by being scary animals. Obviously a tighter group is for venom (that can be used ritually). Similarly, who I would identify as the Hopi Eve is called spider grandmother. My guess is all sorts of venoms were used, especially as human groups entered new lands. (The Hopi also have rattlesnake rituals.)

Expand full comment
José Vieira's avatar

On emailing academics about this sort of thing (speaking as someone who has been on the receiving end of many an email purporting to contain the Truth about how the Universe works that Big Physics doesn't want us to know): I'd recommend avoiding sending full article drafts and instead either ask a small number of bullet-point questions or try to talk them into a chat ostensibly about their work where you may be able to naturally include this. There is so much garbage out there, a draft post can very easily be drowned out by noise.

Expand full comment
Andrew Cutler's avatar

This is the way

Expand full comment