I also find the characterisation of snakes in mythology across the world fascinating, and I find your thesis here and in your earlier articles quite convincing.
I sometimes wonder about a couple of hard-to-understand references to snakes in the old Testament, Numbers 21 where the Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” and Exodus 7 where the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.” I think there must be more to understand in both these cases.
I also would like to understand more about the snake symbolism in Egyptian mythology, such as the snake god Nehebkau, and the so-called Uraeus or cobra on the front of the pharaoh’s crown, and the many snake-related images I’ve seen for myself in Egyptian tombs, which could be very informative in general, and perhaps in relation to your thesis.
Raising the snake on the pole may have been part of the tradition of Asherah, who was later rewritten as Eve. The New Testamanet also says that Christ on the cross represents a snake on a pole (I reference that in EToC v3).
The Egyptian hieroglyph for goddess is actually a serpent. And the mystery cult of Isis had a secret box, which may have contained grain and a snake.
Lots of interesting themes that emerge over and over.
Very interesting, thanks! Yes, Egyptian hieroglyphs I12, cobra, & I13, cobra with basket, are used to name the goddesses Wadjet and Nesret respectively, or as a determinative for any goddess. Probably more could be learnt from a close study of texts where these and the other goddesses are mentioned.
Specifically relevant I think to your ‘Primordial Matriarchy’ idea are the many Indian Tantric texts which indicate that Śakti, the active female principle, gives awareness of multiplicity to the passive male principle, Śiva … which is then depicted as the god Śiva, with a snake around his body.
Hi Andrew, fascinating theory, thank you! Can you recommend a reference on what pre-sapient mental states must have been like? Your conjecture that they must have been essentially schizophrenic really intrigues me.
The classic text on this is Julian Jaynes' Bicameral Breakdown, and I think he gets a lot right. Jung's Archaic Man is also good. I have only skimmed it but Up from Eden by Ken Wilbur is another relevant text. Tim Crow's idea of a "Big Bang" of consciousness and psychosis may also interest you: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18502103/
In a modern population, my guess is the closest to the earlier mindset is the Piraha people described in most detail by Dan Everett in his book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. There are also a couple good docs on them.
What intrigues you about the relation to schizophrenia?
Excellent, thank you very much! I do not know anything about pre-sapience and little about schizophrenia, based only on the general stuff I was taught in med school almost 20 years ago, so this is going to sound ignorant. However, I do vividly remember many of these very unfortunate patients because of how strikingly aberrant their thinking was. Their loss of connection to reality and society was so profound it was wrenching and hard to forget. But emotions aside, it is difficult for me to imagine how anything socially stable could arise out of such a grossly disordered substrate. To my uneducated eye, if the baseline, pre-sapient mental state was schizophrenic then it would be a social anti-foundation. Alas, I need to actually study this topic before opining, so thank you again for the detailed reading list!
I'd like it if you sent this over to David Roman, who does the History of Mankind substack, and get his take on it. Would be very interesting for both your subscribers (I follow you both).
Reaching out to him would probably be better coming from you! I just read his piece on Australia, which was quite nice, and would be helped along with a bit of snake cult diffusion.
Please be careful not to conflate the Neolithic Revolution with the Axial Age. They are two distinct step changes in human cognition, separated by thousands of years. The Eleusinian Mysteries were a feature of the Axial Age, and happened thousands of years after the changes of the Neolithic Revolution were fully disseminated. The Axial Age was less about developing 'consciousness' and more about empathy or a modern theory of mind.
It is likely that both changes were spread mimetically, and that they both used entheogens. It is possible that snake venom was one of the substances used (although I suspect that the Greeks had access to better things). But they are different phenomena.
I follow Joseph Campbell and his Atlas of World Mythology. Axial Revolution is a riff on the earlier themes.
Agree that Greeks likely also had better entheogens. My guess is venom would have mostly been grandfathered in. It's very interesting that it seems to still have been used, though.
Spend more time talking about more recent examples because we have more evidence. I try to make the case for Paleolithic and early Neolithic use in the longer Eve Theory of Consciousness
I don't find this thesis convincing. More compelling would be something to do with inborn phobias, such as fear of snakes. Quoting Emil Kirkegaard:
> Phobias are interesting from an evolutionary perspective because they track ancient dangers, not modern ones. Snakes and spiders are high on the list, but Brits do not die or get injured from snakes or spiders basically ever.
The Jungian archetype or neuro module thesis is a fairly good explanation for why snakes so often appear in mythology. But why so often associated with consciousness? Further, there are a lot of worldwide mythological patterns that can't be explained without diffusion, such as the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades or the Bullroarer. Interestingly, the cluster of associations about snakes is often related to those other ideas that have better evidence of diffusion. I go over a few of them here: https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
Has someone thought about how maybe all those ancient cave paintings were made by children? They look quite like the stuff that a 5-year-old would draw. And I think I read somewhere if you add up all the offspring of Adam and Eve in the bible you end up 6k-7,6k years ago. I’m sold on the snake cult aswell, but where does one get the proper venom oder peptides to make my brain evolve into the next level ?
I also find the characterisation of snakes in mythology across the world fascinating, and I find your thesis here and in your earlier articles quite convincing.
I sometimes wonder about a couple of hard-to-understand references to snakes in the old Testament, Numbers 21 where the Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” and Exodus 7 where the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.” I think there must be more to understand in both these cases.
I also would like to understand more about the snake symbolism in Egyptian mythology, such as the snake god Nehebkau, and the so-called Uraeus or cobra on the front of the pharaoh’s crown, and the many snake-related images I’ve seen for myself in Egyptian tombs, which could be very informative in general, and perhaps in relation to your thesis.
Raising the snake on the pole may have been part of the tradition of Asherah, who was later rewritten as Eve. The New Testamanet also says that Christ on the cross represents a snake on a pole (I reference that in EToC v3).
The Egyptian hieroglyph for goddess is actually a serpent. And the mystery cult of Isis had a secret box, which may have contained grain and a snake.
Lots of interesting themes that emerge over and over.
Very interesting, thanks! Yes, Egyptian hieroglyphs I12, cobra, & I13, cobra with basket, are used to name the goddesses Wadjet and Nesret respectively, or as a determinative for any goddess. Probably more could be learnt from a close study of texts where these and the other goddesses are mentioned.
Specifically relevant I think to your ‘Primordial Matriarchy’ idea are the many Indian Tantric texts which indicate that Śakti, the active female principle, gives awareness of multiplicity to the passive male principle, Śiva … which is then depicted as the god Śiva, with a snake around his body.
Hi Andrew, fascinating theory, thank you! Can you recommend a reference on what pre-sapient mental states must have been like? Your conjecture that they must have been essentially schizophrenic really intrigues me.
The classic text on this is Julian Jaynes' Bicameral Breakdown, and I think he gets a lot right. Jung's Archaic Man is also good. I have only skimmed it but Up from Eden by Ken Wilbur is another relevant text. Tim Crow's idea of a "Big Bang" of consciousness and psychosis may also interest you: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18502103/
In a modern population, my guess is the closest to the earlier mindset is the Piraha people described in most detail by Dan Everett in his book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. There are also a couple good docs on them.
What intrigues you about the relation to schizophrenia?
Excellent, thank you very much! I do not know anything about pre-sapience and little about schizophrenia, based only on the general stuff I was taught in med school almost 20 years ago, so this is going to sound ignorant. However, I do vividly remember many of these very unfortunate patients because of how strikingly aberrant their thinking was. Their loss of connection to reality and society was so profound it was wrenching and hard to forget. But emotions aside, it is difficult for me to imagine how anything socially stable could arise out of such a grossly disordered substrate. To my uneducated eye, if the baseline, pre-sapient mental state was schizophrenic then it would be a social anti-foundation. Alas, I need to actually study this topic before opining, so thank you again for the detailed reading list!
I'd like it if you sent this over to David Roman, who does the History of Mankind substack, and get his take on it. Would be very interesting for both your subscribers (I follow you both).
Reaching out to him would probably be better coming from you! I just read his piece on Australia, which was quite nice, and would be helped along with a bit of snake cult diffusion.
Please be careful not to conflate the Neolithic Revolution with the Axial Age. They are two distinct step changes in human cognition, separated by thousands of years. The Eleusinian Mysteries were a feature of the Axial Age, and happened thousands of years after the changes of the Neolithic Revolution were fully disseminated. The Axial Age was less about developing 'consciousness' and more about empathy or a modern theory of mind.
It is likely that both changes were spread mimetically, and that they both used entheogens. It is possible that snake venom was one of the substances used (although I suspect that the Greeks had access to better things). But they are different phenomena.
I follow Joseph Campbell and his Atlas of World Mythology. Axial Revolution is a riff on the earlier themes.
Agree that Greeks likely also had better entheogens. My guess is venom would have mostly been grandfathered in. It's very interesting that it seems to still have been used, though.
Spend more time talking about more recent examples because we have more evidence. I try to make the case for Paleolithic and early Neolithic use in the longer Eve Theory of Consciousness
I don't find this thesis convincing. More compelling would be something to do with inborn phobias, such as fear of snakes. Quoting Emil Kirkegaard:
> Phobias are interesting from an evolutionary perspective because they track ancient dangers, not modern ones. Snakes and spiders are high on the list, but Brits do not die or get injured from snakes or spiders basically ever.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-155360681
The Jungian archetype or neuro module thesis is a fairly good explanation for why snakes so often appear in mythology. But why so often associated with consciousness? Further, there are a lot of worldwide mythological patterns that can't be explained without diffusion, such as the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades or the Bullroarer. Interestingly, the cluster of associations about snakes is often related to those other ideas that have better evidence of diffusion. I go over a few of them here: https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
Your work got me reading “The Good and Evil Serpent”. Keep these going man
Long time reader - I'm interested in letting a snake bite me to have a controlled brush with morality
I'm afraid that, mythically speaking, this often backfired. Hercules went mad and killed his wife and kids after his trip to Hades and back
i’m sold
Has someone thought about how maybe all those ancient cave paintings were made by children? They look quite like the stuff that a 5-year-old would draw. And I think I read somewhere if you add up all the offspring of Adam and Eve in the bible you end up 6k-7,6k years ago. I’m sold on the snake cult aswell, but where does one get the proper venom oder peptides to make my brain evolve into the next level ?