Most of the feedback I got on the Snake Cult of Consciousness was on the pharmacology of venom. The first was from someone who ostensibly works with snake venom:
How Did a Self-Aware Mind Evolve?
Meditations on mind, myth, and evolution. Cast the scales from your eyes!
TL;DR
- Symbolic thought emerged ~50,000 years ago, yet the universal human symbol, “I,” or the ego appears globally entrenched only in the Holocene ~10 kya.
- According to Eve Theory of Consciousness, women invented serpent-venom initiation rituals that reliably taught subject-object separation, producing powerful gene-culture evolution towards understanding “I am’” at a young age.
- The memory of this awakening is preserved worldwide in creation myths (cf. Lucifer, Nüwa, Quetzalcoatl) and was transmitted globally via bullroarer mystery cults (cf. the rites of Dionysus or Australian Dreamtime).
Topics
About
I’m Andrew Cutler, a Machine Learning engineer researching human origins. My work connects psychology, comparative mythology, and AI to trace how recursive self-awareness evolved. Snakecult.net is a place for me to put lightly-edited AI-generated essays that explore niche questions (usually produced with OpenAI’s Deep Research or o3-Pro).
Research Articles
Consequences Of Conscience
I’d like to add a third postulate to Galton’s Lexical Hypothesis:
Contra Dhuy On Snake Myths
“The key to the interpretation of so many still hermetic motifs […] is available to us, immediately accessible, in myths and tales still alive.” Levi-Strauss
David Stillwell 4
In today’s episode, I’m joined by David Stillwell, a professor of computational social science at the University of Cambridge, who uses big data to understand psychology.
December Subscriber Post
It has been a good year here on Vectors of Mind. The Eve Theory of Consciousness has always been aspirational. Pedantically, it’s more of a hypothesis—particularly versions 1 and 2. However, with the …
Deja You The Recursive Construction
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” -Carl Jung
Drinking With The Gods The Chemistry
Depicted above are several libation cups made in the image of the Ancient Egyptian god Bes. The burgeoning field of archeo-botany allows us to investigate what was consumed from such ritual jugs by an…
Embryo Selection And Our Stone Age
Note: I wrote this piece in 2023 for a now-defunct Substack specializing in embryo selection. It appears below unedited.
Eve Theory Of Consciousness V2
To my knowledge, no one has argued that women evolved recursion before men. This seems like low-hanging fruit, given it’s the oldest story in the book. Indigenous cultures worldwide have myths of a pr…
Eve Theory Of Consciousness V3
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was wi…