On Cape York, dunggul names both ‘snake’ and ‘bullroarer.’ What this polysemy reveals about initiation, being ‘snake‑bitten,’ and the ritual voice.
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
How The Self Went Viral: Eve Theory, Snake Cults, And The Late-Pleistocene Explosion Of Consciousness
A long-form exploration of how the discovery of reflective selfhood radiated through late-Ice-Age cultures, with the Eve Theory of Consciousness and the Snake Cult hypothesis as the most coherent narrative frame.
Shared Etymology of Jñāna, Know, and Gnosis
Tracing the Proto‑Indo‑European root *ǵneh₃‑ that links Sanskrit jñā‑, English know, and Greek gnō‑/gnosis.
Serpents And Women In Emergence Myths Across The Americas
How water-serpents and founding women co-star in Navajo, Zuni, Taíno, K’iche’, and Inka origin stories and what that pairing reveals about birth, chaos, and order.
Light-Poison, Eucharistic Toxikon & Cosmic Venom: three ophidian tropes unpacked
Close reading of Manichaean, Ophite and Naassene passages that speak of Christ-as-Serpent in pharmacological terms.
Deep Roots Of Pan-American Culture
How pronouns, rituals, myths, and fluted spear points reveal a single Ice-Age culture behind all pre-Columbian peoples.
Prehistoric Myths with Origins Over 8,000 Years Ago
Examines the surprising stability of mythic motifs over millennia, suggesting myths like the Cosmic Hunt or Serpent symbolism could encode memories of real cognitive shifts, supporting the Eve Theory’s timeframe.
Women as Progenitors of Culture: Mythic Origins and Scholarly Debates
Examines the historical and anthropological debate surrounding the concept of primordial matriarchy, from Bachofen’s theories to modern critiques and evidence.
Australia and the Sapient Paradox: Evidence for a Late Cognitive Leap
Examining the archaeological record of Australia (Sahul) – early colonization, persistent simple technologies, late emergence of complex art – as a key case study supporting the Sapient Paradox and the late development of behavioral modernity.
Herakles & Dionysus — Twin Keys of the Serpent Mysteries
How Cosmic-Herakles sets the wheel of time while Dionysus turns it toward liberation in Orphic-Bacchic cults.