Manly P Hall And The Eve Theory Of Consciousness

TL;DR

• The Eve Theory of Consciousness proposes that human self-awareness (the conscious sense of “I am”) emerged recently in prehistory – with women achieving self-awareness first (symbolized by Eve) and then initiating men into this inner life ¹.
• Manly P. Hall, a noted esoteric scholar, likewise saw the biblical Adam and Eve story as an allegory of humanity’s transition from unconscious innocence to conscious mind. The serpent represents the awakening intellect that gave knowledge of good and evil (duality), forcing humanity out of the Edenic state of unity ^{2 3}.
• Creation myths worldwide echo this momentous shift: in a Hindu text the universe begins with the Self proclaiming “I am” ⁴; Aboriginal lore says time began when spirits gave humans language and ritual; and Genesis says after eating the forbidden fruit, the first humans’ “eyes were opened” (self-awareness) and they felt shame in their nakedness ^{5 6}.
• This awakening of consciousness was a double-edged sword – it brought reason, imagination and morality, but also existential anxiety, foresight of death, and loss of primal innocence. Hall notes that once conscious, humans were “doomed to the cycle of birth and death” and had to survive by their own wits in a world of dualities ^{7 8}. These burdens spurred new behaviors: planning for the future, agriculture, technology, and the search for meaning that defines civilization ^{9 7}.
• Esoteric tradition frames this “Fall” as part of a larger plan. Hall believed early mankind’s spiritual consciousness had to descend into material experience (the Fall) in order to eventually ascend again with greater self-knowledge. He wrote that the Garden of Eden is not a literal place but a state of inward unity – and that through occult wisdom and initiation (the “Mystery Schools”), humanity can regain this lost paradise by consciously reuniting with the divine within ^{10 11}.

Eve Theory of Consciousness: The First “I Am” and the Fall from Eden#

Modern research into the origins of the mind proposes a bold idea: conscious self-awareness is not an ancient, unbroken trait of our species, but a culturally and neurologically recent development. The Eve Theory of Consciousness (EToC), advanced by psychologist Andrew Cutler, builds on earlier hypotheses (notably Julian Jaynes’s bicameral mind) that our ancestors only became introspectively “conscious” at a certain point in prehistory ^{12 13}. EToC’s provocative twist is that it credits women as the first to awaken to egoic consciousness – hence the name “Eve.” In this view, the Biblical story of Eve eating the fruit of knowledge before Adam is not a tale of sin, but a profound metaphor: the dawn of the human “I.”

According to Cutler’s thesis, early humans initially heard their own thoughts as external voices (of gods or ancestors), lacking a reflective self to respond ¹². At some point “Eve first tasted self-knowledge,” awakening an inner voice and the capacity to say “I am” ¹. Seeing this new awareness was powerful – “desirable” in the allegory – women then initiated men through profound rites of passage into the same self-aware state ¹. In other words, the “Eve” in humanity took the first step in eating of the tree of knowledge, and then shared it with the “Adam” – just as in Genesis Eve gives the fruit to Adam. This hypothesis reframes the Fall of Man as the rise of mind: a Great Awakening that spread “like wildfire” through Homo sapiens, utterly transforming our inner life and society ^{1 14}.

Such an extraordinary claim finds resonance in many ancient myths and esoteric teachings. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Hindu scripture), creation begins with the cosmic Self reflecting and uttering “I am”, thereby bringing the world into being ⁴. Egyptian mythology similarly has the primordial god Atum speaking his own name to birth himself out of chaos ⁵. And in the Hebrew Genesis, only after eating the forbidden fruit do Adam and Eve awaken to self-consciousness – “their eyes were opened” – realizing their nakedness and individuality, which immediately alienates them from the seamless unity of the Garden ^{5 6}. As one commentator put it, “the story of Adam & Eve…describes humanity’s ‘fall’ of consciousness into the dualities of self-awareness”¹⁵.

Importantly, mystical scholars like Manly P. Hall emphasize that these stories were never meant as mere history or morality tales. Hall stresses that the Eden narrative is “an allegorical exposition of the cosmic processes which resulted in the differentiation of the human species.” ¹⁶ In other words, the expulsion from Eden allegorizes a developmental change in human nature – the point when we ceased to be one with the world and became conscious, self-aware individuals. Hall and other theosophists identify this epochal transition with the end of humanity’s spiritual childhood. Before, we lived instinctively “abiding in Abraham’s bosom” (a state of unconscious unity); after, we awoke to the knowledge of good and evil – and to personal responsibility for our actions ^{2 3}.

Myths of the Dawn of Self-Awareness#

Supporting the Eve Theory, global mythologies appear to preserve a cultural memory of the time “when we walked with god” and then fell into our minds. In Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime lore, ancestral spirits originally walked the earth and “brought the first people language, ritual, and technology,” ending the timeless Dreamtime and starting history ¹⁷. In Aztec mythology, prior to the current era humans lived as a race of mindless “wooden” people without souls, speech, or calendar; they were wiped out by a flood so that true humans (with soul and self-awareness) could be created – effectively describing an earlier form of Homo sapiens that “lacked self-consciousness” being replaced by a new, conscious humanity ^{17 18}. Nearly every culture’s genesis myth contains a leap from an original, serene state into a dramatically different mode of existence.

What is striking is how many of these myths list the same set of gifts and curses that came with consciousness. The Aboriginal and Mesoamerican stories explicitly mention language, technology, time, ritual, and soul. The Biblical account focuses on moral knowledge (good and evil) and shame (a social emotion requiring self-reflection). In the Greek tradition, the story of Pandora (the first woman) has her opening a jar that releases all the evils (suffering) into the world – a clear parallel to Eve unleashing toil and death through curiosity, but notably hope remained to help humanity cope. Likewise, the Greek tale of Prometheus portrays the proto-human state as animal-like until Prometheus’s gift of divine fire (symbolic of mind and enlightenment) elevates humans, while also condemning them to eternal striving and punishment. The constants in these stories are undeniable: something happened that made us uniquely human – able to speak, plan, judge, and imagine – and with it came a loss of innocence and the onset of struggle.

Crucially, these mythical patterns align with what modern science tells us about behavioral modernity. Anthropologists refer to a “Great Leap Forward” or “human revolution” around 50,000–40,000 years ago when archaeological evidence shows a sudden flourishing of creativity and complex culture ^{19 20}. Stone tools and fire had existed for ages, but in this window we begin to see symbolic artifacts: cave paintings, figurines, musical instruments, burials with grave goods. It’s as if a light switched on in the human mind. Notably, the earliest known abstract engraving (a cross-hatched ochre from Blombos Cave, South Africa, ~75,000 years old) is quite primitive – something even a clever bird might scratch. Yet tens of thousands of years later, by ~30,000 years ago, humans were painting sophisticated, soulful images in caves (e.g. Chauvet cave). This suggests that having a brain of the modern size and shape was not enough by itself – a mental transformation was needed to unleash full creativity. Recent research by neuroscientists indeed indicates that our brain anatomy continued evolving in subtle ways until as late as 40,000 years ago, when a rounder skull and expanded parietal lobe (associated with imagination and planning) became prevalent ^{21 20}. Strikingly, this anatomical shift coincides with the period when “modern behaviors” like advanced tools, art, and self-awareness seem to explode globally ^{20 22}. Science, then, is essentially catching up to what myths have long intimated – that becoming conscious was a recent “phase change” in our species, not a gradual continuum from animal mentality ^{23 24}.

From the perspective of Eve Theory, the timeframe might be even more recent – perhaps the close of the last Ice Age (~10,000 BCE). Cutler points to the Neolithic as the dawn of true sapience, when suddenly we see megalithic monuments, elaborate religious symbolism, and the revolutionary adoption of agriculture across disparate regions ^{9 1}. Why agriculture? Because to invent farming, humans first needed to conceive of long-term future rewards (planning months and years ahead) and the concept of ownership of land/crops – none of which are obvious to a purely instinct-driven mind. In the theory, once Eve (the first self-aware humans) internalized an “I” and realized “I will die one day,” they began to worry about securing food for tomorrow (leading to stored harvests and farming) and about protecting what was “mine” (leading to property and social hierarchy) ^{9 25}. Indeed, Hall wrote that after the Fall, having lost the inner guiding light, humanity “must struggle to survive in a universe of doubts and fears” ⁷ – an apt description of the post-Ice Age shift from carefree foraging to the strenuous labor and uncertainty of agrarian life. The once nomadic children of nature had become anxious planners and builders of civilization.

Before and After Self-Knowledge#

Hall and other sages often speak of a metaphorical golden age before the Fall – not a historical civilization, but the psychological condition of Edenic innocence. We can contrast this state with the post-awakening human condition to understand what fundamentally changed when consciousness was born:

Hall describes the pre-conscious human as “a globular body unconscious over its entire area, but containing within itself the seed of future consciousness.” ^{28 29} In other words, early humanity was alive and sentient but not yet self-conscious – much like an infant that has sensations and emotions but no sense of “me” separate from the world. Myths symbolize this era as a garden (Eden, Paradise) or a golden age when we lived naturally and harmoniously, akin to Adam and Eve walking with God. After the “seed” of the I AM germinated, however, our ancestors experienced the world fundamentally differently. Hall’s serpent in Eden is this very seed: he calls the serpent the “intellectual principle” which enchanted primitive man and led to “the experience of conscious self-responsibility.” ^{2 27} Once Eve and Adam partake of that principle – symbolically eating the fruit – “man came to recognize an external life” distinct from the inner, spiritual life ²⁶. The result, Hall says, was a profound extroversion: humanity’s attention shifted outward to the physical world, and our prior inner communion dimmed ³. In psychological terms, the ego was born and with it the perception of duality (self vs. other, man vs. nature, good vs. evil).

It is important to note that Manly P. Hall did not view this Fall/Awakening as an unmitigated disaster – nor as a one-time event in 4004 BC as literalist theology does. Instead, he saw it as a necessary stage in a grand cyclical journey. In one interpretation he gives (citing the Kabbalah and Madame Blavatsky’s esoteric doctrine), the “disobedience” of Adam and Eve was an attempt by early humans to hasten their development of mind – to seize divine wisdom prematurely ^{30 31}. For this hubris, they were exiled from Eden: a poetic way to say that by improperly awakening intellect and ego, humanity lost its primal spiritual consciousness. Another interpretation Hall offers is more straightforward: the Eden story simply records that as soon as our intellect evolved, we could no longer remain in the innocent garden of unconscious nature ^{2 32}. We had to leave the womb and grow up.

Either way, the fallout was the same. “They are doomed to the cycle of birth and death,” Hall writes of the fallen humans, “no longer supported by the inward light but [bound to] struggle to survive in a universe of doubts and fears.” ⁷ In Genesis, God’s curses neatly sum up the new reality: Adam must toil with sweat among thorns (the struggle for survival in the material world), Eve will bring forth children in pain and be subject to her husband (the start of mortal life cycles and social order), and the serpent is cast to the ground (the life-force once exalted is now confined to the base, material plane). The Garden gates clang shut – guarded by a flaming sword – meaning there is no simple return to blissful unity once the eye of self-consciousness has opened ¹¹. Humanity must walk forward on a new road.

Yet, in Hall’s philosophy (as in much of hermetic and Eastern thought), this estrangement is temporary in the cosmic scheme. The very term “fall” implies the possibility of rising again. The fruit of knowledge, though bitter, ultimately enables a greater destiny: conscious reunion with the divine. As Hall puts it, “the evolving intellect” led to an outward fall, but the Messianic promise is the *“restoring of the inner life and the conquest of the external.” ¹⁰ In other words, having developed a strong individual consciousness, we are eventually meant to bring it back into harmony with spirit – to return to Eden not as innocent children, but as wise, self-determined co-creators with the divine. The roadmap to this, Hall believed, lies in the secret doctrines of the ages: symbols like the Tree of Life, the serpent, and the cherubim with the flaming sword are keys to an initiatory process by which one can transcend the illusions of duality.

Hall even interprets the end of Genesis 3 in a radically mystical way: the “coats of skin” that God makes for Adam and Eve are our physical bodies, which encase the soul once we incarnate into material life ⁸. The flaming sword guarding Eden, according to the Kabbalist Philo and others, represents the circulating cosmic fire or energy (some have said it is the moving sun or “solar ray” ^{33 33}) that bars the unpurified from immortality. Only when the ego is purified by spiritual fire can one pass the guardians and re-enter the lost paradise – a theme common to alchemy, Gnosticism, and mystic schools worldwide. The serpent itself, so often maligned, is in occult symbology frequently a redeemer: a holder of wisdom and healer’s power (consider the serpent-entwined rod of Aesculapius for medicine, or Moses’s brazen serpent that healed those who beheld it). Hall notes that because the serpent force – called Kundalini in yogic science – is a “twisting, serpentine fire” within the spine, “the snake has been used in all parts of the world to represent the world saviors.” ^{34 35} Thus, the very agent of our fall is also depicted as our potential salvation, once its energy is mastered.

Manly P. Hall’s Hermetic Vision of Our Awakening#

Hall, writing in the early 20th century but drawing on ancient wisdom, placed humanity’s transition to self-consciousness in a grand timeline of Root Races and cosmic cycles. He echoed the Theosophical teaching that eons ago, during the mid Lemurian epoch, our ancestors received the “spark” of mind from higher beings. “It was in the fifth sub-race of Lemuria that man became a conscious being and responsible to Nature for his thoughts and actions,” Hall asserts, identifying the birth of accountability – essentially the birth of moral self-awareness ^{36 37}. Prior to that, the Lemurians (and earlier Hyperboreans) are described as human in form but lacking the fire of mind, much like the Aztec “wooden people” or other mythic proto-humans. Hall describes these early people as strange, ethereal, even hermaphroditic in form – “the first race of humanity…and the first sub-race” were androgynous, not yet split into male and female ^{38 39}. This accords with many creation myths (including Genesis 1:27 and the symposium of Plato) where the original human was one, and only later divided into two sexes. In Hall’s exegesis, Eve being drawn from Adam’s side symbolizes this division of the primitive androgynous being into polar opposites – a necessary step for generation (reproduction) and the awakening of duality ^{40 41}. “Eve is the etheric principle called by Plato the principle of generation,” Hall explains; she is literally the life-force that was extracted out of the previously unified Adam to create polarity ⁴¹. In this reading, woman represents not only the biological mother of future humans but the metaphysical principle that allows consciousness to manifest in the material world (since without division/contrast, consciousness has nothing to be conscious of).

Following this split, the stage was set for the serpent of intellect to do its work. Hall’s narrative here beautifully intertwines with Eve Theory: the feminine (Eve) is first to engage with the serpent (intellectual curiosity), and she offers the fruit to the masculine (Adam) – indicating that the newfound knowledge had to be transmitted or taught to the rest of humanity. Far from condemning Eve, Hall vehemently opposes the old theological view that “with Adam’s fall we sinned all” and that woman as the temptress is to blame – he calls that idea “one of the most ludicrous errors of theology.” ⁴² The “temptation” was not a moral corruption brought by female weakness, but an allegory for the natural impulse of life to evolve. In Hall’s words, “wherever there is division, desire works for good while ever scheming ill… unity alone is perfect wisdom, for when there is division, [there is] desire” (paraphrasing his discourse on the Pythagorean two) ^{43 44}. What he means is that once the world of duality appears (male/female, light/dark, self/other), the dynamic of desire and curiosity inevitably leads beings to seek the forbidden fruit – the knowledge that promises completeness, god-like understanding. This quest for knowledge is double-sided: it elevates us but also causes suffering. Hall illustrates this with a witty symbol: “There was the apple that Eve ate and the apple that fell on Newton’s head. These two apples have changed the course of history.” ^{45 46} In one, the fall of the fruit heralded the fall of man; in the other, a falling apple heralded the rise of modern science (Newton’s discovery of gravity). Both “fruits” impart wisdom, and both mark pivotal shifts that cannot be undone.

To Hall, then, the Eve moment – whenever it occurred in prehistory – was part of a supervised evolutionary plan. He speaks of a “celestial academy” in which divine beings (the Elohim or angels) taught the first humans the secret doctrine at the dawn of consciousness ^{47 48}. He even names the archangel Raphael as a legendary visitor who “discoursed with Adam and Eve in the Garden… concerning the mysteries of the soul” ^{47 49}. Such imagery evokes the notion found in many cultures that gods or higher powers “walked among men” in the early days to guide us. Hall’s framework suggests that consciousness was a gift – or perhaps a loan – from the gods, one that humans were meant to gradually unfold. The tragedy (or comedy) of Eden is that humans rushed the process. We “stormed heaven” to steal the fire of knowing before we fully understood the responsibility it carried ^{30 50}. Thus, we were like teenagers suddenly given the keys to a powerful car – the result was a kind of crash. We found ourselves exiled from the inner Garden, wandering in the wilderness of our now-dominant physical senses and unstable emotions.

Still, Hall would likely agree with Eve Theory on this: once the genie of consciousness is out of the bottle, it doesn’t go back in. Evolution doesn’t reverse; instead, we must move forward and mature into our newfound awareness. The evidence suggests that after this awakening, humans rapidly developed language and culture to navigate their strange new mental landscape ^{51 52}. They told stories – myths of a lost paradise – to cope with the ache of separation, and they built religions to seek reconnection with the divine source. In Hall’s analysis, all of scripture and esoteric tradition is essentially a guide for consciously returning to the unity we once knew instinctively ^{53 54}. “When you thoroughly understand the Garden of Eden story,” wrote metaphysician Emmett Fox in a line Hall appreciated, “you will understand human nature.”¹⁵ Hall’s own works are dedicated to that thorough understanding, peeling back the symbols layer by layer.

In summary, Manly P. Hall’s vision of life and human history beautifully complements the Eve Theory of Consciousness. Both frame the emergence of the self-aware ego as a defining turning point – the point at which “man became man,” stepping out of nature’s unconscious embrace. Hall brings to it the rich context of Hermetic and Kabbalistic wisdom: he assures us that this awakening was inevitable and even intentional in the grand design. Humanity’s task now is to reconcile the two halves of our story – the Eve and the Adam, the heart and the mind, the spiritual and the material. We must heal the rift that opened when our eyes were opened. The Fall, in truth, is the first step on an upward journey. As we integrate our knowledge with reverence, and our individuality with compassion, we prepare to re-enter Eden – not in ignorance this time, but in illuminated unity, carrying in our hearts the hard-earned fruit of wisdom.

Summary#

1. Original Androgyny to Duality: Hall teaches that early humanity was androgynous and spiritually unified – “male and female created He them” – until the separation of sexes (symbolized by Eve’s formation from Adam) initiated duality ^{39 41}. This metaphysical split was necessary for self-awareness to take root, as the tension of opposites (masculine–feminine, self–other) generated the spark of mind.
2. Serpent Mind and the Loss of Innocence: The Edenic serpent represents the awakening intellect or kundalini force that rose within primitive humans ^{2 3}. When Eve and Adam “ate” this knowledge, they became self-conscious (knowing good and evil) and thus fell out of unconscious harmony. Hall notes their “inner senses were dimmed” as outward perception and ego took over – humanity’s childhood innocence was lost in that moment of enlightenment ^{26 10}.
3. Knowledge as a Two-Edged Sword: With consciousness came great power and great peril. Hall remarks that every invention or new knowledge carries a shadow – “good laws are perverted by selfish men; great ideals are…misused” ^{55 56}. Likewise, the fruit of knowledge bestowed divine capacities (reason, imagination, moral choice) but also cursed humans with toil, conflict, and mortality ^{7 8}. We donned “coats of skin,” becoming mortal flesh. Yet Hall emphasizes this was part of the plan: the fall sets the stage for redemption. Through experience and esoteric wisdom, the conscious ego can be refined, eventually overcoming the “pairs of opposites” and regaining Eden – fulfilling the cycle of fall and return ^{10 11}.

FAQ#

Q1. What is the Eve Theory of Consciousness in simple terms?
A: It’s the idea that human self-awareness (the sense of an inner “I” or ego) developed relatively recently in our prehistory – perhaps near the end of the Ice Age – rather than being innate for 200,000 years. The theory suggests the first truly self-aware humans were female (hence “Eve”), and that these women then taught men abstract thought and introspection ¹. In essence, it proposes a cultural “Great Awakening” in which the human mind attained modern consciousness, sparking innovations like art, religion, and agriculture.

Q2. How did Manly P. Hall interpret the biblical story of Adam and Eve?
A: Hall saw it as an allegory of the human mind – not a tale of literal fruit or sin. In his view, the Garden of Eden represents a primordial state of unconscious unity with nature and spirit. Eating the fruit of knowledge (prompted by the serpent of intellect) symbolized early humans acquiring self-conscious minds – the knowledge of dualities (good and evil, self and other) ^{2 27}. This awakening expelled them from Eden, meaning humanity left its innocent, instinctual state and entered the world of personal responsibility, labor, and mortality. Thus, the “Fall” is really the birth of ego-consciousness – a necessary step in our spiritual evolution.

Q3. Why does the Eve Theory claim women were the first to become self-aware?
A: The theory points to clues in mythology and prehistoric culture that feminine insight led the way in awakening the inner self. For example, in Genesis it is Eve who eats from the Tree of Knowledge before Adam – symbolically, she achieves “I am” consciousness first. Andrew Cutler argues women might have been primed for this leap, perhaps through roles in nurturing, early art or ritual, and then initiated men into self-awareness through rites of passage ^{1 57}. In short, “Eve” represents the pioneering consciousness that women shared with men, kick-starting the cognitive revolution.

Q4. What changed in humans after we attained self-awareness?
A: Once humans became self-aware, we see a cascade of profound changes: complex language and symbolic thought blossomed, technology advanced rapidly, and people began creating art and music. Socially, we developed moral codes and a sense of individual identity – which led to organized religion and law. Crucially, awareness of our mortality set in, fostering existential anxieties but also future-planning and innovation (for instance, storing food, domesticating plants and animals) ^{9 25}. In essence, humanity shifted from living in the present like other animals to living in mental time – remembering the past, imagining the future, and striving to influence destiny. This made civilization possible, even as it estranged us from our earlier natural innocence.

Q5. Can we ever “return” to the lost Garden of Eden state?
A: Not by reverting to ignorance, but by transcending our current state through spiritual growth. Esoteric teachings (which Hall often cites) say the Edenic consciousness can be regained in a higher form – sometimes called enlightenment or cosmic consciousness. After mastering the lessons of duality, an individual can overcome egoism and experience unity with the divine while still self-aware. Hall noted that the flaming sword barring Eden represents the trials one must pass to attain inner illumination ¹¹. In effect, we don’t go backward to unconscious innocence, but forward to a conscious innocence (wisdom) – a state where one’s “I am” is fully reconciled with the greater “I AM” (the divine). Mystics of many traditions describe this as the goal of the spiritual quest, often equating it with re-entering paradise or the “Kingdom of Heaven within.”

Footnotes#

Sources#

1. Cutler, Andrew. “The Eve Theory of Consciousness.” Vectors of Mind (blog), 2023. (Proposes that self-awareness emerged in women at the end of the Ice Age, triggering a cultural revolution.) ^{1 58}
2. Hall, Manly P. The Occult Anatomy of Man. Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1925. (Uses esoteric and anatomical symbolism to discuss human spiritual evolution; relates Eden to embryology and the serpent to the spinal fire.) ^{59 34}
3. Hall, Manly P. “The Secret Doctrine in the Bible – Part II (Adam and Eve).” The Students Monthly Letter, Fourth Year, No.2. Los Angeles: PRS, ca. 1940s. (Hall’s privately circulated lesson explaining the allegorical meanings of Genesis; describes Eve as the etheric principle, the Fall as the start of intellectual consciousness, and the exile from Eden as the soul’s immersion in matter.) ^{40 60}
4. Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. (Seminal thesis that human self-consciousness arose around 1000 BCE, ending an earlier “bicameral” mentality in which decisions were guided by hallucinated divine voices.)
5. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.1, translated by Swami Madhavananda, 1950. (Ancient Vedic scripture; teaches that in the beginning the cosmic Self alone existed and, upon declaring “I am,” divided into creator and creation – an explicit mythological account of the emergence of self-awareness.) ⁴
6. “The Transition to Modern Behavior.” Nature Education 1, no.1 (2011). (Summary by archaeologist Sally McBrearty on the archaeological evidence for when Homo sapiens developed modern cognition and culture, discussing the “Great Leap” circa 50k years ago and gradual vs. sudden models.)
7. Brueck, Hilary. “The modern human brain may only be 40,000 years old, scientists say.” Business Insider, Jan 24, 2018. (Reports on a study from Science Advances tracing changes in human skull/brain shape ~40k years ago that coincide with the advent of symbolic thought, language, and art – essentially dating when our brains became “fully modern.”) ^{21 20}
8. Jung, C.G. The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press, 1959. (Jungian psychology text exploring mythological symbols as expressions of psychic processes. Notably states, “Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul,” a perspective mirrored in the Eve Theory’s use of myth to understand consciousness ⁶¹.)
9. Genesis 2–3 (King James Bible). (Ancient Hebrew account of the creation of humankind, the Garden of Eden, the temptation by the serpent, and the expulsion – source of the Adam and Eve allegory central to Hall’s and Cutler’s discussions.)
10. Hancock, Graham. Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. London: Century, 2005. (Investigates the role of shamanic experiences and psychoactive substances in human cognitive evolution; posits, similar to the “Snake Cult” idea, that encounters with the “supernatural” contributed to the sudden advancement of human consciousness.)