Wednesday, January 18, 2023

 "Two or three years ago they were just another snake cult."

To believe that psychedelics had a central role in our evolution I would need to see them at the center of religious iconography regarding knowledge and creation worldwide. And this would have to be the case from the beginning. This seems like an impossibly high bar to clear.

And yet, this is true of snakes, which are worshiped all across the globe, and have been from the beginning. One strange coincidence is how often they are associated with knowledge, despite having a peanut for a brain. What no one has noticed is that snakes themselves contain a hallucinogen: their venom. I argue that there was an ancient psychedelic snake cult concerned with selfhood from which modern snake symbolism descends.

 Filed under "sure, why not?".

1 comment:

Peculiar said...

'The internet is in its true form when you start googling questions like “did snake venom cause consciousness?”'

How very apt, not to mention recursive.

I suppose the main question this raises for me is: If hallucinatory snake venom rituals were once so deeply fundamental, why is no one out of earth's thousands of cultures doing them today (besides the author's one desperate Pakistani addict)? People will put up with a hell of a lot to get high. Or are we just out of the coily loop?