I’ve been taking lots of pictures while traveling around Greece. Besides the striking scenery and archaeological sites, I’ve made sure to snap pics of ancient art and other objects that depict egodeath themes and entheogens.
Snakes appear constantly in Greco-Roman decoration. All the explanations I’ve heard from learned people on this trip sound so lame and incoherent in comparison to the cybernetic metaphor explanation: The snake is the fixed worldline, the fixed path of our thoughts and actions. It wavers and undulates as our perceptions do in the loose cognition state. Secondarily, it signifies visionary plants. However, known of the many snakes I’ve seen are biting someone. Some reach toward a cup of entheogenic wine or the libation bowl full of mixed wine. No images I’ve seen show the snake shedding its skin.
Snakes are especially common on funerary markers. Bodily death was intentionally seen in light of mystic state egodeath. Egodeath occurs when we see the snake, i.e. when we perceive the fixedness of our future thoughts and actions.
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November 13, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Daniel Boon
Here is some fundamental criticism of the egodeath theory.
Michael Hoffman no longer has a public forum, since 2007, and my forum about self-control cybernetics is currently down due to lack of server and because the domainname toolsforphysics.com was sold to another party. Therefore I think it might be relevant and useful if I post it here for the moment. I think the egodeath theory must be cleaned up, because it is here to stay.
9 initiation sessions was (for me) not enough for ego transcendence; 15 sessions is what I needed for egodeath. (This is full basic enlightenment, redeption, and satori)
The ego is exorcised *before* determinism awareness truly develops, *not* during this process; The ego is only shocked by a sense that determinism might very well be true. A sense of dying.
Struggling with determinism awareness is more dramatic, including a fear of being helplessly trapped in a bad-ending story.
Final transcendence of determinism is the experience of entering heaven.
There is no place for magic and for transrationality except if interpreted as metaphor, or rationally explained as miracles frozen in spacetime.
November 13, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Chelsea
Hi there!
What museum were you in for these? I’m trying to find a reference to the last picture you took of the jar with the snake inside!