Language and Monotheism

Terrance McKenna proposed “that the transformation from humans’ early ancestors Homo erectus to the species Homo sapiens mainly had to do with the addition of the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis in its diet, an event that according to his theory took place in about 100,000 BCE (which is when he believed that the species diverged from the Homo genus).” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_M … _evolution

youtube.com/watch?v=TCFAzPl1QmE

The whole premise here seems pretty shaky.

Like, post Sea-people and bronze-age collapse I could see people basically going, “Who cares about the conflicts between our various cults? We just got our asses handed to us. Let’s band together, we can worry about the particulars of the cult later, and just do this. El, Yawheh, whatever-the-fuck-else, let’s just do this then we can argue about it.”

Naturally, those kinds of calls for unity are normally made by the second most powerful faction in the face of an enemy. They use that conflict to solidify their power. No need to involve alphabets into it, though because of the Bronze Age collapse we get the same timing.

Of course, the real answer is that the sea-people brought a monotheistic religion with them because, coming from the sea, they worshipped Chthulu. This also nicely explains why the monotheistic gods of levant are such psychopaths and why various gnostic movements tried to reimagine them as evil gods. It’s a cultural memory of the chthulu invasion.

Duh

Yes, the alphabet theory is interesting theory but it leaves quite a few things unexplained for me. For instance that the same effect could have been achieved through geometry, as it did with Islamic art here: Alhambra geometry and
Sacred geometry of Islamic art). Islamic art is said to have been influenced by Plato’s ideas, who, in turn, was influenced by Pythagoras. So, it seems that it could also have been just as well, the abstraction of mathematics, rather than phonetic alphabet. In fact, for an illiterate populace, meditation on such “sacred” geometry that would have presented itself throughout their waking lives might even have been easier and more effective. But perhaps the answer lies in an indeph exploration of the background context around developments of such things (economic, political, and social), and that would require a lot of historical digging and piecing of events together, and one would need to be as much of a historian as a philosopher.

———

I explored the drug use theory as well, and thought of mentioning it as a possibility, but decided not to, because at the time, I felt that it might move the research in wrong direction (i.e. developments and transformations of ancient cults - which is a big topic on its own). But according to my research, Plato and Aristotle (and likely Pythagoras) were both initiates into Eleusinian mysteries, which would also bring the use of psychedelic drugs into the picture.

Eleusian Mysteries

Philosophers who used drugs

Greek Mystry cults

The problem I have with the drugs theory is that if that were true, that experience would likely be encouraged for other people (the holy communion), and that means that we would be using psyhadelic drugs in our religious rituals as well, but we don’t. In fact, in Islam, even alcohol is strictly forbidden. If drugs were the cause (or an inspiration), why were they not passed on as well?

It’s become on-trend because of Westworld, but I’ve had a soft-spot for the bicameral mind. It’s just so fucking crazy, so it’s a lot of fun.

Drugs do have a strong cultural component. The hashish/vodka line gets used a lot by Russian historians because of how different cultures are on different parts of the line.

Part of their use is ritualizing their usage. Sure, Islam forbids alcohol, but Alawites have rituals where intoxication is mandatory (similar to the Jewish Purim ritua only they do it like every month. That might actually explain Assad’s foreign policy, but I digress). It’s also a good way to create separate groups. Christianity is the oddball here because it rejected that ritualization. I think it was Chesterton who said that the only reason why you open your mind is to close it again. Iconoclastic ideologies usually exist just long enough to mix things up before they become ritualized again. It’s easy to create a teleological narrative with the benefit of hindsight. Plenty of other “shake 'em up” religions. But the region for Christianity is all wrong for psychedelics.

[timg]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Pschoactive_Psilocybe_distribution.png[/timg]

Humans emerging as thinking humans in Ethiopia would appeal to a lot of Hoteps I know. I should share that with them, I’d never really looked at a map. But not really relevant to monotheism.

Probably a better vector for understanding are henotheistic/Kathenotheistic movements. In polytheistic cultures, you see various gods glomming onto other gods, becoming the same god, adopting a foreign god, separating into separate gods, etc. It’s an easy rhetorical move to escalate that and say only one god counts and it’s my god. Going back to the arbitrary rules thing, there is a sociological term for it but it’s escaping my mind right now and my google-fu is weak today. But separating out your cult has strong advantages. That way you’ve basically got one line of authority as opposed to multiple lines. While not strictly monotheistic, that’s basically what happened with Zoroastrianism. And, if you read between the lines a little and allow yourself some leeway since it’s in the distant past, it also does a fair job explaining the El/Yahweh fusion god you get in Judaism.

I like that reading, but it has it’s own retroactive teleology to it. When people start talking about it, things like the Norse religion(s) come up and, yeah, the they match is pretty perfectly. But the only versions we have are post-contact with Christianity and (importantly) after Christians had basically kicked their butts. So of course they Christianized their religion. And that’s when it wasn’t being written down by Christian monks for the purpose of proselytizing when it was 100% about Christianizing the religion.

Greek thought played a big role in all this when Christianity comes onto the scene but the neoplatonics are way late to the monotheism game. Alphabet at least makes more sense because it’s roughly contemporaneous. And alphabet is, as we all agreed, tempting but super shaky.

Same thing with drugs. Why would drugs make you think of one god and not many? I’ve encountered all sorts of crazy beings on trips. If I were a total melt-head shaman who had to trip balls as an occupation, I don’t see why I’d just think of one as opposed to a lot. Granted, that’s an atheist’s view. If there is just one god and psychedelics provide a channel to that god, then eventually you are gonna get it right. But that doesn’t seem real to me for obvious reasons.

It’s tricky man.

I may not be respondnig to the right why, but…

Drugs and shamanism and other ecstatic practices lead to lay priests. (some ecstatic practices go through lineages, like some parts of ecstatic hinduism, say, but in general the tools are available to minimum apprenticeship and absolutely outside the bureaucratic processes loved by the Abrahamis religions).

it’s not in the best interests of bureaucracies to let just regular old members be experts and groundbreakers. It’s like selling a shirt that lasts and stays in fashion for a brand fastion designer. You’re out of work.

Also there are creative people, and there are the people who cluster around them, wanting them to repeat what the did before, to write sequels, new albums or novels in the same style.

From what I understand monotheism was a later development. Cuneiform developed in Sumer and the alphabet came from Greece. Both of these were polytheistic cultures. Am I missing something?

I would say, that religion took advantage of human physiological developments, i.e. language… religion, to me, has always seemed to be about community/safety-in-numbers, and not something that is instigated by our physiological developments at all, but rather takes advantage of them, by creating the cult that is religion… and by creating monotheism, even more so.

One God, one pot of gold to one, rather than shared between the many, then enforce that one religion and you have a monopoly on religion and therefore on those religious offerings, ergo The Vatican and all its riches.

Many species ingest many psychedelics… as well as alcohol in the form of fermented fruits lying on forest floors, but yet they remain far less advanced than we in terms of overall global dominance, and I am sure that we are not the only creatures that eat Psilocybe cubensis, so what about they?

The catalyst for our change could be a multi-pronged affair… a condition that change usually occurs under… when conditions are just right to fuel a need.

Edited:

Hi Felix,

that is also the way I understand it, and if you take into account that the first writing was essentially used for lists and developed from there. It is a long way from there to philosophy as we know it.

Of course, the moment you do have “leisure” enough to sit down and write, our complete perspective is a different one than when we had no time to do that. Judging by what philologists have taught me about the Hebrew language, there were people who had a lot of time, which is reflected in the depth of that language. Martin Luther said that Hebrew was like an ocean, Greek like a river and Latin like a puddle. This tells me that there was a process going on when Hebrew and other older languages were developing that we don’t understand enough (or at least I don’t), and which would help us understand the ancients a lot better if we did.

In what way the development of language helped monotheism I’m not sure, but mysticism found a great source in its poetry and songs, which as I understand it, is a further development of language. The rhythm of language probably gave us a lot more than we are aware of, add the development of musical instruments and we have a development that explains much of what can be called “soul” in the modern sense of the term - which is where people like you come in :wink:

:text-goodpost:

The biblical narrative of God etching his laws on tablets of stone to be given to the people by Moses is an apt metaphor for the importance of the written word of monotheism. Yahweh is the lawgiver and for the law to be accurately remembered from generation to generation it must be etched into stone and later written on papyrus. God could morph into god in oral tradition. Not so the Lawgiver of the written word. His character was bound to the history of Israel by the written word. The Covenant was a written contract. So I see monotheism being dependent on written language rather than vice versa. The biblical conception of God couldn’t have happened without written language.

I’m still leaning towards mathematics as being a better candidate for monotheism (actually, more specifically, monistic ideas); but is mathematics even a “language”?

:open_mouth:

I mean, why not?

google.com/amp/s/modulouniv … nd-et/amp/

My shock is in that you are questioning the roots of a tactical religious innovation…

Not questioning as much as just exploring, especially the background context and events that may have led to such developments. I do believe that there were cultural exchanges happening, even before pre-Socratics, given the contacts and trade between ancient civilizations. (Miletus, home of the first Greek philosopher, for example, was actually a major trading port and was known for its trade with Crete, which in turn, traded with Egypt, so cultural exchange of ideas was very likely). Another interesting fact is that ancient Greeks have also known of eastern ascetics, whom they called gymnosphists, and I suspect that Western ascetism may have been influenced by eastern practices. But this circumstantial approach involves a lot of historical research and getting into the minds of ancient peoples is not that easy.

Isn’t ancient history a fantastic thing… just as we evolved as a species, so did our cultural history.

Graham Hancock on the Pyramids

It is not only possible but that is precisely what actually happens. Having said that, neither o those will ever accept that. Not only that, you can also add Judaism to that list which predates both.

Christian God is second version of Jewish God while Muslim God is the final version, of course, according to them.

with love,
sanjay

I think you may be right that the discovery of prime numbers and other mathematical “Laws” of nature could well be the reason for assuming the existence of an intelligence behind the creation of the world. At this level, the tendency towards monotheism rather than polytheism is logical and may well have occurred much earlier than we have presumed. It has always been a fight for people who investigated the facts of our existence to find acceptance amongst those who ruled by brute force or populism. We see it even today …