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\title{Serpentine cosmopolitics: cross-cultural analysis of the Rainbow Serpent (Seminar)}
\date{25 March 2025}
\author{Ivan Tacey}
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From Amazonia to Australia, rainbow snakes coil at the heart of the cosmologies of Indigenous peoples, embodying forces of creation, destruction, and renewal. Known variously as nagas, dragons, or rainbow serpents, these chthonic entities are intimately entangled with water, blood, women, and untamed power. Among Batek hunter-gatherers of Malaysia, as well as other Southeast Asian Indigenous communities, the violation of taboos—especially those linked to blood—is believed to incite the wrath of these beings who are said to unleash catastrophic floods capable of annihilating entire settlements.


Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, Ivan Tacey examines the roles of rainbow serpents in Batek creation myths, rituals, and cosmological landscapes, comparing these traditions with similar narratives and practices from Amazonia and Australia. Offering a cosmopolitical analysis, Ivan critiques the limitations of New Animist approaches, proposing instead that the global prevalence of rainbow snakes in Indigenous cosmologies reflects a ‘time-resistant syntax of myth and ritual,’ as theorized in Knight, Power, and Watts’ model of human origins.


Lecturer at the University of Plymouth, Ivan Tacey


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So welcome, we are going to have, well, last week we had a tour de force from Kit oi, evolutionary anthropologist on the importance of understanding behavioral ecology of primate mating systems for understanding the emergence and the problems that, homo sapiens and homo sapiens ancestors had to solve.


Tonight we are switching to another, the area of social anthropology, particularly for, an appreciation of cosmopolitans, of symbols of serpentine origin, which, Ivan Tacy, our colleague and former student we’re very proud of Ivan as a former student from University East London.


Ivan Tasy has been exploring this range of cosmopolitans of snake symbolism and snakes, snake entities, rainbow snakes, dragons, rainbow nagas, and so on all around the world.


so this is, again, it’s kind of a, a universalizing theory, that gets to grips with a very origins and emergence as homo sapiens in some sense.


But this is really being applied to particularly Ivan’s work in with the buttock in Malaysia, hunter gatherers, egalitarian hunter gatherers, who of course are very, very interesting in many decades of work.


They all work with buttock. Very interesting.


In comparison to, the work we’re, we’re mostly familiar with rags on African hunter gatherers.


So I think that’s all I need to say now.


That’s, yeah, that’s great. Wonderful to Okay.


All the way. Thanks Camilla, and thanks Chris for inviting me here today.


So, yeah, the title of the talk today is Serpentine Cosmopolitans.


So, my name’s Ivan.


I’m an anthropologist based at the University of Plymouth.


unfortunately today my laptop died on the way up here, and I ha did have a few different slides, which were lost.


My dad died at Exeter, so some of the slides are slightly different than I’d hoped, but anyway, we shall work with these ones.


so, let’s move on.


So if you are, I don’t know if many people will have heard of them, people become regularly, might have heard of the BTech.


so there’s, I’ve been working there since around 2006 with BTech communities.


This, as you can see on the top part of the slide, is Peninsula Malaysia, which is just south of Thailand or Singapore.


I work in that small box area, which is this larger map here.


So this green area, you can see the green, from here online.


This is a kind of forested area, basically, this is the national park.


It’s protected before, of course, until right up to kind of the sixties and seventies or early seventies.


This was all covered in rainforest.


It’s been, it’s been deforested, that’s why it’s white, mainly deforested and converted to palm oil plantation.


So I’m particularly interested in life on the edges between the forest and, the palm oil, palm oil plantations, and how people have adapted, how their cosmologies, their economic practices, their relationships to spirits, how they’re affected by these massive changes that are occurring.


so I worked with two groups of Batek, the Batek Day, her who are more famous, ERCOT fame and his wife Karen Endicott, famous to work with him in the seventies and eighties.


light up Po worked with him in the nineties, and I started work with ‘em about the same time as Deanna Ley back in around 2006.


Since then, we’ve got Vivic, who’s online today, who’s working with them.


Alice Rud, who’s in the room that has been working them in Ang.


but they, most people are working with Batek Day groups.


I’m working also with Batek Maya groups who live in this area, who are a much smaller group.


Their language is different and their religious practices are slightly different, but they’re all former hunter gatherers and many of them do continue hunting and gathering today and as Camilla said in her introduction, they are there, there’s a lot of similarities with African hunter gatherers, particularly in like social organization economies and so forth.


But there are differences that lifestyles are much less ritualized than groups like the had bay, member jelly, et cetera.


Okay, so, we’ll, I’ll be talking about that today.


I’m not sure where I should stand.


So, okay, so the hunter gatherer collectors or post forages that, that they’re famously known as being gender egalitarian.


That’s, that’s actually changing a bit now with, resettlement outside the forest with islamization and, changes to lifestyle.


They’re known as, they’re part of the, what we call the orang asli, which are the aboriginal or the original peoples of Peninsula Malaysia.


They speak Astro Asiatic languages, which are in the kind of ChemE family.


most of them are still animists, although a lot of people have nominally converted to Islam and some people, some people when I even that I met even 2006 said, oh no, I’m really a Muslim.


But then they said, well, I’m not really, I’m still animist.


So it’s kind of in between.


But some, the, the problem is though, the kids are sent to, in the resettlement village is sent to schools, so they grow up kind of separate from the rainforest and I mean, last summer I was there with my son and an older man, a younger man with me in the forest, my son and the older guy was saying they, they don’t know the taboos and then I, I started questioning, I said, oh, yeah, I’m sure they do and I started to talk to this young man and he really didn’t, ? And then, and then I said, well, what about this? And I started questioning and the older man said more than him the, it was quite worrying actually, because people forget things and they blame that on people being excited about life outside the forest, mobile phones, et cetera.


So things are changing a bit.


so, the population figures actually are slightly higher than this, let’s say probably what you think, Alice, about 2000 BTech day now, I would say, I would guess.


And, round about 300 B Maya.


So they face a lot of problems.


Deforestation conversion to oil, palm plantations is mining.


Quarrying, islamization is christianization of certain groups as well.


It’s complete lack of land rights.


they’re politically marginalized, and those groups that are re relocated outside the forest, are living in poverty, right? so one thing that I wanna say quickly is about, is a, a comment about the term cosmo politics.


So unfortunately, my slide on this is missing due to my computer crashing Cosmo politics is a term that’s used quite a lot by people like Isabelle Stenger, Bruno Latour, and in one sense of how they use it, it refers to a kind of more than human world, a more inclusive politics that takes into account many more forces or entities.


So this would include anything from non-human animals, to spirits, to ghosts, whatever you like.


So in that sense, I agree that’s a nice move towards a inclusive world with other agents in it that can act upon the world.


But they also, many people associated with this kind of cosmopolitan, cosmo political turn, which in anthropology is also linked to movements like, new animism, tism, et cetera.


They sometimes talk about multiple immeasurable worlds and personally, I do not go along with that idea.


I think when you live in one world, people might have multiple ways of relating to the world, but bat ex can relate to the world very scientifically, just as western scientists can relate to the world through a religious lens at the same time.


Do you see what I mean? You can have multiple ways of relating to the world, and being in the world doesn’t mean you are living in ontologically separate spheres, if you like, which is rather like the American kind of culturalist anthropology.


I see. It’s kind of remake of that. right.


But in this talk, I really want to kind of move towards reclaiming the term cosmo politics to actually look at how bodies are linked up with landscapes, with weather systems with the moon and I’ll return to this throughout the talk, and hopefully we’ll come back to that in con the conclusion.


So rather than being a kind of somewhat wishy-washy, okay, we’re all this more than human club altogether.


It’s, I would argue it’s fundamental to what it means to be human, to be connected up with cosmic rhythms, if you like, with, particularly lunar rhythms that we’ll come to.


It could have been kind of called lunar cosmo politics in some ways, the talk as well.


and we’ll see how that really emerges through mythology, the difference between a lot of Southeast Asian hunter gatherers and the African hunter gatherers that if you’ve come to other rag lectures you might have heard about in Africa, hunter gather groups are, they have a extremely rich, very rich ritual life for Btex and other groups, in Malaysia and other parts, it’s not as ritualized at tool.


And, but we still see, same if you like, what Camilla and Chris would refer to as the time resistant syntax of myth and ritual in their cosmologies and in their mythologies.


Okay? Right? So, very simple.


I had changed these pictures as well, but this is a, my mum may be, this is an embroidery of the B cosmos.


and on this, on the other side there, this kind of simplified version.


So to describe this briefly, if you imagine us living on, on earth, above earth, you see the, the btex will describe a kind of dome of, of the fer and above there we’ll live these creator beings, the halal, this is where we will go when we die as well.


Joining the Halal, we’ve got a separate place where the thunder de sea called gobar amongst the Ek day kai amongst the, EK Maya and you’ve got the moon and the sun moving across the sky.


you’ve got a cosmic pillar, if you like, whole going up through the world, that’s described in different ways amongst different groups.


But under the world is supported on the back of this gigantic turtle snake dragon that they refer to Batek day and sometimes Batek Mayer refer to this as a NGA using the Sanskrit term.


sometimes they’ll refer to it as dra, which really means rainbow.


So it’s most definitely a rainbow serpent, if you like.


and Batek Meyer refer to it most commonly as, as badgeing.


Okay? This cosmic serpent holds the world on her bag, and below it, she keeps back the underground, underworld c if you like and if she gets angered, if people break taboos, for example, prohibitions, then she’ll ride or go yang without saying, and that writhing will cause huge up swelling, floods that could, that could destroy the entire world and when she does that, often the thunder dirty acts in tandem with her by causing massive storms, sending out lightning, thunder and rain.


So you’ve got all these stories about floods.


so it’s, so underneath her is this underground sin.


She’s often associated with an old woman, a kind of grandmother figure called y.


Okay? Right. Let’s move on.


So I’m gonna start with a moon myth. Okay? So this is a batek day myth, the batek ma one slightly different.


So when the creator han made the first people a man and woman outta us, it’s a kind of clay figure story, if you like it, correct? And then you, and then he sneezes in a life force, AWA bolan, the moon life force, sometimes known as nawa tom, the water life force and this is what gave the first, this is more animated first people and with the moon life force, this is from an interview, conducted in, B Village in Poland with the moonlight force, we would die and come back to life, die and come back to life with each new moon.


So of course, because people are immortal like that, they’re dying and they’re coming back soon, there were too many people and there wasn’t enough food for everyone.


So Han removed this immortal moon life soul or water life soul.


they’re, they’re the same thing, the same soul, which is two different terms for it.


He removed this from, from the people and gave them the banana life water, the banana life soul, ya, boland, which will have now when, a banana die, when it’s, when it’s gone, it’s gone.


But it’s children, if you like, live on.


So this solved this overpopulation problem.


They have other myths about this, but I think this is particularly interesting.


It’s this rhythmic movement coming back alive and dying.


Alive and dying. And we’ll refer to that.


I’ll come back to that later in the talk today.


Batek landscapes are really incredible.


I mean, for me, they’re one of the most beautiful places on the planet.


and you’ve got this huge rainforest area.


We’re lucky for, for batek.


We actually have this remaining rainforest for merick HAIs all gone, really, or most of it’s gone, on these casts, their limestone casts covered in forest at the top.


Each cast has its own endemic flora.


And, so for example, you’ll get orchids that will only grow on one particular cast or psychics that will only grow there.


You’ll get lizards particular to cost when, these are not inaccessible places.


They’re very easy to get to, but they’re incredibly understudied, not just by anthropologists and archeologists. There’s very interesting, cape, you really wonder people, and they’re, and they’re not being studied, but even when, what’s the word? He, hepatology? Hepatologist, no, yeah, they go in there for like a week or so, and they’ll find new species immediately, or someone, a team will go in and botanist and they’ll discover new species.


You can just drive up, ha ha can go out and you find these new species.


So it’s really, for me, these should be protected landscapes, protected by unesco, for multiple reasons for their flo and fauna, but also for me, more importantly, as an anthropologist, because they, most of them are kind of sacred sites akin to Aluru in Australia, okay? They contain a massive amount of knowledge, rather similarly to how Keith Vaso describes for the Western Apache.


these, these places hold myths. They hold stories.


They’re like mnemonic pegs that hang the history of the people on them.


Yes, just quickly do, do they have caves access? They do incredible caves.


You can go and they’ve got underground rivers.


Of course, in there you have, swallows and bats.


So they provide, what’s some people, I don’t like the term, but ecosystem services.


So, ob obviously in Malaysia, tropical country, you’ve got masses of, mosquitoes that could spread malaria.


So the more of these places that have bats as far as that are eating those mosquitoes, the less chance they, they, they clean water comes outta them.


They’re just incredible places.


Anyway, this side, I’ve entitled Nagas Bones because for the bak mare, these, this, this is on the, western side of Tamara, they’ll, they’ll say, well, these, these are actually the bones of ancient, the ancient primordial world creating nagas.


Okay? So sometimes they talk about the Naga, if you like Ji as if it’s one.


Sometimes there’s a multiplicity, and these are kind of seen as it seen as their bones in some cases.


But there’s, as I said there’s multiple kind of layers of meaning on them.


So I’ll get to another one. So this is ante. This is a site.


So right up until 1920s, 1930s, btex like many other indigenous, so asle peoples in the peninsula were being, hunted down by slave raiders, okay? So including ERs and bat ax from bat ax from the Lake Tober region of Sumatra.


They would come in, ties would come in, so all these groups being raid and so they would run off and hide in the forest.


They wouldn’t like fires, all kinds of things to escape s raids.


But the batak maa bat exs, by the way, are famous, or their shamans are famous for tiger transformation, okay? They can transform into all these large, powerful forests, animals, most importantly tigers and they’re kind of feared for that in the area and anyway, my Matt Mya friends explained to me that they were being chased by slave Raiders one day, and they ran off to Baton and there they, all of them, not just at that time, everyone had these sheme powers and they transformed and inside.


So when the slave Raiders arrived, they were terrified and f flagged.


So they’ve got these heroic tales of, shaman’s performing acts like this and the stories are all they’re in place within the landscape like that.


this is another one, Batang.


it’s a, it’s a, a smaller, much smaller cast than Bonte, but it’s still really huge.


This summer, we actually, we recorded a lot of information about this site, but here, there was a group of bat camped around here.


There’s a cave there, as you are so about cave.


And, two guys had gone off hunting, leaf monkeys in the forest.


Other people were there, and someone laughed at a black millipede, okay? Which is completely what they’d say Thailand in that group and b David would say, it’s completely taboo to laugh for Mark to these animals.


Things like, there’s all kinds of animals.


You shouldn’t laugh. I would recommend if you’re with Bat Ex and Hys don’t laugh at any of really, but some animals are worse to laugh than others and when you’re walking around the forest, you gotta be really careful and I remember online, I remember him and Tom with me, and they, one of them said to me, I even, we can’t talk about anything.


It’s everything’s ach. You know? And you do feel, you, you hear this term, taboo, taboo, taboo, said all the time.


Anyway, people laughed at this millipede and then, obviously this angered the Naga angered go, but this huge flood swelled up from the underworld as, as as, baggy wriggled and rye and then Gobar started sending down rain and lightning.


Everyone was killed. Okay, well, one person must have survived to tell a story and the two hunters were kind of frozen in spot in one place.


So those stories these myths are not really free floating they’re often anchored in the landscape itself and this is really clever. I mean, I’ve forgotten the lady’s name.


There’s an Australian lady’s, I’ll remember her name in a minute, written a lot about memory.


So if I’m sure people have heard of kind of memory palace techniques that we used by the Greeks and the Romans.


You know, you walk around in your mind and you can, you can place things in places or you, you probably know about, I would hope about aboriginal song lines.


So you can walk through a landscape, kind of sing the world into existence and these are, these are maps, these songlines.


So indigenous people across the planet have very, very clever ways of remembering things.


I mean, obviously in the western world we’ve had books.


So oral traditions have disappeared more and more because of the printed page and now because of phones and things.


But even when I teach my kids, when I was teaching my kids say the Times tables, I would walk around through the countryside and we’d do it as we’re walking.


They remembered them like that because you remember things through movement.


You remember things through connecting things with place and I would say worldwide indigenous peoples are the masters of memory.


They know how to, in Australia, for example, the stories are so ancient about landscapes, these songlines that they can actually, so about 12,000 years ago, when at the end of the Ice Age, Australia was connected up with Papua up in New Guinea, and they, they can map under the sea.


They know where these giant bolds are.


As you’re singing the songs, you’ll describe a boulder or a mountain or a beam or whatever’s that, and these maps extend out, on the, and, bat ex stories.


They remember things from very, very long ago and they have their flood myths as well, which I would say are actual probably memories of these events.


This is another one, battery to Boy and this is a nice story. So again, a group was camped here.


Most people went off to the forest hunting and gathering in the day.


one guy stayed there and his niece stayed too and his niece was really beautiful and they were in love with each other, but it’s incest, it’s misguided.


Young was getting really horny.


The uncle Corner wanna have sex with her kind of thing and they ended up having sex and then Kai, the Thunder Lord, came down, grabbed both of them, brings them up there, smashes them into the rock, and you see their blood stain there still today.


So everyone remembers.


So, and again, rather like, as Baso talked about, the Western Apache bat ex tend to be very indirect.


You won’t say, don’t do that. It’s incest kind of thing.


You know, you can start talking about the place, oh, you remember bat, you have to say the name of the place and people will know what’s going on.


So it’s really a great way of holding this information.


Anyway. So some of the things I’ve been describing there have been, you find them amongst these kind of, this taboo system.


can’t love for animals.


You can’t dress animals up in human clothes.


You got mock animals, you’ve got a thunder deity.


You’ve got the rainbow spen been described by people like Rodney Needham as, the thunder complex.


Okay? So this is, it often links up stories of petr ation.


cause actually what I could have said about some of these cast as well, other stories overlaying all of these are, in the b my area associated with a guy, called Centi.


So Centi is a, is a figure like an ancient primordial shaman, but lived with he lived with the B and he had two faces, one facing forward, one facing backwards and so he was kind of a bit of a freak really and he was frightening to the people.


And, people were so frightened to him, even one day, even his wife and, brothers and friends, they, they killed him because they were so scared of his, his, his appearance.


But they didn’t really kill him and he came back and obviously was really angry about this and he started just turning people into, he started petrifying people.


So transforming them into these cast.


That’s another story about the cast in Batek Day have a very similar figure called tact, amongst the semi, they use similar term, very similar to ami.


So you’ve got these pet ation stories, they’re out in Borneo, you find ‘em in the Philippines.


you find them in Indonesia.


The whole area is covered in a very similar thing.


So the, the thunder complex.


so if somebody does accidentally break it through, ‘cause, animals can be quite amusing sometimes and so people do obviously laugh about them.


and then if a storm happens, then that X both groups will do.


I’ve got picture here.


Yeah, this kind of blood sacrifice.


So it’s where you take a machete, you lightly tap your shin, it’s not very painful at all.


You know, you take a little bit of blood, mix it with some rain water and throw some over your left shoulder and you’re kind of doing an incantation.


Some over your right shoulder, some up for the, the sky, God, if you like to go back and some down for the rainbows and the smell of this blood is said to go up to, to, to, to, to kai or go barb, or you talking about down to nar.


But it’s that smell that wards maybe don’t like smell may leave.


so there are ways of doing things that doesn’t work.


You can take some hair and you can burn, you can burn some of your hair.


They get like that smell or faction is central food ritual.


Sorry, going back to that one.


So a kind of simplified version of it.


So this term ACH or Thailand, big, taboos, if you like, letting menstrual blood flow into streams or the blood of child birth phone streams, that’s completely taboo.


Laughing at animals. The moon boan or, Dan, I’ve forgotten his name now.


I was saying it to you guys earlier, I’ll remember a minute Anyway, but the moon, you can’t, you can’t even point at the moon.


You can’t point at the rainbow and you find similar stories in many other places too.


Bees, you shouldn’t point at, cooking different types of animals on the same fire.


so, here it could be, there’s different ways of passing fire, but if you, you can kind of cook animals with similar body covering.


So furry brown, furry animals could be cooked on the same fire.


You couldn’t cook, say monkey with a tortoise.


They should be cooked on different fires.


So different food types should be cooked and it’s said again that the odors of them will mingle and, and, that will be atch.


So certain animals like pigtail macca, for example, if you kill one of those animals, then you have to butcher it well away from any water sources.


You can take water from the river and then wash the carcass out wash the intestines out and all this part.


But if the blood goes in that’s low afterwards, you can’t bathe in streams because again, the odor is said to go down to these streams.


another type of classified as chaman chaman amongst the, batek day, batek may would just simply first that as Thailand as well, that’s incest and improper, sexual behavior and then if batek day is referred to, to, so violence and other forms of inappropriate social behavior.


So di bit disrespecting older people, spitting even kind of thinking nasty thoughts they say you shouldn’t really do.


and most of the punishments are collective actually for all those allow actual ones.


and chaman ones, they’ve got, Chaman has individual functions, but also collect functions, which are these huge storms and we find very similar, prohibitions amongst many, many, many other orang groups.


Okay? So that’s why, calls it the thunder complex.


But what I’m somewhat surprised by when I read, so he does a kind of psychoanalytic, take on that.


I don’t buy it at all. it’s very simple.


What’s problematic in lots of the accounts about, orley, there’s a, for me, an over focus on this thunder day, okay? And much less is said about the, the, this underworld, serpent and certainly complex.


When people talk about it, they talk about it in terms of Southeast Asia.


But as we’ll see in the rest of the talk, really, you can take a much broader picture and you can look at, you find very similar stuff in Amazonia.


You find very similar stuff in Australia, and you find very similar stuff in Africa, many other parts of the world.


Okay? So anthropologists I think need to kind of go back to this comparative anthropology and look at other areas because you can, the, why do you see these things? This is a big question.


You know, if you see something like this, which is quite un it sounds quite unusual, but if you find very similar cultural patterns in other parts of the world, we have to ask question why.


Okay? And, that’s what we’re coming to.


So here we said, need and the association of Blood Thunder, Philippe, the gods found across Malaysia, Philippines, Borneo, Eastern Indonesia, even as far as China.


But this are the problems.


Little mention of, the rainbow serpent little men mention of menstrual bleeding, although menstrual taboos are found in all these groups.


and there’s no, it’s not articulated this link between the mu blood, the moon serpents, women and flooding, which perhaps we can see more vividly in Australian and Amazonian cosmology.


So if you take these cosmologies and then return to the Southeast Asian, versions of it, maybe it makes more sense.


So gonna talk a little bit about the moon and the sun here.


So for, the moon Buran, it’s seen by BX as being cool.


So the forest itself is cool. That’s why it’s healthy.


So the moon is cool, it’s healthy, it’s got a beautiful fragrance, whereas the sun, it’s opposite.


It’s hot, it’s stinks and stinks.


The rotting flesh associated sometimes with the world of death, if you like.


so this also this kind of cosmological mapping of kind of IC code, if you like.


We see in terms of the forest and the plantation, that forest is called the forest is healthy, the forest is fragrant, whereas the plantations, the towns are hot, stinky, and dangerous.


Okay? Right? Moving on.


This is a group of Batek Maya women preparing, preparing themselves in the forest.


So look beautiful, okay? So they, I was out there just as in back in when this 2019 with a friend of mine, John Herford, who were working on a book together.


They suddenly started decorating themselves up and all, all the B tech groups in this time of year will start dec decorating themselves up with these flowers, beautiful smelling flowers.


they look really amazing, the kind of headdresses, and they smell great.


So they’re, they’re beautiful, but they’re not just beautiful, visually beautiful and have beautiful aromas, for kind of everyday relations.


They’re also, that’s what the, the spirits like the aum for the, for the Maya or halal for the day, right? And so this time they didn’t actually perform a ritual on this day, but they were telling me what you to know about when we do these, these shamanic rituals, so this guy’s, he, this like, is not actually Sha saying this is what the shaman will do.


He’ll be in the center here.


He’s surrounded by this chorus of singers who are all decorated up, lean two’s decorated with, with aromatic plants and then they’ll start singing, making music and as they’re singing and the, the beautiful smells and beautiful singing will entice their spiritual friends.


So for Batek, my basically known as the a and as they come in, they will come in and they will go into the kind of, into the, the heart, if you like, in the head, and they’ll start filling up the shaman’s body, but also the bodies of all these female, the female courts around.


Then when their bodies are filled with these spiritual friends or allies, if you like, then their selves, the individuals here will emerge outta their bodies and zoom up on a kind of cosmic vo.


But what’s very interesting here is the fact you’ve got a shaman ac accompanied, he has to be accompanied by this collective of women and then they’ll describe, they’ll go up to the heavens if you like, and there they will meet these fruit spirits and they describe it as these rivers of fruit kind of flowing along and then it, or fruit, fruit blossoms rather and then they will take these fruit blossoms and I’ll take them back to work to ensure a bountiful harvest.


Okay? That’s a b day, version of this.


Yes. And yes. Yeah. Sorry, when He women like singing throughout the whole of the shaman’s journey, or is That like Yeah, they’ll keep singing, keep singing throughout, yeah. Yeah. And the Shaman doesn’t sing With them.


The doman does. Yeah. Oh, as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah and here you’ve got, this is a nose flute here, my friend Boeck, who’s who I’ve known for a very long time, he’s quite, he’s quite frail these days, and that be, kind of make it sound like, and it could be quite repetitive and his wife, who actually I think knows a lot more than him, she’s playing, she’s playing, with him and sometimes people will join in with, what they call a ong, like the juice got wine or kind of droney sound, and you’ve got the bamboo stompers and then these participants, they’re all, they spent days making all these kind of bands and headdresses, and then they’re sitting down.


Then you very slowly start dancing like this, a bit like Tamir courtly dance on the ground first, very, very slow, very delicate movement and gradually you’ll rise up and, and you’ll be dancing like this and then eventually, I, I was really surprised when this verse happened.


Then we started doing the conga like at a kind of a wedding, who the bo is.


Are you joking? No, no, no, definitely.


And, it was really, really great fun.


But again, here we see this serpentine movement.


In this ritual. This is the most important ritual of the year in these roots. Okay? Yeah.


Just have a quick question there.


I think your colleagues spoke, previous lecture and said al rituals was a function of the previous enslavement.


Is this Alice? I Think so. Am I correct? You said that, or I may, I’ve got used that was because so many men have been taking a slate. Lisa, I you, Alex, aren’t you are Alex? Yeah, I thought it was Alice.


I was wondering why you thought that.


Oh, I thought it was Alice. Sorry. Okay, sorry and then I said Alice, then I thought, although she’s not answering me.


Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, sorry. Apologies.


I haven’t got my glasses on. Excuse me. Yeah.


sorry. So I don’t know who gave, who said that then? Which lecturer It was about? I think it was someone, I think it was about similar area, I think. Really? Is that who you mean? I, I don’t, I Can’t remember. Was it Southeast Asian group? Yes. So Enough.


I, I, I’m not Sure.


Maybe, I don’t know. I didn’t see that lecture. Yeah, that’s okay. Right.


So I’m gonna start talking now a little bit about Australian, rainbow serpents, because the term rainbow serpent actually was coined, by anthropologists working with aboriginal groups.


So this is from burnt and it’s with cited in Chris’s book, blood relations.


Okay? So the worker, younger sister, non bleeding, began to dance to hinder the snake’s progress.


The ung rainbow snake stopped her in her course and watched the dancing, but the girl retired and called out.


Come on, sister, your turn. Now I want to rest.


The older sister gunman, bleeding after birth, blood came out from the hut, leaving her child in its cradle of soft paver bark and began to dance.


But her blood still intermittently flowing, attracted the snake further, and she moved towards them.


Come on, sister cry, the gunman. It’s no good for me.


My blood is coming out and the snake is smelling it.


See, they got the smell. Blood’s always associated with the smell, and coming closer, it’s better for you to go on dancing.


So the younger sister continued, and again, your young girl stopped and watched in this way, the WW act took and turns to dance.


When the younger sister danced, the sake stopped and when the older one continued, she came forward again.


So the younger girl danced longer than the other, and as she swayed from side to side, the intensive activity caused her menstruation to begin.


Then the pipe and smelling more blood came forward without hesitation.


So this is a kind of a very important myth in Aboriginal Australia.


there’s a couple of things I want to relate back from that to Malaysia.


So, when my wife, was pregnant, when I was doing my peer work, batek friend said that you can no longer go to the forest because you will smell, you’ll carry the odor of her blood with you and this will attract dangerous animals you could be attacked.


Yeah, we’ll see that comes up in other places.


But same if she’s menstruating.


So you’ve got these very menstrual taboo don’t just affect, women.


They affect men as well and if you want to move through the forest from the btex, then they’ll be covered with, they’ll carry these big leaves to stop anything getting on them.


So it’s like this phrase that talks about this, not to touch.


Can you not hear? Oh, I just, I’m just so interested in the particular bit.


Ah, not to touch the sun shall not shine on her head, nor her feet touched the ground.


Yeah, exactly. You know, made famous by the door song later, not such a, not as such Earth, ? So this, we find Fraser was onto something there.


Fraser talked about this, and he found it in count mix throughout the world.


Okay? So again, from Chris’s book here, Aboriginal Le Legends frequently depict the world has been created by the moon, a great snake all by all mother or other semi human, immense entity who combines lunar slash title features with snake-like mother, like and rainbow like ones.


Okay? So think back to the moon life soul story I told you earlier.


Batik might have similar stories.


All these taboos about the moon, think about how blood, it’s blood that attracts these, these, these, these, these monstrous things.


You know, what are these rainbows? S that’s the big question, really.


So this is from Radcliff, a lot of Radcliffe Brown back in 1926.


The Hui is a serpent like creature, which lives deep, literally lives in deep water, holds and burrows into the bank where he makes his denni.


When a man is going on a visit to this monster, he must paint his body all over with red re.


He then follows after the rainbow someday when there is a thunder shower, and at the end of the rainbow rests over the water hole in which is the wow.


He’s a bow. The man then dives under the bank where he finds the hui, who conducts him into his den and sings him a new song for the corroborate.


The man repeats the song after the Hui until he has it sufficiently and then starts back to his own people.


When they see him returning painted red and singing, they know he has been with a w Okay? So keep that in mind, this, sorry.


cause remember I lost my slides on the train. Okay? So now we’re gonna go back to Le Baek. Okay? So this is a story by a Batek elder who sadly passed away now from Koko in Kan.


So this guy, he’s now, when, when I interviewed him, he was already, I’d say late sixties, early seventies, and you could tell he was shaman.


He had a thing like a bracelet on like this, a black bracelet going round, which is kind of often a sign of a shaman that he said, look, I wanna tell you this story when I, when I first became a shaman, if you like.


So I said, oh, I’d love to hear that.


So he’s about 18 years old.


So this would’ve been 1960s, I guess, roughly and that’s the time of the Malayan emergency. Okay? And you also British, it kind still had British colonial era doctors there.


Actually, it was probably in the late fifties, I think, thinking about it.


Okay? Anyway, he said, right? So this is how he told me the story.


I’ve got my notes, but this is basically, he said, I, I dived down, I swam down for 24 hours through the underworld sea.


I pursed giant snake of giant fish and giant Naga.


I swam down and down and down and down and I eventually got into this underworld, kind of huge cavern.


Yeah. As I walked along this pathway, gigantic naga with huge gaping, gaping mouths and huge fangs, huge teeth.


I had to walk between them all and after that, then I swam up through the underworld C and then with the help of these kind of like Hermes, like whirring wit wings on his feet and he flew up through the cosmos, right up into the sky world and in the sky world, there were these strange creatures, human-like, but with kind of animal tails or bird feathers.


So these half human, half animal spirits and I saw, I saw gobar, but his lightnings firing out of his eyes.


So I couldn’t see what he really looked like and then I saw these strange, then no, I looked down on the earth.


So he is got this kind of panoptic synoptic vision of the world below him.


I could see Japan, I could see co barra.


Co barr is this huge, well, it’s a big, the most important Malaysian town era.


I could see, I could see London, I could see everything super excited.


I looked down and I could see, and he, and this is his work’s, not my, I could see the Negroes in Africa and I could see them, but they, they looked dangerous.


They weren’t like the black people, in Africa today, he’s kind of got, so it’s a kind of a mishmash of all these colonial experiences and, and kind of tropes from the colonial period, kind of racial authoring, the, the huge power and prestige of Malay cities.


But layered on all this, you’ve got this extremely ancient, I would say, because we’re finding it all over the world stories of these nuggets and it’s this traumatic ion, much like this one, it involves meeting Bernard, okay? Batek may have similar stories, and they’ve even said to me, they go down and they might ride the nga, ? Okay, right. So back to Australia.


So almost all over Aboriginal Australia, divinity or ritual power is conceptualized as an immense rainbow, which is simultaneously a snake.


So that’s exactly the same for the BTech.


the nga, okay, is the, is the one underground or badgi in the sky? It’s dran, but it’s the same.


The, the rainbow is the sole reflexive in the sky of, of the serpent.


It’s often seen like that in Malaysia, very similar in Australia and Chris argues that rainbow snake variations are endless leading us to suppose that what all these myths are referring to is not really a thing at all, but a cyclical logic, which lies beyond and behind all the many concrete images, moon, snakes, idle forces, waterholes, rainbows, mothers, and so on, used impartial attempts to describe it.


So rather than seeing this as kind of a monster in the typical ified sense, you’ve gotta see it as a kind of, as a cultural logic, a rhythmic movement.


Okay? and here we go.


The Dali Bond term belong signifies not only rainbow snake and the mother of all of us, but also ambiguity in form, creativity, power, and time long pass.


That’s magic writing. 1974. Right? Now, let’s shift over.


So we, we’ve talked a little bit about Australia.


I mean, you could go, we could talk about Australia for weeks on end, and we could talk about Malaysia a lot more, but I want to give you a quick kind of overview of these three areas of the world.


So now we’re onto Australia, to Amazonia and the Rainbow Sea.


So here’s, we’ve got in some parts of the world, the Milky Way is incredible, okay? So in for many Amazonian groups, the Milky Way is itself the rainbow snake in the sky as is the river we’ll see various in images of the river.


So anthropologists working, in, in Amazonia, so including Roe, right in 1989, describe turpentine world views and they have this tri, tripartite cosmo, very much like the batek one that I described to you earlier and during the day, the sky is the realm of the rainbow as great snake tempest with rain and or hail, lightning flash, and thunderclap at night, this realm becomes the Milky Way itself.


A gigantic say, snake and the subterranean worlds are primarily sub aqua and feminine and you get this association with these rainbow serpents in Amazonia with anacondas Caymans turtles, barrans, arm headed catfish and king freshwater dolphins in Australia, they’ll be associated with saltwater crocodiles and a variety of other aquatic life.


You know, these are kind of seen as their allies on earth in Malaysia, it’s, it’s, it’s the same thing with the local, local foreigner there.


Okay? So we’ll have a look at a bit more row.


The celestial dragon is associated, oh, sorry, the celestial dragon is associated with excessive celestial water.


That is the dge, the tempest. Same thing in the Malaysia.


These are the torrential downpour accompanied by high winds, hurricane, where we get our temporal announced by excessive noise.


D thunder clap, and accompanied by natural excessive fire lightning.


So again, what’s interesting here, you’ve got these o oppositions water fire, high, low light, dark, okay? The sub, a sub aqua dragon is also the master mistress of excessive terrestrial water floods coming from the but dangerous lower aroundm.


This dragon is the bearer of root crops and fruits, but is also the incestuous, aquatic seducer of women who are his fish, women daughters, and the initiator of menstruation and decay.


So again, closely linked up with menstruation.


His ally is the knight.


He is the long sub aqua fallas of the moon, just as the celestial dragon partake some of the brilliance of the son’s headrest.


So quite a nice quote there.


Now, so a particularly interesting anthropologist working in Amazonia, who, Chris and Camilla, I think Louis has come in and couldn’t talk to her, hasn’t she? Before I, or not, maybe not. She, She, she’s stayed with us in UEL for a year, Right? I don’t Think we did, but  her very Well, right? Brilliant.


Yeah. So what’s strange, you do have, there’s lots and lots of accounts of these, of these rainbow serpents in Amazonia.


We’ve all, we’ve also got fantastic accounts of ritual life in Amazonia, and we often find stories of kind of, male initiations involving bleeding, which again, something we find in Australia as well, which is kind of like a male.


It’s often described as male menstruation, really, it’s men bleeding as if they’re women and you have these stories in both areas and in Papua as well, of men stealing this ritual power from women and then, and then performing it through things like nail menstruation.


So in Australia that can involve sub incision rituals or bleeding rituals, okay? But none of the anthropology, we’ve also got fantastic accounts of, of, of mythology from, from South America, Peter Gau, gold Moof, Hugh Jones, Steven Hugh Jones, and his wife, Christine, Christine, Hugh Jones, these fantastic books, okay? But they haven’t been kind of comparatively, I don’t think pulled together as well as Louise Alvera as well.


I mean, she does a brilliant job, and she describes it as a cross-cultural snake-like theory of blood articulated around the notion of change of skin or body, which is central key in Amazonian per respectable shamanism and cosmology.


Chris gave a talk about perspective, I believe two weeks ago or something, roughly.


Okay? So there’s shape shifting visions according to different animals, but it’s this notion of change, okay? But if you look at the, the skin of snakes shedding, they are animals par excellence of transformation much higher than the moon is as well.


The moon, you can see it changing, coming back to life before you, you can’t, couldn’t choose better ideas about this.


So throughout the Amazon, throughout the Amazon bleeding, this is again a quote from, Louisa is related to women’s intimate relationship with Anacondas.


The water Anaconda is a master of Digon, where it has a two for tongue and penis may live in the water as well as on land and trees, and embodies the cosmic rainbow, an underwater serpent regarded as mother or owner of all snakes.


Okay? If you think about my first images BTech with the turtle snake, once again, it’s always these kind of semi-aquatic animals that are kind of in between two worlds as well in the ways.


So when you see these animals, it’s kind of the, the, the myth brought to life through the very behavioral characteristics, the anatomy of these animals.


Okay? Another one in Amazonia menstruation is widely attributed to women’s snake-like shedding of skin, body, and their synchronicity with moon cycles.


So incredibly important, and I mean, I think it’s even, it’s much more vivid here than in some of the B examples I mentioned.


You see it in the B myth, you see it in letter taboos, but here it’s really it’s the full force.


That’s the same thing in, in, in Australia too. Okay? So, so that actually, so the first part, my thought that’s weird, it said B okay, so this first part, me, similar to the btic and other oring asay Malaysia.


In Amazonia menstruating women are ge women menstruating women generally interrupt most or at least some of their daily chores and observe a period of sexual abstinence, eating food considered bland, such as vegetables and the meat of animals and fish tend to have little blood.


Their diet excludes the meat of animals regarding of having lots of blood, such as tapir.


Women also avoid going to the river or the forest touching any piece of material culture and coming close to men are these kind of taboos, okay? About menstruating women.


We also found, well probably still find it some parts of Europe now, but I mean, parts of Italy, Spain, Portugal, if a woman was menstruating, there’s no way she would be allowed near crops or certain tools often.


I mean, Camilla talked about this, I don’t know if it’s talking in mh or here, but about hunters darts and things.


If, if they’re women’s menstruating, they lose all their power completely.


Yeah, all the power that’s exactly the same and so it’s got this, this power to kind of d anything comes into contact, it loses its potency if you like.


Okay? So she goes on the blood, let by people, has a transformational effect upon lived, lived experiences and opens up the curtains of communication perception, usually separating daily experience from other cosmological space times its interconnection with shamanism is therefore fundamental.


Where Amazonia letting blood is the change of skin body part excellence and it is women who most saliently bring it about in their menses and childbirth.


So I think there’s one thing, actually, I’m actually writing about this at this at the moment.


This kind of, I wouldn’t say, space times, I’ll come back to that a bit later.


So we’ve got this incredible, we can see if we’ve got stories like this in Amazonia, in Southeast Asia, in Australia, in Africa as described.


Very similar things in her.


Chris is all kinds of places too.


you’ve gotta think why, I mean, you can’t simply explain it away.


I mean, there’s some pretty awful explanations if you we’ve got the kind of Freudian explanations, Jungian archetype, so kind of magical, like we’re all somehow got access to some kind of, of magical archetypes.


other ones will be, oh wow, they’re snakes.


People have an, a kind of built in fear of snakes.


So therefore that’s why they’re really important.


it doesn’t make sense because these aren’t simply snakes.


They’re rainbow serpents.


they can sometimes they can breathe fire.


they’re punished, they’re connected with menstruation, they’re connected with the blood of, gay manal.


Why would you find exactly the same complex of ideas if you just had some kind of naturalistic explanation for, it just doesn’t work for me in the sitis.


I think they’re quite pathetic. A look at them.


Okay, so this is, this is, a una, healer quotes from an interview with them cited in, arm in, in 2004.


A woman is changing skin with menstruation.


That is why she cannot go to the forest or stay under the sun or go to the river if she walks by the river of violent window waves in the trees.


There is a species of stalk called Ena that come down to earth and take on the shape of any animal.


They come down trees to attack women who has s and they may take her into their house.


In that moment. The woman becomes crazy when she sees how animals come out of everywhere to kidnap her.


Very, very similar stories amongst, bat ex.


You know, you just simply can’t go in that, not just the woman, but that her husband can’t go in either.


Okay? So going back to Siskin now, 1973, listen, I will tell you said Basta in the darkness.


Moon made love to his sister.


It was an evening and he kept making love to her.


She wondered who her lover was.


So in the darkness, she painted half of his face with fact, gpa.


The next day she watched the men going along the path.


Suddenly she saw the man, no, it cannot be.


It’s my older brother who has gu power on one side of his face.


May you die. She said, may a foreigner now kill you.


He ran from his, an angry sister crying. Okay.


turned away and then that’s, that’s his face.


Yeah, he becomes moonman. Yeah. Okay.


so she also describes how women’s cycles are closely associated with the moon across Amazonia.


The moon governs the tides, the waxing and waning of all liquids, including blood as they run along meandering slate like rivers and veins in Amazonian cosmology and nephology moon is a major figure, often explicitly paired to the water anacon anaconda as in, Kahua figure of bay moon slash snake.


Yet the figure of moon has been left outta most theoretical debates.


You know, I would say all the, yeah, it’s incredible.


But if you, you must mention the moon. Do Not mention the moon.


Yeah, but  why.


But if we go back to the B stuff you’ve got these taboos pointing at the rainbow, pointing at the moon.


you’ve got this original time where you die, you live, you die with the moon, which again is, it is connected to the tides obviously through the other term.


Now, Bolan, the moonlight cell now Tom, the water life cell, it’s all there and we see it all across.


Well, I mean, actually I think it’s worth mentioning, your work, Camilla, in, with the, here with, did you give a talk here a couple of weeks ago? I said, or not I know was in reading three? No, It’s Theh Plymouth one as well, Sorry, in the, the book club.


Yes. Yeah.


But the Hadza Bay, I mean, the important thing is that, that I think that, the women send, that they would lead with, Oh, they’re very much a set.


They use the moon as a clock, As a clock To know when they going the important point.


Yeah. When she says, when says the moon has been left out from most 30 waves, what she’s saying is that they know and they admit and they ascribe yes, the moon in the stories, the moon’s sort of up there.


But if you’re doing science, the moon doesn’t figure within science, any kind of science, behavioral ecology, university psychology, whatever it did, if you’re doing science, he must involve the moon.


Yeah. You know, so that’s what she’s point. Yeah and the, and this is the point why I, I called my talk serpentine, or I said it.


We could have called it Luna Cosmo politics as well, because humans, as we’ve evolved as a species, we have evolved in other species, but with other species, it might be worth even mentioning the paper about the lions, I think here.


So for example, back in Africa, as we’re evolving as a species, well, lions in other large felines have incredibly good vision.


at night, humans don’t. Okay? So when it’s dark moon, that’s when the lions really go out and do most of their hunting.


So humans, it wouldn’t be in our evolutionary, it wouldn’t be evolutionary advantageous to go out hunting at the same time as massive bloody cats that can kill you and in fact, in the, in the paper, who was the person who read paper? Packer? Packer. Great packer. Yeah.


An excellent, yeah, it’s an excellent paper and he shows the, the, the chances of being killed by a lion, a much, much, much, much higher at dark moon.


So at the time of the dark moon, you wouldn’t want to be going out, you wouldn’t want to be going out hunting.


So, so we’ll come to this a bit later anyway. Okay? But you’ve gotta bear in mind for human, in terms of human evolution in that paleolithic environment, we are coordinating already with the moon.


Okay? So perhaps that’s one of the reasons why this is so important.


One of the reasons. Okay.


another, when, when women bleed, they’re said to see Moon.


We see we, but rather than quoting her, I mean this is like these expressions.


Oh, she’s with the moon. We find them all over the world.


The links between n duration went duration quite simply means it’s means time is a moon, moon time.


Okay. So when women bleed, they’re said to see moon reenacting in their blood flow, the mythical events of moon’s, incest and revenge.


However, women’s blood is seldom given attention to the, in the dominant paradigm of incest established by alliance theory.


Well, in fact, if you look at the Amazonian literature, it’s completely gender blind.


Really. Not all of it. Joanna Overing is different.


there are, there are exceptions, Louisa Valando.


but it’s like, for me, similar in Southeast Asia.


I mean, lots of the anthropologists working out there were men, not all of them, but it’s kind of like this obsession with the thunder dead who’s really, really important by, clearly in about anthropology, but it’s like not talking about this serpentine NGA who’s associated with it, with women and again, it’s mentioned in passing menstrual taboos, but nobody’s saying, well, why are they here? And they’re the same in Africa, and they’re the same in Australia and Amazonia.


Okay. So perhaps, would one of you two like to step in and explain? So I’ve said to me, oh, This exactly.


Yeah. I mean, there would also be a lot to be said on what And the Southern African, rain snakes, Of course. Yeah.


yes. oh, right.


A tiny bit or not, if you don’t want to, don’t worry. Okay.


I mean, it’s just the basis of za cosmology is, is very much organized by the moon, for ebner being the, the major ritual for the entire, both genders mm-hmm.


As a kind of ritual healing.


so there is a swimming, singing in association with man dances that have a healing aspect and that has to happen on the moonless night when the milky very voice is very fully visible.


but then there’s a, an association that are lining up men’s seed on there because women definitely have, not just women men as well, the idea that women should be bleeding around the dark moon.


Yeah. They will not state that it’s specifically in relation to, but the inference is that, but that is why it’s part of the sacred time and then it adds the moon becomes visible again.


there is a period which, which elements, been working with to, to identify that we understand is when animals would be too lean, it would not be possible to, to hunt mm-hmm.


For the animals. they would just be lean if they hunted for them and of course, the Arab poison doesn’t work because woman is menstruating, but also the moon itself means the Arab poison doesn’t work and that is the time when lions can see.


But hunters can’t, hunters themselves would be hunted by lines as the moon waxes, goes around half the first quarter and, and up to full moon.


That is the most successful time for hunting for the hus are particularly worked on and the nocturnal water hole hunting, which is nar scheduled, that is the time when they, when hunters will be able to see lions, the least dangerous time for them, on the most successful as the animals come to be waterhole to hunt.


So the whole, the this, this the economy and ritual for the hus, and we have a, like a still a place to see lunar ecology of hunting with ritual, with, with women’s bodies.


Yeah. But all that cosmo, There’s no end to this and complex descriptions between s getting really, really, really back to basics.


Mm-hmm. If you’ve got any kind of rule gun behavior, certain you mustn’t have sex whatever time Yeah.


You’re allowed to go hunting whatever time, whatever, you’ve gotta divide up time somewhere.


Yeah. And you, you really would predict, wouldn’t you? And if this is a new idea with starting up categorized time, you, you, you start out with the simplest possible way of doing it.


Yep. If you’re dividing up the time into different categories, the simplest thing says two categories and if you’re using a moon to do that, you haven’t got any choice.


If you, if you say you like not so light in the moon or not so much, like it’s gonna be a grade deal, gonna be more or less, there’s only one way you can make it like two categories, because there’s only two points there.


Point on when it switches from waxing to waning, and the point when it switches from waning to waxing, you’re picking, I’m just Saying E is last quarter to, so I’m just saying contrary to what Kim is saying, well, they can have all kinds of really interesting details of what, how it’s worked in practice.


The logic of it is that, and obviously people aren’t gonna be completely stupid, they’re not gonna stick to it Absolutely.


Inconvenient. They’re gonna make all, but for example, the moon might be behind the, the it rock or something.


Yeah. And so it, it won’t be precisely at that, at that switch point.


Mm-hmm. But, but we still need concept to understand why we didn’t, for example, more or less moonlight.


Yeah. It’s not more, less moonlight, it’s waxing away as the, as the sort of model and then people work around that in all sorts of complicated in different ways.


But even you can just get, you can get a huge headache mm-hmm.


If you keep on giving more and more detail mm-hmm.


You want something that explains to detail. Mm-hmm.


And, and that’s the simple One. It’s very simple and I mean that the, the, the moon is, if you are, if you are a hunter group, the moon is the clock.


It’s the big clock in the sky.


So having a giant, it’s a giant thing in the sky, but everyone can see, which obviously it’s not too fo or the mountain.


Right. The way most of the time you can see it and that’s what you’re gonna base your life on.


I mean, we see, I, I don’t know how many people in the audience here today are kind of anthropologists or archeologists or just from the general public, but what’s important is it’s much later.


So this humans became a symbolic culture, bearing species around 200,000 years ago, I would say.


It wasn’t until around 12,000 years ago that we see the emergence of agriculture.


Of course with agriculture, you get a shift to a solar calendar and this country, it wasn’t until, what, 4,000 years ago, agriculture of course then you shift the, your ways of thinking about time it becomes solarized.


That’s when you get all these solar gods emerging.


But most of our history, and it’s, we’ve got a very short history on this planet as a species, 200,000 years is not a very long time.


Okay. But for most of our history, it would’ve been under living under a lunar clock.


100\%. You know, I think there’s, that’s without a doubt the case.


I think we see this in all this society. Right.


So Chris here, I think, could step in and because Chris has got this a theory, it, it’s outlined in his, well, it’s not outlined, it’s detailed in his book, blood relation.


Okay. which he outlines this time resistant syntax, or sex strike theory of human origins.


So I would say, okay, I’ve mentioned there’s a lot of ridiculous ideas how to explain this away.


Freudian, Jungian, psychoanalysis, a natural kind of, oh, snakes we’re just all frighten snakes.


It must be ‘cause of this. You can’t, it doesn’t pull everything together.


Another one that I saw, which is from Robert Blsts Burke, is this idea that, oh, rainbows you see them in waterfalls and things and he kind of explains that way.


It’s a, it says Robert BLS works brilliant in some ways.


cause it’s a very systematic comparison of rainbow snake myths across the planet.


I mean, it’s a few errors in it, but generally it’s very good.


But the conclusions at the end of it, he just explains it went into nothing.


You know, there’s nothing there. So, Chris, if you wouldn’t mind, just for perhaps a few minutes for people who’ve never heard the ideas before, you could explain, Actually this wouldn’t quite for many persist in that federation.


Basically me with Cam and Ian, in 90, 95 would be kind of really worked out.


So it is just everything simple on the left here.


We have, we have ritual power switched on, and those things like loud signals, wax signal.


I don’t don’t think of them as different signal.


They, they’re just so many different aspects of ritual power switched on, but they’re all sort of interchangeable on the airplane side and then on the other side, okay, we’ve got the full moon.


Okay, everyone can just relax now.


Have a nice time, enjoy yourself, have lots of sex, lots of doing nothing.


Don’t worry about all these taboo boots.


And, and so off is what we are calling weak signals and all those things like weak waning in bed.


I don’t think the separate different things, they’re not, they’re just different ways of looking at the same thing, which are just, you switched off the, the ritual power.


and, and it’s just that in any myth right around the world, just try it out.


You don’t expect the storyteller to mix up off with on, because if you have, if you mix up the off signal with the odd signal, you haven’t got a signal.


Mm-hmm. So any, and, and it doesn’t means you can do it, but no one will notice your story.


It won’t be remembered.


It won’t have any impact if you make a big horror film or I don’t know any, any kind of, any kind of importance sort of work of art and you mix that off with our, it you just, the two things to cut out.


Yeah. We, we don’t expect storyteller to mix about it.


Just, you’ll find there are no exceptions to that, but rather it’s not quite like that.


In fact, exceptions are like errors and mistakes made by very bad storytellers and books don’t get published whose films don’t get books come on hits whose myths get got enough a refuse generations one generation.


So, and just test it out with any, any fairytale that has been told over the, over the generations.


You require that absolutely respect it.


Be no rather no, no falsification.


It means that you have a, a falsifiable model.


You can just test it easy to prove it wrong.


Just come up with a story where a a I know min woman is like, he, he can cook beef or something.


I don’t know. You come up with one.


Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a few more things I think we should add here.


So Chris, Chris, Camilla and Ian’s theory together, I think I can describe as is a theory about the origins of human symbolic culture.


Okay. So by that they mean language, ritual, myth, dance, theater, all these things that we have that make human lives so rich and make us so different than other animals.


Other animals can communicate with each other, other animals cannot talk about rainbow serpents or unicorns or quantum physics, these abstract things.


so something happened. Okay? We’ve of course, in Darwin in theory, okay, you, you’ve got the emergence of anto anatomically modern behaviorally, modern homosapien savings.


Yeah. But what is it that actually something’s happened that’s enabled us to communicate through language, through ritual.


So certain conditions have to be in place for that to happen.


Okay. So the theory kind of, if you like, you’ve had, if, if I’ve got a couple of minutes, I think it’s worth mentioning Sarah Hardee’s work on the gray ceilings.


So you’ve got an evolutionary history of humans. You’ve got.


So is that right, Shana? Can I or not? It’s gonna be over the huge Pandora’s box. Oh, okay.


I’ll skip it for today. You need to, okay. Okay.


That’s fine. Let’s leave it for now.


If anyone’s got more questions, questions, we can come back to them later.


Okay. Because that’s fine.


I think, I think the, the important thing is linking that syntax to the thunder complex.


Yeah, absolutely.


You know, that that’s what, so yeah and yeah, we know that that comes out of a specific, behavioral ecology right.


Model. Yeah. Okay.


Let’s leave it that, I mean, come back to more talks Yeah.


To ran if you haven’t, because these are the kind of things that we can look at and other people, evolutionary ologists and paleontologists and archeologists can talk to you about this stuff. Yeah.


Okay. And we’ll be talking about all the archeology actually in your stuff.


Yeah, let’s talk about it. So, so, okay.


So I think, go back to my stuff here.


So this, this is some of the recent changes that we’ve seen in, in Malaysia.


Iron or mining, reforestation, sorry.


the smashing off of these sacred cars.


So this is this ritual, mythological, cosmological landscape being ripped apart.


It’s the apocalypse, if you like, for, for BTech people happening and this is, this is the same story for indigenous people worldwide.


I mean, that takes the people I work with, but this is indigenous peoples across the Congo Basin, across Amazonia, across Papua New Guinea.


They’re seeing the whole world of creation destroyed before their eyes, .


so this causes cosmological collapse.


So of course these activities anger actually the rainbow serpent or, and she rocks and rides.


so during, my field work, there was the, Japanese tsunami, I think the date’s wrong there anyway, but they, they, they said that’s because, the Naga rocked and ride and they said to me when, when I was doing my field work, well, R Shaman has been there he went over to Japan.


I mean, he didn’t take an airplane.


He went there on a soldier journey and he went down into the underworld and he got his age allies with he, they take the batek ma take these magical multicolor threads, and he tied up the underworld serpent and he tied the earth back together and that would stop it. They’ve got all these stories of them doing.


It’s very similar to what, Harry Walker describes amongst the Orion.


They’re kind of like climate charman, if you like.


It’s a climate shamanism.


I’ve got a, a Mongolian friend who’s a shaman.


He does very similar kind of stuff in Mongolian.


This is a key thing, effectively.


So alongside in these shamanic stories and in the mythology, we’ve got simultaneously cosmopolitans, which talks about, which connects us with the moon, the tides men menstrual, the rest of the, the landscape that people live in.


so you’ve got that kind of ancient origin stuff going back.


I’d say it’s obviously this has got a paleolithic origin back in Africa before people moved out into different parts of, it’s so important, this stuff.


It’s remained alive in cosmology worldwide.


But alongside that, you’ve got traces of colonial history.


You’ve got it is a commentary on what’s happening in the world today.


It’s not like things are just locked in the past and one story.


That’s all. It does. Stories and myths and shamanic exploits do lots of things simultaneously and this is what I’ve kind of, it’s like they collapse space in time through, through these myths.


There, there’s lots going on at the same time. Yes.


So contemporary effects really resonate comes with, with, with, of course, actual, history.


Exactly. Much in the same way as if you see an anaconda in Amazonia, you see a saltwater crocodile doing something.


See? So that’s what it’s doing what happened in the air.


But this is, we told you you destroy the rainforest.


So if you break these taboos, the other one was the tsunami of 2004.


Okay. They said that’s because the Indonesians, well, well, there’s various versions.


Batek Maya version, they were laughing at animals and then these frog spirits were associated with water.


They all turned in, transformed in this gigantic way, but then destroyed Thailand and Indonesia, batek day.


they had a story. They’re different stories.


It’s not like one story for the whole people.


One story was, there was, an Indonesian woman working in the Middle East in Dubai, I think and she was being really mistreated by her employer employee less.


There was lots of, Malaysia and home workers working in that area.


Yeah. And, she was so upset with her employer.


She took, she did this magic and took her menstrual blood and poured it into the sea and by the time that got back, then, that transformed into this gigantic wave and destroyed the area.


You see what I mean? You can, you can do all kinds of clever things, but it’s, it’s true.


You know, it’s, this is what’s happening.


You can see it, you can see the tsunami. Okay.


So, this floods, I mean, flooding in this area is increasing out every single year because of deforestation.


It’s not just affecting indigenous people, it’s infecting.


This is guber saying this is a lot of mala malaise and Chinese living this town.


Each year the floods are worth causing billions of dollars of damage.


You know, it’s, it’s massive. You’ve seen the floods, Adam, I guess.


Yeah. They’re huge, aren’t they? Each year worse and worse and worse.


It’s, koala crane, Callan sand the whole town’s coming underwater.


This is they arriving so conclusions, I’m at the end.


Right? okay.


So, we’ve seen all, I’ve mentioned a few of these ways of explaining things away.


They don’t work. You need a testable theory, that is, is based upon evidence and I think sex strike theory.


So Chris Miller Ian theory is by far the simplest explanation for why we find these similar cosmological forms, rituals, prohibitions, myths, animism or shamanisms all across the planet.


the serpentine world views that I’ve described together, or serpentine, cosmopolitans, Southeast Asia, Australia, Africa, many other places can be best understood through the snake-like theory of blood.


So, third point, just to remind you, it’s transformation ans because an, and you can transform into d like the bx becoming tigers, for example.


she manage skin shedding.


So when you become a tiger, by the way, you take off your human skin and you put on a tiger skin, you wanna be an elephant.


You take off your human skin, you put on an elephant.


It’s all about skin changing. Yeah.


skin shedding, menstrual prohibitions, moon, dragon myths, rituals, and the thunder complex are all aspects of exactly the same thing.


We don’t need a theory for the thunder, complex.


Another theory for Australian rainbow straits.


Another theory for menstrual prohibitions in another part.


Well, the same theory.


You can understand everything through and if you want a theory, you don’t want multiple theories in science.


You want one theory that can explain as much as possible.


Okay. Animism blood rituals and shamanisms must be understood.


I think as politics, it’s fundamentally politics and it’s fundamentally gender politics.


Okay. And this is why I mean, science for the, for, for since the beginning of science has been generally gender blind, of course one of the major revolutions in science in this century was the turn toward feminism and, and people starting to talk about gender.


but it’s still, it’s still many, many anthropological theories agenda blind, which is, which is a shame.


so whether in ancient times of a human symbolic revolution or in today’s world marked by ferocious state capitalist violence, it’s intensifying every single day under the current political system.


We have to think through things in terms of gender, in terms of politics and I think, these serious help to it, that’s the end.


Right. Sorry, I probably went on a bit too long.


Sorry about that. God, I wasn’t watching it for Very comprehensive indeed.


Thank you. Which is astonishing that this vast subject, the vast all linked up, usually linked up.


people in the room would like to ask questions and then ask if any Quick question Yeah.


You were saying that was Yeah, yeah.


This kind of feedback. Yeah. Do the movement also know? Yeah. They all go together. All go together.


They must all go together and in lots of, repeat The, Just repeat. Okay.


So repeat the question.


So Adam, Adam mentioned that when I was talking about the VA Maya shamanic ceremony, the women are singing the women chorus is singing.


They’ve got the shaman in the center, who goes on the shamanic journey.


All of them go, the man cannot go without these women.


And, I think I’m the, I’m the first anthropologist to describe this, this kind of thing as far as I’ve seen Yeah.


Of women being, women accompanying men and I think, again, that’s a male bias when they’re looking at shamanic accounts.


It wouldn’t surprise me if I’m this many other places. They’re not Sending them off.


No. They’re helping. I think they’re keeping him under control.


If anything, It just strikes me if I can interpret there because, do  the, the Kini Andi accounts of Genis? No. Because it, those do seem to me to be similarities of the schmank healing practice.


Right. Aligned with menstrual, observation in Boan.


Yeah. Bushman practice Kalahari.


I dunno if Ian would totally agree about that, but, yeah.


So there, there is a, a sort of element of possible male appropriation.


So with either with the healing dance, which is all dependent on women’s singing and polyphony.


or with the girl’s menstruation where healer would use carting and blood falling to create this kind of power launching to, for everyone in the community too.


The other first creation. Oh wow. Okay.


I mean, there are significant that even though you’ve emphasized the lack of ritualization Yeah.


There’s just different ways of doing things For sure.


It seems. Yeah, for sure. but there does strike me.


There’s some similarity. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.


Yes. We have a question on Zoom, right? Yeah. I can invite ache mango to and unmute Yourself. Hi Manchego.


Hey, how you doing? How was great.


Christine and I both have the same question.


Who is this anthropologist? Who with this, this psychoanalytic approach that we were talking about? Oh, Rodney Needham. Rodney Needham. Okay.


I wouldn’t quite describe it as psycho.


You wouldn’t certainly them matter.


Cognitive certainly Explain things, terms, nature, architecture of a human mind. Not, not need them.


You don’t think so? Okay. I wouldn’t Right, Debbie? I know. Yeah. I have read the paper though.


I think there’s traces of, point there in there.


Maybe I, maybe unless I’m confusing with someone else, but I’m pretty sure that there’s Probably slightly discre. Okay.


Right. The difference between Levi throw instructed them and Freud. Yeah. And they don’t Oh, I know that. I, I, I’m, I’m socially aware of that, Not seeing every lump seeing a penis and every round thing a vagina doing all that done.


Needham is very class and catering.


I’ll revisit that. I’ll check it.


Manche I’ll get back to you on that.


But I was referring to the Rodney Needham paper and I can send those across to you if you like.


That would be great. there is a guy who’s, who’s practicing now, his name is Ferra.


Mm-hmm. I don’t it starts with a d his first name and I can’t remember what it is, but, and he, I mean, he’s, he works in Malaysia.


Mm-hmm. But, my reason is more historical than anything else, so. Right.


Yeah. But I’ll get you those papers.


There’s prob maybe I’ve mixed it slightly with another paper that we’re sort also talking about the thunder complex, but I’ll send them across to you.


We can have a chat. Yep.


Okay. Great. Any other questions? Yeah, Ian, just being recently going through James Woodman’s notes.


Yeah. Encountered a, the hats are is an anthropologist who worked with the Hada in East Africa and there unusual amongst African under gatherers.


cause they don’t, they there, there’s very little indicating that they use red pigments with a plant pigments or red ochre.


Mm-hmm. Over in his notes, he does account, he does the two one mythological and one ritual context describe the use of a red flowers.


Mm-hmm.


Ah, Both in, in in one, in the case of a boys initiation and the other, in the case of when this, mantis character releases people who it’s captured mm-hmm.


Back into society. Mm-hmm and I was wondering whether with, with with the women, with the Batek day, women decorating themselves with flowers, whether you’d noticed any sort of product color. I mean, obviously Yeah. They use a lot of, Did zoom hear Ian? Did zoom Hear Ian? I’ll repeat it. Ian’s question.


well, part of it, so Ian was talking about the use of, red flowers.


In which group was it? Hadza rituals, which were, according to James Woodburn, which according to James Woodburn and he asked me if I see similar use of flowers in these bat, kind of the way the women dress dress themselves up before the fruit season.


Well, actually, I mean, I’ve got lots and lots of photos of, we’ve seen lots and lots of different women and actually men wear these, address as well.


But they, it seems to me that they’re just taking the most beautiful flowers.


We’ve seen all kind white flowers, blue flowers, purple flowers, yellow flowers so all kinds of, all kinds.


Because there’s, I, I think yeah, no, I would say to that to be honest.


Yeah. Any other questions? That’s interesting though.


I’d like to see that paper. You know, any more questions? Yeah.


An observation. Any question? The idea of this sort of snake energy moving around and being kind of ancient or, or being found.


Yeah. You know, really unusual cultures, even up into the late Greek period idea of t Yeah.


Was disruptive, move, move through the earth, changed things Yeah and was an element of chaos within even very late week.


Mm-hmm. not the term Naga, so obviously the Sanskrit.


Yeah. Are these guys using the term Naga? Yeah.


So Is so, because as, there’s an Indian influence.


Yeah. So are they getting it from ancient Sanskrit sources? Oh, the actual word for sure the word Is. But, but, but the Idea is, oh, no.


Okay. Right. That’s a really great question actually.


So, Southeast Asia is a bit like the Mediterranean.


It’s crossroads. Yeah.


So, the b the hai, these other ing, well particularly those groups actually Hai, Meri, BTech and Sweden, these kind of, forest dwelling groups, hunter gatherers, they’ve been there for about 60,000 years.


Yeah. We know.


you’ve got similar-ish groups in the Emman Islands in the Philippines.


ACTA for example, these were the, these are the very early people there.


They definitely had leads I’m sure.


cause you can see in in in the terms other terms they’re using in the myth, they’re so similar, ? Mm-hmm. so that way before unionization Indian shorter period Cho When that Yeah, that’s about 2000 years ago, roughly.


Yeah. but of course when they arrived these Naga the terminology, but also the mythology, they’re well aware of like sometimes Denton, Bob Denton’s talked about the thunder complex, and I think he’s right.


You know, that gobar like figure, he kind of embodies as well the slave Hindu wise slave raiding Malay polities as well.


Yeah. So those are kind of pales that are overlaid on top.


Likewise, of course you’ve got Chinese in Malaysia as well and then Chinese have have got their own dragons long in, in, in, in Chinese.


So it’s interesting in Malaysia, because all you’ve got all these different things, stories coming in but that’s the same in the Mediterranean world as well.


You know, the Mediterranean world.


I mean, the Greek world is really linked up with ancient India as well through trade.


So, I think in some parts of the world, we, I think we tend to imagine worlds as being isolated off.


I mean, if you go back to that ontological stuff, remember I criticized at the beginning, these ontological in Commensality, if you like separate world, actually humans across the planet have been connected up with other groups.


So stories flow in, but behind it you’ve got these ancient origins.


But of course, so Naga myths, if you like, or serpentine cosmologies would’ve developed in a certain way in India, independently of Malaysia.


But then they came back together later around 2000 years ago.


Does that help us? Yes.


And, and also within the original people, as they, as you said, they called.


Yeah. Do, do they also use the term They do? Yeah.


Btex, u well, batek day use the term Naga most commonly, sometimes Dred, which really means rainbow dred.


Whereas the Batek Maa, they use the term badgi and they do know the term Naga of course, but they generally would say badgi rather than nga.


Okay. Also language. Language. Batik.


Is this where bati comes from the No, yeah.


Yeah. But Batek I mentioned and I mentioned Batak, the slave Raiders, those words, it really means forest people.


Yeah. And they, you get batak who are more mellow, are like the BTech in the Philippines as well.


Yeah. Great questions. Yeah.


A little thing that’s gone on in my brain that Yeah.


Is, but in Sussex you get nap holes, right? Mythological hold in the bottoms of screen ponds. Yeah and you talked about them for the centuries.


Yeah. And, but in them you get water dragon.


Ah, perfect. Well can We say that to Zoom, because Oh yeah.


So in Sussex, yeah.


We ha can you remind N hole naa holes? Naka naka naka.


NNK. NKNN.


Yeah. Like, like naa.


Okay. NCA holes, which are associated with serpentine beings too.


Dragon, dragon.


Deep, deep. Well, that’s exactly the same for Batek.


So sometimes you’ll talk about on Top Gore. Yeah.


Or on top of, like Mount, the highest mountain in Malaysia is actually in Batek territory called Mount Mount Han and on the top there’s meant to be a kind of pool or lake, and you can enter that to get to the world of Anga.


So often amidst all around the world we saw in Amazonia in Australia, it’s these waterholes and it’s this association.


This is another thing actually plus does that very well.


In his book, he kinda maps out all, all these lists of associations we find in different places, often waterholes caves, the underworld, ? So That’s fascinating. I’ve never heard of that before.


It’s really fascinating. Yeah. Brilliant.


Oh Wow. I’m gonna check that Now. Do, do  any actual places where would be poss These are sacred waterholes.


Can we find any? You can go to Australia.


Oh, really? But can we find them in Sussex? I mean, we know where we think there might be one, but Right.


Secret. Right.


Well, okay, but that’s sort initiate the pupil to the, But, but isn’t that fascinating? You know, the fact that we we’ve talked about these more kind of, if you like exotic places, Amazonia Southeast Asia or Australia.


You’ve got them here at home here at home and I, it doesn’t surprise me in the scientist I, I, I’m really interested to know it, but it’s brilliant.


But you can see it’s the same everywhere.


It’s just on that it’s intact everywhere. Just on that, there’s a classic Brims fairytale on Preciseness, the, the Nixey in the mill pond.


Right? Okay. Mm.


Right. Brilliant. Have to do a analysis of that one. Yeah.


It’s the worm in, Georgie land isn’t Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.


Down a well Lot mess monster Lot mess.


It’ll be all over the place. Weh IC snake.


Huh? Essex serpent. Asic serpent. Exactly. Yeah.


Oh, mid guard serpents. Yeah.


Well, that’s kind of worth mentioning as well, actually.


Sometimes you do see them like in the Baek myths as world they are, they’re holding the whole world on fact.


It’s linking up together the whole thing. Perhaps Kim, just remind us of Julian Dee’s work to work Out. What was the original bit? Well, the kids, they, they’re trying to build a phylogeny of world mythology like consonant byon or like northern latitudes, African continent and so forth.


That’s, Jean Lec as well as Julian Dwe.


and he had a, a very nice sign Scientific American article on this oldest mythology in the, in the world that his suggestion was, that the very oldest, root sort of myth was of a great serpent guarding water.


And, and the implication that that would also be guarding women.


Mm-hmm. In some sense.


So the, the things are going together. Yeah and that analysis, which is polygenetic culturally evolution.


Now There’s one last point I wanted to make really quickly.


I mean, we are tried to cover, I tried to cover quite a lot in this lecture, and I can, I can understand a lot of people here, perhaps not linguists or anthropologists.


Or archeologists. Some people are, some people, most people I guess are not, is that right? Yeah. So hopefully the stories and myths that I’ve told you, you will see this similarity between Southeast Asia or Australia and Amazonia.


But if you are, if that spots your interest, and if you haven’t been here before, I would definitely recommend coming back to more of the rag talks because other people will talk about it in a complete different way.


But do you see what I mean? It, it’s to get to the questions more that I could didn’t have time to get to about, for example, human origins and why they’re right at the beginning.


Yeah.


Perhaps that’s one point to echo what you said.


I Aaron’s been explaining how we all know about these dragons, Korean dragons, Japanese dragons, Chinese dragons, rab snakes, anacondas, and all the you rain snakes.


And, but, but the thing is that all the people that try to explain them, including this person, I, I’m so glad you put me onto bl.


Mm-hmm. What they, what they want to do is to explain these different versions of rainbow snake by reducing it to something we’re all very, very familiar with.


Yeah. So what’s a rainbow say? Oh, oh, it’s a penis.


Yeah. Because we all know what a penis is, right? Everybody know what a penis is. Okay and then you have another thing. Oh, not a tall like penis.


It coins around Oh, oh, oh, oh.


Well it must be a vagina of this. Oh and then, and then, okay.


But then it seems to be something with rain.


Oh, no, no, it’s not gonna a penis nor down.


I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a weather symbol. Yeah.


Change the road and then you’ve got this black guy.


Oh, I know what it is. We all know have everyone seen a rainbow? Very mysterious. Yeah. It’s a rainbow. Yeah.


So the thing is, nobody wants to learn anything. No.


Nobody wants happen. Allow these myths to teach you about something new.


Mm-hmm. Namely, for example, the fact that women can synchronize the cycles mm-hmm.


With a moon become a hugely snake like monster, amazing power.


Nobody wants to learn anything from this. Mm-hmm.


You want to think Oh, oh yes.


Something we all knew already like a penis.


Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s just so tragically Eurocentric or, or Colonial, highly reductive, We learn anything, but we know about penises and we know about the weather we all, and it’s one of those damn things you mm-hmm.


But the thing is, it’s all this ambiguity, all the contradictions within it and it’s things that cannot be explained away through simply saying it’s a penis or it’s a rainbow on its own.


Or they’re Not making the most of the fact that there is this intrinsic gender ambiguity.


Yeah. It is just part and parcel of the whole thing. Mm-hmm.


It it’s not one or the other.


Yeah. I I’m making it something as simple as penis. Yeah.


Takes away the, the transformational Power. Of course.


Yeah. Yeah.


It’s all about transformation, movement, rhythm back and forth and you have to look at the different myths the different variants of it, like it like Levo Strauss attempted to do, but put it all down into the mind if you like.


Yeah. You gotta look at it in terms of material reality.


Yeah. Great. I think that’s probably it for today’s.


Thank you very much.


Thanks for joining us online, everyone. Yep.


Yes. Hope going Too long. I just say a couple of words for Thank you Ivan.


Thanks. That was a fantastic talk.


as you can see, Ivan’s just been taking hold of our theory, just looking at the comparative cross-cultural data with his own index ethnography.


and it’s so compelling as far as we are concerned, but that, that grasping universal ideas about, human mythology and ritual associated to that.


so powerful and thank thanks to Ivan one for coming down here all the way from Clements today.


This is really lovely and also for advertising further rag talks.


in terms of live here at UCL, we’re probably not gonna be back until autumn equinox Tuesday, which is when we always start up again.


we will try and fit some Zoom Tuesday evenings with international speakers like Vivek, who’s with us tonight, and others probably Tuesdays in May.


But we do have events, one a menstrual hut on Dark Moon Saturday, this Saturday in Brockwell Park Walled Garden.


Please come for the afternoon if you’re interested, where we will do some technology of Enchantment singing hopefully in Brockwell Park walled garden, two till five, you’re interested and there will be a snake-like dragon like entity creating a bower there.


So we will be doing that.


and there is April the 28\textsuperscript{th}, which is the day after the April Dark moon, which is a Monday in the pub, the two chairman.


We will make these events details available.


so that is in the evening, April 28\textsuperscript{th}, the Monday we have our poet on comedy communism, Paul, Dave, so a poetry reading there and we’ll have two weeks after that we hope in the same venue, a live event on where have all the menstrual hearts gone.


So those are events coming up in April, may, for anybody interested.









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The Ted K Archive





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Ivan Tacey

Serpentine cosmopolitics: cross-cultural analysis of the Rainbow Serpent (Seminar)



25 March 2025


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