Snake Talk: How the World's Ancient Serpent Stories Can Guide Us

Join us for our seventeenth learning session: "Snake Talk" with Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta on Wednesday October 7, at 12 pm CET | 11 am BST | 6 am EDT | 3.30 pm IST | 9 pm AEDT

What if the stories of the Rainbow Serpent, the Basilisk, Wyvern, Naga, Goorialla, and Quetzalcoatl also contain the knowledge we need in this moment of crisis?

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Across cultures and continents, serpent stories speak of creation and destruction, dwelling between physical and spiritual worlds, between story and history, weaving connections across earth and sky.

In this learning session, we'll explore how these ancient stories can guide us today. Drawing on Tyson's recent book Snake Talk, co-authored with Megan Kelleher, we'll uncover and discuss insights from conversations with Indigenous knowledge holders across the globe; from Nepal to Aotearoa, from Mesoamerica to China and Europe. We'll examine how serpent knowledge helps us understand our roles and align our human gifts within the patterns of creation, seeking answers from makers across cultures who pay homage to the Serpent in images, objects, and ceremony.

Snake Talk shines an Indigenous light on contemporary society. This session thus invites us to see the world through the eye of the Serpent, discovering threads that link us together across a pluriverse of creation entities, entangling languages, flames, skies, waters and rocks. Knowledge that connects rather than divides.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and a founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Collective, a non-profit organisation supporting systems-based Indigenous thinking and innovation. Tyson is the author of Sand Talk, Right Story, Wrong Story, and most recently Snake Talk (co-authored with Megan Kelleher). His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to explore and resolve complex issues, global crises, and catastrophic risk.

Join us for an illuminating session, and bring your questions and reflections on what it means to see the world through the eye of the Serpent!