The Cosmic Serpent

by Jeremy Narby

  With his book, Francis Crick provided a good example of this fragmentation. His mathematics were impeccable, and his reasoning crystalline; Crick was surely among twentieth-century rationality’s finest. But he had not noticed that he was not the first to propose the idea of a snake-shaped vital principle of cosmic origin. All the peoples in the world who talk of a cosmic serpent have been saying as much for millennia. He had not seen it because the rational gaze is forever focalized and can examine only one thing at a time. It separates things to understand them, including the truly complementary. It is the gaze of the specialist, who sees the fine grain of a necessarily restricted field of vision. When Crick set about considering cosmogony from the serious perspective of molecular biology, he had long since put out of his analytical mind the myths of archaic peoples.

  From my new point of view, Crick’s scenario of “directed panspermia,” in which a spaceship transports DNA in the form of frozen bacteria across the immensities of the cosmos, seemed less likely than the idea of an omniscient and terrifying cosmic serpent of unimaginable power. After all, life as described by Crick was based on a miniature language that had not changed a letter in four billion years, while multiplying itself in an extreme diversity of species. The petals of a rose, Francis Crick’s brain, and the coat of a virus are all built out of proteins made up of exactly the same 20 amino acids. A phenomenon capable of such creativity was surely not going to travel in a spaceship resembling those propelled containers imagined by human beings in the twentieth century.

  “A painting on hardboard of the Snake of the Marinbata people of Arnhem Land.” From Huxley (1974, p. 127).

  This meant that the gaze of the Western specialist was too narrow to see the two pieces that fit together to resolve the puzzle. The distance between molecular biology and shamanism/mythology was an optical illusion produced by the rational gaze that separates things ahead of time, and as objectivism fails to objectify its objectifying relationship, it also finds it difficult to consider its presuppositions.

  The puzzle to solve was: Who are we and where do we come from?

  Lost in these thoughts, I started wondering about the cosmic serpent and its representation throughout the world. I walked over to the philosophy and religion sections in my colleague’s library. Fairly rapidly I came across a book by Francis Huxley entitled The way of the sacred, filled with pictures of sacred images from around the world. I found a good number of images containing serpents or dragons, and in particular two representations of the Rainbow Snake drawn by Australian Aborigines. The first showed a pair of snakes zigzagging in the margins (see top of page 78).

  The second was a rock painting of the Rainbow Snake. I looked at it more closely and saw two things: All around the serpent there were sorts of chromosomes, in their upside-down “U” shape, and underneath it there was a kind of ladder!

  “A rock painting of the Walbiri tribe of Aborigines representing the Rainbow Snake.” Photo by David Attenborough, from Huxley (1974, p. 126).

  From Molecular biology of the Gene, Vol. 1, 4th ed., by Watson et al. Copyright © 1987 by James D. Watson, published by The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company.

  I rubbed my eyes, telling myself that I had to be imagining connections, but I could not get the ladder or the chromosomes to look like anything else.

  Several weeks later I learned that U-shaped chromosomes were in “anaphase,” one of the stages of cellular duplication, which is the central mechanism of the reproduction of life; and the first image of the zigzag snakes looks strikingly like chromosomes in the “early prophase,” at the beginning of the same process.

  However, I did not need this detail to feel certain now that the peoples who practice shamanism know about the hidden unity of nature, which molecular biology has confirmed, precisely because they have access to the reality of molecular biology.

  It was at this point, in front of the picture of chromosomes painted by Australian Aborigines, that I sank into a fever of mind and soul that was to last for weeks, during which I floundered in dissonant mixes of myths and molecules.

  Chapter 7

  MYTHS AND MOLECULES

  First, I followed the mythological trail of the cosmic serpent, paying particular attention to its form. I found that it was often double:

  “The cosmic serpent, provider of attributes.” From Clark (1959, p. 52).

  This Ancient Egyptian drawing does not represent a real animal, but a visual charade meaning “double serpent.”

  Quetzalcoatl, the Aztecs’ plumed serpent, is not a real animal either. In living nature, snakes do not have arms or legs, and even less wings or feathers. A flying serpent is a contradiction in terms, a paradox, like a speaking mute. This is confirmed by the double etymology of the word -coatl, which means both “serpent” and “twin.”

  The Ancient Egyptians also represented the cosmic serpent with human feet.

  “Sito, the primordial serpent” (1300 B.C.) From Clark (1959, p. 192).

  Here, too, the image suggests that the primordial divinity is double, both serpent and “non-serpent.”

  In the early 1980s, ayahuasquero Luis Tangoa, living in a Shipibo-Conibo village in the Peruvian Amazon, offered to explain certain esoteric notions to anthropologist Angelika Gebhart-Sayer. Insisting that it was more appropriate to discuss these matters with images,1 he made several sketches of the cosmic anaconda Ronín, including this one:

  “Ronín, the two-headed serpent.” From Gebhart-Sayer (1987, p. 42).

  It would be possible to give many examples of double serpents of cosmic origin associated with the creation of life on earth, but it is important to avoid too strict an interpretation of these images, which can have several meanings at once. For instance, the wings of the serpent can signify both a paradoxical nature and a real ability to fly, in this case in the cosmos.

  “The serpent of the earth becomes celestial; with wings, it can fly, and allows the mummy to ascend to the stars.” From Jacq (1993, p. 99).

  Sometimes the winged serpent takes the form of a dragon, the mythical and double animal par excellence, which lives in the water and spits fire. According to the Dictionary of symbols, the dragon represents “the union of two opposed principles.” Its androgynous nature is symbolized most clearly by the Ouroboros, the serpent-dragon, which “incarnates sexual union in itself, permanently self-fertilizing, as shown by the tail stuck in its mouth” (see page 84).

  In living nature snakes do not bite their own tails. Nevertheless, the Ouroboros appears in some of the most ancient representations of the world, such as the bronze disk from Benin shown below. The Dictionary of symbols describes it as “doubtless the oldest African imago mundi, where its sinuous figure, associating opposites, encircles the primordial oceans in the middle of which floats the square of the earth below.”2

  “Here is the dragon that devours its tail.” From Maier (1965, p. 139).

  “Ouroboros: bronze disk, Benin art.” From Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, p. 716).

  Mythical serpents are often enormous. In the image from Benin, the Ouroboros surrounds the entire earth; in Greek mythology, the monster-serpent Typhon touches the stars with its head; and the first paragraph of the first chapter of Chuang-Tzu, the presumed founder of philosophical Taoism, describes an extremely long fish, inhabiting the celestial lake, that transforms itself into a bird and mounts spiraling into the sky. Chuang-Tzu says that the length of this cosmic fish-bird is “who knows how many thousand miles.”3

  Hindu mythology also provides an example of a serpent of immeasurable proportions, known as Sesha, the thousand-headed serpent that floats on the cosmic ocean while the twin creator beings Vishnu and Lakshmi recline in its coils.

  “Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi resting on Sesha, the thousand-headed serpent of eternity, in an interval between the cycles of creation.” From Huxley (1974, pp. 188-189).

  Mythological serpents are almost invariably associated with water.4 In the following drawing based on descriptions by ayahu
asquero Laureano Ancon, the anaconda Ronín surrounds the entire earth, conceived as a “disc that swims in great waters”; Ronín itself is “half-submerged”—the anaconda being an aquatic species (see top figure page 87).

  The cosmic serpent varies in size and nature. It can be small or large, single or double, and sometimes both at the same time (see bottom figure page 87). This picture was drawn by Luis Tangoa, who lives in the same village as Laureano Ancon. These two shamans would have had all the time in the world to reach an agreement about the appearance of the cosmic anaconda. Yet the former draws it as a single sperm and a two-headed snake, while the latter describes it as an anaconda of “normal” appearance that completely encircles the earth.

  As the creator of life, the cosmic serpent is a master of metamorphosis. In the myths of the world where it plays a central part, it creates by transforming itself; it changes while remaining the same. So it is understandable that it should be represented differently at the same time.

  I WENT ON TO LOOK for the connection between the cosmic serpent—the master of transformation of serpentine form that lives in water and can be both extremely long and small, single and double—and DNA. I found that DNA corresponds exactly to this description.

  If one stretches out the DNA contained in the nucleus of a human cell, one obtains a two-yard-long thread that is only ten atoms wide. This thread is a billion times longer than its own width. Relatively speaking, it is as if your little finger stretched from Paris to Los Angeles.

  “Cosmovision.” From Gebhart-Sayer (1987, p. 26).

  “Aspects of Ronín.” From Gebhart-Sayer (1987, p. 34).

  A thread of DNA is much smaller than the visible light humans perceive. Even the most powerful optical microscopes cannot reveal it, because DNA is approximately 120 times narrower than the smallest wavelength of visible light.5

  The nucleus of a cell is equivalent in volume to 2-millionths of a pinhead. The two-yard thread of DNA packs into this minute volume by coiling up endlessly on itself, thereby reconciling extreme length and infinitesimal smallness, like mythical serpents.

  The average human being is made up of 100 thousand billion cells, according to some estimates. This means that there are approximately 125 billion miles of DNA in a human body—corresponding to 70 round-trips between Saturn and the Sun. You could travel your entire life in a Boeing 747 flying at top speed and you would not even cover one hundredth of this distance. Your personal DNA is long enough to wrap around the earth 5 million times.6

  All the cells in the world contain DNA—be they animal, vegetal, or bacterial—and they are all filled with salt water, in which the concentration of salt is similar to that of the worldwide ocean. We cry and sweat what is essentially seawater. DNA bathes in water, which in turn plays a crucial role in establishing the double helix’s shape. As DNA’s four bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) are insoluble in water, they tuck themselves into the center of the molecule where they associate in pairs to form the rungs of the ladder; then they twist up into a spiraled stack to avoid contact with the surrounding water molecules. DNA’s twisted ladder shape is a direct consequence of the cell’s watery environment.7 DNA goes together with water, just like mythical serpents do.

  The DNA molecule is a single long chain made up of two interwoven ribbons that are connected by the four bases. These bases can only match up in specific pairs—A with T, G with C. Any other pairing of the bases is impossible, because of the arrangement of their individual atoms: A can bond only with T, G only with C. This means that one of the two ribbons is the back-to-front duplicate of the other and that the genetic text is double: It contains a main text on one of the ribbons, which is read in a precise direction by the transcription enzymes, and a backup text, which is inverted and most often not read.

  From Watson (1968, p. 165).

  The second ribbon plays two essential roles. It allows the repair enzymes to reconstruct the main text in case of damage and, above all, it provides the mechanism for the duplication of the genetic message. It suffices to open the double helix as one might unzip a zipper, in order to obtain two separate and complementary ribbons that can then be rebuilt into double ribbons by the duplication enzymes. As the latter can place only an A opposite a T, and vice versa, and a G opposite a C, and vice versa, this leads to the formation of two twin double helixes, which are identical in every respect to the original. Twins are therefore central to life, just as ancient myths indicate, and they are associated with a serpentine form.

  Without this copying mechanism, a cell would never be able to duplicate itself, and life would not exist.

  DNA is the informational molecule of life, and its very essence consists in being both single and double, like the mythical serpents.

  DNA AND ITS DUPLICATION MECHANISMS are the same for all living creatures. The only thing that changes from one species to another is the order of the letters. This constancy goes back to the very origins of life on earth. According to biologist Robert Pollack: “The planet’s surface has changed many times over, but DNA and the cellular machinery for its replication have remained constant. Schrödinger’s ‘aperiodic crystal’ understated DNA’s stability: no stone, no mountain, no ocean, not even the sky above us, have been stable and constant for this long; nothing inanimate, no matter how complicated, has survived unchanged for a fraction of the time that DNA and its machinery of replication have coexisted.”8

  At the beginning of its existence, some 4.5 billion years ago, planet earth was an inhospitable place for life. As a molten lava fireball, its surface was radioactive; its water was so hot it existed only in the form of incondensable vapor, and its atmosphere, devoid of any breathable oxygen, contained poisonous gases such as cyanide and formaldehyde.

  Approximately 3.9 billion years ago, the earth’s surface cooled sufficiently to form a thin crust on top of the molten magma. Strangely, life, and thus DNA, appeared relatively quickly thereafter. Scientists have found traces of biological activity in sedimentary rocks that are 3.85 billion years old, and fossil hunters have found actual bacterial fossils that are 3.5 billion years old.

  During the first 2 billion years of life on earth, the planet was inhabited only by anaerobic bacteria, for which oxygen is a poison. These bacteria lived in water, and some of them learned to use the hydrogen contained in the H2O molecule while expelling the oxygen. This opened up new and more efficient metabolic pathways. The gradual enrichment of the atmosphere with oxygen allowed the appearance of a new kind of cell, capable of using oxygen and equipped with a nucleus for packing together its DNA. These nucleated cells are at least thirty times more voluminous than bacterial cells. According to biologists Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan: “The biological transition between bacteria and nucleated cells ... is so sudden it cannot effectively be explained by gradual changes over time.”

  From that moment onward, life as we know it took shape. Nucleated cells joined together to form the first multicellular beings, such as algae. The latter also produce oxygen by photosynthesis. Atmospheric oxygen increased to about 21 percent and then stabilized at this level approximately 500 million years ago—thankfully, because if oxygen were a few percent higher, living beings would combust spontaneously. According to Margulis and Sagan, this state of affairs “gives the impression of a conscious decision to maintain balance between danger and opportunity, between risk and benefit.”9

  Around 550 million years ago, life exploded into a grand variety of multicellular species, algae and more complex plants and animals, living not only in water, but on land and in the air. Of all the species living at that time, not one has survived to this day. According to certain estimates, almost all of the species that have ever lived on earth have already disappeared, and there are between 3 million and 50 million species living currently.10

  DNA is a master of transformation, just like mythical serpents. The cell-based life DNA informs made the air we breathe, the landscape we see, and the mind-boggling diversity of living beings
of which we are a part. In 4 billion years, it has multiplied itself into an incalculable number of species, while remaining exactly the same.

  “The DNA double helix represented as a pair of snakes. By turning the picture upside down, you can see that the molecule is completely symmetrical—each half of the double helix can serve as a template for the synthesis of its complementary half.” From Wills (1991, p. 37).

  INSIDE THE NUCLEUS, DNA coils and uncoils, writhes and wriggles. Scientists often compare the form and movements of this long molecule to those of a snake. Molecular biologist Christopher Wills writes: “The two chains of DNA resemble two snakes coiled around each other in some elaborate courtship ritual.”11

  To sum up, DNA is a snake-shaped master of transformation that lives in water and is both extremely long and small, single and double.

  Just like the cosmic serpent.

  I KNEW THAT many shamanic peoples use images other than a “cosmic serpent” to discuss the creation of life, talking particularly of a rope, a vine, a ladder, or a stairway of celestial origin that links heaven and earth.