The Cosmic Serpent [Paperback]

I think Jeremy Narby did a fantastic job with this book. Personally, I had read a bit about South and Central American shamanism, and I'm a fan of Carlos Castaneda's books. But while enjoyable, Castaneda's blurring of the lines between truth and fiction leaves me with mixed feelings. Narby's work doesn't suffer the same faults. He's meticulous, academic where he needs to be, but isn't afraid to consider unpopular ideas or develop unconventional theories. And darned if he doesn't come up with some highly unique and thought-provoking stuff! His willingness to take the shamans at their word and see the possible links between their visionary knowledge and that of molecular biology is pretty remarkable, and distinguishes him from the vast majority of his colleagues, whose metaphysical assumptions limit where they can venture, in my opinion.

Narby sees connections between common themes in shamanic visions (e.g., ever-present snakes, often paired and entwined) and DNA. The connections don't stop at common imagery, however. The things the shamans describe, like the way the 'spirits' of plants and animals communicate, their origins, traits, and 'behaviors' all have a remarkable similarity to the way biologists describe DNA and its functions. He hypothesizes that shamans actually gain direct access to their own DNA and the DNA of other forms of life while in trance. It is through the DNA that knowledge is communicated, such as which plants provide which medicinal uses. This leads him to speculate on the possible intelligence of life (developed more fully in his recent book, Intelligence in Nature), and a mode of communication with the world of nature via DNA.

Understandably, his work hasn't been taken seriously by the scientific community. But I think he's onto something. Scientific materialism is a dead end as it is currently formulated, but I think approaches like that developed by Narby provide a saner alternative - they take into account a greater portion of observable reality, whereas the current scientific mindset simply brackets entire phenomena off as unworthy of study, or simply nonexistent. Not very scientific, in my opinion. The book was written in the 90s, so much of the science is out of date, but even taking that into account, the main lines of force still hold today. And works like Bryant Shiller's Origin of Life: The 5th Option make good supplementary reading, and support several of Narby's ideas.

In short, if you're into shamanism, research into hallucinogens, consciousness, or DNA, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I picked this one up on whim and couldn't stop reading. The prose is clear, engaging, and fun.

This if a medical text, would be called quackery. As a "biology" publication, it's pure magical thinking. OK if it warms his heart to think of life as a conscious entity pushing evolution, but it's just God under another name. Or perhaps more like the Buddhist idea of nirvana as the sum total of all life that has ascended.

And DNA as the cosmic serpent of myth? Other than that DNA is usually depicted as a helix, no. Simple-minded folk may believe that DNA actually looks like a snake in life, but not so. That's just how it's drawn as a diagram in textbooks, to make its structure easier to see. In fact, DNA in your cells and mine is firmly attached to a complex, folded set of proteins called histones, and is itself intricately folded. DNA in life looks a lot more like a tangled mass of thread than a snake. Also, the DNA molecule, even for a one-gene length, is thousands of times longer than it is thick: think of a kilometer of monofilament fishing line. No, the resemblance of DNA to a snake is all in the author's mind. He should call his book "The Cosmic Fishing Line".

The ideas expressed in this book are religious rather than biology, faith rather than experiment, and wishful thinking over experimental results. As a fantasy writer, Narby is lacking only a plot. As for my background, I am a science grad turned oncologist, and have over 30 years' experience in medicine, biology, and physical chemistry. I do love to read fantasy, if it has a plot and good characters.

Appropriate that the president of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies would endorse this book.

I found this book very interesting, but quite bizarre. The author states that South American shamans taking an orally active dimethyltrptamine preparation and then seeing various visions or hallucinations, are actually seeing the structure of DNA (which to them appears as snakes). The author further reviews world myth, where snakes often appear, and then states that DNA has communcated with various shamans throughout the world. There is some attempt to show that the molecular biology of DNA somehow supports this idea, but most of the author's sources are conversations with aquaintances who have some knowledge of molecular biology. The recent observations that DNA very weakly emitts photons under some conditions is taken as a molecular mechanism by wich shamans under the infulence of dimethyltryptamine see snakes - or "see" DNA and the "knowledge" that it's out to impart. Without knowing it, the author is part of a long line of scientists and laymen who have tried to find unusual and mystical aspects of the DNA molecule, almost, but not always, without sucess. The author lacks the trainig in molecular biology to understand that these photons may represent oxidation reactions and nothing more. Similarly his ideas about the function of repeditive DNA sequences in the mammalian genome are speculative and nonsensical.
I found this book fun to read, but speculative in the extreme. How photons emitted from DNA can be seen by humans under the influence of a hallucinogen is not mentioned. Or how the photons manage to move through solid matter and be "seen" through any mechanism. In fact, very few of the ideas set forth in this book are supported, particularly those that relate to science.
I still rate the book highly as the author is willing to put together two very different areas and he does have some interesting ideas. However, he is absolutely out of his depth when he tries to relate the structure of DNA to dimethyltryptamine visions. Snakes and DNA are both relatively linear, but that's as far as the comparison can really go. If shamans saw molecular biology, why don't they see DNA polymerase? Any vision could be called molecular biology. One could for example, say that shamans also saw "round things". Round things things could be ribosomes. Ribosomes are both nucleic acids and proteins....I think I have a book here. For what it's worth my science background includes a Ph.D. in molecular biology and medical school. The author is making comparisons that are very hard to take seriously. Still, the book is fun to read and may make one think.