"Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols.
Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts - but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. Myth tells you what the experience is."
(from The Power of Myth by Jospeh Campbell)

From a lycaeum interview:
"Could you sum up your book "The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge"?
"Research indicates that shamans access an intelligence, which they say is nature's, and which gives them information that has stunning correspondences with molecular biology."

We will here tell a bit about the book, then go through a few chapters content one by one.

The Cosmic Serpent is a story of modern anthropology meeting ancient plant knowledge. Jeremy Narby, PhD, grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied history at the University of Canterbury, and received his doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University.
For most traditional school anthropologist being confronted with the knowledge held by Shamans in the native tribes of Upper-Amazon is like a clash of cultures. It is ancestral supersititions and spirit worlds meeting with molecular biology and new rationality.
Coming from a classical anthropological way of seing and understanding the world, J Narby has a hard time making sense of the Shamans telling him that they "get their knowledge from plants teachers". Plants dont talk, so how could knowledge about the nature of the self in the universe be gotten from ingesting them? To answer this question, J Narby went to live with tribes and took part in the initiation ritual of ayahuasca along shamans.
Back from the jungle, he tried to make sense out of the visions of 2 serpents which he saw during his ayahuasca experience. It seemed to him, as if the serpents were holding information about the nature of life.
Convinced that the Shamans did hold some extremely valid knowledge, he went on to organize his thoughts.
After the publication of The Cosmic Serpent, he has has travelled the world speaking to shamans and scientists, further refining his thesis. His his own words: " I spend my time promoting land titling projects and bilingual education for indigenous people, and thinking about how to move knowledge forward and how to open up understanding between people; I also spend time
with my children, and with children in my community (as a soccer coach); and I look after the plants in my garden, without using pesticides and so on. But I do this because I think it needs doing, and because it's all I can do, but not because it's "spiritual." The message I got from shamans was: do what you can for those around you (including plants and animals), but don't make a big deal of it."

Narby's book is a good reminder of the hard process we have to go through in order to keep on trying understanding the world around us, and not be tempted by falling into certain closed down dogmas.  
For exemple, questionning Darwinism is still considered a hot topic, yet, it is still being distributed as hot cookies in school books, even if some scientist are already calling darwinism "a form of metaphysics with no scientifical grounds to stand on".
 
When times get funky, it is that much more nescessary to not let the mind slip into convenient and dogmatic formulas. The modern religion of the all explanatory science departments being in no way immune to such dogma, and can easily turn into a religion itself.

All in all, the book was quite educating. For those already aware of the shamanistic tradition, it will be a nice addition with some intriguing corroletions between ancient and modern sciences. Also, it is interesting to read Narby's process as it progresses from a slight obsession like interest, to a more rational look and search into possible answers to his questions. The only critic could be that, after a few chapters, it seemed a bit confusing. As if Narby himself isn't quite sure of his own conclusions. Narby seems to be dealing with a lot of information, which he has not yet quite organized nor fully processed. The result is a travel through the mind of an anthropologist being introduced to plant's knowledge and attempting to fit along with it his scientific notions.

(Much of his book, is made of his footnotes, which are almost 1/3 of the book. So, don't forget to read them as you go through the book.)

 A few chapters from the book:

 Forest Television:
The book starts by setting us up in a setting: the jungle with the Ashaninca indians, with which Narby lived for a couple of years and learned about their medicinal use of the 50 000 species Amazonian flora plants. He introduces himself shortly, his field of study, ie anthropology, and gives us a short view on the current anthropological views. The european man of the 1900 having decided that they were superior to what they called the savages was the reason europeans wanted to study "savages", in an attempt to try discovering where they themselves came from.
Mention of the pichis-palcazu special project,
Narby mentions his understanding of the shamans, which he thought of as being one of the archetype of the wise man, an old man leaving alone as a hermit. Instead, he sees that the shaman lives and does his work amongst his community. "To understand what interest you, you must drink ayahuasca" says the shaman of the tribe. The chapter ends with Narby first taking of the plant, describing a very visual trip, accompanied with the singing of his mentor.

Anthropologists and shamans: We get introduced to the Quirishari's mythology. Narby, shows again what sort of background he comes from when he mentions his reluctance to study the Indians mythology. "I even considered the study of mythology to be a useless and "reactionary" pastime." This is very interesting to see that from his point of view, the Indians can have a seperate life from their mythology, when indeed, studying their mythology IS the explanation to their connection to their land. They consider themselves of the same family as the jungle's animals. We meet the Maninkari, the spirits, who live on a hierarchical order. We learn that the mother of tabacco is a snake. Back in switzerland with his 2 kids, Narby starts organizing endegenous land protection. Enigma in Rio: Discovery of his DNA theory, from studying snakes and dragons. Mickeal Harner, an anthropologist, gives us one of the earliest accounts of ayahuasca trip in 1968. (p55). He tells about his trip, seing a Viking boat like, with dragon heads, and occupied by half humans half animals creatures. He sees the begining of the world, from a bleu ocean and sky to creatures falling out from the sky into the ocean. This is the creators of life on Earth, who were escaping from enemies.

Defocalizing:
"In retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA, although at that time, 1961, I knew nothing of DNA."
in Harner's account. It is during this reading of Harner's footnote, to which Narby hadn't previously payed much attention to, that he started seing similarities between the modern scientific concept of life as being made up of DNA and between the mythologic serpent archetype.

Seeing correspondences:
Narby reviews various serpents mythologies around the world. He relates the Twin's archetype.
He enters the contradiction brought on by certain Judeo-Christian mythologies, as pointed out by Campbell when analizing the new version of the serpent myth created out of the Old testament. In the new version, the serpent became a thing to combat. In the old version, in many of the old gods' time, the serpent was the creator of all things, a teacher higher than the best human wise men. Even Zeus used to be depicted as a serpent, until he had to fight Python. The myth had reversed, like the Tao turning into the Ouroboros and eating it's own tail. According to Campbell, these patriarchal inversions "adressed a pictorial message to the heart that excalty reverses the verbal message adressed to the brain; and this nervous discord inhabits both Christianity and Islam as well as Judaism, since they too share in the legacy of the Old testament."

Myth and Molecules: DNA master of transformation, like a single, double snake coiled up and living in water. Narby "follows the mythologycal trail of the cosmic serpent, paying particular attention to it's form". From the mythological roots, he takes us into a scientific based introduction to the world of DNA. He mentions the mythology of the twins, found in so many creation myth around the world, to be a good analogy for the 2 strands of DNA creating every cells in the world, wheter it be animal, vegetal or bacterial. The cells containing DNA are all filled with salt water, to the same concentration of salt than the worldwide oceans.

It appears that one strand of DNA is like information, the other strand is the way by which the information strand can reproduce. They are like the sacred Twins, each needing the other in order to survive. As if the basis for the duality which can be observed in life and of which mythologies are made up of, as if this duality is at the root of our fundamental make up.
Your personal DNA can wrap itself 5 million times around the earth. Let's take a trip back in time to 4.5 billion years ago, when earth was just a planet of molten lava, to 3.9 billion years ago when the first bacteria developped, perhaps due to the cooling down of the planet, to 2 billion years as a anaerobic bacteria, capable of processing the hydrogen contained in the water they live in (h2o). 550 million years ago, we see multicellular species, some even getting out of the water, breathing air. But, don't worry, you won't run into one of those, since no species has survived the passage of time and the mutations it brings along. They have all disappeared by now. DNA, seems like a great snake coiled onto a tree, like the axis mundi. Like a double language, wrapped around itself, like the mysterious language of nature, or as Narby hypothizes perhaps "the same reality is being discribed from diferent perspectives".

Links:
Review in french with some links to french critics of the book.
Ayahuasca inspired paintings by Pablo Amaringo.
Extracts from the book on FusionAnomaly.
The CosmicSerpent on Deoxy.
Archipress and Narby.
Joseph Campbell's Mythic Journey by Jonathan.
Foundation for Shamanic Studies founded by Micheal Harner.
Ref book: Gerald Weiss: The cosmology of the Campa Indians of Eastern Peru

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