Tree of Knowledge (courtesy Wikipedia)
In The Cosmic Serpent Jeremy Narby presents a novel theory that the snakes often in seen in the visions of people taking ayahuasca actually are visualizations of DNA. The proposed mechanism of transmission is biophotons which I discussed more extensively in a previous post. The double helix of DNA resembles two snakes wrapping themselves about each other. The ayahuasca vine itself often wraps itself around itself or around limbs of other trees in a serpent-like fashion. His hypothesis is that ayahuasqueros are seeing DNA-emitted photons in their visions, hence the visions often contain snakes. During these visions Nature is actually communicating with us at a cellular level.
While DNA may be involved, there might, however, be a simpler and in many ways more profound explanation. The visions of snakes may be ancestral memories of real snakes.
