The Cosmic Serpent (27 page)

6
Wills (1989) writes that the nucleus of a cell “is about two millionths of the volume of a pinhead” (p. 22). Frank-Kamenetskii (1993) writes: “If we assume that the whole of DNA in a human cell is one molecule, its length
L
will be about 2 m. This is a million times more than the nucleus diameter” (p. 42). Moreover, according to some estimates, there are 100 thousand billion, or 10
¹⁴
, cells in a human body—see, for example, Sagan and the Editors of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1993, p. 965), Pollack (1994, p. 19), and Schiefelbein (1986, p. 40). However, there is no consensus on this figure. Dawkins (1976, p. 22) uses 10
¹⁵
(“a thousand million million”); Margulis and Sagan (1986, p. 67) use 10
¹²
, but in the French translation of their book they write: “The human body is made up of 10
¹⁶
(10 million billion) animal cells and 10
¹⁷
(100 million billion) bacterial cells” (1989, p. 65). The difference between 10
¹²
and 10
¹⁶
is of the order of 10,000! To calculate the total length of the DNA in a human body, I chose the figure that seems to be the most widely used, and that is halfway between the extremes. When I write that our body contains 125 billion miles of DNA, or 200 billion kilometers, it is merely a rough estimate; the true number could be 100 times greater, or smaller. Finally, a Boeing 747 traveling for 75 years at 1,000 km/h would travel 657 million kilometers, which is 0.32 percent of 200 billion kilometers; the average distance between Saturn and the Sun is 1,427,000,000 kilometers.

7
Most cells contain between 70 and 80 percent water. According to Margulis and Sagan (1986): “The concentrations of salts in both seawater and blood are, for all practical purposes, identical. The proportions of sodium, potassium, and chloride in our tissues are intriguingly similar to those of the worldwide ocean.... we sweat and cry what is basically seawater” (p. 183-184). Without water, a cell cannot function; as De Duve (1984) writes: “Even the hardiest bacteria need some moisture around them. They may survive complete dryness, but only in a dormant state, with all their processes arrested until they are reawakened by water” (p. 21). On the relationship between water and the shape of the DNA double helix, see Calladine and Drew (1992), who write: “We see right away how DNA forms a spiral or helix on account of the low solubility in water of the bases” (p. 21).

8
Pollack (1994, pp. 29-30).

9
Both quotes are from Margulis and Sagan (1986, pp. 115-116, 111). On the terrestrial atmosphere before the apparition of life, see Margulis and Sagan (1986, pp. 41-43). They also write: “Barghoorn's Swaziland discovery of actual 3,400-million-year-old microbes raises a startling point: the transition from inanimate matter to bacteria took less time than the transition from bacteria to large, familiar organisms. Life has been a companion of the Earth from shortly after the planet's inception” (p. 72). The recently discovered traces of biological activity dating back 3.85 billion years consist of a reduced ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in sedimentary rocks in Greenland—see Mojzsis et al. (1996) and Hayes (1996); Hayes writes: “The new finding seems to extend that record to the very bottom of our planet's sedimentary pile, crucially altering earlier views of these oldest sediments and leaving almost no time between the end of the ‘late heavy bombardment' of bodies within the inner Solar System by giant meteorites and the first appearance of life” (p. 21). Judson (1992) writes regarding nucleated cells (“eukaryotes”): “Eukaryotic cells are far larger than bacteria—proportionately as a horse to a bumblebee. They have hundreds of times more genes, and 500-fold more DNA” (p. 61).

10
Lewontin (1992) writes: “Fully 99.999 percent of all species that have ever existed are already extinct” (p. 119). For estimates regarding the current number of species, see Wilson (1990, p. 4, “most biologists agree that the actual number is at least 3 million and could easily be 30 million or more”) and Pollack (1994, p. 170, “five million to fifty million”). Wilson (1992, p. 346) also writes: “Even though some 1.4 million species of organisms have been discovered (in the minimal sense of having specimens collected and formal scientific names attached), the total number alive on earth is somewhere between 10 and 100 million.”

11
Wills (1991, p. 36). Regarding the direct observation of DNA's propensity to wriggle (“like small snakes slithering through mud”), see Lipkin (1994, p. 293). Dubochet (1993) writes: “It is not the enzyme that rotates along the DNA helix during transcription, but the DNA that rotates on itself, while moving like a supercoiled conveyor belt” (p. 2).

12
Regarding the “paradoxical passage,” see Eliade (1964, p. 486). Regarding the serpent-dragon guarding the axis, see Eliade (1949, pp. 250-251), Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, p. 385), and Roe (1982, p. 118).

13
To describe DNA's form, Pollack (1994, p. 22) talks of “twisted vines”; Calladine and Drew (1992, pp. 24, 42, 123) of a “highly twisted ladder,” a “spiral staircase,” and a “snake”; Blocker and Salem (1994, p. 60) of a “spiral staircase”; Stocco (1994, p. 37) of a “ladder”; Frank-Kamenetskii (1993, p. 14) of a “rope ladder.” The quote in the text (“like two lianas”) is from Frank-Kamenetskii (1993, p. 92). Regarding the genetic nature of cancer, and the recent advances in scientific understanding of the phenomenon, see Sankarapandi (1994) and Jones (1993).

14
The quote is from Weiss (1969, p. 302). He also writes: “The Sky-Rope motif, which we have already encountered among the Campas and Machiguengas, and which we now find present among the Piros, turns out to be quite widespread among the Tropical Forest tribes. It is reported, in one form or another, for the Cashinahua, the Marinahua, the Jívaro, the Canelo, the Quijo, the Yagua, the Witoto, a number of the Cuiana tribes (the Korobohana, Taulipang and Warrau), the Bacairi, the Umotina, the Bororo, the Mosetene, and the Tiatinagua; it is also reported for the Lengua, Mataco, Toba, and Vilela of the Chaco region.... Clearly equivalent to the concept of the Sky-Rope is that of the Sky-Ladder, reported for the Conibo, the Tucuna and the Shipaya, and that of the Sky-Tree, reported for the Sherente, the Cariri, the Chamacoco, the Mataco, the Mocoví, and the Toba—in each case comprehended as having once connected Earth with Sky. The distribution of this motif might be extended even further if we care to recognize as equivalent the idea of a chain of arrows to the sky, reported for the Conibo, the Shipibo, the Jívaro, the Waiwai, the Tupinamba, the Chiriguano, the Guarayú, the Cumana, and the Mataco” (p. 470). Weiss also notes: “Of particular interest is the Taulipang identification of the Sky-Rope with the same peculiarly stepped vine as that which the present author's Campa informants pointed out as their own
inkíteca
” (p. 505).

15
Bayard (1987) writes in his book on the symbolism of the caduceus: “First, one must retain the association of elements that we find in all civilizations, from India to the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Palestine and Sumerian Mesopotamia: the stone, the column, the truncated and sacred tree, with one or two entwined serpents.... The cult of the serpent is thus linked to the art of healing since the most ancient times” (pp. 161-163). Regarding the caduceus, Chevalier and Gheerbrandt (1982) write: “The serpent has a doubly symbolic aspect: one is beneficial, the other is evil, of which the caduceus represents, as it were, the antagonism and equilibrium; this equilibrium and polarity are above all those of the cosmic currents, which are figured more generally by the double spiral”; in Buddhist esotericism, for example, “the caduceus's staff corresponds to the axis of the world and the serpents to the Kundalini,” the cosmic energy inside every being (pp. 153-155). See also Boulnois (1939) and Baudoin (1918) on the ancientness of this symbol. According to Bayard (1987), the two serpents of the caduceus, the yin-yang of the T'ai Chi, and the swastika of the Hindus all symbolize “a cosmic force, with opposed directions of rotation” (p. 134) See Guénon (1962, p. 153) on the equivalence of the caduceus and the yin-yang.

16
There is a certain confusion surrounding the origin of the caduceus as the symbol of Western medicine. To start with, in Greek mythology, the caduceus's staff is the symbol of Hermes, who is, according to Campbell (1959), “the archetypal trickster god of the ancient world . . . Hermes, too, is androgyne, as one should know from the sign of his staff” (p. 417). Campbell (1964) adds that Hermes is the “guide of souls to the underworld, the patron, also, of rebirth and lord of the knowledges beyond death, which may be known to his initiates even in life” (p. 162). Hermes's staff is topped by two wings and is thus a variant on the theme of the plumed serpent. However, Hermes's staff has mainly been interpreted as a peace symbol, devoid of medical significance. The official medical caduceus is considered to belong to Aesculapius, who was said to be a real-life healer practicing around 1200 B.C., and who only became the Greek god of healing much later. Around the 5th century B.C., rationalism and patriarchy were being set up and myths were modified: Zeus, who was at first represented as a serpent, defeats the serpent-monster Typhon with the help of his daughter Athene (“Reason”), thereby guaranteeing the reign of the patriarchal gods of Olympus; concomitantly, he brings Aesculapius back to life (having previously killed him with a lightning bolt) and gives him a staff with a
single
serpent wrapped around it. According to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Aesculapius's staff “is the only true symbol of medicine. The caduceus with its winged staff and intertwined serpents, frequently used as a medical symbol, is without medical relevance since it represents the magic wand of Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods and the patron of trade” (vol. 1, p. 619). To make things more complicated, the caduceus symbol, sometimes with one snake, sometimes two, has been taken up again in the twentieth century for unclear reasons. For instance, in 1902, the medical department of the United States Army adopted Hermes's staff as its symbol—while the American Medical Association took Aesculapius's staff shortly thereafter (see Friedlander 1992, pp. 127ff., 146ff.). The caduceus formed by the cup and the serpent became the official symbol of French pharmacies only in 1942 (see Burnand 1991, p. 7). The pharmacists with whom I talked invariably said that the serpent was linked to their profession “because of the venom”—for which pharmacies have antidotes.

17
Métraux (1967, pp. 191, 85, 83, 95).

18
There are many different translations of Heraclitus's fragmented work. I rely mainly on Kahn (1979). The fragment that I quote is: “The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither declares nor conceals, but gives a sign” (p. 43). The town of Delphi was originally called Pytho. The oracle in Delphi first belonged to the earth goddess Gaia and was defended by her child, the serpent Python. Later, Apollo slew Python and appropriated the oracle.

19
See Eliade (1964, pp. 96ff.) on the secret language of shamans. Why has there not been more interest in this language of spirits, which is reported around the world? I believe that one of the reasons is that most anthropologists do not believe that spirits
really
exist, so they cannot take them seriously. As Colchester (1982) writes in his study of the cosmovision of the Sanema in the Venezuelan Amazon: “We can only designate this spiritual realm a ‘metaphoric' one, because we do not believe in its reality. Our effective understanding of Sanema phenomenology founders on this lack of belief” (p. 131). Unfortunately, Colchester's honesty is not typical.

20
The six quotes are from Townsley (1993, pp. 459-460, 453, 465). Townsley is not the only anthropologist to report the existence of a highly metaphoric shamanic language. Siskind (1973, p. 31), regarding the songs of Sharanahua ayahuasqueros, writes: “These songs are sung in an esoteric form of language, difficult to understand, and filled with metaphors.” See also Colchester (1982, p. 142) on the “poetic licence” used by Sanema shamans in their songs, and Chaumeil (1993, p. 415) on the “archaic language which is incomprehensible to most” and which is used by Yagua ayahuasqueros.

21
The double helix wraps around itself completely every 10 base pairs. As there are 6 billion base pairs in a human cell, the latter's DNA wraps around itself approximately 600 million times.

22
The estimate of 97 percent of non-coding passages in the human genome is the most frequent—see, for example, Nowak (1994, p. 608) or Flam (1994, p. 1320); but Calladine and Drew (1992) consider that only 1 percent of the human genome codes for the construction of proteins (p. 14), and Blocker and Salem (1994) write: “Currently, it is generally considered that only 10% of the human genome, at most, codes for proteins; . . . No precise function has yet been found for the remaining 90% of our DNA, and it is not even certain that one will be found: it could possibly be mere ‘scrap'” (p. 127). Regarding palindromes, Frank-Kamenetskii (1993) writes: “Palindromes are frequently encountered in DNA texts. Since DNA consists of two strands (i.e., as if they were two parallel texts), its palindromes may be of two types. Such palindromes in an ordinary, single text are called ‘mirrorlike.' But more frequently to be met in DNA are palindromes that read alike along either strand in the direction determined by the chemical structure of DNA” (p. 106). The expression “junk DNA,” meanwhile, was first coined by Orgel and Crick (1980) in an article entitled “Selfish DNA: The ultimate parasite,” where they write: “In summary, then, there is a large amount of evidence which suggests, but does not prove, that much DNA in higher organisms is little better than junk. We shall presume, for the rest of this article, that this hypothesis is true” (pp. 604-605). See also Dawkins (1982, pp. 156ff.).