The Cosmic Serpent (26 page)

5
Métraux (1946) writes at the beginning of his article entitled “Twin heroes in South American mythology”: “A pair of brothers, generally twins, are among the most important protagonists of South American folklore. They appear as culture heroes, tricksters and transformers. The Creator or Culture Hero himself is rarely a solitary character. In many cases he has a partner who is often a powerful rival, but who may be a shadowy and insignificant personage.... Whenever the partner of the Culture Hero is represented as an opponent or as a mischievous or prankish character, the mythical pair is indistinguishable from the Twin Heroes” (p. 114). Garza (1990) writes regarding Nahua and Maya shamanism: “We see the governing
nagual,
in the plastic arts of the classical period, emerging from the mouth of enormous serpents, which are magnificent, in other words plumed, and which symbolize water and the sacred vital energy” (p. 109).

6
Lévi-Strauss (1991b, p. 295).

7
See Eliade (1964, pp. 129, 275, 326, 430, 487-490). Métraux (1967) writes regarding the consecration ceremony of the young shaman among the Araucanians: “One prepares, first of all, the sacred ladder or
rewe,
which is the symbol of the profession” (p. 191).

8
As I wrote in Chapter 2, anthropologists have accused Eliade of “detaching symbols from their contexts,” among other things. I must admit that I, too, had several prejudices regarding his work. The first time I read his book on shamanism and noted the repeated references to ladders, I thought Eliade simply had a folkloric obsession for the “ritual” objects of exotic cultures. I had other reasons for considering his book not to be very useful for the research I was conducting. Eliade considers “narcotic intoxication” to be a “decadence in shamanic technique” (1964, p. 401). This opinion has often been quoted over the last decades to depreciate Amazonian shamanism and its use of plant hallucinogens (which are certainly not “narcotic”). It is important to remember, however, that Eliade originally wrote his book on shamanism in 1951, before the scientific community became aware of the effects of hallucinogens. According to Furst (1994, p. 23), Eliade changed his mind toward the end of his life. The quote regarding the “Rainbow Snake” is from Eliade (1972, p. 118). Regarding crystals, he writes: “It is Ungud [the Rainbow Snake] who gives the medicine man his magic powers, symbolized by the
kimbas,
which are quartz crystals” (p. 87).

9
Campbell (1964, p. 11).

10
Campbell (1968, p. 154).

11
Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, pp. 867-868).

12
The quotes are from Campbell (1964, pp. 17, 9, 22). Campbell writes regarding the twin beings in the Garden of Eden: “They had been one at first, as Adam; then split in two, as Adam and Eve” (p. 29). However, “the legend of the rib is clearly a patriarchal inversion” (p. 30), as the male begets the female, which is the opposite of previous myths and of biological reality. Meanwhile, the damnation of the serpent is particularly ambiguous; Yahweh accuses it of having shown Eve the tree that allows one to tell the difference between good and evil; how can one apply the Ten Commandments without an understanding of this difference? According to Campbell, these patriarchal inversions “address a pictorial message to the heart that exactly reverses the verbal message addressed 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” (p. 17).

13
See Campbell (1964, p. 22) and Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, p. 872).

14
Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975, p. 165). He adds: “Now, the phenomenon of macroscopia, the illusion of perceiving objects much larger than they are, is frequent in hallucinations induced by narcotic snuff” (p. 49). This phenomenon is frequently mentioned in the hallucinogen literature. It also calls to mind
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
when Alice becomes extremely small after eating a piece of mushroom on which a caterpillar is smoking a hookah. Meanwhile, Descola (1996) writes regarding his personal experience with ayahuasca: “Curiously enough, these unanchored visions do not obscure the still landscape that frames them. It is rather as though I were looking at them through the lens of a microscope operating as a window of variable dimensions set in the middle of my usual and unchanged field of vision” (pp. 207-208).

15
Gebhart-Sayer (1986) writes concerning the visual music perceived by Shipibo-Conibo shamans: “This spirit [of ayahuasca] projects luminous geometric figures in front of the shaman's eyes: visions of rhythmic undulation, of perfumed and luminous ornamentation, or the rapid skimming over of the pages of a book with many motifs. The motifs appear everywhere one looks: in star formations, in a person's teeth, in the movements of his tuft of grass. As soon as the floating network touches his lips and crown, the shaman can emit melodies that correspond to the luminous vision. ‘My song is the result of the motif's image,' says the shaman to describe the phenomenon, a direct transformation of the visual into the acoustic. ‘I am not the one creating the song. It passes through me as if I were a radio.' The songs are heard, seen, felt and sung simultaneously by all those involved” (p. 196). The notion that ayahuasqueros learn their songs directly from the spirits is generalized. According to Townsley (1993), Yaminahua shamans “are adamant that the songs are not ultimately created or owned by them at all, but by the
yoshi
themselves, who ‘show' or ‘give' their songs, with their attendant powers, to those shamans good enough to ‘receive' them. Thus, for instance, in their portrayal of the process of initiation, it is the
yoshi
who teach and bestow powers on the initiate; other shamans only facilitate the process and prepare the initiate, ‘clean him out' so as to receive these spirit powers” (p. 458). Likewise, according to Luna (1984): “The spirits, who are sometimes called
doctorcitos
(little doctors) or
abuelos
(grandfathers), present themselves during the visions and during the dreams. They show how to diagnose the illness, what plants to use and how, the proper use of tobacco smoke, how to suck out the illness or restore the spirit to a patient, how the shamans defend themselves, what to eat, and, most important, they teach them
icaros,
magic songs or shamanic melodies which are the main tools of shamanic practices” (p. 142). Chaumeil (1993) talks of the extremely high-pitched sounds emitted by the spirits who communicate with Yagua shamans, more particularly of “strange melodies, both whistled and ‘talked,' with a strong feminine connotation” (p. 415). Regarding the learning of songs by imitation of the spirits, see also Weiss (1973, p. 44), Chaumeil (1983, pp. 66, 219), Baer (1992, p. 91), and Townsley (1993, p. 454). See Luna (1986, pp. 104ff.) regarding the different functions of the songs (call the spirits, communicate with them, influence hallucinations, cure). See also, more generally, Lamb (1971), Siskind (1973), Dobkin de Rios and Katz (1975), Chevalier (1982), Luna and Amaringo (1991), Luna (1992), and Hill (1992). Finally, Bellier (1986) writes that among the Mai Huna of the Peruvian Amazon, “it is inconceivable to take
yagé
[ayahuasca], to penetrate the primordial world
(miña)
and to remain silent” (p. 131).

16
Luna and Amaringo (1991, pp. 31, 43). Luna writes: “I asked Pablo how he conceives and executes his paintings. He told me that he concentrates until he sees an image in his mind—a landscape, or a recollection of one of his journeys with ayahuasca—complete, with all the details. He then projects this image upon the paper or canvas. ‘When this is done, the only thing I do is just add the colors.' When painting his visions he often sings or whistles some of the
icaros
he used during his time as
vegetalista
. Then the visions come again, as clear as if he were having the experience again. Once the image is fixed in his mind, he is able to work simultaneously with several paintings. He knows perfectly well where each design or color will go. In his drawings and paintings there are no corrections—in the five years since we met he has never thrown away one single sheet of paper. Pablo believes that he acquired his ability to visualize so clearly and his knowledge about colors partly from the ayahuasca brew” (p. 29).

17
Suren Erkman, personal communication, 1994.

18
Jon Christensen, personal communication, 1994.

19
See Crick (1981, pp. 51, 52-53, 70). He also writes: “Consider a paragraph written in English. This is made from a set of about thirty symbols (the letters and punctuation marks, ignoring capitals). A typical paragraph has about as many letters as a typical protein has amino acids. Thus, a similar calculation to the one above would show that the number of different letter-sequences is correspondingly vast. There is, in fact, a vanishingly small hope of even a billion monkeys, on a billion typewriters, ever typing correctly even one sonnet of Shakespeare's during the present lifetime of the universe” (p. 52).

1
Angelika Gerhart-Sayer, personal communication, 1995.

2
The quotes about the Ouroboros are from Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982, pp. 716, 868, 869), who also write that the dragon is “a celestial symbol, the power of life and of manifestation, it spits out the primordial waters of the Egg of the world, which makes it an image of the creating Verb.” Mundkur (1983) writes in his exhaustive study of the serpent cult: “It is doubtful, however, that any serpent can or has ever been known to attempt to bite or ‘swallow' its own tail” (p. 75).

3
According to Graves (1955), Typhon was “the largest monster ever born. From the thighs downward he was nothing but coiled serpents, and his arms which, when he spread them out, reached a hundred leagues in either direction, had countless serpents' heads instead of hands. His brutish ass-head touched the stars, his vast wings darkened the sun, fire flashed from his eyes, and flaming rocks hurtled from his mouth” (p. 134). Chuang-Tzu (1981) begins his book with this paragraph: “In the North Ocean there is a fish, its name is the K'un; the K'un's girth measures who knows how many thousand miles. It changes into a bird, its name is P'eng; the P'eng's back measures who knows how many thousand miles. When it puffs out its chest and flies off, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky. This bird when the seas are heaving travels to the South Ocean. (The South Ocean is the Lake of Heaven.) In the words of the Tall stories, ‘When the P'eng travels to the South Ocean, the wake it thrashes on the water is three thousand miles long, it mounts spiralling on the whirlwind ninety thousand miles high, and is gone six months before it is out of breath'” (p. 43).

4
Laureano Ancon is quoted in Gebhart-Sayer (1987, p. 25). Eliade (1949) writes: “A limitless number of legends and myths represent Serpents or Dragons who control the clouds, live in ponds and provide the world with water” (pp. 154-155). According to Mundkur (1983): “Among the Aborigines of Australia, the most widespread of mythic beliefs has to do with a gigantic Rainbow Serpent, a primordial creature associated largely with beneficent powers of fertility and water. He (sometimes she) is also the source of magical quartz crystals known as
kimba
from which the medicine man derives his own power” (p. 58). According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1982): “The Underworld and the oceans, the primordial water and the deep earth form one single
materia prima,
a primordial substance, which is that of the serpent. Spirit of the primary water, it is the spirit of all waters, those of below, those that run on the surface of the earth, or those of above” (p. 869). Davis (1986) writes about Damballah, the Great Serpent of Haitian myth: “On earth, it brought forth Creation, winding its way through the molten slopes to carve rivers, which like veins became the channels through which flowed the essence of all life. In the searing heat it forged metals, and rising again into the sky it cast lightning bolts to the earth that gave birth to the sacred stones. Then it lay along the path of the sun and partook of its nature. Within its layered skin, the Serpent retained the spring of eternal life, and from the zenith it let go to the waters that filled the rivers upon which the people would nurse. As the water struck the earth, the Rainbow arose, and the Serpent took her as his wife. Their love entwined them in a cosmic helix that arched across the heavens” (p. 177). Davis (1996) discusses the cosmological notions of Kogi Indians as reported by Reichel-Dolmatoff: “In the beginning, they explained, all was darkness and water. There was no land, no sun or moon, and nothing alive. The water was the Great Mother. She was the mind within nature, the fountain of all possibilities. She was life becoming, emptiness, pure thought. She took many forms. As a maiden she sat on a black stone at the bottom of the sea. As a serpent she encircled the world. She was the daughter of the Lord of Thunder, the Spider Woman whose web embraced the heavens. As Mother of Ice she dwelt in a black lagoon in the high Sierra; as Mother of Fire she dwells by every hearth. At the first dawning, the Great Mother began to spin her thoughts. In her serpent form she placed an egg into the void, and the egg became the universe” (p. 43)—see also Reichel-Dolmatoff (1987). Bayard (1987) writes regarding the serpent's symbolism: “Serpents, in their relationship with the depths of the primordial waters and of life, intertwine and establish the knot of life, which we find in the Osirian way in the druidic conception of the Nwyre” (p. 74).

5
Each human cell contains approximately 6 billion base pairs (= 6 × 10
⁹
, meaning 6 followed by 9 zeros). Each base pair is 3.3 angstroms long [1 angstrom = 10
^-10
meters (m)]. Multiplying these two figures, one obtains 1.98 m in length, which is generally rounded to 2 m. Moreover, the double helix is 20 angstroms wide (20 × 10
^-10
m). By dividing the length by the width, one obtains a billion—see Calladine and Drew (1992, pp. 3, 16-17). The average little finger is more or less 1 centimeter wide; Paris and Los Angeles are separated by a distance of approximately 9,100 kilometers. This comparison is supposed to give a notion easy to visualize rather than an exact equation; in fact, the DNA contained in a human cell is 10 percent longer, relatively speaking, than a centimeter-wide finger stretching from Paris to Los Angeles. Moreover, in the wide spectrum of electromagnetic waves, human eyes perceive only a very narrow band, from 7 × 10
^-7
m (red light) to 4 × 10
^-7
m (violet light). De Duve (1984) writes: “Even with a perfect instrument, no detail smaller than about half the wavelength of the light used can be perceived, which puts the absolute limit of resolution of a microscope utilizing visible light to approximately 0, 25 µm” (p. 9); that is, 2,500 angstroms.