The Cosmic Serpent
DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Jeremy Narby's Cosmic Serpent is a densely academic book that is 50% footnotes. This not light reading, but on the other hand it is essential reading. Narby's premise is that hallucinogenic drugs used by shaman in the Western Amazon actually give them access to medicinal information through knowledg......more

I... have no idea what I just read. I'm not sure if this is one of those cases of, "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail," or something entirely different, but either this guy is really onto something here, or he's a complete and utter banana sandwich. For the first half of the book, I......more

For anyone interested in DNA, shamanism and the origins of life and knowledge, this book is a must-read. The author attempts to establish connections between modern science's biomolecular understanding of DNA and the knowledge imparted on shaman by their ayahuasca-induced hallucinations. Intrigued?......more

This is the story of an excellent thought experiment, and for this reason I have learned much. However, as a geneticist researcher myself, I have to say that Narby is an excellent anthropologist but a dirt poor biologist. His hypothesis is falsifiable and is therefore "scientific" but it is a poor h......more

Look, the first time I took a hallucinogen, I too saw all of the natural world break apart and twist together and reveal to me its interlinked workings, its fundamental connectedness to me and every other living and non-living entity in the universe entire, I too saw into the deeper reality of the u......more