The Double Helix and the Caduceus

“The medical symbol of the Western world is two serpents coiled around a staff. It is older than medicine. Narby says it represents DNA.”

The caduceus, two serpents coiled around a staff, is the symbol of Western medicine. It is ancient: Hermes carries it in Homer. Some form of the twin-serpent image appears in Sumerian iconography from the third millennium BCE.

Jeremy Narby's argument: the double helix of DNA and the twin serpents of the caduceus are the same image, arriving through different pathways. The shamanic visions in which serpents appear are, in his hypothesis, perceptions of the molecular level of life, specifically of DNA, which emits biophotons in the visible range and which, at the scale at which these biophotons might be perceived, would appear as luminous helical structures.

Kekule's Ouroboros is the supporting anecdote: a Western chemist solved the ring structure of benzene after a serpent dream. The convergence of shamanic vision imagery and Western chemical discovery in the same serpent image is the data point Narby emphasizes most.

The hypothesis is speculative but not empty. It is interesting in the specific sense that it generates testable predictions. That is more than most speculation offers.

Sources

• Narby, The Cosmic Serpent (1998)