Hi all,
first post here. I share something I was thinking the other day. I was traveling (literally), so I decided to listen to a youtube video which I had previously saved, namely Terence Mc Kenna's "Search for the original tree of Knowledge", McKenna_SearchingTheTreeOfKnowledge
I do not know you, but I always get in a good mood when I listen to him.
The image which accompanies the audio is a still image from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, the fall and expulsion from garden of Eden.
In the recording Terence talks quite a bit, it's over 10h.
He cites, among tens of other people, also Jeremy Narby, the author of "The cosmic serpent". In his book Jeremy comes out with the idea that the shamans in the amazonian basin can access the information stored in DNA when under the effect of Ayahuasca. He puts forward many examples which reinforce this hypothesis, as images of artwork, prehistoric cave graffiti and descriptions of creation myths from cultures all around the world and throughout time. All these examples hint at the double helix structure of DNA.
It was a moment and I realized it.
Terence, DMT, Narby, the Cosmic Serpent, Michelangelo's garden of Eden.
It all fits.
Take a look at the image in the Sixtine Chapel
Fall_and_Expulsion_from_Garden_of_Eden

Left: Adam and Eve. She accepts an apple from the Serpent.
Center: the Serpent, on the Tree of Knowledge.
Right: Adam and Eve, expelled from the garden of Eden by the Cherub pointing aggressively a sword.
Can we read the image in some other way?
At the center of everything is the Tree of Knowledge, which joins the bottom of the image with the top, Earth with Heaven: the Axis Mundi.
Around the tree, as emanating from it is the Serpent.
His body spirals around the tree.
Actually it's a double spiral.
At first we may think that the two spirals are its two legs, transformed in serpent tails.
But if we look closer it's really a double helix: one ends with the "Serpent", the other with the Cherub, with the last twirl passing on the other side of the trunk.
The double helix opens up on the top, as during DNA transcription. As in the DNA, each strand is complementary of the other, the sequence of bases is on one side the "mirror image" of that on the other. It's black and white, creation and destruction, male and female.
One strand/coil ends up with a feminine body: it's giving a fruit to Eve, the creative-feminine force in nature. Adam tries to grasp a fruit himself, but does not seem so successful, it's Eve the main actor. Note also that the tree is not an apple tree: it is a fig, symbol of prosperity in the old testament.
The other strand ends up with a more masculine entity: a Cherub. He's branding a sword against Adam. Adam is here the main (suffering) actor, masculine, symbolic of destruction, death. Eve is participating. Note here that the Cherub brands a sword, a symbol of destructive power and of masculinity.
So life and death, generation and destruction, are the two faces of this world, both generated by the demiurgic manifestation of the DNA, a code, a sequence of letters: the Word, which gets his power from the Knowledge, that in turns joins the Heaven with the Lower world, Divinity with Reality in one single unity.

Namaste,
Leonardo

Too bad the serpent's tail is a left-handed helix whereas DNA is a right-handed helix...I guess it's fun to interpret paintings like that but there isn't really much here to link a spiral to DNA, or in other words if the helix was for some arcane reason meant to symbolise DNA, it'd seem as a big mistake to get the double helix-ness of DNA right but be wrong about the chirality.

The chirality is wrong because...
...Michelangelo had an inverted chirality.
Contrary to most of the people he was lefthanded!
Clearly, this is one of the secret codes which he inserted into his work as signature.
Another one is the big M hidden in the figure (follow the rosa tones in the Adam+Eve, Serpent and Cherub figures).
Still another one is his self-portrait in the skin of St. Bartholomew
Surely there are thousand of other codes.

Anyhow, after your comment I hear in my mind once again the words of Terence McKenna: Either I'm nuts or I'm Newton.
Well, surely I'm not Newton.
But I would like to escape the nuts option by the door that you opened me, dear Infundibulum: it was just a funny interpretation, my way to present me to the Nexus community.
Thanks to all of you for existing and for giving such a valuable place for discussion and information sharing.
If for the past experiences I owe much to erowid and the shroomery, now it seems to be the turn of dmt-nexus. I appreciate the freedom which is given when a generous community offers a support and info which would be otherwise rare and scattered in our western culture.

Eppur si muove.

Ciao,
Leonardo