How can we blame the serpent?

Melissa Mendino

The story of Eve and the Serpent is an ancient one
How a creature of the earth tricked the sinless
But what right has that given us to believe
in the “wrongness” of the snake?
We take a stranded form within us
To reveal truths of life
Without understanding the
Implications of its shape
How can we tell the difference between
Us and them?
Not even just them, the serpents,
Them: the others living around us.
The earth does not only provide for “us”
But for the plants, the birds, the rodents, the animals.
So, rethink.
How can we blame the serpent?
The serpent that mirrors a fact of life,
The serpent that lives on the same earth as us.
Time is now, to reconsider our perspective
Answers around us, provided by the earth
Need to be known.
So open your eyes and see.
Know.

Inspiration

In The Cosmic Serpent [Chapter 8], Jeremy Narby mentions his first ayahuasca experience, and one part stuck out to me. He wrote:

I also felt very clearly that the speed and coherence of certain sequences of images could not have come from the chaotic storage room of my memory. For example, I saw in a dizzying visual parade the superimposing of the veins of a human hand on those of a green leaf. The message was crystal clear: we are made of the same fabric as the vegetal world.

I thought this was a very interesting way of reminding us that living things may not be completely the same, but [that] we all have something in common: DNA. We have this idea of being smarter and knowing more than other living things that some don’t always acknowledge their importance. The DNA in all of us connects us in a way we won’t really understand, but it exists.