Ace of Wands/Six of Swords reversed. Today I will experience the spark that starts the fire! This will not be about healing and moving on, oh no! It will be about rehashing ideas, turning them around and examining them from different directions, until the answer is found.

My Thoth card is the Nine of Swords reversed. “Cruelty” tells of the agony of the mind, the assumption of the worst outcome that is imposed on oneself in the dead of night. It is reversed, so I will be more likely to allow my worries to serve as fuel for viable solutions.

My Legacy card is the Six of Coins reversed. The Legacy Tarot shows an image that focuses more on charity and balance than some other decks. It also tells us that charity cannot be offered with such freedom that those receiving the gifts learn to live off of that charity. I may not be seeing clearly today that I need to work for my gifts; once I realize this, balance will return and the gifts will flow.

What an amazing day! I had another glimpse of the Machinery of the Universe this evening, and I am still experiencing echoes and aftershocks of awe.

When I gave Pat from dance class her Reiki II attunement on Tuesday night, just as I finished the attunement she turned to me and said she had just been told that she had a book I needed to read. Pat went up to her bedroom, and came back down with a book called The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, by Jeremy Narby. What a fascinating book! I devoured it, finishing it last night even though I was not home on Wednesday or Thursday evenings.

I was not surprised when Archangel Uriel appeared to me shortly before I left for North Jersey this evening; His appearance after Pat was told through her Reiki II atunement that I needed to read this book was validation that there was a very important message for me within the book’s content. The fact that He just stood there, looking at me with those golden eyes, told me that he was getting impatient because I was not seeing what I needed to see. The process took a while, but I was successful in the end.

Narby is an anthropologist, and he wrote this book after spending some time with some Peruvian indigenous peoples, studying their shamans and their use of vision-inducing compounds in order to learn from “plant-teachers” (yes, they claim that they learn how to use plants to heal, from the actual plants). The people are called the Ashaninca, and the shamans use a drink called ayahuasca that is a natural hallucinogenic in order to induce visions. The visions that the shamans experience bring them knowledge regarding the use of plants for healing that is way more sophisticated than would be expected, considering that this information has been a part of their culture for hundreds of years and was not acquired through the use of technology.

Two basic concepts struck me hard enough to shake me up. First, within his descriptions and explanations of the visions experienced through the consumption of ayahuasca, Narby describes in very simple terms how we see. When we look at a particular object, the receptors in our eyes see the colors and shapes and light and dark that is the object we are looking at. The eyes then transform the light and dark, colors and shapes into electronic form, which electronic data is then sent via the nerves into the brain. The brain then transforms that electronic data back into light and dark, colors and shapes. In other words, when we are seeing, it is our eyes only that are actually seeing. Our brains, which are recognizing and understanding what we are seeing, are not actually seeing at all; our brains are interpreting electronic data (not visual data) that is sent to them from the eyes.

Visions happen when we “see” without our physical eyes; in other words, our brains are receiving and interpreting data regarding things or events that are seen, but these things or events are not in the physical world, so our physical eyes are not seeing them at all. The brain is indeed “seeing,” but what it is seeing is existing elsewhere than in the physical realms!!

Wwwhhoooah! Isn’t that what Uriel was trying to pound into my head during those particularly uncomfortable meditations? **face palm** Yes, that is what He was saying; even after He poked my eyes out I still was not completely getting this concept. As usual, I needed to back up the information I received from Uriel with more information from an objective source. There it was! My validation.

I loaded up the car and began driving north, happy that I had experienced this moment, but vaguely sensing that I had not yet teased everything I needed to know out of this book. As I drove, enjoying the salt marshes and Pine Barrens in the late afternoon and then the twilight of the early Winter evening, I thought more about Narby’s experiences with the shamans of the Amazon.

Narby was convinced that the shamans were actually learning from the plants through their ayahuasca-induced hallucinations. He found paintings created by shamans depicting the things they saw while journeying, and one common element found was the image of twining snakes. Yes, to make a long story very short, the Amazonian shamans were seeing the double helix of DNA in their visions, along with other shamans of many different cultures throughout the world. They were drinking concoctions made from plant extracts to induce hallucinations, and within their hallucinations they were seeing double helixes, ladders and chromosomes. They were even seeing what is called the “dance of the chromosomes,” which happens as a cell divides!

DNA . . . as I drove toward home, I thought about what I had learned about DNA in this book. DNA is incredibly complex, and stores a huge amount of information in a very tiny place. Within one single cell of my body is a double helix of DNA which when stretched out into a single strand is only about ten atoms across, but is two yards long!!! Two yards!!!! All crammed into one cell!!!!

The average human being is made of approximately 100 thousand billion cells. Do you know how much DNA is in those cells? If put end to end, enough to stretch . . . are you sitting down? 125 billion, yes, BILLION, miles, yes, MILES! 125 billion miles of DNA is found in my body alone. How is that for an instruction book? Makes the one that came with my cell phone look like a child’s picture book.

DNA is the one thing that is common to all life. DNA is found in a smear of pond scum, and it is found in Stephen Hawkings; it is the “instruction booklet” for the assembly of all life, LOL, some assembly required, and it replicates itself so that life can continue. I pondered all of this, turning it this way and that in my mind as I tried to figure out the puzzle that was locking me out of the “aha!” moment that I sensed with every fiber of my being awaited me.

It took exactly 113.9 miles for me to finally decode the message. My ponderings about life brought me to the fact that Christians are told that human beings are made in the image of God. This does not make sense to me; what makes humans so special? What is it about humans that makes them closer to Deity than every other life form on our world? Shouldn’t we be searching for ways that we are equal to other life forms instead of ways that we are above them? After all, we depend on each other to exist. What if it is not humans that are created in the image of Deity; what if it is DNA that is created in Deity’s image? No . . . wait; that is not quite the right question. What if the information contained in DNA is created in the image of Deity?

My brain then proceeded to explode. At mile marker 113.9 on the Parkway. Holy chit, that is it!! As a Wiccan, I believe that Deity is imminent, that Goddess is in everything; I accept that and believe that but I could not before today explain that in a way that a scientist ~and~ a metaphysicist could accept. I looked around at the trees and grass and the sky, I watched a pair of gulls fly overhead on their way to their nighttime roost; all of this, every bit of it, every bit of life that exists above and on and within our world is here because of the specific instructions within its DNA. It is DNA that laces us all together, that connects the pond scum to Stephen Hawkings, and the information contained in that DNA is actually the image of The Creatress, the Goddess. The information within our DNA is what the Goddess is and looks like (if “look” is the correct word).

I took several deep, calming breaths, and as I drove I looked around again at the lacy branches of the leafless trees up against the cold Winter night sky, and I saw the God, the Sacred Masculine, within the cycles that are the manifestation of those instructions that are the Goddess. All of life exists and happens through the cycles of the God; when followed, those DNA instruction books that are an image of the Goddess create life that manifests according to the cycles of the God.

**facepalm** It was there all the time. I just didn’t see it. Every bit of life, no matter how evolved or no matter how simple, is sacred because every bit of life contains DNA, which is actually a picture, if you will, of the Goddess. Now, does this mean that I can’t eat ever again? No, it does not. For the Sacred Masculine, which is also necessary for life, tells me that in order for life to continue indefinitely, the living must be recycled, and this recycling happens through consumption. Yes, we all make choices concerning our food according to our personal beliefs, but eating must happen for life to happen. And so, the cycles of birth, life, death, rest and rebirth that are the God, and that are the manifestation of life, are also valid.

Wow, what a night!

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