Snake worshippers
Serpent Archetypes
(excerpts taken from Cirlots Book of Symbols)
The eternal cycle of death and rebirth is represented symbolically in many parts of the world as a snake biting its own tail.
This is represented in graphic form by the Gnostic symbol of Ouroboros, one of the most universal of symbols.
Half of this mythic creature is dark and other half light (like the Chinese yin and yang symbol) illustrating the active and the
passive, the creative and destructive ambivalences of the serpent. This connection of the snake with the wheel of death and
rebirth is understood not only as a way of nature but also of the soul. The Hindu God Vishnu is often portrayed seated
on a serpent implying the sacred wheel of life. The serpent refers to the primordial and the most primitive strata of life.
In the evolutionary process reptiles occupied the first place and mythologically the coiled snake represents the undifferentiated
condition of creation. The snake can connecting worlds and are taken to be a line to eternity.
It symbolizes a powerful psychic energy endowed with magnetic force and because it sheds its skin it symbolizes resurrection.
In India, cults of the spirit of the snake are connected with the symbolism of the sea and are seen as the guardians
of the springs of life. In Indian religious art snakes are depicted coiled and intertwined and often a cobra is seen
with its outstretched hood protecting the head of a savior or divinity. Serpents are worshipped by Hindus, Buddhists
and Jains who consider the snake to be an auspicious and determining life force. A legendary serpent wound itself
around Buddha wound 7 times and finding it could not crush him bowed before him. The serpent was also venerated
in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The serpent was worshipped in the sleep healing temples of Aesclepius and
represented wrapped and entangled around the god's staff. In ancient Greece there were over 100 Asklepia.
These were ritual, ambient temples built to enhance the creative and healing powers of dreams.
These temples were designed to effect healing through curative and coincidental dreaming and their existence gave
emphasis to both the somatic and psychic, and body and soul, components of health.
This image of two intertwined serpents around a rod is known as the caduceus as is still used as a symbol for healing.
It was also a symbol for Hippocrates and Mercury.These intertwining snakes foreshadow what we now know of the double
helix structure of DNA,the coded chemistry of life. Esoterically the two serpents represent the process of involution
and evolution, spirit descending into matter and rising again enlightened into spirit. The serpent therefore the symbol of wisdom
and thus became associated in Christianity with the invitation to eat of the tree of knowledge.
Although orthodox Christianity sees this as the fall from grace, it can be seen esoterically as liberation
from the unconscious and the dawn of self consciousness.
There is a connection between the snake and the feminine principle. The Greek Artemis, Persephone, Hecate.
The sacred python at the Delphic Oracle spoke to Pythia to give prophecy. The Hebraic garden of Eden is adapted
from the Sumerian garden of immortality. In the Sumerian version mother earth is married to the serpent and
there is no jealous god. All men and women are free to enter the garden and seek immortality via enlightenment.
The spaces and loops formed by the snakes also mirror the seven main spinal chakras and the serpent is also
used to represent the power of Kundalini in yoga. Kundalini is represented as a snake coiled up upon itself in the
form of ring in the subtle anatomy of the lowest chakra of the spinal column. As a result of exercises directed
towards spiritualisation in Hatha Yoga, the snake uncoils through the chakras until it reaches the area of the
forehead corresponding to the third eye. The Egyptian Ureaeus is also a visible expression of this concept of
progressive elevation. The progress through the chakras may be regarded analogously to the sacred priestly ritual
of climbing up the steps of Mayan pyramids.
When coiled, the passive circular snake takes on its cosmic origins and implies completeness. Because of its undulating and sinuous movement and the fact it can coil and strangle and that its venom can both kill and cure the serpent has always been connected to the mystery, the control andthe sublimation of forces needed for the development of wisdom and knowledge. For Carl Jung the serpent was an image of the spinal cord and marrow and the sudden unexpected attack of the snake is analogous of the way
that the unconscious can expresses its terrible incursions. On psychotherapy he equated the emergent symbolic
archetype in dreams as a symptom of anguish stirring in the unconscious and a reactivation of its destructive and
creative potential. According to the legend of the Serpent of Midgard in Norse mythology, the deluge will commence
when the serpent awakens to destroy the universe.
