There
is scarcely a spot in the world in which the
serpent has not received the prayers and
praises of men. At first an emblem of the
sun's light and power, it is worshipped in
lands where the sun is not recognized as a
Deity, for instance on the coasts of Guinea
where the negroes curse him every morning as
he rises, because he scorches them at noon.
The winged serpent was a symbol of the Gods
of Egypt, Phoenicia, China, Persia, and
Hindustan. The Tartar princes still carry
the image of a serpent upon a spear as their
military standard. Almost all the Runic
inscriptions found upon tombs are engraved
upon the sculptured forms of serpents. In
the temple of the Bona Dea, serpents were
tamed and consecrated. In the mysteries of
Bacchus, women used to carry serpents in
their hands and twined around their brows,
and with horrible screams cry, Eva! Eva! In
the great temple of Mexico, the captives
taken in war and sacrificed to the sun, had
wooden collars in the shape of a serpent put
round their necks. And water-snakes are to
this day held sacred by the natives of the
Friendly Isles. It was not only worshipped
as a symbol of light, of wisdom and of
health, personified under the name of God,
but also as an organ of divination - W.
Winwood Reade (The Veil of Isis)
Serapis
and Jesus were both represented by a great
serpent – E. Valentia Straiton (The
Celestial Ship of the North)
The worship of the
serpent was therefore universal - George
Smith (Gentile Nations)
...the serpent was the
most ancient of the heathen gods - J. B.
Deane (Worship of the Serpent)
A symbol of sacred
knowledge in antiquity was a tree, ever
guarded by a serpent, the serpent or dragon
of wisdom. The serpent of Hercules
was said to guard the golden apples that
hung from the pole, the Tree of Life, in the
midst of the garden of Hesperides. The
serpent that guarded the golden fruit...and
the serpent of the Garden of Eden...are the
same – E. Valentia Straiton (The
Celestial Ship of the North)
...the nuptial tree,
round which coils the serpent, is connected
with time and with life as a necessary
condition; and with knowledge – the
knowledge of a scientific priesthood,
inheriting records and traditions hoary,
perhaps, with the snows of a glacial epoch
– Kennersley Lewis
...the Egyptians made use
of an instrument called the ur-heka, or
great magical power. It is sometimes
a sinuous, serpent-like rod without the
serpent’s head. At others it has the head of
the serpent on it, united with the head of a
ram - Gerald Massey (Ancient Egypt:
Light of the World)
...the Uraeus...is
frequently represented as guarding the
sacred cypress groves of the Amenti (Sheol)
by breathing out fire to destroy any
invading or unjustified soul. Hence
the origin of the Grecian myth of the
Hesperides garden and the fire-breathing
dragons which guarded it - William
Ricketts Cooper (The Serpent Myths of
Ancient Egypt)
The asp was sacred to
Kneph. The most poisonous winged
serpent in the land was made the
personification of the creator and ruling
spirit! In fact...its figure was in
consequence fixed to the headdress of
Egyptian kings; and a prince, on his
accession to the throne, was entitled to
wear this distinctive badge of royalty...Mr.
Champollion has satisfactorily accounted for
the name Uraeus, given to the snake, by,
suggesting that the word derives its
origin...from Ouro, in Coptic "a king"...Of
Ptah it may be necessary to observe, that he
was regarded as the Lord of Truth, and it is
said to have been produced in the shape of
an egg from the mouth of Kneph, and
represented the creative power of Deity
- George Smith (The Gentile Nations,
1853)
The accepted theory that
the serpent is evil cannot be substantiated.
It has long been viewed as the emblem
of immortality. It is the symbol of
reincarnation, or metempsychosis, because it
annually sheds its skin...It was also
believed that snakes swallowed themselves,
and this resulted in their being considered
emblematic of the Supreme Creator, who
periodically reabsorbed His universe back
into Himself. In "Isis Unveiled," H. P.
Blavatsky makes this significant statement
concerning the origin of serpent worship:
"Before our globe had become egg-shaped or
round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or
fire-mist, moving and writhing like a
serpent. This, say the explanations, was the
Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its
breath had incubated cosmic matter and made
it assume the annular shape of a serpent
with its tail in its month--emblem of
eternity in its spiritual and of our world
in its physical sense" - Manly Palmer
Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)
The figure of Eve is
based upon much older mythology and may be
traced back to the ancient Mother Goddess or
World Mother and the serpent cults of the
pre-Biblical period. Closer
examination of the name ‘Eve’ revealed her
serpent origins, for the Hebrew for Eve is
havvah, meaning ‘mother of all things,’ but
also ‘serpent.’ Likewise, the Arabic words
for ‘snake,’ ‘life,’ and ‘teaching,’ are
closely related to the word or name “Eve’
– Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn (The
Serpent Grail)
The priests of the
Mysteries were symbolized as a serpent,
sometimes called Hydra...The Serpent Kings
reigned over the earth. It was these
Serpent Kings who founded the Mystery
Schools which later
appeared as the Egyptian and Brahmin
Mysteries...The serpent was their
symbol...They were the true Sons of Light,
and from them have descended a long line of
adepts and initiates - Manly Palmer Hall
The Uraeus is a
serpent issuing forth from the forehead of
many gods being also an ornament of the
royal crowns...The amulet of the serpent
head is the symbol of the goddess Isis who
is often represented by a serpent –
Karel Weinfurter (Man’s Highest Purpose)
A
drawing, brought by Colonel Coombs, from a
sculptured column in a cave-temple in the
South of India, represents the first pair at
the foot of an ambrosial tree, and a serpent
entwined among the heavily laden boughs,
presenting to them some of the fruit from
his mouth - John G. Jackson (Pagan
Origins of the Christ Myth)
One striking and
important specimen of early type in the
British Museum collection has two figures
sitting one on each side of a tree, holding
out their hands to the fruit, while at the
back one (the woman) is etched a
serpent...thus it is evident that a form of
the "Fall," similar to that in Genesis, was
known in early times in Babylonia - John
G. Jackson
Jane Ellen Harrison
demonstrated over half a century ago that in
the field festivals and mystery cults of
Greece numerous vestiges survived of a
pre-Homeric mythology in which the place of
honor was held, not by the male gods of the
sunny Olympic pantheon, but by a goddess,
darkly ominous, who might appear as one,
two, three, or many and was the mother of
both the living and the dead. Her
consort was typically in serpent form -
Joseph Campbell (Occidental Mythology)
In Eve’s scene at the
tree…nothing is said to indicate that the
serpent who appeared and spoke to her was a
deity in his own right, who had been revered
in the Levant for at least seven thousand
years before the composition of the Book of
Genesis - Joseph Campbell (Occidental
Mythology)
...in the Near East the
primordial serpent is described as feminine,
and we may suspect that in this region the
myth did indeed become a metaphor for the
conquest of matriarchy. But its
universality suggests that there is yet a
deeper, psycho-spiritual meaning behind it
- Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson (Mythic
Astrology)
Delphi was also known
as Pytho, because before the coming of
Apollo the site was haunted by a monstrous
serpent, or dragon, the Python - David
Fideler (Jesus Christ, Sun of God)
The serpent energy is
definitely one of the most primeval
archetypes and in all ancient cultures was
intimately connected with the mysteries of
the divine female - Crompton
Then the Female
Spiritual Principle came in the Snake
Instructor, and it taught them
saying..."with death you shall not die"
- (The Hypostasis of the Archon)
As long
as humanity kept records of its existence,
serpents were used as emblems of the
intelligence of God. In ancient times and as
widespread and diverse as Australia, China,
Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Babylonia,
Sumeria, Egypt, India, and Central America,
serpents were feared and worshipped as gods
for thousands of years...To this day,
serpents or dragons signify divine heritage
and royalty in many Asian countries, while
in the West the serpent represents wisdom
and knowledge…Among nearly all ancient
peoples the serpent was accepted as the
ultimate symbol of wisdom or salvation -
Tony Bushby (Secret in the Bible)
It may seem extraordinary
that the worship of the serpent should ever
have been introduced into the world, and it
must appear still more remarkable that it
should almost universally have prevailed.
As mankind are said to have been
ruined through the influence of this being,
we could little expect that it would, of all
other objects, have been adopted as the most
sacred and salutary symbol, and rendered the
chief object of adoration. Yet so we find it
to have been, for in most of the ancient
rites there is some allusion to it -
(From the Anonymous Ophiolatreia)
The Hebrews follow the
Babylonians in confusing the Uraeus Serpent
with the serpent of death - Gerald
Massey (Ancient Egypt: Light of the World)
…it was the Serpent of
Wisdom that first offered the fruit of the
Tree of Knowledge for the Enlightenment of
Mankind; whether this be Egyptian, Akkadian,
or Gnostic, it is the Good Serpent.
And as Guardian of the Tree set in Heaven it
was the Good Serpent, or intelligent Dragon,
as keeper of the treasures of Astral
knowledge. It was the later Theology,
Persian and Hebrew, that gave the character
of the Evil One to the Serpent of Wisdom,
and perverted the original meaning, both of
the temptation and the Tempter who protected
the Tree; which has been supplemented by the
theology of the Vitriol-throwers who have
scarified and blasted the face of nature on
earth, and defiled and degraded the starry
Intelligencers in heaven – Gerald Massey
(The Hebrew and Other Creations
Fundamentally Explained)
The
curse in Genesis on the woman, that she
should be at enmity with the serpent, is
obviously misplaced: it must refer to the
ancient rivalry decreed between the sacred
king Adam and the Serpent for the favors of
the Goddess - Robert Graves (The
White Goddess)
The Uraeus is a
serpent issuing forth from the forehead of
many gods being also an ornament of the
royal crowns...The amulet of the serpent
head is the symbol of the goddess Isis who
is often represented by a serpent -
Karel Weinfurter (Man's Highest Purpose)
And I shall destroy
everything I created. The earth will
again appear as primordial ocean…I am
everything that remains…after I have turned
myself back into a snake that no man knows
- Hermann Kees (Der Gotterglaube im
alten Aegypten)
The Pope, though he
permits our typifying Jesus as a fish, as
the sun, as bread, as the vine, as a
shepherd, as a rock, as a conquering hero,
even as a winged serpent, yet, threatens us
with hell fire if we ever dare to celebrate
him in terms of the venerable gods whom he
has superseded and from whose ritual every
one of these symbols has been derived -
Robert Graves
The curse in Genesis
on the woman, that she should be at enmity
with the serpent, is obviously misplaced: it
must refer to the ancient rivalry decreed
between the sacred king Adam and the Serpent
for the favors of the Goddess - Robert
Graves
...the serpent is
uraeus is simply the phonetic of the letter
g - William Ricketts Cooper (The
Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt)
The Bible uses many
Hebrew words to describe the snake: akshub
means a coiled serpent, epheh is a hissing,
probably venomous snake, Livyathin
(Leviathan) is the sea serpent, nachash, a
hissing serpent, pethen, a twisting snake,
probably the asp, seraph, the burning
serpent, shephiyphon, a snapping serpent,
the adder, tsepha or tsiphoniy is the
toungue thrusting snake. We might
compare the Greek words for snake: aspis,
drakon, echnida. Herpeton from whence we
get the classical name for the study of
serpents, herpetology, and ophis which gave
a name to an early Christian sect - R.
T. Mason (The Divine Serpent in Myth and
Legend)
…The outer darkness is
a great serpent, the tail of which is in his
mouth, and it is outside the whole world,
and surroundeth the whole world: in it there
are many places of punishment, and it
containeth twelve halls – Egyptian
Passage (from E. A. Wallis Budge’s Gods
of the Egyptians, Vol. 1)
