SNAKE

FROM BABYLON to Greece, India and China to Europe, the eternal symbol of the snake crossed every path in the myth, culture and history of man. As the Egyptian Ra arose from the depth of the primeval water of Nun, the snake was the first to acclaim him god. In the shape of the great serpent Ophion, he entwined the divine limbs of the Greek Great Goddess and feathered the earth. An ally of monsters as well as the gods, he was the inspiration of the Nassenes and is still a source of of ecstasy to the Holy Rollers of Kentucky.

The wisdom of the gods was the knowledge of the serpent; his sinuous form like the undulating waves of the sea which contain every secret and the mystery of life. Melampus, whose ears were licked by snakes, was the first mortal to be granted prophetic powers and to learn the language of the birds and insects. Garga, the father of Indian astronomy, owed his learning to a serpent. The god Quetzalcoatl, master of life, patron of the arts, and snake-bird, taught agriculture, metallurgy and gave the Aztecs maize and freedom from disease. Plutarch concluded that the serpent himself was a deity because 'it feeds upon its own body; even so all things spring from God, and will resolve into deity again'. The ouroboros, a symbol of the snake biting his own tail, was at the time adopted by the Gnostics, not only because it was a deity, but also because it represented the 'circle' or the 'wheel' of life, regeneration and eternity. The ability of the snake to shed its skin was confirmation of the belief in resurrection to the ancient sages and they thought that with its skin, it also shed old age.

As a symbol of evil the coiled serpent of Midgard encircled the earth in the mythologies of the Noresemen. A serpent entwined the Tree of Life in the Garden of Paradise and first whispered the words of corruption to Eve. The woman succumbed and, like Hecate and Artemis who carry the snake in their hands or the grotesque Medusa whose tresses are made of reptilian coils, the shadow of sin endangered the spirit. The snake or the Devil lurks in the darkness to challenge the power of good; it is a symbol of seduction and the inherent evil in all the things of the world. But the snake coiled also around the caduceus of Mercury and the staff of Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing. As good is balanced by evil, so must health be offset by sickness, and the brass serpent of Moses was the healer of the wound caused by the serpent.

The coiled or triumphant serpent had to be vanquished; so the body of a snake nailed to a cross is found in the sixteenth century book of Abraham le Juif. There it is taken to mean the conquest of the spirit over the temptation of the woman and is also an undeciphered symbol of the union of the male and female principle in alchemy. In the Iliad, an eagle carrying a wounded snake in its claws appears to the Greeks. The crucified serpent is again symbolic of the triumph of the patriarchal Aryans, who have subdued the feminine and matriarchal tradition of Asia.

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_brotherhoodsnake08.htm