animal

Serpent

Beings · Nature

A snake. Healing, danger, wind, and rebirth have all been attached to it; those attachments do not cancel one another, and they are not one symbol.

Also known as snake

Hellenic religion

  • Serpent is associated with Knowledge.

    Pausanias describes Asklepieia where the god of healing was approached; the serpent is part of that cultic furniture. Healing here is Greek temple medicine, not a global serpent-essence.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Serpent is associated with Dream incubation.

    At Epidaurus, as Pausanias tells it, the sick slept in the sanctuary of Asklepios. The serpent belongs to that Asklepian house, not to every snake.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Serpent is associated with Delphi.

    Pausanias records the story of a serpent at Delphi slain so that the oracle could be established. The Python is a local opponent, not Quetzalcoatl.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · sourced · documented

  • Serpent is associated with Healing.

    Greek Asklepian cult pairs the serpent with a healing god. Keep this pairing separate from Apep’s hostility and from the Nahua feathered serpent.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Asklepios is associated with Serpent.

    The serpent belongs to Asklepian cult as Pausanias and later images show it. It is not Apep and not Quetzalcoatl.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Healing is associated with Serpent.

    Asklepian healing keeps a serpent in the sanctuary. Healing and the snake meet there as Greek temple medicine, not as a global serpent-essence.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · partially sourced · documented

  • Apollo is associated with Serpent.

    Pausanias records a serpent at Delphi slain so the oracle could be established. Apollo’s house is founded against a local snake, not Asklepios’s tame one.

    from Pausanias · Description of Greece, c. 150–180 CE

    associated with · sourced · documented

Egyptian religion

  • Serpent is associated with Death.

    Egyptian tradition treats Apep as a serpent of chaos opposed to the sun’s order. Danger here is cosmic opposition, not Asklepian healing and not a feathered serpent of wind.

    from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

    associated with · partially sourced · culturally specific

  • Serpent is opposed to Sun.

    Apep’s opposition is to the sun’s night journey. Keep this hostility separate from the Nahua feathered serpent, which is not an enemy of the sun in the same plot.

    from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

    opposed to · partially sourced · culturally specific

  • Serpent is opposed to Ra.

    Apep’s opposition is to the sun’s order. Danger here is an Egyptian night-road hostility, not Asklepian medicine.

    from Raymond O. Faulkner (translation) · Book of the Dead, New Kingdom spells; Faulkner trans. 1972

    opposed to · partially sourced · culturally specific

Alchemy

  • Serpent is associated with Rebirth.

    Later alchemy uses the circling serpent (ouroboros) as a picture of a work that returns on itself. That is a laboratory emblem, not Egyptian Apep and not Asklepios.

    from Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet), medieval Latin tradition (Arabic antecedents)

    associated with · interpretive · modern interpretation

  • Serpent is associated with Transformation.

    Alchemical writing treats matter as something that can be cooked into another state. The serpent-circle is one picture of that claim, not a biological fact about snakes.

    associated with · interpretive · culturally specific

  • Serpent is associated with Water.

    Snakes swim and live at wells and rivers in many local stories. The association is ecological and folkloric, not a single sacred water-serpent.

    associated with · interpretive · culturally specific

Nahua tradition

European folklore

  • European dragon is historically related to Serpent.

    European dragons inherit older serpent-combat stories. A wyrm is not automatically a Chinese lóng and not Quetzalcoatl.

    historically related to · interpretive · culturally specific

sources