Serpent god

“ In the Vedic heavens the serpent is a magician expert in every kind of magic; in the kingdom of the serpents the young lost hero recovers his splendour, [Pg 406] wisdom, and victorious power. Hence the worship in India of the serpent, who is revered as a symbol of every species of learning. We have, on a previous occasion, found the horned or crested serpent who personifies, in the Ṛigvedas, fire or the god Agnis, and by this we must understand the crest or mane of the sun, which comes out of the darkness; thus the god Haris or Vishṇus lies upon a crested serpent or a many-headed serpent. ”

“ The traditions extant among all peoples seem to connect the introduction of the serpent into religious symbolism, with a time in the history of mankind when they first began to recognize the fact, that through the abuse of the reproductive functions, evil, or human wretchedness, had gained the ascendency over the higher forces. The Deity represented by a woman and a serpent involved the idea not alone of good, but of good and evil combined. ”

“ The serpent, which casts its skin and seems to renew its youth every year, has been used from remotest times as a living symbol of generative energy, and of immortality; indeed, in the most ancient Eastern languages, the name for the serpent also signifies life.** It has been usually worshipped as the Agathodoemon, the god of good fortune, life, and health; though in the Hebrew scriptures, and elsewhere, we meet with a good and a bad serpent—Oriental dualism. ”

“ Here we have the serpent omitted, which is the principal animal to be considered, for really the serpent is the owner of the stone that grows in its head. This idea is very general—that the carbuncle is to be found in a serpent's head. Pliny has this notion; indeed it is found everywhere. [15] The origin of this myth is that the great serpent is the heaven-god—and on the gnostic seals we have the Demiurge so represented as a crowned or nimbed serpent. In the head of this great heaven-god is the sun, the glorious stone that gives life and light and gladness and plenty. ”

“ You know that for thousands of ages men worshiped wild beasts as God. You know that for countless generations they knelt by coiled serpents, believing those serpents to be gods. Why did the real God secrete himself and allow his poor, ignorant, savage children to imagine that he was a beast, a serpent? Why did this God allow mothers to sacrifice their babes? ”

“ The Ophites preserved live serpents in their sacred chest, and looked upon them as the mediator between them and God. Manes, in the third century, taught serpent worship in Asia Minor, under the name of Christianity, promulgating that
"Christ was an incarnation of the Great Serpent, who glided over the cradle of the Virgin Mary, when she was asleep, at the age of a year and a half." ”

“ The divinity of the serpent is proved by the occurrence of a horned serpent with twelve Roman gods on a Gallo-Roman altar.711 In other cases a horned or ram's-headed serpent appears as the attribute of a god, and we have seen that the ram's-headed serpent may be a fusion of the serpent as a chthonian animal with the ram, sacrificed to the dead. ”

“ From the miraculous Cures done by the brazen Serpent. Alexander affected the Honour of being begot by a Serpent, ador’d as a God, by a Decree of the Priests.
WHAT Reason can be assigned for giving religious Worship to Serpents? I answer,
It is no easy Matter to find out the Original of Pagan Idolatry, having no authentick Records of those remote Times, therefore Conjectures, or nothing must content the honest Enquirer: Something may be offer’d, without going beyond our Depth. ”

“ She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the angel said to Bulukiya when describing the serpent, "'And were it not for fear of the Most Highest, this serpent would assuredly swallow up all that is above it, air and fire, and the Angel and his burden, without sensing it. When Allah created this serpent He said to it by inspiration, 'I will give thee somewhat to keep for me, so open thy mouth.' The serpent replied, 'Do whatso Thou wilt;' and opened his mouth and God placed Hell into his maw, saying, 'Keep it until the Day of Resurrection. ”

“ Whence comes a talking, lying serpent, to tempt the children of divine Love? He enters into the metaphor Serpent. only as evil. We have nothing in the animal kingdom which represents the species herein described, — a talking serpent, — and should rejoice that evil, by whatever figure presented, contradicts itself, and has neither origin nor support in God, Good; so that we may have faith to fight all its claims as worthless. ”

“ The priests of the temple of Isis had a silver image of a serpent so constructed as to enable a person in attendance to move its head without being observed by the supplicating votary.
“But Egyptian superstition was not contented with worshipping divinity through its emblem the serpent. The senseless idolater soon bowed before the symbol itself, and worshipped this reptile, the representative of man’s energy, as a god.” ”

“ The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. ”

“ The Serpent having ascrib’d its Reason, and Speech to the eating of that Fruit, the Woman might infer, If this Fruit did turn a Serpent into a rational Creature, why may it not transform a rational Creature into a God, and a Woman into a Goddess? ”

“ Christ Jesus our Lord is the seed of the woman. He bruises the serpent's head under our feet whenever we sincerely desire him to do so. The head of the serpent stands for sin and transgression of God's holy law in all its forms, with the evil loves which prompt us thereto. The heel which the serpent shall bruise is man's natural body, and the natural feelings incident to him from his connection with this body. ”

“ From all these circumstances it must follow as a manifest consequence, that the serpent before the sin of the fall was the most beautiful creature among the beasts which God had made, and most delightful to man ”

“ Now it was this lust, which, as a serpent, inspired us with craft, for it is not lust but labour and constant meditation, which, by God’s grace, gives perfect wisdom.
12. Now since the posterity of Adam are involved in the snares of the serpent, let us imitate herein the fraud of the serpent, and not run our head into danger, but be careful of its security beyond that of our other members, for 1 Cor. xi. 3. the head of every man is Christ. Let this remain safe, that the poison of the serpent may not harm us. For Eccles. ”

“ For God did not cause a real serpent to be taken, but the image of a serpent, in which the fiery serpent was stiffened, as it were, into dead brass, as a sign that the deadly poison of the fiery serpents was overcome in this brazen serpent. ”

“ Then the blessed man said unto him boldly, “May Christ, the Son of God, Who is about to destroy the great serpent, destroy thee also”; and immediately that he had uttered the word, the serpent burst asunder, and all his gall and blood came forth. And when the inhabitants of the country came and saw the serpent, they marvelled, and at the command of the blessed man, because of the stench, they heaped up the sand upon the serpent, but without the word of Abbâ Ammon they would not have approached the reptile, even though he was dead. ”

“ It is His blessed Word that reveals this, and that points to the Lord Jesus Christ,—God manifest in the flesh,—as healing the sin-poisoned wounds inflicted by "that old Serpent the Devil." The Seed of the woman has bruised the Serpent's head; and through the shedding of His blood is preached unto man the forgiveness of sins. ”

“ But the association of the serpent with Æsculapius, as a remnant of serpent-worship, can be explained without going to the Egyptian Tum, or any other foreign sun-god. One has but to turn to Apollo, to whom, as in the case of, perhaps, all sun-gods, the reptile was sacred. ”

“ During many of the ages of fire-worship, holy fire, although a material substance, seems to have been too subtle to clearly represent the god-idea, hence everywhere the worship of the serpent is found to be interwoven with it. In fact, so closely are serpent, fire, pillar, and other phallic faiths intermingled that it is impossible to separate them. ”

“ Hence, also, the Roman custom of keeping serpents in every household, and the serpent-worship connected with their god Aesculapius, to whose shrines, as well as to those of Adonis in Syria, childless women repaired that they might be quickened by a dead saint, a jinn, o by the god himself, in serpent form. ”

“ The serpent is a chthonian animal, and the god, called Smertullos, may be a Dispater.104 Gods who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier animal divinities, sometimes have the animals as symbols or attendants, or are regarded as hostile to them. In some cases Dispater {36} may have outgrown the serpent symbolism, the serpent being regarded locally as his foe; this assumes that the god with the club is the same as the god with the hammer. ”

“ The second is the worship made to the serpent-gods carved in their temples by the non-Aryan and low-caste races of India, by whom the serpent is regarded in the light of a benefactor and friend, and to whom it was at one time customary to offer annually a human victim to propitiate its deadly sting. ”

“ So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed, Hermione and Cadmus, or the god In Epidaurus; ”

“ Even so it was, when the serpent breathed the poison of his pride, the desire to be as God, into the hearts of our first parents, that they too fell from their high estate into all the wretchedness in which man is now sunk. In heaven and earth, pride, self-exaltation, is the gate and the birth, and the curse, of hell. ”

“ Inasmuch, moreover, as from the monster serpent, the cloud and the darkness, come forth flashes of lightning, thunder-bolts, sunbeams, tongues of fire, even serpents sometimes assume a divine nature in the Vedic hymns. ”

“ The close relationship if not absolute identity among the early races of man between Solar, Phallic and Serpent worship was most striking; so marked indeed as to indicate that they are all forms of a single worship. It is with the latter that we must for a little while concern ourselves. How prominent a place serpent worship plays in our own Old [Pg 52] Testament will be remarked as soon as one begins to reflect upon it. The part played by the serpent in the biblical myth concerning the origin of man is the first and most striking illustration. ”

“ This was done accordingly. "Now you are bound," said the prophet, addressing the serpent, "loose yourself if you can." "I cannot," said the serpent, "I am bound so fast, that I can scarcely move." "Then die," rejoined the prophet, "by a just sentence. You were always ungrateful to man, and you always will be. My lord, you are now free; shake the venom from your bosom, and go your way: do not repeat your folly. Remember that the serpent is only influenced by his natural propensities." ”

“ But by the side of divine serpents, essentially benign in character, protective, prophetic, linked with gods of health, life, and healing, we do find in all mythologies a gigantic serpent, who personifies a hostile and nocturnal power, a wicked principle, material darkness, and moral evil. ”

“ Where a solar worship has grown up, either the old conception of the beneficent serpent continues to exist alongside of the new views, without being understood or harmonised with these, or else the defeat of the Serpent by the victory of the Sun becomes a feature of the new religion, and the Serpent appears as a hostile figure. ”

“ The serpent, represented as walking, or formed in a manner to be able to walk, standing in front of, and near a female figure, is to me, one of the greatest representations I have ever seen upon paper, or a writing substance; and must go so far towards convincing the rational mind of the correctness and divine authority of the holy scriptures, and especially that part which has ever been assailed by the infidel community, as being a fiction, as to carry away, with one might sweep, the whole atheistical fabric, without leaving a vestige sufficient for a foundation stone. ”

“ The serpent was formerly queen of all creatures. She had a head like rubies, and eyes like emeralds. Her height was that of a camel, and the most beautiful colours adorned her skin, and her hair and face were those of a beautiful maiden. She was fragrant as musk and amber; her food was saffron; sweet hymns of praise were uttered by her melodious tongues; she slept by the waters of the heavenly river Kaulhar; she had been created a thousand years before man, and was Eve's favourite companion. ”