Serpent worship

“ Nearly everywhere that Neolithic culture went, there went a disposition to associate the sun and the serpent in decoration and worship. This primitive serpent worship spread ultimately far beyond the regions where the snake is of serious practical importance in human life. ”

“ Serpent worship existed the world over. Traces of it are preserved in the literature of the Greeks and Romans, and it was practised even among the Hebrews, as the Books of Kings attest. Among certain African tribes it is still customary to keep huge serpents in temples, and priests are dedicated to their service. Powerful animals also, such as the bear, the lion and the tiger, were sometimes supposed to contain the ghosts of departed chieftains, and were revered accordingly. ”

“ Serpent worship has been shown by many writers to be a form of sex worship. It is often phallic, and we are told by Hargrave Jennings that the serpent possibly was added to the male and female symbols to represent desire. Thus, the Hindu women carried the lingam in procession between two serpents; and in the procession of Bacchus the Greeks carried in a casket the phallus, the egg, and a serpent. ”

“ It may be safely held that one must go back to a time long anterior to that of Æsculapius of the Greeks to acquire the true medical import of the serpent, which has been so closely associated with him. There is excellent reason for believing that we have in it a remnant of [63] that ancient and wonderfully wide-spread cultus, serpent-worship, which is still kept up by the Nagas [189] of India and others. ”

“ The supposed connection of the serpent and serpent-worship with the healing art has been handed down to us emblematically in the serpent symbol with which the caduceus of Æsculapius is always represented as surrounded. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They represented the World by a Circle, in the middle of which was a Serpent, representing the good Demon, or Genius of the World, by which ’tis animated, and is a Symbol of the Almighty Creator. Behold here the Blasphemy of Satan, in giving to God the Form of a Serpent, which he had borrow’d himself to make war against God in Paradise. They sometimes represented their Gods with the Bodies of Serpents, and honour’d those odious Animals with divine Worship, as Symbols of Apollo, of the Sun, and of Medicine, and were put into the Charge of Ceres and Proserpine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they have verified that no curious stranger has penetrated into the place, they commence the ceremony by the adoration of the serpent, by protestations of being faithful to its worship and entirely submissive to its commands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ophiolatreia.—An Account of the Rites and Mysteries connected with the Origin, Rise, and Development of Serpent Worship in various parts of the World, enriched with Interesting Traditions, and a full description of the celebrated Serpent Mounds and Temples, the whole forming an exposition of one of the phases of Phallic, or Sex Worship. ”

“ The former supposition seems the more reasonable, when we remember that the serpent and the serpent’s egg were held sacred by the Druids. Serpent-worship [Pg 195] prevailed in every nation of antiquity. It flourished in Greece and Rome, in Egypt and Chaldea, in Arabia and Central Asia; it extended throughout the Indian peninsula from Cape Comorin to Kashmir; it was practised in Ceylon and the islands of the eastern seas; in Mexico and Peru; throughout the whole of Africa. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 next thing that comes under Consideration is, the Worship of Serpents, which is observed thro’ all the Pagan Antiquity. The Devil, who, under the Shape of a Serpent, tempted our first Parents, has, with unwearied Application, labour’d to deify that Animal, as a Trophy of his first Victory over Mankind. The Conquest made by the old Serpent in Paradise, and the wonderful Cures made by the Shadow of a Serpent in the Wilderness, contributed very much towards making that hateful Creature so venerable in the Eyes of so many Nations. ”

“ The apparently mutually contradictory significations which are attached to the serpent in the myth and the worship must be traced back, not to opposite views held by different races, but to varying modes of understanding the myth, which might all emanate from the idea of the serpent. How often in the mythology of one and the same people we find the same object employed for the apperception of most different, or even opposite, things! ”

“ C. F. Keary, of the British Museum, presents some interesting facts and inferences on the origin of the worship. He maintains that the tree, mountain, and river were the three great primitive fetich-gods, and forcibly argues that a serpent was the symbol of the last, which, it may be noted, is nearly [72] always a life-giving power, an early and substantial type of the fontaine de jouvence. Without pretending to account for their original worship, he “takes it for certain that, at a very early time, rivers became through symbolism confounded with serpents.” ”

“ The worship of the serpent, originating in the same fear, similarly raised that animal into the region where poets could invest it with many profound and beautiful significances. But these more distinctly terrible deities are found in the shadowy border-land of mythology, from which we may look back into ages when the fear in which worship is born had not yet been separated into its elements of awe and admiration, nor the heaven of supreme forces divided into ranks of benevolent and [9] malevolent beings ”

“ It is no accident that the millions who know not the true God nevertheless, some way, learned to worship the Devil, and generally in the form of a serpent. The Egyptians had a serpent-god in Typhon; the Canaanites worshipped a snake in the days of Abraham ”

“ When the Lord of Evil, or Devil, symbolized by the serpent and represented by the constellation "Serpens" placed in conjunction with the Autumnal Equinox, meeting them on the confines of his dominion, and tempting the woman, and she the man, they ate of the forbidden fruit; thus, falling from their first estate, and committing the original sin, they involved the whole human race in the consequences of their disobedience. ”

“ There can be no doubt about the significance of the phallic worship of old times, in which the serpent was symbolic. Dreams where the serpent figures and folk tales telling of dragons who are symbolic of the lustful side of man both have a sexually symbolic meaning. ”

“ Animals are sometimes represented beside the divinities who were their anthropomorphic forms.99 Similarly the ram's-headed serpent points to animal worship. But its presence with three-headed and horned gods is enigmatic, though, as will be seen later, it may have been connected with a cult of the dead, while the serpent was a chthonian animal.100 These gods were gods of fertility and of the underworld of the dead. ”

“ Many reasons have been offered to explain why the serpent has been used to represent the male generative attribute. Some have called attention to its tenacity of life; others have spoken of its supposed mystic power of regeneration by casting its skin. ”

“ These are the powers that must have impressed the primitive races of the East with dread and terror, and wherever the serpent was found, there he seems to have been propitiated by man with prayers, supplications, and all forms of worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ God could have healed these men by telling them to look up even in any way. Why precisely the brazen serpent should be the instrument of their cure I do not know; the Bible does not tell me. I can only tell you a thought that has come to me about it. Perhaps it was for this reason: It would be surely the thought of every dying Hebrew who looked at that serpent and felt a new life pulsing through all his veins, and the pain of death vanishing away, that that serpent came from God, and was a very token and proof of the warm heart-love of God to him. ”

“ The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror,—by his annual renewals, to raise admiration,—by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to serve for a variety of symbols,—and by all, to be an object of religious observance: accordingly, no object of idolatry has been more universal. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Of all these venerable legends painted in colours or embalmed in verse, written in story or sculptured on stone, none are more remarkable than those where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Uniformity of tradition can alone satisfactorily explain uniformity of superstition, where local circumstances are so discordant.
“The serpent is the symbol which most generally enters into the mythology of the world. ”

“ Such of the people as were stung by the fiery serpents, were directed and commanded to look up to the brazen serpent. They who did so were healed. But if any resisted, they were sure to die. For no other means or physicians could relieve them. In like manner Christ Jesus our Saviour, once lifted up on the cross, is exhibited in the preaching of the gospel. Sinners, who are wounded and diseased by sin, are directed, exhorted, encouraged, and commanded to look up to him [John iii. 14, 15.] ”

“ Strengthened with the abundant grace of the Spirit, we shall no longer betray our nakedness in the words: ‘I have put off my garment, how shall I put it on?’ The serpent, by whose deceitful promise we were likened to brute beasts, did not enter into this paradise. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”