THE MYSTERIES OF THE SERPENT

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The serpent or snake is revered worldwide. It is shown over and over again as a potent deity and symbol. From Babylon to Greece, India, and China to Europe and all the Americas, the eternal symbol of the snake crossed every path in the myth, culture and history of man. ​It is associated with both negative and positive, feminine and masculine, duality and unity, devil and god. And also rebirth and transformation. 

The wisdom of the gods was the knowledge of the serpent; his sinuous form was 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. For the Hindus, the serpent or naga is considered nature’s spirit. It is the protector of springs, wells and rivers. Serpents bring rain and thus fertility. But, they can also bring floods and drought. The Hindus also believe that how the naga treats humanity is representative of how we treat the snake and its environment. Serpents also carry the elixir of life and immortality. 

The god Quetzalcoatl, master of life, patron of the arts, and snake-bird, taught agriculture, and metallurgy and gave the Aztecs maize and freedom from disease. Associated with the winds of change, duality, and unity, the prehispanic Cultures erected temples to rever the god Quetzalcoatl.  

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 the Egyptian Ra arose from the depth of the primeval water of Nun, the snake was the first to acclaim him a god. In the shape of the great serpent Ophion, he entwined the divine limbs of the Greek Great Goddess and feathered the earth. 

As a symbol of evil, the coiled serpent of Midgard encircled the earth in the mythologies of the Norsemen. 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. But an eagle eating a serpent also signaled to the Aztecs that they had found the mythical place of Aztlan where they would develop their empire. 

This creature has the ability to shed its old skin. The casting off of this skin metaphorically represents the release of old ways of thinking that don't work with us anymore. To many cultures, the power of the serpent is a representation of ​vital energy.​ This energy remains coiled within at the base of our spine in the sacrum. There it sits until it's ready to move. The movement of the ​kundalini ​is the final joining of the ​masculine and the feminine​ through the heart.

The Maya believed the earth would rise in spiritual consciousness in 2012. Since humans are part of the earth they could also rise. The chakras of the earth are mirrored by the seven chakras in our bodies. It's the rising upward of this vital energy that was predicted by the Mayans. This energy rises because our level of consciousness and understanding has risen, causing the movement of the Kundalini upward through the seven different chakras.