STICKS & STONES
KISSED BY THE SERPENT
by
Morgause Fontleve
The first nagas were the original human adepts, who were later symbolized by the terms serpents and dragons. These 'originals' -- to this day called 'the Dragons of Wisdom' in China -- The name became universal and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol".
(The Secret Doctrine, 2:210 – H.P. Blavatsky, 1888)
In our society the Snake has become synonymous with evil and betrayal. An angry over-vigilant person who exercises his or her power and yields unrestrained control is called a dragon. If something is suspicious, there’s a snake in the grass. If one speaks untruths one speaks with a forked tongue. A person who is a habitual betrayer is called a viper. One gets so angry “one can catch snakes”. Was it always so? And should it be so? Why is it so many Pagans are fascinated by dragons and snakes and have them tattooed on their bodies? Have we even begun to understand the mystery of this symbol we subconsciously make our own?
I ask this question again. Have we? Recently a Pagan wrote this to a fellow Pagan: “You should audition for the role of the basilisk in Harry Potter … kill, kill, kill … sssssss … kill, kill, kill”.
The Common Thread
The Minoans recognised a powerful Goddess of Nature. Her priestesses are said to have handled snakes. Cernunos holds a snake on the Gundesdrup cauldron to invoke serpent energy and to show his mastery over the beasts of the field. Snakes come forth from the bowels of Mother Gaia and as such are seen as chthonic symbols of the Underworld and as offspring of the Universal Mother.
Apophis and the serpentine elemental forces of chaos were particularly threatening to the Egyptians, but Wadjet the patron Goddess of Lower Egypt and Renenutet (the nourishing snake) were protective Goddesses who ensured bountiful harvests, easy childbirth and a happy future.
Sanskrit texts mention that the serpent is the symbol of immortality and wisdom. One of many births, one of unknown and secret knowledge, of repetitive shedding of self in order to grow. If it has its tail in its mouth, it is symbolic of eternity.
Modern times has relegated the dragon of old to a mere snake, the devil, but long before this state of affairs the Dragon was a symbol of Divine Wisdom, of rebirth and immortality. Serpent was the name given to a Wise One.
The Babylonians spoke about the "scaly ones", the children of Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea. The Egyptians had the Dragon Star, they had Serapis (the Dragon of Wisdom), Osiris and Typhon. Hierophants of Egypt and Babylon called themselves "Sons of the Serpent God". The Greeks had Apollo and the Python, baby Heracles who strangled two gigantic snakes in his crib. The Scandinavian had Sigurd and Fafnir, the Druids of the British Isles had an axiom, "I am a Serpent, I am a Druid". What about the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon which threatens but never swallows the sun during eclipses, is benign, rules over water and brings rain.
In the Mysteries, what modern man has come to dread, was seen as the first beam of light that emanated from the abyss of Divine Mystery. The Dragon was both creative and destructive forces. But the modern world will neither accept nor recognize the above for it pertains to the realms of magic and magic is to them merely superstition.
From the remotest antiquity the serpent was held in the greatest veneration as the embodiment of Divine Wisdom and the symbol of Spirit.
The Cosmological Dance
The constellation of Draco has seven heads as does Ananta-Sesha, the serpent on which Lord Vishnu reclines. Each of these heads is a star of Ursa Minor (the Lesser Bear). This seven-headed reptile was the Serpent/Dragon of Darkness. Its seven heads represented the Seven Logoi. The septenary Dragon has been split into 4 heptanomic parts, or twenty eight portions. Each lunar week has its own distinct occult character. Each one of the 28 days of the lunar month has its own specific properties and the 12 constellations have an influence on each house.
Multitudinous Windings
In the writings of Philostratus we read that in India men ate the heart and liver of serpents in order to learn their language. This practice was meant to allow the adept to ingest the wisdom and the learning of the "Wise Ones".
Sigurd roasted the heart of Fafnir the Dragon when he slayed it. According to legend he became one of the wisest and most courageous men ever to live through this act of sympathetic magic.
Epiphanius tells us that the Gnostics revered the Serpent because it had taught the Ancients the Mysteries. Seneca tells us that Medea the Witch summoned deadly serpents by calling out the names of the great Dragons. Cleopatra chose to die by the bite of an asp. The Nagual Medicine Men of South America are the descendants of the Naga-men of yore.
Analysis of the above makes it obvious that mankind was desperately trying to assimilate "snakehood" into their own lives rather than avoid or criticize it.
Humanoid Reptiles?
We are to remember that these are "human serpents", not reptiles. They are the Wise who can cast off their skin and return to us, their youth regained, at the beginning of every new zodiacal age. Like the serpent, these wise men "shed their skin" and return larger and stronger (spiritually speaking) with every precession of the zodiac.
Biblical Echoes of Pagan Stories
What about the tale of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden? In the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden there were two trees which "the man and woman" were not meant to touch: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (gnosis that leads to discernment) and the Tree of Life (gnosis that lead to the realization of man’s immortality and divinity). It seems their God didn’t want them to have either of these boons.
Anyway, despite the suppression of Goddess worship through Yaweh-ism (in Deuteronomy), we see that Asherah was the consort of Yaweh and known as the Queen of Heaven to whom the Hebrews offered small cakes. She was worshiped alongside him (her tree stood next to his altar) and Her name meant sacred tree/pole/grove. Isn’t it interesting that that is exactly where some of the dying godmen had their so-called end (Attis of Phrygia, Dionysus and Jesus); nailed to the tree, the cross-over point of Spirit and Matter, in order to become Christi.
The Armenians have a mystery regarding Lillith (Adam’s first wife) who was created from fire, unlike Adam who was created from the earth. Lillith was a dominatrix type and refused to lie under Adam (refused to be dominated by man). She shape-shifted into a snake and escaped with Samael/Asmodeus. Yaweh then created Eve from Adam's rib. Lillith is said to have caused impotence in men, barrenness in women and untimely death in infancy. She became the prototype of the evil Witch. Some say Lillith was the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. She offered the forbidden fruit to Eve, hoping she would die and leave Adam vulnerable to Lillith’s advances again. If Lillith was the Serpent, then she was the first teacher of mankind.
Could the Greek Cosmic Tree (Khthonie) be the Tree of Life which feeds ambrosial dew to the immortals? If so, then to know this tree, to partake of its sap would mean immortality to mankind.
Rhea Silvia was the mother of Romulus and Remus. Remus died and descended into the Underworld, but Romulus lived and ascended to the heavens. They are respectively the roots and foliage of the Mother Tree. Artemis (Diana) was also known as the Upright Tree Goddess, Orthia. She was worshipped as the Cosmic Axis which holds up the world, echoing the supportive nature of all mothers.
Initiatory Kiss of the Serpent
Queen Helen of Troy (Ilium) was also a tree goddess, Dendritis. Helen deified Menelaus (his name means to “mind/abide with the people” [mene = mind, meno = to remain and laus = the people). The Pythagoreans interpreted the story of Helen as a sort of allegorical initiation where the soul/Helen is seduced and entrapped by matter/Paris. She is then rescued and returned to her home, the Abode of Menelaus (the house of the mind).
The various Tree Goddesses are often represented with a breast-shaped bowl or krater. The bowl is symbolic of the Horned Moon, which implies that the goddess is the source of illumination or enlightenment. She the Serpent at the foot of the Tree of Life, who convinced woman to take from the tree of knowledge, is therefore she who imparts wisdom (Sophia).
The Labours of Heracles
Mother Earth gave Zeus and Hera a tree that bore golden apples. It was situated in the Garden of the Hesperides named after the Evening Star (Venus). The evening star is sacred to Aphrodite (the goddess of Love); if you cut an apple across its axis and see the five pointed star shaped by its seeds. Ladon the dragon lay at its feet protecting the apples.
Heracles (the Glory of Hera) slay the dragon in order to get the golden apples.
In our lives, we must slay the dragon or obtain the fruit through cunning. The Labours of Heracles are, of course, allegorical and lead to his eventual deification. We need only emulate him to obtain refinement of the self.
The Dragon at Delphi
There were two “dragons” at Delphi, offspring of Gaia, the Primordial Mother, and Tartarus. Apollo kills Delphyne (Greek root for womb) with his arrows as she lay coiled around the Laurel Tree, but Typhon lives on as the guardian of the Omphalos. The Sun (Apollo) causes the putrefaction (pytho) of the she-dragon’s body. As a consequence the dragon is named Python and the oracle at Delphi, Pythia. Apollo was banished from Delphi for 8 consecutive years (one great divine year) to atone for killing one of Gaia’ children. Five of these cycles form the 40 years of the one great cycle of Venus. By killing the Pythoness Delphyne, Apollo defeated the old chthonic ways and ushered in the new agricultural and solar mysteries.
Descendants of the Serpent God
Apollonius of Tyana claims that Pythian Apollo Himself fathered Pythagoras when his mother visited the oracle and received the prophecy that a great man was about to come through her into the world. The mother of Pythagoras, being pierced by the rays of the solar divinity (illumination/initiation), changed her name to Pythais and named her unborn child Pythagoras. He would be great man that would be learned, teach people the Truth and die for being true to his ways.
Sol Invictus, Alexander the Great, was the son of a Samothracian snake-cult priestess, Olympias of Epirus. She was impregnated by God in the form of a serpent so, Alexander was not the son of his mortal father, Phillip (founder of the Macedonian Empire), but of Zeus, and was therefore of the same lineage as Hercules and Achilles.
More Mystery Stories
Perseus slew the sea dragon and released the maiden Andromeda.
The Tree of Life is surrounded by a body of water. These are the Primordial Waters which give rise to the All and which protect the unconscious power of life. These waters define the boundaries of our existence, and in order to realise ourselves we have to defy these boundaries of identity to arrive at the core of our truth and to self realization. These waters are guarded by our inner dragon which has to be coaxed or defeated.
When Kadmos slew the dragon he planted its teeth in the earth, inseminating the Mother, the race of the Spartans sprang forth. For killing of the dragon he had to serve Ares for a year, after which he married Harmonia (daughter to Ares and Aphrodite; Love and War), who appeared to him as a snake and whose name meant she who binds opposites in one seamless whole.
To access Sophia/Wisdom, one has to overcome the Primordial Waters and time-bound power as well as kill the Dragon/Sage thereby becoming a Dragon oneself. Just like the challenger had to kill Rex Nemorensis before becoming the guardian of the sacred grove at Lake Nemi himself. In that sanctuary, stood also a holy tree that none could touch; unmistakably the Goddess Herself and Rex Nemorensis had to guard her with his life.
Imagery in Revelations speaks about a red dragon, the enemy of the truth, the sun the enlightener of the physical world. Even here the serpent was seen as the great enlightener of the spiritual as he had given mankind the knowledge of good and evil.
The Greeks had the Cockatrice or Basilisk, the royal serpent or King! It was the manifestation of the sun connected to the epithet “Purros”, the fiery, or the seven crowned serpent. It could destroy animal and vegetable life with a mere look or exhalation. If the basilisk heard a cock crow it would die shortly. For this in the story of Jesus, Peter denies knowing his teacher three times before the cock crows.
In Rome the sacred Epidaurian Serpent was worship along with fire was the divine representation of Aesculapius, the child of the Sun, the Sun incarnate. Romans kept snakes around their domestic altars to represent the god incarnate, and these were treated and behaved like pets coming out to be patted and to be fed at the Patrician tables. These sacred snakes kept the homes free of rats and mice. When it was hot ladies would drape snakes around their necks for coolness. They were protected species; to harm them was taboo and so they multiplied fast, eventually becoming a nuisance in the Roman Capital.
The Fall of the Serpents
According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Snakes and Dragons became the Standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome (purpureum signum draconis), as Pontifex Maximus, head of state and the religion of fire and serpent worship. With the advent of Christianity the great dragon was cast out by the decree of the Christian Emperor, Gratian. Paganism was abolished and the fires of Vesta were extinguished for ever.
We have seen that Pagans tame their inner dragon, in order to become a Sage/Dragon, but when St. Patrick chased the snakes out of bonny Ireland, he was actually chasing Pagans or Paganism out of Ireland. And St. Michael and St. George, both infamous dragon-slayers also trod under and severed the head of the Old Ways. Theirs is the morality our society inherited as far as snakes and dragons are concerned.
But Pagans tend to regenerate and like our forefathers return stronger and larger. We reproduce by contagion, parthenogenesis, and by sheer will power.
Nyaminyami the River God
Much has been written about the power of the African Mamba Munto (the snake people), but more pertinent to us the legend of the Nyaminyami, the Snake River God of the Tonga people. He has the body of a gigantic snake and the head of a fish. The folk in the Zambezi River Valley are protected by the Nyaminyami, wearing his amulet to ward off negative forces and attract wealth and well being. These people honour the River God and his consort, by doing yearly ceremonial dances. One day the white man came and began building a wall at a place called Kariba and the worst floods imaginable happened. A lot of lives were lost. The elders interceded and Nyaminyami allowed the walls to be completed after five years. But alas, he was separated from his beloved wife!
This dragon-like river god in times of penury fed the Tonga with strips of his own flesh. Where there is water, the Africans find prosperity. The Nyaminyami dragon is the ruler of all great bodies of water and water is considered the sacred of vehicle of the river god.
Many say that the story of Hermes and the two serpents on the Caduceus refers to none other than the raising of the kundalini. Aesculapius also had a healing rod with a serpent winding around it; Moses had his brazen serpent on a pole upon which the Jewish nation had to gaze to obtain healing. John the Baptist too is depicted with a wooden cross with a snake on it and according to the Christian story; the Jesus took the place of the serpent to heal the ailments of humanity.
Kundalini Serpents
The first two serpents refer to the Ida and Pingala currents as they rise along the Hara Line; the third serpent is the transformational serpent of fire which descends into the heart of the adept after the 33 vertebrae/years are conquered through hard work. The doors to the Astral Reality are, amongst other things, conquered by the adept’s correct raising of the serpent force.
Crowley and the Kiss
The kiss of the serpent bestowed on the heiress Nancy Cunard, by Aleister Crowley, was not a secret vampirical O.T.O. ritual as intimated by some writers in the last decades. It had no occult significance other than to allow him to enjoy the reaction of the person he is thus “honouring” and to maintain the reputation he so carefully wove around himself.
Born Again Within the Serpent’s Nest
The true mystery of being kissed by the serpent is to act within that which aids us to evolve spiritually. The individual casts off his old body and assumes a new one. “Death” is necessary to for evolution to take place. Man takes on countless births, many countless “sheddings of skin” in order to arrive at the right attitude, understanding relationship and living.
One who has been kissed by the serpent sees his mental make up in the seen. He undergoes an inner change which corresponds to an external change. Being kissed the serpent is the knowledge that if you set yourself aright, you will see the world aright (for slow that it may be). It is the mastery of the mind and senses, it is the realization of oneness with Reality, living life as an act of dedication, it is the sublimation of the intellect, of knowing oneself and the Divine All, seeing godhood within and without therefore, to obtain and maintain a spirit of serenity, to strive for spiritual perfection in this lifetime knowing that is “do-able” through Will, it is knowing that Life propagates and preserves itself, it is the forgetting of fear, the transcending of individual nature and the merging into Infinite Existence.
References:
THEOSOPHY, Vol. 44, No. 7, May, 1956
The Secret Doctrine H.P. Blavatsky, 1888
http://www.spurwing.co.zw/nyaminyami.html
Pausanias, lib. II, Corinthiaca, cap. 26;
Virgil, Æneid, lib. VII, ll. 769-773, pp. 364-365.)
English Translation of the Upanishads - 1976
Lucifer and Ahriman – Rudolpf Steiner 1954
The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling – C. Scott Littleton
Yorke Gerard (November 23, 1954) (personal correspondence to Nancy Cunard) Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)
The Two Babylons - Alexander Hislop – 1st Edition 1916
Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols In Art - James Hall - 1954
CONTACT MORGAUSE FONTLEVE
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