The
worship of serpent deities is present in
several old cultures, particularly in religion and mythology, where
snakes were seen as entities of strength and
renewal.
Hindu mythology
Snake worship refers to the high status of snakes or (
nagas) in
Hindu
mythology. (
Sanskrit: ) is the
Sanskrit and
Pāli word for
a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very
large snake, found in
Hinduism and
Buddhism. The use of the term
nāga
is often ambiguous, as the word may also refer, in similar
contexts, to one of several human tribes known as or nicknamed
"Nāgas"; to elephants; and to ordinary snakes, particularly the
King Cobra and the
Indian Cobra, the latter of which is still
called
nāg in
Hindi and other
languages of India. A female nāga is a
nāgī.
The
Snake primarily represents rebirth, death and mortality, due to its
casting of its skin and being symbolically "reborn". Over
a large part of India there are carved representations of cobras or
nagas or stones as substitutes. To these human food and flowers are
offered and lights are burned before the shrines. Among the
Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a
human being; no one would kill one intentionally. The serpent-god's
image is carried in an annual procession by a celibate
priestess.
At one time there were many prevalent different renditions of the
serpent cult located in India. In Northern India, a masculine
version of the serpent named Nagaraja and known as the “king of the
serpents” was worshipped. Instead of the “king of the serpents,”
actual live snakes were worshipped in South India (
Bhattacharyya 1965, p. 1).
The Manasa-cult in Bengal, India, however, was dedicated to the
anthropomorphic serpent goddess,
Manasa
(
Bhattacharyya 1965,
p. 1).
Nāgas form an important part of Hindu
mythology. They play prominent roles in various legends:
- Shesha (Adisesha, Sheshnaga, or the 1,000
headed snake) upholds the world on his many heads and is said to be
used by Lord Vishnu to rest. Shesha also
sheltered Lord Krishna from a
thunderstorm during his birth.
- Vasuki allowed himself to be coiled
around Mount Mandara by the Devas and Asuras to
churn the milky ocean creating the ambrosia of immortality.
- Kaliya poisoned the Jamuna / Yamuna river where he lived. Krishna
(Balakrishna / infant Krishna) subdued Kaliya by dancing on him and
compelled him to leave the river.
- Manasa is the queen of the snakes. She is
also referred to as Manasha or "Ma Manasha". "Ma" being the
universal mother.
- Ananta is the endless snake who circles
the world.
- Padmanabha (or Padmaka) is the
guardian snake of the south.
- Astika is half Brahmin and half naga.
- Kulika
Lord Shiva also wears a snake around his
neck
Nag panchami is an important Hindu
festival associated with snake worship which takes place of the
fifth day of
Shravana. Snake idols are
offered gifts of milk and incense to help the worshipper to gain
knowledge, wealth, and fame.
Different districts of Bengal celebrated the serpent in various
ways. In the Bengal districts of East Mymensing, West Syhlet, and
North Tippera, serpent-worship rituals were very similar, however
(
Bhattacharyya 1965,
p. 5). On the very last day of the Bengali month Sravana
(July-August), all of these districts celebrated serpent-worship
each year (
Bhattacharyya
1965, p. 5). Regardless of their class and station, every
family during this time created a clay model of the serpent-deity –
usually the serpent-goddess with two snakes spreading their hoods
on her shoulders. The people worshipped this model at their homes
and sacrificed a goat or a pigeon for the deity’s honor (
Bhattacharyya 1965, p. 5).
Before the clay goddess was submerged in water at the end of the
festival, the clay snakes were taken from her shoulders. The people
believed that the earth these snakes were made from cured
illnesses, especially children’s diseases (
Bhattacharyya 1965, p.
6).
These districts also worshipped an object know as a Karandi
(
Bhattacharyya 1965,
p. 6).Resembling a small house made of cork, the Karandi is
decorated with images of snakes, the snake goddess, and snake
legends on its walls and roof (
Bhattacharyya 1965, p. 6).
The blood of the sacrificed animals was sprinkled on the Karandi
and it also was submerged in the river at the end of the festival
(
Bhattacharyya 1965,
p. 6).There are several more interesting examples of
serpent-worship in India, see
"The Serpent as the Folk-Deity in
Bengal" for more information.
Cambodian mythology
Serpents,
or nāgas, play a particularly important
role in Cambodian
mythology. A well-known story explains the
emergence of the
Khmer people from the
union of Indian and indigenous elements, the latter being
represented as
nāgas. According to the
story, an Indian
brahmana named Kaundinya
came to Cambodia, which at the time was under the dominion of the
naga king. The naga princess
Soma sallied forth
to fight against the invader but was defeated. Presented with the
option of marrying the victorious Kaundinya, Soma readily agreed to
do so, and together they ruled the land. The
Khmer people are their descendants.
Ancient Near East
Ancient Mesopotamians and Semites believed that snakes were
immortal because they could infinitely shed their skin and appear
forever youthful, appearing in a fresh guise every time.
[222014] Before the arrival of the Israelites, snake
cults were well established in Canaan in the
Bronze Age, for archaeologists have
uncovered serpent cult objects in Bronze
Age strata at several pre-Israelite cities in Canaan: two at
Megiddo, one at Gezer
, one in the
sanctum sanctorum of the Area H temple at Hazor, and two at Shechem
.
in the surrounding region, serpent cult objects figured in other
cultures. A late Bronze Age
Hittite shrine
in northern Syria contained a bronze statue of a god holding a
serpent in one hand and a staff in the other.
In sixth-century
Babylon]] a pair of bronzer serpents flanked each of the four
doorways of the temple of Esagila
. At
the Babylonian New Year's festival, the priest was to commission
from a woodworker, a metalworker and a goldsmith two images one of
which "shall hold in its left hand a snake of cedar, raising its
right [hand] to the god
Nabu". At the tell of
Tepe Gawra, at least seventeen Early Bronze Age
Assyrian bronze serpents were recovered.
Greek mythology
Serpents figured prominently in archaic Greek myths. According to
some sources,
Ophion ("serpent", a.k.a.
Ophioneus), ruled the world with Eurynome before the two of them
were cast down by Cronus and Rhea. The oracles of the Ancient
Greeks were said to have been the continuation of the tradition
begun with the worship of the Egyptian cobra goddess,
Wadjet.
The
Minoan Snake Goddess brandished a serpent in either
hand, perhaps evoking her role as source of wisdom, rather than her
role as Mistress of the Animals (
Potnia theron), with a
leopard under each arm. She is a Minoan
version of the
Canaanite fertility goddess
Asherah . It is not by accident that later
the infant
Heracles, a liminal hero on the
threshold between the old ways and the new Olympian world, also
brandished the two serpents that "threatened" him in his cradle.
Classical Greeks did not perceive that the threat was merely the
threat of wisdom. But the gesture is the same as that of the Cretan
goddess.
Typhon the enemy of the Olympian gods is
described as a vast grisly monster with a hundred heads and a
hundred serpents issuing from his thighs, who was conquered and
cast into
Tartarus by
Zeus, or confined beneath volcanic regions, where he is
the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of
volcanic forces. Amongst his children by Echidna are
Cerberus (a monstrous three-headed dog with a snake
for a tail and a serpentine mane), the serpent tailed
Chimaera, the serpent-like chthonic
water beast
Lernaean Hydra and the
hundred-headed serpentine dragon
Ladon. Both
the Lernaean Hydra and Ladon were slain by
Heracles.
Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi
, she always
was represented in the vase-paintings and by sculptors as a
serpent. Pytho was the chthonic enemy of
Apollo, who slew her and remade her former home his
own oracle, the most famous in Classical Greece.
Amphisbaena a Greek word, from amphis,
meaning "both ways", and bainein, meaning "to go", also called the
"Mother of Ants", is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head
at each end. According to Greek mythology, the mythological
amphisbaena was spawned from the blood that dripped from
Medusa the
Gorgon's head as
Perseus flew over the Libyan Desert with her
head in his hand.
Medusa and the other Gorgons were vicious female monsters with
sharp fangs and hair of living, venomous snakes whose origins
predate the written myths of Greece and who were the protectors of
the most ancient ritual secrets. The Gorgons wore a belt of two
intertwined serpents in the same configuration of the
caduceus.
The Gorgon was placed at the highest point
and central of the relief on the Parthenon
.
Asclepius, the son of Apollo and Koronis,
learned the secrets of keeping death at bay after observing one
serpent bringing another (which Asclepius himself had fatally
wounded) healing herbs. To prevent the entire human race from
becoming immortal under Asclepius's care, Zeus killed him with a
bolt of lightning. Asclepius' death at the hands of Zeus
illustrates man's inability to challenge the natural order that
separates mortal men from the gods. In honor of Asclepius, snakes
were often used in healing rituals. Non-poisonous snakes were left
to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured
slept. In
The
Library,
Apollodorus claimed that
Athena gave Asclepius a vial of blood from
the Gorgons. Gorgon blood had magical properties: if taken from the
left side of the Gorgon, it was a fatal poison; from the right
side, the blood was capable of bringing the dead back to life.
However
Euripides wrote in his tragedy
Ion that the Athenian queen Creusa had
inherited this vial from her ancestor Erichthonios, who was a snake
himself and receiving the vial from Athena. In this version the
blood of Medusa had the healing power while the lethal poison
originated from Medusa's serpents.
Laocoön was allegedly a priest of Poseidon (or of Apollo, by some accounts) at
Troy
; he was famous for warning the Trojans in vain
against accepting the Trojan Horse from the Greeks, and for his
subsequent divine execution. Poseidon (some say
Athena), who was supporting the Greeks, subsequently
sent sea-serpents to strangle Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes
and Thymbraeus. Another tradition states that Apollo sent the
serpents for an unrelated offense, and only unlucky timing caused
the Trojans to misinterpret them as punishment for striking the
Horse.
Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great and a princess of
the primitive land of Epirus, had
the reputation of a snake-handler, and it was in serpent form that
Zeus was said to have fathered Alexander upon her; tame snakes were
still to be found at Macedonian Pella
in the 2nd
century AD (Lucian, Alexander the false prophet) and at
Ostia
a bas-relief shows paired coiled serpents flanking
a dressed altar, symbols or embodiments of the Lares of the household, worthy of veneration (Veyne
1987 illus p 211).
Aeetes, the king of
Colchis and father of the sorceress
Medea, possessed the
Golden
Fleece. He guarded it with a massive serpent that never slept.
Medea, who had fallen in love with
Jason of
the
Argonauts, enchanted it to sleep so
Jason could seize the Fleece.
See
Lamia .
Ancient Europe
Serpent worship was well known in ancient Europe. There does not
appear to be much ground for supposing that the roman god
Aesculapius was a serpent-god in spite of his
connection with serpents.
On the other hand, we learn from Herodotus of the great serpent which defended the
citadel of Athens
. The
Roman genius loci took the form of a serpent where a snake was kept
and fed with milk in the temple of Potrimpos, an old Slavonic god.
On the Iberian Peninsula there is evidence that before the
introduction of Christianity, and perhaps more strongly before
invasions of the Romans, Serpent-worship was part of local
religion. To this day there are numerous traces in popular belief,
especially in Germany, of respect for the snake, which seems to be
a survival of ancestor worship, such as still exists among the
Zulus and other tribes; the "house-snake," as it is called, cares
for the cows and the children, and its appearance is an omen of
death, and the life of a pair of house-snakes is often held to be
bound up with that of the master and mistress themselves. Tradition
says that one of the Gnostic sects known as the Ophites caused a
tame serpent to coil round the sacramental bread and worshipped it
as the representative of the Saviour.
Nordic mythology
Jörmungandr, alternately referred
to as the
Midgard Serpent or
World Serpent, is a
sea serpent of the
Norse mythology, the middle child of
Loki and the
giantess Angrboða.
According to the
Prose Edda,
Odin took
Loki's three children,
Fenrisúlfr,
Hel and Jörmungandr. He tossed Jörmungandr into
the great ocean that encircles
Midgard. The
serpent grew so big that he was able to surround the
Earth and grasp his own tail, and as a result he
earned the alternate name of the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent.
Jörmungandr's arch enemy is the god
Thor.
African mythology
In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was
Dahomey. but the cult of the python seems to have
been of exotic origin, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th
century. By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in
contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting
from them the beliefs which they at first despised. At Whydah, the
chief centre, there is a serpent temple, tenanted by some fifty
snakes. Every python of the
danh-gbi kind must be treated
with respect, and death is the penalty for killing one, even by
accident.
Danh-gbi has numerous wives, who until 1857 took
part in a public procession from which the profane crowd was
excluded; a python was carried round the town in a hammock, perhaps
as a ceremony for the expulsion of evils. The rainbow-god of the
Ashanti was also conceived to have the form of a snake. His
messenger was said to be a small variety of boa. but only certain
individuals, not the whole species, were sacred. In many parts of
Africa the serpent is looked upon as the incarnation of deceased
relatives. Among the Amazulu, as among the
Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are
assigned as the abode of certain classes. The
Maasai, on the other hand, regard each species as the
habitat of a particular family of the tribe.
Eva Meyerowitz wrote of an earthenware pot that was stored at the
Museum of Achimota College in Gold Coast. The base of the neck of
this pot is surrounded by the rainbow snake (
Meyerowitz 1940, p. 48). The
legend of this creature explains that the rainbow snake only
emerged from its home when it was thirsty. Keeping its tail on the
ground the snake would raise its head to the sky looking for the
rain god. As it drank great quantities of water, the snake would
spill some which would fall to the earth as rain (
Meyerowitz 1940, p. 48).
There are four other snakes on the sides of this pot: Danh – gbi,
the life giving snake, Li, for protection, Liwui, which was
associated with Wu, god of the sea, and Fa, the messenger of the
gods (
Meyerowitz 1940,
p. 48). The first three snakes Danh – gbi, Li, Liwui were all
worshipped at Whydah, Dahomey where the serpent cult originated
(
Meyerowitz 1940, p.
48). For the Dahomeans, the spirit of the serpent was one to be
feared as he was unforgiving (
Nida & Smalley 1959,
p. 17). They believed that the serpent spirit could manifest itself
in any long, winding objects such as plant roots and animal nerves.
They also believed it could manifest itself as the umbilical cord,
making it a symbol of fertility and life (
Nida & Smalley 1959,
p. 17).
The Ancient Egyptians worshiped a number of snake gods, including
Apophis and
Set, and the Sumerians before them had a
serpent god
Ningizzida.
Australian Aborigine mythology
In Australia, the Aboriginal people worship a huge python, known by
a variety of names but universally referred to as the Rainbow
Serpent, that was said to have created the landscape, embodied the
spirit of fresh water and punished lawbreakers. The Aborigines in
southwest Australia called the serpent the Waugyl, while the
Warramunga of the east coast worshipped the mythical
Wollunqua.
Native American mythology
In America some of the
Native American tribes
give reverence to the rattlesnake as grandfather and king of snakes
who is able to give fair winds or cause tempest.
Among the Hopi of Arizona
the serpent
figures largely in one of the dances. The rattlesnake was
worshipped in the
Natchez temple of the sun
and the
Aztec deity
Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent-god. In
many MesoAmerican cultures, the serpent was regarded as a portal
between two worlds.
The tribes of Peru
are said to
have adored great snakes in the pre-Inca days and in Chile
the Mapuche made a serpent figure in their deluge
beliefs. The Mound
Builders associated great mystical value to the serpent, as the
Serpent
Mound
demonstrates, though we are unable to unravel the
particular associations.
Snake handling in Christianity
Contemporary Christian culture identifies the snake as a symbol of
evil, tempting Adam and Eve into the fall of man.
Snake handling is a religious
ritual in a small number of
Christian churches in the U.S., usually
characterized as
rural and
Pentecostal, particularly the
Church of God with Signs
Following. Practitioners believe it dates to antiquity and
quote the
Bible to support the practice,
especially:
- "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly
thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover." (Mark 16:18)
- "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and
scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall
by any means hurt you." (Luke 10:19)
Images related to snake worship
Image:naga1.jpg|The Snake God Naga and his
consort.The photo is taken at the cave temples clusters of Ajanta
, Maharastra
, IndiaImage:Naga2.jpg|
Krishna dancing over snake
KaliyaThe photo is taken at the sand dunes covered
temple ruins in
Talakkadu Karnataka]] ,
India.Image:Naga4.jpg|A motif of snake goddess.
Carving on volcanic
rock at the Kailash
Temple
, Ellora
,
India
Other snake gods
References
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