The Case of S T Nikos

Serpents and Dragons

In a subsequent letter Nikos developed for me his ideas about serpents and dragons.

"There is more to this mythology than you imagine. It is so widespread it must have some deep psychological�one might say elemental�basis. The snake has always been widely revered as a supernatural power supposedly because of its habit of renewing itself by sloughing off its skin. It was also considered to be immortal because it was believed it could devour itself and thereby become reborn. It was the Ouroboros�the snake devouring its own tale which symbolises eternity and the cosmos. The prevalence of snake and dragon imagery, I maintain, is more elemental than the mere sloughing off of a skin. Something is out there, eternal but unborn, giving human beings images of immortality, represented as snakes!

"Python worship was common from the east to the west coasts of Africa. In India the preferred snake was the cobra, the hooded snake. Snake worship seems to have been the original religion of most of India before the Vedas with its priestly caste of Brahmins nominally replaced it. Nevertheless every village continued to have its Naga, or snake god, to whom the villagers turned to first in times of famine or strife. The cobra was the phallic symbol and the phallic god, Siva, was always associated with snakes and often worshipped as one. He was the King of the Serpents. Siva�s consort, Kali, a fertility goddess was also adorned with snakes. Another snake in Hindu religion supported Vishnu when he slept, and helped in the creation. he is therefore regarded as symbolising the eternal rather like Ouroboros. Nagas, though snake gods, can take human form. They live beneath the sea or beneath the earth in magnificent cities ruled by snake kings. They have a passion for precious stones and pretty girls, and, though unpredictable, will reward those who help them with healing or visionary powers, or riches.

"The Aztecs, Toltecs and Mayas were fond of snake motifs in their religious decorations. The earth goddess, Coatlicue, a monster with large fangs, is dressed in a garment of woven snakes and has a necklace of human hands and hearts. Her head is made up of two snakes� heads. The supreme god of the Aztecs was Huitzilopochtli who was also enrobed in snakes. Their rain god, Tlaloc, was similarly associated with snakes. Snakes often seem associated with rain. Quetzalcoatl was a peculiar creature, half snake and half bird; a feathered serpent, who was a wind god. As a god of heaven (feathers) and earth (scales) he represented opposites like light and dark, life and death and good and evil. Like Orpheus he was a god of civilisation, of agriculture, the arts and the smithy. He helped the downfall of the Indian empires by sailing over the Eastern Sea, the Atlantic, promising to return. When the Spanish arrived they believed their god had returned and offered little resistance.

"The Egyptians regarded snakes as survivors from older times of the earth, alien but wise, to be treated with respect if distrust, and they kept asps as pets, or household gods. The Egyptian creator was a serpent which emerged from the Abyss, and at the end of time the serpent would again emerge as supreme. Present at beginning and end, the serpent therefore again represents eternity. The primeval serpent is the god which named all characteristics and is the protector of the earth against cosmic forces which threaten it. The Nile was a snake god. Apopis was a serpent which represented the powers of darkness and sometimes swallowed up the sun god in his daily journey by barge across the firmament (an eclipse). Fortunately the priests could always find a quick way of getting the sun god regurgitated.

"In Mesopotamia, the love goddess Ishtar, the biblical Ashtaroth (Venus), was symbolised as a snake. Clay statuettes show snake headed women breast feeding human children. The Babylonians signified their god of healing by a double headed snake, coiled around a staff, a symbol of medicine which has come down to us via Asklepios to today. The Euphrates, like the Nile, was a snake but the sea was a dragon, the mother of life, Tiamat.

"The primitive religion of the Greeks was a snake religion and many Greek gods remain associated with snakes�Hercules, Apollo, Hermes. Zeus Meilichios was shown as a bearded snake. Snakes were commonly symbols of the underworld and the dead. Dead heroes were originally worshipped as snakes before they became anthropomorphic gods.

"Dionysus was symbolised by a snake carried in a casket. Originally in the depths of time Bacchanalian rites were gory and licentious. The Bacchoi ate human flesh and thereby took communion with the god which they celebrated by drunkenness and ritual sex. By the time of the Christian era, human sacrifice had been illegal for hundreds of years and the Romans were seeking spiritual ways of attaining communion with their gods. That is an important reason why Christianity succeeded. But it did not prevent Clement of Rome claiming to his flock that the Bacchoi, ate human victims, worshipped the snake which was the Christian Devil, and honoured Eve, who like Pandora had admitted evil into the world. Christians were always incensed at any suggestion of snake worship. The snake had become the very incarnation of evil.

"In Persian religion, Ahriman, the Devil. was depicted as a snake, and so he was too in Mithraism which came from Persia. In fact the depiction of the evil spirit as a snake also came into Christianity from Persian religion, during the exile of the Jews in Babylon.

"The obvious interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden is that an ancient Hebrew snake god is replaced by a new omniscient but hidden god: the old god and his human followers are both punished by the new god. Old gods have one of two fates; they become an aspect of the new god or they become a demon. Here the old god became a demon.

"As further evidence of this we can see elsewhere in the Jewish Scriptures that snakes were worshipped by the Hebrews. Moses, leading the Israelites out of Egypt, was fond of tricks with snakes, acting just like a snake shaman. He could make a snake into a rigid pole just like the Egyptian wise men but his snake recovered and ate those of the Egyptians. When the Israelites murmur against Moses, God sends a plague of snakes to punish them. Moses intercedes with God who instructs him to build a brass serpent to cure those who had been bitten. The monotheistic Israelites thereafter burnt incense to, in short, worshipped this brass snake, the Nehushtan, for five centuries until the messianic king Hezekiah destroyed the snake god�s brazen image and his power. When the exiles returned from Babylonia, the snake was the evil spirit, Ahriman, and so he was depicted in the rewriting of the legends that the exiles undertook.

"Australian aboriginals knew of a man-eating snake called Mindi which could vary its size up to a length of ten miles. To even see the monster meant death but he always betrayed his presence with a sickening smell. He was sent by the god of nature, a sort of conservation god, to punish those who acted contrary to his wishes.

"There seems an obvious connection between serpents and with some mythical beasts, most particularly dragons. In China dragons had similar characteristics in many ways to the Nagas of India, even starting out life as little snakes when they first hatched from their eggs. After 2000 years they became adult dragons. Like the Nagas they were associated with good fortune and with life. The Emperors were considered descended from dragons.

"Dragons are in the West depicted as the mysterious and evil forces that mythological heroes like St George, Siegfried and Beowulf have to do battle with.

"Such thoughts must be elemental, deeply embedded in the psyche, because they are especially strong in children, whose primeval thought patterns are still unspoiled by experience and tuition. There is even a link with that other legend with which we are fascinated�the vampire�the monster that lies dead by day but comes by night to suck our blood. The root of the word Dracula is the Latin for dragon!"

Michaela Magi Griffiths, Bloomsbury, September, 1993
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