The Serpent as a Symbol of Wisdom

[shankara]

I think the Serpent has got a bit of an unfair treatment in the Abrahamic religions, particularly due to the snake story in Genesis. Of course in the Christian interpretation of this story the serpent is evil, staining humanity with the taint of original sin that requires the crucifixion of Yeshua to remedy. Clearly that is a one-sided interpretation of the story, though the only interpretation many people understand. In various Gnostic theologies the story is inverted, the Garden of Eden not being a true paradise, but rather a state of blissful ignorance, innocence without experience, which humanity had to leave in order to undergo the painful yet necessary journey towards consciousness and experiential wisdom. Hence the serpent is not considered "evil" from this perspective, rather as the heroic liberator who accepted the curse of the thundering and blustering demiurge (to "crawl on his belly") in order to free humanity from that state.

Now having read that, perhaps you are thinking that I am some kind of satanist. So much has the serpent become associated with "darkness" that people may even be disturbed by hearing someone speaking in his defense. Yet even Yeshua said:

"Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves"​

Which fits very nicely with the story above - cast out of Eden and onto this earth, we can return to a place of peace and wholeness only by again becoming innocent, but an innocence combined with the experiential wisdom we develop during our sorrowful pilgrimage on this earth.

Now the meaning of the serpent symbol is hopefully becoming clearer to you. In many cultures the serpent was associated with wisdom, and also with healing. Shedding it's skin is an allegory of the process of regeneration, shedding the old to make space for the new, rebirth. Serpents are involved in various creation mythologies. The highest God of the Aztecs "Quetzolcoatl" was the "feathered serpent". Vishnu, Buddha, and other deities are depicted crowned by serpents, likely related to the "Kundalini" serpent, which essentially represents the control of vital energies of the body developed by spiritual practice. The serpent's hiss is also considered related with the element of fire, which of course is the element of the sun - the stories of Christ, Dionysus etc all being stories of the dying-resurrecting Sun God archetype.

The Abrahamic (particularly Christian) fear of the serpent is in fact found reflected in the western culture. In accordance with the explanation given above we can make a distinction, hopefully one which will help us to set ourselves from the shallow dualism of those who consider the serpent to be a symbol of evil (and even more absurdly, imagine the devil as some individual being trying to play tricks on us, rather than as a cosmic archetype representing the necessary challenges and tests involved in human life). Essentially we can say that "God" is a priori knowledge, while the serpent is a posteriori knowledge. Now it is the former which is more "pure" we could say, in the sense that logic conforms to laws and can be generalized, while experiential knowledge always has a subjective element.

In our present society, that is to say the Christian-influenced society of Europe, America etc., we see negative forms of both, one ripening into the other. The church, and later speculative philosophers, developed a form of philosophical scholasticism, a total reliance on the abstract and logical divorced from experience. Their dogmas and theories divorced the western humanity from the simplicity of its own experience, things like the sense of the presence one feels walking through a forest or seeing a snow-covered peak. At the same time they virulently attacked the old gods, the pagan gods, who were archetypes of such a natural experience of spiritual presence.

This eventually caused a reaction, one which we are seeing now. The modern "philosophy" (if it merits such a name), denies logic entirely, creating a wholly relativist world where individual subjective experience is the only thing of importance. Modern science is of course wholly empirical, a posteriori, and it has brought us marvels like the nuclear bomb and a million other instruments of death. It has even reached the point of telling us that our experience is wholly the product of neurochemicals, having lost the (a priori) distinction between the logical categories of consciousness and matter, it tells us that they are the same thing.

If we are able to integrate and understand the serpent archetype, we will find the balance between those two types of insight, logical and experiential. To be like serpents, like the serpent of Genesis, we must have no concern for the curses of any demiurge, no attachment to some particular religious system which comforts us with promises of paradise and scares us with tales of hell. As already mentioned, the serpent is a symbol of healing, and when we rid ourselves of attachments to dogmas, we will find a profound experience of inner peace. The way the story has been told to us is but one partial and biased interpretation of its original meaning.

The serpent, and all the other old gods which have been slain in the march of "progress" by the worshipers of wholly transcendent sky-gods, they are all within us, archetypes which can help and guide us if we allow them the space and understand them clearly. This is not to say that every form of paganism is positive - many are simply reactions against the Christian teaching, and any unconscious reaction to something is bound to be in some way less complete than the thing it is reacting against. But there is a natural spirituality which we have lost, a spirituality which at once is in harmony with nature and the things of this earth, and at the same time open to high philosophy and the recognition of the ultimate One Divinity, whatever name we call that Divinity by. Like the serpent shedding it's skin, this understanding will truly bring us a kind of rebirth, a natural and holistic awakening.

 

[AspiringSoul]

The serpents in the bible are the Seraphim. Seraphim are beings of fire, that is they are the Jinn.
The fire, is symbolic of desire, as in the kama-loma/astral plane..and hence humans are also aquianted with the jinn world and have that nature within ourselves.

From the pov of the metaphysical descent of consciousness, desire is a product of awareness of the individual self. It can only be killed by unity with the Universal self, that is, no desire remains on that level..and the symbol of the serpent here is the ouroboros.

in buddhism, unwholesome desire is called Tanha and wholesome desire is called Chanda. i'm referencing this so you can find more material to read this way (i would expect you to know these though).
there's a big difference, like the desire to take/own for yourself vs the desire to share and help others.
So when you talk about kundalini, it is no different to the 'purification of the nafs' in islam.
it's either unwholesome or wholesome.

Purification of the Soul - Tazkiyah al-Nafs

Purifying the soul is among the most difficult tasks a Muslim has to fix. This article explores how one can seek to get his soul purified, isha Allah.

www.gsalam.net

the purified nafs, being in a state of 'wholesome desire' is the 'state of islam'..that is 'perfect submission' which is dualistic (and you understand what that means in hinduism).

the nafs being 'tamed' or purified, THAT is kundalini when it's positive..and even then it's a dualistic state. only here it's a symbol of wisdom, since wisdom is post-causal too. wisdom dont mean too much though, go read the book of Ecclestaties..
these type of people, David and Solomon, were the personification of the nafs..and neither one was a happy person.

since it's the nature of fire to be unpredictable, it is easily swayed to destroy and burn.living under duality, under the system of karma, we're always going to be going through some type of fuckery in life..and that's what happened to David and Solomon, as it did the nation of israel.

lastly, islam doesnt attack the serpent outright, since it tells us iblees, a jinn, was higher ranked than all the angels of light. just as there's the purified nafs.
fire is also light, but it also burns/destroys...

that brings me back to a quote i read a long time ago, from a hindu source

She gives liberation to the Yogi and bondage to fools.

Moses lifted the serpent and placed it on a stick. This was symbolic of 'islam' that is, the tamed serpent.
Jesus was the DEAD serpent, symbolic of 'Ihsan', the highest level of faith, unity of consciousness etc (hence many of the things he said).

 

[Artful Revealer]

I think the Serpent has got a bit of an unfair treatment in the Abrahamic religions, particularly due to the snake story in Genesis. Of course in the Christian interpretation of this story the serpent is evil, staining humanity with the taint of original sin that requires the crucifixion of Yeshua to remedy. Clearly that is a one-sided interpretation of the story, though the only interpretation many people understand. In various Gnostic theologies the story is inverted, the Garden of Eden not being a true paradise, but rather a state of blissful ignorance, innocence without experience, which humanity had to leave in order to undergo the painful yet necessary journey towards consciousness and experiential wisdom. Hence the serpent is not considered "evil" from this perspective, rather as the heroic liberator who accepted the curse of the thundering and blustering demiurge (to "crawl on his belly") in order to free humanity from that state.

Now having read that, perhaps you are thinking that I am some kind of satanist. So much has the serpent become associated with "darkness" that people may even be disturbed by hearing someone speaking in his defense. Yet even Yeshua said:

"Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves"​

Which fits very nicely with the story above - cast out of Eden and onto this earth, we can return to a place of peace and wholeness only by again becoming innocent, but an innocence combined with the experiential wisdom we develop during our sorrowful pilgrimage on this earth.

Now the meaning of the serpent symbol is hopefully becoming clearer to you. In many cultures the serpent was associated with wisdom, and also with healing. Shedding it's skin is an allegory of the process of regeneration, shedding the old to make space for the new, rebirth. Serpents are involved in various creation mythologies. The highest God of the Aztecs "Quetzolcoatl" was the "feathered serpent". Vishnu, Buddha, and other deities are depicted crowned by serpents, likely related to the "Kundalini" serpent, which essentially represents the control of vital energies of the body developed by spiritual practice. The serpent's hiss is also considered related with the element of fire, which of course is the element of the sun - the stories of Christ, Dionysus etc all being stories of the dying-resurrecting Sun God archetype.

The Abrahamic (particularly Christian) fear of the serpent is in fact found reflected in the western culture. In accordance with the explanation given above we can make a distinction, hopefully one which will help us to set ourselves from the shallow dualism of those who consider the serpent to be a symbol of evil (and even more absurdly, imagine the devil as some individual being trying to play tricks on us, rather than as a cosmic archetype representing the necessary challenges and tests involved in human life). Essentially we can say that "God" is a priori knowledge, while the serpent is a posteriori knowledge. Now it is the former which is more "pure" we could say, in the sense that logic conforms to laws and can be generalized, while experiential knowledge always has a subjective element.

In our present society, that is to say the Christian-influenced society of Europe, America etc., we see negative forms of both, one ripening into the other. The church, and later speculative philosophers, developed a form of philosophical scholasticism, a total reliance on the abstract and logical divorced from experience. Their dogmas and theories divorced the western humanity from the simplicity of its own experience, things like the sense of the presence one feels walking through a forest or seeing a snow-covered peak. At the same time they virulently attacked the old gods, the pagan gods, who were archetypes of such a natural experience of spiritual presence.

This eventually caused a reaction, one which we are seeing now. The modern "philosophy" (if it merits such a name), denies logic entirely, creating a wholly relativist world where individual subjective experience is the only thing of importance. Modern science is of course wholly empirical, a posteriori, and it has brought us marvels like the nuclear bomb and a million other instruments of death. It has even reached the point of telling us that our experience is wholly the product of neurochemicals, having lost the (a priori) distinction between the logical categories of consciousness and matter, it tells us that they are the same thing.

If we are able to integrate and understand the serpent archetype, we will find the balance between those two types of insight, logical and experiential. To be like serpents, like the serpent of Genesis, we must have no concern for the curses of any demiurge, no attachment to some particular religious system which comforts us with promises of paradise and scares us with tales of hell. As already mentioned, the serpent is a symbol of healing, and when we rid ourselves of attachments to dogmas, we will find a profound experience of inner peace. The way the story has been told to us is but one partial and biased interpretation of its original meaning.

The serpent, and all the other old gods which have been slain in the march of "progress" by the worshipers of wholly transcendent sky-gods, they are all within us, archetypes which can help and guide us if we allow them the space and understand them clearly. This is not to say that every form of paganism is positive - many are simply reactions against the Christian teaching, and any unconscious reaction to something is bound to be in some way less complete than the thing it is reacting against. But there is a natural spirituality which we have lost, a spirituality which at once is in harmony with nature and the things of this earth, and at the same time open to high philosophy and the recognition of the ultimate One Divinity, whatever name we call that Divinity by. Like the serpent shedding it's skin, this understanding will truly bring us a kind of rebirth, a natural and holistic awakening.

Large parts of your post resonate with me, but I'd still like to nuanciate that the general Gnostic view of the serpent, taken from the Christian apocrypha, remains negative, that it's not exactly the wisdom of the serpent itself that moved Eve to open her eyes and escape the fenced dominion of the demiurge, but that divine inspiration perched on the Tree of Knowledge as an eagle and moved Adam and Eve to wake from their slumber. The serpent, in the mean time, an archetypical symbol of a being close to the ground, close to matter, a wriggling wormtongue, did it for his own gain in his ambition to rebel against the demiurge / god of Eden.

"But what they call the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is the Epinoia of the light, they stayed in front of it in order that he (Adam) might not look up to his fullness and recognize the nakedness of his shamefulness. But it was I who brought about that they ate."​

​

And I said to the savior, "Lord, was it not the serpent that taught Adam to eat?" The savior smiled and said, "The serpent taught them to eat from wickedness of begetting, lust, (and) destruction, that he (Adam) might be useful to him. And he (Adam) knew that he was disobedient to him (the chief archon) due to light of the Epinoia which is in him, which made him more correct in his thinking than the chief archon. (= demiurge)​

​

...​

​

I appeared in the form of an eagle on the tree of knowledge, which is the Epinoia from the foreknowledge of the pure light, that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they were both in a fallen state, and they recognized their nakedness. The Epinoia appeared to them as a light; she awakened their thinking.​

​

- Apocryphon of John​

​

The Serpent according to Christian gnosis:

... by the evil power which is called "the serpent." And he is more cunning than all the evil powers. He led man astray through the determination of those things which belong to the thought and the desires. <He> made him transgress the command, so that he would die. And he was expelled from every enjoyment of that place.​

​

- Tripartite Tractate​

​

First, adultery came into being, afterward murder. And he (Cain) was begotten in adultery, for he was the child of the Serpent (and Eve). So he became a murderer, just like his father, and he killed his brother. Indeed, every act of sexual intercourse which has occurred between those unlike one another (of spirit) is adultery.​

​

- Gospel of Philip​

​

There is a Gnostic sect that goes by the name Ophites, given to them by their detractors, that appeared to have equated the serpent with Jesus, but this remains speculative as far as I know, and their inclusion of a group called Cainites may allude to a possible lineage to Kenites from Midian, the tribe of Moses' stepfather Jethro, who were also serpent-worshipers. The larger body of Gnostic theology did not however, equate the serpent with Wisdom or Sophia, but the wicked angel of the Lord whom was cast out of Eden (by the demiurge) for his rebellion, but in so doing gained his own dominion as prince of this world.

 

[shankara]

The serpents in the bible are the Seraphim. Seraphim are beings of fire, that is they are the Jinn.
The fire, is symbolic of desire, as in the kama-loma/astral plane..and hence humans are also aquianted with the jinn world and have that nature within ourselves.

From the pov of the metaphysical descent of consciousness, desire is a product of awareness of the individual self. It can only be killed by unity with the Universal self, that is, no desire remains on that level..and the symbol of the serpent here is the ouroboros.

in buddhism, unwholesome desire is called Tanha and wholesome desire is called Chanda. i'm referencing this so you can find more material to read this way (i would expect you to know these though).
there's a big difference, like the desire to take/own for yourself vs the desire to share and help others.
So when you talk about kundalini, it is no different to the 'purification of the nafs' in islam.
it's either unwholesome or wholesome.

Purification of the Soul - Tazkiyah al-Nafs

Purifying the soul is among the most difficult tasks a Muslim has to fix. This article explores how one can seek to get his soul purified, isha Allah.

www.gsalam.net

the purified nafs, being in a state of 'wholesome desire' is the 'state of islam'..that is 'perfect submission' which is dualistic (and you understand what that means in hinduism).

the nafs being 'tamed' or purified, THAT is kundalini when it's positive..and even then it's a dualistic state. only here it's a symbol of wisdom, since wisdom is post-causal too. wisdom dont mean too much though, go read the book of Ecclestaties..
these type of people, David and Solomon, were the personification of the nafs..and neither one was a happy person.

since it's the nature of fire to be unpredictable, it is easily swayed to destroy and burn.living under duality, under the system of karma, we're always going to be going through some type of fuckery in life..and that's what happened to David and Solomon, as it did the nation of israel.

lastly, islam doesnt attack the serpent outright, since it tells us iblees, a jinn, was higher ranked than all the angels of light. just as there's the purified nafs.
fire is also light, but it also burns/destroys...

that brings me back to a quote i read a long time ago, from a hindu source

She gives liberation to the Yogi and bondage to fools.

Moses lifted the serpent and placed it on a stick. This was symbolic of 'islam' that is, the tamed serpent.
Jesus was the DEAD serpent, symbolic of 'Ihsan', the highest level of faith, unity of consciousness etc (hence many of the things he said).

Thanks for the further explanations of the symbol, very interesting stuff.

Large parts of your post resonate with me, but I'd still like to nuanciate that the general Gnostic view of the serpent, taken from the Christian apocrypha, remains negative, that it's not exactly the wisdom of the serpent itself that moved Eve to open her eyes and escape the fenced dominion of the demiurge, but that divine inspiration perched on the Tree of Knowledge as an eagle and moved Adam and Eve to wake from their slumber. The serpent, in the mean time, an archetypical symbol of a being close to the ground, close to matter, a wriggling wormtongue, did it for his own gain in his ambition to rebel against the demiurge / god of Eden.

"But what they call the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is the Epinoia of the light, they stayed in front of it in order that he (Adam) might not look up to his fullness and recognize the nakedness of his shamefulness. But it was I who brought about that they ate."​

​

And I said to the savior, "Lord, was it not the serpent that taught Adam to eat?" The savior smiled and said, "The serpent taught them to eat from wickedness of begetting, lust, (and) destruction, that he (Adam) might be useful to him. And he (Adam) knew that he was disobedient to him (the chief archon) due to light of the Epinoia which is in him, which made him more correct in his thinking than the chief archon. (= demiurge)​

​

...​

​

I appeared in the form of an eagle on the tree of knowledge, which is the Epinoia from the foreknowledge of the pure light, that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they were both in a fallen state, and they recognized their nakedness. The Epinoia appeared to them as a light; she awakened their thinking.​

​

- Apocryphon of John​

​

The Serpent according to Christian gnosis:

... by the evil power which is called "the serpent." And he is more cunning than all the evil powers. He led man astray through the determination of those things which belong to the thought and the desires. <He> made him transgress the command, so that he would die. And he was expelled from every enjoyment of that place.​

​

- Tripartite Tractate​

​

First, adultery came into being, afterward murder. And he (Cain) was begotten in adultery, for he was the child of the Serpent (and Eve). So he became a murderer, just like his father, and he killed his brother. Indeed, every act of sexual intercourse which has occurred between those unlike one another (of spirit) is adultery.​

​

- Gospel of Philip​

​

There is a Gnostic sect that goes by the name Ophites, given to them by their detractors, that appeared to have equated the serpent with Jesus, but this remains speculative as far as I know, and their inclusion of a group called Cainites may allude to a possible lineage to Kenites from Midian, the tribe of Moses' stepfather Jethro, who were also serpent-worshipers. The larger body of Gnostic theology did not however, equate the serpent with Wisdom or Sophia, but the wicked angel of the Lord whom was cast out of Eden (by the demiurge) for his rebellion, but in so doing gained his own dominion as prince of this world.

Apparently there are many ways to read the stories in the Bible, different levels of interpretation. Perhaps these Gnostic notions about the eagle etc were developed later in order to symbolize some other aspect of things. I'm saying this partly because I'm aware of different interpretations of the Cain story, one that it represents the destruction of the nomadic peoples (Abel, who herds sheep) by sedentary agriculturalists (Cain), and another that it represents the loss of female virginity ("bloodshed").

As for the Ophites, I had heard about this group. There is an interesting thing I heard a while back about Christ and Lucifer being the same. Lucifer testing us, Christ giving us healing when we overcome the tests. In any case I'm totally opposed to any kind of dualistic interpretation where Lucifer is solely the force of evil, in fact embodiment is a necessary challenge and Lucifer represents that challenge. Of course worshipping embodiment is going to lead to slavery to matter, but many people need to be made aware of the idea of the demiurge rather than Lucifer as the true force of darkness.

 

[rainerann]

There was a book that I found a while back called the origin of serpent worship that you might be interested in.

it traces a history of serpent worship and tree worship from what I remember, so the conflict doesn’t center entirely around the relationship between the serpents representation within abrahamic religions. It goes deeper into a more detailed history on the origins of humanity.

If I remember right, there is some evidence of these two factions were engaged in conflict long before abrahamic religions made any demonstrable stamp on history.

 

[Artful Revealer]

Apparently there are many ways to read the stories in the Bible, different levels of interpretation. Perhaps these Gnostic notions about the eagle etc were developed later in order to symbolize some other aspect of things. I'm saying this partly because I'm aware of different interpretations of the Cain story, one that it represents the destruction of the nomadic peoples (Abel, who herds sheep) by sedentary agriculturalists (Cain), and another that it represents the loss of female virginity ("bloodshed").

While Gnostics had a more liberal approach to the idea of interpretation being free and subject to theological scrutiny than more orthodox theologians, they were nonetheless judged on their logical coherence. Freedom of interpretation would not extend beyond the law of non-contradiction, meaning a simultaneous positive and negative view of the serpent could not coexist within the same theological corpus.

But even according to orthodox Christianity there are the four levels of interpretation. Not interpretations that allow for giving different, even contradictory meanings to verses, but interpretations in different senses. There generally is the literal and spiritual interpretation, the latter being further divided into typological (mostly allegorical congruences between different events), tropological (figurative meaning regarding morality and ethics), and anagogical (relating to the higher spiritual, historical and universal purpose of the Christian message, like eschatology).

Dante gave an example to illustrate:

When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion (Psalm 113).​

​

Now if we examine the letters alone, the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is signified; in the allegory, our redemption accomplished through Christ; in the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace; in the anagogical sense, the exodus of the holy soul from slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.. they can all be called allegorical.​

The dark side of this medal is that this multi-layered form of interpretation could be abused, and has been abused, to make sense out of many of the discrepancies that exist between the Old and New Testaments, something that in my opinion has significantly damaged Christianity to this day. But if done correctly, there could be no end to the spiritual potential of the scriptures.

As for the Ophites, I had heard about this group. There is an interesting thing I heard a while back about Christ and Lucifer being the same. Lucifer testing us, Christ giving us healing when we overcome the tests. In any case I'm totally opposed to any kind of dualistic interpretation where Lucifer is solely the force of evil, in fact embodiment is a necessary challenge and Lucifer represents that challenge. Of course worshipping embodiment is going to lead to slavery to matter, but many people need to be made aware of the idea of the demiurge rather than Lucifer as the true force of darkness.

The equation between Jesus and Lucifer is more a new age Theosophic thing. Lucifer as an entity is a completely artificial being rooted in a personal dislike of the author of the Vulgate, St. Jerome, of a rival bishop who happened to bear that name. It is a modern interpretation derived from the fact that Jesus, in the New Testament, has also been called morning star, but has obviously nothing to do with the morning star (HYLEL) of Isaiah 14:12.

People are free to interpret Lucifer as the representation of he who plunges creation in matter in order to exalt it, but from texts on Christian gnosis, the demiurge is not the true force of darkness, merely the source of ignorance, a force of justice that tries to recreate the fullness that transcends him, but ultimately fails without gnosis. The serpent (or Lucifer), is the one who knowingly and actively prevents the union of creation with the divine, not by testing creation, but by indebting it through the power of sin.

 

[morita]

 

[shankara]

While Gnostics had a more liberal approach to the idea of interpretation being free and subject to theological scrutiny than more orthodox theologians, they were nonetheless judged on their logical coherence. Freedom of interpretation would not extend beyond the law of non-contradiction, meaning a simultaneous positive and negative view of the serpent could not coexist within the same theological corpus.

But even according to orthodox Christianity there are the four levels of interpretation. Not interpretations that allow for giving different, even contradictory meanings to verses, but interpretations in different senses. There generally is the literal and spiritual interpretation, the latter being further divided into typological (mostly allegorical congruences between different events), tropological (figurative meaning regarding morality and ethics), and anagogical (relating to the higher spiritual, historical and universal purpose of the Christian message, like eschatology).

Dante gave an example to illustrate:

When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion (Psalm 113).​

​

Now if we examine the letters alone, the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is signified; in the allegory, our redemption accomplished through Christ; in the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace; in the anagogical sense, the exodus of the holy soul from slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.. they can all be called allegorical.​

The dark side of this medal is that this multi-layered form of interpretation could be abused, and has been abused, to make sense out of many of the discrepancies that exist between the Old and New Testaments, something that in my opinion has significantly damaged Christianity to this day. But if done correctly, there could be no end to the spiritual potential of the scriptures.

The equation between Jesus and Lucifer is more a new age Theosophic thing. Lucifer as an entity is a completely artificial being rooted in a personal dislike of the author of the Vulgate, St. Jerome, of a rival bishop who happened to bear that name. It is a modern interpretation derived from the fact that Jesus, in the New Testament, has also been called morning star, but has obviously nothing to do with the morning star (HYLEL) of Isaiah 14:12.

People are free to interpret Lucifer as the representation of he who plunges creation in matter in order to exalt it, but from texts on Christian gnosis, the demiurge is not the true force of darkness, merely the source of ignorance, a force of justice that tries to recreate the fullness that transcends him, but ultimately fails without gnosis. The serpent (or Lucifer), is the one who knowingly and actively prevents the union of creation with the divine, not by testing creation, but by indebting it through the power of sin.

Well I don't know if Lucifer really represents embodiment or ego exactly. There is definitely the association with temptation, Levi (I believe) speaks of Lucifer as representing the astral light, which I guess is where temptation comes from, as in sexual attraction in particular. As for whether the name is merely due to some historical accident, I'm somewhat less certain, anyway the archetype is the archetype, whatever you want to call it.

But the thing that interests me (along with the whole thing of Christ saying "be ye wise as serpents", an obvious use of the serpent as a symbol of wisdom) is the thing the serpent says in the garden:

"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."​

If you take the idea that the angels were once humans who ascended, or even the Buddhist notion that the human rebirth (and not rebirth in the pleasurable "Eden" of the Deva Realms) is necessary for enlightenment, then what the serpent says is not a lie. After all in "the Garden" we would not "know good and evil", this is something we only know from the human life, individuality and embodiment. Of course it's not that they become "gods" from eating of the tree as such, but that such a "fall" is what creates the possibility to eventually become "gods".

 

[Aero]

People used to like Crows and Vultures, and then superstition took over. Humans killed each other en masse during pointless wars, and the Crows ended up being the evil things. Because they eat corpses, and they aren't modest about it. In any case, I can assure you if every crow in the world could hang out at a giant peanut farm, they would.

Snakes probably aren't very modest either. Either way, if a snake spirit, totem, or symbol enters your life, it's not automatically a bad thing. The same is true of Lucifer. Although I don't know that I would say Lucifer is a spirit. I haven't really been polishing up my Luciferianism or Shamanism lately. But I would say Lucifer is supposed to be a part of some bigger spirit, whereas the snake is its own spirit.

Yall are raising the bar here, though. Keep it up.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

“Guard against the Cross for there are many who will stand in your way”

^ Nephilim reputation reimagined, courtesy of Ubisoft.

 

[shankara]

Nobody knows symbols like Jung did, and here are a few things he had to say... From an article with too much information for me to digest right away, but could be interesting to others:

Serpent

SERPENT Archaic, Visceral, Symbolic, Illuminating The Serpent is the living genius of the family bloodline itself, personified as a spirit.

jungiangenealogy.weebly.com

The snake is a personification of the unconscious, for, as early as the Gnostics, it was used as a symbol for the spinal cord and the basal ganglia, where the vegetative psyche is localized. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.

Perhaps the commonest dream symbol of transcendence is the snake, as represented by the therapeutic symbol of the Roman god of medicine Aesclepius, which has survived to modern times as a sign of the medical profession. This was originally a nonpoisonous tree snake; as we see it, coiled around the staff of the healing god, it seems to embody a kind of mediation between earth and heaven. --Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, page 153



The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother. The earthly (numen loci) separates forethinking and pleasure in man, but not in itself. The serpent has the weight of the earth in itself but also its changeability and germination from which everything that becomes emerges. ~Jung, The Red Book, Page 247.

This serpent does not represent "reason" or anything approaching it, but rather symbolises a peculiar autonomous mind which can possess one completely, a spirit of revelation which gives us "Intuitionen" (intuitions). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.