The Mexican month was divided into twenty days; the serpent and dragon symbolized two of them. In Mexico there was also a temple dedicated to the God of the Air, and the door of it was formed so as to resemble a serpent’s mouth.[12]
Amongst other things, Peter Martyr mentions a large serpent-idol at Campeachy, made of stones and bitumen, in the act of devouring a marble lion. When first seen by the Spaniards it was warm with the blood of human victims.
“Ancient painting and sculptures abound with evidences of Mexican Ophiolatreia, and prove that there was scarcely a Mexican deity who was not symbolized by a serpent or a dragon. Many deities appear holding serpents in their hands, and small figures of priests are represented with a snake over each head. This reminds us forcibly of the priests of the Egyptian Isis, who are described in sculpture with the sacred asp upon the head and a cone in the left hand. And to confirm the original mutual connexion of all the serpent-worshippers throughout all the world—the Mexican paintings, as well as the Egyptian and Persian hieroglyphics, describe the Ophite Hierogram of the intertwined serpents in almost all its varieties. A very remarkable one occurs in M. Allard’s collection of sculptures; in which the dragons forming it have each a man’s head in his mouth. The gods of Mexico are frequently pictured fighting with serpents and dragons; and gods, and sometimes men, are represented in conversation with the same loathsome creatures. There is scarcely, indeed, a feature in the mystery of Ophiolatreia which may not be recognised in the Mexican superstitions.
“We perceive, therefore, that in the kingdom of Mexico the serpent was sacred, and emblematic of more gods than one: an observation which may be extended to almost every other nation which adored the symbolical serpent. This is a remarkable and valuable fact, and it discovers in Ophiolatreia another feature of its aboriginal character. For it proves the serpent to have been a symbol of intrinsic divinity, and not a mere representative of peculiar properties which belong to some gods and not to others.”[13]
From what has been presented, it will be seen that the serpent symbol was of general acceptance in America, particularly among the semi-civilized nations; that it entered widely into their symbolic representations, and this significance was essentially the same with that which attached to it among the early nations of the old continent. Upon the basis, therefore, of the identity which we have observed in the elementary religious conceptions of the Old and New World, and the striking uniformity in their symbolical systems, we feel justified in ascribing to the emblematic Serpent and Egg of Ohio a significance radically the same with that which was assigned to the analogous compound symbol among the primitive nations of the East. This conclusion is further sustained by the character of some of the religious structures of the old continent, in which we find the symbolic serpent and the egg or circle represented on a most gigantic scale. Analogy could probably furnish no more decisive sanction, unless by exhibiting other structures, in which not only a general correspondence, but an absolute identity should exist. Such an identity it would be unreasonable to look for, even in the works of the same people, constructed in accordance with a common design.
It may seem hardly consistent with the caution which should characterize researches of this kind, to hazard the suggestion that the symbolical Serpent and Egg of Ohio are distinctly allusive to the specific notions of cosmogony which prevailed among the nations of the East, for the reason that it is impossible to bring positive collateral proof that such notions were entertained by any of the American nations. The absence of written records and of impartially preserved traditions we have already had ample reason to deplore; and unless further explorations shall present us with unexpected results, the deficiency may always exist. But we must remember that in no respect are men more tenacious than in the preservation of their rudimental religious beliefs and early conceptions. In the words of a philosophical investigator—“Of all researches that most effectually aid us to discover the origin of a nation or people whose history is involved in the obscurity of ancient times, none perhaps are attended with such important results as the analysis of their theological dogmas and their religious practices. To such matters mankind adhere with the greatest tenacity, which, though modified and corrupted in the revolution of ages, still retain features of their original construction, when language, arts, sciences and political establishments no longer preserve distinct lineaments of their ancient constitutions.”[14]
A striking example of the truth of these remarks is furnished in the religion of India, which, to this day, notwithstanding the revolution of time and empire, the destructions of foreign and of civil wars, and the constant addition of allegorical fictions (more fatal to the primitive system than all the other causes combined), still retains its original features, which are easily recognisable, and which identify it with the religions which prevailed in monumental Egypt, on the plains of Assyria, in the valleys of Greece, among the sterner nations around the Caspian, and among their kindred tribes on the rugged shores of Scandinavia.
This tenacity is not less strikingly illustrated in the careful perpetuation of rites, festivals and scenic representations which originated in notions which have long since become obsolete, and are now forgotten. Very few of the attendants on the annual May-day festival, as celebrated a few years back in this country, and very few of those who have read about the same are aware that it was only a perpetuation of the vernal solar festival of Baal, and that the garlanded pole was anciently a Phallic emblem.