The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

by Roswell Park

Since the dawn of written history, and from the most remote periods, the serpent has been regarded with the highest veneration as the most mysterious of living creatures. Being alike an object of wonder, admiration and fear, it is not strange that it became early connected with numerous superstitions; and when we remember how imperfectly understood were its habits we shall not wonder at the extraordinary attributes with which it was invested, nor perhaps even why it obtained so general a worship. Thus centuries ago Horapollo referring to serpent symbolism, said: "When the Egyptians were representing a universe they delineated the spectacle as a variegated snake devouring its own tail, the scales intimating the stars in the universe, the animal being extremely heavy, as is the earth, and extremely slippery like the water; moreover it every year puts off its old age with its skin as, in the universe, the recurring year effects a corresponding change, and becomes renovated, while the making use of its own body for food implies that all things whatever which are generated by divine providence in the world undergo a corruption into them again."

In all probability the annual shedding of the skin and the supposed rejuvenation of the animal was that which first connected it with the idea of eternal succession of form, subsequent reproduction and dissolution. This doctrine is typified in the notion of the succession of ages which prevailed among the Greeks, and the similar notion met with among nearly all primitive peoples. The ancient mysteries, with few or perhaps no exceptions, were all intended to illustrate the grand phenomena of nature. The mysteries of Osiris, Isis and Horus in Egypt; of Cybele in Phrygia, of Ceres and Proserpine at Eleusis, of Venus and Adonis in Phoenicia, of Bona Dea and of Priapus in Rome, all had this in in common, that they both mystified and typified the creation of things and the perpetuation of life. In all of them the serpent was conspicuously introduced as it symbolized and indicated the invigorating energy of nature. In the mysteries of Ceres, the grand secret which was communicated to the initiates was put in this enigma,—"The bull has begotten a serpent and the serpent a bull," the bull being a prominent emblem of generative force. In ancient Egypt it was usually the bull's horns which served as a symbol for the entire animal. When with the progress of centuries the bull became too expensive an animal to be commonly used for any purpose, the ram was substituted; hence the frequency of the ram's horns, as a symbol for Jove, seen so frequently, for example, among Roman antiquities.

Originally fire was taken to be one of the emblems of the sun, and thus most naturally, inevitably and universally the sun came to symbolize the active, vivifying principle of nature. That the serpent should in time typify the same principle, while the egg symbolized the more passive or feminine element, is equally certain but less easy of explanation; indeed we are to regard the serpent as the symbol of the great hermaphrodite first principle of nature. "It entered into the mythology of every nation, consecrated almost every temple, symbolized almost every deity, was imagined in the heavens, stamped on the earth and ruled in the realms of eternal sorrow." For this animal was estimated to be the most spirited of all reptiles of fiery nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit without hands or feet or any of the external members by which other animals effect their motion, while in its progress it assumes a variety of forms, moving in a spiral course and darting forward with whatever degree of swiftness it pleases.

The close relationship if not absolute identity among the early races of man between Solar, Phallic and Serpent worship was most striking; so marked indeed as to indicate that they are all forms of a single worship. It is with the latter that we must for a little while concern ourselves. How prominent a place serpent worship plays in our own Old Testament will be remarked as soon as one begins to reflect upon it. The part played by the serpent in the biblical myth concerning the origin of man is the first and most striking illustration. In the degenerated ancient mysteries of Bacchus some of the persons who took part in the ceremonies used to carry serpents in their hands and with horrid screams call "Eva, Eva;" the attendants were in fact often crowned with serpents while still making these frantic cries. In the Sabazian mysteries the snake was permitted to slip into the bosom of the person to be initiated and then to be removed from below the clothing. This ceremony was said to have originated among the Magi. It has been held that the invocation "Eva" related to the great mother of mankind; even so good an authority as Clemens of Alexandria held to this opinion, but Clemens also acknowledges that the name Eva, when properly aspirated is practically the same as Epha, or Opha, which the Greeks call Ophis, which is, in English, serpent. In most of the other mysteries serpent rites were introduced and many of the names were extremely suggestive. The Abaddon mentioned in the book of Revelation is certainly some serpent deity, since the prefix Ab, signifies not only father, but serpent. By Zoroaster the expanse of the heavens and even nature itself was described under the symbol of the serpent. In ancient Persia temples were erected to the serpent tribe, and festivals consecrated to their honor, some relic of this being found in the word Basilicus, or royal serpent, which gives rise to the term Basilica applied to the Christian churches of the present era. The Ethiopians, even, of the present day derive their name from the Greek Aithiopes, meaning the serpent gods worshipped long before them; again, the Island of Euboea signifies the Serpent Island and properly spelled should be Oub-Aia. The Greeks claimed that Medusa's head was brought by Perseus, by which they mean the serpent deity, as the worship was introduced into Greece by a people called Peresians. The head of Medusa denoted divine wisdom, while the Island was sacred to the serpent. The worship of the serpent being so old, many places as well as races received names indicating the prevalence of this general superstition; but this is no time to catalogue names,—though one perhaps should mention Ophis, Oboth, Eva in Macedonia, Dracontia, and last but not least, the name of Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Seth was, according to some, a semi-divine first ancestor of the Semites; Bunsen has shown that several of the antedeluvian descendants of Adam were among the Phoenician deities; thus Carthagenians had as God, Yubal or Jubal who would appear to have been the sun-god of Esculapius; or, spelled more correctly, Ju-Baal, that is Beauty of Baal.

Whether or not the serpent symbol has a distinct phallic reference has been disputed, but the more the subject is broadly studied the more it would seem that such is the case. It must certainly appear that the older races had that form of belief with which the serpent was always more or less symbolically connected, that is, adoration of the male principle of generation, one of whose principal phases was undoubtedly ancestor worship, while somewhat later the race adored the female principle which they symbolized by the sacred tree so often alluded to in Scripture as the Assyrian grove. Whether snakes be represented singly, coupled in pairs as in the well known Caduceus or Rod of Esculaipius, or in the crown placed upon the head of many a god and goddess, or the many headed snake drinking from the jewelled cup, or a snake twisted around a tree with another approaching it, suggesting temptation and fall,—in all these the underlying principle is always the same. Symbols of this character are met with not only in the temples of ancient Egypt but in ruins antedating them in Persia and the East; in the antiquities belonging to the races that first peopled what is now Greece and Italy, in the rock markings of India and of Central Europe, in the Cromlechs of Great Britain and Scandinavia, in the Great Serpent Mound which still remains in Ohio, and in many other mounds left by the mound builders of this country, in the ruins of Central America and Yucatan, and in the traditions and relics of the Aztecs and Toltecs,—in fact wherever antiquarian research has penetrated or where monuments of ancient peoples remain. There never has been so widespread a superstition, and no matter what later forms it may have assumed we must admit that it, first of all, and for a long time was man's tribute to the great, all powerful and unknown regenerative principle of nature, which has been deified again and again, and which always has been and always will be the greatest mystery within the ken of mankind.

Brown in his "Great Dionysiak Myth" says the serpent has these points of connection with Dionysus, (1) as a symbol of and connected with wisdom, (2) as a solar emblem, (3) as a symbol of time and eternity, (4) as an emblem of the earth, life, (5) as connected with the fertilizing mystery, (6) as a phallic emblem. Referring to the last of these he says: "The serpent being connected with the sun, the earth, life and fertility, must needs be also a phallic emblem, and was appropriate to the cult of Dionysos Priapos." Again, Sir G. W. Cox says, "It is unnecessary to analyze theories which profess to see in it worship of the creeping brute or the wide-spreading tree; a religion based upon the worship of the venomous reptile must have been a religion of terror. In the earliest glimpses which we have the serpent is the symbol of life and of love, nor is the phallic cultus in any respect a cult of the full grown branching tree." Again, "This religion, void of reason, condemned in the wisdom of Solomon, probably survived even Babylonian captivity; certainly it was adopted by the sects of Christians which were known as Ophites, Gnostics and Nicolaitans."

Another learned author says: "By comparing the varied legends of the East and West in conjunction we obtain a full outline of the mythology of the ancients. It recognizes as the primary element of things two independent principles of nature, the male and female, and these, in characteristic union as the soul and body, constitute the Great Hermaphrodite Deity, the one, the universe itself, consisting still of the two separate elements of its composition, modified though combined in one individual, of which all things are regarded but as parts." In fact the characteristics of all pagan deities, male or female, gradually mold into each other and at last into one or two; for as William Jones has stated, it seems a well-founded opinion that the entire list of gods and goddesses means only the powers of nature, principally those of the sun, expressed in a variety of ways with a multitude of fanciful names. The Creation is, in fact, human rather than a divine product in this sense, that it was suggested to the mind of man by the existence of things, while its method was, at least at first, suggested by the operation of nature; thus man saw the living bird emerge from the egg, after a certain period of incubation, a phenomenon equivalent to actual creation as apprehended by his simple mind. Incubation obviously then associated itself with creation, and this fact will explain the universality with which the egg was received as a symbol in the earlier systems of cosmogony. By a similar process creation came to be symbolized in the form of a phallus, and so Egyptians in their refinement of these ideas adopted as their symbol of the great first cause a Scarabaeus, indicating the great hermaphroditic unity, since they believed this insect to be both male and female. They beautifully typified a part of this idea also in the adoration which they paid to the water lily, or Lotus, so generally regarded as sacred throughout the East. It is the sublime and beautiful symbol which perpetually occurs in oriental mythology, and, as Maurice has stated, not without substantial reason, for it is its own beautiful progeny and contains a treasure of physical instruction. The lotus flower grows in the water among broad leaves, while in its center is formed a seed vessel shaped like a bell, punctured on the top with small cavities in which its seeds develop; the openings into the seed cells are too small to permit the seeds to escape when ripe, consequently they absorb moisture and develop within the same, shooting forth as new plants from the place where they originated; the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix which shall nourish them until they are large enough to burst open and release themselves, after which they take root wherever deposited. "The plant, therefore, being itself productive of itself, vegetating from its own matrix, being fostered in the earth, was naturally adopted as a symbol of the productive power of the waters upon which the creative spirit of the Creator acted, in giving life and vegetation to matter. We accordingly find it employed in every part of the northern hemisphere where symbolical religion, improperly called idolatry, existed."

Further exemplification of the same underlying principle is seen in the fact that most all of the ancient deities were paired; thus we have heaven and earth, sun and moon, fire and earth, father and mother, etc. Faber says "The ancient pagans of almost every part of the globe were wont to symbolize the world by an egg, hence this symbol is introduced into the cosmogonies of nearly all nations, and there are few persons even among those who have made mythology their study to whom the mundane egg is not perfectly familiar; it is the emblem not only of earth and life but also of the universe in its largest extent." In the Island of Cyprus is still to be seen a gigantic egg-shaped vase which is supposed to represent the mundane or Orphic egg. It is of stone, measuring thirty feet in circumference, and has upon it a sculptured bull, the emblem of productive energy. It is supposed to signify the constellation of Taurus, whose rising was connected with the return of the mystic re-invigorating principle.

The work of the Mound Builders in this country is generally and widely known, still it is perhaps not so generally known how common upon this continent was the general use of the serpent symbol. Their remains are spread over the country from the sources of the Allegheny in N. Y. state westward to Iowa and Nebraska, to a considerable extent through the Mississippi Valley, and along the Susquehanna as far as the Valley of Wyoming in Pennsylvania. They are found even along the St. Lawrence River; they also line the shore of the Gulf from Florida to Texas. That they were erected for other than defensive purposes is most clear; without knowing exactly what was the government of their builders the presumption is that it combined both the priestly and civil functions, as obtained centuries ago in Mexico. The Great Serpent Mound, already alluded to, had a length of at least 1,000 feet; the outline was perfectly regular and the mouth was widely open as if in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure, also formed of earth, whose longest diameter was one hundred and sixty feet. Again near Granville, Ohio, occurs the form of an alligator in connection with which was indubitable evidence of an altar. Near Tarlton, Ohio, is another earth work in the form of a cross. There is every reason to think that sacrifices were made upon the altars nearly always found in connection with these mounds. Among the various animal effigies found in Wisconsin, mounds in the form of a serpent are most frequently met with, while circles enclosing a pentagon, or a mound with eight radiating points, undoubtedly representing the sun, were also found.