Abury, A Temple of the British Druids, With Some Others, Described

by William Stukeley

“The serpent,” says Maximus of Tyre, Dissert. 38. “was the great symbol of the deity to most nations, and as such was worshipped by the Indians.” The temples of old made in the form of a serpent, were called for that reason, Dracontia. The universality of this regard for serpents, shews the high antiquity of the symbol, and that it was antediluvian.

To give us light into the affair, first it will be convenient to discourse a little concerning the nature of the serpent, and why mankind should make it a symbol of divinity. For it looks a little strange, after our first mother was seduc’d from her innocence, by the devil under this form, that so high a regard should be paid to it.

The first learning in the world confided chiefly in symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients, that is come to our hand, is symbolic. “It was the mode,” says Serranus, on Plato’s Symposium, “of the ancient philosophers, to represent truth by certain symbols and hidden images. It leads us gradually, sweetly, yet most efficaciously, towards the contemplation of the first being, which is the end of all philosophy and theology.” We may add, it was the method of ancient divines too, from the beginning to our Saviour’s time. No one cultivated it more than he, in all his sermons and discourses, which were affecting, well wrought up, lively, apposite, entertaining in the highest degree. Some of them complete dramas. And in general, we must conclude, it gives a beautiful gloss and amiable face to truth.

That the Druids studied in this enigmatic and symbolic way, appears from what we are writing upon; and Diogenes Laertius, in his proem, affirms it of them. He ranks them with the Magi, Chaldeans, and Gymnosophists, gives some of their doctrines, and makes them rather ancienter than the Egyptians, meaning the learned among the Egyptians. He says, “the Gymnosophists are descended of the Magi, and some affirm the Jews too.” He means the ancestors of the Jews, Abraham in particular. I believe, Druids, Chaldeans, Gymnosophists, and Egyptians, all descended, or rather disciples of the Magi, who were the first and patriarchal priests after the flood. Sanchoniathon calls Shem (as I take it) by the name of Magus, as the prince of the order. He says the Egyptians vail their doctrines under the figure of beetles, snakes, birds, and other animals. And it seems to be the origin of animal worship in Egypt. Thus Gale, in his court of the gentiles, P. I. p. 64. again P. II. p. 35. “the ancient mode of expressing things worthy of memory, by hieroglyphic forms, notes, and symbols, was very common amongst the ancients, in the oriental parts especially, both poets and philosophers; and exceeding proper for that infant state of the world, wherein knowledge was so imperfect and impolite. And we need no way doubt but that this symbolic kind of discourse, or language, had its original from the divine œconomy which God prescribed in his infant church, consisting of many terrene images and sensible forms, symbols and types, for the shadowing forth highest contemplations and heavenly mysteries. Which way of conveying and preserving knowledge is not only helpful to the memory, grateful to the fancy and judgment, but also very efficacious for the moving of the affections.”

A symbol is an arbitrary, sensible sign of an intellectual idea. And I believe the art of writing at first was no other, than that of making symbols, pictures, or marks of things they wanted to express. So that every letter was the picture of an idea. This was the first and antediluvian way of writing, before alphabet writing was invented. This latter was a postdiluvian invention, in my opinion. The reasons I shall give on another more immediate occasion. Servius, on the Æneid V. septem ingens gyros, speaking of the snake encompassing Anchises’s tomb, writes, that this method was prior to alphabet-writing. I believe the Chinese method of writing to be the antediluvian one; and the like, perhaps, may be affirmed of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Egyptians had the good sense, when alphabet writing was communicated to them, to embrace it, tho’ the Chinese will not. Still the Egyptians retain’d a particular veneration for their former method, and dedicated it to sacred uses altogether.

This symbol of the snake and circle, which is the picture of the temple of Abury, we see on innumerable Egyptian monuments. Always it holds the uppermost, the first and chief place; which shews its high dignity.

Mr. Selden, upon the Arundel marbles, p. 132, says, “this figure in abbreviated writing, among the Greeks, signifies Δαιμων, the deity.”

And Kircher, in his third tome, affirms the like of the Brachmans of the East-Indies.

I can by no means admit it to be an Egyptian invention. The Egyptians took this, and hieroglyphic writing in general, from the common ancestors of mankind. This is sufficiently prov’d from the universality of the thing, reaching from China in the east, to Britain in the west, nay, and into America too.