The Goddess and the Serpent

[Guest guest]

Our new Goddess of the Week is Nageshwari, or Manasa, the "Snake

Goddess," and so I thought I would write a little something about the

powerful lessons that devotees of the Goddess can find in Her serpent

aspects.

 

The snake, or serpent, is an image that has been inseparable from the

Goddess from the earliest prehistoric art to the most sophisticated

Hindu philosophical conceptualizations surrounding the Goddess as

Kundalini, or the Serpent Power. Nageshwari, or Manasa, is a more

primal Hindu vision of the Goddess -- but she too falls into the same

ancient association.

 

"The serpent first appears in the Neolithic era as a serpent Mother

Goddess [in a terracotta statuette from Sesklo, Thessaly, c. 5000

BCE], and is also drawn coiling around the womb and the phallus as

the principle of regeneration. In the Sumerian cities of Ur and Uruk,

in the lowest level of excavation, were found two very old images of

the Mother Goddess and Her child, both having the heads of snakes. As

the male aspect of the Goddess was [historically] differentiated

[into an independent male divinity], the serpent became the

fertilizing phallus, image of the son who was Her son and consort,

born from Her, married with Her and dying back into Her for rebirth

in an unending cycle." ("The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an

Image," Baring and Cashford.)

 

One of the most famous "Snake Goddesses" from outside India is the

ancient figurine found in the palace of Knossos in Crete (c. 1600

BCE). For a fascinating and well-balanced discussion of that

mysterious and powerful image, see Christopher Witcombe's engaging

presentation at http://witcombe.sbc.edu/snakegoddess/ The Minoan

statuette is a sobering corrective to the modern, Judeo-Christian

understanding of the snake as a symbol of Evil and the most damned of

all creatures. Again, Baring and Cashford:

 

"In images of the Goddess in every culture, the serpent is never far

away -- standing behind Her, eating from Her hand, entwined in Her

tree, or even, as in Tiamat, the shape of the Goddess Herself. [The

Biblical Book of] Genesis is no exception to this, unless it be that,

formally, there is no Goddess, only a woman of the same name

[i.e. "The Mother of All Living"]. However, [here] the serpent, once

lord of rebirth, has now turned into his opposite, the instigator of

death in league with Eve."

 

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