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In Mythology, the wand or staff carried by Hermes or Mercury having two serpents entwined around it and surmounted by two wings. Used as the medical insignia of certain medical groups such as the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Even though it is sometimes used to symbol the medical profession, the staff of Aesculapius, q.v., Roman god of medicine, is usually considered to be the more appropriate symbol.

The Caduceus is often represented as the emblem of medicine, and yet it’s origins are completely unrelated. Let's see how!

For more about this sculpture, see: siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100... For a full view, see: www.flickr.com/photos/takomabibelot/2660575891/ Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons here: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caduceus_Detail_Of_Giusep...

Caduceus Some Gnostic Christians worshipped the serpent hung on a cross, rod, or Tree of Life, calling it Christ the Savior, also a title of Hermes the Wise Serpent represented by his own holy caduceus, the scepter of two serpents. This was one of the oldest and most revered holy symbols. "The usual mythological association of the serpent is not, as in the Bible, with corruption, but with physical and spiritual health, as in the Greek caduceus." To Sumerians it was an emblem of life, appearing on art works like the Libation Cup of Gudea, ca. 2000 B.C. In pre-Hellenic Greece the caduceus was displayed on healing temples like those of Asclepius, Hygeia, and Panacea, which is why it is still an international symbol of the medical profession. The caduceus is found also in Aztec sacred art, enthroned like a serpent-deity on an altar. North American Indians knew it too. A Navaho medicine man said his people's sacred cave once featured "a stone carving of two snakes intertwined, the heads facing east and west." 1 Hindu symbolism equated the caduceus with the central spirit of the human body, the spinal column, with two mystic serpents twined around it like the genetic double helix: ida-nadi to the left, pingala-nadi to the right. Moses's brazen serpent on a pole, the mere sight of which cured the Israelites, was probably a prophylactic caduceus (Numbers 21:9). It was named Nehushtan, and worshipped in the tabernacle up to the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4). See Hermes. Hermes Greek god of magic, letters, medicine, and occult wisdom, identified with Thoth in Egypt, Mercury in Rome. He was really older than Greece, one of the Aegean Great Mother's primal serpent-consorts, partaking of her wisdom because he was once a part of her. Like India's Ardhanarisvara-Kali and Shiva united in one body- Hermes was the original "hermaphrodite" united in one body with Aphrodite. Priests of Hermes wore artificial breasts and female garments to preside over Aphrodite's Cyprian temple in the guise of the god Hermaphroditus.1 Hermes was a universal Indo-European god. An Enlightened One born of the virgin Maia, he was the same as the Enlightened One (Buddha) born of the same virgin Maya in India. The Mahanirvanatantra said Buddha was the same as Mercury (Hermes), the son of the Moon (Maya).2 Greeks called Hermes the Psychopomp, Conductor of Souls, the same title everywhere given to the Lord of Death in his union with the Lady of Life. Hermes had greater power over rebirth and reincarnation than the heavenly father Zeus. It was Hermes who transferred Dionysus from the womb of the Moon-goddess to Zeus's "thigh" (penis) so he could be born from a male; apparently Zeus couldn't accomplish this miracle for himself.3 His feminine wisdom credited Hermes with the invention of civilized arts usually attributed to the Goddess: measuring and weighing, astronomy and astrology, music, divination by knucklebones. He helped the three Fates compose the alphabet.4 He could control the elements. His caduceus could transform whatever it touched into gold, which is why Hermes became the patron of alchemists.5 Ovid said Hermes was married to the lunar priestess of a sacred fountain in Caria, the Land of the Goddess Car. He was also part of a trinity with Mother Earth and Father Hades, and a phallic god of the orgiastic Cabiri who worshipped Demeter Cabiria in the Mysteries of Phrygia and Samothrace.6 · Hermes's phallic spirit protected crossroads throughout the GrecoRoman world, in the form of herms, which were either stone phalli or short pillars with Hermes's head at the top and an erect penis on the front. During the Christian era, the herms were replaced by roadside crosses, but the idea of setting these votive erections at crossroads was pagan rather than Christian. Saxons worshipped Hermes as the phallic spirit of the Hermeseul, or lrminsul, planted in the earth at the Mother-mount of Heresburg (Hera's Mount). It is now known as Eresburg, and a church of St. Peter stands where Hermes's ancient sanctuary united the phallic principle with Mother Earth. Other Germanic tribes worshipped Hermes under the name of Thot or Teutatis, "Father of Teutons." 7 Hermes- Mercury was the same as the Germanic father-god Woden, which is why the Hermetic day, Wednesday, is Woden's Day in English but Mercury's Day in Latin languages. The Cross of Woden also represented Hermes as "the only fourfold god." The sign of the cross traced by Christians on their heads and breasts originated as one of the crosses of Hermes, the Arabic numeral 4, often appearing upside down or backward as the Christians' gesture drew it. 8 The medieval legend that witches made the sign of the cross upside down or backward may have begun with worshippers of Hermes; actually, Christians had reversed the cross-sign made by the pagans instead of vice versa. The cross marked Hermes a god of four-way crossroads, the four quarters of the earth, the four elements, the four divisions of the sacred year, the four winds, and the solstices and equinoxes represented by their zodiacal totems Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius-the bull, lion, serpent, and man-angel symbols adopted by Christians to represent the four evangelists. 9 Sometimes, the cross of Hermes was an ankh, standing on a crescent that signified his mother the moon. This evolved into the conventional sign of Mercury, a circle with a cross Sign of Mercury (Hermes) below and a crescent above. 10 Hermes was also represented by the Gnostic "world" sign, a Maltese cross with a circle at the end of each arm.11 This seems to have referred to the four solstitial and equinoctial suns. Gnostics viewed Hermes as a personification of the World Serpent, ruler of time, who coiled around the terrestrial egg. 12 According to Gnostic Gospels, Jesus told Mary that the serpent surrounded the world, with his tail in his mouth, his body containing the twelve zodiacal halls-that is, he was identified with the Egyptian Tuat (Thoth) and the druidic ouroboros, also known as the Wise Serpent Hermes.13 Neoplatonic philosophers called Hermes the Logos, or Word of God made flesh. 14 Christian images of Jesus as the Logos were borrowed from the older deity, whose hymns addressed him in terms similar to those used in the Gospels: Lord of Creation, the All and One .... He is the light of my spirit; his be the blessing of my powers . ... Hymn, 0 Truth, the Truth, 0 Goodness, the Good, Life, and Light, from you comes as to you returns our thanksgiving. I give thee thanks 0 Father, thou potency of my powers; I give thee thanks 0 God, the power of my potencies. Thine own Word through me hymns thee .... Thou pleroma in us, 0 Life, save us; 0 Light, enlighten us; 0 God, make us spiritual. The Spirit guards thy Word. . .. From the Eternal I received blessing and what I seek. By thy will have I found rest. 15 Naturally, Hermes became the "god within" sought by all religious philosophers of the Gnostic period. (See Antinomianism.) His traditional bisexuality was interpreted as self-love; some said he invented the ritual of self-love, that is, masturbation. His caduceus was called a masturbatory symbol, a rod massaged by the serpents that embraced it. 16 Masturbation was said to be the hermit's typical act of self-contemplation, which some claimed would lead to comprehension of the God, just as sexual intercourse led to comprehension of the Goddess. A "herm-et" was literally a little Hermes, with a divine spirit dwelling in the phallus. Hermes lived on through the Middle Ages in a new disguise as Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the Thrice-Great One, founder of systems of Hermetic magic, astrology, alchemy, and other blends of mysticism with natural science. Lazzarelli' s Calix Christi et Crater Hermetis (Chalice of Christ and Cup of Hermes) said all learning came from Hermes, who gave it to Moses in Egypt. Agrippa von Nettesheim often cited the authority of Hermes, whom he took for a grandson of Abraham. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy listed Hermes as one of the great philosophers, along with Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Seneca, Epictetus, the Magi, and the druidsY A 16thcentury treatise said the Hermetic vessel was "a uterus for the spiritual renewal or rebirth of the individual . .. more to be sought than scripture." 18 Hermetic magic was extensively cultivated by the Arabs, who based much of their numerical and alchemical systems on Hermetic lore. 19 Sufi mystics and eastern alchemists both claimed Hermes as an initiate of their craft.20 After the crusades, Europeans developed a new interest in what they regarded as the ancient wisdom of the east, and became greatly impressed by any philosophy attributable to classical antiquity. About 1460 a Greek manuscript of the eastern Corpus Hermeticum was presented to Cosimo de' Medici by a monk named Leonardo da Pistoia. Other texts were added later to the grov.ing ~of semi-secret "devilish arts" which commanded more and more of the attention of European intellectuals. Sir Thomas Browne called Hermetism "the mystical method of Moses bred up in the Hieroglyphical Schools of the Egyptians," stating that the Egyptians worshipped Hermes as Mercurius or Anubis, "the Scribe of Saturn, and Counsellor of Osiris, the great inventor of their religious rites, and Promoter of good unto Egypt." Hermes ascended to heaven in the form of Sirius, the Great Dog. He was so revered in Italy that the mosaics of Siena Cathedral portrayed him with the inscription, "Hermes Mercury Trismegistus, Contemporary of Moses." 21 The Christian mythological figure most often assimilated to Hermes was the archangel Michael, Angel of Death, with a function resembling that of the ancient Psychopomp. "On the ruins of ancient temples of Mercury, built generally on a hill, rose chapels dedicated to St. Michael." A hill formerly sacred to Hermes-Mercury in France still bears the name of Saint Michael-Mont-Mercure. It lies opposite another "Michael's Mount" located across the channel in England.22 Spirits of the two mounts were both called Mercuri us in preChristian times, perhaps representing the twin serpents that expressed Hermes's dual function as lord of death and rebirth. The twin serpents had many incarnations in alchemy and magic. Of them Flame! wrote: "These are snakes and dragons, which the ancient Egyptians painted in the form of a circle, each biting the other's tail, in order to teach that they spring of and from one thing. These are dragons that the old poets represent as guarding sleeplessly the golden apples of the Hesperian maidens .... These are the two serpents that are fastened around the herald's staff and the rod of Mercury." 23 Hermetic mysticism usually called the serpents male and female, for the real secret of Hermetic power was androgyny. Like that of Oriental gods, Hermes's efficacy depended on his union with the female soul of the world, like the Aphrodite of his archaic duality. In medieval texts she was called the Anima Mercury, a naked woman surrounded by oval mandorla designs like the World card of the Tarot pack.24 This card was the last of the Tarot trumps, and the Magician, identified with Hermes, was the first numbered trump. A Mantegna Tarot showed the Magician as a classic Mercury with serpent-twined caduceus, winged helmet, and flute, stepping over a severed head-symbol of oracles-toward a cock, the symbol of annunciation. 25 Thoth Egyptian god of magic words and writing, which he acquired from his consort Seshat, or Maat. He was identified with the Greek Hermes. His holy city was known as Hermopolis, "City of Hermes." Priests of Hermopolis pretended that Thoth had created the world, either by hatching the World Egg (which he encircled in the form of the Gnostic Serpent), or by speaking the words of creation, after the manner of the biblical God. (See Logos; Ur-Text.) The Book of Thoth was a famous legendary work supposed to reveal the secrets of manipulating matter by verbal charms. Like Hermes and other manifestations of the Wise Serpent, Thoth owed his powers to his former close association with the Great Mother. He was lunar in nature, rather than solar. When he ascended to heaven, he became the guardian of the Moon gates.1 Poimandres "Shepherd of Men," a title of Hermes Trismegistus as psychopomp or Conductor of Souls. According to the Hermetic scriptures called Poimandres, the enlightened soul under the benevolent direction of Hermes could ascend to heaven by giving up its sins to each of the planetary spheres in turn, becoming one with the Heavenly Powers, then entering the essential being of God. "This is the good end of those who have attained gnosis: to become God." 1 See Antinomianism. A medieval prophet named Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio assimilated himself to Poimandres who seems to have been, in this context, a reincarnation ofJesus. He arrived in Rome one Palm Sunday, riding a white ass and leading a procession. He wore a crown of thorns, topped by a crescent bearing the legend: "This is my son Pimander, [sic] whom I have chosen .... Thus speaks the Lord God and the Father of every talisman in the world, Jesus of Nazareth." This Hermetic hero marched to the Vatican to lay his magic tools on the altar, declaring that he had come down from heaven with power to judge the quick and the dead. He wandered about Italy for years, preaching and working magic. He was suspected of heresy but as he was sponsored by Lorenzo de' Medici and other influential patrons, the Inquisition let him alone.2 Teutatis Germanic version of the priapic Hermes, worshipped as a giant phallus at Eresburg, the Mount of Mother Earth (Hera). Teutatis was also called a Lord of Death, and a father of "Teutons." 1 Aphrodite Often dismissed as a "Greek goddess of love," Aphrodite was really much more than that. Like Kali, she was a Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity. She was once indistinguishable from the Fates (Moirai); her old name was Moira, and she was said to be older than Time. She governed the world by ius naturale, the natural law of the maternal clan.1 She was not only Greek. She was the Dea Syria, also known as Asherah or Astarte, Goddess of the oldest continuously-occupied temple in the world.2 She was the ancestral mother of the Romans, for she gave birth to their founding father, Aeneas.3 Under the name of Venus, she was the mother of the Venetii, whose capital city became Venice, called "Queen of the Sea" after the Goddess herself. One of Aphrodite's major centers of worship was the city of Paphos on Cyprus, the island named for its copper mines. Thus, she was called "the Cyprian" or "the Paphian," and her sacred metal was copper. She was also called Mari, the Sea. Egyptians referred to her island as Ay-Mari.4 During the Christian era, Aphrodite's temple on Cyprus was converted into a sanctuary of the virgin Mary, another name of the same Goddess, but in this sanctuary the virgin Mary is hailed to this day as Panaghia Aphroditessa, "All-holy Aphrodite." 5 Continued worship of the goddess on Cyprus probably contributed to the Christian belief that the whole population of Cyprus descended from demons.6 In reality, Cyprian Aphrodite was like all other manifestations of the Great Goddess: ruling birth, life, love, death, time, and fate, reconciling man to all of them through sensual and sexual mysticism. The Cyprian sage Zenon taught Aphrodite's philosophy: "mankind and the universe were bound tqgether in the system of fate .... Diogenes Laertios tells us that Zenon was the first to define the end of human existence as 'life in accordance with nature.' " 7 Aphrodite had almost as many "emanations" as Thousand-Named Kali. She was not only Mari and Moira and Marina and Pelagia and Stella Maris, all titles related to her control of the sea; she was also Ilithyia, Goddess of childbirth; Hymen, Goddess of marriage; Venus, Goddess of sexuality and the hunt; Urania, Queen of Heaven; Androphonos, the Destroyer of Men; and many others. She was often identified with Isis. Anchises, her lover who begot Aeneas and then was castrated, had a name meaning "he who mates with lsis." 8 Under several of her names, Aphrodite mated with Semitic gods. Her cult occupied the main temple in Jerusalem after 70 A.D. In the 4th century it was said that Constantine's mother found the true cross of Christ buried in Aphrodite's Jerusalem temple. (See Cross.) One of Aphrodite's greatest shrines in Asia Minor was the city of Aphrodisias, once dedicated to Ishtar. Up to the 12th century A.D., when the city was taken by Seljuk Turks, the Goddess was worshipped there as the patron of arts and letters, crafts, and culture.9 Recent excavations have uncovered exquisite artifacts and statuary, bespeaking a cultivated and sophisticated lifestyle under the Goddess's rule. 10 The calendar still keeps the name of Aphrodite on the month dedicated to her, April (Aphrilis). The ancient Kalendar of Romulus said this was the month of Venus. 11 Aphrodite, Pan & Eros Dove Aphrodite's totem, the bird of sexual passion, symbolically equivalent to the yoni.1 In India, too, the dove was paravata, the symbol of lust.2 Joined to her consort the phallic serpent, the Dove-goddess stood for sexual union and "Life." The phrase attributed to Jesus, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16), was no random metaphor but a traditional invocation of the Syrian God and Goddess.3 The Oriental meaning was remembered by the gypsies, whose folk tales said the souls of ancestors lived inside magic hollow mountains, the men having been changed into serpents and the women into doves.4 Christians adopted the feminine dove as a symbol of the Holy Ghost, originally the Goddess Sophia, representing God's "Wisdom" as the Goddess Metis represented the "Wisdom" of Zeus. Gnostic Christians said Sophia was incarnate in the dove that impregnated the virgin Mary, the same dove that descended on Jesus at his baptism to impregnate his mind (Matthew 3:16). Pious admirers of Pope Gregory the Great made him even more saintly than Jesus by reporting that the Holy Ghost in dove shape descended on him not once but many times.5 All this was copied from Roman iconography which showed the human soul as a dove that descended from the Dove-goddess's oversoul to animate the body.6 Aphrodite as a bringer of death, or "peace," sometimes bore the name of Irene, Dove of Peace. Another of her death-goddess names was Epitymbria, "She of the Tombs." 7 Romans called her Venus Columba, Venus-the-Dove. Her catacombs, mausoleums, and necropoli were known as columbaria, "dovecotes." 8 Thus the soul returning to the Goddess after death was again envisioned as a dove. From this image, Christians copied their belief that the souls of saints became white doves that flew out of their mouths at the moment of death. In the Catholic ceremony of canonization, white doves are released from cages at the crucial moment of the ritual.9 Christian iconography showed seven rays emanating from the dove of the Holy Ghost: an image that went back to some of the most primitive manifestations of the Goddess.10 In the Orient, the mystic seven were the Pleiades or "Seven Sisters," whose Greek name meant "a flock of doves." They were daughters or "rays" of Aphrodite under her title of Pleione, Queen of the Sea.11 Hemdotus said seven holy women known as Doves founded the oracles of Dodona, Epirus, and Theban Amon.12 They were worshipped in the Middle East as Seven Sages or Seven Pillars of Wisdom: the seven woman-shaped pillars that had been upholding temples of the Goddess since the third millenium B.C.13 See Caryatid. Arabs still revere the Seven Sages, and some remember that they were women, or "doves." 14 The Semitic word for "dove," ione, was a cognate of "yoni" and related to the Goddess Uni, who later became Iune, or Juno. The cult of the Doves used to incorporate primitive rites of castration and its modification, circumcision. India called the seven Sisters "razors" or "cutters" who judged and "critically" wounded men, the Krittikas, "Seven Mothers of the World," root of the Greek kritikos, "judge." They killed and gave rebirth to gods who were castrated to make them fertile, like women. The name of Queen Semiramis, legendary founder of Babylon, also meant "Dove" in the Syrian tongue. She was said to have castrated all her consorts.15 When circumcision replaced castration, the doves were involved in that too. Even Christian symbolism made the connection. The official symbol of the Festival of the Circumcision of Christ was a dove, holding in its beak a ring representing the Holy Prepuce. "Christ's fructifying blood" was linked with the similar emblem of Pentecost, which showed the descending dove on a background of blood red, officially described as a representation of the church fertilized by the blood of Christ and the martyrs.16 A certain "maiden ma~tyr" called St. Columba (Holy Dove) was widely revered, especially in France, although she never existed as a human being.17 Another curious survival of pagan dove-lore was the surname given to St. Peter: Bar-Iona, "Son of the Dove." 18 Some survivals may have been invented to explain the doves appearing on ancient coins as symbols of Aphrodite and Astarte.19 Columba, Saint "Holy Dove," a spurious canonization of Aphrodite as a "maiden martyr" Columba of Sens.1 Celtic myth called her Colombe, the yoni maiden mated to Lancelot as a lightning bolt, the Phallus of Heaven.2 See Lightning. Mermaid Literally "Virgin of the Sea," the mermaid was an image of fish-tailed Aphrodite, the medieval Minne, Maerin, Mari, Marina, mereminne, mare-mynd, mareminde, marraminde, or maraeman.1 Her Death- goddess aspect, sometimes named Ran, received the souls of those put to sea in funeral boats; or, she might trap living men in her fish net. Teutons said drowned men went to dwell in the house of Ran.2 An English law, still on the books in the 19th century, officially claimed for the Crown "all mermaids found in British waters." 3 Urania "Celestial One," title of Aphrodite as Queen of Heaven. Her former consort Uranus was transformed into her castrated "father" in classical myth; Uranus's patricidal son threw his severed genitals into the sea, and the sea-womb brought forth Aphrodite. Actually, Celestial Aphrodite and the sea-womb were one and the same: manifestations of the Triple Goddess. The castrated dying god was her ubiquitous son-lover who died, fertilized her by his death, and begot himself again. Uranus was a western form of Varuna, a deity of indeterminate sex, sometimes a male-turned-female like Hermes or Teiresias. To the Persians he was varan a spirit of sexual intercourse like the Hindu Kama. His name came from vr, to envelop-a female function-and he performed female-imitative miracles, such as turning water into blood, giving birth to the sun, and measuring the earth.1 From the Asian precedents it may be assumed that Urania and Uranus were the same primal androgyne as Jana-Janus, Diana-Dianus, etc. Hygeia "Health," title of Mother Rhea Coronis at her healing shrine of Titane. The name was applied to one of the Goddess's milk-giving breasts. The other was Panacea. Later worshippers of the doctor-god Asclepius made Hygeia and Panacea his "daughters." Panacea "All-healer," one of the divine daughters of MotheJ Rhea Coronis at her Pelasgian sanctuary ofTitane. Another daughter was Hygeia, "Health." To this day, both Goddesses are invoked in the medical Hippocratic Oath.1 The two seem to have been personifications of the Great Mother's breasts, source of the Milk of Kindness and the balm of healing. Egyptians said the remedy for almost every ill was "the milk of a woman who has given birth to a child: such is the sweet perfume" that could expel demons of sickness.2 Panacea and Hygeia were comparable to Egypt's Two Mistresses, Buto and Nekhbet, whose milk bestowed divinity on pharaohs and health on everyone.3 Buto was the same nursing-mother Goddess called Latona, Lada, Leto or Leda, the Babylonians' Allatu, the Arabs' Al-Lat (who later became Allah). Etruscans called her Lat, mother of Latium and giver of moon-milk. Latopolis, "Milk-City," was the Greek name for Buto's oracular shrine, the oldest in Egypt.4 Medieval Europe continued to believe in the curative virtues of mother's milk. It was said that any mother could cure her infant's sore eyes by squirting her milk into them.5 Male doctors often recommended woman-milk for the sick. Ironically, one of the last superstitious believers in Panacea was Pope Innocent VIII, author of the infamous bull Summis Desiderantes, which laid the legal foundations for persecution of witches and caused the torture and death of millions of women. In his last illness, Pope Innocent tried to fend off his own death by living on a woman's breast milk.6 The magic didn't work; he died. Eugenia, Saint "Healer" or "Health," a title of the Goddess converted into a fictitious "virgin martyr." Her legend claimed she was one of the women who entered a Christian sect by "turning herself into a man," for some sects would not admit women unless they did this.1 St. Eugenia accordingly became a monk and called herself Brother Eugenius. The same story told of all she-monks was told of her: she was falsely accused of rape and condemned to a life of expiation, which she patiently endured. Still, the healing miracles attributed to her shrines were older than her Christian legend, showing that she was really the Goddess whose "eugenic" springs were even more popular in the 1st century than Lourdes or Compostela in the 20th.2 Angel of Healing, Muir, Sedona Serpent It was a general belief in the ancient world that snakes don't die of old age like other animals, but periodically shed their skins and emerge renewed or reborn into another life. Greeks called the snake's cast skin geras, "old age." The Chinese envisioned resurrection of the dead as a man splitting his old skin and coming out of it as a youth again, like a snake. Melanesians say "to slough one's skin" means eternal life. A basic serpent-myth said the dual Moon-goddess of life and death made the first man. Her bright aspect suggested making him immortal like a snake, able to shed his skin; but her dark aspect insisted that he should die and be buried in the earth.1 Eternal life and serpenthood are still equated in the Italian expression aver piu anni d'un serpente" being older than a serpent." The ageless serpent was originally identified with the Great Goddess herself. Hinduism's Ananta the Infinite was the serpentmother who embraced Vishnu and other gods during their "dead" phase.2 She was also Kundalini, the inner female soul of man in serpent shape, coiled in the pelvis, induced through proper practice of yoga to uncoil and mount through the spinal chakras toward the head, bringing infinite wisdom. The Serpent-goddess occupied the famous Khmer temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia where she embraced the king every night. If one night the Goddess did not appear, it was a sign that the king must be killed and a new king chosen.3 The Negritos said the divine people called Chinoi (Chinese) were descended from a mighty Serpent-goddess named Mat Chinoi, Mother of the Chinese. In her belly lived beautiful angels who received the souls of the dead. Since her womb was Paradise, shamans underwent their death-and-rebirth initiations by entering the serpent's belly.4 The ancient Aegean world worshipped primarily women and serpents. Men didn't participate in religious ceremonies until late in the Bronze Age, when Cretan kings were allowed to become priests of the bull-god. Even then, the priest's role was subordinate to that of the priestess, until the priest himself took the title of "serpent." 5 The word for "priest" among ancient Akkadian peoples literally meant "snake charmer."6 The Indian Serpent-goddess Kadru gave birth to all the Nagas or cobra people, and made them immortal by feeding them her divine lunar blood.7 She had a Babylonian counterpart, the Goddess Kadi of Der, worshipped as a serpent with a woman's head and breasts.8 Her children like the Nagas were depicted as water-serpents, human from the waist up, like mermaids and mermen. The Nagas guarded "great treasures of wealth and precious stones, and sometimes books of secret teachings in underwater palaces."9 A similar serpent guarded the wonderful Book of Thoth, which was hidden in an underwater palace. 10 Like his Greek twin Hermes, Thoth was often incarnate in a snake, signifying his magical wisdom. Egypt agreed with India in depicting the first serpent as a totemic form of the Great Mother herself. Egypt's archaic Mother of Creation was a serpent, Per-Uatchet or Buto. The Egyptian uraeus-snake was a hieroglyphic sign for "Goddess." 11 Incongruously, "Uraeus" later became one of the most popular "secret names of God" listed in Magic Papyri and medieval texts of sorcery. Egypt's Serpent-goddess also had the title of Mehen the Enveloper, similar to Kundalini or Ananta. Each night, Mehen enfolded the ram-headed god Auf-Ra (Phallus of Ra) during his sojourn in the uterine underworld. This was a mythic image of the king' s sexual union with his Goddess, reminiscent of the custom of Angkor Wat. 12 At Philae, the Serpent-goddess received the title of Anqet, from anq, to surround, to embrace. 13 "Serpent of the Nile" was the title, not only of Cleopatra, but of all Egyptian queens who represented the nation and the Goddess embracing the king. The birth-and-death Goddesses Isis and Nephthys became identified with the dual Serpent-mother of life and after-life. Only they could help the soul through the section of the underworld inhabited by serpent deities, Egypt's version of the Nagas. 14 The Mahabharata depicts a hero seeking immortality in a similar underworld called "city of serpents," where the dual Mother of Life and Death wove the web of nights and days with black and white thread, binding them with the red thread of life. 15 The Akkadian Goddess Ninhursag, "She Who Gives Life to the Dead," was also called "Mistress of Serpents" as yet another form of Kadru or Kadi. 16 Babylon's version of her made her a dark twin of the Heaven-goddess Ishtar, calling her Lamia or Lamashtu, "Great Lady, Daughter of Heaven." Cylinder seals showed her squatting, Kali-like, over her mate, the god Pazuzu, he of the serpent penis. 17 As another Lord of Death, he gave himself up to be devoured by the Goddess. The image of the male snake deity enclosed or devoured by the female gave rise to a superstitious notion about the sex life of snakes, reported by Pliny and solemnly believed in Europe even up to the 20th century: that the male snake fertilizes the female snake by putting his head in her mouth and letting her eat him. 18 The male serpent deity became the phallic consort of the Great Mother, sometimes a "father" of races, because he was the Mother's original mate. In some myths, he was no more than a living phallus she created for her own sexual pleasure. In other myths, she allowed him to take part in the work of creation or to fertilize her world-producing womb. When the serpent-creator turned arrogant and tried to pre- tend that he alone made the universe, the Goddess punished him, bruising his head with her heel and banishing him to the underworld. 19 On this version of the creation myth the Jews based their notion of Eve's progeny bruising the serpent's head, and the rabbinical opinion that the serpent was Eve's first lover and the true father of Cain.20 Actually, the serpent was worshipped in Palestine long before Yahweh's cult arose. Early Hebrews adopted the serpent-god all their contemporaries revered, and the Jewish priestly clan of Levites were "sons of the Great Serpent," i.e., of Leviathan, "the wriggly one." 21 He was worshipped in combination with his Goddess, the moon. 22 The Bible shows that Yahweh was a hostile rival of the serpent Leviathan, for the two gods battled each other (Psalms 74: 14; 89: l 0, Isaiah 51 :9). They would engage in another final battle at doomsday (Isaiah 27:1; Revelation 12). Another Jewish name for the Great Serpent was Nehushtan, described as the god of Moses. Hebrew nahash, "serpent," descended from an ancient Vedic serpent-king, Nahusha, once "the supreme ruler of heaven," until he was cast down to the underworld by a rival. 23 Nehushtan was the same god whose image Moses made: a "fiery serpent" according to Numbers 21:8. The Israelites worshipped him until the reign of Hezekiah, when the new priesthood "cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made" (2 Kings 18:4). Yet serpent worship continued in Israel. Seraph, the Hebrew word for the divine fiery serpent, used to mean an earth-fertilizing lightning- snake, and later became an angel.24 The seraphim were originally serpent-spirits, like those of the caduceus created by Hermes the Great Serpent and copied by Mosaic tradition. Jewish medallions of the lst and 2nd centuries B.C. represented Jehovah as a serpent god, like the "snake-tailed winds" of the Greeks.25 Jews of Asia Minor said their Jehovah was the same as Zeus Sabazius the serpent god of Phrygia.26 Some Jewish Gnostics early in the Christian era maintained that the post-exilic Jehovah was no god, but a devil, the usurper of the original Kingdom of the Wise Serpent. 27 Much Gnostic literature praised the serpent of Eden for bringing the "light" of knowledge to humanity, against the will of a tyrannical God who wanted to keep humans ignorant.28 This view of the Eden myth dated back to Sumero-Babylonian sources that said man was made by the Earth Mother out of mud and placed in the garden "to dress it and to keep it" (Genesis 2:15) for the gods, because the gods were too lazy to do their own farming and wanted slaves to plant, harvest, and give them offerings. 29 The gods agreed that their slaves should never learn the godlike secret of immortality, lest they get above themselves and be ruined for work. Therefore, as the Epic of Gilgamesh reports, the gods gave death to humanity, and "Life they kept in their own hands." 30 In one of the interwoven Genesis stories, God was not one but many, the elohim or "gods-and-goddesses." 31 The God of Eden remarked to his divine colleagues, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil"; therefore he must be ejected from the garden at once, lest he "take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" (Genesis 3:22). The serpent's teachings would have led man to conquer death and become godlike, against the will of the elohim. The Hypostasis of the Archons showed that the serpent was a totemic form of the Goddess, apparently taking pity on her doomed creature and seeking to instruct him in the attainment of eternal life: "The Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake, the Instructor, and it taught them, saying, 'you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather, your eyes shall open, and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good.' " Then "the arrogant Ruler" (God) cursed the serpent and the woman.32 Some Gnostic sects honored both Eve and the serpent for their efforts on behalf of humanity.33 The present form of the biblical story is obviously a much-revised version of the original tales of the Great Mother and her serpent. Babylonian icons showed the Goddess attended by her snake, offering man the food of immortality. The Pyramid Texts said it was the serpent who offered the food of eternal life. 34 As Ophion, or Ophi, he was the ancestor of the African serpent god Obi, whose name is still preserved in the voodoo-magic system, Obeah. 35 The Bible uses a Hebrew version of the name, obh, for the familiar spirit of the Witch of Endor, and the Vulgate renders this word "python." 36 In Dahomey, the primal Mother-Creatress Mawu was supported by a Great Serpent.37 Gnostic accounts of the Eden myth used the Aramaic pun identifying Eve, the Teacher, and the Serpent: Hawah, Mother of All Living; hawa, to instruct; and hewya, Serpent.38 Eve's name in Arabic still combines the idea of "life" (hayyat) with the name of the serpent (Hayyat). 39 Hippolytus viewed the serpent as a feminine Logos, "the wise Word of Eve. This is the mystery of Eden: this is the river that flows out of Eden. This is also the mark that was set on Cain, whose sacrifice the God of this world did not accept whereas he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel: for the lord of this world delights in blood. This Serpent is he who appeared in the latter days in human form at the time of Herod."40 Arabian tradition identified the food of immortality with the female uterine blood, colored "royal purple"; and the Mother's uterine garden with the moon temple at Marib in Sheba. Legend said the serpents of Sheba were purple with the divine essence, and lived in trees; the people were serpentlike, with forked tongues, great wisdom, and longevity.41 From Sheba might have come the mysterious lifegiving substance called shiba in the Epic of Gilgamesh, dispensed by the wife of Uta-Napishtim (Noah), who had become the only immortal man; his wife therefore was a Goddess. When this holy matriarch gave shiba to Gilgamesh, he shed his old, diseased skin like a snake, and emerged from it reborn.42 Persians also maintained the symbolic connections between menstrual blood and the serpent's secret of longevity. Mithraists claimed immortality was conferred by the blood of the sacrificial bull, but a serpent was there to collect the blood as it flowed from the hull's body; and this blood was imitation-menstrual blood in that it was "delivered by the moon."43 Immortality was the special province of the skin-shedding Serpent and the blood-bestowing Goddess from earliest times. Some of the very oldest traditions of the Great Serpent identified him with the Earth's intestines. Archaic serpent gods like Egyptian A pep and Sumerian Khumbaba were said to "resemble intestines." 44 In this connection, the biblical phrase for birth or rebirth was "separation from the bowels." Serpents understood how to restore life to the dead, according to the myths of Crete, where the sorcerer Polyidos learned the serpents' secret and won great honor at the Minoan court by bringing the dead prince Glaucus back to life.45 Many Gnostic traditions identified the Serpent with Jesus. In the Pistis Sophia, Jesus was the serpent who spoke to Eve "from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, which were in the paradise of Adam." Jewish Naassians (Serpent-worshippers) said the serpent was the Messiah. Magic Papyri called him "World Ruler, the Great Serpent, leader of gods ... the god of gods." 46 Some Christians held that the serpent was the father of Jesus, having "overshadowed" the bed of the virgin Mary and begotten the human form of the Savior. These traditions were still extant, though hidden, in Renaissance times. Bartel Bruyn's Gnostic-symbolic painting of the Annunciation showed an unmistakably Hermetic serpent-caduceus as the rod extended toward Mary by the impregnating angel Gabriel. The Dove poised in a halo in its tip, making a sign like a cross between a fairy-wand and the emblem of Venus.47 This made a combined symbol of the male-and-female mystery of the Serpent and Dove, which was inserted into the mouth of Jesus according to Matthew 10:16. Many theologians claimed the crucified serpent Nehushtan was a prophecy of Jesus: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3: 15). In the 16th century, German smiths made golden thalers with a crucified Christ on one side and a crucified serpent on the other, hinting that they were two faces of the same redeemer.48 Every mythology had some form of the World Serpent. Like the Hermetic or Gnostic serpent encircling the World Egg, he was a basic Indo-European religious symbol. Norse myth called him the Midgard-Worm, who encircled the whole round of Middle-Earth (Midgard), his tail in his mouth.49 Russians called him Koshchei the Deathless, encircler of the underworld. 50 This seems to have been a variation of the Japanese dragon of sea-tides, Koshi. 51 Egyptians called him Sata (Satan), or the Tuat, on whose back the sun god rode through the underworld each night. Greeks called him Okeanos, the sea-serpent of the outermost ocean. Often the Heavenly Father assumed this serpent form, like Zeus Meilichios, worshipped as a gigantic serpent in the 4th century B.C. 52 In the shape of a serpent he became the consort of chthonian Persephone. 53 He also begot heroes on mortal women. Alexander the Great was allegedly fathered by God who in the form of a serpent impregnated his mother, Queen Olympias.54 The Pyramid Texts spoke of the serpent as both subterranean and celestial. In his heavenly aspect, he was a dispenser of immortality. 55 As the divine phallus in perpetual erection he was the Tree of Life, or axis mundi, a Pole passing through the center of heaven and earth that is, Father Heaven coupled to the Goddess's "hub." His eye was seen as the pole star. In 3000 B.C., the pole star was Alpha Draconis, the Serpent's Eye. 56 The Mahabharata said the pole star to which the yoke of the world was fixed was "the supreme snake, Vasuki." The same snake was the phallic god who stirred the uterine Abyss at creation, according to the Vedas. 57 Like the God of Genesis, the Vedic deity lndra claimed to have cast down the Great Serpent from heaven into the worldencircling abyss of the outer ocean. 58 Like the Bible story, this myth re-interpreted the original meaning of the serpent as a descending, fertilizing phallus. The sexual image of the phallic serpent's head as the Jewel in the Lotus ramified into many versions of the myth of menarche: the belief that menstruation was initiated by copulation with a supernatural snake (see Menstrual Blood). According to this imagery, the divine male serpent acquired a "blood-red jewel" in his head. Hindus said all the great snakes carried blood-red rubies of immortality in their heads. 59 Germans remembered this Aryan lore, and said a serpent with a magic stone in its head would be found at the root of a hazel tree-witchwood- near mistletoe. The serpent's stone was sacred to the moon, and was identified with the Philosopher's Stone, which could bring eternal life.60 Remnants of the serpent's phallic symbolism appeared in medieval magic charms, such as the conviction that "female diseases" could be cured by applying to the sufferer a staff with which a snake had been beaten.61 In 13th-century France, a snake on a pole like the Ophites' image of Christ was carried in triumphal procession during Easter Week to the baptismal font of the church.62 Sometimes the fetish was an enormous stuffed serpent, like a Chinese carnival dragon. Churchmen tried to assimilate the custom by saying' the serpent was the devil "driven from his kingdom by the Passion of Christ"; but this was but a lame explanation for a rite that was already old when Christianity was new.63 Early Ophite Christians adopted serpent worship and claimed Moses as the founder of their sect, alleging that Moses taught the Jews to worship the serpent in the wilderness.64 Besides, the serpent had certainly given knowledge to Adam and Eve, and therefore was a savior of humanity, an earlier incarnation of Christ who also suffered at God's hands for the enlightenment he brought. The Ophites' holy serpents were made to twine around the bread of the Eucharist, and were adored hanging on crosses. Ophite "colleges" still existed in Bithynia in the 5th century A.D., when bishops began leading mobs to wreck the Ophite churches.65 Medieval Hermetists worshipped the serpent as Ouroboros, king of magic, a syncretic mixture of the Ophites' Christ-Ophion, the Greeks' Hermes, the Phoenicians' Taaut, the Egyptians' Tuat, and other ancient snake-tailed gods including the underground oracle Python.66 Ouroboros was linked with the Chinese pi-dragon, symbol of the universe, carved on jade discs as a dragon or serpent eating its own tail.67 This may have been the prototype of the serpent Python and the Pythagoreans' worship of pi as the mystic numerical principle of the circle. Two serpents eating each other's tails combined the yangand- yin mandala with the caduceus, expressing the bisexual nature of Hermes and all cyclic alternations: birth/death, summer/winter, light/ dark, etc. The Ouroboros was still pictured under the earth in certain European areas, and some people claimed to be able to feel his slow movements through their feet when they stood in the ancient shrines. Sidenote(s): Book of Thoth Legendary Egyptian magical text supposed to have been written by the god Thoth, found in the necropolis at Memphis by a young prince named Satni- Khamois. Magic Papyri Collections of exorcisms, invocations, charms, and spells widely circulated during the early Christian era, used as bases for later grimoires and Hermetic texts. Mahabharata Indian epic poem, consisting of historical and legendary material gathered between the 4th and lOth centuries A.D., including the famous Bhagavad-Gita. Ananta "The Infinite," a great serpent in whose coils Hindu gods spent their periods of sleep or death between periods of activity.1 The serpent might be compared to the ancient Egyptian goddess Mehen the Enveloper, a serpent who enfolded Ra every night when he was "dead" in the underworld. The sex of the eternal serpent was indeterminate. Earlier myths tended to see it as female, a cosmic Kundalini. Later Vedic traditions tended to view Ananta as male. Uraeus Egyptian serpent symbol, a hieroglyphic sign for "Goddess," suggesting that in pre-dynastic times it was thought all serpents were female and divine. The serpent-mother was one of Egypt's oldest divinities, and her uraeus-snake idol signified healing. Moses copied this Egyptian magic with his "brazen serpent" (Numbers 21:9). Egyptian rulers wore the uraeus-snake in the form of a rearing cobra on the forehead, representing the "third eye" of mystical insight. Despite patriarchal opposition to the symbol of the she-serpent Uraeus, among later Gnostic Christians her name became one of the "secret names of God." See Serpent. Ouroboros Greek name of the Hermetic World Serpent, sometimes the Seaserpent Oceanus encircling the earth; sometimes the underground Python coiled in the earth's womb; otherwise known as Sata, Leviathan, Taaut, Tuat, Thoth, Ophion, etc. See Serpent. Oceanus Greco-Roman water-serpent deity supposed to surround the earth with his vast body, holding his tail in his mouth to form a continuous barrier of water at the outer limits of the world. Oceanus was often confused with Neptune, Poseidon, Ouroboros, Taaut, or Python. Oceanus was married to the primal Sea-goddess Tethys, or Thetis. His name meant "He who belongs to the Swift Queen." 1 Nehushtan Semitic serpent god whose idol was made by Moses (2 Kings 18:4). Hebrew Nehushtan or Nahash, "serpent," descended from the Vedic serpent-king Nahusha, once ruler of all the gods, later cast down to the underworld by Indra.1 Gnostic Jews worshipped Nehushtan in the first few centuries A.D. and were known as Naassians, "snake-worshippers," counterparts of the Ophites (see Serpent). Leviathan "Wriggly One," Hebrew title of the Great Serpent Nehushtan, whose worship was established by Moses (2 Kings 18:4 ).1 The priestly name Levi meant a son of Leviathan, who was once another form of Yahweh even though later centuries converted him into a demon. The bishop's miter evolved from the headdress of Levite priests. 2 See Serpent. Cupid Roman name for the god of erotic love, Greek Eros, Hindu Kama. Cupid was the son of Venus and Mercury (Aphrodite and Hermes), and was therefore a "Herm-Aphrodite," signifying sexual union. In Christian usage, the ancient significance of sexual desire was confused with desire for money, hence the modern "cupidity," which used to mean "lust" but now means greed. In the same way, Latin caritas was altered from sensual or sexual giving to the modern "charity," giving of money. Renaissance art made emanations of Cupid into amoretti, "little loves," shown as winged babies. But ancient talismans of Cupid were not babies; they were winged phalli of bronze, ivory, or wood, which gave rise to an Italian slang term for the penis, uccello, "little bird." 1 Kama-Mara "Erotic-desire" plus "Fear-of-death," a dual spirit who tempted Buddha during his solitary meditation. The Upanishads said Kama-Mara was the Self, source of both desire and fear. 1 But Mara was once the mother of the Maruts or nature-spirits; Kama was the Vedic equivalent of Eros; it seems likely that they were combined in an archaic period as a sexual androgyne. The "demonic" combination expressed the ascetics' belief that eroticism drew the flesh of men toward destruction. A Buddhist legend said the Blessed One met the challenge of Kama-Mara by touching the earth with his fingers, thus invoking the irresistible power of the universal Mother, who protected him. 2 Androgyne Many Indo-European religions tried to combine male and female in the Primal Androgyne, both sexes in one body, often with two heads and four arms. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad said the Primal Androgyne was "of the same size and kind as man and woman closely embracing." I Some said the male and female elements lived together in one skin, experiencing constant sexual bliss and spiritual completeness. Shiva and Shakti-Kali appeared as the androgyne Ardhanarisvara, the right side male, the left side female.2 Rudra, the older form of Shiva, was known as "the Lord Who is Half Woman.'' 3 Brahma and Vishnu also appeared as bisexual beings united with their Shaktis. Chinese Taoists held the mandala of Yang and Yin to represent the androgyne. Western myths also assigned androgyny to the elder gods or the first human beings. The Orphic creation myth said the firstborn deity was a double-sexed Phanes or Eros, "Carnal Love," whose female half was Psyche, the soul, Greek equivalent of Shakti. 4 Hermes owed his phenomenal wisdom to his former androgynous ex:stence with Mother Aphrodite, as double-sexed Hermaphroditus. 5 Often, the androgyne appeared in myth as male-female twins born simultaneously, e.g. Isis-Osiris, Jana-Janus, Diana-Dianus, FaunaFaunus, Helen-Helenus, or Artemis-Apollo, the "moon and sun" united in their Mother's womb. Probably an androgynous image on Apollo's altar at Delos gave rise to the story that he copulated with his sister Artemis on that altar. Several forms of the sun god were represented as requiring close physical union with the moon goddess, as even Brahma was useless without his female counterpart Bhavani, "Being."6 Egypt's "supreme" sun god was often an androgyne; the sun was his right eye, the moon his left.7 The same androgynous being is still worshipped in Dahomey as Nana-Buluku, Moon-Sun, who created the world and gave birth to the first pair of human beings.8 Many myths model the first human beings on the androgyne. Persians said the first pair in the garden of Heden (Eden) lived together in one body, until Ahura Mazda separated them. Jewish imitators of the Persians also said Adam and Eve were united in a bisexual body. Some rabbinical sources said Eve was not "taken out of" Adam; they were parted from one another by a jealous God who resented their sexual bliss, which was too Godlike for human beings, and should be reserved for deities. Casting man out of the "garden" meant detaching him from the female body, often symbolized by the Hebrew pardes, "garden."9 This was another way of saying the original sin that angered God was not disobedience but sex. 10 Greek myths of the Golden Age told the same tale of a jealous God: Zeus, who punished humanity's friend Prometheus with eternal torture because he tricked the Heavenly Father for humanity's advantage (see Sacrifice). The people of the Golden Age had been created androgynous by Prometheus, who made their bodies of clay, and Athene, who gave them life. Father Zeus took out his anger on them by tearing them apart. A piece of clay was torn out of the female part and stuck to the male part. That is why women have an orifice that bleeds, and men have a loose dangling appendage that seems not to belong to them but always craves to return to the female body it came from. Cruel Zeus permitted human beings to return the male appendage to its female home sometimes, to sense for a brief moment the bliss of their former bisexual existence. Some Gnostic mystery cults of the first centuries A.D. taught Tantric techniques to prolong the moment of bliss, which angered most forms of the Heavenly Father including the Christian one, whose bishops denounced this training as schooling in wickedness. 11 Church fathers especially deplored making-or remaking- the Beast with Two Backs, another term for the Primal Androgyne. Though orthodox Christianity renounced both sexuality and androgyny in religious images, Gnostic Christians used them. As Kali was the female half of Shiva, so the Gnostic Great Mother Sophia was the female half of Christ. This was revealed "in a great light": the Savior was shown as an androgyne coupled with "Sophia, Mother of All." 12 Gnostic Christians said those who received the true revelation of the Father-Mother spirit were the only ones prepared for the secret sacrament called apolytrosis, "release," a concept identical with Tantric moksha or "liberation." 13 Obviously influenced by Tantrism or its prototype, western Gnostics had made a direct translation of the Hindu Yab-Yum, "Father-Mother," the sexual union of a sage and his Shakti at the crucial moment of death. 14 Sexual sacraments were in effect practicing for that moment, when the enlightened one would be restored to the condition of primordial bliss as an androgynous creature. The Naassenes said no enlightenment was possible without the Father-Mother spirit, an androgyne sometimes called Heavenly Horn of the Moon.15 In the 5th century A.D., Orphic initiations sought to awaken a female spirit within man, to render him sensitive to the message of the Mysteries. After meeting the deities in a death-and rebirth experience, he carried a bowl, emblem of the womb, and touched his belly like a gravid woman, signifying "a spiritual experience uniting the opposed ways of knowledge of the male and female, and fused with this idea is that of a new life conceived within." 16 Such Gnostic subtleties were disliked by the orthodox, who viewed all mergings of the sexes as unequivocally sinful. After Gnostic sects were crushed, the androgyne was consigned to hell and gave birth to many curious devils with both male and female attributes. A 16thcentury book showed Satan himself seated on a throne, wearing a papal tiara, with bird feet, a female face in his genital area, and pendulous female breasts. 17 The Devil of the Tarot pack was usually androgynous, as were many of the devils represented in cathedral carvings. Marginal notes: Naassenes, or Naassians; from Hebrew nahash, "serpent." Jewish or Christian Gnostic sects of the early Christian era, who worshipped the serpent god Ophis (Hermes) as a form of the Savior. Mysteries General term for religious rites of the "secret initiation" type, which included early Christianity. Yama Hindu Lord of Death, male counterpart of the Lady of Life, whose name was his own in reversal: Ma-Ya. In classic Hindu myth, however, Yama's consort was his twin sister Yami, a feminine form of himself. The Fates ordained that he should mate with her, in the manner of the Primal Androgyne (see Androgyne). But Yama refused, saying he intended to keep himself pure. Because he detached himself from his feminine half and renounced the life-supporting power of the female, he became the first man to die.1 He went into the underworld and became its king. This myth presents an interesting reversal of the Judea-Christian notion that the sin of woman and sex brought death into the world. Here death came about through the sin of male asceticism; Yama "died" because he refused to be a sexual being. His followers revered him as a psychopomp, like Hermes after his detachment from Aphrodite: "Yama chose death, and he found out the path for many, and he gives the souls of the dead a resting place." 2 As Lord of Death he took the title Samana, "the Leveller," and at times he wore the fearsome aspect of a blue-skinned, bull-headed demon, the same as Sammael, the Angel of Death in the Book of Enoch.3 Persians worshipped him as Yima the Splendid, the Good Shepherd who gave men immortality.4 In the ancient land of Canaan, he became Yamm, Lord of the Abyss, annually cast down by Baal in their eternal contest for the favors of Astarte. Ur-Text Greatest legendary treasure of medieval Hermetic magic, after the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone. The Ur-text was supposed to be a magical grammar of the primordial tongue, whose words God pronounced at creation in order to bring forth the things themselves; that is, the words could create, just by being spoken. The idea was based on eastern notions of the creative power of Sanskrit, the Motherlanguage. 1 Another development of the idea was the Neoplatonic Logos or "Seminal Word," which was adopted as a Christian dogma. (See Logos.) Presumably the Ur-text emanated from Abraham's "Ur of the Chaldees," famous as the home of magic and astrology. The medieval theory was that all words and names exerted some influence over their objects, hence the efficacy of both magic spells and liturgies. But in all known languages, the power of the word was slightly displaced from the true essence of the thing, as the calendar was slightly displaced from the sidereal year. In the Ur-text, words were precisely aligned with essences or "souls," so the words could control things and events absolutely. The implications were the same as in the Hindu idea of the "holy language" of Sanskrit. Knowledge of the Ur-text would give a man absolute power over the universe; whatever he said would come true at once. Many magicians identified the Ur-text with the equally wonderful Book of Thoth, named after the Egyptian god of magic and mentioned in very old Egyptian folk tales as a written version of Thoth's technique for creating by the power of the Word. One story claimed the book was found by a sage named Satni-Khamois in a Memphite tomb. It contained only two formulae but they were great hekau (words of power): The two formulae that are written there, if thou recitest the first of them, thou shalt charm the heaven, the earth, the world of the night, the mountains, the waters; thou shalt understand what all the birds of he;wen and the reptiles say, as many as there are. Thou shalt behold the fish, for a divine power will bring them to the surface of the water. If thou readest the second formula, even when thou art in the tomb, thou shalt resume the form thou hadst on earth; thou shalt also behold the sun rising in the heavens, and his cycle of gods, also the moon in the form that she has when she appears. 2 The first beneficiaries of this wondrous magic became immortal, not by reading the book but by eating the papyrus it was written on-although the book continued to exist, hidden in underwater vessels guarded by the Great Serpent.3 Eating instead of reading a piece of magical literature was a common Oriental method of absorbing the virtue of magic words even when one is unable to read. In Tibet, Madagascar, China, and Japan it was customary to cure diseases by writing the curative charm on paper and eating the paper, or its ashes.4 Tartar lamas wrote the names of medicines on paper and made the patient swallow the prescription; for they believed "To swallow the name of a remedy, or the remedy itself ... comes to precisely the same thing." 5 The same notion was often found in the west. The modern pharmacist's Rx began as a curative symbol of Saturn, written on paper and eaten by the patient.6 A common medieval prescription for toothache was a paper bearing the magic words by which Jesus removed a worm from St. Peter's tooth. 7 The Venerable Bede declared that scrapings from the pages of "books that were brought out of Ireland," when drunk in water, instantly cured snakebite.8 With so many different kinds of credulity in regard to the written words-especially among the majority to whom all writing was a mysterious, unknown magic-it is hardly surprising that belief in the Book of Books, the Ur-text, survived. Some of the beliefs concerning the Ur-text became attached to the Latin Bible, which the medieval church would not allow to be translated into any other language, even though the readings from the pulpit were quite incomprehensible to most congregations. The theory was that Latin was the language of St. Peter's Roman see, and God intended the Bible to be written in that language and no other; for the magic efficacy of the words lay in their sound, which would be lost if they were rendered in another tongue. Thus, out of superstitious belief in the power of the Word, the church kept the "dead" language of Latin alive within its own in-group for over 1500 years. Teiresias Double-sexed seer of Thebes. The Goddess miraculously made him a woman, and he lived as a temple harlot for seven years, acquiring great powers of insight and divination. His myth may date back to the transvestism or ritual castration required of men who entered the Goddess's priesthood. Hermes also became a god of magic insight by turning himself into the pseudo-female Hermaphroditus and presiding over the temple of his consort Aphrodite, wearing female robes and artificial breasts.1 Teiresias had a Hindu counterpart, Trisiras, god of magic, whose powers were based on his ability to change from male to female at will.2 Teiresias's "daughter" was Mante, whose name means Seeress, and was really a title of the Theban priestesses before men managed to take over their functions. Phanes Orphic double-sexed deity, firstborn of the World Egg. He-she helped the Triple Goddess arrange the universe. Phanes was also known as Eros, Ericipaius, or Phaethon Protogenus (Shining Firstborn). 1 Phanes means "Revealer." From Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

An 8.5 x 11 inch print on yardstick paper of a piece done for #Inktober (www.inktober.com) a worldwide art challenge that features one prompt a day for every day in October. The prompt for this illustration was "snake". Each print arrives signed, in a clear envelope with backing board. The caduceus is often used as a symbol of medicine or healing. A perfect print for the doctor, nurse or EMT in your life.

Doctors or nurses wear this golden snake caduceus staff lapel pin brooch as the unofficial symbol of medical professionals and associations. Order your ClinicalPins today. Gold-plated zinc alloy badges Includes extra locking clasp Pendant 0.6 x 1.2 inches (1.4 x 3 cm) Bare below the elbows (BBE) Sharp: Keep from small children

Custom made Jewelry Set includes earrings and necklace that can be purchased separately. Earring set has a silver-tone DA Caduceus charms that dangle on your choice of stainless steel fish hooks or lead and nickel free clip-ons. Charms and clip-ons are lead and nickel free. Fish hooks are hypoallergenic stainless surgical steel. Necklace has a enamel silver-tone DA Caduceus charm on 1mm width and 18" (45cm), 20" (50cm), 22" (55cm), or 24" (60cm) length stainless steel chain. Want a different width? Just ask and I'll check my stock. Charm is approximately .75" wide and .95" high. Jewelry is packaged for gift giving. Check out the other items in my store. Want something else? I can do custom work, just ask! Please keep in mind, colors may vary with different computer, tablet, and cell phone screens. Always treat pieces with love and care. Do not wear while swimming or showering. Please contact me if you have any questions, I am happy to help! I ship Monday thru Friday from Ohio via USPS First Class with free tracking in the United States. Expedited shipping is available at additional cost. Thank you for supporting independent artists!

Registration completed. Adorn your scrubs with this shiny metal RN caduceus lapel pin for registered nurses. ClinicalPosters is your best source for clinical pins. You have earned it. Silver-plated zinc alloy badges Includes extra locking clasp Pendant 1.3 x 1.2 inches (3.3 x 3.1 cm) Bare below the elbows (BBE) Choking hazard: Keep away from children

Sold by  Create your own from scratch  Size: 5" x 7" Make custom invitations and announcements for every special occasion! Choose from twelve unique paper types, two printing options, and six shape options to design a card that's perfect for you. Dimensions: 5" x 7" (portrait or landscape) Standard white envelope included High quality, full-color, full-bleed Add photos and text to both sides of this flat card at no extra charge Two printing options available: Standard and High-Definition 12 unique paper types and colors to choose from Designer Tip: To ensure the highest quality print, please note that this product’s customizable design area measures 5" x 7". For best results please add 1/16" bleed. Paper Type: Semi-Gloss Our most versatile and economical paper, Standard Semi-Gloss produces crisp, vibrant images with exceptional color and detail—a solid choice for all your printing needs. 12.5 pt thickness / 110 lb weight Bright white, semi-gloss finish 50% recycled content Paper imported from Italy; printed in the USA

I found this image while flipping through The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception written by Max Heindel.

T/Caduceus Icon designed by Cam Hoff . Connect with them on Dribbble; the global community for designers and creative professionals.

When it comes to tattoos that carry profound symbolism, Caduceus tattoos stand out as a powerful representation of healing and wisdom. The Caduceus, often associated with the medical field, holds a rich history and significance that goes beyond its recognition as a medical symbol. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore 27 captivating Caduceus tattoo ideas that encapsulate the essence of health, transformation, and knowledge. 1. Minimalistic Caduceus Sometimes, less is more. A minimalist Caduceus tattoo, with simple lines and clean design, can emphasize the elegance of the symbol while making a subtle statement about your connection to the medical world.

Doctors or nurses wear this metal Snake caduceus staff lapel pin brooch as the unofficial symbol of medical professionals and associations. Order your ClinicalPins today. Silver-plated zinc alloy badges Includes extra locking clasp Pendant 0.6 x 1.2 inches (1.4 x 3 cm) Bare below the elbows (BBE) Sharp: Keep from small children