Serpent mythology

I mentioned snake because they referred to the Serpent Mound in the US, he also stated it had a tail like ending?
But looking at that picture your right it doesnt look very serpentine.

Any quetzals in Britain?



hahaha.

Originally posted by mojo4sale


Any quetzals in Britain?

hahaha.

hmm
no
not many tropical birds in this country at all
they get scared off by cats out looking for snakes in the Devonshire rain forest

Originally posted by Marduk
I would suggest that Herefordshire County archaeologist Keith Ray is looking for funding for something and trying to raise the profile of his department
.
.
anyway
heres a handy translation guide to some of the words that English county Archaeologists frequently use
ritual - we don't know what it was for
funeral material - crap that no one alive wanted
etc

I assume you can do research with no funds?
Do you view it as an ethical problem, when somebody tries to raise the profile of his/her department?

I don't see any proper reason to belittle this man, so frankly you're just busy running your mouth. Your knowledge is appreciated, any foolish/arrogant manners are not.
Also
Please save us from your big pictures which usually just take up space.. and you can't post a comment without a lol or some kind of icon can you?

Let's be respectful to the OP. OP had some holes here and there but who doesn't? That's why we're here to share knowledge and expand further. OP is still trying to have a civilized debate.

Originally posted by frenzy_boy

I assume you can do research with no funds?

yes

Originally posted by frenzy_boy
Do you view it as an ethical problem, when somebody tries to raise the profile of his/her department?

I view it as a problem when they try to do so by lying about the evidence

This is ... going to make us rethink whole chunks of what we thought we understood about the period

and speculating wildly

He compared the site to the Serpent Mound in Ohio, an effigy of a giant, coiled snake generally thought to have built by Native Americans sometime before the 13th century

Originally posted by frenzy_boy
I don't see any proper reason to belittle this man, so frankly you're just busy running your mouth.

really ?
did you read the actual articles posted ?
did you understand what he was claiming ?
do you understand that comments like that bring the field of professional archaeology into disrepute
besides which
you're the only person in this thread so far who hasn't commented on the subject of the thread and who is attacking another poster which is against the rules

Originally posted by frenzy_boy
Your knowledge is appreciated, any foolish/arrogant manners are not.

yours are the only foolish arrogant comments I've seen so far

Originally posted by frenzy_boy
Also
Please save us from your big pictures which usually just take up space.. and you can't post a comment without a lol or some kind of icon can you?

get a better computer, you'll find pages load faster with broadband as well. this is the 21st century you know and the pictures are not loaded onto this website but hotlinked from another
the icons are there for a purpose, are you saying not to use the facilities provided ?

Originally posted by frenzy_boy
Let's be respectful to the OP. OP had some holes here and there but who doesn't? That's why we're here to share knowledge and expand further. OP is still trying to have a civilized debate.

as you clearly haven't bothered to read the whole thread I'll point out at this point that it was the OP who I have been discussing this subject with in the last 12 posts and it is me and the OP who so far have been responsible for 90 % of the posts

if you have nothing better to do than to attack other posters opinion and contribute nothing to the thread at all then why don't you try to show off your intelligence and run your mouth somewhere it will be appreciated
i.e. somewhere else


[edit on 6-7-2007 by Marduk]

This picture you posted earlier Marduk. What is it's significance?



And i would say that Australian and Asian serpent mythology would be just as plentiful as european and christian wouldnt you. As well as the Sth American that weve already discussed (argued). Its a worldwide mythology that seems to have merged with many different belief systems.

[edit on 6/7/07 by mojo4sale]

thats a very famous symbol from pictish symbol stones
its known as the pictish beast
en.wikipedia.org...
no one knows what its supposed to represent
allegedly

Originally posted by mojo4sale
And i would say that Australian and Asian serpent mythology would be just as plentiful as european and christian wouldnt you. As well as the Sth American that weve already discussed (argued). Its a worldwide mythology that seems to have merged with many different belief systems.

well theres a reason why there are far more numerous ancient serpent stories in Australia and Asia than there are in the west
all the serpent stories in the west can generally be traced back to the fertile crescent which is why they are all so similar
consider Apep, Tiamat, Satan to name the three most famous all have the same origin in Mesopotamia

and the ones in Asia and Australia because of the enormous variety of snakes and the much more common method of travelling on water which continued to much more recently have continued to be told and retold until the present day because by comparison the mesopotamian stories have been killed off by modern knowledge in the new cultures that adopted them






[edit on 6-7-2007 by Marduk]

Originally posted by Marduk
thats a very famous symbol from pictish symbol stones
its known as the pictish beast

Thanks for the link, never come across that before. I wont tell you what i think it is or we might end up arguing for another 2 pages.

What do you think of the writings of Pliny the Elder.
I wont bother quoting Herodotus anymore as you've already said he's a liar. Give me a heads up on some ancient writings you would consider as accurate in their accounts that deal with mythology so i can do some research.

Btw you seem to have a little red sticker under your name, what have you been up to?

Originally posted by mojo4sale
What do you think of the writings of Pliny the Elder.
I wont bother quoting Herodotus anymore as you've already said he's a liar. Give me a heads up on some ancient writings you would consider as accurate in their accounts that deal with mythology so i can do some research.

you could try anything written in Akkadian or Babylonian as in those texts a lot of mythology that makes it to later cultures gets its first airing
I found Pliny's natural history essential reading if you want to understand the truth behind a lot of mythology, to understand the way that people in the ancient world thought you need to read what they believed about things in their own words
some of Plinys claims about whales are very enlightening and in most cases humourous (attacks on shipping, descriptions of their nature and diet (they loved eating people apparently) etc etc)

Originally posted by mojo4sale
Btw you seem to have a little red sticker under your name, what have you been up to?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Do you consider www.sacred texts reliable?

You know i'm going to rake up some writings by Pliny dealing with a giant snake dont you!!

sacred texts is reliable depending on the source
e.g. you can read about Vimanas there from a channeled source in the 1930s
if youre looking for Mesopotamian texts then theres only one credible source
www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk...
as for Pliny, thats cool
please tell me all about the Indian Dragon that he mentions
don't bother with the Basilisk
it turns out to be a cobra

Originally posted by Marduk
the biggest clue as to how very important this discovery is would be the fact that it is about to be buried underneath a road and not removed to a museum

Doesn't look like their about to bury it just yet. Has there been any interest shown in this site in the UK do you know Marduk.

news.bbc.co.uk

Herefordshire Council said a protective shield will be built over the site to preserve it for future generations. A relief road will then be built over it.
If inspectors schedule the monument, work on the road will have to stop.

Howdy

don't know if you have seen this source but thought I would put it up.

I enjoyed reading it.

Since the very beginnings of time, on every continent of this earth where humanity has worshipped divinity the serpent has been recognized and accepted as a god. From Africa's steaming jungle to the icy wastes of northern Europe; from the fertile crescent to the deserted outback of Australia the serpent has been worshipped, feared and adored. Serpent mythology is arguably the most widespread mythology known to mankind.

Serpent as Divinity

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet because I didn't read every single post in this thread, but there is a very interesting book my philosophy professor introduced me to called "The Cosmic Serpent" written by an anthropologist named Jeremy Narby.

In the book, Narby takes notice of the presence of serpents or snakes in some form in the mythology/religion of virtually every human civilization. He begins investigating this while living in South America among the Peruvian Indians, and actually ingests ayahuasca given to him by a shaman. His hallucinations and years of further research lead him to believe that the serpents are representative of DNA, and provide a common link between all life on Earth. He goes on to make some pretty legitimate connections between microbiology and the various serpent myths.

It sounds pretty strange and out there, but I found it to be a very interesting read and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in serpent myths, DNA, or shamans. Here's an interview with the author about some of the subject matter: deoxy.org...

Hey Mojo I just stumbled upon this page (www.mythospress.co.uk...) which reminded me of you. It's got some books for sale which are about the history of serpent worship and some other stuff. Some of them have a 2 page preview in .pdf format if you click on the picter of the book cover.

[edit on 7/29/2007 by ViolatoR]

Hey thanks ViolatoR, i'll see if i cant find some of those at my local library. If not i might have to fork out some dollars, but i'm a miserly so and so.

Cheers for thinking of me.

mojo.

Ancient Semitic Snake Spells Deciphered in Egyptian Pyramid


nationalgeographic

The Canaanite spells were invoked to help protect mummified kings against poisonous snakes, one of ancient Egypt's most dreaded nemeses.
According to the incantations, female snakes—acting as mediators for Canaanite magicians—used their multiple mouths and sexual organs to prevent other snakes from entering the mummified rulers' remains.

nationalgeographic

In the inscribed spells, a Canaanite-speaking mother snake cajoles and threatens invading snakes in their own language.
"You need somebody with good connections to the snake. You can't just come along and say, Get out of here, snake. Why should the snake listen to you?" Steiner said.
"You need to involve someone who commands the snake's respect, someone who can speak to the snake in its own language and who is related to it in some way—its mother or its lover," he added.

Sanchuniathon was a (legendary/mythical) phoenician author whose only works were translated by Philo of Byblos, only fragments remain. This excerpt on Serpents is interesting.

Sanchuniathon

The nature then of the dragon and of serpents Tauthus himself regarded as divine, and so again after him did the Phoenicians and Egyptians: for this animal was declared by him to be of all reptiles most full of breath, and fiery. In consequence of which it also exerts an unsurpassable swiftness by means of its breath, without feet and hands or any other of the external members by which the other animals make their movements. It also exhibits forms of various shapes, and in its progress makes spiral leaps as swift as it chooses. It is also most long-lived, and its nature is to put off its old skin, and so not only to grow young again, but also to assume a larger growth; and after it has fulfilled its appointed measure of age, it is self-consumed, in like manner as Tauthus himself has set down in his sacred books: for which reason this animal has also been adopted in temples and in mystic rites.

Ok, since I just found this post I thought I'd share my two-cents. I noticed the serpent symbolism threaded throughout most if not all religions and thought it worthy of some investigation.

There seem to be several aspects to the mythology, several of which have been covered in this thread. The serpent is a fertility symbol, it is equatable to 'mother nature' because of its waveform shape, and its rebirth symbolism is down to the shedding of its skin. The waveform links it to all Goddess worship simply because the ancient symbol for water is a serpent like wave. Ask a child to draw a boat on the sea and take note of the depiction of the waves.

The rebirth aspect was seen at least as early as Egyptian religion in the ourobros and its fiery counterpart the phoenix (benben). These symbols are essentially the same thing, only in a male (fire) and female (water) form. I believe this is how the familiar Dragon image formed and became an archetype.

Western religions have demonised the serpent form because of, what I feel is, a lack of understanding about the original intent of the Garden of Eden story. Eastern religions have revered the serpent form because it is a symbol of life and luck, something we should keep in mind whilst looking at all other interpretations.

The serpent image has been used in several contexts, one of which is fertility, another is natural laws, another is the infinite (ourobros) and another still is Kundalini (serpent power). Whether you believe in any of the above is irrelevant, the only thing thats important is how the symbol has been used and in what context.

I'm going to get metaphysical on you all now. The plumed serpent combines the serpent with another EXTREMELY important symbol - the feather. Feathers have been used throughout the ages in tribes as a ritual object, conquering the birds showed real wisdom and strength. This also goes back to Egypt and the Hall of Ma'at scene, where the heart is weighed against the feather of Ma'at. The feather is truth and our aspirations toward it. This governs our psychology in a really basic way. Curiosity has created our world...

Its no co-incidence we used a feather when we first began writing, only the priests would be literate enough to even use one and they wanted their word to be the the Truth or Law. When you then take into account the truth symbolism, the whole feather/flight/serpent imagery takes on a new and deeper meaning. The shamanic caduceus shows these twin serpents and the feathery crown was seen as the shaman reaching a higher conciousness THROUGH entheogenic drug use or other trance methods. The imagery is navigating the axis-mundi (world tree) and returning with TRUTH.

These experiences are not to be dismissed so easily as I saw was done earlier. Francis Krick who was the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule used '___' around the time of this discovery and threatened legal action to anyone who ever tried to use this againsth him. When he died it hit the headlines, the Newspaper article shouldn't be hard to dig up. The yin-yang shows the same image of duality as the twinned serpents, this should also be looked into.

At Angkor Wat in Cambodia theres a Buddhist and Hindu temple which depicts a scene in which 54 devils and 54 angels (not a literal angel/devil, but something similar), they are working together to churn the milky ocean of the nights sky to create life. This, I believe, marks the precession of the nights sky and also uses the serpent as the natural force being pulled between the polarity of these angel and devils.

=========================================
The Celestial Serpent
=========================================

The biblical garden of eden had several components that I want to break down to see how an original and extremely potent idea has become corrupt and diluted over time.

Adam, Eve, and the serpent

Forget religion for a moment; for energy to traverse any space it has to move within a polarised environment, think circuits in electronics. Most real world physical phenomenon occurs as a waveform, the ancients saw this when they dropped a pebble into a still lake or plucked their stringed instruments. We have confirmed it further still with our advancements in harnessing electrical currents. Our brains, an evolved organ, utilise this electrical force to bring us conciousness; and it does it using polarity.

So we have a + and - in our Adam and Eve. The serpent actually brings wisdom by telling Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. We gain knowledge of good and evil, another polarisation. At this point God gets mad, yada yada yada, removes us from the garden and so we lose touch with the tree of Life - we begin the cycle of birth/death - life begins with polarity!

To me this all tells the same story. Energy is unable to travel without the polarisation of a + and -. Once this polarisation occurs, the Universe expands and matter can exist. Quetzecoatl seems a much purer image of God than any image since, to me at least.

Thanks for your posts Trojan_libido.

Originally posted by Trojan_libido
The shamanic caduceus shows these twin serpents and the feathery crown was seen as the shaman reaching a higher conciousness THROUGH entheogenic drug use or other trance methods. The imagery is navigating the axis-mundi (world tree) and returning with TRUTH....snip......

The yin-yang shows the same image of duality as the twinned serpents, this should also be looked into.

Is the shamanic caduceus you mention different in some way to the traditional caduceus. I thought that the caduceus symbolised commerce. (ie see Hermes).
This duality or twin snakes does intrigue me though.

I found another legend that venerates the Serpent/Snake with some interesting similarity's to other mythology and symbolism.
Here is where the similarity to the caduceus becomes apparent due to the depiction of dual/twin snakes.

wikipedia

The mythology of Illyrians seems to depict Mikon and Zeau as being twin brothers originally born as snakes (Illyrians were very appreciative of the animal) - corresponding to the phrase "two minds are better than one." The two gods seem to be very close to one another and were favorites of Illyrian farmers/growers. Mythology suggests that the two married the child Genusus.

The caduceus has two snakes entwined about a staff. (twin snakes?) did the Illyrians borrow from the Greeks or did the Greeks borrow from the Illyrians or coincidence?
Hard to imagine that one did not influence the other being as they were so close geographically.

Here is an Illyrian legend that i believe shows up in mythology in other country's but contains different animals as the protagonists.

sacred texts, this story reminds me of "The Pied Piper of Hamlet'.

the unknown man took a bone pipe out of his pocket, and began to blow it so powerfully that everybody's ears tingled. Quickly up rushed and crowded from all quarters a vast number of snakes, lizards, and salamanders to the pile, and, driven by some strange force, all sprang into the fire and perished there. But all at once a mightier and shriller hiss was heard from Ososcica, so that all present were seized with fear and dread. The man on the fir, at hearing it, trembled with terror: 'Woe is me! there is no help for me!' so said he. 'I have heard a white snake hiss; why did you thus mislead me? But be so compassionate as not to forget every year to give alms to the poor on my behalf.'

And here the whole "Lizard race perish's". Yet according to the wikipedia article the "Illyrians were very appreciative of the animal", particularly farmers. Which begs the question of how this story came about?

Thus perished, along with the whole lizard race, the monstrous snake which had done so much harm to the cattle. The peasants were again able without fear to carry on their occupations, and the shepherds at Ososcica to pasture their cattle without anxiety.

mojo.