posted on Mar, 17 2012 @ 10:18 PM
Just about every non-Christian religion that presently exists, or has existed, uses imagery of the serpent/dragon.
In the Apocryphon of John, Satan is described as a serpent with the face of a lion (Yaldaboath, one of the gods of Freemasonry).
(All quotes attributed to Wikipedia)
According to the Rabbinical tradition, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent represents sexual passion;
In Hinduism, Kundalini is a coiled serpent, the residual power of pure desire. In Hindu mythology Lord Vishnu is said to sleep while floating on the
cosmic waters on the serpent Shesha. In the Puranas Shesha holds all the planets of the universe on his hoods and constantly sings the glories of
Vishnu from all his mouths;
At Angkor in Cambodia, numerous stone sculptures present hooded multi-headed nāgas as guardians of temples or other premises. A favorite motif of
Angkorean sculptors from approximately the 12th century A.D. onward was that of the Buddha, sitting in the position of meditation, his weight
supported by the coils of a multi-headed naga that also uses its flared hood to shield him from above;
In China, the Indian serpent nāga was equated with the lóng or Chinese dragon;
In pre-Columbian Central America Quetzalcoatl was sometimes depicted as biting its own tail. The mother of Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec goddess
Coatlicue ("the one with the skirt of serpents"), also known as Cihuacoatl ("The Lady of the serpent"). Quetzalcoatl's father was Mixcoatl
("Cloud Serpent"). He was identified with the Milky Way, the stars and the heavens in several Mesoamerican cultures;
The demigod Aidophedo of the West African Ashanti is also a serpent biting its own tail. In Dahomey mythology of Benin in West Africa, the serpent
that supports everything on its many coils was named Dan. In the Vodou of Benin and Haiti Ayida-Weddo (a.k.a. Aida-Wedo, Aido Quedo,
"Rainbow-Serpent") is a spirit of fertility, rainbows and snakes, and a companion or wife to Dan, the father of all spirits;
The Vision Serpent was also a symbol of rebirth in Mayan mythology, fueling some cross-Atlantic cultural contexts favored in pseudoarchaeology. The
Vision Serpent goes back to earlier Maya conceptions, and lies at the center of the world as the Mayans conceived it. "It is in the center axis atop
the World Tree;
In Ancient Egypt, where the earliest written cultural records exist, the serpent appears from the beginning to the end of their mythology. Ra and Atum
("he who completes or perfects") became the same god, Atum, the "counter-Ra," was associated with earth animals, including the serpent: Nehebkau
("he who harnesses the souls") was the two headed serpent deity who guarded the entrance to the underworld;
Jörmungandr, alternately referred to as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent, is a sea serpent of the Norse mythology, the middle child of Loki and
the giantess Angrboða.
According to the Prose Edda, Odin took Loki's three children, Fenrisúlfr, Hel and Jörmungandr. He tossed Jörmungandr into the great ocean that
encircles Midgard. The serpent grew so big that he was able to surround the Earth and grasp his own tail, and as a result he earned the alternate name
of the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent;
A Horned Serpent is a popular image in Northern American natives' mythology. In one Native North American story, an evil serpent kills one of the
gods' cousins, so the god kills the serpent in revenge, but the dying serpent unleashes a great flood;
Snake cults were well established in Canaanite religion in the Bronze Age, for archaeologists have uncovered serpent cult objects in Bronze Age strata
at several pre-Israelite cities in Canaan: two at Megiddo, one at Gezer] one in the sanctum sanctorum of the Area H temple at Hazor,[20] and two at
Shechem.;
The staff of Moses transformed into a snake and then back into a staff (Exodus 4:2–4). The Book of Numbers 21:6–9 provides an origin for an
archaic copper serpent, Nehushtan by associating it with Moses. This copper snake according to the Biblical text is wrapped around a pole and used for
healing. Book of Numbers 21:9 "And Moses made a snake of copper, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a snake had bitten any man,
when he beheld the snake of brass, he lived.";
In China, depiction of the dragon (traditional:龍;simplified:龙) can be found in artifacts from the Shang and Zhou dynasties with examples dating
back to the 16th century BC.[5] Archaeologist Zhōu Chong-Fa believes that the Chinese word for dragon is an onomatopoeia of the sound thunder
makes.[6] The Chinese name for dragon is pronounced "lóng" in Mandarin Chinese[5] or "lùhng" in the Cantonese.[7] Sometime after the 9th century
AD, Japan adopted the Chinese dragon through the spread of Buddhism.
Happy St. Patrick's Day: St. Patrick the banisher of serpents.