Snake Indians of America, and on the other of the Ophiogenes or Serpent-race of the Troad, kindred of the vipers whose bite they could cure by touch, and descendants of an ancient hero transformed into a snake.[1]
Serpents hold a prominent place in the religions of the world, as the incarnations, shrines, or symbols of high deities. Such were the rattlesnake worshipped in the Natchez temple of the Sun, and the snake belonging in name and figure to the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl;[2] the snake as worshipped still by the Slave Coast negro, not for itself but for its indwelling deity;[3] the snake kept and fed with milk in the temple of the old Slavonic god Potrimpos;[4] the serpent-symbol of the healing deity Asklepios, who abode in or manifested himself through the huge tame snakes kept in his temples[5] (it is doubtful whether this had any original connexion with the adoption of the snake, from its renewal by casting its old slough, as the accepted emblem of new life or immortality in later symbolism); and lastly, the Phœnician serpent with its tail in its mouth, symbol of the world and of the Heaven-god Taaut, in its original meaning perhaps a mythic world-snake like the Scandinavian Midgard-worm, but in the changed fancy of later ages adapted into an emblem of eternity.[6] It scarcely seems proved that savage races, in all their mystic contemplations of the serpent, ever developed out of their own minds the idea, to us so familiar, of adopting it as a personification of evil.[7] In ancient times, we may ascribe this character perhaps to the monster whose well-known form is to be seen on the mummy-cases, the Apophis-serpent of the Egyptian
- ↑ Strabo, xiii. 1, 14.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 62, 585.
- ↑ J. B. Schlegel, 'Ewe-Sprache,' p. xiv.
- ↑ Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 217.
- ↑ Pausan. ii. 28; Ælian. xvi. 39. See Welcker, 'Griech. Götterl.' vol. ii. p. 734.
- ↑ Macrob. Saturnal. i. 9. Movers, 'Phönizier,' vol. i. p. 500.
- ↑ Details such as in Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part i. pp. 38, 414, may be ascribed to Christian intercourse. See Brinton, p. 121.
