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By A. T. Mann
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
A. T. Mann is an astrologer, architect, author, artist, designer and teacher. → atmann.net → @atmann4
By A. T. Mann
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
A. T. Mann is an astrologer, architect, author, artist, designer and teacher. → atmann.net → @atmann4
By A. T. Mann
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
A. T. Mann is an astrologer, architect, author, artist, designer and teacher. → atmann.net → @atmann4
By A. T. Mann
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
In the traditional reading, the famous 1460 painting by Uccello (below) shows St George slaying the dragon and thereby saving the virginal princess. This legend symbolized good over evil, or symbolically, patriarchal Christianity overcoming the dangerous temptations of paganism. But, it has powerful hidden symbolism. If you look closely, you can see that a leash links the dragon and the princess together. Far from saving her from the dragon, St George was killing a part of her: her split-off serpent nature, which symbolizes her feminine sexuality, healing energy, and divine inspiration. Medieval Christian authorities and the patriarchy persecuted women, particularly healers or women who expressed their individuality and connection to nature, as witches, and portrayed the sexuality they engendered as evil. Saint George’s silver armor deflects her gaze and protects him from the temptations of her allure, just as Perseus protected himself from the snake-haired Medusa with a mirrored shield. In both myths, the hero slays the dragon to suppress the dangerous pagan feminine, while representing the dominant patriarchy. The same is true today.
Serpents, dragons, and snakes are among the oldest and most potent symbols of humanity, with a wide variety of representations, meanings, signs and misconceptions. This triad is at once symbolic of creation, time, Maya (illusion), wisdom, sexuality, astrology, mythology, healing, evil, temptation, death, the underworld, the mysterious and the mysteries, oracular knowledge, destruction, dissolution, duality, Kundalini energy and royalty. Inherent in all this, the serpent is a primary ancient symbol of woman: her power, her wisdom, her healing, and her sexuality.
Exploring serpent symbolism is a journey into our collective past, which resides within each of us, stored in our psyche, our serpent-like R-cortex brain structure, and our very genes. The symbolism of the serpent occupies the central domain of taboo and religious fury, as well as the territory of pure creativity and generation. We will look above, to the constellations in the sky, around the roots of banyan trees, in art and poetry, at ancient myths and legends, within the psyche, and through architecture, to Nature, to find traces of the snakes, serpents and dragons at our core, including the reptilian brain stem we all carry within. Our quest is analogous to Joseph Campbell’s masculine search for the “Gods of Bliss,” as we shall seek the origins of female serpent power and its many manifestations in our world today. It is not accidental that the entwined snakes of the physicians’ caduceus echos the spiraling strands of the DNA molecule, the seven chakras, Kundalini sexual energy, and the serpent constellation Draco that surrounds the Pole Star — they all evoke powerful and dynamic feminine energy. And the central fact is that we all carry maternal genes, and all arise by being conceived and carried within our mother, echoing the origin myths of all humanity..
According to the Gnostic gospels, Eve collaborated with the wise serpent to bring consciousness and soul to Adam in Eden; Egyptian pharaohs wore the feminine uraeus/cobra symbol, surmounting their crowns, as they were matrilineal; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the protection of the multi-hooded cobra Muchalinda; bare-breasted Minoan goddesses danced with snakes; and doctors still symbolize their healing identity with the entwined snakes of the caduceus. The priestesses of the Greek Delphic Oracle were “Pythonesses,” and \the temple at the Greek healing center sacred to the god Asclepius at Epidaurus contained snake pits; fundamentalist Christian sects contact their god through worship with serpents and speaking in tongues; in Chinese Feng Shui, the dragons symbolize powerful earth energies and sexuality, which are primarily seen as feminine; even the constellations surrounding the Pole Star in every culture are called Dragon (Draco), or some variant. Yet we know little of this omnipresent and profound connection between the sacred mysteries and the eternal feminine. Our daughters and sons need to rediscover this symbolism, and it is central to the emerging philosophies of ecological living, to allow Gaia and feminine wisdom to restore balance to the earth and bring wholeness to our stilted lives.
In the myths of ancient cultures, the generative goddesses bring everything into being by mating with the gods, therefore they ‘birth the world,’ and by extension, everything on Mother Earth is sacred. In general, gods were associated with heaven and goddesses with earth, although they sometimes switched: their heavenly acts crisscrossed over into each other’s territory. The sacred permeates all life – even the simplest actions are rituals founded and blessed by these divinities. This essential sacredness should assure a perfect integration of humanity with nature, but through time, the patriarchs and their religions transformed the serpent from being a divine female icon to a symbol of evil, as depicted in the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The continuing denigration and persecution of the divine feminine by white supremacist, patriarchal world religions, societies, governments, and individuals, leads inexorably to the debasement of our sacred world, as we have experienced for many generations. Paradoxically, the designation of a temple, church or mosque as a ‘sacred’ precinct effectively desacralizes the natural world surrounding it. Then, following that, the materialistic/mechanistic scientific revolution and Cartesian philosophy reduced the material world to inanimate matter (ironically derived from the word for “mother”). Those who seek to understand particles and waves often deny the vitalism of Nature and wish to institute a total domination of humanity over their demeaned nature. Yet humankind and its institutions feel free to utilize, exploit, debase and pollute the world, because we revere it no more, except as a source of and repository for resources and raw materials. The debasement of the sacred feminine and the Earth are two variations of the same intrinsic and deadly philosophy of materialism, which is killing our world.
It is essential that we begin to reconnect and integrate female with male energies to bring a collective mindfulness to fruition, and to encourage a new ecological/sexual consciousness in the world. We must acknowledge, bridge, and integrate these often-warring gender polarities within ourselves, between man and woman, and to re-establish the primal links between humanity and Nature by symbolic and actual bridges of awareness. The discovery of the inherent wisdom of the archetypal feminine through its primary symbols is the first step to the restoration of the sacredness of the world and a return to the lasting ecological consciousness that we so desperately need.
A. T. Mann is an astrologer, architect, author, artist, designer and teacher. → atmann.net → @atmann4