2011.02.17 — Analytical Psychology - Jung on the serpent

I was bumbling around this evening and stumbled into C.G. Jung talking about the serpent. Poked around a little more, and came across a reference by William Blake on the serpent in his 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.'

I love that poem, but had forgotten about the serpent comment, because it is so small:

...
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
 
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility,
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Anyway, because of this, and my own quirk, I think Jung's short piece is interesting and so here it is:

The serpent in the cave is an image which often occurs in antiquity. It is important to realize that in classical antiquity, as in other civilizations, the serpent not only was an animal that aroused fear and represented danger, but also signified healing. Therefore Asklepios, the god of physicians, is connected with the serpent; you all know his emblem which is still in use. In the temples of Asklepios, the Asklepieia, which were the ancient clinics, there was a hole in the ground, covered by a stone, and in that hole lived the sacred serpent. There was a slot in the stone through which the people who came to the place of healing threw down the fee for the doctors. The snake was at the same time the cashier of the clinic and collector of gifts that were thrown down into its cave. During the great pestilence in the time of Diocletian the famous serpent of the Asklepieion at Epidaurus was brought to Rome as an antidote to the epidemic. It represented the god himself.

The serpent is not only the god of healing; it also has the quality of wisdom and prophecy. The fountain of Castalia at Delphi was originally inhabited by a python. Apollo fought and overcame the python, and from that time Delphi was the seat of the famous oracle and Apollo its god, until he left half his powers to Dionysus, who later came in from the East. In the underworld, where the spirits of the dead live, snakes and water are always together, as we can read in Aristophanes' The Frogs. The serpent in legend is often replaced by the dragon; the Latin draco simply means snake. A particularly suggestive parallel to our dream symbol is a Christian legend of the fifth century about St Sylvester there was a terrible dragon in a cave under the Tarpeian rock in Rome to whom virgins were sacrificed. Another legend says that the dragon was not a real one but artificial, and that a monk went down to prove it was not real and when he got down to the cave he found that the dragon had a sword in his mouth and his eyes consisted of sparkling jewels (130-1).

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C.G. Jung.
Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice. (The Tavistock Lectures.)
New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, 1970.
Foreword by E.A. Bennet. (Out of print as of today's date.)

I went snooping on the web for snake imagery,and stumbled into an interesting university paper on the psychology of the snake in myth, religion and literature by Greg Morgenson, called 'The Serpent's Prayer: The Psychology of an Image.' It includes D.H. Lawrence's poem 'Snake,' William Blake from 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,' and quite a lot of other stuff.