Snake in grass: The reptile in myth, philosophy and life

A few days ago, my brother and I were walking through the woods in Ohio. Robins, blue jays, red cardinals flashing above, a lone woodpecker’s taps breaking the silence. Suddenly, he gripped my shoulder.  I followed his gaze.

In extreme slow motion, a snake was pouring itself out of a hole in the tree ahead, body contoured against the trunk, head raised in the air. Retreating to a safe distance I said, “Go up close and take a picture.” My brother replied, “I don’t want to scare the snake!” As a good sister I believed that concern for the snake alone prevented him from moving closer! And we walked – mind you, not ran – away.

I realised that I had goosebumps. My heart beat to an eerie rhythm, with a primeval pulse. I had touched a basic instinct, smothered by layers of reason, and what we deem as “civilization”.

The very idea of the serpent has made the human imagination take its wildest flights. Invariably associated with our awe and fear of the unknown, and what we suspect will always remain unknowable, perhaps a snake is the finite form of the infinite we struggle to comprehend. And how intriguing that these reptiles are associated with both good and evil! Who tempted Eve to bite into the apple? But the same Bible has Moses raising a snake as hope and salvation. As for Hindu mythology, there is benign Adishesha as well as the poison-spewing Kaalinga.

We know that serpents are the oldest mythological symbols across the world, as ancestral spirits or divinities benevolent and vengeful. Every prehistoric culture boasts of snake tribes. Have you heard about the native American rite, where men and women danced in circles holding snakes representing Earth Girl and Sky Boy, before releasing them into the fields to guarantee rainfall and fine harvests? I’m told that some African regions house “sacred” snake colonies, and ceremoniously carry a python or a boa in a hammock around the village to ward off evil.

The phenomenon of sloughing off its skin makes the serpent represent rebirth, immortality, elixir of youth, and indestructibility. The Greeks believed that a python guarded the centre of the earth at Delphi, famous for its Oracles.

Cretans worshipped snakes as they performed the mysteries of birth and regeneration. Folklore believes that snakes can cure physical ailments. Modern science has indeed proved that snake venom contains healing properties.

Legends and literature have established the snake as the image of virility and sexual desire. In India, where physical union is a metaphor for melding with the divine, the power centres of the body are imaged as coiled snakes in kundalini yoga. No wonder then that mystics the world over venerate serpents.

As my brother and I walked quietly away from the coldblooded creature sunbathing at noon, what we felt might have been this primeval reverence rather than fear. I had felt it once before in girlhood. My mother was driving us home at night through a woody lane where trees cast ghostly shadows under the full moon.  Suddenly, the car came to an abrupt halt. Mother grabbed and held me tight. A long and fat snake was slithering across the road with a breath-freezing slowness. We waited till sinuous flow and silvery scales vanished into the dark.

As we resumed our journey, mother told me a story from the Mahabharata. Young brahmin sage Ruru falls in love with a beauteous girl who dies of snakebite. Demented by grief and rage, Ruru vows to kill a snake every single day.  Once, when he is about to smite a snake, the creature looks straight into his eyes, and speaks words which resound with ghastly prophetic power in today’s world.  “I am not the snake who killed your love. I am harmless, I have no trace of venom. How can an educated man be so stupid, ignorant, and arrogant as to indulge in senselessly killing the innocent? Exterminating a whole tribe for the crime committed by a single member of that community? Doesn’t all your learning teach you to differentiate between right and wrong? Don’t you know that ahimsa is the highest dharma?”

Uncannily, the same thought haunts DH Lawrence’s poem about a “snake” coming to drink at his water trough.  “Accursed by human education”, the watcher throws a “clumsy log” at the intruding alien. The snake disappears with undignified haste.  The watcher is left with guilt for his act of meanness, shame for mistreating a fellow creature, regret for missing his chance with a king of the underworld: “I have something to expiate. A pettiness”.  

Does the civilizational process wipe out sensitivity? Does knowledge erase wisdom? Was that snake in Eden not tempting Eve, but actually asking her to choose between mere knowledge and true wisdom?  

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist