serpent (symbolism)

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Naasenians, Naassenes

Naasenians, Naassenes [from Hebrew nahash serpent]

A Gnostic school of the Ophites [from Greek ophis serpent], which regarded the spiritual dragon or serpent as the redeeming power and as a symbol of the intelligence by whose means Adam and Eve received a knowledge of the existence of higher beings than their creator.

The dragon or serpent is an extremely ancient, universal symbol of wisdom and knowledge. Only in Christian times has it become endowed with infernal attributes and used as an emblem of the Evil One. Yet even the Christian scriptures declare that divinity itself can properly be symbolized by the dragon.

serpent (symbolism): Hindu - Hinduism Dictionary on Naga

naga: (Sanskrit) "Serpent," often the cobra; symbol of the kundalini coiled on the four petals of the muladhara chakra.

See: kundalini, kundalini yoga, muladhara chakra, chakras.

(See also: Naga, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

serpent (symbolism): Encyclopedia II - Death In June - Crisis

Pearce formed Death In June in 1981 in England, along with Patrick Leagas and Tony Wakeford. Pearce and Wakeford had been members of the influential political punk band, Crisis [1], which formed in 1977. Crisis had gained a substantial following in the U.K. punk scene, which was getting its legs at that time. Crisis performed at rallies for Rock Against Racism (RAR), and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), organizations that neoist and Crisis/Death in June critic Stewart Home wrote were fronts for the Socialist Workers Party.[2] Home further stated that the SWP organized a tour of Norway for Crisis and that Wakeford ...

Death In June, Death In June - Crisis, Death In June - Early Death In June 1981-1985, Death In June - Live debut, Death In June - Introduction of folk music, Death In June - Tony Wakeford departs, Death In June - Nada! flirtation with dance music, Death In June - Patrick Leagas departs, Death In June - Mid-period Death In June 1985-1996, Death In June - Creation of World Serpent Distribution, Death In June - Collaboration with David Tibet, Death In June - Collaboration with Boyd Rice begins, Death In June - Collaboration with Erik Konofal, Death In June - Collaboration with John Murphy begins, Death In June - Contemporary Death In June 1996-present, Death In June - Collaboration With Albin Julius, Death In June - Demise of World Serpent Distribution, Death In June - Collaboration With Andreas Ritter, Death In June - Collaboration With Boyd Rice ends, Death In June - Neofolk music, Death In June - Influences, Death In June - Literary, Death In June - Musical, Death In June - Film, Death In June - Symbolism and aesthetics, Death In June - Masks, Death In June - Camouflage, Death In June - Totenkopf-6, Death In June - Whip-Hand, Death In June - Three Bars, Death In June - Runes, Death In June - The origins of the name, Death In June - Controversy, Death In June - Censored in Lausanne Switzerland, Death In June - Censored in Chicago Illinois, Death In June - Discography, Death In June - Albums And EPs, Death In June - Compilations, Death In June - Reference

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Thretaona

Thretaona (Mazd.) The Persian Michael, who contended with Zohak or Azhi-Dahaka, the destroying serpent. In the Avesta Azhi-Dahaka is a three-headed monster, one of whose heads is human, and the two others Ophidian. Dahaka, who is shown in the Zoroastrian Scriptures as coming from Babylonia, stands as the allegorical symbol of the Assyrian dynasty of King Dahaka (Az-Dahaka) which ruled Asia with an iron hand, and whose banners bore the purple sign of the dragon, Purpureum signum draconis. Metaphysically, however, the human head denotes the physical man, and the two serpent heads the dual manasic principles - the dragon and serpent both standing as symbols of wisdom and occult powers.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Ureus

Ureus (Ancient Greek). In Egyptian Urhek, a serpent and a sacred symbol. Some see in it a cobra, while others say it is an asp. Cooper explains that "the asp is not a ureus but a cerastes, or kind of viper, i.e., a two- horned viper. It is the royal serpent, wearing the pschent . . . the naya haje." The ureus is "round the disk of Horus and forms the ornament of the cap of Osiris, besides overhanging the brows of other divinities" (Bonwick). Occultism explains that the ureus is the symbol of initiation and also of hidden wisdom, as the serpent always is. The gods were all patrons of the hierophants and their instructors.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Naaseni

Naaseni. The Christian Gnostic sect, called Naasenians, or serpent worshippers, who considered the constellation of the Dragon as the symbol of their Logos or Christ.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Pulastya

Pulastya (Sanskrit). One of the seven "mind-born sons" of Brahma; the reputed father of the Nagas (serpents, also Initiates) and other symbolical creatures.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Brazen Serpent

Brazen Serpent As related in the Bible, when the Jews in the wilderness complained to Moses, "the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died" (Num 21:6); wherefore "Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent has bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived" (21:9).

As the Hebrew words for serpent and brass are the same when the Massoretic points are omitted (N H SH), some have sought for an interpretation by referring to the Evil One, called by the later Jews and Qabbalaistic Christians the Deprived (Nahash), but the fiery serpents "were the Seraphim, each one of which, as Isaiah shows (vi. 2), 'had six wings'; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses -- Seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent is Jehovah, the chief of the 'fiery serpents' " (SD 2:387n).

Again, "both the heathen wand and the Jewish 'serpent' are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son of Apollo-python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for their 'seducer.' With them it was purely physiological and phallic" (SD 2:208).

Just as the serpent is connected with knowledge, wisdom, and magic, whether of the right- or left-hand path, so likewise has copper or brass since immemorial time in all mystic schools been a metallic compound supposed to be under the particular governance of the planet Venus, which is the ruler or controller of the human higher manas -- manas being at once the savior as well as the tempter of mankind, for it is in the mind where temptation and sin or evildoing ultimately arise.

See also SERPENT.

serpent (symbolism): Encyclopedia II - Nehushtan - Serpent staff

The staff was a serpent on a pole which Moses made in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4–9) in obedience to God's directions. At the time, the Israelites were being attacked by poisonous snakes and were dying. After Moses made the staff, any who were bitten and looked at it, survived the snakebite (II Kings 18:4; Num. 21:4-10). Generations later, Hezekiah destroyed it because the children of Israel had forgotten its symbolism and began to regard the object itself as an idol, "burning incense to it". The worshippers were called Naassian ...

It flourished early in the second century, and while holding some of the principles of Valentinus had its own occult rites and symbology. A living serpent, representing the Christos-principle (i.e., the divine reincarnating Monad, not Jesus the man), was displayed in their mysteries and reverenced as a symbol of wisdom, Sophia, the type of the all-good and all-wise.

The Gnostics were not a Christian sect, in the common acceptation of this term, as the Christos of pre-Christian thought and the Gnosis was not the "god-man" Christ, but the divine EGO, made one with Buddhi. Their Christos was the "Eternal Initiate", the Pilgrim, typified by hundreds of Ophidian symbols for several thousands of years before the " Christian" era, so- called.

One can see it on the "Belzoni tomb" from Egypt, as a winged serpent with three heads (Atma-Buddhi-Manas), and four human legs, typifying its androgynous character; on the walls of the descent to the sepulchral chambers of Rameses V., it is found as a snake with vulture’s wings - the vulture and hawk being solar symbols. "The heavens are scribbled over with interminable snakes ‘ writes Herschel of the Egyptian chart of stars. "The Meissi (Messiah?) meaning the Sacred Word, was a good serpent", writes Bonwick in his Egyptian Belief. "This serpent of goodness, with its head crowned, was mounted upon a cross and formed a sacred standard of Egypt." The Jews borrowed it in their "brazen serpent of Moses".

It is to this "Healer" and "Saviour", therefore, that the Ophites referred, and not to Jesus or his words, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so it behoves the Son of Man to be lifted up" - when explaining the meaning of their ophis. Tertullian, whether wittingly or unwittingly, mixed up the two. The four-winged serpent is the god Chnuphis. The good serpent bore the cross of life around its neck, or suspended from its mouth. The winged serpents become the Seraphim (Seraph, Saraph) of the Jews. In the 87th chapter of the Ritual (the Book of the Dead) the human soul transformed into Bata, the omniscient serpents says: - " I am the serpent Ba-ta, of long years, Soul of the Soul, laid out and born daily; I am the Soul that descends on the earth", i.e., the Ego.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Serpent

Serpent One of the most fundamental and prolific symbols of the mystery-language. Its most basic meaning is of the eternal, alternating, cyclic motion during cosmic manifestation.

For motion, which to the physicist and the philosopher alike seems an abstraction, is for the ancient wisdom a primordial principle or axiom, of the same order as space and time, existing per se. Never does motion cease utterly even during kosmic pralaya. And motion is essentially circular: where physics would derive circular motion from a composition of rectilinear motions, the opposite procedure would be that of the ancient wisdom. This circular motion, compounding itself into spirals, helixes, and vortices, is the builder of worlds, bringing together the scattered elements of chaos; motion per se is essential cosmic intelligence. This circular motion, returning upon itself like a serpent swallowing its tail, represents the cycles of time.

This conscious energy in spirals whirls through all the planes of cosmos as fohat and his innumerable sons -- the cosmic energies and forces, fundamentally intelligent, operating in every scale or grade of matter. The caduceus of Hermes, twin serpents wound about a staff, represents cosmically the mighty drama of evolution, in its twin aspects, the staff or tree standing for the structural aspect, the serpent for the fohatic forces that animate the structure.

The serpent is characteristically a dual symbol. In the beginnings of creation two poles were emanated, spirit and matter; and forthwith began interaction between the downward forces of the one and the upward forces of the other. Hermes, Mercury, intelligence, may represent a sage or a thief; the serpentine wisdom may work in every plane of materiality. The perverse will of man may turn natural forces to evil purposes, and thus we speak of the good serpent and the bad, of Agathodaemon and Kakodaemon, of Ophis and Ophiomorphos. A serpent can be a sage or a sorcerer.

The dragon is the eternally vigilant one, guardian of the sacred treasures; but he is the ruthless destroyer of him who attempts to gain by force the riches to which he has not won a title. To gain knowledge, we must know how to tame the serpent which rules the nether worlds, as the Christ refuses to make obeisance to Satan.

The seven sacred planets, or again the seven human principles, form a serpent, often collocated with the sun and moon as making a triad. One form of this spiraling conscious energy, when manifesting in man, is kundalini-sakti, the serpentine power, which in the ordinary person today lies relatively sleeping and performing merely automatic vital functions; but when aroused can ether waft to sublime heights of vision and power or blast like a lightning-stroke.

The power which a serpent has of casting its old skin is analogous to what the earth does at the commencement of each round, and to the clothing of the human jiva with a new body when it enters the womb. Again, the astral light is called a serpent; its lowest strata are dangerous and deceptive, while it extends through all planes up to the highest akasa, the vehicle of divine wisdom.

In early Christianity there arose more than one Gnostic sect using the snake as a symbol, such as the Ophites, which in the vision of certain ecclesiastic Fathers was designated devil worship, or by other uncomplimentary names.

See also NAGA; WORLD-SERPENT

(See also: Serpent, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

serpent (symbolism): Sai Baba Dictionary on Naga

Naga:

Naga: "Serpent," often the cobra; symbol of the kundalini coiled on the four petals of the muladhara chakra. Naga: The best or most excellent of any kind.

serpent (symbolism): Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Charaka

Charaka (Sanskrit). A writer on Medicine who lived in Vedic times. He is believed to have been an incarnation (Avatara) of the Serpent Sesha, i.e., an embodiment of divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the "Serpent" race, is synonymous with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the pralayas. Ananta is the "endless" and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha. (See "Ananta" and "Sesha".)

serpent (symbolism): Encyclopedia II - Mount Nebo Jordan - Recent history

On March 19, 2000, Pope John Paul II visited the site during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Mount Nebo being one of the most important Christian sites in Jordan). During his visit he planted an olive tree beside the Byzantine chapel as a symbol of peace. The serpentine cross sculpture (the Brazen Serpent Monument) atop Mount Nebo was created by Italian artist, Giovanni Fantoni. It is symbolic of the bronze serpent created by Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9) and t ...

Dream Sharing Forum

serpent (symbolism)

A Wisdom Archive on serpent (symbolism)

ARTICLES RELATED TO serpent (symbolism)

See also:

See also:

See also:

See also:

See also:

See also:

Rate this archive!