Here Be Serpents

Every night, Ra travels through the twelve hours of the underworld in his solar barque, and every night Apep waits to swallow him. Apep cannot be killed - he reforms himself each night, endless and hungry. The priests of Ra recited the spells of the Book of Apep to bind him, to spit on him, to drive him back. When a thunderstorm came, the ancient Egyptians understood it as the sound of Apep's thrashing as he was defeated once more. But Wadjet, the cobra of the north, the Eye of Ra, the uraeus on the crown of every pharaoh - she is the fire that destroys the enemies of the king before they can reach him. She is the oldest goddess of Egypt, older than the unification of the Two Lands. The serpent protects and the serpent destroys. Both are necessary. The cosmos requires both.

The long is not a creature of fear but of aspiration. Classical Chinese texts describe it as the lord of rain and rivers, capable of ascending to heaven or descending into the deep, appearing as a cloud or manifesting in a river's current. The Shuowen Jiezi describes it as the chief of scaly creatures, able to be obscure or bright, small or large, short or long, ascending to heaven in the spring equinox and diving into the deep in the autumn equinox. Imperial China identified the emperor as the Son of Heaven and the True Dragon - not because the emperor was a monster but because the dragon embodied the highest virtues of power exercised in harmony with the natural order. When drought threatened, communities petitioned the Dragon King of the local river or sea through ritual, not through combat. The long is something you align with, not something you fight.

Jormungandr lies in the ocean that surrounds all lands, so vast that he encircles the world and holds his own tail in his mouth. He is the son of Loki, and Odin cast him into the sea knowing that this was the only place large enough to contain him. Thor has fought him twice already and will fight him a third time at Ragnarok, when the serpent will release his tail and the ocean will flood the land. Thor will kill him but will walk nine steps and fall dead from the venom. This is not a tragedy - it is the shape of things. Nidhogg gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil from below, as the eagle tears at its crown from above. The tree holds the worlds together, and the serpent works ceaselessly to bring it down. He has not succeeded yet. He will not succeed until it is time for him to succeed, and then everything will end and begin again.

Lotan is the twisting serpent, the powerful one with seven heads, the ancient dragon of the sea. Baal fought him and defeated him, as the texts preserved at Ras Shamra record: 'When you smote Lotan, the fleeing serpent, made an end of the twisting serpent, the powerful one with seven heads.' But Baal's victory over Lotan is not the end of the story - it is the precondition for Baal's kingship, for his palace, for his authority over rain and storm. The sea (Yam) and its champion (Lotan) must be defeated so that order can exist. This is the pattern: the storm god must prove himself against the chaos of the primordial waters before he can be king. Leviathan, whom the Hebrews knew, is Lotan's cousin - the same coiling, the same seven heads in some traditions, the same association with the deep waters that existed before creation.

The Nagas are not serpents in the way a common snake is a serpent. They are kings, queens, scholars, warriors. Vasuki, who served as the churning rope when the gods and demons churned the cosmic ocean for amrita, is a being of such power that the gods themselves required his cooperation. Shesha, on whose coils Vishnu rests between the ages, is not merely large - he is the foundation of existence itself, the one who remains (shesha means 'remainder') when all else dissolves at the end of a cosmic cycle. The Nagas live in Nagaloka, a kingdom of great beauty beneath the earth and beneath the waters, filled with jewels and palaces. They can take human form, and many royal families trace their lineage to a Naga ancestor. To offend a Naga is dangerous - they can curse entire lineages. To honor them properly, on Naga Panchami and at the sacred tanks where they dwell, is to secure their protection and the blessing of water and fertility.

In the beginning, Apsu the freshwater and Tiamat the saltwater were mingled together, and from their commingling the first gods were born. Tiamat was not evil then - she was the mother of all. But when the younger gods disturbed the primordial silence with their noise and revelry, and when Apsu was killed by Ea, Tiamat gathered her forces and created monsters to destroy the gods who had killed her consort. She made serpents, dragons, the Lahmu, the Ugallu, the Mushussu - creatures of terrible power. Marduk agreed to fight her on condition that the gods give him supreme authority. He caught her in his net, drove the winds into her open mouth so she could not close it, and split her body in two - her upper half becoming the sky, her lower half the earth, her eyes the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates. From her body, the world was made. She is the world.

Quetzalcoatl is the wind before the rain, the morning star that appears before the sun. He is the one who went to Mictlan, the land of the dead, and gathered the bones of the people of the previous world ages, grinding them and mixing them with his own blood to create the people of this age. He gave humanity the calendar, maize, and the arts. The temple at Teotihuacan was built in his image - the feathers of the quetzal bird and the body of the rattlesnake, sky and earth made one. At Chichen Itza, on the days when the sun crosses the equator, his body descends the pyramid in shadow, a sign that the seasons are turning, that it is time to plant or to harvest. He departed to the east across the sea, promising to return. His return was expected. When the Spanish arrived from the east in the year One Reed - the year associated with Quetzalcoatl - some believed the prophecy was being fulfilled. The consequences of that belief were catastrophic.

The dragon is the Devil made visible. When John saw the vision on Patmos, he saw a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, whose tail swept a third of the stars from heaven - and the dragon was identified as that ancient serpent, the Devil, Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. The dragon of Genesis who tempted Eve in the garden, the Leviathan of Job who swims in the deep, the dragon of Revelation who makes war on the saints - these are one being, wearing different masks. When Saint George rode out to face the dragon that was devouring the people of Silene, he was not merely killing a large reptile. He was enacting the cosmic battle between Christ and Satan, between the Church and the powers of darkness, in the visible world. The dragon's defeat is always temporary in history and final only at the Last Judgment. Until then, the dragon prowls, seeking whom he may devour.

Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent, is not separate from the country - she is the country. She moved through the land in the Dreaming, and where she moved, she made the rivers, the waterholes, the hills. She is still there, in the deep water. You do not go to certain waterholes without ceremony, without permission, without knowing the right way to approach. People who disturb her - who are too loud, who are unclean, who do not know the law - she can swallow them, take them into her body. But she is not evil. She is the power of water itself, which gives life and can take it. The Rainbow you see in the sky after rain - that is her, moving between water and sky. She is always present. The Dreaming is not the past. It is now.