The Year of the Snake: Myth, Faith, Symbolism and the Dangers of Divinity
This journal post explores both the repressive and liberatory power of stories within our lineage and religious or spiritual traditions and focuses on generational, biblical, and ancestral understandings of snakes in honor of The Year of the Snake.
Story as Warning
My grandmother, Mercy, held a treasure chest of stories in her heart. By far, my favorite story was the tale of Prabhudas and the Cobra. This was not an Indian folktale but a story from my grandmother’s own life. It went something like this…
One day, while visiting her cousin in Madanapalle, my grandmother, a young woman in her early thirties, prepared a bath. She was on leave from her government teaching position and enjoying the spaciousness of both the morning hours and her cousin’s home. Her children were living with another cousin in Chennai and her husband, who required increasing care due to the progression of his type 2 diabetes, was tended to by staff of her host, who was already at work.
After boiling water on the stove, my grandmother carried the steaming pot to the bathroom and carefully poured its contents into a metal bucket under a faucet jutting out of the bathroom wall. With her husband out for a mid morning walk, she savored her solitude and didn’t bother shutting the bathroom door. Humming the chorus of comforting hymn, my grandmother removed her cotton sari, keeping her blouse and petticoat on. The breeze wafting through the open door caressed her bare arms and midriff. Turning the faucet on, she let a cold stream run into the steaming bucket and then immersed and fluttered her finger tips in the water’s surface until it reached a warmth that felt soothing to her skin.
This moment of simple revelry was interrupted by her felt sense of another presence in the room. Slowly shutting the faucet off, my grandmother turned with great care towards the bathroom door. There, about a foot inside the threshold, was a cobra. With his hooded head raised, he remained still, locking eyes with her. Dryness filled my grandmother’s mouth and tightness grew in her chest. Keeping her gaze on the cobra’s beady eyes she prayed fervently within her heart. It was at that moment that she remembered that Prabhudas, her cousin’s handyman, was somewhere on the premises. A wave of embarrassment moved through her as she considered a man who was not her husband seeing her in her partially dressed state. In spite of feeling exposed, my grandmother took a quiet and motionless breath and called out, “Prabhudas!!! Prabhudas!!! Prabhudas!!!””
By the end of the third call, a breathless Prabhudas stood at the door opening. In one swift motion, Prabhudas lunged at the cobra’s tail and seized it in his right hand. Building momentum, Prabhudas whipped the cobra around several times and then with full force, smashed the cobra’s head against the wall. Instantaneously, the cobra died. Prabhudas released his grip and the lifeless snake thudded on the ground.
This is where my grandmother always ended the story. The curious part of me wonders what my grandmother and/or Prabhudas said or did after this harrowing moment. How did my grandmother thank him for his valiant act? How did she and Prabhudas navigate the awkwardness of being in such close proximity with my grandmother only partially clothed? Did this incident change their relationship from that point forward?
It seems that whatever happened after the cobra died was not the point. Instead, my grandmother sought to impart two lessons. The first was that god will save us when we pray for his help. The second was that cobras are sneaky, dangerous, invasive, and deadly animals deserving of death.
This second lesson resonated with my grandmother’s understanding of biblical teachings on snakes. Beginning with the primordial snake in the idyllic Garden of Eden, there are multiple references in both the Hebrew scriptures and the christian gospel where snakes are depicted as symbols of evil power, temptation, and carnal sin and are used to insult and punish those who do not obey a rigid and unforgiving god. As a second generation convert to christianity, my grandmother believed the british missionaries and indian anglican priests who asserted that
the bible was the actual word of god and therefore needed to be interpreted literally. While my own experience of biblical teachings within white mainstream liberal churches allowed for nuanced interpretations and centered a god of love, compassion, and justice, the symbolism surrounding snakes paralleled what my grandmother was taught.
Ancestral Myths as Antidote
To heal from the impacts of colonization on my body and lineage - impacts like severance from ancestral traditions and distrust of my femme body’s intuition, sacred knowledge and desires - i’ve been studying different ancestral technologies including the chakra system, yoga teachings and postures, and hindu mythologies related to goddesses and gods. Through these pathways, I’ve begun to explore the rich and textured symbolism of snakes within hinduism which includes a range of religious and spiritual traditions and diverse systems of thought. As with any religious or spiritual tradition, the teachings of hinduism can be and have been used for liberatory and oppressive purposes. In the case of symbolism surrounding snakes, I see hinduism offering a liberatory view. Within these systems, the snake is seen as:
an important symbol of power, wisdom, grace and divinity.
a representation of hidden life giving energy within humans
a signifier of enlightenment
an emblem of powerful divine feminine energy or SHAKTI
a guardian of earth and water sources
an entity that is both dangerous and divine
I’m particularly fascinated with and drawn to the last point. So much of my conditioning within my blended immigrant family and my predominantly white liberal church led me to see divinity as that which was respectable, controlled, ordered, definable, sacrificial, good, and, through subtle inferences, white. These same sources taught me to fear what was dangerous.
The word danger derives from the Anglo French word “daunger” which meant “power of a lord or master” in the 12th and 13th centuries. The origins of the word also trace back to the Old French “dangier” which broadens its association with power to include mastery, control and authority as well as the power to harm. In the modern sense, danger means “risk, peril, exposure to injury, loss, pain, etc." (from being in the control of someone or something else)”.
Reimagining Old Stories
When I view the mythical story of Eve and the snake in the Garden of Eden through the lens of this etymology, I’m moved by Eve’s willingness to risk her safety and security and step into the unknown. I’m struck by her desire to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and to know both the world and herself more deeply. Eve seemed to intuit that this knowledge would allow her to access the power of choice and to become less dependent on a so-called benevolent god who kept secrets and the sources of wisdom to himself. Rather than the power to harm, I picture Eve reaching for a power to create both her present and future.
As punishment for wanting more than what a patriarchal god defined as good and enough, Eve was cursed with painful childbirth and banished from the Garden of Eden. Her fate served as a stark warning to Indian christian converts who may have felt constrained by the solemnity, meekness, and deference they were taught in anglican churches and christian missionary schools. Vilifying the snake who encouraged Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, who encouraged her to attune to her desires and act on this, is a key element in this warning. As such, distancing oneself from snakes becomes an act of faith.
From my own life I know that when I’ve attuned to a deep knowing of myself and from that place of deep knowing spoken what my heart truly desires, it has felt like, as my somatic therapist once put it, “playing with fire”. A fire that burns away illusions of what we taught ourselves to believe we wanted. A fire that burns off masks we’ve worn to be palatable and useful. A fire that melts the chastity belt we ourselves fasten around our muladhara (root) and swadhisthana (sacral) chakras to keep us disembodied and tame.
Like transforming fire, snakes can be dangerous. In my own life, i feel the dangerous nature of snakes energetically. This happens when i attune to my sacral (swadhisthana) chakra where a coiled, thick bodied snake rested at the base of my spine. For most of my life and across the span of 2-3 generations before me, she lay dormant as a temporal form of protection and a necessary practice of survival. And now I feel her rising, occasionally hissing through my mouth. She sways when I dance with my hips and when I open my mouth to sing. And she writhes when I sit too long and think too much. She is calling forth SHAKTI, the feminine divine, who lives within me and infuses the universe and me with a potent, generative, receptivity which awakens a radical imagination.
Resurgence through New Stories
SHAKTI invites me back into my grandmother’s story where I stand with her, partially exposed, facing a thick glistening female cobra. In this version, the cobra begins to sway and my grandmother and i join her. As we do, we moan and we wail, we shake until layers of skin peel off and fall heavily to the ground. Raising her hands into the light, my grandmother gazes upon her dark brown skin and sees beauty where she once saw inferiority. Sensing heat rising from her perineum to her throat, my grandmother feels her power where she once felt shame. Bearing witness, i offer this sacred serpent a song of praise and thanksgiving.
In this version of the story, the cobra lives, my grandmother’s conditioned selves die and she is reborn fully conscious of the power and divinity within her. In this version, the end is only the beginning.
Practice
What is a story in your lineage or from your life that has contracted your view of the sacred and its power? How might you reimagine this story in ways that liberate your BE-ing?
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¹Online Etymology Dictionary, “dangerous,” Online Etymology Dictionary [website], [no date], para 3-4, <https://www.etymonline.com/word/dangerous>, accessed February 1, 2025.
²According to a World Health Organization report, “India had 1.2 million snakebite deaths (representing an average of 58,000 per year) from 2000 to 2019 with nearly half of the victims aged 30-69 and over a quarter being children under 15.” Public health efforts to educate humans living in densely populated low altitude agricultural areas where venomous snake species are prevalent support hinduism’s understanding of snakes as beings to be revered and feared. S. Reddy and A. Moloo, “Study estimates more than one million Indians died from snakebite envenoming over past two decades,” World Health Organization [website], 2020, <https://www.who.int/news/item/10-07-2020-study-estimates-more-than-one-million-indians-died-from-snakebite-envenoming-over-past-two-decades>, accessed February 1, 2025.