| In her book, Language of the Goddess, Gimbutas describes growing up in Lithuania and the reverence her mother paid to the serpents found around the home. They were fed with milk, brought inside and it was traditionally believed they brought good luck. If a snake entered your home, you were thought to be blessed with happiness and prosperity. It was a sin to harm a snake and they were welcomed into the home with the hopes that they would stimulate fertility and increase the family. Lithuanians sound like cool people to me. Gimbutas comments on a Jesuit missionary in 1604 who was shocked at what he saw in Lithuania and reported on it. Whether or not he was being serious or raising the scepter of propaganda we might never know, but regardless his words were interesting to note: “The people have reached a stage of madness that they believe that deity exists in reptiles. Therefore, they carefully safeguard them, lest someone injure the reptiles kept inside their homes. Superstitiously they believe that harm would come to them, should anyone show disrespect to these reptiles. It sometimes happens that reptiles are encountered sucking milk from cows. Some of us (monks) occasionally tried to pull one off, but invariably the farmer would plead in vain to dissuade us. When pleading failed, the man would seize the reptile with his hands and run away to hide it.” (60) Damballah was a serpent god of the Caribbean. He was a fertility god and father of the lesser gods, who created the world and the gods. He is associated with water, streams and springs and is found living amongst the trees. In Haiti, he is considered “the good god.” He is known to make lightning bolts and to forge metals. His color is white, which is peculiar since this is Africa. His symbol being the serpent, I cannot think of any white snakes except the albino ones. Mushrooms have white stalks though. His attributes are similar to those of Thor or Odin or Zeus. When the sun shone through the mist of the forest, a rainbow was born, and her name was Ayida Wedo. Damballah loved her and married her. (61) Coincidentally, the rainbow serpent is also a big part of Australian folk mythology. (62) In the Old Testament, we are all familiar with the tempter of Eve. In the myth of Thor, the Midgard serpent is evil, and in the story of Marduk and Tiamat, the serpent is evil. In the Rig Veda, Indra is the slayer of Vrtra, the dragon, and Zeus battles the serpent, Typhon. How did the serpent acquire such a rough reputation? Is this a snake that’s being fought against, or is it something else which has for its symbol, the serpent? Of course, the old religious idea is that the serpent represents “Satan.” That’s not a useful answer though because it begs yet another question of who Satan is. If all of these gods are battling serpents and the gods are mushrooms, then that would make the serpents “worms,” which makes sense from one perspective. The worm is truly the mushroom’s “adversary.” This makes much more sense than snakes being evil because there is only one destroyer of the mushroom and that is the worm. Nidhogg Nagar, the dragon of Norse mythology gnaws the roots of Yggdrasil in an illustration from a 17th-century Icelandic manuscript and Lilith makes her nest at the base of the huluppu tree. In the Polynesian language, we find the serpent and worm have the same word, ngata. |
Ancient history is up to interpretation until accumulative evidence either weighs in the favor of a theory or against it. One of the many interpretations of the fact that there are an abundance of bird goddess and snake goddess and many times, both together (as in the case of Thrace), in early matrilineal civilizations, is the idea that the bird represents the sky or that which is “above” and the snake represents the earth or that which is “below,” as depicted in the World Tree or the rising of the Kundalini. This is the theory advocated by the authors of The Great Cosmic Mother. This theory is satisfactory for some, but those who like to dig deeper may find that equally valid and more impressive is the idea that the bird and snake goddess are variations of the mushroom mythology of the goddess and vegetation. The dove and the eagle are both symbols for the mushroom as well as the serpent. (63) The “Thunderbird” appears in numerous cave art depictions, and it makes sense because they represent mushrooms which appear after the thunder. The next information I present, I don’t think has ever been presented before anywhere. I believe it to be the “crux” of the secret and the heart of the mysteries. The serpent represents the mushroom, which has already been presented now and is likely known by several studied authors, considering what has already been written. It is assumed by those “in the know” that the apple in the garden and the tree of knowledge is in fact, the mushroom. However, the connections have not been thoroughly vetted until now. The serpent itself represents the stem of the mushroom and the bird represents the cap of the mushroom. This is the secret symbolism of the bird and serpent goddess. This is the underlying fact that will allow the reader to connect all the dots throughout this book, with great precision. While this might seem like an oversimplification to some people, I regard everything that has grown out of this simple symbolism to be the dressing and stuffing and not the meat or heart of the matter. This is the one key which unlocks many doors previously unlocked by truth seekers and students of the occult. (60)(https://msu.edu/~williss2/carpentier/part1/damballah.html) (61) Mythology and Symbols of the Mother Goddess, p. 172 (62) The Great Cosmic Mother, p. 101 (63) Ophiolatreia: The Rites and Mysteries Connected with the Origin, Rise and Development of Serpent Worship in Various Parts of the World, Privately Printed 1889, Tudor Press Reprint 1980, p. 52; The Round Towers of Ireland, by Henry O'Brien |