There are no snakes in Ireland, because St. Patrick banished them. When I
was a child, preparing for first communion, there was a statute of the blessed Virgin,
standing on the snake. That made me uncomfortable, even then. I was having problems
with the cannibalistic nature of the transubstantiation of the host into the body and blood of
Christ (I was a literal child), so squashed snakes added to my difficulty. I was told that the
blessed Virgin was standing on the snake because he was the cause of the fall of Adam and
Eve (just copped Eve = Evil, thus women = evil. Roman Catholicism is a great religion, its
stories full of layers of meaning) and therefore snakes were to be hated.
But snakes feature so much more positively elsewhere. Shesha, able to be strong enough
to hold up the universe and yet soft enough to make a bed for Krishna, the ouroboros of
Greek mythology…… there’s a great deal of value in the mythology of snakes. Jung found
archetypal patterning in the ouroburos myth, the snake that consumes itself. That black
Anaconda who inspired Nicki Minaj. The golden snakes that entwine the caduceus.
It’s a feature of snakes that they shed their skin. At a symbolic level, they shed the old skin
that no longer serves them and are “reborn” in a new skin that now fits them better. What a
fantastic image for our own potential growth! Jung said the commonest dream symbol of
transcendence is the snake.
