HPB-SD(ed.1) v.1 p.2 sec.10: Difference between revisions

It is easy to see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent : the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal. Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the general association of the Serpent with the tree. The legends about the various things it represents are numberless ; but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. (See ''De Vitâ Apollonii'', lib. 1, c. xiv.) As will be found more than once as we proceed, the “ Serpent ” and “ Dragon ” were the names given to the “ Wise Ones,” the initiated adepts of olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon, whom he had slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and magical charms ; he had received the “ word ” from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as many do, after “ passing the word.” Epiphanius lets out a secret of the Gnostics while trying to expose their ''heresies. ''The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honouring the Serpent : ''it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries ''(''Adv. Hæres. ''37). Verily so ; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the garden in their minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is stated above. The ''Nâgas ''of the Hindu and Tibetan adepts were human ''Nâgas ''(Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of Immortality and Time.

{{Style P-No indent|Eternity — the heaven-born Logos — was finally degraded. In days of old — of the ''divine Dynasties ''on Earth — the now dreaded Reptile was regarded as the first beam of light that radiated from the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms which it was made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols adapted to it, as it crossed æons of Time : as from Infinite Time itself — ''Kala'' — it fell into the space and time evolved out of human speculation. These forms were Cosmic and astronomical, theistic and pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, the ''Alpha Draconis ''of the Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never swallows the Sun during its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, for it was sprinkled by the waters of life ; the great Dragon, ever divine, so long as it was kept within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the tree grew and its lower boughs touched at last the infernal regions — our Earth. Then the great serpent Nidhögg — he who devours the corpses of the evil-doers in the “ Hall of Misery ” (human life), so soon as they are plunged into “ Hwergelmir,” the roaring cauldron (of human passions) — gnawed the World-tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy and mighty roots, and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk ; while the Midgard-snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the Earth, and, through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend herself.}}