The Serpent Symbol in Tradition: A Study of Traditional Serpent and Dragon Symbolism, Based in Part Upon the Concepts and Observations of René Guénon, Mircea Eliade, and Various Other Relevant Researchers

605 Pages·2020·13.918 MB·English

by  Charles William Dailey

THE SERPENT SYMBOL IN TRADITION: A STUDY OF TRADITIONAL SERPENT

AND DRAGON SYMBOLISM, BASED IN PART UPON THE CONCEPTS AND

OBSERVATIONS OF RENE GUENON, MIRCEA ELIADE, AND

VARIOUS OTHER RELEVANT RESEARCHERS

Charles William Dailey

Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
May 2020

APPROVED:

George James, Major Professor
Martin D. Yaffe, Committee Member
Terra S. Rowe, Committee Member
Irene Klaver, Chair of the Department of
Philosophy and Religion
Tamara L. Brown, Executive Dean of the
College of Liberal Arts and Social
Sciences
Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse
Graduate School
Dailey, Charles William. The Serpent Symbol in Tradition: A Study of Traditional
Serpent and Dragon Symbolism, Based in Part Upon the Concepts and Observations of Rene
Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and Various Other Relevant Researchers. Doctor of Philosophy
(Philosophy), May 2020, 596 pp., 77 figures, bibliography, 266 titles.
Serpent and dragon symbolism are ubiquitous in the art and mythology of premodern
cultures around the world. Over the centuries, conflicting hypotheses have been proposed to
interpret this symbolism which, while illuminating, have proved insufficient to the task of
revealing a singular meaning for the vast majority of examples. In this dissertation I argue that,
in what the symbolist Rene Guenon and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade have called
‘traditional’ or ‘archaic’ societies, the serpent/dragon transculturally symbolizes what I term
‘matter,’ a state of being that is constituted by the perception of the physical world as ‘chaotic’ in
comparison to what traditional peoples believed to be the ‘higher’ meta-physical source of the
physical world or ‘nature.’ What is called ‘nature,’ I argue, is also considered in ‘Tradition’ to
be a perception of, from a certain state of consciousness, that aspect of existence that is called
samsara in the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, which Guenon equivalently describes, from a
broadly traditional perspective in The Symbolism of the Cross, as “the indefinite series of cycles
of manifestation.” ‘Chaos,’ according to Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane, is “the
amorphous and virtual…everything that has not yet acquired a ‘form.’”
The following elements have been useful in discerning the specified meaning of the
serpent/dragon symbol: 1) Guenon’s interpretation of the terminology of the ‘Hindu Doctrines,’
as well as his interpretation of the ‘language’ of traditional symbolism and the metaphysics that
underlies it; 2) Eliade’s interpretation of ‘traditional’/‘archaic’ societies by means of his concepts
of ‘chaos,’ ‘creation,’ Axis Mundi (‘World Axis’), and ‘Sacred and Profane’; and 3) the insights
of various other researchers of serpent/dragon symbolism. Beyond purporting to resolve some of
the mystery of the ancient and varied symbolism of the serpent/dragon, my dissertation strives, to
a lesser degree, to serve two related functions: 1) informing the interpretation of the symbolic
meanings of a wide variety of premodern artifacts and narratives and 2) providing a rough
outline for a proposed prolegomenon to the study of the origination, and ancient human
awareness, of the mentioned state of ‘matter.’
Copyright 2020
by
Charles William Dailey
ii
CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...........................................................................................................v
INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1

PROLEGOMENA
CHAPTER 1 RENE GUENON .......................................................................................27
CHAPTER 2 MIRCEA ELIADE.....................................................................................49
CHAPTER 3 SYMBOLISM, ‘TRADITION,’ AND UNIVERSALISM ........................81
CHAPTER 4 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SERPENT/DRAGON IN THE
CONTEXT OF GUENON’S ‘HINDU DOCTRINES’ AND ELIADE’S
INTERPRETATION OF THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF ‘CHAOS’ ...114

THE SERPENT/DRAGON SYMBOL
CHAPTER 5 ‘MODIFICATIONS’ OF THE SERPENT/DRAGON SYMBOL:
‘SPIRITUALIZATION’ AND ‘MATERIALIZATION’ ........................133
CHAPTER 6 THE SERPENT SYMBOL, THE ‘WORLD AXIS,’ AND
‘DUALITY’ AND ITS VARIATIONS IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND
GENESIS 3 ..............................................................................................158
CHAPTER 7 ‘MIGRATION’ OF THE ‘SELF’ IN THE BIBLE..................................188
CHAPTER 8 THE GUARDIAN OF IMMORTALITY/MOKSHA...............................205
CHAPTER 9 THE OUROBOROS AND THE ANIMA MUNDI ...................................232
CHAPTER 10 SYMBOLS OF ‘DUALITY’ IN UNITY ................................................260
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CHAPTER 11 THE SERPENT AS ‘MEDIATOR’ AND ‘MESSENGER’ ...................279
CHAPTER 12 THE ‘RISEN’ SERPENT: THE CONJUNCTION OF WISDOM AND
‘HEALING’ IN KUNDALINI, THE URAEUS, THE BIBLE, AND
BUDDHISM ............................................................................................309
CHAPTER 13 THE SERPENT AND SACRED STONES .............................................356
CHAPTER 14 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SERPENT IN MENHIRS AND
MOUNDS ................................................................................................391
CHAPTER 15 THE DRAGON AND THE ORB ............................................................433
CHAPTER 16 THE SPIRAL, THE ‘THUNDERWEAPON,’ AND
THE SWASTIKA ......................................................................................484
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................524
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................580

iv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
5.1 Zeus against Typhon 145
5.2 Asklepios 156
5.3 Façade of the Temple of the Tigers, Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico 157
6.1 Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve 167
6.2 The Cosmic Serpent ‘Provider of Attributes’ 171
8.1 Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides with a Serpent in the Tree 209
8.2 Medea and Jason with the guardian serpent 210
9.1 The black and white ouroboros of alchemy 233
9.2 Double-headed serpent forming a bowl 236
9.3 Cosmic Spirit 254
10.1 Lady of Pazardzik 262
10.2 The Double Spiral 264
10.3 The Hermetic androgyne 264
10.4 Yin-yang 266
10.5 Plate, Ch’ing Dynasty 274
11.1 The Caduceus or serpent-staff of Mercury 282
11.2 Seal Cylinder of King Gudea 287
11.3 Libation vase of Gudea 287
11.4 Asklepios in the guise of a youth 293
11.5 Amphisbaena 302
11.6 Double-headed serpent 304
11.7 Untitled (Plumed Serpent) 305
11.8 Double-headed serpent forming a bowl 306
11.9 Two-headed Dragon, Copan, Honduras 306
12.1 The cakras 311
12.2 The Chakras 313
12.3 The Mask of Tutankhamen 324
v
12.4 The Uraeon (Egyptian) 326
12.5 From the ruins of Naki Rustan 326
12.6 A Chinese Uraeon 326
12.7 Azon, the Persian god (After Kaempfer) 326
12.8 Azon, the Persian god 326
12.9 Thothmes III. Wearing the sacred crown of Osiris 327
12.10 The Brazen Serpent 336
12.11 Buddha Meditating on the Naga Mucalinda 344
13.1 The Omphalos of Delphi 372
13.2 Four-winged serpent, Chnuphis or Bait 374
13.3 Jacob’s Dream 378
13.4 The Crowned Virgin: A Vision of John 381
14.1 Engraving of Avebury 398
14.2 Plan of Avebury 401
14.3 Ohio Serpent Mound 414
14.4 Untitled (Crucified Serpent) 421
14.5 The Rearing Vision Serpent 430
14.6 K’awil merged with a Vision Serpent 430
15.1 Plate, Ch’ing Dynasty 435
15.2 Imperial court robe, Qing dynasty 455
15.3 Tray, Ming Dynasty 456
15.4 Bronze, the Forbidden City, China 458
15.5 Stone carving, the Forbidden City, China 458
15.6 Pendant, Middle Chou Dynasty 470
15.7 The character wang 478
16.1 The Double Vajra 500
16.2 Japanese statuette, with pedestal 502
16.3 Tibetan thunderweapon (dorje) of bronze 502
16.4 Classical Greek Thunderweapon (keraunos) 503
16.5 Thor Battering the Serpent of Midgard 512
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16.6 The Two Directions of the Rotation of the Swastika 516
16.7 The Double Spiral 518
16.8 The Two Directions of the Rotation of the Swastika 518
C.1 Snake Goddess, Marble sculpture 527
C.2 Snake Goddess, Clay figurine 527
C.3 Snake Goddess, Terracotta 527
C.4 Snake Goddess 527
C.5 Neolithic painted terra-cotta figurine of seated mother with child 529
C.6 Serpent-headed goddess with child 529
C.7 Lord Krishna Dancing with Seven-Headed Cobra 535
C.8 Hagesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, The Laocoon Group 540
C.9 Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh 544
C.10 The Rearing Vision Serpent 548
C.11 K’awil merged with a Vision Serpent 548
C.12 Untitled (The Double Helix) 558
C.13 The DNA double helix represented as a pair of snakes 558
C.14 Ornamental niche on façade, Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico 560
C.15 Façade of the Temple of the Tigers, Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico 561
C.16 Two-headed Dragon, Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico 561
C.17 The Cosmic Serpent ‘Provider of Attributes’ 562
vii
INTRODUCTION
As the skin of a snake is sloughed onto an anthill, so does the mortal body fail; but the
Self, freed from the body, merges in Brahman, infinite life, eternal light.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV: 4:7

In serpent iconography, humans, since 40,000 BCE, have found a way of finding the self.
James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol
Became Christianized

Serpent and dragon symbolism, taken together or separately, is present in the art and
mythology of nearly all of Earth’s cultures, figuring prominently in European, Egyptian, Near
Eastern, Asian, African, Australian, and North and South American cultural artifacts. Various
interpretations of both symbols have been proposed over the centuries. The serpent and dragon
have both been associated with the ideas of: wisdom and knowledge; healing and renewal; life
and fertility; immortality and time; chaos and creation; and evil, sin, and death, among others.
To the philosophically curious, to the active intellect searching for universals in a landscape of
particulars, the question arises as to whether there is some one idea underlying this diversity. I
argue that, in what the symbolist Rene Guenon and the Historian of Religions Mircea Eliade
have termed ‘traditional,’ or ‘premodern,’ or ‘archaic,’ art and mythology, both serpent and
dragon symbolize the state of existence that I term ‘matter.’ More specifically, I argue that the
serpent/dragon symbolizes the ‘traditional’ experience of ‘cyclicity’ or the cyclical nature of the
physical (or ‘natural’) world; and that what I term ‘symbolic modifications’ of the
serpent/dragon, such as the serpent with rod or the dragon with ‘orb,’ symbolize what I shall call
the ‘Spiritualizing’ of ‘matter.’ ‘Spiritualizing,’ in this dissertation, denotes the act of forming,
defining, and ‘actualizing,’ by means of a specific potentiality of human being, ‘nature’ or the
physical world as it is perceived in its cyclical aspect, what Guenon describes as “the indefinite
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