Greek rithuals related to plants and serpents

Danilo Anton

Greek culture has also developed serpentine cults and symbols that were based on the consumption of certain plants. Still today, in contemporary society, as a symbol of medicine is usually used the rod of Aesculapius, a rod surrounded by two coiled snakes.
The Greek God Aesculapius was a shaman or physician who lived in Thessaly, Greece, around 1200 BC.

Homer in the Iliad mentions him only as a skilled physician, then he was honored as a hero, and finally raised to the divine category.
In time, he became the Greek deity of medicine, worshiped in hundreds of temples. In mythology to be developed in later times, he was considered the son of Apollo (God of Light, Truth and Prophecy) and the nymph Coronis. The centaur Chiron taught him the art of healing, but Zeus, fearing that he could return to immortal men, struck him with lightning.
The rithuals began in Thessaly but then spread to all the Hellenic peoples.
It was introduced in Rome by Sibylline to relieve a plague in the year 293 a.e.
Aesculapius was depicted dressed in a long tunic with bare chest. He had a rod with a coiled serpent that would eventually become the symbol of medicine.
The caduceus symbol with its rod with wings and entwined serpents also appears on the magic wand of Hermes or Mercury.
The caduceus or caduceus (in Greek kerikeion) was a staff, rod or cane that showed that the person who took it was sacred and had to be respected.
The hundreds of Greek temples of Aesculapius in Greece were used by sick people who went to sleep to be visited in dreams by Aesculapius or his priests. They slept in a place called abaton which was a holy bedroom. It is believed that diets were used, most likely poppy (opium) and other healing and ceremonial plants, baths and exercises as a method of healing6. It is good to remember, on the other hand, that Hermes, the Mercury of the Romans, was a God closely connected with the deities of vegetation (Bread and nymphs), the deity of dreams to whom the faithful offered the last libation before go to sleep.
Demeter, the Mother Goddess, also known as Gaia, was the deity of plants and nature. In the images that are conserved of it usually appears taking poppies, snakes and barley. Before being dedicated to Apollo, the oracle of Delphi, the most important religious center of Greece, had been object of the cult to Gaia and its daughter the Sacred Serpent. Then the Serpent was to be masculinized and transformed into a serpent-dragon called Python. The priestesses of the sanctuary, which for this reason were called pythonesses, achieved transcendence through the ingestion of Sacred Plants, extracts of wine and ragweed, specially prepared to achieve the cosmic connection with the deep essences. In particular, in their trances they communicated with Mother Earth, and with the ancient celestial serpent, as in the pre-Hellenic times of matriarchal societies.
From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones