The Cosmic Serpents

Everywhere, through traditional societies throughout history, images of snakes are renewed, symbolizing the origins of wisdom.
Already in the year 2,000 a.e.c. a Mesopotamian seal represented a serpentine deity. It was shown in human form, in his hands holding the caduceus, the staff with two snakes intertwined in a double helix.
From the visions induced by the ayahuasca, the Shipibo-Conibo communities, from the Amazon jungles in the present territory of Peru, see in the Cosmic Anaconda the great protective spirit of life3.
For the Mapuches the beginning and the later development of the universe was governed by two serpents (filu), the serpent of the sea: Kaikafilu, and the one of the earth, Trengtrengfilu.
Beyond the Pacific Ocean, in Australia, Aboriginal peoples feel descended from the Great Mother, the Rainbow Serpent.
It is also found in China, represented by two serpentine forms that symbolize the essential, complementary and opposite principles: Ying and Yang. They are two twisted and androgynous silhouettes that personify the forces that make all aspects of life.
Yin is the Earth, the feminine, dark, passive and absorbing, is present in the even numbers, in the valleys and water courses, in the dotted lines.
Yang is the Sky, the masculine, the light, active and penetrating, is present in the odd numbers, in the mountains and in the continuous lines.
Together they transform into the dragon, winged and double serpent, representation of the cosmic evolution. This is at the same time yin and yang, the synthesis of the opposite principles.
In India, the Serpent Mother is represented by Sesha, the viper of a thousand heads.




Even in the drama of Judeo-Christian biblical genesis, despite being disavowed by the ecclesiastical paradigm, the serpent is also present. She is the one who looks after the tree of science. The original sin of the first human couple, for the values ​​of the patriarchal society, was wanting to find out the truth, obtain the knowledge, return to its natural origins. And in that attempt, as with so many other peoples, there was the serpent.
In Mesoamerica, from the old times of the Olmecs, and their allegorical representations of flying serpents, to the Mayan and Teotihuacan images, the magical symbology of the Plumed Serpent reappears again and again. Quetzalcoatl is the Mexica vision of the fundamental duality of the ancestral serpent: this word, of Nahuatl origin, is built with two roots: quetzal (feather, bird) and coatl (twins, snake).
This is how Ptolemy Tomkins describes the twin snakes that generate the universe and life in the Mexican native world:
 "It began to take shape ... a being composed of wind, waves and lvuias, whose essence was movement and whose body was that of the serpent. This serpent lived in heaven, and its presence was manifested everywhere ....
This serpent of heaven had its counterpart that lived on earth and between the two the universe was divided.
Sleepy and cold, the second serpent was very different from her sister who lived in heaven. Its gigantic form vegetated in the black earth and only set in motion to devour things. The stars entered his stomach when they fell below the horizon; it was known that the spirits of corn and other crops descended there when their stems became pale and withered, and human beings, when their bodies were discarded in war or by accident, also penetrated there. The stomach of this serpent was as long as the width of the earth, and a certain number of possibilities were reserved for the beings that traversed its extension. The sky could be described as a two-headed dragon, a gigantic serpent, or a house of four iguanas. "4
The serpent is present through all instances of Mexican mythological drama. Coatlicue, the mother of the mothers, is represented with a skirt of snakes, and her head is made by the composition of two heads of snakes faced. Coatlicue's daughter, Coyolxauhqui, Lunar Goddess, who was dismembered in her fight with Huitzilopochtli, is also depicted with pairs of snakes coiled in her arms, legs and torso.
The Shining Serpent of the Andean peoples
Tupac Amaru, which in Quechua means Brilliant Serpent, was the last Inca who maintained for several years the independence of the nations of the Andes in his mountainous and jungle redoubt of Vilcabamba. After several battles and some traps, the Spaniards captured him and took him chained to Cuzco where he was beheaded. The head of the Incari was exposed to the view of the people for several months.
Two centuries later, in 1780, a Quechua curaca, descendant of Tupac Amaru, called José Gabriel Condorcanqui, rebelled again against the Spaniards and adopted the same name Tupac Amaru II.
From Peoples, Drugs and Serpents, Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Editions