Serpent

enclosing you two all around with the brahman, I will cut you asunder, as the mongoose [cuts] the serpent.

the waves of rivers have subsided, the vigor of the venom-spent serpents has subsided.

I have indeed grasped together the heads of serpents and their offspring;

the other stars, on account of their oblique course, they likened to the bodies of serpents, but the sun to that of the beetle, since it moulds a round shape out of ox-dung and rolls it facing it.

Because even in evil-doings one may find a certain sequence and discernment and composition and conjecture of the things to come.

Well too did Diogenes say to the man who marvelled that he had found the serpent coiled about the pestle:

Those whose totem is the serpent, for instance, do not fear its sting, and in their view the serpent does not sting them.

So too al-Arāqim, a tribe of the Banū Taghlib, who were so nicknamed because their eyes were likened to the eyes of the speckled serpents (*arāqim*), and they became known by this name (2).

and so for the cock, the raven, the mare, the camel, the wolf, the serpent, the locust and the rest of their animals, besides the names of weapons — to say nothing of the synonyms among the names of the sun, the rain, the sea, the well, milk, honey, wine and fire;

"For their wrath," says the Scripture, "is after the likeness of the serpent, like the deaf asp that stops her ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers.

but when, yielding to pleasure (the serpent is the allegory of pleasure, creeping upon its belly, an earthly wickedness, fed upon matter), he was led aside by lusts, the child, made manly by disobedience and disobeying his Father, was ashamed before God.

A Greek festival was being held over a dead serpent at Pytho, and Eunomus sang the serpent's dirge.

Taking, then, the serpent as the workshop of his own deceit, through it he spoke with the woman, and, persuading her to eat of that forbidden tree in the hope of becoming a god, through her he deceived Adam also — for so the first-formed man was called.

as one flees from a serpent.

and when I command the neck of a guilty man to be struck off, when I sew up parricides in the sack, when I send a man to a soldier's punishment, when I set a traitor or a public enemy upon the Tarpeian Rock, I shall be without anger and with the same look and mind with which I strike serpents and venomous creatures.

so the venom of serpents creeping from their lair does harm, but their fangs are harmless once a frequent biting has drained them.

the necks of provoked serpents swell;

There is no serpent on the rope — by what cause, then, arises the fear of a snake?

As, in the case of the serpent [imagined] on a rope, there is no [real] cause and no [real] arising or perishing [of it], so here there is neither origination nor destruction of the world, nor any [real] cause [of it].

Water in a mirage, silver in mother-of-pearl, a serpent on a rope — like the double-moon [seen] by one with diseased sight, the entire form of the world is an error ({{adhyāsa / bhrānti|superimposition / illusory error, as a snake on a rope}}).

And the scorpion, the snake, the wolf and the leopard do harm only upon encounter, whereas man harms the near by striking and reviling and the far by backbiting and talebearing.

So the wolf and the leopard do harm in seeking what they need in the present, and the snake and the scorpion do harm for what they imagine they will need in the outcome, because they imagine something harmful and repel it.

In it is the greed of the dung-beetle and the pig, the ruinousness of the wolf and the leopard, the harmfulness of the scorpion and the snake, the lust of the cock and the ass, and the craving of the camel and the ox in eating;

yet that very milk, drunk by serpents, all the more increases their venom.

and, as you went, you squeezed the fat-cheeked snakes, or brandished them above your head, now shouting your Euoi Saboi!

First they let their hair loose over their shoulders, and secured their fawn-skins, as many of them as had released the fastenings of their knots, girding the dappled hides with serpents licking their jaws.

And he brought forth, when the Fates had perfected him, the bull-horned god, and he crowned him with crowns of snakes, for which reason Maenads cloak their wild prey over their locks.

As for their saying "the satan of the ḥamāṭah" (4), by it they mean the serpent.

A doubled Ḥaḍramī strap plays about as though it were — a satan's writhing among the castor-shrubs (5) of a barren waste

a tree resembling the fig, the tree dearest to serpents

Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs

The breres augmented with their flying spoils:

Its vestments 'mongst the thorns- for oft we see

So beware, O man, of being a thicket within your own frame, holding a snake that strikes and a scorpion that stings, a leopard that tears and a camel that nurses rancour, a dog that dodges and a hare that turns coward before the truth, thorns and thistles that hurt, a lion that preys, and an ape with no portion but mimicry.

And how astonishing of them, that they should repel frivolity with this, when we know that a man who idly plays with his foot without intending anything, and the death of a serpent, say, results from it, is a frivolous man:

and the portent of the serpent and the sparrows is shown to them, and Calchas foretells to them what is to come about.

were a speaker to say, four is more than ten, and I shall demonstrate that by turning this staff into a snake, and then he did it, I should be astonished at the operator's device, but I should remain in my certainty that four is less than ten.

May the enemies be blind, headless like snakes — of those driven out by Agni, may Indra slay each one.

Tiny serpents go unnoticed and are not hunted down by the public;

A king even a slave can kill, and a serpent, and an arrow;

suppose He had rescinded the liberty of arbitration, while He recalls man from the tree, while He keeps the very circumventing serpent from his meeting with the woman — would not Marcion cry out, "O futile lord, unstable, faithless, rescinding what He instituted!

Let the serpent therefore hide himself as much as he can, and twist all his wisdom in the windings of his hiding-places;

"Be wise as serpents, and simple as doves.

Beasts too change their form in place of dress;

If he sees a snake in the house—a brown one—he calls on Sabazios;

A best of the twice-born, having killed a snake, should give an iron spade;

A twice-born who is unable to make the expiation for the slaying of a snake and the others by a gift should perform a `Kṛcchra` for each one for the removal of his sin.

The slaying of a donkey, a horse, a camel, a deer, or an elephant, and of a goat or a sheep, is to be known as a sin causing a mixture of castes, and likewise of a fish, a snake, or a buffalo.