THE SERPENT is the timeless symbol of the highest spiritual Wisdom. Swallowing its tail, it is a symbol of regeneration. It is the self­born, the circle of infinite wisdom, life and immortality. The circle itself is an ancient symbol of eternity and represents the Absolute, the unmanifested universe containing the potentials of all form. As representative of the infinite sphere, the “world egg” of archaic cosmology, this symbol is found in every world religion and philosophy.

Circle. There are several “Circles” with mystic adjectives attached to them. Thus we have: (1) the “Decussated or Perfect Circle” of Plato, who shows it decussated in the form of the letter X; (2) the “Circle-dance” of the Amazons, around a Priapic image, the same as the dance of the Gopis around the Sun (Krishna), the shepherdesses representing the signs of the Zodiac; (3) the “Circle of Necessity” of 3,000 years of the Egyptians and of the Occultists, the duration of the cycle between rebirths or reincarnations being from 1,000 to 3,000 years on the average.

Serpent, swallowing its tail or Ouroboros. The simile of an egg also expresses the fact taught in Occultism that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to globe, from human being to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with all nations the emblem of eternity and infinity—a serpent swallowing its tail.  To realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre.  The field of vision or of thought is like a sphere whose radii proceed from one’s self in every direction, and extend out into space, opening up boundless vistas all around.  It is the symbolical circle of Pascal and the Kabalists, “whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere,” a conception which enters into the compound idea of this emblem. 

The “Mundane Egg” is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols, highly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and cosmological sense.  Therefore, it is found in every world-theogony, where it is largely associated with the serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere, in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of wisdom.  (See Part II, The Secret Doctrine, “Tree and Serpent and Crocodile Worship.”) The mystery of apparent self-generation and evolution through its own creative power repeating in miniature the process of Cosmic evolution in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the efflux of the unseen creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this graphic symbol.  The “Virgin Egg” is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic prototype—the “Virgin Mother”—Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male Creator (under whatever name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the immaculate root fructified by the Ray.  Who, if versed in astronomy and natural sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness?  Cosmos as receptive Nature is an Egg fructified—yet left immaculate; once regarded as boundless, it could have no other representation than a spheroid.  The Golden Egg was surrounded by seven natural elements (ether, fire, air, water), “four ready, three secret.”

The serpent is a sacred symbol, the basis of Python and Pythagoras (Gr.). The most famous of mystic philosophers, born at Samos, about 586 B.C. He seems to have travelled all over the world, and to have culled his philosophy from the various systems to which he had access. Thus, he studied the esoteric sciences with the Brachmanes of India, and astronomy and astrology in Chaldea and Egypt. He is known to this day in the former country under the name of Yavanâchârya (“Ionian teacher”). After returning he settled in Crotona, in Magna Grecia, where he established a college to which very soon resorted all the best intellects of the civilised centres. His father was one Mnesarchus of Samos, and was a man of noble birth and learning. It was Pythagoras who was the first to teach the heliocentric system, and who was the greatest proficient in geometry of his century. It was he also who created the word “philosopher”, composed of two words meaning a “lover of wisdom”‎—‎philo-sophos. More especially, meaning, the “Wisdom of Love”. As the greatest mathematician, geometer and astronomer of historical antiquity, and also the highest of the metaphysicians and scholars, Pythagoras has won imperishable fame. He taught reincarnation as it is professed in India and much else of the Secret Wisdom.

A variant of the serpent is Pythia or Pythoness (Gr.). On the authority of Iamblichus, Plutarch and others, a Pythia was a priestess chosen among the sensitives of the poorer classes, and placed in a temple where oracular powers were exercised. There she had a room secluded from all but the chief Hierophant and Seer, and once admitted, was, like a nun, lost to the world. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapours, these subterranean exhalations, penetrating her whole system, produced the prophetic mania, in which abnormal state she delivered oracles. Aristophanes in “Væstas” I., reg. 28, calls the Pythia ventrilogua vates or the “ventriloquial prophetess”, on account of her stomach-voice. The ancients placed the soul of the human being (the lower Manas) or its personal self-consciousness, in the pit of their stomach. We find in the fourth verse of the second Nâbhânedishta hymn of the Brahmans: “Hear, O sons of the gods, one who speaks through his name (nâbhâ), for he hails you in your dwellings!“ This is a modern somnambulic phenomenon. The navel was regarded in antiquity as “the circle of the sun”, the seat of divine internal light. Therefore was the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the city of Delphus, the womb or abdomen‎—‎while the seat of the temple was called the omphalos, navel. As well-known, a number of mesmerized subjects can read letters, hear, smell and see through that part of their body. In India there exists to this day a belief (also among the Parsis) that adepts have flames in their navels, which enlighten for them all darkness and unveil the spiritual world. It is called with the Zoroastrians the lamp of Deshtur or the “High Priest,”; and the light or radiance of the Dikshita (the initiate) with the Hindus.

Nâga (Sk.), Literally “Serpent”. The name in the Indian Pantheon of the Serpent or Dragon Spirits, and of the inhabitants of Pâtâla, hell. But as Pâtâla means the antipodes, and was the name given to America by the ancients, who knew and visited that continent before Europe had ever heard of it, the term is probably akin to the Mexican Nagals the (now) sorcerers and medicine men and women. The Nagas are the Burmese Nats, serpent-gods, or “dragon demons”.

In Esotericism, however, and as already stated, this is a nick-name for the “wise ones” or adepts. In China and Tibet, the “Dragons” are regarded as the titulary deities of the world, and of various spots on the earth, and the word is explained as meaning adepts, yogis, and narjols. The term has simply reference to their great knowledge and wisdom. This is also proven in the ancient Sûtras and Buddha’s biographies. The Nâga is ever a wise person, endowed with extraordinary magic powers, in South and Central America as in India, in Chaldea as also in ancient Egypt. In China the “worship” of the Nâgas was widespread, and it has become still more pronounced since Nâgârjuna (the “great Nâga”, the “great adept” literally), the fourteenth Buddhist patriarch, visited China. The “Nâgas” are regarded by the Celestials as “the tutelary Spirits or gods of the five regions or the four points of the compass and the centre, as the guardians of the five lakes and four oceans” (Eitel). This, traced to its origin and translated esoterically, means that the five continents and their five root-races (streams of consciousness) had always been under the guardianship of “terrestrial deities”, i.e., Wise Adepts. The tradition that Nâgas washed Gautama Buddha at his birth, protected him and guarded the relics of his body when dead, points again to the Nagas being only wise ones, Arhats, and no monsters or Dragons. This is also corroborated by the innumerable stories of the conversion of Nagas to Buddhism. The Nâga of a lake in a forest near Râjagriha and many other “Dragons” were thus converted by Buddha to the good Law.