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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 403 IDENTITY OF TYPOLOGY. [[This page continued from previous section ]] § X. TREE, SERPENT, AND CROCODILE WORSHIP. "Object of horror or of adoration, men have for the serpent an implacable hatred, or prostrate themselves before its genius. Lie calls it, Prudence claims it, Envy carries it in its heart, and Eloquence on its caduceus. In hell it arms the whip of the Furies; in heaven Eternity makes of it its symbol." DE CHATEAUBRIAND. T HE Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the relative superiority of these was ruled by the degree [[Vol. 1, Page]] 404 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. of light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the serpent had to be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it had rendered humanity. For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric reason given. It is easy to see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent: the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal. Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the general association of the Serpent with the tree. The legends about the various things it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. (See De Vita Apollonii , lib. 1, c. xiv.) As will be found more than once as we proceed, the "Serpent" and "Dragon" were the names given to the "Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon, whom he had slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and magical charms; he had received the "word" from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as many do, after "passing the word." Epiphanius lets out a secret of the Gnostics while trying to expose their heresies. The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honouring the Serpent: it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries ( Adv. Haeres. 37). Verily so; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the garden in their minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is stated above. The Nagas of the Hindu and Tibetan adepts were human Nagas (Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of I MMORTALITY and T IME. The numerous and extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and facts about Serpent worship, given in "The Natural Genesis," are very ingenious and scientifically correct. But they are far from covering the whole of the meanings implied. They divulge only the astronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic phenomena. On the lowest plane of materiality the Serpent was, no doubt, [[Vol. 1, Page]] 405 THE DEGRADATION OF THE SYMBOL. "the great mystery in the mysteries," and was, very likely, "adopted as a type of feminine pubescence, on account of its sloughing and self-renewal." It was so, however, only with regard to mysteries concerning terrestrial animal life, for as symbol of " reclothing and rebirth in the (universal) mysteries" its " final phase " * -- or shall we rather say its incipient and culminating phases -- they were not of this plane. They were generated in the pure realm of ideal light, and having accomplished the round of the whole cycle of adaptations and symbolism, the "mysteries" returned from whence they had come -- into the essence of immaterial causality. They belonged to the highest gnosis. And surely this could have never obtained its name and fame solely on account of its penetration into physiological and especially feminine functions! As a symbol, the Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the Tree itself; the "Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the more gross matter. The revelations and interpretations in "The Rivers of Life" would have astounded the worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in the days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom; and even the early Saivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and suggestions of the author of the said work. "The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that the cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is radically false," writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this is a statement that could be as justly applied to almost all the modern interpretations of ancient symbols. "The Natural Genesis," a monumental work of research and thought, the most complete on that subject that has ever been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining much more than all the symbologists who have hitherto written, does not yet go beyond the "psycho-theistic" stage of ancient thought. Nor were Payne Knight and Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see that their interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross and phallus, fitted the symbol, and approximated it, only on the lowest and last stage of the evolutionary development of the idea of the GIVER OF LIFE. It was the last and the grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird, and even plant; for biune, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction of the contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile and bird as it does in that of man.