Saltmarsh watersnake in a mangrove swamp. Not pictured are the mosquitos in their dark-clouded legions.

I’ve seen a lot of ibises, though too small to take on serpents of this size. I’m open to being surprised.

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Serpents have rich symbolism, both benefic and malefic like any other. When it bites its tail it creates a closed circle in a mistaken self consuming rebellion, cosmologically creating a world of endless cycles and repetitions, something we’ve been led into participating in.

In the closed circle there is no inspiration, no changes, no ascensions, no miracles. No whys; only hows.

King Solomon in Ecclesiastes was melancholy about it, there being ‘nothing new under the sun,’ all things being vanity when divorced and closed off from the transcendent.

The Buddha sought and taught escape from it, to break the cycle with his Eightfold Path. The Ouroboros of Samsara containing nothing but impermanence, aimlessness, futility.

Many traditions contain the serpent, or dragon slaying myth, too many to relate. Be that ancient Egypt’s ibis headed Thoth, or the daily slaying of Apep by the solar boat, Greece’s Apollo and Python – Zeus and Typhon, the Germano-Nordic Thor and Jörmungandr (who also encircles the world, with its tail in its mouth), Christ and the serpent underfoot, to name only a few.

When oriented so, a tradition for the individual and beyond gives the means and teachings to open the circle and slay their serpents – daily. To allow for a moment the chance for something beyond them to enter in and do its guiding, changing work, for one thing to pass for another to come. To “Make All Things New.”

The world, then, isn’t a prison, but a place in which to be reintegrated.

“Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.”
~ G.K. Chesterton.

“Becoming is not a contradiction of Being, but the epiphany of Being.”
~ Ananda Coomaraswamy.