Serpent

The world serpent is the serpent at the largest scale. In the Prose Edda, Alfather (Odin) throws Jörmungandr, one of Loki’s children, “into the deep sea which surrounds all lands. There waxed the serpent so that he lies in the midst of the ocean, surrounds all the earth, and bites his own tail.” Britannica calls him Thor’s chief enemy, and at Ragnarök they kill each other: “Thor gets great renown by slaying the Midgard-serpent, but retreats only nine paces when he falls to the earth dead, poisoned by the venom”. Lurker sets beside him the Ouroboros of classical antiquity, the serpent “which swallows its own tail” and so “is able to embrace the entire universe”, and Indian images of the dancing Shiva inside a ring made of a serpent’s body. The Ouroboros has its own page, and so does Jörmungandr’s enemy, Thor.

In Indian tradition the great serpents are nāgas, “half human and half cobra” in Britannica’s words, guardians of waters and treasure, who live in an underground kingdom. Three are famous: Shesha, or Ananta, on whom Vishnu lies on the cosmic ocean; Vasuki, the rope with which gods and demons churned the ocean of milk, turning the world mountain Mandara “like a creative whisk” (Lurker); and Takshaka, chief of the snakes. Lowell W. Bloss, in the Encyclopedia of Religion, describes nāgas as fertility deities older than the Hindu and Buddhist pantheons that took them in, shown as cobras “with one or many hoods”, and notes the Buddhist story of the nāga king Mucilinda sheltering the Buddha with his coils and hoods. The drawing on this page is a many-hooded nāga.

In ancient Mexico, Lurker writes, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca turned themselves into serpents and tore the primeval water monster in two to make heaven and earth. Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, has his own page: Quetzalcoatl.