Symbol · ◇ Light

The Serpent

The Ouroboros · The Nāga

majorattestedJudaismGnosticismNorse mythologyHinduismMesopotamian religionEgyptian religion

The most double-edged image in religion — teacher and tempter, guardian and devourer, and, because it sheds its skin and lives on, the emblem of a renewal humans were denied. It is the instructor in Eden, the world-encircling Jörmungandr, the churning-rope Vasuki, the thief of Gilgamesh’s plant of youth. Wherever wisdom, immortality or chaos needs a face, it coils into this one.

Reach88

Depth82

Influence74

Mystery71

✦Signature powerThe UnknownA power not yet set down in the record.

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Voices & connections

Figures bound to The Serpent, family and rivals within the myth, and the thinkers and writers who shaped how we know them.

Adamassociated with Enkiassociated with Vishnuassociated with The Quest for Immortalitysymbolizes Forbidden Knowledgesymbolizes

Relics & objects

Sacred and cursed things that belong to the world of The Serpent.

The AmritaSacred The Divine SparkSacred The Forbidden FruitCursed The Golden CalfCursed MjölnirSacred Tablets of the LawSacred Ark of the CovenantSacred

Read the story

Illustrated chapters where The Serpent appears. Start reading in a click.

Illustrated storyGilgamesh, Who Saw the DeepThe oldest epic on earth: a tyrant king is given a wild man for a friend, loses him to the one enemy no king can fight, and walks off the edge of the world to un-learn death. The Flood survivor tells him the truth, a snake steals the consolation prize, and he comes home to the wall of Uruk with empty hands and the story itself — which turned out to be the immortality.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Churning of the OceanCursed into weakness, the gods cannot win immortality by force — so they invite their enemies to help churn it out of the Ocean of Milk, with a mountain for a churning-rod, the serpent king for a rope, and Vishnu as the tortoise underneath it all. What rises first is not nectar but Halahala, the poison of everything, and Shiva must drink it and hold it in his throat forever. The nectar comes last, and is won by a single enchanting glance.Begin reading →Illustrated storyRagnarök, the Twilight of the GodsThe gods know exactly how they will die — a seeress told Odin the whole ending, wolf by serpent by fire. They arm for it anyway. Loki breaks his bonds and steers the ship of dead men’s nails; Fenrir’s jaws scrape heaven and earth; Thor kills the world-serpent and walks nine steps. And then the earth rises green from the sea a second time, and the survivors find the old golden game-pieces in the grass.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Death of OsirisThe good king is tricked into a coffin measured to his own body, sealed in at a banquet by his brother Set, and carved into fourteen pieces scattered the length of the Nile. Isis, the great enchantress, finds thirteen of them and rebuilds her husband with words of power. He does not come back to life; he becomes the reason there is life after it — first mummy, judge of the dead, father of his own avenger.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Descent of InannaThe oldest descent story ever written, four thousand years old: Inanna, Queen of Heaven, turns her ear to the Great Below and walks through the seven gates of the dead. At each gate a garment of her power is stripped away, until she stands naked before her sister Ereshkigal — and is hung on a hook. Her rescue costs a head for a head, and her eye falls on the consort who did not mourn her.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe WatchersFrom the Book of Enoch: two hundred angels set to watch over humankind descend instead on Mount Hermon, bind themselves by a mutual oath, take wives, teach the forbidden arts — metallurgy, sorcery, the reading of stars — and father the giants. The scribe Enoch is sent to write their judgment. The oldest fall-of-angels story ever written down.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Sleeper in ClayThe Gnostic Genesis: the Archons shape Adam as a trap for the light, the blind god breathes his stolen inheritance into the clay, and the copy stands up greater than its makers. The garden, the tree, the serpent who tells the truth — the oldest story in the world, told from the point of view of the spark.Begin reading →Illustrated storyThe Descent of the SaviorThe Savior’s journey told in full: sent by the Ineffable Light, he puts on the form of each heaven he passes so that no warden knows him, breaks the lion-faced power of Authades, strips the Archons of their stolen radiance, and opens — permanently — a road through the kingdom of the blind god. The epic of the way home.Begin reading →