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 Be Ye Wise as Serpents: A Short Meditation onOphidian Botany
By Frederick R. Dannaway
Dedicated to the scholarship of Blaise Daniel Staples“You have drank Fire from the immortal potion.”
 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in thegarden'?"
There is a truly ancient connection between serpents and esoteric plants that isuniversal in scope. Snakes crawl into the infernal regions and return and shed their skin ina bold display of rejuvenation. Serpents have mystical associations that inspire wonderand fear as they slither along the earth and herbs and disappear or strike, perhaps withdeadly venom. Snake and serpent lore is immense and universal associations withmagical, psychoactive or entheogenic plants abound. This paper will explore the contextof snake and serpent legends with plants that become symbolic to a widespread “cult of immortality” as well as digressions on serpent-entheogen links.
 
One of the formative myths of the ancient world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, mightwell be the source of the legend of a plant of immortality that inspired many of themysteries of the world’s religion. This Sumerian legend of man’s defiance of the godsand fear of mortality culminates in a desperate search for a magical plant of eternal life.The hero has lost his life comrade to death and he must quest far and wide to resurrecthim by way of a magical herb. A serpent steals the plant of immortality from Gilgameshwhiles he bathes thus ending his quest in tragedy. Perhaps this old legend is the sourcefor a tension between humanity and serpents and certainlythis Sumerian myth is theprecedent for the mischief in the Garden of Eden.The Garden of Eden story, viewed outside the narrow confines of theological dogma, is a difficult myth to make sense of in terms of the relationship of serpents and mythical botany. God forbid the primordial pair to eat of the Tree of theKnowledge of Good and Evil and allowed them to partake of all others, apparentlyincluding the Tree of Life, which would give immortality (Gen 2:9 makes clear they aretwo different trees and only the former is forbidden). It is useless to speculate why thecouple did not seize the fruit of the Tree of Life, other than that they had no knowledge of death and therefore where oblivious to a concept of eternal life.The paradox is that Adam and Eve would not know of death until they ate of theforbidden fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil but the transgression would void thepromise of eternal life possible in the Tree of Life. They are expelled expressly for thereason that they not be allowed to taste of the Tree of Life (Gen 3:22) as the knowledgeof good and evil plus immortality made them too close to divinity for comfort for God.The serpent exploited this tension and tempts them towards the Tree of Knowledge of 
 
Good and Evil thus ensuring they do not taste of eternal life and they are exiled from thegarden. The collective ill-will in this region towards the snake can be understood withJehovah’s curse:Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!You will crawl on your bellyand you will eat dustall the days of your life.And I will put enmitybetween you and the woman,and between your offspring and hers;he will crush your head,and you will strike his heel.The serpent or snake’s ability to shed its skin and to descend to chthonic regions renewedperhaps contributed to the supernatural and “crafty” (especially in a magic sense of skillor art) associations. As mentioned, in Genesis a serpent tricks Eve into eating of forbidden fruit (all of these immortal plants or forbidden fruits, magic herbs are possiblyentheogens) which was to make them die suddenly. Instead, they are cursed and removedfrom the garden destined to toil on cursed land.
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