Serpent Goddess Cults and Penis Worship (original) (raw)
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Association of Women with Serpent and Devil or evil is common in today’s popular movies and literature. A large number of movies have been made on serpent woman, or Nagin-Kanya, both in India and the West in the last century. But the root of this popular trend lies in Genesis of the Bible, and its interpretations by the theologians and the church fathers. In India, this motif came with British literary and cultural products through colonization. Though we get references of figures (Ulupi in the Mahabharata, myth of snake-goddess Manasa) similar to the western serpent women in pre-colonial Indian literature and myth, they stand apart from the western serpent women for several reasons. Firstly, the serpent-women in pre-colonial literature are hardly demonized and denigrated like their western counterparts. Secondly, fatal temptation and destructive eroticism lie at the centre of the serpent woman myth in western literature and culture after Christianization. This article aims to trace the origin of serpent-woman myth and its cultural construction as well as representations in India and the West.
Suckling the Snake: Motherly Goddess Worship and Serpent Symbolism among Contemporary Nahua
Pedrucci, Giulia / Pasche Guignard, Florence / Scapini, Marianna (eds.): Maternità e politeismi. Motherhood/s and polytheism. Bologna, 495–504, 2017
The ambivalent snake symbolism surrounding mothers and motherly goddesses provides an ideal entry point to understanding the shimmering complexity of contemporary polytheism and pantheism in Milpa Alta, a rural community in the south of Mexico City. This contribution focusses on three examples: the Aztec goddess Tlaltecuhtli and her Christian manifestation as Saint Anne, a myth connecting snakes and motherhood to the Milpa Altan landscape, and a local myth of European origin about a breast-milk stealing snake. In Christian iconography, snakes appear as the “dangerous other”, so that the folkloric representation of mothers, children, as well as internal and external threats to the family as snakes lays fundamental anxieties about kin relations bare: fear of illness, hunger, abandonment, betrayal, even incest. Conversely, in Aztec tradition, snakes may be both auspicious and bad omens, as they represent the changeable, ambivalent nature of feminine power: mothers and goddesses who give or take life, protect or kill, and curse or heal. Accordingly, snakes and mothers are strongly associated with fertility, growth, wealth, and creativity, as well as death, transformation, regeneration, and renewal. Thus, the snake, as a polyvalent symbol, is key to understanding women’s moral positioning and hybridized religious practice in Milpa Alta.
Indo Nordic Author's Collective, 2022
Snake worship in India and Cambodia and some SE Asian countries
Snake Worship in theology (1).docx
Snake Worship in theology is compared in this paper, a comparison between ancient Pagan societies and modern industrialization. The study proves the following facts. Snakes are not to be treated as an enemy or a danger to mankind. Herpetology proves, snakes are highly evolved in a mating dance and the use of neurotoxins to humanely kill prey. Snakes have always been revered in ancient societeies, with speacial habitats in the form of arboretums created for them. That the Book Of Genesis, describes the fall of industrialized man, and the rise of sin, that of rape. Rape must be eliminated, and the religions of nature be reinstated.
Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women's Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India, 2009
This dissertation is an ethnographic study of contemporary Hindu snake (naga) traditions and the worship of snake goddesses (nagattamman) in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Specifically, it analyzes the repertoire of vernacular practices connected with naga dosam (snake blemish), a malignant condition that is believed to result from inauspicious planetary configurations in an individual's horoscope. This astrological flaw is most often linked to having killed or harmed a snake, and is faulted for delaying marriage and causing infertility. Indigenously, these afflictions are identified as distinctly "modern" problems and understood to be increasingly prevalent. Because South Indian nagas have long been associated with fertility in belief, custom, and local mythology, naga traditions offer a religious framework to respond to these modern dilemmas, and the worship of snake goddesses has dramatically expanded as a result. New media, such as devotional magazines, have also played an important role in the popularization of naga dosam traditions, its ritual remedies, and particular snake goddess temples. I propose that these innovating naga traditions represent a distinctively local, culturally inflected "modernity" and reflect some of the gendered tensions of contemporary Tamil social life. This dissertation, then, analyzes how traditional religious practice can serve as a flexible, modern means through which to negotiate a range of shifting social and economic contexts. It charts naga ritual traditions (which include recontextualized as well as more explicitly "invented" rites) as they are being self-consciously adapted to meet a spectrum of new ritual and social needs that these challenging contexts inspire. These rituals are primarily performed at local, neighborhood snake goddess and anthill temples, which form an urban network of sites well-known for their power to counter dosam. These local goddesses, some of whom were previously known for curing pox-related illnesses, enjoy a dynamic and expanding ritual repertoire, a growing annual festival tradition, and the patronage of devotees from an increasingly broad array of caste backgrounds.
Serpent God Worship Ritual in Kerala
Indian Folklore Research Journal Vol.5, No.8, 2008
Serpent god worship is common in parts of India, like Kerala, Bengal and Karnataka. In Kerala, one way of worshiping serpent gods is by laying symmetrically designed floor drawings, that are called 'Kalams', with bright and colourful powders made from natural objects. Beautiful pictures of serpent gods are drawn using these powders on ground smeared with cowdung in the first phase of the ritual. Following this, a senior priest consecrates the floor drawings and two types of physical performances follow. The three performances are orchestrated by wild rhythmic music, using folk instruments. In the next stage, a verbal recitation is followed by the main performance of the ritual, the dancing of the female oracles.