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Throughout the history of mankind the serpent has played a consistent but variable role. In every land it has appeared in some important aspect of cultural life and at one time or another has been worshiped either as a friendly, wise, prophetic soul receptacle or as an evil spirit. Of all early religious practices that of serpent worship is the most universal. The universality of this relationship between man and the serpent, once openly expressed in religious belief but which now in cultured mankind finds only symbolic expression in religious and artistic productions and the sensuous images of dreams and hallucinations, is the subject of this paper.
It would seem almost as if this relationship had acquired a place among those characteristics that are passed on to successive generations as part of their heritage (1) (Freud — The Ego and the Id, London, The Hogarth Press 1927, p. 52). Although this might be true to some degree, the task still remains to account not only for the origin of this curious relationship but also for the enormous quantity of energy with which it is so often cathected.
Since man's attitude toward the serpent is predominantely irrational and is shown most vividly in those conditions in which his ego has been seriously impaired we are led at once to a consideration of his relationship to reality in general at a time prior to a definite demarcation between the ego, the id and the outside world.
The first sensory impressions that impinge upon the periphery of the id, transforming it into the ego, arise both internally and externally. The ego is formed out of a multitude of perceptions having to do with bodily shape,