Art. VII.—Serpent-Worship in India

Art and Cosmology in India

The three notions that underlie Indian culture are that of bandhu, paradox, and yajña. Bandhu is the binding between the outer and the inner that makes it possible to know, and this is the basis of the pervasive spirituality in India; paradox is the recognition that the bandhu must lie outside of rational system, leading to the distinction between the “higher” science of consciousness and the “...

Hero worship

This month, as the surest route to public embarassment, I decided to write about scientific heroes. Today’s world is full of talk of mentoring. Graduate students are told to find supervisors who will intellectually nourish them, emotionally support them, and teach them networking and grantspersonship. As I tap away, I can almost hear Uncle Syd muttering that the world is going to the dogs. In h...

The grounds of worship

Although worship has a pivotal place in religious thought and practice, philosophers of religion have had remarkably little to say about it. In this paper we examine some of the many questions surrounding the notion of worship, focusing on the claim that human beings have obligations to worship God. We explore a number of attempts to ground our supposed duty to worship God, and argue that each ...

'Caduceus'—Or the Significance of Serpents as Emblem of Art of Healing and the Snake Worship

as dispellers of evils and diseases. Mythologically a snake is represented as a creature emerging from the earth and is therefore associated with the mystery of the earth and represents the magic of prophecies, power, dreams and as an aid to the physician in the art of healing. The snakes have therefore from early history became a ritualistic symbol oi whatever is hidden and mysterious. Even to...

In Worship of an Echo