I’m telling you I had NO idea how deep this snake thing went when I made them the titular image of my famously unpublished novel SNAKES IN CAVES. It seems like I come across some deeply entwined image of snake and human almost every day, both in places I’d expect and places I don’t. Here’s the latter – I have a friend who, on her yahoo 360 site http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-gEcduNwibq5i7mCI3I5yIw5F
is initiating a purge against her contacts who post art with crediting the artist. She even, very nicely, went after me because on MY 360 page
I have as background Botticelli’s VENUS AND MARS and as my personal avatar the carving KING NUMA POMPILIUS CONVERSING WITH THE NYMPH EGERIA IN HER GROTTO by Bertel Thorvaldsen. I don’t really see that as stealing credit for somebody else’s art, but I thought I’d humor my pal and give credit. Since it’s really the subject matter that drew me to the carving – King Numa is a wicked cool dude and Egeria has been part of my life since high school, not to the mention the fact that lounging around in a man made grotto taking dictation from a bare breasted nymph (even though it sounds a little like the Playboy mansion) is a lifestyle I’d like to pursue – I thought I’d better do a little research on Mr. Thorvaldsen. I quickly found the THORVALDSEN MUSEUM in Denmark where KING NUMA is housed. But what really blew my mind was what I found in the virtual gift shop –
http://www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/page155.aspx
Copy of Thorvaldsen’s snake ring
The snake-shaped ring is a copy of a gold ring that Thorvaldsen regularly wore. It can be seen on the self portrait statue from 1839 and in the painted portraits by C.W. Eckersberg (1820) and Horace Vernet (1833).
Whoa! O.K. from the conspiracy view point – you could see the snake ring as a tip off to his fellow members that Thorvaldsen was part of that great serpent conspiracy, you know having cosmic intercourse with astral beings of light (aliens? devils?) like Numa conversing with Egeria for inspiration. I just want to know how to join up!
A place I would expect to find the snake lurking is in fin de siecle decadence which I’m once again reading a lot about. In EVIL BY DESIGN: THE CREATION AND MARKETING OF THE FEMME FATALE by Elizabeth K. Menon there’s a whole chapter about the serpent woman motif. Here’s a couple of excerpts:
The historical significance of snakes, especially in religious cults that predate Christianity and in traditional representations of the snake in Eden as female, provides a context for such depictions. Several factors influenced the development of these misogynistic images in the nineteenth century: the revival of the story of the ancient Mother Goddess and her snakes, the tradition of the female snake who tempts Eve in Renaissance works, and the more recent patriarchal association of the snake with phallicism.
A conflated snake-woman figure emerged in popular culture as the nineteenth century progressed. This was not a new phenomenon, but a revitalization of a tradition that may be as old as visual representation itself, for snakes in ancient cultures were associated with both deities and with women.
The original biblical text supports interpretations of the serpent as a symbol or recurring youthfulness, wisdom, chaos and evil.
Menon also quotes this really bitchin’ period piece by a nineteenth century somebody called HYP about a really gone chick who shoots up and freaks out:
She frequents the Louvre, standing rooted before the statue of the Laocoon. There she remains, shaking fearfully, her eyes fixed. This is her favorite haunt for injecting herself, waiting for the hallucinations in which the snakes twine themselves about her own body. Then she flees, her handkerchief stuffed in her mouth so that people cannot hear her screams.
A Leak In The Safe 