Oval red-orange chalcedony intaglio: snake with Gnostic inscriptions above and below.

(undated)

British Museum

If a person has eyes that know how to see, he will look upwards to the heavens and he will see the beautiful image of the serpent coiled there, at the place where the great sky begins. Then he will understand that no being in heaven or on earth was formed without the serpent.

— from The Gnostics by Jacques Lacarriere