To me snakes mean danger due to the fact that A: my parents taught us to be weary of snakes and B: running into snake encounters because of the house I grew up in.

Living in the south pretty close to a river we had many run ins with snakes.  My mom ran into an adult copperhead on our back deck.  When I was little I ran into an adult water moccasin in the driveway next to the garage.  And when I was older I saw another adult water moccasin crawling into the garage.  This doesn't count all the times my dad had encounters with snakes because he cut the grass every week.  You could pretty much count on seeing a snake every summer at my house.  The only question was would it be poisonous.

Harmless garter snakes never concerned me, it's the poisonous ones that we had run ins with around our home that make me associate snakes with danger.

I would have to aggree with Phoenix Binder. Not so much me being taught that the snake is evil. Just very weary of the snake.

Kill the snake is my first thought.  So what does that snake represent?  If we were to see it as a spiritual thing.


Safe Journey

The snake is the symbol entwined around the staff as a symbol for the American Medical Association.  Snakes were free to roam through the temple of healing in ancient times.  Snakes can represent healing.  

A snake sheds its skin.  This shows a transformational potential to snakes.  And that too could be the meaning.

Isn't it interesting to note how the same thing can mean so much to so many people.

According to the Bible, Snake was the tempter, the one who "corrupted" Adam and Eve -- I see it not as "corruption" or "temptation", but the offering of freedom and knowledge. Snake can also be a symbol of change, in the shedding of the old skin, revealing the new.

I don't understand the concept of Snake as "evil", though they are quite startling when they suddenly appear out of nowhere.

The Snake is the symbol of wisdom and of the Mother Goddess.

[/quote] The snake is the symbol entwined around the staff as a symbol for the American Medical Association.  Snakes were free to roam through the temple of healing in ancient times.  Snakes can represent healing. [/quote]

The snake around the staff (actually there are two snakes) are the symbol for the American Medical Association because of the old Greek tale of Asclepius. He was the first of the big Healers, and the first to have hospitals. He was a son of Apollo I think, and had a great gift of healing. People began to worship him because he healed so many people, and built temples. He brought beds into the temples, and created the first hospitals. One of his many daughters (who were his nurses) was named Hygiegia (where we get the word Hygiene, actually), and "scrubbed her patients night and day to keep them clean; she was the first to do so, for in the past the people thought washing them would kill the sick." Asclepius had a staff on which he leant, and two snakes intertwined on it, and whispered in his ear to tell him what was wrong with the people and how to cure them (another symbolism of the Mother Goddess--she was telling him how to heal people). Because of this tale, the AMA adopted the staff and two snakes, which is called the Caduceus.

The snake was only shown as a tempter and evil and a corrupter because the early christians had to change the tales around of the locals so their deities were evil, and the christian god was the only good one. The snake had such big connections to the Mother Goddess, they had to change it to be evil. There was just no escaping it.