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.