*
In the Ancient World snakes were renowned for wisdom.
For most westerners they are now associated with both temptation and sin…
*
As with much else in the Epic of Gilgamesh,
we are treated to a brief, tantalising glimpse of the Old World Wisdom.
May it be sufficient to sustain us…
*
Our serpent emerges from Beyond the Veil,
and slithers to the Watering-Hole,
where Gilgamesh, ‘The One Who Never Sleeps’, again lies sleeping…
*
‘The sleeper and the dead, how alike they are!’
*
So says Utnapishtim, the immortal
who lives in a paradisical garden of ‘jewel-bright’ trees,
at the source of two rivers.
*
But if sleep and death are so similar, what then is dream?
*
In his dreamless sleep Gilgamesh still clutches his prize,
the herb of eternal youth, retrieved by him,
from The Deep over which he now considers himself the lord…
*
As Gilgamesh sleeps,
the snake steals the herb,
eats it,
sheds its skin,
and then returns,
back Beyond the Veil…
*
Could anything be clearer?
Pride cometh before the fall.💜
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Reblogged this on Stuart France.
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