serpent wood

[OPHIOXYLON.] serpent-worship, s. Compar. Relig .: Ophiolatry; the worship of serpents as symbols or avatars of a deity, a branch of animal-worship [ZOOLATRY), with a wide range in time and space. Fergu on connects it with Tree worship (q. v.). He considers that the curse pronounced on the Serpent (Gen. iii. 14, 15) had reference to serpent-worship, and was put in by the writers of the Pent a teuch, who "set themselves to introduce the purer and loftier worship of the Elohim, or of Jehovah," in order to discountenance an older faith, to which from time to time some of the Jews seem to have reverted (2 Kings xviii. 4; Wisdom xi. 15, Story of Bol). In Greece the center of serpent-worship was the grove of Epidaurus, whence the Romans, on the occasion of a plague, A. U. C. 462, sent for a serpent, and brought it to Rome with great ceremony ( Liv . x. 47; Ov . Met . xv. 626-744); at the siege of Troy a serpent appears as an omen of victory to the Greeks ( Il . ii. 304; cf. OΟυ . Met . xii. 1-23), and from Plutarch we know that Alexander was reputed to have been of a serpent race. In Roman history many traces of serpent worship appear. In addition to the emba y to Epidaurus, may be cited the fate of Laocoon ( En . ii. 201-33), the snake which glided from the tomb of Anchises ( ib . v. 84-99), and which Æneasconsidered to be either the genius loci , or the spirit of his father; and the sacred serpent of Lanuvium ( Prop . iv. 8); while from Persius (i. 113), and from discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, it is clear that the serpent was a sacred emblem. In modern times serpent-worship is prevalent among some of the Indians of North America, on the west coast of Africa, and, to a great extent, in India. When we first meet serpent-worship either in the wil derne of Sinaï, the groves of Epidaurus, in Sarmatian huts, or Indian temples, the serpent is always the Agathodæmon, the bringer of health and good fortune. He is the teacher of wisdom, the oracle of future events. His worship may have originated in fear, but long before we become practically acquainted with it, it had pa ed to the opposite extreme among its votaries."-Fergu on: Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 3.