Word: serpents
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...than we can digest" and are suffering a no more serious consequence than "a nightmare of disillusionment." We have had an "orgy of idealism," an extravagant faith in "a perfectibility to be brought about by law." If as been as if we, too, had believed the word of the serpent that eating of this tree would enable us to distinguish between good and evil and in doing so "be as God." We have been driven from the Eden of our idealism, yet no angel with a flaming sword bars our return. At any rate, Dean Pound, a discerner of right...
...ancient, shady ancestry is the Devil. As Egypt's Serpent Apap, he crawled at dark by the Nile while flames shuddered in his thin trail. In Babylonia, even fools dared not prate of him when he was known as "the lady Nina." His was the god-defiance of Prometheus, the malice of Ahriman. Still as Siva he destroys...
...India snake charmers are an impoverished, filthy, untouchable lot of Jogis. With woven baskets containing their trained pythons or cobras they traipse about villages and towns. For an anna or two the charmer sets his serpent on the ground and blows through his pungi. The pungi is a bottle-shaped gourd with two reeds or bamboos inserted. One tube has finger stop-holes and emits a shrill penetrating whine. The other has no holes and gives out a drone. Snakes have no ears. But under their skin they have two primitive ear drums and through those the Indian snake feels...
...striped frieze; he was shot silk. The detachment of speculation, the intensity of personal pride, the uneasiness of nervous sensibility, the urgency of ambition, the opulence of superb taste-these qualities, blending, twisting, flashing together, gave to his secret spirit the subtle and glittering superficies of a serpent. . . . The music sounds, and the great snake rises, and spreads its hood, and leans and hearkens, swaying in ecstasy; and even so the Lord Chancellor, in the midst of some great sentence, some high intellectual confection, seems to hold his breath in a rich beatitude, fascinated by the deliciousness of sheer style...
...When I was about eight years of age I was greatly frightened by seeing a snake crawl out from behind some furniture in my room. My cries brought the elders, and they assured me that this appearance of a serpent was a good omen-that it meant I would become strong and great. For a time, in my ignorance, I had a worshipful attitude toward snakes...