Recently I found my husband watching a sci fi program on TV about a monstrous snake on a rampage against humans. Perhaps no other creature on earth has been so maligned as the snake. Emily Dickinson in one of her poems depicts the fear most of us have with the words "zero at the bone." Out of the fear comes dislike. We may even call a person we do not like or trust a snake in derogatory fashion.
As I tried to rid my mind of the image of the villainous snake from the TV show, I was reminded of a fairy tale in which a snake played a positive part. The hero of the story saw the king whom he served eating a special dish each day. One day the young servant sneaked a bite of the special food - a dish prepared from a white snake. Afterward, he was able to understand the speech of animals. That later played an important role in leading him to go on a quest and be successful with it.
Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz has written several books on how fairy tales reflect elements of our psychological processes. Looking at the fairy tale above in light of her approach, we can see the snake as symbolic of something in ourselves. My symbol book defines that something as "primordial and instinctual" - a life force. It is a part of us deep within the unconscious realm, a part we least control.
In the story "The White Snake" ingesting the snake gave the hero the ability to communicate with animals, which could represent other instincts. It is in becoming aware of what those instincts tell the young man and by meeting their needs that he is able to succeed on his quest. The story suggests to us that we need to recognize and respect the deep instinctual parts of ourselves. That primordial life force gives us the instinct for survival.
But all of the snake within us is not white, and therein lies the problem for us. In nature survival may mean that one creature must kill another. Or it may mean eating the fruit that is readily available, even if it is forbidden fruit. What could that mean in a psychological sense?
In the fairy tale eating the white snake gives the young man what he needs to start moving toward the path of his individuation. Without ingesting the snake, he remains totally unaware. But in the story we see only the white side, the side that moves him forward. Fairy tales give us aspects of the journey. No one tale tells it all. We need to recognize as well that we carry the black - what one analyst spoke of as "the lower psyche, hidden psychosis and what is unusual, incomprehensible and mysterious." (Chevalier 844) In Christianity that has been interpreted as evil. If it is evil, it would serve us well to recognize that we all have that destructive, instinctive potentiality within us which, if we don't develop awareness, at times can slip out or explode forth in ways that consternate even the most rational ( perhaps especially the rational) of us. We see this in people who suddenly murder or commit other crimes. In exaggerated form, survival instincts grow into monsters like the snake in the sci fi flick that became vindictive. The survival instinct gone awry can grow into greed and ambition that causes people to lose their sense of right and wrong in the world.
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