The vulture and cobra symbolize the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt during the life of the Pharaoh as well as in the Afterlife. This unification also takes place at a deeper spiritual level. Mastering Wadjet’s “fiery serpent power” (Kundalini) implied “raising it up on the Wings of Nekhbet”; and when a pharaoh died, the priest would utter spells and incantations intended to empower the King’s Ba (man’s soul — half-man, half-bird) to rejoin his Ka (spiritual essence — close to the Chinese concept of Jing, which manifests in semen), harmonizing them in the Ib (man’s metaphysical heart) for eternity in the Afterlife. Egypt’s union of the white vulture and the red cobra is also reflected in Tibetan meditation as white Bodhicitta drops unite with red seminal fluid drops within the “heart drop of Dharmakaya,” since the unified seat of the soul is said to exist in the heart (Figure 42b). With this unification, the adept’s eternal “Buddha-body” can be liberated from its physical body.
Figure 13e - Nekhbet: the White Vulture Wadjet/Uraeus: the Cobra as Third Eye of Ra
There is a similar unification between the white eagle and the red serpent within Hebrew Scripture. The tribe of Dan adopted the white and red standard of the Eagle (Figure 11d) to replace its former association with the Serpent and Scorpion. Some rabbinical sources often treated Dan as the archetype of wickedness. Christianity associated the tribe of Dan with the serpent and the Devil, which explains why Dan was omitted from the Book of Revelation. According to Jewish folk lore, it was Ahiezer (Numbers 2:25), a prince of the tribe of Dan, who substituted the eagle as the destroyer of serpents, giving the tribe a more upright image.
When Jacob was about to die, he gathered his 12 sons together as leaders of the 12 tribes and prophesied “...what will befall you in the End of Days.”95 Jacob said that Judah would be like the lion (Figure 11d), the king of beasts, while: “Dan would avenge his people, [and] the tribes of Israel will be united as one. Dan will be a serpenton the highway, a viper by the path, that bites a horse’s heels so its rider falls backward.”96 This passage echoes God’s curse on the serpent in Eden, when God declares: "I will put enmity between you and the woman [Eve] and between your offspring and her offspring. He will pound your head, and you will bite his heel.”97 The Hebrew word “Dan” translates into English as “Judgement,” and the tribe of Dan embodies Divine Judgement between Good and Evil. Therefore, the Bible describes its symbolism ambiguously, as both the Serpent and the Eagle, to be inclusive of both Good and Evil. The mission statement of the tribe, according to Jacob, was to enforce justice and unity by “biting at the heels of the unjust.”98
Dan’s role as “Judge” has been misunderstood, forgotten or ignored. Samson, who was from the tribe of Dan, was the last judge in the Book of Judges, leading Israel for 20 years. After Delilah cut seven locks of his hair, the Philistines seized him, gauged out his eyes, and made him a mill slave. When they put Samson between the pillars of the temple he prayed to Yahweh for the strength to push apart the pillars and bring down the temple to smite his enemies. The rabbis tell us that Samson remained pure in judgement, but adopted the treacherous tactics of the serpent in order to “bite at the heels” of the Philistines.
This same dichotomy is embodied within the twin pole serpents of the Caduceus (Figures 14d & e). When viewed from a horizontal perspective, their embodiment of Fire and Water causes them to ascend like Fire, and descend like Water, along the polar axis. From an aerial perspective, however (Figures 14a,b & c), the serpent circles around in a spiral, giving the appearance of swallowing its tail. The Great Serpent constellation, Draco, is circumpolar, revolving in a great circle in the northern sky around the polar star (Figure 14b). Like Ouroboros within ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology, Draco appears to swallow its tail (Figures 14a & b). The ancient mathematics that describes this —the Navel of Order (Figure 25) — is a mathematical description of the sun’s path measured against the stars. The Caduceus, ascending and descending to and from God, is the go-between, or “messenger” between God and man, i.e., man’s soul.
There is a profound mathematics at the heart of all religion that is symbolized by the tightly coupled mythologies of the eagle and the serpent. Solving the mathematics of the “circle and the square within”99 reveals the great religious significance of the body’s purification, as symbolized by the serpent “swallowing its tail.” What each of these different myths share is a story of how a divine bird of prey somehow lifts the serpent, a symbol of libidinous energy and temptation, into the sky (the 12th constellation is effectively “swallowing up” the 13th constellation). Within this same purification tradition, on the Eve of the New Year, Jews would cast their sins onto a goat — a scapegoat — and then exile it from the town. Animal sacrifice (Hebrew: korban) was an important part of the purification rite. In the New Testament, the 12th disciple sacrificed Christ, the lamb of God, the 13th member of the group. Similarly, YHVH Himself slays “the Leviathan, the Elusive Serpent” in order to vanquish evil (Figure 14f).
Figure 14a & 14b - Draco: the Great Circumpolar Dragon
Figure 14c - Ouroboros in Egyptian Mythology
Figure 14d & e - The Caduceus as the Soul
Figure 14f - Gustave Dore’s Slaying of Leviathan
In that day Yahweh will punish, With His great, cruel, mighty sword Leviathan the Elusive Serpent — Leviathan the Twisting Serpent: He will slay the Dragon of the sea 100 ... And in that day, Yahweh will beat out the peoples like grain from the channel of the Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt; and you shall be picked up one by one, O children of Israel! And in that day, a great ram’s horn shall be sounded; and the strayed who are in the land of Assyria and the expelled who are in the land of Egypt shall come and worship Yahweh on the holy mount, in Jerusalem.101
The story of Yahweh and the Leviathan has a long history in Middle Eastern myth. In Egypt, the pharaohs would journey to the afterlife with Ra, the Sun god, on his nightly 12 hour journey through the rivers of the Underworld. Ra was protected by the storm god Set. Each night Set would slay the serpent of chaos, Apep, allowing the sun to rise each day, often bloodied from battle (Figure 14g). The annual “banishing of Apep,” an ancient rite of Egyptian priests, became the prototype for the actions of the Jewish High Priest of Israel on Yom Kippur. This ancient rite included an effigy of Apep built to contain all of the evil and darkness in Egypt. It would then be burned to protect the people for another year. The Egyptian Tuat derives from the Sumerian Apsû. It was both the waters that the boat of the Sun God Ra traversed during the night, and the place where mortal souls journeyed to after death.
The significance of “slaying the Great Serpent,” is symbolic of mastering the seminal waters that lead us toward sexual distraction and away from Enlightenment, thus the need for Abraham’s Covenant of Circumcision. In the Biblical version of this allegory, Yahweh metaphorically “slays” the evil serpent to save Israel (Figure 14f):