In the New Testament, pharmakeia carried with it the idea of sorcery, occultism, and black magic
(media.greatawakening.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (36)
sorted by:
Same here, I remember being a kid and thinking it was weird and "why would the medical profession be associated with snakes???" Now I know why.
Do you not know history? Did you not think to seek the answers that made the most sense, instead of referring to imagery that is much more recent than the source?
There are two reasons that stem from two places:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake image and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten, and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.’” -Numbers 21:8-9
The other one comes to honor the fathers of medicine who were huge parts in the revolution of modernized medicine, Hippocrates II and Asclepiades, named from the Ancient Grecian hero and god (lower case G) of healing, Asclepius, son of Apollo who was said to have a snake entwined staff.
It's also important to recognize the impact of other minor gods and goddesses in the development of medical symbols. Hygieia is another such one, whose symbols are expressed in the compounding and medical aspect of our "Health System"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygieia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_of_Hygieia
It seems even the NIH must publish such information. It seems as if they are bragging:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4190767/
True, I forgot Hygieia's place in reference because of the efforts of Hippocrates and Asclepiades.
Interestingly, Hygieia being the namesake of the word hygiene ended up purging many diseases and illnesses that civilization encountered many times. Just by being clean, and having clean water, etc.
Thank you for the high effort rebuttal to fake news
I'll even go a step further and say that this was created in the 1850s by Eliphas Levi, which people may know as an (in)famous occultist, for his book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (you're damn straight I'm just copy/pasting that name).
His reasons for adding the Caduceus (the staff of Hermes more specifically used for the symbology) were -- apparently and to be a bit reductionist -- to signify "balance". It goes deeper than that, but I don't particularly make it a point to delve too deeply into that stuff beyond the historical aspects, I just wanted to point out why it is used in an 1850s depiction that spawned other versions of it by posers.
Rather than pointing towards what essentially amounts to a modern day depiction of a creation that has only been traced back to as far as 1098 (and was, in 1307, what Philip IV accused the Knights Templar of worshiping in order to arrest them) and what many scholars seem to believe was actually the (false) prophet Muhammad [according to the Brittanica], if you can believe that spicy bit of information, people should instead be looking towards Ancient Greece and Biblical references to understand, both which predate the first known use of Baphomet by at an absolute minimum a thousand years.
You are clearly a scholar, bravo for delivering us an education and a correct frame of reference for perspective!
Parasites. Intestinal parasites cause most illnesses. This knowledge goes back to the Greeks. The worms can burrow into your spinal column and nervous system.
So would the caduceus have been a warning symbol back in those times? That you get the parasites and you become a fallen angel essentially?
I was always told it was based on Moses making a bronze snake and holding it up for the Israelites to be healed. This also makes zero sense to me.... Israelites should have been looking to God for healing.
https://biblehub.com/numbers/21-9.htm
"Israelites should have been looking to God for healing."
God works through us. Moses in this case.
the bronze snake was called Nehushtan. the full story is that God sent poisonous snakes among the Israelites for speaking against Him and Moses. If they were bitten, they had to look at the statue to be healed. After Israel was fully established as a nation, Nehushtan began to be worshipped in his own right. Eventually King Hezekiah realized reverence of the artifact had become full blown idolatry, and he ordered the destruction of all Nehushtan statues.