Hiking Up the Serpent Mound, Autumn 2022 - Path of Souls, Kundalini, Gnosis, and Esoteric Meaning of the Serpent

by Sean Jobst

25 January 2023

[Including an analysis of the Feathered Serpent, Donar against the World Serpent, Mayan links to the Southeast US, comparative Native American and Germanic Mythology, and the Gnostic Myth of Sophia, the Aeons, and Healing the Gender Rift]

   Last Autumn, I took three hiking expeditions to a local site called Morton Hill (2,064 feet / 629 meters). Spread across 80 acres (323,748 square meters), it contains the cultural legacy of the indigenous Abehka, a nation of the Creek Confederacy, surviving within the landscape long after the Trail of Tears. The initial archaeologist's survey in 2009 identified "41 stone walls, six stone mounds, two boulder caches, one possible historical stacked wall feature, two wall tips, and two springhead arches."(1) "Over the next two years more limestone-made stone features were found. Most of the stone mounds are oval or oblong rock pile cairns ranging from 3 to 7 feet in height and up to 17 feet in diameter. The walls are generally 3 to 9 feet wide and 3 feet in height. Their lengths are from 26 to nearly 600 feet. The archaeologists determined that at least some of the stone features were prehistoric and similar to Native American-attributed stone mounds and structures found elsewhere."(2)

   My travels helped me to grow through many experiences, but events of 2020 halting those international travels drew me inward into a greater appreciation for my own region, the southern foothills of Appalachia. I studied more about the indigenous Creek (Muskokee) people of Alabama and Georgia and visited the Etowah (Etula) and Ocmulgee mounds. While reconnecting with my own European heritage, including a spiritual awareness through folk traditions, archaeological and linguistic evidence, I endorse similar efforts by a group of scholars named the People of One Fire to reclaim the suppressed heritage of this region. These include the incredible work of Richard Thornton, a Georgia Creek-Uchee historian and architect who documents how extensively the Southeast was melting-pot of the Mayans and other cultures, seen on mound structures and petroglyphs, toponyms, and tribal names.

   I was unaware of any of this back in 2009 and 2010 when, as an activist-minded college student, I was involved in local protests to preserve mounds that were ultimately destroyed for Consumerism. My motive then was simple decency and justice, but now I recognize there was something primal that knew my tribal ancestors - for everyone is descendant of a tribe at some point in history - had similar mounds. For my tribes these were sacred sites of ancestor veneration and reincarnation.(3) Only with my spiritual journey these last four years have I also learned mounds are on every continent, their meanings and symbolism, and just how ancient they are, challenging dogmas about linear history. Awakening to animism meant connecting to my local landscape and its spiritual vibrancy, including greater respect for the original inhabitants of this region. So it was with all this in mind that I hiked Morton Hill and found many mounds scattered throughout these forests....

   Some were large stones clearly aligned with each other; others were stone walls or stone circles. All these and others I saw there are not a natural placement of stones but placed in a ritualistic purpose by ancient human hands. "Other stone mounds were apparently made as places of 'remembrance' of the dead, with participants placing a stone on a mound at regular intervals. Some walls and stone piles were placed at spots where spiritual power emerged - by springs and along waterflows. In addition, there are other stone features in the immediate area placed on the highest overlooks. These include large and impressive 'prayer circles' and 'prayer seats' which were used in ceremonies." Others were used for three-day vision quests, during which "participants spent daylight hours constructing winding walls as both a means of concentration and a way to create physical exhaustion."(4)

   The Abehka were known to carry "burden stones" in remembrance of the dead(5), especially after a flood destroyed the village and mounds at Choccolocco (whose name was shared by an elder chieftain). Creek oral history told of a city "lost in the water". Mounds were identified at nearby Boiling Spring in the early 20th century. Some scholars have theorized our local sites collectively formed Ulibahali ("mulberry people"), the mysterious Creek village mentioned by the De Soto expedition whose exact location has been unknown although some placed it in Alabama (whose name even came from this village as noted by several Spanish accounts).(6) All these mounds were apparently aligned with Signal Mountain, atop which a mound was built from burden stones (whose impending destruction was the reason for our protests). 

   My first hike up Morton Hill was on the eve of Autumn Equinox (20th September), when the Sun would have a greater effect upon these stones at Dawn or Sunset. This matches the solar alignments of mound chambers and stone circles worldwide. The largest and most well-known Serpent Mound in Ohio is aligned at different points of its winding body to solar positions on the Solstices and Equinoxes. The Creeks had a solar calendar that reckoned the New Year from Summer Solstice. Like my own ancestors, the Creek people had a Sun Goddess and their petroglyphs include solar symbols. The stone walls I saw were aligned with smaller stone circles, apparently symbolic markers of an initiate's journey leading to the largest stones used for contemplation. We can imagine an initiate's vision quest in a heightened state after a steep hike that would have been much harder than in our own time. 

   Many larger mounds there are surrounded by thorny brushes, so the animist in me respected these sentient stones did not want to be accessed. Other stones were easy to reach so these were the ones I visited and discussed here. Their spiritual energy was still felt by me despite no longer being charged in Abehka ceremonies. The lack of electrification around the mountain made me more sensitive to the natural energy, giving me a much-stronger intuitive feeling. I returned back the next week, hiking further than the first time but still unable to find the Serpent mound. Oral histories spoke of a "Water Tiger" stone effigy that (according to scholars) served as a kind of aqueduct to carry water down the valley - yet as I will discuss within this article, there is good reason to argue it served important ritualistic purposes as well. It was only on my third visit (4th October), after hiking well over three hours and beginning the descent back down, that I was guided to see it....

   The Serpent is clearly visible, with stones placed in a way that are man-made, not a natural feature. Two large stones are placed atop each other to form his "mouth", with other stones forming his "eyes" and "head". Other stones form his "body" and "tail", not straightened but at winding much like a Serpent. In the forest leading up to the Serpent, are several flat marker stones that appeared to be ceremonial. One stone was carved into a rectangle, with segments visible even with grass growing over it. Its my theory this stone was carved into a solar symbol that was sacred to the Creek (similar to symbols across the world), namely the Sacred Fire and Royal Sun symbol from Etula and the Track Rock glyphs....

Mississippian Mound Sites and the Path of Souls

   My contention is that Morton Hill shares similar features with both the Creek petroglyph stones and mounds across North Georgia, and the Mississippian sites to the west which form the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Mapping out mounds in the area surrounding Morton Hill reveals at least five separate sites clustered like a serpent, with Morton Hill jutting out as its head and the other sites forming its body until reaching its tail, the Signal Mound. This is the greatest cluster of mounds and stone sites between Etowah (near Cartersville, GA) and Moundville (near Tuscaloosa, AL). Given the central location between those two large mound cities, its natural these local sites would form some kind of ritual significance. 

   At Moundville, the Feathered Serpent represented the Scorpius Constellation and ruled the Underworld, in constant opposition with the Upper World. This cosmology of upper and lower worlds balanced by our middle world, is common among other tribes from the Prairies down to Mesoamerica. A shell gorget from Spiro Mounds (eastern Oklahoma) showed two dancers facing east and west emanating from a striped axis mundi, containing several solar symbols also carved on Creek glyphs. Creek origin stories recount emergence and a migration from Mesoamerica.(7) Themes of emergence and emanation from the Earth are present on a carved whelk shell from the Spiro central chamber showing two figures emerging in both directions from an intertwined serpent. As noted by archaeologist Kent Reilly, the two figures are the Morning and Evening Stars, part of the Hero Twin motif at other Mississippian sites and related to the Mayan Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Between them is the Milky Way center, represented by a serpent such as Mexica's Mixcoatl ("cloud serpent"). The energies of the Earth are also expressed as Serpentine as will be documented later.

Spiro Shell Gorget. The three points on the bottom pillar match
the exact alignment of Orion's Belt on the eastern horizon.
Called the Royal Sun, the four-pointed symbol in the middle is
identical to glyphs at Etowah (Georgia) and Palenque (Yucatan).

Image from a carved whelk shell emerging
from an intertwined serpent. Engraving by
artist Herb Roe from the original Spiro artifact.

"As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without."

   We can view these Serpent symbols - including the Morton Hill effigy - in context of the Path of Souls. The mound builders held that in addition to the life-soul connected to the physical body, there is a second free-soul that leaves the post-mortem body. This soul journeyed west over a body of water(8) on the eve of Winter Solstice. The soul then waited until early morning when Orion's Nebula (below the three belt stars of Orion) was about to descend below the horizon, at which point the soul "leaped" into this portal on to the Milky Way. Eventually the soul reached the Cygnus constellation, personified as a large raptor bird that served as "judge" or "mediator" for the soul. If the tests were passed, then the soul was allowed to make its final journey out of the sky into the realm of the dead.(9) 

   The soul journey is also portrayed on the Moundville Rattlesnake Disc, showing a hand (reversible downward or upward) with an eye in the center and surrounded by two intertwined rattlesnakes. Its been interpreted as a North Star cosmogram with perfect alignment laid out on a Summer Solstice star map. The middle finger is aligned perfectly with the iris, north towards Polaris in an exact 60-degree angle to allegorize the Solstice sunrise. The eye is 9-degrees off-center, matching the exact position from Polaris between 1100 and 1450 CE. The eye represents the North Star in the center, aligned with the thumb (Little Dipper). The eye is an ogee symbolic of portals to the spirit world, the conduit of spiritual energies and an esoteric knowledge about perception - our minds have an active role in what we see and manifest.(10) It could be deflecting the "evil eye" in an example of sympathetic magic. The way the snakes are intertwined replicate the counter-clockwise movement of Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper around the North Star. The snakes are aligned to the two brightest stars, Vega and Capella. 

Moundville Rattlesnake Disc

Moundville feathered serpent

Image from a Spiro gorget showing feathered
serpents rotating as a primal worldwide motif
allegorical of movements around the North Star.

Feathered Serpent in Mesoamerica and the Southwest

   Applying what we know about Mississippian sites to the west and Creek sites to the east, its possible the Morton Hill effigy was also connected to Path of Soul rituals. The ritual occurred in winter, when Scorpius was invisible below the horizon, as it was believed the Feathered Serpent would snatch the soul down into the Underworld. The Underworld itself should not be viewed negatively like an Abrahamic "hell" but simply not part of the celestial Path of Souls. These Feathered or Horned Serpents have tails resembling corn. As Scorpius is visible most in summer, I propose a possible correspondence to the Creek Green Corn festival (poskita), whose days varied from village to village but started when the corn crop ripened, around the full moon that followed the Summer Solstice. 

   Given the Mesoamerican links occurring throughout their origin stories and other evidence, its no coincidence the Feathered Serpent was connected to corn, which served the same mythical function as other grains across the Atlantic: An allegory of regeneration, like serpents shed their skin into renewal. These qualities abound in both his Mesoamerican incarnations as Quetzalcoatl (Aztec) and Kukulkan (Mayan), and rituals among American Southwest tribes also involved corn meal. As expressed by James True, the Plumed Serpent Quetzalcoatl is the heroic-trickster who "stores the epigenetic wisdom of mankind inside corn." Scientists are unable to explain the unique growing process of corn which goes against the linear evolutionary model, since corn and wheat preceded the alleged beginning of farming. Applied to an esoteric level, this relates to spiritual transformation through our innate wisdom. 

   Quetzalcoatl represents a spirit energy that is both primal and transcendent. Sergio Magaña (Ocelocoyotl), a Mexican healer of the Toltec tradition of Nahualism and the Tol lineage of dream knowledge, describes Quetzalcoatl (whose name means "rising of the serpent") as the lord of knowledge and consciousness. He is a spirit and archetypal(11) serpent rising from the coccyx (bottom of the spine) along various points of the body corresponding to the chakras, up to the forehead (representing the conduit to higher awareness) where he transcends as a Feathered Serpent flying to the Sun. The Mexica and Toltec Long Count calendar recounts a total of 26,500 years, divided into four periods of 6,625 years each called "suns". 

   Their cosmology is made up of 13 heavens, so their calendars were divided into 13-day solar wave cycles: "The ancient Mexicans were perfectly aware of the fact that the rotation of the solar equator takes 26 terrestrial days, meaning that the sun shows a different face to us every 13 days." He represents the unmanifested spiritual potential of every human being: "The prophecy says Quetzalcoatls, plural, meaning people around the world will find this precious knowledge."(12) I also like this description of Quetzalcoatl by another Mexican source: "The serpent represents everything man has that keeps him linked to the earth/the ground, the feathers in old Tolteca thinking means the virtues each man has got that keep him connected to the “Sky” to the infinite, to the Gods or as the Mexica called him 'Ometeotl''Tloque Nahuaque''Giver of life' which means the totality and the source of all things that exists and the father/mother of their gods: Tlaloc, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoalt."

Kukulkan effigy at the base of one of the Chichen Itza pyramids
in the Yucatan. I see parallels with the Morton Hill serpent effigy.

   Kukulkan represents the shamanic ability to transcend to higher consciousness and develop ourselves in the Fifth Dimension, to communicate with ancestors and spiritual beings as mentioned by the late Mayan elder Carlos Barrios. Mayan traditions speak of portals called "serpent ropes" lowering from the celestial and mythic North (not to be confused with the geographic north), conducting down to spiritual centers within the body. Their cosmology relates the "ropes" to magnetic storms that disrupt the poles and spark changes in Earth's energy fields. One of their most sacred practices was the Vision Serpent, who "served as a gateway to the spirit realm" and induced visions to communicate with Ancestors and Deities who symbolically emerged from the serpent's mouth. He "created the center axis which communicates between the spiritual and the earthly worlds or planes."(13) 

   He represents the same type of spiritual energy as Wodan, the shamanic ability to travel across all worlds and communicate with the higher awareness; his Initiation upon the World Tree awakened primal and ancestral Mysteries (Runes). Among Q'eqchi' Mayans, a shaman's initiation involved the serpent Ochan, who induced a vision quest possibly similar to the Morton Hill serpent effigy. Pueblo tribes of the American Southwest preserve traditions of a Plumed Serpent. As noted by the late Zuni elder and wisdom teacher Clifford Mahooty, this serpent is a divine spirit of knowledge named Kokopelli (koko meaning "the good"). As with my own European ancestors before our conversion/conquest, Divinities among the Southwest tribes are related to Energy, Light, Consciousness, and Spirit within an all-pervading animistic worldview. These were collectively called Kachinas (pronounced Kaht-see-nah), appearing after the tribes' emergence into the present Fourth World to teach balance with Mother Earth. 

   These and other higher "star people" beings of other Native American lore parallel what our Germanic tribes knew as Alfar (Elves), the "Shining Ones" who are ascended Ancestors of higher spiritual energy and not the creatures they were turned into by Christianization. In any case, Southwest American origin stories refer to a flood (much like the Deluge existing in traditions worldwide long predating the Abrahamic story of Noah/Nuh), after which Kokopelli appeared to teach the tribes. One of their sacred sites is the San Ildefonso Pueblo, where a mysterious serpent image appears on the mountainside whenever it rains but never visible when dry. Mahooty mentioned how every Southwest tribe have their designated place for the Plumed Serpent. The seven Zuni Medicine Societies care for snakes because "they're the ones that go and pollinate the herbs" when they crawl across the ground - another parallel to the corn allegory cited earlier. 

Zuni petroglyphs of the serpentine Kokopelli, with other
symbols common to megalithic structures worldwide.

The path between the Yucatan and Southeast United States is
too short for there not to have been trade and cultural links. 

Path of the Feathered Serpent to Alabama?

   In one of his channeled messages, the American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce proposed how "at the beginning of the Mound Builder Period [3000 BCE and later], people from the Yucatan, from Peru, including the Inca, and from the Norse land, settled in the eastern portion of Alabama and Florida," people he identified as "the lords of the land" who "gave instructions to the other peoples regarding moral and religious tenets and in regards to 'penal codes.'"(14) Morton Hill and other local sites of East Alabama would have clearly been within their path, leaving another tantalizing theory about these sites. Cayce faithfully conveyed messages even whenever they challenged both his own Christian upbringing and conventional knowledge of the time (as well as modern dogmas). Oral traditions worldwide refer to Wisdom Bringers who carried knowledge such as building and aligning the megaliths. This does not make local sites any less indigenous to the Abehka or Creek but conveys another layer to the cultural diffusion expressed throughout their traditions, much as Serpentine symbolism itself can be understood through multiple layers of meaning. 

   Similar to Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan in Mesoamerica and Kokopelli in the Southwest, the indigenous tribes of the Andes (many of whom predated the Incans) referred to the Plumed Serpent named Viracocha. At the "Snake Temple" of Santiago de Ojje near Lake Titicaca, an anaconda is portrayed emerging out of a stone in ways remarkably similar to those aligned to the entrance of Karahan Tepe half-way across the world in Anatolia. Both have been described as initiation sites much like our later local sites. Serpents were long regarded as protectors of sacred precincts. Andean traditions ascribe the megaliths to Viracocha, who is viewed in ways similar to other Plumed Serpents. Serpent symbolisms abound on megaliths as far afield as Xochicalco, Cholula, Avebury, Ggantija, Saqqara, and Cusco. The stone walls I saw scattered (yet aligned perfectly) across Morton Hill remind me of the "Viracocha walls" the Australian archaeologist Charles Kos described as extending across the United States, from California to New England - so why not such a crossroads as the Southeast? 

   Mayan traces are present throughout Etowah and the Chickasaw site of Moundville, showing a cultural diffusion that could include our local sites of East Alabama. Recounting his meeting at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia with the Mayan archaeologist Dr. Román Piña Chán, Richard Thornton writes: "He immediately asked me why the Indians at Etowah made marble statues of Maya slaves? He then pulled out his landmark book, La Cultura Madre, and showed me that the earthen “pyramids” of the Olmec Civilization were identical the earthen mounds of the Southeastern United States. He then pulled out his landmark book, Chichen Itza . . . the City of the Wise Men of the Water, and showed me how the art on the shell gorgets and copper plates of Etowah Mounds had the same human figures as found on the bas relief stone carvings at Chichen Itza. He then pulled out his landmark book, Los Toltecas, and showed me that several types of art and artifacts, excavated at Tula, the capital of the Toltecs, were identical to art and artifacts, excavated at Moundville, Alabama." 

The Serpent As Kundalini: Grounding into the Earth

   As archetypal spirit of initiation, the Feathered Serpent correlates to what the Vedic tradition calls Kundalini. This dormant energy at the base of the spine (muladhara) awakens as a serpent, channeling energy upward to the head crown (sahasrara), activating the pineal gland and ascending into higher awareness. "Kundalini, the serpent power or mystic fire, is the primordial energy or Shakti that lies dormant or sleeping in the Muladhara Chakra, the centre of the body. It is called the serpentine or annular power on account of serpentine form. It is an electric fiery occult power, the great pristine force which underlies all organic and inorganic matter."(15) Kundalini comes from the Sanskrit words kundal "coil, spiral" and lini "that which is coiled". Spirals and coils are a natural fractal occurring throughout DNA, the frequencies of light and sounds, encoded within mythologies and inscribed on megaliths, and extend outward on the macro level to patterns of galaxies.

   Kundalini is not life-force energy as often mistaken (although one can be used to supplement the other), but specific psychological and sexual energies attached to the spine. Its not escape from the physical body into "higher" dimensions as it is the ego and identity maturing as it arises through various stations called chakras. These are not energy cauldrons but points along the spinal column projecting emotional realities so one can achieve greater awareness of our potential. It's our higher awareness of the most primal realities of ourselves and how we can understand experiences that go beyond what we perceive as "normal". Each chakra has its own higher and lower resonances, just as Kundalini itself is neutral - solely positive or negative depending on the charge. Kundalini is also called serpentine because it's associated with the Nagas in Vedic traditions, supernatural beings who were higher wisdom teachers (similar to Kachinas and Feathered Serpent symbolism).(16)

   Our individual Kundalini is "the microcosmic aspect of Mahakunda, the serpentine power (vital-electromagnetic field) of the Earth."(17) Mahakunda reflects and grounds kundalini to Earth's telluric powers, the ultimate Source of our powers and energies as expressed in my Animism series. This natural vibration is the reason why Ma exists in words such as matter, mother, and matrix - and also the last element of the primal sound "Aum" that does not need use of the tongue, which helps us to form those primal sounds into various combinations. Its relation to the primal is also reflected in many Indo-European words for "mind" (not the intellect but our higher consciousness) and "man" (human being). Ha is a common expression of surprise or laughter, thus stepping outside our normal perception. One Vedic source even ascribes the root of Kundalini to kunda "deeper place", viewed as a "cavity" within the Earth that served an initiatory purpose.(18) 

   This is the primal understanding why the Earth Mother was linked in various traditions to Goddesses of the Underworld, a realm of initiation where the soul reflected upon its past life and planned its next incarnation. Citing just one example, Frau Holle relates to the words for "cave" (höhle) and "hole"; one figure involved in the initiatory Wild Hunt was Herda, so with letters shifting with time Herda became known as Erda, Mutter Erde. If we apply the Law of Correspondence, Earth's kunda parallels the Brahma-randhra ("cave of Brahma"), a "hole" in the sahasrara through which the soul escapes at death. For this reason, the Celts understood the head as place of the soul and Greek philosophers often spoke of the "seat of the soul" as connected to this same mind center. So too does the brain contain its own "cavity" that resembles a slumbering, coiled serpent. 

   Kundalini is the ini "small" power of the Earth's Kundala, another layer of meaning within the term itself. Kundalini grounds within Kundala while awakening one's higher perceptions. Its neither an escape from the body or deification of the person, but activates what Tantra calls siddhis, or "supernatural" powers to be found within the physical body. The spirals of DNA are a microcosm of the spirals and coils of Kundala. Mother Earth is "the supreme ambient force that holds DNA configured in its spiralling chains of nucleic acid."(19) Long before modern science "discovered" DNA, ancient initiates knew that "precisely in the human body is to be found the best visible trace of the divine in the material world."(20) Awareness of our divine power within the conscious planetary body was the same whether Magna Mater of the Mediterranean Mysteries or Shakti in India: "The Natural, which is the manifestation of the Mother of Nature, and the Spiritual, or the Mother as She is in and by Herself, are one. But the initiate alone truly recognizes this unity."(21)

   Energy naturally emanates from the Earth, moving in random directions and curves but most often "serpentine" forms of spirals and coils. These energy lines connect various sacred sites, from ancient mounds and stone circles to modern religious (including certain "secular" political) sites built upon previous sacred sites - built over these not only as symbolic of their conquest but to harness and channel those sites' energies. The Greeks referred to the serpent Python guarding the omphalos or Earth's navel, represented by an oracle stone at Delphi. This "son" of the Earth Mother Gaia was "born" from slime left over from the Deluge, allegorical of the energies of land regenerating and renewing itself. Apollo had to "slew" Python before the Temple of Delphi could be built, an allegory for harnessing Earth's energies for ritual purpose in living balance with Gaia. As a healer god, one of Apollo's epithets was "averter of evil" and he was patron of Delphi, a role he took over from the serpent guardian Python - unbalanced aspects of his psyche reflecting back at himself in an archetypal Hero's Journey.

A 1905 illustration of Donar and the World Serpent,
by the German artist Emil Doepler (1855-1922)

Serpent Runestone at Yttergärde, Sweden

Deeper Meanings of Ouroboros and the World Serpent

   The Moundville rattlesnake disc is part of common Neolithic symbol: "Compositions on the shoulders of cult vases reveal pairs of snakes with opposed heads, making the world roll with the energy of their spiraling bodies."(22) The serpent Ouroboros biting its own tail is an expression for the continuity of life. Just as we create psychosis for ourselves if our kundalini is not properly channeled, so too we create an unconscious feedback loop for ourselves where we repeat the same traumas, neuroses, and going beyond the balances of Natural Law. Ouroboros also represents the liminal boundaries that depend on our choices which path we choose - one choice will have an effect in a continuity of outcomes, the principle of causality and karma (properly understood as the Natural Law of consequences). 

   A serpent wrapped around a mountain occurs in the Puranas, in the samudra manthana  "churning of the ocean" that created the elixir of immortality. This story expresses the animist awareness that mountains have their own consciousness, including "serpentine" energies, which is why serpent effigy mounds were constructed worldwide upon mountaintops and hills such as I found locally; and that all life itself is cyclical, so that the eternal soul "tastes" this immortality. Within the cosmology of Jainism, one of the lesser-known Dharmic traditions, the middle-world (madhyaloka) is encircled by the ocean Kundalasamudra, which contains many concentric continents (dvipas) including one called Kundaladvipa. All these traditions express the Maha Kundala that empowers and encircles our world.

   Out of this same innate animism, Germanic traditions speak of the World Serpent whose name in the lore contains many clues: Old Norse Jörmun "great, exalted, huge", the same meanings as Old Saxon Irmin and Proto-Germanic *Ermunaz + Gandr which means both "monster, beast" and "staff, magic, wand" (Proto-Germanic *gandaz or *wandaz). So the Serpent is imbued with the great power emanating from Earth. He was born of the giantess Angrboda, giants being allegories of unknown chaotic forces (jotun "devourer") so that the serpent's presence around Middle Earth forms a protective enclosure between this world, jotunheim, and other dimensions. Jormungandr could personify the equator "belt" that wraps around the world, or the atmosphere and gravity holding that force, just as Mother Earth maintains our space within the universe. The World Serpent's containment within the sea correlates to the subconscious, which comes out jormun in our lives if left unbalanced. 

   The fate of Jormungandr is intertwined with the Thunderer God Donar, who was "born" of the Earth and Wodan, who personifies higher awareness of and initiation to the Mysteries (both within and without), the spirit and transcendence to the Infinite. (As my roots are Vlaam and Schwäbisch, I personally use our continental names for the Deities and not the more well-known Norse). Not only the physical thunder, Donar represents the electro-magnetic field and life-force energy that holds everything in place even while pushing the boundaries of growth. Expansion must be contained within some boundaries lest the chaos consumes. Similarly, Algonquin traditions speak of Wetiko using the allegory of "cannibal" much like the serpent eating its own tail. Donar holds back the chaotic forces (jotnar), but never destroy them fully due to this necessity for unmanifested potential. He is the power of Mind (not the same as intellect) that reflects and processes the Soul. 

   Donar will defeat the Serpent but "die" afterwards since the subconscious always exists as a mirror no matter how much one makes Conscious. Nor does He end the eternal cycles even the Gods and Goddesses are subjected to (not to be misconceived as "limitation", as indeed Donar continuously expands the potential of growth). Indeed, Donar is the life-force energy of expansion who battles the World Serpent who represents the forces of limitation in the Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), not an eschatological event but archetypal process of Nature and the Psyche that always was and is, so the event is as much past and present. What "dies" is the old self being shed while growing into the more expansive, empowered self. Within our animist understanding, Donar is a Deific power-force and an Archetype for growth of our own psyche, as represented by "fighting" the serpent/dragon: 

   "In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the 'treasure hard to attain.' He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means."(23)

"The Sanctum of the Winged Serpent" image from
an Orphic ceremonial bowl, 200-300 CE. Sixteen
initiates - equal number of male and female - circling
around a serpent, with their feet grounded to the Earth.

Gnosis and Serpentine Energies of the Aeons

   Readers will now be aware that upon my ethnic-rooted Paganism I've been infusing esoteric wisdom of a specific school of Gnosis rooted in its true Pagan foundations (I reject all other Gnostic schools as world-denying misdirection back into Abrahamism). Gnosis is not a religion but the esoteric undercurrent of all tribal/folk faiths(24), presenting in the most coherent mythos the primal narrative of a Goddess morphing into the living, conscious Earth. Her name in Gnostic cosmology is Sophia ("Wisdom"), expressing the wisdom and mystery imbued through Nature. She is one of a group of Deities called Aeons, "a cosmically pervasive process, aware, animated and animating. Aeons manifest sensory worlds by dreaming, rather than by the artisan like act of creation attributed to the biblical father god."(25) 

   The Aeons are conceived in similar ways as other Polytheistic classes of Deities (such as the Ansuz/Aesir, Asuras, etc.). The visionary teacher John Lamb Lash has defined the Aeons as neither anthropomorphic nor angelic, but as great torrents of serpentine luminosity, currents of Divine energies and frequencies that are sentient and conscious in their own right. He noted how scientists detected a "plume" of energy emanating from the Galactic Center, considered in to be realm of the Aeons, called the Pleroma in Gnostic cosmology. Could this be the source of Plumed Serpent symbology so widespread in the ancient Americas? Especially since their own descriptions of the Plumed Serpent are Divine energies from the Skies and emanation from within Earth - just as Mother Earth remains an Aeon while embodied in the Natural world. Her powers both radiate from the Pleroma and are grounded in Nature, so are accessible and transcendent to anyone seeking to discover themselves. 

   Kundalini involves what Gnosis describes as the Organic Light, an electrical surge of energy channeling up the spine. Its connected to the Pleroma while grounded on Earth and expressed through the body (the dichotomy between spirit and matter being a false one that has resulted in imbalance and mind-control plaguing our world). This expresses itself in various ways (as I cited in several articles here throughout 2022) - the conflating of power with authority; mental separation of Divinity from the Natural world; and inversion of the Gender principle, with Feminine and Masculine properly being about the respective energies, behavior, and instincts creating a complementary Balance. The latter is spiraled into the Gnostic theme of the "gender rift" that arose after Sophia fell and emerged the Anthropos (human beings), discussed in the Nag Hammadi text called "The Hypostasis of the Archons" or "The Reality of the Rulers".

   In his commentary on this text, John Lamb Lash mentioned how beings known as Archons, most known for their delusion in falsely claiming to be "creators" of the world and humanity, attempted to make woman inferior to man but failed as she becomes "the instructor" and then assumed a "serpentine" form (with an Aramaic pun between "snake" and "instructor"): "The 'female instructing principle' is Kundalini, the Serpent Power. This power is an internal faculty of blissful innate knowing, or cognitive ecstasy. The rulers acted from jealousy when they forbade access to the tree of knowledge, precisely because the fruit of the tree releases the Serpent Power. The myth (90.10) suggests that originally this power belonged to snakes, or was carried by reptiles, but was taken from them and transferred to humanity." 

   Expressing the awareness that the gender principle is both a biological vessel and a spiritual energy, the text describes the biologically-bound "'carnal woman,' contrasted to the spiritual or 'pneumatic' woman who is instructor, the 'Eve' in this Gnostic Myth. The Archons 'cursed the woman' (91.30), including the snake - not realizing their own drakontic or 'reptilian' form: The 'curse upon the snake' is their response to the serpent instructor, Kundalini, by which humans can resist and repel alien intrusion, and heal the traumas caused by Archontic aggression. Kundalini is snake medicine." Much can be said about the "aliens/reptilians" here (with so much disinformation out there), but the reference is simply to ultraterrestrial beings described under various names by every ancient tribal culture. 

   This natural serpent power has been disconnected in common parlance (scams synonymous with "snake oil", etc.) but most insidious is the Abrahamic myth of Eden that has contributed to the imbalance. This includes the disenchantment of Earth with Her Kundala, woven into their theme of humanity "falling" from this far-off "paradise" that is none other than the realm of the Archons and their chief, the Demiurge (who later became the "god" of the Abrahamic scriptures). "Upon leaving the [biologically bound] woman, the Spiritual Woman enters the serpent and instructs the man and woman to eat from the tree of recognizing good and evil, against the Rulers' command. This act of spiritual instruction is simultaneously an act of insubordination. Upon questioning Adam, the Rulers learn from him that woman gave to him from the tree and they curse her."(26) Much can be said about this passage. 

   First, the "creation" myth involving "Adam and Eve" is an inversion of the worldwide Myth of emanation or emergence of human beings from the panspermia of the cosmos and elements from Earth. This is the esoteric wisdom contained in all Indigenous myths; and the awareness there is an Earth Mother and Sky Father whose own "sacred marriage" nurtures our species. All the Deities of various pantheons express and manifest Feminine and Masculine energies. The Fourth-century "heresy-hunter" Epiphanius referred to the Orphite "snake-worshipper" initiates, who "venerate the Serpent because God has made it the cause of Gnosis for mankind. Ialdabaoth [Gnostic name for the false creator god Jehovah] did not wish humankind to have any recollection of the Generators (Aeons), the Cosmic Mothers and Cosmic Fathers on high. It was the serpent who, by tempting them, brought Gnosis to our parents; who taught the first people of our kind the complete knowledge of the Mysteries from on high."(27)

   Second, this explains the earliest origin of the strange pathology against trees that reared its ugly head, from the Hebrew tribal god jealously commanding his zealots to destroy the trees of Asherah (while ordering idols to be consecrated to him); to cutting down the sacred trees and groves of indigenous Europe (such as Donar's Oak and Irminsul, the latter linked to jormun, or those of the Celtic Druids), inspired by the biblical command against "the heathens/ethnos" (Jeremiah 10:2-4); to mass unbalanced deforestation under corporatism and communism (two ideological offshoots of salvationism). Finally, is the inversion of this Serpent from a sentient "instructor" for human growth (seen as a spirit guide) into a malevolent force that "tempted" human beings away from submission and compliance to the Demiurge. Thus was constructed his Shadow called "satan/shaitan" to serve as a convenient scapegoat, inverting the Greek mythology about Lucifer as I've documented elsewhere.(28) The vibrant Maha Kundala of this sentient, conscious Earth is likewise demonized.

"The Sacred Grove of the Druids" painting from the
Opera Norma, by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)

Conclusion

   I increasingly find peace and solace in places such as this mound and the surrounding forests but also feel their spirit and energy, to be experienced rather than conceptualized. At the same time I present here an comprehensive study of this mysterious worldwide symbolism of the Serpent - its esoteric meanings and implications, grounded as it is in the Animism that was and is innate. The Ancients knew of natural technology (modern technologies are often a simulation of processes already in Nature) within the Earth, charging the initiates who went to mountaintops or to sit upon or around mounds. 

   These are liminal places between Earth and Sky, represented often by a serpent awakening into its higher incarnation as a Feathered Serpent to fly towards the Sun ("Soul"), much like Kundalini arising up through our bodies. I felt the melancholy of these mounds on Morton Hill. I maintained a healthy respect for them since these specifically are not part of my heritage, yet still sensed their energy such as exists throughout the land but also left by the past generations who constructed them and "charged" them in rituals. So it is that I meditate upon the mounds and present this study of the Serpent.

Footnotes and Sources:

(1) Harry Holstein, "A Preliminary archaeological investigation of the Morton Hill Stone Structure Complex, 1CA671, Calhoun County, Alabama," Jacksonville State University, Archaeological Resource Library, Research Series #5, March 2010, p. 1. 

(2) Gregory L. Little, Native American Mounds in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide to Public Sites, Memphis: Archetype Books, 2017, p. 31.

(3) Self-discoveries I expressed in articles about mounds in Swabia, their connection to the Goddess Holle, and the importance of mounds within Celtic and Iberian folk-traditions. The linguistic, folkloric, mythological, academic, and experiential evidence demonstrates the connection of mounds and stone circles to ancestors, reincarnation, and celestial events.

(4) Little, op. cit., p. 32.

(5) This was also common across the Atlantic, with processions carrying stones to European mounds in remembrance of ancestors. As noted by Portuguese archaeologist and researcher Arith Härger, in ancient Iberian processions people would remove a stone from mountaintop grave mounds, journey back to where their procession began, and then return to the mound in a symbolic journey to the Underworld and back into reincarnation. They also commemorated ancestors with stylized stones honoring a Solar Mother Goddess.  

(6) George Stiggins, Creek Indian History: A Historical Narrative of the Genealogy, Traditions and Downfall of the Ispocoga Or Creek Indian Tribe of Indians by One of the Tribe, Birmingham: Birmingham Public Library Press, 1989, pp. 139, 141.

(7) Louis Le Clerc Milfort, Mémoires, ou coup-d'oeil rapide sur mes voyages en Louisiane, et mon séjour dans la nation Creeke, trans. and ed. Ben C. McCary, Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1972, p. 236; John R. Swanton, Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no. 73, 1922, p. 192; and Albert James Pickett, History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period, Birmingham: Webb Book Co., 1900, p. 78.

(8) A parallel shared with Celtic traditions, with Finisterre in Iberia and the "Western Sea" in Gaelic lore as western liminal places between land and the Otherworld. Mounds and bodies of water were generally viewed as portals into the Otherworld.

(9) Gregory Little, Path of Souls: The Native American Death Journey, Memphis: Archetype Books, 2014.

(10) In native European spirituality, the Moon "mind" reflects the light of the Sun "soul". It was understood our soul is so transcendent we work with it through our mind which reflects it. Much evil has resulted from the confusion of mind with intellect, and assumptions that every thought comes from us rather than implanted from elsewhere or conditioned by others. Although spiritual beings in their own right given our Animistic worldview, the "dwarves" and "elves" were also understood as allegories of different parts of our psyche. These were not the later caricatures they were made into which distorted the actual ways our Ancestors viewed our traditions.

(11) This is only a contradiction to those still holding on to Abrahamic dualistic baggage they seek to transpose upon Paganism. Our Ancestors knew that something could be an Archetype with multiple layers of meaning and be a "literal" Being at the same time. All tribal and folk faiths are Animistic - they knew that all things have Spirit and Consciousness. This obviously includes those spiritual energies and realities that can also be related to as Archetypes.

(12) Sergio Magaña, Caves of Power: Ancient Energy Techniques for Healing, Rejuvenation and Manifestation, Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2016, pp. 24, 186-187.

(13) Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, New York: William Morrow, 1990, pp. 68, 395.

(14) Gregory L. Little, John Van Auken, and Lora Little, Ancient South America: Recent Evidence Supporting Edgar Cayce's Story of Atlantis and Mu, Memphis: Eagle Wing Books, 2002, p. 96, citing Edgar Cayce Reading 1298-1.

(15) Swami Sivananda, Kundalini Yoga, Tehri-Garhwal, Uttar Pradesh: Divine Life Society, 1994, p. 34.

(16) This description of Kundalini I summarize from the work of Michael William Denney (ThunderWizard), whose teachings I recommend especially on Energy Work and reclaiming an indigenous Germanic shaman tradition.

(17) John Lamb Lash, Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, p. 396.

(18) Swami Satyananta Saraswati, Kundalini Tantra, Yoga Publications Trust, 2002.

(19) For the observations and quotes in this paragraph, I am indebted to an article by John Lamb Lash, "Kundalini and the Alien Force: Gnostic and Tantric Practices of Sacred Sexuality," Metahistory.org.

(20) Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 117.

(21) John Woodroffe, Shiva and Shakti, 1918, p. 88.

(22) Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 7000 to 3500 BC: Myths, Legends and Cult Images, London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.

(23) Carl Jung, Collected Works Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis, New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963.

(24) Although using the names and archetypes of Khemet and Hellas, Gnosticism was first born of the esoteric class of northern Iranian tribes called Magians - thus founded within the common Indo-European mythology. After the rise of Zoroastrian duality (a degeneration of Iranian faith later inspiring Abrahamism), Gnosis took root in the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, and Greek world, but the geographical network of Telestai ("those who are aimed") - called Gnostics by their detractors - also included the native seers, priests, and magicians of ancient Europe. The central aim is Gnosis, the eternal and universal command to "Know Thyself". 

(25) Not In His Image, p. 387.

(26) Anne McGuire, "Virginity and Subversion: Norea Against the Powers in The Hypostasis of the Archons," in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, ed. Karen L. King, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988, pp. 239-258.

(27) Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1986.

(28) Sean Jobst, "Illuminating the Lightbringer: Rudolf Steiner and the True Nature of Lucifer," in Emissary of the Soul: The Mystical Life & Thought of Rudolf Steiner, ed. Troy Southgate, Black Front Press, 2022, pp. 54-80.