The Hebrew word for the serpent in the Garden of Eden is Nahash, which can be translated as blind impulsive urges, such as our instinctive drives. General: Many different things, but usually the life process. If we think of a person’s life from conception to death, we see a flowing moving event, similar in many ways to the speeded up films of a seed growing into a plant, flowering and dying. The snake depicts the force or energy behind that movement and purposiveness – the force of life which leads us both to growth and death. That energy – like electricity in a house, which can be heat, power, sound and vision – lies behind all our functions. So in some dreams the snake expresses our sexuality; in others the rising of that energy up our body to express as digestion – the intestinal snake; as the healing or poisonous energy of our emotions and thoughts.
