Snake symbolism runs on opposites. The serpent is the tempter in Eden and the healer on the staff of Asclepius, a poison and a cure, a death and a rebirth, and most of those meanings trace back to a few sources: the Bible, Greek myth, the ouroboros that swallows its own tail, and the plain fact that a snake sheds its skin and carries on.
The snake ring in an alternative jewellery box has a longer pedigree than most people guess. After the Earl of Waldegrave died in 1846, a gold ring enamelled black in the form of a snake was made in his memory. Strawberry Hill, the house he had inherited, inspired the first Gothic novel. This guide takes the serpent tradition by tradition, names the text or museum object behind every meaning, and ends with the three snake pieces we stock today.
Key Takeaways
- The snake carries opposite meanings inside the same tradition: in the Bible it tempts Eve in Genesis and heals the bitten Israelites in Numbers.
- Its link to rebirth is at least as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, where a snake steals the plant that makes the old young and sloughs its skin as it leaves.
- The ouroboros, a snake swallowing its tail, means eternity. One of the earliest known examples is in Tutankhamun's tomb, and the Norse serpent Jörmungandr bites its own tail around the world.
- One snake on a plain staff (Asclepius) means medicine. Two snakes on a winged wand (the caduceus) belong to Hermes, god of messengers and merchants.
- Before it was a goth ring, the snake ring was Georgian and Victorian love and mourning jewellery, where the coiled snake meant a love or a grief without end. We stock three snake pieces, each $19.99.
What does a snake symbolize?
A snake symbolises renewal, healing, eternity, wisdom and protection, and also temptation, danger and death. No single meaning is the true one. The same animal is cursed in the first book of the Bible and raised on a pole as a cure in the fourth.
The animal explains it. A snake kills with a bite, yet it lives through what looks like a death, leaving its old skin behind in one piece. The New Catholic Encyclopedia notes the serpent's "affinity to fertility by shedding its skin, thus taking on new life". Anything that both kills and renews ends up meaning both.
| Tradition | The snake | What it stands for | Where it is recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew Bible | The serpent in Eden; the bronze serpent | Temptation and the curse; healing | Genesis 3; Numbers 21 |
| Mesopotamia | The snake that steals the plant | Youth regained | Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI |
| Ancient Egypt | The uraeus; the ouroboros | Royal and divine power; eternity | Metal statue fitting; Tutankhamun's tomb |
| Greece | The staff of Asclepius; Medusa's hair | Healing; terror and punishment | Apollodorus; Hesiod; Ovid |
| Norse | Jörmungandr | The rim of the world, and its end | Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda |
| Hinduism and Buddhism | Ananta; nagas; kundalini | Cosmic rest, protection, inner power | Painting and sculpture; tantric texts |
| Georgian and Victorian Britain | Snake rings and necklaces | Eternal love, and mourning | The V&A's jewellery collection |
Why is the snake a symbol of rebirth?
The snake stands for rebirth because it sheds its skin and survives, and people have been writing that down for a very long time. The clearest early case is the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamian poem about a king who goes looking for a way not to die.
Near the end, Gilgamesh finds a plant that restores youth and calls it the "plant of the heart-beat". On the way home he stops to bathe, and in Tablet XI, lines 305 to 307: "A snake smelled the fragrance of the plant, [silently] it came up and bore the plant off; as it turned away it sloughed a skin." The hero goes home without it. The snake gets the renewal he crossed the world for.
European jewellers used the same idea. The V&A, describing a gold snake ring in its collection, says snakes "symbolised regeneration, healing and rebirth and therefore were used as a symbol of eternity". That is the meaning we would reach for in a snake at the throat: the old skin left behind.
What does the serpent mean in the Bible?
In the Bible the serpent is first the tempter and then a sign of healing. In Genesis it persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and God's curse fixes the shape of every snake since: "upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life" (Genesis 3:14, King James Version).
The book of Numbers turns it round. When fiery serpents bite the Israelites in the wilderness, God tells Moses to set one on a pole, and "Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole": anyone who had been bitten and looked at it lived (Numbers 21:9). Centuries later King Hezekiah broke that bronze serpent in pieces, because people had been burning incense to it, and "he called it Nehushtan" (2 Kings 18:4).
Christianity kept both readings. Revelation names "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (Revelation 12:9), and the New Catholic Encyclopedia notes that later Jewish theology and the New Testament make "the identification of the serpent with the devil or satan". John's Gospel, meanwhile, uses Moses' bronze serpent as a picture of the crucifixion (John 3:14). A snake in Christian imagery can be either, and the setting tells you which: the tree in Eden, or the pole in the desert.
What does the ouroboros mean?
The ouroboros is a snake swallowing its own tail, and it means eternity: a circle with no beginning and no end, where every ending feeds the next start. The name is Greek for "tail-eater", from oura, tail, and boros, eating.
The image is far older than the word. The Egyptologist Erik Hornung, in The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 1999), places one of the earliest known examples in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, a funerary text in the tomb of Tutankhamun, from the fourteenth century BCE. Its later life in Greek alchemy and in occult symbolism is set out in our guide to occult clothing symbols, so it is not repeated here.
By the nineteenth century the ouroboros had become a love token. The V&A's serpent necklace, probably made in England around 1835 to 1840 and pavé-set with turquoises, carries the motif, and the museum notes that the snake swallowing its tail "symbolised eternity and can be found as a token of love and in mourning jewellery".
Jörmungandr, the Norse serpent that bites its tail
Norse myth has its own ouroboros, and it holds the world together. In the Prose Edda, compiled in Iceland by Snorri Sturluson (1178 to 1241), Jörmungandr (Jormungand in Anderson's translation), the Midgard serpent, is one of three children Loki fathers with the giantess Angerboda. Odin throws it into the deep sea that surrounds all lands, where it grows until it "surrounds all the earth, and bites his own tail" (Rasmus B. Anderson's translation).
Thor hooks it once on a fishing trip, with an ox head for bait, and loses it when the terrified giant Hymer cuts the line. They meet for the last time at Ragnarök. Thor kills the serpent, then "retreats only nine paces when he falls to the earth dead, poisoned by the venom that the serpent blows on him." The circle that rings the world is also the thing that ends it.
Rod of Asclepius or caduceus: which one means medicine?
The Rod of Asclepius, a single snake around a plain staff, is the symbol of medicine. The caduceus, two snakes winding up a winged wand, is the staff of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and it came into medical use by mistake.
Asclepius was the Greek god of healing, and his myth puts the poison and the cure in one body. Apollodorus writes that he received from Athena the blood of the Gorgon, and "while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation", even raising the dead (Library 3.10.3, Frazer's translation).
The caduceus is a different object with a different job. The Canadian Museum of Health Care describes it as "two snakes intertwined around a staff beneath unfolded wings", the sign of Hermes, Mercury to the Romans, "the protector of merchants, commerce, and thieves". The US Army Medical Corps adopted it early in the twentieth century, a choice the museum calls a mistake rooted in the two staffs looking alike. Robert Wilcox and Emma Whitham argued the same in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2003: "The Symbol of Modern Medicine: Why One Snake Is More Than Two".
Most snake pendants are neither. The Snake Dagger Pendant Choker we stock coils a hooded cobra around a dagger: a blade, not a staff, so it reads as danger rather than healing. If you want the medical sign, count the snakes and look for wings.
Why does Medusa have snakes for hair?
In Ovid's version, Medusa's snakes were a punishment. Ovid's Metamorphoses says she was a celebrated beauty, admired above all for her hair, until "the sovereign of the sea is said to have deflowered her in the Temple of Minerva". The goddess turned away, and "she changed the hair of the Gorgon into hideous snakes" (Book IV, in H. T. Riley's translation).
Older Greek poetry simply makes her a monster. Hesiod's Theogony counts her among three Gorgon sisters and says "she was mortal, but the other two immortal".
Ovid's version is the hard one to read, because it punishes the woman for the god's act. That is the Medusa we would wear: not the monster, but the woman the story wronged. We do not stock a Medusa piece at the moment.
What does the snake mean in Egypt, Hinduism and Buddhism?
In Egypt and in Hindu and Buddhist art, the snake is often a guardian rather than a tempter. The Egyptian uraeus, a rearing cobra, was, in the Cleveland Museum of Art's description of a metal example likely made to fit the head of a large statue, "symbolizing royal or divine power".
Ananta and the nagas
In Hindu art the god Vishnu rests on an endless serpent. The Cleveland Museum's label for a painting made in Chamba around 1700 tells the story: before creation, Vishnu "was asleep on the serpent Ananta, floating on the cosmic ocean", until Lakshmi woke him, a lotus grew from his navel and Vishnu gave birth to Brahma.
In Buddhist Cambodia the serpent holds up the Buddha. A twelfth-century naga-enthroned Buddha in the same museum is seated on a naga, a serpent being. The museum explains that King Jayavarman VII linked himself with that image, and that later Buddhists read it as the moment "a serpent protected him from a flood".
Kundalini
In tantric and hatha yoga, kundalini is a power "imagined in the form of a coiled serpent who sleeps at the base of the spine", in the lowest energy centre of the body, the mūlādhāra chakra. Hugh B. Urban, writing in the Encyclopedia of Religion, traces the word to kuṇḍala, "coil", and the earliest reference to a coiled inner energy to the eighth-century Tantrasadbhāva Tantra.
These are living religions, not old myths. Vishnu on Ananta and the naga-protected Buddha are still images of worship, and kundalini is taught within practising lineages. Wear a snake for what it means to you, and leave these particular images to the people whose faith they belong to. We stock no naga, Vishnu or kundalini piece, and the snakes below borrow from none of them.
Why do goths wear snake jewellery?
The snake ring was a romance and mourning piece long before punk took it up. Georgian and Victorian jewellers made snakes in gold and enamel as tokens of a love or a grief that would not end, and the V&A says the serpent motif "was most fashionable in the 1840s".
Queen Victoria wore it. The same V&A record notes that she "wore a serpent bracelet to her first council meeting in 1837 and was given a serpent and emerald engagement ring by Prince Albert". Men wore snakes too: the V&A notes that George IV was painted wearing a snake ring in a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
The ring that best explains the goth snake sits in the V&A's mourning jewellery. It is gold, enamelled black in the form of a snake, with diamond sparks for eyes and a locket of plaited hair underneath, inscribed for George Edward, Earl of Waldegrave, who died on 28 September 1846 aged 30. He had inherited Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole's Gothic house, which inspired the world's first Gothic novel in 1764. The museum's note is plain: "Snakes were used both in romantic and funerary jewellery, as the circle of the snake symbolised eternity."
So a black snake ring has a mourning ring behind it. It says what the Waldegrave ring said: something here does not end. If that line is the part that draws you, our Victorian mourning dress guide dresses the rest of the look in the colours a widow wore through each stage of grief.
Which snake jewellery do we stock?
We stock three snake pieces at the moment, all jewellery and each $19.99. That is a small shelf, and we would rather say so than pad it with garments whose only snake is the word "serpent" in the name of a colour.
- Punk Serpent Black Ring Set: five black zinc alloy rings, one a scaled snake that winds diagonally across the finger, the others a wide band, a spiral, a double band and a crossed ring. It is sold as one set with no size choice. The product photo marks the rings at sizes from 4 (the crossed ring) to 8.25 (the snake), so check them against a ring you already own.
- Snake Ring Set (4 pieces): four silver-coloured rings, one a broad snake head with engraved scales, one a snake that runs down the finger, and two scaled bands. It is sold as one set, with no sizes listed.
- Snake Dagger Pendant Choker: a silver-coloured cobra coiled around a dagger, hung from a riveted black band that closes with a lobster clasp and an extender chain. The listing gives no length.
The black set is the mourning ring's closest relative here. Wear its snake alone on the index or middle finger of one hand, with the plainer bands spread across the other, so the coil is the first thing anyone sees. The silver set stacks well beside other scaled or engraved silver. The choker sits at the collarbone, so give it an open neckline or a plain high neck in black, where nothing else competes with the blade.
For more rings in the same register, browse our gothic rings and gothic necklaces. If you are building a set of signs rather than one, our witchy jewellery guide pairs pentagrams and moons, and the wider shelf of goth rings, necklaces and earrings has its own guide.
Prices, delivery and returns
All three snake pieces cost $19.99, and none of them has a dress size. The two ring sets come with no size options, so the black set's photo sizes are the only guide to fit, and the choker adjusts on its extender chain.
Under our shipping policy, orders normally go out within 4 to 8 business days of being placed (weekends and holidays excluded). The same policy estimates delivery at 4 to 12 days after that, with a stated maximum of 30 days. Should a piece arrive wrong for you, our return policy accepts it for 30 days from the delivery date, provided it is unused and still in the packaging it came in.
Frequently asked questions
What did Jesus say about a snake?
Jesus mentions serpents several times in the Gospels. He tells his disciples to "be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16), and gives them "power to tread on serpents and scorpions" (Luke 10:19). In John 3:14 he compares himself to Moses' bronze serpent: "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up".
Is the snake a pagan symbol?
Not only. The snake turns up in many traditions: it is in Genesis, Numbers and the Gospels, in Greek, Egyptian and Norse myth, and in Hindu and Buddhist art. Modern pagans and witches use it too, but no single religion owns it.
What do serpents represent in Greek mythology?
In Greek myth serpents stand for healing, terror and the boundary between life and death. The snake on the staff of Asclepius means medicine, Medusa's snakes mean a curse that turns onlookers to stone, and the two snakes on the caduceus mark Hermes, the messenger of the gods.
Is the ouroboros a good symbol?
Yes, in most of its history. The ouroboros stands for eternity, renewal and the idea that an ending feeds a new beginning, and Victorian jewellers used it for love that would last. It is sometimes used for something darker, a loop that consumes itself, such as a habit you cannot break.
Who created the ouroboros symbol?
No single person created it. The image of a serpent biting its tail appears in ancient Egypt, with one of the earliest known examples in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the fourteenth century BCE. The Greeks gave it the name ouroboros, "tail-eater", and Norse myth gave the world its own tail-biting serpent in Jörmungandr.
What does it spiritually mean to see a snake?
There is no single answer, and the old sources do not give one. Omens such as a snake crossing your path belong to particular folk traditions and differ from one culture to the next. What the written sources share is the shed skin: from Gilgamesh to Victorian jewellery, the snake stands for leaving an old self behind and going on.
