When did the Fomorians, Rakshasas, Vieviches, Nagas and other similar creatures live? How many types were there? Did the many-headed and many-armed Rakshasas, Nairrits, Hecatoncheires, as well as the werewolf giants Fomorians, Yakshas, Pishachas, Bhutas and other creatures belong to the snake-people, and if so, why did their appearance change so much? Or did they belong to giant intelligent insects and mammals?
The Vievichi and Nagas lived before the Rakshasas and Fomorians
I will try to answer the last question first on this page. Irish, Slavic and Indian legends contain hidden information thatNagas and Vievichi lived before the Fomorians and Rakshasas. During the power of the latter, most of the Vieviches and Nagas had already been exterminated, and their surviving representatives “went underground.”
The Slavic legends of the Svarog cycle say that the tribe of the Black Snake (snakes or vieviches) was defeated in the battle for the Earth led by the light gods (see also) with Svarog or Semargl, the son of Svarog.As a result of this battle(in which a countless number of snakes died, and " the whole Earth [was] mixed with blood, drops of blood on every pebble")
the first world was destroyed in which there were no people yet.
This is an extremely important circumstance, because both the Rakshasas and the Fomorians have already fought with people. And according to Slavic legends, they did not exist before the first catastrophe.
There is an episode in Adiparva: Nagas and other snakes are destroyed by King Janamejaya. According to this ancient document, “many thousands, millions and tens of millions of snakes fell into the fire.” Although the legend says that the snakes were exterminated by the Pandavas, who are considered the ancestors of people, it confirms rather than refutes the power of the Nagas in more early period than rakshasas. Firstly, King Janamejaya was a distant ancestor of those Pandavas who met and fought with the Rakshasas. Secondly, the Pandavas can be classified as people very conditionally. Thirdly, in the episode of destroying the snakes, rakshasas are not mentioned at all. Although this does not mean that they did not exist then.
The burning of snakes ("Mahabharata") looks like a reworked (by people?) depiction of some monstrous catastrophe, as a result of which he died old world
. The closeness of this episode to Slavic legends about the death of the first world is more than obvious.
Confirmation of the simultaneous existence of the Nagas and Vieviches can also be the similarity of the thousand-headed Slavic Black Snake or Chernobog with the leader of the Nagas, the thousand-headed serpent Sheshu,
and his armies of many-headed snakes with an army of nagas.
Rudra and Typhon are also similar to Chernobog and Shesha, and Quetzalcoatl, in turn, is similar to Typhon
The story of the death of a powerful civilization of snake-people as a result of some kind of catastrophe is also common in the legends of many other peoples. For example, an Egyptian papyrus from the XII-XIII dynasty of the pharaohs (XX-XVII centuries BC) tells about him: “Tales of a Shipwrecked Man”: an Egyptian thrown by the waves onto some island met on it a giant snake with golden scales with human head. The serpent called himself the ruler of the lost country of Punt and told the sailor a sad story about how “a star fell from the sky” and destroyed his entire state, destroying the entire population consisting of serpents.
It is very interesting that intales of three different nations living in different parts of the globe, the same scenario is given of the catastrophe that destroyed the former world. It was destroyed by fire.And here it is necessary to mention the “Code Vaticanus”, “Code Rios”, “Code Telleriano-Remensis”, “Code Chimalpopoca” and others and the Mayan epic “Popol Vuh”, according to which the second, third or fourth generation of humanity was destroyed by fire.
So,Slavic, Indian, Egyptian, American and other legends say that the heyday of the civilization of the Vievichi, Nagas and other snake demons on Earth occurred in times very distant from us - so distant that the storytellers could not remember the real appearance of these creatures.According to some legends, there were no gods on Earth at that time. They appeared later - as you might guess, in order to reclaim our planet from the snake people. And, most likely, they managed to do this at the cost of the death of most of the former inhabitants of the Earth, of whom there were very, very many: tens - hundreds of millions, and maybe much more.
If you happen to turn into a crow, the news received will be extremely negative character. There is a high probability of forced separation from your lover. Moreover, this will happen on his initiative, and this news will become a real emotional blow for you, after which bad thoughts will settle in your head.
Don't think that life ends after separation. Fate always knows when to bring people together and when to separate them. This person has probably already fulfilled his role in your life, and now it’s time to give his place to someone else.
Why do you dream that you have turned into a woman?
For a man, a dream in which he turned into a woman means that he has too soft a character, which is actively taken advantage of by those around him. Uncertainty and indecision neutralize your inherent talents and extraordinary mind. You will not be able to achieve success in business if you do not show your strength and courage.
For a woman, the reverse vision, in which she transformed into a man, has a similar interpretation.
The first step towards getting rid of internal complexes is recognizing their presence. Therefore, be honest with yourself and identify your weak character traits yourself.
The meaning of a dream about turning into an animal
The interpretation of the dream where the transformation into an animal occurred largely depends on what kind of animal you have become. If it was a bear, wolf or other predator, it means you lack determination and strength of character. A fox, cat and similar animals indicate a lack of resourcefulness and flexibility, and a dog characterizes you as not a very good and devoted friend.
Try to find a balance of your soft and decisive qualities in order to become a harmonious person, capable of finding a compromise, and when necessary, showing toughness and inflexibility.
I dreamed of a man turning into a snake
Having seen in a dream how a person turns into a snake before your eyes, you should be more careful when communicating with this special person in reality. Most likely, she has planned something unkind towards you, and at any moment she can show her true nature.
If you yourself have transformed into a viper, reconsider your principles, since the lack of certain qualities, such as decency, can lead to others starting to shun you.
Treat people the way you want to be treated. You cannot demand decency from others if you are not one yourself.
Interpretation of a dream about turning into a cat
According to the dream book, a vision where the transformation into a cat occurred foreshadows favorable events in your life. They will happen after you develop qualities such as diplomacy and flexibility. Your transformation will be facilitated by certain incidents that will somewhat change your inherently rigid demeanor.
Don't be afraid to change. Gentleness in character does not mean weakness or lack of will. Once you become a little kinder, you will immediately notice how much better the world around you has become.
A dream in which the transformation into a werewolf occurred
If you dreamed that you turned into a werewolf, it means that you are currently being guided by base instincts. Greed, greed and thirst for easy money have clouded your mind and turned you into a completely different person. The sign you see serves as a warning that if you don’t come to your senses, you risk getting into serious trouble.
Seeing snakes in a dream is a bad sign.
Snakes in a dream mean our enemies and envious people, rivals (and more often rivals), cunning and lying people. Sometimes a dream about snakes predicts illness.
If the snake is calm in a dream, then avoid conflicts and risky ventures.
If she is aggressive or wiggling, then you are in danger from enemies who hate you.
Try to accept necessary measures precautions.
A snake baring its teeth at you in a dream is a sign that someone wants to take revenge on you for an insult.
If you dream that a snake has wrapped itself in a ring around you and is ready to attack, then your situation is irreparable. You are completely at the mercy of your enemies. Try to free yourself from the snake in your dream. In life, this will help you get out of serious trouble.
If a snake bites you, beware of an accident. Be extremely careful.
A dream in which you saw a snake bite someone else means that your friend will suffer from your actions.
Fighting a snake in a dream is a sign of danger. Beware of enemies and illness. If your conscience is not clear, you face imprisonment.
A dream in which you saw how a small snake turns into a huge snake ready to attack you means a great danger that you did not see at the very beginning.
If in a dream you manage to avoid meeting him and escape, then in life you will withstand with honor ordeal, overcome all the obstacles prepared by your enemies and literally get away with it. Sometimes such a dream is attributed to illness.
Holding a snake in your hands in a dream is a harbinger of a quick and successful victory over your ill-wishers. Sometimes such a dream predicts to you that close person may betray you. Especially if the snake changes its behavior or color while you are holding it.
A dream in which you saw an acquaintance or friend with snakes visible from behind your back warns: beware of a conspiracy against you.
If in a dream the snakes are obedient to this person, then in life you will have a powerful intercessor who will protect you from troubles.
If you dream of children playing with a snake, then you should take better care of them so that they do not fall into bad company. Otherwise they are threatened great danger.
The same thing means a dream in which you are trying to protect a child from a snake. But such a dream also warns you that you should take a closer look at your business partners. Some of them may betray you.
Killing a snake in a dream is a sign of victory over a formidable enemy, the fulfillment of a desire and great honors.
A dead snake in a dream is a sign that you blindly trust people and they enjoy your trust. Sometimes such a dream tells you that some danger has passed.
If you are bitten by a dead snake in a dream, then hypocrisy will upset you, and your enemies will triumph.
Seeing a viper in a dream and handling it quite normally foreshadows that you will enter into an arranged marriage, but will not be happy. If you dream that a viper scared you, then beware of the enemy’s revenge.
A dream in which you saw that a snake was relentlessly following you warns that you will be tormented by remorse.
Seeing that a snake has fallen on top of you is a warning about the machinations of a person in power.
Seeing a lot of vipers in a dream means that you will face disputes with partners or discord in the family.
Seeing yourself surrounded by snakes is a warning that the people around you, for the most part, do not wish you well. Leaving such a place in a dream means that you will successfully get out of a difficult situation and slanderers will not damage your reputation.
Seeing an anaconda (sea boa) in a dream is a sign that you will have a hard time in life. Anaconda lives only in water. Such a dream predicts that you should protect yourself and insure yourself on all sides in order to avoid great danger. Such a dream encourages you to fight to achieve your goal.
Dreams about snakes include rare sleep about Medusa Gorgon. Medusa Gorgon is a character Greek mythology. Her image always meant victory over powerful enemies that no one could cope with. She had many snakes on her head instead of hair. No one could defeat her.
Medusa Gorgon was a symbol of the fight against fatal evil. Seeing her in a dream is a harbinger of victory over an all-powerful enemy or evil, unless in a dream her anger is directed against you.
Being the Gorgon Medusa yourself with thousands of snakes on your head is a sign of a glorious victory over your enemies.
Accidentally stepping on a snake in a dream and not being bitten is a sign that you will make a mistake and miraculously avoid the bad consequences of your frivolity.
If the snake managed to bite you, then you will have to pay dearly for your rash actions.
Not Poisonous snakes or snakes in a dream mean a far-fetched danger or a false alarm.
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I kept thinking that a boa constrictor (or some other snake) CANNOT SWALLOW a person purely by physiological reasons. All films about this are fiction and horror films. But what does it turn out to be? Here's yesterday's news.
In Russia, a drunk can freeze, but it turned out that in hot India it is also dangerous to get completely drunk. A man lying in the cold on the street near a store in the Indian state of Kerala was devoured by a huge man-eating python.
A snake that swallowed a man. Photo: India, Kerala state.
The incident happened in the Indian state of Kerala, which, like Goa, attracts a large number of tourists.
In India, a careless man decided to have a pleasant evening, but did not bring any alcohol home and drank the purchased drinks right next to a liquor store. The drunkard settled down there for the night.
And in the morning local residents They found a bloated snake on the threshold of a shop. It turned out that the python was crawling past the liquor store and saw the “food”. He strangled the man and then swallowed his victim. After such a hearty “lunch,” the reptile was unable to crawl away and lay down at the scene of the emergency.
The bloated snake was subsequently discovered by local residents, LOTD reports.
This example can serve as an edification to numerous tourists who go to India on vacation and often forget about moderation in relation to alcohol and other relaxing substances.
Here's a case like this:
A huge python, according to the children's stories, suddenly grabbed their friend when they were collecting fallen mangoes in the garden. The snake quickly wrapped itself around the child, tightly squeezing his arms and legs. The boy was so scared that he didn’t even scream or cry.
“The python squeezed him more and more until the boy closed his eyes and threw his head back,” said 11-year-old Cave, an eyewitness to the tragedy. - I realized that he was dead or unconscious. Then the snake opened its mouth wide and began to swallow him all at once, starting with the head.” For three hours, the children silently watched what was happening, afraid to move or call for help.
Later, police and snake experts found no traces of the tragedy - the child and his clothes disappeared along with the snake. On the rumpled grass there was only a trail leading to the spring. Herpentologists explained that the African python needed water to better digest its prey.
According to experts, this is the first case of cannibalism for this species of snake. Python apparently woke up after hibernation and was very hungry.
Bloated from human body The reptile was found nearby in the jungle; it could not crawl far. The snake was killed and immediately cut up, but the boy could not be saved - he died of suffocation.
Another case:
It turns out that the plot of the film “Anaconda” has a real basis and in our sinful world there are giant reptiles that can swallow a person whole.
Typically, snakes prefer to attack smaller creatures that they can easily swallow, but despite this, there are many documented cases of these reptiles swallowing livestock, dogs and even baby hippos.
Unfortunately, the diet of these predators is not limited to such a meager set of dishes, and creeping reptiles are not averse to tasting human flesh if possible. It’s hard to believe, but there really are giant giants on Earth for whom humans are just prey.
Four friends: Jose Ronaldo. Fernando Contaro, Miguel Orvaro and Sebastian Forte went to Mato Grosso, Brazil for camping and fishing. The fishing went well, and the alcohol flowed freely. Returning from the river, the friends noticed the absence of the fourth member of their fun company– dentist Jose Ronaldo. The tipsy fishermen looked for their drinking buddy before dark, but Jose seemed to have disappeared into the ground.
The next day, in a cheerful and high spirits, they went in search, hoping to find their friend lying drunk in some ditch. Towards evening they discovered his torn clothes.
“At first we decided that it was a robbery: the ground around was dug up, as if someone had been fighting on it,” says one of the fishermen, Fernando Contaro. “My heart was relieved, because if he was attacked by a person, and not a wild animal, then he could survive!”
After examining the scene of the struggle, they discovered a deep footprint in the ground leading into the forest. Experienced hunter Sebastian Forte immediately said that the snake had left him... very big snake, at least 10 meters long. The sun was already setting and the men decided to return to camp.
The next morning the men followed the snake's trail. What they discovered at the end of their journey shocked them: in front of them was lying giant anaconda with an incredibly bloated body. Miguel pressed the python's head to the ground with a stick, and Fernando shot the reptile twice in the head with a revolver. The anaconda was towed to the camp, where they cut open its stomach and removed the dentist’s body, which had already begun to digest.
If a snake swallows a person, which happens relatively rarely, then it is certainly only for the purpose of “eating a little.” Here we could quote lengthy instructions recently published on the Internet on what to do if you are swallowed by a python or anaconda. The basic idea is that you need to let the snake swallow more of its legs, and then, with a sharp movement of a sharp knife, cut its head from the side from the inside. Where to get sharp knife and what to do if they start swallowing you from the head - this instruction does not tell you.
The only difficulty when swallowing a person should be caused by the shoulders. An adult, broad-shouldered man can hardly be swallowed...
The snake's jaw can, of course, move apart, but only to a certain limit. Only possible way- if the snake manages to swallow a person lying on its side (or it itself turns its head in such a way so that the victim enters it sideways).
So an anaconda may well swallow a child, a woman, a small, narrow-shouldered man...
Case three. Why shouldn't snakes eat hippos?
The answer is simple, hippos have too thick skin that more than one snake simply cannot digest.
(It's an unpleasant sight, think twice before watching)
Video: a stupid python that ate a baby hippopotamus, crawled with this carcass for a week, became terribly hungry and was forced to vomit this delicacy out of itself.
And now just some interesting information about snakes on this topic.
Bernard Grzimek.
From the book “Animals are my life.”
Can a snake swallow a person?
“There is no doubt that the ancients meant by their dragons our modern giant snakes. The amazing size of these animals, their considerable strength and the general fear of snakes in general make the exaggerations of which the ancients were guilty very clear.<…>Over time, human imagination has endowed dragons even richer and from incomprehensible fairy tales oriental people images gradually grew for which man of sense I searched in vain for the originals, because information about the giant snakes themselves was almost lost. The more stubbornly uneducated people stuck to the favorite description of a large dragon or a gorynych serpent, spewed onto the earth for the destruction of the whole world "(A. E. Bram)
A giant twenty-meter or even thirty-meter snake, hiding on a branch, lies in wait for its prey. From a blow to the crown of her head, hard as a stone, a man taken by surprise falls almost unconscious to the ground, and the snake, with a lightning-fast throw, rushes at him and wraps him in its coils, breaking all his bones in an iron embrace. This happens in cases where brave liberators who cut the snake into pieces with knives do not arrive in time to help...
Descriptions of such heartbreaking scenes can be found in many adventure novels and even in other reports of expeditions to the unexplored tropics.
Are they really attacking? giant snakes per person? Are they capable of swallowing us? There are hardly any other animals that are fantasized about as much as pythons, anacondas or boa constrictors. And therefore, it is precisely with regard to these animals that even a specialist finds it very difficult in every special case decide what is fact and what is fiction.
This starts with determining the length. Even serious travelers have claimed that anacondas 30 or even 40 meters long are found in the Amazon forests. But they, as a rule, kept silent about whether they measured these snakes themselves or know this from eyewitness accounts.
Anaconda is the same boa constrictor, only South American. It is she who is considered the largest and strongest among all the giant snakes in the world. Another South American snake, also no less famous and also a boa constrictor (Constrictor), reaches a length of “only” five to six meters.
It must be said that measuring a snake is not so easy. It is most convenient to do this, of course, when it stretches to its full length. But for big snake such a pose is completely unnatural; some of them are simply not able to accept it - they need to bend at least the very end of their tail to the side in order to have support. Such a strong animal will not voluntarily allow itself to be straightened for measurement. In a dead snake, the body usually becomes so ossified that it is even more difficult to measure. If you judge the length of snakes by their skins that go on sale, then it is very easy to fall into a mistake: after all, this skin is sold by the meter, and therefore, while it is fresh, it can be stretched in length by 20 percent, and some say even by all 50. Snake hunters often use this.
It is interesting that live snakes are also sold by the meter. Snake traders charge zoos for small and medium-sized pythons from 80 pfennig to one mark for every centimeter. The New York Zoological Society announced many years ago that it would pay 20 thousand marks to anyone who brought a live anaconda over ten meters long; however, no one has yet been able to earn this tempting amount.
And yet it is quite possible that such giants exist or existed until very recently. The weight of such an animal should be quite impressive; Thus, the Asian reticulated python measures 8.8 meters and weighs 115 kilograms. It’s no wonder that such a colossus, living in the thicket of a virgin forest, is not so easy to defeat without a whole horde of helpers. And then you still need to be able to deliver it unharmed to the airfield or port.
The record length of the hieroglyphic python (Python sebae), widespread in Africa, is 9.8 meters. The Indian or tiger python (Python molurus) reaches 6.6 meters, the East Asian reticulated python (Python reticulatus) - either 8.4 meters or 10 meters, depending on which source you believe. A little smaller than the amethyst python.
So, in fact, we have already listed all six giants of the snake world: four oviparous pythons - natives of the Old World and two viviparous boas - of the New. Among the 2,500 species of snakes that inhabit Earth, is there some more whole line other species of boas and pythons, but they are much smaller.
Giant snakes are not poisonous. Unlike the fat giants of the snake kingdom, poisonous snakes (for example, the African mamba, sometimes reaching four meters, and even longer - King Cobra) thinner and slimmer.
It takes a snake a lot of time to reach its enormous size. The eight-meter reticulated python living at the Pittsburgh Zoo grew by only 25 centimeters in a year. The older a snake gets, the slower it grows.
By appearance It is completely impossible to determine whether a snake is a female or a male. A pair of hieroglyphic pythons, which arrived at the New York Zoo at the age of one, grew at the same rate for the first six to seven years, but then the female began to noticeably lag in growth. The fact is that during this time she began to fast every year for six months: during the maturation of the eggs and when she warmed them, curled up around them.
We don’t know to what age giant snakes can live in the wild. No one has ever ringed them in their habitats, as has been done for decades, for example, with migratory birds. We can judge their age only from data obtained from zoos. The anaconda lived the longest at the Washington Zoo - 28 years (from 1899 to 1927). One of the boas lived in England at the Bristol Zoo for 23 years and 3 months, and the hieroglyphic python reached the age of eighteen there. Tiger python at the San Diego Zoo (California) lived to be 22 years and 9 months, and two East Asian reticulated pythons - one in London and the other in Paris - died at the age of 21 years.
The giants of the snake kingdom are the only large animals on Earth that do not have a voice, like, in fact, all other snakes. IN best case scenario they may hiss. Snakes are not only mute, but also deaf. They do not perceive sound vibrations in the air - they do not have ears for this, like other animals. But they perfectly perceive any, even the most insignificant, shaking of the soil or litter on which they rest.
In addition, these deaf-mute giants also have poor vision. Their eyes are devoid of movable eyelids, and the transparent leathery film that protects the eye during each molt is separated along with all the skin and removed, like glass from a watch. The snake eye lacks the muscles of the iris, therefore the pupil cannot contract in bright light and dilate in dim light. The snake barely reacts to changes in the lighting of the eyes: the lens in it cannot bend, like ours, which deprives snakes of the opportunity to carefully examine objects located at close or far distances at will. To look at anything, the snake has to move its entire head first and then back. Perhaps all these are very useful properties (necessary, for example, for swimming and especially for looking at various items under water), but, by God, much more advanced eyes are found in the animal world.
Since the python, like other snakes, does not close its eyes during sleep, it is always very difficult to determine whether it is sleeping or awake. Some snake researchers argue that a sleeping snake faces downwards, meaning its pupil is at the bottom edge of the eye; others dispute this claim.
The immobility of snake eyes gave rise to the widely repeated fairy tale that snakes supposedly hypnotize, as if paralyzing their prey with their gaze. Frogs, lizards or small rodents do sometimes sit completely still in the presence of a giant boa constrictor, but this is explained for various reasons: sometimes they simply do not notice the danger, and sometimes they freeze with fear; such freezing brings them a certain benefit, since the snake does not distinguish a motionless victim. After all, it is only when the frog runs away that the snake overtakes it.
How, after all, do these deaf-mute and, moreover, short-sighted giants find food for themselves? It turns out that they have developed sensory organs that we do not possess. For example, they unmistakably sense heat from a long distance. The snake senses a human hand already at a distance of thirty centimeters. Therefore, it is quite easy for silently crawling snakes to find even those warm-blooded animals that are carefully hidden in shelters. So that their own breathing does not interfere with their breathing, some of them (for example, pythons) have nostrils facing upward and backward.
But the sense of smell is most developed in snakes. Quite surprisingly, the organ of smell is located in their mouth, on the palate, and necessary information he is provided with a tongue that extracts various fine particles. Thus, snakes do not need daylight; they can crawl in the tracks of their prey with equal success both day and night.
Once, not far from the Serengeti, my son Michael and I came across a huge hieroglyphic python, reaching three to four meters in length. We decided to take him with us. By the way, giant snakes, if they are not holding on to a tree or tangled in bushes, are not that difficult to catch. In an hour they can travel no more than one and a half kilometers - if they suddenly have the desire to crawl for an hour. Giant snakes move completely differently than their small relatives. They move forward, wriggling with their whole body, while in a giant snake the abdominal scales are used for this purpose. The scales are set in motion by muscles extending from the ribs (the ribs themselves remain motionless), causing it to move forward and backward like the small scoops of an excavator.
At that time we did not yet have much experience in handling snakes and therefore at first we showed extreme caution when guiding the python with spears. But in the end, we still decided to grab the snake by the tail, and it didn’t even try to attack us. We managed to stuff her into a bag, which we tied and put under a cot in our tent for the night. Unfortunately, the next morning the bag was empty. Huge snake Still managed to free myself. However, from the trail she left, it was easy to find out where she crawled. This trail was straight, distinct and wide, as if someone had rolled a car tire.
Not a single snake, including poisonous ones, is able to catch up with a running person. But giant snakes can swim well, much better than other land animals. As for the anaconda, it can be classified as an aquatic rather than a terrestrial animal.
Snakes and the sea don't care. Thus, one boa constrictor (Constriktor) was carried by the current 320 kilometers from the South American coast and washed up on the island of St. Vincent, where he arrived in good spirits.
When the Krakatoa volcano erupted in 1888, all life on the island of the same name was destroyed. Biologists observed how, over the subsequent years and decades, various lichens, plants and animals gradually reappeared here. So, the first reptiles to appear there were rock pythons, which by 1908 again took possession of the island.
The giant snakes have not yet completely turned into round ropes, as happened with other representatives of the snake tribe. Boas and pythons, like us, still have a pair of lungs, while in most other snakes the left lung has disappeared, and the right has greatly elongated and expanded noticeably. Giant snakes have small remains of pelvic and hip bones. But only two pitiful claws remained from the outside of the hind legs - to the right and to the left of the anus.
How do such slow giants manage to catch their prey? It should be said from the very beginning that the statement that they knock a person or any animal unconscious with a blow to their head is absolutely false. The head of these giant monsters not particularly hard, and in any case softer than ours. The snake itself would not be too pleased to use it for boxing. In addition, the attack of a giant snake is by no means as lightning fast as it is imagined. The force with which a snake weighing 125 kilograms attacks a victim is no greater than the force with which a dog weighing 20 kilograms attacks. Of course, some frail, unathletic European might fall from such a push. But a more or less dexterous man is quite capable of handling a four-meter boa constrictor alone, at least if he manages to stay on his feet; he can pull down the snake coils entwined around him with a few energetic jerks.
For a snake, it is much more important not to hit its head, but to grab the victim with its teeth. To do this, she opens her mouth to the limit. U reticulated python in the mouth there are a hundred back-curved teeth arranged in six rows. Therefore, if he managed to grab at least a finger, it is not so easy to pull it back. To do this, you need to try to unclench the snake’s jaws and first stick your hand even further into the mouth, and then pull it out.
Only when the snake has firmly grabbed the victim with its teeth does it begin to wrap its coils around it. Therefore, those who have to deal with giant snakes should always remember that they need to be grabbed only by the “scruff” - behind the head, so that they cannot bite.
Please take a closer look at the film footage or photographs that capture the “struggle” of a person with giant snake who allegedly strangles her victim. You will almost certainly notice that the “victim” has grabbed the snake by the throat. In such cases, the person himself wraps the snake around himself and then plays out the whole scene of a frantic struggle.
But even if the snake managed to grab its victim with its teeth and wrap it in several rings, this does not mean that it can “crush all its bones.” Giant snakes, even if they weigh more than a hundred kilograms, do not at all have the remarkable strength that is attributed to them. After all, the larger and heavier the animal, the less strength it has per kilogram of body weight. Thus, a louse, taking into account its weight, is 10 thousand times stronger than an elephant. And smaller snakes can squeeze and strangle a suitable victim much more strongly than giant snakes can squeeze their own.
Giant snakes kill not by crushing bones, but by strangulation. They squeeze the chest of their victim so much that she is unable to breathe air into her lungs. It is possible that prolonged compression may paralyze the heart. Snake rings, coiled around the victim's torso, act more like a rubber gut or rubber bandage than a strong<анат. Раздавить таким способом твердый костяк абсолютно невозможно. Поэтому когда в некоторых сообщениях о нападении змей фигурируют раздавленные человеческие черепа, то заранее можно твердо сказать, что это досужий вымысел. Человеческий череп достаточно твердый орешек, и мягкими, эластичными предметами его не расколешь!
My colleague Dr. Gustav Lederer, who directed our exotarium for forty years, carefully examined three pigs, three rabbits and three rats that had been killed but not yet swallowed by giant snakes. No broken bones were found in the victims. But in the already swallowed prey there were broken bones.
Giant snakes are kept in many zoos around the world and generally do not show any aggression as long as they are left alone. They are even quite easy to tame. Pythons living in the wild, when they are attacked or want to be grabbed, defend themselves only by trying to bite, and almost never try to throw their rings at the enemy; they do this only with prey that they are going to swallow.
In zoos, there are sometimes circumstances in which force must be used against a snake (for example, when moving a newly arrived resident into a terrarium or when veterinary intervention is necessary). To hold the snake, people are placed in this way: for every linear meter of the snake there is one person who must hold his part tightly, under no circumstances letting go of it.
I've been asking everywhere about any case where a snake in a zoo killed someone, but until now I had never heard of it. True, I was told that in a Russian animal sales company several decades ago, a seven- or eight-meter reticulated python wrapped itself around the senior servant Siegfried and “broke several of his ribs.”
One former dancer, who once performed dances with snakes, told the servants of our Frankfurt Zoo that one of the snakes once squeezed her so hard that she broke two ribs. But in order for a slender girl to break two ribs, no supernatural forces are required. For example, one day one of my sons, in a fit, hugged his bride so tenderly that something crunched inside her. It turned out that he broke her rib...
Although giant boas, as already mentioned, can rarely be tamed, nevertheless, the snakes with which dancers perform in various variety shows and circuses do not necessarily have to be tame. In order to wrap snakes around your shoulders and waist during a dance without any risk, it is enough to cool them down before the performance, then you can do almost anything with them. These cold-blooded animals become active only after they have warmed up thoroughly.
Of course, dragging snakes around on tour, especially in winter, or keeping them in poorly heated stage restrooms or hotel rooms does not do them any good.
They do not survive such a life for long and die. Therefore, dancers have to frequently renew their supply of pythons.
It is not true that giant snakes have the habit of hanging from a tree with the end of their tail holding a branch and thus catching their prey. The statement that they pre-wet the dead animal with their saliva to facilitate swallowing is also incorrect. This misconception is based on the fact that snakes are often forced to regurgitate swallowed prey. This happens for various reasons: either the prey turns out to be prohibitively large, or when swallowed it takes an awkward position, or it has horns that prevent it from moving along the esophagus, and sometimes someone simply scared the snake, and this prevented it from calmly coping with the prey. Of course, a burped animal is abundantly moistened with saliva, which led people who accidentally saw it to misinterpret it.
Even very large and heavy snakes are able to crawl into relatively small loopholes, narrow windows or cracks in a fence. In this way, they usually sneak into chicken coops, pigsties or barns where goats are kept. And so, when they, having swallowed their victim whole, try to crawl back into the same hole from which they came, a huge thickening on the body does not allow them to get out, and they find themselves trapped. Here, it would seem, use your ability to regurgitate swallowed prey to free yourself from captivity! But snakes, as it turned out, “don’t have enough intelligence” for this.
Similar cases have been described quite often.
You sometimes come to interesting conclusions when you switch from your passion for horror to the study of mythology and folklore. One after another, parallels are revealed between ancient myths and the plots of modern books or horror films. In some cases, this is understandable - many of the plots are directly borrowed from ancient legends, albeit fairly adjusted to the tastes of the modern reader or viewer. But even in SF horrors, devoid of any mystical surroundings, a deep archaism is sometimes visible, leaving behind outright mysticism in the depth of the images. The various alien “Body Snatchers,” “Aliens,” and “The Thing” echo ancient tales of possession by evil spirits, such as “The Tale of Solomonia the Demoniac.” And films and books in the “monster-movie” style reveal a lot of parallels with world-famous legends about sea, river and lake monsters. At the intersection of horror, fantasy and science fiction, another character is comfortably located - or rather, a whole group of characters united by common characteristics. They are called snake people, lizardmen, reptilians, they have become heroes of books, films, games, urban folklore and conspiracy theories, but the origins of this image, like many others, can be seen in the most ancient and terrible legends of mankind.
The most popular reptile in all known myths is the snake (only in some regions replaced by a lizard, eel or worm), which has become an object of veneration, fear and hatred in many cultures at the same time. The serpent is the main symbol of the monsters of Chaos, hostile to people and gods - such as the biblical Leviathan, the Egyptian Apep, the Scandinavian Jormungand, the Indian Vritra. But at the same time, the snake is a symbol of the earth, the female productive force, water, rain, the hearth, the male fertilizing principle; the snake is an attribute of such goddesses as the Greek Athena, the Egyptian Wajit, and the Indian Manasa Devi. Later, the image of a “dragon” branched off from the image of a snake (originally the Greek “δράκων” and meant a large snake), which gave rise to many symbolic meanings.
In a number of cases, the first ancestor appears to be snake-like: both on the scale of a people (Chinese Fu-si and Nyu-wa, Athenian Kekrop), and one individual outstanding person. For example, according to one legend, the mother of Alexander the Great conceived him from a serpent, in the form of which Zeus himself appeared. It is not far from these one-time, fixed in space and time intercourse to ideas about snake-like creatures that periodically enter into sexual relations with humans. This often leads to ideas about a certain “snake people” living their own lives, but from time to time coming into contact with humans. In Hinduism, such a people are “nagas,” snake-like semi-deities, organically included in Indian mythology, with their admirers and places of worship. From India, legends about nagas spread throughout Southeast Asia, mingling with images of dragons and similar creatures. It is believed that the image originates in the religious ideas of people who took the cobra as their totem - that is, again the “first ancestor”. Naga women - naginis - often again have sexual intercourse with men, for which they need to take on a human form - that is, they also act as werewolves. In particular, the Khmer people in Cambodia were born from the union of Princess Cobra-Naga with an Indian Brahmin.
These common features - werewolfism and sexual relations with people - make the snake-like creatures of the East and West similar. The East, as you know, is a delicate matter: the Buddhist-Hindu model of the world, in principle, allowed for both negative and positive options for human communication with the “snake people”. This, however, is also true for European paganism. But the Christianization of European peoples sharply shifted the emphasis towards the negative. The serpent in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a predominantly negative image. Satan was represented in the image of the “dragon, the ancient serpent”; the serpent served as the reason for the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise; Leviathan, the enemy of Yahweh, was also represented as a gigantic dragon. Human sins were often depicted in the form of ugly snakes. Lust was considered one of the most serious sins - according to St. Augustine, it “is sin in the proper sense of the word.” The “vessel” of this sin was considered to be a woman, accused of being the first to succumb to the persuasion of the Serpent. And it is not for nothing that in sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance the tempter is depicted as a woman with the body of a reptile - a snake or a lizard. In the Jewish mystical teaching of Kabbalah, the devil Lilith was sometimes identified with the snake.
“And the Serpent, the Wife of Corruption, instigated and seduced Eve through the shells of Light, which are holy in themselves. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough has been said for him who understands. And the whole destruction occurred because Adam, the first man, copulated with Eve when she was menstrually unclean - this is the pollution and unclean seed of the Serpent, which possessed Eve earlier... For the Evil Lilith, seeing the greatness of his destruction, became stronger in her shells, and came to Adam against his will, and was kindled by him, and gave birth to him demons and spirits and lilin.”
But Lilith is the destroyer and seductress of men, the one who causes nocturnal emissions and forces them to commit the sin of masturbation in order to conceive new demons using the sperm thus stolen. And all these Judeo-Christian ideas were combined with paganism - which, as already mentioned, had enough myths about certain serpentine creatures that come into contact with humans. But now these legends, except for the most archaic beliefs, are devoid of any positive component. The Christian religion did not recognize snake “first ancestors” or semi-deities; similar pagan characters were declared demons and demons. Legends about “foundlings,” about witches, about incubi and succubi merged with them. All this meant one thing: as a result of Satan’s machinations, those who, outwardly little different from a person, could walk among people, but carried in themselves alien blood, the blood of the Serpent.
Different peoples had such legends. Among the Armenians, dragons - vishaps - used to steal children and replace them with a small evil spirit from their kind, which had a very disgusting character. A famous victim of this custom was Artavazd, the son of King Artashes. Armenian historian Martiros Ananikyan wrote: “Literary monuments allow us to assume that in addition to dragons as such, there was also a genus of dragomens (dragon-people), born from mixed marriages of dragons with women.” Similar ideas existed among the Slavs in the form of beliefs about a “fiery serpent” that enters into relationships with single women. Sometimes such a snake took the form of a deceased husband or another deceased relative. This could be an echo of ancient pagan ideas about serpentine ancestors who, as you might guess, reside in the kingdom of the dead. From these connections, offspring also appeared - the most famous “born of a serpent” was the epic hero Volga.
The epics also tell about another Snake who visits a woman - the sorceress and “whore” Marinka. The snake is killed by the epic hero Dobrynya Nikitich, and the angry witch tries to seduce him, bewitch him, and then destroy him. Marinka herself also has a snake nature, she “has a baby snake, a baby snake, and a little viper in every joint.” In another version of the epic, on Marinka’s hand “a fierce snake lies, on the other hand there are two baby snakes.” Another epic hero, Mikhailo Potyk, chooses Marya, the White Swan, as his wife, who soon dies. When the hero descends into her grave, then, according to the most archaic versions of the epic, Marya turns into a snake and tries to devour Potyk, but he kills his ex-wife. It is possible, by the way, that the names “Marinka” and “Marya” in these epics go back to the image of Marena, the goddess of death - it is not for nothing that Marya turns into a snake in the grave.
In the Russian epic, the image of a woman-snake is demonized to the extreme, retaining its common features: an attempt to deceive one’s “snake” nature and, again, to force the epic hero to marry oneself through deception and witchcraft. However, the matter does not come to the point of having offspring - the hero’s relatives or brothers-in-arms expose the witch and force her to disenchant the hero, and he kills his unfaithful wife. Less bloodthirsty and more successful was the fairy Melusine from the legends of the European Middle Ages, who also had the appearance of a half-woman, half-snake. She received her appearance as a result of the curse of her fairy mother, who, through witchcraft, forced Melusine to take the form of a snake from the waist down every Saturday. She later met Raymondin, nephew of Aymer, Count of Poitiers. Having accidentally killed his uncle while hunting, he hid in the forests, where he met Melusine at the spring and proposed marriage. Melusina promised that he would not have to pay for his crime and that he would gain happiness, wealth and numerous offspring if he married her. But on one condition: her husband must never enter her bedroom on Saturdays. Thanks to his wife, Raymondin became a powerful sovereign and founder of the House of Lusignan, and his wife bore him ten children. However, Raimondin's brother aroused jealousy towards his wife with slander, and he decided to spy on what his wife was doing on Saturdays. Then he saw her washing herself and learned about the tail. Melusine forgave him, but one day, having quarreled with his wife, Raimondin called her a “snake” in front of his court. In response, Melusine turned into a dragon, gave him two magic rings and flew away, never to return.
The legend of Melusine (snake woman, dragon woman) spread throughout Europe in different versions. In one of these legends, for example, Melusine, who took on the form of a snake, was exposed after her husband took her to a priest and he sprinkled her with holy water. But, despite such details, many eminent families traced their family back to Melusine, including the Plantagenet dynasty, Counts of Anjou, who became English kings in the 12th century. They considered Melusine their ancestor and were considered her descendants in the eyes of their subjects. There is a famous saying by Richard the Lionheart, recorded at the beginning of the 13th century. Richard answered those who were amazed by the endless strife and discord in the “accursed family”: “Why do you think everything should be different? Aren’t we all children of the Devil?” Martin Luther also agreed with this definition of Melusine, who considered the fairy to be a succubus.
In the image of Melusine we see the same distinctive signs of snake people: werewolf, deception, seduction, semi-demonic nature of the offspring. Here, however, a new motive appears: Melusine is a snake not by nature, but as a result of the curse placed on her. Such is Princess Margaret from the English fairy tale “The Terrible Dragon of Spindleston Rock,” who was turned into a gigantic snake by her witch stepmother. And although here the girl seems to be a victim, it is possible that this is a later reworking of an older plot.
The original serpentine female deity often splits into the actual snake and the woman, who can even be opposed to each other. Examples are the myths of Perseus and Andromeda, Jason and Medea, Eve and the Serpent. Andromeda and the sea monster, to whom she was allegedly given to be torn to pieces, are in fact two forms of one creature. The royal daughter is not at all a sacrifice intended for a sea serpent or a wild beast. She, naked, was chained to a rock by Bel, Marduk, Perseus or Hercules, after he defeated the monster - her creation. According to the same scheme, Princess Margaret's brother, who disenchanted and freed her from the snake form, becomes identical to the character of another English fairy tale - Robert Lambton, who defeated the terrible Lambton Serpent. Moreover, in both fairy tales, monstrous snakes act in a similar way - they devour or burn everything around, and the peasants pay off the dragon by bringing him milk in buckets. In general, beliefs about dragons and huge snakes are widespread in England - there are especially many of them in the Sussex area. And it was in England that the “serpent in human form” crawled with a hiss from folk tales and legends to the pages of the “Gothic novel.”
It was based on the legends of the Lambton Serpent and others like them that the famous author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, wrote the novel Lair of the White Worm. Its plot is simple: in the very heart of England, ancient legends about a terrible monster - a bloodthirsty white dragon - come to life. People suspect that over the past millennia the dragon has learned to mimic and is quite capable of pretending to be a charming lady in white - the owner of one of the estates. Later this work was filmed. Its artistic value, however, is questionable - just like the original work. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, for example, in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” writes that “an infantile plot almost ruins a magnificent concept.” However, “The Lair” is full of ancient images and symbols, among which is again a woman, again a seductress, the bearer of a pernicious evil that threatens all the heroes of the work.
“Before us appears a creature of a completely new species, perhaps the most dangerous that nature has ever created - a wild force, armed with reason, but at the same time having neither a soul nor morality, and therefore completely devoid of a sense of responsibility. And the snake - an animal with cold blood... is the ideal material for such a creature. If we assume that the Lambton Worm received the opportunity for such a development, then it can be considered a living personification of evil.”
Elsewhere in the novel, another assumption is made about the origin of the monster. It is mentioned that the woman whose guise the monster takes was, as a child, an ordinary child who, while walking through a “reserved forest,” was bitten by “some kind of poisonous creature.” And when the girl grew up, new traits appeared in her character: she liked to kill small animals, people around her died a strange death. Comparing these facts, one of the heroes concludes that “the White Worm gained power over her body, and her soul left her earthly refuge” and “the vile spirit of the White Worm lives in the beautiful body of Lady Arabella.”
Further development of the image in literature occurred in the work of the American writer Robert E. Howard, a prolific author in the genres of horror and fantasy, who gave the world Conan the Cimmerian. In addition to the famous barbarian, Howard invented many characters who now live in books, films and comics: the warrior Red Sonja, the Puritan Solomon Kane, the king of the state of Valusia, invented by Howard, which supposedly existed in prehistoric times. It is in the stories about Kull that a whole race of snake people appears, who also have the ability to take on human form. Moreover, in the story, which tells about the Snake People (“Kingdom of Shadows”), Kull learns that for many centuries Valusia has been ruled by the ancient enemies of humanity - snake people who kill the Valusian kings, and themselves take on their appearance.
“This war was long and terrible, lasting for many bloody centuries, ever since the first man, who ceased to be a monkey, rebelled against those who then ruled the world. And finally, humanity won, so long ago that only vague legends remained from this time. The snake-men resisted the longest, and yet the people crushed even them and drove the last of them into the remote corners of the world. There they mated with real snakes and the sages said that their terrible offspring would soon disappear completely. But time passed, the human race softened and degenerated, forgetting ancient battles, and the creatures returned... Terrible monsters of the old world crept across the young land, taking on any form and committing terrible deeds in secret. And it was impossible to distinguish real people from werewolves.”
Kull learns that he was destined for the same fate (which he avoided, having been warned of the danger in time). Along the way, it turns out that the soul of the murdered king falls into posthumous slavery to the snake people - let us remember the connections with the world of dead snake-like creatures of Russian folklore. Having survived several assassination attempts, Kull vows to pursue the snake people throughout the land and will not rest until the last of them is destroyed.
Robert E. Howard's snake people appear in numerous works by his successors, in comics and films, even appearing in the fantasy action film Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role. By the way, in one of the novels of the successors - Leon Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter - the queen of the snake people appears, bearing the familiar name Lilith, with whom Conan fights. Lin Carter then writes a series of novels on the prehistoric continent of Lemuria with his barbarian hero, Thongor. His opponents are the Dragon Kings - another race of subhuman intelligent reptiles deeply hostile to people. In the preface, Carter admits that the image of the Dragon Kings is based on the Indian nagas. Clark Ashton Smith, a colleague of Robert Howard and Howard Lovecraft, also briefly mentions a certain Snake People. In his story “The Second Shadow,” the Snake Tribe acts as the keeper of forbidden knowledge, for attempting to touch which the sorcerer, the hero of the story, dies a terrible death.
Various “reptilian” races have found themselves in demand in science fiction and fantasy, and in almost all forms of art. Here the mythological attributes become blurred and become less obvious, if only because these races live in alien or parallel worlds, where the main characters act. Reptilians may not change their appearance, and it is not necessary for them to be sexually attracted to people, especially if the work is in the SF genre - “according to science,” reptiles and primates have no point in copulating. However, one feature remains, if not unchanged, then at least steadily present - this is the alienation, detachment, and sometimes open hostility of intelligent reptiles to humanity. These are Harry Harrison's Yilans (archetypally controlled by females), and the Drakh from the Babylon 5 universe, and the Skrulls - the evil alien race of the Marvel universe (and here there is another archetype - werewolf), and a number of others. And even though intelligent reptiles exist openly within the framework of a fantasy world, all the same, one way or another, they carry the curse of the Tempter.
The same idea went beyond science fiction and fantasy, becoming the basis for the conspiracy theory of David Icke. He describes a race of reptiles that came from somewhere “out of the fourth dimension” and became the prototype of the Sumerian gods - the Annunaki, the founders of the first royal dynasties of Sumer and Egypt. It was these dynasties, in his opinion, that later began to rule Europe.
“Around 2200 B.C. In Egypt, something called the “Royal Court of the Dragon” was formed. It is still quite powerful today, four thousand years later, and is located in England, which in my opinion is the epicenter of worldwide control - the epicenter of the network that rules the world... The hybrids who were the rulers of the ancient Near and Middle East became the aristocracy Europe and the royal families of Europe".
Despite the shocking extravagance of this legend, by and large, there is practically nothing new in it: all the same old legends about royal families, in whose veins snake or dragon blood flows. According to Ike, members of the British royal family, US presidents, and major financiers are reptiles:
“Bill Clinton is genetically related to the House of Windsor, the current family of Britain...Clinton actually descends from the Rockefeller family one generation ago, which is a clear explanation for why this so-called “urban boy from Arkansas” received a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University , which is given only to the chosen ones. At a very early age, Clinton became governor of Arkansas, which everyone considers to be the state of the Rockefeller family. He then became President of the United States. These people are being led because of their bloodline, and the bloodline is due to the fact that she has genetic compatibility with these fourth dimensional reptilian beings who can operate through these bloodlines.”
This, of course, smacks of nonsense, but not for conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, anti-globalists and simply paranoids. The old song about the “world behind the scenes” is layered with even more ancient myths and becomes a fashionable postmodernist conspiracy theory. Ike gains followers, he cites the words of “eyewitnesses” who almost directly observed how one or another world leader turns into a reptile. UFOlogical articles are published about reptilian aliens, anonymous authors write about human sacrifices committed by evil reptiles. They are accused of the emergence of Nazism and influencing Hitler, while producing texts that are Black Hundred in style, where the reptiles treat their victims in much the same way as the Jews “did” with Christian babies and Aryan girls:
“The magical satanic rituals constantly carried out by the “elite” have several goals, reinforcing and maintaining control over the energies for the continued interaction of the Illuminati with the reptiles. Women who were ritually raped reported that when the “human” man had intercourse with them, he was possessed by a non-physical entity that transmitted energy through the rapist at the moment of orgasm. These violent energy frequencies recode the DNA of the unborn child into reptilian frequencies... unwitting participants in these rituals have reported reptilians and other entities materializing during the ceremonies, and "human" participants changing their appearance to a reptilian one. They practice vampirism because the blood of the victim contains the frequency, DNA codes and life force they need... These entities most want to receive the energy of teenagers who have not reached puberty, especially young girls with blond hair and blue eyes.”
To summarize, we can say that the myth of “snake people”, which originated in ancient times and has undergone certain changes under the influence of Christianity, is still alive today. Like a ball of snakes flowing into one another, Melusine and the Visitors, Howard's snake people and Indian nagas, Skrulls and the White Worm merge. Yes, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to trace the relationship between the elements of a common Myth, but this is not required. The main features of the main characters remain virtually unchanged: werewolf, secret wisdom, sexual attraction to people, infiltration into the ruling elite, hostility towards humanity. Apparently, the belief in “intelligent snakes” is embedded somewhere in the human subconscious, regardless of a specific culture and era. Perhaps this is due to the influence of the oldest parts of the brain, its most primitive part, called the “reptile complex” or “R-complex”. Some scientists consider these very areas of the brain to “play an important role in establishing social hierarchy” - is this where the idea of the reptilian essence of the powers that be comes from? One can also recall Arthur Machen, another author of mystical stories, a contemporary of Stoker and Lovecraft. In the story “White Powder” he writes about how “the triune hypostasis of man disintegrated, and the creeping reptile, sensitively dormant in each of us, became a tangible, independent being, clothed with flesh.” From this point of view, snake-like intelligent beings in literature, cinema, conspiracy theories and religion are a constant veiled reminder that a snake lives inside every person.
"Snakes that can talk" are cursed, forbidden words in Robert E. Howard's The Shadow Kingdom. Is it because the first words addressed by the Serpent to man were “Be like gods”?..
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