How the snake evolved from a revered symbol of worship to a figure of fear and evil in ancient Chinese culture
Calling someone a snake might not win you any smiles today, but in ancient Chinese culture, snakes were revered as creator deities and symbols of mysterious forces. They starred in poignant love tales like “The Legend of the White Snake,” yet were also feared as harbingers of danger and evil. Among the 12 zodiac animals, the snake stands out for its particularly complex and contradictory symbolism. With the Year of the Snake just around the corner, it’s the perfect moment to uncover how this enigmatic creature has inspired worship, fear, and awe.
Like many origin myths around the world, ancient Chinese mythology also links snakes to themes of creation and procreation. One widely circulated story was recorded in the Chu Silk Manuscript, the earliest silk manuscript excavated in China, which dates back to the first century BCE. It recounts that in the chaos before the formation of heaven and earth, there were two deities, Fuxi and Nüwa. They became husband and wife, giving birth to four sons who became the deities representing the four seasons. Many ancient texts and works of art portray Fuxi and Nüwa as having human heads and snake bodies. In images etched into Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) stone and brick, Fuxi and Nüwa are depicted with snake tails (sometimes as dragon tails). Huangfu Mi (皇甫谧), a scholar from the third century, describes Fuxi in his work The Chronicles of Emperors（《帝王世纪》）as having “a human head and a snake body.” Meanwhile, around the same time, scholar Guo Pu (郭璞) described Nüwa in his annotation to The Classic of Mountains and Seas (《山海经》), a mythological text believed to have been compiled in the fourth or third centuries BCE, writing: “Nüwa, an ancient goddess and empress, had a human face and snake body, and she could transform seventy times in a single day.”
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