Archive Home Page A little followup on my mostly off topic post.
I woke up this morning with some doubt regarding the images I had remembered (after all it was some thirty years ago) so after work I went to my local branch public library and spent about thirty minutes perusing thru the encyclopedias and a book on Christian Symbolism for clarification and here is what I found.
The actual American flags with the snakes and the motto "Don't Tread on Me" were battle flags with a different connotation than the circular or dual snakes. A single coiled snake adorned the battle flag of the Culpepper Militia and a single snake extended on a field of lines was apparently one of the first battleflags of the U.S. Navy. These are aggressive images. An earlier Navy flag flown on the ships initially commanded by Washington showed a green tree on a white field with the inscription 'A Plea to Heaven". There was also snake imagery from a newspaper drawing by Franklin showing the colonies as seperated segments of a snake with the exhortation "Join or Die". Interesting symbols.
From the book on Christian symbolism, after several pages of the negative aspects of the serpent (admittedly there), the author acknowledged the symbol of the snake with it's tail in it's mouth as a symbol of eternity with the circle commonly representing everlasting life. A negative reading of that symbol would suggest a kind of self destruction or feeding on onself while a positive reading would show self sufficiency and perhaps wholeness or unity. Campbell, of course, in his book the "Inner Reaches of Outer Space" had interpretations ranging across a half dozen belief systems and cultures including John 3:15. I'm still not entirely sure where I got the image that I attributed to the flags. I must have seen it somewhere. Nevertheless, having once dealt with the negative aspect of that image, I greatly appreciate it's positive side.
I guess the main point that I want to leave is that symbols are very very often transitional, and that a simple redirecting of the energy embodied in a symbol can change it's meaning from negative to positive. The clearest example of this can be seen in the spring skies when looking at the constellation known as the Northern Cross. The image of suffering. That same configuration of stars however is a part of the constellation Cygnus. And when starting with the cross and expanding your view of the sky you can see the transformation. The cross is transformed into a beautiful swan flying thru one of the richest star fields in the sky.
I don't need to tell you who that represents.