Aries 14: A SERPENT CRAWLING NEAR A MAN AND A WOMAN

Aries 14: A SERPENT CRAWLING NEAR A MAN AND A WOMAN (Jones ,1953)

The first and most obvious theme concerns things that crawl. The word serpent descends from the Indo-European (IE) root serp-2 which means “to crawl, creep.” One of its paronyms is herpetology--the branch of zoology that deals with reptiles and amphibians. Paronyms of crawling include crayfish and crabs.

A second theme concerns rulers and authority figures. For example, paronyms of crawling include landgrave (a man in medieval Germany who had jurisdiction over a particular territory), margrave (the lord or military governor of a medieval German border province; used as a hereditary title for certain princes in the Holy Roman Empire), and palsgrave (a feudal lord exercising sovereign power over his lands). One of the paronyms of man is Manu which in Hinduism is “the primordial father of the human race and sovereign of the earth who first instituted religious ceremonies and devised a code of laws.”

Finally, there is a clear religious theme. The imagery of the symbol strongly suggests the temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden as related in third chapter of the book of Genesis. Innumerable commentators of this passage have remarked upon the shame that Adam and Eve felt after having eaten the forbidden fruit, a transgression of the law. Interestingly, the word ‘shame’ is the definition of the IE root gwhibh-, the root of woman. Furthermore, the paronyms of crawling include the word agrapha which are “the sayings of Jesus not written in the canonical Gospels but known from other ancient sources.” A central tenet of Christian theology posits that Jesus came to the world to save mankind from Adam’s original sin. That belief is summed up for many Christians in John 3:16 which reads:


In light of this verse, it is notable that the word world descends from the IE root wi-ro- which means “man.”

hmmm the first and most obvious theme here concerns sexuality.
i think the judeo/christian degradation of woman leans you toward the interest in crawling


rahu

rahu said:

hmmm the first and most obvious theme here concerns sexuality.
i think the judeo/christian degradation of woman leans you toward the interest in crawling


rahu

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Rahu, I have a very specific formula analyzing the Sabian Symbols. I begin with the morphological base of the keywords of the symbol. Typically that would be the base form of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. In this case that would be SERPENT, CRAWL, NEAR, MAN, and WOMAN.

Step 2 is to find the etymological root of these bases. My preferred source for this information is the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. In this case, four of five bases have an IE root. They are as follows:

*The noun serpent descends from the Indo-European root serp-2 that means “to crawl, creep.”

* The verb crawling descends from the IE root gerbh- which means “to scratch”

*The adverb near descends from the Middle English ner and the Old English near.

*The noun man descends from the IE root man-1 which means “man”

* The noun woman also descends from the root ghwibh- which means both “shame” and “pudenda”, the external genitalia of a woman.

As you can see, the last word contains the part of the symbol that loomed largest in your interpretation. The method I used goes further.

The third step is to examine all of the other words that also descends from these roots. Those words are known as "paronyms." I won't bother to repeat that step here but let it suffice to say that there are five groups of paronyms--a group for each keyword in the symbol.

Step four is to find semantic, logical, rhetorical, and other linguistic relationships that cut ACROSS two or more groups of paronyms. Thos relationship are what I call a "theme." The ONLY things I list as themes in my analyses are relationships that are objectively present among the groups of words defined and described above. I concentrate solely on specific relationships that have their basis in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. You appear to have another approach: more power to you.

---sdh3

yes you are correct, i use intuition rather than intellectual faculities ,

rahu