Snake rings made of various materials, including gold, silver, and platinum, have become very fashionable in recent years. Although some women refuse to use them because they associate the snake with fear, others find them irresistible: loving or hating the emotion invoked always seems intense. Perhaps for this reason, archaeological evidence shows that people have appreciated snake rings long before history was first recorded.
Generally, rings, particularly those made of precious metals, have great symbolic significance in most cultures. However, the snake itself is one of the most powerful symbols of all; perhaps the most important symbol recorded in the records of prehistoric man. The first recorded evidence of ritual behavior and religion is found in a massive 70-80,000-year-old snake-shaped rock found in the Tsodilo Hills of Botswana.
Local people call the place “The Mountain of the Gods”. The snake rock gives the appearance of a twisted movement of thousands of notches carved into it that flicker as the light changes. The broken spearheads scattered everywhere suggest that people came from hundreds of miles around to participate in some profoundly meaningful sacrificial ritual; The fact that humanity’s earliest religious activity involved a snake as its central object of worship should perhaps not surprise us.
Freud’s work on psychoanalysis showed how, even for modern men and women, the snake is a powerful symbol of sexual desire: dream analysis often reveals the presence of snakes that generally have a sexual or sensual connotation and often reveal repressed feelings. How could this have emerged as such an intrinsic part of the human psyche? Jung would have said that it was simply “part of the collective unconscious”. However, the real reason likely stems from the physical form of the snake itself, the sensation of touching its skin or at least imagining it, and its potential to cause death. Although it is long and smooth, it has the constant potential to grow and bite; it can also wrap around the body and cause death.
The fact is that the serpent’s ring combines two of humanity’s most powerful symbols into one object of extraordinary psychological power: the ring, which is a symbol of lasting union, and the serpent, which symbolizes sexuality. For this reason, many cultures over the centuries have embraced the serpent ring, including Christianity, Chinese, Aztec, as well as Indian and Scandinavian culture.
When you buy a snake ring, therefore, you are not simply purchasing a fashionable object. Instead, you become part of a long tradition of people who have felt in the snake ring more than just their physical presence. There are those who say that you should never accept the gift of a snake ring, particularly a gold one, from a partner you are not married to or do not intend to marry. This is, of course, an old wives’ tale, actually based on a Scandinavian story I remember as a child, and it’s not something you should consider if you really want a ring, although I must add,