I recently started getting interested in the religious/occult symbol of the Crucified Serpent. There seem to be several variations of it (try this link for more images), but the one I like best is the one where the serpent is coiled around a Tau cross. I rather like the explanation of it on AltReligion, which reads:

[…] a common alchemical drawing representing the “fixing of the volatile,” or, making the elixir of mercury, a legendary curative, by removing the volatile, or poisonous element. The crucified serpent is a symbol of overcoming one’s base or materially inclined nature.

It’s also related to an episode from the Old Testament. In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 21, God afflicts the wandering Israelites with a plague of serpents. Hilariously enough, this occurs as a result of them complaining of poor treatment from God. Rather than getting more pissed off, the Israelites eventually repent and plead to Moses to intervene on their behalf. Lines 8-9 explain what happened:

and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.”

Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he recovered.

I really like this idea of taking that which has afflicted you, and reconfiguring it into something which will cure you of those very same ills. I guess people would probably technically call this “sympathetic magic” but that doesn’t denigrate it any for me as an idea.

The other interpretation worth following up here, of course, is the overtly Gnostic one. In some gnostic sects, the Serpent who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden was not actually Satan, but a messenger sent by the Divine Wisdom - Sophia, in order to wake humanity up to its true seed and divine spark of knowledge within. In this cosmology, of course, salvation is achieved through reconnecting yourself to divine wisdom, rather than through the death of a man on a cross. By fixing the image of the serpent onto the image of the cross, Gnostics sought to establish a semiotic connection between the teachings of Jesus and this “salvation through gnosis” which the Serpent represented.

Other coiled snake symbols you might want to research are the Staff of Asclepius, the Caduceus of Mercury/Hermes and the Orphic Egg.

Here are some wonderful images provided by Jennifer Emick:

• Fixing the Volatile - the Alchemical Serpent
• Cagliostro’s Serpent Seal
• The Brazen Serpent of Moses