Page 339 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 332

Pictures of snakes in medical books

it presages major change of some kind in your life: here the image of the snake sloughing
its skin is connected with the notion of change in general. When a man dreams about one
snake by itself, it means that he’s going to get a new girlfriend.
Snakes are supposed to be very sensual creatures, and since they are apparently very

attracted to the smell of women’s underwear they can be caught in this way. So it is not
surprising to find the snake identified symbolically with the penis. However, a snake with
a triangular head is a female symbol – a caveat not to jump to indiscriminate conclusions
in the field of psychological imagery!
Snake-demons with human heads are supposed to occur in the province of Guang-xi.
If one of these demons calls you by name, it is best not to answer! In the same province,
it is said that there are snakes so big that they can swallow an elephant. However, as
the word for elephant (xiang) is phonetically identical with the word for ‘minister’, this is
probably a reference to the abovementioned tale of the snake which swallows its rather
too ambitious benefactor, who has in the meantime become a minister.
‘White Snake’ (bai she) is the heroine of a very popular folk-tale, which has been used
as a basis for several films. She is a snake, but she has turned herself into a beautiful
young woman: she marries the young man she has fallen in love with, and makes him
rich. The young man, however, lets himself be persuaded by a Buddhist monk that his
wife is an evil creature, although by this time she is expecting his child. The monk allows