Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

and the Eastern Star? Their god has magical powers. He is the god of the underworld (hell) and the patron of thieves and gamblers. Note also that Mercury’s son is Pan. The caduceus (or magic wand) that Mercury carries “consists of three elements: a rod, a pair of wings and two intertwined serpents. The rod is emblematic of power and authority. In the hands of primitive man, the largest club and the power to wield it were mighty persuaders as to just who was the leader of the tribe.” The caduceus “was reported to have the power of producing sleep. Milton refers to it as the opiate rod.”

In A Dictionary of Symbols we find: “For the Romans, the caduceus served as a symbol of moral equilibrium and of good conduct. The wand represents power; the two snakes wisdom; the wings diligence; and the helmet is the emblem of lofty thoughts....According to esoteric Buddhism, the wand of the caduceus corresponds to the axis of the world and the serpents refer to the force called Kundalini, which, in Tantrist teaching, sleeps coiled up at the base of the backbone—a symbol of the evolutive power of pure energy. Schneider maintains that the two S-shapes of the serpents correspond to illness and convalescence. In reality, what defines the essence of the caduceus is the nature and meaning not so much of its individual elements as of the composite whole. The precisely symmetrical and bilateral arrangement, as in the balance of Libra, or in the triunity of heraldry (a shield between two supporters), is always expressive