Snake gods

Quetzalcoatl () (Nahuatl: "Feathered Serpent") is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He is also a god of wisdom, learning and intelligence. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc (ally and the god of rain) and Xolotl (psychopomp and its twin).

Atum (, Egyptian: jtm(w) or tm(w), reconstructed ; Coptic Atoum), sometimes rendered as Atem, Temu, or Tem, is the primordial God in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose. He created himself and is the father of Shu and Tefnut, the divine couple, who are the ancestors of the other Egyptian deities. Atum is also closely associated with the evening sun. As a primordial god and as the evening sun, Atum has chthonic and underworld connections. Atum was relevant to the ancient Egyptians throughout most of Egypt's history. He is believed to have been present in ideology as early as predynastic

Geb (, Egyptological pronunciation: Gebeb), also known as Ceb, ), was the Egyptian god of the Earth and a mythological member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. He could also be considered a father of snakes. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter created earthquakes and that he allowed crops to grow.

Apophis (; from ), also known as Apep () or Aphoph (, ), usually depicted as a giant snake or serpent, is the ancient Egyptian deity of chaos, darkness and fire, and is thus the opponent of light and Maat (order/truth). Ra was the bringer of light and hence the biggest opposer of Apophis.

thumb|right|280px|Zeus aiming his thunderbolt at a winged and snake-footed Typhon. Chalcidian black-figured [[hydria ( BC), Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 596).]] Typhon (; , ), also known as Typhoeus (; ), Typhaon () or Typhos (), was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters.

In various Asian religious traditions, the Nāgas () are a divine, or semi-divine, race of half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala), and can occasionally take human or part-human form, or are so depicted in art. Furthermore, nāgas are also known as dragons and water spirits. A female nāga is called a Nagini (Hindi: Nagin). According to legend, they are the children of the sage Kashyapa and Kadru. Rituals devoted to these supernatural beings have been taking place throughout South Asia for at least 2,000 years. They are principally depicted in three forms: as entir

Fuxi or Fu Hsi is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2900 BC or 2000BC. He is also said to be the originator of bagua (the eight trigrams) after observing that there were eight fundamental building blocks in nature: heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, and lake. These eight are all made of different combinations of yin and yang, which are what came to be called bagua.

Abzû or Apsû (, + ) is the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in ancient near eastern cosmology, including Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. It was believed that all lakes, springs, rivers, fountains, rain, and even the Flood, as described in Atrahasis, originated from the Abzû. In Mesopotamian cosmogony, it is referred to as the freshwater primordial ocean below and above the earth; indeed the Earth itself was regarded as a goddess Ninhursag that was conceived from the mating of male Abzu with female saltwater stream Tiamat. In this w

Lakshmana (, ), also known as Laxmana, Lakhan, Saumitra, and Ramanuja, is the younger brother of Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana. He is considered as an incarnation of Shesha, the lord of serpents. Lakshmana was married to Urmila, and is known for his loyalty and dedication towards Rama.

Slavic god of earth, waters and the underworld

Shesha (), also known by his epithets Sheshanaga () and Adishesha (), is a serpentine demigod (naga) and king of the serpents (Nagaraja), as well as a primordial being of creation in Hinduism. In the Puranas, Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as Ananta () or Ananta Shesha ().

ancient Egyptian deity

Primordial Greek creator deity

thumb|Kukulkan at the base of the west face of the northern stairway of El Castillo, Chichen Itza thumb|Kukulkan at Chichen Itza during the Equinox. upright|thumb|The Classic Maya vision serpent, as depicted at Yaxchilan. Kukulkan, also spelled K’uk’ulkan (; "Plumed Serpent", "Amazing Serpent"), is the serpent deity of Maya mythology. It is closely related to the deity Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people and to Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology. Prominent temples to Kukulkan are found at archaeological sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan.

Vritra (, , ) is a danava in Hinduism. He serves as the personification of drought, and is an adversary of the king of the devas, Indra. As a danava, he belongs to the race of the asuras. Vritra is also known in the Vedas as Ahi ( ). He appears as a human-like serpent blocking the course of the Rigvedic rivers, and is slain by Indra with his newly forged vajra.

In the biblical Books of Kings (2 Kings 18:4; written c. 550 BC), the Nehushtan (; ) is the bronze image of a serpent on a pole. The image is described in the Book of Numbers, where Yahweh instructed Moses to erect it so that the Israelites who saw it would be cured and be protected from dying from the bites of the "fiery serpents", which Yahweh had sent to punish them for speaking against him and Moses ().

Tatenen (also Ta-tenen, Tatjenen, Tathenen, Tanen, Tenen, Tanenu, and Tanuu) was the deity of the primordial mound in ancient Egyptian religion. His name means "risen land" or "exalted earth", as well as referring to the silt of the Nile. As a primeval chthonic deity, Tatenen was identified with creation. Both feminine and masculine, he was an androgynous protector of nature from the Memphis area (then known as Men-nefer), the ancient capital of the Inebu-hedj nome in Lower Egypt.

deity in Hellenistic mythology

Glycon, also spelled Glykon ( Glýkōn, : Glýkōnos), was an ancient snake god. He had a large and influential cult within the Roman Empire in the 2nd century, with contemporary satirist Lucian providing the primary literary reference to the deity. Lucian claimed Glycon was created in the mid-2nd century by the Greek prophet Alexander of Abonoteichos. Lucian was ill-disposed toward the cult, calling Alexander a false prophet, accusing the whole enterprise of being a hoax, and claiming that Glycon himself was a hand puppet.

Wadd () (Ancient South Arabian script: 𐩥𐩵) was the national god of the Kingdom of Ma'in, inhabited by the Minaean peoples, in modern-day South Arabia.

Ōkuninushi (; historical orthography: , ), also known as Ō(a)namuchi (Oho(a)namuchi) or Ō(a)namochi (Oho(a)namochi) among other variants, is a kami (divine figure) in Japanese mythology. He is one of the central deities in the myth cycle recorded in the () and the (720) alongside the sun goddess Amaterasu and her brother, the wild god Susanoo, who is reckoned to be either Ōkuninushi's distant ancestor or father. In these texts, he is portrayed as the head of the kunitsukami (gods of the earth) and the original ruler of the lush terrestrial world, .

creator god and common motif in the art and religion of Aboriginal Australia

Ningishzida (Sumerian: DNIN.G̃IŠ.ZID.DA, possible meaning "Lord [of the] Good Tree") was a Mesopotamian deity of vegetation, the underworld and sometimes war. He was commonly associated with snakes. Like Dumuzi, he was believed to spend a part of the year in the land of the dead. He also shared many of his functions with his father Ninazu.

Ištaran (Ishtaran; ) was a Mesopotamian god who was the tutelary deity of the city of Der, a city-state located east of the Tigris, in the proximity of the borders of Elam. It is known that he was a divine judge, and his position in the Mesopotamian pantheon was most likely high, but much about his character remains uncertain. He was associated with snakes, especially with the snake god Nirah, and it is possible that he could be depicted in a partially or fully serpentine form himself. He is first attested in the Early Dynastic period in royal inscriptions and theophoric names. He appears in s

Nehebkau (also spelled Nehebu-Kau) was the primordial snake god in ancient Egyptian mythology. Although originally considered an evil spirit, he later functions as a funerary god associated with the afterlife. As one of the forty-two assessors of Ma'at, Nehebkau was believed to judge the deceased after death and provide their souls with ka – the part of the soul that distinguished the living from the dead.

, also pronounced Wadatsumi, is a legendary kami (神, god; deity; spirit), Japanese dragon and tutelary water deity in Japanese mythology. is believed to be another name for the sea deity Ryūjin (龍神, Dragon God) and also for the , which rule the upper, middle and lower seas respectively and were created when Izanagi was washing himself of the dragons blood when he returned from Yomi, "the underworld".

In Egyptian mythology, the name Mehen (), meaning 'coiled one', referred to a mythological snake-god and to a board game. ==Snake god== The earliest known references to Mehen occur in the Coffin Texts. Mehen is a protective deity who is depicted as a snake which coils around the sun god Ra during his journey through the night, for instance in the Amduat.

thumb|A lion-faced, Snakes in mythology|serpentine [[deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's ''L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures'', a depiction of Yaldabaoth.]]

Yinglong () is a winged dragon and rain deity in ancient Chinese mythology.

Tishpak (Tišpak) was a Mesopotamian god associated with the ancient city Eshnunna and its sphere of influence, located in the Diyala area of Iraq. He was primarily a war deity, but he was also associated with snakes, including the mythical mushussu and bashmu, and with kingship.

deity

thumb|The purported Flag of Widewuto (Potrimpo on the right) Potrimpo (also Potrimpus, Autrimpo, Natrimpe) was a god of seas, earth, grain, and crops in the pagan Baltic, and Prussian mythology. He was one of the three main gods worshiped by the Old Prussians. Most of what is known about this god is derived from unreliable 16th-century sources.

Damballa, also spelled Damballah, Dambala, Dambalah, among other variations (), is one of the most important of all loa, spirits in West African Vodun, Haitian Voodoo and other African diaspora religious traditions such as Obeah. He is traditionally portrayed as a great white or black serpent, but may also be depicted as a rainbow. Damballa originated in the city of Wedo (Whydah or Ouidah) in modern-day Benin.

Pakhangba is a primordial deity, often represented in the form of a dragon, in Meitei mythology and Sanamahism, the indigenous religion of Manipur. He is depicted in the heraldry of Manipur kingdom, which originated in paphal (), mythical illustrations of the deity. It is believed that the ancestor of one of the Meitei clans manifested himself as the Pakhangba.

The Mahoraga (), also pronounced as Maha-Uraga ("Greater Reptilians"), are a race of deities in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. They are the exalted ones among the Uragas, a race of primordial reptilian beings who are cousins to the nāga. Like the nāga, they are often depicted as anthropomorphic beings with reptilian bodies from the waist down. However, their appearance can differ depending on artistic tradition, sometimes having serpent skin with humanoid bodies, or having a serpent head with the body of a human.

thumb|right|Žaltys and the Holy Fire are depicted in Olaus Magnus' Carta Marina, above the inscription LITVANIE PARS thumb|Parade belt of an officer of the Lithuanian Army, decorated with Žaltys ornaments. thumb|right|Monument to Žaltys in Vyžuonos A žaltys (, literally: grass snake) is a household spirit in Lithuanian mythology. As a sacred animal of the sun goddess Saulė, the grass snake was considered a guardian of the home and a symbol of fertility. People used to keep it as a pet by the stove or other special area of the house, believing that it would bring good harvest and wealth. Killin

Ōmononushi (; historical orthography: Ohomononushi) is a kami in Japanese mythology associated with Mount Miwa (also known as Mount Mimoro) in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture. He is closely linked in the imperial myth cycle recorded in the Kojiki (ca. 712 CE) and the Nihon Shoki (720 CE) with the earthly kami Ōkuninushi (Ōnamuchi); indeed, the latter text treats 'Ōmononushi' as another name for or an aspect - more precisely, the spirit or mitama - of Ōnamuchi.

mythological serpent

Gebeleizis was a god worshiped by the Getae, whose name has been interpreted as a theonym for the Indo-European sky and weather god, evidently also called by the Thracians with a symilar theonym – Zibelthiurdos or Zbelsurdos. In ancient literature he is mentioned only by Herodotus.

Greek god worshipped in Elis

In Fijian mythology, Degei (pronounced Ndengei), enshrined as a serpent, is the supreme god of Fiji. He is the creator of the (Fijian) world, fruits, and of men and is specially connected to Rakiraki District, Fiji. He judges newly dead souls after they pass through one of two caves: Cibaciba or Drakulu. A few he sends to paradise Burotu. Most others are thrown into a lake, where they will eventually sink to the bottom (Murimuria) to be appropriately rewarded or punished.

thumb|upright=1.3|Nirah depicted as a snake on a kudurru (boundary stone). He is often found on the edge of a kudurru, "enclosing" the stone document (land boundary, or entitlement deed).

In myths of the Binbinga people of northern Australia, Bobbi-Bobbi was a supernatural being who lived in the heavens in the Dreamtime. He was a huge snake, similar to the Rainbow Serpent, and was originally benevolent towards humans. From the heavens, he saw that humans needed more than just water to survive, so he created flying foxes for them to catch and eat. When the bats flew too high for the humans to catch them, Bobbi-Bobbi removed one of his own ribs and gave it to humans who used it as the first ever boomerang.

Tongan god