The prehistoric earthwork known as The Great Serpent Mound, located near the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio, is reportedly more than 3,000 years old. At 1,348 feet long and three feet high, it is the largest serpent effigy in the world. Although archeologists think that it was built by one of three possible Native American tribes to symbolically record cosmological knowledge, no one really knows who built it or why. Because the mound reflects various lunar and solar alignments, as well as the pattern of the Draco constellation, it seems definite that there is some truth in that conclusion.
Did the Serpent Mound hold some even greater significance for its builders? We think so. It is PluribusOne™’s contention that the symbolism embedded in this sophisticated set of constructions is more information-rich than has been suspected.
As those of us who have visited ancient sites in the USA and Central and South America, the common explanation given by guides for nearly every enigmatic earthwork or stonework is that its purpose was to track the seasons, record periodic astronomical events, and/or pay homage to legendary star people. Large flat stones are sacrificial altars, buildings are temples, and walls are battlements—all constructed between 500 and 3,000 years ago. Yet many of these structures have obviously older foundations and served purposes beyond the ones experts consider attributable to primitive minds.
Many times we have heard the assertion that the first book of learning for the ancients was the sky. We disagree. The first book was the human body and its immediate environment. Through interaction with the environment practical knowledge developed, including recognition of repetitive patterns and processes. Useful correspondences were discovered between objects having similar shapes and/or movements. Such survival-related discoveries led people to eventually recognize similar meaningful patterns made by weather, by the sun and moon, and by lesser lights of the firmament.
The similarity between a snake and animal intestine would be noticed before making the more intellectual connection to a set of lights in the night sky that vaguely suggest a serpentine configuration. So it is our thinking that by the time a connection was perceived between a snake and the constellation we now call Draco, people having the intelligence to build the Serpent Mound were already well familiar with patterns present in their bodies that found correspondences in the environment. Based on our studies of Native American spirituality we can say with certainty that this is so. The “Indian” had a better holistic grasp of self, Earth, and cosmos than did the invading European.
All of which brings us to our contribution to decoding the symbolism of this Mound:
What we see is a design that synchronizes the builders’ grasp of all levels of the reality they perceived, including an understanding of their personal role in the perpetual Creation process. Because the Mound’s design expresses not only elaborate systematic connections between the Earth and surrounding heavenly bodies but also reflects equally complex knowledge of that cosmological connection as reflected in the purposeful design and functioning of their own bodies. The Mound expresses an essential holistic grasp of the natural magic and existential meaning of Omniverse.
Here’s how: The Great Serpent Mound’s design is not only a stylistic rendering of Draco but also an excellent abstract of a uterus, an ovum, and a spermatozoon. (See Image File #47.)
Tags: Draco constellation, Native American spirituality, natural magic, Serpent Mound
PluribusOne™ 
February 1, 2013 at 10:33 AM
How could they have known about ova and spermatozoa in an age before microscopes?
February 1, 2013 at 11:00 AM
They could have known in a number of ways: (1) by directly receiving the knowledge as “gifts of the Spirit” via inner-visions, (2) through heightened perception achieved during religious ceremonial ingestion of hallucinogenic plants, (3) through comparative study of larger scale natural processes and logical extrapolation, or (4) through oral transmission of knowledge preserved from an earlier and more-advanced lost civilization.
Native American knowledge of some things may have been theoretical, just as most of today’s “knowledge” is theoretical. Consider that the inability to see atoms—invisible building blocks theorized by Greek philosophers more than 2,000 years ago—did not prevent 20th century scientists from splitting them.
Note that the Temple of Luxor, in Egypt embodies in its overall design an abstract blueprint reflecting ancient Egyptian initiates’ understanding of the human body, including the reproduction system down to the microscopic level. A wall inscription in the Luxor temple portrays a phallus and seminal fluid together with a sperm cell. Is this a product of synchronicity?
Massive stone-works around the world—some at mountaintops and others undersea—evidence a common architectural schema. This commonality of design indicates a worldwide prehistoric civilization that cannot be called primitive. If the scientific knowledge and spiritual wisdom of such civilization was preserved in structures erected in Africa, why not in structures built in the Americas?
In fact, it is our conviction—based on many years of both armchair and firsthand study of evidence for such worldwide prehistoric civilization—that the Great Serpent Mound is at least 9,000 years old and was created for the purpose of recording a great cataclysm that all but erased that civilization, during which time constellation Draco presented itself with unique prominence and symbolic significance.
February 1, 2013 at 12:31 PM
In my understanding, ancient people venerated snakes because they feared them, whether they were cobras, rattlesnakes or fer-de-lance vipers which are among the most poisonous. Is there really a valid correspondence value between snakes and human sperm—a positive connotation?
February 1, 2013 at 1:04 PM
Actually, it has been noted by others that the snake depicted by the Mound is not a rattlesnake—the common poisonous snake in that area—because there is no rattle. Since there is nothing buried in the mound—no bodies and no bone or pottery artifacts—it is all the more clear that it was an artwork created to express worshipful recognition of the builders’ understanding of their place and role in the cosmos. If we are correct that the builders were, at least in part, celebrating an imminent rebirth of civilization, fertility rituals are likely to have been performed there. That the area is host to unusual magnetic and gravity phenomena must have added to the attraction and sexual association.
February 1, 2013 at 6:28 PM
Are there any other correspondences that add to your analysis?
February 1, 2013 at 8:36 PM
There is one which we see as fundamentally significant: The plateau itself has a unique structure that some geologists say is due to the impact of a meteorite. Ancients who witnessed the dramatic event and passed the memory on via folktales over generations are likely to have associated it with a process of cosmic impregnation, perhaps akin to the modern-day theory of Panspermia. Dragons (Draco constellation) were also associated with Creation. Our research indicates that the Adena people believed their original home was in the stars—perhaps Draco.