profane crowd was
excluded; a python was carried round the town in a hammock, perhaps as
a ceremony for the expulsion of evils. The rainbow-god of the Ewe was
also conceived to have the form of a snake; his messenger was said to
be a small variety of boa; but only certain individuals, not the whole
species, were sacred. In many parts of Africa the serpent is looked
upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives; among the Amazulu, as
among the Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are assigned as the
abode of certain classes; the Masai, on the other hand, regard each
species as the habitat of a particular family of the tribe.

In America some of the Amerindian tribes reverence the rattlesnake as
grandfather and king of snakes who is able to give fair winds or cause
tempest. Among the Hopi (Moqui) of Arizona the serpent figures largely
in one of the dances. The rattlesnake was worshipped in the Natchez
temple of the sun; and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was a serpent-god.
The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the
pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent figure in
their deluge myth.

Over a large part of India there are carved representations of cobras
(N[=a]gas) or stones as substitutes; to these human food and flowers
are offered and lights are burned before the shrines. Among the
Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a human
being; no one would kill one intentionally; the serpent-god's image is
carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess.

Serpent cults were well known in ancient Europe; there does not, it
is true, appear to be much ground for supposing that Aesculapius was
a serpent-god in spite of his connexion with serpents. On the other
hand, we learn from Herodotus of the great serpent which defended the
citadel of Athens; the Roman _genius loci_ took the form of a serpent;
a snake was kept and fed with milk in the temple of Potrimpos, an old
Slavonic god. To this day there are numerous traces in popular belief,
especially in Germany, of respect for the snake, which seems to be a
survival of ancestor worship, such as still exists among the Zulus and
other savage tribes; the "house-snake," as it is called, cares for the
cows and the children, and its appearance is an omen of death, and the
life of a pair of house-snakes is often held to be bound up with that
of the master and mistress themselves. Tradition says that one of the
Gnostic