The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. With these words, Eve snitched on the snake. As the evil power responsible for the fall, in Western art serpents symbolize the devil. Saint Patrick got a day named after him for banishing the snakes from Ireland.
Western psychologists believe human beings have an innate aversion to serpents.
Everywhere else, however, snakes are great. This is the Chinese year of the snake. There are Native American serpent mounds in Ohio, snakes drawn on the plateaus of Peru and the caves of France. The Hopi, Huron, Shoshone and Sioux tribes venerated serpentine deities. Asps adorn the helmets in paintings and sculptures of Egyptian pharaohs.