1. Entering Into the Serpent
Maria Cabrera
ETHS 2100-002
Remote Assignment
2. Symbol of Snakes
• The Aztecs viewed the snake as a powerful creature. They
admired the feathered snake as their god, “Quetzalcoatl.”
• “Quetzalcoatl” refers to the male version of the serpent
• “Coatlique” refers to the female version, “Mother Goddess”
• Anzaldua was a queer, so she believed that she could
combine both female and male attributes
3. “The earliest is Coatlicue, or “Serpent Skirt.” She
had a human skull or serpent for a head, a
necklace of human hearts, a skirt of twisted
serpents and taloned feet.”
• Coatlicue means “Serpent Skirt”
• The snakes represent waves which mean that they were speaking
• The snakes symbolize electromagnetic waves and interacting
between natural forces
4. Pg. 26 (pdf version)
• “Like the ancient Olmecs, I know Earth is a coiled Serpent. Forty years
it’s taken me to enter into the Serpent, to acknowledge that I have a
body, that I am a body and to assimilate the animal body, the animal
soul.”
• Anzaldua forms a new identity by embracing the idea that the serpent
holds a strong, feminine identity.
5. Pg. 34 (pdf version)
• ”The Olmecs associated womanhood with the Serpent’s mouth which
was guarder by rows of dangerous teeth, a sort of vagina dentate.
They considered it the most sacred place on earth, a place of refuge,
the creative womb from which all things were born and to which all
things returned.”
• “Snake people had holes, entrances to the body of the Earth Serpent;
they followed the Serpent’s way, identified with the Serpent deity,
with the mouth, both the eater and the eaten. The destiny of
humankind is to be devoured by the Serpent.”
6. Pg. 35 (pdf version)
• “Once, in my bedroom, I saw a cobra the size of the room, her hood
expanding over me. When I blinked she was gone. I realized she was,
in my psyche, the mental picture and symbol of the instinctual in its
collective impersonal, prehuman. She, the symbol of the dark sexual
drive, the chthonic (underworld), the feminine, the serpentine
movement of sexuality, of creativity, the basis of all energy and life.”
• Anzaldua socializes the serpent with her sexuality.
