Nāga: The Shapeshifting Snake People Of Buddhist Mythology
Nāga is the Sanskrit and Pali word for a deity or class of entity or being taking the form of a very great snake, specifically the king cobra, found in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. A female nāga is a nāgin" or nāgini".
Elgood, Heather (2000). Hinduism and the Religious Arts. London: Cassell. p. 234.
Strange as it may seem, my first introduction to Nāga was as a child.
The fantastic RPG Chrono Trigger feature an enemy called Naga who is a half human, half snake being that is part of a royal kidnapping scheme.
It was later in adulthood when I became interested in the study of religion and mythology that I realized the source material of this character was from the ancient myths of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism: a race of half snake, half human beings that interacted with humans and held a state of demi-godhood in the Eastern pantheon.
The Buddhist Nāga
In Buddhism, the nāga usually takes the form of a great cobra with a single head but sometimes with many. At least some of the nāgas are capable of using magic powers to transform themselves into a human semblance.
The nāga have many forms between which they can shape-shift:
- A snake (generally a cobra or large water python)
- A man or woman
- The 'medusa' form, a human with many snakes emerging from the head and/or shoulders
- The 'snake mermaid' form, like a mermaid except that the lower half is a snake instead of a fish
- A snake too large to be natural (sometimes so big it can swallow elephants)
- A snake with many heads (sometimes also gigantic)
- A dragon (this is rare in India, but more common in Thailand and Malaysia, where the Nāga is sometimes considered a creature of cryptozoology)
One nāga, in human form, attempted to become a monk; when telling it that such ordination was impossible, the Buddha told it how to ensure that it would be reborn a human, able to become a monk.
VINAYA: The Ordination Ceremony of a Monk
There is the story of the daughter of the Dragon King, who was an 8 year old longnü:
Point Six, on the passage “There is the daughter of the dragon king Sāgara, who has just turned eight. Her wisdom has keen roots and she is good at understanding the root activities and deeds of living beings."
She transformed into a male Bodhisattva and immediately reaches full enlightenment.
The Home of the Nāga
Nāga are believed to live on Mount Meru:
Mount Meru (Sanskrit: मेरु, Tibetan: ཪི་རྒྱལ་པོ་རི་རབ་, Sumeru, Sineru or Mahameru) is the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology and is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes.
Meru (Sinhalese:"මහා මේරු පර්වතය") to which is added the approbatory prefix su-, results in the meaning "Excellent Meru", "Wonderful Meru" or "Great Meru". In other languages, (Chinese: 須彌山 Xūmíshān; Pāli Meru; Burmese: မြင်းမိုရ် Myinmo), Khmer:ភ្នំព្រះសុមេរុ (Phnom Preah So Mae).
Many famous Hindu and similar Jain as well as Buddhist temples have been built as symbolic representations of this mountain. The "Sumeru Throne" 須彌座 xūmízuò style base is a common feature of Chinese pagodas. The highest point (the finial bud) on the pyatthat, a Burmese-style multi-tiered roof, represents Mount Meru.
They also live in various parts of the human-inhabited earth. Some of them are water-dwellers, living in streams or the ocean; others are earth-dwellers, living in underground caverns.
Beings of great power and influence
The Nāga are considered to be very powerful deities and guardians of Virūpākṣa, one of the Four Heavenly Kings. They guard Mount Sumeru, protecting the dēvas (godlike non-human beings) of Trāyastriṃśa (a kind of heaven) from attack by the asūras, a kind of titan demigod.
Two disciples of the Buddha, Sariputta and Moggallāna, are called "Mahānāga ", which means "Great Nāga" (P. 74 How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings by Richard Francis Gombrich)
Relation to modern day
Even though their views vary substantially in many categories, tne of the most sensational claims by writers and whistleblowers such as David Icke, Donald Marshall, David Wilcock, and Corey Goode is that there is a race of shapeshifting reptilian beings that hold great power over human society.
I am not trying to address those claims in this post, but simply pointing out that there is a very ancient belief in such beings spanning across every continent, religious folklore, and culture.
it does seem rather coincidental that the mystical traditions of so many ancient cultures at some point address the existence of a shape-shifting race of reptilian people. This is either something that holds some bearing in reality or it's such deeply compelling psychological archetype that it appears in distributed cultures over distributed periods of time in distributed places.
What do you think?
I've always found ancient religion and folklore fascinating, and when there are accounts of things that relate to modern day, that's all the more reason to pay attention.
What are your thoughts?
**Images from https://pixabay.com/
Perhaps there is an explanation, at least partially, how these types of myths, if indeed that is what they are, arise and keep being perpetuated. Carl Jung identified what he called the collective unconscious, Rupert Sheldrake calls this same phenomenon "morphogenetic fields", the Buddhists have a name for it too, but I cannot recall what term they use but it is the same phenomenon. I just simply call these etherial banks of memory or energetic reservoirs, energy banks. Perhaps I'll make a post about it.
In the West, our Newtonian mechanistic approach to the cosmos when combined with Judeo/Christian culture denies the existence of such things. But exist they do. Essentially, human experience and consciousness is banked or recorded in specific banks of information or "fields". There is an energy bank for every imaginable thing from professional sports teams to the Democrats, to religions. One can tap into these powerful source fields and be immersed in their energies. So this legend or myth of the Reptilian people gets perpetuated through these energy banks. One can quite literally access the information, the energies. Upon experiencing the specific info one comes to the conclusion that it is "real". When in fact it is just energy, just stored information.
Well, if you can grasp all of that without your cognitive dissonance alarms going off then you are pretty special. But I suspect this is what has occurred with the people who literally believe in all sorts of odd things: they have accessed specific banks of information from the collective unconscious.
Well, there! Bet you weren't looking for that. Many blessings.
And that is all well and good, right up until you meet a Naga.
But, everything is energy. The entirety is fields.
What "modern scientists" want to call reality is no more "real".
In the west, it is easier to talk about angels.
Most people have three angels following them around.
Imagine if you could see all the angels at a people party.
The room would seem quite crowded.
People tend to think of all of this as superstition.
Hey, they call Casteneda's books "fiction".
Just because they can't see it or interact with it directly
they call it a myth.
Indeed, everything is energy. It's all energy. You and I are energy. All part of the One.
Don't know that I have three angels following me. If they are they need to wake up, pay attention and do their job!!
Perhaps one day we will overcome our biases and accept the reality of realms we do not see.
And the angels are probably saying, I hope he wakes up and notices us. We've been trying to get his attention to tell him (something like the bridge is out ahead, lets take an alternative route) ^_^
But, seriously, how does one even know to listen to angels when we are told, by "modern scientists" that those things don't exist, and that you are a superstitious nut job for believing any of that old crap.
Ha! Yes, they are probably trying to get my attention. No doubt about that. Funny, I've never felt a guiding presence though I've felt and experienced many other things. I do follow spiritual promptings though... perhaps that comes from my angels. Blessings.
Sounds similar to energy manipulation as I read it years ago in Castaneda's books. Wayne Dyer also hints at it as well with his book You'll see it when you believe it.
I would look forward to reading what you would write. Ideas/examples on perception have intrigued me since I was a teen.
Actually, I think I must address it in a series I am writing entitled, "The Roots of War, the Hope of Peace". This phenomenon of being infused with beliefs that motivate us to march off to war is central to what I am presenting. Keep an eye out. Blessings.
If we've been here since ancient times then every tradition, myth and cultural norm had to adapt just like humans did.
Every entity may still exist just in other form as it is always changing.
It was an interesting read! Thanks!
I love me some Wilcock and Goode and this goes to all cultures and around the world. Very interesting write, I wish I'd heard of this contest I would have given you a run for your money. :)
I am glad to see that someone else is writing about mythology. I know that medusas appear in Greek mythology as well.
Concerning reptilian shapeshifters who hold great power, I don't think it matters. We do know there is a group of people who hold great amount of money and power, I don't think it is important what they are. They can be reptiles, chickens or mere humans and there is no difference on what their holding of power means to humanity.
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