The caduceus and the rod

The teaching

As the Greek lore of Hermes and of Asclepius teaches it.

The herald's wand

The caduceus is the Latin name of the Greek kerykeion, the herald's staff, from keryx, a herald. A herald who carried it could not be harmed: he passed between enemies to carry words, to ask for a truce, to make a bargain. So the wand means safe passage, peace, negotiation and exchange, and it became the sign of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and of Mercury, the Roman god of trade, whose envoys came to sue for peace under its protection.

How Hermes came by it

The Homeric hymn to Hermes tells it. On the day he was born Hermes stole the cattle of his brother Apollo and made the first lyre from a tortoise shell; when Apollo came in anger, Hermes played, and gave him the lyre. Apollo in return gave him a golden staff of wealth and good fortune and made him keeper of herds. A later story says that Hermes found two snakes fighting and laid the staff between them, and they wound about it in peace: that is why the staff carries two snakes.

Homer gives the wand a further power: with it Hermes lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he will and wakes others from sleep, and with it he leads the souls of the dead down to the house of Hades. The messenger goes between waking and sleep and between the living and the dead, as well as between enemies.

Staff, snakes and wings

Each part of the caduceus is read in turn. The staff is the herald's authority, the right to go where others may not. The two snakes are opposites brought into accord, the two sides of a quarrel or a bargain wound about one rod. The wings are the speed of the messenger. Drawn small, the wand became the sign of the planet Mercury, and through it the sign of the metal, the quicksilver of the alchemists, whose whole art is called Hermetic after the god.

The occultists kept the wand. Lévi set it in the lap of his Baphomet as the sign of eternal life, and in Waite's deck the caduceus rises between the cups of the two lovers on the Two of Cups, crowned with a lion's head between its wings.

Asclepius and his staff

Asclepius, son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis, was taught the art of healing by the centaur Chiron, and grew so skilled that he raised the dead, for which Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt; afterwards he was honoured as the god of healing. His staff is a plain, rough stick, a traveller's staff, with one snake coiled about it and no wings. The snake was his own creature, kept in his temples, and the old readers saw in it renewal, since a snake sheds its skin and is new.

Sleep in the god's house

At Epidaurus and the other houses of Asclepius the sick came to sleep in the god's presence. They bathed, made an offering and lay down for the night in a hall set apart, where tame snakes moved freely among the sleepers. They hoped the god would come to them in a dream, to touch them or to tell them what to do, and in the morning the priests heard their dreams. Tablets set up in the sanctuary told of cures that sleepers said they had received.

Ovid tells that when a plague struck Rome the city sent to Epidaurus for the god, and he came in the form of a great serpent, boarded the Roman ship and, at Rome, swam ashore to the island in the Tiber where his temple was then built.

Moses' serpent of brass

A third staff stands beside these in the Bible. When the people in the wilderness were bitten by fiery serpents, Moses was told to set a serpent on a pole: And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Centuries later King Hezekiah broke it in pieces, because the people burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.

The Gospel of John reads it as a figure of the cross: as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. The likeness of this pole to the staff of Asclepius helped the single snake become the sign of medicine in Christian Europe.

Which staff is which

One snake on a rough staff, without wings, is Asclepius, and belongs to medicine. Two snakes on a slender wand, usually winged, are the caduceus of Hermes, and belong to heralds, trade, eloquence and the planet and metal Mercury. Moses' serpent hangs alone on a pole, the sign of a healing asked of God.