Why does the Serpent represent illusion and doubt?

In traditional divinatory science and Chinese mystical systems like Qi Men Dun Jia and Da Liu Ren, the Serpent is given an extremely special symbolic meaning, specifically governing “false alarm and strangeness, illusion and suspicion, mental confusion.” This seemingly strange symbolic meaning was not fabricated out of thin air by the ancients, but is rooted in the snake’s biological habits, the “riding mist” characteristic from mythology, and the Eastern psychological mapping of Five Element generating/overcoming dialectics, among multiple dimensions. To understand why the Serpent became a synonym for humanity’s “illusion and doubt,” we can deeply analyze it through the following core logic.

First, this stems from the Serpent’s most core mythical ability — “riding mist.” Ancient texts like the Han Feizi record: “The flying dragon rides the clouds, the Teng snake travels through mist.” The biggest difference between dragon and snake is that the dragon soars through clear, vast heavenly clouds, possessing an openly upright dignity; while the Serpent, to fly, must rely on thick mist. Mist’s essence is precisely “an illusion technique” — it represents low visibility, blurred matters, hard to distinguish true from false. When a person is immersed in thick fog, straining their eyes into the distance yet only seeing vague, indistinct shadows, their reason malfunctions, and imagination begins to run wild. Under this fear of the unknown environment, any slight disturbance is amplified by the brain into danger. Therefore, the “traveling through mist” the Serpent represents is, at the psychological level, a state of “the truth being obscured.” Because one can’t see clearly, doesn’t know, this produces a groundlessly conjured “illusion”; and because of lacking solid evidence, one can’t trust anyone or anything around them, thereby falling into deep “doubt.”

Second, the Serpent’s biological prototype and form have the characteristics of “winding entanglement” and “disguise and transformation.” In traditional Chinese culture, a snake’s behavior is winding forward, never taking a straight path. This “twisting” physical form was perfectly grafted by the ancients onto human thinking patterns. The dragon’s thinking is a straight path — it is Yang firmness, decisiveness; while the Serpent’s thinking is a winding, tortuous path — it is Yin gentleness, repetition. When a person’s thinking falls into the Serpent’s state, they consider problems in an extraordinarily complex way — a simple matter can be twisted around countless bends, tying themselves into a logical dead end. This is the root of “doubt.” At the same time, snakes excel at hibernation and shedding skin, able to change body color according to the environment, possessing extremely strong disguising ability. This “unpredictable, ever-changing” quality, corresponding to reality, represents uncertainty. Because of fearing being deceived, or trying to deceive or disguise oneself, a person’s spirit becomes highly tense, constantly suspecting whether others harbor ill intent, leading to rampant paranoia.

Furthermore, looking at it from the Five Element generating/overcoming of mysticism, the Serpent has the contradictory duality of “Fire” and “Earth,” and this attribute conflict extremely easily triggers mental exhaustion. Among the 12 Heavenly Generals, the Serpent resides in the southern “Si” position, its Five Element Fire, and is “inauspicious fire,” “strange fire.” Fire, among the Five Elements, corresponds to the human heart and spirit, governing the mind, thought, and emotion. Normal fire is warm and bright like the sun, but the Serpent’s fire is a hidden, illusory fire, a hollow fire concealed within mist and shadow. This hollow fire disturbs a person’s mind, causing an unsettled mind and rising hollow fire. When a person’s mind is disturbed by hollow fire, the most direct manifestation is insomnia and excessive dreaming, hallucination, mental confusion, even a rambling, hysterical state. The ancients said “the mind gives rise to all manner of demons” — the Serpent’s fire burning in the heart burns out not reason, but all kinds of terrifying “illusions” produced by anxiety. And in another system classifying the Serpent as central Earth, Earth governs “worry and overthinking” — excessive overthinking harms the spleen. Whether it’s Fire disturbing the mind or Earth trapping one in overthinking, its projection in real-world psychology is that self-doubt and mental exhaustion caused by excessive thinking and excessive anxiety.

Finally, the Serpent representing illusion and doubt is also perfectly embodied in the famous ancient Chinese psychological fable “mistaking a bow’s reflection for a snake in the cup.” A guest saw the reflection of a bow in his wine cup, mistaking it for a snake, and as a result fell ill from worry. This story exquisitely reveals how humans are deceived by their own “illusion,” and how they torment themselves in “doubt.” The snake, as a creature, has since ancient times brought humanity a wariness and fear etched into their genes. The Serpent, as the great snake of mythology, further gives concrete form to this fear. Very often, the “disaster” a Serpent-accompanied Palace represents is actually not a truly severe blow occurring in reality, but often “a false alarm.” It represents that you heard an uncertain piece of news, repeatedly chewing it over in your heart, guessing, deducing the worst outcome, scaring yourself out of your wits. When the truth comes out and the mist clears, you find it was nothing but the bow’s reflection in the cup.

In summary, the reason the Serpent became the spokesperson for illusion and doubt is that the ancients borrowed its “riding mist”‘s vagueness, “snake nature”‘s winding quality, “hollow fire”‘s restlessness, and the fear of “mistaking a bow’s reflection for a snake.” It’s not a simple, evil symbol, but a profound psychological mirror, reflecting that “mind-demon snake” woven from anxiety, sensitivity, suspicion, and wild imagination deep within the human heart when facing the unknown, uncertainty, and a crisis of trust in interpersonal relationships.