Hi, sorry to bother you, but what do you make of all the biblical symbols. There's the snake (obviously the real life snake and there's one on the wall behind Cas in the diner), Jack even brought it into the bunker (not saying the bunker is paradise lol) and then the Judas Iscariot-ish poisonous kiss on the cheek. Does that mean something?
hey hi, you’re definitely not a bother. :D
I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask about religious symbolism, for several reasons. I usually try to avoid making “real world Religion” comparisons to Supernatural canon, because so much of their use of this symbolism is only tangentially related to real-world meanings and purposes for these symbols, you know? So I try to look at them in the context Supernatural is using them, rather than how we would look at them in reality.
I hope that makes sense, because this is such a potentially touchy topic. So I’ll do my best to attempt to explain my understanding within Supernatural canon, and not mix it up too heavily with actual real-world biblical lore, because that’s a big enough can of worms on its own. (cue biblical scholar fisticuffs in three, two...) :P
This entire episode seemed to have been framed around various snake-related mythologies, not just from the bible. The title Ouroboros is a depiction of a snake eating its own tail in a circle, and a quick scan of the wikipedia article on it shows the diverse origins of this mythological symbol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros. There’s a lot going on here, but all of it is snakey.
Then we have a gorgon for our MotW. The most famous gorgon we know of is Medusa, but this gorgon didn’t have snakes for hair, but his pet Felix (which is the snake Jack brought back to the bunker). But again, the mythology is complicated and has shifted over time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon
The gorgon’s name was Noah Ophius, and Ophius means “snake.”
Dean references Clash of the Titans to explain his knowledge of the gorgon, but the knowledge he actually relates... doesn’t actually apply to a gorgon, but to a hydra. It’s not a gorgon that grows back more heads when it’s beheaded, but the hydra, which is also a snake-like creature, but definitely not a gorgon.
Also in this episode, Felix the snake shed his skin-- a reminder that this is how snakes grow, by sloughing off and discarding the old layer to reveal the new layer beneath. Kind of like Jack has been doing as he’s grown, in a metaphorical fashion.
And we know some snakes are venomous, like our gorgon monster, but poor lil Felix is just an innocent lil beauty of a corn snake. Not a drop of venom in him. I did find it hilarious that the show opened in Raton, New Mexico, because it vaguely looks like “Rat town,” and the snake monster is eating the residents, and rats are the standard fare for many snakes-- including Felix the corn snake (aka the red rat snake).
Strangely enough, a close relative of the red rat snake is the black rat snake, and the egg-eating black snakes of Africa from which the parable of the chicken and the black snake that the gorgon told Jack in this episode derived.
But I’d venture to suggest that all of them have brought potential danger into the bunker, you know?
They knowingly brought Dean into the bunker even though Michael was locked in his brain fridge and could’ve theoretically escaped at any time. They knowingly brought Michael himself, while possessing Dean, into the bunker in 14.10. They unwittingly brought some of Michael’s monsters into the bunker in the same episode. They brought Jack into the bunker back in the beginning of s13 not knowing if he was gonna go evil and explode at any moment. They brought all the AU hunters through the rift in s13, even knowing that doing so was incredibly dangerous to the Natural Order (Billie warned them not to mess with the AU’s because the cosmic house of cards was highly unstable), but again, it was supposed to be a temporary place of refuge for them to regroup and plan a more direct attack on Michael in their own world, before Michael himself came here instead.
So yeah, there’s a lot of circles closing, a lot of snake imagery (both positive and negative, thanks to Felix being a good bean and not an inherently evil thing like his former owner).
On to the Judas Kiss. Let’s look at Luke 22:47-48:
While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"
This was how Judas “identified” Jesus to the Romans, so he could be captured. But some biblical scholars believe that this wasn’t a betrayal at all, but more of an understanding between the two that this was something that needed to be done. Essentially the ultimate act of “killing what you love” for the salvation of the rest of the world.
Remind you of anyone? Of Cas sacrificing himself to the Empty in Jack’s place? Of Dean wanting everyone to agree to let him go into the Ma’lak box to save them all from Michael? Of Sam back in 5.22 knowing the only way to stop the apocalypse was for him to say yes to Lucifer and fling himself into the cage, or even the trials he undertook in s8 to close the gates of Hell? Of Jack willing to burn up his own soul in order to kill Michael and thereby save the world?
It’s all fun and games until someone chokes on a boiled egg... or on the equivalent of all the souls in Purgatory... >.>
This theme of sacrifice is finally getting a blatantly toxic label here, I guess? I don’t know what it means going forward, but the show has been thematically denouncing this sort of “all in for death” play for a while now, and this is about as blatant a “Danger Poison” label as the act has been given yet.
And then we have one final bit of snakey imagery-- the vortex of Michael’s grace spinning in a circle above Jack’s head as he burned it off from an ouroboros of malice into a lil wispy snake that he eventually inhaled and apparently assimilated into his own being. I found it fascinating that he just burned off the vast majority of that grace cloud until he was left with what was apparently just the “power pack of grace” he needed for himself, and the rest had apparently been “the Persona of Michael.”
Heck I don’t even know what else to write about any of this, and I don’t think very much of it was actually biblical, and I didn’t even touch on the “letting the snake into the garden” thing, because I feel like the show already dealt with that during the Gadreel arc in s9. And heck if that wasn’t letting the serpent into the garden, right?
