In the context of our current study of Mayan Astrology , Ophiuchus' battle against his enemy is pictured in this Constellation group as the Scorpion and Serpens. This gives us an example of how to take a composite view to glean the truth from the celestial signs. Man's struggle for dominion against the serpent is highlighted by the temporary wound the serpent inflicts on him, as shown by the scorpion's stinging of his heel [Gen. 3:15]. The star picture of this initial prophecy of the promised seed cannot be fully grasped, unless we take a composite look at these signs [Ophiuchus, Serpens, Sagittarius, Scorpius & Corona]. The same can be said of the four serpents in the sky, where the function and mode of operation of the evil one is concerned. A case in point we are illustrating here relates to the Mayan prophecy of the end of the World on December 21st, 2012. Our view of this celestial sign focused on the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy , is based around the Biblical Astronomy of this scenario, more than the emphasis given to Mayan Astrology by most others.The graphic below from the Voyager ¹⁷ Astronomy program depicts the sky on this predicted date for the end of the world based on the Mayan Astrology . The primary componets of the scene include Sagittarius , representing the returning Lord Jesus Christ, riding his flying white steed in ultimate victory in the spiritual warfare against the dragon and his brood, represented by Scorpius the scorpion. The Sun is centered at the tip of Sagittaruis" arrow which is pointed at the red star Antares , the heart of the Scorpion, as it"s simeultaneously being crushed from above by the foot of Ophiuchus .This reveals the light of the world shining his inescapable light on the kingdom of darkness, as he totally exposes the evil works of the enemy while conquering and laying waste to them all.

As The Sun of God arises here with healing in his wings,the light of the world is pictured at the heel of Ophiuchus. This is the heel wounded by the Scorpion, but his sacrificial death was only temporary, unlike the deadly wound he inflicts on the serpent. This image of Jesus as the great healer of all our wounds was foreshadowed by Moses Brass Serpent, also known as the Caduceus . Even today, the symbol of the medical arts is this Caduceus . This ancient icon formed on mirrored serpents spiraling around a pole , pictured with Mercury/Hermes below, finds its Biblical precedent in the book of Numbers 21. It will be profitable to take a closer look at this brass serpent of Moses here, to study not only the Biblical basis of the Caduceus, and how it became the symbol of the medical arts, but also its connection to the Constellation Serpens.

Moses' Brass Serpent

In this Biblical topical study we will include some pertinent elements from Keil & Delitsche as we have above, which bring out key aspects of this record. The purpose is to provide the reader a fuller view of the context and details of this important study, while elaborating on elements not considered by Keil & Delitsche , also.

Numbers 21:4-9
(Num 21:4) And they journeyed5265 from mount2022 Hor4480, 2023 by the way1870 of the Red5488 sea,3220 to compass5437 (853) the land776 of Edom:123 and the soul5315 of the people5971 was much discouraged7114 because of the way.1870
(Num 21:5) And the people5971 spoke1696 against God,430 and against Moses,4872 Wherefore4100 have ye brought us up5927 out of Egypt4480, 4714 to die4191 in the wilderness?4057 for3588 there is no369 bread,3899 neither369 is there any water;4325 and our soul5315 loatheth6973 this light7052 bread.3899
(Num 21:6) And the LORD3068 sent7971 (853) fiery8314 serpents5175 among the people,5971 and they bit5391 (853) the people;5971 and much7227 people5971 of Israel4480, 3478 died.4191
(Num 21:7) Therefore the people5971 came935 to413 Moses,4872 and said,559 We have sinned,2398 for3588 we have spoken1696 against the LORD,3068 and against thee; pray6419 unto413 the LORD,3068 that he take away5493 (853) the serpents5175 from4480, 5921 us. And Moses4872 prayed6419 for1157 the people.5971
(Num 21:8) And the LORD3068 said559 unto413 Moses,4872 Make6213 thee a fiery serpent,8314 and set7760 it upon5921 a pole:5251 and it shall come to pass,1961 that every one3605 that is bitten,5391 when he looketh upon7200 it, shall live.2425
(Num 21:9) And Moses4872 made6213 a serpent5175 of brass,5178 and put7760 it upon5921 a pole,5251 and it came to pass,1961 that if518 a serpent5175 had bitten5391 (853) any man,376 when he beheld5027, 413 the serpent5175 of brass,5178 he lived.2425

( K&D) March of Israel through the Arabah. Plague of Serpents, and Brazen Serpent. – Num. 21:4. As the Edomites refused a passage through their land when the Israelites left Mount Hor, they were obliged to take the way to the Red Sea, in order to go round the land of Edom, that is to say, to go down the Arabah to the head of the Elanitic Gulf.

Num. Num. 21:5-6
“As they went along this road the people became impatient (“the soul of the people was much discouraged,” see Ex. 6:9), and they began once more to murmur against God and Moses, because they had neither bread nor water (cf. Num. 20:4.), and were tired of the loose, ie, poor, food of manna. The low-lying plain of the Arabah, which runs between steep mountain walls from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, would be most likely to furnish the Israelites with very little food, except the manna which God gave them. The people rebelled in consequence, and were punished by the Lord with fiery serpents, the bite of which caused many to die, lit., burning snakes, so called from their burning, ie, inflammatory bite, which filled with heat and poison, just as many of the snakes were called by the Greeks, not from the skin of these snakes with fiery red spots, which are frequently found in the Arabah, and are very poisonous.”

(Note: This is the account given by v. Schubert, R. ii. p. 406: “In the afternoon they brought us a very mottled snake of a large size, marked with fiery red spots and wavy stripes, which belonged to the most poisonous species, as the formation of its teeth clearly showed. According to the assertion of the Bedouins, these snakes, which they greatly dreaded, were very common in that neighborhood.”)

Num. Num. 21:7
“This punishment brought the people to reflection. They confessed their sin to Moses, and entreated him to deliver them from the plague through his intercession with the Lord. And the Lord helped them; in such a way, however, that the reception of help was made to depend upon the faith of the people.” As the Israelites endured the judgment of their sin of speaking against God & Moses, they were shown the error of their ways in no uncertain terms, but were still allowed by the merciful Heavenly Father, to remain with the tribes under Moses, as they continued their journey through the wilderness.

Num. Num. 21:8-9
“At the command of God, Moses made a brazen serpent, and put it upon a standard.
Whoever then of the persons bitten by the poisonous serpents looked at the brazen serpent with faith in the promise of God, lived, ie, recovered from the serpent"s bite. The serpent was to be made of brass or copper, because the color of this metal, when the sun was shining upon it, was most like the appearance of the fiery serpents; and thus the symbol would be more like the thing itself.
The brazen serpent is called “a symbol of salvation; for he that turned himself toward it was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by Thee, that art the Savior of all.” It was not merely intended, however, as Ewald supposes (Gesch. ii. p. 228), as a “sign that just as this serpent hung suspended in the air, bound and rendered harmless by the command of Jehovah, so every one who looked at this with faith in the redeeming power of Jehovah, was secured against the evil, - a figurative sign, therefore, like that of St. George and the Dragon among ourselves;” for, according to this, there would be no internal causal link between the fiery serpents & the brazen image of a serpent. It was rather intended as a figurative representation of the poisonous serpents, rendered harmless by the mercy of God. For God did not cause a real serpent to be taken, but the image of a serpent, in which the fiery serpent was stiffened, as it were, into dead brass, as a sign that the deadly poison of the fiery serpents was overcome in this brazen serpent. This is not to be regarded as a symbol of the divine healing power; nor is the selection of such a symbol to be deduced and explained, as it is by Winer, Kurtz, Knobel, and others, from the symbolical view that was common to all the heathen religions of antiquity, that the serpent was a beneficent and health-bringing power, which led to its being exalted into a symbol of the healing power, and a representation of the gods of healing. This heathen view is not only foreign to the Old Testament,and without any foundation in the fact that, in the time of Hezekiah, the people paid a superstitious worship to the brazen serpent erected by Moses (2Kings 18:4); but it is irreconcilably opposed to the biblical view of the serpent, as the representative of evil, which was founded upon Gen. 3:15, and is only traceable to the magical art of serpent-charming, which the Old Testament abhorred as an idolatrous abomination. On the contrary, to conquer sin it was necessary that the Redeemer should be without sin; and to take away its power from death, it was requisite that Christ, the Prince of life, who had life in Himself, should rise again from death and the grave (John 5:26; John 11:25; Act 3:15; 2Tim. 1:10).

The brazen serpent became a symbol of salvation on the three grounds which Luther pointed out. In the first place, the serpent which Moses was to make by the command of God was to be of brass or copper, that is to say, of a reddish color, and (although without poison) altogether like the persons who were red and burning with heat because of the bite of the fiery serpents. In the second place, the brazen serpent was to be set up upon a pole for a sign. And in the third place, those who desired to recover from the fiery serpent"s bite and live, were to look at the brazen serpent upon the pole, otherwise they could not recover or live (Luther"s Sermon on John 3:1-15). It was in these three points, as Luther has also clearly shown, that the typical character of this symbol lay, to which Christ referred in His conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:14). The brazen serpent had the form of a real serpent, but was “without poison, and altogether harmless.” So God sent His Son in the form of sinful flesh, and yet without sin (Rom. 8:3; 2Cor. 5:21; 1Pet. 2:22-24). - 2. - 2. In lifting up of the serpent as a standard. This was (a “showing openly,” or “triumphing”), a triumphal exhibition of the poisonous serpents as put to death in the brazen image, just as the lifting up of Christ upon the cross was a public triumph over the evil principalities and powers below the sky (Col. 2:14-15). - 3. In the cure effected through looking at the image of the serpent. Just as the Israelites had to turn their eyes to the brazen serpent in believing obedience to the word of the Lord, in order to be cured of the bite of the poisonous serpents, so much we look with faith at the Son of man lifted up upon the cross, if we would be delivered from the bite of the old serpent, from sin, death, the devil, and hell. “Christ is the antitype of the serpent, inasmuch as He took upon Himself the most pernicious of all pernicious potencies, viz., sin, and made a vicarious atonement for it” (Hengstenberg on John 3:14). The brazen image of the serpent was taken by the Israelites to Canaan, and preserved till the time of Hezekiah, who had it broken in pieces, because the idolatrous people had presented incense-offerings to this holy relic (2Kings 18:4).” ¹⁷

We find in this fascinating Bible record, that by viewing Moses' Brass Serpent , God made healing available to the Israelites afflicted by the fiery serpents. This serpent was corrupted into an idol, still being revered over 800 years later, in the times of King Hezekiah. This shows one mode of how the enemy deceives, by emphasizing a literal aspect of God's work in the senses realm, causing people to miss the spiritual truths communicated by the physical symbol. In effect the physical symbol becomes a blind spot in human perception, leaving a psychological open door for the enemy to exploit. This case is especially worthy of interest due to the longevity of the idol in question, as is evident with the caduceus, still the modern symbol of the medical arts. As Kiel & Delitzsche astutely observed above: “the symbolic view that was common to all heathen religions of antiquity, that the serpent was a beneficent and health-bringing power, which led to its being exalted into a symbol of the healing power, and a representation of the gods of healing…”
The truth of course, is that there is only One true God of Healing , the Almighty Heavenly Father, Who created the human body as a self-healing biological system. The ancient Greek myth of Hermes the bearer of the caduceus, promoted the polytheistic idea of a pantheon of many gods, each having different areas of specialization. One key aspect of Numbers 21, are the Hebrew words for “fiery serpents.” The Hebrew for “fiery serpents” here, according to Bullinger, are nacheshim seraphim. Nacheshim comes from the root nachash [to shine], ¹⁸ which is the same Hebrew word referring to the serpent of Genesis 3, who tempted Eve.