CADUCEUS
A rod with two snakes coiled around it, topped by two small wings or a helmet with wings. Considered to be the oldest symbol, found, for example, in India, where engraved on stone slabs and is called nagakals (rod nags), representing a form of sacrifice, placed in front of the entrance to the temples. According to esoteric Buddhism, the rod corresponds to the world axe, the snake refers to the force called Kundalini, which in the teachings of tantra is represented as coagulated, sleeping at the base of the serpent axe and signifies the evolutionary force of pure energy. Heinrich Zimmer has traced representations of the caduceus all the way back to Mesopotamia, finding it in particular in a drawing of a sacred bowl of King Gudea from the Sumerian city of Lagash (around 2200 BC). Zimmer argued that the symbol may have appeared even earlier because the inhabitants of Mesopotamia (the Sumerians and the Babylonians who succeeded them, the Assyrians and others) believed that the intertwining snakes were the symbol of the god who healed all diseases.