Caduceus is a continuation of the older Indo-European dragon-slayer motif. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (1913) pointed out that the serpent as an attribute of both Hermes and Asclepius is a variant of the "pre-historic semi-chthonic serpent hero known at Delphi as Python", who in classical mythology is slain by Apollo. One Greek myth of origin of the caduceus is part of the story of Tiresias, who found two snakes copulating and killed the female with his staff. Tiresias was immediately turned into a woman, and so remained until he was able to repeat the act with the male snake seven years later.
The Worship of the Serpent The Worship of the Serpent The Worship of the Serpent by John Bathurst Deane is an 1833 study of snake worship and specifically the snake mentioned in the Book of Genesis who convinced Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, leading her to convince Adam to do the same. A number of Gnostic texts, some only discovered recently such as those from the Nag Hammadi Library expound on an idea of knowledge and how the serpent gave knowledge to man. Deane draws a number of conclusions and makes certain guesses regarding snake