Sleep temples and sacred snakes

 Hellas, the world of the ancient Greeks, had temples devoted to Asclepius. They are sometimes called sleep temples or dream temples.

Asclepius was the icon of medicine. Some people — Homer, for instance — thought he was a man, a doctor. Others thought he was a god or demigod. Myths tend to get more elaborate with age.

In ancient times, sick people went to the temple and slept overnight. They expected to see Asclepius or one of his daughters in a dream. The temple had physician-seers on staff who interpretated dreams. They’d recommend therapy based on your dream.

It’s a peculiar idea: the cure for what ails you comes from within in you, somewhere deep down, below the level of awareness.

It’s hard to tell what different Greek thinkers had in mind when they talked of psyche, which usually becomes soul or spirit in English. Some people believed the psyche was immortal. Some did not. But some people still have similar beliefs. If you believe that your cure must come from your subconscious, your self, your life, you might feel at home at an Asclepieion.

This is an oversimplified version. But it’s important to get the general idea because the details of ancient practices tend to strike us as creepy.

Trips to the temple usually started with catharsis, a cleansing and purging that might last days. The Greeks also had a word for this “temple sleep,” egkoimesis. It wasn’t waking, dreaming or sleeping in the usual sense; it was something else. It might have been induced by drugs. But if you were there, you were after guidance, rather than a good night’s sleep.

Asclepius was something of a trickster. He liked to appear in dreams as a dog, snake or rooster. Dogs and snakes were allowed to roam the temples. We see therapy dogs in hospitals now, but the snakes are harder for us to fathom.

Sacred snakes were a feature of life in Hellas. Even the gods quarreled when somebody killed somebody else’s sacred snake. Asclepius always carried a rod with a snake coiled around it. If that seems strange, remember that we have self-help writers who teach us how to get rid of stress, anxiety and guilty by just “letting go.” The snake was an obvious metaphor for that doctrine. A snake must shed its skin, leave part of itself behind, to grow.

And, if you’re wondering about the roosters, recall that at the end of Socrates’s life, he asked his friend Crito to offer a cock to Asclepius. The professor who endured my clumsy efforts to learn Greek was convinced it was the customary thank-you gift for a healer.

Why would anyone think of Asclepieia? My excuse was that I was reading Anne Carson, who mentioned them in an essay in praise of sleep.

• Source: Anne Carson, Decreation; New York: Vintage Books, 2005. “Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)” is on pp. 17-42.