The Lizard King Quotes

“A squiggle, they are believed to be the first animal ever drawn.”
― Bryan Christy, The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers

“In The Frog Prince, a beautiful princess drops her golden ball into a deep spring and must allow a frog into her bedroom to get it back, maturing thereby into a woman. Fairy tales and myth often place an odd creature on the path of the hero to signal an opportunity exists: turn right for good or left for evil. Of all the harbingers of change in fairy tales and myth—disfigured dwarfs, shriveled witches, even Yoda—it is reptiles (and amphibians) that are considered ugly enough without embellishment to awaken the part of the brain that listens to fairy tales. In real life, it is possible that reptiles have the power to switch off a person’s thinking brain and switch on the subconscious, opening the door to a person’s most deeply suppressed passions. Perhaps this is what makes reptiles so terrifying.
Coiled at the center of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the word fascinate is this: “of a serpent.” Evolved from lizards, deliverers of venom—snakes are the villains of the animal kingdom. And yet, throughout history, snakes have been recognized for their power to bewitch man, to deprive him of resistance, to draw him near.”
― Bryan Christy, The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers

“Healing and protection are long-standing themes for the serpent: the wand of Asclepius, Greek god of medicine, wrapped by a single serpent, inspires the symbols of the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization. Hermes’ winged staff, entwined by a pair of snakes, forms the caduceus, a symbol of alchemy and commerce, and a second symbol of medicine. Jung considered ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail, to be the one archetypal symbol that explained absolutely everything.”
― Bryan Christy, The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers

“Snakes are the most widely dreamed about, most feared, most religiously significant creature in the world. A squiggle, they are believed to be the first animal ever drawn. As sea serpents they embodied terra incognita on ancient maps; they marked a “Don’t Tread on Me” barrier between the colonies and the rest of the world; they are the physical line between the Judeo-Christian notions of good and evil. No other creature figures so widely in folklore and myth. No other creature is so universally accused of hijacking the amygdala, the region of the brain responsible for flight. According to a recent hypothesis published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the shape of the human head—eyes front, large brain—stems from a desire by man’s ancestors to avoid snake predators.”
― Bryan Christy, The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers