Snakes great and small, and the curse of the split tongue.
The great serpentsch. 4, 10, 17, 18, 21
The named serpents are Yaldabaoth, the lion-headed serpent demiurge; Leviathan, the serpent of the sea and of the nothingness; and Ouroboros, the serpent that consumes itself. Chapter 18 is titled Meat Ends of Three Snakes. See Yaldabaoth, Leviathan and Ouroboros.
The split tonguech. 10, 20
Antony's spear cuts up through the end of the demiurge's tongue, “where serpents will be cursed with the opened front half of this mouth muscle.” Afterward, “the lions and snakes of the Earth go into shade and shame” (10). Antony's lightning later splits Leviathan's already split tongue down to the throat (20).
Snake whispersch. 7
“A snake whisper crawled legless across my hospital bed and next to the ear, where the slithering tongue promised me as antichrist.” “Like a rabbit to the hole, I imagined there to be something beautiful inside, not the snake's den; or was it?”
The garden snake and the boach. 6
“Pretending that the lost could be depraved alone, the garden snake was foolish to forget the constricting boa's evil they had been sleeping upon, being no rival in hate-stature.”
Hidingch. 33
At the spirit of life's saying, “many snakes hide beneath rocks.”