In Ophidian theology, the Serpent does not represent the Divine in a metaphorical or didactic sense. Its form expresses the ontological rhythm of God’s presence: a movement that proceeds by withdrawal, interruption, re-emergence, and transfiguration. The existence of the Serpent—silent, liminal, cyclic, and unbound by fixed shape—provides the most faithful symbolic structure for articulating a Divinity that cannot be circumscribed by permanence. For this reason, Ophiology regards the Serpent not as a mythic figure but as a theological grammar, the system of signs through which the Divine articulates Its action in the world.

Central to this discipline is the concept of Phármakon, not as a simple duality of poison and remedy, but as the modal logic of the Divine. In Ophiology, the Phármakon names the way God operates: by generating renewal through dissolution, by producing clarity through destabilisation, and by reconciling opposites without erasing their tension. The Divine is therefore understood not as an external, immutable principle, but as a dynamic unity that becomes present precisely through its contradictions. The Serpent manifests this logic in its very body: vulnerable while shedding yet renewed in the process; dangerous and healing; feared and protective. Ophiology interprets these traits as a revelation of God’s inner dynamism.

Time itself becomes a theological category within this discipline. Ophiology does not merely observe spiral time as a spiritual intuition; it conceives this spirality as the temporal form of Divine action. Each return, each recurrence, each re-emergence of meaning is a gesture of the Divine passing through creation. The Serpent’s coiling and uncoiling express this temporal structure: contraction, concealment, revelation, extension. Ophiology thus understands the liturgical year of the Synodus as a participation in Divine temporality, not as a commemoration of past events.