Asclepius and the Ancient Art of Healing and Sleep by Dr. Miles Neale
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- March 31, 2025
I’d been a student and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism for more than twenty years, so my first encounters with Asclepius and his serpent-entwined staff took me by surprise because they originated from a culture I knew little about. I came to learn Asclepius was the Greek god of healing. His name means to “cut open” because, according to myth, he was delivered via cesarean section by his father, the god Apollo, from his mortal mother’s womb as she lay on her deathbed. For me, this was profoundly symbolic because it was Asclepius who would excise me from the bondage of my culture-bound prison. Apollo entrusted young Asclepius to the centaur and physician Chiron, the archetype of the wounded healer, who raised and trained him in the secret arts of natural healing.
One day, Asclepius killed a snake with his staff, then observed another snake revive the dead one by regurgitating medicinal herbs into its mouth. He deduced which herbs were used and began resurrecting patients from the dead. As his gifts as a healer grew, Asclepius antagonized the gods, deprived Hades of souls for the underworld, and disrupted the natural order of things to the point of provoking the ire of Zeus, who killed him with a single thunderbolt. After his death, Asclepius spent a short time in the underworld, but because of his acumen and virtue, Zeus placed him among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus—the Serpent Holder—elevating his status from demi-god to god. Asclepius is often depicted as a healthy, bare-chested, bearded man dressed in a toga, holding his iconic staff. Many will notice the similarities to the caduceus—the staff with not one but two intertwined, winged, and ascending serpents wielded by the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian goddess Isis—which still today represents medicine and is depicted on modern hospital and pharmacy logos.
In most Indigenous cultures, the serpent is a potent symbol of rejuvenation and rebirth because the snake sheds its skin to become anew. The snake is also a compelling symbol because its poison, if administered appropriately, can be transformed into medicine, becoming—according to the Asclepius myth—the elixir of immortality. Poison, which ordinarily kills, with esoteric wisdom, liberates. Citizens of ancient Greece and Asia Minor made pilgrimages to their nearest Asklepion—healing temples and sanctuaries, sacred places to resolve physical and mental diseases. Ruins of more than 300 Asklepion still exist in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. These include the most well-preserved and famous sites at Athens, Kos, Pergamon, and Epidaurus in modern Greece and Turkey. They were our hospitals’ precursors, but their healing modes were holistic and spiritual. The locations for these healing sites weren’t arbitrary; they were remote places of natural beauty, far from the bustle of the cities and of commerce, quiet, serene, and restorative. They were places where natural elements featured prominently as part of the healing matrix. This isn’t limited to the Mediterranean. Ancient and Indigenous peoples have customarily considered location and environment to be as important as action and process—and it’s universal.
Consider how Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce people famously said, “The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same.” The Greeks understood this; as part of the therapy, the Asklepion incorporated the power of the sun, geothermal radiation, hot and cold natural springs, medicinal herbs, fresh air, and perhaps even magnetic fields called ley lines. As for protocol, based on inscriptions on the stela that have survived the centuries, we know pilgrims and patients made their way to the sanctuary entrance, where they underwent two phases of healing. The first—katharsis—involved a strict diet and ritual bathing—practices of purification sometimes lasting several days. This had a twofold purpose: cleansing the body and priming the mind. Offerings were made to Asclepius himself at the inner temple, along with prayers and other rituals recommended by the temple priests according to the patient’s symptoms.
I imagine these actions of reciprocity with the divine allowed the soul access to what we would now call the placebo effect, or what famous Harvard cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson redefined and coined “remembered wellness.” There was a keen awareness that, in addition to the natural environment, a patient’s beliefs, worldviews, and lifestyle were critical in the restorative process. Consider all we have lost along the path of industrialization. Patients were led to a sizeable open dormitory called the abaton for the second phase—incubation. You read that correctly; the main form of healing at the Asklepion was incubation or “temple sleep,” which was, more than mere rest and perhaps the earliest known precursor of psychoanalytic dream interpretation.
In the abaton, patients may have been given hallucinogenic plants to facilitate deep hypnotic slumber and initiate them into the therapeutic dream journey, not unlike the current therapeutic use of psychedelics. At some Asklepion, hundreds of beds filled the central dormitory. Along with the patients, supine on low mattresses on the marble floor, host animals—dogs, roosters, and, of course, non-lethal snakes—roamed among the sick, occasionally biting or licking the wounds of the injured who, in their dream journeys, were visited by Asclepius or his daughters Hygeia and Panacea, who might spontaneously heal or directly diagnose and prescribe treatments. At other times, dreams were more cryptic, and upon awakening, patients would receive counsel and interpretations from temple physicians we might call the first psychotherapists, literally soul healers. When healing wasn’t immediate, patients were prescribed holistic treatments and remained on the sanctuary grounds for days or weeks to recover and rejuvenate. In some cases (as evidenced by the array of surgical implements uncovered on-site at Epidaurus by modern archeologists), surgeries were performed, or patients were sent to the gymnasium for exercise and rehabilitation. Finally, they could attend the outdoor amphitheaters—the one at Epidaurus held 15,000—for music and performances that elicited catharsis or emotional release.
The origins of Western theater used now for entertainment likely came from these early forms of therapy, allowing onlookers to access the shadow world of their unconscious and, through active imagination, identify with the heroes and antagonists in classical drama and comedy, which allowed for emotional integration. Testimonials of patient recoveries were inscribed in stone at Epidaurus for future generations. Along with the Oracle at Delphi and the summoning of mystical or non-local agencies for healing and guidance, the Asklepion served the sick throughout Greece and Asia Minor for centuries before being phased out toward the end of the Roman period. Despite their success, these natural healing centers and the remedies they delivered accomplished perhaps what was most threatening to the late-stage Romans and early Christians: they empowered citizens to heal themselves. As in the mythology of Asclepius, destroyed by a threatened Zeus because of his power to heal, successive civilizations would require unquestioning and unflinching allegiance to the state or dominant religion and could not afford the competition posed by the empowering wisdom of the great mystery schools and bastions like the Asclepias.
Written by By Dr. Miles Neale
Miles Neale, Psy.D., is a psychotherapist teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, and founder of the
Gradual Path through which he leads inner and outer pilgrimages of spiritual transformation around the
world. The author of Gradual Awakening and co-editor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy, he
lives in Bali, Indonesia.
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