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Woodcut: Snake, Magic Wand, Leather Books (detail of portrait of Ebenezer Sibly). more
This vignette shows a snake climbing up a stick, perhaps a magic wand since this woodcut was in a book about astrology and magick; the wand rests againsts a pile of leather-bound books.
This is a detail from a portrait of Ebenezer Sibly, a physician of the late eighteenth century, and is actually a Rod of Askelpios, Asclepius, Æsculapius or Aesculapius, a Greek god connected to medicine and the arts of healing [Unicode: ⚕]. The scene reminded me of Harry Potter, although these are “real” magic books, not fantasy.