An ambivalent monster, a ‘wicked worm’ like the Prince of Darkness, the rebel and the fallen angel, or ‘worms/born to make the angelic butterfly,’ the earthworm and the caterpillar are man’s other face or, better, his image. ‘What are all men,’ wondered St Augustine, ‘born of flesh, if not worms?’ Fear of worms is in the last analysis fear of oneself. These creatures, like mankind, were born of decay; man from fetid sperm, from stale blood, fed in the womb by the same putrid blood that also produced snakes; worms of rotting blood and decomposing flesh. The difference was only superficial.
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