Serpent, dust, and Prince of Sepulchres

Meaning

The serpent’s motion and apparent feeding on dust become figures for the spirit working among earthly and decaying bodies. The title Prince of Sepulchres is attributed to cabalists; the passage does not establish it as a universally used name outside this account.

The decisive qualification is that earth and dead bodies are not the spirit’s nourishment: they are its seat or place of work. The spirit is in earth but not simply from earth, and its productive mine is described as renewing what is drawn from it. Moses’ serpent and dust image is thus reinterpreted through locality and operation, not a literal diet. A summary that says the spirit feeds on corpses would reverse the explicit denial.