An appeal to figurative representations preserved by folk tradition is an attempt to study mentality, understanding the world of a particular culture. Immersion in the world of mythological and fairy-tale formations makes it possible to reveal social representations, the specifics of intercultural interaction at the level of folk tradition. The relevance of this article lies in the possibility of identifying supra-ethnic processes of intercultural interaction in the South Slavic realm, as well as their social, cultural and ideological aspects. The symbolism of the snake in the cultures of various samples is known from Paleolithic times. According to a biological point of view, this is one of the most common groups of animals, neighboring in the past and today to humans all around the globe. Emotional perception of the quality of a snake (danger, secrecy, unusual appearance) and its mythological derivatives, make it possible to identify alternative, but common types of the snake image reflection that take place in Western and especially Eastern Slavic, Romanesque, Albanian, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Greco-Roman and other mythological traditions. Their correct understanding of the ethical and aesthetic cultural paths of development of modern Slavic peoples, who have entered into a regulated dynamic cultural convergence with the whole world, is an urgent scientific and social task. The main sources of the article are songs, fairy tales, descriptions of the rituals of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bulgarians, Macedonians. Perception of the image of a snake and giving it fabulous and mythological features in historical times revealing the inconsistency of Slavic ideas about the objects present, their natural, emotional coloring of images and detection with a person.