About this star:

A binary star, pale yellow and gold yellow.

The ancient Arabic name for Alya is Al-Alyah, "The fatty tail of a sheep". In the early days of Arab astronomy a space in the heavens, coinciding with parts of Hercules, Ophiuchus, and Serpens, was the Raudah, or Pasture.

Alya, of the Palermo Catalogue and others (sometimes, but erroneously, Alga), probably is from the same source as the similar title of the lucida (Unukalhai). It is the terminal star in the Snake's tail; and lies southwest of Aquila, in a comparatively starless region between the two branches of the Milky Way. (Allen).

Serpens, is the same Snake that is found on the symbol of medicine worldwide, the staff of the god Mercury, the caduceus. The caduceus shows two snakes coiling around a central rod surmounted by two wings of the bird on top. Mercury placed his wand between two serpents struggling to devour each other, which represents the directing intelligence (Mercury) reconciling basic opposing forces and so representing good balanced by evil, health by sickness. This much-used image is an emblem of homeopathy - a cure effected by what caused the ailment. The serpent therefore becomes the source of the healing of the wound caused by the serpent.

A snake's ability to shed its skin is symbolic of transformation and renewal.

Kundalini is represented symbolically as a snake coiled up upon itself in the form of a ring at the base of the spinal column; and when it is roused, as sometimes happens in human experience, the snake uncoils and stretches up along the spinal column, through the chakras, corresponding to the various plexuses of the body, until it reaches the area of the forehead corresponding to the crown chakra, there it blazes out to enlightenment.

The snake represent power, wisdom, temptation, sublety, moral dualism, the harmonizing of divergent tendencies.

The snake has often been likened to a bolt of lightning. There is no foretelling the snakes' movements, when a snake uncoils to strike, he moves like lightning.

This energy can bring about sudden changes.

Influence of the constellation:

It is said to give wisdom, craft, deceit, malice, a feeble will and danger of poison. (Robson).