Ornament of Shiva

Beyond the single episode of the churning, Vasuki becomes one of the most consistently reproduced attributes in Shiva iconography, shown coiled around the god's neck as a living garland or wound around his waist as a belt, a visual shorthand that appears across paintings, temple sculpture and bronze images throughout the subcontinent and wherever Shaiva worship has spread. The association is read two ways in different textual and devotional traditions, sometimes as a reward Shiva grants Vasuki for the endurance he showed swallowing punishment during the churning, and sometimes simply as an expression of Shiva's mastery over dangerous and poisonous creatures generally, alongside his command of ash, cremation grounds and other things ordinary society keeps at a distance.

Vasuki is also shown, in a smaller but still widespread iconographic tradition, wrapped around the belly of Ganesha as a girdle, a detail some texts explain as marking Ganesha's own control over desire and appetite. As king of the nagas, Vasuki additionally appears in narrative literature as ruler of Naga-loka, the subterranean or underwater realm the nagas inhabit, presiding over a serpent court parallel to the human and divine ones above it.