What is the symbolic meaning of the walking stick or staff in "Young Goodman Brown"?

The old
traveler who comes for Goodman Brown is a figure of ambiguity in 's story "."  For, he
resembles the grandfather of Goodman Brown, as well as a demonic figure.  His walking staff
suggests the staffs of the Egyptian magicians of the Old Testament who mocked Moses as they
appeared to turn their staffs into snakes:

...his staff,
which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be
seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent.  This, of
course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

When Goody Cloyse appears on the path, the traveler stays on the
path, and Brown hides lest she see him.  As she approaches, the traveler touches her with his
staff which "seemed the serpent's tail" and Goody
screams, "The devil!" 

When Goody expresses her haste to attend the
witch-meeting,he traveler performs a similar trick:  He gives Goody his twisted staff and it
changes just as the staffs of the "Egyptian magi" changed.

After
young Goodman Brown reaches the forest and he observes  the pink ribbons wafting to the ground,
he grabs them and cries "My Faith is gone!....Come, devil; for to thee is this world
given." Having lost his faith [double entendre], Goodman invokes the devil and now grasps
his staff, going forth and "seem[ing] to fly" he continues on the forest
path, "...rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil," all the
while he "brandishes his staff" with frenzied gestures.

For the
most part, the staff represents not the religious staff of Christ, but the serpent of the
devil.  The traveler, the devil, is described as "he of the serpentine staff," Goody
Cloyse travels with the snakelike staff of the traveler and seems to fly above as a witch
while Goodman Brown holds a staff and seems to fly with it.