Snake

From the “blessed and tortured” walls of an ashram to the dark caverns of the psyche, follow a journey of surrendering to the serpent within. Discover how being “devoured” by our deepest fears can actually be the ultimate initiation into healing and raw, vital power.

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Years ago, I lived and worked in an ashram. It was one of the most blessed and tortured periods of my life. There was endless work to do on the retreat center and farm, and we faced pressure from our stakeholders to generate profit while lacking staff and business savvy. My responsibility was running the internship program, welcoming seekers for 2-12 weeks of service and meditation training. But within a permissive culture of spiritual bypassing where everything was to be enduring with a cheerful smile as “the guru’s will”, I had little authority or support, and found refuge in the arms of a dysfunctional relationship that eventually consumed, demoralized, and sent me fleeing the state to escape.

As I struggled to tame overwhelmingly fiery feelings of desire, jealousy, rage, and self-loathing over my inability to navigate the complex relationships in the community, I began to encounter dragons. They would appear in dreams and meditations in dark, murky water, barely identifiable beyond a shadowy wingtip or outline of a horned snout. They appeared powerfully to guard and protect me.

When I landed in a new home and painstakingly began building my life, I began to feel myself drawn downward in meditations to tunnels and caverns beneath the earth. There I encountered Snake – her sharp eyes piercing me through, paralyzed in terrified fascination. I couldn’t escape and I couldn’t fight, so I had to surrender. I let her swallow me. And there swaddled in the dark stillness within her body, I was dismembered and dissolved into nothingness.

As much as we’re taught to fight and defeat the dragons that hunt us, I learned that many shamanic traditions view being eaten as an initiation, a vital rite of passage. And as I shared my story with others, I was surprised how deeply the idea of surrendering and being consumed resonated with them. Our culture teaches us to master nature and to subdue our impulses, and yet sacrificing ourselves for something greater, literally feeding the wider web of life with our own flesh and blood, is integral to the wisdom of people who’ve mastered living sustainably on their land.

After letting Snake devour me, she began to accompany my meditations, wrapping herself around my body and resting her chin on top of my head. When I trained in shamanic healing, Snake was the one who would accompany my inward journeys to the homes of the sick, undulating like a sea serpent of light as she wove her body through theirs. During the depths of my own illness, I would lie on my back and feel her weaving through my body, bringing energy and release.

A few years later, I participated in a solo, overnight psilocybin journey with a trained facilitator and body worker. Before taking the mushroom tea, I was given a small dose of MDMA to relax and open my senses, facilitating a more somatic, less psychedelic journey. Having been enveloped by the stress of my job and chronic illness, I hadn’t thought much of Snake for quite some time, but as the MDMA began to sharpen my sight, I saw her pop her huge head between the slats of the banister outside and rest her chin on the porch floor.

My psilocybin journey was five hours of kundalini tremors; shaking, sweating, and moaning as what I realized was Snake’s energy worked through every organ and muscle group in my body, releasing physical and emotional constrictions I’d been holding since before recollection. Towards the end, Snake appeared over me with the most loving gaze, and I stroked her creamy chin and tawny head, feeling the smooth, coolness of her scales beneath my fingers.

The memory came to me of my first experience with this energy in a cave in the Himalayas while on pilgrimage with the ashram community. I had shaken involuntarily, felt and saw light pulsing up the back of my head, and had extraordinarily acute sight for hours afterward. Everyone told me to forget about it, not talk about it, not let it make me feel special – but I knew something important had happened. A portal in me had opened that years later allowed the plant medicine to reorganize me.

After my psilocybin journey, the energetic tremors continued to come on strong whenever I lay on my back, deepening the release and coaxing me past my fear and disbelief to a place of surrender to a mysterious intelligence beyond me. Snake continues to visit me whenever I’m in powerful places – in a psychic reading, at Mt Shasta, when feeling intense fear or grief. She matches the full width of my body, rising from root to crown as I wrap my arms around her and feel her smooth, cool, sinuous strength. My feelings toward her are more of awe than ease. There’s something wild and untamed about her, as though I never know if I will be healed or swallowed, poisoned or soothed. She’s taught me to respect the raw vital energy that courses through our human bodies. It’s lightning that can spark life or take it. And when ignited, it’s wise to step aside and let it run its course.

This is why Snake lives in my root where the Vedic scriptures describe her and from where I’ve experienced her bursting up and through me. Her home is beneath me, deep in the caverns of the earth where I first met her. She is the raw fire of life that can invigorate or short-circuit me, deserving of the utmost respect and as sacred as the wall of flame that explodes from the belly of the earth to build mountains, devouring everything so it can be reborn from the ash.

Nancy