Giving Voice to Snake

A few nights ago I had a dream, and it was one of those ones that just confounded me. As connected as I am to the animal kingdom (both seen and unseen) it is not every night that I have dreams about a specific animal around who the entire dream revolves. This particular dream, from the moment I woke up, struck me as significant. I'd thought about it over and over but could not make head nor tails of it (literally).

In the dream, someone had given me a live rattle snake. I don't remember exactly what I did with it but I must have tucked it under the bed when I went out because when I came back, that's where I found a shedded snake skin. "Cool! A snake skin! ...Wait! Where's the snake?..." I looked deeper into the shadows under the bed, and spied among the boxes and debris the coils of a huge serpent. Originally my snake was only a couple feet long, and now it was the size of a gigantic python! I flipped out a bit and spent the rest of the dream trying to keep people (and my cats) away from it because of course its venom would be deadly.

Snake's medicine is about transformation, about out-growing your old skin and embracing your new one, but these changes are seen as alchemical in nature, akin to transforming base metals into gold. The same venom that means certain death can, when used properly, save someone's life. Obviously the snake in my dream had under gone a huge transformation, wriggling out of its two foot long skin and emerging in its pythonesque embodiment.

So what had this to do with me? Well, my life has undergone a huge transformation itself -- literally overnight. I've had some drastic changes to my work schedule and conditions, which I will talk about in another post, but they have definitely driven me out of my skin! Of course that hadn't occurred to me at the time -- and honestly I don't remember if the dream took place before or after that change -- and so I remained baffled for a number of days trying to unmask the correlations that I knew must be there, while Snake remained coiled in the back of my brain refusing to reveal her secrets.

And so it was when I went to Flute Quest last weekend. Despite this festival's close proximity in a State Park only a half-hour away, a friend and I decided to camp over Friday night to enjoy the first two days immersed in the magick of Native American flutes. It was wonderful, uplifting, and inspiring to walk amongst the brilliant beauty of the hand crafted flutes, enveloped by haunting beauty of their song.

I have a few different flute, including a Native American flute my parents gave me for Christmas one year (fittingly with an eagle on it), but had never really learned to play. Still there is something about the sound of a flute that goes straight to my heart, especially, as I've discovered in the past year, if it is a drone. A drone is a flute where the body instead of consisting of one cylinder, contains two -- usually one you play with using tone holes and the other that emits a single tone (or drone) somewhat like a bagpipe.

A friend of mine has a drone and it has simply enchanted me with its music. And so, not expecting to actually purchase anything (particularly with the financial uncertainties of my job changes), I set about checking out the different drones, seeing and hearing their differences. It was the second day when I saw another friend hanging out at this booth while the vendor played a drone for her. Perfect! I joined them, listening eagerly and testing out various ceramic flutes this man was selling. I saw an interesting flute he had made, but the vendor was busy with other customers, and I didn't dare pick it up to try it myself for fear of dropping or breaking it, so my friend and I walked on.

We didn't get very far, raving about this man's flutes, when I told her that the one I really wanted to hear was the one in the corner of the booth. She practically physically pushed me back to the booth to ask the guy if he could play that one for us.

It was a drone, only instead of two cylinders, it had three. The man was more than happy to accommodate us and I was lost in the very first strains of breath that flowed from it. Then the man tilted his head or something which changed the perspective of how I was looking at the flute, and a surge of energy ran through my body. I instantly flashed back to my dream because the flute was in the shape of a snake -- a rattle snake no less -- and suddenly I was looking at the same view of the rounded coils that I had glanced at under my bed.

I politely thanked the man as my friend and I walked away from his booth, bolts of energy still flashing through my system. "Crap!" "What?" "That flute is mine." "What do you mean?" I looked my friend in the eye and answered, "I dreamt about it the other night." Her eyes widened, "Ohhhh..."

I explained my dream and I told her of my energetic response to the flute, so very similar to that when I saw my reindeer drum bag for the first time. "Crap! I can't go spending money like that now!" But despite my protests, I knew it was inevitable. That was, I had no doubt, my flute. It was as if it had been custom made solely for my possession. Now understand that this was not an "Oh my god I have to have that! It's so pretty and I'll just die if I don't have it!" sort of thing. It was not an ego-driven status-symbol aquiring motivation. It was simply a recognition. "Oh yeah, that's my flute."

That night I went to a birthday party, and as one of the people who lived in the house we were at gave us the obligatory tour, I spied instantly another validation. Our hostess had a pet snake. That makes three, the magick number that usually signifies a particular animal is working with you.

So, though I haven't totally unravelled Snake's message or meaning yet, I am starting to feel on a more emotional level the changes and transformations she is hinting at. And though she has not yet told me her secrets, at least I have for the last couple days, playing her flute, been able to give her a voice.

Wolf Feathers

art and parcel of my spiritual path, Wolf has always been present. At least as far as I can remember. Even as a kid I remember, when starting cub scouts, I was unbelievably disappointed because I had signed up late and so had to begin as a bear cub rather than a wolf cub like most kids.

At the same time, I never felt comfortable saying Wolf was my totem because I had read Black Elk Speaks, and as much of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee as I could stomach before having to put it down, and so had become pretty sensitive to people claiming things from other cultures that weren't theirs to claim. Still, one night in the early 90s I had a dream that convinced me that, indeed, Wolf is my totem --

I found myself running along the bottom of a dry river bed lined, almost to the point of being tiled, with large river stones. I was in a panic because the wolves were chasing me, and even though I couldn't see them I knew they were behind me. Finally I scrambled up the bank of the river bed and climbed up into a tree. I settled on a branch some distance off the ground and leaning my back against the trunk, closed my eyes and released a sigh of relief. Phew! I was safe!

This feeling was short-lived as, with eyes still shut, I felt the branch I was on bend beneath me, under another's weight. Gulp! I slowly opened my eyes to find a wolf sitting on a fork of my branch, not even a yard away from me. Before I even had time to panic I heard his words float into my mind: "Do not fear. We are always with you ."

...So, yeah, that seemed pretty significant. Definitely not a typical dream, and I had to admit to having been chosen by Wolf. It is from this dream that I took my 1st magickal name: Perching Wolf.

As this dream or vision settled in and made itself comfortable in my personal mythology, I officially joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism -- a medieval recreation group) and, as is one of the first things you do in the group, I started designing my device, or coat of arms. My medieval name is "Lovell", which means "Little Wolf." Technically, though used for humans, it was more common as a dog's name, making me want to adopt "We named the dog..." (an obscure reference to Indiana Jones) translated into Latin as my personal motto. And so of course my device had to feature a wolf, but it had to be distinguishable from other wolves. It had to be my wolf.

I reached further back in my experience to when reading Living In The Light by Shakti Gawain and doing some of the suggested meditations at the end of the chapters. Back then, though new to meditation, etc, I had met a wolf during guidance to meet your inner male. He was black, with green eyes, and he said his name was Yammas (which I still find interesting in it's closeness to the word "Lammas" -- one of the Pagan holidays that celebrates the Divine Masculine).

So my SCA wolf would be black (with green eyes although that couldn't be part of the blazon, or description, of the device), but there had to be more to set him apart... Wings!! How else would a wolf have gotten into a tree with me? And so my black winged wolf became my device --

And so, that is how my wolf got his wings, and the Corvus Lupus was born. And as I learned more about my Totem, and began to identify with Wolf -- to the point of discovering my 'inner puppy' -- he, or actually I in his form, began to show up in my comics...

The winged-wolf continues to deepen and expand into the landscape of my personal mythology. In a shamanic journey I was recently shown the palace/temple of the 'Wolf King,' before which, standing guardian, is a 3-story tall statue of a winged-wolf -- so it has definitely become deeply engrained as part of my subconscious psyche. And that is so exciting because as I grow, so does he. He is a living vital thing, just like me.

...How Does Your Garden Grow?

Wow! In just the past week alone I feel as though my metaphysical skills have grown exponentially. And it is with definite hesitancy that I say "my" because all I'm doing is getting better and better at getting out of the way and allowing things to happen.

What I am discovering with more and more clarity is that living a shamanic life is not about learning new things, but letting go of the things you've already learned. It's good to have structure to build from, but it is a flexible thing to propel you into something new -- not so much rules as guidelines.

In a way it is like 'making it up as you go along' because it is basically a process of being presented with a situation, checking in with your guidance, and going forward with whatever you are guided to do. There is no way to prepare for that! Perhaps that is part of the reason that in the past some shaman and medicine people have been looked down upon -- because they really were just making it up on the spot. But it wasn't out of charletainistic intentions, it was because the shaman's ego or personality couldn't know what to do. So when I am presented with a situation now, my attitude is, "Alright, let's see what I can do," rather than, "If A then goto B, if C then goto D." My entire life is becoming more organic that way as I tune into the flow rather than trying to figure out what what I should be doing. This may be a trial to those around me (and if it is I truly apologize) as one result is that I have difficulty being "on time" to things. This is actually a bit of a struggle for me still because of the knowing that I am always in the right place at the right time -- even if if that right time is late according to external perceptions of time...

"Gandalf! You're late!"
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins! Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to"

Anyway, there have been a few instances this past week that have made these lessons of trust and letting go dig deeper and become more solidly rooted.

The first one was at a camping festival last weekend, and could probably be classified under "Snow White Moments." A friend was bit by a bee. After making sure she was okay, I just found myself, without thinking about it, walking over to where their nest apparently was underground, and where a number of them were still buzzing angrily about, crouching down and holding my hand out toward them. I'm guessing it was a reiki thing -- the energy healing that I do -- but they started to calm down and returned to their nest. That raised a couple eyebrows (including my own!). Then I did reiki on the friend who'd been bit, and by the time I was done, the swelling around the bite had actually gone away.

The 2nd instance was at my counselor's house. We had finished my session and I was getting ready to leave when she started talking about her deceased mother, saying she can always feel her with her. Instantly I got a flash of an older woman standing behind my counselor. "Did she have grey hair, and was she a bit taller than you?" I asked. "Yes. Can you see her?" "Uh-huh." "Does she have anything to say to me?" I quieted myself and went within, almost instantly feeling a happiness and a pride. "She is so pleased with what you've done with your life and she is proud of you." As tears began to fill her eyes, a chill ran up my spine, indicating the validity of the information. And as I headed out the door she mentioned how her mom had never gone anywhere, but with my counselor also being a flight attendant, her mom was enjoying the ride. "You're living her dreams!" I blurted out without even thinking. More tears and more spine chills.

The interesting thing is that this was a first for me to do that on the spur of the moment, and with a human. I have numerous cases of working with deceased animals but not so many humans.

The third experience just happened yesterday. I was in this little metaphysical shop giving a sample Medicine Card reading to the owner, to see if I am good enough to read there on a permanent basis (which, of course, I am ;)). I actually finished the reading and was explaining to her my process and how the cards are just a starting point for me to communicate with the animal guides. She stopped me and asked if I could tell what her animal guide was. I just said 'sure' and closed my eyes to see what I could find out. Instantly this big, beautiful swan was there and she sat up in the water and opened her wings. She was pure white and exuding light. I had no idea, when I closed my eyes, what I would be able to do or find out, but I just went for it and there it was. Ta-dah!

This whole process is just so miraculous and magickal to me, and as my garden of experience continues to grow and bloom, I am constantly being blown away and in awe of the beauty of Life in Her spiral dance. There simply are not words, except, maybe...

Ta-dah!!!