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.