Higher Asp-Irations

For awhile now, there has been someone skulking around in the shadows at the corner of my consciousness. Well, not skulking so much as slithering.  I have been an admirer from afar, and felt a kinship and connection, but have never really owned that.  Recent events, however, have brought that full in my face (literally -- but I'll get to that) and I've had to acknowledge the place Snake has in my power animal pantheon.

I've always liked snakes and remember playing for endless hours with the garter snakes at my cousins' house as a kid. At one point I even drew up the blue-prints for an enclosure so I could bring one home with me (luckily for the snakes it never got past the planning stage).

Though I've never had a live snake, I do have a snake skin that I feel was a gift from the Snake Spirits.  It was a couple years ago and I was at this local Pagan ritual.  As I was walking past some underbrush I heard a rustling sound, and catching a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye, I quickly turned my gaze upon it, expecting to see one of the many rabbits that populate this area.  To my surprise I saw a snake, smoothly sliding out of sight into the tall grasses, and in his wake, a glistening complete sheath of his former self.  Holy crap! I had just witnessed one of the most amazing, and magickal, occurrences in the animal kingdom!

Then came the question: Do I take it?  I've had mixed feelings through the years about keeping various animal parts, particularly when it came to dead animals (something I have, since then, resolved), but then I realized that this wasn't a dead animal and in fact was not very different from the feathers I collected -- each one a gift and message from that particular bird.  This was basically a gift and message from Snake -- a snake feather!

Actually, what prompted me to finally write this entry today is that, last night I dreamed I found two snake skins.  The weird, and admittedly a bit creepy, thing was that when I picked up the second one, I realized the snake was still in it. The skin was totally loose and unattached, but the snake was still moving through it -- kind of like one of those gel-filled tube toys that you can endlessly slip through your hands because it keeps rolling and turning back into itself.  Not sure how good an explanation that is, but hopefully you know what I'm talking about. :)

Almost exactly one year ago, I had a huge encounter with Snake in a dream, which then manifested in my purchasing a beautiful, 3-way drone flute in the shape of a snake.  Since that was an entire blog post of its own, I will let you read it here if you are interested, rather than re-telling that tale. :)

So this past summer I've taken a couple shamanic classes that have influenced and deepened my relationship with Snake.  The first class was the basic class from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, the organization created by Michael Harner who basically brought Core Shamanism to the main stream western world. We were learning about Power Animals, and the teacher explained them differently than I had ever heard them explained before. I just thought they were like guardian angels, just watching over you and guiding you, etc. But when they say Power Animals they really mean "Power" Animals.  They are the ones that help us plug in to the power of the Universe, and help that power to flow to and through us, maintaining our well being.  She told us they were like transformers, taking the vast power of the cosmos, which would totally wipe out our circuitry, and bring it down to a level that our systems can handle.  Me, being who I am, when I heard our Power Animals were transformers, could only picture Nathaniel, my reindeer, transforming into a Delorean -- As one friend put it, "Totems in disguise!"

Anyway, we then learned to do Power Animal Retrievals, to reconnect someone with a power animal they had lost or were disconnected from, which we performed on a partner in the class, and the animal who was retrieved for me? Snake!

When my partner journeyed to find my power animal, she actually almost stepped on him.  "Oh sorry! Ok! Now where's this power animal I'm looking for!" She finally realized Snake was the one, and he showed himself to her three more times (an agreed upon demonstration to signify that this is the power animal you're looking for).  The final time that he appeared (and when I heard this I just nodded my head and said, "Yep. He's gotta be one of mine.") he was driving a car -- a Ford Fairlaine my partner thought -- and saying, "This is a different reality, baby!"

A week after the Foundation class, I went to Portland for another shamanic class taught by a well-known author/teacher who focuses on Celtic Shamanism.  Now the Celts did not believe our essence or spirit resided in our hearts, like the general consensus seems to believe today.  They thought the head was the receptacle for one's essence and power, and thus the Celts would take the heads of their enemies.  So the exercise was to do a dismemberment journey (a process where during a journey one's guides dismember you and then put you back together in a clearing and transformative way) only it was to be a partial dismemberment, asking our guides to just take our head and to doctor it up into a power object.

In my journey I met Nathaniel, and I think before I could even ask, I saw him cock his head to the left, and with one fell swoop of his antlers, off came my head.  It was one of the oddest sights, seeing a reindeer pick up and carry my head by the hair.  He set it on a big rock, and then, as I watched out of my own eyes again, Nathaniel took one more swipe with his antlers, and split my head open, exposing my brain. (Perhaps at this point I should interject that there is no blood or pain, for those of you over there cringing in the corner.  ...sorry) The next thing I saw was this huge cobra-ish snake coming right for my head with opened mouth and brandished fangs. He sank one fang into each hemisphere of my brain.  I don't remember actually being put back together, but then as I heard the call-back signal on the teacher's drum, I turned to Nathaniel to say good-bye, and was shocked by what I saw. "Nathaniel! Where are your antlers?!" "On your head, duh!" I sort of lolled my head back and forth and felt the extra heft of them. "Oh my god! That is so cool! Thank you!" Nathaniel just sort of smiled and loped off as I returned to the room where I lay.

The timing of all this has not been lost on me.  Everything that is happening in my life right now (and particularly over the last 9 or so months...) is pointing me toward a HUGE rebirth.  Everything I thought I knew no longer holds sway.  I am having to let go, release, and surrender everything I thought I was, or thought I had.  It's been a painful exfoliation experience, out-growing my old skin and letting the things that are no longer, or never were, true peel away, leaving a tender and not fully hardened skin exposed to the world. Snake shedding it's skin.  And add to that the alchemy of transforming the poisonous venom into healing medicine -- That all these changes and experiences, painful as they may or may not be, are all purposeful and hold at their root that which is necessary to heal myself and the world. 

What better example of this transformation than my aforementioned journey where big, beautiful antlers, like the branches of a tree reaching up and opening receptively to the sky -- to Spirit -- sprout from the same spots where the snake's venom was injected into my head. 

And as I'm still processing all of this information and allowing it to integrate into my system, I'm preparing for another huge transformation. Two weeks from today I begin a 5-day intensive training in Soul Retrieval with the woman who literally wrote the book on the subject.  As I just start to think about it, the tears well up, and all I know is that something big is in the makings.  BIG.  Big, big medicine.

"This is a different reality baby!"