I want to say here in the beginning that anything I discuss is my experience, what I come to know by no means should be taken personally or judged as right or wrong. It is my life, a journey of becoming and sometimes I have help, a teacher and sometimes I have to rely on the Spirit world to show me the way.
I have learned in my spiritual travels about snake medicine carriers. Like Bear medicine carries, Snake medicine carriers are born into the medicine they will carry, the people always are powerful healers. Omens usually follow them from birth. In the days past there were snake medicine rituals, coming of age as a medicine man or woman. Basically a large pit was made, rattlers would be placed in it and after preparation and ceremonies the person becoming the medicine carrier of snake would dance until unconscious in the pit of rattlers. These people are bitten many times and by many snakes during rite of passage. Just like in the coming of age rituals and practices of ancient societies only 1 percent would die and it was said that it was the spirit of the person who was not ready to carry the medicine. Once the poison was taken in and transmuted the person had medicine that would transmute all poisons into the medicine needed for the cure. As you can imagine very powerful medicine people have and use snake medicine. I do not know believe that I fall into this category as I have not had the privilege of this ritual and to be honest I would have a heart attack and die before I even made it into the pit. I would need serious help to get over my snake issues. I have had my share of snake medicine rituals even though they do not seem as serious as the snake dance.
I think this should start with yet another story about my powerful great grandmother Billy. I know say this all the time but she is still to this day the most powerful being I have ever witnessed on earth in my life thus far. I have seen, studied with, lived with and witnessed many healers, shamans, medicine people, holy men and woman of all kinds. I have traveled and worked with as many as I can from all over the world, from many countries and yes there are many, many frauds. I have been extremely lucky as I seem to attract higher evolved beings to me in every day life. Even I am astonished by where these beings/people show up.
Since Billy was my first teacher I have based my experiences of others from the ones with her. I think everyone has something to give, share, teach but few in this world have power, real power and have done their work in order to have the power they have and the ability to really practice “do no harm”. My Lakota Shaman/medicine woman teacher in my early 20’s said to me many times that we must do everything we can in the physical world, doing it physically first and giving it everything we have before we turn to magic to solve the problem we face. She said, “that we cannot use our power to get away from facing real physical life issues and must use every attempt to resolve it as a normal person does”. This also keeps us from misusing power and using it against others who do not have the same level of abilities which would harm them greatly mentally and emotionally. I later found out that this is the path of the warrior. I also came to fully understand stalking which is another conversation.
This story was told to me by my grandmother the daughter of my great grandmother before she died, long after Billy was dead. It happened to her when she was 8 years old. It was not really a strange event to her she had ground up with such events and was not concerned even as a kid. My grand mother went on in her adult life to be a real prophet. All the women in my bloodline are very powerful in many ways.
My great grand parents moved to the back woods of Colorado, I have no idea exactly when it was a long time ago. They moved into an old cabin. Shortly after arriving there my great grandfather started working for the railroad leaving Billy alone there with 2 kids. For the first year Billy would talk to the snakes living under that cabin in a den. She had noticed them not long after moving in when the chickens, cats, rabbits were showing up dead. Billy’s big concern was that of her kids. People in that time period food supplies contained eating and raising small animals. Though she was a powerful herbalist and could heal anyone of anything she also practiced the same principles as my Lakota teacher. Dealing with matters physically and not waiting until you have to use magic to solve it. Same exact lesson applies here.
Billy told those snakes every day to move on, move out from under the house and move far into the woods. As the months passed her message to them became more serious. She told the snakes that if they did not leave within a certain amount of time that this land was now hers that she would remove them in a way that would not allow them choice. My grand mother said there was no playing outside because of the rattle snakes and there domination of the yard and everything in it. However she said the snakes never attempted ever to come in the house.
Finally after about a year Billy felt that she had given the snakes enough time, she was ready to do what she must and it was time to use the spirit world to do it. My grand mother told me that Billy packed a big can of food and water as if they were going on a trip. Billy was distant that morning. I know now that she was moving into another state of awareness the one in which we magic lives. Billy took my grand mother and her older brother outside to a big tree far enough away from the house. Billy told them to stay there, no matter how long it took that when they were to move she would come and collect them. Billy returned to the house sharpened a knife, chanting and went under the cabin. Snake after snake was brought out and the head was cut off. You may feel pretty disturbed by this story but in my family these kinds of events were pretty normal. Billy had rendered the snakes powerless against her by working in the physical in asking them to leave. She had waited until spirit said okay it is time to manage the snakes. I was told that it went on for an entire day, not one snake bit Billy. At the end of the day Billy piled the dead snakes up and burned them letting any other snakes know that might have escaped her that that this will be their fate if they do not leave soon. No rattler was ever spotted near the cabin as long as they lived there.
When I was growing up the only dreams I had were always with snakes. I have to report here that I hate snakes. Not only hate them but I am terrified! Why did I get picked or chosen to be a snake medicine carrier? It is the biggest practical joke ever I am the biggest chicken ever! In my night dreams I deal with snake/s, in some dreams I have carried them around, the snakes also would bite me for no reason, snakes kill people and family members as well. When I snakes kill people in my dreams, I know in the near future they are going to die from something that cannot be healed. If I had any kind of dealings with snakes like in my night dreams when I am awake I would need meds big time.
My mother told me that when I was little a group of kids told me to hide in chest so I did. The kids through massive amount of plastic snakes on me and locked the chest. Though some of the trails and rituals of snakes medicine were not equal to a snake dance I feel that I did experience enough to forever change me and maybe not in good way.
The last part of this blog is a dream I had and how it manifested into my waking world. Though there are many stories I could tell about my relationship to snake this story is waiting to be told.
About 6 years ago I had a dream. In the dream a friend of mine was giving me 4 rattle snakes. I would never touch a snake at lease one alive or accept 4 as a gift in the waking world. My friend in the dream someone I do not know in the waking dream of every day life tells me that I need to find something to put the snakes in to take with me. I look around and I find a vibrant white large man’s tee shirt. We Put the snakes 3 large rattle snakes and one considerable smaller rattler onto the tee shirt wrap them up, we stand up and the bundle is handed to me. My friend leaves. I have the bundle held out with straight arms. I was clutching the bundle of snakes with both hands. I can feel the snakes moving around and even for a dream disturbs me in a way that I have to find a place to sleep, to lay down and I know this will take me to another level in the dream to deal with what is happening. My conscious mind is having trouble in the dream. I walk into another building. This building has a dark grey concrete floor, walls are vibrant white and there is nothing in this building. I find a room where there is a camping/hunting sleeping lounge chair set up it is high enough off the ground that if I let the snakes loose for a nap they cannot get to me. I check the doors of the room the gap under the door was not wide enough for the snakes to escape, this is great news. I am so tired in the dream I need to lay down. I release the snakes out of the tee shirt and lay down falling fast asleep. I woke up in the waking world freaking out that I had let those snakes go! How was I going to get them wrapped back up? Touch them? Get off the bed? Then it hit me it was a dream! I have never forgotten that dream it was the farthest “out of” character for me I could possibly get!
3 years after that dream I was living in the desert, down a long dirt road. One day when I was out walking I came across a dead, perfectly squished and flattened snake. Upon closer inspection it was also perfectly dried, though it was pretty small I could tell that it was in fact a baby rattler. I spent several minutes inspecting it and then the corporate decision to take it home was made. I was going to take it home and put it next to my owl wing on my alter. There was still part of me uncertain about the whole snake matter even dead. I walk around the area looking for something I could put the snake in to carry it back to the house. I find 3 feet by 3 feet pretty beat up vibrant white thick piece of plastic. Iput the flat, crisp snake in the plastic wrap it up and with arms out stretched proceed to walk down the dirt road to the house. It was about them I literally almost vomited! The dream was happening exactly. I got the snake home, I put it on my alter and lay down on the bed next to it passed out from the stress of all the realizations, just like in the dream.
Though I have many dreams about snakes, I also have many dreams that are omens in some way happening to me in real life. This dream has always stood out and has been was one of the most powerful ones I have ever had, so far. This dream caused a shift in me. It may have finally been the moment that I accepted the path of the healer. I have to tell you I have been in the healing field for 25 years at the time. I just had not accepted snake, the poison and had not been the vessel from transmutation until then. It was also the moment that I knew that spirit was in charge totally and all things that happened in the waking world were a cause from the night dream world where spirit rules. I firmly believe that God or Great Spirit talks to us at night in the dream world; it is where life and death, waking and sleeping meet. It is where we are open have less complicated beliefs that stand between spirit and ourselves.
I still have the snake in my box of medicine. This box travels with me to do my work. I use my work in shamanism with snake as my transmutor for land, water, soil, homes, offices, buildings, people, animals, insects, winged beings, companies, corporations literally anything and everything needs transmutation. At some point, some kind of medicine is needed to change the poison or energy into the medicine and become the cure for the change desired.