 Throughout my life, in deep dream state: I am bitten by Snake. Often more than one bite at a time. The venom is hot as it pumps through the fangs, a shivery sensation engulfs my whole being. Sometimes it is ecstatic a sustained orgasm. Sometimes pure terror grips, flooding dread and doom through the tiniest of muscles in my body. Wisdom arriving. Now, being an old pro at this dream: a woman gets curious...When and why is the medicine coming to me? Snake brings us life-death-life cyclical awareness, cosmic consciousness, healing, Kundalini Rising. Dark, silent, sinuous, it reads the vibrations of our world with its body just as you capture knowledge with scanning a page or the horizon. Before it sheds its eyes cloud over, a veil drops marking space between the worlds. We enter a time and space in which it is Right to shed our skins. At first we might just skim the surface, perhaps we play around this transmutation... All potent, powerful, and important work. No better work to be done…..We might drop masks of Ego and Expectation. We get in the river and let the cold water wash our old stories downstream. Then settling in a bit more Raven may come to us and loose our sacred voice from our beautiful throats with jet feathers and sharp eyes. Ah, the song we had waited so long to sing. When Snake slides her body across our path, awaits coiled on a rock in the golden sun, raises her head to strike, or punctures our flesh with those sharp teeth we receive Wisdom. What is ready to be peeled away? Snakeskin is diaphanous, thinner-than-paper-thin. It s a wonder to hold between careful fingertips. Oh, but the weight and the pull when it itches! The constriction and chaos of it against Soul and Spirit is altogether too great. So in silence, eyes cloud over. In Vermont, days past the Equinox, days strangely warmish and dry, in liminal space. Great Spirit is playing with us, trees green and brown without that fierce snap of red and gold we are craving. Tell us it is time. Tell us we can let go. Tell us that although we believed that every wound was tended there is but one more to go. Let us peel that skin away, agree to the contract in the dark, and then know Beauty.
0 Comments
 First, I was the Dancer.
Stretching, I became the Drummer. Now, I am the Drum. When in ceremony I hold my medicine drum and strike the beater against the hide, skin on skin. I am the Drum. I drop out of the picture, drop into the Lower World which runs alongside what we see with our eyes. You will see my body before you, the motion of my arm, you may notice me sway on my feet: but that drum is thunder in my blood and I’d race its song anywhere. My drum came to me when I called. Made for my hand alone, horsehide laced to the pattern of my heartbeat, consecrated under the Solstice Sun. When he arrived after crossing an ocean, I unwound layer after layer of wrapping, sunk to my knees, and breathed in the heat and scent. You’re finally here, I whispered to Him. My drum taught me to love myself. He arrived just before a Wounding. ..Light and resonance left my gaze. Food turned to ash on my lips. Lean with grief my body became unrecognizable to me as it dissolved to bare essentials. Shadow marked each rib, the long angles defined like swift arrows bundled into a quiver. Sometimes, upon waking I found bruises blossoming on my hip -- the bone concealed only by a thin veil of skin-- the scant weight of my body against the bed left a trail of grey and yellow. And the ache of bone against bone made a truly fierce sound. But I had My Drum. As time passed restoration of my power was accomplished (after a thorough Underworld surrender) through a Radical Self-Care practice. As you cradle and tend a lost child or a violated creature, I showered myself with a million small blessings and benedictions. Mornings I face East, wreathed in cedar smoke to dispel fear, and whisper or sometimes sing my gratitudes. The years are now spinning a soft distance from the Awakening: one filled by allies of Bear, Panther, Raven, Snake, Spider, Owl, Coyote, Eagle, Wolf. And always Red Fox. Truly my Fantasic Mr. Fox: my door to Lower World, always with his woven blanket, fast paws, clever sideways glance. Ready to meet My Drum? Reach out to me. |
AuthorLinda River Valente Archives
November 2017
Categories |
RSS Feed