A Meditation on the Cult of the Serpent

This week, I got the first tattoo of my life - a serpent with red eyes and a red tongue, on my left leg above my ankle. When I shared the photo, many of my friends asked “why a snake?” I’ve been trying to respond, but none of the left-brain responses seem to capture what I want to really say. So, below is an effort to bring logos to what is essentially beyond a complete description, i.e., the place of the symbol of the serpent in my psyche. Hope this answers, at least in part, the query of my friends.

Come, imagine with me.

A cave deep in the earth. Carved into the dry, red-brown stone. Flickering torchlight casting a mesmerizing web of light and shadow on the walls and the floor. Light glistening on hot, sweaty skins of women, dancing, under the spell of some long-forgotten entheogen. As light suddenly strikes a certain part of their whirling, twisting bodies, serpents on their skins come alive. The snakes dance on the skins of these women who have stepped away, together, from the "upper world" of consensus reality, and entered together the sisterhood of the Cult of the Serpent.

The women here have come from far and wide to honor the underworld divinities. Honor Mother Earth herself. Upon arriving in this land, they have walked, sometimes for days, to finally convene in this place in the wilderness. As they congregated, drawn by some unspoken agreement, they sat down on the ground, in the shade of large boulders. Sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups - made up of friends or strangers.

As dusk began to approach, they left their separate shelters, and congregated under the broad open sky. There, they shared a meal of bread, honey and dates, and fresh well water and old homemade wine held in skins that their grandmothers had made. They did not know who had brought what part of the meal. But they knew, through some unspoken instinct, that this was a meal to be shared.

Upon completing the meal, as the sun was ready to set on the western horizon, and the sky was on fire - they got up together, left their belongings out in the open without a second thought, and holding hands, walked toward the cave that was their destination. No one directed them. No one needed to.

Arriving at the lip of the cave, they walked carefully down a flight of rickety wooden steps to the mouth of the cave. There, they encountered a sacred pool. At the edge of the pool, they shed their worldly garments, and cleansed themselves by immersing in the pool.

On the other side, they were received by the apprentices to the Priestess of the Cult of the Serpent. Each was given a simple white one-piece garment to wear. They were sprinkled with rose-water and invoked with burning incense.

Once inside the cave, they were invited to sit on the floor in a circle.

~~~

The cave already feels magical to them - already a realm separate and contained from the world above and outside.

Now, the priestess and her apprentices start a slow chant. A hum that rises as if from the body of the cave itself, without an identifiable source. The drone rises, and the women begin to sway in place. Now, the High Priestess - the Oracle - stands up. She has a sparkling cup in her hand, and a young apprentice, standing beside her, holds an ornate pitcher. The priestess stops in front of each woman, and makes direct eye contact. The apprentice fills the cup with just a bit of the liquid in the pitcher. The priestess offers it to the woman in front of her. The woman receives it gratefully, and drinks it down. It tastes bittersweet. It burns her throat. It tingles her scalp.

The priestess goes from woman to woman until she has offered the drink to all the women congregated.

By this time, the entheogen in the drink is already taking effect in the women who first took the draft. Some of them begin to get up. They sway and dance, and slowly the others join in.

As you look around, you see women - young and old - healthy and ill - many with visible scars and deformities - dancing together in this place under the earth, where all are present as devotees to the Goddess of the Underworld.

Many of them begin to tremble. To shake. To speak. To sing. To chant. To make noises that cannot be easily categorized.

As their dance becomes more energetic, the snakes that live in the walls and the ground of the cave feel the vibration. They come alive. They slither out, and dance among the women.

As the snakes slither on the skins of the dancing, swaying women, and sometimes bite their skins - they release their poison into the women's bloodstreams, which is then transmuted into the potion of wisdom by the magic of the cult.

The women begin to see themselves as their authentic sacred selves, as emissaries of the World-Mother-Serpent, the progenitress of all life. They hear themselves speaking her words of reverence for all life - no matter how small, how insignificant. They feel the magic and medicine that lives in their feminine bodies - bodies that are capable to generating and sustaining life.

As the dance continues and the night moves towards dawn, the women finally collapse on the floor of the cave, exhausted, among the snakes - their sisters from another realm. And here, they receive the healing dream - the dream of what is theirs to do, with their one wild, precious life!