Mind States
Serpents And Shadows
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Our lives in the enchanted Southwest are marked by moonless nights and sun drenched days, as well as what artists call “chiaroscuro,” or the delicate interplay of dark and light brought about by subtly shifting shadows. We paint with light as much as pigment, but to make sense of what is illuminated, one must explore the unlit depths of meaning and being. The dark serves us in the form of insightful pain, comforting silence, the stillness between periods of tiring activity, the death that begets life, and the blackness that gives birth to light. In spite of this, there is no element or force of nature more commonly associated with evil in Western societies than the dark hours of night, and there is no creature more demonized than the dreaded snake lying in wait for us there.
The degree to which I have a different understanding of snakes—by learning from them and accessing their power—is perhaps due to decades of deepened intimacy with a canyon as yet untouched by a light bulb’s glare, and time spent in close association with the creatures housed there.
I’ll never forget the day that I spotted a rattlesnake, swaddled in shadow a mere few feet from my playing infant daughter. I choked back the urge to shout a warning, afraid of causing her to panic and thereby alarm the four-foot long beast. It happened to be a black-tailed rattler, a species found only in a few mountainous areas of Southwest New Mexico and Southeast Arizona. While known to be less aggressive than its cousin, the diamondback, the black-tailed rattler’s poison is every bit as potent. A single bite to a child so far from medical assistance could possibly mean her life. To my horror, she continued walking in its direction, singing her favorite song. A heartbeat later she stepped directly on the outstretched creature, and then over and past it without its ever coiling. I watched her go on her way, and then came as close to the unperturbed animal as I dared in order to proffer thanks to the reptile that had, for whatever reason, opted not to strike.
My daughter demonstrated not only a level of blissful ignorance, but her freedom from fear of the invisible and the unknown. She learned to hesitate and
shudder, but not until she was older and exposed to the city. At that stage, she explored every dark nook, and still laughed as she stumbled without a flashlight in the thickest of night. We adults, on the other hand, all too often froze at the blurred edge of the moonless evening, the sharp perimeter of the street, or the yard’s security light. We might mistakenly attribute both darkness and snakes to evil entities, due to the way each reminds us of our vulnerability or triggers bone-deep flight from the realization of our mortal life’s end. Or we may have learned to accept our biological limits, as well as value what we can neither see yet nor understand. Still, what is most likely to send chills up our spines is the terror of the unknown and the nearly universal fear of change.
No wonder snakes arouse strong feelings and critical dogma. They are an often concealed agent of mystery and danger as representatives of the shadow world. Yearly shedding its skin, the serpent is also a cross-cultural symbol of unavoidable transition. The meaning of life itself can be discerned from a reading of its meaningful molt, with the spirit and anima continuing on as our flesh and energy is repeatedly cycled back into the earthen alchemical cauldron from which it sprouted and branched. The snake’s molting skin is emblematic of our temporal creations and fragile illusions, as well as those exactly defined personas we pray will outlast all transition.
In societies where nature is generally considered to be base, dirty or evil, the serpent is reviled. Indigenous peoples living close to the land have never been as quick to abhor the rodent-reducing reptiles seen slipping through their granary roofs. The Comanche would only kill one if it failed to rattle, assumed to be on a ninja mission of vengeance. Rattlers repay the Chitimacha of Louisiana for a historic favor by guarding their houses while they’re away, and Hopi priests dance with snakes, including rattlers, before releasing them to ask the Thunder Gods for much needed rain.
By affirming the right of snakes to exist, we proliferate sentient and outlawed life. Sensual life. Sexual life. In Yogic traditions, the energy of life and transformation is known as Kundalini, the serpent energy which rests at the base of the spine in the sexual chakra. It’s the arousal of the Kundalini serpent power that reunites the false dualities of good versus evil, spirit versus matter, and body versus soul. It’s our conscious retrieval by the Garden of Oneness. It’s the re-membering of our selves as the planet-body Gaia. With Kundalini, we have both human nature and a greater nature on the rise. With the Greek Oroboros—the snake with its tail in its mouth—we have a complete circle, representing nature forever consuming itself without diminishment, a corporal as well as a spiritual homecoming.
The serpent and the darkness are not threats as much as opportunities. All manifestations of nature in and around us are ready to inform and empower us and darkness is the fecund womb from which all possibilities arise. Both the shadow world and its resident snake are always right here in front of us, unseen among the dried grasses and lichen-covered rock of our still-wild souls. They wait for nothing, but if they did, it would not be to ambush us, but to welcome us back to the real world of inter-coursing darkness and light, to wholeness and balance, and to the wondrous cycling of death and life.