{"id":620,"date":"2013-02-14T07:03:37","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T07:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/asenseofplace\/?p=620"},"modified":"2013-02-14T21:34:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T21:34:47","slug":"snakes-in-the-dark-beginning-to-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/asenseofplace\/2013\/02\/snakes-in-the-dark-beginning-to-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"Snakes in the Dark: beginning to remember"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My feet are bare as I run through the pasture.\u00a0 Calluses, built over years of refusal to wear shoes, give them a protective layer all their own.\u00a0 Long, dark hair billows behind me\u2013a knot of tangle and wave. My mind is full of one thought, one intention: Grandma\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

I will sit at her feet and help shell peas while she tells me stories.<\/p>\n

Maybe she will comb my hair and braid it.<\/p>\n

We will sit quiet together, while the wind rustles the curtains in the breezeway and she twiddles her thumbs.<\/p>\n

Naked legs and arms hurtle through warm air. \u00a0An early morning Gulf breeze stirs the tall grass.\u00a0 My left foot plants itself upon the soil\u2014rolling forward in propulsion\u2013as I glance down; vision caught by movement not my own.<\/p>\n

Across the top of my foot scales undulate, sliding sideways\u2013right and left\u2013smooth yet rough.\u00a0 Frozen in a moment, I stare. In the consciousness of my five-year-old self,<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t notice me.\u00a0 That\u2019s not right, is it?\u00a0 She\u2019s supposed to notice me.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are land, child of earth<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026said the four-foot snake, as she danced across my foot on her way to the farm pond.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Br\u00fa na B\u00f3inne : Ireland : curb stone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thus began my relationship with snakes.\u00a0 In this Chinese year of the Snake, which commenced on the new moon of my birthday, I find myself musing on the many vivid encounters, both tangible and in dream, I have had with the serpent.<\/p>\n

There was the awesome and frightening moment when I was ten. I was jumping rain-swollen ditches and happened to glance down as I began my leap. \u00a0Coiled just below the surface, a robust cottonmouth ready to strike.\u00a0 I ran for my Grandpa, who chased her with a hoe.\u00a0 It was she who leapt then\u2026as high as she was long, straight into the drainage culvert.<\/p>\n

In my early to mid-twenties I began the long years of intense snake dreams.\u00a0 The serpent was always the active principle in those encounters.\u00a0 Often he tried to bite me, but my hand would grasp the head\u2013pulling him away.\u00a0 Occasionally, he was hunting one of my children, so I put my own body in his path.\u00a0 Once, the dream migrated in the night\u2014slithering \u00a0across space and time to alight in my partner\u2019s mind: the same dream, and the same conclusion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Knowth : Ireland : curb stone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These dreams progressed along a continuum, from fright at the sighting, to physical encounter (usually biting), to my own engagement by grasping the snake\u2019s body, to finally\u2026. the serpent speaking.\u00a0 Once he spoke, his next move was to ride me and ultimately to enter my body.<\/p>\n

By the time the dreams reached this stage I had grown to love the serpent.\u00a0 I hid him, when others hunted him.\u00a0 I undertook the arduous journey up the mountain, when he needed to return to his temple home.\u00a0 I spoke for him, when others forgot how to hear.\u00a0 And I myself, remembered\u2026. the ancient voice of the snake.<\/p>\n

These stories have more to do with my own psyche, and personal development, than any general theory of serpent worship; however, it does have me thinking about the motif of snakes here in Ireland, both the association with Brighid (the serpent rising from the hole) and the modern Paddywhackery of Patrick driving out the snakes.<\/p>\n

It has already been argued (Hero-Feast of C\u00fa Chulainn<\/a>) that this pernicious story of snakes being driven off the island is rubbish.\u00a0 Not only were there no snakes in Ireland, the indigenous population certainly never identified them allegorically or metaphorically with pre-Christian religion, i.e., the Druids.<\/p>\n

There are; however, Irish words for serpent and dragon: Ollipeist, P\u00e9ist and Arach<\/a>, and some native Irish, practicing a reconstructed form of their indigineous religion, honor these representations as the Solar Serpent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mircea Eliade, in Patterns In Comparative Religion, argues that the symbol of the serpent was generally seen as threatening, even \u201clife-destroying\u201d, in pastoral nomadic cultures, while in subsistence cereal grain cultures it was seen as\u201d life-giving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Snake Goddess Crete : creative commons: photo credit \u2013 Chris 73<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Ireland, there was a unique alchemy between the importance of agriculture and a love of cattle and horses.\u00a0 In this ecological blend, power was viewed differently.\u00a0 Here in Ireland, sovereignty was bestowed upon a chieftain by a feminine agency\u2014the land under his feet.\u00a0 There was no sky-god ruling over a divine kingdom, as you find in Indo-European cultures.\u00a0 Instead, the king married the land and sacrificed himself for her.\u00a0 The act of marriage, to the female principle, brought fertility and prosperity, and bestowed the right to rule\u2013 which tied the king to his specific Place.\u00a0 He did not strive to be a universal ruler, such as you find in IE cultures.\u00a0 Instead, the Irish chieftain was literally bound to his Place within the landscape through his vow of marriage.<\/p>\n

This difference in the source of power (between the earth and the sky) has been described as \u201cbeing with\u201d rather than \u201cbeing above\u201d, and is a distinguishing characteristic of ancient Irish culture.<\/p>\n

And one of the powers that sovereignty granted, was the ability to \u201cdream dreams\u201d.<\/p>\n

. . . the Serpent Woman, the Daughter of\u00a0 Ivor\u2026Bride of the Mantle<\/em><\/p>\n

the White woman<\/em><\/p>\n

a woman of the underworld who could suck the soul out\u00a0 of a man through his lips, and send it to slavery among the people of ill-will, whom there is\u00a0 no call to speak of by name; and if she had any hidden wish that is not for\u00a0 our knowing, she could \u00a0take\u00a0 his life out of his body, and nip it and sting it\u00a0 till it was no longer a life, and till that went\u00a0 away on the wind that she chased with\u00a0 screams and laughter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fiona MacCleod, By the Yellow Moonrock, The\u00a0Dominion of Dreams\u00a0Under the Dark Star<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brenneman, W.L. Jr., Serpents, Cows, and Ladies: Contrasting Symbolism in Irish and Indo-European Cattle-Raiding Myths<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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