Advice from Snakes

I go down my well.
This time is thick with muck, rotting things.
It foams with rancid matter.
The fetid detritus clears as I sink,
but then the liquid thickens like congealed blood.
Finally, I ascend and emerge sticky with gore.
My familiar is waiting for me.
I apologize for not visiting her more often.
She leads me to the World Tree.
This time it is up on a hill.
Its web-like branches fill the sky.
My familiar turns and leads me past the tree and into the almond valley of the Pythia’s Temple.
She flashes her tiny key and I realize I am holding my own.
I remember that at my last esbat I used a key as a symbol for the center of the circle, the self.
Maybe that’s what my temple key unlocks.

My familiar snarks,
“Now you’re getting smarter.”

I enter and the great python slides aside to let me enter the inner sanctum.
I greet her nose to nose and inhale her breath.

I cautiously step towards the dais and state that I wish to learn more about the oracle’s practice.
Are there any taboos I ought to observe? Tasks? Tools? Techniques?

a red cord,
a dry spring of wormwood smoldering as incense
appear in my hands.
My red robe is over my shoulders.

The Pythia instructs me to sit.
I close my eyes, clutch my cord, and perch on the high seat, then open my eyes.

Back in the world, I hear a plumbing pipe clang.
Oracle work is not a tap to turn on when you wish or to turn off when you choose.

I feel a drop of water fall on my face.
The visions come in drops or floods as needed like rain.

I feel the water of the bath ripple.
You must learn to be immersed. Be carried by the current of the flow.

I feel hot, cramped, and uncomfortable.
I ask if it is time to go.
The Pythia insists I submit to the water
and directs me to sink down.
In the world, I plug my fingers in my ears,
lay back, and sink further.

My head hurts and I feel feverish.

Does your skull hurt?
You must learn to unhinge it as I do.
Open up you head.
You cannot take small bites of the visions,
you will choke.
You must swallow them whole.

I think I finally understand.
I am permitted to go.

I turn back, unsure if I should leave an offering to the python.
I reach back and red rose petals spill from my hand.
I see that they and falling like drops of blood from a wound in my hand.

My familiar leads me back the way we came.

I open my eyes.

Notes:
Just to clarify, this journey took place in the bath.

This journey was unusual because I was especially aware of certain sounds and sensations that either actually were or seemed like they were occurring to my body in the mundane world. Specifically, the sound of pipes and the feel of water. For the most part, I try to tune out those types of things. Usually, if something is too obvious to ignore, it becomes distracting and can break the trance. The fact that the sensations in the world were intimately related to the occurring events in the journey seemed to highlight the nature of trance being a lateral shift in consciousness rather than an outright change in consciousness like sleep or dream, for example.

In ancient Greece, “pythia” was the title given to the oracular priestesses themselves. In this text, I have used that title interchangeably with the word “python” to describe the snake spirit as a personification of the Delphic tradition.

Related posts:
 the Oracle

the Oracle

I go into the tree and emerge back up in valley of tall grass of wheat. Before me is a blossoming almond tree. I begin walking towards the craggy hills. I walk down a path lined with olive trees that are thick and knobby with age. I come to the temple threshold in the side of the hills and descend down a flagstone terrace that is damp with moisture.

I go down a narrow hall towards the inner temple. A door slams shut behind me.
It is pitch black except for the red light of two torches flickering far in the distance.
An enormous snake appears and blocks the way. She is as thick as the hall is tall, 10 feel or more.
Guarding the inner temple she asks,
Why do you come?
To see my seer-self, learn my name, learn about the oracle path, I answer.

She lets me pass, then advises,
Know what is bound and what is not bound.
I see her black form wind muscularly; the binding of the constrictors embrace.
I picture the ouroboros encircling creating, binding it together.
I imagine helices of DNA in in her coiling length
and contemplate the idea of one being bound on not bound by their ancestry, their family, their fate.
“Bound” means both binding and captivity,
but also fixedness in path, being bound on a course; the idea of what is predetermined, fated, or inescapable,
versus what is free of obstacles or restraint.

I enter the inner temple.
There is a dark reflecting pool and above it a dais flanked by two torches, the only light.
A hooded oracle sits there. As she raises her face, her features become more like mine.
She wears a red robe with black feathers drawn along the hem. A red rose rests in her palm and a red cord is wrapped around her hand.

I ask her name, but before I form the words,
she knows the question and states,
Pythia.
In my conscious mind, I merge into her, and turn my gaze to see as she sees from her perch.

Images, light, and energy floods me.
They stream through me violently, like “warp drive” in a movie.
I see past, future, present, underworld, upperworld, middle world.
I am being carried away by the torrent of it
as if a river rapid or lightning bold were rocketing through me.
I gasp audibly in the real world.
I flounder trying to break free or grasp an anchor.
I see a iron chain rooted to where I was sitting and grab it.
I think of her word “bound” as I grip and wrap the chain around me.

The energy subsides slightly, but I don’t know how to break free or control it.
The chain become the python. She wraps around me, holding me fast.
She bites me. The venom in me creates a link, she explains.
Now I can be anchored when in the oracle’s temple.

I remember to ask my question and receive my answer.
At once, I bolt out of the inner temple, shedding the seer’s cloak.
I flee past he Python guarding the egress.
My body is prickly with adrenaline, but I force myself to slow and thank the python.
I breathlessly ask what i may give her as a gift.
She replies that my gift is my initiation. To return, to learn this path.

I keep running the way I came and up through the world tree.
My familiar and ancestor are waiting for me and I embrace them.
I want to give my familiar a gift to help her work with me in the seer’s temple.
She hands me a key and I want to give her one too.
She opens her hand and reveals a small replica.
It is not for me, but for safekeeping for you,
she says.

I open my eyes.

 

Notes

Path-working elements inspired by “Journey to the Oracle’s Cave.”  Paxson, Diana. The Way of the Oracle. 

Afterwards, I had a friend check my chakras with a pendulum.  All of them were perfectly aligned except my crown witch had to be dialed way, way down and my throat chakra which needed a tiny boost.