The Venom is the Antidote: The Healer’s Path
My hand has not been guided to write for a while, it has been a cold Winter requiring much rationing. I prepare my garden for new fruits today with this story.
Usually, I feel little resistance to express where I am in my journey; but these past few months even froze me. When water becomes ice; life becomes a masterful waiting game. Each win, each loss, was met with sameness. To survive winters like these, means for a beautiful thaw.
I feel my lungs bubbling up with air as I rise again to the surface, the sun calls me to life again. For a while I felt submerged, hardened, dead. It is always difficult to write through these times, it can light a fire where I am not ready to see. Deep below the surface there are caves, one specifically that I called home this wintering. For a while it felt safe, dry, dark; but without my creative fire, my eyes forgot to see. As an Artist and Woman, this situation became a critical one.
Without my illuminated truth, my creation fire, I wandered this void without direction, without fear, without knowing; exposed to the psychic predator that looms in each of our subconscious minds. My search for safety had brought me deep into the belly of the serpent indeed.
The Shaman, the Healer, the Medicine Woman; is the one who greets the serpent with deep belief and without fear. She senses the moment it enters her garden, and journeys into the tall grass to commune with the evils of the world. She knows that especially the serpent must be drawn to her life-giving nature; for he also must consume to survive. She uses her scent to overwhelm the predator, drawing away this evolutionary fate from Her village. Here, in the tall grass, the Devil does his dealings.
Without clear sight, without full wits; the ground is level between the Shaman and the Serpent. Now, instinct begins to speak. When the Serpent feels the warmth of the Shaman, her internal fire of Creation, it draws him close. When the Shaman feels the pain of every bite she has suffered in the past, she too is brought closer.
They dance in the tall grass for some time, the same one they have danced since the Beginning. One day, a storm rolls through the valley. The Shaman and the Serpent tense; the dance intensifies. The Shaman pulls out her chalice, the one she uses for collecting Sweet Milk and Rain Water; the predator believes this unpredicted movement is an act of war. He opens his jaw to lunge towards her, settled to win the battle. Her instinct knows where he will strike; for she has been bitten before. He exposes his hollow smile as he reaches towards her skin, venom dripping from his fangs. She extends her cup with great skill and accuracy, his jaw hooking over the metal rim. The vessel keeps warm by her body, the Serpent shallowly believing he has finally won; that his Poison has claimed his Prey.
It is in this moment the Shaman realizes that the power of the serpent lies within its venom. That the Serpent being a vessel of death and destruction is in its design, much like the Shaman and her responsibility for life and creation. Her power lies within her healing, her medicine. The dance they dance is one of War and one of Unity alike; of life and of death in their most essential forms.
The Medicine Woman is one of the most revered archetypes in the world; an essential pillar to every society since early humanity. Those who embody this archetype may find themselves experiencing great hardship and trauma; especially during formative years of life. The Shaman/Medicine Woman/Healer must first learn to heal Herself before healing others. She must remember the Mechanism and Technology of Healing that rests undisturbed within her lineage; tincturing her findings to medicate herself before extending her medicine to her Village. She herself is the purification and initiation from sickness to aliveness.
With the hum of creation in her belly, she swallows the destruction whole; knowing now the neutralizing nature of their primordial dance. The ‘power’ of the serpent behaves differently in the body of the Healer.
“‘Anti-venom’ is traditionally made by collecting venom from the relevant animal and injecting small amounts of it into a domestic animal. The antibodies that form are then collected from the domestic animal's blood and purified. Antidotes work by counteracting or neutralizing the effects of poisons or toxins through various mechanisms, including binding to and neutralizing the poison, preventing its absorption, or blocking its effects at the receptor site. “
Her healing-mechanism begins fashioning this Soul Medicine instantly. Pulling from her deepest caves to draw out the darkness that has made a home out of her. Death does not escape her, the poison pulls the Shaman into the underworld; and the Serpent laughs. It is here in the land of destruction where she will create herself once again. The Poison grants her access to the exact formula that will inspire her own Antidote. Her cells begin (instinctually) to bind and neutralize the ingested darkness; creating a poison-pathway for the venom to flow out of her in the form of Anti-venom. Which she carefully collects as a tincture for her medicinal supply.
The Shaman makes her way to the surface, lungs bubbling with air as the Sun calls her to life again. She emerges from the tall grass, with the head of the serpent in one hand, and the body in the other; her tincture still warm in her pocket. Before returning to her Village, she seeks the shade of a tall and wise tree. She lays her dismembered counterpart at the tree’s roots, and lays herself down next to it. She mourns.
This dance, as fated as ever, is never without loss. The Shaman exercises her power of creation through befriending her own destruction. She knows that it is within her design to live and die continuously; but she also knows the Creator that has willed this path for her. She knows the value she brings to her people, she knows the Healer’s story she was told and the one she is living. She knows that she is also the sacrifice; and that she too must pay for life with death as the Serpent must pay for death with life. We all must consume and be consumed; it is our nature.
She rests at the feet of her Beloved, at the Beginning of time where Life and Death are One. Where Creation and Destruction dance their Primordial Dance. Where there is no Serpent and no Shaman, no Predator nor Pray.
I return often to wet my feet in these waters, I give thanks for the Wintering that has survived us All. May the Medicine Woman we share rejoice at her ritual return to the surface.
