The Serpent Within - Its Not a Myth

My journey with the “Serpent” had started unbenounced to me at an early age in my life. I suspect “Serpent” was always with me since my birth but didn’t start to come forth until the age of 17. Well that’s when the mystery started to unfold. These are all the seemingly unrelated events over 53 years, which lead to me finding the Serpent Within me. Each and every one of these phenomena’s, is a part of a whole story, that took me on a journey of epic proportions.

It was 1977 and I was attending the University of Victoria, summer theatre program in British Columbia, Canada. I had a hard night and decided I would get some air and walk down to Oak Bay from the campus, which was an easy 20 minute walk down the hill.

I was half way down the hill (on the empty street, in a residential area) when I heard a female voice called my name. “John” she said. My head whip around really quickly. It was like someone had called my name feet from me. I thought it might have been one of my fellow students but when I turned around there was no one there. |In fact there was no one on the street at all. Up or down. No one. I shook my head paused looked around in all directions. Nothing. The street was completely empty.  Confused I kept walking toward the beach. “John” she said. I turned faster this time, still no one to be seen. Again I searched for an explanation but found none. This happened a total of six times, but I couldn’t figure out the anomaly.  The voice was female, and she spoke into my ear as if she was right beside me. It was so clear and so familiar, I was just gob smacked. I had no clue who was speaking to me, but new I was not alone on the empty street (even though it was a high volume residential urban neighbourhood, at approximately 6 in the evening in the middle of the summer) and knew someone was following me. Who? I had no idea. Why? I was clueless. I did know the voice was female and warm and extremely familiar.

This female voice would talk to me in my head through out the next 13 years. I don’t remember hearing her voice outside of my head until I was 30.

In 1990, I was alone, after leaving my first wife and I was struggling as I had been that night at the University of Victoria (Some 13 years earlier). I was asleep and then, “John” a female voice whispered my name into my ear waking me up! I was freaked out. I was living in one bedroom attic flat, it was late approx 2 or 3 o’clock. Bolting upright awake (heart pounding) I looked around the room, with the street light pouring in from my bedroom window. I saw nothing. Heard not a sound in the room but felt a presences so strong, it unnerved me completely. It took me at least 10 minutes before I could get the courage to turn on the light, to see if anyone was physically in the room, in real time. There was no one.

1990: I was hired to work in the Dominican Republic as an Activity Director with my first wife. We worked at a resort closer to the Santa Domingo side, near Boca Chica.  I was coordinating a staff of 6 and over 200 Canadian guests, plus doing 6 shows a week, and organizing the Fashion Show, Scuba Diving tours, and Artisans to come in for the guests so they can buy wares. I’d bring everyone in weekly and one of the carvers and I started to have a good trust/friendship together.

I’d been working the Beach Club Resort for almost 6 months before I’d decided that I would like to buy a piece off him. The Sculpted/Carved piece I wanted was extraordinary, I literally felt the piece was calling me. I had to buy it.

The Carvers name was “German” and he finished the piece 10-3-90 (As seen below) before he’d even had met me. 

 

Now he wouldn’t take any money for the Sculpture at all and through an interrupter I was shocked that he wanted to trade for it. I went back to the cabana and found one of my favourite objects and we trader them. It wasn’t until 29 years later that I realized that something may have happened than what I had thought originally was going on.

On the back of the Sculpture was a snake (As you can see below) and it started me sleuth visioning. He had abstractly sculpted me and all of who I was. I have two faces, not on purpose I just do. And all those animals and birds are inside of me, and the Lizard is the championship dreamer, like me. Wow. German who carved the sculpture before even seeing me, which makes me wonder: Who he was…really?  I know a Carver….really? And trading creates a connected circle or a twining, a bond between spirits, a seal of agreement, in short A Medicine Gift.

The Serpent was there before I’d know myself and now after seeing it again it makes me laugh because everyone seemed to know about her way before I did. But no one said a word. Well they did but they didn’t.

That year I went through a hard time and headed home back to British Columbia to move in with my parents. I’d separated from my wife and then got involved with a women who turned out to be so abusive, I came home broken.

1990: My friend in Hunnington Beach California invited me to come and stay with him and search for work. So, I decided that was a good option. I’d lived and studied down in Pasadena for four years when I was in my 20’s. Now 7 years later, I was excited to go back to California. It was great to hang out with my friend again and while I was down there a number of extraordinary things happened to me. This, was another experience that I think relates to the same story but at the time I wouldn’t have known that.

It was late (approx 3 in the morning) and I got woken up from the dream. However when I woke up I wasn’t dreaming but I wasn’t in real time, in this dimension, on this plane. I could feel something coming towards me from inside my closet in the room I was in. I got outta bed and sat down curled up with my back to the wall. I was scared to death. Frightened to my core and out from the close came this huge white bird. I knew right away that the Big White Bird was female. She came out of the closet (floating a little above the floor) and went right towards me. I was shaking I was so scared and so how I knew I needed to make contact. I lifted my right extending my index finger, up towards her. Her energy was overwhelming, it was all I could do to not poop myself. She lifted her wing and I touched her right wing tip. I looked up simultaneously and could not make out her face cause it was blurred out, which only added to my confusion, fear and made me spin out of control emotionally. She then turn and went to the mirror attached to the Chester drawers. It took all my effort to stand up and move to her. I had too. I’m not sure why but I knew at the time, it was something I needed to do. I walked up behind her and saw her looking at me but still I was unable to see her face. I grab her by the shoulders and shook her, yelling, “Who are you!!”| 

1991 My Parents house in British Columbia, Canada. I was down stairs having a nap after work, it was late September and I was a woken by a presences that was so strong (no female voice this time) and when I opened my eyes there was me and another person standing looking at me with this Blue Mask. They (Me) were standing looking at me, lying in bed looking at them. They (Me) stayed for 5 seconds before disappearing. I took an old actors head shot I had and with pastels I coloured the mask over the picture of my face. Both people four feet from the right side off my bed had the same blue face.

Later I had built first generation of my bird and created a mask from the picture below. I took the Bird which I had made myself and danced down in Sedona, Arizona, USA. 

I had an encounter with a spirit in Burnaby at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a Sky train Platform, who said to me many times: “You will build a Bird, it will be, all white, it will be 10 ft by 5 ft and you will go to the Hopi Land and Dance.”

I made and created the Bird, without a pattern,(To my fathers amazment) it came out of me and I poured all my energy into her. With the mask complete, I started to search for materials for the “|Rattles” that I would place into the wings to extend them further out from my body.

When I was working with the school, (with my Special Needs students) and we’d go on field trips. This day we went to a Rescue Reptile Facility in Surrey BC. There were snakes every where (of course) so, I explain to the Curator that I was making a project that required snake skin and wondered if they may have some that I could have. After all, snake shed there skin all the time. The Curator said that it would be know problem and she went away and came back with Anaconda Skin! This was huge. I’m in Canada and I was just given snake skin that I never thought I’d be able to get, even in my wildest dreams. It was so epic and so extraordinary, it blew my mind. I thanked her and went home to create my Rattle’s that would fit into the sleeves of my design of the Bird and extend the wing span.

1992 New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. My own apartment. It was my 33^rd birthday and I really had to get a tattoo. I was my birthday gift to myself. I went in and got it with one of the best tattoo artist in Vancouver. The pain was excruciating but I pushed through. That night upon arriving home, my friend Sitauxwood had asked me to come and help her Aunty. The very next day I went to her daughters house and met with the both of them. Aunty looked sad and I was not entirely sure why. We all sat down and before I knew it I was in a trance state. A male voice came through and yelled at her Aunty. “Look at me old woman. Raaaaaa, “ he said “I am the Bear”.

And they my friend and Aunty both said “|Its Uncle Izadora”. 

Aunty looked at him, giving him the hairy eye ball, “ I’m looking Old Man!”

He responded, “No your not Old Women, you scared to look, you got no hope!”

“I gots hope!”

“You don’t Old Woman! “

“I do got hope!”

“If you got hope Old Woman then look into my eyes and see what you can see!”

Moments passed as they both sat there staring at each other intensely.

Then Uncle Izadora said, “Ha!! Now you see Old Woman!! Now you got hope!! Tell me what you see!?”

“I see nothing”

“Ha!! Don’t lie to me Old Woman…Raaaaa!! I’m the Bear!”

And that was pretty much it. Later we went back to the laundry room where the Aunties pulled out cigarettes and began to smoke. I was talking to my friend when Aunty turned to me and asked, “How long you been bugging us!?”

I looked at her and said, “I don’t know, I think 5 years.”

Aunty looked at me (While puffing on her cigarette) “You’ve been bugging us longer than 5 years, you’ve been bugging more than 35 years, and you’ve been bugging us over a thousand years!”

I looked at her shocked and amazed, “What did you see?”

She studied me carefully and said, “I don’t know what I saw, I never seen it before.”

I got very excited, “Did it look like this!” Then I lifted my shirt and showed both the ladies my Phoenix Tattoo that I had gotten the nigh before.

Aunty looked at it quickly, smiled and laughed saying, “You don’t have to have that, we know who you are.”

I said, “What did you see! Is someone telling you not to tell me?” Cause sometime that happens. Well it’s happened to me before.

“I don’t know what I saw, some prehistoric dragon.”

1994 I wanted to help a Native friends sister who was being pulled down to Montana to be with a man she didnt want to be with. I traveled down to Montana via dream journeying and found a Medicine Man dressed in Coyote skin, dancing with rattles, in a clockwise direction. The ex-boyfriend had paid him to use his power to pull my friends sister down to Montana to be with him.

I was standing watching the Coyote Medicine Man (he didn't realize I was there) when all of a sudden 5 Black Adder snakes came from each foot and went over to the dancing medicine man and bite into his right and left foot. The next thing I known he is fallen unconscious onto his back. I thought, you know I have killed him. My wise old dead friends laughed and explained that he wasn't  dead just in the process of healing. He would heal for 9 days then regain his consciousness.

After the ninth day the Coyote Medicine Man regained his consciousness and look up at me accusing me that I took his Medicine!

I looked at him and said, Dude, what do I want with you Medicine! But Ill tell you this that if you want to hurt people with your medicine you wont be able to, but if you want to help people, no problem. Then I left.

This was another clue to my Serpent inside of me.

1995 New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. My own apartment. I was living in my basement apartment watching T.V. and Peruvian Shaman (he was wearing his traditional medicine clothing and head dress) showed up with two helpers to take me down to the Amazon. So a part of me left and went with him and a part of me stayed home. I was living and being in two places at once. When I got down to the Amazon basin where he lived he put me to sleep and laid me out in a dug out canoe. My head was on his lap and (there were three men on either side of the canoe as we went into the water holding on to either side of the small dugout) then he leaned over with a stick and blew yellow powder up my nose. The next thing I knew I was this Dragon Phoenix Bird thing all on fire and huge (the six men ran to shore scared to death) and I said, the Bird thingy said “What do you want OLD Man!!!”  He was petrified but not surprised, “I had to be sure.” I, it, we said, “Next Time Ask…Or die!!”  Then the next thing I knew I was on my knees and all the children in the village where placing there hand on my right shoulder blade where my Phoenix tattoo was.

2001 Davis Bay BC. I was walking down my street and this female voice inside of me said, “I love you.” Then a few minutes later she said, “I love you” again, and then finally again.

I spoke out loud while walking. “Who are you, you’ve been there talking to me for a long time. Who are you?” I thought the voice was someone (human) that was looking for me.

2011. I thought I was dancing as (for sure) a Thunder Bird, maybe a Phoenix, and I had sleuthed that the Bird I was dancing in, was female. But that was all I came up with. I mean I have no one who could tell me what was going on. I had no idea how deep down the rabbit hole my life was going after dancing as the White Thunder Bird/Phoenix/Owl/White Eagle (I didn’t know what else) for 25 years.

2014 Penticton BC. I was visiting my sister. I was on vacation with my daughter and so I had no agenda what so ever. I was looking for down time, time to relax. I’d separated from my Second Wife some four years earlier, I was an exhausted single parent looking for some down time.

It was 3 in the morning when I felt some thing coming towards me in the dream. I was barely conscious to what was coming my way. I was almost barely awake when I saw something huge dropping out of the dream above me. It was two and half feet in diameter and translucent and approximately 70ft long. Suddenly this thing dropped right into my solar plexus. Boom, boom, boom, this thing dove deep into my body, all 70ft of it. Then when this thing was inside of me, my energy went through the roof and right off the charts. Wow!!! I’d never felt like this in my life! Even dancing didn’t come close to this.

What just happened? I wasn’t sure and had no one to go to about this phenomenon.  I had seen nothing about this in any book I’ve read, fiction or non-fiction (And I read a lot, a lot).

When I have a mystery I hunt it like crazy because I believe there is nothing you can’t know, or understand, and if I desire to know I will find the answer. I believe the information will come to me, through people (friends, relatives, strangers, and other happen chance encounters) film, T.V. books, magazines, animals, signs from spirit but I will find it, I will dig it up! 

Years later I realized that my sister lived right beside Lake Okanogan with the Ogopogo (The Interior Salish, the First Nations peoples of this area call this Water Serpent: Naitaka).

I was just given a huge honor and I knew nothing about what had happen to me.

Then life and phenomenon began to speed up and the puzzle pieces started to come together. I had created a character called the Green Man and performed in St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Now the interesting thing about this parade is that Saint Patrick himself was given Saint Hood for getting rid of all the Serpents out of Ireland. Saint Patrick didn’t get rid of physical snakes from the island, no he killed off the Pagans, who where shamans, who had this Serpent Medicine Power inside of them too! And here I was back in parade on St. Paddy’s Day with a 70ft Serpent inside of me!

I thought all this was influenced from Native North American culture but now I strongly suspect it comes from my own Irish Ancestral Medicine.

 

 Here is the final creation of the White Bird. She is White Raven, she is Serpent, and her name is Shayarahna. She is a 273 ft blue serpent who lives inside of me and in the Amazon River near Peru. 

Before I used to dance in Pow Wow’s, 10 to be exact, but I frightened most of the Native Peoples (I was invited to Dance by my Elder friend Aunty Nora) because I was an Owl (at that point I thought I was an Owl and that scares most Native Peoples) and the children would follow me (20 to 30 at a time). My friend and Elder Uncle Jake said (after the Capilano Pow Wow) “That Blanket is strong. If you Red it be okay but you White, so you should go dance in the Bush.” So 20 years ago I shifted and started dancing in the bush, the forest, the mountains.

When I dance i go up 21 miles (7 km) into the mountains. Here I'm dancing up in a clear cut with three fires, like my Celtic/Pict ancestors have been doing since 731 on the eve of Samhain. They believed if you dance between the fires you dance between the worlds.  Then I dance through the doors created by the fires for 8 minutes. Its exhilarating and when I finish i wait on one knee for the Serpent to fly through me however it took me years to realize what was going on. In fact its only been recently that i figured this out. The Serpent would drop from the other world and dive threw my back were the heart would be. Then I am mobilized for 15 minutes, unable to stand or walk, similar to when I'm in a trance as a Medium. I wonder now if  Shayarahna was re-calibrating my energy system or maybe something deeper was going on I haven't figured out yet, but I no longer get that going on and I've been dancing 25years.

I dance to wake the children, the others, the dancers, the other serpent people?

My mother once said to me: "Dance and they will come. "

I maybe seen two maybe more but not in the numbers I expected.

Somewhere in the depths of my beings I had told my people to look for me way back 40000 years before Christ. As wild as that sounds its my truth, my knowing.

Serpent Immensity – The Big Mystery

The Older I get, the more I understand the Serpent and what can and will happen and from that understanding the more “She/Serpent/Shayarahnaw|” the more a healthy symbiotic interrelationship occurs. Before this however, before my “A-ha Moment” I had no clue what could happen and these are some of those experiences that did happen:

1997 Boom County, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. I went dancing with my work mates. We were going drinking and just to get silly. (My silly is three beers) The night was going well, it was a country bar and I was having fun with the gang of folks. There was two stepping going on (I can dance so I was excited to give it a whirl)

I asked this lady to dance and then we proceeded to twirl around the floor. We went faster and faster and then there was the huge unexpected woosh of energy.  The lady smiled at me, and I at her, not sure of what just happen but knowing it was extraordinary and probably unexplainable. I just put it to my medicine power. After the dance was over I thanked her and went to the bar to get another beer. When I turn around the lady I had been dancing with was standing their with a picture of water in her hand. She then took her left hand grab the top of my pants and poured the picture of water down my pants.

“What did you do that for!!” I was just shock and upset.

“Now we’re both wet!!” She smiled at me but was definitely confused on how it happened. We both were.

I sat there, with my mouth open thinking “WTF”!! With no idea of what just happen on the dance floor and why she just did what she did!?

2008/2010 Netherlands:

I was hired to do workshops with a good friend of mine. We did our workshop to open the event. It went very well. I was thanking people (80 people in the room) everyone was hand shaking and hugging.

From across the room I saw this Dutch woman walking towards me and there was something so familiar to me. She came up to me and hugged me and then and only then did I realize who she was. Her name was Adriana.

Holding me she said, “You are doing so well.”

I was speechless and tearing as I nodded.

Soul gazing, her and I she spoke again, “You have come so far since we last met.

I was lost with her in a vision, now then, here there, at the same time, 1641 was the last time we where together.

“Look at you. Amazing. And how far you’ve come. Thank you for finding me. Thank you.”

The energy between us was incredible and did we know there was more to come.

2010

It was our 3^rd visit to the Netherlands but this time it was all us (My Good Friend and I), 10 days of workshops. Unfortunately Adrianna was not there but by the end of our stay I’d managed to get a hold of her again. We plan to meet at my Dutch friend’s house.

She dropped by after supper. The intensity between us just overwhelming for me, we couldn’t stop looking into each others eyes/soul gazing. Then it went deeper than I could have ever thought.

In retrospect I suspect there was something or someone with a plan maybe Shayarahna I’m thinking because again it left me wondering what and why the experience did happen.

I stood up and my Adrianna stood up with me. She turned around and I put my hands on her back. Fully clothed, in the dinning room of my friends house with my buddy I went to teach with in the Netherlands and my Dutch friend and her husband. I then could feel the spiritual intensity building but had no idea what was going on. Well to a point. I knew my magic was amplifying. Then I started to go into trance and my Dutch friend supported me from the back and Adrianna turned around and my Buddy supported her. So now we have four of us all standing up. My Dutch friend held hands with my Buddy and they cradled us as the energy coming out of me aligned with Adrianna’s and then, then the amazing the impossible, the unseen occurred.  Together our spirits lifted up and out of our body’s and suddenly ripped upwards, leaving me n Adrianna in a trance state. Unable to speak, to see…just the ability to be! If our friends weren’t holding us we would have fallen down to the floor, we had no strength because it had become a total out of body experience or such magnitude it is nearly impossible to describe. Like two super Nova’s colliding together at the same time. No hallucinogenic’s or Alochol. We were clear. We four, we five, clear and authentic in the experience that was occurring. It was life changing!

After the journey, to the unknown destination that we seemed to collectively all knew but didn’t know, none of us quite realized what happened. It was differently a positive experience for all those involved, but the what and how I didn’t really discover until some 10 years later. Until now in writing this.

Many, many Serpent moments have happened when directly related to intimacy, but I didn’t recognize them for what they were. It wasn’t until I met my a very special lady who was filled with cougar and magic to be willing to explore the parameters of what this Magic/Medicine was. I feel gifted for meeting her and going deeper intimately then I ever have in my past, before.

I’m sure there is more to understand but I feel that finally I have a grip on what’s going on. Mostly lol and that is the way of the Shaman’s Path, The way of the Serpent.We are now living a symbolic relationship, (Shayarana and I)existing together and apart, one and two, both of us helping each other in the real world and in the other worlds, dream walking together. Not an easy task but we manage in this world of a whole lot of conservative and straight believing in this lie called normal.

I wrote this in hopes it’ll help someone…one of you, who yes may think you’re crazy.

YOU’RE NOT ©