Snake

Snake Animal Medicine: Transmutation

Snake is a reptile that is able to shed its skin and live through a traumatic life death-rebirth experience. So as life and with transmutation from one experience to another, and from one level of existence to another.

Snake teaches you to recognize that you are an eternal being experiencing mortality, you are constantly shedding anything that has served its purpose, in favor of something which is of greater value.

Snake has transformational ability and supplies the power to use Fire energy in a correct way. Continuity

Snake medicine people are very rare. Their initiation involves experiencing and living through multiple snake bites, which allows them to transmute all poisons, be they mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional.

The power of snake medicine is the power of creation, for it embodies sexuality, psychic energy, alchemy, reproduction, and ascension (or immortality). The transmutation of the life-death-rebirth cycle is exemplified by the shedding of Snake’s skin. It is the energy of wholeness, cosmic consciousness, and the ability to experience anything willingly and without resistance. It is the knowledge that all things are equal in creation, and that those things which might be experienced as poison can be eaten, ingested, integrated, and transmuted if one has the proper state of mind. Thoth, the Atlantian who later returned as Hermes and was the father of alchemy, used the symbology of two snakes intertwining around a sword to represent healing. Complete understanding and acceptance of the male and female within each organism creates a melding of the two into one, thereby producing divine energy.

This medicine teaches you on a personal level that you are a universal being. Through accepting all aspects of your life, you can bring about the transmutation of the fire medicine. This fire energy, when functioning on the material place, creates passion, desire, procreation, and physical vitality. On the emotional place, it becomes ambition, creation, resolution, and dreams. On the mental place it becomes intellect, power, charisma, and leadership. When this Snake energy reaches the spiritual plane, it becomes wisdom, understanding, wholeness and connection to Great Spirit. If you Snake is showing up for you, there is a need within you to transmute some thought, action, or desire so that wholeness may be achieved. This is heavy magic, but remember, magic is no more than a change in consciousness. Become the magician or the enchantress: transmute the energy and accept the power of the fire.

Transmute all poisons. Shed the skin of the past. Honor the change in progress.

Source: Sams, Jamie and Carson, David. Medicine Cards (Santa Fe: Bear and Company, 1988).