Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Ouroboros

Monsieur, you have been absent, I thought you had forgotten me. The spelunker of snakes? It alarms you, this imagination of mine.

All my life I have hallucinated snakes.

Even now, they come out of the shower head, slither down my back, small pythons, Black Mambas, always in stone grey or black. Sometimes I become rigid with fear, the hot hissing water.

Ground myself: concentrate on the tiles, the shower curtain, the soap, the wash cloth. Push out sensations of snakes dropping on my head, slithering down my back. Remnants of memories of watching the poor creatures swinging on sticks in the air until their backbones broke and they went limp. It was a game, in a circle laughing.

Terrors of a memory gone awry, misplacing splices of the past out-of-context in the present: I step onto floors thick with writhing serpents, but they aren't real. This phobia of mine.

Freud's interpretation was very narrow; Jung's was better, except that they don't automatically signify psychic fragmentation if they're not dynamically balanced, as revealed in spontaneously individuated mandalas, symbols of wholeness.

Once I did a long research paper on serpents and the winged kind, dragons, in Western art, and explored many mythologies. From Egyptian cobra worship, to Graeco-Roman Medusas, to the Judeo-Christian myth of the Fall from Eden due to the guiles of the Satanic snake, to all the St. Georges' and other Courtly Love heroes fighting all the dragons who had taken over the land and were demanding fresh virgins, to modern day snake cults and Goddess lore, to the R-Complex, or brain at the base of our skulls, the reptilian one, that controls automatic functions.

For me, Monsieur: the power of the Minoan Snake Goddess who holds live serpents in each hand; and the Greek understanding that serpents enable us to enter the mysteries of the chthonic earth itself. They have become a motile symbol of my creativity.

I collect serpent jewelry. Wrapped around my fingers are silver snake rings, silver serpents coil around the tubes that form my dangling earrings, another embraces a crystal pendant that hangs on a chain and falls between my breasts, and my arms are braceleted by silver cobras.

Once when I was young, in a bikini sunbathing alone, a man, himself no more than a messenger, a hallucination, approached, wearing khaki clothes and snake boots, as if out of the African jungle itself, in his hand a choke of snakes that he held over my body, and said, threatening to drop them on my skin, "Will you write?"

My muse is a Lady of Serpents.

She is the Kundalini, the lightning that travels from chakra to chakra in the awakening.

Yes, I have painted snakes, but they don't belong on canvas; rather, they are like the brushes themselves.

Monsieur, I have always known that what terrifies me is my source.

4 comments:

  1. i have ALWAYS found Jung to be more palpable than Freud...real nice writing as usual!

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  2. Anonymous1:52 PM

    These writings, and this no exception, go into places where most dare not brave. These metaphors, to even discover them~deeply searched within the psyche.

    Quote: "It alarms you, this imagination of mine." Such a perceptive observation for one to give to another. Brilliant!

    Quote: "Terrors of a memory gone awry, misplacing splices of the past out-of-context in the present." This is a statement of deepest insight into the self and sifting through the sands of our most hidden and reactive selves.

    Quote: "Yes, I have painted snakes, but they don't belong on canvas; rather, they are like the brushes themselves...I have always known that what terrifies me is my source." Right there~Exactly!

    Your words stitch and weave together a perfect Tapestry. ~~visions so powerful they become a liquid substance that one trembles to consume~that singular cider made from the mythical orchard~that is what one finds in your writing.

    Blessings~

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  3. it alarms you, this... it carries you along, and us along with you... the older than biblical form of inspiration that crawls along the earth and absorbs the power of the sun and then rises up to pass on - what? - knowledge, inspiration, the dreams that chase us/drive us/lead us.

    your writing is spectacular.

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  4. "I have always known that what terrifies me is my source" -- sheer power there.
    One of my most pleasant memories was my introduction in the 70s to "Agamemnon", a 3-year-old boa constrictor. It was the first time I'd ever held a snake in my hands, and I was surprised at the dryness of his forked tongue as he licked my nose. Then again, when I was a toddler my favorite stuffed animal was a 6-foot-long purple snake (whom I named "Snakey").

    I've got 2 snake poems on my website: "Snake Goddess" (originally published in The Round Table, 1(1), Spring 1984, and inspired by my meeting with Agamemnon) and "Invoking the Ruby Serpent" (originally published in Sage Woman, 1(3), Spring 1987, and based on a meditation I did that, alas, worked for me only once).

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___