When are snake dreams actually initiation dreams?
There are dreams with snakes in them …
… and then there are Snake Dreams.
These dreams can signal a major life shift.
They can help you transform negative traits into positive power.
In fact, some snake dreams are so powerful they can affect you for weeks, months or even years.
Well, in this post I’m going to talk about the potency of snake dreams …
… and then I’m going to show you how to work with your own dream medicine.
Snake Medicine: Understanding the Potency of Snake Dreams
Most people have frustrating emotional patterns they don’t like, for instance anger, depression, bitterness, or low self-esteem.
But lying dormant in these negative emotions are great gifts. Working with your dream medicine is one way to transform those energies into helpful allies who can give your life more meaning.
According to Christina Pratt, shaman and founder of the Last Mask Center,
Our medicine is first a poison — like emotional oversensitivity or a hot, righteous temper that ends relationships and loses jobs.
As we mature spiritually and psychologically in response to our suffering, we are actually being transmuted by the poison. In that inner transmutation, we become able then—and only then—to transmute the poison in the outer world and bring it as medicine to others. The anger that once lost you friends, lovers, and jobs can become the medicine that makes you a potent, astute and trusted negotiator on an international stage.
What upsets us the most in every day life and drives us to ask for help is the dormant energy of our unique genius and the key to our soul’s purpose.
Source: http://www.pr.com/press-release/359673
Your dreams can help you access this powerful process.
I’m Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor
In 2004, I was going through a particularly difficult and emotional time, and I needed to find a new channel for my anger. I was about to be ordained as an interfaith minister when something unexpected happened that sent me into deep resentment. That’s when I had the snake dream of all snake dreams.
In the dream I am standing ankle-deep in a river. I see a giant egg that is about 2 feet long and 1.5 feet wide. The egg is resting on top of a giant snake head.
The snake body is immersed in the water, but I can’t see it.
I feel a moment of panic because I know I have to let the snake eat me.
Now I am inside the belly of the snake. I can feel the humid moisture of the tight muscles as the enormous swallows me alive.
I am uncomfortable, to say the least, and deeply afraid as the muscles pull me through the snake’s digestive tract.
It was a terrifying, but soulful experience. One I am likely to remember forever.
Snake Dreams and (Shamanic) Initiation Ceremonies
Although snakes have taken on many roles in mythology, the Rainbow Serpent, an Aboriginal mythic deity, views this particular snake as initiator and teacher:
“The Rainbow Serpent is a gigantic serpent which has its home in deep and permanent waterholes and represents the element of water … In some tribes it is the object of … the cult of the initiation ceremonies. In a considerable number of tribes it is the chief source or one of the chief sources of the magical powers possessed by the medicine-men.”
Source: The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece edited by Ira R. Buchler, Kenneth Maddock, page 126
During such ceremonies, dismemberment and death are common steps of the initiation process.
“The male snake-group … swallows the initiates into the ritually pure masculine age grade: from mystification through ingestion to intelligibility in defecation is the path that we are set upon.”
Source: The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece edited by Ira R. Buchler, Kenneth Maddock, page 126
Although my dream snake was not rainbow-colored, it certainly shared many similarities with the Rainbow Serpent: it was enormous, lived in a waterhole, and swallowed me.
Without realizing it, I’d been initiated into snake medicine. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but years later I had another powerful dream experience that helped me understand.
This time it happened while I was meditating.
As I sat on my floor in a trance state, I suddenly felt a tangible presence behind me. I turned to look, thinking it was my cat, but with my inner vision I saw a very large snake slither by me. It was about the same size as the snake I saw in my dream and I wondered if it was the same one.
This snake had a distinct feminine presence. I asked her what her name was and she said, “Bethesda.”
My mind immediately thought of Bethesda, Maryland, but that seemed an unlikely link!
My deeper intuition, however, made a connection with the Pool of Bethesda. Admittedly, I didn’t know anything about it, other than to know the name, so I quickly researched it.
I’m glad I did …
The Pool of Bethesda is in Jerusalem and it is the healing pool referred to in the Gospel of John:
“Now in Jerusalem next to the Sheep Pool there is a pool called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five porticoes; and under these were crowds of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed waiting for the water to move; for at intervals the angel of the Lord came down into the pool, and the water was disturbed, and the first person to enter the water after this disturbance was cured of any ailment from which he was suffering.” (John 5 2-4)
I continued my research and found something even more intriguing and relevant. In the 1st century BC, natural caves to the east of the pool of Bethesda were turned into small baths as part of an asclepieion.
Source: Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land, (2008), page 29
An asclepieion was a temple where people went to be healed. Snakes were sacred to Asclepius, the god of healing, and he often was depicted as carrying a staff with a snake coiled around it. The temple floor was even graced with the presence of snakes that were allowed to roam freely through the rooms where the sick and injured people came to heal. Non-venomous, of course.
Perhaps Bethesda, my snake friend, was from this place.
Working with Snake Medicine
I didn’t realize it then, but these two events – my dream of being swallowed by a snake and my introduction to Bethesda – were initiations into my role as healer.
Not only did the experience help me understand the potency of my emotions, I am now able to call upon snake medicine to help transform my anger into healing energy.
Today, Bethesda is one of my main spiritual guides. She is more than a snake. She feels infinitely wise, loving and gentle despite her enormous size.
In my personal life and while doing healing sessions, I ask her for guidance and receive useful help from her in times of need. I even send her to help my clients when they need extra and ongoing healing help; they tell me they can perceive her presence.
Embracing dream medicine, whether it is from a snake dream or any other dream, is a process of integrating sleeping and waking dream information. It requires paying attention to outer and inner senses, which are often underdeveloped in Western cultures. But anyone who wishes to can learn how to develop these senses.
Developing Your Dream Medicine
1. Pay attention to your dreams, especially Big Dreams that capture your attention for long periods of time.
2. Notice waking dreams from shamanic journeying, meditation, or imagery that pops into your mind and acknowledge what happens.
3. Research your experiences to find out if there is a history that is foreign to you.
4. Work with your dream medicine. Ask your snake or other images how you might work with them to get guidance and help.
5. Then stay open to their visitations and dream guidance. You might be surprised. Even though you can call on them for assistance, they may show up when you least expect it. Just remember to pay attention to your inner senses. If you’re new to this, you may start seeing things you’ve never seen before.
Have you ever been swallowed by a snake or other creature in a dream? If so, share your experience below.
Also share if you’ve ever had an initiation dream that helped you on your lifework journey.
P.S. Please respect other people’s wishes and refrain from interpreting their dreams unless they specifically ask for your assistance.
As a nightly dreamer of 20 years, with many precognitive dreams fulfilled, I would like to share some of my thoughts.
1. An egg represents something new about to be born, about to begin its life.
2. A serpent is something cursed. This happened when a devil was cursed to become the serpent. Just as all men descend from Adam, and bear Adam’s curse of death, all serpents descend from the original, and bear it’s curse.
3. To be consumed by another living being is to become part of it, and to be reduced to what comes out the other end.
4. Your fear in seeing the snake should not be overlooked. The wisdom of our hearts and our head knowledge often conflict. (the war between flesh and spirit).
For me a dream is interpreted on how one feels in the dream. My dream of the two huge snakes mating was one of happiness and joy at seeing them. They freed me from the tension of the other part of my dream. We can read lots and lots of interpretations, and depending on what culture you are reading it in it will be good or bad. In Japan a white snake is HIGHLY auspicious, and the gods will come down in a snake like that. It is also a symbol of money. But in the EuroChristian culture the snake is associated to the devil. But my theory on this is because it the easiest way to demean the symbols of an earlier religion. In pre-christian regions the snake is the snake is health, knowledge, the shedding of old skin, initiation …….
I had a vivid snake dream early this morning where my family and I were on vacation, and randomly driving along a desolate shoreline after dark, to where we could go no further because the the road ended in a neighborhood of decrepit deserted houses. I followed my wife and family into one of these homes, and being heavier than them, almost fell through boards covering a cavity or cellar hole by the entrance. The house was musty smelling with scattered old tables and dusty furnishings.
I went upstairs and into a bedroom, where a couple of children unfamiliar to me were sleeping; then I retreated back to a larger adjoining room, where suddenly this large snake appeared, and in rapid cadence of side winding motions, repeatedly advanced on me and retreated. The snake had the color and patterns of a Copperhead, though when I observed its head, it looked to be narrow, as opposed to the wide triangular shape that characterizes a poisonous snake.
Then with a poof of sudden deflation, the snake became much smaller, though it continued its rapid advances and retreats for a time, before finally retreating for good, disappearing under a table. In the meantime I found myself back with my family in a decrepit common room. Finally, I noted a small, rather unassuming dog, fast asleep under a table, and the impression I had was this was the snake transformed. Needless to say, this was a standout dream full of symbolism which so far I am at a loss to decipher.
Blessings;
What a divinely insightful website, I am very grateful for your time in putting this out there…
I would like to share a snake dream and welcome any interpretation and insight as the timing of this dream is significant to my journey.
I was with a male friend of mine, whom I haven’t seen or made contact with in years, we were playing easily with each other in a way children play , rolling in mud, laughing like children only we were adults, in what felt like a past life… we walked into the house and two snakes came out of the walls, made from hay, and chased me directly. One of them bit my very lower back, right on the centre of what I felt was my muladhara chakra. We called for a doctor, and after awhile I realised that I wasn’t poisoned. Then my daughter appeared, in the dream and walked inside the house, I told her not to go in because of the snakes, I then woke up. Upon waking, I was aware of a dull aching sensation in my overies? Any insight is welcome….. I work with yoga and meditation, and I am aware of the signifigance of the snake energy.
Blessings
I had a dream that I was in an amphitheatre, they were doing healings there and I had to break open an egg and swallow a baby snake before I was immersed in a pool, then a giant snake reared up from the water and spat me back out into the crowd. Then I had to be bathed in rose water in a separate pool.
I have another dream where I’m walking through an amphitheatre and a giant serpent is hypnotising a group of women. I walk through and the serpent tries to get my attention, gets right up in my face and eventually we are able to communicate, eye to eye.
Can anybody help me understand this?
Hi…I like to know the meaning of kissing only a big snake head…in my dream I don’t see the body of snake , only the big head the hold still so I can. Kiss ……I don’t feel or react scared …I did feel calm…and then I wake up….this it is funny because in real life I don’t like snakes …I always avoid this reptil…thank u