Snake Milk: A Mystical Elixir for Modern Times
A basketful of ritual cobras
comes into the tame little house,
their brown-wheat glisten tingled with ripples.
They lick the room with their bodies, curves
uncurling, writing a sibilant alphabet of panic
on my floor.
Mother gives them milk
—A.K. Ramanujan
We can only love what we’re willing to see, and see what we’re willing to love. The Year of the Yin Wood Snake removes the scales from our eyes and the veil from reality, inviting us to love precisely through alignment and revelation.
All over the world, Snakes exude mythical import. From divine shakti to religious subjugation, Snakes go everywhere we go, and well beyond. Snake’s receptive readiness embodies skill. Its fluid form synthesizes duality, moves easily between worlds, and adapts to any circumstance. Its uneven rhythm—long periods of stillness, followed by lightning-quick kills—models patience and precision. Its constant contact with the ground gives it unmatched instincts. Its cyclical shedding portends potent revelation and complete renewal. Its method of devouring prey whole brings us face to face with fear and death. Its clarity exposes lies and truth at once, while its complexities challenge us to love beyond conditions.
Complex symbols invite a return to simplicity. Don’t worry about what Snake Year “means.” Simply accept its potent invitation to presence.
The short version of this essay is love is the only thing that matters. Not love-as-sentiment or love as a passive breach of integrity, but love as a creative and regulatory force rooted in ecological sovereignty. Love is the foundation of life and the practical expression of non-duality. Collaborating on behalf of Earth and animating our planet through loving integrity sustains us this and every year.
The long version of this essay grounds us in our indigenous minds as we undergo accelerated developments in human perception and belonging. I’ll be sharing prophetic dreams, mystical experiences, and personal stories to kindle your own hidden depths as our latent capacities emerge.
If we let Snake Year initiate us, we will come out completely different people.
Thank You
I am deeply grateful for the unbroken Chinese tradition of Mantic Arts and its teachers, both seen and unseen, who transmit the wisdom of cyclical time. Thank you to Liu Ming, who introduced me to the life-sustaining practices of Chinese Astrology and Path Dreaming. Thank you to Dr. Apela Colorado for helping me remember my whole mind. Thank you to my friend and collaborator in previous years, Claudia Anfuso, for translating wisdom all over the globe and for giving me the courage to say things out loud. Thank you to the brilliant, dynamic artists for allowing creation to move through them, and for generously sharing their work with us here. Click on the names beneath each image to see more of their work. Thank you to Ethan Lechner for helping me get off the ride. Thank you especially to Darren Gibbs for creating the Polestar and Almanac astrology apps that make the study of time accessible, and for his calm abiding that has opened my own capacity to calm down, sort of. His unconditional support has enriched my life in innumerable ways, including the ability to go off-grid so I can write.
Copyright Tabby Booth, shared with written permission from the artist. | Image shows a coiled black snake against a matte gold/beige background in folk art style.
A Note on Process
Time is just a symptom of love. —Joana Newsom
Although I have studied Polestar and Almanac astrology for 20 years, I do not consider myself an astrologer. You don’t need to be, either. Anyone can develop intimacy with time by simply being alive and listening.
When I am empty except for love, knowing comes. I meticulously curate spaces where goodness wants to gather. I dream there, I divine, I see. I rely on ancient ways of knowing that never left. They contain checks and balances and the integrity of a scientific method that includes the scientist. I’ve been trained by teachers and elders, and have cultivated the longterm disciplines of listening and tracking. My main modalities are dream, divination, pattern recognition, and direct transmission.
I typically collaborate with a tiny team of human beings and a multitude of unseen friends. Mystics often work together in discretion, but this year I took a three-month retreat from all social interaction and obligation outside the home. Projects come together the way weather does. Who can say what really happens, or how, but eventually a pattern emerges.
What precedes ritual art is not apart from it. Snake Year urges us to acknowledge the unseen. Life begins in the dark. In many traditional cultures, periods of prayer, ritual, and preparation last for days before the physical act of creation can begin. This project required much of me, including two months of beautifying and organizing every last corner of my home, at least 100 hours of tracking dreams, two weeks fashioning a tortoise from clay and then painting it, maintaining spiritual hygiene practices throughout retreat, making ritual offerings, repeatedly entering the liminal world of direct transmission, enduring multiple bouts of intense illness that characterize my path, and one full day of divination. I share this to honor your own unseen acts of love, and awaken your profound connection to the essence that gives rise to all things.
Copyright Rithika Merchant, 2022, shared with written permission from Rithika Merchant and TARQ gallery
Festival of the Phoenix Sun, 2022. Mixed media collage with gouache, watercolor, ink, colored pencil and magazine cutouts on paper
55 × 39.3 in | Image is a chimeric group of bird-headed human forms and one human form made of cosmic space with one open eye in its chest and one for its head. They hold hands around the axis of a stylized sun emerging from a black ball with an curvy orange and red snake moving around it.
The Revelation of Rhythm
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order—the continuous thread of revelation. —Eudora Welty
Dream 11/1/2024: Rhythm is found, not created. It’s an inherently erotic discovery that also self-resolves. It is intimacy with nature and time. It is the way the heart starts to beat all by itself. I’m watching straight lines and shapes occasionally coalesce into form, rhythm, and speech. An anthropologist is placing concepts on rhythm, contriving some top-downness that isn’t part of meaning or language. Animated dancers vibrate with sexual tension; straight lines become coiled and chaotic, indicating orgasm. We are told to look at the predictable patterns we trace every day to help us discover our innate rhythms.
We are a rhythmic intimacy. Whether we know it or not, our natural patterns perfectly express time. The uneven measuring sticks of modern clocks and calendars can only marginally disrupt the deep rhythms that give rise to, empower, and conclude our bodies.
We live in meat with an expiration date. One of the most exhilarating facts about this is rhythm. Time doesn’t exist in the spirit world. You’ll never hear a heartbeat there or see the sun set. We come here to experience the pulse of our bodies, the beat of the seasons, the undulations of the moon, and the spinning of the stars.
It sounds romantic, but often sucks. We register this dance of fate and freedom as the ebb and flow of ease. This year we experience an immediate narrowing of the road, when fate constricts freedom. Snake teaches us that some of the most auspicious times occur when constraint catalyzes us into true human beings. We can always express freedom by adapting to any circumstance with dignity.
But what’s behind the rhythm? An effortless intelligence generates everything, including the brief pattern of our body. We are time beings and we are the effortless being that gives rise to time. Snake Year may seem dangerous, but nothing can harm our original nature. We experience true freedom when we leave fear.
illustration of a long, straight green snake with a gray and tan scaled head, designed for the workshop of Jacques-Charles-François-Marie Froment-Meurice, b. 1864 | artwork undated
The Narrowing of the Road
I was born with eyes that can never close. —Joy Harjo
Dream 11/1/2024: My husband and I throw the same divination, Hexgram 12. A goddess of change says, “Certain things need to happen along the path. Some outcomes are fixed to set humans on their fated trajectory. You are encountering a narrowing of the road.”
I’d been in a 3-day spate of prophetic dreams, so I knew the dream was true. Still, I threw divination coins when I woke up, and got Hexagram 12 again. I don’t know the probability of this happening, but I knew it confirmed the dream’s message.
Hexagram 12 is called Obstruction. Liu Ming’s Zhou Yi describes Obstruction as “a situation in which good or superior people are temporarily held back by minor obstructions. This includes mistakenly working against your own fate. It is also about a time when inferior, small-minded people prevail. This is not a time of going forward. Be humble and patient, and cancel or postpone great plans. Adaptation and patience are keys to positive change in the future.”
When we consult the Zhou Yi or I-Ching, we can also receive “changing lines” that clarify the reading. I received lines 1, 2, and 5, whose commentary I will also share to shed more light on our collective journey:
Line one: “In adversity, you are not alone. Our natural interconnectedness to beings and things brings both misfortune and its resolution.”
Line two: “Realizing the full potential of a lowly position brings good fortune. Sincere humility brings the support of real power. Doing the right thing when you are in a lesser position demonstrates that subordinate does not mean ineffective.”
Line six: “A temporary obstruction is removed. You feel great happiness. Patience pays off.”
The transition from Dragon year to Snake year feels like a throttle. Quickly recalibrate to stillness and conservation. This year’s subtle, irregular rhythm requires silent attention to cues. Only when we register the swell of inspiration should we move. Once we feel invited, take precise and confident action. Snake asks us to demonstrate self-control, as it shows us how profoundly little we control anything else.
Depending on our character, we may get restless. Waiting for the right time to act can feel like a high libido with no outlet. This buildup of tension will likely happen throughout the year at irregular intervals. If we can curb our impulses, we will end up having great sex with the right person at the right time, as it were. Snake Year gives us many opportunities to discern the difference between impulsivity and inspiration.
photo by Zdeněk Macháček for Unsplash
A Matter of Scale
You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this. —Raymond Carver
The scale of Snake is “much smaller” than Dragon (2024), but it might not feel that way. The Yin Wood Snake is still “big enough” to be a cycle of time; it will take us a full year to see its body. Because Snake is more suited to human comprehension, its revelatory quality will be extremely potent. Its smaller scale combined with its inward direction and mystical depth can completely transform our lives.
We may have missed most of what Dragon year set up simply because it was too big to register. This year gets under our skin. Don’t let small-minded people unmoor you. Let small, good things come together. Think skill-swaps and ordinary joys. Discover the wonder of routine. Diminish commitments, downscale productivity, and eliminate inessentials.
When Snake qi is exhausted, it becomes paranoid, depressed, and anxious. Everything feels bigger and more harrowing when we’re depleted. Welcome the return to dreaming and being. Overwork is the most celebrated form of self-harm. This year it can literally kill us. Every action costs so much more than it did last year. Yin Wood Snake energy is suited to reflection and regeneration, rather than productivity. Practice radical rest. If we exhaust ourselves this year, Fire Horse (2026) will feel like a panic attack. Stick to small, considerate movements so we can enjoy a deeply-satisfying gallop next year. (God willing and the creek don’t rise.)
Copyright Deming King Harriman, “Beginnings and Endings II,” shared with written permission from the artist. Image shoes a blue snake moving through a human skull in warm, muted tone on a green and orange floral background.
Crazy, Scary, Spooky, Hilarious
Beliefs are not a reliable criteria for reality. —Matilda McElroy
The infinite, interlocking worlds are bigger and stranger than we can comprehend. Curb your allegiance to certainty. None of us knows “the real story.” The real story doesn’t matter. Snake advises us to divest from story altogether in favor of the generative intelligence that animates life. Apply the power you invest in blame, self-righteousness, and certainty to a rigorous inner inquiry. Disaster is a convergence of unexamined inner worlds. Don’t be lured into war. You’ll know the inquiry is over when you can no longer point fingers. Let Snake swallow you whole.
Excerpt of a photo by Russell Lee, 1946. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain. Image is a vintage black and white photo of a white man holding up a poisonous snake as he looks upward. Other people in the congregation are holding snakes or watching the snake handlers.
Full of Empty
Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake. —Nagarjuna
Snakes can be a straight line or completely coiled. They are the magic wand and the spiral of creation, the clarity of the kill and the chaos of the chase. In the liminal zone of sex and death, anything can happen. Snakes naturally synthesize paradox and duality. Events may emerge from this margin that push the limits of our minds. This is good. Like Snakes, true human beings live in our whole bodies and our whole minds, which extend beyond the illusion of the individual into ecological and cosmic integrity, and beyond even that, into the unknowable infinite.
You may have already noticed that your capacity to accept the “unbelievable” has grown exponentially in the past few years. In the external world, we will continue to see a rapid escalation of strange. The inner correlate is a deep, profound revelation of who we are. The short version is we are nothing, in a good way.
excerpt from David Lynch’s Last Public Broadcast Speech at Meditate America, September 13, 2024. Posted by @alxwlsh on YouTube
Emptiness feels like a smile. Uncoupled from love, its dynamic warmth becomes the cold void of nihilism. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you are an infinite being who came here to love. You have a good heart, a caring presence, and eyes that shine with the open secret of who we are.
I sound like a preacher, but emptiness is not a religion. It’s a discovery—something each of us finds out for ourselves. St. Francis lived it as well as any siddha. Our native ancestors had many different names for emptiness as well as the depth of culture to express it. Our modern society, emptied of symbolic meaning and ritual expression, also refers to our nameless foundation as “emptiness” and “nothingness.” Of course we're going to turn it into nihilism. Our animist forebears and plenty of modern people discover it the only way we really can—directly. Then and now, we join our infinite depths through revelation, ceremony, song, dance, and dream. Emptiness is not a cognitive concept; it is a full-body knowing, a childlike wonder, a way of life.
Copyright Mark Rogers. “Paranormal Investigators” shared with written permission from the artist. | Image shows a group of beings holding hands in a forest. There’s a robed insectoid being, a woman smoking a pipe in colonial-era dress with brown skin and black hair, a skeletal-looking ghost, Bigfoot, a big, black mothlike creature, and a grey alien holding a tiny winged fairy being. They are standing near an old-fashioned camera on a tripod.
Sky Fam
People are strange when you’re a stranger. —The Doors
Dream 2/28/25: Glowing orbs fill the sky. Some are disc-shaped. They have come to facilitate ego death and help the planet.
Our ancestors, elders, and culture keepers remember that our lineage extends to the stars. Many tribes embedded star lore in stories, songs, dances, and rock art so that future generations (that’s us!) would remember. Revelation can also occur through dreams and direct communication with Earth and other beings. All over the globe, ancient stories speak of star people who came from the sky with gifts to help humanity flourish on Earth. They taught us about agricultural cycles, timekeeping, metallurgy, celestial navigation, artistic and technological skill, and more. In indigenous Irish lore, the Tuatha de Dannan descended from the mist in a ship on Bealtane, just as the Pleiades sets beneath the horizon for the season. Known for artistic, healing, and martial expertise, the “shining ones” brightened the ancient island, and continue to refine Ireland’s legacy.
In this era of UAP (unexplained aerial phenomena) “disclosure,” we are wise to remember our deep genealogy. Learning about “alien invaders” from militarized men with hidden agendas hits different than learning about our star relatives from indigenous grandmothers.
Copyright Deming King Harriman. “Surreal Grail V (cup overflowing, wings),” digital collage, 2019. I Image shows a European woman in a blue gown holding a bowl of water that overflows onto the head of a blue dragon-like creature, which she is standing on. Her head is the cosmos with a halo around it and golden rays emanating from it. She has two pair of colorful wings and is flanked by two copper snakes.
Web of Power
Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude. If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back. —Joy Harjo
Dream: 12/5/24
I’m wandering through a house with many rooms, looking for where I belong. I encounter lots of people, but don’t fit anywhere. I usually feel this way, so it’s not a problem. I walk outside, where a group of indigenous people watch three grandmothers sing and burn sweet-smelling grass in ceremony. We come from different backgrounds, but all of us are in our whole minds. I surrender to trance, allowing myself to be seen. For the first time, my full capacity emerges, brought forward by the strength of rooted relationships and shared consensus reality. We belong and move as one—the people, the animals, the spirits, and the land. The prayer possesses me, raising me into the sky. It feels natural. I realize in my bones that the deep bonds of a loving ecology position us in a web power that no act of war can undo.
I am riveted to be alive during a time when chaos kindles remembering. We get to claw—I mean, love— our way back to wholeness. We can only forget who we are for a little while. Wholeness is here, now.
Copyright Lou Benesch, “The Braid,” shared with written permission from the artist | Watercolor and ink image shows a blue snake with orange flowers emerging curvily upward from a beige egg with roots that look like fire beneath it.
Fertile Ground
People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness. —Christopher Alexander
There’s nothing like hands in the dirt. It’s a miracle every time—planting a seed and nourishing the earth until the first sprout emerges. I started growing every plantable thing we buy from the grocery store. Lettuce, tomatoes, garlic, lemons, oranges, blueberries, raspberries, and more are sprouting in my windowsill. Engage the small, profound technology of creating life. Literally any practice of regenerating Earth has invaluable implications for our planet right now. Put the hair from your brush outside for the birds, give your monthly blood back to the Earth, clip your fingernails over potted plants. It sounds trivial, but expresses continuity and reciprocity with the planet.
Just like snakes, seeds are small and potent. Plant what feeds you. Every thought, feeling, and action is a seed. Don’t mistake latent for fallow. Go within and get clear about what you want to contribute in this fertile node of germination. Fertility, family planning, small-scale farming, artistry, and creative solutions are enhanced. Withdraw from relationships that diminish you. This includes relationships with people, ideas, land, and yourself. Regenerative practices like alchemy and non-conceptual meditation replenish us, and perfectly express Snake Year.
illustration by Carl Emil Doepler for the book Die Götterwelt der Germanen by Wilhelm Ranisch, 1905. Image shows a Germanic girl with long brown hair sitting with a huge snake and other creatures.
Earth Magic
A good window lets the outside participate. —Natalie Diaz
Yin Wood Snake Year is a year of Earth magic. I recently opened my medical practice to include the Earth. Geomancy means collaborating with the spirit of the land, noticing connections, and fostering them. Participating in the strategic awakening of Earth is the most exhilarating way to enlist the body of knowledge that brings us acupuncture.
Snake Year invites us to harmonize our inner and outer landscapes. Integrity includes not only harmony between our energy, words, and deeds, but harmony with our surroundings.
Since moving to North Carolina, I’ve made multiple fairy houses and stone circles, which I regularly tend. (For the record, all of them spontaneously grew mushrooms.) I cleaned up the (electric) well house and set up a small way to discreetly honor the water, since we share the well house with neighbors. I am getting the knack of when to care for these energetic focal points and when to practice benevolent neglect. They tell us when they do and don’t want human contact through our feelings, inclinations, and instincts.
One warm day, I filled my offering basket with milk and butter for the faeries. I felt relaxed and happy as I placed the butter at the foot of their small, red door. I turned to pick up a piece of quartz, which I also intended to offer, and when I turned back around, a big, beautiful hawk feather lay at my feet. It was the first time I felt directly acknowledged by the land and its unseen collaborators. It was not just me making offerings; it was a gift exchange. That’s what wholeness feels like.
Just a few days ago, after tending the connections between the different “neighborhoods” of my yard, something startling happened. As I was drifting off to sleep, I smelled tobacco so strongly that I sat up. A native man, who I assumed to be Occaneechi, entered my room in spirit and said, “thank you for tending the land in the old way.” Even though this kind of interaction is completely natural, my first thought was, “Is this really happening??” I said, “I wish I could say thank you in your language,” to which he immediately replied, “Say it in your own ancestral language.” Of course. I looked up the Irish, and joked with him about pronouncing “go raibh maith agat.” But after several tries and some YouTubing, I finally got it. It means, “May you have goodness.” An overwhelming swell of tobacco surrounded me. I couldn’t help crying a little.
Minoan Snake Goddess from the Palace of Knossos, c. 1300, Wikimedia Commons
Microculture and Belonging
All flourishing is mutual. —Robin Wall Kimmerer
We had squirrels living in the rafters of our screened-in porch for years. They tore up the screen, chewed through wires, and left nesting material everywhere. My husband went to war with them, setting up bright lights and blaring music into their little den, while I fed them nuts and berries in the front yard. This amusing blend of behaviors went on for years. Eventually it occurred to me to talk to them. One day, walking near their nest, I asked them what they needed to move out. A few days later while in the same spot, I heard them say (in a clear, unbidden voice in my head), “We want a house.” I answered them out loud, “You got it.” My amazing husband built them a beautiful home, no questions asked. We put a bed of moss and some almonds inside, and they moved right in.
Conversations with the nonhuman realm are a normal part of belonging. All we have to do is remember. It starts with listening, with walking around and noticing trees, plants, stones, insects, animals, and patterns of energy: paths, waterways, anthills, mushroom spots, and the last puddles to dry up. We don’t even need to be outside. Your teacups will talk to you. An already-robust context regulates our immediate environment, whether we live in a prison or a palace. Once we humbly and strategically begin to collaborate with these forces, they begin to care for us in the same deliberate way. It is a feeling of love coming in and going out, like breathing. We are lungs made for the exchange of goodwill.
Establishing core relationships with our immediate surroundings ritually reclaims our wholeness. We are making microculture. Microculture has a life of its own. We will be surprised at how much our environments recalibrate once we live as though everything is alive and has a place. We will want our belongings to belong. Little islands of wholeness have a way of being drawn together. Something larger happens all by itself. Something like culture.
Copyright Cynthia Jurs, 2013, shared with written permission from the artist. Photo shows a closeup of Indigenous Pygmy community members’ hands holding a small vase covered with and sealed with layers of cloth. Children are in the background. “This photo was taken in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo during a pilgrimage to the Indigenous Pygmy community in the Itombwe Forest where an Earth Treasure Vase was planted in 2013.”
Precious Medicine
Just look inside our own human bodies, all the bodies of life on Earth working together. It is so incredibly miraculous when you touch this caring. That understanding is enlightenment. That is it. It’s nothing else. —Cynthia Jurs
Snake Year is a vital time to enliven the Earth because the medicine goes deep. The ancient Bön and Tibetan Buddhist practice of offering Earth Treasure Vases involves ritually planting clay vases at select points in the Earth. A longtime friend who participates in a modern strand of this lineage describes it as “a bit like acupuncture for Gaia as a living being. Each vase is filled with herbs, deep prayers, mantras, precious jewels, or anything that the local indigenous people might deem appropriate for their culture, if they agree to work with the Tibetan vases.” This tradition honors a sacred place, or brings vitality and protection to locations that have been degraded by human behavior. Simply knowing about these practices awakens right relationship, agency, and belonging on Earth.
As embodiments of Earth, we are wise to include ourselves in opportunities for profound nourishment. Drink deeply from the well of rest. Well-chosen herbal remedies and spiritual cures have the power to transform us. Gentle, consistent nourishment works wonders. Comply thoroughly with treatment plans. Sudden recovery and sudden death can also occur. Pay attention to your dreams. Integrate their wisdom with small acts of acknowledgment in the waking world.
meme by Zsuzsanna Oláh, original illustration by Harold Speakman from The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor by Helen Rowland | Image shows an upperclass East Asian woman sitting on a pillow facing a smiling snake. She’s smoking a cigarette, while saying, “I understan [sic] why you bite and I respect you for it.”
Nature Spirits
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart. —The Velvet Underground
Nature sees us completely, and mirrors our behaviors back to us. If we don’t respect life, it has no reason to respect us. Killing snakes can cause a host of non-medical health problems, especially related to the skin. Snakes can house powerful nature spirits called Nagas, who live in small bodies of water and govern the health of the land and people. Treatment usually involves some combination of apology, offerings, herbs, and mantra. Tibetan lamas commonly offer Earth Treasure Vases to Nagas on specific days to keep the peace or restore balance to a region or community. I have personally seen the diagnosis and successful treatment of these conditions.
Viper in a Rocky Garden from Manafi’ al-Hayawan of Ibn Bakhtishu, Persia c. 1300 | Image is of a warm, muted green viper with an open mouth entwined with the landscape. Background includes a tree with red berries or flowers and plants with red flowers, painted in a traditional East Asian style (as a result of Mongol conquest of Persia).
Radical Honesty
We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. ―Hildegard von Bingen
“Don’t trust anyone but yourself” is a very Snake thing to say, and Snake is right. They know the mouthpieces of the surface world mislead us, and that complaining about it is counterproductive. Feel your feelings, but keep your power. Railing against what you don’t like entrenches your entanglement with aversion. Don’t invest in the world you despise. Apply fury strategically.
We can only detect truth once we root out our own lies. Honesty carries a signature we won’t recognize until we embody it. Mostly, we don’t recognize when we are lying. Every time we override our instincts, our physical limitations, our need to rest, we lie. Every time we say yes when we mean no, we lie. Fake enthusiasm, false humility, people-pleasing, spiritual bypassing—lies. Doing “the right thing” for the wrong reason, lie. What does it feel like to tell the truth, through and through? The Earth does not try to be good.
vintage photo of Maria de Naglowska (1883-1936), photographer unknown. | Image shows a Russian woman with bare feet and a gossamer gown holding up a large black adder as they look at each other face-to-face.
Feminine Wisdom
you are the night and no one owns you —@fiscadoro
In Chinese cosmology, Yin is the feminine principle of the cosmos. Yin is Moon, Night, Dark, Still, Cold, Rest, Receptivity, Matter, Sleep, Earth, Woman, Water. All humans have feminine wisdom, just as we all have Yin. As a society, we have long diminished Yin, conflating women with with evil, deception, lesser, other. Rest becomes laziness, and sleep a blackout between bouts of productivity. I have worked with many people who want to support women, but refuse to acknowledge their own Yin. When Yin is diminished, Yang is overabundant. Yang is Hot, Active, Masculine, etc. This imbalance appears as the chaotic, violent world we’re living in.
Reclaiming Yin is key to the full expression of our humanity. All we need to do is relax and receive love. This aligns us with cyclical time. Our bodies constantly express natural cycles. We see it when we bleed and sleep. We feel it when the seasons change. Surrender synchronizes us. When we are in integrity with time, we experience synchronicity.
Some of my wisest friends continuously take on way too much—mostly women. Internalized subservience murders us. We think we can nourish the world by killing ourselves. Don’t let Yang kill you. That’s been done for generations. It’s time for a new story. Can it be complex to withdraw from the violent, insatiable empire of Yang? Yes. But if nuns can relax while they’re on fire, we can relax, too.
I have seen how chronic exhaustion affects my thinking, my choices, and my health, and I’ve seen how it affects my colleagues’. I’m done diminishing myself. I stand with humanity by concluding this pattern for myself and future generations. I commit to putting down what’s not mine to carry, and nourishing myself as a human being on equal footing with all others.
Snake year has already tested my integrity. Am I willing to allow this project to come together in its own time? Can I rest when I don’t feel well? Can I respond to swells of inspiration? Can I do a little bit at a time? Am I willing to collaborate with time as a teacher and partner? Does aggression need to be an ingredient in everything I make? The fact that Snake Milk is coming to you a month “late” shows me that I am finally learning.
The best thing we can do for our Yin is to receive love. I’m sending you some right now. See if you can take it in.
Now see if you can take in your own love: May you open to receive all the love you’ve ever shown the world.
Now see if you can feel how much the world loves you. Your friends, family, ancestors, guardians, guides, animals, land.
Now the whole cosmos.
Breathe it in till tears come out. You are loved, and you are love.
No one else can do it for you, only you can let it in. —Natasha Bedingfield
Image shows an ancient tantric scroll depicting shakti (creative cosmic force) as a pair of black snakes coiled around an invisible lingam (male reproductive organ) on a red background, artist and date unknown.
Creative Intent
American they said + + but Horse I dreamed
, and Horse became
++ ++ ++
+ ++ +++ ++ ++ +++ ++ ++
+ +++ +++ + —Natalie Diaz
Will is an expression of harmonized kidney qi. It’s not a top-down, self-imposed dictatorship masquerading as discipline, reliability, or caretaking. Only when we relax and recover our ecological body can we experience the revelation of intent. Will is a receptive act of collaboration.
Reframe activism as a somatic calling that wells up from within. Don’t succumb to the unconscious, unspoken drain of peer pressure. Imagine trying to make a snake feel guilty for sunning itself on a rock. Withdraw from the consensus delusions of scientism, cynicism, overcommitment, and hysterical doom. Be in nature; find out how you really feel. Honest actions have infinite reach. So does honest non-action. Discover your real appetites. Kill your lies as they assert themselves. Make precise movements for the right reasons.
Turn toward what you love, and organize underground. Think discreet, indirect, and nuanced. Snakes like to be alone knowing there’s no such thing as isolation. Neither can we isolate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions from affecting the relational world. Direct action and confrontation are not effective this year. Snake calls us to inhabit a hidden network of power. Attention-seeking will backfire. Quietly contribute to underground social and humanitarian endeavors. You may save lives.
Copyright Lou Benesch. Image shared with written permission from the artist. Image is a painting of a scary-looking serpent-like creature with red hands and blue claws, and blue spikes along its spine. It has a light blue body with black polka dots and a bright red face with spikes and an open-mouthed grimace.
Face Your Fears
I
release
you,
my
beautiful
and
terrible
fear. I
release
you…
You
can’t
live
in
my
eyes,
my
ears,
my
voice
my
belly,
or
in
my
heart
my
heart
my
heart
my
heart.
But
come
here,
fear. I
am
alive
and
you
are
so
afraid
of
dying. —Joy Harjo
Dream: 6/2006
I’m in a den of striking snakes, which scares me enough to wake up in the dream. Lucid, I fight the urge to walk through a wall or change the scene. Instead, I sit down among the snakes and meditate. Immediately, the dream and I dissolve into pure, deep blackness. I integrate mortal terror as a surge of power that sends me back to my waking body. I wake up feeling more alive than ever.
I love nightmares because they show me where to practice. I wake up giddy with resolve to undo illusions of a self that can be harmed. Snake Year sees that we all get this opportunity. Protection is the natural habitat of our relationships (think microculture), while anxious efforts to protect ourselves are just asking for it. What are we trying to protect? Let go of illusions. Lean into death.
Fear is entering the unknown without trust. It’s another common symptom of exhaustion. We also feel it during initiation. Initiation takes us past our limit of trust to show us how alive we are. There will always be a moment when we wonder if we’re going to survive. Sometimes it feels like terror or bewilderment, sometimes despair and impossibility, sometimes like complete surrender. Always it’s unknown and unknowable. Welcome to the essence of the Yin Wood Snake.
Chronically ill and disabled people, veterans, incarcerated people, and other communities that have been forced into the margins hold the teaching because they have sustained experience with visceral hardship, danger, and death. If we can’t carry wisdom into adversity, we’re not mature practitioners yet. When we surrender to the fundamental life force that eclipses fear, that’s initiation. If the initiation is complete, we’re no longer victims.
It’s natural to feel like a victim. All of us do sometimes. Most of us do not have elders officiating rites of passage that mark our maturity and integrate us back into the community. We don’t ritualize the rhythmic nodes of the year. Life orchestrates our ordeals in isolation, with no framework, meter, guide, or celebration.
Liu Ming taught that our family members who have it the hardest are the “heavy hitters” of the lineage. Whether they know it or not, they’re throwing down so the rest of the family live more freely. I think it helps if they know, or if we silently acknowledge the enormity of their effort. Judgment becomes gratitude when we realize our relatives are wrestling demons so that we don’t have to.
Before I went to Ireland for the first time, I had a lucid dream. A giant black crocodile came for me. I remembered what my teacher said: “If an animal wants to eat you, let it devour you completely.” I faced the tremendous reptile and took a deep breath as its jaws clamped down on my head. I felt its teeth on my torso, my legs, and finally, my feet.
Victory happens in pitch black. We enter our whole minds when we enter fear. We don’t know what we’ll find or whether we’ll live or die. But we know that the part of us that is most alive lives on.
Not axe nor hammer
Tumor, tremor
Can take it away, and it remains
It remains. —Joanna Newsom
Fattu “Krishna Slays Aghasura: Folio from a Bhagavata Purana Series,” c. 1780. | Image is a painting of two giant pink snakes on a hillside with trees and a road. A group of people are perched on the head of one miserable-looking snake, while another group is standing in the open mouth of the second snake.
Animal Auspices
Speaking of devouring, let’s talk about this year’s menu. How well can we digest the buffet that Yin Wood Snake offers?
The interplay between our birth year and the year of the Yin Wood Snake generates broad auspices that can light the way. Our individual birth charts provide a more specific picture of our position and how to align with the times, as do the five elements that characterize our birth years. (More specific does not necessarily mean better.) I consulted my trusted teacher, the Zhou Yi to bring these messages forward. The similarity between results for the 12 animals corroborates the overall auspices for the year. Hold the following lines lightly, and honor your own intuition and experience above all else. Remember that every circumstance is auspicious for cultivating our humanity.
Rat
Free as a Bird
Not free as a canary in a coal mine, either. Actually free. Don’t drag the ghost of hardship forward. Through no effort of your own, you’ve reached the end of bondage and restraint—unless you’re into that. From illness to health, from obstacles to options, you can finally breathe. Let opportunities come and go and life open up by itself. There’s no pressure to move forward right away, nor is there a need to make choices based on fear. Cautious doesn’t mean anxious. Let a fresh perspective guide you. Good for small, progressive movement, travel, marriage, graduations, and funerals. Comply with divined omens. Sudden recovery including auspicious death-as-release is possible.
Ox
Red Light Green Light
You start out restricted in order to grow strong. Consider it a retreat, not a prison sentence. Let initial limitations help you. Conserve your strength knowing you’re in a crucial phase of germination. When the world starts feeling too dark, your friends show up with everything you need. This is the best kind of fortune. Eventually, the light turns green. You’ll be praised, promoted, and invited to lead. The clarity and energy you gained in retreat will carry you forward with much greater authority and purpose.
Tiger
God’s Gift
After an awkward start to the year, you get the hang of Snake. Then it’s smooth sailing. Hard work and strong connections bloom naturally into reward. You have the opportunity to move beyond the need for approval. Just make sure greed doesn’t become a thorn in your paw. How you satisfy your appetites for food, power, and success matters. Be discreet with personal ambitions. Self-interest alone will undermine what you came here to be and do. Clarify what you’re really going for, and see how it connects to the community. Focus on nourishment—the food that enters your mouth and the words that come out of it. Lasting success depends on nurturing your inner resources. Use the energy of your achievements to invest in a balance of generosity toward yourself and others. Think self-care and gift-giving.
Rabbit
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Talk about initiation. Rabbits are not known to feel safe around Snakes. This year makes you diamond-strong if you play it cool. Restraint and patience are your crucible. Don’t draw attention to yourself or overreact. Belligerence, hopelessness, and self-righteous ideals make everything worse. You have an auspicious opportunity to express equanimity. I believe in you! The present moment will be your burrow. Return to love and presence no matter the circumstance. “I don’t know” is a fine and honest place to be. Rest there. When restrictions lift, stick to cautious progress. Fall signals fruition. Routine work pays off. Natural calm and clarity return. The long view makes everything easier. Exercise caution and resilience. You are leveling up big-time if you don’t freeze, fight or flail.
Dragon
Mt. Superior
Slow down, then keep slowing down, then stop. Folding your wings might feel unnatural after last year, but you won’t have to be still for long. Just kidding, you will. Adjust your strategy to include a whole lot of inner stillness. When the outside world harasses or humiliates you, turn the other cheek. Return to your non-dual foundation that swallows victimhood whole. Let resistance turn to peace—that’s the power of a mountain. Feel the balance of reciprocity by receiving and giving in equal measure. Stick to inspired action only, and let things arise of themselves. Vacations, retreats, and routine work go well. Clarify your goals knowing the time to fly will return. Right now, you’ll find happiness close to home.
Snake
Gathering Steam
Stillness comes naturally to Snakes. This year is perfect for consolidating your energy and preparing. Empower your will. Hone your focus. Allow ancestral support to solidify. Subordinate to the auspices, and stick with strong friends. Focus on doing small projects well. Obstacles and delays only indicate calendar qi. It’s no problem, not personal, and actually means you’re in sync. Don’t push through. Good intentions and idealism are not enough to make big things happen right now. It’s a year of allowing. Wait for the worlds to conspire on your behalf. Good for self-reflection, perseverance, education, discipline, cultivation, patience, subordination, alliance, stepping down, inheriting, and traveling in familiar places.
Horse
Only Literally Lame
The bad news: you’re in a stable. The good news: You’re in for a journey! An inner one. Gallop on the inside through rugged, unfamiliar terrain. Horses are strong! You can take a little calendar qi. You don’t have a direct role in the difficulties that may arise, so don’t waste energy wondering what you did. Don’t engage any kind of entanglement at all. Just wait it out. If you feel confused, don’t layer worry on top of it or even push for clarity. Just wait. If debts come due, pay them happily, knowing it’s your turn. Be meticulous, forthright, and thorough when dealing with inherited problems or illnesses. Make small offerings and perform divination along the way. Maintain your everyday spiritual practice. Whatever you do, don’t make your case, complain, or gossip. If you play victim, you will get trounced. Just take it as it comes and seek guidance. Discretion and good manners are vital. Favorable for small accomplishments, temporary appeasement, medical treatments, short journeys, and learning. Bad for risk-taking, marriage, complaint, travel, and extended family visits.
Goat
Fortunate Son
You’re entering a time of spiritual and material success. Education, opportunity, and alliance are at your door. Cultivate an atmosphere where gratitude naturally arises. A tripod vessel is an alchemical container with a stable foundation from which to make offerings of gratitude. It also implies the process of refining raw materials into something noble and enduring. This is the auspicious image offered to you, dear Goat. Honor your ancestors without carrying their grudges forward. Abandon old disputes and grievances. Let the last of all that go at the start of the year. Now turn toward the profound commonality that connects us. Good for paying debts, letting go, divorce, cutting losses, generosity, friendship, learning, gratitude, gift-giving, collaborative planning, and enjoyment.
Monkey
Relax!!!
Telling a Monkey to relax is like nailing jelly to a tree. It’s not gonna work. But Monkey, you sweet little bundle of neurosis, just relax and enjoy the ride. This year brings both unexpected incidents and the freedom of being without expectations. Enter the ebb and flow with a clear, open mind, knowing none of it has a specific or direct relationship to your actions. Let go and trust the unfolding. You’ll have opportunities to lead with courage and make mature choices for the greater good. Integrity and openness are all you need. It’ll be fun!
Rooster
This Little Light of Mine
This year, enjoy the gradual, instinctive progress of a bird making its way home. Advance with care, then rest in strength. Glide, settle, glide. Continue to gracefully accept what comes. Constant, modest people become that way by letting ordinary joys fill their hearts. You are fated to reach your goal, dead or alive, in a journey that reveals and expresses our true humanity. Recognize conclusions, and punctuate them with a pause. Shine on in deep stillness. This year is good for education, industry, courtship, marriage, and distant travel. Bad for lawsuits, innovation, and loans. Stay on the broad, straight path of ordinary fulfillment and let your little light shine. You are a beacon who lights the way for so many people, and you don’t even know it.
Dog
Swole
The winds of heaven fill your sails. Keep your boat in the water! Mind your body so you don’t get carried away. Grounded, judicial actions with attention to timing express the auspice beautifully. Avoid sloppy shows of force. Cautious preparation, conservation, and energy management are where it’s at. Don’t worry too much about an impulsive start. Return to normal as soon as possible and let your instincts kick in. Impulsivity becomes more dangerous later. Play a role in your celestial protection by making mature choices. Don’t overestimate your power or underestimate your opponents. Pay attention to synchronicity. Patience, subordination, and alliance guide you to inevitable success.
Pig
Some Pig
Holding the center demonstrates and invokes great power. Cultivate meditative composure that can’t be unhinged by success, failure, or danger. Be undaunted by defeat. The past and the future distract you from what is real and truly matters. Use strength cautiously, as great power implies the potential for significant collateral damage. Be the means to the end. Quiet, collaborative efforts express power gracefully. Do what others cannot without drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. Good for travel, moving house, meditation, leadership, family matters, and marriage. Bad for excessive emotion, sentimentality, enthusiasm, and complaint.
photo by Tseten Tshering, muralist unknown, Creative Commons. | Image shows folk painting of a red-brown snake with black polka dots coiled around three egg-sized rounded conical objects that are teal, yellow, and navy blue.
Traditional Daoist New Year Invocation
I would like to start over.
I would like to be honest and say that I really don’t know why I do what I do.
If I am owed anything, may that debt be canceled.
If what is owed me is merit – I’m not interested.
If what is owed me is retribution – I’m not interested.
I’d just like to start over in the cycle of time.
I am recalibrating my relationship to the whole universe.
_______________
This essay is an offering. If you feel moved to make an offering in return, my Venmo is @erin-langley-4. Pour some milk on the Earth to nourish all beings. Connect with the loving spirit of your local water source. Download the Merlin bird app. Listen to the Telepathy Tapes. Discover the kinship of microculture. Let the love in.
