Snake

I was told my power animal was a rat when someone saw how good I was at shoplifting, walking out openly with a bagful of stuff, finding cosy places to sleep everywhere I went.  But I was never very comfortable being a rat.  It's not very sexy.  I wanted a better power animal.

And one came to me in a dream.  I dreamed that I woke up, got out of bed,  and went outside to find a fox staring at me in calm alert presence before dashing off into the bush.  A fox!  As sneaky and feral as a rat, but also wild and beautiful, with the luminous eyes of a loving dog and the potential for danger or gentleness.

So at our power animal guided meditation this summer I expected to see a fox.  I walked through the landscape I was guided to imagine as it slowly became more vivid, looking around for a creature I could relate to.  I was holding a staff, walking with it, feeling its power, when I suddenly thought of Moses.  I threw the staff to the ground and it became a snake.  I reached out my hand and the snake returned to my hand as a staff.  I had been carrying my power animal with me the whole time, always having that potential in my hand, to transform into a snake.

Sneaky, quiet, passive and yet potentially dangerous; sleek, sexy and close to the earth.  For some it might be terrifying to have a snake slither up your leg, bite you on your ankle or your thigh or your...  For others maybe it's quite thrilling, especially when at any moment, that snake can pull back and I am not a cold-blooded reptile, but a warm body with a pair of luminous eyes that reveal everything about my loving intention.

It was a snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she ate that apple, and the juice runneth over her lips and down her chin.

The Christians claim that the snake was Satan, the deceiver, but Joseph Campbell claims that in every culture except the Judeo-Christian-Industrial-Economy culture, the snake was always the primary deity of the garden and that Jahweh was a peripheral deity, though clearly trying to make it big, favouring one race over all others and spreading across the world with the power of genocide and agriculture.  Jahweh is still the primary deity of our culture, the atheists worshipping him as ravenously as the fundamentalists.  Jahweh supposedly doesn't exist anymore, but he's the same god of genocide and agriculture, now a secular god called The Economy.

The snake is still the deity of the garden, perhaps, its belly always close to the earth, a deity who is close to the goddess, the mother of all life, who gives the apple to man, Adamah, who is also of the earth, despite his lofty ideas and the strange demonic voices whispering in his head.

I grew up in a Christian Capitalist culture, a member of the chosen people, the pure whites, to whom the planet belonged, as far as the eye could see.  We already had satellite imagery, so we could see the whole planet, and so it all belonged to us, one master race under god, with liberty and justice for sale.

But I ate the apple and after that crude oil milkshakes tasted nauseating and I would argue in the street with evangelical Christians and try to undermine their numb-minded sincerity.  I would argue with evangelical Capitalists in uniforms at train stations, or security guards who kicked me out of my shelter into the rain in the middle of the night, trying to sow seeds of doubt into the idiot sincerity with which they were "just doing their job".  We never know what seeds eventually sprout and grow, but we do know that antagonism provokes defensiveness.

I know I can shed my skin when I need to.  I can leave behind my own numb-minded sincerity and the idiotic culture I've allowed to leak into my psyche.  I can be a rat hiding alone in my little hovel and I can be a snake and eat that rat whole, simply upon deciding to do so.

And here I stand, appearing reasonable and civilised, but knowing that this staff in my hand can at any time be thrown down and I can become a snake.  I can shed my skin, I can change my name, the way I dress, the way I talk, I can become a new person, reborn into a new life.

I can leave behind a life of loneliness, antagonism, moral superiority and freedom, I can refine my words on the ears of the sophisticated until they are sharp and effective.  I can subvert the straight and tense by slithering up their muscular leg and biting them on their ankle, or their thigh, or their...

I can integrate, I can shed my skin, I can give up my values and maintain my integrity.

I can drink chlorine and my thirst will be quenched.

But I yearn for more, I settle for no compromise.  Nothing will satisfy me but total power or total annihilation.

I am who I say I am.  Nothing will come between me and the world but my inevitable death and the reliability of that death reassures me that I cannot take this too far.

I want to drink your semen every morning like a shot of espresso from your ecstatic ejaculation.  I want a new lover every new day.  I want to reveal myself so they all know who I am.

Yes, I shop at the stupormarket now and yes, I keep my myki topped up, but I am not another hetero slave, I'm a fucking faggot shaman, you fools.

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