Snake Medicine

Hopi Snake Dance

Snake medicine represents cosmic consciousness, lightning, creation, fertility, sexuality, reproduction, transmutation, and the all-consuming cycles of death-and-rebirth, exemplified by the shedding of Snake's skin. As Snake sheds its skin so we can shed beliefs and habits which we have outgrown, moving into higher levels of consciousness and wholeness. On the deepest level Snake represents infinity or wholeness, which is depicted by the Ouroboros -- an ancient symbol depicting a snake swallowing its own tail. The Ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal.

For time immemorial people have regarded Snake as the guardian of sacred places, the keeper of concealed knowledge, and the path of communication between the worlds. The ancient Maya invoked serpent deities who dwelled beneath their stepped pyramids. In the rapture of bloodletting rituals, the shaman priests opened a path of communication between the human world and the Otherworld. The Vision Serpent was seen rising in the clouds of copal incense and smoke above the vision chamber of the pyramid. In the vision chamber atop each pyramid, the entranced shaman king and priests communed with the ancestors and with the gods of the Otherworld.

Snake symbolizes rain, growth, and fertility. Among the Hopi tribes, the Snake Dance is the grand finale of ceremonies to pray for rain, held in Arizona every two years. Hopis believe their ancestors originated in an underworld, and that their gods and the spirits of ancestors live there. They call snakes their brothers, and trust that the snakes will carry their prayers to the Rainmakers beneath the earth. Thus the Hopi dancers carry snakes in their mouths to impart prayers to them.

Snake is often associated with spiritual awakening and the path to enlightenment. The Feathered Serpent was a prominent deity of spiritual enlightenment found in many Mesoamerican religions. In the Eastern traditions, a storehouse of fiery energy known as Kundalini, or the Serpent Fire, lies coiled at the base of the spine. When awakened, the Serpent Fire rises up the spine, activating spiritual energy centers and opening new levels of awareness. Snake medicine is the energy of cosmic consciousness, wholeness, and creativity. Invoke Snake to awaken your untapped power, creativity, and vision.

They Were Here: An Epic Shamanic Album

New Music from the two Shamanic Practitioners Debuts High on Radio Charts, is called "Phenomenal, Primal" in early reviews, and slated for soundtrack placement.

"They Were Here," by shamanic practitioners Byron Metcalf and Jennifer Grais, is an epic full length shamanic album, invoking the untamed power of America's wild horses. Driven by a deep sense of respect for 'Horse' as healer and spirit guide, tempered by sociological and political concerns about the ongoing extinction of mustangs from the American West, the seven-track, hour-long recording evokes the magic and majesty of our wild horses. "Run," the transcendent 14-minute journey at the heart of the album, begins with the real-life sounds of galloping horses that Byron ultimately fuses with his explosive drumming and Jennifer's joyful, heart-rending vocalizations.

Horse as 'Spirit Animal' represents and mirrors the innate life-force, personal power, wildness, and the instinctual impulse for freedom within all of us. Jennifer's invocation-like vocals, combined with Byron's deeply meditative drumming, take the listener on a unique shamanic adventure -- a freedom ride of soaring potential and along the way they are held gently and safely in the arms of Mother Earth. "They Were Here" weaves a deeply-grounded yet blissfully ethereal world infused with beautiful and haunting vocals, polyrhythmic drumming, droning didgeridoo, orchestral soundscapes, and field recordings of galloping horses. This evocative shamanic performance is an astounding listening experience of spiritual depth and sonic ecstasy. It debuted this week at #10 on the NACC Radio Charts and is available on Amazon and iTunes. Listen to the entire album on Bandcamp.

FREE Guide to Shamanism

The Sacred Hoop Magazine "Guide to Shamanism" is 128 pages of wonderful, image-rich shamanic information. This special (PDF download) issue of Sacred Hoop is a give away, please feel free to share it widely, wherever you think it would be well received. You may share this free issue in any non-commercial way but reference to www.SacredHoop.org must be made if any of it is reprinted anywhere. Sacred Hoop is an independent magazine about Shamanism and Animistic Spirituality. It is based in West Wales, and has been published four times a year since 1993. Sacred Hoop seeks to network those wanting to learn the spiritual teachings of indigenous peoples as a living path of knowledge. In Hoop you will find articles and features by acclaimed contributors about Shamanic Traditions, Storytelling, Myth, Traveler's Tales, Ritual Arts, Sacred Living, Healing, Ceremonies and much more! To get a low-cost subscription please visit: Sacred Hoop.

In Memoriam: Michael J. Harner, 1929 – 2018

It was announced that Michael J. Harner, author of The Way of the Shaman, died Feb. 3 at the age of 88. Dr. Harner was born in Washington D.C. in 1929. He received his doctorate in anthropology in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley, after which he taught "at various institutions, including UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Yale University, and the graduate faculty of the New School in New York." Founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Harner was widely acknowledged as the world's foremost authority on shamanism and has had an enormous influence on both the academic and lay worlds. Michael Harner's legacy lives on through his thousands of students and practitioners of shamanism. His was an authentic life well lived and he will be deeply missed.

Northwest Coast Indians Box Drums

Shaman's Cedar Box Drum

Wooden box drums are a customary element to the music of the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Box drums accompany singing during funerals and at the memorial potlatch ceremonies that come later. The box drum is either played upright or tilted back and is used to begin and to mark certain points within a song. Like many of the musical instruments used on the Northwest Coast, box drums can be associated with shamanic practice. Some indigenous people of the Northwest Coast utilize the drum to indicate the presence of spirits. For example, a tremolo created by rapidly striking the drum can be perceived as an audible manifestation of a spirit being's presence.

The carved cedar drum in the photo is a very old box drum belonging to the Mount Fairweather (Snail) house of the T'akdeintaan clan in Hoonah, Alaska. It commemorates the time that a T'akdeintaan shaman proved his spiritual power as a shaman. A physical representation of the shaman's spirit guide is carved into the drum as an effigy used to invoke the spirit's power. The top figure carved on the front of the drum is a bear. It's most likely the same drum depicted in geographer Aurel Krause's 1882 book, called "The Tlingit Indians" in English, and could have been carved decades before that.

Frog Medicine

Frog symbolizes rain, cleansing, purification, healing, rebirth, transformation, and magic. Their magic is reflected in their metamorphosis from aqueous tadpoles to air-breathing creatures which can live on land. It is this kinship to the element of water that gives Frog medicine great cleansing and healing properties. In knowing the element of water, Frog can use its drum-like ribbit to invoke the Thunder Beings—thunder, lightning, wind, and rain—to cleanse and replenish the earth with water. Frog teaches us how to recognize when it is time to purify our bodies and our environments so that healing can occur on all levels. It teaches us to know when it is time to cleanse, refresh and replenish the soul. Frog sings the songs that call the rain to Mother Earth. Listen to the "Frog Rain Chant."

The Neuroscience of Drumming

According to new neuroscience research, rhythm is rooted in innate functions of the brain, mind, and consciousness. As human beings, we are innately rhythmic. Our relationship with rhythm begins in the womb. At twenty two days, a single (human embryo) cell jolts to life. This first beat awakens nearby cells and incredibly they all begin to beat in perfect unison. These beating cells divide and become our heart. This desire to beat in unison seemingly fuels our entire lives. Studies show that, regardless of musical training, we are innately able to perceive and recall elements of beat and rhythm.

It makes sense then that beat and rhythm are an important aspect in music therapy. Our brains are hard-wired to be able to entrain to a beat. Entrainment occurs when two or more frequencies come into step or in phase with each other. If you are walking down a street and you hear a song, you instinctively begin to step in sync to the beat of the song. This is actually an important area of current music therapy research. Our brain enables our motor system to naturally entrain to a rhythmic beat, allowing music therapists to target rehabilitating movements. Rhythm is a powerful gateway to well-being.

Neurologic Drum Therapy

Neuroscience research has demonstrated the therapeutic effects of rhythmic drumming. The reason rhythm is such a powerful tool is that it permeates the entire brain. Vision for example is in one part of the brain, speech another, but drumming accesses the whole brain. The sound of drumming generates dynamic neuronal connections in all parts of the brain even where there is significant damage or impairment such as in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). According to Michael Thaut, director of Colorado State University's Center for Biomedical Research in Music, "Rhythmic cues can help retrain the brain after a stroke or other neurological impairment, as with Parkinson's patients ...." The more connections that can be made within the brain, the more integrated our experiences become.

Studies indicate that drumming produces deeper self-awareness by inducing synchronous brain activity. The physical transmission of rhythmic energy to the brain synchronizes the two cerebral hemispheres. When the logical left hemisphere and the intuitive right hemisphere begin to pulsate in harmony, the inner guidance of intuitive knowing can then flow unimpeded into conscious awareness. The ability to access unconscious information through symbols and imagery facilitates psychological integration and a reintegration of self.

In his book, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing, Michael Winkelman reports that drumming also synchronizes the frontal and lower areas of the brain, integrating nonverbal information from lower brain structures into the frontal cortex, producing "feelings of insight, understanding, integration, certainty, conviction, and truth, which surpass ordinary understandings and tend to persist long after the experience, often providing foundational insights for religious and cultural traditions."

It requires abstract thinking and the interconnection between symbols, concepts, and emotions to process unconscious information. The human adaptation to translate an inner experience into meaningful narrative is uniquely exploited by drumming. Rhythmic drumming targets memory, perception, and the complex emotions associated with symbols and concepts: the principal functions humans rely on to formulate belief. Because of this exploit, the result of the synchronous brain activity in humans is the spontaneous generation of meaningful information which is imprinted into memory. Drumming is an effective method for integrating subjective experience into both physical space and the cultural group.