The Red Serpent
When my head hurts, I play the drum. Its rhythm disperses the pain and brings me back. It makes me more whole.
When my head hurts, I play the drum. Its rhythm disperses the pain and brings me back. It makes me whole. It happens that my head often hurts; since I was little, I have had migraine attacks that force me to retreat into the dark. The drum, with its vibration, helps.
Some time ago, I dreamt that a powerful, blood-colored, enormous, and voluptuous Red-Serpent came out of my drum. Its iridescent scales in reds, browns, and ochres were making their way through the darkness. Its gigantic body snaked voraciously across the ground. This portal-drum is like Aladdin’s lamp where the genie lives, but here lives the Red-Serpent. When I woke up, I drew it on the drum itself, marking it and recognizing its place.
Today my head aches, but I haven’t played the drum yet.
I have felt entangled with the Red-Serpent. I feel her embrace that both imprison and sets me free. I feel it writhing under my feet, alive, contracting and expanding, revolving the earth's bowels. I perceive its archaic and primal movement and recognize the fear of this living ground in motion, which may bite or swallow me at any moment. The great Red-Serpent whispers and draws me in, invading me. In all her wild harshness, she guards Life, hissing and dreaming about our existence. Its wisdom is deep and ancient, and its teachings are hard but real. It devours us in one swallow, looking at us penetratingly. She commits herself to protecting Life from the frontiers of time and the most hidden places. Her colossal sacred body senses everything, translating the most hidden intentions into textures and vibrations. The great Red-Serpent awakens in us the raw sagacity of instinct. Its presence can be felt as cruel in its perpetual and relentless movement.
Millennia ago, there was an attempt to cut the throat of the great Red-Serpent, to forget its essential wisdom. The story goes that Apollo cut off its head, and it was, like Lilith, expelled from the garden of paradise. But, from the hidden wilderness, she is reborn at every moment and demands to be heard again. Her original pulse requires presence and attention.
It reminds us of the abyssal wisdom of the wild ground, the untamed land, the primitive soil, the uninterrupted alchemy of transformation between Life and Death, and the threads that weave and unite us.
The sacred blood Red-Serpent is the beginning and the end of the mystery of Life. Its timeless power is in us with every heartbeat, in the blood that courses through our veins.
Ai ❤️