Yesterday, I saw three snakes!

An exploration of paradox

Yesterday I saw three snakes.

Images, not real animals. (Though mid-summer, I did see both a live snake and a legless lizard within 24 hours—a story for another time)

The first appeared as backdrop to Taylor Swift’s Reputation concert video. A few hours later, at dinner, we were talking about Nine Inch Nails's old hit ‘Hurt,’ but my husband hadn’t heard the song before so I found a video clip from a concert and in the stage props—a video of a snake. An hour later, my daughter asked me to read a chapter from her current favorite series, Amari and the Night Brothers, and the chapter she chose, yep, you guessed it, had a snake above the chapter number.

My non-believing superstitious mind came to life. Was this a bad omen that I’ve just seen three snakes within hours of each other? I hesitated to google, because even though I don’t believe in omens, I didn’t want any bad luck narratives creeping into my active imagination before I slept.

My dreams, luckily, were (at least as far as I am aware) snakeless. By morning, I was ready to face the google machine.

I asked: “What does the symbol of snake represent?”

Maybe you already know about some of the scarier stories about snakes, or heard someone being called a snake. But what I hadn’t heard, and what popped up as the first entry in my search, is that because snakes shed their skins, they are seen as symbols of rebirth, of transformation, of healing.

I learned that snakes also symbolize duality: positive and negative, helpful and unhelpful. On one side they represent creativity, and healing on the other they stand for harm and destruction.

I felt a strong urge to grab hold of the creativity story and give it a value lable. Snakes are good!

But the reality is, snakes are just snakes. They contain beauty and potential for danger.

My story around the snake has been influenced by childhood bible stories and name name-calling and folk stories heavy on the venom.

What would it take to reimagine the snake symbol as one of healing? Sure it’s in medical insignia, two snakes winding round something like a stick. But, to see the shedding of skin, to tell the story of renewal? Could that come to be my first instinct?

And further still, what would it take to accept the snake’s complexity and perhaps paradoxical symbolism?

I wonder … what other narratives am I responding to that I could notice, become more curious about, challenge to view from many directions and hold them all together as one.

What about how I see myself?

What narratives do I believe that I don’t actually have a full perspective on?

A tutor once wrote that part of human connection is that we need each other to show us to ourselves.

We don’t see all of our parts and sometimes the parts we see might not be clear. We might see in ourselves an aspect we find upsetting and regard it alone, under a microscope, separated from its other aspects, experiences, circumstances.

Something to ponder as I, here in the Northern Hemisphere, move deeper into another symbol for change, deep autumn.

Writing exercise:

This makes for a somewhat surprising idea for a writing exercise, maybe because of the strong danger associations I have in my mind, even now, about snakes. But I tried it, and it was rather fun. So, if it feels OK to you, imagine yourself as a snake that, within itself contains both the potential for destructive forces and also the natural power for great transformation.

What would that mean?

What would it feel like to accept the many aspects of yourself that you might not be so keen to claim?

Set your timer for 7 minutes and explore the paradoxical qualities of destruction and renewal in yourself as a whole being that exists as-is.