🌹🎶 Shedding Skins

A slither through the layers of Imbolc/ Lunar New Year of the Snake.

Image: Whole Earth Education

A slither of a crescent smile iced the February skies this week in sparkling sisterly alignment with the beady eye of Venus, overseeing celebrations of Lunar New Year of the Snake and Imbolc. This weekend the park was full of folks welcoming the promise of spring, the end of January and payday, their enlivened chatter cutting through the crisp sunsliced air.

Over this potent week, I’ve been reflecting on how human connections cycle through harmony, rupture, and repair and how change and crisis can prompt the shedding of skins. This has been accompanied by a practical instinct to mend or release things around the house and the metaphysical desire to unpeel some mythological layers.

Expert slitherers and swimmers, the wave-like undulations of snakes enable them to mobilise smoothly. Before shedding, they take a dip to loosen the old skin before breaching a hole they can slither out of, leaving an inside-out snake sock behind. So no wonder that for centuries snakes have been revered as symbols of rebirth and fertility, from the aboriginal Creator Rainbow Serpent and Mayan feathered-serpent Quetzalcoatl to the eternally tail-biting Egyptian Ouroborous and Norse Jörmungandr. In the Sanskrit Upanishads, Kundalini, from kundala, the coil of a rope, is the feminine Shakti energy sleeping at the base of the spine until awakened by yogic practice. The deep passions of the snake are also described as lying coiled beneath a cool exterior in Chinese Astrology.

Images - (L) the highest and largest statue of Dewi Danu in Indonesia, Lake Batur, Songan Village, Kintamani District, Bangli - Bali Official Facebook. (R) Brigid - Laura Tempest Zakiroff

Snaking through the intricately interwoven stories of our global family tree, we find the Vedic, European and Celtic Goddess, Danu/ Don, whose name means river, flow, drop or liquid. Believed to have mothered Vedic Danavas and Celtic Tuatha Dé Danaan, folk of Danu, she sings in the waters of the European Dunăre, Duna, Dunav, Donau, Danube River and the Nepalese Danu River. In the Rig Vega, Danu’s serpentine son Vritra blocks the flow of the rivers until defeated by the warrior God Indra. Dewi Danu, Goddess of water is worshipped at temples on the Balinese lakes Beratan and Batur.

Moch maduinn Bhride
Thig an nimhir as an toll.
Cha bhean mise ris an nimhir,
Cha bhean an nimhir rium.

On Bride's morn,
The serpent will come out of the hole.
I will not harm the serpent,
Nor will the serpent harm me

One of many versions of a Hymn to Brigid found in Carmina Gaelica, a compendium of Scots folklore collected from 1860-1909 by Alexander Carmichael

Wending her way from watery ancestor Danu, we find Brigid/ Bride multi-tasking impressively as the Celtic Goddess of fire, poetry, healing, childbirth, smiths and namesake of three rivers. The warrior Goddess, served by Brigand soldiers, was the first to caoine/ keen/ lament for her son, lost in battle. As a Serpent Queen, she emerges with her snakes on Lá Fhéile Bríde on 1st February, to warm the earth for spring. Imbolc rituals include creating Bride corn dollies and rush crosses, visiting watery places and spring cleaning.

As Christianity assimilated Pagan practices, Brigid was rebranded as a monastery founding saint and foster mother of Christ in 453 CE and St Patrick was proclaimed a hero for banishing snakes from Ireland. Nonetheless, there is a hill on Venus named after Brigid and she shines bright this February night.

Image: Sphinx Sunset at Crystal Palace Park, South East London

On Brigid’s Day, I slithered out of my winter lurgy cave to watch clouds bursting with the Sphinx in Crystal Palace Park. Her regal Uraeus headdress is modelled on the flared Cobra hood of Goddess Wadjet, Guardian of Lower Egypt. After unification, Wadjet’s vulture sister, Nekhbet, Guardian of Upper Egypt, joined her on the Uraeus, their sister power duo mirrored by snake-wearing Isis and Nepthys. I like to think a cool crescent smile flickers at the edges of the Sphinx’s lips, as I sit remembering the often overlooked female Pharaohs - Nitokris, Sebeknefru, Tauosre, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra - who ruled beneath their snaky sister’s protective hood. Sometimes there are many layers to shed before truth shines through.