The Snake

 I was five, maybe six years old, the first time I encountered the physical manifestation of a creature which would follow me, literally and spiritually, throughout the rest of my life. 

The name of my companion at the time escapes me, despite many attempts made on my part to recover it, including interviewing my parents at length, but to no avail. He was a young boy, yellow-haired and energetic, and perhaps two or three years older than me at most. When your age resides in the single digits, a two to three year gap is a big difference, but it didn't seem to bother him. My parents had taken us - me and my two (at the time) brothers - to the home of a friend of theirs. My siblings and I had never met them before, but we made friend with their children with a speed which can be achieved only by those who yet have no understanding of social norm. Their youngest - the blonde boy - took me in hand and brought me to his special sanctuary.

Night had fallen since our arrival, and with a good dinner filling our bellies, we pranced out into the darkness of their little back yard and across the carefully groomed yard to the edge of the fence bordering in their yard. Sam - the name I shall dub him in place of continuously calling him "the boy" - brought me to the back corner of the yard where he had apparently put in great effort to wiggle free a couple of boards of the fence, making a gap through which he was just barely able to squeeze. Being a few inches smaller than him in all directions, I followed him easily. Once through, we crept quietly around the fence until we stood in the tall, un-mowed grass. And then he did something that I would, forever after, recall with nothing less than unadulterated joy. He stooped and scooped up a scaled, wriggling creature with a kind of care that would have made Steve Irwin applaud. Turning, he held his hands out to me and said, "It wont bite."

Fueled by blind faith and the wonderment of a child who had dreamt of coddling the creatures of the wild since she'd watched her first Disney movie, I accepted the living gift. 

And it was a gift, in a way that one gifts to another a deep-tissue massage, or a trip to Venice. That was how I saw it. I gently wrapped my child fingers around this green snake, and felt it bunch its little coils within my palm, its satin scales brushing my skin with an exquisite kind of softness I'd never felt before. The lights from the house could not reach us here, on the other side of the fence, but in the dim shadows of the night, I reveled in the sight of this small reptile as it slithered between my fingers and around my wrist, as unafraid of me as I was of it. 

Sam searched around for another, and found one. He lifted it to his chest and held it protectively, as one scoops up their house pet to cuddle affectionately. "They're grass snakes, " he told me. "They don't have venom, and they won't bite if you're nice to them." Right or wrong, it made little difference to me. I was the kind of child to coax a wolf out of the forest just so I could give it pets. Nature, and the creatures that lived, killed, and died within it, had never frightened me. I kept very still, making only small movements as I watched in awe this creature of life, nature incarnate, coil in my palm. I wanted it to last forever. 

But the porch lights flickered on, and Sam's mother or father - or perhaps my own mother or father - called us back to the house. It was time to leave. The boy put his wild pet back where he found it, and I laid my own precious green treasure back in the grass. We walked carefully, lest we step on any other lifeforms, and made our way back through the fence and into the house. 

I have no recollection of what happened after that - of saying goodbye or what kind of child-promises of friendship Sam and I made with one another. I don't know if he remembers me, and if so, if he understands the kind of impact he and the gift he shared with me had on my life. But it was massive.

I'm almost twenty-eight now, and I still fall back on that memory like a totem, to remind me that regardless of what happens in my life, that I once held in my hand a piece of the Mother. That She, in facet, wound around my hand and kissed me with the unknown. That I touched something I'd thought untouchable. That it had touched me back, and left a mark, the depth of which I would not know until much later on.

In recent years, my spiritual practice has brought before me again and again the sign of the snake. Whether in deity work or my tarot spreads, or in physical manifestation, the Snake has always followed me. When I see it, understanding, wisdom, knowledge, death, and rebirth follow. The Snake is my omen of change, of growth, of the shedding of skin in which we must all partake, willing or otherwise. It is a reminder that if we do not shed fully, if we do not allow that which is old to slough off, then we are in threat of disease and infection. To shed fully, a snake must be hydrated, healthy, and have something rough to rub itself against in order to care for itself. Similarly, our shedding process happens naturally, and to grow through that phase we, as people, must care for ourselves, look to our health, and allow the difficult things in life to help us wriggle out of our old skins, for everything that happens *can* be made into a purpose. 

Most recently, I have been learning about familiars. This was something I delved into when I first began my journey into witchcraft, and like many other things, it excited me. I did not know then, as I do now, that all things will come with time - if they come at all - and that to rush into something too soon will often result in a whole lot of nothing - or, in less optimistic situations, a good deal of damage. So when I came up empty in my search for a familiar, I learned my lesson and quickly abandoned the quest. I determined not to seek it out, but instead allow it to find me, should it ever happen. It has been about six years since I've thought seriously about having a familiar of my own, but have begun to feel that inevitable tug of the void, something that happens in phases like the moon. Each tug, when followed, brings with it a new revelation for me. And this one has begun to draw me in the direction of a familiar. IT is what inspired me to write down this particular journal entry, and how I decided to name my book. It is the theme of my entire spiritual walk, as well as my life as a whole, and so it seemed only natural to make all of these things an ode to one of my first spiritual experiences - that little grass snake, handed to me by a nameless boy in the dark of night.