Snakes, Spiders and Signs - What can we learn from Nature?
Posted: Sunday, October 03, 2010
by Dr. Carla Goddard
In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul.
Albert Camus
Spending time in nature, for me my gardens, is always a regenerating and powerful experience. I was reminded recently that your internal world is reflected by your outside world. I have been, gratefully so, very busy recently and have not had time to spend in my gardens. They were reflecting my internal world. Overgrown in places, blooming in others, and in need of thining out. The bushes needing some reshaping and the flowers blooming needing to have some blooms gone by pinched off.
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The colors go on and on with the bushes in white, purple, and pink |
I am fortunate in that many of the gardens are self caring for the most part. I chose to grow flowers and plants natural to Florida that do not require watering and rarely need to be weeded. My biggest gardening issue is the pesky locust that love to make their cocoons in and eat my crocus plants. Some of the crocus plants grow to over six feet high and it makes it difficult to hand remove the cocoons.
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The blooms can reach over six feet high |
Today the guides of nature were not missed.
The snake skins collected always reminding me of the art of transforming. The need to shed the old that no longer serves us. The snake being one of medicine animals and totem, I do not miss their signs. Although some of the snakes that have crossed my path since moving to Florida tend to me ones I do not wish to "play" with, I appreciate their wisdom and symbolic meanings. From the orange colors to the skins.
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My Buddy |
The baby hummingbird nest reminding me of the need to nurture. There are times when I can be blunt and seem insensitive to those who come to me for advice. While sometimes that blunt honesty is exactly what someone needs to hear, there is a need to nurture the soul of others in a balanced and harmonious way.
The spiders. I am not a big fan of spiders. I have never worked with the wisdom and medicine of spiders. Yet, in the past few days spiders have been everywhere in my path. From the fake black plastic decorations to the massive webs I keep finding in my yard.
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A visitor this morning |
Pausing to reflect upon the spider and what its meaning to me may be I came up with some thoughts I wanted to share. A spider weaves a web to attract its food. It makes 'conscious' decisions about where to weave the web. As you look at webs, it is amazing the intricate patterns created. It is a work of art that is created from nothing.
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He just wanted to come in and say hi |
Is that not what we as humans do. We create life. We create the webs that attract what comes into our lives. So a web itself is a reflection of the choices we are making in our daily lives as we weave our webs.
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The webs are really incredible works of art |
Watching the spider weave its web I was amazed to think that this tiny spider was creating a home, a food source, and a place to create life again with their eggs. My decisions, my choices, and my actions in life are creating my own web. Is the web enslaving me to its creation? Is the web manipulating myself to be entrapped rather than being the creator? Is the web attracting the things I wished it to?
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Perception determines what we see |
Although some may see the spider as death or crafty in symbology. It has been shared with me in my teachings that the spider is a symbol of protection. Protection for an upcoming storm. To watch as things may not be exactly as they appear to be. The illusion of what may be, rather than focusing on the reality of what is.
As I reflect upon all of these thoughts and look within to the nature of my being, my own 'web' just as my garden, needed to be thinned out. Just as a web is grounded and anchored before it is stretched between each of its points, I must to be grounded and anchored in my own foundation. The eggs layed (my creation of life) must be nutured and cared for lest they fall through the spaces. The beauty of the web creation can not be seen from the center, one must step back and observe in order to see the big picture.
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My Meditation bench |
This day is only partially over, the sun still shines, the wind still blows gently, and my ice tea quenches my thirst as I sit beneath the cypress trees and gaze across the gardens, the colors, the blooms and the buds. Birds sing, dogs bark, the squirel is eating the almods I left, and butterflies flutter against the green foliage. Ideallyic days sometimes can provide answers to the most profound questions - what is the meaning of life. To live life on purpose is my answer.
Nature usually provides great insight into our selves and life if we only take the time to listen. It looks like your meditation area gives you that opportunity. Loved the photos. You are blessed to live in such great surroundings.~ GraceGrace
I am blessed. Although I will share that my oldest tells me I live in the amazon jungle and really does not care for it all. I grew up in a very small town in Maine and spent a great deal on an old school family farm. It was my aunt's but the extended family went on weekends and summer's to work on her farm or my grandparents chicken farm. So I love being out in the middle of the amazon. Grins. mwah
You have a beautiful garden and I agree that nature can provide a lot of answers to our inner questions but you can keep the spiders and snakes. UGH!Dixie
Thank you. These last few weeks I have not had enough time to spend in my gardens as I would like but when I do go out to work in them it always touches my soul. The snakes and spiders are not what bother me. It is the baby gator, the turtles that bite and the red ants that get me a bit "ugh" feeling.mwahBaby gator? How do you live around that???LOL now you sound like my oldest daughter Dixie. They don't bother you if you don't bother them. Actually since one of my dogs is a little Jack Russell to be honest I put up a retaining fence around the yard so they can't get in at the dogs.mwah
You have a lovely garden.The tall flowering Canna you show must, as roots, be dug up, in New York, and the bulb corms saved here in the chilly North for replanting; Florida is tropical by comparison.
Spiders and snakes are often the self- chosen symbols that demons choose to represent themselves as, when they invade and infest our dreamstates, so I have a different orientation about such creatures and about such symbols.
The webs spiders design are oddly and uniquely invisible to the insects who cannot see them and who blunder into them.
Such insect prey are devoured by having their juices sucked dry by these spiders who rather than eat them, discard them as dry shells, afterwards.
So, too, do unclean unseen denizens of the Darkness, predators of our vital spiritual 'juices' perceive and use us, we whose souls are often caught in their invisible crosshairs.
Snakes, too,like spiders, like demons, lay in wait, disguised, unseen and are specialized in hypnotizing their prey before swallowing them whole.
I thank God for discerning gardeners, such as you, who can alert us and defend us and inform us.
PaulPaul
Nature is only sharing a message. Symbolics is a perception of those who are seeing and hearing the messages. I love snakes. I have a two and half foot spiraled snake tattoo on my left ankle and leg as it is my totem. In Native culture the snake is a symbol of regeneration. A symbol of rebirth. It is a symbol of healing and sexual energy. Even the medical symbol for doctors has two snakes upon it.
Demons are not snakes nor spiders. The way an entity reveals itself to a human being is in the form of what the perceive to be evil. But you know my thoughts as I have shared them with you before.
For me these are wonderful signs and gifts that have blessed my path.mwahI love snakes also.
However, Santa Maria is a satanic cult that worships a singular specific demon by the blood cult sacrifice of animals,babies in worship to it ; demonologists most familiar with this cult, state that the serpent/snake is a specific, singular and classic image that surfaces into the minds of unfortunate people infested, attacked by this cult's worshipped unclean entity, and that the serpent, in dreamstate, as a signature image, reveals and identifies the cult's manifested entity.
In this particular case, it is not the mind of the beholder that lends what form, an evil perception takes; I respectfully beg to differ with you on this minor point.
I shall not deny you your animal token, its blessing or tattoo; I just wanted to clarify what I have been told by demonologists about this cult and the image that surfaces, associated with the spirit invoked .PaulCurious Paul to know if you have ever worked with or spoken with a person who practices Santa Maria as their religion.I had been in correspondence with a Bronx police sergeant detective, Ralph Sarchie, who wrote the book,"Beware the Night" , soon to be a television series, who doubles as an exorcist; he investigated some cases here in New York involving this cult and wrote me that the diary of a cult leader who committed suicide wrote as a last entry in a diary,"I can no longer control the entity".
This detective, as well as other demonologists I have been in contact with, have indeed documented the snake as a repeated surfaced dream image as a signature symptom of the demon specifically associated with this cult.
PaulNot taking one side of the debate or the other - I will tell you that many from the islands that I have spoken with and worked with would disagree with their spiritual path being called a demonic cult.
There are many who look at what I do as being demonic in nature. Just a perception but perhaps it is the individuals that make the sensational news and not all persons within the path that are demonic not some symbol or path.
One definition of a cult is a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies; Sociology defines it as a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols. Another : any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.
Everything that i do is unorthodox based upon insight. I lead workshops, lectures, and classes to empower others. I use rites and ceremony in a sacred nature.
Everything that Jesus did in creating miracles was unorthodox. He was considered a radical leader whom people venerated. Those who go to Mass are participating in a sacred rite with symbology and have set ritualistic prayers for certain times with a physical human being being the sacred leader (the Pope).
These fit the description by man of a cult.
It is just about perceptions and thinks that perpetuating opinions based upon other peoples opinions based upon their perception of study and experience is dangerous. Perhaps it is better to base perceptions upon your own personal experience. Just a thought.The operative word was,"demonic", not the word, " cult"; for instance one who builds a geodome hut and curses it so that nonfollowers who enter it get ill or develop lesions is hardly performing a "sacred', operational function.
Just a thought.
PaulIs perspective Paul, that is all I was trying to explore with you. My original point was simply that not all those who walk the path of Santa Maria are part of a "demonic cult". As human beings we obtain perspectives based upon our own experiences, what we read, and what is shared with us. When we are unable to see from another's perspective, have their experience, or hear the other side of the story, we come to conclusions that perhaps would shift if we had the rest of the story. Such as the rest of the story regarding geodome huts.I do indeed quite understand the concept of perspective.
I was making an informed point about a uniform signature symptom, the nightmare symbol of a serpent, a snake, which surfaces in people's mind's eye in the dreamstate, within nightmares, when they are attacked by the powerful spirit related to the specific summoned demon associated with the religious cult of Santa Maria.
One's unfair conclusions, not acquiring the other side of the story, notwithstanding, it is still fair to state that evil is, as evil does.
One who invokes magick to cause infirmities/ disease in others who trespass into a geodome that one has built, can hardly be said to be a good person with good intentions who does good things.
That's all I was trying to explore with you.
I believe you to be a person beyond and above such sinister intent and purpose.
I know there is more to a story than one side or one perspective.
But to cause or wish harm on others for any reason, is something unconscionable and beyond the acceptable pale of defined goodness, by any measure.
Much affection,
PaulFirst off, occult or cult comes from the latin word "occultus" meaning clandestine, hidden or secret.(knowledge of the hidden?) One must remember the atmosphere of Roman rule. Sinister?
"I was making an informed point..." "I know there is more to a story than one side or one perspective." Do tell. Perhaps I should make a more informed point by stating many indigenous peoples believe the serpent to be a sign of fertility and the spider a sign of prosperity and reward and nothing sinister at all.
"uniform signature symptom" ok, you failed geomancy 101. Busted, and here's proof.
"one who builds a geodome hut and curses it so that nonfollowers who enter it get ill or develop lesions is hardly performing a "sacred', operational function." Actually, dear novice, it's quite sacred in the act of preventing malicious idiots from misusing the power embedded in such a structure. Said programming is protective to potential prey.
Thank you Paul, for reminding me why I don't want to teach beginners anymore.
Shaman Hawk
I like the way you compare the spider's web to the way we live our lives. I enjoyed your beautiful photos.Jennifer
Thank you - my garden is my solace and miss spending time in it when life gets moving too fast.mwah
Fantastic article, very thought provoking. You are a very wise and observant woman, I really enjoyed this article.
Not many people have so much respect for nature, but I always appreciate it when I find someone who does, as you do.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom,
-Sydney
