Swan Blessing Story: Awakening the Black Serpent

At the New Moon Eclipse on Friday I received the treasured gift of Emily's Swan Blessing story. It is a story that led her to create the beautiful image and message you see below her story. Emily's Swan Story is one of great darkness and beauty and that is the gift of Swan - that she can take you safely into what feels like the darkest cave of memory to discover that this place, when named and reclaimed, is filled with gold. I believe the Dark Mother holds our treasures, gifts and wise medicine for us in the lifetimes where we feel we have had to bind it or forget it until we feel strong enough to return and reclaim our birthright gifts again.

Bright love to you Emily for your beautiful courage to awaken the Black Serpent of your Wise Medicine and for sharing your story. For those who resonate with Emily's story I hope that in the reading, comes great unbinding and release.


Dear Julia, 

It’s taken me a full cycle to begin to discover the power that was unbound by your swan blessings at the Seven Sisters Festival (I came to both the Friday afternoon and Sunday morning). I am so grateful to you for the gifts you shared and what has been awakened in me.

I was quite frightened and disturbed by my past self and by my animal guide. She was angry and vengeful…her black eyes spitting vicious spite at me. She looked proud and Roman...somewhere dusty and crowded. She had cut out her own tongue to bind her magic and power, to punish and prevent herself from practicing evil. I felt this as barbed wire around my throat and heart.

The first unbinding came from my animal guide…it emerged from the darkness as a huge black serpent, terrifyingly beautiful and powerful, with glowing red eyes and glistening black scales. I shook with fear as it rushed towards me, towards the barbed wire. It wound its strong body around my legs, up around my hips and chest and somehow just melted the barbed wire away.

The second unbinding came from the crone…she handed me a black stone knife and I knew it was the same knife She had used to cut out her tongue. I thrust it into the pool, shattering its surface into light. WE ARE FREE. Her power is my power. My healing light is her healing light. I am free to choose to speak the truth, to never speak evil. It is my choice and my power to wield. 

The black serpent was there to guide me, to travel with me on my journey. It sinuously slid away and I ran after it, rushed through the darkness. We easily merged into one and travelled through the dark, unafraid. We are power, energy, in direct connection with the earth. We wrap the ones we love with our whole body and strength, entwined with love, hearts beating together in the darkness. We shed many skins. We never act in anger, spite or evil. We are protective. We are guardians of light and truth.

This freedom and power has awakened many of my old dreams and childhood memories and activated the way to move forward and create new dreams, new ways of working and healing people's bodies and souls - not just with my hands (as an osteopath) but with colour, collage, art and movement. Using my heart and my voice that have both been silent for too long!

I hope to visit you in the forest soon, to continue unbinding my power and activating my soul's purpose. To find more love and less fear. To let my heart crack open.  I have attached a card I made after the Swan Blessings. I only just found its voice today.  EMILY


Card: Awakening the Black Serpent created by Emily after Swan Blessing

The Black Serpent

I am one who is powerful, strong, terrifying. I have been hidden in you for a long time. I am waking up inside you.
I give you your power. Don’t be afraid. Destructive energy comes hand in hand with creative energy. You need me to create/birth the New.
I want you to stand in your own power, to be strong and unafraid, to speak up for yourself, to speak your truth.
Remember that you can shed your skin like a snake. There are infinite layers and ways of being. No need to feel stuck. Call on me to help shed your skin, to be more your True Self.


Past Lives - only the costumes change...

ca. 1848-54, [daguerreotype portrait of Fulton, an early San Francisco actor] via the Online Archive of California, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library, Zelda Mackay Pictorial Collection
ca. 1848-54, [daguerreotype portrait of Fulton, an early San Francisco actor]

ca. 1856-1910, [tintype portrait of a smiling and sharply dressed young lady] via Harvard College Fine Arts Library, Special Collections
ca. 1856-1910, [tintype portrait of a smiling and sharply dressed young lady]
I am often struck by the similarities between past and present. We are living in mythic times, we are walking in the histories of our ancestors and at the same time being guided by them into the future. You might want to have a look at the fascinating Historical Indulgences website featuring photographs from America in the mid-1800s. When I look at these faces I see such modern expressions and eyes full of stories looking back at me.

The soul lives forever, only the costumes change... 

ca. 1852, [daguerreotype portrait of an Iroquois man, probably Seneca, with applied hand-gilt detail] via Heritage Auctions
ca. 1852, [daguerreotype portrait of an Iroquois man, probably Seneca, with applied hand-gilt detail]
ca. 1870-80’s, [tintype portrait of two women admiring cabinet cards and carte de visites] via Ebay
ca. 1870-80’s, [tintype portrait of two women admiring cabinet cards
ca. 1860’s, [ambrotype portrait of a Confederate soldier wearing a plaid shirt and a holstered pistol. He carries a large bedroll, a percussion rifle and a kepi with the letters “4 SLG” for the 4th Sumter Light Guards] via Heritage Auctions
ca. 1860’s, ambrotype portrait of a Confederate soldier 
ca. 1860-80’s, [tintype portrait of a woman in unusual costume, possibly for a Wild West show, with a bow and arrow] via Ebay
ca. 1860-80’s, [tintype portrait of a woman in unusual costume, possibly for a Wild West show]
ca. 1860, [tintype portrait of a mother and her child] via Christie’s Auction
ca. 1860, [tintype portrait of a mother and her child]
ca. 1859, [daguerreotype portrait of a bespectacled gentleman, handwritten on verso: “Present from dear George”] via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photography Collection
ca. 1859, [daguerreotype portrait of a bespectacled gentleman,

being important, being nothing

Frost - Sarah Joncas

We’re here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all.
Jeanette Winterson, Whiskey River

The Hag at the Well - Origin of the Dreamer

Both of these beautiful films can be found on the website of husband and wife shamanic artists, Will and Niamh of Tobar Trua (Well of Compassion) based in the Northwest of Ireland. Together they work with the spirit of the land and craft shamanic drums and rattles. This area is very dear to my heart and is a place I return to often in my dreaming. Home to sacred waterfalls, holy wells and turloughs: disappearing and reappearing lakes - it is also the ancestral home and origin of Swan Blessing. The waterfall and pool that Will is singing beside in the video below is so very much like the one I see in Swan Dreaming that I felt a wonderful jolt of recognition to see it in this beautiful water song. A song that is beyond words and time similar and reminding me of a post I wrote recently: Your Spirt Has Songs Beyond Time. After writing this post I was contacted by many singers who felt deeply connected to this message.

Recently I was asked to write for School of Shamanic Midwifery's Women's Mysteries Teachers ejournal about my personal journey to teach Women's Mysteries in the Swan Blessing. I wrote a piece called  Hiraeth - the Heart's Call to the Dreamer. Hiraeth is something felt deeply in Australia as many of us came to this wise place of ancient dreaming from many other countries in the scattering of diaspora. I feel it is so important to heal the trackways, ancestral pathways with song, storytelling and remembering as these are often the same paths we need to follow to find and reclaim the Dreamer.

Next year we have been invited by our dear friends Karen Ward and John Cantwell of Sli An Chroi (Pathway of the Heart) to bring Swan Blessing to Ireland. It will be such a homecoming to visit this waterfall and sing my gratitude back to my ancestors. To feel the water flow deeply along this ancient liquid pathway from the origin of the Dreamer back to my heart.

Here is Will's description of the beautiful Celtic Shamanic Icaro singing and drumming you hear, derived from journeying with plant spirit and medicine. Thank you Will and Niamh for your hearts, your craft and your songs.

"This type of singing is derived from working with the plants. It is similar to the system of healing known as Curandismo in Peru where the healers "diet" with a particular plant to learn its medicine and how to carry its energy in the form of Icaros. 

I've learned through working with the plants certain vibrations and melodies which flow through me as energy and information which has the capability to clear, inform and heal. These icaros or healing songs call on the intelligence of the plant spirit world.  

This Icaro is a type know as "puro sonido" or "pure sound", where words of a language are not used but primal sounds relating to plant sentience comes through, the sounds, though not a language per se, do carry intent and meaning. By the fact that it is not a constructed language, it can bypass our rational mindset and speak to us on a deepr transrational layer where it can be felt and understood in an intuitive way. 

This song is never the same, as it changes to suit the moment and the environment where it takes place. When sung in the power spots of nature such as the waterfall, the spirit of the place amplifies and lends itself to the song as a combined expression of the beauty of spirit.
Perhaps it is not a matter of singing but of being sung, of becoming a channel or instrument for the divine to come through."


This song can be downloaded for free at the following link.
http://hu.lk/w8l5wf3gj7uc