#11: Snake Medicine
Animal Communication and Transformation
Hi angels! I hope you had a beautiful Eclipse weekend. We’re officially in the portal now. Can you feel it? Things are likely to be…wonky this month with the combo of Eclipses and Mercury stationing retrograde next week. If stuff is already feeling strange or especially annoying for you, trust that you’re not alone in the liminal space (and that everything is temporary).
I’ve had many revelations lately, one of them being that I was unnecessarily stressed out about sending this newsletter every single Sunday! I’m reverting back to just letting the Universe dictate when I reach out and I feel really good about it. Because of this more sPiRiTuAl schedule, I’m nixing the weekly astrology and Tarot sections and will just begin with a general “Energy of the Moment” reading that highlights a mixture of whatever feels resonate.
Moving forward, trust that whenever the TBH Magic newsletter finds you…it’s right on time. :-)
Energy of the Moment
I can’t stop raving about this deck so I wanted to share it with you! Not sponsored, I just really love it. It came with a die, which I had never used/seen in Tarot, but I’ve found it to be a supportive practice for releasing some control.
I asked what we needed to see, and it landed on 2. Card 1 can be read as the “conflict” and card 2 as the “resolution.”
The energy of gentleness is available, you just have to decide to take it. The looming Scorpio Full Moon Eclipse will be in a square to Saturn, and as someone clawing my way through the remainder of my Saturn Return can attest…gentleness is likely to feel in short supply with this planet. But seeing the resolution as held, I thought of something a good friend told me during one of my fraught Saturnian moments last year.
She said to wrap my arms around myself (like giving yourself a hug) and that it “sounds silly, but actually feels really nice” and she’s right. When things feel tough, remember that you can always feel held by being gentle with yourself. It doesn’t mean that your worries will magically disappear…but in the least, you’re likely to relax a bit.
Trust that whatever is going on, you’re in the midst of being thrust onto the path you were born to walk. Be gentle with yourself. You are held.
If you’d like to book a personal reading (currently focused in astrology and Tarot, but I’m in reiki training *and* studying palmistry…so stay tuned), you can find all my offerings here. 11% of every reading purchased is donated.
Back in 2020…I realized I could talk to snakes. Or at least, I realized that they could talk to me.
I was quarantined at my parent’s house when the whole world was changing. We were navigating lock-down and I had decidedly become my nephew’s in-house PE teacher.
We walked down to the park right by their house, a place we always loved to adventure. We were swinging (an activity I’ve always loved and believe more adults should embrace) when it came out of nowhere into my mind’s eye.
SNAKE.
Now. Unless you’ve had a psychic experience like this before…this part might be strange to grasp (or even believe), but I’ll try to explain how it feels.
I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was blessedly checked out from my thoughts and was only aware of pumping my legs and feeling the sun on my face and wind in my hair. If anything, I was “thinking” about being happy and free.
“SNAKE” appeared not as a conscious thought, but as a word that was placed there from something or someone outside of myself. It was sudden and confusing, yet crystal clear.
I later realized that what I was experiencing was either clairaudience, a gift that my Mother has experienced to even greater extremes (and something I believe everyone has the potential to tap into)...or telepathy, which I believe we’re almost always doing anyway. But that’s for another newsletter.
At that moment, all I knew was that I heard SNAKE in a way I had never heard anything in my life before. I told my nephew, Soren, I wanted to stop swinging and go for a walk.
It was such a clear message and I was curious, and frankly nervous, to find out what it meant.
I walked with him completely on guard, asking if he had ever seen a snake in the park before (he hadn’t). I was trying to seem casual and not freak him out…but I didn’t want one to take us by surprise. I didn’t really know what was happening, but I knew something was going to soon. A few minutes later, I saw it.
We were walking by the inlet of the lake that runs through the park, and I saw a snake slithering towards us in the water. I immediately pointed at it and said “SNAKE! CAN YOU SEE IT SOREN?” I’m not going to lie, I was questioning my sanity at that point.
To my relief he pointed to the water and said that he could see it slithering our way, too. We watched it for a minute or so and decidedly walked back towards the house before it reached the bank. I might have stuck around longer if it was just me, but I wasn’t playing any games with my nephew there.
For the next several days…I was just stunned. I told my parents and texted said “hug” friend from today’s reading because I knew she would have some words of wisdom to offer. She sent me some info I shared below.
I’ve had more amazing experiences with my clair (“clair” was underlined as I was writing and suggested a correction to “clear”...hmph!) senses since that day, but that was the first time I knew something far beyond “normal” was getting my attention in a way I couldn’t ignore, or write off as a coincidence. I knew that that snake had told me it was there…and two years later, I’m beginning to understand why.
I’ll be 6 months sober (!!!) on May 5th this week…and in researching for this newsletter, I realized I had heard from that snake on, wait for it, May 5th, 2020! What’s more, on the day I decided to get sober last year…I woke up and saw two GIGANTIC snakes slithering directly across from my balcony- two days before an Eclipse. In Vedic astrology, the Eclipse points are referred to as Rahu and Ketu, the head and tail of the snake. Naturally.
Snakes are an animal in spirituality that come with a big reputation. If they’re continually showing up in your life (and that includes “real” life, physical snakes, but also snakes in dreams, movies, books, etc.) it’s safe to bet that you’re undergoing a massive transformation.
Eclipses are our snake medicine. Whether you experience them as literally as I have the past couple years or not…they are moments of dynamic change. They frequently point to where things are out of balance in our lives, and provide healing course-corrections.
And remember that Eclipses happen multiple times a year, so not all will be as memorable, but most of us will be able to look back at Eclipses that aspected personal planets or points in our birth chart and recognize them as pivotal moments in the unfolding of our life’s story.
Sometimes things just aren’t clear until they’re clear, but if you release control and allow the Eclipses to transform you, to shed your skin, one day it will all make sense…and that day just might come sooner than you think.
Until next week’s magic,
Erin River Sunday
Chills! Thank you for sharing your gifts with us and I 100000% support writing as it feels universally aligned 💛 your messages are always the most powerful!