Journey Into The Shadow
Spring is the time of the year when light increases after the darkness of winter. As we are coming back into the light this year, I invite you to explore the dark as we rise out of it.

I did a journey on behalf of a client last week that took us into the dark. My power animal and I arrived in Lower World only to be greeted by a cobra, standing. We were prompted to follow the cobra into a snake hole. We followed it through a long, dark, winding passageway. We finally came out of the earth, but not into the light. We arrived in a lower chamber of a Pyramid in Ancient Eqypt. It was very dark. We were greeted there by a young woman in white robes who was undergoing an initiation into the Mysteries.

This journey represented a past life for my client. As I often tell people, the past life material I experience during shamanic journeys feels very real, but I can’t guarantee that the life happened exactly as I see it. I tell people to consider it a metaphor and that this is how their energy is appearing to me in story form.  The material that is represented in the journey has relevance to their current life in some way.

The beautiful young initiate seemed to have a strong relationship with the snake – it was her power animal in that life. We saw the snake slither up her right arm and whisper guidance in her ear. She gave us a gift of a gold snake bracelet to bring back to my client. This gift is symbolic of the spiritual wisdom she achieved in that lifetime, and sharing of that wisdom with my client as she comes into greater wisdom and spiritual growth in this lifetime.

When I started researching the symbolism of snakes in Ancient Egypt, I learned that they were thought to have mystical significance. They were believed to be associated with inner vision, and were worn as a symbol by those who were being initiated in Mystery Schools. (I did not know about this practice before the journey – this is a synchronicity that validates the journey).

The young woman in the journey also showed us the symbol of the Ouroboros, a snake eating its tail. This symbol is used in many spiritual traditions, but the earliest known representation of the Ouroboros is contained in the Egyptian Book of the Netherworld found in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen. This symbol represents the oneness of life, unity, infinity, immortality and the endless cycles of life recreating itself.

In many traditions, the snake molting, or shedding its skin, symbolizes death and rebirth, or resurrection. When a person receives Snake as a power animal, it does not mean that they will literally die, but it signifies that they will undergo a powerful transformation, shedding what is no longer useful, and creating a new “skin.”

My client had been consistently pulling the Snake card in her Animal Totem deck before our session together, and she wasn’t sure she was happy about it. Sometimes the process of transformation requires going into our shadow to bring light to whatever is still hiding in the dark. She said she would prefer to stay out of the dark for a while. However, the young woman in the journey had this to say to her, “Sorry, but you can only become as Light as you have gone into your own darkness.” She was saying that we cannot raise our consciousness without dealing with our shadow side. When we deny our shadow, it gets projected outside of us. When we own it and integrate it, our shadow makes us stronger, more conscious, more able to access the Light.

In the Tarot, the card for the major arcana card XX is sometimes called Resurrection and sometimes called Judgment. I like the symbolism on this card from the Motherpeace tarot deck. It takes us from the death to the rebirth using the Egyptian symbol of the ankh, symbol of life. The card speaks of change or transformation that is grounded in healing and love and that serves the best interest of all.

Blessings on your transformative journey.

Sally Beckett-McCollum, CSP, Reiki Master

303-570-7870

Sally@HealingJourneysb.com

www.healingjourneysb.com

Sources for this article