August 14, 2024

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This past Sunday, my neighbor arrived at my back porch to show me the snake that he had killed on the pathway that leads to my jungle home. Staring at its long body—its silent, shimmering scales and, now, harmless fangs—I felt the medicine of the serpent weaving through the air. 

 

The snake. La serpiente. Kahansi, in the native Cofan language. Guardian and guide of the endless death and rebirth cycles of life. Messenger of the cosmic mysteries. Skin shedder. Ancestral whisperer. Master teacher. Divine mother. The snake had come with her blessings, her warnings, and her teachings, all wrapped into one glorious and, inevitably, decaying gift.

 

“Por eso siempre usamos las botas cuando andamos por la selva, no?” I quipped to my neighbor.

 

Translation: that’s why we always wear boots while walking through the jungle. 

 

For the medicine of the snake is one that offers multiple teachings in regard to the divine order of all life. The snake is to be revered, yes, but also to be respected and, yes, even feared. For the snake is both messenger and assassin. Teacher and predator. Guide and trickster. Transformer, shapeshifter, walker between worlds.

 

The snake was the first animal that I got tattooed onto my body over 6 years ago when I was 22 years young and I was in the depths of a transformation by the likes of which I had never known to be possible before. The snake guided me, in my visions and dreams, into the underworld of my pain and taught me how to come into sacred intimacy and communion with the strength that comes from being stretched so far over the smith’s anvil that a spirit must choose to break itself first in order to avoid being broken prematurely by the world. 

 

And, yes, this life has stretched me. It has broken me, or, rather, broken me open. It has tempered me and honed me and humbled me and pommeled me and shaped me and rebirthed me time and time again with the disciplined and calculated orientation of the snake that has protectively guided the footsteps on my path that have lead to where I am now. 

 

The message of the snake was clear: Now is the time to rebirth yourself into the world once more.

 

The presence of the serpent was both the blessing that I didn’t know I was asking for and also the foreboding omen that I am always grateful to receive. An invitation and a caution. A dual sided offering to help midwife me into the life chapter that I am actively writing in the choice to finally birth my podcast, The Serpentine Path, into the world.

 

After years of dreaming and visioning, months of planning and preparing, and weeks of logistical and technological organizing, The Serpentine Path Podcast feels like the culmination of my life’s work (thus far). Prompted by a growing frustration with online censorship, shadow banning, and the algorithmic hellscape of social media, I feel as though I have finally found a medium that will allow me to go as deep as I have always wanted to go with the things that I have always wanted to share.

 

One of the many blessings that my ancestors have passed onto me is the gift of storytelling. My father, in particular, has taught me the importance and value of holding onto the ethos of a family’s origin story: the jokes, conflicts, triumphs, heartbreaks, songs, recipes, and dreams that did or did not come to fruition. My father is a master in painting the universe with his pauses and enveloping his family into the essence of a moment in time that we all once shared in the past and can now share again together, in another lifetime, timeline, and snapshot of the cosmos. In passing on his storytelling gift to me, I dedicate this project, in part, to him. 

 

In fact, this project is dedicated to all of my ancestors, both living and passed on, who have walked this path before me. It is dedicated to all of the mothers and fathers, elders and children who lived and died and learned and loved and shared and suffered and crafted my lineage into what it is now. It is for them that I share my stories, for they are their stories as well. They are of my blood, and I am of theirs and our stories are forever interwoven in the divine dance that takes place in the liminal veil between worlds, times, and dreams.

 

This project is also dedicated to my late and beloved teachers, Abuelo Querubin of the Cofan nation and Abuela Maria of the Murui nation. For it was their love, care, guidance, orientation, acceptance, discipline, and respect for the original instructions of right relationship that taught me how to realign myself with what is most sacred and holy in this life: the love of a healthy family, the strength of a united community, and the glory and majesty of a territory that is stewarded and protected by it’s human caretakers. In all of the noise and confusion of modern life that I had absorbed into my bones and cells as “truth”, it was their fierce and unwavering commitment to preserving the sacredness of human life that brought me back to my soul’s mission in this lifetime as one who learns from my ancestors in order to diligently craft a better future for my descendants. 

 

Therefore, I am humbled beyond measure by the opportunity to open my heart and share my story with you all. The telling of one’s story is an intimate and vulnerable experience. It is also, in my opinion, one of the most powerful, illuminating, liberating, and healing medicines that a person can offer to the world. Hearing the cadence in a storytellers voice, their laughter, their tears, their tone, their pauses, their pain, their joy, their curiosity, and their heart’s song is something that can only truly be experienced byway of oral story telling. Thus, in honoring the storytelling lineages of all of our ancestors, I offer my story to you now. In another world, another time, another dream we are all sitting together in front of a big fire, passing our visions across the flames and receiving the medicine in our hearts. 

 

Now, it is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the serpentine path of life, where the ancestors have called us back to—let’s start at the end, and find our way back home, together. 

 

For seven generations forward and seven generations back.

 

Blessings and good health,

Claire/Clarita