Serpent Power

by Dennis Green

Kundalini. Serpent Power. The serpent lying coiled at the base of the spine, coiled around that first chakra. Just waiting to be awakened, and to rise up through all seven chakras to the Crown. (See the physician’s symbol, the Caduceus, two serpents twined around a herald’s staff, or spine, in a double helix.)

You’ve seen the King Tut exhibit, and the representation of serpent power, that cobra rising up and out of the Pharaoh’s third eye. That indicates that he was enlightened, had brought the serpent power all the way up into his higher consciousness, his sixth chakra.

I have a large cobra tattooed on my belly, coiled and just beginning to rise up into a position of wakefulness. At the base of the cobra is the word “Kundalini.” I practice Kundalini yoga still, after all these years, and I first saw the King Tut exhibit in 1979, just after I had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I saw the serpent power in the Pharaoh’s forehead, and I determined then that I would study the old gods of the Egyptians, learn the meaning of that snake god, of the ankh, (the “Key of the Nile”), and Isis, (the goddess of motherhood and simplicity), her brother/consort Osiris, her son Horus, and her brother, Set, who chopped Osiris into 14 pieces. Two years later, I began my first class in Kundalini yoga, and found several volumes in an esoteric book store on Polk Street that described the Egyptian myths.

Trade between Egypt and the Far East had been common. Their ships, which sailed the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, it has been shown in modern times, were also seaworthy on the open ocean. For the Egyptians, the real treasures of China, India and Japan were the spices and the incense. Burning incense to appeal to the gods was essential in all their rituals.

So it was natural that the beliefs of the Far East would also be brought back to influence the beliefs and rituals of the Egyptians. Kundalini, a belief in Serpent Power, was one of those. And it found fertile ground.

Cat Power is an altogether different state of mind, of consciousness. Feline intelligence is independent, alert, even spooky, or at least easily spooked. But if you’ve ever seen a cat lying on the roof of a car in the sun, oblivious to everything, you’ve also seen Cat Power at work.

Reptilian intelligence, however, is very particular, and even modern neuroscience speculates that in the brain stem we still harbor remnants of that evolutionary state or stage. “Cold blooded” is only one way we have of describing such a state. It is sometimes also called the “Undermind.” I once encountered it in full force when I shook hands and spoke once briefly with Ted Turner after a speech he gave in San Francisco.

Kundalini yoga uses breathing exercises, (such as the “Breath of Fire”), postures and visualization practices to rouse that Undermind. It is alert, but not excitable or easily aroused, almost impervious to pain or distraction. This intensity of focus can be measured, and the brain waves can be seen as “Theta Waves,” just as portions of the brain stem light up on an MRI with more activity than normal.

Pharaoh was regarded by the Egyptians as a divine being, a god on earth, a child of Isis, and from a very early age was initiated by the high priesthood into the Mysteries. No doubt by the end of his boyhood, at about age 12, he had attained some mastery of those rituals for awakening self-knowledge, self-realization and divine wisdom.

Serpent power. Don’t leave planet Earth without it.

©2010 Dennis Green