In the above video a priestess kisses a cobra three times to bring rain to her people.

This is an act of someone with much more than wonderful reflexes. In actuality her strength is in her lack of reflex, her non-reactionary dance with serpent, that deflects but never rejects him. She is a woman with great awareness. They are matched, dance partners coaxing and chiding one another with graceful cadence and gentle rebuffs. Yes the cobra is deadly, and can kill her. Likewise the priestess is deadly to the cobra and could also be the end of him.

In this act there is so much more than stolen kisses from the crown of a King Cobra. These kisses are not stolen but earned through the grace of her movements and knowing. The cobra is muted by her intuitive response that mirrors him before he can move and her body’s oscillation around the stillness of her center. This is a high act of equals. She is not taming, thieving or intimidating, but matching her partner perfectly.

There is a dialogue, a potential affection; beyond reaction. This is the space in which we swap medicines. What rains come from the cobra the same gains come to the cobra through this exchange. Both are exhilarated by the chance to dance with the untamed, the respected and feared. The electricity between them mimics the sky lit with lightening before he releases upon the earth his rain. The serpent comes forth from his cave like lightening from the cloud. His throws and tongue are like flashes and cracks that split the sky and stick the plains below.

How does this bring rain to the people?

As the alchemical maxim goes; as above, so below

The tension of this dance, and the romance between earth in the form of the woman and sky in the form of the snake is like that of pre-monsoon. In the labouring, sweltering season before monsoon all the grudges flare up, the sky rumbles threateningly, and the earth looks to it hopeful yet exhausted, hardly able to bear another scorching. Yet here it comes, the thunderbolts and the lightening, to lift the last of the dust and the pollen from the earth and swirl it in the air. So that when the rain finally pours, the seeds are pushed into her in exactly the place they need to be.

The awareness of this ritual is in knowing that sometimes what we are seeking is veiled beyond the thundercloud and can burst forth through violent means, but it is in receptivity and non reaction that we can be quenched by it’s true intention and meaning. Once we are witness of the other and their grievances,  resistances, fears and intolerances; only then can we receive their essence.

The metaphor in this powerful ritual speaks to me that what we fear the most often mutually fears us.
We all fear the other, but through that fear is the greatest creative potential; deep trust. There is such depth of trust between these two beings. Both have a true innate knowing that they are equals and mean the other no harm, yet they play their roles to test the others commitment to that trust.

The lesson of this priestess and this serpent is in fact about safety and trust. That when we are flowing and receptive, allowing for the nature of things to be; we can flow beyond the reactionary and flow in harmony with what seems to be dangerous and defiant, accepting threat as potential that is as of yet unrealised, and can manifest in a different guise if we allow for it.

This immense trust is what inspires and relieves her people that the rain will come. If this priestess can place her lips upon the crown of a cobra three times; then surely we can trust the sky to quench us with rain at the right time.

We all have cobras to kiss, whether they are aspects of ourselves or another. We all need to love and be in flow what cannot be controlled, what we cannot tame.
Trust in the timing, trust in the dance, trust in your role in the cosmic romance between what scorches and quenches you.
It is with this that true power gushes forth and our lives, loves and our relationships are washed in a great soaking of compassionate and creative rain.