Year of the Wood Snake
Energies & Insights for the Lunar New Year
“Love ‘em or despise ‘em, snakes bring us powerful, transformational medicine – if we choose to welcome their energy.” – DD
Happy Chinese New Year 2025!
In Chinese astrology, this is the year of the Snake. So in this week’s missive I’d like to share with you some ways that you can work with Snake Medicine for greater flow during such an activating year of our planetary ascension.
East Versus West
Here in the East (where I spend my winters), appreciation for the wisdom of serpent medicine has never been lost. In Buddhist Southeast Asia and Hindu South Asia, serpent iconography (images & representations) are everywhere. They are sometimes revered, and at the very least they are respected. In many parts of this region, snakes are still associated with wisdom and protection, healing and spiritual awakening (discussed further below).
In the west it’s a different story. Very different. While there are certainly sub-groups of society who are “into” snakes, overall snakes are denigrated. Associated with the devil and the worn-out Adam & Eve trope of the old testament, folks of the west often respond to serpents and serpent energy with fear, dread, horror and even panic.
Indeed, one of the most common phobias in the western world is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. (I would not be surprised if all of the ophidiophobes on my list opted to delete this particular email rather than read it. Let me know if I am wrong!)
Questions for You Reflection:
What is my initial reaction/response to the thought of snakes?
Does this response feel empowering, disempowering or neutral?
What are the stories or beliefs I have about snakes?
Snake Medicine
As someone born in the west during the year of the Snake (Wood Snake, in fact - same as this year), I have not shared the negative sentiments toward snakes that many of my fellow denizens hold. In fact when my son was young we had a couple of pet snakes. This gives me a few personal insights about Snake energy, some of which I’d like to share with you here.
But first, let’s begin with a question:
What are the possibilities for greater flow, wisdom, decision-making and engaged awakening for YOU this year, should you choose to work with Snake medicine?
Generally speaking, the snake is associated with wisdom, ancient Earth guardianship and protection. The snake moves “belly-to-belly” with Mother Earth. That should tell us something right there.
The snake is also extremely flexible yet incredibly strong. There are snakes that are poisonous and those that are not. The snake self-renews each time it sheds its skin. All of these literal qualities also offer us symbolic messages for our own growth.
Questions for Your Reflection:
How often do I allow myself to rest, belly-to-belly with Mother Earth?
How and when do I allow myself to “self-renew”?
Am I in a process (or resisting a process) of shedding an old skin?
2025: Wood Snake
Each animal in the Chinese zodiac can correlate with one of five different elements, depending on the year. These elements are: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth.
2025 is the year of the Snake, yes. But it is a Wood Snake. The wood element further defines and clarifies the nature of the energies and influences at play during the year.
In a recent livestream in my private community, one sister shared this: “The year of the Wood Snake symbolizes the wisdom, resilience and determination needed to confront authoritarian threats, defend democratic values, and inspire collective action in turbulent times.”
An interesting and somewhat contemporary take on an ancient archetype. Yet the “resilience and determination” energies in “turbulent times” certainly applies.
Let’s unpack this further …
Wood comes from trees. Trees root themselves in order to rise. Trees exist in a collective consciousness. In order for a tree to survive and thrive, it must be strong enough yet flexible enough to withstand the turbulence of nature's varied storms. When you stand in a forest during a windstorm, for example, you will feel, hear, and see the tops of the trees bend and sway. They are in flow with the wind. You will witness the way strong roots can anchor even the tallest tree sufficiently so it can bend without breaking.
A healthy tree is resilient.
Trees naturally grow together. Have you ever connected with a lone tree somewhere in a city or area that has been changed by humans? I thank these trees for standing outside of their natural community setting. I feel for them as lone rangers in a forest of cement or noise. It is not a tree’s natural environment to stand alone. Trees share a network of roots and “feed” each other nourishment and information.
Trees reflect community and connection “beneath the surface”.
Walk into any forest and you will find branches and trunks along the forest floor, all in differing states of decay. This “decay” is home to many other life forms. For those trees whose roots no longer flow with sufficient lifeforce, branches snap with the weight of snow and trunks split in strong winds. These become the fodder for rich soils from which new life emerges.
Trees show us the cycle of life.
Resilience, connection and the cycles of life. These “lessons” from the trees can be applied to the serpent energies during the year of the Wood Snake.
In a nutshell then, when we combine the serpent energy with wood, what we get is a grounded flow in connection with all of life.
Question for Your Contemplation:
How resilient am I when facing the winds of change?
What community do I have around me to support me, nourish me and sustain me in a storm?
Where am I part of a collective that supports others?
Kundalini Activation
In the ancient Vedic tradition, the serpent has long been associated with kundalini energy. Kundalini is associated with rising consciousness and ultimately, enlightenment.
As we cultivate, through yogic practices, the discipline of “yoking” the body and mind to the higher wisdom of Spirit, we can eventually awaken the kundalini - the energetic “serpent” that sleeps at the base of our spine. As these energies rise up the chakras, we rise in our consciousness. As we raise our consciousness, we can literally activate latent skills and abilities beyond the 5 senses of the material body.
There is a flow to the kundalini energy, a sensuous rising up of the life force which activates those latent potentials within us. Anyone who has had some kundalini activation (if not a full fledged awakening) can attest to a feeling of this rising, almost electrical energy up the spine and through the chakras.
Yet a full kundalini activation before one is psycho-spiritually ready can be shocking, traumatizing, and take years to integrate. Not unlike (symbolically speaking) taking in the “venom” of a poisonous snake and surviving, a kundalini activation before we are ready can make us sick.
Questions for Your Reflection:
How well can I sense the energy centers in my body?
Can I “flow” energy through my body with my attention and intention?
Have I ever felt the kundalini rise within me?
What were the circumstances before & after?
Shedding the Old
Another significant symbolic message from Snake Medicine has to do with change. Or rather: evolutionary growth through symbolic death & rebirth.
As they grow, serpents shed their old skin. They literally out-grow their old selves and are required to discard their now-too-small skin; their once-protective layer. This can be a highly vulnerable time for a snake, because the first thing that begins to dislodge is the skin layer over the eyes.
When a snake first begins its shedding process, its vision becomes milky and blurry. This is the time when an otherwise docile serpent or “pet” who is used to their human can become snappy, attacking shadows until clarity emerges once again.
How like snakes we can be in the midst of change and uncertainty, no? When the old identity markers start falling away without the clarity of our new “skin”, we can feel wobbly, vulnerable, grumpy and defensive.
And yet, when we trust the process of change and recognize that the old must give way in order for something new and better to emerge, we can relax, withdraw if needed, then find the quiet spaces to deepen our peace in the process of change.
Questions for Your Reflection
When have you experienced a “death-rebirth” in your life?
What is this accelerated ascension asking you to “shed” from your life or identity in order to be born anew?
Are you allowing and flowing with this, or are you in resistance?
Embracing Your Shining LIGHT
Of course, when we shed the old, dull “skin” what is revealed is our shining new one.
Symbolically, this reminds us that when we allow ourselves to fully release the old identity markers, habits, patterns, routines or other “security blankets” which informed our former identity, we make the space needed for our new self to emerge.
When we flow with change, we give ourselves permission to welcome in new insights, guidance, inspiration and directions. But just like snakes, we often need support. A snake’s skin doesn’t simply fall off. It must be peeled away.
A snake will use the environment around it in order to facilitate this peeling away. That could be a tree, a rock, branches on a forest floor, a fence or fence post. Anything really that provides some support and also friction that lets the serpent shed the old.
This too, offers us symbolic insights! Consider the way friction (adversity) can often be the catalyst for transformational change. After all, when we are comfy with life, we don’t often make an effort to change. This is certainly true before we become self-aware. But even then, it is sometimes a troublesome person or situation - something causing friction - which we can work with in order to let go of the old.
I have personally had some of my greatest periods of growth through working with the seeming friction in my life.
Questions for Your Consideration
When have you shed an old skin and “birthed” yourself anew?
What support do you need if you are in a shedding process now?
Is there friction in an area of your life that you can lean into as a catalyst for your own growth?
Ascension Support from the Elemental Realm
Ultimately, as with all energetics available to us during this ascension cycle, we can work with Wood Snake Medicine as part of our personal and planetary awakening.
Although in the western world, we’ve been given a story about serpents which denigrates them as poisonous minions of evil, those of the east did not lose the ancient truth. They have kept alive the remembrance of the serpents, nagas and yep, dragons too, as our long-standing teachers and Earth Guardians.
Along with the other elemental beings – those in form, such as snakes, and those who exist interdimensionally such as dragons, naga, fairies, etc. – The Snake comes to us as a teacher of flow, the capacity to shed the old, resilience, love for Gaia, and ultimately, awakening.
The Wood Snake reminds us to stay grounded and flexible, connected with community, and in service to the whole – not through sacrifice but through shared support.
So whatever your feelings are about serpents, let this be the year when you can receive this potent medicine for yourself!
Many blessings,
Dawn
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