Shedding Skins: On Cycles and Transformation

This week @voodooloutattoo gifted me a whole skin that Damballah, a python, had shed. The skin feels alive with potent energy. What it symbolises is rich in teachings, too.

Lou described how, when she is soon to shed her skin, Damballah’s eyes will cloud over and become milky. The protective scales of her eyes are separating from the new ones underneath. During this time she experiences a loss or inhibition of vision.

Damballah draws her energy inward, she retreats, unseen, for a week before emerging anew having shed her old skin. Just like Damballah has her own natural rhythm for shedding, so do we. Her drawing inward is what we humans do at times of deep transformation and release.

For some of us, Damballah’s cyclical re-birth mirrors the monthly initiation of the menstrual cycle. For others, the waxing and waning of the moon is our cyclical guide each month.
Sometimes it can feel like whole weeks or months or years are a time of drawing inward, of seeing deeply, retreating in order to eventually, return renewed, re-born.

The shedding process is often uncomfortable but ultimately liberating and a natural part of life. There is no one cycle and no single speed nor rhythm for all.

Where are you in your own cycle of contraction and expansion, transformation and shedding?

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