Serpent Medicine

Reclaiming the Forbidden

I got three new tattoos in one day. The first two I loved, I felt alive with them, embodied. But the third one, a serpent on my forearm, brought a wave of unexpected emotion.

I suddenly felt impure. Bad. Tainted. Unfeminine.

Like I had made a huge, irreversible mistake.

This was my eighth tattoo, and I’ve never felt this way before. Sure, I've had moments of “maybe not my favorite idea,” but never “I feel unclean.”

So I sat with it. I let myself fully feel it. I observed it instead of pushing it away. And what became incredibly clear was this: deep in my subconscious, I still carry the imprint of Catholic conditioning.

“The serpent is evil. The woman who touches it is fallen. To be feminine is to be pure, good, and clean.”

It wasn’t just mine. I could feel it echoing through the collective, through my maternal lineage, my mother, my grandmother. I could feel how tightly this belief still grips the world, how it controls the feminine through fear.

But why did I get the serpent in the first place?

Because I know what it truly is.
The serpent is not evil. It is feminine power, earth wisdom, sensuality, transformation, death and rebirth, creativity, and it’s our life force.

In Genesis, the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she does, which is seen as “the fall of humanity.” And Eve is blamed, the serpent is demonized.

Woman + serpent = downfall.
Seeking knowledge = sin.

But here’s the truth they don’t want us to know.

In the Gnostic texts (early mystical Christian writings) the serpent is actually aligned with Sophia, the Divine Feminine Wisdom.
The serpent didn’t lie. It told Eve she would gain awareness, and she did.
This was not a fall, it was an initiation.

Eve became the first spiritual seeker. She chose to awaken, even at a cost.
The tree wasn’t forbidden because it was evil, it was forbidden because knowledge makes people sovereign.

To be sovereign is to think for yourself, trust your inner authority, no longer blindly obey systems that benefit from your disempowerment.

Awareness is dangerous to systems that depend on obedience.

What better way to keep people from awakening than to make the symbol of awakening, the serpent, the villain?

Eve wasn’t wrong. She was brave. She chose truth over comfort. And that’s not sin, that’s liberation.

Now let’s talk about Mary.

In Christian imagery, Mother Mary is often shown stepping on a serpent, symbolizing her triumph over evil, or over Eve’s so-called original mistake.

She’s called the “New Eve”, pure, obedient, immaculate. But that interpretation misses her true power.

Mary wasn’t just a passive vessel. She was a mystic, a priestess, a sacred woman deeply connected to divine feminine wisdom.
Her immaculate conception isn't about sexual repression, it’s about spiritual fertility. Her birthing consciousness into the world.

That image of her stepping on the serpent? It’s not about destruction or conquest. It’s about integration.

The serpent, the ancient symbol of instinct, sexuality, Earth wisdom, isn’t something Mary destroys. It’s what she stands with and embodies.

Her “victory” isn’t rejection, it’s wholeness.

She is in right relationship with her power.

She shows us you can be sensual and sacred, powerful and pure.
That you can walk with both the rose and the thorn, both the womb and the Word.

She becomes a guide for integrating our lower, instinctual nature with our divine, spiritual truth.
She doesn’t slay the serpent. She becomes it.

How many of us women have felt shame for our wildness? For our desire? For being close to the Earth, to our own bodies?

These beliefs are not ours. They were never ours.

Choosing to awaken, to see clearly, to embody your full feminine expression, that is the most sacred, most pure thing you can do.

To awaken is not to sin.

To see clearly is not to fall.

To embody your full, alive, sensual, wise, wild, sacred self is not impurity, it is divine remembrance.

This serpent tattoo is an initiation. A remembering.
Each time I meet a new edge in reclaiming my feminine power, a deeper, older belief rises to be faced.

Just like the serpent was Eve’s initiation into consciousness, this serpent is mine, and maybe, if you’re reading this, it’s yours too.

So, we can choose to either live in fear, keep our heads down, and let things stay the same, or we can choose to awaken, to see, to evolve, to embrace the serpent medicine and truly create heaven on Earth.