From the Secoya nation in the Amazon I learned that if you get bit by a snake, you will have to talk to the Boss of Snakes and thereafter track down the clan, family, and individual snake responsible for the bite. This way the matter can be resolved, and the wound healed in an amicable manner.

Amongst the Zulu Swazi and Shangaan peoples of South Africa, traditional healers called sangomas undergo training to correspond with their ancestors, and ask them for assistance in times of need. This training is sometimes precipitated by a period of illness whereby the apprentice is physically or metaphorically submerged in a river, and encounters the Master of the Water Snakes. Thereafter, knowledge is transmitted to the healer-to-be in a fluid and flowing fashion.

On a trip to New Orleans, I was waiting at the dock to go on an airboat tour of the swamp cypress canals and bayou. I wanted to say hi to the alligators and snapping turtles. Bored of just sitting there, I wandered off to go and explore the dense undergrowth and forest nearby. Did not get very far before a hectic man yelled, “Get the hell out of there! You are going to get bit by a water moccasin!”. And so that was the end of beating around the bush…

Well on the island of Taiwan aka Formosa, before the coming of the Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Chinese peoples, there lived and continue to live a number of indigenous aboriginal southeast asian malay polynesian tribal peoples. In one of their stories, a Bunun tribe woman named Hossu married a man named Li Ta Ko from the Rukai tribe. They were happy for a while, but things did not work out. Basically it came down to this: she liked to eat snakes – specifically, Chinese moccasins – and the in laws did not. Hossu left the Rukai, and ended up alone in the misty mountains. She kept waiting for a husband who did not come for her. In sadness, anger, and bitterness, she etched the rocks with her fingertip, and kept eating snake meat. And when she spat out the bones, they would turn into more snakes! The land was filled with pit vipers. This rock where she sat and traversed is called the great carved rock of Oponohu, and it is in the Maolin district of Kaohsiung County, in the southwestern mountains of the island.

Guess that is what I try to do too when I am angry or frustrated, channel that destructive energy into something a little bit positive and productive like art. Here she is, my Queen of the Hundred Paces.