#vision serpent

"That false hydra was so possessive, looking back on things. Anything good I did was really hers, and all the bad stuff was just mine. I just want to forget about her. "Problem is, that's hard to do when there are many other monsters that look like her. Today I got in a screaming match with a vision serpent. A STATUE of a vision serpent, no less."

The Vision Serpent is an important figure in Mayan mythology. It is usually depicted as a two headed snake with a beard and a rounded snout. Sometimes, it is shown with the spirit of a deity or ancestor emerging from its jaws.

Several significant beings in Mayan mythology have been classed as Vision Serpents. Most often, they are a direct link between the spirit world and the human world, appearing in visions to those performing bloodletting rituals. The core Mayan deity Kukulkan has also been called a Vision Serpent.

Image source.

Monster master list.

"Now to 'scape the Serpent's Tongue, We will make amends ere long." - Puck, in William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

I was in my early twenties and found myself on the tail end of a multi-year journey back and forth across the United States. I had abandoned my academic studies in order to look more thoroughly at a fork in the path that had opened up to me via a series of ecstatic visions.

By the early 1990s, after a dark stint in New York City that involved a flat above a store front gospel church and a mad brilliant Kabbalah teacher and poet named Lionel Ziprin, I ended up in Chicago, living on the south side practicing a hybrid of western ceremonial magic and south american ecstatic shamanism. I had picked up in my wanderings the method of seeking the vision serpent, and the divinatory and spirit communication avenue of the great serpent. Not left hand path Set based workings but Mayan glyphs and scrying bowls full of flaming liquids. The Serpent is much older than Western civilization and its sister the jaguar hunted men before the written word was a scratch in the dirt.

The vision serpent is a spirit that manifests in flames, usually derived from an organic oil or other agent burning in a specially prepared black bowl. When invoked the serpent can be dangerous, and will lie endlessly if one can not come to an arrangement with it. It is wise beyond our understanding of time, but it cares little for the contemporary matters of mankind.

I had come to Chicago to seek advise about Mayan glyphs and blood rituals. I knew that at the University of Chicago I had connections to various experts and their holdings yielded much of what I was seeking. Body modification rituals, complex astrological/astronomical formulae, calendars of divinatory events stretching far into the past and future.

The south side of Chicago is a strange place full of more than its share of unusual characters. The University of Chicago casts an eldritch shadow over an otherwise dominantly black American set of urban neighborhoods. Among the professors of U of C are some eminent academics, hell even Indiana Jones studied at U of C. The mix of this culture of academia with the surrounding black americana was rich with African Diaspora practices.

I learned to dance at basement Rada parties and longed to become a Maman player, that deep drum that I have long felt is directly responsible for the jagged change in rhythm via the Kasé (pattern break) that triggers the state of possession in the dancer. I hung out with blues musicians and listened to their stories of hoodoo men, crossroads and root conjure. It was the end of an era there in those days, where Sun Ra's ghost had recently been seen, just days after Alton Abraham (his former partner and lawyer) had come into the record store on 53rd Street boasting of having had his Lincoln Continental's seats recently relined. It was the last days of the real Maxwell Street, where you could buy John the Conqueror root at any number of stalls while street preachers accosted one with the potentialities of eternal damnation and endless fire for not accepting the Lord's love.

The neighborhood of Hyde Park was stuffed with antiquarian bookstores, Jamaican restaurants, soul food kitchens and above all Harold's Chicken on 53rd. I took a job at a record store and spent my days chatting with professors over jazz records about everything from astrophysics to trance inducing sound forms and psychopharmacology.

Somewhere there in a massive and mostly empty apartment I found a way to stitch together bits from the grimories with the serpent's fire, the pounding drums with the crossroads. I got as far as a letter of introduction to a houngan in Haiti from a professor and the offer of a free ticket from a friend who had an airline voucher that was about to expire before the universe shoved me in another direction. Probably for the best really, that lost trip to Haiti still smarts though.

Instead of Haitian drums I learned to listen to free jazz percussionists, improvised rhythms that fall together and apart endlessly. I studied Kabbalah further under Russell Thorne, owner of the Occult Bookstore and an avant-garde composer himself.

The serpent dances inside of us all, it burns with our blood as its fuel, it is a fire of creation as well as destruction. To call the vision serpent is to call a complex thing to present itself to you. It is partly you, that paradigm in which you perceive reality manifesting itself. But it speaks with a voice animated by something other, something that is always there but usually not paying the slightest attention to the world you call home.

Careful of the fire of the vision Serpent's tongue. It will lie to you as you lie to yourself. It will trick you as you allow yourself to be tricked. But it is wise and has much to teach those patient of its ways.

Vision Serpent just played our first of the year in a new state at a new venue for our first festival.

(A lot of firsts for us)

We booked a slot on the lineup for Pagoda Metal Fest in Reading, Pennsylvania at The Reverb club. It was mostly local and semi-local bands for the touring package of Soulfly and Kataklysm w/Sworn Enemy and Incite.

(The venue is decorated with celebrity mugshots which is fucking phenomenal and hilarious)

It was a honor to play for the mighty Max Cavalera again and this time I actually got to see Soulfly play cause I didn't have to work today. All the bands were fantastic and most were really cool to hang out with.

In addition to the perks listed above, this show was big for me personally because I felt comfortable and confident in myself and the material. 🤗🤗

Now we can focus on writing our first full length as we hit the studio this coming weekend. I'm real excited to finally put two of our oldest songs down on "tape" confidently and with the knowledge they won't be butchered by the engineer.

Ashen Headstones and The Abyss have been through 2 different studio sessions and have never come out presentable or approved. Mostly Ashen, as there were almost hands thrown between the engineer and Jim(singer) over the bridge lyrics. What ended up happening was he did several takes and the asshole put all of them into the song at different times to fuck it up.

Then we have one more show at the end of the month in Queens with Joey Conception in Daughter Chaos.

I think I'll start doing these tour diary, band updates from now on.

PS look for a single soon

We've still got some tickets left for this motherfucker of a show! Vision Serpent is pulling out the stops for this one, new music and new covers. Prepare to get your mosh on and feel the metal.

Hit us up on facebook to get in on this 🤘🤘🤘

Vision Serpent has another fantastic show where we get to play with our brothers in Dark After Dawn!

This time, we are pleased to be sharing the stage with Devildriver and Jinjer on their ONLY US Tour for the fall. They're coming to Poughkeepsie, NY on November 5th so don't miss out!

Message me or my bands facebook (below) for tickets($20). Buy through me and I'll include a free patch with all orders.

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