🐍 Medusa in the Shamanic Journey: Facing Fear, Awakening Power

Snake Medicine & the Death Walker (Muertera): When Medusa and Santa Martha Meet

Recently, I held space for a client moving through sacred pain—the kind that feels older than the body, older than words. It was raw, sacred, deep and very much alive. As I witnessed her, something stirred in me. A familiar presence emerged: Santa Martha. Not just La Dominadora, the tamer of serpents—but as a muertera, a walker between worlds. A guide through endings.

It brought me back to the first time I drank San Pedro—and also to a spiritual community ceremony I participated in, one led with Palo music by initiated drummers singing ancestral songs to call on the Mysteries. I had held that ceremony to give thanks for the blessings in my life. I had also come seeking love—pure, unconditional self love. But Spirit, and my own inner wisdom, had other plans.

After hours of prayers. What came was not gentleness—but power.

Suddenly, I began to hiss.

At first, softly. Then louder. Someone tried to calm me, not realizing I was in a deep trance. But the hissing only grew. My body moved of its own accord. My hands spoke a language I didn’t know, yet deeply understood.

Santa Martha had arrived.

When another tried to soothe me, her fury surged through my body. My head shook violently. My mouth curled into something ancient. I wasn’t performing—I was becoming. And I understood:

Love doesn’t always come as light. Sometimes it arrives as fire. As death. As sacred rage.

I tried to contain it, aware that others in the circle were new, still learning how to hold space. But inside, snakes slithered through my spine, my skull, my skin. Wings, too—energetic ones—pushed against my back, aching to break free.

Voices echoed inside, asking questions I didn’t want to answer. I resisted. I demanded proof. Eventually, I surrendered.

When I said “yes,” Papa Bondye appeared—radiant and unmistakable, the same presence I remembered from childhood photographs. He asked me, three times, if I was ready to walk this path and serve the 21 Divisions. I wept (in public in front of others which was a huge deal back them for me!). I said yes. Twice more, I was asked to confirm. And I said yes—but only if it was in service of the Light. Even in such a spiritual mythical experience, I wanted to ensure I was not saying yes to a contract with entities to cause pain or harm to others.

In that moment, I was taken to a realm of pure luminosity. From that high vantage point, I could see many deaths—of humans, animals, insects, and trees—along with immense movement and deep pain, as if watching the soul’s journey unfold across lifetimes. Much more occurred, but that part I’ll keep private—for now.

To bring me back from the journey, my aunts and head Prayer ladies had to say a prayer and pour liquid over my head. Still, the trance continued deep into the night. I was seeing energies everywhere, even those trying to hide in plain sight. I was nauseous for hours, my body felt like it was breaking apart. I was in pain and couldn’t sleep. Eventually, I began to come down and finally fell asleep.

My aunt, who was in the bedroom next to me, looked at me with concern. The things coming out of my mouth were things I couldn’t have possibly known. I wasn’t the one speaking—I was channeling. My inner wisdom took over, and I began sharing things that were deeply private, as well as events that were yet to come.

That night, an energy came again—in a dream. We walked through a sacred garden. He showed me truths I cannot fully recall, but feel etched into my bones. He told me I come from a lineage of snake sorcerers—ancient ones awaiting my awakening.

I laughed in the dream, half-nervously joking (thinking i am going crazy for-real this time), “This isn’t the Disney Channel… what’s happening?” But deep down, I knew there was some truth to what this energy was telling me.

This was realer than real. 

In that same dream, Medusa appeared as a vision not as part of the dream.

Only for a few seconds—but it shook me.

She was radiant. I saw her embodying a Mocha-skinned beautiful woman. A wild afro of serpents crowned her head. Her gaze was steady, intelligent, fierce. She wasn’t a monster.
She was a survivor.
A warning, distorted into myth, for daring to hold her power.

I saw myself in her. as she reflected me with my own snakes on my head – I think the snakes represented all the fears i had to let go of which took years to work thru)
I saw Santa Martha.
Two faces of the same medicine.

Maybe they are different names for the same current—serpent medicine, death-walking, shadow integration. Or perhaps they simply resonate at the same vibrational frequency. Some things I don’t try to fully comprehend with my human brain from an intellectual perspective, I just let it be.

Medusa and the Sacred Hiss

That vision helped me understand the hissing. The sobbing. The pain.
It wasn’t a breakdown.
It was an initiation.

Which brings me back to my client’s ceremony.

As I held space for her to release layer after layer of sacred pain, I felt awe—not just at the intensity of her healing, but at her quiet courage and wisdom. The first year we worked together, the progress was slow. She’d often feel disappointed, hitting wall after wall. But by year two, she had begun to blossom—like a rainbow-colored flower, blooming in both the physical and spiritual realms.

Watching her, I was reminded: to walk this path is to hold space for death—not just physical death, but the death of illusions, lies, betrayals, and old skins.

To walk as a muertera (death walker) is to guide others—and ourselves—through the shedding.

Medusa and Santa Martha Walk With Me

I don’t claim to possess them. I walk with them (with respect / reverence never thinking i am them but i am a vessel for their medicine)
One stands at the crossroads, her snakes a warning and a blessing.
The other moves with the dead, calming what others fear.

Both are fierce teachers.

They’ve shown me again and again:
Love doesn’t always whisper. Sometimes it hisses. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it strips you bare.

And maybe…
That’s the love I was asking for all along.

In the last month, she’s returned—alongside other fierce archetypes.

My connection with her is not new. In 2021, I created the logo for my YouTube channel as an offering to both Santa Martha and Medusa—a visual merging of two sacred forces.

But it began earlier. During an ayahuasca journey, I felt the serpents crawling from my skull. The sensation lasted hours.

To me, Medusa is not a myth.
She is priestess. Muertera (Death Walker). Healer. Embodiment of sacred rage and untamed wisdom.

She shows people in dreams, meditations, deep trance experiences what they are afraid to know about themselves—what they’ve buried, betrayed, or feared reclaiming.

 

🧿 Reflections: Medusa in the Spiritual / Shamanic Journey

 

1. Embodiment of Repressed Power

Medusa appears when we’re reclaiming parts of ourselves we were taught to fear or suppress:

• Ancestral rage, betrayal, and silencing
• Wild feminine energy demonized across time
• Sovereignty over our bodies, our gaze, our truth

She is a gatekeeper of power and a midwife for the shadow.

2. Guardian of Thresholds

Historically placed at temple gates, Medusa was a protector—not a destroyer.

In dreams or ceremony, she may appear as:

• A guardian of liminal space
• A bridge between ego and soul, life and death

She joins a lineage of goddesses like Hekate, Kali, and Sekhmet, who shatter illusions and birth truth.

3. Alchemical Shadow Work

Medusa’s myth is rich with alchemy:

• Snakes = Kundalini rising
• Beheading = Ego death (I’ll definitely put this down to do a post on this later)
• Turning to stone = Freeze response to buried truth (I’ll try to do a post on this later)
• The mirror = Reflective awareness
• Pegasus (born from her death) = Rebirth of soul and creative freedom

This is not destruction.
It is transmutation.

4. Collective Feminine Awakening

Medusa is rising in the collective psyche—especially for women reclaiming exiled parts.

If she’s appearing to you, you may be:

• Healing generational feminine wounds
• Reclaiming sacred rage
• Ready to disrupt internalized systems of control

🐉 5. Mythic Initiation

If Medusa appears in your journey:

• You’ll be told the truth you’ve been swallowing / hiding or avoiding

• You’ll be guided to integrate sacred rage

• You’ll experience the disruption of internalized oppression

• You’ll start to break inherited spells from patriarchy, colonization, or trauma

She is not a monster. She is an initiator. A guardian of becoming.

🌪 6. Truths We May Not Want to Hear

When Medusa—or any archetypal force—enters ceremony, she doesn’t arrive to flatter the ego. She arrives to rupture illusion / delusions and lies. Her medicine often comes through the body, through unexpected words, through inner voices that won’t be silenced. And those messages? They won’t always be what you want to hear.

Sometimes she’ll speak truths you’ve been avoiding.
Sometimes she’ll show you parts of yourself you’ve disowned.
Sometimes, she’ll mirror back the role you’ve played in your own suppression—and ask you to take responsibility for your becoming.

This is why her gaze has power. Not because it punishes—but because it pierces. When archetypal forces like Medusa, Saint Martha, Ogun, Shiva, Kali, Santa Martha, or Hekate (or any other mysterie / lwa / spirit guide show up, they speak the language of the soul—not the language of comfort. You get what is needed not want we want. Sometimes we get the comfort not because we are seeking it but because it gets us ready to face what comes next.

If you’re in ceremony and a message cuts deep, resist the urge to dismiss it. Ask instead:

• What is this message asking me to see that I’ve been unwilling to face?

• What truth am I being initiated into—even if it hurts /burns?

• What part of me is dying, and what is trying to be born?

Medusa doesn’t coddle. She initiates.
She might hiss, cry, rage, or whisper—but she will not lie.

And neither will any being aligned with your evolution.

To walk with these beings is to surrender to radical honesty.
To choose clarity over comfort.
And to trust that beneath the intensity, there is always love—fierce, ancient, and deeply liberating.

 

Medusa doesn’t appear to destroy.
She appears to initiate.
To ask: Are you ready to see?

Let her.

To learn more about how your spirit and spiritual court speaks to you in your dreams, join our next dream program – check it out here.