Walking the Land: The Snake’s Coiled Tail-Sedona, Arizona-Marchiene Rienstra
Copyright Marchiene Reinstra 2010
All Rights Reserved
This is Eileen’s drum she made. She painted Bololokan, the Yavapai myth “rainbow snake” that lives in the Verde Valley, according to their legends and knowledge. She is a water snake and brings water to places around Mother Earth. It is her job to move the rain so that the Earth remains verdant and green. And alive.
WHO ARE WE?
Eileen Nauman (Ai Gvhdi Waya is here Eastern Cherokee name) is 1/8 Eastern Cherokee via her father’s side of the family. Her great-great grandmother was on the Trail of Tears and as a sixteen-year-old, escaped and ran into Kentucky, where she later married into the Gent family. We know only two things about her: that she came from a medicine family and was from the Wolf clan of her people. Her medicine was being a shaman. And this gene has gone down through our family. Eileen was the chosen child to be taught this ‘medicine’ (this means an inherited skill of healing) by her father. She trained with him from age 9 through 18. Later, she had other Native American teachers and in 1990 began training others for Soul Recovery and Extraction, the medicine of her great-great grandmother.
Marchiene Reinstra is an interfaith minister. She has written many books and has been an advocate of women being equal to men in all organized religions. Coming from Dutch missionary parents, Marchiene grew up in India. She is cosmopolitan and has many natural psychic skills. She met Eileen in the mid-90s and since then, they have become a psychic team in search of understanding the energy of the land where they live in the Verde Valley of Arizona. This includes Sedona, but the scope is much wider than that. Please see our blogs from 2009 as they worked to bring the chakra system of Sedona back online.
WHAT IS WALKING THE LAND?
Eileen’s genetic knowing about the land comes through her Native American genetics. She simply sees Nature as symbolic and is able to interpret it so she that she understands the visible and invisible energy in an area and what it is doing. Further, she is clairvoyant and can see the spirits, the guardians of sacred places, vortexes and everything else associated with the land. Her belief is that if we understand the energy and beings where one lives, that you can live in a deep and positive harmony with them.
The land is fed by the human’s gratefulness and attention. And the land’s energy/spiritual beings, in turn, create a far more positive energy framework and environment for the human. They must work together for harmony. Otherwise, if one ignores the other, we are ignoring Mother Earth and all her relations. That is like ignoring your neighbors and pretending they aren’t there or exist.
This blog is dedicated to showing the fundamentals of Walking the Land in hopes that you will take the information and apply it to your own area. And if you will, then you will forge a positive and healing link as a result. And the energy of your area where you live will be amplified, lifted and online so that the positive applications of this teamwork will benefit all. Weather will return to what it used to be. There will be no more floods and droughts, as an example. Water can be cleaned up with prayer and attention to the spirit of it. And so much more. You will learn as we Walk the Land here in the Verde Valley.
TWO BLOGS: Eileen will post her blog on Walking the Land first and then the next day, will post Marchiene’s. Each writes a blog based upon her experience as they walk the land in search of the planetary water snake, known as Bololokan to the Yavapai Native Americans who live in the Verde Valley. There are many powerful planetary beings that work with Mother Earth. Humans can interface with them as well but it is always the planetary, regional or local spirit who decides that. You can’t work with one unless your heart is in the right place, you practice daily humility and understand that humans are a small part of the mighty woven energy that is here on our home, Mother Earth.
Their intent is to discover the natural energy geology of where Bololokan moves/slithers, through the landscape of their valley. In discovering Bololokan’s path, Eileen and Marchiene will then perform ceremony to reawaken this path. In doing that, the energy comes back online and it lifts and helps feed the area in a natural way as it used to be when the First People lived here in union with Mother Earth and all her relations. It will change the weather pattern of the area, which has been in a twenty-year drought. Bololokan is the WATER snake. There are three other planetary snakes for the other three elements: earth, fire and air. Bololokan utilizes the Verde Valley area as one of her many sipapu’s (emergence hole) to come up into our area. She has sipapu’s around the world and slithers inside Mother Earth in tunnels that connect them all. We’re fortunate to have her with us and we discovered her when we opened up the chakras of Sedona. She came to us and we had no idea she existed before that except in Yavapai legends who spoke of “Bololokan.” Once she contacted us at Rainbow Bridge, one of her sipapu’s, she has been with us ever since. This year in 2010, she asked us to discover her energy path throughout our valley and clean out those sacred points with human attention and ceremony. In doing that, her third dimensional energy in our valley will reawaken and bring harmony to it once more. We hope the drought will be broken and the rains that Bololokan brings, will once more, go back to its normal pattern. Join us on our journey and you can be a part of the discovery and education as well.
MARCHIENE’S BLOG ENTRY FOR 12.7.2010
The adventure Eileen and I began last Thursday continued this past Tuesday when she picked me up for our usual lunch at the Wild Flower, which was delicious as always. In the morning at sunrise, I went on a walk along a wash to prepare myself. Walking on washes, which are (now dry) water courses through the high desert always makes me feel close to the great Water Serpent we call Bololokon. A raven flew overhead as I walked, which was a sign to me we were headed in the right direction again with our plans to visit the Sipapu near Mingus Mountain.
The Raven has been our major physical ‘guide’ on our journey of the planetary spirit water snake, Bololokan. Eileen had a Raven show up at her place this morning as she gathered her ceremonial items. And then, another Raven for me as I walked this morning. All good ‘double checks,’ that tell both of us we’re walking with a good heart and our intent is pure. Nature ALWAYS responds to anyone whose intent is humble, who is in their heart and who wants to serve “all our relations.”
Over lunch, Eileen showed me the maps she had found which showed us how to get there along forest service roads. She showed me how the shape of the roads near the sipapu (emergence opening) were like the shape of a snake’s head with open jaws surrounding an egg. I also saw the shape of a bird’s head with wings outspread facing west. This was not surprising, considering I have strong bird medicine, just as Eileen has strong snake medicine. In fact, we have taken to smilingly calling ourselves “Snake Woman” and “Bird Woman.”
Eileen also shared, with much excitement, the vision she had of how the Great Water Rainbow Serpent curved up into the sky from the Grandmother mountain peaks near Flagstaff, and came back down to where it’s tail rested at the sipapu we were about to visit. This is the classic Ouroboros symbol from prehistoric times!
Here is an ancient symbol illustrating ouroborus. Depending upon the country, it was either a snake (Native American/North and South America) or a dragon (the Eastern Asian countries), it meant the same energy. Sometimes “labels” get in the way of the energy and must be discarded or put aside in order to connect with it. Why? Because the left hemisphere of the brain loves to intrude and get into details that may not be important, but pull the person out of their right hemisphere where they need to be operating in order to deal with the invisible and other dimensions.
Eileen’s vision showed how and why this great Serpent energy was both fire and water. It made a lot of sense to me, and gave a clearer picture of what we were dealing with.
The first road Eileen and I took to reach out goal ended up as a “dead end”, although it turned out to be a live end! First of all, there was a sign for me that we were being blessed our journey by the Grandmothers. A double check! We stopped for Eileen to take a picture of the nearby sipapu from which we were then separated by the barbed wire fence of a ranch, and I saw a mailbox right by us with the number 1121.
As we stopped at the dead end, I spotted this mailbox and started to jump up and down! What a double check for me!
That was the number of my maternal grandmother’s house, in which I had lived for several years as a teenager after returning from India with my parents! I was coming to a “home” like place today, the sign said to me. And it turned out to be true. (no surprise!)
We did not give up, of course! We just turned around and found the other road to our destination, which turned out to be much better.
Here is the rocky switch back trail that we hiked on to reach the sipapu or Bololokan’s coiled tail that you can see. It is a rounded hill, soft with feminine curves. Another clue that it is female energy. Anything in the geography of the area that is rounded is feminine. Anything sharp, jutting or angular is male energy expression.
It took us higher, for one thing. And where the road got too rough to drive on, we parked the car. Looking out over the vast view, realized we were in direct alignment with the Grandmother (Humphrey’s Peak/Flagstaff) peaks! (see Eileen’s pics of this) Double check!
As if that were not enough, a beautiful little bird began flying and hopping to our left along the road from bush to bush as if to lead us and assure us we were on the right track.
At last, we had reached a way to get to the coiled tale of Bololokan! We were so excited!
When we reached a dry creek bed at the bottom of the sipapu, we stopped, grounded ourselves, and gave offerings and prayers to the directions and the spirits of the place, asking for permission to enter in a sacred manner. In the silence after our prayers, I heard the words within “Welcome to the womb of the world! We have been awaiting you both for a long time.”
Here I am crossing the dry creek bed that is at the base of the hill. This is where we stopped to give our offerings, our prayers and to ask permission of the Grandmother guardian who stood atop it. Unless we get an okay to move ahead, we never do. To enter an area where one is not welcome only creates chaotic energy. In this case, we were welcomed joyously.
We proceeded forward in this beautiful place with light and eager hearts, following the DRY creek bed until we came to a place where a little path led upwards to a womb-like enclosure on the hillside. We settled in, Eileen saged us, we prayed, and she began drumming. She tells what happened in her blog. I heard the instruction that it was my task as “Bird Woman” to watch for bird signs as we did our work, and create songs to sing at each place.
When given permission, I could post them on the blog in my entry. Just as Eileen rightly emphasized the importance of drawing what you see out on the land as you tend it in a sacred manner (something I love to do!) I realized the importance of singing songs to honor the land and the experiences we have on it.
Just as we went into the ‘womb’ area, we came out the same way and traversed down the dry creek to the trail. It’s important to retrace one’s steps because you are deepening the intention behind being there.
The double check on this is that Nicholas Mann, in his book (which has been an important guide and resource for us) titled: Sedona: Sacred Earth) tells the story of the creation myth of the first woman, Komwida, and her grandson, Skaatakamcha. It is said he went around the land singing, and taught all the people to do the same, saying, ‘If you sing around my body, you will get my songs. If you sing my songs, they will keep you and the earth alive.”
These are the words of the song I heard as Eileen drummed.
“This is where the end
becomes the beginning.
This is where eternity
turns into time.
This is where the egg
of infinite potential
rests in the nest
of a newly hatching world.
After I heard these words I saw a bright line of fire snaking up to the grandmother mountains, rising in the air, and looping back down to the place where we were sitting. I realized it was the Sacred Hoop of Black Elk’s vision of long ago, a sign of hope and life renewed here and now. Eileen also saw a “fire vision” and how we would be lighting that sacred fire in each place we went along the trail of Bololokon.
When we were done recording and sharing our journeys, we returned by way of the creek again to our car, pausing to consider a raven who flew over our path towards the grandmother mountains with which we were aligned as we walked, as if to encourage us and applaud our efforts in behalf of all our relations.
