Surrounded By Snakes Quotes

She kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.

Identity was a liquid state, ever interchangeable, and adaptable to its surroundings... It was better to not have favourites - a snake didn't mourn when it had to shed its skin.

(Actually, I have been surrounded by fire-breathing death snakes before, but not ones with wings. Everything is worse when it has wings.)

I was happy to know her in my small, formal, dependent way. And I felt a ravenous grief for nice boys who are too stupid to take care of themselves, and too dumb to remember to check the surrounding brush for snakes before settling down to sleep for the night.

Surround yourself with snakes, and they will poison you. Surround yourself with eagles, and you will learn to fly to the heavens.

Have you ever had a dream in whig, having spied a deadly snake at your feet, you suddenly begin to see snakes everywhere - suddenly realize, in fact, that you're surrounded by them?" Reynie was surprised. "I have had that dream. It's a nightmare." "Indeed. And it strikes me as being rather like when a person first realizes the extent of wickedness in the world. That vision can become all-consuming - and in a way, it, too, is a nightmare, by which I mean that it is not quite a proper assessment of the state of things. For someone as observant as you, Reynie, deadly serpents always catch the eye. But if you find that serpents are all you see, you may not be looking hard enough.

We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was an infinity of greens, rendered all the greener by splashes of red hibiscus and the herons floating past, so white and big it seemed as if sheets hung out to dry had suddenly taken wing. All other colours - even purple and black - were shades of green. Light and shade were degrees of green. Greenness, here, was less a colour than a colonising impulse. Everything was either already green - like a snake, bright as a blade of grass, sidling across the footpath - or in the process of becoming so. Statues of the Buddha were mossy, furred with green.

Well, there is nothing we can do about it. We have to put up with these snakes, dogs, and swine surrounding us and corrupting the Gospel both in doctrine and in life. Wherever there are faithful preachers they always have to take this. Such is the fortune of the Gospel in the world.

QUALITIES There is a sun-star rising outside form. I am lost in that other. It's sweet not to look at two worlds, to melt in meaning as honey melts in milk. No one tires of following the soul. I don't recall now what happens on the manifest plane. I stroll with those I have always wanted to know, fresh and graceful as a water lily, or a rose. The body is a boat; I am waves swaying against it. Whenever it anchors somewhere, I smash it loose, or smash it to pieces. If I get lazy and cold, flames come from my ocean and surround me. I laugh inside them like gold purifying itself. A certain melody makes the snake put his head down on a line in the dirt....Here is my head, brother: What next! Weary of form, I come into qualities. Each says, "I am a blue-green sea. Dive into me!" I am Alexander at the outermost extension of empire, turning all my armies in toward the meaning of armies, Shams.

While I told myself that each win was a small deposit on the ultimate ownership of the world welterweight crown, the enormous need in me to win touched a whole heap of other responses a fourteen years old can't really work out. It had something to do with rejecting the Lord, with my mother, the Judge, being surrounded by guys who came from wealthy homes, even my headless snake. While I didn't think of it as camouflage, I now know that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front. Too far in front to be an easy mark.

Some species of snakes have small pits on their heads that pick up infrared rays from tasty warm-blooded prey, readily revealed at night against the rapidly cooling surroundings

They passed a dead man in a sitting position on a hummock, entirely surrounded by wild animals and snakes. Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.

She rides the sandworm of space! She guides through all storms Into the land of gentle winds. Though we sleep by the snake's den, She guards our dreaming sould. Shunning the desert heat, She hides us in a cool hollow. The gleaming of her white teeth Guides us in the night. By the braids of her hair We are lifted to heaven! Sweet fragrance, flower-scented, Surrounds us in her presence.

The fact is, that people cannot come to heartily like Florida till they accept certain deficiencies as the necessary shadow to certain excellences. If you want to live in an orange-orchard, you must give up wanting to live surrounded by green grass. When we get to the new heaven and the new earth, then we shall have it all right. There we shall have a climate at once cool and bracing, yet hot enough to mature oranges and pine-apples. Our trees of life shall bear twelve manner of fruit, and yield a new one every month. Out of juicy meadows green as emerald, enamelled with every kind of flower, shall grow our golden orange-trees, blossoming and fruiting together as now they do. There shall be no mosquitoes, or gnats, or black-flies, or snakes; and, best of all, there shall be no fretful people. Everybody shall be like a well-tuned instrument, all sounding in accord, and never a semitone out of the way. Meanwhile, we caution everybody coming to Florida, Don't hope for too much. Because you hear that roses and callas blossom in the open air all winter, and flowers abound in the woods, don't expect to find an eternal summer. Prepare yourself to see a great deal that looks rough and desolate and coarse; prepare yourself for some chilly days and nights; and, whatever else you neglect to bring with you, bring the resolution, strong and solid, always to make the best of things.

And I felt a ravenous grief for nice boys who are too stupid to take care of themselves, and too dumb to remember to check the surrounding brush for snakes before settling down to sleep for the night.

Let me ask you: Have you ever had a dream in which, having spied a deadly snake at your feet, you suddenly begin to see snakes everywhere – suddenly realize, in fact, that you're surrounded by them?" Reynie was surprised. "I have had that dream. It's a nightmare." "Indeed. And it strikes me as being rather like when a person first realizes the extent of wickedness in the world. That vision can become all-consuming – and in a way, it, too, is a nightmare, by which I mean that it is not quite a proper assessment of the state of things. For someone as observant as you, Reynie, deadly serpents always catch the eye. But if you find that serpents are all you see, you may not be looking hard enough.

She leaned back enough to free a hand and brushed his lips with her fingers. He felt the calluses from her guitar strings, the soft surrounding skin, as she examined the previous night's injury. Then, almost shyly, she kissed him, sending shock waves through his body. Ignoring the pain in his lips, he responded, hungry and curious, every nerve in his body awake. He kissed her until his lip started to bleed a little, and would have kept going had she not pulled away.

Julius explained that the palace rooms where they stood were called Wunderkammers, or wonder rooms. Souvenirs of nature, of travels across continents and seas; jewels and skulls. A show of wealth, intellect, power. The first room had rose-colored glass walls, with rubies and garnets and bloodred drapes of damask. Bowls of blush quartz; semiprecious stone roses running the spectrum of red down to pink, a hard, glittering garden. The vaulted ceiling, a feature of all the ten rooms Julius and Cymbeline visited, was a trompe l'oeil of a rosy sky at down, golden light edging the morning clouds. The next room was of sapphire and sea and sky; lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold and silver. A silver mermaid lounged on the edge of a lapis lazuli bowl fashioned in the shape of an ocean. Venus stood aloft on the waves draped in pearls. There were gold fish and diamond fish and faceted sterling silver starfish. Silvered mirrors edged in silvered mirror. There were opals and aquamarines and tanzanite and amethyst. Seaweed bloomed in shades of blue-green marble. The ceiling was a dome of endless, pale blue. A jungle room of mica and marble followed, with its rain forest of cats made from tiger's-eye, yellow topaz birds, tortoiseshell giraffes with stubby horns of spun gold. Carved clouds of smoky quartz hovered over a herd of obsidian and ivory zebras. Javelinas of spotted pony hide charged tiny, life-sized dik-diks with velvet hides, and dazzling diamond antlers mingled with miniature stuffed sable minks. Agate columns painted a medley of dark greens were strung with faceted ropes of green gold. A room of ivory: bone, teeth, skulls, and velvet. A room crowded with columns all sheathed in mirrors, reflecting world maps and globes and atlases inlaid with silver, platinum, and white gold; the rubies and diamonds that were sometimes set to mark the location of a city or a town of conquest resembled blood and tears. A room dominated by a fireplace large enough to hold several people, upholstered in velvets and silks the colors of flame. Snakes of gold with orange sapphire and yellow topaz eyes coiled around the room's columns. Statues of smiling black men in turbans offering trays of every gem imaginable-emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, diamond-stood at the entrance to a room upholstered in pistachio velvet, accented with malachite, called the Green Vault. Peridot wood nymphs attended to a Diana carved from a single pure crystal of quartz studded with tiny tourmalines. Jade tables, and jade lanterns. The royal jewels, blinding in their sparkling excess: crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, heavy ceremonial necklaces, rings, and bracelets that could span a forearm, surrounding the world's largest and most perfect green diamond. Above it all was a night sky of painted stars, with inlaid cut crystal set in a serious of constellations.

I have a capital story which is quite new to me. The hero is a certain Professor Alexander, a philosopher, at Leeds, but I have no doubt that the story is older than he. He is said to have entered a railway carriage with a large perforated cardboard box which he placed on his knees. The only other occupant was an inquisitive woman. She stood it as long as she could, and at last, having forced him into conversation and worked the talk round (you can fill in that part of the story yourself) ventured to ask him directly what was in the box. ‘A mongoose madam.’ The poor woman counted the telegraph posts going past for a while and again could bear her curiosity no further. ‘And what are you going to do with the mongoose?’ she asked. ‘I am taking it to a friend who is unfortunately suffering from delirium tremens.’ ‘And what use will a mongoose be to him?’ ‘Why, Madam, as you know, the people who suffer from that disease find themselves surrounded with snakes: and of course a mongoose eats snakes.’ ‘Good Heavens!’ cried the lady, ‘but you don’t mean that the snakes are real?’ ‘Oh dear me, no said the Professor with imperturbable gravity. ‘But then neither is the mongoose!

When we returned from our jog, several Pirahãs were huddled in a corner of our house, and there was a strong smell of alcohol in the air. Those in the huddle looked conspiratorial and stared at us. Some seemed angry, others ashamed. Others just stared down at something on the ground that they were all surrounding. As I approached, they parted. Pokó’s baby was on the ground, dead. They had forced cachaça down its throat and killed it. “What happened to the baby?” I asked, almost in tears. “It died. It was in pain. It wanted to die,” they replied. I just picked up the baby and held it, with tears now beginning to stream down my cheeks. “Why would they kill a baby?” I asked myself in confusion and grief.

At about eight-thirty or nine the friends make a halt, already in sight of Moranchel. Moranchel is on the left of the Cifuentes road, at some two hundred paces from the highway. It is a gloomy, dark town that seems to have no business being surrounded by green fields. The old man sits down in the ditch and the traveler lies on his back and looks up at some little clouds, graceful as doves, which are floating in the sky. A stork flies past, not very high, with a snake in its beak. Some partridge fly up from a bed of thyme. An adolescent goatherd and a member of his flock are sinning one of the oldest of sins in the shade of a hawthorn tree blooming with tiny sweet-smelling flowers, white as orange blossoms. ― Camilo José Cela, Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside

Territories in the wild are large not as a matter of taste but of necessity. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out. Whereas before for us the cave was here, the river over there, the hunting grounds a mile that way, the lookout next to it, the berries somewhere else—all of them infested with lions, snakes, ants, leeches and poison ivy—now the river flows through taps at hand’s reach and we can wash next to where we sleep, we can eat where we have cooked, and we can surround the whole with a protective wall and keep it clean and warm. A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely. A sound zoo enclosure is the equivalent for an animal (with the noteworthy absence of a fireplace or the like, present in every human habitation).

Shee-it,” the black guy said when he saw us. “You white girls got attitude. Far as I can see, these boys need to get their heads examined. I’d put up with that shit for about a fuckin’ second.” Any normal person would politely pretend that they hadn’t heard a thing. I was learning quickly that I was not surrounded by normal people anymore. Since normal for me was a Dad who would up and leave, a fading beauty queen of a mother who was so engrossed in her own life she forgot her daughters had one, too, and might need her help, and my two “fuckin’ sisters” who were mean as snakes, I figured not normal was not so bad. Shirleen had different thoughts and turned on the black dude. “Like black women don’t have more attitude then ten of these white women,” she declared, as if that was a good thing. “Black women don’t give you shit by yellin’ at your ass for-fuckin’-ever. They get fed up, they quit bitchin’ and burn down your house or stick you with a knife. Makes it easier. Either way, you know it’s time to get your shit together and you just gotta call your insurance man.

The sky is a dark bowl, the stars die and fall. The celestial bows quiver, the bones of the earthgods shake and planets come to a halt when they sight the king in all his power, the god who feeds on his father and eats his mother. The king is such a tower of wisdom even his mother can't discern his name. His glory is in the sky, his strength lies in the horizon like that of his father the sungod Atum who conceived him. Atum conceived the king, but the dead king has greater dominion. His vital spirits surround him, his qualities lie below his feet, he is cloaked in gods and cobras coil on his forehead. His guiding snakes decorate his brow and peer into souls, ready to spit fire against his enemies. The king's head is on his torso. He is the bull of the sky who charges and vanquishes all. He lives on the stuff of the gods, he feeds on their limbs and entrails, even when they have bloated their bodies with magic at Nesisi, the island of fire. He cooks the leftover gods into a bone soup. Their souls belong to him and their shadows as well. In his pyramid among those who live on the earth of Egypt, the dead king ascends and appears forever and forever.

There once was a female snake that roamed around a small village in the countryside of Egypt. She was commonly seen by villagers with her small baby as they grazed around the trees. One day, several men noticed the mother snake was searching back and forth throughout the village in a frenzy — without her young. Apparently, her baby had slithered off on its own to play while she was out looking for food. Yet the mother snake went on looking for her baby for days because it still hadn't returned back to her. So one day, one of the elder women in the village caught sight of the big snake climbing on top of their water supply — an open clay jug harvesting all the village's water. The snake latched its teeth on the big jug's opening and sprayed its venom into it. The woman who witnessed the event was mentally handicapped, so when she went to warn the other villagers, nobody really understood what she was saying. And when she approached the jug to try to knock it over, she was reprimanded by her two brothers and they locked her away in her room. Then early the next day, the mother snake returned to the village after a long evening searching for her baby. The children villagers quickly surrounded her while clapping and singing because she had finally found her baby. And as the mother snake watched the children rejoice in the reunion with her child, she suddenly took off straight for the water supply — leaving behind her baby with the villagers' children. Before an old man could gather some water to make some tea, she hissed in his direction, forcing him to step back as she immediately wrapped herself around the jug and squeezed it super hard. When the jug broke burst into a hundred fragments, she slithered away to gather her child and return to the safety of her hole. Many people reading this true story may not understand that the same feelings we are capable of having, snakes have too. Thinking the villagers killed her baby, the mother snake sought out revenge by poisoning the water to destroy those she thought had hurt her child. But when she found her baby and saw the villagers' children, her guilt and protective instincts urged her to save them before other mothers would be forced to experience the pain and grief of losing a child. Animals have hearts and minds too. They are capable of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, hunger, fear, joy, and caring for their own and others. We look at animals as if they are inferior because they are savage and not civilized, but in truth, we are the ones who are not being civil by drawing a thick line between us and them — us and nature. A wild animal's life is very straightforward. They spend their time searching and gathering food, mating, building homes, and meditating and playing with their loved ones. They enjoy the simplicity of life without any of our technological gadgetry, materialism, mass consumption, wastefulness, superficiality, mindless wars, excessive greed and hatred. While we get excited by the vibrations coming from our TV sets, headphones and car stereos, they get stimulated by the vibrations of nature. So, just because animals may lack the sophisticated minds to create the technology we do or make brick homes and highways like us, does not mean their connections to the etheric world isn't more sophisticated than anything we could ever imagine. That means they are more spiritual, reflective, cosmic, and tuned into alternate universes beyond what our eyes can see. So in other words, animals are more advanced than us. They have the simple beauty we lack and the spiritual contentment we may never achieve.

The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5 Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker. Foragers mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives and bird nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practising yoga or t’ai chi.

At first of course everybody had been quiet, fearful. The funeral procession snaked its way through the drab, slushy little city in dead silence. The only sound was the slap-slap-slap of thousands of sockless shoes on the silver-wet road that led to the Mazar-e-Shohadda. Young men carried seventeen coffins on their shoulders. Seventeen plus one, that is, for the re-murdered Usman Abdullah, who obviously could not be entered twice in the books. So, seventeen-plus-one tin coffins wove through the streets, winking back at the winter sun. To someone looking down at the city from the ring of high mountains that surrounded it, the procession would have looked like a column of brown ants carrying seventeen-plus-one sugar crystals to their anthill to feed their queen. Perhaps to a student of history and human conflict, in relative terms that's all the little procession amounted to: a column of ants making off with some crumbs that had fallen from the high table. As wars go, this was only a small one. Nobody paid much attention. So it went on and on. So it folded and unfolded over decades, gathering people into its unhinged embrace. Its cruelties became as natural as the changing seasons, each came with its own unique range of scent and blossom, its own cycle of loss and renewal, disruption and normalcy, uprisings and elections. Of all the sugar crystals carried by the ants that winter morning, the smallest crystal of course went by the name of Miss Jebeen.

Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.

Thousands of grasshoppers were jumping everywhere; I felt like I was walking through popping popcorn. These critters made me conscious of my surroundings, since many snakes eat grasshoppers. When it comes to rattlesnakes and copperheads, the locals there have a saying that the “Third person gets bit.” The theory is: the first person gets the snake’s attention, the second person gets the snake aggravated, and the third person gets bit. There were only two of us, but I didn’t feel like testing the theory.

Peruvian, Amor-cintas Also known the Peruvian Penis Pull, this is a wedding tradition from the Andes where bridesmaids surround the groom who has 6 ribbons coming out from the top of his trousers, only one of which is attached to his penis. The lucky girl who yanks the ribbon connected to his trouser snake makes love to him before he ties the knot.This tradition led to another notorious tradition called the 'Conmutación-de-novia-de-última-hora', that is, last-minute-bride-switching.

Foragers mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives and birds’ nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practising yoga or t’ai chi.

Kundalini is a primitive spirit, a creative force that typically resides in a dormant state within our bodies. We realize our innate power and completeness upon awakening. We know there is everything within us that we need to be happy and fulfilled. Kundalini is not a physical reality but a perceptible reality. Once we have been awakened, we are shedding our old tendencies, and negativity like a snake sheds off its old skin. The kundalini is said to empower us with Shakti — that Divine Mother's primordial energy. Charged with this feminine creative force, we get filled with the vigor, enthusiasm, willpower, and self-confidence that we need to shake off negative memories and emotions hidden deep within our subconscious mind. Our mind is getting dormant. Issues and issues that had once held our focus now seem insignificant. Such a mind-state automatically produces intuitive wisdom.  Released from the endless chain of uncertainty and misunderstanding, insight is our guardian and guide.  The strength of discernment is unfailing. The reason kundalini awakening is such a remarkable aspect of spiritual awakening is that it is not based on complex theological arguments or religious norms that are culturally defined. Instead, Kundalini concentrates on the divine's immediate, ultimate experience within us. And regardless of your particular religious background and values, we can all use kundalini yoga to assist in our spiritual evolution. Most ancient myths allude to the meaning of kundalini. Tiresias narrative is a prime example. If Tiresias–the ancient Greek seer discovered two copulating snakes, he would stick his staff between them to distinguish them. He was immediately turned into a woman and remained like that for seven years until he was able to repeat his action and turn back into a male. In this novel, the force of change, powerful enough to completely reverse both male and female physical polarities, emerges from the fusion of the two serpents, passed on by the ring. Tiresias staff was later passed on to Hermes along with serpents. Several medical organizations use the ancient Greek icon of Hermes, the Greek god and messenger of all gods, called “Karykeion.” In occult Hermetic philosophy, Hermes Caduceus represents the masculine's potential as a central phallic rod surrounded by two coupling serpents ' writhing, woven Shakti energies. The rod also represents the spine (sushumna), while the serpents perform metaphysical currents (pranas) along the inda and pingala channels from the chakra at the base of the spine to the pineal gland in a double helix pattern.

Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels had never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be. Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been hissed at in the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while men who defended slavery—practiced polygamy—-justified the stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor, are supposed to have passed smilingly from earth to the embraces of the angels? Why should we think that the brave thinkers, the investigators, the honest men, must have left the crumbling shore of time in dread and fear, while the instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and users of thumb-screws, of iron boots and racks; the burners and tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers and babes; the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the builders of dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty, the breakers of fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded by the fierce fiends of God?

Focus Attract illicit sexual relationships Make a specific person have an increased sexual appetite for you Obtain unasked for gifts of significant value Discover if someone is hiding money or valuables from you Pathwork The landscape seems to be filled with a soft pink haze. You walk next to a man-made stone pool of water. The water is warm, and on its surface, float winding black snakes. A warm, wet breeze blows around the ruined walls surrounding the pool. You smell the scent of fresh skin after bathing. Gremori Sigil

Warkentin has been studying this behavior ever since. Fortunately, their research now involves fewer itchy all-nighters and more infrared video cameras. They show me one recent video in which a cat-eyed snake lunges at a tree frog clutch and grabs several eggs in its jaws. As it tries to pull its mouthful free from the jelly, the surrounding embryos wriggle furiously, releasing an enzyme from their faces that quickly disintegrates their eggs. One of them plops into the water. A second later, another joins it. Soon, tadpoles are tumbling down too quickly to count, and the snake, still chewing its first mouthful, is left with a smear of empty jelly. “I never get tired of watching this,” Warkentin tells me.

She rides the sandworm of space! She guides through all storms Into the land of gentle winds. Though we sleep by the snake's den, She guards our dreaming souls. Shunning the desert heat, She hides us in a cool hollow. The gleaming of her white teeth Guides us in the night. By the braids of her hair We are lifted up to heaven! Sweet fragrance, flower-scented, Surrounds us in her presence.

The beasts. Tobias’s lips turned up as he looked at the bags surrounding us and back. “They will be grateful, but you two need to get ready. Have someone else bring it to them. We don’t have time.” As if on cue, the creatures started to sing, and my gaze dropped to the stone floor. A chill ran up my spine at the chorus of laughter. It always reminded me of hyenas, and it freaked me out. I knew how far down they were, and it always astounded me how the acoustics worked such that we could still hear them. Miles of tunnels snaked their way into the mountain, connecting rooms, chambers, and dungeons through numerous levels.

It's not until Uncle Ronnie returns from the grill with the final plate of burgers, settling into a seat at the head of the table, that it hits me. He makes himself a plate then gazes down the table, his eyes coming to rest on me and Deja. 'So how is school for you girls?' 'Grades okay?' And then I realize: he sees me as a child. It's like a bolt of lightning snaking down electric from the sky. Almost every day since I was thirteen, since my body first began to transform, I have moved through the world surrounded by men trying to convince me and themselves that there is no such thing as too young for a woman, or too old for a man, that there is no such thing as an unavailable female body. I have been moving through the world feeling like a glowing green light, green for go Go GO and Deja's uncle Ronnie is the first person in a long time to see me, not the red of my hair, but me and decide on his own to stop.

Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter ‘H’.

Calmer again, he looked out to see he was sandwiched below the cloud and above the fog. There was no way the helicopter would see him here. The cabin was nearer, but he was still too far above it and night was getting closer. He had to keep going. He plucked another couple of limbs from a tree. The pine scent thrilled his senses. He was alive. Norman half walked, half skidded down the slope until eventually it began to widen and the gradient relaxed. He found Sandra a little further down, tall spruces surrounding the patch of snow where she lay. Norman’s seat from the plane was just above her. Her eyes were open but she was stiff and dead. He covered her body with twigs then moved on. Now that the slope was shallow enough for him to control his descent, he slid on his bottom down the apron for at least 300 m (1,000 ft). He made his way down into a narrow and twisted gulch in front of the huge ridge he had seen earlier. Carefully he avoided the ice-covered stream that snaked below him. Get wet, you get hypothermia, you die.

All I had to do to get home was follow gravity. The school perched on a high, rocky promontory surrounded on three sides by the sea. A single road—the cunningly named “Main Street”—snaked downhill through beautiful downtown Dunnsmouth (a handful of sad stores and a police station), past the town’s only stop sign, and ended at the bay. If I’d turned left at that stop sign I would have eventually made it to the highway and civilization. Don’t think I didn’t fantasize about it.

fuck” I gasped, unable to stop myself. My mouth flew forwards to meet his cock as it coiled in the air like an angry snake, my lips surrounding the head of his dick as it reached towards me. I felt his strong hand on the back of my head as I swirled my tongue around his cock, his thickness taking me by surprise as I gorged on him. I felt so aroused, so charged, so full of excitement as I sucked on him. His hands on the back of my head pushed me further onto his stiffness, as I sucked harder and stronger, tasting his masculinity, feeling myself being taken fully under his control. His slender fingers ran from my head, across my face and towards my neck where they plunged south towards my breasts, my stepbrother kneeling slightly to allow his hands to reach my nipples

light the night before. Downriver, I found the footprints of our mystery guests, but they were from the kind of hiking boot that pretty much everyone wore. I didn’t find anything new around the dig, not that I really expected to come across anything else as blatant as the Weems Aerospace pen. But it was still incredible to be in the middle of a real dinosaur dig, surrounded by honest-to-goodness tyrannosaur bones. We had to strike camp early. Sage needed to help out around the ranch, Dash and Ethan had to get to their summer jobs, and Summer had lined up more investigating for us to do. Once again, I hadn’t agreed to this so much as been thrust into it. I had turned off my phone when I went to sleep, and when I turned it back on, I found a long text chain from Summer saying that she was heading to Snakes Alive in the morning to question Rick, and she was doing it with or without me. I also found a series of e-mails that I had been included on between Summer and Tommy Lopez. Summer had written to Tommy with an update about what had happened at the Barksdales’ and our lead to Rick at Snakes Alive. Tommy had responded that this was great work, but then said he was still going to be out of town on business at least another day, at which point Summer had suggested approaching Rick with me, posing as normal kids who wanted to buy a snake. To my surprise, Tommy had been supportive. He even thought there might be an advantage

If you really want to help, then be extra vigilant. Be aware of your surroundings, watch for anyone acting strangely. Stay away from them and let us know.” “He’s right.” I said. “I couldn’t deal with it if something happened to either of you two.” “Nothing will.” Sam shot Stacey a look. “We’ll stay out of it, but if you need our help, we’ll be there for you.” “Like the Scooby-Doo gang,” Stacey said with a smile. “But cooler and without the dog.” She paused, wrinkling her nose. “We have a giant demon snake instead.

The anesthesiologist had a point. Magnetic resonance imaging equipment surrounding the patient’s head provided three hundred and sixty degree visibility of the entire lower brain cavity. The delicate depression known as Turk’s Saddle, which housed the pituitary gland, was clearly visible on a bank of monitors mere inches from Rick’s keenly scanning eyes. And the tiny flexible penlight snaked carefully up the boy’s left nostril into the sphenoidal sinus gave an unmistakable close-up view of the organ in question.

An absence of gringos visiting the city meant that it was easy to find a taxi; they surrounded and implored me.

The plump, nervous bride, flicking at her veil, posed in a voluminous gown and glittering tiara, attended by a bevy of young men in black suits, slicked-down hair, wide shoulders, and confident smiles; the bridesmaids, all shapes and sizes but dressed in identical purple gowns, stumbled badly in stiletto heels on the cobblestones. Surrounding them were potbellied matrons in tight dresses, portly husbands in yellow suits with stupendous sideburns and droopy mustaches, overdressed children, and heavily made-up crones in bombazine and shawls.

Eighty traps seemed like a lot when we started walking. But at the end of two hours, Gordon and Tom and I haven’t collected a single snake. Maybe it’s the drought. Maybe the snake population, here in the north of the island as in the south, has passed the peak of its cycle and declined. Maybe the trap design is no good, or possibly we’re using the wrong bait. Temporarily, for whatever reason, B. irregularis has turned invisible. But the consequences of its presence surround us like a web.

No place in Haiti was easy to get to and to drive to their lodge would take a couple of hours, so they sent a van to pick us up. It was already evening and the sun had just set, as we made our way up into the mountains behind Port-au-Prince. As we bounced along the dirt road winding through the hills, I could distinctly hear the rhythm of drums and see fires on the distant mountains. Mrs. Allen, who was with us, explained that in the 1940’s devout members of the Catholic faith considered the Voodoo rites an abomination of their faith. They armed themselves and started to eradicate from Haiti what they considered a cult. The entire thing turned into a war! They burned voodoo temples and shrines, and killed some of the practitioners as well as voodoo priests. In the end, the Catholic hierarchy gave up and after a time reached a tacit understanding with them. They now allowed Voodoo drums and songs to be sung in Catholic Church services and ignored what they once called devil worship. At the lodge, we were assigned rooms with real beds instead of the cots we were used to on the ship. Dinner consisted of chicken in a hot tomato and garlic sauce, over rice, with a heap of picklese on the side. Picklese is a pickled dish or Vinaigre Piquant, indigenous to Haiti consisting of peppers, shredded cabbage, onions, carrots, peas, vinegar, peppercorns and cloves. The dessert was Haitian Flan. It could not have been better and I was glad that I had availed myself of this generous offer. After dinner we went outside to where there was a large fire roaring, surrounded by benches made of split logs. We were warned that it gets cool in these mountains, and I was glad that I had brought along a sweater and jacket. We seated ourselves on the logs around the fire and listened to a gaunt-looking old Haitian woman explain what Voodoo was. She sounded convincing as she told of the Grand Voodoo Zombie rituals that were held at “Wishing Spot,” and how snakes slithered about the feet of the young women dancers. She spoke reverently about the walking dead in the Lower Artibonite Valley and the Spirits trapped in bottles near Cape Haitian. It was all very spooky and gave me something to think about that night. However before her talk ended, she came directly up to me and, looking deep into my eyes, said that I was to beware…. “I would witness death before leaving the island….” Ouch!

Primitive man has never been able to limit his needs to what is strictly necessary. His friendships among the souls are not confined to the creatures that are useful to his body or dangerous to his life. When we see how man in his poetry, his myths and legends creates an imaginative counterpart of his surroundings, how he arranges his ceremonial life, at times indeed his whole life, according to the heavens and their movement, how at his festivals he dramatizes the whole creation of his limited world through a long series of ritual scenes, we gain some idea how important it was to him to underpin his spiritual existence. His circle of friends spans from the high lights of heaven to the worm burrowing in the soil; it includes not only the bug that may be good to eat, but also innocuous insects that never entered into his list of delicacies; it comprises not only the venomous snake, but also harmless crawling things that have no claim on his interest save from the fact of their belonging to his country.

WHY SO SWEET? Tongues surrounded by the farm of sugarcane, Hold on, their prickling stuff stings like a snake. Showers of appreciation swiftly slide through words, But droplets of back-stabbing makes your innocence appear as a blur. Faces coated with the colors of togetherness, But their hearts turning black with the particles of deceitfulness.

Malory tells the story, in his 'Morte D'Arthur,' that the end comes by a fatal Destiny, that no one can escape. Arthur, surrounded by his noble warriors, approaches his son, who leads the enemy hosts, and offers him peace. . . . Mordred, dressed in black, thin, with his generals around him, has accepted the offer. Then, a snake slithers between the feet of a warrior who unsheathes his sword to protect himself. The gesture is taken as an attack and the fratricidal war is unleashed. Everyone dies, except Arthur, who is carried to the Isle of Avalon (to the impregnable earthly Paradise, to Hyperborea) where the women-magas and wise women look after him until his recovery.