Calendar of the Moon 5 Gort Naga Panchami: Festival of Snakes Colours: Green and Brown Element: Earth Altar: Upon cloth patterned like snakeskin place three green candles, a chalice of milk, a bowl of rice and ghee, an open box containing all the collected snakeskins of the House, and many figures of snakes, including one large central figure. If there is a live snake in the House, it is brought out and honored today, and fed. Offerings: Milk, rice, and ghee. Daily Meal: Indian food. Naga Panchami Invocation Hail, Serpents, and children of serpents! Hail, you who shed your skins! Hail, you who are nestled In the bosom of the Earth! Teach us what it is to be humble, To crawl on the ground, To do without limbs, To be dependent on other things for warmth, And yet still to pursue what it is that you need. Teach us the mystery of the stiffening and quietness, The slow blindness and lack of feeling, And then the bursting out into the world, Hungering for sustenance and warmth, Renewed again like the young. Help us to rebirth ourselves, Over and over and over again, That we might better accept the final ending When it slithers to our side. (The milk is poured out as a libation, as is the rice and ghee. All spend the next hour in a drum circle, doing the snake dance.) Chant: Fur and feather and scale and skin, Different without but the same within. Many in body but one in soul, By all colors are the spirits shown whole.
[source:paganbookofhours.org]