The Gifts of the Nagas

By Bhola Banstola

The word “naga” means different things. It is a Sanskrit term, and it is used to express one of the aspects of the serpent; and so the serpent is used as a metaphor, or as an animal spirit form of the naga that we can see.

Naga, as I said, means many things. In my language, breathing is called naga, and naga also means naked, like the serpent is naked, they have nothing, not even an eye lid to cover their eyes, everything is open; there is nothing to hide.

So nagas are very important spirits. In our Nepalese traditions we often make offerings to them.

The Lower World realm is the naga loca. Naga loca means the realm of the nagas, and it is the lowest part of the Lower World realms. From there the nagas, the serpent beings, command they rule the whole universe.

The naga loca is a place where many types of nagas dwell. Some traditions say there are eight kinds of nagas — called the Eight Naga Kings — but some traditions say there are nine or twelve different types of nagas.

Nagas have two aspects. For some people and in some traditions, they are seen as auspicious all the time, and in other traditions they are not seen as auspicious, because if they are not happy they can create a kind of disharmony within our own body, within our minds, within our emotions, and also in our environment.

They are the most important archetype of change and transformation because they shed and change their skins for renewal, which is the beginning of new life. Because of this, they teach us to let go of old things and to begin again. If we cannot let go of our old patterns, our old thoughts, our old stories, things which are unhealthy, we cannot begin new things.

This is why nagas are seen as primal spirits, who teach us about change, because change is inevitable, we are all perishable beings, not immortal ones.

But, at the same time, nagas are called the ‘spirits of immortality,’ although that does not mean they do not die, it simply means they have a very high, a very strong, consciousness. Their consciousness and their wisdom is helpful for us to learn to understand from them.

Our myths say that at the beginning of everything is a conch shell, and above the conch shell is a naga, and above the naga is a turtle, and above the turtle there are eight elephants, and above the elephants is the earth herself.

The naga who supports the turtle is called Sesha-Ananta Naga Devi, and she holds the whole world on her nine heads. Our stories say that if this naga is unhappy she moves one of those nine heads and then an earthquake happen, and when she spits her venom a volcano erupts. Sesha-Ananta Naga Dev holds up the sky too, she holds up everything, everywhere.

It is so important that we remember these serpentine beings. If we look at the ancient civilisations of the world, such as the Sumerians and the Mesopotamians of the Middle East, or the Mayan civilisation of Central America, or if we look to the ancient Indus valley civilization, in all of these, we see the presence of naga serpents in different forms.

Some are exactly like serpentine beings, but some are half human, some are half bird, and some are half serpent and half animal of one kind or another.

These spirit beings were envisioned and understood by our ancestors, who saw how the world was created, and what role the serpentine beings have in it. So they understood how important it is to honor these serpentine beings.

And here I think it’s important to mention something we called the naga mani. This is a jewel, held in the mouth of the naga, and it is one of the most precious things that a naga holds.

In our tradition, we say that when a shaman journeys to the lowest part of the Lower World, it is not dark, deep down there, because of the light that the naga-mani omits, making everything luminous instead of dark. So we say naga-mani is one of the most precious things that the world has ever had.

But not everything about nagas is positive, we have a term we use which is naga dosha. Naga dosha means the negative effect that a naga can have on someone or something if we do not respect them. Respecting nagas is very important, for example if we defecate, or pollute their sacred places, then they can cause both physical and psychological problems for us.

In my culture we also speak about something we call sarpa dosha. This is the negative affect a naga may have on a woman.

We believe that the nagas are responsible for fertility, and that they are the protectors of the human race. Nagas bring abundance, and nagas also give progeny to people, they are responsible for human fertility.

So nagas affect the ability of a woman to conceive a child. They may give a woman a series of miscarriages, or they may cause problems with a woman’s menstrual cycle, or create physical problems in a woman’s sacred femine reproductive organs.

When those things happen we say it is sarpa dosha, they are caused by the affect of the nagas, because we are not in harmony with them.

But it is not just women they affect. We have another term, sarpa kala dosha, which is the negative affect of a naga on the course of a person’s life.

In the course of our life we may have things we want to do, but we are blocked from doing them. It is not enough that we want to do it, it is not enough that our ancestors approve, or our family approves, or our spirit helpers approve; something happens all the time to block us. The nagas have a great role to play in the cycle and path of our life. So we believe these types of blocks can be caused by the naga serpents.

Nagas are sometimes compared with trees and mountains. A mountain can be thought of as the emanation of a naga, just as some sacred trees are. Nagas are the bringers of the rain too. Sometimes we know that there is not enough rain, so we have a drought, and sometimes there is too much rain and crops fail because of that. This is one way in which they can affect the environment.

So, because of all these, we need to make offerings to the nagas to help bring harmony and to thank them, to express gratitude to them, for the way they make our life smooth, for the timely rain, for the harvest and all we eat which grew during the previous seasons.

Nagas WIthin Our Body
As we know, caduceus, the famous symbol of medicine — which I am sure we have all seen and know well, the sign which many pharmacies and hospitals have outside — is a staff with two serpents, two nagas winding up it and looking at each other.

Nagas are the symbol of medicine, because we have nagas in our body, and the caduceus sign, the two snakes and the central staff, represent the three energy channels we have in our bodies.

These are two aspects, represented by the nagas, one female and one male — called ida and pingala — and the central staff — called sushumna — as well.

The shusumna, which is a neutral channel, neither male or female, carries all of the memories from our previous existences, and in our tradition at the base of the shusumna the nagas coil three and a half times around it.

When we do sacred breathing exercises, and when we stimulate our lower ends, the processes are important for generating harmony within us, in order to maintain our inner body temperature, enliven our cells and tissues, and give life to our organs.

So, the place where the nagas coil around at the base of the sushumna within our body, is regarded as our naga loca, just as the earth has her own naga loca; it is the realm of the naga within our body. It is the same Sesha-Ananta Naga Devi — the powerful naga who holds up the earth and the sky — within our body.

When Sesha-Ananta Naga Devi within our body contracts, it is like a serpent going in a cave, or a hole in the ground. In that hole the serpent rests all coiled up; but when it comes out of it’s hole the serpent goes out in a line, zig-zagging as it goes.

It is like this with the naga in our body too, the Sesha-Ananta, when we are in state of low energy, of slow motion, when we do not see the light of life, when we do not see the door of life opening, when we do not see the opportunities of life coming, then we become like the coiled naga, we do not move, we remain down. This contracts time, makes it shorter.

And when, through healing and ceremonies and rituals and sacred practices, we start to make things happen, we are no longer stagnant, and the naga opens up itself, and this prolongs time.
So, we are governed by the nagas within ourselves very much. Even sneezing and blinking our eyes, even our heart beat and our breathing, the sacred fire in our belly, our knees, our calfs, under the soles of our feet... every place, every house, every space within, every important spirit point in our body, they are all governed by the naga.

So nagas are not something that we have to go to look for somewhere very far away from us, we can reflect upon ourselves, because we are the carriers of the nagas ourselves, deep within us in an unconscious form. The nagas are the greatest teachers and mentors to humans.

In our earthly realm, in the subterranean regions, nagas live under the trees, in holes underneath, or inside trees, and in the cracks of the earth, and they remain in profound silence within these places.

A snake will not attack any being unless it perceives that it is in danger, but once there is danger, than a snake will attack quickly. nagas are like this too.

And nagas teach us about our course through life. Serpents, when they move, do so in a zig zag motion, because they are connected to the earth. It is said that the serpents collaborate with the Earth Mother. The Earth Mother and the nagas are not separate, they work together.

So when they move in a zig zag, it is a lesson for those of us on a spiritual path, as the nagas tell us that one single path, one direction, one way, may not have the answer. We cannot remain fixed on one path only; we have to look for opportunities, we have to look for different sources.
That is why, when a serpent moves that way, in a zig zag, it is a medicine, a teaching for us that we have to look using different perspectives, look in different directions, look for different sources, in order to learn to understand and let go of what we have been holding for a very long time.

Naga Kanya
And now we come to a special naga, called Naga Kanya or sometimes Naga Kumari. Naga Kanya is the virgin naga, which means she has no family, and lives on her own.

Naga Kanya lives beyond the boundaries between realms, she has no one single realm which she belongs to. She is the carer of the earth, the carer of the waters, the carer of the atmosphere, she has no limitations.

She is shown with a number of small serpents rising above her, growing out from within her, and forming a canopy above her. When she has five serpents she is Pancha Kanya DevI; when she has seven serpents she is Sapta Kanya DevI; and when she has nine serpents she is Nava Kanya Devi.

The lower half of her body is shown as a serpent, and the top half of her is shown as a woman, and she also has wings. The wings are important, because they symbolise that she has no limitation of her domain, with her she can go anywhere, to any level of every world; she is beyond limits, beyond borders.

In her hands she holds a white conch shell, holding it with both of her hands. The conch shell represents our primordial memory. Around her neck she wears a mala, a string of prayer beads, made of pearls. This special naga is considered very important in Nepal, and she is very well known.

The nagas are infinite, we can never finish speaking about them. According to our traditions, when the world ends, when everything comes to a conclusion, the one who will remain will be the Naga Kanya with nine serpents coming out of her — Nava Kanya Devi.

She will be the last one, and she will work with time to prolong it, because she is the commander of all of the naga realms.

Naga Panchami Festival
On the fifth day after the dark moon in the Nepali month of Shrawan, a major naga festival takes place in Nepal each year, which is called Naga Panchami. The Nepalese calendar is a lunar calendar, so each year Naga Panchami is on a slightly different day according to the Western calendar, but it is normally around the middle of July.

The month of Shrawan is regarded as a dark month, an inward month, and it is also said to be an auspicious month of the year. In this month in which the deities, the divinities, the spirit beings are said to go to the Lower World on retreat, and it is the most important time.

Naga panchami is dedicated to thanking the nagas for bringing the rain, so that the farmers can cultivate the land and sow the crops. The nagas are called ‘the spirit of fertility’ because they bring the rain and with it fertility and abundance. Without the rain, nothing can live.

During the day of Naga Panchami, people fast, and most of the people do a ceremony in the morning with a picture, or a drawing, which represents the nagas, the naga spirits.

The naga pictures, or home made drawings with a pen or pencil, or the statue of a naga needs to be woken up, so we say a prayer to the nagas in front of it as a way of giving life to it. If we do not give the image life we do not give prana. Prana is life, so if we don’t give life to a sacred image it will have no meaning.

So we would make a simple prayer in our own way; saying something like: “You are the guardian of the earth, you are the caretaker, you are the protector of my house and my property, you are the protector of all the realms — the water realm, the earth realm, and the Upper World realm. Please be present, please be alive and protect my property.”

There are many different ways, that the nagas are depicted, but in the one on this page you can see, eight nagas, four on the left, and four on the right in a variety of colours. There are also poisonous beings shown with them like centipedes and scorpions.

If you look you will see every naga has bowl in front of them filled with milk. Milk is given to the nagas as a universal life sustaining food. Now, we all know that snakes, are non vegetarian, but it is a traditional to give milk to the nagas, although some traditions in my country also make offering of eggs, or even sacrificed a chicken, but in my tradition we don’t do that, we only offer milk, flowers, fruits and sweets.

We also make a special drink, which looks like milk. We grind rice into a flour, and add water to it to make something that looks like milk.

Before the ceremony if we have a statue of a naga, we clean it, and if we have a painting or any kind of printed poster, then we sprinkle a little water over it to cleanse it. And after we have done the cleansing work we offer put the statue or the picture on an altar, and we offer the flowers, fruits, milk and sweets to the nagas.

At the end of the ceremony we offer the water again, sprinkling over the statue or the picture. The first water is to quench the naga’s thirst and the last water is to clean the naga again after the food has been received; just like we might wash our faces after we have eaten a meal.

Nagas like gold. They like real gold and they like the colour gold too. You can out a yellow cloth down on your altar and put all the offerings on that, and you can also make a golden drink for them by adding some saffron, or even some tumeric to some water, so it becomes like gold. Nagas really love that, so, if you have no milk at home, if you cannot make the white rice flour water, then you could add some saffron or tumeric to some water and make an offering of that, and they will be very happy.

When you make offerings, make sure that everything is very clean.

And after we have given the offerings we stick the drawing up besides the main door of our house. It doesn’t matter if we can only put it inside our house, the important thing is we put it in such a way that it is visible to us.

In Nepal people put their poster or picture of the nagas by the front door to protect against lightning, because the nagas create the clouds and bring the rain, and the clouds bring with lightning with them. That is why we ask the nagas to protect our houses from lightning. And they also protect our house from the invasion of any kind of venomous animals, which is why those creatures are shown on the pictures of the nagas.

And after we have put the image above our door, we put special plants with it too. We use a shrub called dharuba, [Bothriochloa pertusa], which is also called ‘Indian couch grass’ [not to be confused with the English plant known as couch grass], or “Devil’s grass.”

It grows mostly in dry places, and it is very sacred to the nagas. We offer it to them when we do a ceremony, so we add some to the picture, and add a coin too in order to call abundance in to our house.

Another sacred plant we offer the nagas is kusha grass [Desmostachya bipinnata] which grows abundantly in Asia.

This is a very important plant, because we have a story that says Garuda stole amrita – the elixir of immortality — from heaven, but he dropped it as he flew. When the amrita fell from his beak it fell on some kusha grass, which has a very sharp edge, so when the nagas went to lick up the amrita, their tongues were cut, and that is why all snakes now have a V shaped tongue.

So kusha grass is very sacred and connected to the nagas, and the nagas have the wisdom of immortality because they tasted the amrita which fell from the beak of Garuda. So we remember the story and then we know how the nagas became such powerful healing spirits. Kusha grass is used equally by shamans, Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, and they all consider it very sacred.
When we make an offering to our ancestors we also use kusha grass. We make a ring out of it, and put it on our finger, and when we make an offering of water and food to them, and it is like reconnecting with them and bringing back wisdom from them.

Kusha grass grows in swamps and places where there is a lot of water, which are the sacred places of the nagas. Lakes and pools and rivers; anywhere where there is water, in these places nagas are very, very active.

There is one more plant, a creeper called Naag Beli Lahara, which we consider as sacred to the nagas. The creeper grows in trees and looks like a snake, and during the Naga Panchami festival some people put this creeper outside their front door too.

The creeper grows all over Southeast Asia, and I got the one I have when I was visiting Laos in a very special place. I took a rest on the ground and fell asleep, and in my dreams I saw a serpent.

When I opened my eyes, I saw this creeper right in front of me hanging in the tree straight away. It was dead and dry, I did not have to cut the plant, so I took it and put it on my body and I went back to sleep again and had the same dream again. Because of that I felt the special importance of the one I found in Laos, so I took it away with me and now I carry it with me often when I travel.

Nagas of the Directions
When we do a naga offering in our house, whenever it is possible — and it depends on the time and space available — we mix flour and water together to make a dough, and with that dough we make small representations of nagas.

We make the nagas like a snake, with either three, five or seven bends in their body. When we make them, we make them with their heads looking up, not looking down or flat to the ground. When we make them with their heads up it shows that they are alive; they need to be alive.

We always make the nagas in pairs too, so they are not lonely, and if it is possible we make enough to be able to colour them for each of the colours we use for the sacred four directions and the four elements.

We colour two black to represent the black nagas. All this family of nagas we call the Kali Naga, the black nagas.

Then we colour two more yellow — the Aphelia Naga. Two red — the Rati Naga. Two blue — the Need Naga. Two green — the Hariyali Naga. And finally a pair of white nagas — Seti Naga.
If colours are not available, then people often just tie little strips of coloured cloth to them to decorate the nagas.

We place the yellow nagas in the north to represent the element of earth. The blue nagas go in the west to represent the element of water. The red nagas go in the south to represent the element of fire, and the green nagas go in the east to represent the element of air. We do this because the nagas are everywhere, and are present in every element.

Then we place the white and the black nagas in the center of all of the other nagas. The black nagas represent the Lower World nagas, and the white nagas represent the Upper World nagas.

Some traditions say that the white nagas are the male nagas and the black nagas are the female nagas, but it is not like that in my understanding.

So, all the nagas can be set up like this, but if it is not possible to do this with nagas for each direction, then you might be able to make just two nagas, a male one — a naga — and a female one — a nagini. These represent the king and queen of the nagas, Naga Raja and Naga Rani.
If you only make two nagas like this, it is best to offer them some yellow coloured fabric to represent gold, or if you are able to, you could colour them both with saffron or tumeric water.

All the nagas — whether you make two for each direction or just two in total — they all face inwards, facing the centre, with their tails on the outside.

And in front of this circle of nagas, you then offer a small bowl of water, a bowl container of milk, and a small bowl with water that has saffron or tumeric added to it.

Then you can add some coins, and some fruit, such as a peeled banana, or a peeled apple cut up into small pieces. Any other vegetarian food is Ok to use as an offering as well.

When people can not do the ceremonies to honor the nagas they can do the bumi mudra. This is a special hand position; a mudra is a sacred hand position.

In my culture, each finger represents an element, earth air, fire, water and either, and bumi is the earth. So the bumi mudra is the earth hand position. For this you unite your thumb — which is the fire element — and your ring finger — which is the earth element.

People make the bumi mudra and they face thier hands down towards the earth, and they do the simple practice of making a prayer and remembering the sacred presence of the nagas.

Finding the Naga Place
So now here is some homework for you to do. Take your drum, and with the permission of the spirit of your drum, and the spirits of your ancestors, do a journey to the place where you live.

You might already know a place near you where the nagas are likely to be present; perhaps it is even in your garden; and if it is that is great because you will not have far to go.

Maybe on your journey you be shown a special group of trees that grow together near where you live. Sometimes trees are very sacred to the nagas, maybe coming out of the earth in a special way. When you go and stand near trees like this you might feel a very strange sensation, especially if it is possible for you to be in bare feet. In these places sometimes it feels like the naga spirit is moving up and down inside your body. You might feel like yawning, and your eyes may blink, and you may feel your heart palpitate and maybe also a strange tingling sensation at the base of your spine.

So, go on a journey and ask to be shown this sort of place. Maybe it is a group of trees like I said, or maybe it is a waterfall, or a spring. It can be any kind of special place. So you ask the spirits to be shown where it is, and then when you can, you go there in the physical world.

In the future that will be the place where you go to make offerings to the nagas.

We can always make offerings in our home when we need to, and we leave the offerings on our altar for a day if we can. Then the next day, we go and give those offerings at our sacred place in nature.

When we go, we take with us one of the coins we put on the altar as an offering, but we keep all of the rest of the coins ourselves.

We also take the food we put on the altar, the banana or apple, or some other food, but if we have offered a lot of food we can keep some of it to eat ourselves as sacred food.

When we get to the sacred naga place we thank the nagas and ask them to accept the offerings and we leave them there, in a way which will not be difficult for other people who might visit that place.

And when we go there, to the sacred naga place, we bring some other offerings too, like some rice or some grain, and also some water in a little bottle.

We use those extra offerings to give to all the other spirit beings at that place and to all the sacred directions too. It is important, we have to be very careful when we make offerings out in nature, if we give to one sacred being — like the nagas — but do not give to all the other sacred beings there, it is not a good thing.

So we make the offering to the principal being, and then after we have done that, we make offerings to all the other beings who live there, who help to take care of the land, the environment, the world.

According to our tradition, Mondays and Thursdays are the best days to make offerings to the nagas; these are naga days, especially if the fifth day after a dark moon falls on one of those days, because that is considered a very important naga day.

If someone is sick in your family, and you feel that it is because the nagas are not in good harmony, and you make a request for healing, it is good to make the offering ceremony either on a Monday or Thursday or on a full moon.

If you do not have a statue or a picture of a naga you can look for a stone which is a little bit like a serpent, and that can stay in your house on your altar.

But when we make offerings to the nagas, we always ask pardon for our mistakes. We always do that because we live on the Earth Mother, we walk on her, we build on her, we do many things which may not be good things for the nagas and the Earth Mother.

Maybe we have a house that was built in the abode of the nagas, maybe we throw our trash away in the home of the naga; we always have to ask pardon for our mistakes.

So these are the nagas, these are the bestowers of health, these are the bestowers of longevity who take care of everything. They are the custodians of the Lower World, the Middle World and the Upper World realms, and this is why and how we honor them.

This article was originally published in Sacred Hoop Magazine,
a leading international magazine about Shamanism, Sacred Wisdom, and Earth Spirituality.

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Bhola Nath Banstola was born and raised in the Bhojpur district of Eastern Nepal. At a very young age, he was called by the ancestors onto the healing path. Taught initially by his paternal grandfather, he started practicing healing from a young age and then went on to apprentice with many master shamans from different traditions. After graduating in Cultural Anthropology and Alternative Medicines, he set up a small place in Kathmandu to help and assist others in their healing, using a combination of shamanic healing and local herbs.

After getting married in 1997, he started making trips to the West, where he created courses on different aspects of Nepalese Himalayan traditional shamanic healing practices, in order to share the wisdom of his ancestors. He and his wife organize shamanic journeys to the Himalayas, to teach and share the traditions alongside the locals and indigenous shamans. Recently he registered a cultural association called Nepal Shaman to preserve and teach shamanic practices throughout the world.

As the ancient healing traditions are slowly eroding away, Bhola is working on collecting documentaries, stories, and myths of shamans in Nepal and the Himalayan areas. He co-authored The Nepalese Shamanic Path, Practices for Negotiating the Spirit World — a book on Nepali shamanism, sharing healing rituals, myths, stories, the shamanic realms and more. Bhola is organizing the international Himalayan and World Shamanic Summit 2021 in Nepal from September 30 to October 03, 2021, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Click here for more information.