The Snake Test

You must fail it in order to pass.

Jun 13, 2026

On his first night on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, Brad dreamed that a booming voice said, “Archbishop Pompey has God’s number!” The next morning, he asked the cab driver if he knew anyone by that name.

“Archbishop Pompey is the leader of the Spiritual Baptist churches in St. Vincent. I can take you to meet him.”

It was unusual for foreigners to show up unannounced on Archbishop Pompey’s doorstep located at the very top of the island, far from the tourist areas. Spiritual seekers will hike into the Himalayas to meet a yogi or venture deep into the Peruvian jungle for a sip of tea, but almost no one goes to the small island churches where descendants of enslaved Africans worship Jesus through syncopated rhythms, passionate singing, and a deeply mystical visionary tradition.

Photo by Kern Nickerson, from *Shakers of St. Vincent,* edited by Bradford Keeney

Archbishop Pompey sat expressionless, listening carefully to Brad’s report. He then paused for a moment and said, “Yes, I have God’s number. Do you know what your vision means?” Brad was startled to find out he was being called to undergo a week-long fast under the supervision of the Archbishop who would serve as his “pointer” or guide.

Later Brad learned that someone must first dream of their spiritual pointer before they are invited to fast. Often the pointer dreams of that person also. This helps ensure that the endeavor is ordained by God rather than only driven by personal will.

Called “going to the mourning ground,” “taking a spiritual journey,” or entering “the room of sorrows,” Brad wrote about this rite of passage in his book on the Spiritual Baptists, Shakers of St. Vincent:

…they seek a vision through prayer and fasting, which typically lasts between six and twenty-one days. In the visions, Shakers find instruction and knowledge, ranging from metaphysics to the practice of healing, passed on to them. This learning from the spiritual world is sometimes called “going to school.” . . . One’s life is symbolically buried and mourned, opening up the possibility of a personal resurrection.

Archbishop Pompey gave Brad a secret password or line of prayer to repeat. They banded his head in cloth with wax drippings on the outside marking where in the world of Spirit he was being sent. Each day, people from the church entered the mourning room to pray and sing over Brad who periodically reported his visions to the Archbishop. That’s how a pointer checks whether someone is traveling where directed and if their dreams are of God.

Brad (left) with Archbishop Pompey (right)

Seven days later, Brad emerged from the room shouting with a fire in his bones and in his heart. A huge crowd gathered to hear the lessons received. He’s been a shouter ever since.

Brad’s time in St. Vincent was one of the most spiritually significant periods of his life, which is saying a lot considering his life story.1 The spiritual fathers and mothers he met there are now “saints” of Sacred Ecstatics. Though most of them have passed away, they live on inside the Guild.

I share that story to give context to my report.

The Snake Test

Two years ago, I dreamed that Brad and I were in St. Vincent and I was undergoing preparation for mourning. The women overseeing the process have already passed on: Mother Superior Sandy and Mother Samuel. Therefore, my dream was not a literal call to mourn but a visit to the spiritual classrooms to receive a lesson.2

In the dream, we were in a small church. Mother Sandy seemed to be the one in charge. There were many other women praying and singing. When the service was over, they determined I was ready to proceed. Brad and the other women left the room and I was alone with Mother Sandy and Mother Samuel.

Mother Superior Sandy (left), Mother Samuel (right). Photos by Kern Nickerson from the book *Shakers of St. Vincent,* edited by Bradford Keeney.

They sat me down on a wooden pew. My eyes were covered but I could see with spiritual eyes that Mother Sandy was holding a snake. This was the final test: if the snake was calm and did not react, it meant I was spiritually clean and empty, ready to proceed. If the snake tried to bite, it meant I needed to further rid myself of interference.

Mother Sandy walked near me with the snake. I wasn’t afraid but knew that I should fill myself with prayer. Even so, the snake snapped at my head. My heart sank a little. The mothers exchanged a knowing glance. Mother Sandy, perhaps not wanting me to feel badly, said, “That’s okay. Sometimes this old snake gets a little temperamental.”

The mothers left the room. I sat on the bench knowing I had to pray even harder to relinquish any remaining stores of doubt and self-reliance that I’d half-consciously hidden away somewhere like an existential disaster preparedness kit, just in case every wisdom elder throughout history was wrong and I really am the lone captain of my solo ship, sailing the rough seas with only my own reasoning and intuition to guide me. A frightening and depressing thought.

Maybe you have one of those emergency kits stashed away somewhere, too. Don’t bother trying to find it—only the snake can see it.

Speaking of which, what’s the deal with this snake? In real life, the St. Vincent pointers don’t conduct a “snake test” or carry a live serpent. However, they do have a pole in the center of every church where prayers are made. The Holy Spirit travels down into the room through this pole. Sometimes there is a snake painted on it. Other times there is no snake painted on the pole but elders say that spiritual eyes can see it. That snake is regarded as Jesus, the mediator between earth and heaven.

There are two Bible verses that reveal why Jesus may be regarded as a snake. In John 3:14-15 Jesus says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

One of our favorite pieces of Southern folk art. Artist unknown.

Jesus is making reference to Numbers 21:8 where Moses was commanded by God to make an image of a serpent and “set it upon a pole.” When Moses lifted the pole high in the air, those who glanced at the snake were cured of a deadly snake bite. In facing the affliction, they found the cure. I’ll come back to this point later.

Why were the Israelites being bitten by snakes? Essentially the same reason the snake lunged at my head in the dream. Despite their spiritual efforts to stay faithful in the wilderness, they got weary, scared, and began to doubt. This doubt created all sorts of impious behavior, much like it did almost forty years prior to the snake incident when the Israelites commissioned a golden calf statue to tide them over while Moses was absent too long and things felt shaky. How many times did the Israelites have to learn the same lesson?

How many times do I?

In my dream, I wasn’t consciously aware I had accumulated a little storehouse of (probably laughable) back-up plans tucked away in a box labeled, “In case of life emergency, open this box of presumed rational thinking and delusional self-fortitude illogically seasoned with a dash of half-baked supernaturalism, and be saved.” I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got a golden calf stashed away in there, too.

In contrast, the Israelites were pretty explicit that their faith was starting to falter. After following Moses through the desert for forty years (!) they complained: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.”3 This complaint was registered by God as a lack of faith and piety, so God sent an infestation of poisonous snakes to snap them out of it (pun intended).

Now fatigue and hunger were compounded by death from snakebites. The people got faithful again real quick and ask Moses to pray for help. God told Moses: “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.”4

This was a surprising command coming from the God of Abraham, world famous for being vehemently angered by even a hint of idolatry. But the bronze snake was not itself the target of worship, nor did it have supernatural powers, per se.

The snake’s healing power came from this dynamic: by looking at it, the Israelites could see both the truth of their errors and the abiding presence of God’s forgiveness, their human weakness and God’s curative strength.

Divine grace and unconditional love can only transform our lives when we honestly face how much we need them. If we don’t feel that need and still think we can muscle our way through the wilderness (or a week-long fast) on our own, we’ll miss out on the medicine.

Likewise, when the St. Vincent mothers look up at the snake on the pole they see Jesus, the one who knows their faults and tendencies to falter but heals and loves them anyway.

In a world where people are quick to placate each other with poisonous, self-bolstering bromides that keep us from honest self-reckoning, Jesus the Snake-on-a-Pole keeps it real. Snake Jesus will reliably snap at our heads, prompting us to look up so we can really start to live.

(Once we look up, it’s impossible to look down on others.)

I realize some Sacred Ecstatics readers have an iffy relationship with Jesus, and I’m not implying you literally have to take up that path (though doing so is what landed Archbishop Pompey God’s direct number, so maybe give it some thought).

I’m only passing on what I have found to be a universal spiritual lesson that just happened to come down the St. Vincent lineage line: Human beings are too full of self, this causes suffering, and only by facing that truth and dropping all deluded efforts to prove otherwise will we find the real deal peace and joy we’re yearning for. Ask the Buddha, if you prefer, but he’ll tell you the same thing.

When I told Pointer Brad my dream the next morning, I asked if it meant I had failed the test. He said, “No, you passed. You had to fail the test in order to pass it.”

In other words, the snake had to snap at my head (fail) so that I could earnestly recognize the truth about my spiritual condition (pass) and enter the mourning room where a deeper journey of surrender and rebirth begins.

In that sense, passing the snake test doesn’t mean our self-clinging tendencies have been conquered. Passing means passing through to a different way of living: the next time we backslide, we turn to prayer rather than self-pretense. Then we keep making that choice again and again, day after day. Hopefully, the backslides will get briefer. If there is such a thing as spiritual growth, I think that’s it.

That, and relinquishing those ridiculous emergency kits. There’s never been anything in there powerful enough to heal or save us from ourselves.

We don’t have to be selfless or spotless to climb the center pole to the Big Love fire on high, but we do have to be honest that we’re human, bullshit ourselves constantly, and are tempted to reach for lesser comforts and sources of direction when the prophets are silent for too long or we get tired, hungry, and scared.

The good news is, in facing the affliction we find the cure: an inexhaustible source of refuge, healing, guidance, and redemption that’s available to everyone—both saints and ‘aints alike. All we have to do is look up. Once we do, the mothers will be there to help see us through.

Hillary (& Brad)

***

Please enjoy listening to this short interview Brad conducted with Mother Superior Sandy testifying about her own visions and call to enter the “room of sorrows.” You will hear her shout and sing with the joy of someone who made it through the desert to the Promised Land.

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