Dealing with Python: Spirit of Constriction: Strategies for the Threshold #1

By Anne Hamilton and Arpana Sangamithra

On the threshold into your unique calling in life a dark spiritual sentinel waits. Scripture names it ‘Python’—it has a God-given right to be there and test your significant choices. Trying to cast it out of a situation is useless.

Paul encountered it just as the Gospel was transitioning across a major threshold: the wate

• Language: English
• Publisher: Armour Books
• Release date: Nov 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781925380392

Anne Hamilton

Anne Hamilton is the author of the travel memoir, A Blonde Bengali Wife. She lives in Edinburgh with her young son.

Book preview

Dealing with Python: Spirit of Constriction

Strategies for the Threshold #1

First edition © Anne Hamilton and Arpana Dev Sangamithra 2017

Second edition © Anne Hamilton and Arpana Dev Sangamithra 2021

Published by Armour Books

P. O. Box 492, Corinda QLD 4075

Cover Image: Walk in the Light by Graham Braddock

Interior Design and Typeset by Beckon Creative

ISBN (print): 978-1-925380-09-5

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-925380-39-2

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Please note: this book uses Australian spelling, punctuation and grammatical conventions.

Strategies for the Threshold #6

Dealing with Python:

Spirit of Constriction

Anne Hamilton

with

Arpana Dev Sangamithra

Scripture quotations marked BSB are taken from the The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible, BSB Copyright ©2016 by Bible Hub Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked Darby are taken from the Darby Translation Bible. Public Domain.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version - Second Edition Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture quotations marked HNV are taken from the Hebrew Names Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked ISV are taken from the Holy Bible: International Standard Version®. Copyright © 1996-forever by The ISV Foundation. All rights reserved internationally. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NAS are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™.

Other Books By

Anne Hamilton

Devotional Theology series

God’s Poetry: The Identity & Destiny Encoded in Your Name

God’s Panoply: The Armour of God & the Kiss of Heaven

God’s Pageantry: The Threshold Guardians & the Covenant Defender

God’s Pottery: The Sea of Names & the Pierced Inheritance

God’s Priority: World-Mending & Generational Testing

More Precious than Pearls:

The Mother’s Blessing & God’s Favour Towards Women

(with Natalie Tensen)

Mathematics and Theology in Medieval Poetry

Gawain and the Four Daughters of God:

the testimony of mathematics in Cotton Nero A.x

Award-winning Children’s books

Many–Coloured Realm

Daystar: The Days are Numbered Book 1

Merlin’s Wood: The Battle of the Trees 1

Contents

Introduction

1 Python Piles on the Pressure

2 Python Goes to the Movies

3 Python Meets its Match

4 Python and Yoga

5 Python Goes Down for the Count

Appendix 1Brief Summary

Appendix 2Random Stuff

Appendix 3Common Symbols of Python

Appendix 4The Silver Chair

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to so many people who have helped my thinking and who have shared their lives with me as I have journeyed through the threshold process.

However, in the making of this book, there are just a few people I would like to single out as having helped at crucial times:

Michael Knoeppel, who in checking the words in the Jewish language starting with the Hebrew letters ‘peh’ and ‘tav’, was instrumental in pointing out to me the relationship between Python’s tactics and its name.

Ben Gray, who first drew my attention to the terms constriction and wasting, which so perfectly described the threshold experience.

Donna Ho, who provided first-hand information on what a ‘Friend of the Court’ in Australia entails.

Arpana Dev Sangamithra, who generously contributed almost all of Chapter 4.

Meredith Swift, Elizabeth Klein, Quang Hii, Natalie Tensen, Melinda Jensen, Janette Busch, Alison Collins, Rhonda Pooley, Judy Rogers and Janice Speirs who contributed a wide variety of valuable insights.

My mum, Dell Hamilton, who crafted the prayers at the end of each chapter.

The wondrous Trinity—Abba Father-God, Jesus His only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit—without whose guidance it would be impossible to get out of the clutches of Python.

Introduction

Paul of Tarsus wrote: ‘…that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.’ (2 Corinthians 2:11 ESV)

True as that statement was some twenty centuries ago, it’s not the case today. In so many ways, it’s a pity this book is necessary. However, so few believers are aware of the tactics of the enemy of our souls, it seems timely to collect the information outlined in God’s Pageantry and God’s Pottery in a more systematic way.

This book focuses on one of the most common of all threshold issues: a sentinel spirit known as Python.

I can’t say I enjoyed pulling this together. CS Lewis said once in an interview: ‘Of all my books, there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing… The Screwtape Letters… They were dry and gritty going… making goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatiguing.’ I relate to his feeling: after writing about Python for a while, I felt almost suffocated and desperately wanted to write something about the loveliness and majesty of God.

As usual, this book is meant to be the opening of a discussion—not the last word on the topic. As usual too, it’s designed with a mathematical underpinning, a numerical literary style inspired by the word-number fusions of the gospels and epistles.

Importantly, I sound a note of caution to all readers. I have noticed that, whenever preachers are writing or speaking at length about spirits like Python, then the particular spirit under consideration shows up in the teacher’s words about three-quarters of the way through their presentation.

I have prayed that absolutely nothing in this book should ever be construed as an invitation to Python to be present in these pages. Nevertheless, should you discern something amiss in any wording, please contact me—because it’s a matter I certainly do not wish to go unaddressed.

Throughout this book, the terms threshold and threshold covenant will be used constantly. As far as the word threshold goes, whenever it is used in a spiritual sense here, it denotes the entry point into our destiny. It’s essentially the ‘doorway’ or the ‘opening’ into the individual calling God has appointed for each of us before the foundation of the world. As for threshold covenant, the concept is re-introduced, after a long period of historical obscurity, in God’s Pageantry and God’s Pottery.

One of Scripture’s shortest books is Jude. It doesn’t mention Python or thresholds, yet alludes to them constantly. And it finishes with this assurance of God’s protection:

Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.

Jude 1:24 KJV

If I have one recommendation before you begin this book, it’s this: read Jude. Closely and carefully.

Lastly, please note: I love the fiction of CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia. I once tried to read his poetry but gave up after the first page, deciding he’d been wise to move on. However, in trying to understand the symbolism of the dreams my sister and I had as children, search engines repeatedly led me to the work of ‘Clive Hamilton’, a name which turned out to be a pseudonym of Lewis. I went back and persisted through that poetry—only to realise he knew much more about familiar spirits than he’d ever said. I was angry. I felt I needed to know what he’d kept secret. It’s only after you understand the nature of threshold and name covenants you can see how his fiction deals with the relevant issues. It both conceals and reveals at one and the same time.

Yet now—nearly two decades on—I understand his reticence. If God doesn’t give you permission to pull aside the curtain on His secrets, then you don’t. Now, Appendix 4 on The Silver Chair is not for everyone. It is long, rambling and wordy—and not quite in keeping with the rest of the book. But somewhere in the world, there are a few individuals who need to know what’s in it.

Anne Hamilton

July 2017

1

Python Piles on the Pressure

THE LAST STEP, THE FIRST step, the boundary, the frontier, the gateway, the door, the bridge—there are so many different ways to picture thresholds. Our ancestors considered such liminal places to be dangerous and fraught with risk.

In taming so much of our world, we’ve largely forgotten how perilous a threshold really is. Only a few places still remind us: the hazardous cross-currents of an ocean bar, the wild turbulence of the sound barrier, the pain and unpredictability of giving birth. All of these difficult transitions in the natural world testify to a spiritual reality: thresholds are intrinsically unsafe. They can never be taken for granted.

And because, deep down, we know this, many of us choke on the last step. We can’t cross the line into the new or out of the old—and our own inability baffles us.

A colleague of mine went to a theme park and decided he was going to take on the challenge of the highest diving platform there. He climbed up the mega-high tower all the way to the — second-last step. And there he froze. No matter what his brain said to his feet, they refused to move. His muscles rejected his self-talk that it was just another step. He couldn’t get his legs to obey his mind’s instructions. Eventually, because he simply couldn’t make it onto the top of the tower, he dived off the second-last step. ‘The difference,’ he said in telling this story, ‘between the final two steps was nothing compared to the height of the tower. I’ve never been able to understand why I was paralysed at that moment.’

The fact is: a last step, like a first one, constitutes a threshold. It may not be a spiritual threshold but it’s a physical one. And the natural always clues us in to what is happening in the spiritual. So often our hearts know what our minds fail to recognise: all thresholds are exceedingly dangerous.

Precisely as our ancestors said they are.

Although the spirit of Python isn’t the only sentinel stationed on a threshold, it’s the one we usually recognise first. It’s a constrictor: it tries to squeeze us so tightly we feel forced to surrender to its agenda. Its goal is to block us so that we are never able to access our divine calling.

Our English word python is actually related to one of the Hebrew words for a threshold. It’s probable that python is directly related back to ‘pethen’, an ancient Jewish word meaning cobra, asp or adder.¹ Moreover ‘pethen’, this word for various venomous serpents, is also the origin of the Biblical term ‘miphtan’—a word that specifically denotes not just a threshold, but a defiled one.²

It’s clear from this relationship between ‘miphtan’ and ‘pethen’ that the Hebrews recognised Python as a threshold guardian. Now it happens that Python is explicitly mentioned only once in Scripture (in the Greek wording of Acts 16:16); however, its presence should not be overlooked whenever ‘miphtan’ appears in the text.

More subtly, Python often rears its head when words for choking or strangling, doorways or gates, openings or stumbling-blocks appear at critical moments in Biblical history. Various literary hints show it was the zeitgeist— the ‘spirit of the age’—during the period of the Judges. Most significantly, it makes several anonymous appearances in the life of Jesus—its identity only shown by distinctive words or the signature descriptors in its behaviour.

Python doesn’t work alone. It is part of a cabal of spirits—that is, a focus group conspiring together to achieve the downfall of God’s plans for your life. Its especial interest is the threshold into your calling. In part, this is because it is a fallen cherub originally charged with guarding spiritual entryways. The gifts of God being irrevocable, it still retains that high office, though using it to ruthless ends.

Before looking at why Python is able to hold on to so much power, let’s look at its modus operandi.

The primary tactic Python uses to achieve its agenda is constriction.

Finances, time, health, appearance, qualifications, education, position, reputation, personal circumstances, work situation, racial background, availability of resources, personnel or networks—there are many ways Python can constrict our ability to enter into our calling but the most obvious is lack of money.

When money is the issue, we look around for partnerships or financial backers. We search for someone we can trust to help us complete our calling. But when Python is present, we often discover many people want to compete with us instead.

When thresholds are involved, Python has a right to be there—striking at our choices.

My brother was just starting out in plumbing design