Follows Understanding Tanit through Felt Experience and Visualising the Energy in Hathor’s Temple (click to read).
In these minimalist times we accept the sky as being the domain of one male god. The Goddess Nut, in her star-spangled unitard, arching over humanity in pyramid pose, turns sky father doctrine on it’s head. Girls On Top aligns much better with astrophysics, after all the womb and cosmos are both creative cauldrons.
“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” – Gloria Steinem.
My journey into decoding the triangle, through an artist’s eye, leads me to ask the following questions. Why the premise that up-pointing triangles represent male / air energy and down-pointing triangles represent female / earth energy? Why would an inverted vulva symbol, a container for female creative energy, represent male energy? Which came first, the vulva or alchemy? Was the triangle subject to patriarchal reversal to claim female power as male power? Can we use the triangle to track the rise and fall of Girl Power?
If the triangle is the building block of the universe then Goddess Nut, as a great cosmic arc, is the Golden Spiral. Nut, ‘nw’ , the water pot and infinite consciousness and nothingness, holds space and IS space. She rises from Earth to the amniotic waters of the Milky Way, birthing souls, birthing stars, her body as vessel for the entire cosmos, whilst the negative space beneath Her holds structure for humanity. Understanding Nut and ancient Egyptian’s elaborate mechanics of the universe is to go to the place where the edges are blurred, to felt experience, to tantra. It’s why I’m searching for answers in the artwork in Hathor’s temple. There are parallels with science and tantra but perhaps science trips itself up because quantifying consciousness is not necessary to understanding it.
To unravel the complex world of ancient Egyptian deities is to see beyond the ordinary and step into the vibrational fields of mirroring, twinning, pairing, polarity (deities in female / male pairs – Isis / Osiris); omnipotence (particles and deities can be everywhere at once – the four faces of Hathor); interconnectivity (complex, often incestuous, relationships – Shu / Tefnut); quantum entanglement (deities link together even though in space they are far apart – Nut / Geb); parallel universes and alternate dimensions (the afterlife).
Nut swallows the sun at dusk and births it at dawn. Meanwhile sky Goddess Hathor who is vibration, the Eye of Ra and mother, sister, consort and daughter of the sun god Ra, births him through her iris. The mythology of the omnipotent, energetic mother intertwines, forming and reforming, moving through itself like a Torus energy field (click to view).
Mirrors were Hathor’s votives and in Her temple mirror images hint at divine reflections of ourselves and mirror universes – afterlife in ancient Egypt was a replica of life on Earth. One of Her avatars, as the sun’s heat, drawn as rays, when mirrored, forms a pyramid facade. It seems logical the up-pointing triangle is a reflection of the down-pointing triangle, both vulva symbols, both female.
‘As above, so below…” Hermes Trismegistus.
‘As above’ Nut arches over the ceiling of the Hypostyle hall in Hathor’s temple. Meanwhile ‘so below’ in the crypt there are pairs of bulb shaped containers, known as the Dendera Lightbulbs, with serpent filaments and Blue Lotus cords, the negative space beneath forming a triangle.
Perhaps these lotus bulbs are Nut’s ‘mirror’ wombs, rising up in a pyramid pose from the Earth god Geb – the first act of creation. Perhaps this scene represents Nut’s own birth as She simultaneously births the twins Osiris and Isis, as Isis simultaneously births Horus – birth within births, infinitely folding back in on itself like the Torus. One coffin text says Isis was impregnated by a flash of lightning so perhaps the lightbulb theorists aren’t so far off!
“You stirred in the belly of your mother in the name of Nut,You are indeed a daughter more powerful than her mother, Great One who has become the sky!” – Geb to Nut – Pyramid texts.
So what of the pyramids, the ultimate triangle? As a pentahedron, does the square base represent Nut’s hands and feet marking the four cardinal directions? Or perhaps it represents the ‘four faces of Hathor’, the seeing-all eye. ‘Hwt-hor’ means House of Horus, so perhaps She is the pyramid.
If the pyramid is the pharaoh’s tomb, the final stage of rebirth happening in another dimension, then surely it makes sense to think of the pyramid as a womb.
“To reach the afterlife the dead pharaoh had to be rejuvenated into the womb of various goddesses, in particular, the great mother and sky goddess Nut.” – Birth and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt – Cathie Spieser – Asor.
Overlaying an image of Khafre’s pyramid with an image of the uterus is not definitive but the dimensions do correlate. The lower and upper burial chamber passageways resemble fallopian tubes. Is this the coincidence of divine proportion or by design?
The insidious rise of patriarchal conditioning and gender stereotyping erased from consciousness the harmonious and ancient pairing of rising female energy and grounding male energy – Shu supporting Nut rising from Geb.
In ancient Egypt there were male uprisings. Ra forbade Nut to give birth on certain days, limiting her power. Pharaoh Akhenaten replaced polytheism with Atenism – the worship of one single sun god – possibly the first doomed attempt to limit the power of the sky Goddess.
Of course there is such a thing as female and male energy however, as many now intuitively identify beyond the binary ’she’ and ‘he’, I question why gender is used to describe ascending and grounding energy. Gender stereotyping opens a portal for discrimination and exploitation. I’m sure cross dressing Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, 1479 – 1458 BC, would agree, as would Hapi the androgynous fertility god with female breasts.
As time advanced the rise of monotheistic, sky father religions side-lined the sky Goddess. Girls On Top were banished and demonised as the story of Lilith refusing to lie beneath Adam during sex illustrates. Winged Isis, with power over life and death, was conflated with Mary, the silent, static virgin mother. Women who ‘traveled the sky’ were called witches, hunted down, becoming Halloween stereotypes – interestingly the witch’s hat is an up-pointing triangle. Enlightenment was for men. Women were kept out of the light. The fall of the sky Goddess was complete and the sky god set himself up as the patriarch. Ascending energy was for men whilst women were pushed down into servitude.
“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen.
Amaterasu, Iris, Asteria, Hera, Nephele, Gleti, Selene, Luna, Nyx, Eos, Theia, Ushas, Chang’e, Aurora, Nephthys, Asherah, Shapash, Xihe, Päivätär, Kuutar, Isis, Nut, Hathor and Tanit are all Girls On Top – sky, atmosphere, air, solar, luna or celestial deities. Understanding how female power was once a primordial, creative and ascending force changes women’s relationships with themselves. There are cracks in the patriarchal narrative and the Goddess is rising to reclaim Her power.
“Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman.
References:
Love Poem From Geb to Nut – Ancient Egypt Info
Birth and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt – Cathie Spieser – Asor
College students are increasingly identifying beyond ‘she’ and ‘he’ – The Conversation
You are infinite Consciousness – A Torus energy field – Werner Fraanje
The Pyramid of Khafre and the Sphinx – Time Trips
The Dendera Lightbulb – Ancient Egypt Online
Egypt: Gods – Nut – Tour Egypt