Follows Understanding Tanit through Felt Experience, Visualising the Energy in Hathor’s Temple , Girls On Top , and A Bun in the Oven
Scent is transcendental. Aroma, memory and emotion intertwine like serpents coiling around the wrists of the Goddess. Fragrance lifts the veil to the limbic system, to the amygdala and hippocampus, where emotion and memory are stored. Whether floral, citrus, musk, exotic or spicy the perception of scent is a holistic one, as tangible as touch, triggering floods of memory, taking us from our current mental state to another place entirely. Great temples built to honour the Female Divine used perfume to raise mass consciousness.
My desire to understand the relationship between rising Female Power and Sacred Triangle symbolism leads me to the Aroma Cone – a fashion statement or deeply spiritual experience where an etheric perfumed aura veils the body? Can I permeate the ancient psyche if I wear one and who – Goddess or Queen – will be invoked when I do so?
Just like that I’m flown to the Queen Bee. The Bee pictogram, symbol of royalty, precedes Queen Hatshepsut’s signature. According to historians the Aroma Head Cone first appeared in artwork during her reign 1479 – 1458 BC. There are images of musicians and seated women sharing fragrant cups, perfumed lotus blooms and symbolic fabric strips, wore beeswax Aroma Cones, as dancers waft through veils of fragrance, gyrating hips releasing energy – rhythm and aroma lifting the veil to Divine Feminine consciousness.
The Bee Dance was an intoxicating Egyptian dance and dance is how bees communicate where the nectar is. Most figurative images, dawn and sculptural, in ancient Egyptian art are formulaic. Their structure can be broken down into a series of triangles implying they are divine units with a specific role within their mythological system. Images of dancers and musicians tend to be free flowing, implying they are on the outside – perhaps as energy agitators.
Ancient Egyptians linked the nectar of consciousness with perfume, flowers, music, ritualistic dance, honey, bees and beeswax. Magical beeswax was used to create effigies for ritual so presumably the beeswax cone had great spiritual significance.
“One of the earliest instances of the magical use of wax is in the Westcar Papyrus.” – Hilda Ransome, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore.
Bees were considered to be the tears of Ra; Egypt was the Land of the Bee; the Queen or King was the Beekeeper; honey was the Nectar of the Gods and it was used as currency; the ka-soul was imagined as both bee and bird; the voices of souls were thought of as bees; and the golden apples of immortality ripened in the sacred Garden of the Bee.
“When Ra weeps [ ] the ground turns into working bees. [ ] wax and honey come into being.” – Salt Magical Papyrus (The Sacred Bee: Ancient Egypt, Planet Bee Foundation).
Was Hatshepsut channelling past, present and future energy of the Minoan Bee Goddess; the Melissae – the oracular Bee Nymph priestesses; the Anatolian Mother Goddess who wore a Beehive crown; Cybele as a pillar, pregnant with pollen; Artemis who’s dress was decorated with ‘bee people’; Demeter ‘the Pure Mother Bee’; and Neith, Goddess of the ‘House of the Bee’? A golden pendant of Hathor was found in a beehive shaped tomb, dating to 1500 BC, in Greece, implying there was a flow of spiritual thought between cultures.
Since I’m using felt experience to understand ancient ritual I’m making an Aroma Cone from linen strips dipped in molten wax, infused with essential oils. I’m using Nag champa but they would have used a plethora of ingredients including honey, acacia, myrrh, cinnamon and frankincense. Winding the strips around a conical mould the Conical Loaf pictogram meaning ‘to give’ comes to mind, as do images of Neith, spinner of destiny, ’Opener of the Ways’, psychopomp and warrior, Sun Goddess of weaving and embalming – the linen strips are down to her! Bees flock to the yellow flowers of Her symbol, the Acacia tree, used for incense, perfume and embalming gum.
“Lady of the anointing oil and also of the making of cloth” – Hymn to Neith.
Frescos depict a creamy beeswax cone with a yellow ‘crown’ which, in the absence of hard evidence, I’m guessing is beeswax or another fatty substance infused with a heady concoction of honey, spices and perfume.
“The perfume [ ] was an oily salve, not the liquid we use today [ ] it was rubbed on the body or burned as incense to make a smoke-based scent.” – Hannah Fielding, Perfumes of Ancient Egypt.
How did wearing the Perfume Cone make me feel? The soft, malleable cone is perfectly weighted for soothing the cranium. It feels like acupressure. Ancient Egyptians wore wigs, my cone sits on hair. Balancing the cone makes me stand up straight, lengthening and energising the spine. There is something divine, exquisite, evocative, mystical, magical and trance inducing about being veiled in aroma falling from head to toe. I do feel as if the ‘veils of illusion’ are falling away and I’m imagining the Mother Goddess, ruler of the hive, who is enshrouded in honey and crowned with a halo of bees.
“She walked into the fragrance of the god. [ ] his love passed into her limbs” – inscription, Deir el-Bahri, where Hatshepsut’s temple is.
Neith’s crowning symbol is either a shield with arrows or a weaving shuttle, shaped as a torus, where energy folds into the heart/mind centre and out again. Similarly wearing the Aroma Cone is a top down immersive experience opening channels so energy can rise, possibly as kundalini. It’s all about love, sensory experience, purification and flow. Interestingly the Apis Bull wore a purifying beehive crown. He also generated ‘bee people’ souls.
Was Hatshepsut taking Egypt back to a time when the Queen Bee represented the matriarch? Did the cones represent Ra’s tears falling upon the heads of the female worker bees – the ‘ka-soul bees’?
In the spirit of Nu/Naunet, the primordial hermaphrodite, Hatshepsut wore the fake pharaoh’s beard, implying she was self-generating, as was Queen Bee Neith, Mother of the gods and universe, who’s name means ‘I have come from myself’. It could be said Neith was an androgynous, self-generating deity and Her arrows were not war symbols at all – they were an expression of balanced feminine and masculine energies.
Intersectional ‘looking’ into the sacred triangle reveals how patriarchal reversal works. Psychopomp Neith lifts the veil between worlds, meanwhile the Aroma Veil can raise vibration and consciousness. Perhaps the etheric veil was once a female power symbol – now subject to patriarchal reversal [why am I not surprised!] as the veil continues to be weaponised to shame and subjugate women.
The triangular womb space, rather like a cosmic beehive, is a hub for manifesting and generating creative energy. Wearing the Perfume Cone was a top down immersive aroma experience where fragrance and rhythm gently stirred ancestral memory, aligning consciousness with the primordial Mother Goddess. Interestingly a statue of Neith / Hathor, in cow form, draped in what could be a ceremonial veil, appeared from the mountain at Deir el Bahri.
So how is this relevant to us today? Aside from protecting bees we must look beyond patriarchal illusion and dominator techniques that veil the source of Divine Feminine Power. Perfume, music, rhythm and touch have the power to transform. As the inscription at Deir el-Bahri says, we can step into the perfumed aura and raise our vibration. Our ancestor’s gift is Her tool box, helping us create new universes within ourselves so we align with our soul purpose. That is where our power lies. We can be that beautiful place.
“I have done things according to the design of my heart.” – Hatshepsut, 1479 – 1458 BC.
References and links
Ancient Egyptian ‘head cone mystery’ solved by archaeologists – Erin Blakemore, National Geographic
Dance of the Bees: Reading the Language of the Goddess – Carol P. Christ, Feminism and Religion
Bees and Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt (A Historical Study) – Manal B. Hammad, jaauth.journals
Has The Mystery of the Perfume Cone Been Solved? – Jeff Burzacott, Nile+Magazine
http://www.veronicagoodchild.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sacredbees-042018.pdf
Bees and Honey in Ancient Egypt – Planet Bee
Perfumes of Ancient Egypt – Hannah Fielding
The Beekeepers of Ancient Egypt – living on earth
Neith and the Acacia Tree – Hearth Moon Rising
The Bee: Part 1- Beedazzled – Andrew Gough
Ancient Egyptian Dance – Michael Levy, youtube
The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore – Hilda Ransome