[Author’s Note: This post follows Understanding Tanit through Felt Experience, Visualising the Energy in Hathor’s Temple , Girls On Top , A Bun in the Oven and I Made an Aroma Cone.]
I’m searching beneath the elaborate creation myths adorning the walls of Hathor’s temple for something more primal – energies aligned to the Divine Feminine that can empower today, after all the story of the Goddess is one of evolution.
“I need a father, I need a mother, I need some old, wiser being to talk to. I talk to God but the sky is empty.” – Sylvia Plath.
This is a lost world of hand gestures, Asanas, dance, body art, medicine, magic, mantra and lineage. Once dormant beneath the sand Hathor vibration rises like mist in the desert. Awakening feminine consciousness has the potential to heal past, present and future. Empires fall and rise. The Goddess fell. Hathor’s temple lay buried, holding it’s breath, resting and healing, yet the intention was always to rise again. We are a humanity adrift, battling apocalyptic tides of a patriarchy so toxic we struggle to tune in to the steady pulse of loving, healing and joyful Hathor energy our ancestors described as the Celestial Cow, who’s maternal legs were pillars of protection beneath which humanity could thrive in peace and stability.
“The mission of the Seven Hathors is to bring a consciousness level to the people [ ] the sistrum is used to activate in ceremony through sound the vibration of the Pleiadies.” – Sonja Grace, author of Spirit Traveller – This Egyptian Temple Is Connected to the Pleiadians, Gaia.
Hathor’s temple, homage to the Mothers of Vibration, including Naunet, Nut and Isis, is a soul sister temple. Construction, overseen in part by Cleopatra VII, was completed as Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, a very turbulent time to be a woman. Soon a male dominated society would embark on the systematic eradication of the Sacred Feminine. Meanwhile patriarchal propaganda painted Cleopatra as a depraved temptress; sacred sex as debauched and the Hathor priestess as whores.
Hathor asks us to ‘align our core vibration with source’ through sound, light, love and other energies we can’t see or hear – energies the existential sciences are starting to explore. Consciousness; the sacred trinity of sex, pregnancy and birth; herbalism and body autonomy; mirroring the divine within ourselves and in parallel worlds (Eugene Wigner proposed the existence of mirror worlds,1927) are prominent concepts in Hathor’s temple, as are EMOTION; vibration – the on/off binary code which weaves through the universe….and fractals.
“…Fractal is [ ] the nesting of the Mother within the Grandmother, [ ] the Girl within the Mother, and the Baby within the Girl, an infinite process bridging the Macro to the Micro.” – Jain 108.
Cult priestesses were tattooed with the mark of the Hathor Cow, Uraeus, Lotus and Protective Eye. Henna’d thighs and tattooed bellies could be the marks of the shaman, after all the Egyptian soul journeyed between realms and deities shape-shifted from human to power animal. Priestess Amunet bore elliptical tattoos on her root and sacral energy centres – a vesica piscis opening over her womb, possibly a form of apotropaic magic, or symbol of the ‘womb matrix’, an energy grid – matrix means ‘uterus’ – connecting Mothers of the Universe, past, present and future. Energetic dots and spirals decorate ancient temples and female icons, found all over the globe.
“A woman who heals herself, heals her mother, heals her daughter, and every woman around her.” – source unknown.
Gentle movement releases trauma and strengthens life-force. Hathor’s dancers raised vibration – said to protect women in labour, as did the Taweret amulet. We get so used to viewing dance as entertainment that we’ve removed from consciousness the ancestral memory of the female shaman rhythmically moving into intuition, ecstasy and healing.
Trance wasn’t the only pathway to other dimensions. Festivals of drunkenness removed inhibitions and psychological blocks so the portals of mass consciousness open.
“You are [ ] the Mistress of Dance
The Lady of Unending Drunkenness.” – Hymn of the Seven Hathors, Dendera.
Drunken gatherings of uninhibited, high status women ‘making love to source’ horrified the Roman patriarch, who themselves loved consuming to excess. For them this was male territory, their god of wine, ritual ecstasy and drunkenness was male and they preferred women temperate. In contrast, blood thirsty lion Goddess Sekhmet, ‘She who is powerful’, an aspect of Hathor when angry, was plied with alcohol during festivals to keep Her happy.
“I am woman hear me roar.” – Helen Reddy.
On the temple walls, etched in stone, representations of sound and vibration made visible, cascade into storage jars, as the Sistrum and Menit necklace are rattled. Remote healing can be directed to the past, present and future. The energy, intention and timing for healing can be stored in a container, so perhaps this is what these images describe. Did they raise and store vibration to activate ceremonial libations, spells, the latent power of hieroglyph (temple language) and statues?
The temple was a birth house so they may have infused mother’s milk, used in spells, with the vibration of bovine ‘Mother of Mothers’ and Goddess of percussion, Hathor. Dr. Masaru Emoto’s experiments with water consciousness show how sound, thoughts and intention impact the molecular structure of water. Sound and intention can raise our vibration since our bodies are 50-60% water. Harmonics can levitate and alter the shape of water droplets.
When harnessing universal energy a triadic flow is created between energy, agent and recipient making healing reciprocal, so perhaps hands held up to venerate deities, as seen in temple imagery, could be for energy channelling rather than solely for reverence – their palms do resemble the Reiki hand posture.
Perhaps the story of the Dendera Zodiac is one of Karma, identifying past and future dates in need of healing, possibly problematic lunar or solar eclipses.
“During the period 51 BCE – 30 BCE, the reign of Cleopatra, actual eclipses tally 52 Lunar eclipses and 54 Solar eclipses.” – Rosalind Park, The Eclipse of Queen Cleopatra and the Dendera Zodiac, Academia.
The temple is decorated with celestial bodies. The moon, stars and sun radiate specific types of energy. The sun was often drawn as an anthropomorph – sun rays with hands, symbolising divine touch. Hathor is ‘Sovereign of the Stars’ and her ‘eye’ mirrored sunlight. Considering we are all born of star dust and considering the effect of the moon on the tides and menstrual cycle, denying the influence of astrological alignments seems illogical. Mother Earth dances to the beat of the planets and stars too far off to see.
One ‘Mother of Vibration’ with breasts and ‘false beard’; palms cupping the Sun disc like an ‘energy orb’; body curving into a spiral (equivalent to the Plough Pose in yoga), lurks in a far corner of the temple. This deity is the seed of creation.
“….the primordial hermaphrodite, equivalent to Nu/Naunet with the waters inside it, like the embryonic waters within the egg.” – John Grigsby.
Since all motion is spiral I’m trying out this ‘inversion pose’. In yoga it shifts energy in the throat and spine. I’m experiencing it as a ‘womb inversion’. In Hathor’s temple it’s a pose of magic, similar to ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ rising into consciousness and unity.
“Everything is in the process of either coming into being or expiring.”- Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls.
Digging deep into the fertile soil of the Goddess reveals how female spiritual power was subject to patriarchal reversal. The ‘inversion pose’ of the primordial hermaphrodite expresses balance, imbalance and rebalance.
“Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of love. – Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life.
Where love is ego cannot go. A shift in the apocalyptic tides of patriarchal domination is long over due. May we tip the balance and experience it as sweetness opening our hearts, touching our core, changing everything.
References
The Eclipse of Queen Cleopatra & the Dendera Zodiac (2014), Roz Park, academia.edu
Uncovered: Ritual public drunkenness and sex in ancient Egypt – Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times.
Aspects of a Goddess: The Cult Image of Hathor in the Garstang Museum, Garstangmuseum.wordpress
Plato, Shamanism and Ancient Egypt, by Jeremy Naydler, Golgonooza, thehumandivine
The Tattooed Priestesses of Hathor, Ancient Origins
Oldest Tattooed Woman Is an Egyptian Mummy – Laura Geggel, livescience
Hieros Gamous: Sacred Sexuality Ancient and Modern – Kerri Ryan, academia,edu
Women and Religion in Ancient Egypt – Barbara S. Lesko, Diotima
Dr. Masaru Emoto and Water Consciousness, the wellness enterprise
The Book of the Heavenly Celestial Cow – Roland Mastaff, Tour Egypt
Star-Shaped Droplet Levitated By Sound, Vocativ
This Egyptian Temple Is Connected to the Pleiadians, Gaia
Akhenaten: Magic at Amarna – Historicaleve