During this new moon phase, I have come to the conclusion that I am retiring. After many signs and messages, I have finally been talked round to the idea by my team that I can hang up my shoes and surrender the role of purger. I think I’ve done my fair share of that now and it’s time to move on to new things.
Instead, I think it would be immensely fun to assume the role of expander. Expanding the path, expanding energy, expanding vision, expanding consciousness. I don’t even know if expansion is the right word to describe the feeling but it’s the best I’ve got right now, so I’m running with that.
This news has little to do with my adventures with Sekhmet but I felt it was momentous enough to warrant a mention – and perhaps a little celebration. Although now I have said it, my niggling feeling is that it has everything to do with my encounters with Sekhmet. Let’s find out, shall we.
You can’t go to Luxor and not visit Sekhmet. In my opinion, her statue, hidden away in the vast complex that is Karnak, is the most important place to visit in the whole area. Whether it’s because of the statue itself, the location the statue is placed on or a combination of both, but few people can stand in her presence and not be touched somehow by her.
This statue is attributed to Amenhotep III who apparently had over 700 of them made so he could beseech the goddess daily for good health. According to some scholars the number is closer to 500 but, regardless, all agree that it was a significant number, which begs the question – why? Why make so many? And why Sekhmet?
Some of the recovered statues were moved to the temple of Mut in Karnak but the others are in Cairo or have been scattered around the world in various museums. Our Sekhmet remains in her place. Although, she was broken by locals, around a hundred years ago, for fear she would devour their children. And then painstakingly put together again by the archaeologist who worked on the chapel – so say the books.
All the Sekhmet statues are made from a solid block of black basalt and the craftsmanship is superb. So much so that some researchers dispute the standard age and allocation to Amenhotep III because they resemble the type of stonework found in the early or pre-dynastic period. Certainly, it is recorded that he rebuilt the temple over a much older temple, so, could there be some truth in that?
Did you know that the quality of the stonework actually deteriorated over the years? That there are early artefacts that baffle experts to this day? All hinting that perhaps there was a much older, more advanced civilization in Egypt before dynastic Egypt came on the scene. The royal architect Imhotep, from the third dynasty, himself wrote about trying to reverse engineer the technology of the ancients. If he was from the third dynasty, what ancients are these that he spoke of?
Our lovely Sekhmet in Karnak can be found in a small chapel to Ptah, hidden away down a side path, outside the main temple complex that you come into when you enter the site. There are three chambers in the chapel. An entrance in the middle with two rooms on either side. The room to the left is empty and is where we go to tone and prepare for seeing her. The room to the right is where she stands.
The chambers are small and would be completely dark if it wasn’t for a small hole in the ceiling allowing a shaft of light to come into the room. This wasn’t by the original design but was created by the archaeologist who excavated the chapels so he could see better inside.
Outside the chapel entrance is an old sycamore tree, beloved tree of the ancients. The sycamore was connected with Hathor, the cosmic feminine principle and by association with Isis, who, like Sekhmet, is an aspect of Hathor.
On my first visit in November 2023, we waited here under the tree for another group to leave the chapel. I leaned against her, feeling the power in her rugged trunk, as little birds played in the upper branches. Somehow, greeting her feels important, as if only through acknowledging her and receiving her blessing may you be fully embraced by Sekhmet.
We filed into the chapel and hakim directed the group to go quietly into the left chamber. Standing in a row he came to us one by one and began toning before indicating we could go in to see her.
When it was my turn, I walked into the chamber, trembling slightly from the energies and stood before her in the semi-darkness. The space held a hushed, reverent feeling such as you find in sacred places of prolonged worship.
In the darkness, her face seemed to flicker in my vision but what struck me most were the waves of energy I could feel coming off her. The magnetism was so strong it was making me rock backwards and forwards on my feet.
Once we were all in, Hakim urged us to approach the statue. Stepping forward, the intensity became so much I could feel electricity coursing through my body, making my arms and hands shake uncontrollably.
Then, as if we passed through an invisible barrier, the shaking abruptly stopped and I could place my hand on her along with the others, as Hakim said a beautiful prayer from the heart.
And just like that emotion welled up within me and tears gathered in my eyes. I cried the whole way out back to the tree. Crying with joy. Crying with gratitude. Crying in the full knowing that I am supported and loved. Crying because I am not alone and I have never been alone, even when it felt like I was. Crying because I knew my sisters were with me. Just by standing in her presence, I was touched so deeply.
These are the words I wrote in my notes afterwards.
“Sekhmet, oh mighty Sekhmet, sister of my heart. Blessings upon you.
My heart weeps with gratitude for you.
As I look forward into the future, I know you have my back.
You are my shield from the darkness and the expander of my path.
Blessings on you dearest sister.”
From that moment on I could see the gods and goddesses of the land and sky. I could see them in the form they take in the great halls of Amenti and I was welcomed to walk amongst them as an equal. And when my mind would quail with disbelief, clutching at humility, they would stop me and dismiss such human thoughts as nonsense. To think that way would trap me in a particular vibrational field, something they urged against.
That afternoon we returned to our boat and began sailing towards Aswan. The day before I had started my bleeding time, in the great temple of Hathor in Dendera, which felt rather apt and after all the emotions of the day in Karnak I was ready for some down time on the boat. Little did I know I was going to have a very unexpected visitor.
I went down to my room to go to the toilet because I felt like I was going to have a large bleed and, quite frankly, I’d rather do that in the loo than in my granny pants.
I was sitting on the loo when all of a sudden, I felt my energies shift in the usual way when a being is there wanting my attention. I tuned in and Sekhmet came swooping in with great power and force, looming over me as I sat in quite a vulnerable position.
I could feel a strong magnetic pull to her, like she was beckoning me, calling for my attention but I was on the loo – hardly the place to talk to a goddess.
“Erm, hang on a second,” I said, “I’m almost done here and then I’ll go upstairs and sit comfortably somewhere, able to give you my full attention. Ok?”
A most excellent plan, I thought. So, I pulled my awareness back to me and tried to hurry up the business of bleeding so I could join her and find out what was going on.
Hang on a second, who tells Sekhmet to wait a moment?
I checked back in and she was still there, arms crossed over her chest, waiting. And then I started to bleed some more, so there was no wrapping this business up quickly now.
Darn it, I don’t want to lose the moment!
“Why don’t you just meet her here?” a voice asked.
Then it dawned on me. True, why don’t I meet her here? This is where she came to me after all and I must trust her timing to be impeccable.
I tuned back into her and there she was still standing in front of me, watching me closely with a faint, amused smile on her lips.
“Don’t try to control it, just let it happen as it does,” she said.
My attention locked onto her energy, which seemed to grow in magnitude completely enveloping me. Then I felt her tilting my head back and opening my mouth. Her energy pushing my jaw and throat open, wider than is humanly possible until she could slip her arms down into me, wedging me even further open as she slid inside and lined the opening she had made.
I began to bleed again and she instructed me to bleed all the stories I had gathered during my journeys in the shadow realms into the Nile. To release it through my blood into the sacred waters.
I breathed her in, deeper into my being and pushed the blood out of me with focused intention. I could see the drops falling through the boat into the Nile, leaving ripples in the dark waters below, as if the boat had disappeared and we were gliding in light.
After I had bled, Sekhmet asked me, “are you free?”
My impulse was to say yes but then my mind questioned, “am I? If I say yes, would it be true? Would I be lying to Sekhmet?”
As my brain churned these questions over, it was as if my mouth involuntarily opened and I found myself saying, “yes!” with great conviction and I knew it to be true.
Then I felt another presence come in from the sky. The mother, a cosmic force so powerful, yet incredibly gentle, gathered from the corners of the sky and swept into the opening of my body that was lined with Sekhmet. She smiled at us, serenely, with gentle, loving eyes, like a cow’s eyes with long lashes, as she slipped through and into the Nile, from there to touch everything.
Suddenly, I stood with the sisters, Sekhmet, Isis, Nut and others as we watched the mother dance with the river.
“My sisters,” I said, as our fingers touched and crackled with love. And they told me things. Things of before and things of what is to come. Of where I came from and what I still have to do.
“Step by step, the way will open up for you,” they promised. And I knew it to be true.
That was my first visit to Sekhmet, my second was with my mother during our April 2024 adventure. I paused by the Sycamore tree to greet her before we went into the chapel. Inside, we could hear a woman’s voice singing beautifully. So, we waited outside in the courtyard to the chapel until they were finished, enjoying the music that was priming the space we were preparing to enter.
Soon after the music stopped, two women came out of the chapel, followed by the guide and we thanked them for their music before being ushered in ourselves. Following the same format as before we went first to the room on the left, where Hakim toned over us one at a time.
I went first into the room with Sekhmet and had some time with her alone before mum joined me. It felt like a long time we stood there staring at each other but who knows how time really passes in that room.
This time I didn’t feel her energy like before, it was more comfortable than that, more familiar as we stood in companionable silence. And just when I thought she had no message for me today she spoke.
“Are you ready for your power?” and as she spoke, she turned to look at me where I was standing to her left, with my back against the wall.
This time there was no hesitation in my answer.
“I am ready,” I replied.
She stared into my soul for a moment and then she passed me the papyrus sceptre she held in her hand. I reached out and accepted the sceptre, part of me numb with shock because I wasn’t expecting this and the other part feeling like she was returning it to me, as is somehow, it had been mine all along.
As soon as my hand touched it, I had a vision. I saw myself riding a huge lion at the head of an army so vast you could see nothing else as far as the eye could see but the dust they kicked up. I don’t even think they were human, I couldn’t see for the dust. Perhaps it was the earth itself, the sands of the desert, the creatures of the forest and of the skies.
She didn’t look like me now and I have no idea who it was, except she had hair like mine but thicker and shining like coppery gold in the sunlight. She looked like how I see myself inside. Do you have that? An idea of who you are and then when you see your reflection or photo you’re shocked because it doesn’t look like you at all.
I rode the lion and gave a mighty battle cry. Fierce in my righteousness and powerful in my certainty that all I did and do is for the good of All, I led the army to root out injustice and restore balance.
And just as quickly as it came, the vision was gone and I was back in the room and we were being ushered out.
Shaking slightly, still feeling numb and a bit confused by the vision we went to the sycamore tree to sit under her golden boughs and share.
“I went into the chamber,” Michelle began, “and it felt so peaceful. I was looking at her and I thought, wow you are so beautiful and she turned to me and said, no, you are beautiful. And then I thought, but you are so kind and she said, you are so kind. And so it went. Everything I thought about her, she would turn it around and tell me it was a reflection of me. It was quite powerful. She is not scary, all I felt was goodness and beauty.”
We shared, we cried and then we went to the seven gates, which is a whole other story I will have to keep for a book as I’ve gone way over my word count for here.
Before I end, however, I must add that we finished our visit by walking around the scarab beetle 7 times. The scarab from Amenhotep III’s court is on a pedestal by the temple lake. Amenhotep III who was married to Queen Tiye, the daughter of a priest. I have dreamed about them in the past, several times and it felt fitting to walk their scarab. Legend has it that if you walk it 7 times you will be blessed with marriage or a baby – or both.
“What will the scarab bring?”
“My beloved back to me.”
Comments