The Crocodile Initiation

Halfway down the Nile in a sleepy little town originally called Nubt is the temple of Kom Ombo dedicated to the crocodile neter Sobek and the hawk Horus. Here is where we face our fears. I wrote about this temple in Under the Stone Paw.

Image by Makalu from Pixabay

There’s a tunnel that runs from the holy of holies niche under the paving stones and comes out near the wall to the east. It is said in the old days that the area was flooded and the crocodiles would sun themselves around this pool. Initates had to swim through this tunnel and emerge without becoming any reptiles’ next meal.

Talk about scary (except Stephen and Hakim always said the crocodiles were well fed).

Image by DEZALB from Pixabay

The tunnel is closed now, but when I first visited this temple when Hakim was still leading tours, it was open and we all got to experience the initiation — sans the water and crocodiles. I crawled in and about halfway through, a huge bolt of energy hit me right in my sacrum and ran up my spine to my head. Wow! I felt like a crocodile for a moment and I was filled with energy the rest of the day.

Here’s a video of Stephen explaining the process.

Power Places: The Sphinx

The Power Places series are novels set in special sites around the earth. Power places are spots on the earth that radiate a lot of energy that uplifts or energizes anyone who spends time there. One theory is the energy comes from lots of crystalline rock and running water in the ground. Some say these spots are the earth’s equivalent to acupuncture points or chakras on the human body. Myths and legends collect around these sites. Often humans will build shrines, buildings or entire complexes around them.

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The first novel in the Power Places series is Under the Stone Paw, set in Egypt, a land filled with magic and myth. The title of the novel refers to the Sphinx and the legend that grew from Edgar Cayce who claimed that ancient artifacts from Atlantis had been buried under the right paw of the Sphinx. This famed Hall of Records was due to be opened by the end of the twentieth century and world history would be rewritten. Since I hadn’t heard about this happening—who knows, some secret society might have done it—I decided it was high time and proceeded to open the Hall of Records in this novel. No spoilers. I won’t tell what they found.

Here I am in front of the Sphinx on my first trip in 1999.

Me in front of Tefnut

 

 

 

Many people consider the Sphinx to be male, representing the Pharaoh Khafra, but indigenous legend claims the Sphinx is female. She represents the great mother. Her name according to the locals is Tefnut, meaning the spittle of Nut. Nut is the sky goddess. You’ve probably seen her arched with her feet in the east and her head in the west, with the blue sky and stars above her body. Nut spit on the earth (bodily fluids were considered sacred then) and the Sphinx manifested.
When my character, Anne le Clair, first approaches the Sphinx, it’s late at night. She’s just arrived in Egypt, and they stop in the village of Nazlet el Samman to buy a bottle of water. She approaches the fence of the Giza Plateau, and there in the mist she sees a dim figure, a head looming out of the sand.

“She’s smaller than I expected,” Anne says.

“She’s in a hollow left from the lake that used to surround her,” Michael says.

Then a voice comes from the darkness. “You just wait until I get a hold of you.”

And trust me, the Sphinx definitely gets a hold of Anne in Under the Stone Paw.

New Egyptian Short Story

The Nile floods when Sirius rises just before the sun. And when the Priestess of Hathor and the Priest of Horus perform the Sacred Marriage ritual. Read it now.

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Reprint from The Aether Age:  Helios (2012).

The Serapeum

On our tour to Egypt in April, I was finally able to visit the Serapeum, and Oh My God!

We walked down steps into the ground, then down some more. We turned left next to a large box and walked down to a corridor filled with niches. I turned left and went to the first one. That’s when the visions began.

I wish I could go through it niche by niche and describe every world and every operator, but I can’t remember it that clearly. But I saw the attendants in mostly every niche and images, colors and feelings of the worlds that niche connected to. The attendants reached out and touched me with their scepters. Some on the third eye, some on the shoulder. Others nodded an acknowledgement of me. Others made hand gestures or motioned for me to come inside.

The boxes were filled with liquid light. They were transport devices to other worlds. I asked how they worked, and the third or so guardian told me, “They work much like the crystal you described in your book.” The person lays in them and is transported to the place this niche connects to. Just sort of dissolved into energy. In others, I saw people turning into Neters. In some, people were healed.

Some were solar worlds, filled with light and gold and sun. Others had many colors. Some were night worlds. These began toward the end of the corridor and mostly on the other side. Some were very green and filled with plants. Some desert and sand. Some were water worlds. In one of the night worlds, the guardian came forward to greet me and a big black Jaguar came out and licked my face.

There were 27 in the hallway. Later I realized that’s how many letters there are in the Hebrew alphabet. Then I went down the hallway that intersected them, sort of like an H, but not even. The boxes were being made or repaired on that side. Stephen went further and said there was a workshop back there. He says there’s a door blocking another tunnel and there are more—who knows how many.

I went back and that’s when I counted them. At first, I counted the box without a lid next to the door. If there are more, I’m curious how they are grouped. In certain numbers or what?

I’d like to go there with a master toner and see what happens, or do what my friend Jeanne suggested and each of us sit in one and tone. Holy cow. I can feel the place turning on just thinking about that.

When we left, the vendors were waiting just outside the door. A Neter-like being, at least seven feet tall if not more, walked out with me. The vendor said to us, “Five dollars American” and I completely cracked up, imagining if this Neter were really there fully in our dimension, him looking at some chronometer on his wrist and thinking, “Blast, I’m in the wrong year.”

When I was in the Serapeum, I thought I was seeing other worlds, other planets that make up our stellar family. But later I thought perhaps they were dimensions. Perhaps it’s not a matter of time—that in the distant past we used this place in this way, but a matter of layers—that in some higher frequency we still use this place as a transportation and healing nexus.

In either case, I want to visit the Serapeum again.

Me in Serapeum

 

 

New Short Story

The Judgment of Osiris — A modern retelling of an ancient myth. The ancient gods of Egypt reach through time and claim Owen as their next sacrifice. On the last day of the tour he leads, Owen accepts a gift from a rival tour guide Simon. The miniature sarcophagus contains a mysterious white powder  that takes Owen into the mythic Egyptian underworld. Will resurrection come for him as it did for his namesake Osiris?

 

Sekhmet, Coming to Balance

On this trip, seeing Sekhmet was the day I shed the world. She is one of my reliable spiritual connections. She always sets me straight.

When Stephen and I first got into a relationship, he used to give me Sekhmet presents. A wall hanging, a picture—that kind of thing. I used to think it was sweet because he loved Sekhmet. That was until I met her. Then I understood.

We were walking to her shrine in Karnak in silence. Hakim kept shushing the guard. Then it happened. The vision began with me walking out from the shrine, but a different me. A me from the way past. This me said, “Welcome home.” And the whole temple burst into color and bloom. Fountains played in the recesses. Birds sang and splashed. A line of priestesses carried platters of fruit and flowers to her, chanting beautiful weaves of harmony. I wept the whole way there. Hakim protected me from intrusion. When I went in to see her, she was not stone. She was a living, breathing presence. She looked down through several dimensions at us. Pure compassion. She knew what it was like to live in this time. She whispered encouragement, healing, pure love. There was more.

On my next trip to Sekhmet, I wondered what I would experience. The first time is often the most powerful. She looked down at me again, and this time she had a simple message. “You need to play more.” She took me to a cave with a spring, a green bank outside. My sister priestesses and I swam and rested, enjoying her comforting presence. I can’t remember what she said on my third visit, but I always leave in peace, my consciousness cleansed, my frequency vibrating high.  

This time on the boat my little crystal skull I’d brought along yelled at me that it wanted to come too. I almost missed the bus tearing through my luggage to find it. After all, it hadn’t said a word to me in a year in a half. When we arrived at Karnack, we split into two groups. We went to the open air museum, toned with Gary Evans in a granite room, looked at hieroglyphs and inscribed Neters with Stephen and Patricia. The guard indulged us.

Then we walked toward her shrine. The other group met us on their way out. My friend Jeanne had been weeping. Someone approached her to see what was wrong, but she caught my eye. I nodded my head. She nodded hers. And we hugged, sister priestesses celebrating our return to Mother Sekhmet.

She had already come to me with a vision while we toned. When I came in she whispered to me about what she’d shown me, then released me to watch her come to the others in the group. Some cried or closed their eyes and listened or came up to touch her and had a hard time letting go. We toned. One woman slipped behind her and wept healing tears. Nothing was wrong. Everything is right when we visit Sekhmet.

 

Coming Home from Egypt

Monday morning about 1:00 a.m. I opened the door to my home after spending two glorious weeks in Egypt. The cats greeted me with yawns and stretches, then purrs. My husband, Stephen, stayed behind for one more week.

Before I acclimate to being home and am no longer surprised by things I had grown accustomed to before I left, I want to say a few words about what the U.S. feels like these days. I actually started noticing it in Egypt when I’d check Facebook. I had to be on the web to teach my online courses, so I posted some pictures of our trip and read a few posts.

When the Boston bombing happened, I noticed that everybody seemed to have to take a stand on it. Why is that? Terrorist bombings happen in lots of countries. People don’t get up on soap boxes and make speeches about them. They don’t apologize to the world or make public pronouncements about praying or rail on about catching the culprits. They do wish them to be caught, but they don’t obsess and feel self-righteous about it. Or like special victims.

When I got home, people were still talking about it. Salman Rushdie commented on this phenomenon when he was on the Bill Maher Show last week. When the IRA bombed London during the 1970-80s, people were irritated, yes. Some people died. Very sad. But your average citizen, after being sad and annoyed, simply replanned their route to work. They moved on.

I got a newsletter from a writers’ organization and the president felt the need to say something about it in her monthly column. Just to acknowledge that it had happened. Like we could have missed it? It had nothing whatsoever to do with the organization or content of the newsletter.

On the other hand, everyone wondered if Egypt was safe. Yes, in fact it was very safe. Our group was welcomed everywhere we went with only one exception, and there people just didn’t smile or catch our eye. How violent is that?  Once our bus was rerouted because of protests. A slight inconvenience. Otherwise, everyone was happy and polite and making the best of life. We saw long gas lines. Prices are going up. I’m confident the people of Egypt will rise up and make some changes in their government soon. I was only encouraged not to feel safe when I returned home.

We don’t have to participate in this. It does take some refocusing of one’s attention. And we are all affected by the general atmosphere we live in. Let’s ask ourselves why this atmosphere of paranoia and fear and victimhood is being perpetrated. Let’s just say no to it.

Picture by Carmen Miller

Reading for Auraria Writers Week

osiris31I’ll be reading from my short story “The Judgment of Osiris,” Monday, March 18, at 11:45 a.m. in Tivoli Room 320 AB on the Auraria Campus in Denver. The story will appear in spring in the anthology Tales of Firelight and Shadow edited by Alexis Brooks de Vita for Double Dragon Media.

On Tuesday we have our State of Publishing panel, and on Wednesday Gish Jen will present. (See the post below for details.)