We are standing in the court before the Egyptian Temple dedicated to Hathor.

Jean Houston has just acknowledged the men who have had the courage to be part of this journey of mostly women.

“We know that Sekhmet, that great fierce extraordinary goddess, the one who existed before time was, danced wildly here in happiness,” Jean says. “We have among us some very fierce women.”

“What we would like to do for you here in this great temple of connection, of love, in the great temple of Dendera, which is also the temple of the Zodiac… is to dance zodiacly and maniacly around you with the fierce energy that is the rising feminine and to honour these men for being willing to recognise us in our true partnership emergence.

 

Zodiac in the Temple of Hathor

“ This is the time, I believe, of the new hieros gamos, the sacred union of the evolved male and the evolved female who can face each other with glory, and no longer with ambiguity.”

So we dance wildly, in a zodiacal form, honouring our male companions on the journey. Wild dogs watching from a nearby hill bark encouragement, approval.

“Thank you for being born at the same time we are. Thank you for coming on this wild journey,” Peg says to the men. “ Thank you all of us for having lived long enough to see this day in this place with that lady of grace, Hathor, and her sister, her other aspect, which is Sekhmet, because she did so love and honour the masculine.”

Jean invites, “Let us intone a great appreciative ahhhh in their honour, and in modern parlance, Wow! Wow! Wow!”

We move into the vast temple, gathering in a small chamber. Above us on the painted ceiling, the Sky Goddess, Mother Nut, awaits us, her outstretched body alive with stars.

Ceiling in the temple of Hathor

Peg leads an invocation: “For Hathor, for the restoration of joy in our souls, for the restoration of dancing in our feet, no matter how slowly they may move on these stones, for the restoration of greening in the world, for again and again and again the promise of love between human beings and between all life forms, the engendering love, the love that creates, so between us we create something beautiful on behalf of the world. Underneath this night sky glory, this mother of us all, who swallows the sun, and sends it through her beautiful body and gives birth to it in the day.

“This is the house, this huge temple, the house of the lady, Hathor, whose own name, as we’ve been told, means the House of Horus, so there is an engendering power of male and female here that is filled with inebriation, drunken love, drunken happiness and delight at every level.”

Jean calls us into a reflection on the inner feminine and masculine. “The House of Hathor, the House of Horus. The bridal chamber of the two here under the great begetting goddess Nut.

“Your right hand, your right foot: Horus; your left hand, your left foot: Hathor.”

Honouring the masculine and feminine sides of our bodies, we stamp our feet, gesture with our hands, first right, then left, again and again as the chant continues: Horus… Hathor… Horus… Hathor… Horus… Hathor… Horus… Hathor…

“Bring them closer,” Jean invites. “Crossing your hands across your breast. Horus and Hathor. This is the place of the marriage of the self in time with the eternal beloved. It is also the place of the marriage or the great sacred hieros gamos, of yourself with your soul, and as well as many other dyads between you, within you, of you : male and female, spirit and nature, matter and time. And I ask you the questions: Do you take onto yourself this marriage of self and soul, of male and female, of matter and spirit, of nature and time? Do you?”

And we respond “I do”.

“Will you promise to love, to honour, to support, to sustain, to keep the holy ignition bright and flaming?

“Do you agree to a life committed from this moment forth to the joy of such union?

“Do you agree to bring the joy and the power, the enormous fertility and fecundity, as we see from Mother Nut, into this world and time?….and to bring this joy and creativity into the simple things in your life as well as the middling things, as well as the great ones?

“Do you agree to be a fertile vessel of the emergence of the world that is coming now?

“Do you agree to be a spiritual channel for all that is now fertile, fecundating,
a joyful thing, a winged gift? Do you agree to be the bearer of this winged gift now?

“Then celebrate, celebrate, celebrate this union now.”

There is an explosion of sound. A joyous energy courses though the chamber, soars up past Mother Nut, moves through the great temple, delighting the lady of the house. Hathor. Herself.

(from  Called to Egypt on the Back of the Wind  by Anne Kathleen McLaughlin, Borealis Press, Ottawa, Canada 2013  http://borealispress.com)