Living the Mysteries of Sekhmet & the Myth of the Goddess Sekhmet Part 1{Anne Key}

This article and future articles are a three part series from Anne’s time at the Sekhmet Temple and excerpted with permission from her book, Desert Priestess.

During my three years of living at the temple {Sekhmet Temple of Goddess Spirituality}, I lived outside of the Christian American calendar, celebrating the turn of the seasons and undulating with the cycle of the moon. Truly living “as above, so below; as the universe, so the soul; as without, so within,” I basked in the revolutions of the sun; the waters of my body ebbed and flowed with the cycle of the moon. I opened myself to the stars and planets of the cosmos every night, watching their procession across the sky and feeling the changes each wrought. I understood finally what it meant to embody spirituality, to embody my spiritual practice, to live it for myself, and to lead others through the cycles of the seasons. This was natural, easy, and I surrendered to it gratefully and with an open heart.

Then there was Sekhmet. How could I live, embody, and lead her mysteries? How could I make sense of a deity accused of destroying the world, who was sedated by alcohol to bring her out of her fury? And, to add a further layer of incongruity, how could I embrace the idea that a deity who is often called a warrior, often associated with war, resides here at a temple proudly standing as a testament to peace?

People would come to the temple and expect me to be able to explain Sekhmet. I would invite them to come chant with me, say her names. I told them the myth “The Destruction of Humanity.” I told them the history of the temple. The incongruities stood stark. I’m sure many people considered me an airheaded goddess worshipper who was too deep in her New Age hoo-ha to figure out that this didn’t make sense. People will think what they will.

But I wanted to understand—for myself. I wanted to write poetry to Sekhmet just as the priestess Enheduanna had written poetry in honor of Inanna 4,000 years ago.²⁸ I wanted to hear the poetry read and sung in her honor. But to do that, I needed to “get it.” And I needed to get it bone deep.

I went many routes to discover these answers, and hoped that by sinking fully into them all I could clear the cognitive dissonance that pervaded my thoughts. One route led me through the aisles of academia, digging through books and journal articles. Another route led me through my interactions with those who came to honor her at the temple—what did Sekhmet mean to them? What did she help them with? How did they perceive her? Another route led me through myself. I met her in trance journeys. I met her in ritual. I continued to pay homage to her, chant her name, arrange festivals in her honor, always listening and feeling her. I began to surrender gratefully to her mysteries.

Sekhmet Myths

The first place that goddess researchers usually go to understand a deity is to the myths. Goddesses who are honored in living traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Yoruba have a continued tradition practiced today that links with their ancestral roots. The myths of these goddesses continue to be told in contemporary times. In order to research goddesses like Sekhmet who are part of ancient traditions not practiced in a continuum to the present, we need to look at how these goddesses were worshipped and honored in their ancient context. That posed particular problems for me. First, I did not have an academic background in Egyptian studies, so I could only rely on secondary sources and translations. This meant that I was always looking through someone else’s eyes—eyes that were not looking for the same thing I was. In my academic research on Mesoamerican goddesses, my knowledge of Spanish and Nahuatl had shown me time and time again that translations were not full enough to deliver the nuances of narrative, and that in reading papers and books solely in English, usually by American scholars, I learned only a shadow of the full story.

Taking into account my limited investigative skills, relying on secondary sources and translations, I researched everything I could regarding the myths of Sekhmet, her names, the stories that were told about her by those who worshipped her, and which cultures called her names in prayer and why. I was fortunate enough to find Normandi Ellis’s works, as she is both an academic researcher and a spiritual practitioner. I wanted to read about Sekhmet from the perspective of someone academically informed who sees her as a divine entity, who experiences her in multiple ways, and who believes in her.

There are relatively few myths mentioning Sekhmet, and the ones that do mention her as the Eye of Re, the Eye of the Sun. In Egyptian mythology, the Eye of the Sun is a personage, a character that represents the concentrated and directed strength of the sun. Three myths about the Eye interweave and overlap, sharing characteristics and differences. They are all found in different texts, so they should not be seen as linear or congruent; however, these stories do provide an interesting and fuller portrait of The Eye and Sekhmet. In the first two myths, The Eye leaves Egypt. The Eye creates humanity in the first myth and sets out to destroy humanity in the third. The Eye’s return to Egypt in the second and third myths is heralded with fanfare and joyous festivities.

In the first of these three myths, this version from The Book of Smiting Down Apophis, the Eye leaves Egypt and follows the deities Tefnut and Shu. Upon her return, the Eye is enraged to find that Atum-Re created another Eye to take her place. Her tears of rage and grief form human beings. Atum-Re then places the Eye on his forehead as the uraeus, where it rules over everything.²⁹

In the second myth, often referred to as “The Distant Goddess,” The Eye leaves Egypt and goes south to Nubia. Re realizes that he is powerless without his Eye, so he sends an emissary to convince the Eye to return. Through much storytelling, cajoling, and charm, the Eye is persuaded to return. Upon the Eye’s return, everyone rejoices and a great festival is given in her honor.³⁰ According to one text, upon return the Eye “has come to rest and has stopped in Isheru in her form of Sekhmet.”³¹ The Eye can be seen as the first feminine being, and the ensuing festival upon her return (in both this and the third myth) was celebrated as “the welcoming of a beneficial force for all of Egypt.”³²

The third myth, the one most commonly associated with Sekhmet, is referred to as “The Destruction of Humanity,” and is from the Book of the Heavenly Cow found on the walls of royal Egyptian tombs from the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, around 1200–1100 BCE. This myth is considered to be one of the oldest ancient Egyptian narratives.

The “Destruction of Humanity” myth opens with a group of humans rebelling against Re, the aging solar god. Re brings together a council of elder deities for advice. Among those attending is his Eye, who created humans. Nun, the primeval chaos, suggests that Re send his Eye out to wage war against the humans who rebelled against his authority. The Eye, in the form of the goddess Hathor, goes to slay the human rebels, who have fled to the desert. She slaughters the rebels and then returns to Re, saying that she “overpowered mankind, and it was agreeable to my heart.” And it is here that “Sekhmet came into being.” Considering this, Re decides that he does indeed want to rule over the humans.

Realizing that Sekhmet will destroy the rest of humanity, Re has a change of heart. He commands his chief priest to grind red ochre to mix with seven thousand jars of barley beer being brewed by women. On the eve of Sekhmet’s planned destruction of humanity, the intoxicating draught is completed and poured into the fields where she will arrive. In the morning, Sekhmet arrives to find the fields brimming with the red beer. Seeing her own reflection in the flooded plains, she is delighted and drinks her fill. She is then too intoxicated to even recognize humans. Re greets her with the words “Twice welcome in peace, O Charming One” and decrees that every year women will brew intoxicating draughts for a great feast in her honor.

Variants of “The Destruction of Humanity” story exist in Egyptian mythology with different deities and different rebellions, which cause this narrative to be viewed as a repeating pattern of events.³³ The myth shares many similarities with other myths that depict deities creating humans and then ultimately destroying them because they were dissatisfied with their creation. This supports the principle that a deity that is powerful enough to create life is also powerful enough to destroy it. And in this ancient Egyptian myth, that power resides with female deities. The power of Sekhmet is beyond the male gods’ control; she is a force of nature, wild and indiscriminate.

In all of these myths, the Eye is a symbol of power, the awesome and awe-full power of the sun. This power spans the destructive acts of creation and the creative acts of destruction.

Ancient Egyptians reenacted the myth of “The Destruction of Humanity” in an annual festival held in the first month of the year after the flooding of the Nile. These feasts are well-documented at the temple of Mut during the reign of Hatshepsut and well into the Ptolemaic era. The temple inscriptions reveal continual singing, dancing, drinking, and music-making as acts of propitiation of Mut in her form as Sekhmet.³⁴

This New Year’s festival occurred after the hottest days of summer had finally ended, the rains arrived, and the Nile flooded. Ochre-colored beer, brewed by women, flowed in an ecstatic ritual of propitiation to the power of the female divine.³⁵ The flooding of the Nile brought the promise of the continuation of life in an annual cycle. The early floods would flush more clay, silt, and sand down the river, creating rich and fertile sediment. With the mythic identification of the Nile and menstruation, this festival honored the power of the female in all aspects.³⁶

The regeneration of the land and the continuation of life were intricately tied to the cycles of the Nile. If the Nile’s flooding was too high or too low, cultivation was adversely affected, often resulting in severe famine. Water, as well as the sun, wielded the forces of creation and destruction.

The New Year festival was one of the principal transition periods for the ancient Egyptians. Sekhmet was invoked and propitiated as her immense power could be wielded in many directions. A recitation of a spell called “The Book of the Last Day of the Year” was performed over a piece of cloth, which was then worn as an amulet during the days leading up to the New Year. Prayers were recited to gain the protection of Sekhmet, and tokens of Sekhmet and another feline deity, Bastet, were liberally bestowed.

The clergy of Sekhmet, the “Uab,” were famed as healers and surgeons. One of the few surviving ancient Egyptian medical books, the Papyrus Ebers, contains many spells written expressly for the use of the clergy of Sekhmet. A comprehensive knowledge of the heart and circulation was attributed to the Uab. The heart reflected the solar attributes of regeneration. Heart scarabs, placed on the chest of the deceased, manifested the revitalizing powers of the sun, aiding the transformation of the deceased. Some heart scarabs were made of carnelian; this passage from The Egyptian Book of the Dead, beautifully translated by Normandi Ellis, refers to the stone’s regenerative and solar qualities: “Mine is a heart of carnelian…I am the phoenix, the fiery sun, consuming and resuming myself.”³⁷

Sekhmet was a complicated weaving with seemingly contradictory threads: warrior and healer, protector and destroyer. I needed to surrender my preconceptions to really see the whole.

Next part … Entering the Myth of Sekhmet

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