We each do this, as I drip the water onto me I feel refreshed and invigorated with new strength and knowledge. This pulses through my body as I step forward into a close circle. The chant begins; ‘Hear me, our Lady, hear and save by thy sacred flower, the Lotus of eternal life and beauty; by thy love and mercy; by thy wrath and vengeance; by our desire toward thee, by all the magical names of old hear us, O Lady, hear and save. I invoke thee to initiate our souls’.
I take a dagger from my binding cloth, each of us then say ‘Oh mother Isis, great art thou in thy splendour, mighty is thy name and thy love has no bounds. Unto thee do we pledge our solemn oath of dedication’. We then each place a droplet of our blood into a canopic jar depicting Isis, then in the ancient language we all say ‘ ithir couthor eth e bennin o qour d’lyir’, (‘come oh great Queen unto this world’).
Fire runs through my veins, it curses its way through me, it feels and knows me. An enchanting voice rings through my head, ‘do you think by summoning me you receive eternal life, what do you want, child of the temple?’ Only thoughts pass through my mind to reply, ’I wish only to serve thee’. ‘I have been summoned before for that exact purpose, I will only be fully awakened by true people of Isis. Do you know the purpose?’ How can I answer a goddess that controls me so utterly, and already knows the answer to her question? ‘I can only do want my heart wishes to, and at the moment it wishes for you to be upon this earth. That is the only purpose to my life that I can see’.
She answers me threateningly, ‘you know I have searched your thoughts, for you do not know your true mind, and you lie to me, although you are a true descendant of the ancients, you do not yet comprehend or even perceive what that means and your abilities are still untapped’. To this I have no perception of what she means and she knows it. ‘Can I simply ask then, your highness, what abilities do I possess that I have no knowledge of?’ I feel her laughing at me as though she pities me for my ignorance. ‘You have studied the ancient texts all of your life, and did you not wonder how you came to understand them? I will only tell you this, if you look for my flower where no other grows, you will find me’.
My energy drained from me, I felt my limbs go numb as I collapsed onto the hard floor. People rushed to my side, they had not perceived the time that I had felt pass. They began to think that I had been turned mad by the ceremonies that we perform. They cast me out into the desert with only my thoughts to accompany me.
I had wondered the desert for what seemed an age, until I could travel no further. The sun had ravaged my skin until it was a fiery red. My feet and been burnt till they were almost black and my eyes could not see as well as they used to. I let the smouldering sand take the weight of my decaying body. As I lay there, my eyes scanning the endless sands around me, they pick a blurred image close to me. A purple, fragrant object, the words rush back into my thoughts ‘look for my flower where no other grows’.
I clawed myself to the delicate flower that was not wounded by the suns fierce rays. As I picked the flower from its wiry stalk, an intense light filled the air around me. Once again the faint aroma of the Lotus wafted about me. A shadow sprang from the light yet there was nothing to cast it, ‘you have finally found what you did not seek, I can now tell you what has lain hidden within you for thousands of years. You are Hathor, the goddess of creation and life. Many eons ago Seth pursued you to the ends of the universe; the only way to escape him was to become mortal. Within those bounds he could not find you, for Ra forbid the killing of any mortal. Even though Seth would be punished greatly if he killed a mortal he still pursued you. You feared that your knowledge would betray you, so enclosed your thoughts within a canopic jar. You entrusted me, your sister to keep this knowledge and your identity a secret, until Seth had been destroyed, and so that has been done and you must now rise to the heavens to take your place among the gods’.
With that final phrase a blinding golden light was spread throughout Egypt and to the lands beyond. A god was returning home and it was written in the books of Ancients that there own Queen had been re-born.
