This was actually written after visiting and doing a ritual at the Temple of Khnum on Elephantine Island, Aswan, Egypt, March , 2011. I chose to use it here as inspiration and a potential meditation/visualization guide post for those who may wish to enhance the New Year's Resolutions made or empower new ones with the visualization of creating each dream, desire, goal or change as YOU are its creator (in the stead of the Neter, Khnum, Ram-headed god of creation and the Nile ebb and flow). After the ritual to rewire old issues, we may become as the creator, as if Khnum (in this instance) or any other creator image you choose, has stepped alongside to guide our hands in making the new "vessel" or form/imagery to the renewed being, accordingly. Alas, we (as a species) are learning to become the creator. Therefore, I wrote of the experience just as it flowed and without any actual plan or prompt. So, because this is the middle of the first month of 2016, I offer this experience in story form as it was physically, mentally and metaphorically experienced that day at a temple once venerated for the creation of life forms, ideals and the prosperity for individuals and nations; adaptable to the world in which we currently reside and the one in which we wish to leave for our children. Thus, as Khunm created life metaphysically with mud from the bottom of the Nile formed into all kinds of living things upon a potter's wheel, so we can take a lesson from him, as well as the alchemists of old, and in a similar style, create our dreams -- Sa Sekhem Sahu.
INSPIRATION -- "THE MAKING OF A VESSEL"
It was certainly a difficult struggle from the slime and mud as the lotus, yet it was a journey in measurable increments. Khnum demands so much more. He displays the symbolic horns, which remind us that our journey is upon the waters of the Nile and within the spiral of the DNA wherein lay the cellular memory of all our lifetimes across all time.
Step by painful step and each asthmatic gasp in the intense heat of the day, I climb the mud brick and stone steps leading through four or five layers of history. Hundreds of years of living and working represented by each level of homes stacked one on top of the other and unaware of those who dwelled below and before or would build upon theirs in the future. It occurs to me that climbing up through these ruins I was furiously ripping away the sheets of a calendar but by the year rather than the day. The eons blurred together until only now existed.
In the heat, I could only imagine the ghostly faces peering from the windowless houses to watch the strangely dressed people who were walking past oblivious of their residual existence. Did anyone care that the memories had been recorded in the fabric of time and played repeatedly, unknown, unheard and unseen by visitors and archeologists who come.
On top of all this invisible living, we find all that remains of Khnum’s temple. Broken pieces of granite blocks and fragmented stone floors. Only two pylons still stand joined at the top with a lovely lintel. Many fragmented spells or messages remain on many of the blocks and a few picture images as well. The presence of these pylons provide a sense that this was once a sacred place of Khnum, the ram who sees, hears and decides the plight of the people who live along his great river, Nile. He has cared for them for thousands of years. He will continue to do so for as long as he is remembered with the speaking of his name by all who come here.
We walk reverently through the pylons and circle around a gigantic round altar stone, reminiscent of a pottery wheel, which can no longer spine for its size, weight and lack of turning mechanism. Yet as co-creators with the Neteru, we have earned the right to work here. We have the power to visualize our desire, our own potential or destiny and the great wheel spins. We will form a new vessel to contain all that we hope for and our greatest possibilities. We breathe the heart breath, exhale and suck it in again. We make a connection deep into the earth’s core and up into the stars, to stand here: As above, so below. Our visualizing energizes the wheel spinning it faster, blurring with the speed. Khephera, the great black dung beetle, works his pincers and mandible to push and roll the clay from its origin as fertile mud at the bottom of the Nile up to be the clay we drop onto the spinning wheel. Water from a cistern poured over the clay, moistening and shaping the once fertile sludge coagulated as clay and it is malleable in our hands.
Centrifugal force such as the cataract whirlpools roiling rapidly in the great river below, the vessel begins to take a shape coaxed by creative hands. Each container varies by the dreamer and is hardened by baking in the fires within each belly, which contains the flames and embers ignited by the Egyptian Mystery rites that have come before this moment.
There on the stone, I see my vessel/desire. Even though the visualization was to create the vessel from formlessness, mine appeared instantly and in finished form as if I had poured a mold rather than manipulated clay. There exact in every minute detail, I saw a statue of the scribe, which I remembered from the Egyptian Museum. In fact, the paint was also old and chipped as if I had copied the ancient statue exactly in my mind in order to be the vessel for my dream to become the writer or scribe -- "whatever your heart shall desire ....."
HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS TO EVERYONE!!!
It was certainly a difficult struggle from the slime and mud as the lotus, yet it was a journey in measurable increments. Khnum demands so much more. He displays the symbolic horns, which remind us that our journey is upon the waters of the Nile and within the spiral of the DNA wherein lay the cellular memory of all our lifetimes across all time.
Step by painful step and each asthmatic gasp in the intense heat of the day, I climb the mud brick and stone steps leading through four or five layers of history. Hundreds of years of living and working represented by each level of homes stacked one on top of the other and unaware of those who dwelled below and before or would build upon theirs in the future. It occurs to me that climbing up through these ruins I was furiously ripping away the sheets of a calendar but by the year rather than the day. The eons blurred together until only now existed.
In the heat, I could only imagine the ghostly faces peering from the windowless houses to watch the strangely dressed people who were walking past oblivious of their residual existence. Did anyone care that the memories had been recorded in the fabric of time and played repeatedly, unknown, unheard and unseen by visitors and archeologists who come.
On top of all this invisible living, we find all that remains of Khnum’s temple. Broken pieces of granite blocks and fragmented stone floors. Only two pylons still stand joined at the top with a lovely lintel. Many fragmented spells or messages remain on many of the blocks and a few picture images as well. The presence of these pylons provide a sense that this was once a sacred place of Khnum, the ram who sees, hears and decides the plight of the people who live along his great river, Nile. He has cared for them for thousands of years. He will continue to do so for as long as he is remembered with the speaking of his name by all who come here.
We walk reverently through the pylons and circle around a gigantic round altar stone, reminiscent of a pottery wheel, which can no longer spine for its size, weight and lack of turning mechanism. Yet as co-creators with the Neteru, we have earned the right to work here. We have the power to visualize our desire, our own potential or destiny and the great wheel spins. We will form a new vessel to contain all that we hope for and our greatest possibilities. We breathe the heart breath, exhale and suck it in again. We make a connection deep into the earth’s core and up into the stars, to stand here: As above, so below. Our visualizing energizes the wheel spinning it faster, blurring with the speed. Khephera, the great black dung beetle, works his pincers and mandible to push and roll the clay from its origin as fertile mud at the bottom of the Nile up to be the clay we drop onto the spinning wheel. Water from a cistern poured over the clay, moistening and shaping the once fertile sludge coagulated as clay and it is malleable in our hands.
Centrifugal force such as the cataract whirlpools roiling rapidly in the great river below, the vessel begins to take a shape coaxed by creative hands. Each container varies by the dreamer and is hardened by baking in the fires within each belly, which contains the flames and embers ignited by the Egyptian Mystery rites that have come before this moment.
There on the stone, I see my vessel/desire. Even though the visualization was to create the vessel from formlessness, mine appeared instantly and in finished form as if I had poured a mold rather than manipulated clay. There exact in every minute detail, I saw a statue of the scribe, which I remembered from the Egyptian Museum. In fact, the paint was also old and chipped as if I had copied the ancient statue exactly in my mind in order to be the vessel for my dream to become the writer or scribe -- "whatever your heart shall desire ....."
HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS TO EVERYONE!!!
