PHOTOS: Above: Ruins of Temple of Khnum; view across the Nile to the Hotel where Agatha Christie stayed and wrote. Left: Ruins of mud brick village structures through which narrow steps lead up to the temple site.
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As I pondered of what to use as a topic for my blog for Sept. (after procrastinating until the very last day), I caught a newscast on TV in the background. I talked about the hurricane devastation in Texas and Puerto Rico and when I came across this essay/meditative story theme, it seemed ironically appropriate. Mind that this was written during one of several Shamanic type experiences in March 2011 after trekking to the Temple of Khnum atop layers of mudbrick homes, shops and LIFE, which represented the accumulation of settlements built one on top of the former for eons. At the very top of this area, stood the temple or should I say what was left after it was deliberately destroyed by a conquering faction (If I remember correctly, Persians) and the ravages of TIME. It’s difficult to describe the site perfectly, but the picture from my files may help, but as you read this, I hope the imagery will become clear in the way IT MOST RELATES TO YOUR SPIRIT! The purpose is to guide into the concept of remaking a metaphoric vessel, similarly to making a clay pot upon a potter’s wheel – The neter Khnum represents this conceptual idea for he is the neter that rules physical creation. He forms all living things on his potter’s wheel, using the muddy muck from the bottom of the life-giving Nile and sandy clay from the land; then once the form is finished, he breathes life into its lungs, bringing it to life and giving it a Divine spark. We can equate this story to that of God creating life with certain differences based on religious and cultural ideals—no matter, the idea is universal!
If you chose to use this imagery, I believe it will become more vivid and appropriate to your sensibilities and be changed to suit them, thereby personalizing the process to fit your needs. I think the idea here uniquely describes what nowadays people call – reinventing oneself. Indeed, with all the tearing down and rendering to nothing that is happening in our lives – regardless of the degree or cause – the idea of going within the self and reinventing the occupant of your vessel (the body in which that Divine essence resides); as a personal sort of shamanic journey within the self, you may create a basis on which to reassess your life goals, address issues that need change or healing and most of all, reinvent yourself to whatever degree you wish—The analogy befittingly placing yourself upon Khnum’s potter’s wheel and requesting a bit of correction for what is not working any longer or needs some remodeling in order to move forward either more successfully with who you already are or changing what needs to allow that success to become more effective/efficient. Bottom line . . . the uses for this imagery for personal meditation/healing are ENDLESS and limited only by YOU.
With the fires in the west, hurricanes in the south and east and everything else chaotically causing extreme changes to so many people . . . I thought about equating things to the Tarot as the Tower Card, but this journey to the potter’s wheel at the top of layered history (fractal time), I thought this would suffice to do three things: 1. Provide a guided meditation for personal reconstruction regardless of what or how it equates to YOU; 2. Offer a gentler message of the change that begins within before it can be made without; and 3. Allow the mental images lead toward any form of reinventing of the self that you may wish to begin—after all, as the seasons change, so do those who sense such changes and utilize the shifting energy to enact changes beginning with moving life more indoors as the air chills to fall house cleaning and preparing for the holidays beginning with Samhain/Halloween to New Year’s Day – or getting around to the reinvention of the self in all ways, including new career or hobby choices, that have been on the back burner for ? (years?).
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.
Atop all that 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 still give the sense that it was once and always shall be 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.
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Feel free to reinvent the imagery to suit YOU, but remember that the journey itself is a universal metaphor applicable to ????? whatever culture, individual ideals or whim! Just consider that WE (as humans) moving into higher energies of all kinds, need to and are learning to become co-creators with the Divine.
---------------------------------------------
As I pondered of what to use as a topic for my blog for Sept. (after procrastinating until the very last day), I caught a newscast on TV in the background. I talked about the hurricane devastation in Texas and Puerto Rico and when I came across this essay/meditative story theme, it seemed ironically appropriate. Mind that this was written during one of several Shamanic type experiences in March 2011 after trekking to the Temple of Khnum atop layers of mudbrick homes, shops and LIFE, which represented the accumulation of settlements built one on top of the former for eons. At the very top of this area, stood the temple or should I say what was left after it was deliberately destroyed by a conquering faction (If I remember correctly, Persians) and the ravages of TIME. It’s difficult to describe the site perfectly, but the picture from my files may help, but as you read this, I hope the imagery will become clear in the way IT MOST RELATES TO YOUR SPIRIT! The purpose is to guide into the concept of remaking a metaphoric vessel, similarly to making a clay pot upon a potter’s wheel – The neter Khnum represents this conceptual idea for he is the neter that rules physical creation. He forms all living things on his potter’s wheel, using the muddy muck from the bottom of the life-giving Nile and sandy clay from the land; then once the form is finished, he breathes life into its lungs, bringing it to life and giving it a Divine spark. We can equate this story to that of God creating life with certain differences based on religious and cultural ideals—no matter, the idea is universal!
If you chose to use this imagery, I believe it will become more vivid and appropriate to your sensibilities and be changed to suit them, thereby personalizing the process to fit your needs. I think the idea here uniquely describes what nowadays people call – reinventing oneself. Indeed, with all the tearing down and rendering to nothing that is happening in our lives – regardless of the degree or cause – the idea of going within the self and reinventing the occupant of your vessel (the body in which that Divine essence resides); as a personal sort of shamanic journey within the self, you may create a basis on which to reassess your life goals, address issues that need change or healing and most of all, reinvent yourself to whatever degree you wish—The analogy befittingly placing yourself upon Khnum’s potter’s wheel and requesting a bit of correction for what is not working any longer or needs some remodeling in order to move forward either more successfully with who you already are or changing what needs to allow that success to become more effective/efficient. Bottom line . . . the uses for this imagery for personal meditation/healing are ENDLESS and limited only by YOU.
With the fires in the west, hurricanes in the south and east and everything else chaotically causing extreme changes to so many people . . . I thought about equating things to the Tarot as the Tower Card, but this journey to the potter’s wheel at the top of layered history (fractal time), I thought this would suffice to do three things: 1. Provide a guided meditation for personal reconstruction regardless of what or how it equates to YOU; 2. Offer a gentler message of the change that begins within before it can be made without; and 3. Allow the mental images lead toward any form of reinventing of the self that you may wish to begin—after all, as the seasons change, so do those who sense such changes and utilize the shifting energy to enact changes beginning with moving life more indoors as the air chills to fall house cleaning and preparing for the holidays beginning with Samhain/Halloween to New Year’s Day – or getting around to the reinvention of the self in all ways, including new career or hobby choices, that have been on the back burner for ? (years?).
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.
Atop all that 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 still give the sense that it was once and always shall be 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.
------------------
Feel free to reinvent the imagery to suit YOU, but remember that the journey itself is a universal metaphor applicable to ????? whatever culture, individual ideals or whim! Just consider that WE (as humans) moving into higher energies of all kinds, need to and are learning to become co-creators with the Divine.
