Day #22 Soulmate Search

And More Things I Learned from Damien Echols

Now I’m experimenting with wheatberries.  I never had them before, and after my disaster with the Japanese radishes (see 2 entries ago), I made sure I was purchasing the right grain.  Of course, then I discovered I had nothing except ugly Tupperware dishes to store the grain in.  Oh, if that doesn’t make me feel just feel so un-countrified unhippy-ish, doing that.  Tupperware.  How suburban.  How provincial!  How un-continental.  I’m physically tying myself to a chair so as not to run out the door and over to Home Goods, looking for a chic ceramic container, since it would be made in China anyway.

I managed to combine numerous cultures into one lunch:  Egg drop soup (China), with spinach (Nepal to China where it was, and still is, known as the "Persian green"), and corn (or maize (zea mays), a domesticated plant of the Americas), wheatberries  (Babylonians, Hittites, Hebrews, Romans, Arabs and Egyptians), matzoh balls (Jewish) and saffron (India and Spain).  Could I cram more stuff into one soup bowl??  Anyway, it was delicious.
 

LOSS AND GAIN.

How sadly beats the heavy autumn rain;

How mournful drives the wind among the trees;

Along the shore the weary sailor sees

The waves roll in that send him out again;

The birds are restless in the scattered leaves,

The clouds move wildly on in massy fold,

And all the outer world, or earth, or air,

But yesterday so warm, so fair,

Is changed, and in a night, to drear and cold.

Now goes the golden autumn far away;

Now nearer comes the winter to my door;

And thus doth Nature, working evermore,

Create new life from changes and decay.

Between the Lights, page 355

A week or so ago, I was checking out Damien’s journal, which I’ve taken to calling “The Book of Damien” when I quote him in my Day Book, quickly turning into a Book of Shadows, mainly because I enjoy imagining archeologists 500 years from now unearthing my Day Book and trying to figure out what “The Book of Damien” was.  Yes, sadistic cruelty aimed at future archeologists IS my hobby, I’m sorry to say.  On October 25^th of 2010 he wrote,

“The archangel who presides over these things is Azrael. He’s commonly known as the “Angel of Death,” although I think that sounds a little scary to most people. Azrael not only escorts the dead to heaven but also helps the living get through the grieving process. We can also give him the emotions and states of mind we’ve outgrown, so that we can move forward. Azrael takes away fear, doubt, anger, worry, stress, and resentment. If it stands in the way of your developing a closer relationship with the Divine, Azrael will remove it.”  (Book of Damien, 25OCT2010)

Aside from the fact that I can’t find “Azrael” in my Lewis & Oliver Angels A to Z book (I wonder if he’s in Michele Belanger’s book on Demons), Damien really has become my Signpost Guy, because at that very same time he mentioned Azrael, I had begun reading all about Sekhmet, who had, it seems, a lot of the same characteristics as Azrael.

 

Azrael, I have to say, really does personify the utter terror westerners have for death.  Just google images of “Azrael” and see what you come up with.  Except for the one pimply kid who drew Azrael as a women with unnaturally gigantic boobs (you want to pat him comfortingly on the head and say, “Yes, yes, you’re terrified of female sexuality, we understand …”), most of the depictions are pretty ugly.  The one exception is the painting that appears on the Wikipedia page (right), in which he appears almost comforting.

Is he an angel?  Is he a demon?  Who knows?  I’d ask Damien, but see excuses for why I can’t (previous entries) and “ditto”.

Sekhmet  is credited with some of the same qualities of Damien’s “give him/her the emotions and states of mind we’ve outgrown”.  I hope “outgrown” means the same thing as, “the emotions and states of mind that we’ve realized are killing us”.  Anger.  Rage.  Resentment.  Those sorts of things.  Either he had a lot more to be angry about, or perhaps Damien just used a more patient and “understanding-sounding” way of wording the same sentiments.

I’m not as nice as he is.  I know I have an issue with rage, and it’s surfacing more and more lately.  Hence the intense anger directed at, for example, the stupid women of North Andover, who shove shopping carts at or maliciously sneeze on people.  Or, place their need to maniacally babble away on their cell phones while they’re driving high above the lives of others.  Maybe I should have said, hence the anger directed at stupid women in general.  I have basically zero tolerance for them.  Men overlook women’s evil largely because … well, where women are concerned, men are thinking with every other body part they have except their brains.  Women generally don’t have that distraction where other women are concerned.

So, as part of the “burning up those little scraps of paper” step in finding a soul mate – and I still haven’t done it yet - I knew I had to burn up the rage issue.  But there was a part of me that felt it was a larger problem than something that could disappear with a “burning a small piece of paper” ceremony, particularly because the rage rarely turned outward, except on paper or in journals and blogs; in reality, it always turned inward.  And I’d been trying to think of a way of learning how to banish it from myself, my psyche, my brain, my emotions.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy; it was too big a part of me, and I knew it was causing me serious damage.

THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES.  I know.  I encountered Sekhmet and Damien’s mention of Azrael at the same time.  I don’t know why I found Sekhmet so intriguing, other than:  I was meant to find her intriguing, which almost felt like a calling of sorts. 

I knew a few things about Sekhmet.  I knew she was considered quite dangerous to invoke, and didn’t, as they say, suffer fools gladly.  This I actually liked about her, as I was normally opposed to and disgusted by “girly” nonsense anyway.  That is probably the best benchmark I have for people who claim to be “channelers”.  If any deity claims to be addressing me, and starts out the speech with, “My beloved child” and starts throwing out “thou”s, “thee’s” and “thys”, or something equally as ridiculous, I’ll get up and walk out.  Any deity worth his or her salt knows better than to address me like that and wouldn’t do it.  So needless to say, very few deities have addressed me at psychic fairs, let’s put it that way.  I can’t imagine for a second that Sekhmet would do such a thing so I’m operating on something I swore I would never employ:  a tablespoon of faith..  That’s all though.

From what I’ve heard, Sekhmet never answered questions you already knew the answer to, or did things for you that you could do for yourself, and I knew that even the heavily Islamic contemporary Egyptians recognized her as one of the few deities who still inhabited a ‘living statue’ – I vaguely recall reading about two nutball Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists who broke her statue in three pieces in an attempt to banish her altogether – it didn’t work. 

The thought that she might seek retribution for the damage terrified the local residents to such an extent that they hurriedly reconstructed her and punished the vandals severely – Muslim or not.  Hank Wesselman recorded an astounding encounter with the living Sekhmet in Karnak as well.  If there was one deity who understood a woman’s rage and could transform it, it was Sekhmet.

According to the White Moon Gallery, “It is widely believed that Sekhmet herself is a much more ancient deity, and in fact, Sekhmet is much older than Ra. It is told that she “came to Egypt from a place unknown and a time unrecorded” (Masters) as shown by some of her titles:

Lady of the Place at the Beginning of Time

One Who Was Before the Gods Were

Mother of All the Gods

As far as titles go, she actually has something like 100 titles and probably more.  She is, I believe, the only Egyptian goddess with a temple in the Americas, located in the Nevada Desert, which she inhabits.  She is so alive and visible she is loathed by the United States Air Force which buzz her from a local base regularly, so you know there has to be something good about her, for the obsessively pro-Christian, militaristic U.S. Air Force to hate her so much.  More’s the pity none of them can differentiate between the ancient Egyptians who had a huge impact on their own spiritual and cultural development (although they’re too stupid to admit it), and the present day Egyptian Muslims they feel they have to hate.  Same way the Arkansas Baptist Church Ladies hated Damien, so you know there’s something right about him, too.  Besides, Sekhmet has Sagittarius connections.  One guess what Damien’s birth sign is. 

If you read his description of his wife from his autobiography, his connection of sexuality with feline characteristics is pure Sekhmet, as connected as she is with sexuality and raw, untamed kundalini energy.  She may have her claws in him too, even if he doesn’t know it.  Or maybe he does and just never mentioned it.

There’s that sexual power again.  No wonder the Christians hate her.

http://www.sekhmettemple.com/

“If it stands in the way of your developing a closer relationship with the Divine …”  I think that’s the direction I’m supposed to be going, and I suspect Sekhmet is about to pick me up in her razor sharp teeth by the scruff of the neck and take me there.  And she isn’t going to tolerate any foot dragging or whining, either.  The dream space (see previous entry) was created for that purpose, and my willingness to seriously try to meditate is another part.  As always, Damien was “Mr. Signpost”, turning me in that direction, so that I could suddenly find myself looking into the stern eyes of a lioness-goddess, off in a new bend in the road. 

Sacred Source – which, I have to say, I’d never heard of until now -  agreed to send me a sistrum, which is an ancient Egyptian musical instrument, and a replica (I’m guessing N-scale, but I’m bad at estimating scales, even when I’m looking at model railroads) of the Karnak statue of Sekhmet, which is even awesome to look at in photos.  I should clarify that they’re not sending me an actual ancient Egyptian musical instrument; they’re sending me a replica of that, too.  I had to do another You-Tube video search to learn how they’re played and the rhythms they used.

Bill Miller solemnly pushes me forward with “Never Too Far” from his Spirit Rain cd, while I next research Sekhmet oil.  I love Bill Miller – well, not romantically – he’s just a phenomenal musician – slash - singer - slash - songwriter and I could listen to him all day.  He’s followed by Mario Frangoulis, whose “Hijo de la Luna” always makes me tear up when he gets to that last stanza.

Sekhmet Oil.  I realize I’m kind of throwing myself off a spiritual cliff, here … I know I need her help but am not sure how to ask for it.  Respect.  Anointing her when she arrives – the Egyptian “opening the mouth” ceremony … greeting her with respect at the very least.  Creating an elementary shrine of sorts.  I’m thinking, “Hopefully, she’d appreciate that much more than the Air Force disrespectfully buzzing her in Nevada.”  Will she elect to inhabit her statue in its newly created shrine in Massachusetts, the way she does in Karnak and Nevada?  ?  Well, time will tell.

I’m also thinking that someone ought to tell the Air Force pilots the story of what she did, according to Egyptian history, the LAST time she expressed her disapproval at the disrespect shown to deities, like herself.  Read the myth and you suspect immediately that this is the earlier version of the back-story for Noah’s flood:  a deity becoming so angry with human beings he decides to wipe them off the planet.  In Egypt it was Ra, who sent Sekhmet.  Judeo-Christians, with their contempt for women, rewrote the story to eliminate a feminine role;  they talk about Yahweh sending a flood to wipe humanity off the planet when they got rude and disrespectful.

In the Egyptian version, Ra sent Sekhmet who did her job so well Ra had to save humanity from her blood lust, which was considerable.  Like I said, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  And the U.S. Air Force is sticking their very foolish toes way over the line as far as that goes.  I’d back away from the Air Force, if I were you, to avoid getting splattered with the fallout, when she finally loses her temper at them in a big way.  All of the weapons and planes in the world won’t do them a bit of good when that happens.

Understand I have no problem with the U.S. Air Force in general; just with their habit of disrespecting deities of others.

But back to the Oil.  I flip through Bast and Sehkmet:  Eyes of Ra (Constantine and Coquio) and find the recipe. 

2 drops frankincense oil

2 drops orange or sweet orange oil

2 drops sandalwood oil

2 drops rosemary oil

Hmm.  Love the visual image of me trying to measure “drops” without an eyedropper.  Well, THAT has “one big oily mess” written all over it.  What do you say I go looking for an eyedropper and a bottle?  I discover I have all the ingredients except for the sandalwood oil.  See?  I knew there was a reason I had frankincense oil, which I had picked up at a Whole Foods out of curiosity and mentioned, in a previous entry somewhere.

Normandi Ellis believes that the rage of Sekhmet is a manifestation of “thwarted energy.” Because women are taught to repress anger and turn it inwards, it builds up – and eventually, that energy has to be released. Sekhmet is transformative power, and we can use her energy in a positive way by learning how to release and express it appropriately.

Normandi Ellis, Feasts of Light: Celebrations of the Seasons of Life

Sekhmet:

“Ruler of the desert, Blazing eye of the sun” (lyrics from “Om Sekhmet”)