Sekhmet – Feminism and Religion

Bloody Waters by Ivy Helman

(Author’s note: I live in Prague, Czech Republic and teach at Charles University. Try as I might, I could not express in prose my thoughts about the violence in the world and particularly the violence here, in Prague, on the 21st of December, especially given the fact that I was a block away from what took place. So, I have written a poem instead.)

I swim through
the slimy waters of patriarchal violence
Difficult to express in words
the anxieties, the fear, the sadness
I feel as I take another stroke

towards

the parshah Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:6),
a divinely wrought plague of locusts
devouring all in their path.

Breathe,
stroke.

Darkness lasting three long days
blood smeared on doorposts and lintels
the deaths of first-borns, humans and animals alike,
the proclamation of a New Year and its festivities
to remind us of such nonsensical violence.

Breathe.
There is blood in the water.
Stroke.

The Return of the Goddess to Our Human Consciousness by Caryn MacGrandle

*One of the over 700 granodiorite statues made of the Goddess Sekhmet almost 3500 years ago, “the Lady of the Place of the Beginning of Time.”*

Molly Remer of Brigid’s Grove, a fellow contributor here at Feminism and Religion recently wrote on the Mother Well section of the divine feminine app: “I feel like Inanna & Enheduanna are all around in recent months!”

Yes. I do as well.

A year or two ago, I read a book by Lauren Sleeman entitled ‘Behold’. The premise of the book has remained with me: a telling of the Goddesses, in particular Lilith, the Great Mother and Crone of the Cosmos, and Hekate, Goddess of the Dark Moon and the Mysteries of Life, who have been silently watching and waiting these past few thousand years to return to our human consciousness.

Strolling with Sekhmet and Bast into the New Year by Jan Peppler

In my dream, two large cats are walking towards me on a sidewalk. They are large cats, not house cats, rather, lions or tigers and they are walking on two legs, standing up, like humans. Wait, their bodies are human, only their heads are feline. As they come closer, they appear to have top hats on their heads. They look like twins. I step aside and they stroll past me.

Clearly Sekhmet and Bast have come to me in my dream. These goddesses are not part of my faith tradition. Yet depth psychology is my tool for understanding and dreams are the realm of life: animating the forces bubbling beneath the surface. I must turn my face to these feline goddesses, bow and listen, to hear what they may want to share.

Sekhmet and Bast derive from Net or Neith, the oldest Egyptian female deity. Both were considered daughters and consorts of Ra (or Re), the sun god. Bast was designated the mild eye of Ra, while Sekhmet was the sun’s scorching eye. As such, the two goddesses are both opposites and complements of each other. Continue reading “Strolling with Sekhmet and Bast into the New Year by Jan Peppler”