Sekhmet Chances

It was such a beautiful day that I was concerned I might not be alone as I trundled down the steep path to my favorite spot on the river. I had recently discovered that I could no longer do Sacred Pipe ceremonies at home - my apartment complex, which apparently includes my balcony, is a smoke-free zone - so as a Pipe Carrier I needed to find other places to do ceremony. My first thought was the river. I was introduced to this particular, secluded site years ago by a friend, and it has since become one of my most magickal and favorite places in the world. A small number of people know about it, hence my apprehension, but as I cleared the trees I found myself quite gratefully alone beside the beloved river. From my mind I breathed a sigh of relief, even as my heart joked, “Duh! You were called to do ceremony here so of course you’re going to have solitude.”

For a second I thought about sitting on the beach next to the water, but then my favorite ‘sitting rock’ called to me and, without questioning it, I clambered atop and sat down. I breathed in the serenity and power of this place, exhaling a half dozen “thank yous,” then after laying out my ceremonial spread - My chanupa bowl and stem with the accompanying sage, tobacco, and matches resting on a blue patterned cloth I’d acquired during my Shamanic training - I set sacred space by thanking in turn the elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, the Spirits of the Upper World, the Lower World, and the Compassionate Spirits of the Middle World - The Fae, the Spirits of the Land, and the Ancestors of the Land - for their presence, asking each to bless me with their Love and their Light. Relaxing into that glowing sphere, I pass my pipe, and everything that would touch it, through cleansing sage smoke, then taking the bowl in my left hand and the stem in my right, I close my eyes and breathe deeper into that liminal space. I raise the bowl and stem above my head, asking for permission to smoke in this place at this time, then join the bowl and stem together to form my pipe. I offer four pinches of tobacco to the four directions before tucking them into the bowl and then lighting up, I blow a smoke blessing to the directions as well, this time including Sky and Earth, ending by turning my pipe in a circle with a smoke blessing to All My Relations.

After a short round of intermittent puffing and sitting silently, I turn my attention to the main purpose of this ceremony. “Compassionate spirit of Sekhmet, will you come smoke with me?” For a moment I feel slightly embarrassed as I realize I’ve pretty much bogarted the entire space on the rock with nowhere left for her to sit opposite me. Then I hear her roaring laughter at my embarrassment as she towers over me, the river barely washing over her ankles. “I am a goddess unhindered by the limits of your time and space.” The next thing I know, she has shrunk down to a more or less human stature, and is sitting in midair in front of me, her lion tail casually splishing back and forth in the river below.

Sekhmet, for those unfamiliar, is the lioness-headed goddess of Ancient Egypt. She is one of the few solar goddesses you’ll find in global mythology. Born of the eye of Ra the sun god in a fit of vengeance, it is said that she created the barren Sahara with her breath and killed countless humans in her wake. Her unquenchable anger and blood lust could only be curbed by tricking her into drinking beer dyed red with pomegranate juice until she passed out. Upon awakening she found balance in the love of the god Ptah, becoming the Goddess of Appropriate Action. She is one of the most powerful deities in Ancient Egypt, her name actually deriving from the Egyptian word for “Power.”

For a very long time I have heard Sekhmet calling to me. At one point I even found myself spontaneously drawing a lioness’ face which developed into a portrait of her. Still, even though I felt a kindredship with her, I kept avoiding actually connecting with her. Turns out she wasn’t what I was really avoiding. Being raised both Catholic and Minnesotan, and by no fault of those who raised me, I already had two strikes against me as far as repressing my emotions. Between Commandments and the rules of polite society, there was nothing I did that didn’t come under the scrutiny of questioning or judgement, and for sheer survival I learned to hold myself in and not let too much of my true self show. That is the recipe for resentment and anger. Things improved in adult life with a wider acceptable range of self expression, especially as an artistic-type from whom a certain eccentricity is to be expected. But there was still those leftover emotions from my youth stuffed way, way down - Wasn’t there? I didn’t know because I was afraid to look. I was avoiding my own healing and my own power.

The thing about spiritual growth is that you can’t hide from those things forever. Sooner or later those stubborn little pockets of gook from childhood are going to be reflected in your present life situation - Not for punitive or patronizing purposes by the Universe, but simply as a natural process to heal those wounds and claim the wholeness that is your birthright. And that has been my current year. I have gone deeper than ever before, clearing out and healing all kinds of crap until I am left with those icky, sticky, gross emotional remnants that have been cooked and recooked onto the sides of the pan of my soul for countless eons which require scraping and digging-in to remove.

And now my life, though better and more authentic than ever before, is starting to reflect the earlier crusted and baked on gunk that taints the taste of my life. It is time to finally look it in the eye and start clearing. It’s time to heal. And I knew it was time when Sekhmet followed me home last weekend from a Fairy Festival. At once I was struck both by her power and beauty, standing proudly on the store shelf, as well as by the sinking of my stomach when I knew things were about to get real. I was not wrong. This week has seen an escalation of feelings of frustration and desperation as I deal with what seems like an endlessly shrinking box of expectations and obligations, binding me further and further from experiencing or expressing myself as more than a mindless worker drone. I have awakened with a stomachache every morning just from having to face stress of the day, and there have been times when I felt the anger and frustration rise to such an extent in my chest that I’ve been afraid I would literally explode.

And that is what prompted this ceremony at the river. I am not generally an angry person, and I realized I didn’t have the tools to deal with these seemingly foreign feelings. I knew Sekhmet had come more prominently into my life for a reason to help me with exactly that, so I faced whatever fears and doubts I still had about working with the lioness goddess with a propensity for destruction, and I invited her into my circle to seek her council.

I took a puff and, blowing the smoke toward Sehkmet’s heart, I offered her the stem of the pipe. Then I returned my chanupa to my lap and sat quietly in her presence. Sekhmet was not the tough, harsh, disapproving, disciplinarian I expected, but rather soft, gentle, and kind. The first thing she did sitting opposite me, looking deeply into my eyes with a smile wrinkling her broad nose, was place a huge paw on my heart, where it lingered for some time before she started to speak.

“You fear your anger and that gives it power. You fear that it will become bigger than you, but you forget it exists inside of you, that you are bigger than it because you are the space that holds it. You only need to expand to the point where it becomes but a single candle in the vast night rather than a huge bonfire threatening to consume everything around it. You already are the infinite expanse of the Universe”

“It is trying to shrink yourself into the boxes of the expectations of others, and of yourself, that fuels the fire. When those feelings arise it is but a signal that you are playing small.  It is a reminder of your inner light and it rises to burn away the smoke of illusion as the sun burns off the morning mist, dissolving the illusions and revealing the truth of who you are." The image of a tepee with it's open smoke hole seemed to randomly drift into my mind, but then she said, "Open your crown like a chimney and allow the flames to rise. Your anger is constructive.  Align with it and allow it to carry you higher. It is meant to fuel your rise, not burn you to the ground. It is by remaining closed and continuously turning it inward that you suffer.”

I asked how to implement that when I’m at work in the midst of the frustrations. Her reply didn’t surprise me. “You are a carrier of the pipe, yes? You do not need it physically with you to utilize it. It is part of you now, and the same way you blow out the smoke in ritual, blow out those falsehoods and lies during your day. It is your breath that holds the power, not the smoke."

She lingered a little longer as I practiced blowing out those feelings, finding the in breath to expand me like a balloon and the out breath to cleanse that new space. I thanked her as
she faded away, and blew a couple more smoke blessings skyward in gratitude before closing my circle.

It's funny how a lot of times I have these experiences in ceremony or while journeying, and I don't understand how profound they are until I write them down afterwards. The next morning, though, as I prepared to apply Sekhmet's advice I knew for sure that some sort of shift had taken place. While walking the short distance from my car to the warehouse of my day job, I stopped short and stared in awe as a bald eagle flew directly over my head, less than twenty feet above me. "...Okay!" I thought, "Let's do this thing!"