I know I'm about to open myself up here in a way that I rarely ever do, but I guess if there's a place to open up, it's here at GnH.
I have been trying to get back into trance meditation, which is something I haven't practiced in many years (never quiet enough around here to do it properly). A couple of weeks ago I was not feeling good, so hubby told me that if I needed to go to bed then I should go lay down. It was 8pm and being a daughter of the moon and a night owl, this is pretty rare for me. So I decided to take this opportunity to do some meditation by ways of a method that I'm doing some research on so that I may write an article for GnH in the future.
Anyway, at some point during the evening, I became aware that there were 4 beings standing around me, each appearing like floor-to-ceiling pillars at the corners of the bed. I knew they were neteru (the Ancient Egyptian word for gods and the root word for our word "nature"). They stood watching me as I drifted in and out of sleep. I could not identify the two at the foot of the bed but the one on my left kept whispering "The Tongue of Ptah" into my ear. The tongue of Ptah is Thoth, who communicates Ptah's divine plans with us. At the right of me was Anubis, who laughed as I called him that, saying, "that is my Greek name."
I felt like Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz, when she wakes up and looks around at her friends and family saying, "you were there, and you were there," and they all look at her and tell her that of course we were there, we've been there the whole time!
And it got me thinking about some of the reading I've been doing lately. The one particular author I've been reading believes that the original head of the Sphinx was Anubis, and not the current pharaonic head of Judefre, as many archaeologists believe. There is evidence that his head is not the original because proportionately, it is way too small and the pattern of erosion on it is not the same as the rest of the body. According to Egyptian and Greek myths, sphinx gives passersby a riddle: "What has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" The answer is man, who crawls as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane as an elderly person. This represents the death and rebirth cycle which is echoed through much of Egyptian lore.
I've had two dreams in which I was presented riddles like this. The first was probably five or six years ago, I had a dream where I was walking down a spiral path, from which I was told I could not go back up. At the bottom I reached a trap door where I was greeted by a being I understood to be a spirit. I was told if I was to go where the trap door led I would receive infinite wisdom but I would need infinite cunning to get back out. The dream ended with me dropping through the trap door, and I woke up before I could see what was on the other side of it.
The other dream was probably around the same time, 4 or 5 years ago. I walked into a large study, like you would imagine would be in an old mansion. Dark wood wainscoted walls with shelves of books floor to ceiling. Behind a chair I knew one of the panels of wainscoting would push aside and there would be a secret passage way. Once I was in this low crawl space, I heard a voice say, "you must go down to go up."
Now with my recent reading about the Egyptian Neteru I have learned that Anubis leads us down the spiral path of death and rebirth we experience not only through reincarnation but even within each life, as major life events can be seen as a death and rebirth when the old mindset must change and move aside for a new one. And looking at the story on Anubis, he was born to his mother Nephthys in the underworld by raised by his aunt Isis in the overworld. He was born in darkness to be raised into the light. He had to go down so that he could go up.
And this morning as I thought of these things I began to cry. I was Dorothy as she realized that her friends and family had been with her the whole time even if they had looked differently for a while. I have been studying Egyptology since I was in sixth grade and even though it was my passion, I'd never taken their Neteru or natural forces as my own. And now that I have I see things beginning to line up. I am overcome with joy and at the same time kicking myself in the ass that I didn't see it sooner. But I also believe that major life events are meant to happen at a certain time.
The Sed festival took place during the dark moon of the first harvest month of the 30th year of the reign of the pharaoh and it celebrated the rejuvenation of the land and the powers of the pharaoh. When I thought about this, I realized that last September was the last time I spoke to my mother. During the dark moon of that month I did a ritual banishment to break the curses that she'd put upon me. This was the month before I turned 30. At that time, I had not been reading about the Neteru and had never heard of the Sed festival. This was something that has been ingrained in me from a previous life and I had been led back to it by the forces of nature.
That is how fate works for me. Pinpoints stuck into the map of life for which we will eventually arrive. There are many behind the veils with us to guide us to these events and stand by as the events unfold.
I would also like you all to understand that no matter what I call them, these forces are universal truths that belong to everyone, whether you see them all as one omnipotent force or as I do, as many forces that mesh into one. The many religions and faiths of the world, when boiled down to their basics, are more alike than you think.
AND btw it didn't take me an hour to read as you suggested it would 