Imhotep and the Bears

 

Dreams can introduce us to areas of knowledge and open spiritual connections we might not otherwise know about. A woman in one of my courses received the name Imhotep in a dream. She knew it was Egyptian but knew nothing about Imhotep himself. She accepted the research assignment and discovered that in ancient Egypt, Imhotep, whose name means "comes in peace,” became associated with medicine and healing. In the late period, Cleopatra's time, the shrines of Imhotep were sites of dream incubation for healing in the style of the Asklepian temples of the Greco-Roman world. The dreamer’s curiosity deepened. Why was she dreaming of Imhotep? And what did an Egyptian god have to do with the other characters in her dream, in which she found herself in a happy family of black bears, gamboling with them and perfectly at home?
    Historically, Imhotep was famous as an architect. He is said to have designed the step pyramid of Djoser in the 27th century bce. It was only 2,200 years later that he started to be recognized as a physician. That probably came in because of people's dreams. Maybe they dreamed of a physician by that name. Imhotep was celebrated in Cleopatra's time as a physician whose sanctuaries were places where dreams healed.
    At Saqqara, on the west side of the Nile from the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, there was a temple of Imhotep where people went to dream or have their dreams interpreted by professionals. In Karnak, in a vanished temple of Imhotep, at one time there were no fewer than fifty priests responsible for dreamwork. There are records of a very knowledgeable dreamer whose name was Hor. He was actually a priest of Thoth and used to dream amongst the mummified ibis birds in the temple of Thoth. But when it came to reading an important but confusing dream, the priest of Thoth went to "a magician of Imhotep” to get a definitive reading.
   So a modern American woman dreams of an Egyptian deity and a family of black bears. She learns that Imhotep was at the center of a cult of dream healing at a time when ordinary people are gaining access to sites and practices once reserved for royalty and closed priesthoods. What’s with the bears? Their appearance in a dream of an ancient god was both thrilling and strangely familiar for me. In the first years when I was leading public dream workshops I often placed a statue of Asklepios on the altar at the center of the circle. These gatherings usually started with the group singing a song to call the Bear as healer and protector.
     During one of these workshops, as I circled the room, beating my drum to power a journey to a place of healing, I asked about the possible connection between the Bear – the great medicine animal of North America – and an Old World deity of dream healing. Suddenly I saw the energy form of the bear joining what had become the living statue of the god. The two fused and came together. I understood that one way of seeing this connection is that in the new world, the bear is the equivalent of what Asklepios and maybe Imhotep meant in the ancient world of the Greeks and the Egyptians. I think this perception would have delighted the ancient mind because the ancient mind was forever shuffling things together, making hybrid deities, melding different traditions, borrowing power and “breathing images” from many cultures.
    “You are a natural at this,” I told the woman who dreamed the name of an Egyptian god while dancing with bears.

Illustration: Just for fun! RM with NightCafé

 

 

Ankh at the heart

I am asked to find a symbol for the heart.

    It comes immediately. It is a standing ankh, silver-bright. Waters stream over and around it. I know that its gift is neverending life.
     I remember drinking healing waters from a vessel shaped like an ankh, and holding such a vessel to the lips of those in need of strength or healing.
     I remember an ancient baptism: an ibis-headed god of the Moon and of writing pours the waters of life over the chosen initiate.

     How often have I seen the ankh in the hands of deities, grasping it by the loop, giving meaning to the name the Romans gave it: crux ansata, the handled cross, the cross you can handle.
     The essence of male and female are wound together in its form. Here are the knot of Isis and the djed pillar of Osiris, the womb and the phallus or backbone of the bull.
     I remember other uses for this eternal symbol of life. Of looking through the loop, as through a viewfinder, into the world-behind-the-world.
     Gratefully, I say the old, old words.

I am life
I am love
I am truth

     From life to life, from world to world, there are forms that return.

Note: Egyptologists contiue to speculate whether the form of the ankh was chosen because of its resemblance to a certain phsyucal object. There was popular theory that ut might be modeled on a sandal strap. ings'. The ankh symbol has also been identified wth a girdle knot, a mirror, a double-axe, a penis sheath, and the thoracic vertebra of a bull. The rival comparisons are discussed in Andrew Gordon and Calvin. Schwabe, The Quick and the Dead: Biomedical Theory in Ancient Egypt (Leiden:Brill, 2004) pp.102-4. 

Writing and Dreaming

 

Writing and dreaming are intimately connected, as far back as we can travel through the history of humans making marks intended to be read by others. It seems that in many cultures, humans developed systems of writing because they needed better and more specific ways to record and honor dreams, when dreaming was understood to be a field of interaction between humans and greater powers.
      The techniques of writing may themselves have been the gift of dreams. It is surely no accident that in ancient pantheons a god of writing is also a giver and interpreter of dreams. Ibis-headed Thoth, with his stylus, venerated in night rituals of dream incubation, is a famous exemplar. His consort the star goddess Seshat, patron of scribes and keeper of the akashic records, is also depicted writing.
      The cuneiform scripts of Mesopotamia and the hieroglyphs of Egypt were not devised merely to figure out how many bales of cotton or bundles of reeds had delivered, but to record dream encounters with the gods, and oneiric geographies of the Otherworld. From these recorded visions, mythologies grew and spread their waving fronds over whole peoples.
       Among indigenous peoples, we can see the process at work up to the present day. Look at the intricate pictographs of the Anishnaabe, or Ojibwa, of the Great Lakes. They are drawn on long scrolls of birch bark, the papyrus of the Northeast woodlands of North America. They record the trials of the soul between birth, through trial and initiation, to the womb of rebirth. They depict life as a spiritual adventure, where success will be followed by a zigzag path of new challenge and temptation. They are vision maps. They spring from the soul journeys of shamans, and the shared dreaming of initiates gathered in the medicine circle of the Midewiwin.


Photo: The Egyptian goddess Seshat writing with a stylus, in a carved relief on the back of a statue of Ramses II at Luxor

 

The Way to Seshat's Library

 The gates are unbolted to you by Seshat!

These are words of a spell In the Egyptian Coffin Texts, where Seshat, the goddess of writing and patron of scribes, is featured as a gatekeeper.

As doorkeeper she may take on the function of a judge, deciding who may pass through the door she guards. In the Book of Thoth, Seshat stands with Shai, a personification of Fate. The soul traveler is instructed to say, "May the goddess open for me the road to the House of Life."

My painting was inspired by a shamanic journey to the Library of Seshat. The door was opened, quite literally, by the dream of a friend. She reported in high excitement that she had opened a book in my study - Budge's translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead - and a doorway swung open, revealing a pathway to "a library even bigger than yours".

We journeyed together through the dream door, with the aid of shamanic drumming. I noticed, monitoring the scene from a witness perspective while at the same time fully engaged in the action, that the path we were walking was the body of an immense golden cobra.

Lucid dreaming through the Net

This is not a report about the internet. It is about the interworld. My adventures in conscious dreaming often begin in the twilight zone between sleep and awake. Quite often, in this liminal state I find myself looking at the patterns and textures of what appears to be woven cloth or webbing. Sometimes I find myself suspended in the mesh. The following experience was quite tactile:

Through the Net

I floated weightless, looking into a dark, grainy field, textured like hessian, a very palpable depth. I felt I was hanging in this, as in a hammock or net. I was uneasy, to begin with, hanging between worlds. I did not feel stuck in the net. I realized I could push through the net and travel in any direction. I eventually resolved simply to open myself to my creative source.

     The “hessian sacking” opened into a textile bazaar. I examined bolt after bold of richly textured patterns and designs.

     I heard noise in my house and realized I was operating with multiple consciousness, fully engaged in dream travel while safely tethered to my body in the bed.

     I spent the whole night slipping back and forth between dream locales, mediation, and long study sessions in which I devoured books and memorized material.

     One of the dream episodes involved the Egyptian Mysteries, especially the mysterious god Ptah, whose power is associated with the breath and who is said to be the Giver of the Ka.

      Another dream episode carried me into the realm of the Kabbalists. I tried out a thronelike chair with a hard wooden strut that stuck out low down at the back of the seat. This guaranteed that you would not get too comfortable or doze off. It was intended to assist Kabbalistic meditation.

These adventures sent me off into a spate of happy research. The palpable resistance of the web or net in which I had hung, and the fact that, once through it, I had access to Mystery teachings in corresponding locales, sparked many thoughts and speculations.
     The name of the temple of Thoth at Khemennu (the City of Eight) in ancient Egypt was Het Abdit, literally the House of the Net. This net confined unevolved humans to their lower natures. But to initiates, it became a kind of cosmic trampoline, a springboard to higher realms. In Thrice-Greatest Hermes, G.R.S. Mead suggests that “this Net was the symbol of a certain condition of the inner nature which shut in the man into the limitations of the conventional life of the world, and shut him off from the memory of his true self”.
      Mythologically, the net may also be the web of life or the Veil of the Goddess. The Egyptian goddess Neith wears a weaver’s shuttle on her head. The inscription at her temple at Saïs reads, “I am all that has been and shall be and no mortal has ever revealed my robe.” To go beyond the veil is to go beyond the ordinary human condition. It is possible that Neith, with her veil and her weaver’s shuttle, personifies the human energy web, spun from fine threads or lines of force or light;

     The net I encountered may evoke the web of the human energy field, woven from Faraday’s “lines of force.” Those familiar with neuroscience may think about the reticular (literally "net-like") formation that regulates states of awareness and attention. 
    The net I pass through in lucid dreaming gives me the sense of being inside the cell walls of the larger reality, of testing the energy membranes that separate levels or dimensions of the multiverse. This may involve traveling from higher to lower astral planes, or - in deeper journeys - beyond the astral altogether.

Text adapted from Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life beyond Death by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Image: Aegis of Neith, XXVI dynasty, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Photo by Rama 

The Way to Seshat's Library

Thoth-Tehuti is well known, as Egypt's god of writing and measurement associated with the Moon and in some ancient theologies as a creator deity who brings things into existence by naming them. I have led many group journeys into a magic library whose presiding figure casts the shadow of an ibis-headed biped. Less well known than Thoth is his sister Seshat, who has her own magic library.
     A friend's dream opened the way for a shared journey in which we traveled together into her realm. The experience is a lively example of what Yeats called "mutual visioning". It is also an example of the practice I call"dream archaeology", in which we use the techniques of Active Dreaming - especially conscious and interactive dream travel - to gain authentic first-hand knowledge of ancient traditions, and then use the tools of scholarship and science to verify our findings.

     My friend Carol, who is also a gifted dream teacher,  was eager to share a powerful dream with me. In the dream, a young woman leads her from one of my workshops along a passage into a library where she meets the Egyptian goddess Seshat, and is shown shelves filled with books of different times and a crystal window that opens onto both the past and onto many "drawing-board futures" – futures than have not yet been fixed.

     In the dream, the portal is a dark bookcase Carol finds beside her in a circle in which I am sitting at the north; a book by the Egyptologist Wallis Budge is on a lower shelf. As she bends down to inspect the book, she feels a hand on her right wrist. A young woman tugs at her, drawing her into a long hallway. The floor, walls and ceiling are light ivory. The young woman talks to Carol about meeting someone she has wanted to meet.
     Carol struggles with the name. She gets something like "Shasta" and thinks, No, that’s a brand of soda. The young woman smiles at Carol’s embarrassment. Carol looks down and notices she is now wearing a lovely long white dress. They go through a curtain of feathered wings, into a library. Carol knows this is the library of Sesha, or Seshet, or Seshat….she’s getting closer to that name now.

     The owner of the library appears and greets Carol as if she knows her. "I hope you will be able to remember. I precede Mary."
     "You know Mary?" Carol is stunned.
     "Of course. We are connected. I know many. You must remember."
     She leads Carol to the windows of the library. Carol sees geometric designs of cities on many boards. Some are surreal or futuristic, some ancient; some are "on the drawing board" and may or may not be constructed. Carol feels she could go through many different windows, to different cities. On the library shelves are artifacts: a star, writing instruments, engravings on stone that include a carving of an ibis. There are papyrus scrolls that appear to be new. There are beautiful flowers on Egyptian vases.

I was intrigued and excited by this dream. Carol and I made a date to meet privately and travel together back into this dreamspace, with the aid of shamanic drumming, to learn more.

    As I drummed for us, I found myself moving deep into Carol's dreamscape. I approached the bookcase and found Wallis Budge. He showed me praise names of Seshat, transcribed in his books, that we could use as an invocation that would open the gate to her library.
     The passage from the bookcase to the library of Seshat was on the back of an immense cobra. Its scales gleamed golden, with crimson flashes, against a dark void. As we traveled together, I noticed that Carol did not realize what she was walking on, which may have been a blessing since - while Carol is an intrepid dream traveler - the idea of walking on a giant snake could be distracting. She walked a few paces ahead of me, on the cobra’s flattened head through an open archway, high above, into Seshat’s library.
    In the library, I was drawn at once to a window set in a deep niche. The glass appeared to be a crystal several inches thick. Through the window, I looked into a sea world. Mer-people live here. They ride larger sea creatures for faster transportation. Their cities are underwater. This may be another vision of Atlantis, the Moist Land.
     I turn to the goddess. Her eyes are lapis blue, purplish blue around the pupils. Her headdress is a seven-pointed star.She tells me she is the original Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. This is a fundamental sense in which she precedes Mary (who was given the borrowed praise name). From her library, I am able to view the original of the XVII Tarot trump, the Star. The Book of Seshat is concealed – and revealed – through this image.
     I sense the presence of Thoth/Tehuti. I am told he presides over a parallel library. I want to know their relationship and their story. Did they come to this Earth together? My sense is they are truly "extra-terrestrial gods". They are brother and sister. Thoth came first, at a time when Earth was a very savage and primal environment, the time when baboons were wiser and stronger than the ancestors of homo sapiens. He established a forward base on the Moon for his work in transferring language to humans and effecting the link with higher consciousness. Seshat came later, she instructs me. She descended directly to Earth, and therefore may preserve a more direct connection with the Star from which both of them come.

At the end of the journey, Carol and I shared our travelogues and found that our reports were very similar. Carol had experienced walking a path of golden light, but had not - as I noticed - realized that she was on the back of the giant cobra. By traveling into the multiverse in this way, as partners or in groups, we can achieve objective confirmation of our experiences of the deeper reality, and advance the work of reopening living connections to the past that matters, and of mapping the imaginal realms.

Art: The Way to Seshat's Library (c) Robert Moss

Text adapted from The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

I am posting this tonight because of a wonderful journey report shared in my class for The Shift Network in which a woman received healing and guidance from Seshat and resolved to honor the encounter by "shamanic decorating" including the special arrangement of a library of colors as well as books.

The scribe as ruler

New York City

If you have any doubt about the importance of writing in early civilizations, go see the special exhibit titled "Haremheb, The General Who Became King". Horemheb (to give the transcription of his name a more familiar form) has long fascinated me. He was a fighting general, especially skiled in chariot warfare, and as commander of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun's army, he led successful campaigns to defend Egypt's borders. When he took the throne as the last pharaoh of the XVIII dynasty (he ruled from a 1316-1302 BC) he instituted laws that secured the rights of civilians and curbed abuses perpetrated by powerful groups, including the army. He also restored the cult of the old gods that were briefly supplanted by Akhenaton's experiment with monotheism.


In the exhibit at the Met, we meet Horemheb as scribe and agent for Thoth, the god of writing and wisdom. The granite statue at the center of the displays shows Horemheb before he became king. While his face is beautiful and finely chiseled, his body is that of a man grown flabby and stooped through long hours of study. In his lap is a papyrus on which he has written a magnificent prayer to Thoth.



There are many other images of Thoth and his sacred animals, the ibis and the baboon, in the Horemheb exhibit. Excited by these testimonies to the place of Thoth and his magic words in the Egyptian mind, I noticed an extraordinary carving in another room, devoted to Egyptian art from late antiquity, on my way out of the Met. It shows Thoth baptising a pharaoh (who by this time was a Roman emperor) by pouring the water of life, streaming as a series of ankhs from what looks like a scribe's stylus-case.