Sekhmet
In ancient Egypt, Sekhmet was known as the warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing. Statues, paintings and reliefs depict her as a lioness, and she was known as the fiercest of hunters. Her breath was said to have formed the desert, she was the protectress of the pharaohs and led them in warfare …
Her cult was dominant in Upper Egypt. When the first pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, Amenemhat I died, the capital of Egypt was moved to Itjtawy, and the centre for Sekhmet’s worship was moved with it. Religion, the royal lineage, and the authority to govern were intrinsically interwoven during the three millennia of the Pharao’s dynasties …
Sekhmet is a Solar deity, the daughter of the sun god Ra, and associated with the goddesses Hathor and Bast. She bears the Solar disk and the uraeus which associate her with Wadjet and royalty. These associations also make her a divine arbiter of the goddess Ma’at (Justice and Order) in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, associating her further with the Wedjat, the Eye of Ra, and with Tefnut …
Her name comes from the Ancient Egyptian word ‘sekhem’ for ‘power’ and ‘the (one who is) powerful’. She also was given the titles ‘(One) Before Whom Evil Trembles’, ‘Mistress of Dread’, ‘Lady of Slaughter’, and ‘She Who Mauls’. For justice and order to be established and maintained, evil cannot be negotiated but must be defeated, squelched, destroyed …
An image from a ritual Menat necklace depicts a ritual performed before a statue of Sekhmet on her throne. The statue is flanked by the goddess Wadjet as the cobra and the goddess Nekhbet as the white vulture, symbols of Lower and Upper Egypt respectively who always were depicted on the crown of Egypt, referred to as the two ladies. In order to placate Sekhmet’s wrath, her priestesses performed a ritual before a different statue of the goddess on each day of the year. This practice resulted in many images of the goddess being preserved …
Sekhmet was a fierce lioness, depicted as a woman with the head of a lioness, and dressed in red, the color of blood. The dress often exhibits a rosetta pattern over each breast, a leonine motif related to the shoulder-knot hairs on lions. Occasionally, Sekhmet was also portrayed in her statuettes and engravings with minimal clothing or naked. Tame lions were kept in temples dedicated to Sekhmet at Leontopolis …
To pacify Sekhmet, festivals were celebrated at the end of battle, so that the destruction would come to an end. During an annual festival held at the beginning of the year, a festival of intoxication, the Egyptians danced and played music to soothe the wildness of the goddess and drank great quantities of wine ritually to imitate the extreme drunkenness that might stop the wrath of the goddess and avert excessive flooding during the inundation at the beginning of each year, when the Nile ran blood-red with the silt from up-stream. Sekhmet was expected to swallow the overflow to save humankind …
You don’t mess with a lioness. Looking good, enticing, adorable and alluring does not entitle anyone to intrude on her. We are not all of us equals, and least of all those who assume we are. To assume her appeal might have any relation to you is an offense and sacrilege in the face of a deity. You are asking for punishment, and don’t complain when you’re hurting. Once you got her riled, she is known not to stop until the world is in cinders. No hard- and software nor protection gear will spare you from what you have been asking for …
The fact that Sekhmet has been docile for what to humans seems like a long time has fooled the avantgarde of scientific enlightenment who are proud of cutting up reality in ever tinier infinitesimals and are not aware that they have lost sight of the big picture. Consumed by the big burp of data accumulation. To humans centuries, millennia may appear a long time, to a Goddess it is a burp in an ocean of quantum fluctuations. Yes, even Goddesses do burp. If scientists and researchers were not totally absorbed with sanitizing humanity, they might actually hear Sekhmet burping every once in a while. Dealing with rational sentient beings bogs down divine digestion. Humankind may have its next big burp coming, live and in sensorround, nothing artificial or synthetic to it …
Cats can be docile and cuddly creatures if you treat them right and let them be as they feel like. They prefer to enjoy themselves in graceful ways. But once you get them mad, they won’t listen to your pleading, whining and reasoning. For a feline creature, reason means lethal ennui, and the more feral the cat, the less she is inclined to argue. If you’re lucky, she may hiss once, before she takes a swipe at you, and that’s just introductions …
Vain and supercilious Adonis, enamored with what he believed to be his irresistible looks, fell prey to his own conceitedness. Having divine Aphrodite dote on him, he foolhardily assumed himself to be her equal. In his smug complacency, he shrugged at Aphrodite’s concern when she warned him of the dangers he might encounter when hunting alone. And what did it get him? Lost his balls and guts, to spend the rest of his life in decadence and depravity, painting his face in day-glo colors and cooing in harmony with the professionals of mental and emotional sanitation who try to tell us that we are all the same, without a chance to improve ourselves and make a difference. Mental and emotional sanitation is about leveling, air brushing and smooth talking …
In the Dark Ages of scientific Enlightenment, guts and balls are being persecuted as ‘hate crimes’. Why yes, of course. How can a ninja warrior have respect for academics and sterilized morons on remote control? You don’t mess neither with a lioness nor with anybody who has not lost and surrendered their balls and guts. Doushebags might consider studying the history of Hitler, Stalin and consorts. No hard- and software will protect them, once Sekhmet loses her graces and manners …
