Raw Nephthys

I had nothing specific in mind for today’s post. So I did a bit of meditation with the Beautiful Sister, Senet Noferet, and I’ll share with you what we did.

I used the Nephthys contact ritual I have been working with (I cannot believe it’s been almost a year since then), but in my smaller shrine rather than the larger temple space, so I was seated almost the entire time. I purified and consecrated, established the Horizons, invoked Her…

And now, I am within Nephthys’ temple garden.

The strong scent of greenness and the life of animals comes to my nose. It smells good, alive, alive. I look around, orienting myself. I see the serpents, the birds, and now a scarab dung beetle, a creature I had not seen before in Her temple. I follow the windings of the artificial channel of the Nile that flows through the temple and fills the sacred lake. Her garden is becoming familiar to me.

But She has done something unexpected. I don’t have to go to Her throne-room to find Her. Instead, She is standing in the shallow sacred lake, Her feet in the water and the bottom of Her robe wet to the knees. She is smiling. When She knows that I have seen Her, in an instant, She grows to an immense size. Her dark wings unfurl, enclosing the entirety of the garden temple. “Eternity is in My wings,” She says, “Everlastingness is in My heart.”

I feel my mind expanding beyond the confines of my head; it is dizzying. Behind my closed eyelids, I see—literally see, as dark patterns on the inside of my eyelids—wings. “Unending depth is here,” She says, “do you feel it?” I do feel it.

Blue lotuses begin to bloom around Her. “Lotus petals or wings,” She says, “it is all the same thing.” (What She means, I think, is that the petals in a flower and the feathers in a wing must open, expand, to do their work (like my head is expanding now). Petals gather sunshine and attract the pollinating insects. Wings gather the wind and move the bird as it flies and hunts.)

And now, I realize that I am a blue water lily, planted in the sacred lake of Nephthys. And the lake is not at all shallow, as I had thought. My head is fat and full. My consciousness is in my head, and beyond, and below, and…way beyond. I realize that I am sensing my roots and leaves. I am floating, swaying, waiting. As She has said, unending depth is here.

My slim stem is impossibly long as I pull up nutrients from below. My feet are in cool, wet, and somewhat sticky mud that is kicked up by the tiny fish feeding where I, too, am feeding. Nephthys says, “The dead are here.” (She means that life feeds on death, as it ever, ever was. The dead send up ka energy to the living that they may live. We return it to them when we die.)

“Now, rise up,” She says. (And I remember that She has said this to me before, as a uraeus.) I do. My fat head blossoms and a golden sun burns upon my forehead. Magic heat floods my body. (I mean this literally. When magic happens, my body frequently responds with a flush of heat. I know this happens to others. To you?)

Above me, I see the Goddess, wings outspread. Her heart is a sun. Her eyes are on fire. Above Her extend the nourishing rays of the Sun God. She is mediating His power to me like the World Soul (sorry, different mythology, but it’s in my head, so there we are). Re burns above, the lotus sun in my forehead burns below. “Stop striving,” Nephthys instructs. And I notice my body has tensed to, what?…stop the sense of expansion? I relax my body. Our three suns connect. My mind, my heart, and my lotus body expand again. And further. “This is Everlastingness,” She says.

Next, I am aware of the fish nibbling at my roots. It reminds me of a lake in Tennessee where our family would vacation. My brothers and I would float in the water while tiny fish would nibble at our toes.

In a flash, the Goddess has transferred my consciousness into a fish. No, transfer is too gentle; more like “thrown.” Oof. My eyes seem to work a bit independently of each other. I am swimming through reeds. I am very fast or very still. I move. Then I float. I breathe. It is weird; like my lungs are not in my body. What am I supposed to learn from being a fish I wonder? “Simplicity,” She says aloud in my head.

“I am not sure I like being a fish,” I say. She laughs and asks why. “I don’t know. My life is complex right now. And simplicity seems both unattainable and uncomfortable.”

“Learn how,” She says. “Are You simple?” I ask. “I can be,” She answers. “That is the lesson: control it. Simplicity is a kind of purity.” (I am thinking about this and it comes to me that there is a kind of ‘fish meditation’ possible, focusing simply on the awareness of self in existence. Similar to mindfulness meditation? It is a type of meditation I rarely do. Mostly, my meditations are like this one, intentionally receiving visions.) “Fish (She means the ongoing lifecycle of fish) is Eternity,” She says. “Fish meditation is Everlastingness.”

The magic heat fades a bit and I am standing before Her in the water. And, for the first time, I can see Her face. Wide, dark, almond eyes with fire in them. Wide mouth with a gentle smile. She places Her palm upon my heart and gives me some of Her ka. I give Her some of mine in return. “This will help you form your akh,” She says. Then She flows back into the water. I am left with wet feet and a robe wet up to my knees.

As I am wont to do, I look things up after visions like this. There were some mild synchronicities. One was the scarab beetle, the dung beetle. I hadn’t seen one in Nephthys’ temple garden before. As it turns out, the most important pollinators of the sacred blue water lily (and other water lilies) are beetles.

I haven’t found out the exact kind, so that probably means there are several types. But I did learn that the scarab beetle is the main pollinator for a specific type of night-blooming water lily: the Amazonian giant water lily. These are ones with leaves big enough for a human to sit in. Not Egyptian, but this is one amazing water lily. It blooms at night as a female with a white blossom and strong scent. The scent attracts the beetle, which comes in with pollen of a male flower on its body. Once pollinated, the flower turns pink and male, and the once-more pollen-carrying scarab is on to the next flower. And we have yet another example of gender change in Nature.

The other synchronicity was small, but sweet. After the lessons on simplicity in this vision, I looked at the music that I had chosen in advance. The title of one song was “Simplicity.”

As I said, everything here is a bit raw. I haven’t figured out all the things I’m supposed to learn yet. But for today, for now, that is how it went.