#146.20 - Sunday #66: Hathor

Hathor

Hathor has her origins in Sekhmet. Sekhmet was created in order to get rid of humanity which had become disruptive and horrible. She could not be controlled, so she ended up being unable to stop the killing. Ra then got her drunk and turned her into Hathor, the Goddess of Pleasure and Love. Fertility, of course. If you are Goddess you are bound to be linked up to fertility somehow.

Hathor is a cow. Literally, she is often depicted as a cow. But very interestingly, when she is half human half cow, the shape of her face is that of ... the female reproductive system. Her ears are the ovary and her neck, long and thin, is the shape of the vaginal canal. Her face is the uterus itself.

Hathor is therefore not related to any other god as such. But because she was a bit like Athene, created by Ra himself, she was also associated with Ra and therefore the Sun itself. Hathor was the goddess of love, pleasure and sensuality. She was also the goddess which traveled with Osiris to the Duat, the land of the Living. Perhaps it is time to say something about what the Egyptians thought of Life After Death.

We have learnt a lot about what Egyptians thought about life after death because of the many splendid tombs and papyri they have left behind. Not to mention the detailed sarcophagi and funerary objects. Essentially the Egyptians did not think that people died per se when they died physically. They believed that the spirit traveled on towards eternal life - or the possibility of it. Everyone knows the famous story of if your heart did not weigh less than the feather when you came to stand before Osiris in the Hall of Judgement, you would end up being thrown to Sobek, the crocodile god who would then consume you horribly. You did not come back. If there is any form of reincarnation in Egyptian religion, please let me know. I have not as yet found it.

Anyway, the soul would was good would spend the After Life in a kind of heaven which was like a pleasure garden. You would drink and feast and be merry and I'm sure have wonderful sex.

In many ways, this idea that you are not reincarnated after you die and are judged to be good or evil in the main Abaramic faiths comes from this Egyptian concept of death.

As a result of this, Egyptians spent a lot of time trying to be good. I'm sure they failed spectacularly, but there are whole sets of rules which they have which prevent them from doing horrible things. There is what is called the negative declaration. Egyptians believed that your brains were useless - which is why they threw them away - and that your HEART was what was needed in the after life because it was a testament to what you did in life. Your heart was incapable of lying. So you had all the negative declarations, imploring your heart not to bear witness against you. And they were REALLY specific. Like I did not take the bread out of the mouths of widows and orphans. I did not poison the water. I did not save food for myself.

Life on Earth, this physical realm, was therefore spent mostly preparing for the after life. Everything you did would go towards your credit or debit in the after life. Of course one's life span was a lot less in those days so you know if you compare say 20 or 30 years to a lifetime of eternity, you would probably say it was a good idea to perhaps err on the side of caution - i.e. spend your time prepping for after life. Plus if it made you a good person and life better for everyone else, then so much the better.

Hathor is of course, like many female deities with her own agency, the enduring principle. She lasts while her consorts and lover and others are sacrificed to her. She has several Gods as consorts as well, including Ra and Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. She confers or bestows fertility and she welcomes the dead into the Duat, the terrifying journey into the Underworld. That was the other thing. Death was seen as an initiation and as such in order to REMEMBER what you had to do when you died, you spent a lot of time memorising the various obligations and oblations and verses you had to say when you were in the after life to gain passage to the final hall.

Many initiation ceremonies today, in secret societies and based on this idea. So if you know someone who is being initiated and has to memorise whole load of things in order to pass their initiation, this is where it comes from.

Hathor was always the loving and beautiful face of Rage and Punishment. Sometimes she is remembered as the Lion Goddess which she is. I love how dualities and subtleties are held in the many layered wisdom found in our ancient myths. If only we could appreciate the archetypes and lessons they have for us and find a space for them in our now, if you ask me, much impoverished interpretations of beauty and morality.