Spirituality/Paganism & Magick: Sekhmet

Sekhmet is the most prominent of the many lioness deities. Worshipped primarily in Memphis, she is the consort of Ptah and mother of Nefertum.

"I am the creative fire, energizing the life force within the creation. Wearing the solar serpent upon My brow, I am the masculine/feminine, the female warrior performing the dance of life and death, creation and destruction. Each time equilibrium is threatened, the First Time is threatened. I, the materialization of the original forces of the universe, must uphold Ma'at. Together Ptah and I represent the desire of Netjer to know matter and the desire of substance to know divine spirit. Through alternating currents, we transpose impulse and idea into function and form. In our union we have produced the perfect being, Nefertum: Light emanating from the creative pulse, the divine scent of inspiration that impels life to ascend to sacred regions." -Lioness of the Sun

Well attested to as early as the 4th Dynasty, a passage in the Pyramid Texts credits her with conceiving the king of Egypt (often portrayed as a lion). Elsewhere she is portrayed as passing the life force to King Snefru.

Manifestation of the first primal, female force, 'The Powerful One' had a dual nature, beneficent and malevolent. Her more benign lioness qualities of protecting her young were extended to the protection of the original order (Ma'at) of the universe, the king and the nation as well. Mistress of war and strife, she helped the king to slaughter his enemies against whom he was sometimes said to 'rage like Sekhmet.'

But Her malevolent side was most dangerous to all, especially at times of cyclic change; one reign to another, one year to another:

"At the end of the year, with Sopdet's heliacal rising at summer's climax, My destructive power is most apparent. The Khamsin wind, my fiery breath, singes the land. Iteru's rising waters bring pestilence and plague with the insects She harbors. Like a giant river of blood, pregnant with red mud from the decaying banks, Iteru overflows. The Inundation, heralding the New Year, like Myself, is both feared and desired."

-Lioness of the Sun

Stephen Quirke so aptly said of an undertaking of Amenhotep III to appease the Lioness when she was enraged, "the incantations to appease the Furious Goddess Sekhmet at the end of the year became the greatest litany ever sung: a chorus of perhaps 730 images of the goddess."

Often called 'Mistress of Healing,' The Feline Goddess drove away sickness. Disease could rarely be defeated and its causes were only understood in the more obvious instances; scorpion and snake bite, for example. Plague, on the other hand, remained the work of the raging Goddess, Sekhmet. Just as the 'Lady of the Messengers of Death' could visit pestilence upon Egypt in the form of epidemics, so she could be persuaded to remove the same plagues through the performance of the 'Rite of Appeasing Sekhmet'. The title, "Priest of Sekhmet" came to mean 'doctor,' possibly because her priests were entrusted with the task of driving out the evil spirits that the ancient Egyptians thought were the causes of sickness. Who better to fight them than the Goddess of War.

Sekhmet was the dualistic manifestation of the fiery rays of the sun:

"I am Sekhmet, Powerful One, Eye of Re. Mightier even than My Lord, I was in attendance before His conception from the watery womb of Nun. In fear of My power, and to appease Me, he set My form upon His brow as a serpent, a Uraeus of protection. I am Lady of Flame, Annihilator of Enemies, Lady of the Red Heart, Lady of the Massacre, Eater of Blood, Fire of the Sun Who Conceals Re with My Flame. I warm and give life, but also, I burn and sear life away. No one can control the Force that is Sekhmet."

-Lioness of the Sun

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