sacred sexuality

Sacred sexuality is something I could grasp on a higher plane but doubted it in the now I find myself. I have intuitively understood that the union between a man and a woman mimicked the state of unity of the all however I knew the unity we can experience right now is fleeting and short. As well our peculiar human experience likes to foul things up and attach morals and expectations to biological urges so thus attached to sex are ideas of shame and a need to shield your predilections from others lest your ego be called out for what turns you on. Through this the dark side of your human experience can control you since it has something on you. It is a form of internal blackmail. If you engage in an activity not culturally sanctioned, in the aftermath of pleasure you immediately feel ashamed. This is so ingrained within it is difficult to break free of and perversely this leads to an addiction to the behaviour and a cycle hard to break. First thing is to clear the mind and stop the behaviour and regain control over your thoughts and actions. I did that and then tried to reintroduce the behaviour. It was a no go for a long time. Finally this wise woman I follow on the Internet counselled us on the need to bring joy into our lives and accept it and not feel ashamed about pleasure.

Play & Pleasure as a portal to the soul

For some reason this time it really got through to me and resonated down to my very core and I have reintroduced the behaviour, this time with no shaming but just full on acceptance of what turns me on and brings me a respite of pleasure within my mundane existence. It's funny in that I fully embraced purification and celibacy as a requirement for my journeys into altered states of consciousness. I was a prize student in this regard and then lo and behold during these ceremonies I experienced very erotic visions and senses, so much so it made me wonder what is up? It led me to a discovery of what serpent power is and how it can be used. I have boiled it down to the sexual, health, and the spiritual. Then the next step is balance, something I sorely lacked! In psychology it is a given that the suppression of a feeling or a desire will eventually lead to major difficulties and a presentation of this need in an increased way. The philosopher Alan Watts has counselled many times in his lectures about feelings and that there are no wrong feelings. You may attach cultural labels to feelings and there are justifiable moral questions raised by feelings we experience however it is important to remember a feeling is never wrong. I have taken this to heart. So with this all said, admitted to, and accepted, I fully realize as well the idea of purity and how it relates to the use of serpent power. Purity does not mean a Victorian sense of chasteness and prudishness. Instead it is an attempt to describe the need for an empty chalice or a stilled mind like the calmness of a cottage lake at dawn. The stillness of the mind is what is needed and what is being described by purity. This allows you to enter into higher states of consciousness much easier. Shifting gears on serpent power from the sexual to the spiritual is what I will be doing now. It is part of my intent as enacted by my will. I will return to pleasure at some point but for now I will channel the energy into my sacred journey to the top of the mountain. 

As an addendum to the above I'd like to discuss how the cycle of arousal within the male mimics the life cycle, in a sense the journey that is available to all. I have seen echoes in this idea within the iconography of ancient Egypt. The ithyphallic Osiris is a result of Isis and Nephthys re-membering him, after he was murdered by his brother Set, through magic in order that Isis could copulate with her husband to produce the son Horus.

Isis as a kite bird copulating with Osiris from Seti I Temple at Abydos

It is the power of the two goddesses, in essence serpent power, that causes Osiris to become erect.

Ithyphallic Osiris from Seti I Temple at Abydos

The inert Osiris is reanimated and given life in this world once again temporarily through the magical power that is property of goddesses. The son of the union, Horus, is the ever returning vessel of light, the eternal energy, come forth once again through the magic of cosmic union. As well in ancient Egypt the figure of the god Min is shown erect.

Ithyphallic Min on stele from ROM

His power is fecundity and it is interesting that he is connected with mountains with one of his epithets being 'Min, the man on the mountain.’ I have found that in my spiritual journey I have reached a point where I need to physically go to the highlands in order to climb the proverbial mountain. With all that has been happening to me I can connect the scaling of the spiritual mountain to its apex as being in congruence with an erect penis. The serpent power is fully engaged within and you are at your peak but with the difference being channeling the power into a spiritual rather than a sexual outlet. A major reason why I have made this connection is that there is a passage in the Tao Te Ching that ruminates upon this pure power being present in a baby boy when the baby involuntary produces an erection. 

Being full of power

is like being a baby.

Scorpions don’t sting,

tigers don’t attack,

eagles don’t strike.

Soft bones, weak muscles,

but a firm grasp.

Ignorant of the intercourse

of man and woman,

yet the baby penis is erect.

True and perfect energy!

All day long screaming and crying,

but never getting hoarse.

True and perfect harmony!

To know harmony

is to know what’s eternal.

To know what’s eternal

is enlightenment.

Increase of life is full of portent:

the strong heart exhausts the vital breath.

The full-grown is on the edge of age.

Not the Way.

What’s not the Way soon dies.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way - Ursula K. Le Guin, pages 81-82.

It took a while to figure out what it meant but once I connected it to the figures of ancient Egypt discussed above along with serpent power I grasped the meaning. In relating this masculine sexual organ as being related metaphorically to the cycle of life it is such: 

Through excitation, metaphorically the plucking of a guitar string, the phallus through vibration is put into motion and gathers power. The power coalesces and the member stands erect. Through increasing vibrational power the member eventually reaches a stage of being fully engaged and full of power and explodes. This is reaching the top of the mountain peak and climaxing. From that point the power recedes and the form returns to a state of inertness until once again the vibrational string is plucked, put into motion, and the process repeats. In ancient Egypt when this power noticeably declines in the ruling Pharaoh they held a festival for the King to renew this power. Part of the rituals enacted at the Heb Sed festival had the Pharaoh demonstrating the ability to obtain an erection and masturbating to completion. In addition the Pharaoh would become a night time music maker for the great goddess Hathor and call upon the serpent goddess to renew his power, as this text from the tomb of an official of Pharaoh Amenhotep III’s court reveals:

…in the lower register is a powerful invocation to the starry snake goddess of the night, Hathor 'Gold', whom they call on to rise and be propitiated through the dances they perform in her honour. But they dance not only for this beneficent queen of the night, shining in her fiery brilliance, but also for Amenhotep who has great need of her power. In their chant to the goddess they implore her to take him to the east of the sky, to the place where at dawn, 'the doors of the sky open and a god goes forth pure'. And this is what they sing:

Make jubilation for Gold

and sweet pleasure for

The Lady of the Two Lands,

that she may cause

Nebmaatre [Amenhotep], given life,

to be enduring.

Come, rise. Come

that I may make

Jubilation at twilight for you

And music in the evening.

O Hathor, you are exalted

In the hair of Re, in the hair of Re,

For to you has been given

The sky, deep night and the stars…

Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, pages 26-27.

Changing your attitude towards what is ultimately the most sacred of the sacred reveals ultimately that the expression of the godhead we seek, the totality of the all, the one, is the sacred cosmic union of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. The climax of that relationship enacts creation. It's the big bang. We are living in the post orgasmic stage of the most sacred sexual union ever consummated. How delightful is that? 

dark secrets

Hail Min

who fecundates his Mother,

How secret is that

which you have done to her

In the darkness,

O Divine One, Sole One…

Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, page 84.

Who is this lady that is impregnated by her son? This idea is awfully strange in our modern day culture as it references ideas of incest and Sigmund Freud oedipal fantasies. At first glance, it seems that libido was a driving force in this ancient Egyptian idea. This idea was known as Kamutef, bull of his mother, and it is the idea that in the cyclical legitimacy of kingship, the Pharaoh must continually impregnate the Great Goddess in order to engender the next incarnation of the Pharaoh. Ramesses II makes the claim that he has had many kas (life forces/incarnations) and king lists were celebrated on temple walls as a way to ensure their legitimacy.

Pharaoh Seti I with son Ramesses II at the Abydos King List

There are two Great Goddesses of ancient Egypt who got involved with Kamutef. They would be Aset, the Greek Isis, and Hwt-Her which in Greek is Hathor.

The sacred animals of Min were a falcon and a white bull, and one of Min's most important titles was Ka-mut-ef (the Bull of his Mother). Min was said to secretly unite with his mother under cover of darkness to beget himself.

Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch, page 165

The sacred animals of Min are presenting a clue as to his role as the bull of the heavens. Min is the virile aspect of the constellation of Orion. His right arm is raised in the classic striking pose of Orion warriors and his erect phallus a symbol of the three stars in the belt of Orion. This association with the constellation of Orion led at times to Min's association with Osiris as the consort of Isis and also his association with Horus, who as I have detailed in this blog post, can also be an aspect of the Orion constellation.

He is also found in the Coffin Texts where the deceased associates himself with the 'woman-hunting' Min in order to possess the god's sexual powers. During the Middle Kingdom Min became associated with the god Horus and Min-Hor and as a result he was sometimes described as the son of Isis, though the association also led to Min being worshipped as the consort of Isis and father of Horus.

The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson, page 115.

Min on stela with Goddess and child

Amun-Re, an aspect of the great hidden light of the sun from the New Kingdom onwards, was in ithyphallic form known as Min-Amun or Amun-Kamutef.

Ithyphallic Amun-Kamutef at Luxor Temple

The unusual epithet 'Bull-of-his-Mother' (Kamutef), already associated with the ithyphallic Amun by the Middle Kingdom, also needs to be considered here, since it both encapsulates the generative fertile power of the bull god and provides a veiled hint of his incestuous relationship with the mother goddess, who, at Thebes, more often than not was Isis. Much more explicit is an epithet of Min-Amun naming him as 'the fecundator of his mother'. For contained in the strange name Kamutef is the paradoxical truth that the god is both Father and Son, the agent of his own rebirth, brought about by the fertilization of his own mother.  And she is the matrix, the vessel of renewal, supporting and containing his fecund seed, though she herself is not to be understood as the active power engendering life. This lies in the male seed of the bull god, which she contains in her womb, seed which not only preserves the ever-recurring cycles of nature but also safeguards the generations of Egyptian Kings.

Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, page 82.

In this role, the fecundating light of Min-Amun comes to the metaphorical womb inside us - Isis, that houses Osiris as the Ba soul and will give birth to Horus. The hidden light of the sun combining with the great celestial light allows Osiris to wake up and impregnate Isis. Now is probably as good a time as ever to riff on the intricacies of the light of the sun in ancient Egyptian thought:

You see, the light of the sun is the ultimate provider. He gives life to all when he rises in the eastern horizon at daybreak. He is majestic in his glory and this newborn child who is birthed anew every morning by the goddess is a sight to behold a million times over. This child is the golden calf; the calf denoting the relationship to the ka. He is the beneficent giver and sustainer of material life. In this respect it is ka power that is on an unmatched scale. In previous blogs, I have connected the power of Set to the ka; this ka power being relegated to the beastly animal life force that makes up our material self. Our ba soul is felled by this power at first but at some point in our lives it is realized that this power is necessary to give you healing wisdom in order to birth your greater self. However, the ka power contained in the light of the sun is a different sort of power; it is a power that sustains all life on earth. With this realization the next step in thought is if the light of the sun is a majestic ka force then it must have a twin, another aspect which would be a beneficent majestic ba force. In New Kingdom ancient Egypt, we see the rise of this all powerful state god named Amun who when combined with Re is given the designation Amun-Re. At some point in ancient Egyptian history culminating in the New Kingdom, there seems to be a progression of religious thought which allowed them to make this leap in faith. The simple meaning of Amun means "hidden" so in this respect the Egyptians were recognizing another aspect of the light of the sun. Amun-Re could be represented as a man with two feathers in his crown or as a ram. When the Egyptians represented gods and goddesses as being manifest in human form they were expressing the belief that these gods are active in not only our material plane of existence but also having influence over us directly here on earth. In this respect, you witness Horus as a baby being represented as human and the celestial elder Horus as a hawk because he has taken to the skies and is not operating exclusively in the earthly realm. Amun-Re's iconography as a ram is telling us that he is a ba force and this ba force is a twin to the ka force I have previously attributed to Re as the manifest light of the sun. However, this ba force is hidden much like Osiris is hidden to the ancient Egyptians. The great world ba soul comes to our world to enliven our individual souls. That is the great power of Amun-Re and why he rose to prominence in the New Kingdom and became the king of the gods in a very short period of time. He was the great liberating figure for all, a personal god who promised all encompassing salvation. I promise you that you will not read about this interpretation anywhere else than this blog space.

So, why then did the Egyptians have to combine this Amun with Min? Well, because in essence a ba can't enliven another ba. There has to be some kind of ka, a virile bull represented as Min, to give the life necessary for Osiris to wake up and do his thing. Min, the seed bull god known for his virility, presided over the Pharaoh's Heb Sed festival of renewal where the king had to demonstrate his vitality and virility to prove he was capable of impregnating the mother goddess Hathor and in essence continuing the cyclical legitimacy of kingship over the two lands, Upper and Lower Egypt, which contained within them the idea that a Pharaoh will rule over both the heavenly (spiritual) realm and the earthly (material) realm.

Much later in his life Amunhotep (III) celebrated a jubilee marking the thirtieth year of his reign.  It also seems to have been the occasion for his official, public declaration of his transformation into a deity, the sun disk itself.  He is shown in the sun bark with Hathor, and his artists rendered him far more youthfully during his last eight years, as if to stress that the king had been reborn.

This event had its origins in prehistory, and originally marked the ritualistic or symbolic death and resurrection of the ruler.  There are only fragments of inscriptional material that illustrate this event before Amunhotep's reign, but even those from the Old Kingdom share significant features of Hathoric ceremonies.  After the fall of the Old Kingdom these were taken over and imitated in the tomb scenes of private persons, who hoped thereby to be reborn after death, just like the kings.  Apparently Hathor's presence and her magical power were necessary to ensure this rejuvenation.  Lioness-masked priestesses using the curved ivory wands that were ritual objects of Hathor are depicted in Middle Kingdom private tombs and in the representations of these significant and memorable royal event in the tomb of Kheruef, a courtier of Amunhotep's queen, Tiy.  He had been present at the royal jubilee and recorded in his tomb the prescence of the goddess Hathor, about whom it was sung: "Make jubilation for The Gold and good pleasure for the Lady of the Two Lands that she may cause Nebmaatre (Amunhotep), who is given life, to be enduring…Adoration of The Gold when she shines forth in the sky…[T]here is no god who does what you dislike when you appear in glory…[I}f [you] desire that he (Amunhotep) live, cause him to live during millions of years unceasingly."

Amunhotep III also seems to have claimed divinity for his wife, Queen Tiy.  Artists altered existing statues of the queen to give her the blue hair and diadem of Hathor; others portrayed her from the start as this goddess, suggesting she was the earthly manifestation of Hathor.

The Great Goddesses of Egypt, Barbara S. Lesko, pages 118-119.

The ritual meaning of the dances, however, is very much in the spirit of New Kingdom Egypt, as can be gleaned from the songs inscribed above the young performers, who are accompanied by women musicians, playing flutes or clapping their hands in rhythm.  Over the dancers and musicians in the lower register is a powerful invocation to the starry snake goddess of the night, Hathor 'Gold', whom they call on to rise and be propitiated through the dances they perform in her honour.

But they dance not only for this beneficent queen of the night, shining in her fiery brilliance, but also for Amenhotep (III) who has great need of her power.  In their chant to the goddess they implore her to take him to the east of the sky, to the place where at dawn, 'the doors of the sky open and a god goes forth pure'.  And this is what they sing:

Make jubilation for Gold

and sweet pleasure for

The Lady of the Two Lands,

that she may cause

Nebmaatre [Amenhotep], given life,

to be enduring…

Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, pages 26-27.

It is in this aspect that the Pharaoh, the living Horus, becomes Min-Horus. He fecundates the mother goddess Hathor, who originally brought his material essence, ka, into the material world, and who is now his consort.  

The king of Egypt was identified with the god Horus, as texts in Hatshepsut's temple recall when Hathor says, "I have wandered through the northern marshes, when I stopped at Khebt, protecting my Horus… I am thy mother who formed thy limbs and created thy perfection."  The vignette illustrating Spell 186 in the New Kingdom's Book of the Dead also shows the Hathoric cow emerging from a mountainside and parting clumps of papyrus plants.

The Great Goddesses of Egypt, Barbara S. Lesko, page 109.

He will impregnate Hathor in this aspect to complete his becoming when she births his spiritual ka in the morning dawn, which the ancient Egyptians called akhet, and the child born is the great leaping golden calf Ihy. 

yep, that Golden Calf

Ihy being nursed by Hathor in the birth house at Denderah

In a sun-hymn dating to Haremheb's reign, Hathor is specifically named as the mother in the eastern horizon bearing the young Re within her. He is 'vital and young in the sun-disk within your mother Hathor' (Book of Day in the tomb of Ramesses VI at Thebes)

My Heart My Mother, Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, page 182.

As I have previously mentioned in this blog space, please note the above passage is also describing the essence of Re is encapsulated within the sun-disk and that Re is not the sun-disk. Digging deeper into this declaration, it becomes clear that Hathor is the dawn, the akhet. This passage below is also a confirmation of the understanding that the Pharaoh must become the bull of his mother Hathor if he wishes to continue in the Pharaonic cycle of rebirth.

But as musician, seated though he is, King Amenhotep (III) is continuing a long tradition of royal music-making at Thebes.  In inscriptions on a stela which Herbert Winlock found among the rubble at Deir el-Bahri, the Middle Kingdom ruler, King Antef, describes how he too, some 700 years before Amenhotep, was a night-time music-maker for Hathor, accompanying Re on his journey through the Netherworld:

My body speaks, my lips repeat

pure Ihy-music for Hathor.

Music, millions

and hundreds and thousands of it,

Because you love music,

a million of music for your ka,

In all your places.

Through such music-making, both Antef and Amenhotep become open to renewal through the shining, beautiful goddess.

Hathor Rising, The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Alison Roberts, page 29.

So, Amun-Re has to impregnate the mother Isis who will birth the baby Horus who becomes Pharaoh and eventually in a divine cycle becomes Re again as he is reborn in the akhet as Ihy and Ihy becomes Re. On the other hand, the mature Horus has to impregnate his consort Hathor to allow for the birth of this bull calf Ihy. Hathor is the great mother goddess of the Ennead of which Horus is the ultimate expression, hence the meaning of Hathor's name - the house of Horus. This is the reason behind the ancient Egyptian concept of these gods being kamutef, bull of his mother.

doing justice to Min

Maybe I'm a rube but this etymological situation puzzles me greatly. In ancient Egypt, there was this famous place called Wadi Hammamat which was utilized throughout the span of Egyptian greatness as a major centre for mining and quarrying activity. Gold mining and quarrying for bekhen stone were the chief activities; bekhen stone being prized for its colours, and utilized for making sculptures and sarcophagi. Wadi Hammamat connected the great ancient Egyptian city of Gebtu (Koptos in Greek, now called Qift) to the Red Sea coast. At Gebtu, the predynastic god Min had a cult site and caravans would depart from Gebtu on their way to and through Wadi Hammamat for mining, trade, and travel. Nowadays, the wadi is prized for the hieroglyphic and hieratic inscriptions left behind by these tradesmen of the great Egyptian civilization. Not surprisingly, Min was worshipped by the miners and masons doing their digging at Wadi Hammamat. Min was known here as "Min, the (foremost) Man of the Mountain" or "Min, the Male of the Mountain". Now, this mining activity went on here, as I intimated, for at least three thousand years. There are numerous texts and figures of an ithyphallic Min adorning the rocks here.

On the internet at dictionary.com, a mine is described as such:

an excavation made in the earth for the purpose of extracting ores, coal, precious stones, etc.

On the internet at dictionary.com, the action to mine is described as such:

to dig in the earth for the purpose of extracting ores, coal, etc.; make a mine.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mine

This is an apt description of what went on at Wadi Hammamat for thousands of years under the auspicious watch of the great Min.

One of my favourite sites on the internet, the Online Etymology Dictionary, gives this for the origin of the english word mine:

c.1300, from O. Fr. mine, probably from a Celtic source (cf. Welsh mwyn, Ir. mein "ore, mine"), from O.Celt. *meini-. Italy and Greece were relatively poor in minerals, thus they did not contribute a word for this to Eng., but there was extensive mining from an early date in Celtic lands (Cornwall, etc.). The verb meaning "to dig in a mine" is from c.1300.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mine

That's it, that's the best we can do in our modern research. Puzzled, I thought maybe the goods we are mining for, minerals, might help reveal some clues to the origin of the mine family of words. Nothing; a virtual dead end. One thing I have always been good at is math. I've always been confident and unshaken in the conclusion that 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 2 = 4 and so on, so when I see things that add up to reveal an answer I'm quite certain of the truthfulness of that answer despite what I might be taught. The ancient Egyptians dug and quarried for thousands of years at Wadi Hammamat for earth's treasures. This was overseen by Min. This place, the substance and the performing of the action preserves the power of this deity to this very day. You cannot convince me otherwise.