See A.K. Reader for other archived pieces. This one documents what led up to an eerie, even uncanny meeting with the goddess Sekhmet in a small, out-of-the-way temple located east of the main colossus in Karnak, Egypt. My encounter with Sekhmet released old personal/collective karma that had held me frozen and changed my life. This essay, first published in Crone Chronicles #31 (1997), was included in an anthology devoted to Sekhmet, When the Lion Roars, by Galina Krasskova, in 2012.
Here’s a little taste . . .
“Strangely enough, when we approached the little shrine, I was first in line (usually I had dragged behind). The outside doorway led into the central one of three rooms, which contained the statue of a headless seated god. Before I had a chance to investigate this statue I felt like I was being pulled to the right, to enter a darkened room. Peeking around the corner (why was I peeking? did I already know that I would be afraid?) I was instantly galvanized by what looked like two eyes, gleaming in the darkness. Looking right at me, they were fierce, alien, even extraterrestrial. Hope, who had been right behind me, heard me whisper, “Oh my God!!”–as if I was terrified. I was terrified. I felt like a small child who had just seen the bogeyman.
“I was not the only one to experience the statue of Sekhmet in this manner. Even the skeptical intellectual Britisher in our group came up to me afterwards to say, in a surprised, hushed voice, “She was terrifying!”
0 thoughts on “An AK Reader: Meeting Sekhmet (1997)”
very interesting story, ann, thanks for sharing! i’ll let this one sit with me for a bit.