I’ve been dreaming in temples recently.
I’ve spent decades devoted to the Egyptian Mysteries. A lineage landing in my lap in 2008 and with it the return of Sheshat (another story for another day).
In my present reality, Egypt feels very far away. The trip I planned in October rescheduled for January, the book sitting dormant with some hefty edits until the winter holds me in her embrace. This is the least Egypt has been in my conscious waking field in over 18 years.
My embodiment work is rich with projects and tasks, so somehow Egypt is somehow inviting itself to be the backdrop of my sleep. 4 dreams within the past month… Egypt clearly doesn’t care that I am gloriously embroiled in real life over here.
A note before we wander in: Much of what I share here comes from my relationship with an Egyptian Mystery lineage, its teachings, and the neters themselves. These understandings can’t always be found in conventional Egyptology or verified through outside sources. I’m sharing what has been lived, practiced, and known through relationship, not simply what I’ve read and interpreted.
Reality is the Dream
A potent and pertinent tenet from my Egyptian lineage:
Reality is the dream. The dream is what’s real. Not this.
The many temples made visible through my dreamscape could just be fantasy, but I feel like there’s something more rising up to be witnessed.
Last week, a temple of the wasp goddess, complete with accommodations for the priestesses. I was there in vivid detail exploring the chambers and walking barefoot on the sand.
I can’t claim them to be real or imagined but I’m beginning to realize that’s not the point. This is the dream. So let me lean in and see what messages I can extrapolate….
Because this dream is curious indeed and makes little sense to my little brain.
My Dream Temple of Bast
I was in an interior chamber that I had to crawl in to access. It was cool inside, that brilliant sandstone somehow illuminated from within. I was allowed to visit several times and felt sad knowing I may never be granted access again.
I was given a choice by my friend and true to life Egyptian guide Khaled.
Stay here in the temple of Bast or choose Khnum.
I chose Khnum (cause somehow duh) but I grieved that I was leaving this familiar sanctuary behind.
Leaving the temple, the hot winds and sands greeted me. In departing, I encountered the harsh world of man.
Somehow real life crushing upon me. Ok not real, real life but an east coast hellscape… apocalyptic mayhem of trying to get to my family. People were being sorted as I made my way down these congested roads based on their skill sets and what would be needed to survive in the coming world.
I woke with a fright. Cause what the fuck was that.
My conscious brain holds no relationship with Khnum and yet, within the dream, I was certain in choosing him. The choice seemed wrong and terrifying once I had chosen.
Bast & Khnum
Allow me to state that my connection and knowing of the Egyptian neters is through relationship. I don’t study or worship, I’m friends with them. This is the way the divine makes itself most available to humans. Not an image on an altar, not a book extolling their traits, a direct living breathing relationship.
So when I say I know Bast and have no clue who the heck Khnum is, well I’m flummoxed.
Bast, I know well… The cat goddess. The sweet little puss who gives us softer access to the beautiful ferocity of Sekhmet. Within my lineage, Bast is the soul of Isis- the Ba Auset. An ambassador of peace. The serenity of mind and the assurance of a beneficent universe. She serves the blossoming of consciousness.
Of course I’d rather stay with her.
Khnum is older… an ancient god of water, a creator god.
Since I don’t know him so well… permit me to discover him right alongside you. I am cautious of not taking in all the online definitions, so let’s invite him to come forward in the context I can place him within the Mysteries.
Consort of Neith. There we go.
Neith, she of the unborn light. The self created weaver of reality giving life to the heavens and the earth and everything inside it. Neith is singular, not just single, but freakin’ self-created. She needs no other and from the vastness of the no-thing she chooses to bring herself into being. So if she’s taking a partner, he must then be an equal.
Khnum is the potter, a natural complement to the weaver. The God of becoming, of something taking form from the formless to exist in this world.
She is the air and the ether, he is water and clay, crafting humans out of clay and giving the Ka (or spirit) to each newborn child.
And the Ka here is fascinating. My lineage honors a 10 body/soul system.
Ka is the densest and thickest, the karma you inherited. In order to exist, you must take on the ka… it is yours to evolve while also the very etheric substance that allows a being to take form at all.
The Ka is sometimes akin to the mental body of the etheric field, full of all the collective beliefs and limitations that occur in every human. So Khnum, as the giver of Ka, implants within the clay the raw material necessary to be human. Not the animating spark, not the dna, the very force required to be born.
And a quick but necessary sidebar. The Ka when purified becomes the Aka… the threads with which one can create reality. (Yup, there’s Neith.) Of course this process of clearing is reserved to the mysteries, a ritual per se, and must be done in cosmic harmony and order of Sheshat. But I’ll stay focused.
The Ka is not a sentence or punishment, the ka is foundational and meant to be evolved.
So… Neith creates it all and Khnum gives us the necessary material to have life. She creates reality, he creates form upon her threads.
His name means to unite, to build. While Neith is the infinite divine itself.
Quite the power couple.
Leaving the Realm of Peace to Enter the World of Form
Ok, back to this dream… I have to leave the hidden sanctuary of Bast (peace, love, and all that) and go into this world of Khnum.
You might know the idea that the monks can’t stay atop the mountain and truly be of benefit to society. So my dream, it’s kinna like that. It seems I’ve sat with Bast for long enough that I am anchored in her.
I’ve got to leave her reassuring space to return to the world of man. To step from Neith’s infinite, oneness of creation into the landmine of form, dense with all the “heavy” humanity has managed to pile in over a few thousand years.
The temple was never meant to be where I stayed. I was meant to take what I learned there back into the world.
So that part about skills… I guess you could say I know how to evolve the ka, to purify the density back into creative potential. This is well practiced for me and something from the lineage I love to share with others. I never held it as a skill, but the dream pretty clearly honors it as such.
Both Bast and Khnum are overtly connected to consciousness.
One serves its blossoming, the other gifts us the Ka, the mechanism through which consciousness evolves.
I Choose Khnum
Apparently not just in my dream state. I choose to participate in the evolution of consciousness every dang day. My own first and through these little didactic escapades I drop here into Substack. With my clients, evolving them from the patterns of unconscious behavior into the sovereignty of aligned choices made with love. With my daughter each time she encounters corporate reality when she’s just trying to pump out coffee.
I’m held by Bast even while I grieve leaving her. This is the hero’s quest, not as some grand feat but that of every morning. Ha a little ridiculous but also true.
Why do we get out of bed in the morning?
Why do we keep creating?
Why do we still have hope even when the world mirrors back absolute schiet?
The mission of the Mysteries, the collective reason the darn thing was preserved, was to be a seed point for current humanity. That the teachings would be encountered again and restore us the capacity to make real the dream. To remember the future.
I’m not desiring to be grandiose and heck… maybe the dream was nothing at all. Babe, I’m not claiming to be Omm Sety 2.0. I’m also not going to arrogantly declare that consciousness can only encounter what’s real while I’m awake. But there is precedent here and I won’t say no if that’s the case.
My ancient Mysteries heart can’t quite write off the dream that easily.
Protection Not Rejection
I’ll also publicly share that my October trip to Egypt has been rescheduled. It’s not what I wanted but it is what is. I don’t see this as a personal failure, far from it. I’m being protected, not rejected, by Egypt for the timing that is most supportive.
I had a grand vision and was excited to visit Amarna on 10/10.
Alas, Osiris is still working us. This is the shared concession of my group last March.
Osiris delivered… and it may take a full 9 month gestational cycle to let was was given land fully. So yeah, October may have been too ambitious given how we deeply were asked to participate.
So the call is clear— Esna is calling instead. The temple of Khnum where the creation of the universe is depicted in brilliant color.
Esna preserves unusually detailed requirements for ritual purification before you’re allowed to access the temple. I love that I didn’t know this and yet somehow it makes perfect sense.
To encounter the temple of Khnum, to gain the wisdom of the Ka, one must purify. This is the technology I cannot claim, but it aligns perfectly with the teachings of my lineage.
Does Esna perhaps offer a cue to the technology of Aka left for us?
The choice isn’t Bast or Khnum. It’s taking everything Bast has given me/us and embodying it in Khnum’s world. This is our most human choice point right now.
You can’t stay in the cozy sanctuary, baby. You’ve gotta climb down off the mountain. You’re an asset within our world because of what you carry within, how you show up, and how you move.
The temples of my dreams need not be real. I can accept that my imagination may just be this cool. But as the Egyptian Mysteries continue their penetration into my dreams, I’m not going to argue with the invitation. I’ll take the magical mystery ride and see what wants to come into form.
Join us in Egypt as we make real the dream and answer Khnum’s call.
I took a photo of a wasp nest less than an hour before reading this and last night I couldn’t sleep so I was chanting the Hekaus for Neith 🥰