“The thing that got interrupted had no business continuing. This virus, this is a god; that is not overstating things, and the gods are in the house, and god is having god’s way as gods tend to do. Our obligation is to exercise a radical hospitality to this anarchic presence and to learn how to be undone by it” – Stephen Jenkinson.

Welcome to the time of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of the sun, war, destruction, plagues and healing.

There’s a lot more to her than this blog will deal with today so you can find details here. 

In a nutshell, Sekhmet is the dark side while her parallel goddess, Bastet is the light. Legend has it that they are either twin sisters or two sides of the same coin. Sekhmet has the head of a lioness and Bastet the head of a cat.

Both goddesses protect and avenge the sun god, Ra and the mother goddess, Ma’at. Ra is the creator and Ma’at is the overseer of the balance of creation from the stars to the seasons. She represents divine order, balance, morality, truth and justice. Let’s see the two of them as Elohim, the divine feminine who wove creation into existence, according to the book of Genesis, and Yahweh the divine masculine who turned up with the advent of humanity.

Hopefully, you know that the Divine has no gender; It is way beyond gender but, as we have dealt with a patriarchal God for millennia, I think it’s important to balance with references to the feminine, especially as all the legends and teachings equate the divine feminine with nature, creation and both plague and healing.

We are in the time of plague and it behoves us to seek the healing.

Sekhmet’s legend tells of how she brought vengeance on humanity for disrespecting the light and the land. Her initially Samurai-type anger became corrupted into rage and she became so violent that she slaughtered humans without limit and drank our blood. Ra, seeing her imbalance, poured 7000 jugs of beer and pomegranate juice into the Nile River, turning it red to resemble blood so that Sekhmet would drink that instead. She did, become drunk and slept for three days. When she woke, she was re-balanced.

To mix metaphors (perennial truth is perennial truth in every tradition), Sekhmet represents the natural response to the overbalancing of the side columns of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. We humans have focused on the side of action, growth, more, more, more, faster! and through our intent to build without stopping, we brought the balance of creation to its knees.

It is Sekhmet’s job to point this out and to call us to a halt.

So far, Sekhmet has been gentle with us. Yes, I know it doesn’t feel like that. I too am grieving for loved ones who have died, for the loss of work and outside life and I know that, for many who don’t have access to the countryside, or enough to live on or are in unhappy or abusive relationships, this is hell. I also have the greatest admiration and sympathy for those who are having to attempt home schooling!

But, trust me, she is.

I believe that we have two things to learn here. The first has been said much more clearly than I can say it by many. We have to slow down and, if we won’t, we will be made to do so. The ecological heart of this planet is a living Being. She has needs just as much as humanity does and we have to learn to respect that.

We’ve all seen pictures of the blue skies over Wuhan and Los Angeles. We have seen the clear canals of Venice. If we are able to step outside at night time and, in the relative silence, listen to the stars and the wind and the clouds, we will know that this is a time of radical healing. We will be able to feel the Earth beginning, just a little, to relax. The plague of physical psoriasis (humanity) is not itching quite so much…

The second thing we have to learn is not physical. It is to quit with the projected rivers of hatred. It is THIS virus which will, energetically, unleash the unlimited plagues of Sekhmet and if those are released, God help us all.

You can see these potential plagues everywhere – in MAGA baseball hats, in fake news, in our need to criticise, condemn and despise, in our need to create and sustain conspiracy theories, in our compulsion to range ourselves on one side of any argument and make the other wrong.

We are in liminal space here. A precious and doubting time; a time to make us realise that what we believe and what we create are the same thing and to reconsider what we think, do and create.

On last Tuesday’s online Kabbalah group, one of our members began to talk about David Icke. Now, I loved David’s first book, The Truth Vibrations but I went off him big time when he went into the ‘lizards and control’ line of teaching.

Why? Because that way is the route into imbalance, ill-health and to creating exactly what you are protesting against.

The law of attraction is not some New Age ‘thing’, it is perennial wisdom, all the way through the Bible and – I believe – all sacred texts. It is dead simple: what you put out you get back. What you focus on, becomes real. It teaches that if you focus on good, you draw good and if you focus on everything that is wrong, you align to that very energy and you create more of it.

There was a (small) furore when some of David Icke’s work was banned from Facebook and I do understand that free speech is important. But deliberately stoking up anger, resentment and fear cannot solve the problems they are highlighting.

At the group, I simply asked the participant if she thought that David Icke was happy and healthy. She thought for a moment and said, ‘no, he’s incredibly angry.’ And then she got it; that aligning with a teacher who was filled with rage (no matter how righteous) was not healthy for her let alone for the planet.

And yes, there are positives to anger as a force for change – but that anger must never be allowed to draw us down into the abyss of hatred. The moment it does, then we are promulgating exactly that which we are trying to resist.

Maybe Sekhmet overbalanced into devastating destruction because humanity fought back, instead of going into the silence, the accepting, the healing. Maybe they blamed the government, the elite, the wealthy, the arrogant, the dumb. In fact, everyone other than themselves.

This is liminal time. It hurts. It is meant to. We have been given a chance to change. Whether we will take it or just head back to careless and riotous over-consumerism again remains to be seen. 

In the meantime, let us attend to our healing.

Let us cook instead of ordering take-aways.

Let us plant seeds, even if only on windowsills (that still counts!).

Let us smile at those we pass at two metres’ distance instead of fussing about whether they are wearing a mask or ‘doing it right.’

Let us wash our hands and wear face masks ourselves to protect everyone including ourselves.

Let us explore boredom instead of rushing to be entertained.

Let us bless instead of cursing.

Let us hope instead of fearing.

Let us accept that we do not know what life is bringing but it is our responsibility to create whatever we can that brings peace to the future of humanity and this beautiful planet.

We can do this.

Let us breathe.

Sekhmet awaits…