Hathor
The beauty of your face
Glitters when you rise
Oh come in peace.
One is drunk
At your beautiful face,
O Gold, Hathor.
From a hymn to the goddess Hathor, Egypt, 18th Dynasty
Hathor was associated with erotic music and dancing, patron of sexual love, the sky, the sun, the queen, music, dance and the arts, and the Egyptian’s cognate of the Romans’ Venus, while the Greeks identified her with Aphrodite. Egyptian women prayed to Hathor for assistance during childbirth, and as a cow deity she was envisioned as suckling infants. On the occasion of a birth in Egypt, seven Hathors (rather like European fairy godmothers) would appear to ‘speak with one mouth’ and determine the child's fate. . . . She was also a harvest goddess; congruent harvest goddesses are Demeter, Ceres, Mawu, Spider Woman, Ukemoshi, Gaia, Ge, Rhea, Tellus Mater, Carna, Chicomecoatl, Coatlique. More here.
Wiki says that: Essentially, Hathor had become a goddess of Joy, and so she was deeply loved by the general population, and truly revered by women, who aspired to embody her multifaceted role as wife, mother, and lover. In this capacity, she gained the titles of Lady of the House of Jubilation, and The One Who Fills the Sanctuary with Joy.
The worship of Hathor was so popular that more festivals were dedicated to her honour than any other Egyptian deity, and more children were named after this goddess than any other. Even Hathor's priesthood was unusual, in that both men and women became her priests.
An ancient hymn praised Hathor, saying: Thou art the Mistress of Jubilation, the Queen of the Dance, the Mistress of Music, the Queen of the Harp Playing, the Lady of the Choral Dance, the Queen of Wreath Weaving, the Mistress of Inebriety Without End.
Art found here, here, and here.
1 comment:
I've been thinking along the same lines about what any one of us would be willing to risk in order to effect change. Ghandi's weapons included the numbers, the magnitude of his countrimen who were individually completely powerless. "Our lives, our sacred fortunes" has been a little mantra running through my head.
I've been obsessed with the horrors of our health care system for years: way back on "St. Elsewhere" there was a scene where a patient cited "45 million uninsured"--and how far back was that? I don't know what the number of uninsured is, nor the numbers of people who (now) go bankrupt and lose their homes to medical debt, or who wind up at the ER because they can't pay for a doctor's visit, or die of treatable disease. But what if it truly could be anyone at all and millions more bet the farm and their lives?
Here's the thing that I'm pondering. What if people who COULD pay Blue Cross their extortionary premiums, decided not to? "Our lives, our sacred fortunes"?
Yes, I could be wiped out financially with a little old heart attack. Then what? Like Ghandi's salt miners, I would fall dead and three would step over me to continue towards the bayonet. If I live, my savings will yet feed the bayonets, and so on, until the beast of our health care industry gets so big it can't stand up. Let there be ninety million uninsured--and the way things are going there will be. Maybe then, things can change.
Since this is my big issue, it may be a gamble I'll soon take.
Or it could be insane, and that's what conventional wisdom would say. You could lose everything! You might die! Lives and sacred fortunes, indeed.
(Not that I don't believe in real insurance, I'm probably over-insured on my auto and homeowner's.) Those insurance entities may or may not be fairly priceed, but somehow they're different in scale to the truly horrific health insurance companies.
So what do you think?
nuncamas
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