June 24, 2005

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  THE GOLDEN CALF part 2     

  
  

  HATHOR, THE GRAND OLD LADY OF SEX, DANCE, BOOZE, AND ROCK & ROLL

  
  

  In the Egyptian religion, the deities not only ruled a certain area of life, but they actually embodied these concepts as well. Hathor was the embodiment of what Egyptians considered the pleasures of life.  She was the embodiment of beauty, joy, love, sex, fertility, dance, drunkenness and music, (especially percussive music) as well as turquoise, malachite, copper and gold.  So, wherever beauty, dance, music, sex, or drunkenness were, there also existed the spirit of Hathor in it.  She was like a Greek muse for these things.  For example, malachite, which was mined in Hathor’s province of Sinai, was ground to powder and used for eye make up.  So, by wearing eye make up, you would not only look beautiful, but you would be wearing Hathor’s essence on your person.  The goddess Isis later shared or adopted most of Hathor’s attributes.  But even today, 5000 years later, Egyptian women still reportedly seek cures, fertility, and protection at the ruins of Hathor’s shrines.

  
  

  Hathor dates to pre-dynastic times.  When the Egyptian dynasties first began, Horus was associated with the king, and Hathor was associated with the queen.  Hathor translates to (ht-hr)”The House of Horus.”  She is associated with the royal family and is said to be the mother and sustainer of Pharaoh.  She is the holy mother, . . . goddess of the whole world, according to the Egyptians.

  
  

  Hathor, ‘the Great One of Many Names,’ shows up in many forms, depending on which of her attributes is being highlighted.  Hathor’s most famous and popular manifestation is as a cow.  Even when she is shown as a woman, the woman sports the ears of, or the complete head of, a cow.  Usually the sun disk is shown between her raised horns. (You might recognize that as a symbol of Isis, but it belonged to Hathor first).  She can be distinguished from normal bovines because she is the cow wearing make up. (Hey, listen. Hathor is the cow with the simply exquisite eye liner, of course. ) Her popularity made her the first Egyptian god worshipped outside of Egypt, ( in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Libya.).  Her hairstyle, dubbed the “Hathor hair-do” is distinctive and stands out because it is not elaborately braided and decorated like the Egyptians commonly depicted elsewhere.  The ‘Hathor hair-do’ was a simple flip, often parted down the middle. Interestingly, several other female goddesses of the Middle East, while they may have had different names (like Ishtar, Anat, and Astarte) are also later depicted wearing the Hathor hair-do, and, **cough, cough,** they sure do share a lot of other attributes with the ancient Hathor, too.

  
  

  Hathor held ‘spiritual dominion’ over the Sinai peninsula.  It was her sacred land, so to speak. (There were several valuable Egyptian mining camps in the Sinai region before the Israelites arrived there.  They dug up a lot of beautiful stones and metals, and, of course, they had shrines to Hathor.)  Unlike other Egyptian deities, that had priests of only one sex associated with them, Hathor, however, had both.  She was as revered in the mining camps of Sinai by male miners and soldiers, as she was by young girls living along the Nile seeking husbands, or married women seeking to give birth.

  
  

  Hathor was, the primary goddess of women, and textiles, love, sex, and conception.  Egyptian artifacts found in association with Hathor worship indicate that grapes were offered to her, and that naked aroused men (and apparently sometimes naked women) danced, played, and sang before her.  Followers wore or used votive phallic objects made of wood or stone ( the original Order of the Holy Dildo), and apparently they wore cowrie shells that resembled the female vulva, because all of these have been found in association with her shrines.  One Egyptian myth tells us that Hathor once got the sun god Re to cheer up, when he was depressed, how? – by raising her dress and exposing her genitals, that’s how. (You can just imagine, what a holiday that celebrated that religious tradition might have been like!  It would give all new meaning to  ”Pass the cranberry sauce.” )

  
  

  Hathor, as Nut, is the heavenly water goddess, and is sometimes portrayed in murals that show her golden body as a nude woman bent or arched over the earth, with stars on her body, and the red sun-disk is shown as traveling within her watery body to be born from her vagina at dawn.  In other murals she is shown as a golden heavenly cow with the sun traversing her starry and watery body in a boat,

  
  

  Hathor, among her other attributes, was also revered as the goddess who received the dead into the underworld.  She is often portrayed in association with ‘the mountain of the west” where the sun sets and dies each evening.  Usually she is portrayed as seated before the mountain, or standing in front of it.  Sometimes her head is shown emerging from the mount, like a cow looking out of a barn, and the rest of her body is in a cave or opening symbolic of the entrance to the underworld.  When men died, she received them into her holy mount (think pyramid).  The sun, however, is reborn the next morning in the east, between two trees of turquoise, as her golden calf.

  
  

  (Hummm. Two trees.  Hathor is herself associated with trees.  She is found depicted as a sycamore tree, a tree of life, giving food and drink to the ‘righteous’ dead.  So, I might not be too far off to suspect that the two trees of turquoise represent Hathor’s legs as she gives birth to the golden sun calf each morning.  It makes a symbol that personally reminds me of the design of Darth Vader’s fighter ship (the Egyptians would call it his’ holy boat’ (or ark) traveling the starry heavens) seen from the front “IoI,” he being “the chosen one” and all.  Also, the “back at you”/”hook’em horns” hand sign that so many spiritual icons are painted as displaying, also strangely resembles this symbol. . .    Now don’t “lol,” but it also reminds me of the Beatles song “Here Comes The Sun” by George Harrison.  “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it’s all right.  Little darlin’ the smiles returning to their faces.”  

  
  

   In Christianity, life between the two trees (the tree of Knowledge and the tree of Calvary) is said to be fallen and lost, as mankind became seperated from God by their own selfish lusts.  However, the life between the two trees of Hathor is just the opposite. It is celebrated. It is risen and found, and mankind is brought closer to Hathor by exercise of their selfish lusts. (And if you didn’t know how to lust, they had erotic rituals to help you, so you could draw closer to Hathor.)   Indeed, the sun, the symbol of warmth and life, the golden calf,  rises between the two trees (or as often depicted, the two horns) of Hathor.

  
  

  OH YEAH, ABOUT THAT GOLDEN CALF. . .
  

  
  

  The golden calf symbol is a very old one.  It goes clear back to the Old Kingdom of Egypt.  It is mentioned in the Old Kingdom pyramid texts of the 5^th and 6^th dynasties of Egypt (approx. 2375-2184 BC) where Pharaoh (pick a Pharaoh, any pharaoh…) is repeatedly referred to as a golden calf.    Yes, Pharaoh.

  
  

  Here, from what used to be called The Egyptian Book of the Dead, but what is now I understand referred to simply as The Pyramid Texts, is this sample quote I found: “Pepi comes to thee, O Ra, a calf of gold, born of heaven. I have come to you Ra, a calf of gold, born in the sky, a fatted calf of gold… O Horus, do not leave me boatless.”  (Pyramid Text; Utterance 485a)

  
  

  In their writings, the only god ever referred to specifically as a golden calf by the ancient Egyptians, is Pharaoh.   According to the mythology, the sun rises in the east as a golden calf, born of the queen of heaven, or the heavenly “lady” of the sky, the cow goddess Hathor.   At noon the sun, this golden calf, becomes a mighty bull, and at sunset, he impregnates his mother, (the “lady” of the sky, the goddess of the heavens) in order to be born again the next morning as a golden calf again. (hence the probable origin of the phrase- “Watch out, he’s a hot Mother F**cker!”)

  
  

  OOOps!

  
  

  Well, that’s not really the best note to end on, but it seems I have rambled on far too much about the old holy mother, so we will have to pick it up here next time I suppose. (c) RLM

  • 6:11 pm
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