Many Moments of Epiphany
April 13, 2008

In one of the many discussion forums I frequent, I found "This weeks Pagan Prompt": "I am a ___________ Describe the moment when you could call yourself a witch, pagan, _______ and know that it was true." There is not just one single moment of epiphany, but several such moments in my life of deepening understanding. At age fourteen, observing the religion of my grandmother and the other relatives, I could not understand their view of the Supreme Creator. To throw people into eternal hell for 'not believing in him' seemed the actions of a despot, worse than Hitler, for at least the mortal despots' cruelty ended upon death, not eternal torment. At age sixteen, reading Ayn Rand and Nathanial Brandon, about the idea of 'rational selfishness' and the importance of self esteem was restorative, aiding me in losing the concept of being a 'wretched sinner'. But they are atheistic and deny the power of intuition and mystical matters. At age nineteen, coming home from some outing in the summer, I looked up at the stars, and a recognition shot through me like electricity. Those stars! What made them come into being, what gives them the power to glow? I knew then the atheism was not a suitable answer. There was a Great Power which made them come into being. I knew it was electrical in nature and that we could plug into it. From there on, a long period of 'wandering', so to speak. There was little that called to me, to the 'deep heart's core'. I found a poem or so, oddly one to an Egyptian goddess, Nut (aka Nuit), but mostly nothing very much. There was a brief, but deep crisis as an agnostic tried to pull at my deism. All shattered, my sense of Order in the Universe, of Cause and Balance. As rough as that was, it was useful for then came a moment of epiphany, as I found the Divine within. I'll let that forty year me speak: November 18, 1998 (excerpt) As I laid down tonight, preparing for sleep, I pondered a me fifteen years in the future. I wondered what she would tell me. I could imagine the warm, loving message of encouragement she might have for me. I could almost feel her. . . . . .And an epiphany came over me so strong that the force of it nearly pushed me out of bed and to the computer: It was me, all along, the Goddess was, and has always been a part of ME. I haven't lost Her, for She is right there inside of me, the best part of me! She's the best part of all living things. We like to externalize it, but that's not what it really is. I have long understood how people could believe they are 'channeling' a spirit which inspires their creativity, for poems will arrive in my mind whole. I seem but merely to write down the dictation. I knew it was really coming from that part of the brain people call the 'subconscious', the part from which arises all intuitive leaps. And so with the God/Goddess energy. It's really all right here, within us. The world seems a brighter place, now. (end of excerpt) With that recognition came wholeness. But more epiphanies were in store for me. At age forty four, I was studying a website which spoke of great mysteries and an Egyptian god named Set. "Great of Strength", his title then in the ancient days when he knew respect. But the Dark Lord had come to a period in Egyptian history when he was not respected. He was feared and demonized, and many of his images damaged. Yet, I felt a great calling. I studied (and continue) to study all I could find about him. I knew this for me was the one 'great of strength', whose power enabled the stars to come into being. And indeed, as all the gods hold the Was scepter, symbol of his power, that they too are thereby empowered. Yes, there was a moment of 'saying Yes!'. This year, a meditation brought intriguing results, a 'full circle' moment. I was pondering the Egyptian word Seb or _sb3_ which means 'star', 'teaching' or 'door'. That's a lot of concepts to hold under one word, but yes, it comes together for me like that. I can imagine me as a white skirted cross legged youth with the sidelock sitting in the shade, listening to the elders: "You will remember it, the lessons of the stars. This will be with you, you will take this lesson with you, incarnation to incarnation. You will see the stars, and you will remember." Certainly there is enough to allow for 'rational' interpretations of these things, to say we are getting these 'memories' from the collective unconscious or ancestral memory embedded in the DNA. However, it is interesting to contemplate these things. "The lesson of the stars": I remember it in the heart's core, somehow, of Ma'at, how she is all to life, truth, beauty, balance, how the stars and the sun show this in their regular and orderly appearance, and how it is Set's power to keep away the Apep (which would return everything to non-existance) that he maintains Ma'at. Everything in its balance, and we are all stars in our orbits, in our balanced cycles. And we shine, we shine with the power of akh, the sekhem, we burst forth, we cast forth radiance. And we inscribe in ways of permanent influence what is this beautiful Will, known in the heart (Sia) and uttered (Hu) and given words (Thoth), this influence, this influence to awaken consciousness, that those who hear with their ears may become as Ptah in their lives, the creator of their world, in however this should manifest to their Ka's, with their hands of creation. Consciousness is all, it is the fire, it is this moment. It is in the eye which sees the light, (the light of the stars, and the great light which could blind...), yet not just in the eyes, but in the moment of recognition. And so this meditation brought me full circle around to my epiphany under the stars at age nineteen. Now, as I'm assembling a gallery of ancient images of Set, I learn still more. Those images of Set, they came about during the times of Egypt's greatest strength. The most powerful and wise rulers built or enlarged temples to Set, and created monuments featuring Set. Ramses II, Seti I, Thutmose I, II, and III, these in the New Kingdom. Senwosret I in the Middle Kingdom also has many such monuments. So for me, all these epiphanies are part of a PROCESS of 'coming into being', which the ancients and now the moderns call 'Xeper'. This process is understood in a phrase, 'Xepera, Xeper, Xeperu': "I Have Come Into Being, and by the Process of my Coming Into Being, the Process of Coming Into Being is Established." This becomes a self-sustaining system, for once the wheels start going in a certain direction, that mobilizes further process in that direction. One scientific principle is that an object in motion tends to remain in motion. Not only so in the physical world, it is also so with our mental and emotional evolution, as well. If we point our Will towards Conscious Evolution, our thoughts, emotions and actions are given direction to enable that evolution. This gives me optimism for the future as moment to moment my life is revealed.

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