Het~Hert: Womb House Above
ROTA TARO ORAT TORA ATOR ~ The Wheel of Tarot Speaks the Law of Hathor
- Mary Greer
Hathor came to me in a dream more than a decade go. I stood beneath a night sky, gazing up at the stars from a large, open meadow of summertime grass. I could feel a warm night breeze stirring the hair from my face, cooling the skin at the back of my neck.
There was a group of people milling around, some were chatting, laughing. Others seemed to be drinking, as if at a party. The atmosphere felt festival-like. Some of my family were there. One of my brothers stood next to me, deep in thought. He gazed downward, absorbed by heavy emotions I couldn't penetrate, though I had tried several times.
I looked up to the sky again. There, astonishingly, was a huge and glowing white cow, gazing back down at me with a benign expression on her face, as if to say, "Yes, I know. I'm a cow, floating in the sky above you. Amusing, isn't it?"
I looked around me- was anyone else seeing this? Unbelievably, they weren't. Only I could see this impossibility. Something in my heart knew this was a symbol- a divine visitation and calling, in the form of this white sky cow. I stared up at her in awe, and complete reverence. I had no idea who she was, or why she was showing herself to me, but I knew it was important.
I awoke with a sense of purpose, spellbound. Who was this sky cow? I had no clue, but I began researching any keyword combinations I could think of to get information. Nothing emerged for me for quite a while. It was frustrating, but life was busy so I tried to push it to the back of my mind until it was ready to reveal itself. By this time, I had become used to mysterious dreams taking their own sweet time revealing their true purpose. They were like seeds, planted in me at the dreaming, but requiring time and experience to mature them to the point of pushing up through the surface of my awareness for interpretation and integration. I really had no choice. I would just have to wait.
Then, in February of 2013, I had another dream. At the time, it didn't seem in any way related, but it absolutely was.
I stood a little ways back from the rise of a green hill. The air was warm. Seven young women, all dressed in flowing white, raised seven pillars to the sky. Each had a single , long strip of beautiful cloth waving in the gentle breeze. Once all seven pillars with seven sashes were raised and planted in the hill, the women raised their arms in unison. Seven beautiful full moons began rising - each above their own raised pillar. I stood silent, reverent to the ritual and magic I was observing. I knew what I was beholding was both an ancient ceremony and a message. There was a reason I was being visited by these priestess-witches, and their seven moons.
Seven full moons later, I discovered I was pregnant with my son. It took me some time, but when I was ready, I realized that these dreams were coded invitations. Hathor had been visiting me as prophetess and guide in my dreams, calling to me as apprentice and showing me my future as a mother with her Seven Hathors aspect, heralding the coming of my own star seed, midwifing the journey of his soul from behind the veil into my womb.
After three more years, Hathor came to me again (in truth, she had never left, visiting me during prayer and meditation and in my writing practice), this time simply smiling at me as I drove home from a training workshop out of town. I was tired and wondering what was next for me, juggling motherhood and a private practice, marriage and home-making, family dramas and my own personal needs for solitude having taken such a dramatic pause.
I caught myself tuning out, and made a concerted effort to come back to the present and pay better attention to the road. The car directly in front of me had a license plate that read, simply, "HATHOR". I started laughing. What an odd choice to put on a license plate! It was impossible to think this was a coincidence or unimportant. Hathor was winking at me, amused with herself. I know I was, too.
If Isis has been a sister and mentor on my path, then Hathor has been the grandmother wisdom I feel both reverence for and comfort from. She is the no-nonsense elder who can laugh at me and herself. She lifts me to cosmic consciousness and simultaneously keeps my feet on the ground. She holds Sehkmet within herself, containing divine fire. She scatters her aspects like strong light through a prism, becoming Astarte, Venus, Aphrodite, Demeter, Isis and so many other faces of the Divine Feminine that hold their black roots within her womb.
She is turquoise and lapis, she is laughter and sex, she is nurture and the healing power of song and sound tuned well for the soul. She is mother to the motherless and mentor to the mothers. She stands behind me always with her hands on my shoulders while Isis walks at my side. She is the house where the throne resides- Isis and her sovereign magic live within the great womb house of Hathor, and Hathor grounds all power in stable integrity.
It is from the house of Hathor that I receive the holy flame of Sehkmet, devourer of all that is false and She Who Is Powerful. When I stand in those fires I do not burn, but refine. Hathor ensures that this fire remains holy rather than heinous. She holds the balance between blood and water, and wields the feather of Ma'at with precision and mercy.
She is the channel within which I summon the waters of the sacred Nile, the boat within which I sit and journey to the island of the gods. She is the jokester and the empress, a formidable yet trustworthy presence that announces itself without invitation. She needs none to show up when and where and how she pleases. One day a dream of seven moons and the next a license plate. She decides the medium as well as the message.
She is talkative, yet she speaks to me in riddles, and I can sense her laughing when I try to interpret the words she tosses to me like small rubber balls, bouncing this way and that, some out of my reach as they dance gaily away out of my fingertips. Other times, she comes to my dreamtime and says one word only, looking deep and strong into my eyes so I am not confused and acknowledge how serious it is that I pay attention.
Het-Hert, Hwt-Hr, Het-Her, Het-Hrw, Hathor.
Womb House. The House Above. House of Horus. My House is the Sky. Celestial Sky Cow. Great Lady. Lady of Fate. Her names are endless.
Outside of her histories and stories, she is personal for me. A guide and celestial elder, unexpected but somehow anticipated by my deep heart. Nurturing, reliable and wise. She has mothered my motherhood since the time before I knew I would become one. She has used wise fires to burn off what I've held onto but didn't really need, and reshaped the tools to properly fit my evolving hands.
She reminds me of the ongoing importance of laughter and delight, and smiles at the belly I try to suck in when self-consciousness gets the better of me. She's the crone and the maiden, shifting seamlessly between the two without a thought, and she tells me that all women are called to this creature dance of forms and shapes, too. We are fluid, she says, and meant to move in and move out of ideas and feelings and the images they adopt. No one thing is meant to solidify us. No one stance is ours to become stone within. We are called to retain our softness and reject the rigidity of structures built with the intention to inhibit and constrain our true selves. It's a mystery, she says.
She's a lioness, a cow, a serpent. She's the scorpion and crocodile, and woman besides. She is the communion of polarities and the merging of opposites as she teaches us to contain and release and flow and sink low underneath where the true current waits- to carry us deeper home. She is mystery and magic, mother and mentor. She is the true behind-the-scenes that sits and waits patiently, a small little smile tugging at her lips.