Goddess of love, music, joy, flowers, art and fertility in Ancient Egypt.
Hathor is one of the major goddesses of Ancient Egypt who performed a wide variety of sacred functions. She was worshipped in ancient Egypt, most notably around 2250 BC, according to some sources.
As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both associated with royalty, so Hathor was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs.
It is clear that the previous paragraph refers to the Logoic trinity, as a marvelous fusion that brings all to life and in no way it refers to a physical aspect or the sin of incest.
She was one of the many goddesses who in her time assumed the role of the Eye of RA , that is; the watchman who protected him from his enemies, who could attack from any of the four cardinal points.
In her benevolent aspect towards humanity, she represented music, dance, joy, love, eroticism, sexuality and maternal care, as well as conception and femininity.
She moved freely between the worlds of the living and the dead, assisting deceased souls in their transition to the afterlife and, logically, to a new incarnation.
She was often represented as a sacred cow, a symbol of her maternal and celestial character, although her most common form was that of a woman with a headdress of cow horns and a solar disk on her head.
Her name in hieroglyphics is represented as a falcon inside a square, allegory of the house and relating the Ornithological mysteries accessible to humanity of the ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Under the patronage of the rulers in the Old Kingdom, she became one of the most important deities. More temples were dedicated to her more than to any other goddess, the most notable of which was the one at Dendera in Upper Egypt.
She was one of the most invoked deities in private prayers and in *votive offerings, especially by women who wished to have children, thus showing that the ancients understood Hathor’s relationship with the fertile aspect of nature.
During the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), goddesses such as Nut and Isis occupied a large space in the ideology of royalty, but Hathor remained one of the most venerated deities until the extinction of ancient Egyptian religion in the first centuries of our era.
She was given the epithets “lady of the sky” and “lady of the stars” and was said to dwell in the sky with Ra and other sun gods. The Egyptians believed the sky was a body of water through which the sun god sailed and associated her with the waters from which, according to their creation myths, the sun emerged at the beginning of time. This cosmic mother goddess was often depicted as a cow. Both Hathor and Meheturet were regarded as the cow who gave birth to the sun god (Ra) and placed him between her horns. Like Nut, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god every dawn.
Wikipedia
Her Egyptian name was ḥwt-ḥrw or ḥwt-ḥr, which is usually translated as “house of Horus,” but can also be translated as “my house is the sky.” If we take into account that the falcon god Horus represented, among other things, the sun and the sky, the house referred to is the Sacred Absolute Sun, that is, the intangible world where the gods dwell. It is the Sacred Space deep and unknown to the human mind.
Let me eat beneath the sycamore tree of my mistress, the Goddess Hathor, and spend my time among the Divine Beings who rest there. Give me power to tend my fields in Tattu and raise flocks in Annu. Let me live on bread made from well-mixed white barley and beer made from red grain, and so let the persons of my father and mother be granted to me as guardians of my gate and the disposition of my possessions. Make me healthy and strong, grant me a large mansion, and let me settle wherever I please.
Chapter LVI, from The Book of the Dead
In this previous quote, the scholar and practitioner of Sacred Alchemy can see the transformation processes to which he submits, with profound humility he calls out to RA, but always through the intermediary of the gods, in this case, the goddess Hathor.
As the sun rose, Sekhmet was preparing for her next hunt when she saw the earth awash in red, and she believed it must be royal blood because no men were around. She approached and drank joyfully, laughing and enjoying herself, thinking it was blood. She drank so much that that day, overcome with drunkenness, she was unable to kill a single man.
When Sekhmet returned to Ra, the god welcomed her with joy because she hadn’t killed anyone, and he decided to change her name to Hathor. From that moment on, she became the goddess of sweetness, love, and passion.
Popular legend of RA and the gods
In this excerpt from “The Legend of RA” we see Hathor as the benevolent expression of the sun god himself, for it is He who radically transforms her from being a “devourer of humanity” to the Cosmic Mother, the root of all love…
As the goddess of the afterlife, Hathor frequently appears in texts and funerary art. Along with Osiris and Anubis, Hathor was one of the most common deities in royal tomb decorations during the early New Kingdom. During that period, she often appeared as the goddess who welcomed the dead into the afterlife.
She is the Divine Mother under whose orders the angels of death work; she is the one who decides when we will pass away and awaits us in the Temple of the Great Law to plead for our souls before the agents of Karma.
The Instinctive Magician
From another, more intimate perspective, oriented toward sexual mysteries, Hathor is the fifth aspect of the Eternal Feminine in each of us, an unstoppable force with which the initiate must work when it comes to carving, chiseling, and polishing the rough stone.
In the work of alchemy, it is an indispensable element that should not be ignored, as it liberates sexual powers so that the Soul can work tirelessly.
The Instinctive Magician is magic, infinite love, delicious eroticism, sublime manifestation, emerging truth, exact instruction in sexual mysteries.
Master Samael Aun Weor writes the following about her:
In vain I struggled against the categorical imperative of the Dionysian Waves; they were indeed terrifyingly divine, omnipotent…
Those supernatural powers seemed like an apocalyptic catastrophe; I felt as if such forces could blow the Earth to bits.
When I wanted to search, investigate, inquire about the origin of such sexual forces and powers, I found myself face to face with the Elemental Magician, with my Divine Mother KUNDALINI in her Fifth Aspect.
Samael Aun Weor – The Three Mountains
The Seven Hathors
According to Egyptian mythology, the seven Hathors represented the seven daughters of the divine light, the sun god Ra , and among their duties was determining the length of human life. Therefore, the seven Hathors were symbolically present at the moment of birth, acquiring special relevance in that of the new pharaoh. Her main function, therefore, was to ward off evil, contribute to maintaining harmony, and protect births. Furthermore, she was the goddess who was often present when the soul left the earth for its passage to the world of the dead.
The 7 Hathors, the Seven Sisters, the Celestial Cow, the Pleiades
The ancient Egyptians were wise astrologers and observers of the night sky. By recording the movements of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, they developed a calendar system to measure time.
In ancient Egypt, the Pleiades star cluster was known as “The Celestial Herd”. Seven goddesses, represented by seven cows, made up this celestial herd that provides divine nourishment to humans. This herd is observed in the sky as a group of stars, which we now call the Pleiades, near Aldebaran and the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus.
This celestial herd was linked to the goddess Hathor. In Egyptian mythology, Hathor is the goddess of the sky, and in her celestial cow form, she provides sustenance and life to humanity. She is the cosmic Matter, the Cosmic Mother.
Hathor is actually two words, Heth-hor, which is commonly translated as “house of Horus.” The first part, Heth, translated as “house,” has a deeper meaning…
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The Seven Hathors represent the Great COSMIC Matrix, the womb or mold within which everything originates, takes form and develops to its full maturity.
As is well known, during gestation the womb provides nourishment and protection to the fetus. As such, Hathor provides both nourishment and protection to all human and subhuman creatures.
She is also worshipped in the form of the “Seven Hathors”: these seven goddesses are the Pleiades who shine in the sky, usually represented by seven cows, often associated with a bull (taurus), as a celestial herd that provides food, milk, bread and beer, in the Underworld.
The names of the Seven Hathors appear in a spell in the Book of the Dead:
- Lady of the Universe
- Storm of the Sky
- The hidden one, who presides in his place
- You, from Khemmis
- The Red-Haired One
- Bright Red
- You who prevail in the West
In short, the Seven Hathors are a vivid expression of the versatility and power of Hathor in the sky, on earth, and in the Amenti, one of the most important and venerated goddesses of ancient Egypt. She is the mother of all the gods…
*A votive offering is an object or monument left at a sacred place or for ritual purposes. It can be made as a sign of gratitude, a promise, a vow, or a sign of faith.
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