Becoming Hathor

We are now in third month of the Ancient Egyptian Cairo Calendar. This is the month of Hathor.

Hathor’s name means “House of Horus [the Elder]”, and she was a goddess of many things. She was a celestial goddess, The Mistress of Heaven; A goddess of love, music and beauty as the Goddess of Love, Cheerfulness, Music and Dance. Hathor was known as the Mother of Mothers and the Celestial Nurse who presided over women, fertility, children and childbirth. And she could also be a goddess of darker things – she was Sekhmet the Vengeful Eye of Ra, the Lady of Drunkenness, and a goddess of the dead.

Hathor was the Mistress of Turquoise, Malachite, and Lapis Lazuli. It makes sense that she would be the Mistress of these stones as she was the Goddess of Beauty and these stones would be used in jewelry and crushed for decorative make-up.

Pigments in India, on market stall Please let me know if you use this photo. If you like it please give it a rating or leave a comment – Thank you!

She was so revered and so wonderfully diverse that there is even a spell to Become Hathor:

BECOMING HATHOR:

I am Hathor who brings her Horus and who proclaims her Horus; and my heart is the lion-god, my lips are the sytyw [word unknown], there is no limit to my vision, there are none who can encircle my arms, every god will take himself off before me. I have appeared as Hathor, the Primeval, the Lady of All, who lives on truth; I am the uraeus who lives on truth, who lifts up the faces of all the gods, and all the gods are beneath my feet. I am She who displays his [Horus] beauty and assembles his powers, I am that Eye of Horus, the female messenger of the Sole Lord, the like of whom shall not be repeated [Osiris]. Truly I am She who made his name. I have flourished, I came into being before the sky was fashioned, and it gives me praise; before the earth was released and it exalts me, while I seek your [Horus] saliva and your spittle [ish and tef]; they are Shu and Tefnut. I have searched and sought out, and see, I have fetched what I sought; come with my horns and display my beauty; come with my face, and I will cause you to be exalted. I have smitten all with my hands in this my name of Hathor; I have given my tears. I reduce (them) to order in this my name of She who is over reducing to order; I make warmth for them in this my name of Shesmêtet. Such am I; I am Wadjet, I am indeed the Mistress of the Two Lands.

~Ancient Egyptian coffin texts, Vol. I, p. 255f