Ma’at initiation

I was watching Joan Fletcher’s The Story of Egypt, enjoying my memories of visiting there many 45 years ago. It inspired a dream of shopping in a souk and seeing a beautiful gold embroidered cape, eating in a restaurant and then realising I had lost my shopping bag. I returned to the area but had difficulty finding the place. I kept asking. Eventually a man threw this cape over the table I was sitting at. I still was asking for my shopping bag. He showed me a black one. No, mine was canvas. I woke up thinking I had lost my purse, cards and phone! 

It reminded me of many decades ago belonging to an Egyptian women’s group that studied fashion, dance moves and the goddesses from ancient Egyptian wall paintings. 

The group met for a ritual to Ma’at. First we had a circle discussion, what is truth, and what is justice? Truth is evidence based, science, health, accuracy. Lies are dishonourable, confusion, illhealth. Justice, like truth is evidence based; it must be finely balanced, not exacerbating and inflaming; injustice creates hatred and anger. We had been asked to bring a booth photo of our face from the side and we were given a picture of Ma’at and we placed this photo where her face would be. It was put into a cardboard photo frame. We made a list of all injustices we had suffered in our life, and the injustices done to our ancestors, there were many harrowing stories and lots of tears. Then we spoke about all the injustices we had carried out against others. We learnt that we are victims but also victimisers, if only through ignorance and neglect. There was a procession, pageant style. 42 questions were answered by us to cleanse ourselves of past deeds and an ostrich feather was brought to us to ask if we were fully pure and cleansed and we related all the good deeds that we had benefited from and we pledged to do good in our future life. The scales were not to balance, but come down heavily on the side of our commitment to this goddess of Truth and Justice. I wrote a poem to her expressing my love for her, my dedication. Each went through this process of initiation and were asked to wear a ring with a clear stone to seal our commitment. Beautiful Middle Eastern music was playing through the day.