Excerpt from "Hieroglyphic Words of Power: Symbols for Magic, Divination, and Dreamwork"

For nearly two years I used the hieroglyphic symbols as a focal point in ongoing meditations. To make meditations easier, I drew the images I was seeing onto blank papyrus slips and placed them where I could see them during the meditation. The writing of the oracle notations began after several months of meditations, several dreams, and some encouragement from my spirit guides.

The more you write or copy a hieroglyph in a notebook with your own hand, the more you inscribe the image into your own flesh. The more often you work with these symbols, the more you will expand your consciousness, your understanding of life, and your ability to create a life around yourself through your attention and intention. The magic is inherent in the hieroglyph itself and lives within you. In other words, each word written in hieroglyphs offers a world to be explored.

I suggest that you draw these images on papyrus, if you can, or on cardstock. Copy them by hand. Then study the oracle hieroglyphs as you hold each card, imbuing it with your energy and deepening your own understanding of the multiple meanings.

Ankh

This ubiquitous, well-known hieroglyph offers messages of renewal, fertility, and eternal life. Nearly everyone who has ever seen the Key of Life knows immediately what it means. Most gods and goddesses, the pharaoh and his queens, and many of the comforting beings in the underworld clasp or offer the ankh. It is the key to the mysteries, the key of life, and the breath of life.

The ankh particularly invigorates those who have entered the afterlife. For example, the goddess Hathor fondly offers the ankh to her newly departed companion Nefertari in the duat. The goddess holds the ankh to the queen’s nose so that she may breathe in the fragrant renewal. Whatever seems to have died--person, project, love--yet it shall be renewed and live again. Like the sa hieroglyph, which the ankh resembles, it offers magical protection. Still others suggest that the ankh may represent a sperm penetrating an ovum at the beginning of life. I do not dispute any of these ideas, believing that these similarities are the way one’s mind constellates a fuller poetic meaning of a simple, albeit somewhat abstract, image.

The ankh, often offered by the hands of goddesses, becomes an especially feminine symbol. Like the thet, the ankh represents the mother and the womb through which everyone of us are connected. That protective, nurturing spirit of the divine and its emblem of self-sacrifice – that is, giving one’s life to a higher purpose - reappears in later Christian traditions as the sign of the cross. The physical world appears as the cross, or four directions, surmounted by a circle of the eternal.

1. Through all of our incarnations we attain one life eternal; but in this particular body, we have one physical life. Live yours to the fullest. Gather wisdom from all experiences. Become a shining example to others. God gives you life from Life.

2. Live for others. It’s all about how we on this planet treat each other and all life forms. The Golden Rule applies. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You understand that we must all live in like manner: nurturing others as well as ourselves. Listen with your heart.

3. A new creation is coming straight out of your being. You will need to nurture it as it grows. Eventually you will release it and it will live on after you. This could be a creative project or a child. The work takes on a long arc of being; this is only the beginning.

4. Put your work under a microscope. Investigate what will make it pulse with life. Listen with a stethoscope to what you have not been hearing. Hear it now in order to fix any irregularities. Work the “Big List” of things that you need/want to accomplish today, this month, this year, in your life. Doing is being.

5. Live in the moment. Change things up. Go to the window to gaze out over an expansive vista for inspiration. Life is meant to be enjoyed. Let go of the melodrama. Read some inspiring books or poems; then go about living inside them, or write some poems, or paint some pictures. Your life is grand theatre, enjoy the play. Resurrect some forgotten themes.

6. Our family connections are lifelines to the world. Keep those connections Love Light clear. If there are family riffs, release and forgive. Life’s too short for anger. Your body is a temple for Spirit. Care for it. Let hope in. The ankh here may indicate an addition to the family.

7. God is Love. Even when you are alone, your spirit guides love you and work with you to keep you connected to the source. Isis cradles you in her arms. Live an inspiring life to others. Read and emulate someone else’s inspiring life. God wants you to embrace your true calling. The power of the ankh celebrates “high doing.” This means engaging in the spiritual work of learning through life experience that leads us toward tremendous insight and spiritual wisdom.

8. God is in the details. If you are living a life of purpose, every day is a particular day in which particular energies occur and particular things are happening that will never be the same again. You may wish to track them through astrology, numerology, even the colors you wear. Do something that matters for others, for your work, for yourself. In all things, express gratitude.

9. Get rid of distractions that keep you from living in the now. Whatever is passing will transform when you let it go. Something new is rising. The seed must be planted in the dark, which requires radical trust. Prosperity waits in the

Normandi Ellis is an award-winning writer, workshop facilitator, and archpriestess of the Fellowship of Isis. The author and coauthor of several books, including Awakening Osiris and Imagining the World into Existence, she leads tours to Egypt. She lives in Chesterfield, Indiana. https://normandiellis.com/

Hieroglyphic Words of Power: Symbols for Magic, Divination, and Dreamwork by Normandi Ellis © 2020 Bear & Company. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com

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