Vincent Bridges

Lioness of the Sun opens with a powerful depiction of the experience of shape-shifting into a lioness, as it introduces the book's main characters, the Goddess Sekhmet and Her High Priestess. It moves smoothly into the romance at the heart of the book, that of two shipwrecked lovers from ancient Crete, Marissa and Arion. Marissa is fated to become the High Priestess of Sekhmet, with results that affect the course of Egyptian history. Woven into this tale are some amazing insights into the nature of magick in the Egyptian worldview.

Here's one:

"In order to experience and communicate with forces beyond human comprehension, the mind creates a symbolic landscape filled with personalities representing inconceivable energies. The consciousness may call upon these energies to manifest within charged symbols and there find a continuum in which to construct limitless, eternal powers."

That's about as close as I've ever seen anyone get to a definition of 'magick.' The Golden Dawn's Neophyte ritual supplies the same basic key - "By Names and Images are all Powers awakened and re-awakened" but this elegant saying misses some of the directness of Ms. Tartasky's definition. Within the context of ancient Egypt, Ms. Tartasky's version has the added bonus of the rest of the novel in which to see this theme develop.

Lioness of the Sun is a romance about magick itself, the intoxication that comes from direct contact with the Egyptian Netjers. The novel follows Marissa and Arion as they find their destiny, and eventually each other once again, in the intrigues and power politics of the court of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut. While the story is certainly compelling enough to keep the reader interested, I found myself thumbing ahead, looking for nuggets of magick. Chapter sixteen, Marissa's initiation into the mysteries, is simply superb.

But it is chapter twenty-six that supplies, in a simple novelistic form, one of the great magickal truths. The Goddess Sekhmet is disturbed that Hatshepsut's plans for a dynasty has failed, and blames the Goddess Shait, who is the expression of Ma'at, or harmony, as fate. As they argue, Shait reminds Sekhmet of a most basic truth:

"The Lioness began, the Scarab proceeded, then the Twins, followed by the Bull. Each has had its defining characteristics, which are above and beyond the control of the Gods and men alike. We all exist within the parameters of a greater framework, and that is Ma'at, supreme of Destiny, which is I."

The book ends with a sort of promise for the future:

"Sekhmet had seen into the future and with that sight came knowledge that although the cycles of the heavens would bring both desired and dreaded change, and that in time all but Aset (Isis) would be forgotten, there would come a day when Sekhmet, Eye of Re, Defender of Ma'at, Lioness of the Sun would be remembered."

If we consider the zodiacal ages listed above, then we are now, at the cusp of Aquarius/Pisces, one half a Great Year, roughly 13,000 solar years, from the Time of Sekhmet when Ma'at was supreme. Could this be the moment when Sekhmet is suddenly remembered?