Starry Nights: On Myths and Prophecy

There’s a story I told the high school girls, back when I directed a mentor program in the city. “The first time I saw the Milky Way,” I would say, “my heart started to hum. I could feel it vibrate, like I was singing harmony with the Universe.” I paused, clutching in my mind for the words to explain the deep oneness and connection I’d felt that dark night in a Jamaican fishing village. How best to describe the magnificence of the universe in its full glory? 

Before that night what I’d known was city life and light pollution and stressed-out elders with zero appreciation for the sublime. Before that night I didn’t get all the fuss about the Milky Way, a mythical river of stars blazing across the sky. A spinning galactic pinwheel. Millions of celestial lights; miraculous, breath-taking and bright.

Wherever the night skies are dark, the stars put on a show. 

Like silver light traveling from distant stars, the wisdom of our ancestors is reaching for us through myth and prophecy, after thousands of years of silence. At ten years old, I devoured Greek mythology from books in my school library. I remember reading a story about the goddess Hera, who spilled a bucket of cream and created the Milky Way. But over time my fascination with the Greeks faded. I prefer pantheons of gods that aren’t so rapacious and prone to raping innocent girls. 

So naturally I was fascinated when I read of a different myth about the Milky Way when I was visiting the temples of Egypt. It was about the sky-goddess Nut, whose nude body sparkled and glimmered with ten thousand stars. This goddess hovered over the earth and ruled the cosmos. She was the goddess who swallowed the sun each night and birthed the disc every morning. In the ancient Egyptian religion, Nut gave birth to all of the stars and planets. She was the Milky Way. 

Ancient and mysterious night skies, dreamers and storytellers inspired.

So...flashback to the city... after I’d told my ‘river of stars’ story, the girls would all yawn, their itchy fingers longing to press and swipe. Having never seen a pitch black night the girls had a rather uncontrollable need to ‘like’ the latest TikTok video on their stream. What I was trying to describe to these city-dwelling girls was unknowable. It had to be experienced. It’s possible that-- like many trying to maintain and make it in today’s modern cities-- those girls will live and die and never look up at the sky. 

Imagine you have a baby koi in a little fountain in your backyard. Koi grow as large as the environment allows so if you keep that little koi in that tiny fountain, it’ll grow, but not very big. Small world. Small dreams.

Now... change the environment and give the koi a chance to live in a beautiful Japanese botanical garden pond? Well that koi is going to become big and strong and--dare I say--wise. Oftentimes until you’ve experienced the measure of a thing for yourself, you just can’t know. Our lives are supposed to be creative. Experiential. Not something we watch on a silicon screen.

Dark Middle-eastern skies, we watch televised explosions from a hundred murderous drones. 

Is it time to admit to ourselves that things are not okay? Reports that the economy is growing and stocks aren’t crashing and there may be a future where every family gets a $2000 rebate check from the tariff scheme...none of that makes living on a dying planet okay. In the neon nights of our everyday lives the stars are faint. Underwhelming. Yet if we close our eyes in meditation, within our dark interior a star appears. Sharp and bright. A guiding light.

In a time and place not far from the exploding war drones, an Egyptian guard turns on an electric light within the ancient and dusty King’s Chamber. Then he depart through the tunnel, leaving our small group of spiritual explorers alone in the ancient tomb. Within the Great Pyramid of Giza, the King’s Chamber is large and empty-- except for the red granite sarcophagus at the far end. Accompanied the high vibrational sound of sacred chants and song, I climb inside.  

The size and shape of the chamber creates sonic vibrations and inside of the sarcophagus. my body is bathed in energy. Images arise behind my closed eyes. I see myself awaking in an ancient temple of the Goddess Isis-Aset. Here, it is completely dark, but still I see the millions of stars that fill the night sky above. I breathe in and the starlight fills my mind. In that moment I am called to the knowledge that I am a true daughter of the Goddess. 

I remember that long ago, the ancient scribes of Egypt prophesied that at the end of an era all of the cosmos reverts to chaos. That which is no longer sustainable collapses. It’s important that all of us re-remember the cycle of life. That we re-remember that everything has its season. Because we are at such a time when empires fall, and today we find ourselves in the midst of chaos. 

This time calls us to awaken to a greater version of ourselves. To create the world we long to see. There is another dawn. And from the primordial waters of potentiality, a new era. A new earth.