The Night the Dark Goddess Called

Sitting cross-legged in the dimly lit room, I glanced at the other participants gathered for the evening’s activities. Strangers’ eyes met mine as the candlelight cast flickering shadows across their faces. I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only light-skinned person in the group—a minority in this space. And yet, I felt calm. Curious, even.

A soul friend I was visiting in Oakland had discovered the event, and we decided, almost on a whim, to attend. The facilitator, a mysterious woman who seemed to be in her late 40s, greeted us with gracious warmth. She led us up the back stairs of a crystal shop into a small room thick with the heady scent of incense.

I had no idea what I was walking into, but I trusted my friend’s intuition. She had a way of leading me to what my spirit needed most, even when I didn’t know it. The rainy weekday evening added to the mystique—a night I’ve returned to in my mind countless times over the past seven years.

The woman at the front of the room began to speak, and her voice was both grounding and electric. She explained that we would participate in an initiation process, one she conducted as a channeler of Sekhmet, the lion-headed Egyptian goddess known by a hundred names. I had never heard of Sekhmet before that moment, but I was intrigued. One by one, we were called to the front of the room, where we immersed our hands in sacred water. Afterward, we intuitively touched different chakra points on our bodies before returning to sit face-to-face with a partner in our dyads.

What happened next defies logic and yet remains one of the most visceral experiences of my life.

The facilitator began guiding us through a visualization, her voice weaving a spell of imagery that felt more real than the room itself. Suddenly, I was no longer seated in that small space. I was transported to a vast river, the water lapping at my torso as tall bulrushes swayed gently along the shore. Above me, herons flew against a backdrop of vivid blue skies, while the golden heat of the sun soaked through my skin.

On the riverbank, I saw her. A woman, radiant and alive, her presence rooted me to the moment as if I’d been searching for her my entire life. Her dark skin seemed to glow with an inner light as she gathered her belongings, humming a tune that stirred a strange, aching recognition within me. She wasn’t aware of my presence, but her energy enveloped me. There was something in the way she moved—so powerful, so whole, so fully embodied. She emanated a strength and beauty I had never witnessed before, and it left me awestruck.

The scene swirled around me, and deep within my awareness, I could still sense the initiation room. I felt my forehead touching my friend’s as our breath synchronized, moving together like the tides. The energy in the room was palpable—voices rising and falling, bodies swaying as if responding to some unseen rhythm, a collective erotic pulse of life coursing through us all. My body thrummed with heat and life, caught between two worlds yet completely alive in both.

But my focus kept returning to the woman by the river. Somehow, I knew her. She wasn’t just part of the vision; she existed within me—a reflection, a guide, or perhaps an ancestor. Suddenly, a flash of memory struck me. The image of Moses floating in a basket down the Nile, found by the Pharaoh’s daughter, entered my mind. It’s as if that event had just happened a few days before.  A wave of love and recognition flooded my body, tears welling in my eyes. I belonged here, with her, in this moment that felt as eternal as the river itself.

And just like that, the vision dissolved. The silence in the room pulled me back, and I opened my eyes, blinking rapidly to adjust to the darkness. I was aware of the circle forming around me as the visualization ended, but I struggled to reorient myself. Someone handed me a paper—a handout, perhaps—but I barely comprehended what was happening. My entire being yearned to return to the river, to the woman, to the overwhelming sense of belonging I had experienced there.

Years later, I found myself on a phone call with a Shaman from Egypt. We were practicing magick together, and as the call was wrapping up, he offered me a piece of advice that would forever alter my life. I mentioned that I would be visiting Egypt for the first time soon and asked if there was anything he recommended I explore.

He chuckled softly and said something in passing, almost as though it were obvious. “Ah, as an initiate of Priestess Isis, I’m sure you’ll find your way just fine.”

The words hung in the air long after the call ended. I didn’t fully understand them at the time, but I couldn’t shake them either. A week later, during a walk on a mountainous trail behind my house, I found myself in a field of cattails that swayed in the wind, their presence so reminiscent of the bulrushes from my vision. There, Isis came to me for the first time.

And everything changed.

To be continued.