An Ancient Technology for Modern Times
Why I work with this symbolic system from ancient Egypt.
I want to share something with you that feels important to me, not as a claim of lineage or authority, but as the reason I was drawn to this particular symbolic system for the work we do.
The symbols I use come from ancient Egypt, but not from the Egypt of temples and New Kingdom dynasties most people imagine. They emerged much earlier, during a period of enormous upheaval, a time when people were being pushed into a new way of living faster than their spirits could adapt.
And this is the part that matters to me: ancient Egypt was entering its own version of “modernity.”
Climate shifts forced nomadic herders toward the Nile. Small communities became early cities. People who once lived by the cycles of the moon found themselves living by a ten‑day administrative week. Natural rhythms were replaced by state rhythms. Life became more structured, more pressured, more centralized.
People were trying to make sense of a world that no longer matched the pace of their bodies or the wisdom of their ancestors.
And in the middle of that transition, a symbolic system took shape: a way of understanding the self, the body, the sacred, and the world that helped people navigate disconnection, overwhelm, and rapid change. It was a way of remembering how to stay human inside systems that demanded more than the human nervous system was built for.
This is the system I work with, not because it is ancient, but because it was born in a moment that looks a lot like ours.
Today, many of us are living through our own version of that rupture. We’re navigating speed, pressure, digitization, and the sense that life is accelerating beyond what we can metabolize. We’re trying to stay connected to ourselves in a world that constantly pulls us away.
This is why the symbols matter to me. They were created by people who were facing the same questions we’re facing now:
How do I stay connected to myself when the world is changing too fast?
How do I live in a system that doesn’t honor natural rhythms?
How do I keep my spirit intact when everything around me is reorganizing?
For me, this symbolic system is not a set of beliefs. It’s a technology of meaning: a way of working with the inner world that helps us navigate the outer one with more clarity, agency, and presence. It helps us reconnect with the parts of ourselves that were never lost, only quieted.
It’s an ancient technology for a world in transition. That’s the heart of it.