Celebrating the Festivals of Goddess Sekhmet
Are you moved to celebrate the great festivals of Sekhmet, to offer Her your worship in community throughout the year?
Having stepped into the monthly rhythm of devotion, you now enter the greater arc of the year, the sacred cycle through which Sekhmet was honored in Her many forms. For the ancient Egyptians, the festivals were holy times of remembrance and renewal. Worship was inseparable from the turning of the seasons, the rising and falling of the Nile, and the movements of land, river, and sky.
The pharaonic texts offer valuable insight into this historical cycle: the official rites of kings and priests, the processions, offerings, and temple observances that marked the sacred calendar. Yet these records reflect an exclusive system, with many rites reserved for the elite and only a few open to the wider people. They show us the structure of the year, but not its living heart.
That living heart comes to us through the Nubian priestess traditions - embodied, ecstatic, and communal - where devotion was offered through dance, song, breath, movement, and the sanctity of sexual energy as a sacred gift. In these lineages, the body itself became the vessel of offering. We carry this inheritance forward as a living way of worship, shaped by historical study and by our direct experience of the Goddess.
Thus, for each festival, we gather first in workshop to learn the history and meaning, and then in ritual to offer our worship directly. To walk the festival cycle is to let the Goddess shape your year, letting Her presence rise, crest, and return through you as the seasons turn. Each festival becomes a gateway: a moment of transformation, a chance to meet the Goddess in a new form, and to step deeper into devotion as the year unfolds.
Across the year, we honor the Goddess in Her many aspects through ten festivals. Each festival includes a preparatory workshop followed by a ritual gathering, allowing us to learn the history and then offer worship directly.
Why We Honor Many Names of the Goddess
In ancient Egypt, the Goddess was understood through syncretization, the weaving together of multiple deities into a single, radiant presence. Sekhmet, Hathor, Mut, Wadjet, Bastet, and even Min in His generative aspect were not separate beings competing for devotion, but different faces of the same divine force: protector, lover, mother, lioness, cobra, fertile bull, radiant sun.
To honor these festivals is to honor Sekhmet in Her fullness - fierce and joyful, nurturing and erotic, protective and creative. Each name reveals another facet of Her power.
How We Celebrate
Each gathering begins with a meditative group travel to Tawy - the lands of Goddess Sekhmet. Our rituals draw from Nubian priestess traditions (ecstatic, embodied, communal) where devotion is offered through dance, song, breath, movement, and the sanctity of pleasure.
Each festival becomes a moment of transformation: a chance to step deeper into devotion, to offer our bodies and our joy, and to join the ancient rhythm of the year.
Heriu-Renpet ( 𓁹𓅱𓅱 𓇉𓏏) - Epagomenal Days in Liminal Time
The five Epagomenal Days stand outside of time, feared in antiquity as days when boundaries thinned and the world was unmoored. We honor this liminality by crafting an amulet‑scarf and wearing it around the throat for protection. Each day, we make a home invocation of the Twelve Guardian deities, led by Sekhmet, asking Her to shield us as we move through this potent, unsettled space.
Wepet Renpet ( 𓅱𓊪𓏏𓏤 𓇉𓏏 ) - Opening of the Year and First Light
After the Epagomenal Days, when the year stands outside of time, Wep Renpet marks the return to order. At dawn, the Goddess is brought to the roof of the temple to greet the first sunlight of the new cycle. We follow this ancient gesture by inviting the Goddess into our bodies, so She may experience the first sun through us, letting its light cleanse, awaken, and realign us for the year ahead.
Heb Tekh ( 𓎛𓃀 𓏏𓐍𓏊 ) - Festival of Inebriation
A night of ecstatic surrender and divine encounter. In the ancient rites, inebriation and dance opened the way to ma’a - to see and to be seen by the Goddess. Through altered states, music, and movement, celebrants entered the moment when Sekhmet’s fierce power softened into joy. In our ritual, we raise energy through dance and breath, offer our petitions for the community, and give the Goddess erotic worship as sacred offering - letting our bodies become the channel through which She is honored.
Heb Nefer en Ipet ( 𓎛𓃀 𓄤 𓈖 𓇋𓏏𓊖 ) - Opet Festival
A season of procession and divine union. In ancient Thebes, the barks of Amun and Mut were carried from Karnak to Luxor for the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage that renewed the cosmos. The pharaoh offered the newly restored temple as a gift, affirming his devotion and the bond between deity and community. In our ritual, we echo this movement by offering what we have built, from the work of our hands, to the growth of our hearts, and the structures we have renewed in our own lives. Each devotee brings a personal offering, asking: What have I created this year that I now give to the Goddess?
Khenet Sekhmet ( 𓐍𓈖𓏏𓊠 𓌂𓐍𓏏𓁐) - Sailing of Sekhmet/Mut
A procession of revelation and intimate questioning. At the Mut Temple, the Goddess traveled in Her sacred barque, carried by priests who interpreted Her will through movement (forward for yes, backward for no). Devotees approached with their personal questions, seeking Her guidance in matters of the heart, the body, and the path ahead. We honor this ancient oracle by bringing our own questions to Her, listening for the subtle ways She moves in our lives. As the bark passes, we offer ointment and flowers, gifts of scent and beauty, inviting Her presence to rest upon us with clarity and blessing.
Khenet Bastet ( 𓐍𓈖𓏏𓊠 ) - Sailing of Bastet
A festival of fierce delight. We begin with erotic dance, echoing the river journey to the temple at Per‑Bast. The Greek historian Herodotus describes women lifting their skirts in playful celebration (a gesture of joyful abandon offered to the Goddess). We then offer ointment and incense, and recite the tale of Bastet defeating Seth and returning the Eye to Heru, thus restoring order.
Heb Min ( 𓎛𓃀 𓋉 ) – Festival of Sekhmet‑Min
A celebration of fertility and sacred arousal. In ancient rites, the statue of Min was carried to the fields to witness the pharaoh’s first harvest cut as a gesture of generative blessing. Our priestess does the same, leading us outside to cut the first grain and offer it to the Goddess. At the Khonsu Temple, a wall relief shows Sekhmet‑Min as ithyphallic, a radiant fusion of protection and potency. Following ancient practice, we place phallic symbols at our thresholds. In this festival, all bodies are invited to explore the experience of embodied ithyphallic arousal - a living offering to the Goddess who creates through desire.
Heb Nefer en Int ( 𓎛𓃀 𓄤 𓈖 𓇋𓈖𓏏𓈦 ) - Beautiful Feast of the Valley
A festival of remembrance and ancestral care. Sekhmet, as Mistress and Lady of the Tomb, guides this work. We study ancient Egyptian views of death and the soul (from the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead) and raise energy to support our recent ancestors on their passage to Sekhet‑Aaru, where ka and ba unite as an immortal akh, becoming maat kheru, true of voice. Each participant brings a picture of an ancestor and writes a letter to that ancestor, offering remembrance and strength for the journey.
Heb Sekhen Nefer ( 𓎛𓃀 𓂋 𓄤 ) - Beautiful Reunion
A celebration of joy, movement, and sacred ecstasy. In this festival, Hathor traveled from Dendera to Edfu to reunite with Horus, accompanied by music, dance, and the ecstatic rites of Nubian priestesses. These traditions honor three intertwined aspects of the Goddess: Mistress of Music and Dance, Lady of Intoxications, and Goddess of Love and Sacred Pleasure. Together, they open the way to communal spiritual ecstasy. We celebrate using traditional tools and garb of the Nubian priestesses: the menat, the sistrum, ostrich feathers, and tooled leather skirts.
Preparation and Foundation
Participation in these festivals grows from the grounding offered in our History and Symbols workshops. Each holiday is preceded by a communal preparation gathering, a time when we come together not simply to plan logistics, but to enter into a shared act of discernment. We study the surviving accounts of the festival, explore the gestures and offerings that once honored the Goddess, and attend to the felt sense of what She may be asking of us now.
In these gatherings we co-create the ritual as a living offering. We identify the items that must be crafted or prepared, shape the structure of the rite, and distribute the roles and spoken parts so that every participant has a place in the shared work. This is not a performance but a collaboration - a weaving of scholarship, intuition, devotion, and community insight - all in service to a relationship with the Goddess that is both ancient and alive.
As our founding priestess reminds us, the heart of this work is reciprocity: both as individuals and as a community, we seek to give the Goddess what She wants, that She may give us what we need.
Invitation
We welcome you to join us in celebrating this ancient cycle of festivals, where historical memory and embodied devotion meet, and where the worship of Sekhmet becomes a living, communal path.
Sekhmet - Pleasure Is Our Prayer, the Body Is Our Altar.