Crafting for Ritual

Our Communal Creative Process

We gather to explore the tools, adornments, and sacred technologies used by priestesses, dancers, spiritual healers, and celebrants throughout ancient Egypt. Each workshop begins with shared research: examining museum artifacts, reading inscriptions, reviewing chemical analyses, and tracing the lineage of objects that carried power, beauty, and meaning. We study not only how these items were made, but how they were used in ritual, what roles they played in temple life, and what symbolic or devotional significance they held for the communities who carried them.

From that grounding, we step into creation together, honoring tradition while shaping tools that serve our living rituals today.

Participants have crafted ointments and unguents from reconstructed ancient recipes; blended kohl and eye paints using ingredients identified in archaeological samples; and created menat necklaces, Hathor mirrors, ritual throw-sticks, cowrie-shell belts, and tooled leather skirts inspired by Nubian priestesses and khener dancers. Each piece is made with intention, blessed in community, and used in ceremony - returning these ancient forms to the realm of practice rather than display.

These workshops are joyful, hands-on, and deeply rooted in devotion. They offer a way to learn through doing, and to celebrate a tradition of artisans who shaped beauty as a form of worship.

Sharing Our Work

Our ritual crafts do not remain only within the Temple. The tools, adornments, and devotional pieces created in community often travel beyond our ceremonies, becoming part of public celebrations of Sekhmet’s presence. Works made by Temple members have been displayed in exhibitions including the Art of the African Diaspora, the Black Light Art Show, as well as the dedicated gallery show Feast of Sekhmet at CounterPulse in San Francisco.

These public showings offer others a glimpse of our practice to help us connect with people who feel drawn to this tradition.