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Sekhmet: Transformation in the Belly of the Goddess
A shamanic ritual with the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet to bring about alchemical transformation at the deepest levels of your being
• Details how to work with Sekhmet to transform your negative behavior patterns and character flaws into creative impulses and higher energies
• Leads you through guided visualizations, illustrated with photographs, to Sekhmet’s chapel at the Temple of Karnak and through her shamanic ritual of transformation
• Includes initiations, rites of passage, and transmissions from Sekhmet to release your fears and anger and rejuvenate your body, mind, and spirit
Sekhmet is the lioness goddess of the Egyptian Pantheon, a fierce protector of truth, balance, and the Cosmic order of Ma’at. Known and feared as the goddess of war and destruction, she also represents the transformative power of kundalini energy, or sekhem , and is the main goddess to harness this power for healing. As “She Who Comes in Times of Chaos,” she takes offerings of fear, rage, and weakness and transforms them into alchemical gold, the universal medicine for physical, emotional, and soul healing.
In this book you are guided through a shamanic ritual of alchemical transformation and initiation with Sekhmet, working with this powerful goddess to release your most deeply rooted negative behavior patterns and be reborn into a more purified state of consciousness. Using intensive self-examination exercises to help you prepare to meet the goddess, the author leads you through a guided visualization, illustrated with photographs, to an ancient statue of Sekhmet in her chapel at the Temple of Karnak. There, you will be shamanistically devoured by the goddess, directly experiencing the alchemical process of transformation in the belly of Sekhmet until you are rebirthed as a fully realized adult child of the goddess. You will experience how your offering of pain, fear, rage, and self-sabotage is digested, absorbed, and assimilated by Sekhmet while you are initiated into the alchemy of total transformation. The initiations, rites of passage, and transmissions from Sekhmet included in the journey restructure the most important aspects of your body, mind, spirit, and soul.
This journey of shamanic death, illumination, and rebirth in the belly of Sekhmet provides an opportunity to heal on all levels and allows you to release your rage, anger, and fear as you transform the energies that maintained them into creative and constructive solutions that benefit yourself, your community, and the planet.
• Details how to work with Sekhmet to transform your negative behavior patterns and character flaws into creative impulses and higher energies
• Leads you through guided visualizations, illustrated with photographs, to Sekhmet’s chapel at the Temple of Karnak and through her shamanic ritual of transformation
• Includes initiations, rites of passage, and transmissions from Sekhmet to release your fears and anger and rejuvenate your body, mind, and spirit
Sekhmet is the lioness goddess of the Egyptian Pantheon, a fierce protector of truth, balance, and the Cosmic order of Ma’at. Known and feared as the goddess of war and destruction, she also represents the transformative power of kundalini energy, or sekhem , and is the main goddess to harness this power for healing. As “She Who Comes in Times of Chaos,” she takes offerings of fear, rage, and weakness and transforms them into alchemical gold, the universal medicine for physical, emotional, and soul healing.
In this book you are guided through a shamanic ritual of alchemical transformation and initiation with Sekhmet, working with this powerful goddess to release your most deeply rooted negative behavior patterns and be reborn into a more purified state of consciousness. Using intensive self-examination exercises to help you prepare to meet the goddess, the author leads you through a guided visualization, illustrated with photographs, to an ancient statue of Sekhmet in her chapel at the Temple of Karnak. There, you will be shamanistically devoured by the goddess, directly experiencing the alchemical process of transformation in the belly of Sekhmet until you are rebirthed as a fully realized adult child of the goddess. You will experience how your offering of pain, fear, rage, and self-sabotage is digested, absorbed, and assimilated by Sekhmet while you are initiated into the alchemy of total transformation. The initiations, rites of passage, and transmissions from Sekhmet included in the journey restructure the most important aspects of your body, mind, spirit, and soul.
This journey of shamanic death, illumination, and rebirth in the belly of Sekhmet provides an opportunity to heal on all levels and allows you to release your rage, anger, and fear as you transform the energies that maintained them into creative and constructive solutions that benefit yourself, your community, and the planet.
288 pages, Paperback
Published June 20, 2017
112 people are currently reading
269 people want to read
About the author
Nicki Scully
21 books31 followersNicki Scully has been teaching healing, shamanic arts, and the Egyptian Mysteries since 1983 . During her first visit to Egypt with the Grateful Dead in 1978, Nicki experienced an epiphany that transformed her life. She deepened her focus on healing and began delving into the hidden shamanic arts of Egypt. She is now a lineage holder in the Hermetic tradition of Thoth⎯her teacher and mentor. With Thoth, she developed Alchemical Healing, a comprehensive healing form that is practiced by thousands of practitioners internationally. In the late '80s, Nicki founded Shamanic Journeys, Ltd., and continues to guide inner journeys and spiritual pilgrimages to Egypt and other sacred sites. Nicki lives in Eugene, OR, where she maintains a healing and shamanic consulting practice. She welcomes you to study with her in her beautiful garden center.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 21, 2020
Book Review – Sekhmet: Transformation in the Belly of the Goddess, by Nicki Scully, Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2017
I came to review Sekhmet because of its title. In my practice and teaching of ecstatic trance and the ecstatic trance postures, the Sekhmet posture as pictured on page xxiv is one we use that when in a state of trance provides a death-rebirth experience. This trance is brought about by rapid drumming or rattling stimulation to the nervous system.
Nicki Scully takes us on a journey of transformation in the belly of Sekhmet, a powerful death-rebirth journey that brings us a transformation experience not unlike the ecstatic trance experiences provided when we use the ecstatic postures as described by Felicitas Goodman. In fact, Scully’s transformation experiences sing to the same tune as the experiences shared by the participants of the ecstatic trance groups. The ecstatic death-rebirth journey provided by the Sekhmet posture is one of the postures I find most powerful with its message of determination.
The first half of Scully’s death-rebirth journey portrays the death of the ugly habit patterns, traumas, and limitations experienced by the participants as they dissolve into a liquid soup in the goddess’s belly. The second half of the book is of the reconstruction or co-creation of the participants in health with new visions for the future.
During my extensive fifty years experience with using hypnosis and ecstatic trance for healing and spiritual growth I have studied a number of different transformation programs and have been dissatisfied with most as being shallow or ineffective, but I find this transformation in the belly of Sekhmet very effective and quite parallel to my own work. The Egyptian pantheon of deities that leads a person in personal healing and growth is very impressive and interesting. I have used the pantheon of the Nordic deities on parallel journeys for healing with my first book, Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery and Hypnosis, and my yet to be published book Loki’s Children that uses ecstatic trance for dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
To begin the Sekhmet journey Scully has the participant tie knots in a piece of organic twine for each of the ugly habits, traumas and limitations, past and present, as they come to mind. The examples that she frequently considers are the ugly habits of ineffective anger and fears. This twine is then brought to the altar of Sekhmet who is hungry for it as she ingests and relishes it as the journey begins. The twine continues to be available throughout the journey for additional knots as other issues and memories are uncovered or come to mind. At the end of the journey the twine is burnt in a celebration ceremony. In my practice as a psychologist I have similarly used the creation of a medicine bundle that holds objects as reminders of important experiences, but I love the tying of knots in the twine, a piece of jute that I have been carrying with me.
The journey in the belly of Sekhmet begins with the practice of breathing from the heart, breathing that as you inhale brings in feelings of love with its power, vitality and intelligence, love that then spreads throughout the body as you exhale. While reading this book I have been practicing these first two steps of tying knots in a piece of twine and breathing from the heart, which I find quite valuable in the process.
With the reading of each step of this death-rebirth process the reader is periodically instructed to pause to incorporate or integrate the experience within the self. Though I have read the rest of the book without taking the time to pause and practice each step, I am looking forward to returning to and following this journey to experience and integrate each step of the way.
The pictures of the shrines of each of the Egyptian deities involved in this process of transformation, especially the shrine at Karnak of the lion-headed Sekhmet, provide powerful experiences for their visitors. In the courtyard to Sekhmet’s sanctuary is an ancient sycamore, a special place under which she lays upon returning from the visits to the sites of other deities who assist in the process of transformation. She retreats to under its branches in her lion form with the two-dimensional participant, one who has been digested and resides in her belly and the other who walks beside her on these journeys.
Upon the complete dissolution in the belly of Sekhmet, the process of co-creation begins. One of the earlier stops in this journey of reconstruction takes place in the courtyard at the Luxor Temple where Akasha is called upon to provide the elements of earth, air, fire and water that will constitute the new three-dimensional reality and its DNA, providing the blue-print for the new you. Next your new skeletal system is formed in the White Desert with its many bone and shell fragments after which the circulatory, endocrine, and neurological systems are restored. With this restoration past maladies and injuries are healed, problems that were previously incurred by your old self.
Sekhmet then takes you to the temple of Kom Ombo where Horus, Sobek, and Neith restore your three brains, the reptilian brain, the midbrain, and the cortex along with the neural connections to restore your five senses. Beyond the heart breath, the gut breath is also called upon to energize your meridians to renew your energetic connection to the Earth and the Sky. Beyond the personal healing and growth provided in this transformation is the transformation in our relationship to the Earth for healing the Earth that we have proceeded to destroy in our greed for accumulating meaningless wealth. Finally the ram-headed creator god, Khnum at his temple puts you on his potter’s wheel, using clay to form the skin covering to complete your recreated body. Finally with a giant roar from Sekhmet you new self emerges, a journey that is completed with the celebration of burning the knotted twine.
Each chapter concludes with “Shared Voices,” the stories of previous participants as they describe the effective experiences of their transformation journeys as led by Sekhmet who carries them sloshing around within her belly as they at the same time walk beside her in their three-dimensional reality.
In this reconstruction or co-creation I personally identified with a number of the struggles that may be healed in this journey including my continued problem with prostate cancer, my deafness and my heart valve replacement. In reading the “Shared Voices” one that was especially relevant to me was Nicki Scully’s own story of her struggle in experiencing her journeys without clairvoyance, clairaudience or clairsentience. In my own role in leading groups in ecstatic trance and in journaling the ecstatic trance experiences, I find that my more recent experiences feel quite shallow, a shallowness that has provided a number of knots in my twine. I have used trance for nearly fifty years and realize that I have recently come to experience trance in what feels quite limited and more rational than what comes through the third eye. I have accepted this with the thought that I have spent so much time in the beyond dimension that takes me into the universal mind that now I have difficulty distinguishing between the two worlds.
I am looking forward to reading other of Scully’s books to learn in greater depth more of the Egyptian pantheon. I believe, as with the Nordic pantheon that I know so well, that the Egyptian deities offer just as much in providing personal healing and growth.
Such ancient myths I believe came from the dreams of our ancestors and have much relevance in our lives today as we move into the new age that Jean Gebser calls the era of time-free transparency. This transparency has been lost over the last 2500 years during the era of rationality when reality was limited to only that which comes to us through the five senses. Now we are recognizing that there is much beyond this limited rationality as we discover the world of the universal mind as was experienced by our hunting and gathering ancestors.
In reading Scully’s acknowledgements at the end of the book she acknowledges the influence that Barbara Hand Clow has had on her work. Barbara, who is also a certified instructor of ecstatic trance journeying, has also influenced and helped me in my writing.
I came to review Sekhmet because of its title. In my practice and teaching of ecstatic trance and the ecstatic trance postures, the Sekhmet posture as pictured on page xxiv is one we use that when in a state of trance provides a death-rebirth experience. This trance is brought about by rapid drumming or rattling stimulation to the nervous system.
Nicki Scully takes us on a journey of transformation in the belly of Sekhmet, a powerful death-rebirth journey that brings us a transformation experience not unlike the ecstatic trance experiences provided when we use the ecstatic postures as described by Felicitas Goodman. In fact, Scully’s transformation experiences sing to the same tune as the experiences shared by the participants of the ecstatic trance groups. The ecstatic death-rebirth journey provided by the Sekhmet posture is one of the postures I find most powerful with its message of determination.
The first half of Scully’s death-rebirth journey portrays the death of the ugly habit patterns, traumas, and limitations experienced by the participants as they dissolve into a liquid soup in the goddess’s belly. The second half of the book is of the reconstruction or co-creation of the participants in health with new visions for the future.
During my extensive fifty years experience with using hypnosis and ecstatic trance for healing and spiritual growth I have studied a number of different transformation programs and have been dissatisfied with most as being shallow or ineffective, but I find this transformation in the belly of Sekhmet very effective and quite parallel to my own work. The Egyptian pantheon of deities that leads a person in personal healing and growth is very impressive and interesting. I have used the pantheon of the Nordic deities on parallel journeys for healing with my first book, Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery and Hypnosis, and my yet to be published book Loki’s Children that uses ecstatic trance for dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
To begin the Sekhmet journey Scully has the participant tie knots in a piece of organic twine for each of the ugly habits, traumas and limitations, past and present, as they come to mind. The examples that she frequently considers are the ugly habits of ineffective anger and fears. This twine is then brought to the altar of Sekhmet who is hungry for it as she ingests and relishes it as the journey begins. The twine continues to be available throughout the journey for additional knots as other issues and memories are uncovered or come to mind. At the end of the journey the twine is burnt in a celebration ceremony. In my practice as a psychologist I have similarly used the creation of a medicine bundle that holds objects as reminders of important experiences, but I love the tying of knots in the twine, a piece of jute that I have been carrying with me.
The journey in the belly of Sekhmet begins with the practice of breathing from the heart, breathing that as you inhale brings in feelings of love with its power, vitality and intelligence, love that then spreads throughout the body as you exhale. While reading this book I have been practicing these first two steps of tying knots in a piece of twine and breathing from the heart, which I find quite valuable in the process.
With the reading of each step of this death-rebirth process the reader is periodically instructed to pause to incorporate or integrate the experience within the self. Though I have read the rest of the book without taking the time to pause and practice each step, I am looking forward to returning to and following this journey to experience and integrate each step of the way.
The pictures of the shrines of each of the Egyptian deities involved in this process of transformation, especially the shrine at Karnak of the lion-headed Sekhmet, provide powerful experiences for their visitors. In the courtyard to Sekhmet’s sanctuary is an ancient sycamore, a special place under which she lays upon returning from the visits to the sites of other deities who assist in the process of transformation. She retreats to under its branches in her lion form with the two-dimensional participant, one who has been digested and resides in her belly and the other who walks beside her on these journeys.
Upon the complete dissolution in the belly of Sekhmet, the process of co-creation begins. One of the earlier stops in this journey of reconstruction takes place in the courtyard at the Luxor Temple where Akasha is called upon to provide the elements of earth, air, fire and water that will constitute the new three-dimensional reality and its DNA, providing the blue-print for the new you. Next your new skeletal system is formed in the White Desert with its many bone and shell fragments after which the circulatory, endocrine, and neurological systems are restored. With this restoration past maladies and injuries are healed, problems that were previously incurred by your old self.
Sekhmet then takes you to the temple of Kom Ombo where Horus, Sobek, and Neith restore your three brains, the reptilian brain, the midbrain, and the cortex along with the neural connections to restore your five senses. Beyond the heart breath, the gut breath is also called upon to energize your meridians to renew your energetic connection to the Earth and the Sky. Beyond the personal healing and growth provided in this transformation is the transformation in our relationship to the Earth for healing the Earth that we have proceeded to destroy in our greed for accumulating meaningless wealth. Finally the ram-headed creator god, Khnum at his temple puts you on his potter’s wheel, using clay to form the skin covering to complete your recreated body. Finally with a giant roar from Sekhmet you new self emerges, a journey that is completed with the celebration of burning the knotted twine.
Each chapter concludes with “Shared Voices,” the stories of previous participants as they describe the effective experiences of their transformation journeys as led by Sekhmet who carries them sloshing around within her belly as they at the same time walk beside her in their three-dimensional reality.
In this reconstruction or co-creation I personally identified with a number of the struggles that may be healed in this journey including my continued problem with prostate cancer, my deafness and my heart valve replacement. In reading the “Shared Voices” one that was especially relevant to me was Nicki Scully’s own story of her struggle in experiencing her journeys without clairvoyance, clairaudience or clairsentience. In my own role in leading groups in ecstatic trance and in journaling the ecstatic trance experiences, I find that my more recent experiences feel quite shallow, a shallowness that has provided a number of knots in my twine. I have used trance for nearly fifty years and realize that I have recently come to experience trance in what feels quite limited and more rational than what comes through the third eye. I have accepted this with the thought that I have spent so much time in the beyond dimension that takes me into the universal mind that now I have difficulty distinguishing between the two worlds.
I am looking forward to reading other of Scully’s books to learn in greater depth more of the Egyptian pantheon. I believe, as with the Nordic pantheon that I know so well, that the Egyptian deities offer just as much in providing personal healing and growth.
Such ancient myths I believe came from the dreams of our ancestors and have much relevance in our lives today as we move into the new age that Jean Gebser calls the era of time-free transparency. This transparency has been lost over the last 2500 years during the era of rationality when reality was limited to only that which comes to us through the five senses. Now we are recognizing that there is much beyond this limited rationality as we discover the world of the universal mind as was experienced by our hunting and gathering ancestors.
In reading Scully’s acknowledgements at the end of the book she acknowledges the influence that Barbara Hand Clow has had on her work. Barbara, who is also a certified instructor of ecstatic trance journeying, has also influenced and helped me in my writing.
October 26, 2019
- A very intense book for practices to work with the Goddess Sekhmet, along with some lovely photos inside!
- This book is less theoretical and mostly practical - Nicki has included exercises in each chapter, designed to get us closer to working with Sekhmet's energy, with the overall goal to transform our anger and fears and give us a whole new body.
- It's probably best to read it "passively" first as one pass-through, before beginning the exercises in earnest, as they can be intense and emotional. Happy Transforming!
- This book is less theoretical and mostly practical - Nicki has included exercises in each chapter, designed to get us closer to working with Sekhmet's energy, with the overall goal to transform our anger and fears and give us a whole new body.
- It's probably best to read it "passively" first as one pass-through, before beginning the exercises in earnest, as they can be intense and emotional. Happy Transforming!
July 29, 2017
A good book of shamanic exercises. It wasn't really what I was looking for and I skipped through the second half. However, for someone looking for an intro to shamanism with an Egyptian flair, this would be gold.
August 13, 2021
If you have ever had the inclination towards Egypt, Sekhmet, Bastet or Shamanic Healing. You’ve arrived. Work with the sun goddess of fire, healing and war to call on her assistance to aide you in your journey, shadow work, trauma, fear, love and healing. Learning that it’s all about surrendering to what plagues you in order to strip yourself and rebuild it, stronger, better. The accounts from other peoples experiences may help you understand that you’re not alone in this life and remember that’s she always been there, waiting.
March 16, 2025
I am following the tracks of lioness iconcry, from the early use with Mother God images on thrones on the Anatolian Peninsula. I have always thought that the original head of the sphinx was that of a lioness and not the pharoah, di to the too small head for the body.
This book is not on that track. Instead I found that Scully has shaped the most thorough vessel in which to do self alchemy ritual. Scully found her inspiration in Sekmet, but the ready can adapt Scully's frame, as summarized in the books TOC, to their own source inspiration.
This book is not on that track. Instead I found that Scully has shaped the most thorough vessel in which to do self alchemy ritual. Scully found her inspiration in Sekmet, but the ready can adapt Scully's frame, as summarized in the books TOC, to their own source inspiration.
August 17, 2021
I first met Sekhmet on 10/09/2020 at the ROM in Toronto, 🇨🇦. I was in much need of healing and that is why I believe she appeared to me. Since then I have been reading this book and this book helped me to heal and know Sekhmet. Page xiii jumped out at me and I never looked back. I am learning how to react and process emotions differently. The meditations are amazing experiences. Thank you Nicki Scully and Sekhmet for helping me on this journey.
Sa Sekhem Sahu 🖤🙏🏻🌻
Sa Sekhem Sahu 🖤🙏🏻🌻
May 26, 2025
Beautiful experience. It was a book about both general information, but mostly, guided meditations. Definitely a book to keep around and follow some of those meditations when one feels called by these energies.
March 11, 2019
Not my thing, devotees of Sekhmet will find it inspiring
August 4, 2022
This was a beautiful & life-changing initiation, thank you Nicki Scully.
January 5, 2024
Alchemical process of Sekhmet’s teachings. This is my favourite healing book I’ve come across so far. “Imagination is the lightning rod of the shaman”
February 25, 2021
Amazing program description and the intensive work presented with the Neter Sekhmet; I recommend this book to any serious student of the Egyptian Neteru and mysteries.
June 30, 2024
This is a good book about strengthening one's connection to Sekmet. However there are a lot of meditation exercises in the book. It would be wonderful if the author would provide audio meditations to accompany the book.
April 7, 2023
Currently re reading this again a lot of information to absorb and balance with the return of Spring and the coming Summer months
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews