Learning From and About Deities through Dreams

Dear Neophyte,

I vowed to try to find out more about my personal pantheon yesterday, starting again with Hecate. I think it's very important every once in a while to go back over the legends and such just to remember why you fell in love with Them in the first place. Hecate came into my life several time but I never understood the symbols till recently. As a child I had black dogs appearing in my dreams every now and again, which I now associate with Hecate, though Her dog is female and I get the distinct impression the one from my dream was male.

He smells Beggon-Strips!

I could just be wrong about either the gender or the association as well. One even told me it's name, though I won't repeat that hear for obvious reasons. The internet has nill to say about the name (it's a corporation name, but nothing in mythology). I still had all these pages pulled up when I shut down my computer yesterday (Ubuntu/firefox is wonderful that way!).

"It's called studying.  Trying it sometime!"

Thoth is the real reason for this resurgence in Deity research, as I promised Him an altar if certain circumstances are met and they were met so now I have an altar to a Neteru that I only know smatterings of lore about. Not to say I'm lazy but when praying for smarts one goes to a intelectual deity in the pantheon you are most familiar with so I went Egyptian > Brain Power > Thoth. He also helped come through on helping me get job in exchange for certain things which I am unable to provide at this time. I don't know if His role is temporary or permanent in my personal pantheon but once I get to learning about Him (and introducing myself formally) I intend to ask.

Fun dream to detail!

1st part:

I was at a New Seasons in Tennessee. An older homeless man (filling out every stereotype of the kind) had a pit bull puppy on a 2 foot long chain. In my mind I knew the puppy was going to spend the rest of it's life on the end of the chain unless someone got it away form the homeless man. I also though that the only reason the man wanted it was because it was a pit bull. Even though I was going to leave it alone I felt like I was being watched and judged for how I would react to seeing this obvious wrong.

Hecate loved your first, ingrate!

I go into the market and find a manager to inform of the situation. After telling her what is going on she acts like it's no big deal. So I detail the laws in Tennessee saying you can't chain a dog up unless it's on your own front lawn (which I don't know if I was making that up or believed it in the dream). The woman then walks outside to do something about the situation. As she walks away I hear a voice, which I don't know if it's my subconscious or the woman or the “narrator” say, “I'll go do what you should have done.”

Then the cat starts yowling outside my door, in reality.

It's 10:00 on the dot, feed meeEEEEEeeee!

As I'm waking up I hear a voice tell me, “Menet, the Everyday Woman's (tm) mouse goodess!” My immediate first semi-conscious though is, “I wonder what Renennutet has to say about that...” Seeing as Ren is the snake goddess of Egypt who is worshiped for protecting the harvest from mice. My second fully conscious though is to wonder if goddesses ever squabble because their earthly familiars eat each other.

Dream interpretation time!

Menet, Necklace Sacred to Hathor

So I looked up “menet”, “Mouse goddess of egypt” (and every variation of that phrase), “renenutet” and the like. From what I can see “menet” is not the name of a Goddess, but is the name of the necklace that is sacred to Hathor (who is a cow/lion headed goddess instead of a mouse). There is no internet information about any mouse-headed deities in Egypt, though I could have sworn I saw one mentioned somewhere and even remember seeing one pictured somewhere.

Honor me with wine, for I keep the harvest safe.

Renenutet is, of course, the snake goddess associated with protecting the harvest from mice. Her alternate form is also the Goddess Sakmet, who has a lion's head. Not sure what any of this has to do with each other but I'm still on the search.

Sakmet, Hathor when She's Pissed

Hathor, With Cow Ears

 

Dogs are Sacred to Hecate

While I was opening up loads of tabs for this search I started closing tabs from the previous days searching about Hecate and in doing so I remembered reading that She is the protector of those who live on the fringe of society... who's sacred animal are dogs. The realization that the first part of the dream, about the homeless man with a dog, may have been from Hecate shocked me. My judgmental attitude (even in my dream thinking this man fit the stereotype of homeless animal abuser too well) may have been being called into check. Perhaps Hecate was telling me that I cannot offer thanks to Her and insult those under Her protection in the same day. I've been encountering a lot of homeless people in Portalnd lately but I don't give them anything because even in Nashville they are able to take care of their entire homeless population so well that they now put out signs saying, “Don't feed the homeless, they already eat better than you!”

Don't look down on someone unless your helping them up.  Don't look back at someone unless you're guiding them.

Perhaps this is Hecate's call to me to be more charitable to those in need. I've been feeling rather greedy lately and I catch myself and though my greed doesn't escape outward, I do little to quell the feeling internally as well. This has lead to a greed deal of unbalance inside. I think but I don't say. I say what I don't believe. This has to stop. If I know something is imbalanced, and my job is to uphold Ma'at, then I need to internalize that understanding, not just have a superficial, outwardly showing. I think perhaps Hecate is telling me to reevaluate my greed and stereotypes. Like the voice said, “I'll go do what you should have done.” I should have done something for the old man, starting with giving him the benefit of the doubt. 

Volunteer Match, Website for Volunteers 

I still don't know what the Egyptian names in my dream mean but I'm pretty sure I have Hecate's partially figured out.  That, and all of them have snakes in common!

Salutations,

Sesh

P.S. All pictures except the meowdling cat are courtacy of google image search.  The cat in the picture is the exact cat who woke me up at 10 and interrupted my divine dreaming.

Amendment: Perhaps I heard wrong and the name that was said was Meret instead of Menet.  It's only a letter difference and Meret is actually a goddess, though not of mice. Still no mice goddess.  Meret is the counterpart of Hapy and is the one who recieves all His bounty.  She is a goddess of joy, rejoicing, celebration and dance.  If it was Her in my dream, well I can see how she could be the "everyday woman's [...] goddess".  Meret is depicted with the same lotus or papyrus of upper or lower Egypt and almost always shown with an offering bowl.  Maybe my dream is telling me to stop stalling on the offerings?

Alternately I got tired of trying to find specific Egyptian mouse goddesses so I just googled "Mouse deities" and Genesh popped up.  Mostly depicted with an elephant head, He ssometimes shows up with an mouse head instead, and there is a good chance that might be where I saw the mouse headed deity.  However, I am not Hindi so this is not a path I'm willing to try to walk.  Sometimes Deity calls to us and we are FORCED to answer.  Sometimes they wave a little "you-hOOO!" and we just wave back and keep going.