The Hind of Hinds - Continued

I want to relate a couple of very interesting "hallucinations" I had last night that are related to the material above and – well, you’ll see where this goes -- I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about how I tend to have hallucinatory "dreams" – not sure what to call the state, exactly, it tends to happens in that area where I’m half awake, or not quite asleep. Last night, or I should say, early this morning, it was between 2 and 3 a.m. when I am prone to wake up these days – anyway, I did my usual, wake up, roll over, look at the clock, roll back to settle into the pillows and I saw what, for the life of me, appeared to be the outline of a bear sitting in my wing chair by the south window. Now darlings, I knew it couldn’t possibly be a bear sitting in my chair, not at 2 in the morning, but it was quite distinctly the outline of a bear, even after I shook my head and blinked my eyes a couple of times and tried to "wake up." It was still there. I laid back down and watched it for awhile; it’s head was moving! It didn’t occur to me until I was having my morning coffee that it was moving in a barely perceptible nodding motion. I was totally stumped as to why this hallucination would not go away even though I thought I was almost fully awake; I fell back asleep – perhaps it was 10 minutes later while continuing to look at the "bear in the chair." It’s a bit hard to explain – this half-baked/half-awake thought process, but since the bear did NOT attack me, I KNEW it was an hallucination, not the real thing (forget about the logic of how a bear would happen to get into a locked house without any noise, happen to wander upstairs into my bedroom, and happen to sit in my chair quietly waiting for me to "wake" up), and so I wasn’t afraid to try and fall back asleep, only annoyed that whatever it was wouldn’t go away. As often happens in these post-menopausal times (women of a certain age in the audience will know exactly what I mean), I then proceeded to wake up about every 45 to 55 minutes for the next couple of hours – sometimes this happens until the alarm goes off at 6 a.m., but last night/early this morning it only happened two more times, and so I was able to get in a last couple of hours of "quality" sleep before the alarm went off. Anyway, when I next awoke, I turned my head and crinked my neck up just to get a look and sure enough, the bear was still sitting in the chair by the window on the south wall. Damn! And still ever so slightly nodding it’s head. I could see it distinctly because my south window overlooks a street light perhaps 50 feet away, and it casts enough light through the curtains to cast eerie shadows inside my bedroom (cue spooky music….) Hmmmmm. Then I rolled over toward the west wall and caught a glimpse of something that set my heart to pounding – a giant serpent! I nearly leaped out of bed -- Of course it wasn’t a giant serpent, it was my "pharmacy" style floor lamp that I have sitting next to the computer hutch, but to my half-awake eyes it took on the form of a gigantic hooded cobra. Hmmmm, a bear and a snake? Very weird. Someone must be trying to tell me something, I thought, as I settled back into my pillows and went back to sleep. OKAY! A bit of back story. The serpent I understand because for the past couple of weeks delion and I have been nattering back and forth about things Egyptian, etc. and I’ve been refreshing my memory by checking out information on Uadjet, the serpent tutorial Goddess of "Upper" (Southern) Egypt, very ancient, who also represents the Sun God (Ra/Re) and, in one of her aspects, is also His Sacred Eye. So the lamp-turning-into-cobra makes sense, in a "dream" way. But the bear? Now, mind you darlings, this all happened before I ever cracked open Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia today and copied out the information on "Arabia" published above. As it so happens, when I first opened the book, I came upon an entry of Atalanta: Amazonian huntress, the best athlete in Calydon. As an infant, Atalanta was suckled by Artemis herself, in totemic form as a She-Bear. When she grew up, she took part in the famous hunt of the Calydonian Boar and drew first blood, pausing only to kill two centaurs who tried to rape her on the hunting field. Ah ha! Bells went off in my head. Artemis was the bear! But not only a bear, Walker links her to the "Hind of Hinds" (Hind al-Hunud): "Many Koreshites remained faithful to the Goddess and to their queen, Hind al-Hunud: the Hind of Hinds, similar to the title of Artemis" – but I didn’t know that until I read and then posted the entry on Arabia from The Woman’s Encyclopedia today! So – my admittedly amateur interpretation of my "waking dreams" is that the Goddess (in bear and serpent forms) approve/approved my intent/plan to post more about the ancient battle queens here – even before I knew I was going to do it. Well, they are goddesses, they can "see" the future! A couple notes. Based on what I read in Walker, Fatima, the putative daughter of Mohammed, is a "sister" of the ancient Egyptian cow-goddess Hathor. One of Fatima’s titles is "Red Cow," and Fatima shares many other titles and attributes with Egyptian Hathor. Hathor was also considered a moon goddess, because her horns formed a "crescent" moon. Hmmm, where have we seen that symbol before? Oh yeah, on the flags of many countries where Islam is the majority religion. Hmmm….