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 Some of my experiences related to Egypt   
      by Kristen Ann
 
In 1995 I had painted the Egyptian image of Thoth on the sacred Right Eye of Horus.  It's called "An Initiate's Dream", above right.  ( Lithographs of this are on the Artwork link at the top of the main page.)  At the time I never dreamed that I could someday go to Egypt. Source Books had asked for some poster-size lithographs of the painting and it is now the cover art of "The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean" (SourceBooks.com). Then in Jan. of '97 Robin from Source told me that Gregg Braden was going to lead a tour to Egypt. She said that if I wanted to go to Egypt this was the trip I should take. I had no money to go, but knew that if it was meant to be, somehow things would fall into place so I could go on that trip.
 
Months later I happened to come into the house at just the right moment, and turn on the tv to the right station to hear the 12 o'clock news anchor say that QVC was looking for interesting things to sell from every state. As it turned out, they placed a large order with me for necklaces, and there was my trip to Egypt!
 
Shortly before leaving for the trip, I had a strong urge to take a little harp with me.  Something that would fit into the backpack I was taking would be just perfect.  I didn't even know if they made such a thing, but I spent days calling music stores to see if they had any stringed instruents besides guitars or violins. The answer was always something like, "No, lady!"  Eventually I had to set the idea aside. My trip was less than a week away anyway.
 
The very next day a catalog mysteriously arrived in my mailbox!  It was so bizarre!  Totally out of the blue -- from a music store in Michigan called "Elderly Instruments".  Talk about 'mysterious connections!  And guess what?! They had, of all things, a little lap harp  -  smaller than my antique one  -  that happened to EXACTLY fit into my backpack!  Funny ... later I discovered that tiny little harp had been discontinued.  They carried it at the time that I needed it, and I was 'led' to find it, then it was no longer available.
 
When we were in Cairo I told our guide that I had the little harp and would like to play it inside the Great Pyramid. We had 4 hours inside the pyramid to ourselves. A story of experiences in itself!  When we entered the King's Chamber I got it out & set it on the floor to remind him.  He had planned to play recorded music though, and tried over and over to get his tape player to work.  It worked fine outside of the pyramid, but wouldn't work inside.  Very strange!  But I never played the harp either.

 Riding across the Sahara for a magnificent sunrise at Giza. I was on a white Arabian horse. (The tips of his ears are faintly in the foreground.)
 
Anyway, days later we had traveled south to Aswan and Luxor. All the while, everyday, I had been taking my little harp with me in my backpack. Then one special day we rode on the Nile to the wonderful temples of Horus at Edfu, and his mother Isis at Philae. Because of the flooding caused by the Aswan Dam the Philae temple had been moved stone-by-stone from its original location to a nearby island. The original location of the Isis temple now lays covered by the Nile.
              Me & my 'buddy' Horus in 1999.
 
We walked through these majestic temples in awe. Somehow I could "feel" the people and the sacred ceremonies that had taken place there.  I even crawled through a tunnel that I had once gone through an Initiation rite in thousands of years earlier.  And I could feel the sense of triumph and overcoming fear that I had been feeling in that earlier time when it was in total darkness and filled with potentially deadly animals.  I just made up my mind that I'm getting thru this calmly.  That there's nothing to worry about.
 
As we were leaving the Isis temple I stood near the entrance & played my harp while people slowly made their way to board the boat again.  When my sweet Egyptian guide Emile saw that I had a little harp he went ballistic!  He was so excited!  He told me he had been trying for weeks, unsuccessfully, to find a musician for that very day!  And a harp was the PERFECT instrument.  He was planning to stop the boat over the spot where the Temple of Philae had once stood so we could tune into the majestic and mystic energy that the place still held.   What Emile had wanted, but thought was just not going to happen was for a musician to play something as our boat hovered over this very special place.

 "Do you know what Isis played?!" Emile asked me with a dumbfounded look of total shock on his face.  "Isis played the Harp!"  Emil was shouting now.  I stood there in shocked surprise myself.  A surge of energy welled up within me.

So on that magical afternoon, having first visited Edfu, the glorious temple of Horus that I had always longed to see  -  where I had my picture taken standing next to "my buddy" Horus, the music of my little harp was heard on the Nile.  It felt so still and so sacred as the boat hovered there over the place where Philae had once stood.  At that moment I got out the harp & let my fingers play across the strings.  The melody just seemed to flow and had a very Egyptian and also very ancient sound to it.
 
       Sunset on the Nile.
 
Later someone said to me in an excited but hushed voice, "Did you know that you were channelling Isis?"   ...  Whatever it was that had happened that day, it felt very special. A special moment in time ...   

And the experiences continued.  What happened as I lay in my bed near Mount Sinai was phenomenal.  It would go on too long to describe it here.  I've included it in the book.
             

  
     Sunset at Mount Sinai. Happy camel, happy me!
 
 
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