Who Is Egyptian Goddess Hathor + Her Role In The Venus Path
Only recently have I delved into the mysteries and magic of ancient Egyptian Goddess Hathor. If you found your way here, there’s a strong chance that you resonate on a soul level with Goddess Hathor and her path.
Maybe you were a Priestess of Hathor in ancient times (which I believe I was). Maybe you feel called to explore the divine feminine or merge sex and pleasure with the sacred. Maybe you are a student or lover of the arts.
All of these paths lead back to Hathor. So let’s explore who this Goddess was in more detail, her gifts, and the lessons and wisdom she has for us today.
Who is goddess hathor?
When was she alive? Between 5000 and 6000 years ago.
Symbolism: The sacred cow, and sometimes a lioness or cobra.
Also known as: The Primeval Goddess, Lady of Stars, Hathor of the Sycamore, Hathor Mistress of Heaven/the Desert, Mother of Mothers. Lady of the Vulva.
Hathor is one of the oldest Egyptian Goddesses, often depicted in mythology as a cow-headed woman. She was a sky and sun Goddess, closely connected to mother earth, the cosmos, and the milky way.
She is a very grounded, earthy Goddess who lived and led amongst the people. Her name means house, womb, or temple of Horus, often interpreted as her being the mother of the Egyptian sky God Horus.
What is hathor the goddess of?
Hathor was a Goddess of many things, including love, sex, fertility and motherhood, beauty, music, dancing, pleasure, sensuality, trade, wealth, and journeying to the underworld. She was full of light, playfulness, humor, youth, mamma bear energy, and an appetite for squeezing every last drop of juice out of life.
1. The mother of civilization
Egyptian Goddess Hathor was seen as the original Creatrix of the cosmos and the milky way, producing the milk that eventually formed our sky and stars. This is why she is symbolized by the sacred cow and is seen as a maternal Goddess who provides nurturing and nourishment to the land and all its living creatures.
Hathor was the Goddess of the time when people moved from being hunter-gatherers to forming communities, starting families, planting crops, farming, and establishing a homeland. With this came larger families, more abundance, and more time to devote to leisure, pleasure, beauty, and more. This is what Goddess Hathor helped to build and nurture.
2. Love
Before humans started to form tribes and settle, love was a luxury not indulged in. But Goddess Hathor inspired, popularized, and celebrated intimacy, love, sacred relationships, and deep care and devotion to people, animals, and even plants and trees.
Although Hathor is not a popular Goddess name today and appears to have been forgotten, her legacy of love lives on. The Greeks loved Hathor and saw much of her spirit in their Goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Similarly, the Romans adored Hathor because she mirrored Venus.
3. Beauty
The frequency of Egyptian Goddess Hathor lives on today in how big a part cosmetics and beauty play in our world. It’s not the products themselves but the ritual of applying makeup, spritzing on perfume and adorning yourself with jewelry while you admire your reflection and the art you’re creating in the mirror. The Egyptians invented perfume, and scent played a large role in rituals, worship, and ceremonies of this time.
So many girls and women today still ritualize getting ready together before a night out, and I’ve often arranged and tended to my vanity table as another sacred altar in my house. This is all a part of Priestessing and Goddess worship.
4. Pleasure
The world we live in today is missing pleasure, and we are confused about what true pleasure feels like. And it’s because Goddess Hathor has disappeared from our culture, and our current society and systems do not honor her frequency or the feminine.
This has led to copious amounts of disconnection, mental illness, loneliness, discontentment, stress, exhaustion, addiction, and pain reverberating worldwide. Thanks to technology, we have never been more connected than we are now, so why do we feel desperately alone?
We live to work rather than work to live and rob ourselves of the simple pleasures in life. Things like eating a nourishing meal, talking to a friend over a cup of coffee, stopping to smell a rose in the garden, walking on the beach, watching the sunset, and breathing in fresh air. This is true pleasure; all it costs is our time and attention.
5. The arts
Hathor is the Goddess of arts and culture and all the beauty created from it, including language, art, music, mantra, and dance. In Egyptian culture, these expressions were held in high regard and were a common part of everyday life. Hathor conveyed the sacredness of all this beauty and encouraged people to celebrate it as often as possible. Egyptian temple art and relics devoted to Goddess Hathor often depict musicians playing instruments (lyres, harps, tambourines, the sistra).
Aside from bringing more joy and beauty to people’s lives, the arts can also be a great channel for creative expression, healing, and spiritual connection.
6. Fertility & sex
Sacred sexuality and sacred union are all a part of the Priestess template. Seeing sex and relationships as sacred, healing through sex, the sacred prostitute archetype, fertility, and birthing are all part of Hathor’s lineage as a Goddess. She inspired people to reconnect to the divine feminine, reclaim sex as a sacred, spiritual act, and helped women through childbirth.
Hathor is sometimes symbolized by the sycamore tree, which produces a milky sap. This represents fertility and the maternal frequency of Hathor.
7. Wealth & abundance
One of the things most people don’t know about Hathor is her link to trade, foreign goods, the mining of gemstones, and abundance. As a Goddess of the sky, one of her duties was to protect trade, and she used her connection to the stars and the sun to guide her.
She would travel in and out of Egypt, and trade would take place across countries and cultures, of physical goods, knowledge, and wisdom. These sacred exchanges are another example of fertility and creation. By working with Hathor, we can heal blocks around money and unplug ourselves from any scarcity and suffering grids we’ve tapped into.
8. Guide to the afterlife
You may have heard of a birth doula—a woman with energetic and spiritual powers who is here to help women have positive birth experiences and steward new life into the world. But have you heard of a death doula?
A death doula has a sacred contract to steward souls from this life to the next. The journey to the underworld is the move back into the realm of the mother. It is the unknown, the other world, and in the dark—it is the feminine, and this is why so many people fear death; it is a fear of the feminine. This journey is often seen as a return to the womb; the way we came into life is the way we exit.
Stewarding is one of the many roles that Hathor had. She could move between life and death as she pleased and would help souls transition to what the Egyptians believed was the Afterlife.
In this Afterlife, Goddess Hathor is said to be a tree Goddess who provides air, water, and food to the dead, bringing them peace and bliss.
The rise of other goddesses & spiritual paths
As Egyptian Goddess Isis and her following rose, Hathor fell, along with her divine frequency. Many of Hathor’s roles were passed to Isis, but these Goddesses differ greatly.
Hathor is devoted to the feminine path and worships the feminine and everything associated with the feminine, including creativity, art, nurturing, motherhood, sensuality, and more. She was a wife and a mother, but these roles were further examples of the fierce, beautiful, sovereign feminine in motion.
In contrast, Isis was seen as the perfect wife and mother and defined by her relationship to the masculine. And as society moved further into this masculine era (coupled with the rise of patriarchy), Goddess Hathor gradually lost more power.
But she lives on today, in her own right, as well as through Goddess Aphrodite and the planet Venus. Similarly, the frequency of Hathor lives on through Isis and again through Mary Magdalene—this is the Magdalene lineage, and it began with Hathor. This path of love, of Venus, can be found in every culture.
Are you here to walk the venus path?
If you feel drawn to any of these Goddesses, your soul is likely on the Venus path, which is the path of the divine feminine. You are here in this lifetime to reclaim what has been lost since the birth and rise of the masculine and bring back all of this love, beauty, pleasure, art, and nourishment to the people and the planet.
Working with these Goddesses, seeking guidance, and embodying more of their frequencies in everyday life are simple ways to honor their essence and help heal the feminine, within and without.