Page 42 - The Flickering Cauldron Magazine - June 2022

Alive she was, but she was not the Dorothy that they knew and loved before the accident, she had changed. She had come back from the dead with memories of a past life in ancient Egypt, that she was too young to comprehend.
She developed a foriegn accent that they did not recognise and she started to withdraw, having vivid dreams of a large columned building, asking to be taken home, and not to her parents house. This caused many problems for her parents as they could not understand what the matter was with their little girl, they took her to doctors who could not help, as she was too young for psychiatric care. So they did what all parents do, try to comfort her, praying it would go away!
When Dorothy was four they took her to the British Museum, and she did what most toddlers would do so young, ignore it, she had no interest whatsoever, until they reached the Egyptian galleries. Out of nowhere her eyes lit up and she became excitable, breaking free of her mothers grip, and running through the gallery, crying and shouting ‘these are my people’ ‘this is my home’, kissing the feet of God statues, sitting in front of mummies, refusing to move or leave. Her parents must have been horrified and suspect back into that era, completely embarrassed by her behaviour, as she was kicking and screaming on being removed from the gallery to take her home.
Her trip to the museum had only intensified her behaviour and she now started to have strange dreams about her columned building and the life she led within. To a 4 year old, this must have been so frightening, especially as nobody could understand her, including her parents. How lonely and confused she must have felt!
One day she was looking at some photographs and she came across a photo of the Temple of Seti. She did not have a clue what the building was or even where it was, but it was the building in her dreams. She instantly told her parents that it was the building in her dreams and it was her home, but something was wrong with the picture, the gardens were missing and Dorothy became upset. By this time they were used to their little girl’s, what they obviously thought was her fantasy life, so just appeased her, dismissing it! To Dorothy, the building in her dreams would now lead to a fascinating world of self discovery that dominated the rest of her life.
We wish we had the space to tell you in detail about her early life, but it could fill a book on its own.
Throughout her young life, growing into a teenager, she was rejected by her parents church as a heathen, as she compared Christianity with Egyptian religion. She started going to Catholic mass, even though she was not Catholic, as it reminded her of the Old Religion. The priest did not recognise her as a local, so questioned her, and to her sadness, was also rejected yet again as a heathen.
She had no interest in school, and eventually due to her eccentricity she was expelled, but before that day, she would skip class and go to the British Museum to learn everything she could about her beloved Egypt.
Here she met Egyptologist Sir. E. A. Wallis Budge, who had noticed her comings and goings and was taken by her enthusiasm, encouraged her to learn how to read the hieroglyphs. He was quite taken aback on how easy it was for her to learn, her answer was simple, ‘this is not a new language to me, it is simply one I have forgotten and am now remembering’.
This only fuelled her obsession more and her dreams became stronger, vivid and frequent as she got older, claiming she was visited by Seti I, who ravished her as they became lovers...
Her parents were now worried for her health and state of mind and she was eventually committed to quite a few sanitariums, but they could never find anything wrong with her.
After leaving school at 16, Dorothy continued to visit museums, libraries and archaeological sites around Britain, learning as much as she could. Dorothy worked for her father when he invested in a cinema, collecting inexpensive Egyptian artefacts with her wages. She also joined the Plymouth Art School, and a
42 | The Flickering Cauldron® Magazine - Omm Sety