Page 43 - The Flickering Cauldron Magazine - June 2022

local theatrical group, who performed at her fathers cinema, in plays based on the story of Isis and Osiris.
When she was 27 she had the opportunity to work for an Egyptian public relations magazine in London, she jumped at the chance. Here she wrote articles and drawings that reflected her political stance for an independant Egypt. It is here she met her future husband Eman Abdel Meguid, an Egyptian student. On his return home, they wrote letters to each other every week until he proposed to Dorothy, for which she accepted. In 1933 she boarded a boat and set off for Cairo to marry her beloved. One can only imagine the thoughts in her mind as she was drawing close to Egypt, the excitement, apprehension and to her the reality that she was finally going home.
On arriving into Egypt, as soon as she disembarked the boat, she immediately kissed the ground and said ‘I am home, home to stay’.
She married Eman who was now a teacher of English in Cairo, and the couple stayed with Emans upper-middle class family who gave her the name of Bulbul (Nightingale) Abdel Meguid. It was not long before she fell pregnant and had a son, whom she called Sety, after the Pharaoh that visited her in her dreams. It was customary in Egypt that women were often called by their son’s first names out of respect.
From this day forward she was now to be known as Omm (Omm meaning ‘mother of’) Sety. For the rest of Dorothy’s life, locals, Egyptolists and people in authority called her by this name.
During her early years of marriage, Omm Sety became more and more engulfed and obsessed by ancient Egyptian ways and started living her life as such, that coupled with her nighttime visitations from Seti I and of Hor-Ra in earlier years, dictating to her over a period of time, the story of her previous life, whom she would tell the tale to anyone that would listen, put an immense strain on her relationship.
Omm Sety's story of her reincarnation from Hor-Ra of her previous life, took up over 70 pages of cursive hieroglyphic text, which she wrote as and when the information was given to her, and is of sadness and love.
Here is the short version
The daughter of a soldier in the reign of Seti I, and of a woman who sold vegetables at the local market, her name was Bentreshyt, (meaning ‘Harp of Joy”). Unfortunately her mother died when she was very young, aged three. It was too much for her father to raise her alone financially and be the soldier he was meant to be, so put her in the care of a Temple in Abydos.
There from an early age she learnt the ways and was brought up to be a priestess. At the age of 12 she was given the option to go out in the world to find her fortune or stay and become a consecrated virgin and stay dedicating her life as a priestess. She did not feel like she had a choice, as the temple and way of life was all she had ever known, so took her vows.
During the next couple of years she took the role that only a virgin priestess consecrated to Isis could perform ‘Osiris’s passion and resurrection’.
Then one day Seti I, visited the temple, and she caught his eye, they started talking, this led to them becoming secret lovers. When she became pregnant she went to the high priest, she was actually tortured into giving them the name of the father.
The gravity of what they had done, as a consecrated priestess of Isis, the offence against Isis was so bad, that only death would be the most likely penalty at trial. She could not bear to put Seti through the public scandal weakening his reign, so committed suicide.
Eventually it was too much to bear for her new husband and his family and they separated in 1935,
The Flickering Cauldron® Magazine - Omm Sety | 43