Sesheta was an Awakened mage active circa 2500 BCE. She, along with her husband Djhowtey, is considered one of the founders of the Order of Hermes.
Overview[]
Sesheta and Djhowtney originally hailed from Phoenicia, where they are credited by the Order with the invention of writing. Eventually they relocated to Egypt, where they became powerful advisers to the pharaoh and masters of their own mystic court. They also forged an alliance with the Bubasti and may have had dealings with the Silent Striders and the Followers of Set.
Their exact history is difficult to reconstruct, as the Technocracy has systematically eliminated them from the historical record and their own powerful magic still prevents attempts to scry on them from the present day. According to one account, after Dhjowtey died, Sesheta merged with his remaining essence to become a bi-gender being of tremendous wisdom. This being dictated a sacred text to the Egyptian mages and then either Ascended or vanished; while this text has been lost, it is considered one of the sources of the Corpus Hermeticum.
Afterwards, Sesheta was sometimes conflated with Isis, or she and Djhowtey together were identified with Thoth.
Those inspired by the sacred text came to be known (somewhat inaccurately) as the Cults of Thoth. More directly, Sesheta's followers were the Cult of Seshat. The cult became a religion called Seshetat that spread across western and north-western Egypt. After the arrival of Christianity, the Seshetat dwindled to a mystical order called the Seshati, who eventually joined the Order of Hermes as House Shaea.[1]
Version Differences[]
Dhjowtey and Sesheta were not mentioned in AM: The Order of Hermes (1990) which begins the history of the Order of Hermes with the Cult of Thoth. Thus they are an element of the Order's tradition which is specific to Mage: The Ascension.
MTAs: Order of Hermes Tradition Book (1997) begins its discussion of the Order's history with these two, but does not definitively attribute the Pyramids to them and declares "Whether these archmagi died or Ascended, nobody knows."
The above-given description of Djhowtey's death and Sesheta's Ascension is given in MTAs: Tradition Book: Order of Hermes (2003), which also definitively ascribes the construction of the pyramids to them.
References[]
- MTAs: Order of Hermes Tradition Book, p. 10
- MTAs: Tradition Book: Order of Hermes, p. 17
- ↑ MTAs: Order of Hermes Tradition Book, p. 44