Home > Author > Normandi Ellis
1 " Mine is a heart of carnelian, crimson as murder on a holy day. "
― Normandi Ellis , Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
2 " Who you are is limited only by who you think you are. "
3 " My body is but wax and wick for flame. When the candle burns out, the light shines elsewhere. "
4 " Not a perfect soul, I am perfecting. Not a human being, I am a human becoming. "
5 " Name yourself in your heart and know who you are. "
6 " In the beat of a heart, the suck of a breath, you are the universe. "
7 " In my heart are the deeds my body has done and my heart has been weighed in the balance. "
8 " I return to the rhythm of water, to the dark song I was in my mother’s belly. "
9 " May I rise like bread every day. "
10 " In every blade of grass rises the strength of the sun. "
11 " I molded my body in clay on the potter’s wheel. I carved my own heart out of carnelian and gave to my family my red, red love. "
12 " Give me iron words forged in fire that I may speak the language of earth. "
13 " Change is a difficult task, a dying, a dreaming, an awakening. "
14 " I flew straight out of heaven, a mad bird full of secrets. I came into being as I came into being. I grew as I grew. I changed as I change. My mind is fire, my soul fire. The cobra wakes and spits fire in my eyes. I rise through ochre smoke into black air enclosed in a shower of stars. I am what I have made. I am the seed of every god, beautiful as evening, hard as light. I am the last four days of yesterday, four screams from the edges of earth—beauty, terror, truth, madness—the phoenix on his pyre. "
15 " I remember the names of my ancestors. I speak the names of those I love. I speak their names and they live again. May I be so well-loved and remembered. In truth, may the gods hear my name. May I do work with my hands worth remembering. "
16 " I am counted as one among stars. I am sworn to life. I am bound to death. "
17 " The past and future dreams us, lie on our bodies like skin that we might pass the days with grace. To us were given all the ways and the obligation to travel. To us were opened all the roads of heaven, all the tunnels in earth and the channels of sea. Among the dead and the living, by these same words have we all travelled. Together we walk a single path into the heart of the infinite. "
