Ancient Magic and Egyptian Myths | Mystical Bedtime Story | The Falls Series

I want to say a huge thanks to subscribers, especially as we've been adding some new subscribers this

“mental health month. You get the best of nine falls, your support helps the show a huge amount”

and it means a huge amount. The nature around me feels so alive at the moment. The trees are blossoming, the birds are chattering away and the smells of the spring bloom are intoxicating. I don't know about you but winter fell long and heavy this year, a real time to hibernate. I don't mind though, it's made this spring all the more exciting, especially the early morning light, great for a dog walk without him. In tonight's story I tell you of the time behetian

Alistair returned to the falls campfire after a long winter away. We caught up on their travels

but as the night settled in the conversation drifted somewhere older, something that's been here far longer than any of us. This behetie began to speak of Hecca, the quiet magic said to move through everything. The air itself started to change and before long, night falls on magic found its way back to Earth. Before we begin, here's the quick ad break that keeps this free content possible. To go add free, subscribe, via the link in the show notes.

You know, there are a lot of different places here in night falls but during the day I still find

“myself wanting to learn a little more about the world. That's what led me to everything everywhere daily.”

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learn something new every single day with everything everywhere daily, find out an apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, now back to night falls. When dusk had drifted gently by, another night descended upon night falls. As they find their way back to their nests, the birds hummed their evening song. The croquette soaked in the pine forests set the temple for them, and occasionally baritone owls

with twit two from the highest branches of the canopy, the crow did around the clearing. The campfire crackled, and my friends and I were already settled in beside it, would be Hity and Alistair made their way into the clearing. The weather had continued to improve, and that night, in dry air that suggested summer might be just around the corner, the smell of the wood smoke was stronger than usual.

It abbed into my clothes, my hair, and even the pages of the book that lay open on my lap. Be Hity, Devani smiled warmly at the women who had kept Alistair so distracted, he had scarcely visited us in months. How have you been, Wanda? It wasn't known to be a hugger, through her arms around the Egyptian sorceress.

Well, be Hity smile. We batted down the hatches for winter, but it certainly seems like spring has sprung. Indeed it has, Lira said brightly, soon enough I'll have to send you all out to harvest again. I suppressed a groan at the idea.

Unfortunately, regardless of what she chose to call herself, she needed the fresh roots

“flowers and herbs, the bloomed in springtime, to be able to make the potions we all benefited from.”

And she wasn't up to gathering them herself. Lira grew far too tired too quickly, that she simply couldn't dedicate herself to harvesting the wares she would need to work year round. Well, be happy to help. Alistair agreed, before he settled beside me on a wooden stool that looked too small for a man of his stature.

He held out to hand to shake, but I pulled him in for a hug.

It had been such a long time since we had seen Behity and Alistair that the pair would have forgiven me for accusing them of hibernation. The only person I hadn't managed to catch up with that spring, was a nightfall's magic, and he wasn't a person at all. The magic could be even more elusive than usual, and I had a good reason to suspect that he had spent most of winter, just past the ravine in the next clearing down with Alistair and Behity.

Behity especially shared a special connection with the ancient primordial magic

that usually lingered between the trees and nightfalls, and occasionally manifested in a long robe and a pair of obnoxiously white trainers. It made sense that the pair acted like mother and son when she had, in fact, had a hand in raising him. She herself hailed from ancient Egypt. In the town where I grew up in Scotland, it was considered rather rude to comment on the lady's age, but in nightfalls, where half of the ladies were pushing 2,000 years old,

it was considered a cardinal offense. None of them like to be reminded of how long they had walked the earth. As my friends and I shared dinner around the campfire that night, we settled

“into easy conversation. Truly, what was a few thousand years between friends?”

The world might have changed shape in the last several millennia, but people had remained much the same, and Behity and Alistair were some of the best I knew. Have you seen the magic recently, Devani asked Alistair, when we were clearing the dinner plates away? Not for a while, he grimaced, eyeing Behity, who looked perhaps a little deflated by the reminder. Not for months, she sighed, and I realized that perhaps for her, the separation ran a little

deeper than it did for the rest of us. He can be like this, though. He has been since I've known him. If the magic needs time to work through its doors, or once a moment alone, he'll take it. Can't fall down. Alistair sighed. You can't. Behity gave a tight lip agreement, and maybe it was because they were so distracted by the magic's absence that they didn't notice the shift in the air. I felt it. A change, a charge out on the edges of the pine forest, and I knew that the magic

“of night falls was listening, even if my friends did not. Where could he have gone?”

Lira asked, determined to get to the root of the issue, and with no idea that we had already managed to get its attention? Not sure, usually he goes back to Egypt, where we grew up. In the past, he has sought an audience with Heca, but I've told him time and time again that Heca cannot be summoned to speak to. Heca just is. Alistair nodded, as though everything Behity said made perfect sense. But the look of confusion on wonders, of all faces, was enough to warrant my next question.

Behity took a breath. The question isn't so much who is Heca, but what is Heca?

“It's certainly not of this earth, but it is very much present all over our earth,”

and has been since the dawn of time. My head cocked to the side of its own volition, and Behity looked to Alistair for help explaining. Well, Alistair began, looking at her with uncharacteristic uncertainty. Heca is more of a concept than a deity, but all of the Egyptian deity haven't. It actually predates the Egyptian gods. They believe that in the beginning there was only darkness, and Heca itself.

So Heca isn't just a concept, Devani asked. No. Alistair's eyes drifted skyward as he searched

“for an answer. It's a physical present. It is divine, but it's usually thought of as”

Sheepless, shifting, and fluid. Alistair had fielded the question expertly, and I realized that I knew at least one other magical force that was best described as Sheepless and ever-shifting. Heca is pure, distilled magic, Behity added, and it translate to English as such. Heca means magic, Lyra confirmed over the brim of her tea cup. Quite right, the Egyptian sorceress nodded, but it has another meaning too, an old one,

in the first transcriptions. Heca was translated as "the activation of the soul."

“A hush swabbed through the clearing as her words landed.”

So Heca was a god. Lyra clattered through it with her question. Not in the way you're imagining, Behity corrected her, and how would you know Lyra was suspicious as ever? Well, I was there. Behity shrugged, and just like that, we were all reminded of the fact that Behity, who looked like she hadn't yet seen her fourth decade on earth, was actually thousands of years wiser than us. Perhaps it was because of her wisdom that Behity sought to spend

so much time on her own. Knowledge has always had a way of forcing people to look in words,

and with thousands of years of thoughts knocking around in her mind, maybe Behity needed a little more time than the rest of us to sort through her feelings. She was the oldest of us all, but Alistair was at least stanchant enough that he could relate to her. Perhaps that was why the pair had chosen to cozy up together for the long winter months. Something ancient, rippled through the undergrowth out in the pine forest, and I felt the air thickening as the magic of night falls

came into being for the first time in months. As if it hadn't been on hiatus for multiple months,

when the leaves settled back on the ground, and the wind that his transformation kicked up had settled, night falls magic, ambled over to the campfire. He plopped on ceremoniously into the seat beside Devani, and she tried not to look at him. Devani wasn't the only one trying not to make the kind of fuss that might scare the magic off. In fact, we all tried to downplay the magic's return, with the exception of Lyra, who pinned him with a look, and asked, "What sort of time do

you call this?" The magic shrugged beneath the shadow cast by the hood of his cloak, I could just

he'd missed us. He was glad to know we had missed him too. Hekka, a heatie attempted to go on,

“wasn't worshipped in the same way, Ra, or her Cyrus were, but it was the cosmic force that made”

the gods divine acts of power possible. Back then, we believed that, sorry, Devani interrupted her, "You've been gone for months, and you still haven't found any time to buy a pair of shoes that match your robe." I like these ones. They support my arches. The magic sounded defensive. "Can you not magic, weak arches away?" she prodded him. "I'm not going to change my arches, just because you don't like my shoes."

The magic rounded on her. But you're just taking a shape first, because it's easier for us to

understand and interact with you this way. Devani motioned at the magic's physical form. You're choosing to have weak arches every time you manifest in front of us. It's absolutely senseless. I'm choosing feet that fit these shoes well, because they're cool.

“The magic turned back toward the campfire sharply. You wouldn't understand?”

The magic nodded toward Devani's tattered walking boots. Devani was closer to the magic than Lyra, Wanda, or I. The parents stood one another. They were both playful in nature, and usually fought like siblings. Besides, these are in mint condition. The magic clicked his heels together. "That's parts of the problem," Devani muttered. "I-ing the robe that looked as though

it had been bartered for, and paid for, with copper pieces in ancient Egypt."

“It didn't match the shoes that looked as though they had been purchased at a modern shopping”

center. Anyway, B.H.T. tried, but Devani wasn't yet finished. All I'm saying is that HECKA, who sounds as boundless as we all know you can be, wasn't wearing this season's latest trainers when he manifested physically. He was actually... lies. He put me onto them. The magic drold said they were the perfect

blend of style and durability. Something like a cackle, cracked out of Devani, and for the first

time and months, I heard the magic laugh too. A felt his joy in the air, in the way the oxygen atoms in night falls rearranged themselves. In ancient Egypt, people believed that all divine power flowed through and from HECKA, B.H.T. lifted her voice over the chaos. The gods themselves used it, so did ordinary people, and the clergy. B.H.T. had a hard time getting the crowd to settle, but once she began to explain the intricacies of HECKA, of sole activation itself,

I could have heard a pin drop, or one of the pine needles out in the forest falling from its branches, and settling in the undergrowth. Before creation, HECKA travelled with Rha, the Sun God. The oldest texts say that HECKA existed even before duality. That is, before there was a distinction between light and dark, self and other, sleep and wake. In ancient Egypt, that primordial state was known as none, and it was beyond peaceful. During none, the cosmos was dark, infinite,

and full of endless, unrealized potential. HECKA was present then, before the earliest gods,

HECKA existed alone for what would seem like an eternity to you and I,

“for that ancient magic though, I wonder if it felt like the endless emptiness lasted more than a night.”

A cold nightfall's magic waving his hand at the heavens out of the corner of my eye, and in an instant, a darkness so heavy that it almost smothered the campfire's flames settled over the falls. The dark snuffed out the familiar sound of the crackling campfire flames, and the bird song that was ever present out in the forest felt quiet. The magic bent the world to its will, until there we were, moored up in the same vast, endless nothingness that HECKA would have known at the dawn of time.

“In that silence, that stillness, that total darkness, I felt my senses reaching out.”

I didn't need to see or hear divani to feel her presence beside me, as we drifted through the total calm. I don't know how long the magic let us live in that silence. It could have been arrows, or weeks, or years, before a behethe's voice pierced the quiet like an arrow. The Egyptians believed that HECKA flowed through everyone, from birth, magic wasn't reserved for deity, so for priests. It was a universal gift that all could feel

flowing through them. HECKA has in me, in you, in the earth beneath our feet, and the skies above,

behethe hum. It is always present, she went on, but it takes time to learn to access that power,

to learn to activate the soul. Do I have it? Laira asked. We all have it, behethe patiently reiterated. But accessing it doesn't come from force or effort. You cannot bend HECKA to do your will. You are the one who must yield. HECKA reshapes the people that wield it. It banks them stronger and karma, and teaches them to be present in every moment. The magic of HECKA can only be channeled

when you're relaxed, when you're receptive, and when you finally find your way into alignment,

in the mind, body, and being. That counts me out, then. Laira resigned herself. My mind and body haven't gotten on for decades. I wish I could see her the sound of Devani's laughter drifting out of that darkness into my memory forever. HECKA flows through all living things, behethe insisted. Of all of us, you are the best at working with nature, and extracting the magic

“from the land, Laira. Perhaps you aren't as disconnected from HECKA's you think?”

Why didn't reply? But I thought I heard her stool creak, as she settled back onto it. Magic is something you tune into, behethe murmured, as she did just that. Not something to be forced or perform. Gradually, the campfire began to like high into the sky once more, and when it was light enough, I noticed behethe. Eyes fixed on the flames, whispering words in a language,

she would never let herself forget. She didn't stop until the fire that blazed in the heart

of night falls, burned deep purple, and flickered in to go. HECKA is the thing that connects us all.

Where did you learn this? One that asked, keen to get to the source of the knowledge, so that she

“might digest it herself. It's all in the books of HECKA, behethe smiled, the ancient texts are quite”

comprehensive. Not all of it, the magic spoke up, but avoided making eye contact with any of us. Realisation seemed to dawn on behethe, and something I couldn't make sense of past between her and Alistair. And how would you know that? Alistair asked gently, and the magic dug the toe of its trainer into the ground. Because he's HECKA, Lyra jumped to conclusions, and jumped to her feet. You haven't been listening, wonder grown. He can't be HECKA, because HECKA isn't a

“physical being. I'm not normally a physical being, the magic mumbled, and all six pairs of eyes”

turned toward him. Are you HECKA, behethe sounded uncertain? On a part of it, like an arm or a leg, the vanny rationalised. More like a finger, or a toe, nightfall's magic said flatly.

If you knew, why did you never say, behethe breathed? I spent years trying to work out where your magic

came from. Romantly the smallest part of it, the magic hummed. It summoned big of the me that my partner never seemed worth mentioning. Well, even if it took 2,000 years, I'm still grateful for

“you telling me. behethe always knew exactly what to say. What most people never realise is that channeling”

HECKA relies on true calm. The kind you can only find at the bottom of a deep breath in. The magic hummed, or at the end of a long, lazy, sigh of relief. That night, the magic showed us

parts of ourselves that we might never have known otherwise. Pretty then, it would say,

does you exhale feel the way the magic unravels at your heart center? In hell, and as you exhale, let your power and wine, there's no need to push it in. There's no need to pull at it. It is you, and you are it pure power and potential moving through life together with every gentle breath in. And for the longest time, I thought that there were three things that made a person up, and indeed, as I breathed in and out that night, I felt my mind, body, and being

satellite to alignment. But I hadn't expected to feel a fourth element, twinning with my mind, sinking into my soul, and settling into my muscles. As I tuned into the hecker at my heart's center, they found something shift within me. It didn't feel different or new. It was as though I was finally letting the light shine on a part of me that had gone long ignored. With every breath, the feeling of strength, of stillness,

of total calm, floed into my body, and with every moment that passed, a sank deeper into the

inner power, I suppose I'd always possessed, but it never quite known how to access.

for what felt like hours. Dipping in and out of a language, I would never be able to understand.

“When I could no longer shake the exhaustion from my shoulders, I pulled myself up onto my feet,”

and made the short walk back to nightfall's beat.

The vanity had given up trying to make sense of be heaty, alicester, and the magic's conversation

hours prior was already deep in our dreams. Stretched out on the soft sand.

“Nightfall's lake lapt softly beyond her feet, and my dog Otto had made himself comfortable in”

between curling around her toes, his tail swatting at the sand, even as he slabbed.

The vanity murmured something soft as I curled around her that night, and I couldn't help but breathed the smell of her hair in, and out, and out, until I could no longer keep myself awake.

“That night, sleep found me easily, and my dreams were filled with all the endless”

peace of that time before time, when there had been nothing but hecka, and there was only the deepening darkness to keep him company. We'll leave our story there for tonight. I hope you enjoyed that, and this leap finds you easily. Sweet dreams. [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]