I’ve talked quite a lot about Thoth mostly in the podcast, especially episode 7 based on material from my books. I can’t promise not to repeat myself but here I want to return to the subject, and not for the final time, as Thoth is such an important entity, our paths are bound to cross. Thoth is a god of magick, and also, not surprisingly writing, the hieroglyphs being devised as a tool or expression of magick. Any utterance of Thoth was considered a magical spell, the use of the term spell, showing how inextricably linked magick and words are. And indeed there is something unique about the human ability to form the complex flow of phonemes we call speech. Two things there, language and speech, are very special. Thoth is usually depicted with a human body and the head of the sacred ibex, his most popular avatar. He can also be described as an ape or baboon. In the earlier podcasts, i often emphasise an opening rite I call the Abydos arrangement and the sevenfold rite that flows from this, what I call the “sefkhet”. Sefkhet meaning seven, most commonly personified as the goddess Seshat, the female scribe, the one with the seven-rayed headdress or crown. She is the daughter of Thoth and Maat and shares some of their features, holding the same long measuring stick with which she and Thoth keep a tally of space and time.