Calmer Journeys in Cairo: Words, Art & Magic!

Luxor, West bank of the Nile.

Deep beneath the earth, in the Valley of the Kings, the air is thick and musty. I walk silently, amongst turquoise hieroglyphics carved into stone.

Each symbol still seems alive—fragments of stories inscribed thousands of years ago. As I read their pictures and speak with my guides, I learn: to the ancient Egyptians, spelling and writing were sacred acts.

To speak through the written word was to wield the highest form of magic.

No wonder we find the word “spell” in “spelling.”

It struck me as I sketched, in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, why art is sometimes described as a spiritual experience.

When we open our minds and allow curiosity to carry us into the unknown, it touches something deep within us, stirring wells we once thought dry or empty.

Then, it invites us into a flow of emotions, ideas, and sensory awareness that turns barriers into frontiers of time and space. Anaïs Nin captured this idea when she said, “When I don’t write, I feel as if my world is shrinking.”

Surely the artists and scribes who carved the royal tombs at Giza must have felt their worlds expand as they worked. Through their chisels and brushes, they etched literary and visual maps with the goal of guiding the deceased from the slumbering realm of death into the afterlife.

Sitting with my own sketchbook later, I begin to meditate on the magic of words. I play with them, teasing out hidden meanings:

…pain within painter,

scribe within describe, inscribe…

and a word we all are bombarded with daily: subscribe!

How the ancient scribes must have spelled their words with reverence! Every mark carried intention, every line held meaning.

Dear Friends, today, I invite you to do the same—

Choose to wield your words with the precision of a chisel, the depth of charcoal, and the duality of clay’s malleability and strength.

If we create with intention, then our art, too, can be more than just decoration. It might serve as breadcrumbs on our own journeys or for generations after us. To decode, to connect, maybe even to calm.

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Listen to "Desert Spaces" on the Calmer Journeys Podcast.

"The Great Sphinx of Giza," canvas prints are now available in the Art Gallery. 

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