How a Egyptian obsession, a bass player's vision, and a priestess's invitation led me to the top of the world—and into the rest of my life.
Before you can understand why I ended up alone on top of the Great Pyramid at 4 AM in March of 1997, you need to know about Osiris.
Not the academic version—the one that lives in the myths, in the river mud, in the endless rhythm of death and renewal that pulses through Egyptian cosmology like a heartbeat.
Osiris was the first king of Egypt, murdered by his jealous brother Set, dismembered, scattered across the land. His wife Isis—magician, healer, devotee—gathered the pieces and reassembled him through love and sorcery, conceiving their son Horus in an act of tantric resurrection. Osiris descended to rule the underworld, judge of souls, keeper of the threshold between what was and what comes next.
A mural of Osiris' rebirth at the Temple of Abydos
The myth isn't just a story. It's a map: death, dissolution, rebirth. The Nile floods, deposits its fertile silt, recedes. Crops die, seeds return, life begins again. Osiris is the cycle itself—the thing that gets broken apart so it can be made whole in a new form.
I was eight years old when I first encountered him in a library book on Egyptian funerary rites. The images seized me: canopic jars, the weighing of the heart, Anubis guiding souls through the Duat. I wrote reports on temple architecture, memorized the names of gods, traced cartouches on notebook paper. Egypt wasn't a place—it was a frequency, a doorway I couldn't stop staring through.
By the time I hit high school in Arizona in the '70s, that obsession had braided itself into another current: the Grateful Dead, psychedelics, the Superstition Mountains, and the Ganja seal I'd eventually design at CalArts. Desert mystic meets cosmic traveler. Outlaw energy threaded through ancient symbology.
Then, in September 1978, the Dead played three shows at the Giza Sound & Light Theater—at the foot of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, with the final concert aligned to a lunar eclipse. Phil Lesh had pushed for it. He believed in performing at "places of power," ancient sites that still hummed with intention. The whole trip felt like a ritual disguised as a rock show.
The Dead performing in 1978 as the Gizeh Sound and Light Theater
Phil's connection to Egypt ran deeper than the performances. On the back of his legendary Alembic bass—"Mission Control," also known as "Osiris"—was an intricate mother-of-pearl inlay of the god himself. Years later, in his memoir Searching for the Sound, Phil would write that he'd stumbled upon "the astronomical and spiritual meaning behind the myth of Osiris" and come to believe the Dead's concerts had somehow "played a role in the return of the gods."
Osiris on the bass. Osiris in the myth. Osiris as the thing that gets dismembered and comes back different.
Phil Lesh's bass with Osirus inlaid on the back of the headstock
I didn't know it yet, but that pattern was already weaving itself through my life.
The Briefing
Fast-forward to early 1996. Phoenix. I was in my mid-thirties, freshly out of a multi-year relationship, unmoored. I'd never been to Europe or Egypt, but I knew I needed to go—needed to cut myself loose for long enough to figure out what came next.
I started planning: six months, no fixed itinerary, just a general arc that would take me through Egypt and around the Mediterranean, tracing the threads of civilizations that had all drunk from the Nile's source.
Then a friend called. "There's this woman leading a two-week Egypt tour. She's doing a presentation tonight at Linda Londen's house in North Phoenix. You should come."
Linda's house was a sprawling mansion, all marble and silk and low lighting—the kind of space that made you feel like you'd wandered into someone's private museum. The living room was packed with an array of psychics, Egyptologists, and people who looked like they'd read The Egyptian Book of the Dead as a source of insight and meaning.
And then Nicki Scully walked in.
She wasn't dressed like a tour guide. She was dressed like a priestess—flowing robes, bangles up both arms, beads that clinked softly when she moved. Her presence filled the room before she said a word.
She didn't pitch the trip like a vacation. She called it a Mystery School. Two weeks on the Nile, moving through temples and tombs, but the real journey was internal—guided meditations, shamanic pathworkings, ceremonies at dawn and midnight in places most tourists would never access. She talked about the neteru—the Egyptian gods—not as artifacts but as living archetypal currents you could meet, work with, be transformed by.
"This isn't sightseeing," she said. "This is initiation."
I was in before she finished talking.
Nicki's Path
Nicki Scully hadn't always been a priestess.
She'd grown up in Beverly Hills in a secular Jewish family, spent the early '60s diving headfirst into the psychedelic vanguard, and eventually landed in the Grateful Dead family as the partner of their manager, Rock Scully. She was there for the wild years—concerts as temples, music as prayer, community as ceremony.
In September 1978, she went to Egypt with the Dead for those three legendary shows at Giza. On her first morning there, she climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid and had an epiphany: her life's purpose was to bring forward the hidden shamanic arts of Egypt.
She spent the next decade in study—visionary work with the neteru, training with healers, cultivating relationships with deities most people only knew from museum placards. She was ordained as a priestess of Hathor by Lady Olivia Robertson, co-founder of the Fellowship of Isis, and became a lineage holder in the Hermetic tradition of Thoth.
By the time I met her in 1996, she'd been leading Shamanic Journeys tours to Egypt for over a decade, guiding groups through the same temples and tombs where she'd first heard the call.
Nicki & Rock Scully - 1977, Nicki's Book, and a recent photo
Her path: Dead family → pyramid epiphany → priestess → guide.
Mine, it turned out, was about to intersect with hers in ways I couldn't have predicted.
Arrival
Cairo, Egypt. 9:30 PM. March 22, 1997.
After months of preparation, last-minute deadlines, airline mix-ups, and general trip anxiety, landing in Cairo felt like crossing a finish line. I'd carved out six months of open road travel and freedom. The Nicki tour was the opening act—two weeks with the Mystery School crew—and then I'd continue solo, wherever the road pulled me.
I was met at the airport by Hatem, who navigated me through customs and baggage claim with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times. On the drive to the Mena House, he pointed out buildings, mosques, the sprawl of the city at night.
Then, through the windshield: I have my first glimpse of the pyramids.
Floodlit. Massive. Impossible.
My first thought was absurdly simple: They look like tall ships. Ships of time, anchored in infinite sand, still sailing.
The Mena House—an old sultan's palace converted into a hotel—sits literally at the edge of the Giza plateau. I checked in, met my randomly assigned roommate Wolf (a friendly German hippie with long grey hair who laughed to himself every five minutes), opened the balcony door, and stared.
The Great Pyramid, illuminated by spotlights, filled the frame. I'd spent my whole childhood reading about this place. Now I was here, standing in front of it, about to step inside it, maybe even climb it if I could pull it off.
The Mystery School
The next two weeks moved like a fever dream: the Cairo Museum's overwhelming candy store of antiquities, an overnight train ride south to Aswan, a slow cruise up the Nile, temples at Philae, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Dendara, Abydos. Each site had its own current, its own initiatory charge.
Nicki led us through guided journeys—visualizations where we'd meet the neteru in inner temples, offer up fears and old identities, receive teachings. Hathor at Dendara, goddess of joy and sacred marriage. Sekhmet at Karnak, the lioness who devours what no longer serves. Anubis, weighing the heart. Osiris, lord of death and renewal.
At Kom Ombo, we stood at the temple of Sobek—the crocodile god, feared and revered, a living emblem of the Nile’s power. Most pilgrims were never allowed into the inner sanctuary, so the temple offered a workaround carved right into the outer wall: a recessed “listening niche” marked with eyes and ears in stone. You can see them here—watchful, attentive—built so ordinary people could press close, speak their prayers, and be “heard” at the nearest point non-priests were permitted to reach.
At Karnak, I knelt alone in a darkened chapel with a statue of Sekhmet and felt something crack open inside me—grief, rage, love, all of it pouring out at once.
The whole trip had that quality: every moment fraught with meaning. Conversations at dinner felt like prophecy. Random encounters turned into synchronicities. The temples weren't ruins—they were live circuitry, still transmitting.
And then, on April 2nd, came the event we'd all been waiting for.
Midnight at the Great Pyramid
Nicki had arranged something almost unheard of: private access to the Great Pyramid from midnight to 6 AM.
At 11:45 PM, we gathered in the lobby of the Mena House. The vibe was pilgrimage-solemn, like the eve of a holiday. We walked in silence across the dark plateau, the pyramid looming ahead, massive and patient. The entrance to the Great Pyramid looked like a portal to another universe.
Inside, we descended first—down the narrow passage to the Subterranean chamber, the unfinished room at the pyramid's base. The walls were raw limestone, the ceiling perfectly flat. We sat in a circle in the dark and toned—voices layering, harmonizing, the sound swelling until it felt like the stone itself was singing.
It reminded me of a flock of disembodied spirits swirling together in a cosmic choir.
Nicki in the Grand Gallery, climbing up, the Kings Chamber
One by one, Nicki sent us up to the King's Chamber. I volunteered to go last—I wanted to stay in the basement as long as possible. It had the feeling of a cave, but lighter somehow, if that makes sense. Sacred and grounded at once.
When I finally climbed to the King's Chamber, it was candlelit, the group already there. Nicki invited me to lie down in the granite sarcophagus. I did. The group gathered around and toned—one long, resonant breath that reverberated through the stone, through my bones, through everything.
When I stood, Nicki had us form a circle. She asked each of us to state our name and who we were—or who we wanted to become.
Then she taught us a final gesture: raising our intentions and sending them to the four directions, then reversing—hands open, asking the universe to respond.
She slipped a small silver scarab pendant into each of our hands. A gift. A marker.
On a lighter note: I'd been heroically suppressing gas all evening. Just as we finished the ceremony, standing close in that sacred circle, I lost the battle.
BRAAP! Everyone exploded into laughter. Nicki grinned and said, "End of ceremony." By then it was nearly 4 AM.
The Climb
As the group filed out, I lingered. I did not want this moment to end. I caught Nicki by the entrance.
"Would you mind if I stayed out here until dawn?" I asked. "Maybe… climb it?"
She looked at me, smiled. "Try not to get caught."
I started up the western face, switchbacking my way up the massive limestone blocks. Each one was waist-high—more like climbing a staircase for giants than scaling a monument. Behind me, I heard Egyptian guards shouting, but I didn't stop. I angled toward a corner where the climb got easier and kept going.
The whole ascent felt like a dream. Moonlight spilled across the plateau, illuminating the stone in soft silver. The air was cool and still. Cairo rumbled faintly in the distance. Islamic prayers echoed from minarets across Giza, woven into the night like an ancient soundtrack. I had no real way to track my progress except to glance over at the Pyramid of Khafre beside me, using its ridgeline as a kind of altimeter.
Thirty minutes later, I reached the summit. I had just climbed the Great Pyramid. The thought hit me in waves—disbelief, exhilaration, something close to vertigo that had nothing to do with height. I stood at the center of the capstone platform and turned slowly, taking in all four directions. Cairo to the east, a sprawl of lights and minarets. To the west, the desert stretched into infinite darkness, vast and unknowable. The Sphinx crouched below, smaller than I'd ever imagined. The other pyramids rose like sleeping gods.
I was absorbed in the moment, breathing it in, listening to the prayer calls drifting up from the city, when I realized: it was getting cold. A small breeze had picked up. I checked my watch—sunrise was still an hour away.
I found a small niche near the corner of the capstone, just big enough to curl into and get out of the wind. As I settled in, I noticed something I hadn't seen in the rush to the top: graffiti carved into the stone.
Names. Dates. Inscriptions in French, English, Arabic, and languages I couldn't identify. Some were recent—crude initials scratched with pocket knives. Others were deeply etched, worn smooth by wind and time, going back hundreds of years. 1842. 1721. Even older. 
The Prussian expedition in 1842 and my pre-sunrise photo in 1997
It was like stumbling onto a guest book for eternity—tourist graffiti for the ages. Dukes and sultans, slaves and soldiers, explorers and outcasts, all of them compelled to leave a mark, to say I was here. The same impulse that drove ancient Egyptians to carve their names into temple walls, the same drive that makes us tag subway cars and bathroom stalls. A lineage of presence stretching back through centuries, all converging on this one improbable platform in the sky.
I lay down on the ancient limestone, pulled my jacket tighter, and closed my eyes for a moment. Twenty minutes later, I opened them to find a pair of feet standing over me. I looked up. A young Japanese man, maybe twenty-one, stared down at me with the wide-eyed expression of someone who'd just found another human being on top of the world.
"You climb too?" he said in broken English.
I sat up, grinning. "Yeah. You?"
"Yes. Alone."
His name was Doe. He'd been traveling solo through Egypt for three weeks. We talked in fragments—his English limited, my Japanese nonexistent—but the conversation didn't need much language. We were both there for the same reason: to witness the sunrise from a place most people would never stand.
As the sidereal light show began, we fell quiet. The sky shifted from black to deep blue to violet. The first hint of orange bled along the horizon. We savored every graduation of light, every incremental change in color and contrast.
And then the sun broke the horizon.
The pyramid's shadow—our shadow—stretched out across the desert to the west, a perfect geometric projection that went on and on, tapering into infinity. The image seared itself into my mind, sharp and indelible: the apex of human ambition casting its line across the earth, a sundial marking not just time, but presence.
Doe and I traded cameras and took each other's portraits. Two strangers on top of the world, holding the moment together.
The Descent
Eventually, we had to go down.
From the top, I could see one guard circling the base. By the time we got close to the ground, there were several—some in Tourist Police uniforms, others in dirty galabeyas.
They surrounded us, shouting in Arabic, pointing at the pyramid, at us, and a clearly marked sign that stated, ‘No Climbing’. They surrounded us, grabbing at our arms.
I greeted them warmly. "I'm going to my hotel, let me buy you all breakfast " I said, gesturing toward the Mena House. "I love Egypt. The people, the history!" I kept walking, beaming and embracing them. They hesitated, confused by the lack of fear, the refusal to play the fear game.
One uniformed guard grabbed my arm harder. I gently pulled free and kept walking, still talking, still smiling, still inviting them to breakfast.
"Mena House! Breakfast! All of you!"
One by one, they gave up. The backsheesh wasn't coming. I wasn't going to panic, wasn't going to pay. The last guard threw up his hands in disgust and walked away.
I still invited Doe to breakfast, but he declined and said he had to get going. So he and I shook hands, said goodbye, and went our separate ways.
I walked back to the Mena House alone, the sun now fully risen, and sat in the outdoor courtyard café with a direct view of the pyramid.
I called my brother Skip in Seattle. It was 9 PM the night before there. He was stunned to hear my voice. The connection was very faint and crackly.
"I just climbed the Great Pyramid," I told him. "I watched the sunrise from the top."
What I didn't say—what I didn't fully understand yet—was that the climb wasn't just a stunt. It was a threshold. A way of saying yes to something I couldn't yet name.
The Signal Continues
That trip to Egypt wasn't the end of my journey—it was just the beginning.
From Cairo, I traveled to the Red Sea, then looped around the entire Mediterranean: Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, and France. Every culture I touched had roots in the Nile, echoes of the same mysteries Nicki had been teaching.
The Ganja—born in the Superstition Mountains, carried into CalArts, smuggled onto blotter, worn by Phil Lesh on stage—had always been about one thing: wake up, pay attention, this moment is the mystery school.
Standing on top of the Great Pyramid at dawn, I understood it in my bones. Osiris dies. Osiris is reassembled. Osiris rises in a new form.
Phil played at places of power because he believed music could call the gods back. Nicki climbed the pyramid in 1978 and realized her purpose. I climbed it in 1997 and stepped into the next version of my life.
The Ganja was always a compass for people moving through the world awake, curious, and a little bit outlaw. Egypt didn't create that—it confirmed it. The signal was already there. I just had to follow it all the way to the top.
Live the moment. Share the vision.
When you wear the Ganja, you're picking up the thread of a story that runs from human canyons of the mind to Egyptian temples or wherever you're standing right now, awake, dancing and breathing.
The journey's still unfolding.
