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Ancient
Light of the
World by
Gerald
Massey
A Work of
Reclamation and Restitution in Twelve Books
It mav have been a Million years ago
The Light was kindled in the
Withi which the illumined Scrolls are all aglow,
That
This was the secret of that subtle smile
Inscrutable upon the Sphinx's face,
Now told from sea to sea, from isle to isle ;
The revelation of the Old Dark Race ;
Theirs was the wisdom of the Bee and Bird,
Ant, Tortoise, Beaver, working human-wise ;
The ancient darkness spake with
Hers was the primal message of the skies:
The Heavens are telling nightly of her glory,
And for all time Earth echoes her great story.
Ancient
PREFATORY
I have
written other books, but this I look on as the exceptional labour which has
made my life worth
living.
Comparatively speaking, " A Book of the Beginnings" (
Natural
Genesis" (
the light of
day. The earlier books were met in
Nevertheless,
four thousand volumes have got into circulation somewhere or other up and down
tlte
reading
world, where they are slowly working in their unacknowledged way. Probably the
present book
will be
appraised at home in proportion as it comes back piecemeal from abroad, from
To all dear
lovers of the truth the writer now commends the verifiable truths that wait for
recognition in
these pages.
Truth is
all-potent with its silent power
If only whispered,
never heard aloud,
But working
secretly, almost unseen,
Save in some
excommunicated Book;
'Tis as the
lightning with its errand done
Before you
hear the thunder.
For myself,
it is enough to know that in despite of many hindrances from straitened
circumstances,
chronic
ailments, and the deepening shadows of encroaching age, my book is printed, and
the subject-
matter that I
cared for most is now entrusted safely to the keeping of John Gutenberg, on
this my nineand-
seventieth
birthday.
Page 2
Ancient
CONTENTS VOL.
I and 2 Page
Number
Size
in K
Pages
(Approx.)
ANCIENT
Introduction
PREFATORY Roman 23 4
BOOK 1
SIGN-LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY AS PRIMITIVE
MODES OF
REPRESENTATION 1 172 39
Book 2
TOTEMISM, TATTOO AND FETISHISM AS FORMS OF
SIGN-LANGUAGE
46 579 60
BOOK 3
ELEMENTAL AND ANCESTRAL SPIRITS, OR THE GODS
AND THE
GLORIFIED 120 256 53
BOOK 4
EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD AND THE MYSTERIES
OF AMENTA 186
473 51
BOOK 5
THE
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF ASTRONOMICAL
MYTHOLOGY
868 88 -The
Primitive African
- Egyptian
Wisdom 269
-The Drowning
of the Dragon 287
BOOK 6
THE
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF ASTRONOMICAL
MYTHOLOGY
(PART II) 321
472 95
-Horus of the
Double Horizon 332
-The Making
of Amenta 344
-The Irish
Amenta 366
-The Mount of
Glory 376
BOOK 7
EGYPTIAN WISDOM AND THE HEBREW GENESIS 398 996 88
BOOK 8 THE
EGYPTIAN WISDOM IN OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS 470
BOOK 9 THE
YEAR 544-627
294
BOOK 10 THE
EXODUS FROM
AMENTA
628-688 222
BOOK 11
EGYPTIAN WISDOM IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN THE
DIVINE
689-725 135
Page 3
Ancient
Book 12 THE
JESUS-LEGEND TRACED IN
THOUSAND
YEARS 726-804 285
APPENDIX 905
Page 4
Ancient
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS - Volume -1-
ANCIENT
Book
No.
Page
No.:
1 APT, THE
FIRST GREAT MOTHER 124
1 THE
MUMMY-BABE 219
3
ILLUSTRATION FROM A THEBAN TOMB 289
4
HIPPOPOTAMUS AND HAUNCH 311
5 SHU THE
KNEELER 315
6 HORUS
STRANGLING SERPENTS 317
7 HORUS IN
PISCES 343
8 HORUS THE
SHOOT OF THE PAPYRUS 450
9 ASSYRIAN
CYLINDER 453
10 THE
FLAMING SWORD WHICH GUARDED THE TREE 455
11 HORUS
BRUISING THE SERPENT'S HEAD . 462
Page 5
Ancient
VOLUME 1
BOOK 1 of 12
SIGN-LANGUAGE
AND MYTHOLOGY AS PRIMITIVE MODES OF REPRESENTATION
THE other day
a lad from
standing with
his mother looking at the rolling breakers tossing and tumbling in upon the
sands, when he
was heard to
exclaim, "Oh, mother, who is it chucking them heaps o" water about
?" This expression
showed the
boy's ability to think of the power that was " doing it" in the human
likeness. But, then,
ignorant as
he might be, he was more or less the heir to human faculty as it is manifested
in all its
triumphs over
external nature at the present time. Now, it has been and still is a prevalent
and practically
universal
assumption that the same mental standpoint might have been occupied by
Primitive Man, and
a. like
question asked in presence of the same or similar phenomena of physical nature.
Nothing is more
common or
more unquestioned than the inference that Primitive Man would or could have
asked," Who is
doing it
?" and that the Who could have been personified in the human likeness.
Indeed, it has become
an axiom with
modern metaphysicians and a postulate of the Anthropologists that, from the
beginning,
man imposed
his own human image upon external nature; that he personified its elemental
energies and
fierce
physical forces after his own likeness; also that this was in accordance with
the fundamental
character and
constitution of the human mind. To adduce a few examples taken almost at
random: David
Hume declares
that " there is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings
like
themselves".
In support of which he instances the seeing of human faces in the moon. Reid on
the Active
Powers (4th
Essay) says our first thoughts are that "the objects in which we perceive
motion have
understanding
and power as we have". Francis Bacon had long before remarked that we
human beings
"set
stamps and seals of our own images upon God's creatures and works". (Exp.
History) Herbert
Spencer
argued that human personality applied to the powers of nature was the primary
mode of
representation,
and that the identification of this with some natural force or object is due to
identity of
name. (Data
of Sociology, chapter xxiv, 184.) "In early philosophy throughout the
world", says Mr. Tylor,
"the
[Page2} sun and moon are alive and as it were human in their nature".
Professor Max Müeller, who
taught that
Mythology was a disease of language, and that the Myths have been made out of
words
which had
lost their senses, asserts that "the whole animal world has been conceived
as a copy of our
own. And not
only the animal world, but the whole of nature was liable to be conceived and
named by an
assimilation
to human nature". (Science of Thought, page 503.) And "such was the
propensity in the
earliest men
of whom we have any authentic record to see personal agency in
everything", that it could
not be
otherwise, for "there was really no way of conceiving or naming anything
objective except after the
similitude of
the subjective, or of ourselves". (Science of Thought, page 495.)
Illustrations of this modern
position
might be indefinitely multiplied. The assumption has been supported by a
consensus of
assertion,
and here, as elsewhere, the present writer is compelled to doubt, deny, and
disprove the
popular
postulate of the accepted orthodox authorities.
That, said
the lion, is your version of the story: let us be the sculptor's , and for one
lion under the feet of
a man you
shall see a dozen men beneath the pad of one lion.
"Myth-making
Man" did not create the Gods in his own image. The primary divinities of
Sut, Sebek,
and Shu, three of the earliest, were represented in the likeness of the
Hippopotamus, the
Crocodile,
and the Lion; whilst Hapi was imaged as an Ape, Anup - as a Jackal, Ptah as a
Beetle, Taht as
an Ibis, Seb
as a Goose. So was it with the Goddesses. They are the likenesses of powers
that were
Page 6
Ancient
super-human,
not human. Hence Apt was imaged as a Water-cow, Hekat as a Frog, Tefnut as a
Lioness,
Serkh as a
Scorpion,. Rannut as a Serpent, Hathor as a Fruit-tree. A huge mistake has
hitherto been
made in
assuming that the Myth-Makers began by fashioning the Nature-Powers in their
own human
likeness.
Totemism was formulated by myth-making man with types that were the very
opposite of
human, and in
mythology the Anthropomorphic representation was preceded by the whole
menagerie of
Totemic
Zootypes.
The idea of
Force, for instance, was not derived from the thews and muscles of a
Sign-Language
shows, the Force that was "chucking them heaps of water about" was
perceived to be
the wind; the
Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters from the beginning. This power
was divinised
in Shu, the
God of breathing Force, whose zootype is the Lion as a fitting figure of this
panting Power of
the Air. The
element audible in the howling wind, but dimly apprehended otherwise, was given
shape and
substance as
the roaring Lion in this substitution of similars. The Force of the element was
equated by
the power of
the Animal; and no human thews and sinews could compare with those of the Lion
as a
figure of
Force. Thus the Lion speaks for itself, in the language of Ideographic Signs.
And in this way the
Gods and
Goddesses of ancient
Superhuman
types.
If primitive
man had projected the shadow of himself upon external nature, to shape its
elemental forces
in his own
image, or if the un-featured Vast had unveiled to him any likeness of the human
face, [Page 3]
then the
primary representation of the Nature-Powers (which became the later divinities)
ought to have
been
anthropomorphic, and the likeness reflected in the mirror of the most ancient
mythologies should
have been
human. Whereas the Powers and Divinities were first represented by animals, birds,
and
reptiles, or,
to employ a word that includes all classes, they were portrayed by means of
zootypes. The
Sun and Moon
were not considered "human in their nature" when the one was imaged
as a Crocodile, a
Lion, a Bull,
a Beetle, or a Hawk, and the other as a Hare, a Frog, an Ape, or an Ibis, as
they are
represented
in the Egyptian hieroglyphics by means of the zootypes. Until Har-Ur, the Elder
Horus, had
been depicted
as the Child in place of the Calf or Lamb, the Fish, or Shoot of the Papyrus-plant
(which
was
comparatively late), there was no human figure personalised in the Mythology of
Primitive or
paleolithic Man was too beggarly poor in possessions to dream of shaping the
Superhuman
Powers of
Nature in the human likeness. There is one all-sufficient reason why he did
not; he simply
could not.
And it is precisely because the Makers of the Myths had not the power to
animate the universe
in their own
likeness that we have the zoomorphic mode of representation as the Sign-Language
of
Totemism and
Mythology. On every line of research we discover that the representation of
nature was
pre-anthropomorphic
at first, as we see on going back far enough, and on every line of descent the
zoomorphic
passes ultimately into the human representation. Modern metaphysicians have so
developed
the faculty
of abstraction and the disease of Subjectivity that their own mental operations
offer no true
guidance for
generalisations concerning primitive or early man, who thought in things and
almost
apprehended
with the physical sense-alone.
They overlook
the fact that imaging by means of object-pictures preceded the imagining so
often
ascribed to
primitive men. These did not busy themselves and bother their brains with all
sorts of vagrant
fancies
instead of getting an actual grasp of the homeliest facts. It was not
"Primitive Man" but two
German
metaphysicians who were looking out of window at a falling shower of rain when
one of them
remarked,
"Perhaps it is I who am doing that" "Or /," chimed in the
other.
Page 7
Ancient
The present
writer once had a cat before whom he placed a sheet of polished tin. The cat
saw herself
reflected as
in a mirror, and looked for a short time at her own image. So far as sight and
appearance
went, this
might have been another cat. But she proceeded to apply the comparative process
and test
one sense by
another, deliberately smelling at the likeness to find out if any cat was there.
She did not sit
down as a
non-verifying visionary to formulate hypotheses or conjure up the ghost of a
cat. Her sense of
smell told
her that as a matter of fact there was no other cat present; therefore she was
not to be misled
by a false
appearance, in which she took no further interest. That, we may infer, was more
like the action
of Primitive
Man, who would find no human likeness behind the phenomena of external nature.
Indeed,
man was so
generally represented by the animals that the appearance could be mistaken for
a primitive
belief that
the animals were his ancestors. But the powers [Page 4] first perceived in
external nature were
not only
unlike the human; they were very emphatically and distinctly more than human,
and therefore
could not be
adequately expressed by features recognizable as merely human. Primitive men
were all
too abjectly
helpless in presence of these powers to think of them or to conceive them in
their own
similitude.
The one primordial and most definite fact of the whole matter was the distinct
and absolute
unlikeness to
themselves. Also they themselves were too little the cause of anything by the
work of their
own hands to
enter into the sphere of causation mentally. They could only apprehend the
nature-forces
by their
effects, and try to represent these by means of other powers that were present
in nature, but
which were
also necessarily superior to the human and were not the human faculties
indefinitely
magnified.
The human being could only impress his own image on external nature in
proportion to his
mastery over
natural conditions. He could not have figured the Thunder-bolt as a Stone-axe
in the hands
of a
destroying Power until he himself had made and could wield the axe of stone as
the weapon of his
own power.
But he could think of it in the likeness of the Serpent already known to him in
external nature
as a figure
of fatal force.
An ignorant
explanation of the Egyptian Sign-Language was begun by the Greeks, who could
not read
the hieroglyphics.
It was repeated by the Romans, and has been perpetuated by "Classical
Scholars"
ever since.
But, as the interpreter of
Ignorance of
primitive sign-language has been and is a fertile source of false belief. For
example,
Juvenal asks,
" Who does not know what kind of monsters
having seen
or heard of the long-tailed Ape in an Egyptian temple, the satirist assumed
without question
that this
animal was set up as an object of worship. He did not know that the Ape itself
was the
worshipper,
as an image in Sign-Language and as the Saluter of the Gods. Ani, the name of
this
particular
Ape, denotes the Saluter, and to salute was an Egyptian gesture of adoration.
The Ape or
Cynocephalus
with its paws uplifted is the typical worshipper as Saluter of the Light. It
was, and still is,
looked upon
in
disappearance
of its night-light and rejoices at the renewal and return of that luminary.
(Hor-Apollo, B. i,
14. Also
Captain Burton, in a letter to the author.) In the Vignettes to the Ritual, Ani
the Ape is the Saluter
of the rising
Sun, that is of Ra, upon the Mount of
past has been
made in misapprehending this primitive sign-language for what is designated
"Worship",
whether as
"Sun-Worship", "Serpent-Worship", "Tree-Worship",
or "Phallic-Worship". The Tree, for
example, is a
type, but the type is not necessarily an object of worship, as misunderstood by
those who
do not read
the types when these are rooted in the ground of natural fact. The forest-folk
were dwellers in
the trees, or
in the bush. The tree that gave them food and shelter grew to be an object of
regard. Hence
it became a
type of the Mother-Earth as the birthplace and abode. Hence Hathor was the hut
or house of
Horus (Har)
in the tree. But worship is a word of cant employed by writers who are [Page 5]
ignorant of
sign-language
in general. Such phrases as "Stock-and-stone worship" explain nothing
and are worse
than useless.
The Mother and Child of all mythology are represented in the Tree and Branch.
The Tree
was a type of
the abode, the Roof-tree; the Mother of food and drink; the giver of life and
shelter; the wet-
Page 8
Ancient
nurse in the
dew or rain; the producer of her offspring as the branch and promise of periodic
continuity.
Was it the
Tree then the Egyptians worshipped, or the Giver of food and shelter in the
Tree ? On the Apis
Stele in the
the Apis
carries the Solar Disk betwixt its horns. This also is being saluted. Which
then is the object of
worship ?
There are two objects of religious regard, but neither is the object of
adoration. That is the God
in spirit who
was represented as the Soul of life in the Sun and in the Tree, also by the
fecundating Bull.
In this and a
thousand other instances it is not a question of worship but of sign-language.
Nor did
Mythology spring from fifty or a hundred different sources, as frequently
assumed. It is one as a
system of
representation, one as a mould of thought, one as a mode of expression, and all
its great
primordial
types are virtually universal. Neither do the myths that were inherited and
repeated for ages by
the later
races of men afford any direct criterion to the intellectual status of such
races. A mythical
representation
may be savage without those who preserve it being savages. When the Egyptians
in the
time of Unas
speak of the deities devouring souls it is no proof of their being cannibals at
the time.
Mythology has
had an almost limitless descent. It was in a savage or crudely primitive state
in the most
ancient
mythical mode
of representing nature that was probably extant in
amongst races
who are no longer the producers of the Myths and Marchën than they are of
language
itself. Egyptian mythology is the oldest in the world, and it did not begin as an
explanation of
natural
phenomena, but as a representation by such primitive means as were available at
the time. It
does not
explain that the Sun is a Hawk or the Moon a Cat, or the solar God a Crocodile.
Such figures of
fact belong
to the symbolical mode of rendering in the language of animals or zootypes. No
better
definition of
"Myth" or Mythology could be given than is conveyed by the word
"Sem" in Egyptian. This
signifies
representation on the ground of likeness. Mythology, then, is "representation
on the ground of
likeness",
which led to all the forms of sign-language that could ever be employed. The
matter has been
touched upon
in previous volumes, but for the purpose of completeness it has to be
demonstrated in the
present work
that external nature was primarily imaged in the pre-human likeness. It was the
same here
as in
external nature: the animals came first, and the predecessors of Man are
primary in Sign-
Language,
Mythology, and Totemism.
It is quite
certain that if the primitive method had been Conceptual and early man had
possessed the
power to
impose the likeness of human personality upon external phenomena it would have
been in the
image of the
Male, as a type or in the types of power; whereas the primal human personification
is in the
likeness of
the female. [Page 6]The great Mother as the primal Parent is a Universal type.
There could be
no divine
Father in Heaven until the fatherhood was individualized on earth. Again, if
primitive men had
been able to
impose the human likeness on the Mother-Nature the typical Wet-nurse would have
been a
woman. But it
is not so; the Woman comes last She was preceded by the Beast itself, the Sow,
the
Hippopotamus,
or Lioness, and by the female form that wears the head of the Zootype, the Cow,
Frog or
Serpent, on
the body of a divinity. Moreover, the human likeness would, of necessity, have
included Sex.
But the
earliest powers recognised in nature are represented as being of no Sex. It is
said in the
Akkadian
hymns, "Female they are not, male they are not" Therefore they were
not imaged in the human
likeness. The
elements of air, earth, water, fire, darkness and light are of no sex, and the
powers first
recognised in
them, whether as destructive or beneficent, are consequently without sex. So
far from
Nature having
been conceived or imaged as a non-natural Man in a Mask, with features more or
less
human,
however hugely magnified, the mask of human personality was the latest that was
fitted to the
face of external
nature. Masks were applied to the face of nature in the endeavour to feature
and visibly
present some
likeness of the operative elemental forces and manifesting powers of Air, Fire,
Water, Earth
Page 9
Ancient
Thunder and
Lightning, Darkness and Dawn, Eclipse and Earthquake, Sand-storm or the
drowning
waters of the
Dark. But these masks were Zoomorphic, not human. They imaged the most potent
of
devouring
beasts, most cunning of reptiles, most powerful birds of prey. In these
monstrous masks we
see the
Primal Powers of Nature all at play, as in the Pantomime, which still preserves
a likeness to the
primordial
representation of external nature that is now chiefly known under the names of
Mythology and
Totemism. The
Elemental powers operant in external nature were superhuman in the past as they
are in
the present.
The Voice of Thunder, the death-stroke of lightning, the Coup de Soleil, the
force of fire, or of
water in
flood and the wind in a hurricane were superhuman. So of the Animals and Birds:
the powers of
the
hippopotamus, crocodile, serpent, hawk, lion, jackal, and Ape were superhuman,
and therefore they
were adopted
as zootypes and as primary representatives of the superhuman Powers of the
Elements.
They were
adopted as primitive Ideographs. They were adopted for use and consciously
stamped for
their
representative value, not ignorantly worshipped; and thus they became the coins
as it were in the
current
medium of exchange for the expression of primitive thought or feeling.
Sign-language
includes the gesture-signs by which the mysteries were danced or otherwise
dramatised
in
of which
language has been read by those who are continually treading water in the
shallows of the
subject
without ever touching bottom or attaining foothold in the depths. It is by
means of sign-language
that the
Egyptian wisdom keeps the records of the pre-historic past. The Egyptian
hieroglyphics show us
the
connection betwixt words and things, also betwixt sounds and words, in a very
primitive range of
human
thought. There is no other such a record known in all the world. They consist
largely of human
[Page 7]
gesture-signs and the sounds first made by animals, such as "ba" for
the goat, "meaou" for the
cat,
"su" for the goose, and "fu" for the Cerastes snake. But
the Kamite representation by means of sign-
language had
begun in inner
into the
forms of gods and goddesses by the dwellers in the valley of the
zootypes were
primary, and can be traced to their original habitat and home, and to nowhere
else upon
the surface
of our earth. The cow of the waters there represented the earth-Mother as the
great bringer-
forth of life
before she was divinised as Apt the goddess in human guise, with the head of a
hippopotamus.
The overseeing Giraffe (or was it the Okapi ?) of Sut, the hawk of Horus, the
Kaf-Ape of
Taht-Aan, the
white Vulture of Neith, the Jackal of Anup, and fifty others were pre-extant as
the talking
animals
before they were delineated in semi-human guise as gods and goddesses or
elemental powers
thus figured
forth in the form of birds and beasts or fish and reptiles. The zootypes were
extant in nature
as figures
ready-modelled, pictures ready-made, hieroglyphics and ideographs that moved
about alive:
pictures that
were earlier than painting, statues that preceded sculpture, living
nature-types that were
employed when
there were no others known to art. Certain primordial types originated in the
old dark
land of
Earth as
solid ground amidst the water of surrounding space, or as the bringer-forth of
life, depicted as a
Water-Cow;
possibly the Cow of Kintu in
of the Light
that rose up from the Abyss and coiled about the Mount of Earth at night as the
Devourer; the
evergreen
Tree of Dawn - pre-eminently African - that rises on the horizon, or upon the
Mount of Earth,
from out the
waters of Space; the opposing Elemental Powers beginning with the Twins of
Light and
Darkness who
fought in Earth and Heaven and the Nether World; the Great Earth-Mother of the
Nature-
powers; the
Seven Children of her womb, and various other types that are one in origin and
worldwide in
their range.
When the
solar force was yet uncomprehended, the sinking Sun could be imaged naturally
enough by
the Beetle
boring its way down through the earth, or by the Tortoise that buried itself in
the soil: also by
Page 10
Ancient
the Crocodile
making its passage through the waters, or the Golden Hawk that soared up
through the air.
This was
representing phenomena in external nature on the ground of likeness when it
could not be
imaged
directly by means of words. When it is held, as in
and that it
was also the author of marriage, we have to ascertain what the Lizard signified
in sign-
language, and
when we find that, like the serpent or the Frog, it denoted the female period,
we see how it
distinguished
or divided the sexes and in what sense it authorized or was the author of
Totemic Marriage,
because of
its being a sign or symbol of feminine pubescence. It is said by the Amazulu,
that when old
Women pass
away they take the form of a kind of Lizard. This can only be interpreted by
knowing the
ideographic
value in the primitive system of Sign-Language in which the Lizard was a
zootype. The
Lizard [Page
8]appeared at puberty, but it disappeared at the turn of life, and with the Old
Women went
the
disappearing Lizard.
The Frog
which transformed from the tadpole condition was another Ideograph of female
pubescence.
This may be
illustrated by a story that was told some time since by Miss Werner in the
Contemporary
Review which
contains a specimen of primitive thought and its mode of expression in perfect
survival. It
happened that
a native girl at
and take
charge of the baby. Her reply was, "Nchafuleni is not there; she is turned
into a frog". (Werner,
Contemporary
Review, Sept., page 378.) She could not come for a reason of Tapu, but said so
typically
in the
language of animals. She had made that transformation which first occurs when
the young girl
changes into
a woman. She might have said she was a serpent or a lizard or that she was in
flower. But
the frog that
changed from a tadpole was also a type of her transformation, and she had
figuratively
become a frog
for a few days of seclusion. Similarly the member of a Totem also became a
frog, a beetle,
a bull or
bear as a mode of representation, but not because the human being changed into
the animal.
The same
things which are said at a later stage by the ideographic Determinatives in the
Egyptian
hieroglyphics
had been expressed previously by the Inner African zoo types or living Beasts,
Birds and
Reptiles, as
may be seen in the stories told of the talking Animals by the Bushmen. The
original records
still suffice
to show that the physical agencies or forces first perceived, were not
conceived or mentally
embodied in
the human likeness, and that external nature offered no looking-glass for the
human face.
To take the
very illustration adduced by Hume. The original Man in the Moon did not depend
upon any
fancied
resemblance to the human face. The Egyptian Man in the Moon, Taht or Tehuti
(Greek Thoth),
had the head
of an Ibis or of the Cynocephalus; both Ibis and Cynocephalus were lunar types
which
preceded any
human likeness, and these were continued as heads to the human figure after
this had
been adopted.
The Man in the Moon, who is Taht (or Khunsu) in
the Dog or
Cynocephalus, the Ibis, the Beetle, the Bull, the Frog, and other ideographic
figures of lunar
phenomena. As
natural fact, the Ibis was a famous Fisher of the
as a zootype
of Taht, the lunar God. Where the modern saw the New Moon with the "auld
Moon in her
arm",
the Egyptian saw the Ibis fishing up the old dark orb from out the waters with
the crescent of its
curving beak,
as the recoverer and Saviour of the Drowning Light. The Moon was not looked
upon as
having any
human likeness when it was imaged as (or by) the Cat who saw in the dark: the
Hare that
rose up by
night and went round the horizon by leaps and bounds: the Ibis as, the
returning bird of
passage and
messenger of the Inundation: the Frog that transformed from the tadpole: the
old Beetle
that renewed
itself in the earth to come forth as the young one, or the Cow that gave
re-birth to the child
of light as
her calf. The sun was not conceived as "human in its nature" when the
solar force at dawn was
imaged by the
Lion-faced Atum; the [Page 9] flame of its furnace by the fiery serpent Uati;
the soul of its
life by the
Hawk, the Ram, or the Crocodile, which are five Egyptian Zootypes and a
fivefold disproof of
the sun being
conceived as or considered human in its nature or similitude.
Page 11
Ancient
In beginning
ab ovo our first lesson is to learn something of the Symbolical Language of
Animals, and to
understand
what it is they once said as Zootypes. We have then to use that knowledge in
simplifying the
mysteries of
mythology.
This
primitive language is still employed in divers forms. It is extant in the
so-called "dead language" of
the Hieroglyphics;
the Ideographs and Pictographs; in the Totemic types, and figures of Tattoo; in
the
portraiture
of the Nature-Powers which came to be divinised at length in the human likeness
as the Gods
and Goddesses
of Mythology; and in that language of the folk-fables still made use of by the
Bushmen,
Hottentots,
and other Africans, in which the Jackal, the Dog, the Lion, the Crane, the
White Vulture and
other beasts
and birds keep on talking as they did in the beginning, and continue more or
less to say in
human speech
what they once said in the primitive symbolism; that is, they fulfil the same
characters in
the Märchen
that were first founded in the Mythos. It has now to be shown how the Mythical
mode of
representing
natural phenomena was based upon this primitive system of thought and
expression, and
how the
things that were thought and expressed of old in this language constitute the
primary stratum of
what is
called "Mythology" to-day.
In the most
primitive phase Mythology is a mode of representing certain elemental powers by
means of
living types
that were superhuman like the natural phenomena. The foundations of Mythology
and other
forms of the
ancient wisdom were laid in this pre-anthropomorphic mode of primitive
representation.
Thus, to
summarise a few of the illustrations. The typical Giant Apap was an enormous
water-Reptile.
The typical
Genetrix and Mother of life was a Water-Cow that represented the Earth. The
typical Twin-
Brothers were
two Birds or two Beasts. The typical twin brother and sister were a Lion and a
Lioness.
The typical
Virgin was a heifer, or a vulture. The typical Messiah was a calf, a lamb or
Unbu the Branch.
The typical
Provider was a goose. The typical Chief or Leader is a lion. The typical Artisan
is a beetle.
The typical
Physician is an Ibis (which administered the enema to itself). The typical
Judge is a Jackal or
a
cynocephalus, whose wig and collar are amusingly suggestive of the English
Law-courts. Each and all
of these and
hundreds more preceded personification in the human image. The mighty Infant
who slew
the Dragon or
strangled serpents while in his cradle was a later substitute for such a
Zootype as the little
Ichneumon, a
figure of Horus. The Ichneumon was seen to attack the cobra di capella and make
the
mortal enemy
hide its head and shield its most vital parts within the protecting coils of
its own body. For
this reason
the lively, daring little animal was adopted as a zootype of Horus the young
Solar God, who in
his attack
upon the Apap-Serpent made the huge and deadly reptile hide its head in its own
enveloping
darkness.
But, when the figure is made anthropomorphic and the tiny [Page 10]Conqueror is
introduced as
the little
Hero in human form, the beginning of the Mythos and its meaning are obscured.
The
Ichneumon,
the Hawk, the Ibis might attack the Cobra, but it was well enough known that a
Child would
not,
consequently the original hero was not a Child, although spoken of as a child
in the literalised
marvels,
miracles, and fables of "the Infancy".
It is the
present writer's contention that the Wisdom of the Ancients was the Wisdom of
her
explanation of the Zootypes employed in Sign-Language, Totemism, and Mythology
holds good
wherever the
zootypes survive. For example, the Cawichan Tribes say the Moon has a frog in
it, and with
the Selish
Indians of North-West
Moon. They
have a tradition that the devouring Wolf being in love with the Frog (or Toad),
pursued her
with great
ardour and had nearly caught her when she made a desperate leap and landed
safely in the
Moon, where
she has remained to this day. (Wilson, Trans, of Ethnol. Society, 1866, New
Series, v. 4,
page 304.)
Which means that the frog, as a type of transformation, was applied to the
changing Moon as
Page 12
Ancient
well as to
the Zulu girl, Nchafuleni.
Sign-language
was from the beginning a substitution of similars for the purpose of expression
by
primitive or
pre-verbal Man, who followed the animals in making audible sounds accompanied
and
emphasised by
human gestures. The same system of thought and mode of utterance were continued
in
mythography
and totemism. Renouf says the Scarabeus was "an object of worship in
symbol of
divinity. But this is the modern error. If there was a God, and the Beetle was
his symbol,
obviously it
was the divinity that was the object of worship, not the symbol: not the
zootype. Ptah, we
know, was
that divinity, with the Beetle as a type; and those who read the types were
worshippers of the
God and not
of his symbolic dung-beetle which was honoured as a sign of transformation.
When told that
the Egyptians
were worshippers of the "Bee", the "Mantis", and the
"Grasshopper", we recall the words of
Hor-Apollo,
who says that when the Egyptians would symbolise a mystic and one of the
Initiated they
delineate a
Grasshopper because the insect does not utter sounds with its mouth, but makes
a chirping
by means of
its spine. (B. 2, 55.) The grasshopper, then, which uttered a voice that did
not come from its
mouth, was a
living type of superhuman power. And being an image of mystery and superhuman
power,
it was also
considered a fitting symbol of Kagn, the Bushman Creator, or Great Spirit of
creative mystery.
Moreover, the
grasshopper made his music and revealed his mystery in dancing; and the
religious
mysteries of
Kagn were performed with dancing or in the grasshopper's dance. Thus the
Initiates in the
mysteries of
the Mantis are identical with the Egyptian Mystae symbolised by the
grasshopper; and the
dancing
probably goes back to the time when pre-verbal man was an imitator of the
grasshopper, which
was a
primitive type of mystery, like the transforming frog and the self-interring
tortoise. There is a
religious
sect still extant in
identify them
with the leaping "Grasshoppers" and the "praying Mantis" in
the [Page 11] mysteries of old.
They still
“dance that dance”. The “Moon belongs to the Mantis”, say the Bushmen, which
goes to show
that the
Mantis was not only a Lunar type as the leaper round the horizon, but on
account of its power of
transformation;
and this again suggests the reason why the Mantis should be the zootype of the
Mystae
who
transformed in trance, as well as leaped and danced in the mysteries. The Frog
and Grasshopper
were earlier
leapers than the Hare. These also were figures of the Moon that leaped up in a
fresh place
every night.
It was this leaping up of the light that was imitated in the dances of the
Africans who jumped
for joy at
the appearance of the New Moon which they celebrated in the monthly dance, as
did the
Negroes and
other denizens of the dark Continent who danced the primitive mysteries and
dramatized
them in their
dances.The Leapers were the Dancers, and the leaping Mantis, the Grasshopper,
the Frog,
the Hare,
were amongst the pre-human prototypes.
The frog is
still known in popular weather-wisdom as the prophesier of Rain. As such, it
must have been
of vastly
more importance in the burning lands of Inner
the Consort
of Khnum, the King of Frogs, was frog-headed, as the prophetess, or foreteller,
on this
ground of
natural fact. Erman says the “great men of the South,” the “Privy Councillors
of the royal orders
were almost
always invested – I know not why – with the office of Prophet of the
frog-headed Goddess
Hekat”. (Life
in ancient
countries,
and of spring-time in others.In
Consort of
Khnum, the Lord of Inundation, and King of the Frogs. Hekat was also the Seer
by Night in the
Moon, as well
as the crier for the waters and foreteller of their coming. From her, as Seer
in the dark, we
may derive
the names of the Witch as the Hexe, the Hag, the Hagedisse; and also that of
the dark
Goddess
Hecate, the sender of dreams. As prophesier of rain, or of the Inundation, it
was the herald of
new life to
the
making its
transformation from the tadpole state to that of the frog, it was the figure of
a still more
Page 13
Ancient
important
natural fact. This, in the Mythology, was applied to the transformation and
renewal of the Moon,
and to the
transformation of the Mortal into an Immortal in the Eschatology, a type of
Ptah, who in one
form is
portrayed as the frog-headed God.Lamps have been found in
part, and one
is known which has the legend , “I am the Resurrection.”
(Lanzone,
Dizionario, page 853; Budge, The Mummy, page 266) – In this figure the lamp is
equivalent for
the rising
Sun, and the frog upon it is the type of Ptah, who in his solar character was
the Resurrection
and the life
in the Mythology before the image passed into the Eschatology, and the God who
rose again
as Solar
became the Light of the World in a Spiritual sense. The frog was a type of
transformation, and
the
Frog-headed Ptah made his transformation in Amenta to rise again as the opener
of the Nether
Earth. And as
he represented the Sun in Amenta, the frog, like the cynocephalus of
42) was
imaged as Golden. Thus we find the Sun in the lower Earth of two depicted in
the Golden Frog,
and, as
stated by John Bell, the [Page 12] Lamas had an idea that the earth rested on a
Golden Frog, and
that when the
Frog stretched out its foot there was an Earthquake. (“A Journey from St.
Petersburgh to
Tortoise, is
Egyptian, and as such we can learn what fact in nature was represented by it as
a zootype of
Ptah in the
Nether World called the Earth of Eternity, where the typical tadpole that swam
the waters
made its
transformation into the frog that stretched itself out and set foot on land.
It is related
in a Chinese legend that the lady, Mrs. Chang-ngo, obtained the drug of
Immortality by
stealing it
from Si Wang Nu, the Royal Mother of the West. With this she fled to the Moon,
and was
changed into
a Frog that is still to be seen on the surface of the orb. (Denny’s, Folk-Lore
of
117). As
Egyptian, the Mother of the West was the Goddess who received the setting Sun
and
reproduced
its light. The immortal liquor is the Solar Light. This was stolen for the
Moon. Chang-ngo is
equivalent to
the frog-headed Hekat who represented the resurrection. The frog in
“myriads” as
well as of transformation. In the Moon it would denote myriads of renewals when
periodic
repetition
was a mode of immortality. Hekat the frog-headed is the original Cinderella.
She makes her
transformation
into Sati, the Lady of Light, whose name is written with an Arrow. Thus to
mention only a
few of the
lunar types, the Goddess Hekat represented the moon and its transformation as
the Frog. Taht
and his
Cynocephalus represented the man and his dog in the Moon. Osiris represented
Lunar Light in
his character
of the Hare-headed Un-Nefer, the up-springing Hare in the Moon. These are
Egyptian
Zootypes to
be read wherever found by means of the Egyptian Wisdom. Amongst other Hieroglyphic
Signs in the
Language of Animals, the Head of a Vulture signifies victory (doubtless because
of the bird’s
keen scent
for blood). The sheathen claw is a determinative of peaceful actions. The
hinder part of the
Lioness
denotes the great magical power. The Tail of the Crocodile is a sign for black
and for darkness.
An Ape is the
ideograph of rage and a fiery spirit, or spirit of fire. The sparrow is a type
of physical evil
because of
its destructive nature in thieving corn – its name of “Tu-tu” signifies a kind
of plague or
affliction of
the fields. (Birch) The Water-wagtail is a type of moral evil. This bird, as
Wilkinson pointed
out, is still
called in Egypt the father of corruption (aboo fussad) It was regarded as the
type of an impure
or wicked
person, on account of its insidious suggestiveness of immoral motion. The
extent to which
morals and
philosophy were taught be means of these living object-pictures cannot now be
measured,
but the
moralizing fables spoken as well as acted by the typical animals still offer
testimony, and
language is
full of phrases which continue the zootypes into the world of letters, as when
the greedy,
filthy man is
called a hog, the grumpy man a bear, the cunning one a fox, the subtle and
treacherous one
a snake.
In the folk
lore of various races the human Soul takes the form of a Snake, a Mouse, a
Swallow, a Hawk,
a Pigeon, a
Bee, a Jackal, or other animal, each of which was an Egyptian zootype of some
[Page 13]
Page 14
Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
power or soul
in Nature before there was any representation of the human Soul or Ancestral
Spirit in the
human form.
Hence we are told that when twins are born the Batavians believe that one of
the pair is a
crocodile.
Mr. Spencer accepts the “belief” and asks, “May we not conclude that twins, of
whom one
gained the
name of crocodile, gave rise to the legend which originated this monstrous
belief?” (Data of
Sociology,
ch. 22, par. 175). But all such representations are mythical and are not to be
explicated by the
theory of
“monstrous belief.” It is a matter of Sign-Language. The Batavians knew as well
as we do that
no crocodile
was ever born twin along with a human child. In this instance the poor things
were asserting
in their
primitive way that Man is born with or as a Soul. This the gnosis enables us to
prove. One of the
earliest
types of the Sun as a Soul of life in the water is a Crocodile. We see the
Mother who brings forth
a Crocodile
when the Goddess Neith is portrayed in human shape as the suckler of the young
crocodiles
hanging at
her breasts. Neith is the wet-nurse personified whose child was the young
sun-god. As Sebek
he was imaged
by the Crocodile that emerged from the waters at sun-rise. Sebek was at once
the child
and the
crocodile brought forth by the Great Mother in the mythology. And because the
Crocodile had
imaged a Soul
of Life in water, as a superhuman power, it became a representative, in
Sign-Language, of
the human
soul. We see this same type of a Soul in external nature applied to the human
Soul in the
Book of the
Dead, when Osiris in the Nether World exclaims, “I am the crocodile in the form
of a man,”
that is as a
Soul of which the Crocodile had been a symbol, as Soul of the Sun. It was thus
the Crocodile
was born with
the Child, as a matter of sign-language, not as a belief. The crocodile is
commonly
recognized by
the Congo natives as a type of Soul. Miss Kingsley tells of a Witch-Doctor who
administered
emetics to certain patients and brought away young crocodiles. She relates that
a Witch-
Doctor had
been opened after death, when a winged Lizard-like thing was found in his
inside which
Batanga said
was his power. The power being another name for his Soul.
Mr. Spencer
not only argues for the actuality of these “beliefs” concerning natural facts,
supposed to
have been
held by primitive men and scientific Egyptians, which vanish with a true
interpretation of the
mythical mode
of representation, he further insists that there seems to be, “ample
justification for the
belief that
any kind of creature may be transformed into any other “ because of the
metamorphosis
observed in
the insect world, or elsewhere. From which there resulted “the theory of
metamorphosis in
general” and
the notion “that things of all kinds may suddenly change their forms,” man of
course
included.
(Data, ch. 8, par. 55). But there was no evidence throughout all nature to
suggest that any kind
of creature
could be transformed into any other kind. On the contrary, nature showed them
that the frog
was a tadpole
continued; that the chrysalis was the prior status of the butterfly, and that
the old Moon
changed into
a New. The transformation was visible and invariable, and the product of
transformation
was always
the same kind. There was no sign of suggestion of an unlimited possibility in
metamorphosis.
Neither was
there ever a race of savages who did think or believe (in words of Mr. Spencer)
[Page 14]
”that any
kind of creature may be transformed into any other,”no more than there ever
were boys who
believed that
any kind of bird could lay any other kind of bird’s egg. They are too good
observers for any
self-delusion
as that.
Mythical
representation did not begin with “stories of human adventure,” as Mr. Spencer
puts it, nor with
human figures
at all, but with phenomena of external nature, that were represented by means
of animals,
birds,
reptiles and insects, which had demonstrated the possession of superhuman
faculties and powers.
The origin of
various superstitions and customs seemingly insane can be traced to
sign-language. In
many parts of
England it is thought necessary to “tell the Bees” when a death has occurred in
the house,
as to put the
hives into mourning. The present writer has known the house-wife to sally forth
into the
garden with
warming-pan and key and strips of crape to “tell the Bees,” lest they should
take flight, when
one of the
inmates of the house died. We must seek an explanation for this in the
symbolism of Egypt
Page 15
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
that was
carried forth orally to the ends of the earth. The Bee was anciently a zootype
of the Soul which
was
represented as issuing forth from the body in that form or under that type.
There is a tradition that
Bees alone of
all animals descended from Paradise. In the Engadine, Switzerland, it is said
that the
Souls of men
go forth from this world and return to it in the form of Bees. Virgil, in the
Fourth Book of the
Georgics,
celebrates the Bee that never dies, but ascends alive into heaven. That is the
typical Bee
which has an
image of the Soul. It was the Soul, as Bee, that alone ascended into heaven or
descended
from thence.
The Bee is certainly one form of the Egyptian Abait, or Bird-fly, which is a
guide and pilot to
the Souls of
the dead on their way to the fields of Aarru. It was a figure of Lower Egypt as
the land of
honey, thence
a fitting guide to the celestial fields of the Aarru-Paradise. It looks as if
the name for the
Soul, Ba, in
Egyptian, may be identical with our word Bee. Ba, is honey determined by the
Bee-sign, and
Ba is also
the Soul. The Egyptians made use of honey as a means of embalming the dead.
Thus the
Bee, as a
zootype of the Soul, became a messenger of the dead and a mode of communication
with the
ancestral
Spirits. Talking to the Bees in this language was like speaking with the
Spirits of the dead, and,
as it were,
commending the departed one to the guidance of the Bees, who as honey gatherers
naturally
knew the way
to the Elysian fields and the meads of Amaranth that flowed with milk and
honey. The type
is confused
with the Soul when the Bee is invoked as follows:– “almost as if requesting the
Soul of the
departed to
watch forever over the living”:–
“ Bienchen,
unser Herr ist todt,
Verlass mich
nicht in meiner Noth.”
(Gubernatis,
Zoological Mythy., v. 2, page 218) In the Ritual the Abait (as Bee or Bird-fly)
is the conductor
of Souls to
the celestial fields. When the Deceased is asked who conducted him thither, he
replies, “It
was the
Abait-deity who conducted me.” He also exclaims. “Hail to thee, who fliest up
to heaven to give
light to the
stars.” (Ch. 76. Renouf). Here the Bee or Bird-fly is a Solar type, and that
which represented
the ascending
sun in the mythology [Page 15] became a type of the Soul in the eschatology.
Thus the
inventor of
honey in this world led the way to the fields of flowers in the next.
Modern
popular superstition to a large extent is the ancient symbolism in its second
childhood. Here is a
case in
point. The Cock having been a representative of Soul or Spirit, it is sure to
be said that the
human Soul
has entered the Cock by a kind of re-incarnation. Hence we read a legacy left
to a Fowl by a
wealthy lady
named Silva, of Lisbon, who held that the Soul of her dead husband survived in
a Cock.
(Daily Mail,
May 26th, 1892). So it has been with the zootypes of other elemental souls that
were
continued for
the human soul, from the Crocodile of the Batavians to the Red Mouse of the
Germans.
Folk-lore is
full of fables that originated in this language of signs.
The Jackal in
the Egyptian representation is the guide of the Sun upon his pathway in Amenta,
who takes
up the young
child-Horus in his arms to carry him over the waters. In the Hottentot
prototype the Jackal
finds the Sun
in the form of a little child, and takes him upon his back to carry him. When
the Sun grew
hot the
Jackal shook himself and said “Get down.” But the Sun stuck fast and burnt the
Jackal, so that he
has a long
black stripe down his back to this day.(Bleek,Reynard,p.67). The same tale is
told of the
Coyote or
Prairie-dog, who takes the place of the jackal in the mythical legends of the
Red Men. In the
Ritual the
Jackal who carried Horus, the young Sun-god, had become the bearer and
supporter of Souls.
In passing
the place where the Dead fall into darkness, the Osiris says, “Apuat raiseth me
up.” (Ch. 44)
And when the
overwhelming waters of the Deluge burst forth, he rejoices, saying, “Anup is my
bearer,”
(Rit. Ch.
64). Here as elsewhere, the mythical type extant with the earlier Africans had
passed into the
Page 16
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
eschatology
of the Egyptians.
The eternal
contest betwixt the powers of light and darkness is also represented in the
African folk-tales.
The Hare (or
rabbit) Kalulu and the Dzimwi are two of the contending characters. The Hare,
as in Egypt,
is typical of
the Good Power, and no doubt is a zootype of the young up-springing Moon. The
Dzimwi is
the Evil
Power, like Apap, the Giant, the Ogre, the Swallower of the waters or the
light.(Werner, “African
Folk-lore)
Contemp. Rev. September, 1896). It is very cunning, but in the end is always
outwitted by the
Hare. When
the Dzimwi kills or swallows the Hare’s Mother it is the Dragon of darkness, or
Eclipse,
devouring the
Lunar light. The Moon-mythos is indefinitely older than the Solar, and the
earliest slayer of
the Dragon
was Lunar, the mother of the Young Child of Light. Here she is killed by the
Dzimwi. Then
Kalulu comes
with barbed arrow with which he pierces the Dzimwi through the heart. This is
the battle of
Ra and Apap,
or Horus and Sut, in the most primitive form, when as yet the powers were
rendered non-
anthropomorphically.
Again, the Monkey who is transformed into a man is a prototype of the Moon-god
Taht, who is
a Dog-headed Ape in one character and a man in another. A young person refuses
several
husbands. A
Monkey then comes along. The beast takes the skin off his body, and is changed
into a
Man. To judge
[Page 16] from the Egyptian mythos, the young person was Lunar, and the Monkey
changing into
a Man is Lunar likewise. One of the two won the Lady of Light in the Moon. This
was the
Monkey that
became a Man, as did the bear in “Beauty and the Beast.” In another tale
obviously Luni-
Solar, that
is with the Sun and Moon as the characters, a girl (that is the Moon) refused a
husband (that
is the Sun).
Thereupon she married a Lion; that is a Solar type. In other words, the Moon
and Sun were
married in
Amenta. This tale is told with primitive humor. When the wedded pair were going
to bed she
would not
undress unless he let her cut off his tail. For this remained un-metamorphosed
when he
transformed
into a Man. “When she found out that he was a lion, she ran away from that
husband.” So in
a Hindu story
a young woman refuses to marry the Sun because he is too fiery-hot. Even in the
American
Negro stories
of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, and Brer Terrapin the original characters
of the typical
animals are
still preserved as they were in the Egyptian mythology when divinised. The
Turtle or Tortoise,
the wise and
sagacious one, is the hider; the Fox, like the Jackal, Anup, is the cunning
one. The Wolf is
the
swallower, and the rabbit equates with the Hare, a type of the Good Osiris or
of the African Kalulu.
Any number of
current superstitions are the result of ignorance concerning the Ancient
Wisdom, and one
of the worst
results bequeathed to us by the past is to be found in our customs of cruelty
to dumb
animals.
These poor victims have had to suffer frightfully for the very service which
they once rendered to
man as
primitive types of expression in Sign-Language. In the Persian and Hebrew laws
of Clean and
Unclean, many
of the animals and birds that were once held sacred in Egypt for their symbolic
value are
there
condemned as unclean, to be cast out with curses; and so the real animals
became the outcasts of
the mental
world, according to the later religion, in the language of letters which
followed and superseded
the carven
hieroglyphics of the earlier time. The Ass has been a shameful sufferer from
the part it played
in the
primitive typology. Beating and kicking the ass used to be a Christian sport
practised up and down
the aisles of
Christian churches, the ass being a cast-out representative of an old Hebrew,
and still older
Egyptian
deity.
The cat is
another sufferer for the same reason. The cat sees by night, and was adopted as
a type of the
Moon that saw
by night and kept watch in the dark. Now, witches are seers and foreseers, and
whenever
they were
persecuted and hounded to death the cat suffered with them, because she had
been the type
and symbol of
preter-human sight. These were modes of casting out the ancient fetish-images
initiated
and enforced
by the priesthood of a later faith. In Egypt, as Hor-Apollo tells us, the
figure of a mouse
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
signified a
disappearance. Now, see how cruelly the little animal has been treated because
it was a type
of
disappearance. It was, and may be still, an English custom to charm away
disease by making a hole in
the shrew-ash
or witch-elm tree and shutting up a live shrew-mouse in it. In immuring the
mouse in the
bole of the
tree, the disappearing victim typified or [Page 17] enacted the desired
disappearance of the
disease. That
which had been a symbol in the past is now made use of alive in performing a
symbolical
action in the
present.
Much misery
has been caused to human beings as well as animals through the misapplication
of certain
mythical,
that is symbolical characters. Plutarch tells us how the evil Sut (or Typhon)
was humiliated and
insulted by
the Egyptians at certain festivals, “when they abuse red-haired men and tumble
an ass down
a precipice
because Typhon was red-haired and like an ass in complexion.” ( Ch. 30). The
fact is also
notorious in
Europe that an evil character has been commonly ascribed to red-haired persons,
with no
known warrant
whatever from nature. They suffer for the symbol. Now for the origin of the
symbol,
according to
the Egyptian Wisdom. Sut, the treacherous opponent of Horus (Osiris in the
later mythos),
was the
Egyptian Judas. He betrayed his brother to his enemies the Sebau. He was of red
complexion.
Hence the Red
Ass and the red-haired people were his types. But the complexion and red hair
of Sut
were not
derived from any human origin. Sut was painted red, yellowish, or sandy, as
representative of
the desert.
He was the original devil in the wilderness, the cause of drought, and the
creator of thirst. As
the
Hippopotamus, Sut, like Apt the Mother, was of a red complexion. As the
betrayer of his brother
Osiris, Sut
was brought on with the Jesus-legend in the character of Judas, the traitor; hence
in the
Miracle-plays
and out-of-door customs, Judas true to the Sut-Typhonian tradition, is always
red-haired or
wears a red
wig. Thus, in our pictures of the past the typical traitor still preserves his
proper hue, but in
the belief of
the ignorant the clue is lost and the red-haired people come to be the Viva
Effigies of Sut,
the Egyptian
Judas, as a human type of evil.
Folk-lore in
many lands is the final fragmentary form in which the ancient wisdom – the
Wisdom of old
Egypt – still
survives as old wives’ fables, parables, riddles, allegorical sayings, and
superstitious beliefs,
consecrated
by the ignorance which has taken the place of primitive knowledge concerning
the mythical
mode of
representation; and from lack of the lost key, the writers on this subject have
become the
sheerest
tale-bearers whose gossip is full of scandal against primitive and ancient man.
But not in any
land or
language can the Märchen tell us anything directly concerning themselves. They
have lost the
memory of
their meaning. It is only in the Mythos that we can ascertain their original
relationship to
natural fact
and learn that the people who repeat the folk-tales were not always natural
fools. It is only in
the Egyptian
Wisdom that the key is to be found.
On of the
most universal of the Folk-Tales which are the débris of Mythology is that of
the Giant who had
no heart (or
spark or soul) in his body. The Apap-Dragon, in Africa, was the first of all
the Giants who has
no heart in
his body, no root in reality, being as he is only the representation of
non-existence, drought,
darkness,
death and negation. To have no heart in the body is an Egyptian expression for
lack of
understanding
and want of nous. As it is said in the Anastasi Papyri of the Slave who is
driven with a stick
and beaten
like the Ass, “He has indeed no heart in his body.” It was this [Page 18] lack
of intelligence that
made the
Giant of the Märchen such a big blundering booby, readily out-witted by clever
little Jack, Horus
or Petit
Yorge, the youthful Solar God; and so easily cajoled by the fair princess of
Lunar Lady who is
held a
captive in his dungeon underground. In one of the Tartaro-Legends told in
Basque the Hero fights
“a body
without a soul.” When the monster is coming it is said of him “ he is about to
come, this horrible
body without
a soul.” In another tale the seven-headed serpent, Heren-Suge, bemoans his fate
that he
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
hasn’t “a
spark betwixt his head and tail”; if he had he would burn up Petit Yorge, his
lady, his horse, and
his terrible
dog. In this version the Monster is a serpent equivalent to the Apap-Reptile or
Dragon of
drought and
darkness, which in the Kamite mythos has no soul in its body, because it is an
image of
darkness and
negation.
Most of the
characters and localities, the scenery and imagery of these Märchen belong to
the Egyptian
Mythos. The
Lake is also African, as the typical great water of those who had never seen
the Ocean. It
remained the
same type with the Egyptians after they did know the Great Green Water of the
Mediterranean
Sea. In such ways they have preserved their proofs of the Inner African
beginnings with
an adamantine
unchangeableness. The lake of the Goose or Duck is referred to in the Ritual.
(Ch. 109)
The Sun was
imaged as a Golden Egg laid by the Duck or Goose. The hill or island standing
in the lake
is the Earth
considered as a Mount of the Double Earth in the Kamite Eschatology. The Snake
or Dragon
in the Lake,
or coiling about the Mount or round the Tree, is the Apap-Reptile in the Water
of Darkness
who coils
about the Hill at Sunset (Rit. Ch., 108) or attacks the Tree of Life which is
an image of the
Dawn, the
Great Green Sycamore of Hathor. Earth itself was imaged as a Goose that rested
on the Nun
or the Waters
of Space. This was the ancient Mother Goose that every morning laid her Golden
Egg. The
Sun sinking
down into the underworld is described in the Ritual as “the Egg of the Great
Cackler”: “ The
Egg which Seb
hath parted from the earth.” (Rit., ch. 54) The Giant with no heart or Soul is
a figure of
Darkness as
the devouring Monster with no Sun (or Soul) in his body. Hence the heart or
Soul that was
hidden in the
Tree, or in the Egg of the Bird far away. The Sun is the Egg that was laid by
the Goose of
Earth that
brought forth the Golden Egg. This Soul of the Giant, Darkness, was not the
personal soul of
any human
being whatsoever, and the only link of relationship is when the same image of a
Soul in the
Egg is
applied to the Manes in the dark of death. The Soul of the Sun in the Egg is
the Soul of Ra in the
underworld of
Amenta; and when the Sun issues from the Egg (as a hawk) it is the death of
Darkness the
Monster.
Our forebears
and forerunners were not so far beside themselves as to believe that if they
had a Soul at
all, it was
outside of their own bodies hidden somewhere in a tree, in a bird, in an egg,
in a hare, in a
duck, a
crocodile, or any other zootype that never was supposed to be the dwelling of
the human Soul. In
the Basque
story of Marlbrook the Monster is slain by being struck on the forehead with an
egg that was
found in a
Pigeon, that was found in a Fox, that was [Page 19] found in a terrible Wolf in
a forest.
(Webster, p.
83). However represented, it was the Sun that caused the Monster’s death. So in
the Norse
Tales the
Troll or Ogre bursts at sight of dawn, because his death was in the Solar orb
that is represented
by the Kamite
Egg of the Goose. The Giant of darkness is inseparable from the young hero or
the solar
God who rises
from Amenta as his valiant conqueror. These being the two irreconcilable
enemies, as
they are in
the Ritual, it follows that the Princess who finally succeeds in obtaining the
Giant’s secret
concerning
the hiding place of his heart in the egg of a bird is the Lunar Lady in Amenta
who, as Hathor,
was the
Princess by name when she had become the daughter of Ra. She outwits the Apap,
who is her
swallower at
the time of the eclipse, and conveys the secret knowledge to the youthful solar
hero who
overcomes the
Giant by crushing his heart in the egg. In fighting with the Monster, the
Basque Hero is
endowed with
the faculty of transforming into a Hawk! The Hawk says to him – “When you wish
to make
yourself a
Hawk, you will say, “Jesus Hawk,” and you will be a Hawk.” The Hawk of Jesus
takes the place
of the
Horus-Hawk, just as the name of Malboro is substituted for that of the Hero who
is elsewhere Petit
Yorge =
Little Horus. (Webster, Basque Legends, p. 80-83) Horus, like the hero of these
tales, is human
on earth, and
he transforms into the Hawk when he goes to fight the Apap-Monster in Amenta.
In the
Basque version
the human hero transforms into a Hawk, or, as it is said, “the young Man made
himself a
hawk,” just
as the human Horus changed into the Golden Hawk: and then flew away with the
Princess
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
clinging
firmly to his neck. And here the Soul that was in the egg is identified as the
Hawk itself. At least it
is when the
egg is broken with the blow struck by the Princess on the Giant’s forehead that
the Hero
makes his
transformation into the Hawk. In the mythology it was the bird of earth that
laid the egg, but in
the
eschatology when the egg is hatched it is the Bird of Heaven that rises from it
as the Golden Hawk.
The Hawk of
the Sun is especially the Egyptian Bird of Soul, although the Dove or pigeon
also was a
type of the
Soul that was derived from Hathor. In the Märchen the Duck takes the place of
the Goose. But
these are
co-types in the mythos.
In the
Egyptian, Horus pierces the Apap-Dragon in the eye and pins his head to the
earth with a lance.
The mythical
mode of representation went on developing in Egypt, keeping in touch with the
advancing
arts. The
weapon of the Basque Hero was earlier than the lance or spear of Horus; it is a
stake of wood
made red-hot.
With this he pierces the huge monster in the eye and burns him blind. The Greek
version
of this is
too well known to call for repetition here, and the Basque lies nearer to the
original Egyptian. It
is more
important to identify the eye and the blazing stake. Horus, the young Solar
God, is slayer of the
Apap by
piercing him in the eye. The Apap is the Giant, the Dragon, the serpent of
darkness, and the eye
of Apap was
thought of as the eye of a serpent that was huge enough to coil round the
mountain of the
world, or
about the Tree of Life and Light which had its rootage in the nether earth.
This, on the horizon,
was the Tree
of dawn. The stake is a reduced form of the tree that was figured in the green
of dawn. The
typical tree
was a weapon of the [Page 20] ancient Horus who is described as fighting Sut
with a branch of
palm, which
also is a reduced form of the tree. The tree of dawn upon the horizon was the
weapon of the
solar God
with which he pierced the dragon of darkness and freed the mountain of earth
and the
Princess in
Amenta from its throttling, crushing, reptilinear coils. This tree
conventionalized in the stake
made red-hot
in the furnace, formed the primitive weapon with which Horus or Ulysses or the
Tartaro put
out the Monster’s
eye, and pierced the serpent’s head to let forth the waters of light once more
and to
free the lady
from her prison in the lower world. When the Apap-Monster in the cave of
darkness was
personified
in something like the human shape, the Giant as reptile in the earliest
representation passed
into the
Giant as a Monster in the form of a magnified man called the Cyclops and named
Polyphemus.
In one of the
African Folk-Tales the little hero Kalulu slays the monster by thrusting a
red-hot boulder
down the
devourer’s throat. This is a type of the red-hot solar orb which the Power of
darkness tried to
swallow, and
thus put out the light.
The lunar
lady, as well as the solar hero, is the dragon-slayer in the Basque legends. In
one of these, the
loathly
reptile lies sleeping with his head in the lap of the beautiful lady. The hero
descends to her
assistance in
the Underworld. She tells him “be off.” - “The Monster“ has only three-quarters
of an hour to
sleep”, she
says, “and if he wakes it is all over with you and me”. It is the Lunar Lady
who worms the
great secret
out of the Monster concerning his death, when he confesses where his heart lies
hidden. “At
last, at
last,” he tells her, “you must kill a terrible wolf which is in the forest, and
inside of him is a fox, and
in the fox is
a pigeon; this pigeon has an egg in its head, and whoever should strike me on
the forehead
with this egg
would kill me.” The Hero, having become a hawk, secures the egg and brings it
to the
“young lady,”
and having done his part hands over the egg and says to her, “At present it is
your turn; act
alone” Thus
it appears that the egg made use of by the Prince to kill the Giants is the
Sun, and that made
use by the
Princess was the Lunar orb. Here we have “the egg of the sun and the moon”
which Ptah is
said to have
moved in the Beginning. “She strikes the Monster as he had told her, and he
falls stark
dead.”
(Webster, “Malbrouk”). The Dragon was known in Britain as the typical cause of
drought and the
devourer of
nine maidens who had gone to fetch water from the spring before he was slain by
Martin.
These are
representative of nine New-Moons renewed at the source of light in the Nether
World. Dr.
Plott, in his
History of Cambridgeshire, (p 349) mentions the custom at Burford of making a
dragon
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
annually and
“carrying it up and down the town in great jollity, on Midsummer Eve, to which
he says, not
knowing for
what reason, “they added a Giant.” (Brand, “Midsummer Eve”). Both the Dragon
and the
Giant
signified the same Monster that swallowed the water and devoured the givers of
light, lunar or
solar, the
dragon being a zoomorphic type and the Giant hugely anthropomorphic. Instead of
saying nine
Moons passed
into the dark, as a mode of reckoning the months, it might be said, that Nine
Maidens
were devoured
by the Dragon of darkness. The Myth originated when Darkness was the devouring
Giant
and the
weapon of the warrior was a stone that imaged the Solar orb. In the [Page 21]
contest of the
young and
ruddy hero David with the Giant Goliath the Hebrew Version of the Folk-Tale
still retains the
primitive
feature of the stone.
We know the
universal Monster of the Evil reptile of the Dark, for ever warring with the
Light, that also
drinks the
water which is the life of vegetation, as the Fiery Dragon of Drought. But
there is a very
primitive
version extant amongst the Australian aborigines, the Andaman Islanders, and
the red men, in
which a
gigantic Frog drinks up all the waters in the world. Here the Frog plays the
part of the Apapmonster
that swallows
the waters at sundown and is pierced and cut in pieces coil by coil to set them
flowing
freely at the return of day, either by the Hawk of Ra or the Cat or by Horus,
the anthropomorphic
hero. In the
Andaman version of the conflict between the bird of Light and the Devil of
Darkness the
waters are
drunk up and withheld by a big Toad. An Iroquois or Huron form of this mythical
representation
also shows
the devouring monster as a gigantic Frog that drank up all the water of the
world. The
Aborigines of
Lake Tyers likewise relate that once on a time there was no water anywhere on
the surface
of the whole
earth. This had all been drunk up and was concealed in the body of a monstrous
Frog. The
Dragon of the
waters, is also a denizen of the Holy well in Britain; and here again the evil
power of
drought and
darkness is represented by the Devil in the form of a Frog as presiding spirit
of the water. In
the well on
the Devil’s Causeway between Ruckley and Acton there is supposed to be a huge
Frog which
represents
the devil, that is, the hostile power of drought. The proper time for the
malevolent Frog to be
seen would be
when the Well was dried up in times of great drought, hence he is but seldom
seen in a
rainy climate
like ours. (Burne, Shropshire Folklore, p. 428). The Frog still suffers even in
this
“enlightened
land” of ours for supplying a zootype of the Evil Power. It is yet a provincial
sport for country
louts to
“hike the Toad,” that is by jerking it high in the air from the end of a plank
as a mode of appealing
to Heaven for
rain and the kind of weather they wanted. Even so, poor Froggy has to walk the
plank and
suffer in the
present for having been a representative in the past of the Monster that drank
up all the
water. The
Orinoco Indians used to keep Toads in vessels, not to worship them, but to have
them at hand
as representatives
of the Power that drank up the Water or kept back the rain; and in time of
drought the
Toads were
beaten to procure the much-desired rain. (Bastian).
In various
countries the Monster of the Dark was represented by an animal entirely black.
This in Egypt
was the black
Boar of Sut. And what these customs signified according to the Wisdom of Egypt
they
mean
elsewhere. When the Timorese are direfully suffering from lack of rain, they
offer up a black Pig as
a sacrifice.
The Black Pig was slain just as Apap was pierced because it imaged the dark
power that
once withheld
the waters of day and now denies the rain, or the Water of Life. In Sumatra it
is the black
Cat that
typifies the inimical Power which withholds the rain. Women go naked or nearly
so to the river,
and wade in
it as a primitive mode of sacrifice or solicitation. Then a black Cat is thrown
into the Water
and forced to
swim for its life, like the Witch in the European custom. [Page 22] The Black
Goat, the Black
Pig, and the
Black Cat are all Typhonian types of the same symbolic value as the Black Boar
of Sut or
the
Apap-Dragon. In each case the representative of the dark and evil Power was
slain or thrown into the
water as a
propitiation to the beneficent Power that gave the rain. Slaying the type of
Drought was a
means of
fighting against the Power of evil and making an appeal to the Good Spirit. It
was a primitive
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Ancient
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mode of
Casting out Satan, the Adversary, in practical Sign-Language.
The giant or
ogre of mythology was a result of humanizing the animal types. At first the
Apap-reptile rose
up vast,
gigantic, as the swallowing darkness or devouring dragon. This when humanized,
became the
giant, the
magnified non-natural ogre of a man that takes the monster’s place in later
legendary lore. The
Apap-dragon
coiled about the mount was the keeper of the treasures in the nether-world. So
is it with the
giant. In
“Jack the Giant-Killer,” it is said “the mount of Cornwall was kept by a huge
giant named
Cormoran.”
Jack, our little solar hero, asked what reward would be given to the man who
killed
Cormoran.
“The giant’s treasure,” they told him, would be the reward. Quoth Jack, “ Then
let me
undertake
it.” After he had slain the giant, Jack went to search the cave, which answers
to Amenta in the
lower earth,
in which the treasure was concealed. This was the treasure of light and water
that had been
hidden by the
giant in his lair.
The Aryan
fairy-tales and folk-tales can be unriddled in the Kamite mythos which was
based on the
phenomena of
external nature. It is the Moon, for instance, who was a woman one half the
time and a
frog or
serpent during the other half. In the first character she was Sati, the lady of
light. In the second
half of the
lunation she was the frog that swam the waters of the nether earth and made her
transformation
as Hekat in Amenta. Some writers have denounced the savage brutality and
obscenity of
those whom
they look upon as the makers of mythology. But in all this they have been
spitting beside the
mark.
Moreover, the most repulsive aspects do not belong to mythology proper, but are
mainly owing to
the decadence
and degradation of the matter in the Märchen. Also to the change which the
mythos
suffered in
passing from the zoomorphic mode of representation. There is neither morality
nor immorality
so long as
the phenomena are non-human and the drama is performed by the primitive actors.
But when
the
characters are humanized or divinised, in human form the re-cast may be fatal
to the mythical
meaning;
primitive simplicity is apparently converted into senseless absurdity, and the
drama of the
nature-powers
turned into a masquerade of monsters. Plutarch will furnish us with an
illustration which
these idiotai
might have selected for an example. When speaking of the elder Horus who “came
into the
world before
his time” as the phantom-forerunner of the true light, he says that Osiris had
accompanied
with Isis
(his spouse) after her decease. Which looks very ominous for the morals of the
“Myth-makers”
who could
ascribe such immorality to their Gods. Is it not a fair deduction from a datum
like that to infer
that the
Egyptians were accustomed to cohabit with the corpses of their dead women?
Obviously that is
one of the
possible implications. Especially as Osiris, according to Spencer, was once a
man! [Page 23]
But now for
an explanation on the plain ground of natural fact. Isis, in one character, was
the Mother-
Moon, the
reproducer of the light in Amenta; the place of conjunction and of re-begettal
by the Sun-god,
when Osiris
entered the Moon, and she became the Woman who was clothed with the Sun. At the
end of
a lunation the
old Moon died and became a corpse – it is at times portrayed as a mummy – in
the
underworld,
and there it was revivified by Osiris, the solar fecundator of the Moon who was
the Mother
that brought
forth the child of light, the “Cripple-deity” that was naturally enough
begotten in the dark.
(Plutarch).
But worse still. When Osiris lay helpless and breathless in Amenta with a
“Corpse-like face”
(Rit., ch.,
lxxiv) – his two wives who are likewise his daughters came to co-habit with
him, and raise him
from the
dead, or re-erect him like, and as, the Tat. It is said of Isis she “raised the
remains of the God of
the resting
heart and extracted his seed to beget an heir,” or to make him human by
reincarnation in the
flesh. (Hymn
to Osiris, Records, line 16, p. 102, Volume Iv., first series; Volume Iv., p.
21, second series).
In this phase
it is the female who cohabits with the Corpse of the dead Male. But in neither
were the
actors of the
drama human, although they are humanized in the Märchen. The Mythos is repeated
and
applied in a
Semitic Folk-Tale when Lot’s two Daughters are “with Child by their father.”
(Gen., xix, 36).
The
difference being that Osiris as father in the Mysteries of Amenta was dead at
the time, whereas in
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Ancient
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the
irresponsible Märchen, Lot is represented as dead-drunk.
The Myths are
not to be explained by means of the Märchen; not if you collect and compare the
Nursery-
Tales of all
the world. But we can explain the Märchen more or less by aid of the Myths, or
rather the
mythical
representation in which we can once more recover the lost key. The Aryan
Folk-Tales, for
example are
by no means a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive
mind. They are
not a direct
reflection of anything; they are refracted mythology, and the representation in
mythology is
not direct,
not literal, but mystical. Egyptian mythology, and all it signifies, lies
between the Aryan or other
folk-tales
and Primitive Man. The Märchen are not the oldest or most primitive form of the
Myth; they are
the latest.
The coinage is the same, but the primitive impress is greatly worn down, and
the features are
often well
nigh effaced. In the Märchen, the Ancient Wise Woman or old Mother goes on
telling her tales,
but the
memory of their meaning has lapsed by reason of her age. Whereas in the Ritual
the
representation
is still preserved and repeated accurately according to knowledge. The Mythos
passes
into the
Folk-Tale, not the Folk-Tale into the Mythos.
In Egyptian
Sign-Language, the earliest language of Mythology, the Sun was represented, in
the fulness
of its power,
by the Lion. When it went down to the Underworld by night or in the winter time
it was
imaged as the
disappearing Mouse. Ra was the Lion: Horus was the Mouse: the blind Shrew-Mouse
being a type
Horus darkling in Amenta. Ra as the Solar Lion lost his power in the Underworld
and was as
the animal in
the hunter’s toils. Then Horus the Little Hero as the Shrew-Mouse came to
deliver the
entangled
Lion. Under the type of the Mongoose or Ichneumon [Page 24] the little hero
attacked the
serpent of
Darkness: and, as the mouse, it was the deliverer of the Lion in the Mythos.
But when or
where the
wisdom was no longer taught in the mysteries the Gnosis naturally lapsed. The
Myth became
a Folk-Tale
or a legend of the nursery, and passed into the fable of the mouse that nibbled
the cord in two
which bound
the captured Lion and set the mighty beast at liberty. Thus the Mythos passed
into the
Märchen, and
the Mysteries still clung on for very life in the Moralities.
The Ass in a
male form is a type of Tum the Sun-God in Amenta. A vignette to the Ritual
shows the Ass
being
devoured by the serpent of darkness called the eater of the Ass. (Ch. 40) The
Ass then in the
Egyptian
mythos represents the Sun-God Tum, Greek Tomos, passing through the
nether-world by night.
It is Tum in
his character of Aiu or Iu who is also represented on the tomb of Rameses the
Sixth as a god
with the ears
of an Ass, hauling at the rope by which the Sun is drawn up from Amenta, the
lower Egypt
of the
mythos. Atum, or Tum, is the Old Man of the setting Sun and Aiu is his Son.
Thus the three
characters of
the Old man, his Son, and the Ass can be identified with Atum-Aiu = Osiris and
Horus; and
the nocturnal
Sun or the Sun of Winter with the slow motion which constitutes the difficulty
of getting the
Ass forward
in the fable. This difficulty of getting the Ass along, whether ridden by Tum
the father or
pulled along
by his Son, was illustrated in a popular pastime, when on the eighth day of the
festival of the
Corpus Domini
the people of Empoli suspended the Ass aloft in the air and made it fly
perforce in
presence of
the mocking multitude. Gubernatis says the Germans of Westphalia “made the Ass
a symbol
of the dull
St. Thomas, and were accustomed to call it by the name of “the Ass Thomas,” the
laggard boy
who came the
last to school upon St. Thomas’s Day.” (Zoological Mythology, vol. I, p. 362)
But we find
and earlier
claimant than this for the “Ass Thomas” – in Tum or Tomos, the Kamite Solar
God, who made
the passage
of Amenta very slowly with the Ass, or as it was represented, riding on the
Ass; and
therefore for
the Greek Fable of he old Man and his Ass.
The birth of
a Folk-tale may be seen in the legend of “The Sleeping beauty.” When it was
known that the
renewing Moon
derived her glory from the procreative Sun, their meeting in the Underworld
became a
Page 23
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
fertile
source of legends that were mothered by the Myth. The Moon-Goddess is the
lovely lady sleeping
in Amenta
waiting for her deliverer, the Young Solar God, to come and wake her with the
Lover’s kiss.
She was
Hathor, called the Princess in her Lunar character; and he was the
all-conquering Horus. It was
a legend of
resurrection which at first was Soli-Lunar in the Mythos; afterwards a symbolic
representation
of the Soul
that was awakened from the Sleep of death by Horus in his rôle of Savior or
Deliverer of the
Manes in
Amenta. So the Mythos faded in the fairy-tale.
It is a
cardinal tenet of the present work that the Aryan Märchen and European
folk-lore were derived
from the
Egyptian Mythology. This might be illustrated without end. For example, there
is a classical
tradition of
Folk-Tale, repeated by Pliny (Hist. Nat., 7,3), which tells of a time when a
Mother in Egypt
bore seven
children at [Page 25] one birth. Of course this legend had no origin in natural
history. Such a
birth belongs
to mythology in which the Mother of seven children at a birth was primarily,
the bringer-forth
of seven
elemental powers, who can be traced as such, in all their seven characters. The
One great
Mother with
her seven sons constituted a primary Ogdoad. She survived in a Gnostic form as
Achamoth-
Ogdoas,
Mother of the seven Rulers of the heptanomis. “This Mother,” says Irenaeus (B.
I., ch. V. 2,3),
“they call
Ogdoas, Sophia, Earth, Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is identified by Jeremiah with the
ancient
Mother who
was the bringer-forth of seven sons as the “ Mother of the young men,” she that
hath born
Seven,” who
now giveth up the Ghost. (Ch. Xv, 8). This Mother of seven also appears as the
Great Harlot
in the Book
of Revelation who is the Mother of the Seven Kings which were at the same time
seven
heads of the
Solar Dragon, and also seven Consorts who were born children of the Old Great
Mother.
These were
“the Seven Children of the Thigh” in the Astronomical Mythology. Thus the
Ancient Genetrix
was the
Mother who brought forth Seven Children at a birth, or as a companionship,
according to the
category of
phenomena. Her seven children were the Nature-Powers of all Mythology. They are
variously
represented
under divers types because the powers were reborn in different phenomena. We
shall find
them grouped
as seven serpents, seven apes, seven jackals, seven crocodiles, hippopotami,
hawks,
bulls or
rams, who become Seven children of the Mother when the myth is rendered
anthropomorphically
in the later
forms of the Märchen, amongst which there is a Bengalee folk-tale of a Boy who
was suckled
by seven
Mothers. (Lal Behari Day, Folk Tales of Bengal). And this boy of the Märchen
can be identified
with
child-Horus in the astronomical mythos, as “the Bull of the seven cows”. The
seven cows were
grouped in
the Great Bear as a seven-fold figure of Motherhood. The cows were also called
the seven
Hathors who
presided over the birth of the child as seven fates in the Egyptian theology.
And in later
legends there
are the seven Mothers of one child. When he became a child they were the seven
women
who
ministered to him of their substance in a very literal manner. The seven givers
of liquid life to the
nursling were
portrayed as women in Amenta; the seven Hathors who were present as Fates, at
childbirth;
and as cows
in the constellation of the Great Bear. The sucklers might be imaged as seven
women,
seven cows,
seven sows. Thus the Romans had evidently heard of them as a seven-fold form of
Rerit
the sow, a
co-type with the Cow. The Bengalee Folk-Tale, shows the Egyptian Mythos reduced
to the
stage of the
Aryan Märchen. The typical seven Mothers of the child also survive amongst the
other
curiosities
of Christianity. It is said in the Gospel of he nativity (ch, viii.)– that Mary
“the virgin of the Lord”
had been
brought up with seven other virgins in the Temple. Also there are seven women
in the Gospels
who minister
to Jesus of their substance. Again we are able to affiliate the folk-tale with
the original
mythos. After
which it is of little importance to out inquiry which country the Aryan Märchen
came from
last. The
Seven Hathors or Cows in the Mythos are also the Seven Fates in attendance at
the birth of a
Child; and in
the Babar Archipelago Seven [Page 26] Women, each of them carrying a sword, are
present
when a child
is born, who mix the placenta with ashes and put it into a small basket, which
they hang up
in a
particular kind of tree. These likewise are a form of the seven Hathors who
were present at Childbirth
as the Seven
Fates in the Mythos. In such ways the Kamite Mythos passed into the Aryan Märchen.
Page 24
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
The Child who
had no father had been mythically represented as the Fertiliser of the mother
when in
utero, like
Ptah, the God in embryo. Hence he was called the Bull of his Mother. But why
the Bull?
Because this
was not the human Child. It was Horus as the calf, born of the Cow and a
pre-human type,
when the
fatherhood was not yet individualized. The Solar God at Sunset made his
entrance into the
breeding-place
of the nether world, and is said to prepare his own generation for rebirth next
day, but not
in human
guise. The bull of his Mother is shown upon the horizon as Horus the calf. But
when the
persons and
transactions are presented anthropomorphically, in accordance with the human
terminology
the calf,
which had no Father but was his own bull, becomes the child who was born
without a father.
Thus the
mythos passes into the Märchen or legendary lore, and the child who fecundated
his own
Mother takes
a final form as the Boy-lover of Venus, Ishtar, or Hathor, the divine Mother,
and the subject
culminated in
literature, as (for example) in Shakespeare’s poem of “Venus and Adonis,” which
is at root
mythology
fleshed in a human form. Again and again the Egyptian Mythos furnishes a
prototype that will
suffice to
account for a hundred Folk-tales. For another instance, take the legend of the
child that was
predestined
to be a King in spite of the Monster, pursuing the Mother, or lying in wait to
devour and
destroy the
infant from before its birth. Har-Ur, or Horus the Elder, was that Child in the
mythos. The title
of Repa will
identify the Child born to be King as that signifies the Heir-apparent, or the
Prince who was
predestined
to become the King. An instructive example of the way in which the Mythos, that
we look on
as Egyptian,
was dispersed and spread in Folk-Tales over the whole world may be seen in the
legend of
the combat
betwixt a Father and Son. The story has attained to somewhat of an Epical
dignity in Matthew
Arnold’s poem
of “Sohrab and Rustum.” It is also found in many parts of the world, including
New
Zealand.
Briefly summarized, the story, in legendary lore, is that of the Son who does
not know his own
Father. In
the Maori tale of “Kokako” the boy is called a Bastard. Also in the tale of
Peho the child is a
Bastard. This
is a phrase in later language to describe the boy whose birth was Matriarchal
when the
Father was
unknown individually. But such a legend as this, when found in Folk-Lore does
not come
straight out
of local Sociology or Ethnology in any country. We have to reckon with the
rendering of the
natural fact
in the Astronomical Mythology of Egypt. In the olden day of indefinite
paternity, when the
Father was
personally unknown it was likewise unknown that the child of light born and
reborn in the
Moon was the
Son of the Solar God. This was a Mythical Son who could not know his own
Father. The
earliest Son
in sociology or mythology did not know his own Father. The elder Horus was the
Mother’s
child, who
was born not begotten. Now, a child whose [Page 27] father is unknown is called
a Bastard.
Thus Horus
was a Bastard born, and it was flung at him by Sut that he was a Bastard. Also
in Jewish
legend, Jesus
is called the Mamzer or Bastard. Thus, the child of the Mother only was the
Bastard, just
as the Mother
who was “na wife” came to be called the Harlot. The present writer has no
knowledge of a
Folk-Tale
version of the legend being extant in Egyptian. This does not belong to the
kind of literature that
was preserved
in the sanctity of the coffins and tombs, as was the Book of the Dead. But the
essentials
are extant,
together with the explanation in natural fact, in the ancient
Luni-Solar-Mythos. Horus the
Bastard was a
child of light that was born of Isis in the Moon, when the Moon was the Mother
of the child
and the
father-source of light was unidentified. But sooner or later there was a secret
knowledge of the
subject. For
instance, in the story told by Plutarch, it is said that Taht the Moon-god,
cleared the character
of the Mother
by showing that Horus was not a Bastard, but that Ra, the Solar-God was his
true Father. It
is still
continued to be told in various Folk-Tales that the woman was no better than a
wanton in her
wooing of a
man whom she seeks or solicits as her paramour. This character may be traced in
the
mythology. It
is the Lady of Light in the Moon who pursues and seduces the Solar God in the
darkness of
Amenta, and
who exults that she has seized upon the God Hu and taken possession of him in
the vale of
Abydos where
she went to lie down and sought to be replenished with his light. (Ritual, ch.,
lxxx). Child-
Horus always
remains a child, the child of twelve years, who at that age transforms into the
Adult and
finds his
Father. So when he is twelve years of age, the boy Jokull in an Icelandic
version of the Folk-Tale
goes in
search of his Father. They fight and the Son is slain, at least he dies after
living for three nights.
In other
versions the fight betwixt Father and Son is continued for three days. This is
the length of time
Page 25
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
for the
struggle of Osiris in death and darkness who rises again as Lord of Light in
the Moon and now is
recognized as
the Father of Horus, who was previously the Mother’s child that knew not his
Father.
Moreover, in
the Märchen it is sometimes the father who is killed in combat, at other times
it is the Son.
And, in the
Mythos, Osiris the Father rises again upon the third day in the Moon, but at
other times he
rises as
Horus the triumphant Son. A legend like this of the combat between the Father
and son does not
originate in
history, much less does it rise from a hundred different Ethnological sources,
as the folklorists
would have us
think. In the Folk-Tales there are various versions of the same subject; the
mythos
is one, and
in that oneness must the origin be sought for the Märchen. This origin of our
Folk-Lore may
be found a
hundred times over in the “Wisdom” of old Egypt. The Tale of the Two Brothers
furnishes a
good example
of the Egyptian Mythos reappearing in the Folk-Tale. In this there are two
brothers named
Anup, the
elder, and Bata, the younger. Anup, has a wife who falls in love with Bata, and
solicits him
illicitly.
“And she spoke to him saying, What strength there is in thee, indeed, I observe
thy vigor every
day.” Her
heart knew him. She seized upon him and said to him, “Come, let us lie down for
a while.
Better for
thee ... beautiful clothes.” Like Joseph in the Hebrew version, the youth [Page
28] rejected the
advances of
the lady. He “became like a panther,” in his fury at her suggestion. Like
Potiphar’s wife, she
charges him
with violating and doing violence to her. We shall have to return to the story.
Let it suffice for
the present
to say that the “tale of the two brothers” in the Märchen is derived in the
course of a long
descent from
the myth of Sut and Horus, the Brothers who were represented later as Anup and
Horus,
also as the
Horus of both Horizons. The elder brother Anup corresponds to Sut, who in one
form is Anup;
the younger
Bata, to the Sun-god Horus of the East. The name Bata signifies the Soul (ba)
of life in the
earth (ta) as
a title of the Sun that rises again. On this account it is said that Bata goes
to “the Mountain
of Cedar,” in
the flower of which upon the summit lies his heart, or soul, or virile force;
the power of his
resurrection
as the Solar God. Hence Bata says to Anup, “Behold, I am about to become a
Bull.” And he
was raised by
Ra to the dignity of hereditary Prince as ruler of the whole land, over which
he reigned for
thirty years.
As myth, such Märchen are interpretable wheresoever they are found. The Solar
Power on
the two
horizons or the Sun with a dual face was represented by the two Brothers who
are twins, under
whichever
name or type, who were earlier than Ra. One is the lesser, darkling and
infertile Sun of Night,
or of Autumn;
the other is the Victor in the Resurrection. These were associated in Amenta
with the
Moon, the
Lady of the Lunar light, who is described with them in Chapter lxxx., of the
Ritual as uniting
herself with
the two Brother-Gods who were Sut and Horus. She is wedded to the one but is in
love with
the other.
Whether as Sut or Elder Horus, her consort was her im-pubescent child; and she
unites with
Hu the Virile
Solar God and glories in his fertilizing power. She confesses that she has
seized upon Hu
and taken
possession of him in the vale of Abydos when she sank down to rest. Her object
being to
engender
light from his potent Solar source, to illuminate the night, and overthrow the
devouring Monster
of the dark.
This is true mythos which is followed afar off by the folk-lore of the Tale.
There was no need
to moralize
as this was Egyptian mythology, not semitic history.
When the
Aryan philologists have done their worst with the subject and the obscuration
has passed
away, it will
be seen that the Legend of Daphne was a transformation that originated in the
Egyptian
mythos. Ages
before the legend could have been poetised in Greece, Daphne was extant as an
Egyptian
Goddess ta or
Tefnut by name, who was a figure of the Green Egyptian Dawn. (Birch, Dictionary
of
Hieroglyphics).
The Green tree was also a type of the Dawn in Egypt. The transformation of the
Goddess
into the Tree
is a bit of Greek fancy-work which was substituted for the Kamite Gnosis of the
Myth. Max
Müller asked
how the “total change of a human being or a heroine into a tree” is to be
explained.
Whereas
Daphne never was a human being any more than Hathor, in her Green Sycamore, or
Tefnut in
the Emerald
Sky of the Egyptian Dawn. The roots of these things lie far beyond the
Anthropomorphic
representation,
and in a region where the plummet of the Aryanists has never sounded.As the
Egyptians
apprehended,
the foremost characteristic of the dawn was its dewy moisture and [Page 29]
refreshing
Page 26
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
coolness, not
its consuming fire. The tree of dewy coolness, the Sycamore of Hathor, or of
Tefnut, was
the evergreen
of Dawn, and the evergreen as fuel may be full of fire, like the Ash or the
Laurel into which
Apollo turned
the young divinity who was Daphne in Greece and Tafne in Egypt. And if Apollo
be the
youthful
Sun-God, like Horus, on the horizon, who climbs the Tree of Dawn, the dews
would be dried by
him;
otherwise the tree of Moisture would be transformed into a tree of fire, and
assume the burning
nature of the
Laurel, as in the Greek story. It was the Sun that kindled the fire, and as the
Sun climbed up
the Tree the
Dews of Tefnut dried. It was not the Dawn quâ Dawn that was changed into a
Laurel, but the
cool Green
Tree of Dew = Tafne = Daphne , or the Dawn that was dried and turned into the
Tree of
blazing
lustre by the Solar fire, or the Sun, i.e., by Horus or Apollo when
personified. The Water of
Heaven and the
Tree of Dawn precede personification, and the name of Tefnut, from Tef (to
drip, drop,
spit, exude,
shed, effuse, supply) and Nu, for Heaven, shows that Tefnut represented the dew
that fell
from the Tree
of Dawn. She is the giver of the dew; hence the water of dawn is said to be the
water of
Tefnut.
Tefnut gives the moisture from the Tree of Dawn in heavenly dew, but in another
character she is
fierce as
fire, and is portrayed in the figure of the lioness. The truth is, there was
Egyptian science
enough extant
to know that the dew of Dawn was turned into the vapor that was formed into the
Green
Tree on the
horizon by the rising Sun of Morning, and the Kamite mythos which represented
the natural
fact was
afterwards converted into a Greek fancy, as in numerous other instances.
When once
they are identified the myths must be studied in their Egyptian dress. It is my
work to point
the way, not
to elucidate all the Semitic and Aryan embellishments or distortions. But we
may depend
upon it that
any attempt to explain or discuss the Asiatic, American, Australian, and
European
mythologies
with that of Egypt omitted is the merest writing on the sand which the next
wave will
obliterate.
Max Müller
asked how it was that out Ancestors, who were not idiots, although he has done
his utmost to
make them
appear idiotic in the matter of mythology, came to tell the story of a King who
was married to
a Frog? His
explanation is that it arose, as usual, from a misapplication of names. The
Frog was a name
given to the
Sun, and the name of the frog, Bekha, or Bekhi, was afterwards confused with or
mistaken
for the name
of a Maiden whom the King might have married. In reply to this absurd theory of
the
mythical
origins another writer says it was the nature of savages to make such mistakes,
not merely in
names, but in
things; in confusing natural phenomena and in confounding frog-nature with
human nature:
this
confounding confusion being the original staple of “savage Myth.” It would be
difficult to tell which
version is
farthest from the actual fact.
Whoever
begins with the mythos as a product of the “savage” mind as savages are known
today is fatally
in error.
Neither will it avail to begin with idiots who called each other nick-names in
Sanskrit. Let us make
another test
case of Bekhi the Frog. The Sanskritist does not start fair. He has not learned
the language
of [Page 30]
animals. The mythical representation had traveled a long way before any human
king could
have got mixed
up with a Frog for his wife. We must go back to the Proto-Aryan beginnings,
which are
Egyptian or
Kamite. In Africa we find these things next to nature where we can get no
further back in
search of
origins. Egypt alone goes back far enough to touch Nature in these beginnings,
and, as so
often to be
said in the present work, Egypt alone has faithfully and intelligently kept the
record.
The Frog was
a Lunar type on account of its metamorphosis from the Tadpole-condition in the
water to
the four-legged
life on land, which type was afterwards applied to the Moon in its coming forth
from the
waters of
Nun. The name of the frog in Egyptian is Ka, whence, the Lunar Lady, who was
represented as
Page 27
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
a Frog, is
designated Mistress Heka or Hekat, who was a consort of the Solar God Khnum-Ra.
An
inscription
in the British Museum tells us that under one of his titles Khnum was called
“the King of
Frogs.” There
is not proof, perhaps, of his being a Frog himself, but his son, Ptah, had a
Frog-headed
form, and his
consort, Hekat, is the Froggess. This then, is the very King, by name who was
wedded to a
Frog, but not
as a human being. Such a tale was only told when the Gnosis was no longer truly
taught
and the
ancient myth had been modernized in the Märchen. In the Kamite mythos Khnum has
three
consorts, the
Goddess Hekat, Sati, and Ank. We might call them one Wife and two Consorts. The
wife is
Ank, whose
name signifies the Mirror. She personates the Moon as reflector of the Sun.
Hekat and Sati,
are
representatives of the dual lunation; Hekat is the Frog of darkness, and Sati
the Lady of Light. As the
Frog, Hekat
sloughs her frog skin and reveals her wondrous beauty in the form of Sati, the
Woman in
glory. These
three are the Consorts of Khnum-Ra, who is (1) in Amenta with Hekat, (2) in
Heaven with
Sati, and (3)
in the Moon herself, as the generator of Light with Ank, or in the Mirror.
Khnum-Ra is the
nocturnal
Sun, and Hekat, his Consort, is a representative of the Moon that transforms in
the lower
hemisphere,
as the tadpole transforms and emerges from the waters in the form of a frog.
Khnum, God
of the
Nocturnal Sun, is King of Frogs in Amenta, the hidden underworld, and it is
there that Hekat is his
Consort as
the Froggess. In the upper Heaven she is the lovely goddess with the arrow of
light that was
shot from the
lunar bow with which her name of Sati (Coptic, Sate) is hieroglyphically
written. And every
time she
re-enters the water of the nether world she transforms into a frog according to
the mythical
mode of
representing the Moon in Amenta.Thus we can identify the “Sun-Frog” of the
Aryan Märchen in
the
frog-headed solar God (Ptah) or in Khnum, “the king of frogs,” both of whom
were solar deities. We
can also
identify the Frog-maiden in “Mistress Heka,” or Hekat, the goddess with a
Frog’s head, who is
one of
Khnum’s Consorts, the Cinderella (so to say) of the three sisters, who are Ank,
Sati, and Hekat,
the three
goddesses of the myth who survive as the well-known three Sisters of Märchen.
The “Sun-frog”
then was
Khnum, “the King of frogs,” as the Sun in the night of the underworld, who was
wedded to
Hekat, the
lunar frog in the mythos which supplied the matter for the Märchen. [Page 31]
It is only in
this nether world that Sun and Moon can ever meet, and that but once a month,
when the
Lady of Light
transforms into the Frog, or Hekat, which Frog re-transforms into Sati, the
Lady of Light,
when she
emerges from the abyss. The King was not to be seen by his Mistress without the
royal
garments on,
and these were laid aside when the Sun-God entered the nether earth. If the
lady dared to
look upon her
lover in the night she would find him in the shape of a Beast, as in “Beauty
and the Beast,”
which was
prohibited; and if the lover looked upon the Maiden under certain conditions
she would
transfigure
into a Frog or other amphibious creature, and permanently retain that shape, as
the story was
told when the
myth was moralized in the Märchen; the exact antithesis of the Frog that
transformed into a
beautiful
Princess, the transformation of Bekhi, and possibly (or certainly) of Phryne,
the Frog, whose
sumptuous
beauty was victoriously unveiled when she was de-robed before her vanquished
judges. In
the different
phases of the mythos the young Sun-god might have been met by night as a
Crocodile, a
Beetle, a
Frog, an Eel, or a Bear, for the Bear was also a zootype of Horus. In one of
his battles with Sut
he fought in
the form of a Bear. It was a law of primitive Tapu that the bride or wife was
not to be seen by
the lover or
husband in a state of nudity. In the story of Melusine the bride is not to be
looked on when
she is naked.
She tells her lover that she will only abide with him so long as he observes
this custom of
women. This
also was the law in the mythical land of Naz, and one man who did look on his
wife unveiled
was trans
formed into a monster. Now the veil of the bride is one with that of the virgin
Isis, which
originated in
the loin-cloth or leaf-belt that was demanded by the “custom of women”when the
female first
became
pubescent.
In Egypt, the
dog-headed Ape Aani was a zootype of the moon in her period of eclipse and
change, as
explained by
Hor-Apollo (B. I., 14) . The menstruating Ape was a representative of the
Sloughing Moon,
that is of
the veiled bride, the female who was on no account to be looked on in her
nudity. The Sun and
Page 28
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Moon could
not meet below except when the goddess or mistress did vanish from the light of
mortals in
the world
above. The lunar lady in her poor lonely state goes underground or enters the
waters to make
her
transformation and is invisible during three nights (and days) which correspond
to the three days’s
festival at
which Cinderella lost her slipper (the last relic of the magical skin) and won
the heart of the
fairy prince.
The meeting of the Sun and Moon in Amenta was monthly: once every twenty-eight
days, as
it was
reckoned in the Calendar which for, mystical reasons, counted 13 Moons to the
year; and it is
these
mystical seasons which alone can penetrate to the natural origin of Tapu
concerning the custom of
women. It was
the menses = the mensis; the female period = the lunar. The wife, as we have
seen, was
not to be
looked upon during her monthly period when she was in retirement, like the moon
once a
month. It was
on the sixth day of the New Moon that Osiris re-entered the orb and paid his
first visit to the
Lady of
Light. The Australian deity Pundjel is said to have a Wife whose face he never
looks upon.
(Smyth, vol.,
i, 423). When that representation was first made Amenta was not known as the
monthly
[Page 32]
meeting place for Moon and Sun by night. It had only been observed that they
did not meet by
day. Isis,
veiled in black, goes down to the nether-world in search of lost Osiris. It was
only there they
ever met, He
as the Bull of Eternity, She as the Cow, a later type than the Frog of Hekat.
This drama of
the primitive mysteries, this mythical mode of representing natural fact, is at
times more
appealing in
its touching simplicity than anything to be found amongst the best things that
have been
“said” in
literature. The custom of women which was to be religiously respected being
identified, it is easy
to see that
this led to other customs of Tabu, which were founded and practised as modes of
memorizing
the law
intended to be taught and fulfilled.
The mystical
Bride who was not to be seen naked was personated by the Wife who wore the
bridal veil,
or the Wife
whose face was never to be seen by her husband until she had born him a child:
or who is
only to be
visited under cover of night. For, like the Sun and the Moon, they dwell in
separate huts and
only meet
occasionally and then by stealth, according to the restrictions of Tabu. Hence
marriages were
made on
condition that the woman was not to be seen naked by her husband. When Ivan has
burned the
frog-skin of
the beautiful Helen in the Russian tale, to prevent her from turning into a
frog again, she bids
him farewell,
and says to him, “Seek me in the 27th earth, in the 30th kingdom.” (Afanassieff,
Story 23).
We have here
a reference to the twenty-seven nights of lunar light, the three nights of the
moon out of
sight,
together with the transformation and re-arising on the third day. But the
annual conjunction of Sun
and Moon at
the vernal equinox is indicated in the Vedic version when Urvasi promises to
meet her
husband on
the last night of the year for the purpose of giving birth to the child which
was born monthly
of the Moon
and annually in the soli-lunar rendering of the Mythos . Urvasi says to
Pururavas, “Come to
me the last
night of the year, and thou shalt be with me for one night, and a Son will be
born to thee.”
The Egyptians
have preserved for us and bequeathed the means of interpreting this typology of
the early
Sign-language.
The primitive consciousness or knowledge which has lapsed or got confused in
inner
Africa, or
Australia, India, or Greece, lived on and left its record in their system of
signs. If the Australian
savage does
attribute the earliest marriage-laws to a Crow, he is but saying the same thing
as Hor-Apollo
(I, 9) who
tells us that when the Egyptians denote marriage they depict two Crows, because
the birds
cohabit in
the human fashion, and their laws of intercourse are strictly monogamic. Nor is
the Gnosis of
the original
representation quite extinct. The “Wisdom of Manihiki” is a Mangaian
designation of the
Gnosis, or
knowledge of mythical representation, the secrets of which were limited to a
few priests who
were the same
in the Hervey Isles that the Her-Seshti were to the Wisdom of Egypt. A race to
degraded
or
undeveloped as the Bushmen have their hidden wisdom, their Magic, with an
Esoteric interpretation of
Page 29
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
their
dramatic dances and pantomime, by which they more or less preserve and
perpetuate the mythic
meaning of
their religious mysteries. What we do really find is that the Inner African and
other aborigines
still
continue to talk and think [Page 33] their thought in the same figures of
speech that are made visible
by art, such
as is yet extent among the Bushmen; that the Egyptians also preserved the
primitive
consciousness
together with the clue to this most ancient knowledge, with its symbolic
methods of
communication,
and that they converted the living types into the later lithographs and
hieroglyphics.
Animals that
talk in the folk-tales of Bushmen, or the Indians, or the Märchen of Europe,
are still the living
originals
which became pictographic and ideographic in the zootypology of Egypt, where
they represent
divinities,
i.e., nature-powers at first and deities afterwards; then ideographs, and
finally the phonetics of
the Egyptian
alphabet.
No race of
men ever yet imagined that the animals talked in human language as they are
made to do in
the popular
Märchen. No men so “primitive” as to think that anyone was swallowed by a great
fish and
remained
three days and nights in the monster’s belly, to be afterwards belched up on dry
land alive.
They were not
human beings of whom such stories were told, and therefore those who first made
the
mythical
representations were not capable of believing they were human. Put your living
representatives
of primitive
or aboriginal men to the test. Try them with the miracles of the Old or New
Testament,
presented to
them for matters of fact, as a gage of credulity. What does Dr. Moffat say of
his African
aborigines?
“The Gospel appeared too preposterous for the most foolish to believe,” and “To
speak of
the Creation,
the Fall, and the Resurrection seemed more fabulous, extravagant, and ludicrous
to them
than their
own vain stories of lions and hyaenas.” (Missionary Labours, p. 245).But they
knew more or
less, that
their own legends were mythical, whereas, the Christian was vouching for his
mythos being
historical,
and that they could in no wise accept. A Red Indian known to Hearne as a
perfect bigot with
regard to the
arts and tricks of the jugglers could yet by no means be impressed with a
belief in any part
of the
Christian religion, or the documents and vouchers for its truth. (Hearne,
Journey among the
Indians, p.
350). When Robert Drury told the Malagasy for the first time how God created a
man, and
made a woman
from one of his ribs while he was asleep, they said, “it was plain untruth, and
that it was a
shame to tell
such lies with a serious countenance.” They at once proceeded to test the
statement by
reckoning
ribs of a woman and a man. “They said that to talk of what was done before man
was made
was silly,
and that what I had said of God’s talking with men and telling them such things
had no proof;
and the
things I pretended to know and talk of were all old women’s stories. When I
mentioned the
resurrection
of the body, they told me “ it must be a lie, and to talk of them burning in
fire after this life
was an
abominable lie.” (Madagascar: Robert Drury’s Journal, during Fifteen Years'
Captivity on that
island). And
A Further Description of Madagascar , by the Abbé Alexis Rochon. Edited, with
an
Introduction
and notes, by Captain Pasfield Oliver, R.A.)
The
aborigines do not mistake the facts of nature as we have mistaken the primitive
method of
representing
them. It is we, not they, who are the most deluded victims of false belief.
Christian capacity
for believing
the impossible in nature is unparalleled in any time past amongst any race of
men. Christian
readers
denounce the primitive [Page 34] realities of the mythical representation as
puerile indeed, and
yet their own
realities alleged to be eternal, from the fall of Adam to the redemption by
means of a
crucified
jew, are little or nothing more than the shadows of these primitive
simplicities of an earlier time.
It will yet
be seen that the culmination of credulity, the meanest emasculation of mental
manhood, the
densest
obscuration of the inward light of nature, the completest imbecility of
shut-eyed belief, the
nearest
approach to a total and eternal eclipse of common sense have been attained
beyond all chance
of
competition by the victims of the Christian creeds. The genesis of delusive
superstitions is late, not
early. It is
not the direct work of nature herself. Nature was not the mother who began her
work of
Page 30
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
development
by nursing her child in all sorts of illusions concerning things in general.
She did not place
her hands
upon his eyes and bid him to interpret the world subjectively. Primitive man
was not a
metaphysician,
but a man of common sense.And if limited as a limpet, he clung hard and fast to
the rock
of reality as
the sole ground he had to go upon. The realities without and around were too
pressing for
the senses to
allow him to play the fool with delusive idealities; the intellectual and
sentimental luxuries of
later
hylo-idealists. Modern ignorance of the mythical mode of representation has led
to the ascribing of
innumerable
false beliefs not only to primitive men and present-day savages, but also the
most learned,
enlightened,
and highly civilized people of antiquity, the Egyptian; for had these natural
impossibilities
been believed
the Egyptians must have shared the same mental confusion, the same manifest
delusion
concerning
nature, the same incapacity for distinguishing one thing from another, as the
Pygmy or the
Papuan.
It has been
asserted that there was little or no prayer in the lower forms of religion. But
this would have to
be determined
by Sign-language rather than by words. Two hands of a person clasped together
are
equivalent to
a spoken prayer. In the Ritual, the speaker says of the God Osiris, – “His
Branch is of
prayer, by
means of which I have made myself like him.” (Ch., xxviii). Teru is the Branch,
and the same
word
signifies to adore, invoke and pray. It was a mode of praying that the branches
of the bedwen or
birch were
strewn in the ancient British graves. It is the same language and the same sign
when the
Australian
aborigines approach the camp of strangers with a green bough in their hands as
the sign of
amity
equivalent to a prayer for peace and good-will. Acted Sign-language is a
practical mode of praying
and asking
for what is wanted by portraying instead of saying. A green branch of a
symbolic Tree is
dipped in
water and sprinkled on the earth as a prayer for rain. New Caledonian wizards
dig up a
skeleton and
pour water on the dead bones to denote the great need of a revivifying rain.
Amongst the
rock-drawings
of the Bushmen, there is a scene in which it is apparent that a hippopotamus is
being
dragged
across country as a symbolic device for producing rain. Naturally the water-cow
is an African
zootype of
water. In Egypt, she imaged the great Mother who was invoked as the wateress.
Not only are
the four
naked natives dragging the water-cow overland; two of them also carry the
water-plant, probably
a lotus, in
their hands, as a symbol of the water that is so greatly needed. It was a
common mode of
primitive appeal
for savages [Page 35] to inflict great suffering on the representative victim
to compel the
necessary
response. In this case, as we read the language of signs, they are intending to
compel the
nature-power
to send them water, the female hippopotamus or water-cow being the Image of
that power.
This would be
dragged across the land as a palpable mode of forcing the Great Cow of Earth to
yield the
water, in the
language that was acted. The appeal to the Power beyond was also made with the
human
being as the
suffering victim. In Transylvania, girls strip themselves stark naked, and, led
by an elder
woman who is
likewise naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across a field to the nearest
brook; then
they set it
afloat and sit on the harrow for an hour in making their appeal. The Pawnee
Victim ( or the
Khond Meriah)
made appeal to the cruel Powers as the intercessor and suppliant on behalf of
the people
by her
wounds, her tears and groans, her terrible tortures purposely prolonged in
slowly dying, her torn
tormented
flesh agape with ruddy wounds, as in the later Mysteries where the Victim was
held to be
divine.
Pathetic appeal was made to the Nature-Power or Elemental Spirit, chiefly the
Goddess of Earth
as
food-giver, by means of the suffering, the moans, the tears, the prayers of the
Victims. This was
employed as a
Moving-Power, often cruel enough to search the heavens for the likeness of a
pitying
human heart.
The ears of dogs were pinched by the Mexican women during an eclipse to make
them
howl to the
Power of Light. Meal-dust is thrown into the eyes of the Sacred Turtle by the
Zunis to make it
weep. The
Australian Diererie solicit the Good Spirit for rain by bleeding two of their
Mediums or divinely-
inspired men,
supposed to be persons of influence with the Moora-Moora or Good Spirits, who
will take
heed of their
sufferings and send down rain. The scene described by Gason (The Native Tribes
of South
Australia, p.
276) should be compared with that in the Ist Book of Kings, ch. xviii., where
the Priests of
Page 31
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Baal cut and
slash their flesh with knives and lances and limp around the altar with their
bleeding wounds
as a mode of
invoking heaven for rain.Such customs were universal; they were supplicating in
the dumb
drama of
Sign-language for the water or the food that was most fervently desired. The
Guanches used to
separate the
lambs from their mothers, so that their bleatings might make a more touching
appeal to the
superhuman
Powers. When the corn of the Zulus was parched with continual drought they
would hunt for
a particular
Victim called the Heaven-Bird, "as the favourite of the Gods, kill it and
cast it into a pool of
water. This was
done that the heart of heaven might be softened for its favourite, and weep and
"wail for
it by
raining; wailing a funereal wail". (Callaway, Religious System of the
Anazulu, page 407.) The idea is
to make the
Heavens weep at. sight of this appeal, that is representation, of the suffering
people,. and
elicit an
answer from above in tears of rain. The customs generally express the need of
water and the
suffering
endured from long-continued drought.
When the
Chinaman raises his little breast-work of earth with bottles stuck in it muzzle
outward, looking
like guns in
position, to scare away the devils or evil nature-Powers, he is threatening
them and
protecting
his dwelling in Sign-language signs which they are [Page 36] supposed to
understand. Making
the sign of
the Cross or ringing the bells subserves the same purpose in the religion of
Rome. When the
church-bells
were rung in a thunderstorm it was intended to scare off evil spirits just as
much as was the
Chinaman's
futile fortification.
The
Intichiuma ceremonies of the Arunta Tribes are amongst the most primitive now
extant upon the
surface of
the earth. These are performed as sacred mysteries in various modes of
Sign-language, by
which the
thought, the wish, the want is magically expressed in act instead of, or in
addition to, words.
The obvious
object of these most ancient mysteries of magic is the perennial increase of
food, more
expressly of
the animal or plant that gives its name to the totem of those who perform the particular
rites.
The members
of the Witchetty-Grub Tribe perform a mystery of transformation in relation to
the Grub
which is an
important article of diet. With magical incantations they call upon the Grub to
lay an
abundance of
eggs. They invite the animals to gather from all directions and beg them to
breed in this
particular
feeding-ground of theirs. The men encase themselves in the structure intended
to represent
the chrysalis
from which the Grub emerges in re-birth, and out of this they crawl. In trying
to interpret the
dumb drama of
these Totemic Mysteries we have to learn what is thought and meant to be
expressed
chiefly by
what is done. Thus we see the mystery of transformation is acted magically by
the men of the
Witchetty-Grub
Totem for the production of food in the most primitive form of a prayer-meeting
or
religious
service; and the Powers are solicited, the want made known by signs, especially
by the sign of
fasting
during the performance. They shuffle forth one after another in imitation of
animals newly born.
Thus they
enact the drama or mystery of transformation in character.
The primary
phase of what has been continually miscalled "Phallic Worship"
originated in the idea and
the symbolism
of Motherhood. The Earth itself as producer of food and drink was looked upon
as the
Mother of
life. The Cave in the Earth was the Womb of the Bringer-forth, the uterine
symbol of the
Genetrix. The
Mother in Mythology is the Abode. The sign of the female signified the place of
birth: the
birth-place
was in the cave, and the cleft in the rock or entrance to the Mother-earth was
the earliest
phallic type
identified throughout external nature. The Cave, the Cavern, or Cleft in the
rock was an
actual place
of birth for man and beast, and therefore a figure of the uterus of the
Mother-earth. Hence
the mount of
earth, or the rock, was made a type of the Earth-mother in the stone seat of
Isis, or the
conical
pillar of Hathor. The Stone-Image of the mount of earth as Mons Veneris was
identified at times
as female by
the .te.. being figured on it, as it was upon the conical stone of Elagabalus:
or the
Page 32
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
impression of
Aphrodite which was pointed out upon the Black Stone at Mecca by Byzantine
writers. The
Cteis or Yoni
was the natural entrance to or outrance from the Mount, and all its co-types
and
equivalents,
because it was an emblem of the Mother who brought forth her children from the
earth.
The natives
of Central Africa have a widespread tradition that the human race sprang out of
a soft stone.
This goes far
towards [Page 37] identifying the stone as a symbol of the earth; especially
the stone with a
hole in it
that was made use of in the Mysteries as the emblem of a second or spiritual
birth. The Yao of
Central
Africa affirm that Man, together with the animals, sprang from a hole in the
rock. This birthplace,
with the
Arunta of Australia, is represented by the stone with a hole in it, from which
the children emanate
as from the
womb of Creation. In their magical ceremonies they represent a woman by the
emblematic
figure of a
hole in the earth. (N.T., p. 550.) Also a figure of the Vulva as the Door of
Life is imaged on
certain of
their Totems. The Esquimaux Great Mother Sidné is the earth itself as producer
of life and
provider of
food, who is a figure of the Mother.
The origin of
so-called “Phallic worship" then began with the earth herself being
represented as the
Womb of
Universal Life, with the female emblem for a figure of the Birth-place and
Bringer-forth. Not that
the emblem
was necessarily human, for it might be the sign of the Hippopotamus, or of the
Lioness, or
the Sow;
anything but worshipful or human. The mythical gestator was not imaged
primarily as a Woman,
but as a
pregnant Water-Cow, size being wanted to represent the great, i.e., enceinte,
Earth-mother, and
her chamber
of birth. But, under whatsoever type, the Mother was the abode, and the oval
image drawn
by the
cave-dwellers on their walls as the universal figure of the female proves the
type to have been
uterine. The
Female was the dwelling and the door of life, and this was her image "in
all the earth". The
likeness was
also continued in the oval burial-place as sign and symbol of re-birth, and
lastly as the oval
window or the
door in architecture; the Vesica in Freemasonry.The Mother's Womb was not only
a
prototype of
the tomb or temple; it also represented the house of the living.
"When
the magistrate of Gwello had his first house built in wattle and daub, he found
that the Makalanga
women, who
were engaged to plaster it, had produced. according to a general custom. a clay
image of
the female
member in relief upon the inside wall. He asked them what they did that for.
They answered
benevolently
that it was to bring him good luck. This illustrates the pure form of the cult
of these people.
who recognize
the unknown and unseen power by reverencing its manifestation (in this instance)
on the
female side
of the creative principle” (Joseph Millerd Orpen, The Nineteenth Century,
August, 1896, pp.
192-3.) They
knew the natural magic of the emblem if the European did not. Also, they were
identifying
the woman
with the abode. In Bent's book he gives an illustration of an iron-smelting
furnace,
conventionally
showing the female figure and the maternal mould. "All the furnaces found
in Rhodesia
are of that
form, but those which I have seen (and I have come upon five of them in a row)
are far more
realistic,
most minutely and statuesquely so, all in a cross-legged sitting position, and
clearly showing
that the
production or birth of the metal is considered worthy of a special religious
expression. It
recognized
the Creator in one form of his human manifestation in creation". This is
lofty language. "We
call the same
thing by another name in our part of the country".
The God Seb
is the Egyptian Priapus. who might be termed a Phallic deity. But he is the
Earth-God and
Father of
Food; the God [Page 38] of Fructification associated with plants and fruits,
flowers and foliage,
which are
seen issuing from his body. He is the "Lord of Aliment,"in whom the
reproductive powers of
earth are
ithyphallically portrayed. But the potency represented by Seb was not human,
although the
human member
is depicted as a type of the begetter or producer. The enemies of Ra are
repulsed by the
Page 33
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
phallus of
Horus. When the Apap-monster is overthrown it is said, "Thy phallus, O
Horus, acts for ever.
Thy phallus
is eternal". (Rit., xxxix., 8.) Where Herakles employs his club against
the Hydra, the phallus
was the
typical weapon used by Horus against the Apap-dragon. Apap was the Image of
Evil as
negation,
sterility, non-production; and the weapon of Horus symbolized the virile power
of the
procreative
sun. Again, it is said the phallus of Osiris is agitated for the destruction of
the rebels, and it
dooms the
beast Baba to be powerless during millions of years. (Rit., xciii., I.) The
Lion and phallus are
elsewhere
identical as zootype and type of the solar force when it is said the luminous
lion in its course
(the sun) is
the phallus of Ra. (Rit., xvii.) As this was solar and not human, it will
account for the
enormous size
of the image carried in the processions of the Phallus. (Herodotus, B, 2,48.)
Hippolytus,
in his account of the Naaseni, speaks of the hidden mystery manifested by the
phallic figure
which held a
"first position in the most ancient places, being shown forth to the
world, like a light set upon
a
candlestick". This identifies the male emblem with its solar origin as
symbol of the Sun. It is something
to know that
when the long sperm candles are set up in the religious Mysteries today, the
Ritualists are
not doing
this to the praise and glory of the human member, but are making use of a type
which has been
continued in
the darkest Christian ignorance of pre-Christian origins.
A still more
curious but kindred case of survival occurs in Australia, where it is a custom
yet extant
amongst the
aborigines for the widow of a deceased person of importance to wear the phallus
of her
dead husband
suspended round her neck for some time, even for years, after his death. This
is not an
action
directly natural, but one that is dominated and directed by some religious
sentiment, however
primitive,
which makes the action symbolical, and Egypt, who used such types,
intelligently interprets
them. By
wearing the phallus the widow was preserving it from decaying in the earth, and
in wearing it
she was
preserving that type of resurrection which Isis in her character of the Widow
sought so
sedulously to
preserve in a typical image. (Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris.) In the Turin
Ritual (ch. xciii.) the
Manes prays
that the Phallus of Ra may not be devoured by the powers of evil at a feast of
fiends. In
Egyptian
Resurrection-scenes the re-arising of the dead or inert Osiris is indicated by
the male emblem,
re-erection
being one with resurrection. It is thus the dead are raised or re-erected as
Spirits and the
power of
rising again is imaged in the life-likeness as by the figure of Amsu-Horus.
Thus interpreted few
things could
be more pathetic than the poor Widow's devotion to her dead husband, in wearing
the
emblem as a
token of his future resurrection. In point of time and stage of development the
Widow in
Australia is
the natural prototype of the Widow divinized as Isis who consecrated the
phallus of Osiris and
wore it made
of wood. It [Page 39] is in such ways as this the Wisdom of Old Egypt will
enable us to read
the most
primitive Sign-Ianguage and to explicate the most ancient typical customs,
because it contains
the gnosis or
science of the earliest wisdom in the world. The "Language of
Animals" is obviously Inner
African. It
is employed especially by the Bushmen and Hottentots. Just as obviously was it
continued by
the dwellers
in the valley of the Nile. Beyond the hieroglyphics are the living types, many
of which were
continued as
Egyptian, and these have the same significance in Egypt that they had in Inner
Africa, and
still say the
same things in the language of words that they said as zootypes. It appears as
if the many
links that we
thought broken past mending in the long chain of human evolution were preserved
in Egypt.
There is a
Kamite tradition mentioned by Plutarch that previous to the time when Taht
first taught a
language of
words to the human race they used mere cries like the pre-human animals. We
know that
Homo imitated
the .cries of the zootypes because he continued to do so in the Totemic
Mysteries. We
know that the
Ape was one of the most prominent zootypes. Now the God Taht who is here called
the
creator of
speech, and whose name of Tehuti is derived from Tehu, a word for speech and to
tell, is
portrayed in
the form of the Kaf-Ape. The Kaf-Ape is the clicking Cynocephalus; and it is
recognized as
the Clicker
who preceded the Speaker; the animal from whom the later language came. Whence
the Kaf-
Page 34
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
headed
Taht-Ani is the figure of the God who taught mankind their speech and made the
hieroglyphics,
which
ultimately led to letters. This type of language, speech, the word, the mouth,
the tongue, carries us
back to the
pre-lingual 'Clickers, and establishes the link betwixt them and the Clicking
Ape in tracing the
origin and
line of descent for human speech. The Cynocephalus, then, represents a
pre-human source of
speech, and
is personified in Taht-Ani as the Divine Speaker. We may look upon the Clicking
Ape as one
of the
animals whose sounds were repeated by his successor Man. The Egyptian record testifies
to his
pre-eminence.
Possibly the Ape, as typical talker, Sayer or Divine Word, may account for the
tradition
current among
the negroes in West Africa, also in Madagascar, that the Apes once talked and
could do
so yet, but
they conceal their faculty of speech for fear they should be made to work. The
Ass was also
honoured like
the Ape of Taht-Ani as a saluter of the Gods or Nature-Powers. It was a great
past-master
of pre-human
sounds, as the pre-human utterer of the vowels in their earliest form. (Natural
Genesis. )
The Egyptians
call the Ass by the name of Iu, Aiu, and Aai, three forms of one primary
diphthong in which
the seven
vowel-sounds originated. Iu signifies to come and go, which might aptly
describe the Ass's
mode of producing
the voice. Aiu or Iu with the A prothetic shows the process of accretion or
agglutination
which led to the word Aiu, Iao, loa, lahu becoming extended to the seven vowels
finally
represented
in the fully drawn-out name of Jehovah, which was written with the seven vowels
by the
Gnostics. The
English attribute the dual sound of "hee-haw" to the Donkey, and, if
we omit the aspirate,
"ee-aw"
is near enough as a variant and the equivalent of Iu, Aiu, or Aai, as the name
given to itself by
the Ass which
was registered in language by [Page 40] the Egyptians. The animal with his loud
voice and
long-continued
braying was an unparalleled prototype of the Praiser and Glorifier of the Gods
or Nature-
Powers. He
uttered his vowel-sounds at the bottom and top of the octave which had only to
be filled in for
the Ass to
become one of the authors of the musical scale. Such were two of the Sayers in
the language
of animals,
as zootypes, as pictographs of ideas; as likenesses of nature-powers; as words,
syllables,
and letters;
and what they said is to be read in Totemism, Astronomy, and Mythology; in the
primitive
symbolism of
the aborigines, and in the mystical types and symbols now ignorantly claimed to
be
Christian.
It is but
doing the simplest justice to these our predecessors in the ascending scale of
life and evolution
to show
something of the rôle they once played and the help they have rendered to
nascent, non-
articulate
man in supplying the primary means of imaging the super-human forces
surrounding him; in
lending him
their own masks of personality for Totemic use before he had acquired one of
his own, and in
giving shape
and sound and external likeness to his earliest thought, and so assisting him
on his upward
way with the
very means by which he parted company from them. Whosoever studies this record
by the
light that
shineth from within will surely grow more humanly tender towards the natural
zootypes and
strive
hence-forth to protect them from the curse of cruelty, whether inflicted by the
fury of the brutal
savage or the
bloody lust of the violating vivisectionist. This zoomorphic mode of
representation offers us
the key by
which we can unlock the shut-up mind of the earliest, most benighted races so
far as to learn
more or less
what they mean when they also talk or act their unwritten language of animals
in Totemic
customs and
religious rites, and repeat their Märchen and dark sayings which contain the
disjecta
membra of the
myths. It is as perfect for this purpose of interpreting the thought of the
remotest past,
become
confused and chaotic in the present, as is the alphabet for rendering the
thought of the present
in verbal
language.
Homo was the
finisher but by no means the initial fashioner of language. Man was preceded by
the
animals,
birds, and reptiles, who were the utterers of pre-verbal sounds that were
repeated and
continued by
him for his cries and calls, his interjections and exclamations, which were
afterwards
worked up and
developed as the constituents of later words in human speech into a thousand
forms of
Page 35
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
language.
Thinking, by man or animal, does not depend upon speech. Naming is not
necessary for
reflecting an
image of the place or thing or person in the mirror of the mind. Thought is
primarily a mental
mode of
representing things. Without true images of things, there is no trustworthy
process of thought.
Doubtless
many blank forms may be filled in with a word as a substitute for thinking; but
words are not
the images of
things, nor can they be the equivalent of the mental representation which we
call thinking.
It is the
metaphysician who thinks, or thinks he thinks, in words alone - not the Poet, Dramatist,
or natural
man. The
Argus-eyed Pheasant did not think in words but in images and colours when she
painted
certain spots
upon the feathers of her young progeny. Thought is possible without words to
the animals.
Thought was
possible without words [Page 41] to inarticulate man and the mere clickers. The
faculty of
thinking
without words is inherent in the dumb, and it is impossible that such faculty
should be extinct or
not exercised
by articulate man. Much thinking had been acted \without words before the
appearance of
Man upon the
planet. Also by Homo while as yet there were no words but only cries,
ejaculations, and
animal
sounds. The dog can think without words. To make its hidden meaning heard, how
pleadingly he
will beseech
without one sound of human speech. So it is with the human being. As an
example, let us
suppose we
are going upstairs to bed in the dark. In doing this we do not think
"Stair s", - Ban i s t e
r",-
" Landing", handle of door, Candle-stick, Matches . We act the same
as if we saw, only the vision
is within and
the dark without. We see the stair and feel for it with the foot. We see the
banister mentally
and clutch it
with the hand. Internal seeing and external touch concern us a thousand-fold
more than
words, and
these give us a sensible hold of outer things. Thought does not need to spell
its way in
letters. We
are thinking all the while as a process of mental representation, and do not go
on words when
we are not
called upon to speak.
The Bull and
Cow said "Moo"; the Cow with us is still called a "Moo-Cow"
in nursery language. The Goat
and Ram said
"Ba". The Goose in hissing cried "Su". The Hippopotamus in
roaring said "Rur" or "Rurrur".
Various
others in uttering sounds by nature were giving themselves the names by which
they were
to be known
in later language. The name of the Cat in Egyptian is Mau or Miau. This, then,
was one of
the
self-namers, like the Goose Su. Philologists may tell us that "Mu"
and "Ba" and "Su" are not words at
all. In
Egyptian they are not only words but things, and the things are named by the
words. Such words
are a part of
the primary sound-stuff out of which our later words were coined. Moreover,
they are words
in the
Egyptian language. In that we find the word Ba signifies to be, Ba therefore is
a form of to be. Also
it is the
name for the Ram and the Goat, both of whom are types of the Ba-er or Be-ing,
both of whom
say
"Ba". The Cow says Moo. Mu (Eg.) means the mother, and the mythical
mother was represented as
a moo-cow.
The Ibis was one of the self-namers with its cry of "Aah-A ah",
consequently Aah-Aah is one
name of the
bird in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and also of the moon which the Ibis
represented.
It is but
natural to infer that the Totemic Mother would make her call with the sound of
the animal that was
her Totemic
zootype. Her zootype was her totem, and her call would identify her with her
totem for the
children of
each particular group. But where the moo-cow made its gentle call at
milking-time, the water-
cow would
roar and make the welkin ring. And the wide-mouthed roarers would be imitated
first perforce,
because most
powerful and impressive. They roared on earth like the thunder or Apap-reptile
in the
darkness
over-head. In the hieroglyphics the word rur is equal to roar in English, or to
ruru, for the loud-
roarer in
Sanskrit; and the greatest type of the roarer under that name is Rurit the
hippopotamus, whose
likeness was
figured in heaven as the Mother of the Beginnings. When the Cat cried
"miau" it did not
exactly utter
the letters which now compose the word, but contributed the primary sounds
evolved by
[Page 42] the
animal in its caterwauling; and the phonetics that followed were evolved in
perfecting the
sounds. The
shaping of primary into fully developed sounds, and continuing these in words,
was the work
of the
dawning human intelligence. So with other pre-human sounds that were produced
by animals
Page 36
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
before the
advent of Man.
According to
the hidden Wisdom, which is now almost a dead letter, there are reasons why we
should be
particular in
sounding the letter H as an aspirate. In the hieroglyphics one H or Ha-sign is
the fore-part of
a Lion,
signifying that which is first, beginning, essence, chief, or Lord; and Shu the
power of Breathing-
force is
represented by a panting lion. This, then, is the “Ha", and in expelling
the breath it makes the
sound of Ha.
Thus the Lion says “Ha", and is the figure of breathing-force; and this
one of the origins in
language
survives in the letter H – when properly aspirated. It is a dark saying of the
Rabbins that "All
came out of
the letter H". The Egyptian zootypes and hieroglyphics are the letters in
which such dark
sayings were
written and can still be read. The letter H, Hebrew He, Egyptian Ha, is the
sign of breath, as
a Soul of
Life, but as the hieroglyphics show, even the breath that is first signified
was not human. The
earliest
typical breather is an animal. The panting lion imaged the likeness of the
solar force and the
breath of the
breeze at dawn, as an ideographic zootype of this especial Nature – power. On
the line of
upward ascent
the lion was given to the god Shu, the Egyptian Mars. On the line of descent
the
ideographic
type passes finally into the alphabet for common everyday use as the letter H.
The
supremacy of
the lion amongst animals had made it a figure of firstness. And in the reduced
form of the
hieroglyphics
the forepart of the lion remained the sign of the word "Ha", which
denotes priority. The
essence of
all that is first and foremost may be thought in this likeness of the lion.
Amongst the
natural zootypes which served at first as ideographs that were afterwards
reduced to the
value of
letters in the final phonetic phase, we see that beast, bird, fish, and reptile
were continued until
the written
superseded the painted alphabet. These pictorial signs, as Egyptian, include an
from
Aa Khaa, the
Calf
B Ba, a
Nycticorax.
B Ba, the
Bird of Soul.
B Ba, the
Goat or Ram
F Fu, the
Puff-adder.
H Ha, the
panting Lion
H Hem or hum,
the Grasshopper
M Mau, the
Cat or Lion
M Mu, the
Owl.
M Mu, the
Vulture
N Neh, the
Black Vulture
N the
Crocodile
N the Fish
N the Lizard
P Pa, a
Water-fowl
Page 37
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
P Peh, the
Lioness.
A Akhem, the
Eagle.
A Akhu, a
Bird
A Am, or Hab,
the Ibis
A An (Variant
Un), the Hare
K an erect
serpent.
K Ka, an Ape.
K Kam, the
Crocodile's Tail
Kh or Q. from
Kha, the Fish.
Kh or Q. the
Calf
P Pa, a
Water-fowl.
R or L. from
Ru, the Lion.
R Ru, the
Grasshopper.
R Ru, the
Snake.
S Sa, the
Jackal.
S Su, the
Goose.
T Ta, the
Nestling.
T Tet, the
Ibis.
T Tet, the
Snake.
T The Hoopoe.
U the
Duckling.
U U r , the
Finch.
U Un, the
Hare.
[Page 43] The
zootypes serve to show the only ground on which a divine origin could have been
ascribed
to language
on account of the pre-human and superhuman sounds. Several of these are
representative
of Powers in
nature that were divinized. They uttered the sounds by which they were
self-named, and
thus the
Language of Animals might become the language of the Gods. The zootype of Apt
the Roarer
was the
Hippopotamus, and Apt of Ombos was "the Living Word". The zootype of
Taht, as God of
Speech and
Writing, was the Clicking Ape. A zootype of the nocturnal Sun as Atum-Ra was
the Ass. The
Goose that
said "Su" was a zootype of Seb the God of Earth. Ka is the Egyptian
name for the Frog; this
was obviously
self-conferred by the call of the animal, and the Frog was made a zootype of
Power
divinized in
Ptah the God of Transformation and Evolution.
It is obvious
that Homo in making his gestures either continued or imitated sounds that were
already
extant in the
animal world, such as the clicks of the cynocephalus, and other sounds which
can be
identified
with their zootypes, the animals that uttered the sounds before man had come
into being. We
know that
monkeys have an uncontrollable horror of snakes, and no doubt primitive man had
similar
feeling. Now,
supposing the primitive man in a difficulty wished to warn his fellows of the
presence of a
snake, and
had no words to convey the warning with, what would he do ? What could he do
but make
use of the
imitative faculty which he possessed in common with the ape ? He would try to
utter some
signal of
warning in an imitative manner! The sound would have to be self-defining i.e.,
a snake-sound for
Page 38
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
a snake. It
is usually said that snakes hiss. But the Africans represent them as puffing
and blowing rather
than hissing,
as we have it expressed in the name of the puff-adder. When the snake swelled
and
distended
itself, reared up and puffed, it made the sound which constituted its own
audible sign: and the
human being
would naturally repeat that sound as his note of warning to anyone in danger.
The apes will
do so much,
for they will swell and puff and thrust out the mouth, expel their breath and
spit at sight of
the snake.
This representative sound turned into a note of warning would in time be
accompanied by a
gesture that
portrayed to the eye some visible likeness to the thing signified by the sound.
To do this the
mimic would
swell and puff out his cheeks in puffing out his breath. He would thus become
the living
likeness of
the puff-adder, both to eye and ear. The man would represent the audible image
and visible
likeness of
the snake, and such a representation would belong to the very genesis of
gesture language
and natural
hieroglyphics. Further, we have the means of proving that such was the process
in the
beginning.
The puff-adder, the [Page 44] cerastes or horned snake, remains the Egyptian
hieroglyphic sign
for the
phonetic figure or letter F, the syllabic Fu, which was an ideographic fuff or
puff-adder. The
swelling,
puffing, fuffing snake is self-named and self-defined in the first or
ideographic stage - it then
becomes fu in
the second or syllabic stage, and finally is the letter F of modern language,
where it still
carries the
two horns of the hieroglyphic snake. Here we see the survival of the snake as
one of the
mythical
authors of language, like the Ape, the Ass, the Goose, the hissers, purrers,
grunters, roarers
previously
described.
Sometimes the
zootypes are continued and remain apparent in the personal name. Some neighbors
of
the present
writer; who are known by the name of Lynch, have a Lynx in their coat-of-arms,
without ever
dreaming that
their name was derived from the Lynx as their totem, or that the Lynches were
the Lynxes.
This is one
of numerous survivals of primitive totemism in modern heraldry. Again, the Lynx
is one of the
animals which
have the power of seeing in the dark. The Moon is an eye that sees by night, or
in the
dark. This
was represented as the eye of the Lynx or the Cat, the Seer being divinized as
a Lynx in
Mafet, an
Egyptian Goddess. The seeing power thus divinized is marked in later language
by the epithet
"Lynx-eyed".
Lastly, there are something like 1,000 Ideographic signs in the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and
only 26
letters in our alphabet. So few were the sounds, so numerous the visible signs
of things and
ideas. We now
know that man had a language of gesture-signs when he was otherwise dumb, or
could
only
accompany his visible signs with clicks and other ape-like sounds, which he
kept on repeating with
intention
until they were accepted at an exchange-able value as the first current coinage
or counters of
speech before
words. The Zootypes were also continued in the religious Mysteries to visibly
and audibly
denote the characters
assumed in this primitive drama. Just as the Zulu girl could not come to her
mistress
because she was now a Frog, so the Manes in Amenta exclaim, "I am the
Crocodile". "I am the
Beetle!"
"I am the Jackal!" "I am the God in Lion-form!" These express
his powers. They are also the
superhuman
forms taken by the superhuman powers, Power over the water, Power of
transformation,
Power of
resurrection, Power of seeing in the dark of death, together with others, all
of which are
assumed
because superhuman. In assuming the types he enters into alliance with the
powers, each for
some
particular purpose, or, rather,- he personates them. When surrounded by the
enemies of the Soul,
for example,
he exclaims, "I am the Crocodile-God in all his terrors" This has to
be read by the Osirian
Drama. Osiris
had been thus environed by the Sebau and the associates of the evil Sut when he
lay
dismembered
in Sekhem. But he rose again as Horus. In this case the Crocodile-type of
terror was
employed: and
down went the adversaries before the Almighty Lord - thus imaged in
Sign-Ianguage. The
Masquerade
continued in later Mysteries with the transformation of the performers in the
guise of beasts,
birds, and
reptiles, had been practised in the Mysteries of Amenta, where the human Soul
in passing
through the
Nether World assumed shape after shape, and made its transformation from the
one to the
other in a
series of new births according to the Kamite doctrine of metempsychosis, which
it [Page 45] was
afterwards
perverted and turned to foolishness in India and in Greece. In this divine
drama the Soul from
Page 39
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
earth is
assimilated to the zoo types or is invested in their forms and endowed with
their forces which had
figured forth
the earlier Nature-powers in the mythology. The Egyptian Ritual is written in
this language of
animals, and
never was it read in the past, never will it be in the future, unless the
thinking can be done
in the
Ideographic types of thought. Merely reading the hieroglyphics as phonetics is
but a first lesson in
Sign-Ianguage.
Page 40
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Book 2of 12
TOTEMISM,
TATTOO AND FETISHISM AS FORMS OF SIGN-LANGUAGE
[Page 46]
With due search we shall find that the unwritten and remotest past of primitive
man is not
immemorial
after all that may have been lost by the way. Most obscure conditions have been
more or
less
preserved and represented in the drama of primitive customs; in the mirror of
mythology and the
Sign-Ianguage
of Totemism. Ceremonial rites were established as the means of memorizing facts
in
Sign-
language when there were no written records of the human past. In these the
knowledge was
acted, the
Ritual was exhibited, and kept in ever-Iiving memory by continual repetition.
The Mysteries,
totemic or
religious, were founded on this basis of action. Dancing, for example, was a
mode of Sign-
language in
all the mysteries. To know certain mysteries implied the ability to dance them,
when they
could not be
otherwise expressed. The Bushmen say that the Mantis-Deity Kagn taught them the
Mysteries of
dancing under the type of the "Praying Mantis" or the leaping
grasshopper. Primitive men
had observed
the ways and works of Nature, and imitated all they might as a means of
thinking their
meaning when
they could not talk. They danced it with the Grasshopper, they writhed and
swelled and
puffed it
with the Serpent; they panted it with the Lion, roared it with the
Hippopotamus, hummed it with
the insects,
pawed and clicked it with the Ape. In short, they acted in accordance with the
example of
their
forerunners on the earth. They not only wore the skins of animals and feathers
of birds, they made
their motions
in Totemic dances and imitated their cries as a primary means of making
themselves
understood.
From the beginning in the far-off misty morning of the past, dancing in the
likenesses of
animals was a
Totemic mode of demonstration. Amongst the earliest deities of Egypt are Apt
and Bes,
who issue
forth from Inner Africa as dancers in the act of dancing the mystery of the
phallic dance, and in
the skins of
animals. The Arunta Tribes of Central Australia dance the Unthippa Dance in the
ceremony
of
young-man-making at the time of circumcision. This tells the story of the way
they came in what is
known as the
“Range all along". (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, page 442.) It is
said to be
the dance of the Unthippa Women in the Alcheringa who were beings of both sexes
and who
danced all
the way "until their organs were modified and they became as other women
are". This denotes
the status of
the [Page 47] pre-Totemic people who were as yet undivided by the Totemic Rites
of Puberty
which are now
illustrated in the mystery of the dance. In the Initiation ceremonies of the
males described
by Messrs
Spencer and Gillen (page 381), a special dance of the women follows the making
of the youth
into a man
who is now welcomed by them into the ranks of the elders. A number of young
women come
near. Each
one is decorated with a double horse-shoe-shaped band of white pipe-clay which
extends
across the
front of each thigh and the base of the abdomen. A flexible stick is held
behind the neck and
one end
grasped by each hand. Standing in a group, the women sway slightly from side to
side,
quivering in
a most remarkable fashion, as they do so, the muscles of the thighs and the
base of the
abdomen."The
object of the decoration and movement is evident. It is to incite the youths
and prepare
them for
connubium. At this period of the ceremonies a general interchange and a lending
of women also
takes place .
“This women's dance goes on night after night for perhaps two or three-weeks”.
The men
sing the
“Corroboree Song" whilst the women dance the mystery of young-man-making,
and show the
object and
mode of it. In this case white pipe-clay was substituted for the white
Undattha-Down with
which the
female was usually embellished. Here the customs of the Totemic Mysteries
naturally suggest
that a
primary object in putting on fur and feather or down, and dancing in the skin
of the Totemic Animal
at the
festival of pubescence, was to dramatize the coming of age for sexual
intercourse when this was
determined by
the appearance of the pubes whether of the female or the male.
Page 41
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
There had
been a pre-Totemic period of promiscuity in which there-was no regulated
intercourse of
sexes, no
marriage by the group, or of one half the group with the other half: At that
time, or in the
primeval
state, the earth as yet was undivided into South and North; the Mythical Cow
was not yet cut in
twain, or the
mother separated into the Two Women. Much is told us by tradition if we can but
interpret
truly. It
says the race of beings was not then divided, and had but one leg to go or
stand on, meaning
there was but
one stock. All the earth, in later phrase, being of one blood and of one
language. The
sexes were
not yet divided by the lizard, as female pubescence was quaintly figured. There
was no
cutting of
the male or opening of the female with the firestick or the stone knife by
which the sexes were
divided, or
made, or in the latter phrase "created" into men and women. These
were the "Inapertwa"
beings in the
Alcheringa who preceded women and men and were pre-Totemic. These were the
Unopened or
the Uncircumcised, who had to be transformed into women and men by cutting and
opening; that
is by introcision and circumcision, or subincision, by which they were made
into women and
men in
becoming Totemic. Dancing then was a dramatic mode of rendering the mysteries
of primitive
knowledge in
visible Sign-language. With the Tshi-speaking peoples "Soffa", the
name of the priest,
signifies
“the dancing man". The African Acholi in their- dances, says Sir H.
Johnston, imitate animals
"most
elaborately". An African potentate has been known to dance for some ten or
fifteen minutes
together in
receiving a distinguished European visitor, like Richard Burton, before he had
represented all
his own
titles of honour [Page 48] and claims to admiration in the language of dance
and gesture-signs.
With the
Bechuanas each Totem has its own special dance, and when they want to know the
clan to
which a
stranger may belong they will ask "What dance do you dance?" as an
equivalent for the question
"To what
clan do you belong?" These dances are continued in the Initiatory
ceremonies of Totemism.
They tend to
show that the shapes and sounds and movements of the Totemic animals were
imitated in
the primeval
pantomime by way of proclaiming the clan to which the particular group belonged.
The
Totemic type
was thus figured to sight in gesture-language before it could be known by name.
Admission
into the
Dacota Clan was effected by means of the great Medicine Dance. The Medicine Men
of the
Iroquois have
four dances which are sacred to themselves, no other person being allowed to
dance
these
Mysteries. The first is the " Eagle-Dance", the second the "Dark
Dance" (performed in the dark);
the other two
are the "Pantomime Dance" and the "Witches' Dance". (Myths
of the Iroquois. Bureau of
Ethnology.
Second Annual Report, 1880-81, page 116.) The Eagle being the Bird of Light,
the Sun-Bird,
we may infer
that the first two dances told the story of the Beginning with Light and
Darkness, which was
thus rendered
in gesture-language and continued to be memorized in that fashion by those who
danced
such
primitive Mysteries. We also learn from the sacred dances of the aborigines in
the character of the
Bear, the
Wolf, the Seal, the Crab, or other animal that the gesture-Ianguage included an
imitation of the
Totemic
zootype. The Mandan Indians dance the Buffalo-dance, the heads of the dancers
being covered
with a mask
made of the Buffalo's head and horns. In other dances of the Dog and Bear
totems, the
dancers acted
in the characters of the animals. The Llamas of Thibet dance the Old Year out
and the
New Year in
whilst wearing their animal masks. The Snake-dance is still performed by the
Moqui Indians
of Arizona
(Bourke, Snake-Dance of the Moquis, page116), arid also amongst the Australian
aborigines
when they
"make the Snake" in their sacred procession of the Mysteries
(Howitt). It was a common
Totemic
custom for the brothers and sisters to perform their commemorative ceremonies
or mysteries in
the likeness
of the Totemic animal. In the Australian Rites of Initiation the teachings and
moral lessons
are conveyed
in object-lessons pantomimically displayed. The various Totems are indicated by
the
language of
gestures. The " Rock-Wallabies" are initiated by jumping with the
knees slightly bent and the
legs kept
wide apart. The Kangaroos hop about in the likeness of the Totemic animal. The
howlings of a
pack of
dingoes or wild dogs are heard afar off as if in the depth of the forest. The
sounds grow less and
less distant.
At length the leader of the band rushes in on all fours followed by the others.
They run after
each other on
all fours round the fire, imitating the actions of wild dogs in the Dingo
dance. (A. W. Howitt
on some
Australian Ceremonies of Initiation.) With the Inoits at their religious fetes
and anniversaries of
the dead, the
biographies of the departed are told to the spectators in dumb show and
dancing. With the
Page 42
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Kakhyens of
Northern Burmah it is the custom to dance the ghost out of the house at the
time of the
funeral. The
Egyptian mourners also accompanied the Manes on the way to Amenta with [Page
49] song
and dance, as
may be seen in the Vignettes to the Book of the Dead, where the text deals with
the
mysteries of
the Resurrection. The same Mystery is expressed in the Black Fellow's jumping
up a White
Fellow when
he rises from the dead. It used to be the custom in Scotland for dancing to be
kept up all
night long
after a funeral (Napier, Folk-lore of West Scotland, page 66). Not as a desire
of getting rid of
the Spirit,
but as an act of rejoicing in dancing the Resurrection of the Spirit. The
on-lookers often wonder
why the
performers in Gaelic and Keltic dances should, when furiously dancing, give
forth such inhuman
shouts and
shrill blood-curdling cries. But there is nothing likelier than that these are
remains of the
"Language
of Animals", and a survival of the primitive Totemic practices. Leaping in
the air with a shout
while dancing
had a special dramatic significance. What this was may be inferred from the
Egyptian
Funeral
Scenes. That which had survived as the Dance of Death in the Middle Ages was
the earlier
Dance of the
Resurrection, or the rising again from the dead. The dancing occurs in the
presence of the
mummy when
this has been raised to its feet and set on end, which is then a figure of the
risen dead.
The rising
again was likewise imitated in the dance. Hence the women who are seen to be
jumping with
curious
contortions on some of the bas-reliefs are acting the resurrection. It is their
duty and delight to
"dance
that dance" for the departed (Papyrus of Ani). Thus, Sign-language,
Totemism and Mythology
were not
merely modes of representation. They were also the primitive means of
preserving the human
experience in
the remoter past of which there could be no written record. They constitute the
record of
pre-historic
times. The most primitive customs, ceremonial rites and revels, together with
the religious
mysteries,
originated as the means of keeping the unwritten past of the race in
ever-living memory by
perennial
repetition of the facts, which had to be acted from generation to generation in
order that the
knowledge
might become hereditary. This is a thesis which can be fully proved and
permanently
established.
Before ever a Folk-tale was told or a legend related in verbal speech, the
acting of the
subject-matter
had begun, dancing being one of the earliest modes of primitive Sign-Ianguage.
Not
"trailing
Clouds of Glory" have we come from any state of perfection as fallen
angels in disguise with the
triumphs of
attainment all behind us, but as animals emerging from the animal, wearing the
skins of
animals,
uttering the cries of animals, whilst developing our own; and thus the nascent
race has traveled
along the
course of human evolution with the germ of immortal possibilities in it darkly
struggling for the
light, and a
growing sense of the road being up-hill, therefore difficult and not to be made
easy like the
downward way
to nothingness and everlasting death.
It is now
quite certain that speech was preceded by a language of animal cries,
accompanied by human
gestures
because, like the language of the clickers, it is yet extant with the
Aborigines, amongst whom
the
language-makers may yet be heard and seen at work in the pre-human way. The
earliest human
language, we
repeat, consisted of gesture-signs which were accompanied with a few appropriate
sounds, some
of which were traceably continued from the predecessors of Man. A sketch from
life in the
camp of the
Mashona [Page 50] chief Lo Benguela, made by Bertram Mitford, may be quoted,
much to the
present
purpose:
“ He comes - the
Lion! “ and they roared.
"Behold
him - the Bull, the black calf of Matyobane!” - and at this they bellowed.
"He is
the Eagle which preys upon the world!” -here they screamed; and as each
imitative shout was
taken up by
the armed regiments, going through every conceivable form of animal voice - the
growling of
Page 43
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
leopards, the
hissing of serpents, even to the sonorous croak of the bull-frog - the result
was
indescribably
terrific and deafening". (The Triumph of Hilary Blachland, by Bertram
Mitford, page 28) In
this
Sign-Ianguage, which was earlier than words, the Red Men acted their wants and
wishes in
expressive
pantomime whilst wearing the skins of the animal that was pursued for food.
They "laid their
case" as
it were before the Powers previous to the hunt. Each hunt had its especial
dance which
consisted in
the imitation of the motions, habits, and cries of the animals to be hunted.
They climbed like
bears, built
like beavers, galloped about like buffaloes, leaped like roes, and yelped like
foxes.
(Chateaubriand,
"Voyage en Amérique", page 142.) Travellers have detected a likeness
betwixt the
scream of the
Prairie-dog and the speech of the Apache Indians, who will imitate the animal
so perfectly
as to make it
respond to them from the distance. On the night of the Lunar festival, when
waiting for the
Moon to rise,
they will invoke her light with a concert of cries from their brethren of the
animal world,
which include
the neighing of the Horse, the whinnying of the Mule, the braying of the Ass,
the screech of
the Coyote,
the call of the Hyena, the growl of the Grizzly Bear, when this Totemic
orchestra performs its
nocturnal
overture in the Language of' Animals. The Zuni Indians in their religious
service imitate the
cries of the
beasts which are imaged as their fetishes in ceremonial rites at the council of
Fetishes. They
sing a very
long hymn or prayer-chant, and at the close of each stanza the chorus consists
of the cries
which
represent their Deities, called the Prey-Gods, in the guise of their Totemic
Animals. Hall, in his “Life
with the
Esquimaux", tells us how the Inoit look up to the Bear as superior to
themselves in hunting the
seal.
Because, as they say, the Bear "talks sealish", and can lull the
animal to slumber with his
incantation.
The Inoit have learned the secret of Bruin, and repeat his language all they
can to fascinate,
decoy, and
magically overcome the seal and capture it, but they are still beaten by the
Bear. Dr. Franz
Boaz has
recently discovered the remains of a very primitive tribe of Aborigines near
the boundary
betwixt
Alaska and British Columbia. They are called the Tsutsowt, and are hunted to
death by the
Indians like
wild beasts. They formerly consisted of two Clans that rigidly observed the
ancient law of
Totemic
connubium, no woman being allowed to marry within her own Clan. At present
there is but one
Clan in
existence, and the men of this Clan have been forced to seek for wives among
the Indians of
Nass river.
These Tsutsowt apparently talk in bird-Ianguage. They cheep and chirrup or
whistle in their
speech with a
great variety of notes.
The Supreme
Spirit, Tharamulun, who taught the Murrung tribes [Page 51] whatever arts they
knew, and
instituted
the ceremonies of Initiation for Young-man-making, is said to have ordered the
names of
animals to be
assumed by Men. (Howitt, "On Some Australian Beliefs" ). Before the
names could be
assumed,
however, the animals were "adopted for Totems, and the earliest names were
more or less the
cries and
calls of the living Totems. The mothers would be known by their making the cry
of their Totemic
animal, to
which the children responded in the same pre-human language. The Sow (say) is
the mother,
the children
are her pigs. The mother would call her children as a sow, and the children
would try to
repeat the
same sounds in response. The Totemic Lioness would call her kittens by purring,
and the cubs
would respond
by purring. The Hippopotami, Lions, and other loud roarers would grow terrible
with the
sounds they
made in striking dread into the children. When as yet they had no names nor any
art of
tattooing the
Totemic figures on the flesh of their own bodies, the brothers and sisters had
to demonstrate
who they
were, and to which group they belonged by acting the character of the zootype
in the best way
they could by
crying or calling, lowing, grunting, or puffing and posturing like the animals
in this primitive
pantomime or
bal masqué. Thus the sign to the eye and the sound to the ear were continued
pari passu
in the dual
development of Sign-Ianguage that was both visual and vocal at the same time
when the
brothers and
sisters were identifying themselves, not with nor as the animals, but by means
of them, and
by making use
of them as zootypes for their Totems. The clicks of the Pygmies, the San
(Bushmen), the
Khoi-Khoi
(Hottentots), and the Kaffirs constitute a living link betwixt the human
beginner and his
predecessor
the Ape. The Bushmen possess about the same number of clicks as the
Cynocephalus or
Page 44
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Dog-headed
Ape. The Monkey-Mother also menstruates; another link betwixt the Ape and the
human
female. The
Clickers born of her as blood-mother would be known by their sounds as
Monkey-Men. Taht-
Aani is a
Totemic monkey-man raised to the status of a divinity in Egypt. Hanuman is the
same in India,
where the
Jaitwas of Rajputana claim to be the descendants of the Monkey-God. And the
Ape-Men,
imitating the
Cynocephalus, would be on the way to becoming the human Clickers. Very
naturally,
naming by
words would follow the specializing by means of the Totemic types, as we have
Tree the type,
and Tree the
name; Bull the type, and Bull the name; Dove the type, and Dove the name; Lynx
the type,
and Lynch the
name. An instance is supplied by Frederick Bonney in his notes on the customs
of the
River Darling
Aborigines, New South Wales, which is also to the point. He observed that the
children are
named after
animals, birds, and reptiles, and the name is a word in their language meaning
the
movement or
habit of one of them.(Journal Anthrop Institute, May, 1883). The sound may be
added. The
Totem (say)
is an animal. First it was a figure. And from this a name was afterwards drawn,
which at
times, and
probably at first, was the voice of the animal.
The earliest
formation of human society which can be distinguished from the gregarious horde
with its
general
promiscuity of intercourse between the sexes is now beginning to be known by
the name of
Totemism, a
word only heard the other day. Yet nothing later [Page 52] than the Totemic
stage of
Sociology is
fundamental enough as ground to go upon in discussing Sign-language, Mythology,
and
Fetishism, or
in tracing the rootlets of religion; and the study of the subject has but just
commenced. It
had been
omitted, with all its correlates and implications, from previous consideration
and teachings
concerning
the prehistoric past and present status of the scattered human family. On this
line of research
the inquiries
and explorations which go back to this tangible beginning are now the only
profitable
studies. The
results of these alone can be permanent. All the rest were tentative and
transitory. But "No
satisfactory
explanation of the origin of Totemism has yet been given". So says the
writer of a book on
the subject.
(Frazer, J. G., "Totemism.")
The author of
"Primitive Marriage” who first mooted the subject in England, could make
nothing of it in the
end.
According to his brother, in a preface to "The Patriarchate" McLennan
gave up his hypothesis and
ceased to
have any definite view at all on the origin of Totemism. Nevertheless, McLennan
was right in
his guess
that the so-called "animal-worship of the Egyptians was descended from a
system of Totems or
Fetishes"
(Budge, " The Gods of the Egyptians", Vol. I., page 29), though
" Worship", we protest again
and again, is
not the word to employ; in this connection it is but a modern counterfeit. The
Totem, in its
religious
phase, was as much the sign of the Goddess or the God as it had been of the
Motherhood or
Brotherhood.
It was an image of the superhuman power. Thus the Mother-earth as giver of
water was
imaged as a
water-cow. Seb the Father of Food was imaged by the goose that laid the egg.
Horus the
bringer of
food in water was imaged by the fish or papyrus shoot. These, so to say, were
Totems of the
Nature
powers. But when it came to " worship" it was the powers that were
the objects of supreme
regard, not
the Totems by means of which the powers were represented; not the water-cow
,the goose,
the fish, the
shoot, but the Goddess Apt, and the Gods Seb, Sebek- and Child-Horus. It is in
the most
primitive
customs that we must seek for the fundamental forms of rites and ceremonies. It
is in Totemism
only that we
can trace the natural genesis of various doctrines and dogmas that have
survived to be
looked upon
as a divine revelation especially vouchsafed to later times, in consequence of
their having
been
continued as religious Mysteries without the guidance of the primitive Gnosis.
The human
past in its remoter range might be divided into two portions for the purpose,
and described as
pre- Totemic
and Totemic. The first was naturally a state of promiscuity more or less like
that of the
Page 45
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
animals, when
there were neither Totems, nor Law of Tabu, nor covenant of blood, nor verbal
means of
distinguishing
one person from another. The only known representatives of this condition now
living are
the Pygmies
of the Central African Forests. By Totemism we mean the earliest formation of
society in
which the
human group was first discreted from the gregarious horde that grovelled
together previously in
animal
promiscuity. The subject, however, has various aspects. The term has many
meanings which
have to be
determined by their types. Many years ago the present writer sought to show
that Totemism,
Mythology,
Fetishism, and the hieroglyphic system did not originate in separate systems of
thought and
expression,
as [Page 53] any modern "ism" sets up for itself, but that these had
a common rootage in
Sign-language,
of which they are various modes or forms. Totemism originated in Sign-language
rather
than in
Sociology, the Signs being afterwards applied for use in Sociology as they were
in Mythology and
Fetishism.
The name "Totem" is supposed to have originated in the language of
the North American
Indians. The
word Totem exists in the Ojibway language for a sign, a symbol, mark, or device
of the
group, Gens,
or Tribe. The Rev. Peter Jones, an Ojibway, spells the word
"Toodaim". Francis Assikinack,
an Ottawa
Indian, renders it by Ododam. The Abbé Thavenet, quoting from the Algonkin
language, gives
nind Otem for
"my tribe", and kit Otem for "thy tribe". The root of the
word as here rendered is Tem or
Dem. The name
and things thus denoted are found to be universal for a group, a gathering, a
collection,
a total of
persons, animals, huts or houses. The Magar Thum is the Phratry or Clan, of
which there were
twelve altogether.
The Attic township was called a Dem. The Sanskrit Dama is the home; Greek
Domos,
Latin Domus,
Sclavonic Domu, English Dome. Itembe = the dome is the roof in Niamwezi. In
Zulu the
Tumu is an
assemblage. In Maori, the Tamene is a collection of people. Also the Toma is a
cemetery like
the Scottish
Tom, and the Tumuli where the dead were gathered together. Tomo, in archaic
Japanese,
denotes a
gathering of persons who are companions. In Assyrian, likewise, the Timi are
the companions.
As is usual
in the present work, we turn to Egypt to see what the great Mother of
Civilisation has to say
concerning
the Tem and the Totem.
..µ (Tom) in
Coptic signified joining together as in the Tem. The word "Tern" has
various applications in
Egyptian. It
signifies Man, Mankind, Mortals, also to unite, be entire or perfect. Moreover
it is a name for
those who are
created persons, as in making young men and young women in the Totemic
ceremonies,
of which more
hereafter. If ever the word "created" could be properly applied to
the Making of Men and to
those who
were grouped together, it is in Totemism. In Egyptian, Tem, or Tem-t, is not
only a Total and to
be
totalled.The sign of Tem-t in the Hieroglyphics is the figure of a total
composed of two halves;
thus the Tern
is one with the Total, and the Total comprised two halves at the very point of
bifurcation and
dividing of
the whole into two; also of totalling a number into a whole which commences
with twofold
unity. And
when the youths of the Aborigines on the River Darling are made men of in the
ceremonies of
puberty -
that is, when they are created Men - they are called Tumba. (F. Bonney.) It
would seem as if the
word ,”Tem”
for the total in two halves had been carried by name as well as by nature to
the other side of
the world,
for two classes in St. George's Sound are universally called Erinung and Tern.
The whole body
of natives
are divided into these two moieties. The distinctions, says Nind, are general,
not tribal. They
agree,
however, with the Arunta division into two classes of the Churinga at the head
of the Totems which
represent the
sub-divisional distinctions. (Scott Nind, Journal of Royal Geographical
Society, Vol. I.,
1832.) The
Egyptian Tem is also a place-name as well as a personal name for the social
unit, or division
of persons.
The Temai was a District, a Village, a Fortress, [Page 54] a Town or a City, on
the way to
becoming the
Dom, as we have it in the heirdom and the kingdom, for the whole or total that
is governed
by a King.
But the group-name for people preceded the group-name for a collection of
dwellings, whether
for the
living or the dead. Here the "Tern" is a total, as we have it in
English for a "team" of horses, a
brood of
ducks, a litter of pigs. Egypt itself had passed out of the Totemic stage of
Sociology in
monumental
times, but the evidences for its prehistoric existence are visibly extant in
the place-names
and in the
mirror of Mythology which reflects aloft a pre-monumental past of illimitable
length. In Egypt
Page 46
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the Zootypes
of the Motherhoods and Companionships had become the Totems of the Nomes. Thus
we
find the Nome
of the Cow; the Nome of the Tree; the Nome of the Hare; the Nome of the
Gazelle; the
Nome of the
Serpent; the Nome of the Ibis; Nome of the Crocodile; Nome of the Jackal; Nome
of the
Siluris; Nome
of the Calf; and others. These show the continuity of Totemic Signs. Also the
status of
Totemic
Sociology survived in Egypt when the Artizans and Labourers worked together as
the
Companions in
Companies; the Workmen in the Temple and the Necropolis were the Companions;
the
Rowers of a
Ship were a Company like the Seven Ari or “Companions" on board the bark
in the Mythical
representation.
These Companions are the Ari by name, and the Totemic Ari can be traced by name
to
Upper Egypt,
where Ariu, the land of the Ari, is a name of the seventeenth Nome. (Brugsch.)
At a remote
period Egypt
was divided into communities the members of which claimed to be of one family,
and of the
same seed -
which, under the Matriarchate, signifies the same Mother-blood, and denotes the
same
mode of
derivation on a more extended scale.
So ancient was
Totemism in Egypt that the Totems of the human Mothers had become the signs of
Goddesses, in
whom the head of the beast was blended with the figure of the human female. The
Totems
of the human
Mothers had attained the highest status as Totems of a Motherhood that was held
to be
divine, the
Motherhood in Nature which was elemental in its origin. So ancient was Totemism
in Egypt
that the Tems
were no longer mere groups, clans, or brotherhoods of people, or a collection
of huts like
the Tembs of
the Ugogo. The human groups had grown and expanded until the primitive
dwelling-places
had become
great cities, and the burial-mounds of still earlier cities; the zootype of the
Motherhood and
the
Brotherhood had become the blazon of the kingdom. If we take the City to be the
Egyptian Temai, the
Lion was the
Totem of the Temai in Leontopolis; the Hare was the Totem of the Temai in
Unnut; the
Crocodile was
a Totem of the Temai in Crocodilopolis; the Cat in the Temai of Pi-Bast
(Bubastes); the
Wolf was the
Totem or Lycopolis; the Water-Cow of Teb; the Oxyrhynchus of Pi-Maza; the Apis
of Ni-ent-
Hapi; the
Ibis of Hermopolis; the Bull of Mendes; the Eel of Latopolis; the dog-headed
Ape of Cynopolis.
When Egypt
comes into sight, the Tems have grown into the Temais and the Totems into the
signs of
Nomes, and
she has left us the means of explaining all that preceded in the course of her
long
development
from the state of primitive Totemism in Africa: the state which more or less
survives
amongst the
least cultured or most [Page 55] decadent races that have scattered themselves
and sown
the Kamite
Wisdom which they carried as they crawled about the world; and, as the evidence
shows,
when this
identifiable Wisdom of the Ancient Motherhood was first carried forth from
Egypt, she was in
the most
ancient Totemic stage of Sociology. The “Tem", then, in the last analysis,
as Egyptian, is a
Totality in
two halves, also a total of "Created Persons", that is, of those who
were constituted persons or
companions in
the Tern or Group by means of the Totemic Rite. In other languages the Tem,
Deme, or
Timi are the
Group, or Brotherhood. And in the languages of the Red Men, the Dodam, Otem, or
Ododem
is the symbol
of the group of Brotherhood or Motherhood, who were known by their Totem.
Totemism
really
originated in the Sign-Ianguage of Inner Africa. Some thirty different Totems
have been enumerated
as still
extant amongst the natives of Uganda and Unyoro, and each Totem is connected
with a birthplace
or place of
origin for the family in relation to the Elemental Ancestry (Johnstone), which
is the same as
with the
Arunta in Australia. But a great mistake has hitherto been made in supposing
that a sign called
the Totem had
its origin in Sociology. The primitive type now generalized under the name of
"the Totem"
was employed
for various purposes as a factor in Sign-Ianguage. It might be personal,
sexual,
sociological
or religious. It might be the sign of legal sanction, or a type of Tabu. It might
identify the
human Mother
or the superhuman power that was invoked for water, for food and shelter as the
Mother-
earth.
Page 47
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Since the
brief jottings on "Totemism" were made in the "Natural
Genesis" (Section 2) much water has
passed
beneath the bridge. A flood of light has been poured out on the subject by
Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen in
their invaluable work on the Native Tribes of Central Australia. The Wisdom of
the Egyptians is
supplemented
most helpfully by the traditions of the Arunta. The Gods and Goddesses may have
been
relegated to
the "Alcheringa", but much of the primitive matter has been preserved
at a standstill which
had been
transfigured by continued growth in Egypt. It is shown by the Arunta and other
Australian Tribes
that certain
Totemic districts were identified by or with the food they produce, as the
district of the
Kangaroos,
the district of the Emus, or the district of the Witchetty-Grubs. The Arunta
Tribes are
distributed
in a large number of small local groups, each of which is supposed to possess a
given area of
country, and
therefore of the food grown in it. Generally the group describe themselves by
the name of
some animal,
bird, or plant. One area belongs to the group who call themselves Kangaroo-Men;
another
belongs to
the Emu-Men; another to the Hakea-flower-Men; another to the people of the
Plum-Tree. (N.
T., pages 8
and 9.) The tribal area of the Australian Euahlayi is likewise divided into
hunting-grounds in
relation to
food. According to Sir George Grey, the Natives say that the Ballaroke family
derived their
name from the
Ballaroke, a small opossum, on account of their having subsisted on this little
animal; and
of the
Nag-Karm Totem he tells us the Nagarnook family obtained their name from living
principally in
former times
upon this fish. These, then, were food- totems. So likewise are the
Witchetty-Grub, the
Kangaroo, and
the [Page 56] Emu of the Arunta groups. Scott Nind also tells us that the
tribes of the
Torndirrup
and Moncalon classes are in a measure named from the kind of game or food found
most
abundant in
the district (Journal of Royal Geographical Society, 1832 ), which is the same
as saying that
the members
of the Emu-totem were named from the Emu-bird, or the Kangaroos from the
Kangaroo-
animal,
naming from food being sub-divisional and later than the descent from the Tree
and Rock or the
Churinga of
the two primary classes. The most important ceremonies of the Arunta are
performed for the
sake of food,
that is for increasing the supply of the plant, animal, bird, or insect which
is the Totem of the
particular
group that enacts the rite and makes the magical appeal. The Emus perform,
propitiate, and
plead for
abundance of Emus. The Witchetty-Grub people ask for plenty of Beetles. These
not only eat
their Totem,
they are also its protectors. The Totem was eaten ceremonially as a type of the
food that was
asked for,
with its likeness drawn upon the ground in the blood of the brotherhood.
It is obvious
that both in Australia and Inner Africa the primitive Totemic mapping-out
includes that of
food-districts,
and that the special food of certain districts was represented by the Totem of
the family or
tribe. At the
time of the 6th Egyptian Dynasty one family branch of the Hermopolitan Princes
owned or
possessed the
Nome of the Hare whilst another governed the Nome of the Gazelle. (Maspero,
"Dawn of
Civilisation",
English Translation, page 523.) These in the primitive stage would be the
food-districts of
the totemic
Hares and Gazelles, and this status has been preserved in Australian Totemism
with the
ownership
retained by the group. The totemic origin of the zootypes assigned to the
Egyptian Nomes is
shown when
the animals .. were not to be eaten as common food. As Plutarch says, the
inhabitants of
the
Oxyrhynchus Nome did not eat a kind of Sturgeon known as the Oxyrhynchus. (Of
Isis and Osiris,
page 7.)
Also, the people of Crocodilopolis would not eat the flesh of the Crocodile.
The notions
of Totemism previously entertained have been upset by the new evidence from
Australia,
which tends
to prove that the Totem was first of all eaten by the members of the group as
their own
especial
food. Hence they were appointed its preservers and cultivators, and were named
after it.
According to
the present interpretation, the Totem primarily represented the maternal
ancestor, the
mother who
gave herself for food and was eaten, and who as the mythical Great Mother in
Egypt was the
Goddess
Hathor in the Tree; the suckler as Rerit the Sow, the Nurse as Rannut the
Serpent, the enceinte
Mother as
Apt, who was fleshified for eating as the totemic Cow. The object of certain
sacred ceremonies
Page 48
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
associated
with the Totems is to secure the increase of the animal or plant which gives
its name to the
Totem. Each
totemic group has its own ceremony and no two of them are alike, but however
they may
differ in
detail the most important point is that one and all have for their main object
the purpose of
increasing
the supply of food; not food in general, but the particular food that is
figured by their Totem.
For example,
the men of the Emu-totem perform their special ceremony and pour out the
oblation of
blood in
soliciting plenty of Emu. There can be no mistake in the kind of food that is
piously besought, as
a likeness of
the Emu-bird is portrayed on the ground in the blood [Page 57] of the tribe to
indicate the
Power that is
appealed to. Thus, in the very dawn of ownership by the group, when property
was
common and
not several, the Totem would be a sign of that which came to be called property
as the
special food
of the totemic family or clan. A group of totemic Kangaroos would be the owners
and eaters
of the
Kangaroo in their locality. A group of totemic Emus would be the owners and
eaters of the Emu.
Those whose
Totem was the Tree would eat the fruit of the Tree a Totem being the veritable
image of the
food. The
women of the Grass-seed Totem fed upon the Grass-seed in the Alcheringa. The
women of the
Hakea-totem
always fed upon the Hakea-flower in the Alcheringa. After the men of the Witchetty-Grub
have
performed the Intichiuma ceremony for increase of food, the Grub becomes Tabu
to the members
of the Totem,
and must on no account be eaten by them until the animal is abundant and the
young are
fully grown.
If this rule should be broken it would nullify the effect of the ceremony. (N.
T., page 203.) If
the
Witchetty-Grub men were to eat too much of their Totem the power of performing
the ceremony for
plenty would
depart. At the same time, if they were not to eat a little of the totemic
animal it would have
the same
effect as eating too much. Hence the sacred duty of tasting it at certain
times. The people of
the Emu-totem
very rarely eat the eggs. If an Emu-man who was very hungry found a nest of
eggs he
would eat but
one. The flesh of the bird may be eaten sparingly, and only a very little of
the fat, eggs and
fat being
more tabu than the meat. "The same principle holds good through all the
totems. A carpet-
snake man
will eat sparingly of a poor snake, but he will scarcely touch the reptile if
it be fat". (N. T., page
202.) That
was left, like the finest grain, for seed. So the members of the
Irriakura-totem do not eat their
Totem for
some time after the ceremony of Intichiuma. The man of the Idnimita-totem, a
large long-
horned
beetle, may not eat the grub after Intichiuma until it becomes abundant. It is
the same with the
men of the
Bandicoot Totem. But when the animal becomes plentiful, those who do not belong
to the
Totem go out
in search of one, which when caught is killed and some of the fat put into the
mouth of the
Bandicoot-men,
who may then eat a little of the animal. (Pages. 204 to 207.) Again, the Arunta
have a
custom or
ceremony in which the members of any local group bring in stores of the totemic
plant or
animal to
their men's camp and place them before the members of the Totem. Thus, as
Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen
remark, "clearly recognizing that it is these men who have the first right
of eating it" (page
210), because
it was their Totem. In this social aspect, then, Totemism was a means of
regulating the
distribution
of food, and in all likelihood it must have included a system of exchange and
barter that came
to be
practised by the family groups. In this phase the Totem was a figure of the
especial kind of food that
was
cultivated and sought to be increased by the magical ceremonies of the group.
If we were to
generalize,
we should say that in the beginning the "food" represented by the
Totem, whether animal or
vegetable,
was both cultivated or cared for, and eaten by the members of that Totem. In
scarcity, it was
eaten less
and less, and was more and more prohibited to the brotherhood, for social,
religious or
ceremonial
reasons, and that this was certainly one of the origins in Totemism. The Totem
as food may
[Page 58]
partly explain the totemic life-tie when the human brother is taught to take
care of the animal
and told to
protect it because his life is bound up with the animal's so closely that if it
dies he too must
die.
Totemism,
however, does not imply any worship of animals on the part of primitive men. It
is the sheerest
fallacy to
suppose that the most undeveloped aborigines began to worship, say, fifty
beasts, reptiles,
insects,
birds, or shrubs, because each in some way or measure fulfilled one of fifty
different conceptions
Page 49
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
of a divinity
that was recognized beneath its half-hundred masks. Moreover, if primitive men
had begun
by
worshipping beasts and holding their deadliest foes religiously sacred as their
dearest friends; if they
had not
fought with them for very existence inch by inch, every foot of the way, to
conquer them at last,
they never
could have attained supremacy over their natural enemies of the animal world.
It would be
going against
all known natural tendency for us to imagine that human nature in the early
stage of
Totemic
sociology was confused with that of the lower animals. The very earliest operation
of the
consciousness
which discreted the creature with a thumb from those who were falling behind
him on four
feet was by
distinguishing himself from his predecessors: and the degree of difference once
drawn, the
mental
landmark once laid down, must have broadened with every step of his advance.
His recognition of
himself
depended on his perceiving his unlikeness to them, and it can be shown how the
beasts, birds,
reptiles, and
fishes were first adopted as zootypes on account of their superhuman and
superior power in
relation to
the , various elements, and therefore because of their unlikeness to the nature
of the human
being. The
ancestral animal then is neither an ideal nor imaginary being as a primitive
parent supposed
to have been
a beast, or a bird, a plant, or a star, any more than the first female as head
of the Gaelic
Clan Chattan
was a great cat, or was believed to be a Great Cat, by the brothers in the Clan
Sutherland.
However
ancient the mythical mode of representing external nature, some sort of
sociology must have
preceded
mythology and been expressed in Sign-Ianguage. Actuality was earlier than
typology. Thus
amongst the
American Indians we find that Earth, Water. Wind, Sun, and Rain are Totems,
without being,
as it were,
put into type by mythology. This, which can be paralleled in Africa and
Australia, points to a
beginning
with the elements of life themselves as the objects of recognition which
preceded the
zootypes; the
elements of water, earth, air, and vegetation. It need scarcely be re-asserted
that Totemism
was a
primitive means of distinguishing the offspring of one Mother from the
offspring of the other; the
children of
the Tree from the children of the Rock, the hippopotami from the crocodiles, the
serpents from
the swine.
The earliest sociology touches on promiscuity at the point of departure from
the human horde
when the
Mother was the only parent known. The Mother comes first, and from that point
of departure
the Egyptian
representation reflects the sociology in the Mirror of the Mythos. In the
pre-Totemic stage,
there was one
Mother as head of the family. This is repeated in Egyptian Mythology. In
Totemism the
Motherhood is
divided between two sisters, or a Mother and an elder sister. This [Page 59] is
repeated in
Egyptian
Mythology. In Totemism the dual Motherhood is followed by the brotherhoods.
This is repeated
in Egyptian
Mythology beginning with the Twin-Brothers Sut and Horus, or the Black Vulture
and the
Golden Hawk,
which are equated by, or continued as, the Crow and Eagle-Hawk of Karween and
Pundjel
in Australia.
In Totemism the two Brothers are followed by four or six in a group, and these
are consorts
of the
sisters in group-marriage. So is it in the Egyptian Mythos. In this way
Mythology will lend its
search-light
to show the backward path of prehistoric Totemism.
At a very
early stage the boys became the Consorts of the Mother. When of age they would
enter into
connubium
with her, the eldest being first. Incest at the time was naturally unknown, it
being the same
with them as
with the animals. This status is reflected in the mirror of Mythology. For
example, there is
evidence that
the eldest Son was the earliest representative or outline of a Father and that
he cohabited
with his own
Mother on purpose to keep pure the Mother-blood. This is an African
institution. The Queens
of Cape
Gonzalves and Gaboon are accustomed to marry their eldest Sons as a means of
preserving
pure the
royal blood. It was a very stringent law and custom with the Yncas of Peru that
the heir to the
kingdom
should marry his eldest sister. (Bastian, Der Mensch in der Gescht'chte, Val.
III., page 293;
Wearne,
S.,Journey to the Northern Ocean, page 136.) This custom also is reflected in
Egyptian
Mythology.
Indeed, so perfectly have the prehistoric sociological conditions been
preserved by the
Egyptians in
their Mythical rendering of the natural fact that the very beginning in Heaven
is with the first
Page 50
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
departure
from utter promiscuity as it was on earth. The Genetrix as typical Woman is
both Mother and
Consort to
her own Children. Hence Apt, the old first Mother of Gods and Men, was called
the “Great
Mother of him
who is married to his Mother". That is, of Horus as the Crocodile-headed
Sebek. Sut, the
male.
Hippopotamus, was also both Son and Consort of the same first Mother. As
Hor-Apollo says,
"when
the male Hippopotamus arrives at its prime of life it consorts with its own
Mother". This was the
status of
Sebek-Horus, who was termed the husband of his Mother. The earliest powers born
of the
Earth-mother
were thought of as fecundating her in utero; Sut as the Hippopotamus, Sebek as
the
Crocodile,
Shu as the Lion, Elder Horus as the Child. The tradition of the sons who
consorted with the
Mother is to
be detected in the story told of Mars by Herodotus (b. ii., 64). He describes
an Egyptian
festival
which the priests informed him was instituted to celebrate or commemorate the
ravishing of his
Mother by the
God Mars. Now Mars, in Egypt, is the warrior Shu, who was one of the sons that
cohabited
with the
Mother. Thus Sut, Horus, and Shu are all three described in this pre-Totemic
character. There
were seven
altogether of these Sons who were Consorts of the Mother in Mythology, and who
reappear
with the Old
Harlot and partake of her cup of fornication in the Book of Revelation. At a
later time both
Sut and Horus
were denounced as “Violators of their Mother."When Isis uttered the cry of
"No Crocodile",
Horus had
violated his Mother, and it was the Mother who effected the "Act of
Salvation" by refusing the
incestuous
intercourse of Son and Mother, whether of the uterine Son or only of [Page 60]
the same
Totem, which
in this case was the Crocodile. (Magic Papyrus, page 7.) With Sut as Violator,
it was the
Hippopotamus;
with Horus the Crocodile, with Shu the Lion. Thus, in the mirror of Egyptian
Mythology
human
promiscuity is reflected when the Great Mother's own Sons are her Consorts.
Polyandry is
represented
when brothers and sisters couple together, as did Shu and Tefnut. The African
marriage of
one male with
two sisters is reflected in the mythos when Osiris is the consort of Isis and
Nephthys.
If we take
the word "Totem" to indicate a sign, the earliest sign or symbol to
be identified in Totemism was
related to
the fact of feminine pubescence. This was the Word that issued out of silence
in the Beginning.
The earliest
law of covenant or tabu was based upon the transformation that occurred at the
time when
the girl
became a woman ready for connubium. This was the mystery of a transformation
that was a
primal source
of all the transformations in the folk-tales of the world. The girl became a
woman as a
natural fact.
This had to be expressed in the visible language already drawn from external
nature. We are
told by
Theale, the Cape historian, that the only festival celebrated by the
Zulu-Kaffirs to-day is one that
is kept when
the girl becomes pubescent. This was indeed the mother of mystery, the mystery
of all
mysteries
ever solemnized or celebrated by the people of the past. It was a time of
rejoicing because the
girl had come
of age and was now ready to be welcomed into communal connubium by the whole
group
of grown-up
males. When the female had attained pubescence and become of age the opening
period,
as it is
commonly designated, was proclaimed, and confirmation given in various modes of
Sign-
Ianguage. The
fact was tattooed on the person. A cicatrice was raised in the flesh. Down was
exhibited
as a sign of
the pubes. The Zulu women published their news with the Um-Iomo or mystical
mouth-piece.
The act may
be read on behalf of the women by assuming the operation to have been female
from the
first, and
then passed on to the boys. The girl in her initiation joins the ranks of the
Motherhood. She has
attained her
opening period. The tooth is knocked out to visualize the opening. One of the
signs of
readiness
shown by the Arunta women was the erection of the sacred Pole immediately after
the
ceremony of
introcision had been performed. A Purulu woman of the Achilpa Totem (in the
mythical past)
is said to
have had a large Nurtunja. This when erected stood so high as to be seen by the
men a long
way off. The
woman showed her Undattha or down (typical of the pubes and pubescence) and the
men
performed the
rite upon her, and then they all had intercourse with her. (N.T., page407.) The
special fact
then
signified by the raising of her Nurtunja, or sacred pole, was that her
womanhood was now
accomplished.
This may explain why no Nurtunja is used but once, a fresh one being made for
every
ceremony.
Also why Churinga were hung upon the pole to intimate her Totem.
Page 51
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
The name for
a Totem (in Luganda) is Muziro, which signifies something tabooed:
"something I avoid for
medical or
other reasons". This tends to identify the Totem in one of its aspects as
a teacher of Tabu in
relation to
the primitive mystery of female nature.
The fact is
that the Sign-language of Totemism was in existence long before two groups of
people were
distinguished
from each other [Page 61] by two different signs or zootypes. Sign-Ianguage is
far older than
any form of
Totemic sociology .The signs now known as Totemic were previously extant; they
had served
other uses,
and were continued for other purposes. The very first thing to regulate in
primitive marriage
was the time
at which the pubescent girl was marriageable. This was determined primarily by
nature and
secondly by
the preparatory rite. As shown by the Australian customs, no girl was
marriageable until the
rite of
introcision had been performed upon her person. Her Totem followed the Totemic
rite as her
heraldic
badge. Thus a first division was made to indicate the fit and protect the unfit
from savage
assault, when
the Totem was individual and feminine. So in the mysteries of Artemis no young
woman
was
considered marriage-able until she had danced in the bear-skin at the
Mysteries; the Bear-skin that
symbolized
the pubes or pubescence, as did the down of birds or the skin of the serpent.
The natural
raison d' ętre,
the primary need for the Totem, was in its being a sign of feminine pubescence.
In a state
of sexual
promiscuity the first thing to be determined was the Mother-blood. This was
manifested at the
period of
puberty and the Totem was adopted as the symbol of motherhood. The manifestor
was now a
frog, a
serpent, a she-bear, or as we say, a Woman to be distinguished by her Totem.
The Totem then
was the sign
of "Earth's first blood" on this most primitive natural ground. When
the Australian black
described the
Churinga-like sacred stones of New South Wales as "All same as bloody
brand", he meant
the
blood-brand, or Totemic mark, and thus identified the Mother-Totem with the
Mother-blood. The
different
mother-hoods were recognized as different Mother-bloods which were visibly
discriminated by
the different
Mother-Totems. The recognition of the Mother-blood, even in the undivided
horde, would
naturally
lead to the Blood~motherhood which we postulate as fundamental in Totemism. At
first no
barrier of
blood was recognized. The brothers and sisters of the same mother intermarried
although they
were, or
because they were originally of the same one blood. When the nations of the
earth were all of
one blood it
was the blood of the Mother, who in her mystical aspect is the Virgin-Mother of
the Mythos
and the
Eschatology. On entering the ranks of the motherhood the girl assumed her sign
which signified
that she was
now a woman. In being made Totemic she was recognized by her zootype - that is,
by the
reptile,
beast, or bird of the Totem into which she had first made her transformation at
the time of puberty.
In various
legends it was said that in making this transformation the young women were
changed into
beasts. Once
on a time a young girl in Arcadia transformed into an animal. It is common in
the folk-tales
for the
female to change into a hyena, a tigress. a serpent, a lioness. or some other
beast or reptile. It
was the same
with the Zulu-Kaffir girl who became a frog. When her change occurred she was
no longer
a tadpole of
a girl, but a full-blown frog and in the human sense a woman. The beginnings
were very
lowly in
Sign-language. It had been awesomely remarked that the serpent had the faculty
of sloughing its
skin and
renewing itself. Hence it is said by the Kaffirs that when the girl makes her
change [Page 62] she
is visited by
the great serpent, or, in other legends, she is said to change into a serpent.
In the Arunta
tradition the
two females who are the founders of Totemism and finishers of the human race
made their
transformation
into the lizard. (N.T., page 389.) The native women of Mashonaland also tattoo
themselves
with the lizard-pattern that is found on their divining tablets when they come
of age. (Bent., i
page 305.)
Thus the lizard in one instance, the serpent in another, the frog in a third,
is the type of beast
or reptile
into which the young woman is said to transform at the particular period. Hence
the lizard, frog,
and serpent
remain as fetishes with the aborigines. Both lizard and frog were continued in
Egypt, but the
serpent there
attained supremacy. At the coming of age the girl changed into a lizard, a
frog, or a serpent
as a mode of
indicating her status as a woman, whether in nature or in Totemism. Thus three
different
types, the
lizard, frog, and serpent, are identified as figures of the fact in nature,
with the "beast" or reptile
Page 52
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
into which
the young girl made her transformation in the mysteries of motherhood which
formed the
mould of
other later mysteries in Totemism and mythology; the types of which were worn
by the
Goddesses as
well as by the Egyptian women. The amulet of Isis which she tied round her neck
when
she had
conceived Child-Horus corresponded to the Totemic sign of the pubescent Virgin.
It was of
blood-red
stone and it imaged the blood of Isis. (Plutarch, c. 65.) The girl was changed
into the woman at
the time of
puberty, therefore the Totem was a type of motherhood. In a sense it was the
Crown of
Maternity
which in Egypt was represented by the serpent of renewal. In attaining this
type the girl
became a
lizard or the Zulu maiden was said to be visited by the great serpent. The
serpent that visited
the Kaffir
maiden was also a Totem of the Virgin-goddess Rannut, in the Kamite mythos, and
this was
doubled to be
worn by the Egyptian Queens as the symbol of Maternity or a Totem of the dual
Motherhood,
in the characters of Girl and Woman, Maid and Mother, Virgin and Gestator. We
may now
affirm that
Totemism was founded on the nature of the female as a mode of showing when the
maiden
might be
admitted into the ranks of Motherhood, and the young girl made her
transformation into the
animal and
became a frog, a lizard, serpent, crocodile, bear, lioness, cat or other
zootype as the bringer-
forth of
human offspring in the mask. Which animal was represented would depend upon the
Totem of
the
Motherhood or the Group of Males. And here it may be asserted that for the
first time we touch
another of
the several tap-roots of Totemism.
The Totem has
sometimes been called the "original Ancestor", as if it were a
representative of the human
Father. But
the sole original Ancestor in sociology, in Totemism, in mythology, is the
Mother; and the
female Totems
of the Motherhood on earth were repeated as the Totems of the Mother in heaven,
or in
the
Astronomical Mythology. One object of the Totem being worn in the form of the
Skin, the badge of
tattoo, or
the crest, was to signify the "blood" which could only be determined
by the Motherhood, so that
the children
of the same Totem could or should not intermarry because they were or were not
of one
blood. It
follows, therefore, that the earliest Totems must have signified the Mother as
a means of
identifying
the one [Page 63] blood of her children. Descent from the Mother, identified by
her Totem, is
indicated
from one end of Africa to the other, when the Egyptian Pharaoh wears the tail
of the Cow, the
Kaffir chief
or Bushman the tail of the Lioness, and the Hottentot is the Son of the yellow
Lion-tail. So is it
in the
Egyptian Mythology where, the priority of the Mother-Totem is well exemplified.
Shu is also a Son
of the Lion-tail,
the She-Lion, and he carries the Ur-heka or Great Magical Power on his head.
This is the
hinder-part
of the Lioness; and the tail of a Lioness on his head denotes the Lioness as a
Mother-Totem
from which
the child traces his descent as a lion. The earliest human being individualized
was
necessarily
the Mother. She and her children formed the primal family, whose tie was that
of Blood-
Motherhood, a
tie that must have been already common with the horde in pre -Totemic times,
the one
blood of
Motherhood being the original source of all Blood-Brotherhood. The primary form
of human
personality
(Personâ) was that attained by woman under the Matriarchate as the Mother.
Fortunately
Providence
placed the Mother first and secured her on the side of procreant nature, for
the perpetuation
of the race.
It has been cast up against Woman that she is Mother first and Consort
afterwards, and that
the Maternal
instinct reigns supreme. But Woman was the Mother ages earlier than she could
be the
wife. The
Mother had the start by many thousand years. The child was known as hers from
the
beginning.
The husband was not. Her function was that of breeder for the group and bearer
for the Tribe,
and not for
love of the individual. She fulfilled the Ideal of Primitive Man as the Woman
of infinite capacity,
like the
Lioness, Hippopotamus, or other huge Titanic type of superhuman power and size.
She may
have had her
individual likes and dislikes, but was grimly governed in the grasp of stern
Totemic Law. It
was perforce
her duty to provide pasturage for forty feeding as "one" or the whole
tribe, not to cultivate
her own
personal preferences. The Mother necessarily grew predominant in the duality of
her nature.
And still the
noblest nature yet evolved is hers whose desire for maternity is dual, and who
blends most
perfectly the
love of the Mother and Wife in one.
Page 53
Ancient
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The solution
of the problem now propounded is that the secret of the Totemic Sphinx, in its
ultimate
secrecy,
originated with the Totem being first of all a sign of feminine pubescence, and
a personal means
of making
known the natural fact; that it thus became a blazon of the Mother-blood and
primal family
group; which
tends to corroborate the suggestion now sought to be established that the Totem
was a
figure of the
female from the beginning, and that this was followed by along and manifold
development in
the
application of the Sign to the Motherhoods and Brotherhoods, and to the
inter-marriage of the groups
now called
Totemic.
There are two
classes of tradition derived from Totemism concerning the descent of the human
race.
According to
one, human beings were derived from the Totemic animals, or Birds, as the
Haidahs in
Queen
Charlotte Sound claim descent from the Crow. According to the other, the
Totemic zootypes are
said to have
been brought forth by human mothers. The Bakalai tribes of Equatorial Africa
told Du Chaillu
that their
women gave birth to the Totemic animals, we have [Page 64] seen how, and that
one woman
brought forth
a Calf, others a Crocodile, a Hippopotamus, a Monkey, a Boa, or a Boar. (Du
Chaillu,
Explorations
and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, page 308.) The same statement as this of
the Bakalai
is made by
the Moqui Indians, who affirm that the people of their Snake-Clan are descended
from a
woman who
gave birth to Snakes. (Bourke, Snake-dance of the Moquis, page 177.) In various
savage
myths we have
seen how the animals are descended from human mothers. This is a complete
reversal
of the
supposed belief that the human race is descended from beasts, birds, reptiles,
and all the other
Totemic
types, and tends to show that the primary Totems were representative of the
Mothers, whence
the alleged
descent of the Totemic animals from human originals which of necessity were
female; when
the Women as
the authors of Totemism brought forth the types. Because the Mother was the
primal
personality
it followed that the earliest human group was a Motherhood. The Clan at first
was Matriarchal.
This is still
extant in the Oraon Maharis, which are the Motherhoods by name. (Dalton,
Ethnology of
Bengal, (page
63.) When there was no individual fatherhood yet determinable, descent was in
the female
line, from
the Mother to the Eldest Daughter. These became the typical "Two
Women" in Totemism and
the "Two
Mothers" in Mythology because they had been the Two Mothers in the
primitive Sociology, as
the Mother
and the Eldest Daughter of the human family. The primary human group was
naturally uterine.
The family
first formed were the children of one Mother, and the human pact or tie was
founded on the
one blood of
the Mother; the Blood-Motherhood which determined the Blood-Brotherhood.
According to
Schoolcraft,
the Totems of the Algonquins denote the Mothers. The Emu, which is also
"The Woman",
Ngalalbal, is
a Mother-Totem of the Kurnai in Australia. When the Euahlayi tribe of Australia
take their
Totem-names
from their Mothers, and are divided into two groups as the Light-blooded and
the Dark-
blooded, this
indicates a two-fold derivation from the one Mother-blood, whether pre-Totemic
or Totemic.
If we take
the Bear as a Mother-Totem, we can understand the Ainu of Japan when they say
their earliest
ancestor was
suckled by a Bear. In that case the Totemic Mother was a She-Bear, and the fact
was
memorized
when the Ainu women suckled the young Bear that was to be killed and solemnly
eaten at the
annual festival.
Besides which, when the She-Bear was eaten in place of the human Mother the sex
of
the Totem was
determined by her being invested with a necklace and adorned with eardrops like
a
woman.
It is the
same when the Snake-Clan of Arizona claim descent from a Woman who gave birth
to Snakes.
She was the
Mother of that Totem and the Snakes were her children. But there was a Mother
in
Mythology who
did give birth to the Totem-animals, and who is confused at times with the
human
Motherhood.
This was the Mother-earth, who was represented by the snake as renewer of
vegetation in
the Goddess
Rannut. Egyptian Mythology is a mirror of Totemism from the beginning with the
human
Mother who
was the primal parent. And as it was in Totemism so is it in the Mythology and
Eschatology
Page 54
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
of Egypt. In
the beginning was the Great Mother, because the first person recognized in
Totemism was
[Page 65] the
Mother. The Totemism of Egypt was the basis of all its Mythology and
Eschatology, but that
stage of
sociology was almost silted under and hidden out of sight as one of the several
strata of Egypt's
buried past.
The Indians who trace their descent from the Spirit-Mother and a Grizzly Bear
acknowledge
that the
Bear, like that of the Ainos, was a She-Bear, and consequently a Mother-Totem.
The Tugas
claimed
descent from a She-Wolf, and the Tufans from a She-Dog. Descent from the Mother
or in the
female line
was universally recognized by the aborigines. From this it follows that the
zootypes first
represented
the Motherhoods; and when the males came to the fore the same animal would
serve two
purposes. As
female it would represent the motherhood; as male the brotherhood. A tribe of
Indians still
living in
North-West America claim to have descended from a Frog. If this was a Totem of
the
Motherhood,
the descent would be the same as if it were from the Goddess Hekat, only their
sign is
simple Frog,
whereas the Frog had been elevated in status by becoming an image of the Mother
as
Mistress
Hekat, the Froggess who typified the Divine Mother in the transforming Moon.
The divine Cow of
the Todas is
an extant type of the Great Mother as the giver of food, equivalent to Hathor,
the Egyptian
Venus, the
Cow that protected her Son with her body, primarily when the Mother was a
Water-Cow. The
Toda Palal or
High Priest obviously personates the Divine Son, and is the dispenser of
blessings to the
world for the
divine Motherhood that was represented by the Cow.
No race on
earth so ignorant but that it has claimed descent from the Mother. And this
human descent
being the
recognized fact in Totemism from the remotest times, the descendants from the
Mother who
could be, and
was, identified as their own flesh and blood and breath, the Mother who gave
visible birth
to the human
offspring, and no other, from the womb, never could have claimed an actual
descent from
animals,
reptiles, birds, trees, stones and other objects, animate and inanimate. An
Australian tribe
considered
themselves to have been Ducks who at one time were changed into Men. In that
case the
Duck would be
a Totem of the Mother as the means of tracing their descent in the female line.
When they
became Men the
descent would be reckoned from the Male Progenitor. The Bygahs have a tradition
that
the
foster-mother of the first Man was a Milch-Tigress, and therefore, as we show,
a Mother-Totem. In
this
statement the foster-mother is distinguished from the human Mother and is
identified by means of
her Totem as
the Tigress and Lioness, or Sow or Water-Cow, or any other female zootype. The
Hyena
was a
Mother-Totem of Inner Africa. The Wanika in East Africa reverence this animal
as ancestral. When
a Hyena dies
it is bewailed by the whole people. The mourning for a chief is said to be
nothing compared
with the
death of a Hyena (New, Charles, Life and Wanderings, page 122), because, as we
hold, of its
being a
maternal zootype. It is certain that the hippopotamus was a Mother-Totem with
the natives of the
Zambesi, who
have now the greatest horror of touching its flesh. Livingstone's pilot would
go without food
rather than
cook it in the same pot which had contained any of the meat. (Livingstone,
Zambesi.) As
Herodotus
tells us, the first Mother of [Page 66] the Scyths was a Serpent-woman. With
the Kings of
Abyssinia the
line of descent was traced from the Serpent, which was therefore a Mother-
Totem. The
process of
divinizing the power by means of the type had begun in Africa beyond Egypt. The
vulture in
Ashanti is
the same sign of royalty as with the Egyptians. In Coomassie, says Ellis,
"vultures are
considered
birds sacred to the Royal Family". This is not in the same way as the
leopard is to the leopard
family; but
rather that these birds have been despotically declared to be sacred, "
which means that they
are
exceptionally sacred by being the totem of the Royal Family, or, as in Egypt,
of royal and divine
Maternity.
Any molestation of this bird was punishable with death. (Ellis, A. B., The
Tshi-speaking People,
page 213.) It
is a Mother-Totem like the vulture of Neith, which was both royal and divine,
as the Bird of
Blood, the
Mother-blood, the royal blood.
The Mother
was the primal parent, and the Totem was a means of distinguishing one mother
and one
Page 55
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
group of
children from another before these were divided in the two classes of the Two
Mothers. Single
Motherhood
was natural1y known to the gregarious horde. Which means that the earliest
Totems were
types of the
female. This is shown in the Egyptian Mythology .that mirror of the
Matriarchate. "Your
Mother"
knew her children and they knew their Mother. "My Mother" knew her
children, and they knew
their Mother.
But without some permanent sign the children would go forth like the beasts
from the lair
and the birds
from the nest, and even this one natural link of relationship must have been
lost in the
undistinguishable
horde. That sign was the Totem as the earliest mode and means of identifying
the
Mother and of
memorizing the descent of the children upon any line of the original
Matriarchate. The
mother's sign
then was the Totem of her own children, male and female, differentiated by sex.
"Your
Mother"
was known by her Totem; "My Mother” by her Totem - to each other's
children. The Mother's
Totem was
naturally recognized by her own children. If "Your Mother" was a
Lioness, the male offspring
knew
themselves as her young Lions. If "My Mother" was a Hippopotamus, her
children knew
themselves as
Hippopotami, or Bulls of the Cow if male. The Mother was always human beneath
the
Totemic mask
which was needed, adopted, and worn to distinguish one human mother from the
rest, so
that she
could be identified by others who were not her children. Thus the first
"Two Women", the "My
Mother"
and "Your Mother" of the Kamilaroi, were recognized as the Emu and
Iguana, and these became
the Totems of
their children.
The Arunta in
their isolation have preserved some relics of a primitive tradition of the
pre-Totemic and
pre-human
state in what they term the"Alcheringa". In this the mythical
ancestors, the Nooralie, or Mura-
Mura of other
tribes, are supposed to have lived. At that time, or in that condition, nothing
human had
been evolved,
distinct from other forms of life. As it is said, in those days there were
neither men nor
women, only
rudimentary creatures waiting to be humanized. The Alcheringa represents a
mythical past
which did not
commence with those who have no clue to the origins. It is a past that was
inherited and
never had any
contemporary existence for them. These rudimentary beings the Arunta call
"the
Inapertwa, [Page
67] or imperfect creatures". We know what was meant by the term because it
is still
applied to
the girls who have not been opened and the boys who have not undergone the rite
of
circumcision
or sub-incision. Such beings still remained the same as the Inapertwa creatures
because
they had not
yet been made into men and women. The sexes were not then divided at puberty
or, in
other words,
had not yet become Totemic. The Arunta tradition tells us further that the
change from pre-
human to
human beings, and from the pre-Totemic to the Totemic status, was effected by
Two Beings
who were
called the Ungambikula, a word which signifies "out of nothing" or
"self-existing". Though these
two are not
designated Women, they are two females. There being no men or women in those
days, only
the
rudimentary Inapertwa, it was the work of the Ungambikula to shape the
Inapertwa creatures into
women and
men, with their lalira, or great stone knives, made of quartzite. These Two
Beings were the
primitive
creators of men and women from the undistinguishable horde of the imperfect
Inapertwa as
founders of
Totemism (N.T., page 388), by means of the Totemic rites. They are said to have
changed the
Inapertwa
into human beings belonging to six different Totems-(I) The Akakia, or
Plumtree. (2) The
Inguitchika,
or Grass-seed. (3) The Echunpa, or Large Lizard. (4) The Erliwatchera, or Small
Lizard. (5)
The
Atninpirichina, or Parakeet. (6) The Untaina, or Small Rat. The Two Beings
having done their work of
cutting and
carving which was to establish Totemism, then transformed themselves into
lizards. Hence it
was the
lizard of Australian legend that was reputed to have been the author of
marriage, because the
lizard was an
emblem of the feminine period.
It will be
shown by degrees what the nature of these rudimentary creatures was, and what
is their relation
to the human
race and to Totemism. The same primeval tradition is to be found in the
Mangaian myths of
creation. In
this the beings born of Vari-ma-te-takere, the originator of all things, the
very-beginning, dwelt
Page 56
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
in the
Mute-land at the bottom of Avaiki. There was no verbal language in this land of
the Great Mother.
You could not
provoke an angry answer there. The only language known in the Mute-land is said
to be
that of signs
- "such as nods, elevated eyebrows, grimaces, and smiles". (Gill,
page 6.)
“Avaiki is a
land of strange utterance,
Like the
sighs of a passing breeze;
Where the
dance is performed in silence,
And the gift
of speech is unknown". (Native song).
The Mother
and Daughter of the Mangaian version take the place of the two female
ancestresses in the
Arunta
legend. Also, one name of the daughter in another of the islands was Papa or
Foundation. In this
also the six
Totems are equated by six parts of Avaiki, the body of the Great Mother
(Mother-earth), who
is said to
pluck off six portions of her flesh, from the right and left sides of her body,
with which to form
her children.
The tradition is one and universal with many variants. It is fundamentally the
same in the
mythology of
the Californian Indians, who tell us that at first their ancestors walked on
all fours. Then they
began to put
forth some members of the human body, such as a finger or a toe, until they
were perfected
[Page 68]
like the Inapertwa when these were made into men and women. They missed their
tails, which
they lost as
the result of having to sit up. It was a result of this derivation of the
children from the mothers
illustrated
by means of Totemic zootypes that the aborigines in various Asiatic and
European countries
were despised
and derided by later races as “The Men with Tails". When the Burmese call
the Karens
“Dog-men",
and the Airyas of India call the aborigines “Monkey-men" they are naming
them derisively in
accordance
with the primitive Totemic status. Nothing is more common than for the later
lighter races to
accredit the
old dark races with the possession of tails, as a continuation of the Totemic
likeness. They
were the
beast men, or their descendants from the earlier Totemic times and status. The
Kickapoos tell a
humorous
story of their ancestors who once were in possession of tails which they
afterwards lost. Then
the impudent
frog would send every morning and ask them how they felt without their tails,
much to the
amusement of
the bear, who used to listen and shake her fat sides with laughter at the joke.
As the frog
had likewise
lost its tail in the process of becoming a frog from a tad-pole we may see in
this the
particular
Totemic type of the Kickapoos that lost their tails. The tail or hinder part is
naturally a Mother-
Totem. The
tail of the lioness carried on his head is the Mother-Totem of .Shu. The
Egyptian kings were
men with
tails. They wore the tails of the lioness and the cow, which were two forms or
zootypes of the
mythical
mother, Neith the Milch-Cow (earlier, Apt, the Water Cow) and Tefnut, the Lioness.
Here the tails
of the
lioness and cow were worn by the human lion or bull who at one time sported his
Mother- Totem in
the shape of
the typical animal's tail. Various tribes on the Upper Nile are the wearers of
artificial tails
made of hair
, straw, or fibre of hemp, in place of the earlier skin. On grand occasions the
Egyptian
judges and
other dignitaries wore the tails of jackals made of horsehair. In Egyptian
symbolism the jackal
represents
the judge; and the tail of horsehair still survives with us as the queue of the
judge's wig. The
fox in Europe
took the place of the jackal as the zootype of the lawyer, and this preserves
the character
of Anup, the
jackal, as the sign of council and of cunning or wiseness on the part of those
who “wear fur",
or the later
silk.
One supreme
and primary object of Totemism was the preservation of the Mother-blood in
aboriginal
purity. This
gave priority and un-paralleled importance to maternal Totems like those of the
Serpent and
Vulture of
the Mother which were symbols of royal and divine maternity in Egypt. The most
profoundly
primitive of
all the ancient mysteries was that of the Mother-blood. At the same time it was
the most
profoundly
natural. By this mystery it was demonstrated that blood was the basis of
womanhood, of
Page 57
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
motherhood,
of childhood, and in short, of human existence. Hence the preciousness of the
Mother-
blood. Hence
the customs instituted for its preservation and the purity of racial descent.
Only the mother
could
originate and preserve the nobility of lineage or royalty of race. And the old
dark race in general
has not yet
outlived the sanctity of the Mother-blood which was primordial, or the
tabu-Iaws which were
first made
statutable by means of the Mother's Totem.
In the
Egyptian system of representation there are Seven Souls [Page 69] or
life-forces recognized in
nature. Six
of these were pre-human, elemental powers, born of the primary Great Mother
when there
was as yet no
human soul distinguished from the six that were the souls, such as light, or
air, earth, or
water, and
animal or vegetable life. The seventh soul alone was human. This was the soul
of blood
brought forth
by a Goddess in the human likeness. The earliest soul considered to be human,
the soul
that was made
flesh in the Child- Horus, was born of the Mother-blood, the blood of Isis,
and, as such,
was
distinguished from the earlier elemental powers, otherwise the six Totemic and
pre-human souls.
The
Blood-Mother was imaged as the Virgin Neith who was represented in one phase by
the vulture that
was fabled,
like the pelican, to pierce its thigh and give its off-spring her own blood for
nourishment. (Hor-
Apollo, B. I.
I I.) This was as the conceiver of a soul that was incarnated by the
Blood-Mother. The blood
that was
considered to be the soul of life, in a series of seven souls, is the blood of
the female - not the
typical blood
of the male; the blood of Isis, not the blood of Adam, Atum, or Belus; and it
can be shown
that the
human race, distinguished from the preliminary people, originated in the
Mother-blood. This was
a
demonstration made by nature herself on grounds as permanent as they were primitive.
The
reproduction
of human life and the means of descent were dependent on the Mother-blood. By
this same
means the
Mother also attained her supremacy, the Matriarchate being based upon the
Mother-blood
that was to
be so preciously preserved and memorized. According to the Egyptian wisdom, the
salvation
of the human
race was effected by the blood of Isis. Salvation was perpetuation. Isis was
the Virgin-
Mother, and
hers also was the Mother-blood. The blood of the Mother, who was primarily the Virgin,
being the
earliest recognized source of human life, thence came the doctrine of a
Virgin-Mother and the
saving blood
in the Eschatology. This Mother-blood originated with the Virgin at the time of
puberty. It
passed into
the racial Mother-blood in the phase of fulfilment with marriage. The Virgin,
represented in
the Egyptian
Mystery, was the maiden who conceived; in her second character she was the
bringer-forth.
These Two
Mothers were imaged by the double Uraeus-crown of Maternity. The mythical
Virgin-Mother
had a very
natural origin. She represents the pubescent female who was the fount and
source in nature
for the one
original blood.The blood of Isis was the Virgin-blood. She was the Mother of
Life in the
mythical
representation, and in the first of two characters she is the Virgin-Mother,
when her sister
Nepthys is
the Bringer-forth or Nurse of the child. The sacredness of the Virgin-blood,
the earliest
Mother-blood,
will help to account for the sanctity of the pre-pubescent virgins who were so
carefully
secluded from
the outer world at the time of its primary manifestation. Among the Ot-Danons
of Borneo
the
pre-pubescent girl is sometimes shut up during seven years awaiting her sign of
the Virgin-
Motherhood.
This is born in blood, and she is consequently looked upon as one newly born
into life. She
is led forth
to breathe the air, and is shown the sun, the water, and the trees. Then the
event is celebrated
by the
sacrifice of a slave, and her body is painted with his blood. This was the
Blood-Mother as a Virgin,
in the first
of the two characters assigned [Page 70] to the female. Thus, the Two Women in
Totemic
Sociology
were the Virgin and the Mother. It is the same in the Mythology, and lastly in
the Eschatology.
The first of
the Two was the pubescent Virgin who conceives: the second is she who brings
forth. Hence
the doctrine
of a Double Motherhood. Ra is said to be united to his "Double
Mother". One of the
Ptolemies
claims to be the Beloved of the "Double Divine Mother". The Double
Mother was also the
Double Sister
in another relationship with Horus. "I am thy Double Sister", says
Isis to Osiris. (P. Pierret
Pantheon Eg.
28. ) In this duality Isis is the Blood-Mother and Nephthys the Milch-Mother;
hence she is
called the
Nurse. Isis is at once the Great Mother and also the Virgin-Mother who keeps
the primary
Page 58
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
place in the
Mythos because the Virgin preceded the bringer forth of the child as source
itself. This
double
Motherhood is also assigned to Jesus in the ", Gospels with the Two
Mothers as two sisters: the
first being
the Virgin - Mary, the second, Mary the wife of Cleopas.
In modern
times the blood in certain families is considered to be royal, and royal blood
is the blood to be
sacredly or
very carefully preserved from any base admixture, although the origin of royal
blood is
hitherto
unknown. Under the Matriarchate there could be no blood-royal by derivation from
the Male.
There was but
one blood, that of the Mother. It was impossible at first for the males to
transmit. There
was but one
means of descent for the race. This was the Mother-blood. Hence the primitive
customs for
preserving it
in purity and sanctity. The Mother-blood was not only known as the "one
blood" of the race,
it also
denoted the "one flesh" or one stock. Descent from the Mother
connoted the one blood or one
flesh. It
would be a way of preserving the Mother-blood in Totemism for the brother and
sister of the
same Totem to
intermarry; the same Totem being a determinative of the Motherhood, as the
means of
identifying
the original Mother-blood. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the Arunta
traditions point to
a time
"in the Alcheringa" when it was the normal condition for the male to
cohabit with a woman of the
same Totem as
his own. The evidence points back to a time when the brother and sister of the
same
Totem always
married each other. It was long sought to keep the Mother-blood intact by the
intermarriage
of the
uterine brothers and sisters."These used to cohabit, and such intercourse
was at one time
considered to
be not only natural and proper, but was esteemed as preferable. The Kalangs of
Java are
what is now
termed Endogamous, and when a girl is asked in marriage the man "must
prove his descent
from their
peculiar stock". That is originally the one stock of the Mother-blood.
People of this stock were
known both in
Africa and Australia as the one-legged people, those who were the undivided
primitive
Endogamists.
Prolonged efforts were made by the “Endogamists" to preserve the
Mother-blood or the
"one
flesh", as it was called by the aborigines of Victoria, who say of a man
that takes a woman of his
own group to
wife, he has "fallen into the same flesh". (Dawson, Australian
Aborigines, page 28.) It was a
custom long
continued by the Egyptians to preserve the Mother-blood by the marriage of the
brother and
sister, a
custom that was sacred to the Royal family, thus showing that the [Page 71]
Mother- blood
transmitted
by the elder sister was the Royal blood. The Goajiros of Colombia in South
America have
divided and
subdivided into a score of Totemic groups, but they all preserve the descent in
the female
line, and
therefore from the Mother-blood. For, if a member wounds himself with his own
knife he is not
allowed to
spill any of his own blood without paying for it. His family on the Mother's
side demand blood-
money in
compensation for their loss. There was no individual property in the
Mother-blood. This
belonged to
the family or tribe. It happens with the Gonds of Central India that they have
lost much of
their pure
blood by intermixture with the Hindu race. Hence, at the installation of a
rajah his forehead
must be
touched with a drop of blood drawn from the body of a pure aborigine of the
tribe to which the
rajah
belongs. (Forsyth, J ., Highlands of Central India, page 137.) Intermarriage
has now come to be
called
Endogamy in opposition to Exogamy, or marriage outside the group. But the
family traced from the
Mother-blood
was earlier than the Totemic tribe. When the children of one and the same
mother
intermarried,
a kind of Endogamy, however limited, would be founded. And when the children of
one
mother were
compelled to marry the children of another mother a sort of Exogamy was
established.
The Mother
was the foundress of the family, consisting of herself and children. The
foundation of the
human
structure was in blood, the blood of the Mother. The fact was commemorated in
blood-sacrifice
when the
victim was immured, or the blood was poured out at the base of the building;
the custom, like
others, is a
mode of memorial that was continued in Sign-language when the origin and
meaning of the
act were
inexplicable. The Mother-blood, we repeat, was primary, and various customs,
rites, or
ceremonies
show the purpose that was intended to keep the one first blood, that of the
Mother, intact.
Page 59
Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Each family
would be proud of and prefer their own fount of source, and endeavour to keep
it pure.
Hence the
marriage of the uterine brother and sister was a mode of preserving the
Mother-blood. Hence
also the
eating of the Mother living was a way of preserving her blood to the
consanguineous group. The
Mother eaten
sacramentally was the earliest victim of blood-sacrifice. In this great cruel
rite the body was
eaten living
to preserve the Mother-blood. Eating the Mother was the primitive Eucharist in
which the
Mother was
the Host whose flesh was torn in pieces like the later bread, and whose blood
was drunk
religiously
as is the later wine. Blood was the life, and this was given by the Mother in
her life and death.
The human
Mother was then in the position of the Totemic zoo type that was substituted
for the parent
and eaten by
the brothers in a later sacrificial rite. It is not uncommon for the
communicants who partake
of the
Sacrament to hold that they have eaten the body and drunk the blood of God
himself, and this
belief
survives in Christianity, as witnessed by the hymn which is sung after taking
the Sacrament,
beginning
with-
“Jesus,
Mighty Saviour,
Thou art in
us now".
To emphasize
the fact still more, it is sometimes requested that those [Page 72] who have
not eaten the
God should
sing the word "with" instead of “in". (Instance quoted in
British Weekly, Sept. 1895.) The
eucharistic
rite of the Mexicans was called Teoqualo, or “God is eaten"; and to eat
the God as
represented
was to share the nature of the divinity. In like manner the Namaquas eat the
flesh and drink
the blood of
the lion and tiger to partake of their superhuman strength. The Tierra del
Fuegians explained
that they ate
the white man on purpose to share in his superior power. The Kamilaroi will eat
the heart
and liver of
a brave man in order that they may partake of his spirit. The Mother was eaten
on the same
principle,
but, as the Mother, she was eaten sacramentally in the primitive family meal.
The custom of
"killing
the God", the priest, the royal personage, the virgin or divine animal,
and eating the victim at a
sacrificial
meal was rooted in this very primitive practice of the children eating the body
of the Mother and
drinking her
blood in what may be termed the primordial Eucharist. The Mother was the
earliest of the
sacrificial
victims that for special reasons were only allowed to live a certain number of
years, at the end
of which time
the giver of life was eaten in honour by her children as the most primitive
sacramental food.
The Mother
was eaten at the family sacrament because, in the first place, she was the
Mother. But there
were other
motives at work. She was sacrificed comparatively young to preserve her from
the effects of
age, from
grey hairs and wrinkles, from disease, decrepitude, and bodily decay. The
children were
preserving
her from the worms of earth and from the prowling beasts of prey, and probably
from the
change of
life at the departure of the lizard. In eating the body of her who had been the
food-giver, they
were
returning her as food to the family, and in partaking of her blood, the
precious Mother-blood, they
were giving
back the soul (of blood) to the life of the family or brotherhood. Some races,
like the Indian,
will not eat
the blood of an animal, for fear the soul of the animal should enter the human
body. But this
was a reason,
in religious cannibalism, for the eating of the Mother-blood in order that her
soul of life
which was her
blood might re-enter the family or brotherhood, or be “contained" by them.
The Mother
was not
turned into a sacrifice, or the blood preserved on her own personal account, so
much as on
account of
the family or tribe to which the blood belonged. Dawson tells us that only
those who had died
a violent
death were eaten by the aborigines of the Port Fairy District, Western
Australia. And then they
were eaten
"as a mark of affectionate respect, in a solemn service of mourning for
the dead". (James
Dawson,
Australian Aborigines.) The dead were eaten as a sign and token of mourning for
those who
were taken
away before their time; and thus religious cannibalism is resolved into a
solemn mourning for
the dead; and
the significance would be the same when the funeral feast was furnished by the
body and
blood of the
Mother. The Fijians, among other races, used to put their mothers to death
before they had
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
attained old
age. There is an account in Wilkes's exploring expedition of the putting to
death of a mother
(page 211,
abbreviated). She was walking about as gay and lively as anyone, when one of
her boys
invited Mr.
Hunt to the funeral. Her two sons considered she had lived long enough. They
[Page 73] had
prepared her
funeral feast, and were now going to kill and bury her. They were doing this
from love of
their mother,
and said that none but themselves, her own sons, could perform so sacred an
office.
Among the
wandering Birhors of India, who are cannibals, the parents in articulo mortis
will beg their
children to
kill and eat them; and this is done as an act of filial piety. (Réclus,
Primitive Folk, - English.
Translation,
page 249.) At the British Association meeting for 1895 it was testified by
Capt. Hynde that
one of the
finest races of the Congo negroes are still in the habit of eating the old and
decrepit members
of their
families. Now, as the Mother was the earliest parent known and honoured, it was
she who would
be eaten by
the children in the earliest form of a funeral meal. According to Herodotus
(4,26), it was a
custom
observed by the Issedones to eat the dead bodies of their parents. But, we
repeat, the Mother
was the only
parent known at first, therefore the only one that could be knowingly eaten as
the parent.
The Mongols
and other races considered it impious for any part of the sacrifice to remain
uneaten or
unconsumed.
Terrible penalties were inflicted for such sacrilege. Now, there is I nothing
like the eating of
the Mother
with honour that can so plausibly explain the origin of such a custom. The
Mother as sacrifice
would be
"very sacred indeed", and to eat the body wholly and entirely,
including the bones and viscera,
would be
giving the proof of the highest honour and the profoundest affection which at
the time was
humanly
possible. Nothing was considered unclean, because it was the Mother. At first
the body of the
human Mother
was religiously eaten as the most primitive Eucharistic Meal. Her flesh thus
eaten was the
sacred food,
and her blood was the drink when these were devoured warm with life. Her
representative,
the Totemic
zootype, was adopted later, and torn piecemeal, to be eaten in a similar
manner. This tearing
of the
"host" in pieces tooth and nail was continued in the Egyptian, Greek,
and other mysteries; and so it
comes about
that the body of Osiris or the Christ was torn in pieces as flesh in the form
of bread, and
everyone of
the communicants must drink of the wine as blood. Hence the commandment:
"Drink ye all
of it".
And here it may be remarked that the sacrificial victim in the Gospel is eaten
alive, or, at least, the
Last Supper
is solemnized before the victim was crucified. We next see the group of
communicants
extending
beyond the inner circle when, as related by Angas, the different part of the
body were
apportioned
according to the human relationship, the choicest portions being given to those
who had
been nearest
and dearest to the departed in this life. It was from affection the children
ate their parent,
but the
ceremony of devouring her alive was awesome and cruel. It had to be performed,
from motives
that sufficed
to establish the custom, but she was not eaten because the act was cruel.
Still, the cruel
ending of her
life made her become a sacrificial victim, and as she was eaten piously, the
meal was
sacramental
and the prototype of all the sacraments in which the Totemic zootypes or the
Divine Son
succeeded as
the victim sacrificed at the Eucharistic Meal. The Mother gave her life back to
the family or
tribe whilst
living. She was literally eaten alive. In accordance with the laws of Tabu, it
was the custom for
everyone to share
and share alike all round in killing and eating the sacrifice. [Page 74] This
was so when
the victim
was a fawn or a kid. But no victim was so naturally calculated to raise the
initial difficulty of
striking the
first blow in a form so acutely cruel as the Mother. This must have verily
necessitated the
practice of
all the participants falling on the victim together to avoid the sense of
individual blood-
guiltiness.
Everyone must partake of the body, everyone must tear the flesh and lap the blood;
everyone
must share
the responsibility of the awful act. The Mother was not only eaten physically.
There was a
primitive
kind of spiritual communion celebrated in the rite which I raised it to a
religious status. The body
and blood
were supposed to be converted into spirit. The theory is explicitly expressed
in the Greek
statement
that "the dead was raised again in the same sacrifice". "All
tasted the sacrificial flesh, so that
the life of
the victim was renewed in the lives of those who ate it". (Theophrastus in
Porph., De Abst., 2,
29. Cited in
Encyclopedia Brit., volume xxi, page 137 , Ninth Edition) And this, of course,
applied to the
Mother as
well as to any other victim whose flesh was eaten as a sacrifice. In eating the
flesh and blood
of the
Mother, the Brothers were absorbing her soul of life and she was being
converted into a spirit. The
Page 61
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
idea survives
in the Alcestis. As pointed out by Percy Gardner (Sepulchral Relief from
Tarentum, page
21), the
heroine of the drama "is scarcely dead before she is invoked by the chorus
as a superhuman
Power able to
give and to withhold favours, now that she has been transubstantiated".
Eating the
human Mother as the Eucharist at the family meal led naturally to eating the
Mother of Life
who gave
herself in food that men might live; the Mother who was represented by the Ainu
She-Bear, the
Acagchemen
Panes-Bird, the crucified Great Mother of the Cypriotes, or by the blood of
Isis in Egypt,
and who,
under various mythical or Totemic types, was the renewer of life by offering up
her own; the
earliest type
of voluntary sacrifice which preceded that of Horus the Saviour-Son or of
Osiris in a later
Eucharist.
The human Mother was eaten actually, not as a Totemic type. The "Great
Mother" was eaten
by proxy as
Totemic: Rerit or Shaat was annually eaten as the Sow; Hathor was eaten as the
Heifer; the
female being
the Totem of the Mother, whether human or divine. The Goddess Tari Pennu is a
form of the
Earth-Mother
who was worshipped by the Kolarians of Bengal, and made fecund periodically by
oblations
of blood at
her festival of reproduction when the human doctrine was repeated and reapplied
to external
nature and
she was fertilized with blood. The offering was at times the flesh and blood of
a virgin. A
young girl,
called the Meriah, was stripped stark naked and bound with cords to a maypole
crowned with
flowers, and
ultimately put to death with horrible tortures, torn in pieces, and partly
eaten. (Réclus,
Primitive
Folk, pages. 311-315.) In the Khond sacrifice of the Meriah we have another
form of the Great
Mother. She
was fastened to the stake by her hair and forced to become a figure of the crucified,
for her
arms were
extended cross-wise by four priests, who pulled her legs apart to complete the
figure. She
was the
cross, the crucified and the Christ or Charis in one.
The theory
now substantiated is that the earliest Totems were zootypes of the Mothers,
that the Mother
was the
earliest victim [Page 75] eaten at the family meal, and that the human
sacrifice was commuted by
the
substitution of the Totemic animal at a later stage of development. Thus, we
hear that the sacrificial
offering made
to the river Nile was first of all a human virgin, and afterwards a sacred
animal. Also, when
the
Panes-Bird of the Acagchemens is said to have been a woman previously, or
elsewhere, we see the
bird has been
substituted for the human victim in the Eucharistic rite as representative of
the Great
Mother. The
Emu was the bird of Earth in Australia, like the Goose in Egypt. As layer of
the egg it
represented
Earth, the Mother of Food. Now the Emu, in the Kurnai mythology, is also called
" the
Woman",
or Mother, who, like Neith, was imaged as the Giver of Food. And when the
Arunta members of
the Emu Totem
propitiate the power solicited by them for the increase of food, the blood
which they shed
from their
own veins is not simply poured forth on the ground. A small prepared plot of
soil is saturated
with blood
and allowed to dry, and on this the bird is outlined to represent the food of
the Totem for which
they are
asking. The Emu is a type of the Earth-Mother to whom the oblation of blood is
offered, and who
is thus
identified by the bird as their provider or providence, who had been "the
Woman" previously. The
human Mothers
had been eaten sacramentally to preserve the family blood in all its primal,
that was
virginal,
purity. At a later stage, when the Totemic animal was religiously eaten
periodically as the
sacrificial
victim, this had come to represent the Great Mother, the Earth-Mother, the
Mother who was
propitiated
and pleaded with for provender; the Mother of Food who was eaten vicariously
with the Totem
as her type
of food. Blood was the ancient life and Motherhood the fount of source. Blood
was the
earliest
human tie. Then the Blood-Brotherhood succeeded and gradually superseded the
Blood-
Motherhood. A
group of progenitors, or brothers of the blood, began to usurp the place of the
Ancestresses
as parental powers on the way to finally establishing the Patriarchate.
Civilization
first began with the conditions of the pre-Totemic people, who were pre-human.
According to
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the
traditions of the Arunta, they had no stone knife, no fire-stick, no rites or
ceremonies of pubescence.
Indeed, there
were no men or women then extant. The nascent race was not yet humanized; it
had to be
created by
becoming Totemic. This tradition of the human origin, which can be universally
corroborated,
is, in its
way, a primitive version of the so-called "Creation of Man" that
comes to us belated in the Book
of Genesis.
It tends to show that human beings, "Created Men" of the Egyptian
"Tem", were a birth of
Totemism. The
traditions of the Arunta affirm that Totemism originated with "Two
Women" who, as here
suggested,
were the Mother and the Eldest Daughter in the human family, the first two
persons who were
recognized as
ancestral types of the Virgin who conceived and the Mother who brought forth.
There is
ample
evidence to show that Totemism was founded by "Two Women", the
"Two Women" who were the
mythical
Ancestresses of the Race. These are represented by the two females who prepared
young girls
for sexual
intercourse at the period of pubescence, by performing the opening rite of
introcision, and who
were
consequently the typical founders of Totemism. [Page 76]
The Arunta
say it had been found that many of the younger women died in consequence of
unlimited
promiscuous
intercourse with men who were unrestrained and women unprepared by the opening
rite
when there
was as yet no law of tabu. The opening rite was preparatory and considered
necessary to
befit the
young women for sexual intercourse, and also to protect them previously from
savage treatment.
Therefore we
argue that it was devised by the Mothers for the protection of the daughters.
The women of
the Hawk
Totem are said to have made certain men "ashamed of their excesses".
(Spencer and Gillen,
N.T., page
416.) The men were monstrous in their size and savagery, and necessitated the
Totemic rites.
It is related
of the "Two Women", here called the Elder and the Younger Sisters,
that they were
"considerably
alarmed at the Ulpmerka Men". But when the pubescent rites had been
performed, the
women were no
longer afraid, and all the men had free access to them (page 315). In order
that the fears
of the
"Two Women" might be allayed the Ulpmerka made a large nurtunja, or
Totem-pole, upon which
the sacred
emblems called the Churinga were suspended. "After this had been shown to
the women they
were no
longer timid". One of the Two was then decorated with the down of birds
and a small nurtunja, of
a blunt,
conical shape, was set upon her head for ornament, and the men danced round
her, shouting
"Wah!
Wah!" Then she was taken and laid beside the large nurtunja, which was fixed
upright in the
ground. The
operation of opening the vulva, Atna ariltha-Kuma, was then performed by means
of a large
stone knife.
After this the intercourse was lawful and all the men had access to her. The
same ceremony
was repeated
in the initiation of the second or younger woman. Sexual intercourse till then
had been
promiscuous,
and there was no standing on ceremony or waiting till the females came of age
for rape to
be enforced.
The first two females were made into women by means of the opening rite in
which they
were prepared
for Totemic connubium. One of these, the elder one, operated on the younger,
and then
the two women
became the first Ancestresses of the Race who were constituted such by the
opening rite
that was
performed at puberty. These were the Two Women of the Lizard Totem. There were
only "Two
Women"
originally among the Plum-tree Ulpmerka Men, that is the uncircumcised. At
first they were
unopened.
Then they were operated on, and all the men had access to them, first with one,
and then with
the other
(page 315). These were the Two Women with whom semi-promiscuity was regulated
by the
division into
the two classes with which dichotomous-Totemism began. These Two Women are
variously
described as
coming to introduce the rite of pubescence by means of which the girls were
made into
women and the
uncircumcised males into men. This is performed by them at different halting
places.
Under the
Matriarchate, racial descent was reckoned by the Mother-blood, therefore the
Mother was the
earliest
Woman known. The eldest daughter was the primary channel of descent. Therefore
the eldest
daughter was
the second woman of the primal Two. A score of mothers or daughters would not
change
the type of
the two women first known as the Mother and Eldest Daughter or the Two [Page
77] Sisters.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Thus amongst
the primitive or archaic traditions of the human race there is a legend of
descent from
"Two
Women" called the "ancestresses". This is extant in Africa and
in Australia in Totemism and
Mythology.
The Arunta have several traditions or fragments of tradition concerning these
two typical
women in the
sociology of Totemism. There were "Two Women" in the Alcheringa or
Mythical Past. Two
Women of the
Opossum Totem. (page 403). Two Women of the Magpie Totem (page404). Two Women
of the Hakea
Totem (page 436). Two Women of the Kangaroo Totem (page 464). Two Women who
accompanied
the Men of the Plum-tree in the Alcheringa, as Two Sisters, Elder and Younger
(pages 149
and 315). The
starting point of the Hakea-flower Totem is from Two Female Ancestors (page
122). These
Two Women are
called the elder and the younger. All the men had access to both of them as
soon as
they had
undergone the opening rite.
Thus the
Arunta trace the origin of Totemism in its sociological aspect to the rites of
puberty that were
adopted for
utility when the pre-human creatures were first changed into women and men by
means of
the rites.
These were first performed upon Two Women of the Lizard Totem, one being
described as the
Elder, the
other as the Younger Sister. The lizard is the sign of feminine pubescence and
especially the
Mother's
Totem in Africa and Australia. Hence it was honoured as the author of primitive
marriage. The
Two Women are
the Ancestresses of the human race because they were the first two females to
undergo
the
preparatory rite that changed them into Totemic women fitted for social intercourse
in communal
connubium.
This feminine duality evolved in the sociology had been divinized as the Great
Mother in
mythology
both in Australia and in Africa. In the Osirian cult Isis and Nephthys are at
once the Two
Mothers, Two
Sisters, and Two Wives of Osiris. Isis is the Virgin-Mother, the Blood-Mother,
the one of
Two who
conceives but does not bring forth the Child. Nephthys represents the Goddess
who does bring
forth and who
is the Nurse by name. These are also called the Mother and Sister as well as
the Two
Sisters and
the Two Wives. In short, they are the Two human Ancestresses of the Race who
were
divinized in
Mythology. Thus the Two Women who were the Authors of Totemism are the Two
Ancestresses
who may be described either as Two Mothers, Two Sisters elder and younger,
Mother and
Daughter, or
the Virgin and Gestator, in the various legends, because they are the typical
Two that were
from the
beginning when the Mother and Eldest Daughter were the means of descent during
the
Matriarchate.
With the Nairs of Malabar, whose manners are very primitive, the brothers obey
their eldest
sister. Next
to the mother she is the ruler of the family. And in former times, on great
ceremonial
occasions,
the reigning prince himself yielded precedence to his eldest daughter. She was
one of the
only
"Two Women". The Mother being the first person in the human family,
the eldest sister was the
second as
next available for sexual intercourse; and these became the mythical "Two
Women" from
whom the
Australian natives claim descent. These represent the female duality that
brought on the
Mother-blood.
In some of the legends the Mother passes into the Two Ancestresses as the
Mother [Page
78] and
Sister, instead of Mother and Daughter. At others they are the Two Sisters.
Isis is designated the
Mother, and
Nephthys the Sister. Demeter is the Mother, and Persephone or Kore is the
Daughter. The
two were
often called the Mother and Daughter. It may seem a long way from the Greek
Mother and
Daughter to
the Polynesian Mythology, but as a form of the feminine ancestors they are
originally the
same in the
human sphere. In the Australian ceremonies of initiation there is what Howitt
terms the
feminine
"duality" of Ngalalbal, in the "Wives of Daramulun". This
female duality is the analogue of the
two sisters,
Isis and Nephthys, who were the two consorts of Horus or Osiris in the Egyptian
mythos.
These Two
Sisters are the same Two Mothers of the typical child in Australia as in
Africa, Daramulun, like
Horus, is the
child of the Two Mothers, "The Ngalalbal-dance", says Howitt,
"is rendered very effective
through being
preceded by the duality of Ngalalbal, the wives of Daramulun" these are
seen to glide from
the forest
past the fire and to disappear in the gloom beyond to a slow and rather
melancholy air sung by
the audience,
which may be rendered. "Ngalalbal, you two coming from afar, where are you
going to?"
(Howitt,
Australian Ceremonies of Initiation.) Ngalalbal, the wife of Daramulun, was
originally represented
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
by the Emu,
and is at the same time "the Woman" who divides into the Two Women.
Thus the human
source of
descent follows the pre-human here, as in the Egyptian Mythos. And in the
duality of Ngalalbal
we have the
two wives who are the two sisters of Horus in the Osirian myth. This feminine
duality was
one of the
secret mysteries in Australia as in Africa. Communal marriage, as practised in
Totemism, had
been reduced
in Egypt to the system of two wives; the one being known as the Hemet or Wife,
the other
as the
Nebt-Paru or Mistress of the House. This was also an Inner-African marriage
institution. The first
corresponded
to Isis the Wife; the second to Nephthys the Mistress of the House. The Wives
of Osiris
were also his
Sisters. Isis says to Osiris, "I am thy double Sister". This she was
in the two characters of
Isis and
Nephthys, because the Great Mother qua Mother duplicated in the two females as
ancestresses.
Hence the
"Double Divine Mother" who is mentioned in the texts. Not that Osiris
was supposed to have
married two
Blood-Sisters, but that sister was the earlier name for the Wife, because there
was a Totemic
Sisterhood corresponding
to the Totemic Brotherhood. This dual symbolism, extant amongst the
Australian
aborigines, had been divinized and preserved in the Mythology of Egypt, because
it was once
extant in the
Sociology. In these Two Sisters who were Two Wives one sees the Totemic
consorts
reduced to
that number as the sisters of one brother, on the way to complete monogamy. At
an earlier
social stage,
which we find among the Namaqua Hottentots, two chiefs had four wives in common
among
them. This
was a departure from the equality of the more primitive communal connubium in
which four
brothers were
husbands to four sisters, as in Africa, or ten brothers to ten sisters, as in
Britain.
There would
have been two Ancestresses to the human race in the Hebrew Genesis if the
legend had
been properly
reported. In the extra-biblical tradition Adam had two wives, Lilith and
Chavah, but [Page 79]
Lilith, the
more mystical female of the two, has been damned by orthodoxy as the demoniacal
destroyer
of children -
she who did not bring forth. In a more mystical phase the female duality of
nature was prepubescent
and
pubescent. It is mentioned here because the dogma of a Virgin-Mother originated
in this
natural
reality, and because the two divine women Isis and Nephthys also represent the
Virgin and the
Mother in
this mystical character. Isis was the Virgin and Nephthys was Matrona; the
Virgin who
conceived,
and Matrona who brought forth the child. Female nature of itself divides into
the two phases
of Girlhood
and Womanhood; the Virgin and the Mother, the one being the Mother of blood,
the other the
Milch-Mother
of the child. Such was the origin of a double Motherhood which is personified
in the
Egyptian
mythos. In one cult the Goddess Neith is the Mother who conceives the child,
and Sekhet is the
Bringer-forth.
Now , Neith was the mystical Virgin, whilst Sekhet was the Goddess of sexual
passion. But
in the
Osirian cult this female duality was represented by Isis the Virgin and
Nephthys the Nurse. These
are the Two
human Ancestresses (Tiriti) divinized, but not merely as two sisters in
sociology.
The marital
or sexual relations were at first promiscuous. Then there was a division of the
gregarians into
two
communities or classes in which the primal promiscuity was regulated for
group-marriage with the
totality
divided in two halves, and subdivided afterward by the Totems, which were
extended more and
more until
they reached the radius of the "Upper Ten" or the Chinese
"hundred families". As will bear
repeating, to
the confusion of various writers, the Arunta have traditions of a time when a
man always
married a
sister of his own Totem. This, as tribal, followed the marriage of the brother
and sister of the
blood in
natural endogamy: the same intermarriage that is found in African Totemism.
There was a time,
the Arunta
also say, when "under the old system" all the Purula women were
eligible as wives to a
Panungo man,
whereas under the new system only one half of the women were marriageable to
him
(Native
Tribes, page 421) those of the other half being strictly forbidden to him. This
shows that utterly
promiscuous
intercourse was followed and superseded by the division of the whole into two
halves;
which we take
to have been the intercourse that was sacred to the brother and sister of the
blood within
the
matriarchal family, and which was afterwards divided into the first two
exogamic inter-marriageable
Page 65
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
groups. As
testified to by the latest witnesses, the "fundamental feature" in
the organism of the Australian
tribes is
"the division of the tribe into two exogamous intermarrying groups"
(page55). In the Urabunna
Tribe, which
may be taken as typical, "the whole tribe is divided up into two exogamous
intermarrying
classes,
respectively called Matthurie and Kirarawa. These two classes are subdivided
into two sixes as
Totemic
“groups". All descent is counted from the Mother both as regards class and
Totem (page 60).
And "
the men of one half of the tribe must marry the women of the other half in
marriage by the group,
no such thing
as individual marriage being known. One of the Australian aborigines who had
travelled far
and wide has
stated that "he was furnished with temporary wives by the various tribes
amongst whom he
sojourned in
his travels; that his right to these women was recognized [Page 80] as a matter
of course;
and that he
could always ascertain whether they belonged to the division into which he
could legally
marry, though
the places were I ,000 miles apart and the languages were quite different.
" (Fison and
Howitt, page
53.) Starting from the beginning with the Two Classes, one man at that stage
was entitled to
half the women.
As we find, the two divisions spread out over great parts of the land . Totems
were
added and
further divisions made when the two were divided into four and the four into
eight, but if the
man belonged
to one of the primary two classes, his right to half of the women corresponding
to his
Totem would
still hold good if they were scattered over all the country. His range in the
communal
marriage
would be more circumscribed if his were one of the well-known four Totems, and
become still
more limited
if it were only one of the eight into which the two were so frequently
subdivided in Australia
and America.
On certain festival occasions the women of all the Totems are held as common
property or
there is
partial promiscuity of the sexes by a return from the sub-divisional
arrangement to that of the first
Two Classes;
as when a man will lend his wife to a stranger, always provided that he belongs
to the
same class as
himself (N.T., page 93), the class that was anterior to the Totem. This common
right of all
the tribal
brothers of one class to all the women of the other even from the beginning,
when there were
but two, will
explain certain perplexing marriage customs of later times, when the marriage
of individuals
was slowly
taking the place of marriage between groups or classes; which may be termed
customs of
exemption
from the primitive communal connubium, such as the right of the tribal elders
to act the part of
Baal-Peor,
and the droit du seigneur still extant, although commutable, in the island of
Jersey.
As a natural
fact, the human race originated from the Mother-earth in Two Classes. They were
the forest-
folk and the
Troglodites born of the Tree and the Rock; and such a fact was sure to have
been preserved
in the Kamite
Record. In the very first stage they were the children of Earth, or the
Earth-Mother. The
Mother is
then divided or followed by the Two Women who are distinguished from each other
by their
emblems of
the Birth-place: the Tree and the Rock, or stone with a hole in it, which is an
image of the
Mother-earth.
We can now compare the wood and stone Churinga of the Arunta with other emblems
of
the Tree and
Rock of earth.
The
Australian Totemic system begins with being Dichotomous. There is a Division of
the Whole in two
halves. The
Arunta erect two Totem-posts or sacred poles, one for the south and one for the
north, by
which the
division is most carefully distinguished. There are Two Ancestresses or
self-existent female
founders; Two
kinds of Churinga made of wood and stone; Two Women of the Lizard Totem. There
are
several
instances in which the first departure from promiscuity remains final because
it has never been
outgrown.
This is so in the case of the two classes still extant and still recognizable,
which held good for
marital
rights all over the continent. The whole universe was divided into two primary
classes of things,
corresponding
to the two primary Totemic classes of the Australian aborigines.[Page 81] The
Port Makay
Tribe in
Queensland divided all Nature between their two primary Motherhoods; the
dichotomous system
founded on
the twofold character of the Mother as Virgin and Gestator whom the Egyptians
had divinized
as She who
conceived and She who brought to birth. The Totems commonly follow the two
divisions as
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Ancient
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the signs of
subdivisions. Indeed, it appears that we get a glimpse here and there of the
two divisions
without any
Totems following them, as if the most rudimentary organization had extended no
further. The
Banks
Islanders, for example, appear to have been divided into two primary classes,
and to have had no
sub-divisional
Totems. Reading Totemism by aid of the Egyptian wisdom, it is evident that the
two
classes, the
two kinds of Churinga (wood and stone), the two Poles (North and South), the
two women,
represent the
Motherhood that was duplicated in the two female ancestors; and that the Totems
of the
sub-divisions
represent the blood-brotherhoods, thus affiliated to the Mother-blood which
were followed
finally by
the blood-fatherhood. The Arunta beginning is immeasurably later than the
Egyptian tradition
preserved in
the astronomical mythology. Their beginning is in fact with Totemism. This was
preceded by
a period or
condition of existence called “ the Alcheringa “ or the far-off past of the
mythical ancestors of
whose origin
and nature they have no knowledge but have preserved the tradition.
The twofold
division was fundamental and universal in Egypt. Beginning with the two Egypts
and the two
Tiruti they
had the two halves, North and South, divided by the Equinoctial line: the two
earths upper and
lower, the
two houses of earth and heaven, the two houses of government, the two houses of
the
treasury, the
two granaries, the two fields of sacrifice. The War Department was twofold. The
property of
the State and
of the Temple was divided into two parts. An endeavour to recover the Kamite
mythology
from the traditions
of the Arunta may look like fishing the infinite, but deep-sea dredgers
sometimes find
strange
things. The Ritual preserves a record of the fact that in the primary division
of the total or the
whole earth
in two halves, the boundaries of South and North were determined by two trees.
Hence,
when the Sun,
or Solar God, rises in the East, he is said to issue forth from betwixt the two
sycamores of
the North and
South. This division of the oneness in space into North and South in locality
has been
curiously
preserved by the Arunta Tribes, who make use of the two Poles in their
religious or Totemic
ceremonies,
one the Nurtunja, is erected in the North; the other, called the Waninga, is
made use of in
the South.
(page627.) These are equivalent to the Kamite two sycamore-trees of the North
and South, as
types of the
original division of the earth, and of the later earth and heaven; also called
the two trees in
the garden of
the beginning. This primordial division of the whole into two classes still
persists in the
Christian
scheme of the future life, where the dichotomous arrangement of the promiscuous
multitude is
continued as
from the first. There are to be only two classes of people in the world to
come, and only two
Totems, the
sheep and the goat, to distinguish those who are still described in gesture-
language as
being the one
on the right hand, the other on the left; [Page 82] which is a re-beginning
hereafter in exact
accordance
with the first Totemic bifurcation of the human race on earth.
In the course
of time, as human consciousness increased, the Mother would be made exempt from
the
primitive
promiscuous intercourse. Here it may be observed that much of the early wisdom
was secreted
in the
Totemic Tabus that were recited to the initiates in the mysteries of young-man
and young-womanmaking.
The
Buffalo-clan of the Omaha Indians are prohibited from eating a calf whilst it
is red, but when
it turns
black the animal may be eaten. This, as we understand it, was a mode of
memorial by means of
Tabu. There
was a similar prohibition in the Red Maize clan. The youngsters the sub-clan
are told that if
they were to
eat of the red maize they would break out in running sores all round the mouth.
Nothing is
more common
in the initiation of Australian youths than for these to be solemnly warned
against eating
forbidden
food. They are not to eat the emu, that is a Totem which represents the Mother
- as did other
forms of
prohibited food, including the tree. Thus eating the fruit of the forbidden
tree is violating the
Mother or
female in one of the phases known to be prohibited. If, as herein advanced, the
Totem first
represented
the Mother, we may find a root-reason why it came to be prohibited from being
eaten,
excepting as
a sacrament at the religious festival of promiscuity once a year. We know that
in the Totemic
Mysteries it
was the Mothers or female-elders who inducted the boys into a knowledge of
connubium.
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Ancient
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This probably
registers the fact that, when the boys became pubescent, the Mothers showed
their own
the way, in
the early state of promiscuity. And the likelihood is that the Mother was made
Tabu to her own
children as
the earliest law of prohibition from what came to be considered unnatural
sexual intercourse
which had
been at one time natural. They were prohibited from "eating of her"
in this sense, and the
mode of
memorizing the law would be by not eating of it the zootype which represented
the Mother. The
Hindu does
not eat the cow, the Jew does not eat the swine, and this is because these
represented the
Mother as a
Totemic sign, and the typical Great Mother in the Mythology. Descent from the
Mother was
represented
by descent from the Totem. Thus, if the Totem were a cow, and it was said in a
mystery, thou
shalt not eat
of the cow, when it was intended to repudiate the primitive practice, the
command would
signify in
Sign-Ianguage, "Thou shalt not eat the Mother". She was now forbidden
food, whether as the
cow, the sow,
the emu, or the tree, the same as with the red calf, which represented the
child. According
to Bailey,
the custom of the Veddahs "sanctions the marriage of a man with his
younger sister". But to
"marry
an elder sister or aunt would, in their estimation, be incestuous",
whereas "marriage with the
younger
sister is considered to be natural". It was in fact the proper marriage.
To understand this, we may
assume that
the elder sister of two stands for the Mother, and that the Tabu was originally
directed
against
connubium betwixt the son and the Mother, whereas the marriage or a brother and
sister, blood
or tribal,
was allowed as the only proper connection now for preserving the Mother-blood
without
committing,
incest. [Page 83]
If the Totem
is a means of Tabu, as we know it to have been, and the Mother or the Sister is
represented
by the Totem,
then the human female is aimed at under various Totemic types. Thou shalt not eat
the calf
whilst it is
red would convey protection for the pre-pubescent girl: There are twenty
different kinds of
game
forbidden to the Narrinyeri youths in their initiation; also any food belonging
to women is prohibited.
This would
include the animal which constituted the Totem that was first of all the sign
of the Mother
herself, as
the cow, the sow, the mouse, or other female zootype. Thus, when, as Plutarch
tells us, the
Egyptians
thought that if a man should drink the milk of a sow his body would break out
in sores, it
should be
remembered that the sow was a Totem of the Mother, and the human Mother was
masked by
the sow.
Various Tabus are expressed in Sign-Ianguage, which has to be interpreted. A
prohibition
against
eating the Mother would be expressed by not eating the food or animal that was
her Totem. Say
the Totem was
a type of the Mother, who was at one time eaten, and was represented by the
cow, and
afterwards
the custom was prohibited, the law of Tabu in that case would be conveyed to
the initiate in
the primitive
mysteries by the injunction "Thou shalt not eat the cow", or cohabit
with the Mother. Various
Tabus were
certainly conveyed in that way. Thou shalt not eat the cow, Hindu and Toda
Tabu; Thou shalt
not eat the
sow, Jewish Tabu; Thou shalt not drink the milk of the sow, Egyptian Tabu; Thou
shalt not eat
the hare,
Damara Tabu; Thou shalt not go near or look on the crocodile, Bechuana Tabu;
Thou shalt not
eat the calf
while it is red, Omaha Tabu; Thou shalt not touch the Mother-blood, common
Tabu; Thou
shalt not eat
the female of any animal, Kurnai Tabu; Thou shalt not eat the fruit of the tree
of knowledge,
Biblical
Tabu; Thou shalt not eat the Totem, common Tabu. We might add “Thou shalt not
marry a
deceased
wife's sister", as a Christian Tabu. Thus not eating the cow or other
female-totem - like the sow
or the
panes-bird - would originally mean not conjoining with the Mother, whereas not
eating the calf
whilst it was
red would be a mode of protecting or of safeguarding the impubescent girl.
The Totemic
festival of fructification naturally had a phallic character, as it was sexual
from the first. It was
not only
performed at seed-sowing and harvest, on behalf of food. Long before corn was
cultivated in the
name of Isis
or Demeter, there was a general rejoicing at the time when the youth was made
into a man
and the girl
into a woman. The general rejoicing at the girl's coming of age was in
celebration of her
entering into
connubium, which was communal, as she was then open and accessible to all the
males, at
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Ancient
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least on this
occasion when she entered the ranks of womanhood as common property, which was
afterwards made
several by development of the marriage Iaw. Marriage began as a recognized, if
regulated,
right of all the brothers to ravish every maiden as she came of age, and thus
to make a
woman of her
for tribal connubium. And the primitive rite, though commuted, was continued in
the later
ceremonies.
Various customs tend to show that capture in marriage originated as a mode of
rescuing or
ransoming the
woman from the clutch of the general community in which the female was common
[Page
84] to all
the males of the group. In the special marriage of individual pairs the woman
had to be captured
and carried
off from the group only instead of being captured we might say
"rescued" by the individual
(and his
friends) from being the promiscuous property of the community. Hence the custom
of
compensation
to the group (or, later, parents) for permitting the female to become private
property in
personal
marriage. The primitive rite of connubium was first consummated by all the
males of the Totemic
group, not by
an individual husband. The customs show that communal connubium involved
connection
with the
whole brotherhood as a rite of marriage after the general promiscuity had been
modified. For
instance,
with the Australian Kunandaburi tribe when a girl became marriageable, on
natural grounds, her
affianced
husband, accompanied by his male contemporaries, fetched her from her parents,
and the
marriage was
consummated there and then, not by the husband, but by the whole of his
confrčres; the
jus primae
noctis, including all his Totemic brethren. Mr. O'Donnell, who furnished the
information, says it
included all
the males present in camp without exception of class, Totem or kin, and was
fulfilled for
several days.
(Howitt, Mother-right to Father-right, J. A. S., February 7,21, 1882.) This was
communal
connubium
once for all, but only once, in place of the older custom of continual
promiscuity. In the
Sonthal
marriage, which also takes place by the group once a year, all the candidates
for matrimony live
together for
six days in promiscuous intercourse. After which, only separate couples are
held to have
established
their right to marry. (The People of India, by J. F. Watson and J. W. Kaye,
Vol. i., page 2.)
Thus there
was a rite of promiscuity observed as a propitiatory preparation for individual
marriage. This
was to be
seen at the temple of Belit in Babylon, where the women offered themselves to
all men
promiscuously
before they were free to marry. It was a mode of releasing the woman from a
bondage
imposed upon
her in the past. It is said of this custom in the Epistle of Jeremy - "The
women also with
cords about
them, sat in the ways burning bran for incense: but if any of them, drawn by
some that
passeth by,
lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow that she was not thought as worthy as
herself nor her
cord broken
(Book of Baruch, 6, 43).When the Attic maidens danced as bears at the Brauronia
in the
a..te.a of
Artemis, it was a mode of making them individually marriageable, and the mode
was evidently
in accordance
with the Totemic ritual as in the mysteries of Belit. This will also explain
the crave for
human blood,
which was attributed to the goddess, on the ground that the blood was that of
the Virgins
thus
consecrated by the most ancient practice of promiscuity, or all-for-all.
In various
ways the Totemic or tribal organization fought hard and long against the woman
becoming
private
property. The males considered, with Prudhomme, that property was robbery, and
individual
ownership in
marriage had many modifications in the course of being eventually established.
In the south
of Malayalam a married woman is permitted to have twelve other husbands as
lovers
besides the
man to whom she is legally bound, but she must play the game fairly and not
exceed the
number
allowed. With the Esquimaux or Inoits the primitive [Page 85] communal marriage
still obtains in
spite of
their being monogamists in appearance. As M. Réclus remarks, adultery is a
daily escapade with
the women as
well as the men. The "members of the Marital Association keep running
accounts and
open large
credits" with each other. When the wind blows from the south every woman
is out on the
rampage after
other men, but each wife must lawfully couple with the man to whom the husband
would
willingly
have lent her, and who will lend his own wife in return. They hold that all
were made for all. The
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Ancient
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sin against
nature is for the lawful wife to seek connubium with a bachelor, who can make
no return in
kind to the
husband. (Réclus, Primitive Folk, English Translation, page 32. Ross, Second
Voyage.) The
custom is
African. Sir Harry Johnston mentions a curious mode of weighing out even-handed
justice in
cases of
adultery. Amongst the A-nyanja if a man is caught in the act he is compelled to
get another man
as substitute
to cohabit with his wife before he can return to her; he must also pay his
substitute for this
service four
yards of cloth, or make an equivalent present, otherwise the substitute can
claim and carry
off the wife
as his own property. (Brit. Cent. Africa, page 415.)
It was not
the men alone who resisted the change. According to Petherick, the mother of
the bride,
among the
Hassanyeh Arabs, protests against "binding her daughter" to a due
observance of that
chastity
which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week at a
time.
(Petherick,
J., Egypt, the Soudan, and Central Africa.) Various ways of limiting the
primitive promiscuity,
and at the
same time of securing elasticity in the marriage tie, might be cited. For
example, the Spaniards
found a
curious custom current in Lancerota. A woman there had several husbands, but
"a husband was
considered as
such only during a lunar revolution". (Spencer, Data, 298.) Thus one woman
was limited to
one man for a
month, and the marital relations were changeable with the moon. That which was
once the
woman's right
is still sought for as a privilege when the Esthonian women claim to repeat the
rites of the
ancient
saturnalia, such as dancing in a state of nudity at the festival of spring.
With us the Matriarchate
still
survives on Friday, the woman's day, and in February, the month in which the
women claim the right
to choose
their husbands every leap-year. On certain festive occasions there is a total
or partial return to
the pre-eval
status of the sexes. This return occurs at the phallic festival or primitive
Agapae. In a
corroboree of
the Arunta, which lasts for ten days or a fortnight at a time, there is a
partial return to
promiscuity,
or the sexual licence which the natives say was a practice of the Alcheringa,
or old, old
times. (N.T.,
page. 96 to 101.) This does not stand alone. According to the report of Mr.
Kühn in Kamilaroi
and Kurnai
(by L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, pages. 285 to 287), the men of the Turra tribe
were not
debarred from
sexual intercourse with women of their own Totem in the orgies of the grand
corroboree.
This shows
the same return to utter promiscuity for the time being as in all other
celebrations of the
phallic
festival when the only law was that of all for all. It was a return pro tem to
the most ancient usage,
which is
represented in mythology by the old first Mother in connubium with her own
sons. The primitive
customs were
established as a means [Page 86] of memorizing that which could not otherwise
be
registered.
Thus the Arunta danced the history of their descent from the time when the race
was not
divided by
the Lizard. And thus the state of promiscuous intercourse was repeated in the
religious
mysteries,
including those of the Christian Church. According to a Latin myth, the
saturnalia of ancient
Rome was held
in commemoration of the sexual promiscuity that once obtained. Such customs
constituted
the record of prehistoric if not primitive man. That is why their performance
is so permanent
and so
universal.
A change in
the human descent from the Motherhood to the fatherhood is apparent in the
Egyptian
Mythology as
early as the time of Ptah, the father of Atum-Ra. The Mother, human or divine,
was
primordial.
Next came the sisters. Then the brothers, the same in mythology as in Totemism.
Previous to
the dynasty
of Ptah there were seven brothers born of the sevenfold Motherhood, when there
was as yet
no father
individualized. Six of these were pre-human, for instance, Sut the
Male-Hippopotamus, Sebek
the
Crocodile, Shu the Lion, Hapi the Ape, Apuat the Jackal, Kabhsenuf the Hawk;
and one the Elder
Horus, was
human, as the child of Isis, the blood-Mother. The seven souls are commonly
reckoned as 6
+ I. The six
are pre-anthropomorphic. They were powers of the elements represented by the
zootypes,
such as the
soul of earth that was Imaged by the beast of earth; the soul of water by the
crocodile; the
soul of
breathing-force by the lion; the soul of fire by the ape; the soul of
vegetation by the serpent. The
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Ancient
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seventh soul
was human. This was imaged in Child-Horus, who became the chief of the Seven
and
leader of the
Company.
The Dog-rib
Indians preserve a tradition, which is also repeated along the Pacific coast
from Alaska to
Oregon, that
the ancient Mother of the human race was a woman who was mated with a dog. The
woman gave
birth to six pups, which used to throw off their skins at will when they were
alone, and play
in human
shape. This, in its quaint way, is another form of the mystery of the six as
pre-human souls
which
culminated in the seventh soul that attained the human status together with the
anthropomorphic
type. In the
Mangaian “Mute-Iand," at the root of all beginning, there are "Two
Women", called the Mother
and her
Daughter. This beginning was at the bottom of the hollow cocoa-nut shell called
Avaiki. Vari is the
name of the
mythical Great Mother. Tu-Metua is the daughter. Her name, which signifies
"Stick-by-theparent",
is knowingly
natural. Another point. She is the last product of the Great Mother, the only
female
child, and is
called her support, her beloved child. These two are the ground and basis of a
world in six
divisions.
Now, there
came a time in Egypt when the brothers, who had previously been the children of
the Mother,
were called
the sons of Ptah, and all their powers were comprehended in the unity of the
God , who was
portrayed as
both Father and Mother in one person. In the Texts, Ptah is called " the
husband of his
Mother",
which shows the polygamous Patriarch who afterwards entered the monogamic state
with
Sekhet
Mer-Ptah for his single consort. (Maspero, The Dawn of Civilisation, page106.
Note, English
translator)
It has been previously [Page 87] shown that the custom of couvade was a
dramatic mode of
affiliating
the offspring to the father which had previously derived its descent from the
Mother. (Natural
Genesis.) It
is certain that in this the male impersonates the Mother because he acts as if
in gestation
with the
child and sometimes undergoes a fictitious parturition. But the supreme
peculiarity of this
primitive
mystery is that the male parent not only acts the part of the Mother, but also
of the father; both
parents in
one person. It is in this sense only that Sut, who was the first-born of the
Seven, is called in
later
language a Father of the Gods. (Rit., ch. 8.) In Akkad or Babylonia, the group
of seven males is
divided into
Ea as a father with his six sons. It is the same among the Zuni Indians, whose
fetish deities
are seven in
number, that is six, with a form of God the Father as the supreme one. These
were the
rulers of the
six regions or mountains, with Po-shai-an-kia in the centre as the head over
all. (Cushing.
Second Annual
Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1883.)
A soul of
life in man, animal, and vegetable was at one time held to be derived by the
transformation and
embodiment of
some external force in animal guise. Hence came the anima or soul of wind that
was
humanized in
breathing, whether as the soul of man or animal. At length it was observed that
a human
soul of flesh
was formed or embodied in the Mother-blood, as it was written in the secret
Book of Nature.
This was the
earliest soul of man that was discreted from the external elements of life,
which formed the
rudimentary
and pre-human beings who are to be met with in the legends of the aborigines
the whole
world over.
These were also known to the Semites as pre-Adamic people; the Admu, the Kings
of Edom,
which brings
us back to the Egyptian root of the matter in the word Tum or Tem.Tem, we
repeat, signifies
Mankind,
mortals, created persons, which were created mystically from the soul of Adam
in Hebrew, or
Atum in
Egyptian, the earlier form of which name in the Ritual is "Tum". The
race of Tum, Atum, or Ad mu
identify
their origin in nature, with the soul of blood by the Adamic name. And,
sociologically, the
"Creation
of Man" qua man was a birth of Totemism. The creation of man in the
Egyptian genesis is late
when measured
by the mythology. Atum represents the primal being who was the earliest evolved
as
perfect man.
As Sun-God he is designated Ra in his first sovereignty, the solar mythos being
last of all.
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Ancient
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This, with
Atum as Supreme God in the human likeness, was preceded by the lunar and the
stellar
mythos; by
the Mother-earth and all her Elemental Powers. We shall frequently find the
time-gauge of the
past in Egypt
when it is nowhere else recoverable on earth.
The subject
of the Hebrew beginnings is fundamentally the same, as will be seen when we can
reach the
root. It is
the evolution of the human race from the pre-human conditions that were actual
in nature and
not, as
alleged, the abortions of a false belief. This was the subject dramatized,
danced and taught in all
the mysteries
of gesture-language and Totemic ceremonies by means of which the unwritten past
was
commemorated
and indurated by ceaseless repetition of the acted drama.
The so-called
Legends of Creation would be more correctly termed [Page 88] the legend of
human
Evolution,
although in a different sense from that of Darwinian development. As Semite,
they came to us
in the latest
and least genuine form, with no clue to any true interpretation. In a Maori
myth, Man was
created by
the God Tiki from red clay. This he kneaded with his own blood, or with red
water from the
swamps. Man
is Atum in Egyptian, Admu in Assyrian, Adam in Hebrew; and this was the
creation of the
human Being
discriminated from the preliminary and pre-human Beings of the Mythos and the
Märchen
in legendary
lore. It was the soul of blood distinguished from the earlier souls or forces
of the external
elements,
which were the six preceding the human soul as supreme one. The origins in
mythology are
very natural
underneath the mask. Indeed, they are a hundred-fold more natural than the
pretended
explanations
of their modern mis-interpreters. Primitive naturalists had only the light of
nature for
guidance, and
by this they went.
The creation
of man, or, as the earlier versions have it, of men and women, was mystical in
one sense, in
another it is
Totemic. As before said, the history of the race might be roughly divided into
pre-Totemic and
Totemic,
pre-human and human. This, when reflected in the mirror of Egyptian Mythology,
is pre-Atumic,
or, in the
Semitic version, pre-Adamic and Adamic. The same legend of a later origin for mankind
is also
Mexican. When
there were no human beings on the earth certain of the lower powers solicited
help from
the supreme
gods in the work of creation, or of a re beginning. They are instructed to
collect, the remains
of the former
race, and these will be vivified by the blood of the Gods. In this version the
god who plays
the part of
Atum, Adam. or Belus procures a bone from the burial-place, and on this the
gods drop the
blood drawn
from their own bodies. Whereupon there is a new creation, namely, that of
mankind.
(Mendieta,
Hist. Ecl. Ind., page77.) Here, as elsewhere, the human soul of blood is
derived from source
as male
instead of from the earlier motherhood. So in the Book of Genesis the second
creation of Adam
is based upon
the bone called a rib which is extracted from the male.
It is in
Atum, the Son of Ptah, that man was perfected. In him the Matriarchate is
completely superseded
by the
Father-Right or derivation from the Fatherhood. Now the change in the human
descent from the
Mother-blood
to the Father-blood is obviously commemorated in the mysteries or ceremonial
rites of the
Arunta. In
the operation of young-man-making two modes of cutting are performed upon the
boy by
which he
becomes a man and a tribal father. The first of these is commonly known as
circumcision, or
lartna, by
the Arunta; the other ceremony of initiation, which comes later, is the rite of
sub-incision called
ariltha. The
second cutting is necessary for the completion of the perfect man. Indeed, some
of the more
stalwart
young men undergo the cruel rite a second or even a third time (N.T., page 257)
to prove their
manhood. With
this trial-test the youth becomes a man; a fathership is founded, and, as
certain customs
show, the
Motherhood is in a measure cast off at the time or typically superseded by the
fatherhood.
Nature led
the way for the opening-rite performed upon the female, therefore we conclude
that this
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Ancient
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preceded the
operation performed upon the men, and we [Page 89] suggest that this was a
custom
established,
like that of couvade, in the course of commemorating the change from the
Matriarchate to
the
Father-right.
The rite is
Inner African. It is universally practised by the Fan (or Fang) Tribes. An
uncircumcised native is
not
considered as a man either for fighting, working, or inheriting, but is
regarded as a nonentity and not
allowed to
marry. The rite proves the reality of manhood. (Nassau, Fetishism in West
Africa, page 12.)
We have
previously traced the custom of couvade to Ptah, and now propose to trace the
rite of ariltha or
sub-incision
to the full-formed father Atum, who was his son. When the Arunta perform the
rite of sub-
incision,
which follows that of the primary operation, a slit is cut in the penis right
down to the root. The
natives have
no idea as to the origin of the practice. (N.T., page 263.) But as the practice
proves, it is
performed as
an assertion of manhood, and is a mode of making the boy into a man, or
creating man.
Now, at this
time it was customary to cast the Motherhood aside by some significant action,
that is at the
time when the
fathership is established in the initiation ceremony. And in the Arunta rite of
sub-incision
the operating
Mura first of all cuts out an oval-shaped piece of skin (from the male member)
which he
flings away.
(Page 257.) The oval shape is an emblem of the female all the world over, and
this we take
to be another
mode of rejecting the mother and of attributing begettal to the father, as it
was attributed in
the creation
by Atum-Ra, who was both male and female (as the one All-Parent). The human
soul was
preceded by
the elemental forces of external nature which were typified in a tradition that
is universal.
The soul that
followed these as human was then born of blood, at first of Mother-blood, the
blood of Isis,
which was
followed by a creation from the Father-blood. In the Babylonian legend
concerning the
generation of
mankind attributed to Oannes by Berosos, the beginning is with hideous beings
in the
abyss, which
are described as human figures mixed with the shapes of beasts. "The
person who was
supposed to
have presided over them was a woman named Omoroca". This is the Great
Mother who at
first was
Mother-earth. "Belus came and cut the woman asunder", which in
Totemism is the dividing of
the one
woman, or the type in two. At the same time he destroyed the animals in the
abyss. Thus the
pre-human
period was succeeded by the Matriarchate and the two female Ungambikula, who in
the
Arunta
tradition cut and carved the rudimentary creatures into Totemic men and women.
Then Belus the
deity
"cut off his own head: upon which the other gods mixed the blood with the
earth; and from thence
men were
formed". Thus the source of life, or a soul of blood was changed from the
female to the male
deity who in
the Egyptian theology is Atum-Ra, or Tum, the image of created man, or of man
who was
created from
the soul of blood that is at first female and afterwards was fathered on the
male. This
creation of
man or Tum is represented in the "Book of the Dead " (ch. xvii.). The
God, as Father, takes
the Mother's
place; the Matriarchate terminates in the mythology of Egypt. Tum is described
as giving
birth to Hu
and Sa, as the children of Him who now unites the Father with the Mother as
divinity in one
person.[Page
90] Hu denotes matter, Sa (or Ka) signifies spirit. This creation, then, is
from blood and spirit;
"the
double primitive essence" first assigned to Ptah. The change from the
Mother-blood to the Father-
source is the
same in the Kamite legend as in the Semitic version, but the modus operandi was
different.
Belus
produces the blood by cutting off his own head, whereas in the Ritual Father
Atum draws the blood
from the
genetalia of a divine being who is both male and female blended in the
formation of the Father-
Mother, from
whom the soul of blood was now derivable. The drops of blood are described as
issuing
from the
person of Atum when he performed the rite of "sub-incision" or of
mutilation on himself in the
generation
now attributed to the solar deity, considered to be male as well as female, or,
finally, male
instead of
female. Thus the Arunta are still performing a blood-covenant in the rite of
ariltha on the male
which is
attributed to Atum-Ra in the Egyptian mythos and by which he demonstrates the
parentage of
the children
Hu and Sa, in the course of changing the descent from the Matriarchate to the
Patriarchate.
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Ancient
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The primitive
essence of human life was blood derived from the female source, with Nature
herself for
the witness.
In the later biology it was derived from the "double primitive
essence" of Ptah that was
continued in
Atum and his two children Hu and Sa. Thus the basis of being was shifted from
the Mother-
blood to that
of blood and spirit assigned to the Fatherhood.
From the
"cutting" of the male member now attributed to Atum-Ra we infer that
the rite of circumcision
and of
sub-incision was a mode of showing the derivation from the human father in
supersession of the
Motherhood,
and that in the Arunta double-cutting the figure of the female was added to the
member of
the male. Nor
is this suggestion without corroboration. In his ethnological studies, (page
180) Dr. Roth
explains that
"in the Pitta-Pitta and cognate Boulia dialects the term Me-Ko ma-ro
denotes "the man with
a Vulva"
which shows that the oval slit was cut upon the penis as a figure of the female
and a mode of
assuming the
Motherhood. In the Hebrew Book of Genesis this carving of the female figure on
the person
of the male —
in the second creation – has been given the legendary form of cutting out the
woman from
the body of
the male. Adam is thus imaged in the likeness of the biune Parent. The
foundation of Jewish
Monotheism
was laid in the blood of the new covenant which followed the cult of the female.
It is
noticeable
that when the Jewish child is circumcised it is said of him that he is made to
"enter into the
covenant of
Abraham", that is of the Great Father in Israel. Moreover, the man who
stands sponsor as
the godfather
is called the Master of the Covenant. (Godwyn, Moses and Aaron, page 216.) This
may
possibly
explain the re-circumcising of the children of Israel. If, as the history
asserts, they dedicated to
the female in
the earlier time and were afterwards circumcised in a covenant made with the
deity as God
the father,
re-circumcising would be a means of denoting a change in the rite, when the
people were
circumcised
on the Hill of Foreskins."And this is the cause why Joshua did
circumcise" Joshua, ch. v.,
2,4). The two
covenants would thus tally with the two forms of the ceremony performed in
first
circumcision
by the Arunta and in sub-incision, which is re-circumcising in [Page 91] the
rites of the same
people. Thus,
there were two covenants, one sealed in the blood of the female, one in the
blood of the
male, and
both were applied to the deity according to the sex.
This mode of
affiliation to the male deity is likewise obvious in the legend of the
Guatemalans, who
besought the
Quiché God Tohil to favour them with the element of fire. This he gave them on
condition
that they
united themselves to him by drawing blood "beneath the girdle".
(Bancroft, v., 547.) That is by
drawing it
from the membrum virile in a covenant of blood. When they did this they
received the fire from
Heaven which
was derived direct from God the father as begetter who was Atum-Ra in Egypt,
and God
the father in
spirit as well as in flesh and blood.
The cause of
a mystical relationship that was recognized between man and the animals may now
be
traced on
grounds less lofty than that of the supposed divine incarnations, and more
natural than that of
an animistic
interfusing which led to a confusion of identity and personality. The animals
were first
recognized as
powers in themselves, but they were also adopted as the living visible symbols
of
elemental
powers that were superior to the human as a means of representing natural
phenomena. They
were further
adopted into the human family as Totemic types with religious rites that gave
them all the
sanctity of
the blood-covenant and made them typically of one flesh with the human
brothers. Thus they
were doubly
adopted; and this led to their becoming later living fetishes as the
naturalized
representatives
of superhuman powers, though not as the direct object of human worship. The
life-tie
assumed
between Totemic man and the Totemic animal or zootype was consciously assumed,
and we
can perceive
by what process and on what ground the assumption was made. The zootype being
adopted as a
badge of distinction, the primeval coat of arms, it was a custom for the human
beings to
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Ancient
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enter into a
brotherhood of blood. That is, the men who were not born of the same mother, or
of two
sisters,
could extend the natural tie of blood by a typical rite to others who were born
of different mothers.
In this way,
the larger kin, clan, or tribe was formed on the basis of brotherhood under
some Totemic
sign. Now if
the animal becomes of kin to the human brother by virtue of a covenant
intentionally made in
the blood of
both, that proves the kinship did not exist before. The relationship did not
spring from any
root in
nature, or any false belief, but was ordained for the purpose, and is
consequently limited to the
particular
beast and brotherhood. The bull is only kinsman to those whom he serves as a
Totem, an
image of the
ancestor and a type of the fraternity. So is it with all the other zootypes
which had been
employed from
before the time when the individual fatherhood was known. There is no necessary
confusion of
identity. If men had abstained from eating the animals on the ground of kinship
and
intercommunion
of nature, because of a confusion or identification of themselves with the
beasts, they
ought to have
abstained from eating any, whereas they ate them all in turn, exceptions being
made solely
on the
artificial ground of the Totemic motherhood or brotherhood. The beast only
became of the "same
flesh"
with the particular family because it had been adopted as their Totem,
ancestral animal, or foster-
brother of
the blood-covenant, and [Page 92] not on account of any belief that they
descended from this or
the other
non-human parent with a different progenitor for every separate group. Even in
the human
relationship
the being "of one flesh" shows that the system represents a later
extension of the same
family that
first derived from one mother, the mode of extension being by the blending of
blood, the rebirth,
the drinking
of the covenant, and eating of the fetish. But there was nothing promiscuous in
this
arrangement,
which had been made on purpose to avoid promiscuity. They did eat, and did not
tolerate
being eaten
by, each other's Totems. The relationship of men with beasts was most
deliberately adopted,
and the
partnership was held with the strictest regard to the law of limited liability.
Thus the blood-
brotherhood
with the beasts was not based on any belief that they were on a level with the
human being,
nor on any
mental confusion respecting their oneness of nature. At least it was not that
which first
rendered the
animals tabu, or made them sacred to men.
The typical
character of the Totemic animal was continued in various ways; putting on the
skin was a
mode of
assimilating the wearers to the powers beyond the beast, the superhuman forces
which the
animals
represented in visible symbolry. Hence on going to battle they wore the skins
and acted the rôle
of the animals,
birds, and reptiles, as their link of alliance with the superhuman
nature-powers that were
over all. In
like manner the God Shu, the warrior of the gods, the Egyptian Mars, does
battle whilst
wearing the
superhuman power of the Lioness on his head - and the moon-god Taht-Aan, is
clothed with
the power of
the great Ape, the ideograph of superhuman rage, when he fights against the
demons of
darkness by
night on behalf of the suffering Solar God. The mage or medicine-man was
wrapped up in
the skin of
the Totemic beast for the purpose of communing with the spirits of the dead.
Thus the trance,
the
transformer, and the transformation, the beast, the nature-power, and the human
ghost, got mixed up
together.
Such being the fact, it is easy to identify the foundation of the faith or
ignorant belief that the
medicine-men
had everywhere the power of transforming into wolves, hyenas, or tigers
themselves; and
that belief
would cause the fear lest they should apply this power of metamorphosis to others,
and
ultimately
create a belief in their power to transform human beings into animal shapes.
The only veritable
power of
metamorphosis possessed by the ancient medicine-men or mages, the witches or
wizards, was
that of
inducing the condition of trance either in others or in themselves. This was
and is a fact in Nature
with which
the primitive races were profoundly well acquainted. But those who are ignorant
of such
phenomena
will be apt to mistake a surface appearance for the underlying reality, and
must find it
difficult, if
not impossible, to distinguish between the true cause and a false belief. In
the mysteries they
changed place
and shape and nature with the beasts of prey. They masked themselves in the
skins of
animals,
reptiles, and birds, and sat at feast in those forms to devour the sacrifice
when the Totemic
animal was
slain for the Eucharistic rite. In that way they transformed and were said to
change
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Ancient
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themselves
into wolves or tigers, bears or crocodiles, to partake of this most primitive
rite of
transubstantiation.
For it did [Page 93] become a religious ceremony and a mode of entering into
alliance
and communion
with the powers first apprehended as superhuman. When the ghastly, grim reality
had
passed into
the legendary phase we are told, as Plato tells us in the Republic, that those
who ate of the
human
sacrifices offered to the Wolf were transformed into wolves. Herodotus likewise
relates that the
Neurian
wizards changed themselves into wolves for a few days once a year. First, the
men who ate the
flesh of the
Beast had changed themselves into wolves to eat it, according to the mode of
masking. Next
it was said
that by eating human flesh men would become Were-wolves, and lastly we have the
Werewolf
as a man who
is supposed to turn into the wolf on purpose to devour human flesh. Such are
the
tricks of
typology, based on the primitive simplicity and the agnostic misinterpretation
of later times when
the mythos
passes into the fable which deposits these types of the were-wolf, the mermaid,
the
cockatrice,
the serpent-woman, the vampire, or the ghoul. In the latest phase of this
transformation and
transubstantiation
it is the flesh of a supposed historical personage that is eaten and his blood
that is
drunk with
the view of effecting a transformation into Horus or the Christ. It was a
masquerade; but the
men beneath
the masks originally knew that they were acting in characters which they
themselves had
created. They
wore skins in a typical transformation; they clothed or tattooed themselves
with the signs
of superhuman
powers for a definite purpose, and not because they were returning to the
condition of
beasts from which
they came, or expected to be saved by doing so. The masking and metamorphosis
were but
modes of the mysteries which included the mystery of Trance. This primitive
drama is not yet
played out.
The rites and doctrines are also to be identified at times as survivals in
religious ritual. A
startling
illustration may be seen in a collection of English hymns (1754), where these
lines occur:
"What
greater glory could there be
Than to be
clothed with God ?
He drew His
skin upon my skin,
His blood
upon my blood".
The skin is
likewise assumed by the Manes as their Totem in the other life, different ideas
being
expressed by
different kinds of skin. In the Ritual (ch. 145, 31) the speaker who has just
been baptized
and anointed
in process of regeneration when he transforms into the likeness of Horus the
adult says he
has the skin
of a Cat for his badge. The cat being a seer in the dark, the skin shows that
he is no longer
as the
sightless Horus, but is the Horus with the second sight or beatific vision.
With the Red Indians the
skin of the
Totemic animal is placed at the side of a man who is dead or dying. It has also
been stuffed at
times and
hung above the grave. The sign is the same for the dead man as for the dead
animal. In each
instance the
skin means renewal, repetition, resurrection for another life. It has been a
common custom
for the dead
to be buried in the skin of an animal, or in shoes or boots made from the skin
of an animal.
When
Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral his
boots were taken with
him to the
tomb, and in a sense he was buried in the skin. The significance of the skin is
everywhere the
[Page 94]
same. The slipper thrown after the newly-wedded has the same meaning. Leather
is made from
the skin that
denotes a renewal of life, and the act expresses the desire for the couple to
be blest with
children. We
have seen that the skin was equivalent to the animal as a type of renewal. This
may afford
us a clue to
the custom of swearing oaths in making covenants on the skin, which would be
like swearing
by the future
life, the hope of immortality, or "by the eternal God". The earliest
masks were formed of the
head and skin
of the Totemic zootype. They also represented the invisible powers and finally
became the
heads of
goddesses and gods. Masks were assumed when deities or spirits were represented
in the
mysteries.
Thus, when a mask is put on by the lnoit girl at the time of her first
menstrualia it denotes the
presence of
the Nature-power that reveals itself in this particular way as one of the
mysteries of Nature.
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Ancient
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The masks
that were worn in certain mysteries were derived from the Totemic zootypes, not
from the
human face.
Hence their super-human ugliness at times. These masks were used as portraits
of the
powers beyond
the Totem, and in the lnoit mysteries, when the controlling spirit of a Shaman
was
consulted, it
was customary for the mask which represented the particular power invoked to be
laid upon
the Shaman's
face, and this mask was the skin of a victim that moment killed. (Réclus,
Primitive Folk,
Eng. Tr.,
page 87.) A tribe of the hill-men near Darjeeling, in India, still retain the
huge and hideous masks
that
represent the powers of Nature. These are worn on the heads of priests when
performing their
elaborate
religious rites. One of these images the god who looks after their spears and
helps to drive
them home.
Which shows the character of the masks as effigies of the Nature-powers is not
forgotten.
(Paragraph
and picture in the London Daily Mail, Nov. 20, 1896.) We have seen that the
change made by
the young
girl into an animal at puberty was an origin of wearing the mask. This we
assume to have been
primary.
Next, the practice was continued in Matriarchal Totemism. Then the customs of
cutting in sub-
incision, of
wearing the skin, and of becoming the Totemic beast, are applied to the male in
the later
mysteries of
young-man-making.
The Totemic
mysteries survived as eschatological in the Osirian, religion. For example,
when Horus the
child, who
was born of the Mother only, under the divine Matriarchate, makes his
transformation into
Horus the
adult, who rises from the dead in Amenta, it is in the character of the
Anointed Son of the
Father.
Anointing had then become the mode of showing the Glory of the Father in the
person of the Son.
This was
imaged with the holy oil upon the face of Horus. He who had been Horus the
mortal in the flesh,
is now Horus
in spirit personalized and established as the Anointed Son. The typical
Anointed originated
as the youth
who was made a man of at the period of puberty, at which time the Mother's
child assumed
the likeness
of the father at the time of his Totemic rebirth. The boy who was initiated
into the mysteries
of the
Australian Blacks was equally made the Anointed in however primitive a fashion.
When his
probation
terminated, and the stringent rules of his novitiate-were relaxed, he was
rubbed by an old man
with fat that
was taken from the Totemic animal which was previously forbidden food. He [Page
95] was
not permitted
to eat the female of any animal, nor the emu, that primordial Mother-Totem, and
he
becomes a
free man by having the fat of the animal smeared over his face. In fact he is
made a figure of
the Anointed.
The Kurnai youth was made a free man of when anointed with fat. With the
Adamanese the
bodies of the
initiates are smeared over with the melted fat of pork and turtle in the
ceremony of freeman-
making. (E.
H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, page 62.) The boy was
anointed when
he made his change into the adult. Horus was anointed when he transformed from
the
mortal Horus
to the Horus in spirit who rose again from the dead. And this anointing is
still practised it.
the extreme
unction of the Roman Catholic rite that is administered when the dying are
about to pass into
the future
life. This again correlates with, and is a survival of, the aboriginal custom
of placing a lump of
fat in the
mouth of the dead, by which act they were made into a form of the Anointed
preparatory to their
resurrection.
The mummies exhumed at Deir el-Bahari show that the faces had been painted and
anointed for
burial. "The thick coats of colour which they still bear are composed of
ochre, carmine (or
pounded
brick) and anima! fat" (Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, English
Translation, page 54, note 5.)
These are also
forms of the Anointed One, who was made so by extreme unction more primitively
applied to
Osiris the Karast-Mummy.
The art of
Tattooing was likewise a Totemic mode of Sign-language. This also corroborates
the feminine
origin of the
signs, as when some of the aborigines such as the Ainu of Japan, and the
Siberian Chukchi,
only tattooed
their women. "Tattoo the women and not the men", is the command that
was given in the
Wisdom of
Manihiki. The Totem is sometimes tattooed on the person of the clansman, as it
was by the
Iroquois, the
Ojibways, and other tribes of the Red Men. The Indians of San Juan Capistrano
practised a
Page 77
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
peculiar mode
of tattoo. A figure of the personal Totem was made of crushed herbs on the
right arm of
the novice.
The paste was then set on fire and the figure of the Totem burned into the
flesh. At an earlier
stage before
the art of tattoo had been mastered it was the custom to cut the flesh and
raise cicatrices to
pattern. This
was especially practised by the Australian aborigines, and the tribal badges
thus figured in
the flesh
were sometimes representations of the Totem. (Kamlaroi and Kurnai, by Fison and
Howitt, page
66.) Herbert
Ward, who suffered the ceremony of establishing the covenant of
blood-brotherhood with
Mata Mwiki, a
Bangala chief, in 1886, found that the skin of the Bangalas was tattooed or
slashed and
cicatriced in
conformity with the Totemic or tribal pattern and that the patterns varied with
the different
tribes.
(Herbert Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals. 1890.) The Esquimaux
indicate the
particular
Inoit tribe by different ways of trimming the hair; the women by the figures
tattooed on their
faces. The Aleuts
at one time tattooed the figures of birds and fishes upon their skins. The
women told
Hall that
they tattooed their faces as a mark of high distinction. It was so, as a sign
of womanhood. The
custom of
tattooing the Totemic token upon the body may be traced in survival through all
[Page 96] the
later
mysteries as a mode of identifying the initiates with their particular
community. It is more than
probable that
the habit of the ancient Britons mentioned by Roman writers in staining their
bodies with
woad really
refers to the system of Totemic Tattoo, as is indicated by the description of
the Picts found in
Claudian's De
Bello Getico (xxiv., pages 417 to 418), “ ferroque notatas porlegit examines
Picto moriente
figuras".
This is shown by an initial letter in the Book of Kells - a facsimile of which
has been published by
the
Palaeographical Society, containing the figure of a man quite naked, the body
being covered all over
with
significant marks just as the hieroglyphics are described by Boece, who affirms
that in “all their
secret
business the ancient Britons wrote with cyphers and figures of beasts made in
manner of letters"
which he
identifies with the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Thus the woad-bedaubed men
stigmatized as
savages become
the more intelligent illustrators of Totemic times and customs who wore the
stigmata of
Tattoo, and
the Picts or painted men are the men who carried the Totemic marks either
painted or
branded on
the living book of their own bodies. They were not merely dyeing their flesh
for decoration,
but making
figures for use that could be read by others at sight. Even the raising of
cicatrices in the flesh
which
preceded tattooing was an Egyptian custom. On the bas-reliefs of the Temples at
Philae and
Ombos the
bosoms of goddesses and queens are scored with long incisions which, starting
from the
circumference,
united in the centre round the nipple of the breast. (Maspero.)
In Totemism
the Mother and Motherhoods, the Sisters and Sisterhoods, the Brothers and
Brotherhoods,
the girl who
transformed at puberty, the Mother who was eaten as a sacrifice, the two women
who were
ancestresses,
were all of them Human, all of them actual, in the domain of natural fact. But
when the
same
characters have been continued in mythology, they are superhuman. The Mother
and
Motherhoods,
the Sisters and Sisterhoods, the Brothers and Brotherhoods, have been
divinized. The
realities of
Totemism have supplied the types to mythology as goddesses and gods that wear the
heads
or skins of
beasts to denote their character. The Mother, as human in Totemism, was known
as the
Water-Cow,
and this became a type of the Great Mother in mythology and polytheism. But it
is the type
that was
continued, not the human Mother. The Mother as first person in the human family
was first
person in the
Totemic sociology. Thence came the Great Mother in mythology who was fashioned
in the
Matriarchal
mould. But with this difference: it is the human Mother underneath the mask in
Totemism. It is
not the human
Mother who was divinized as the Great Provider in mythology. Totemism is not
derived
from
mythology, but it has been mixed up with it because the same Sign- language was
employed in
both. Thus,
the Mother was human in the mask of Totemism and is superhuman in the mask of
mythography.
This was the Great Mother who was the First Person, as the "only
one", according to the
Egyptian
Wisdom.
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Ancient
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They were not
seven human mothers or sisters who were constellated in the fields of Heaven as
seven
Hathors or
seven Cows. These were the Mothers of food, who were givers of life in the form
[Page 97] of
the Cow, when
the Seven Stars in Ursa Major supplied the numerical figure of Plenty. Thus
there are two
kinds of
Motherhoods that have to be most carefully discriminated one from the other;
the first is human,
the last is
superhuman. The human Mother might be represented by or as the Totemic cow,
serpent, frog,
or vulture.
Nevertheless they were not human Mothers who were divinized in those same
likenesses as
the Egyptian
goddesses Isis, Rannut, Hekat, and Neith. But the human Mother who was eaten at
the
sacramental
meal did supply a type of the superhuman Mother in external nature, who also
gave herself
as a
voluntary sacrifice for human food and sustenance; the Mother of life in death
who furnished the
eucharist
that was eaten in the religious mysteries. The human Mother had been an actual
victim, eaten
as a
sacrifice. The superhuman Mother or goddess was eaten typically, or by proxy.
Hence she who was
the giver of
food and life to the world came to be eaten sacramentally and vicariously, that
is, in some
Totemic
victim, by whose death her sacrifice was symbolically represented.
There were
different types of the sacrificial victim at different stages of the eucharist.
At one stage it was
the Red Calf
as the type of Horus, the child. At another it was Osiris as the Bull or Ox.
The victim,
speaking in
the Book of the Dead, exclaims, "I am the Bull of the sacrificial
herd" who identifies his body
with the
"mortuary meal". But in Egypt the Great Mother was eaten as the Cow
that represented the
goddess
Hathor or Isis; also as the Sow which represented the goddess Shaat or Rerit;
two of the types
that were
figures of the Great Mother who thus gave her body and blood for human food
that was eaten
as a
voluntary sacrifice of her own maternal self: Herodotus notwithstanding, the
cow had been a type of
sacrifice in
Egypt. Moreover, it was the Red Cow or Red Heifer, the same as in the Hebrew
Ritual. As
already
shown, the Mother-types and Totems were primary and the Red Cow was a type of
the Blood-
Mother from
the time when she was the Red Water-cow of the first Mother Apt, who was
succeeded by
Hathor, as
the Milch-Cow.
It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish between the human Mother in Totemism and the
Great Mother in
Mythology,
because the same types were employed for both. Besides which, as Earth was the
bringer-
forth of all
living things, she was also a Mother to the human race in common with the other
forms and
elements of
life. For instance, as the bringer-forth of life she was the Mother of animal
food; the giver of
grass-seed:
of tubers and plants in the soil and of food in the fruitful tree. As the
Crocodile, the Serpent,
the Goose,
the Emu, or the Witchetty-Grub, she was the layer of the egg, and thus a Mother
to be
ultimately
divinized as the Great Mother who was superhuman, in the Kamite Mythology; Apt,
the
Hippopotamus;
Rerit, the Sow; Neith, the Crocodile; Rannut, the Serpent; Uati, the Papyrus;
Hathor, the
Fruit-tree;
Isis, the Field. The human Mother was the suckler of her children. This image
of Maternity was
likewise
given to the Earth as the Nursing-mother, who was the giver of liquid life in
water. But the Earth
as wet-nurse
or layer of the egg for food could not be so directly rendered. Hence the need
of Sign-
language. in.
the mythical representation [Page 98] of superhuman phenomena. The human Mother
had
brought forth
her children in the forest and from the cave in the rock; in consequence of
which, as natural
fact, the
tree and the hole in the stone, or the ground, have each continued ever since
to represent the
human
birth-place in the image of the female figured as the superhuman Mother, the
Great Mother-earth.
It was not
the human Mother that was the object of worship or of propitiation with the
offering of blood.
This was the typical
Mother; the Great or pregnant Mother; the Mother of food and sustenance; the
Mother who
for ages on ages was not imaged in the human shape because she was superhuman.
In
modern
phraseology the primitive "seekers after God" were seekers after food
and drink and physical
sustenance.
The Giver of these elements was the Earth itself, or herself, when depicted in
the image of
the Mother as
the Nurse of life.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Nothing simpler
has been recovered from the past than the religious system of the Arunta Tribes
of
Central
Australia, who, in their sacred rites, are self-portrayed as seekers after
food. An important
ceremony,
that was designed to bring success in kangaroo-hunts, consisted in the letting
of blood. Thus
the blood was
an offering to secure plenty of food. (N.T., page 193, note.) In certain of the
Intichiuma
ceremonies
blood is poured out freely as an offering on behalf of food. These ceremonies
are performed
for the
purpose of insuring the increase of the animal or plant which gives its name to
the Totem, the
emu, the
beetle, the kangaroo, or others. The blood was poured out on the earth as an
oblation to the
Earth-mother,
even though she was only represented by the Emu-bird. The earliest religion, so
to call it,
was a cultus
of the Mother who was propitiated as the "Only One" who was in the
beginning. This was
the primal
providence or provider as the Great Mother, the Mother-earth, who was invoked
with offerings
of blood for
food and drink. In Egypt she was given several characters. She was Abt; Khebt,
or Ta-Urt,
the
Hippopotamus-headed; Rerit, or Shaat, the many-teated Sow; Hathor, the Cow;
Rannut, the Serpent-
woman, and
others related to the phenomena of external nature as the source of life, of
food and water.
The root of
the whole matter was fecundity, and the goddess, who in later times was called
the Mother of
love in
Egypt, originated in the giver of plenty as the goddess of fecundity. But the
fecundity at first was
that of
Earth, the provider of food and drink. Hence, she was imaged by the Suckler who
gave the image
of life as
Shaat the Sow, or Hathor the Cow. At this stage that which has been so often
generalized by the
phrase
"Phallic worship" was propitiation of what we call Mother Nature =
Mother-earth divinized, or
idealized as
superhuman in the likeness of the large-uddered Cow or the multi-mammalian Sow,
which
were figures
in a cult of fecundity; the first and foremost object of the
"worship" being the food and drink
that were
supplied by the Mother-earth who gave her life in sacrifice that men might
live.
The
Mother-earth, Dhurteemah, is still the primordial deity with the Bygah tribes
of Seonee, India. They
offer food to
her as provider at every meal before they call on any other god or [Page 99]
goddess. With
the
Babylonians Nin-Ki-Gal, the Great Lady, is another form of the Earth-Mother. As
Miss Kingsley
shows, this
primitive Earth-Mother of African origin still survives in Africa as the
Earth-Goddess Nzambi,
the Great
Mother. There is "aye a something" that shows the stage of the
beginning is still extant as Inner
African, from
which the thought and symbolism of Egypt were developed. In her account of
"Fetish"
according to
different schools Miss Kingsley tells us the Earth-Goddess Nzambi is the
paramount feature
in the
"Fetishtic" religion. "She is the Great Mother".
"Round her circle almost all the legends, in her lies
the ultimate
human hope of help and protection, or, in modern phrase, salvation".
(Kingsley, M. H.,West
African
Studies, pages 154 and 155) Previously the same writer had said "the
school of Nkissi is mainly
concerned
with the worship of the mystery of the Power of Earth; Nkissi-nsi".
(Kingsley, West African
Studies, page
137)
Now "the
mystery of the power of earth", or Nkissi-nsi, as Egyptian, is expressed
by the word Kep, which
is a name of
the old Earth-Mother, Ta-Urt. The word Kep signifies mystery, to be mysterious;
the mystery
of
fermentation, the mystery of fertilization, and of water as the source of life.
This is as it was in Africa
from the
first; and as it was in the beginning so it remained in Egypt, allowing for
development, to the last,
for Apt, the
old first Mother-earth, survives in the eschatology of the Ritual, still
keeping her
hippopotamus
form, as "the Mistress of divine protections" and rekindler of the
light of life from the spark
when it had
gone out in the dark of death. Thus, she who had brought to birth as the
Mother-earth lived
on as the
bringer to rebirth for another life in the phase of eschatology. (Renouf, Book
of the Dead, ch.
137A, 137B.
Notes. Also Vignette in Nebseni.)
The old first
great mother, then, one of whose names is Khebt, was the Mother-earth in her
primary
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
character,
and if we go back far enough we find the type is universal. The Mother-earth
gave birth-place
and food to
all the children born of her. Isis, represented as the Sekhet or field, was
still the Mother-earth.
With the
Algonkins, Mother-earth was the great grandmother of all. Mamapacha, worshipped
by the
Peruvian
tribes, was the Mother-earth.
Following the
pathetically-primitive custom of ceremonially eating the mother in honour, as
the first giver
of food, a
cult emerges from the darkness of the past upon the way to worship; the worship
of the Mother
with young,
who was the pregnant, therefore the great, Mother. This was a cult of
supplication,
propitiation,
and thankfulness for food and liquid life, which made its offerings to the
Mother-earth as the
provider of
plenty. Mother-earth is the Great Mother of the Moqui Indians, "Our
Grandmother" with the
Shawnees, and
the Grandmother of the Karens in Burmah. Tari-Pennu is the Mother-earth to the
Khonds
of Orissa.
The Finnish goddess, consort of Ukko, is the Mother-earth. The Esquimaux old
Mother Gigone
was the
Mother-earth; Gae was the Greek Mother-earth; Ops was the Roman Earth-Mother,
whom we
look on as a
form of the Egyptian goddess Apt, or Ap. The ancient Germans worshipped Mother
Hertha,
who is
identical by name with the [Page 100] earth, and also with Ta-Urt, the Egyptian
Mother-earth. There
was a
primitive kind or class of people known as earth-born aborigines, like the San
of the Khoi-Khoi and
the Chinese
Miau-tze. These children of earth who came forth from the forest and the cave
would
naturally be
divided first for recognition in two categories as the Children of the Tree and
the Rock, which
are spoken of
by Hesiod as the two origins of mortals, both tree and rock being
representatives of the
earth as
birthplace. This cult of the Earth-worshippers may account for the
Earth-eaters, who still survive
in Africa and
also with the Indians of California. The tradition is common with the people of
several
countries
that they issued originally from the ground. But to restore the lapsed meaning
we have to read
Earth for
ground, and then identify the earth with one of her types as the Mother of all,
who is the Great
Mother in
mythology. According to S. Powers, the Californian Indians think that their
Prairie-Dog
ancestors
were moulded directly from the soil. If so, they have lost the clue which
survives in mythology.
The Coyote as
a burrower in the ground is a type of the Mother-earth that was made the totem
of the
Coyote
Indians. The birth of the human race from the Mother-earth is indicated both
directly and
indirectly in
the legends of the Kaffirs. In these men issued from the ground, from the cleft
in the rock, or
a bed of
reeds. Others say that Unkulunkulu split them out of a stone. It is still said
of a great chief by the
Zulus that he
was not born; he was belched up by a Cow. The Cow, like the cloven stone, or
the tree,
was a female
type of the Mother-earth. Thus represented, the earth becomes a rock, from
which issued
the race of
men, or in the words of Isaiah, it is the rock whence they were hewn ( ch. li.
I) and the hole of
the pit from
whence they were digged. Also, as the rock was a type of the earth, the Great
Mother, we
can see how
and wherefore in a following stage the stone pillar or the hole-stone should
become a figure
of the
mythical Genetrix as it was of Hathor and the Paphian Venus; and why the stone
seat should be an
emblem of the
Earth-Mother Isis as a figure of foundation. With the Bushmen the Earth-Mother
has
become the
typical “Old Woman" of later language. Earth as the superhuman Mother is denoted
in the
Quiche legend
in which it is said the human race descended from a cave-dwelling woman or
female.
Cave, pit,
and cavern were the uterus, 'So to say, of Mother-earth as the place of coming
forth, the Unnu,
or opening of
Neith; the Ununait of Hathor as the solar birthplace. Very naturally the mount
was typical of
Mother-earth
in which the cave was a place of birth for man and beast. “The citizens of
Mexico and those
of Tlatelolco
were wont to visit a hill called Cacatepec, because, as they said, it was their
Mother"
(Bancroft).
Molina states that the principal sacred place or Huaca of the Mexican Yncas was
that of the
hill
Huanacauri, from whence their ancestors were held to have commenced their
journey (Spencer ,
Data of
Sociology, ch. xxiv. page 186). The mount with the cave in it was a natural
figure of the Mother-
earth to the
Troglodites who. were born and there came to consciousness. When the
Navajos.[Page 101]
issued from
the womb (euphemistically from the bowels) of a great mountain near the San
Juan River,
that mountain
is an image of the Mother-earth. The Oneida, Ojibway, and Dacotah Indians, who
claim
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
derivation
from a sacred stone, at the same time trace their descent from the mountain of
the race.
Naturally,
the cave as birthplace of the Earth-Mother was identified with the uterine
abode. We might say
identified by
it, that is by the emblem scrawled upon the rock from time immemorial. This
figure, or
similitude of
the female, called the symbol of wickedness "in all the land" by
Zechariah (ch. 5, 8),
portrayed
through all the world, has ever been most prominent in the primitive art of the
aborigines from
Africa to
Australia. Not as an object of worship, nor of degradation, but as alikeness of
the human abode
depicted in
the birthplace of the Cavemen. The superhuman type of the motherhood appears in
symbolism as
the Cleft, the Gap, the Cave, as well as the Tree, the Sow, the Water-Cow ,
Crocodile,
Lioness, and
other zootypes. The human mother comes into view by means of her emblem, the
hieroglyphic
Ru or door of life in the divinized motherhood as the Vesica Piscis of later
iconography.
There is no
getting outside of nature, either in the beginning or in the end. With the
Arunta tribes of
Central
Australia a gorge among the hills at some local totem-centre is identified as
the place of
emanation
from the Earth-Mother. This is exactly in keeping with the Gorge of Neith,
whence issued the
"younglings
of Shu , as spirits of breathing-force. Local tradition tells that at the Emily
Gap, near to Alice
Springs",
certain Witchetty-Grubs became transformed into Witchetty-Men" (N.T., page
123). Otherwise
stated, the
elemental souls passed into the mothers of that ilk to be specialised in the
human form
instead of
becoming animal, bird, or reptile. If we take Hathor as the abode of birth,
that is, the Mother-
earth as the
birthplace and the bringer-forth of life, the stone or conical pillar of Hathor
was a type of this
birthplace.
Now, let us turn for a moment to the Erathipa-stone of the Arunta for the proof
that the stone
with an
opening in it was a Totem of the Mother-earth, the stone out of which the Zulus
say the human
race was
split in the beginning. There is no mistaking the nature of the Arunta stone.
It is a representative
image of the
Mother in the very simplest form. According to the tradition, spirit-children
issue from a hole
in the
Erathipa-stone. Over this aperture a black band is painted with charcoal. This
completes that figure
of the female
which has been portrayed in all the earth as a symbol of the human mother
applied to her
who was
externalized as the superhuman mother, the primeval birthplace. The Fijian
pillar-stones were
girdled round
the waist with the primitive Cestus or Liku of hair, to typify pubescence and
identify the
motherhood.
It is common for the Tree to be draped in female attire and hung with feminine
ornaments,
as when the
Israelite women wove hangings for the Ashera. Two female figures of stone and
wood are to
be found not
only in the Arunta Churinga, but at the head of all human descent and all the
"stock-andstone"
worship of
the world. They are recognized by Homer when Penelope says to Ulysses,
"Tell me thy
Lineage, and
when [Page 102] thou art, for thou dost not spring from the ancient Tree nor
from the Rock"
(Odyss. 19,
163), meaning that he must be an immortal, whereas these are two types of an
origin that is
of the earth.
Hesiod also ( Theog. 30, 35) speaks of the Tree and Rock as being amongst the
mysteries
of the
beginning pertaining to the ever-living, ever-blest immortals. The earlier name
of the chief
sanctuary in
Israel, called Bethel, was Luz,or the Almond Tree. Bethel was the place of the
stone-pillar,
as the abode
of the God, and Luz, the locality of the Tree. These, we repeat, are two
primary and
universal
types of the feminine abode, represented by the Two Women in Australia and the
Two Divine
Sisters in
Egypt. They are classed together also as objects of abhorrence in the later
casting out of the
primitive
types. "Woe unto them that saith to the Wood Awake! to the dumb stone,
Arise!" in the making
of idols
(Hab. ii. 19). “ The Stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the
timber shall answer it "
(Hab. ii. I
I). The wood and stone of the Australian Churinga, which are Totemic types, are
excommunicated
in Israel as idols when they were no longer understood as symbols. They came to
be
looked upon
as deities in themselves, set up for worship. Both Caesar and Lucanus state
that the gods of
the Gauls
were pillar-stones. and tree-trunks. Nevertheless, these were not the gods. In
Egypt both the
Pillar and
Tree were pedestals for the gods, and both were blended in the tree-pillar, or
Tat of Ptah. As
images of the
Mother both were the Beth or abode, as Bringer-forth of the Divinity or Spirit
which was the
object of
worship, as was the God of Jacob in the Conical Pillar and of Horus in the
Tree. These two
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
primordial.
and universal types of origin are coupled together in Logion V. of the ..G..
..Ç.. (page 12).
"Raise
the Stone, and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I".
To raise the stone is to
erect an
altar. The Wood is one with the Tree. The Stone was raised and the Tree
prepared for worship,
because they
were types of the Divine Abode, which represented the Two Women or Sisters who
were
the Two
Mothers or Bringers-forth of the Race in the beginning. The perception that
life was born of the
Earth must
have been as primordial as it was natural, and that which brings to birth is
the Mother. Thus
the race of
human beings, in common with the animals, was born of Mother-earth. In Central
Africa the
natives claim
that they came from a hole in the rock (Duff Macdonald). It is indeed a common
African
tradition.
The stone or rock crops up continually as an emblem of the Earth or solid
ground. The Earth
itself was
brought to a point and focused in the ceremonial stone on which the offering
was made. For
instance,
when the members of the Hakea-flower Totem perform their mystery to solicit
food, one of the
young men
opens a vein in his arm and lets the liquid flow over the ceremonial stone
until it is entirely
covered with
blood. A rock near Gouam, in the Marcian Islands, is locally regarded as the
ancestor of the
human race.
The African birth-place denoted by the rock of earth and the forest-tree is
indicated by the
tradition of
the Ovaherero which relates that Men were born from the Omumborombonga Tree,
and that
sheep and
goats issued from a flat rock. (Reiderbecke, Rev. H., Missionary Labours, page
263.) Now, the
Great Goddess
who was "worshipped" with the gory [Page 103] rites of many lands
originated as the
Mother-earth
who was fertilized with blood, and with the definite object of procuring food.
This was the
superhuman
Mother who gave her own life in food, and to whom blood was offered as a
propitiatory
sacrifice for
sustenance. Also in this rite the blood. was poured out freely on the earth
itself, as life for life.
The
Intichiuma ceremonies of the Arunta amply show that human blood was poured out
on the earth as a
sacrificial
offering for food. Plenty of blood was shed for plenty of food. It was a mode
of magical
invocation
that is still practised in the mysteries of black magic for the evocation of
spirits. Food was the
supreme
object sought by primitive folk, and the giver of food and drink was
propitiated and besought for
more. This
was naturally the Mother - the Mother-earth; the Mother in the water, in the
tree, in the
animals that
were eaten. Hence the Intichiuma ceremonies of the Arunta are still performed
for the
increase of
the animal or plant which gives its type (or name) to the Totem. "The sole
object of these
ceremonies is
that of increasing the total food supply". (Native Tribes, page 169.) The
Arunta of the Emu-
totem pour
out their blood lavishly upon the earth in asking for plenty of Emu, an image
of which is
painted on
the ground to be deluged with blood. On the other hand, the men of the
Witchetty-Grub totem,
in praying
for food, will paint their totem on the body of each man in red ochre, which is
a local substitute
for blood.
Then they represent the mystery of transformation, from matter to spirit, from
death to life, and
await the
emergence of the fully-developed insect from the cocoon of the chrysalis (N.T.,
pages 175 and
176). In the
one case blood was offered actually, in the other symbolically, but in both it
was offered for
continuance
and increase of food. Thus the Intichiuma ceremony is a festival celebrated for
the increase
of food,
especially of the totem that was eaten solemnly at the thanksgiving meal. Also
the Corroboree of
promiscuous
intercourse takes place at this festival of invocation for plenty of food. And
the drama of
reproduction
is humanly enacted, as it were, in aid of production in external nature.
The
"blood of the martyrs" was not only the "seed of the Church“ in
later ages; the flesh and blood of the
victim
offered in sacrifice were also buried in the earth as seed for the future
harvest. In West Africa it
was a custom
for a man arid woman to be killed with spades and hoes in the month of March,
and for
their bodies
to be buried in the middle of a newly-tilled field to secure a better crop. The
Marimos, a
Bechuana
tribe, offer up a human victim for the welfare of their crops. The man chosen
for a sacrifice is
taken to the
field and slain amongst the wheat, according to their phrase, to serve as seed.
The custom
was not only
African. The Pawnee Indians offered the flesh and blood of a sacrificial victim
at the time of
seed-sowing.
As late as the year 1837 a captive Sioux girl was sacrificed by them at the
time of planting
the maize.
The flesh was torn in morsels to be buried in the earth, and the corn was
sprinkled with drops
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
of her
propitiating blood. The appeal for food and drink was natural and universal.
According to the
ancient
wisdom, this appeal was made to the Mother-earth as the source of life, who was
imaged as the
giver of
sustenance in various forms, but first and foremost as the superhuman suckler,
the Sow, the
Water-Cow, or
Milch-Cow. [Page 104] Egypt has registered the permanent proof that a
superhuman power
was first
besought for food and drink in the person of the Great Mother. The human mother
who was
eaten
sacramentally had supplied the type for the Great Mother in mythology. The
sacrifice was offered
to the
goddess on the hill-top, on the altar-stone, in the field or granary, or under
the green tree, as these
were
different types of the Earth-Mother. The palm-tree that is being fecundated on
the Mesopotamian
monuments
represents the Mother-earth as source of food, one form of which is the produce
of the tree.
The tree is
female. The cone held in the hand of the Geni is an emblem of the male, or
solar power by
which the
earth is fertilized. Earth is the mother of food, the universal matrix; the
tree is but a type, like
other
representatives of the bringer-forth. The sacrifice portrayed beneath the tree
upon the Hindu
monuments is
frankly phallic (Moor's Hindu Pantheon).
Under
whatsoever type or name, the so-called "tree-worship" or
"phallic worship" is a festival of
fertilization,
celebrated in propitiation of the earth-goddess, who is the genetrix besought
for food and
sustenance,
and blood was the primitive oblation made to the Mother-earth. This, however,
was not the
only one, as
is shown by the invocatory rites.
The ancient
Mother still survives amongst the Western lnoits in the same primeval character
of Mother-
earth; she
who is the bringer of food, and who when in a merry mood will play at raining
down melted fat
in her
capacity of the Great Mother who is pregnant with plenty, and who is designated
Mother Plenty.
We are not
likely to get much nearer to primitive nature than amongst these Esquimaux who
still perform
the mystery
of generation and celebrate their Arctic Agapae at the annual festival of
fecundity. In one of
the scenes
the Shamans enact the resurrection of life as the reproduction of food. The
prey is hunted to
death with
savage cries. Whilst fleeing from the pursuers the man in a mask, who acts the
part of the
animal,
seizes hold of a brand from the fire and hurls it aloft to the roof, so that
when it falls back to the
ground it
throws out a shower of live sparks. What does this portend ? asks Réclus. The
answer is that,
surrounded as
it is by its persecutors, the quarry forgets its danger to reproduce its
species, an exploit
which all the
spectators greet with acclamation." It is not enough to kill the prey; it
must also reproduce
itself, so
that its race may not die out or food become scarce. This festival was
universal once. It was
celebrated
all over the world as a drama of reproduction - first and foremost for the
reproduction of food.
The
resurrection of food by reproduction in animal life is thus enacted at the
lnoit festival, as it has been
acted in a
hundred other mysteries, Intichiuma, Eucharists, Corroborees, and religious revels.
By the dim
glimmer of
this distant light we seethe victim's death was followed with the act of a
begettal to new life. It
was a drama
of reproduction in which the sacrificial victim from the first had represented
food - the new
food of
another year, or of another life in the religious mysteries. It was, we repeat,
a drama of
reproduction,
in which the victim that died and was eaten as the Eucharist was symbolically
reproduced
in the
Corroboree that followed. From very early times the sacrifice of a victim was
solemnized,[Page 105]
and followed
by the phallic feast, whether in. the Corroboree of the Arunta or the Christian
Agapae. First
the
sacrificial victim is slain and eaten, ante lucem, at the evening meal or Last
Supper, and next the
festival of
reproduction was celebrated in the Agapae. This reproduction was performed by
universal
promiscuity
from a time when paternity was impersonal and the relationship of the sexes was
that of all
for all,-when
boundless licence was the only law befitting the Great Mother. This promiscuity
is also
recognizable
when Tertullian repeats the charges that were brought against the conduct of
the Christians
at their
festivals: "Dicimur scleratissimi de sacramento infanticidii et pabulo
inde, et post, incesto
convivium
quod eversores luminum".(Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. vii.).
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Ancient
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We now come
to the secondary cause of what has been called "phallic worship". The
first we found in
Earth herself
being imaged and propitiated as the Great Mother in the pre-anthropomorphic
mould when
she was
represented by the Water-Cow , the Sow, the Goose, or other figure of food.
Long before the
god Seb was
divinized as "the Father of Food", the Earth was Mother of Food and
gave drink as the wet-
nurse, with
the Sow as suckler of her children, and the cave in the rock as her womb.
The goddess
Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, was the fairest representative of Mother-earth. She
was
propitiated
as the Mother of Plenty, like the lnoit Sidné, and was imaged in the likeness
of the Cow or
sow, as the
figure of food and fecundity. She was also the goddess of generation,
maternity, and childbirth,
as well as of
music and the dance, of loveliness and love. Length of time and the course of
development
have to be allowed for. The Greek Venus in her nudity is immeasurably distant
from the
goddess
Hathor offering her milk to the glorified. Nevertheless, the Mother of Food was
primary as
Mother-earth,
and the Goddess of Love explains the phallic nature of the later cult of
fertilization.
The most
exact and comprehensive title for the religion designated phallic worship would
be the Cult of
the Great
Mother, taking Hathor for the type, who was the womb of life as Mother-earth,
the suckler as
the cow, the
giver of food, shelter, and water as the tree, and who in the course of time
became the
Goddess of
Love, of fecundity and child-birth. Moreover, in the later phallic cult the
type had been
changed from
the cow to the human female. The primitive simplicity of "Hathor
worship" was just that of
the infant
pulling and mumbling at the mother's nipples, when the source of milky plenty
was portrayed as
superhuman in
the likeness of the cow or sow; and when the representation became
anthropomorphic
this
simplicity was lost.
The Cow or
Sow was superseded by the Woman in the temples as the more alluring type of the
great
goddess. It
is most naďvely-pitiful to see how the sex became the human organ of the
superhuman power
offering
itself as Hathor in the Asherah-tree or as the house of God; acting the goddess
as the great
harlot of the
cult in its debasement and deterioration. This, we repeat, was mainly a result
of the
representation
becoming anthropomorphic. The Great Mother was the ideal in the minds of the
devotees,
she whose
size had been imaged by the hippopotamus, whose sexual force had been
represented [Page
106] by
Sekhet as the lioness in heat. Thus, when the type was humanized the female of
the greatest
capacity
would present the nearest likeness to the divinity, and be held most worthy of
her at the festival
of
fertilization. The Great Mother, when represented in the human form, becomes
the harlot of
promiscuous
intercourse who brought much revenue to the religious house by her capacity for
performing
the rite on behalf of the Great Mother in her tree-tent or rock-cave, or later
sanctuary. Carver
in his
Travels relates that when amongst the Naudowessies he saw they paid uncommon
respect to one
of their
women, who was looked up to, if not worshipped, as a person of high
distinction, because on one
occasion she
invited forty of the principal warriors to her tent, provided them with a
feast, and treated
them all as
her husbands. This, the Indians said, was an ancient custom by which a woman
might win a
husband of
the first rank. (Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, page 101) She, like the
Water-Cow, would be a
type of the
Great Mother, or Goddess of Fecundity, represented by the woman capable of
entertaining all
the males of
the Totem at one time as the Great Mother indeed. It was as representatives of
the Great
Mother that
the temple prostitutes attained pre-eminence in various lands, and afterwards
were highly
honoured as
the servants of the goddess.
The Great
Mother in the Mount was represented by such goddesses as Astarte, whose Ephebae
and
Courtesans
received her devotees in grottoes and caves that were hollowed out for the
purpose in the
Page 85
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Syrian
hillsides. The temple of Hathor at Serabit-el-Khadem, discovered by Professor
Petrie in the
Peninsula of
Sinai, was based originally on a cave in the rock, which was the Great
Earth-Mother's
earliest
shrine. In England there is or used to be a mild return to sexual promiscuity
once a year. The
confusion or
" mingling on the Mound" was practised on the hill, though not in a
very Belialistic way. In
the present
writer's youth it was an Easter pastime for the lads and lasses to meet upon
the “Beacon",
the
"Steps", or some other sacred hill-equivalent to the Mound, and kiss
and romp and roll each other
down the
hill-side in a scene of fine confusion, and with much soiling and tearing at
times of pretty frocks
that had to
be put on quite new for the saturnalia. All young folk were sweethearts in a
kind of sexual
promiscuity
on Easter Day. In its way this was a form of the phallic festival and the
return to promiscuity
that was
celebrated at the time of year when a reproduction of the fruits of the earth
was dramatized and
all the
inimical influences that made for sterility, drought, and famine were
figuratively driven away. As
Herodotus
relates, some700,000 people used to assemble at Bubastis to celebrate the
annual festival of
the Great
Mother Bast, who was known as the goddess of strong drink and sexual passion.
The women
who exposed
their persons on the boats to the watchers on the shore were exhibiting the
natural lure to
signify that
they were free to all comers, for this occasion only, in the service of the
goddess, who was a
lioness in
heat. They were going to celebrate the great festival of reproduction. He says
that when the
barges passed
the river-side towns some of the women danced on board, others stood up and
exposed
their persons
to those who were watching them from the banks of the Nile. (B. 2,60.) [Page
107]
The phallic
festival was periodically celebrated in honour of the Great Mother, the first
supreme power in
nature
personalized as the goddess of fertility, the giver of food and drink, the
celebration being in
accordance
with primitive usage and the promiscuous sexual intercourse of pre-Totemic
times. The
phallic
festivals were chiefly repeated at the equinoxes - that is, at seed-time and
harvest. The equinox
was a figure
of equality and of all things being on a level. This fact is expressed in the
names of our Fairs
and Evens.
Promiscuity was a mode of making things fair and even in the sexual saturnalia.
High and
low, rich and
poor, young and old, "commingled on the mound", the hill, the high
places. It was a world in
which old
maids and bachelors were not allowed, and there was at most a six months' lease
for private
ownership in
womankind (from one equinox to the other). Hence we learn from the witches'
confessions
that women
were the strongest supporters of the "Sabbath". Laws of Tabu were
violated with impunity for
this occasion
only. At this time, and no other, men and women of the same Totem cohabited
promiscuously.
The Asherah is a sacred simulacrum of the goddess whose desire was to be for
ever
fecundated.
And when the women of Israel set up the Asherah and wore the hangings for
curtains of
concealment
(II. Kings, xxiii. 7) they became the representatives of the Great Mother who
is denounced
by the
biblical writers as the Great Harlot, but who was a most popular Mother in
Israel, and Sekhet her
own second
self in Egypt.
There is
every reason for concluding that the unlimited excess indulged in promiscuously
at the phallic
festival was
designed to represent the desire for an illimitable supply of food, the
boundlessness of the
one being
dramatically rendered by the latitude and licence of the other. It was a
magical mode of the
mysteries in
which the meaning was expressed in act as a. primitive form of Sign-language
addressed to
the
superhuman Power as the Great Mother. The customs of the savage, or, as we
prefer to say, the
aborigines,
are modes of memorizing. For ages on ages their only means of keeping an
historic record of
the past, the
sole mode of memorial, have been the customs; and with what faithful
persistence these
have been
fulfilled. Promiscuous connubium is recognized by the Arunta as the condition
that obtained in
the remotest
times. They connect it with the custom of exchanging wives at the Corroboree,
saying this
was the
practice in the Alcheringa (N.T., pages. 96 and 99). That was in the time
beyond which nothing is
or can be
known, because nothing was formulated in the lawless state of utter
promiscuity. Howitt relates
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
that on one
occasion, when the Aurora Australis was more alarming and portentous in
appearance than
usual, the
Kurnai tribe beheld it with great terror, and betook themselves to inter-sexual
communism by
the exchange
of wives as a mode of warding off the calamity supposed to be impending.
(Howitt on some
Australian
beliefs.)
The root
origin, then, of what has been called the phallic religion is also to be traced
in a periodic
celebration
of the festival of reproduction, which was first applied to the renewal of food
in the flesh of
animals and
the fruits of the earth, this reproduction being rendered in the grossest human
guise on the
hugest scale,
and in the most prodigious manner befitting the Great Mother in communal
connubium
[Page 108]
with all her sons together. The festival of fertilization is a survival from
the far-off past when the
Mother-earth
was the All and the Only One, to be propitiated as the giver of food. Being the
Mother, she
was
represented by the female, who was at first pre-human, and finally human.
Thenceforth woman was
the living
type of the mythical Great Mother, instead of the Cow or Sow, the Goat or the
She-Bear; and at
this festival
all womankind were one in imaging the Mother who from the beginning had been
the AII-
One. Nothing
was recognized but the female, the typical organ of motherhood, which imaged
the earth
as mother of
sustenance; the mother, who was propitiated and solicited in various ways, by
oblations of
blood and
other offerings, was a1so invoked in the likeness of the human female to be
fertilized in human
fashion. She
was the Great Mother, the All-One, and nothing less than the contributions of
all could duly,
hugely,
adequately represent the oblation. In Drummond's (Oedipus Judaicus, pI. 13,
there is a drawing
from the
Mithraic monuments according to Hyde, which shows that the seed-sowing at the
festival of
fertilization
was illustrated in the human fashion by the male, and that the Earth-Goddess
was fecundated
as the
female, who was represented by the women in the orgie of promiscuity. The
mystery of
reproduction
was acted in the festival, as the vicarious mode of fecundating the Great
Mother and Good
Lady, by the
bountiful sowing of human seed. It was a primitive mode of representing her, on
behalf of
whom all
women kind contributed vicariously. Call it "worship", "phallic
worship", or any other "worship",
the supreme
object of devotion at first was food and drink, which were represented by the
earth in crop,
the tree in
fruit, the animal pregnant with young; by the Mammalia, the Water-Cow, the Sow,
the Milch-
Cow, the
Goose, the Emu, the Kangaroo; and lastly by the goddesses and the women who
represented
Mother-Earth
as Apt or Isis, Nin-Ki-Gal or Demeter, when the latter had been objectified in
Hathor, the
goddess of
love, or Sekhet, the goddess of sexual communion, as divinity in female form.
As it is said of
Pepi in the
Texts, "Thy sister Isis hath come to thee rejoicing in thy love. Thou hast
had intercourse with
her, and hast
made her to conceive." (Budge, Book of the Dead, Introduction, page 134-)
In these
celebrations
the woman took the place of the goddess. At the time when the begetters were
not yet
individualized
a single pair of actors would have conveyed but little meaning. The soul of
procreation was
tribal,
general, promiscuous, and the mode of reproduction in the most primitive
mysteries was in keeping
therewith.
Reproduction by the soul of the tribe was rendered by all the members
contributing to
fecundate the
Great Mother. Hence the phallic saturnalia, in which the reproduction of food,
especially in
the future
life of the animals, and the continuation of the species were dramatized in a
primitive phallic
festival
which survived eventually as the "love-feast" of the Christian cult.
Many examples
could be cited of this custom, which was universal as it was primitive, and
which may be
looked upon
as the festival of reproduction that represented the begettal of future food in
human fashion
and in
connubium as it were with the Great Mother, the Mother-Nature, or the
Mother-earth, like Pepi with
his [Page
109] divine sister Isis. In India to-day young girls are married to the Gods.
The doctrine is the
same in the
Roman Cult when the Virgins are the dedicated Brides of Christ. In the earlier
rite it was the
Males who,
like the Pharaoh Pepi, were married "to the divine Mother who was
personated by the
women in the
mysteries of the primitive religion. At such a time, whatsoever their status
attained in
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
civilization,
the people lapsed pro tem into a state of general promiscuity. The women lost
all feeling of
modesty and
became raging Bacchantes. Men and women were more furious than animals in the
indulgence of
their passion at this wild debauch. As described by M. Réclus, divinized
Mother-earth had
to he stirred
from her winter sleep by naďvely lascivious spectacles for the purpose of
exciting the spirit of
fecundity.
She was represented by young wantons of women, who danced and frolicked
indescribably or
lay down and
scraped the ground with their heels, caressed it with their hands, and offered
their
embraces like
so many naked Danaeas wooing the fertilizing sun. In this saturnalia there was
a general
reversion to
the practice of an earlier time somewhat analogous to the throw back of atavism
in race, with
this
difference: the intentional lapse in moral status was but temporary, although
periodically recurrent. It
was a
stripping off, or rather bursting out, of all the guises and disguises,
trappings, ties, and stays of
civilization,
and running amok in all the nudity of nature.
There is a
pathos of primitive simplicity in some of the appeals thus made in the lower
ranges of the cult
that is
unparalleled in literature. The Thotigars of Southern India, at the festival of
sowing seed, will insist
that their
wives shall make themselves common to all comers as an incitement for the
Mother-earth to
follow their
example. The husbands improvise shelters by the road-side and stock them with
provisions
for their
wives, and call upon the passers-by to "procure the public good and ensure
an abundance of
bread"
(Réclus P. F. P., page 283). Ŕ propos of this same festival, Israel is charged
by Hosea with having
become a
prostitute by letting herself out for hire upon the corn-floor! "Thou hast
gone a-whoring from thy
God; thou
hast loved hire upon every corn-floor" (ch. ix. I). In this case the
harlot was a representative of
the Mother-earth
as goddess of corn who was being fertilized by proxy on the grand scale in the
phallic
festivities,
which included connubium upon the corn-floor, as well as on the hill, under the
green tree, or
in the
embrace of the earth itself.
Phallic religion,
then, as here maintained, did not originate in a worship of the human sex. The
Great
Mother,
pregnant with plenty, was the object of propitiation and appeal, as the bringer
to birth and the
giver of
food. This was the superhuman mother in mythology, and not the human parent, as
in Totemism.
"Phallic
worship" originated in the cult of the motherhood. It was the Mother who
was honoured; her body
and blood
were sacredly eaten in the primitive Eucharist, if not as an act of adoration,
it was an act of
primitive
homage and affection. The type was then applied to Mother-earth as the giver of
life, of food
and drink,
the Great Mother in mythology who was thus fertilized and fecundated as it were
dramatically
in the human
fashion for increase of food.
The drama of
reproduction also involved the mystery of resurrection [Page 110] and rebirth
applied to the
periodic
renewal of food which was represented in character by the victim. Reproduction
was
represented
in various modes of resurrection including .the dance. It was a common custom
for the skin
of the
animal, bird, or reptile to be preserved entire and suspended on a pole as the
sign of reproduction
for another
life. This might be the skin of the Ainu bear, who is invoked to "come
back soon into an Ainu"
whilst being
offered up as a sacrifice. They then rejoice and sing, and both sexes dance in
ranks as
bears.
Judging from other forms of the primitive Agapae, we surmise that what is meant
by the sexes
dancing in
ranks as bears is that the performers at this festival coupled together in the
skins of the bear
for the
reproduction of their future food, which in this case was the bear, but
elsewhere might be the
buffalo, the
bull, the boar, or other Totemic animal that was slain and eaten sacramentally.
The
resurrection
acted in the mysteries of Amenta still continues, the Totemic type when the
reproducer is
Osiris, the
Bull of Eternity. It was the same festival of reproduction when the goat was
the sacrificial type
as when it
was the bear, or calf, or Iamb, or other zootype that was eaten, food being the
primitive object
Page 88
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
in
propitiating the super-human Power. It was the mystery of reproduction and renewal
of the animal for
future food,
whether this were the bear, the bull, the goat, the turtle, or any other
Totemic type. The secret
of the
mystery is that food was the object of the festival of reproduction, and the
Great Mother was
propitiated for
abundance of food. Sexual intercourse was known to be a mode of reproduction,
and the
performers
not only danced in Totemic guise as animals, they acted the characters. In this
mad festival of
fertilization
for the production of food, men also dressed and acted as women; women dressed
and acted
as men, the
function of each being thus apparently doubled. We know that in the Totemic
mysteries the
performers
wore the skins of animals as a mode of acting in character, and when they acted
thus in pairs
it would
inevitably give rise to statements that men and animals commingled in dark
rites without
distinction
of nature. Now, the goat was a Jewish type, Totemic or religious, and the Jews
were reputed
to be
goat-worshippers after the animal had been made a symbol of the evil Sut in
Egypt. But the goat
was at one
time good, as a giver of food in flesh and milk, when those of the Totem would
dance in the
skin of the
goat and be denounced by later ignorance as ''worshippers" of the Shedim
or of Satan. Thus
amongst the
mysteries that were continued by the primitive Christians is this of
reproduction, which was
first applied
to food and finally to the human soul. Hence they were charged with “running
after heifers",
just as the
Jews were denounced for running after she-goats. The root of the whole matter
is that in this
festival of
fructification the animals which are eaten for food are represented by the
Totemic actors in the
skins as
reproducing themselves for food hereafter. The fact is disclosed by the Inoit
ceremony in which
the prey must
reproduce itself before the sacrificial victim dies, so that the species shall
live on and future
food may be
secured. The mystery was the same the wide world round. The early Christians
had to be
admonished
against "running after heifers" in their mysteries performed at
"Christmas and on other
days".
This was the survival [Page 111] of a primitive custom that, like all others,
had its genesis in the
nature that
was blindly groping in the gloom with dark religious rites. The fact was patent
in all the
mysteries
that promiscuous sexual intercourse was an act which came to be called
religious. The Agapae
did not
originate with what is termed Christianity, but was one of the most primitive
institutions of the
human race,
which began as the festival of fertility when the invocation of the super-human
Power was
for food and
sustenance addressed to the Good Lady, the Earth-Goddess, the Great Mother, in
her
several
elemental characters. It was a festival of fructification at which she was
represented by the
human female,
the more the merrier, the primary object being future food far more than human
offspring,
and it was
this desire that gave the touch of religious feeling to the orgy of the sexes
in which the seed
was sown
broadcast, so to say, for future harvest.
Following
Totemism, we find that Fetishism takes up the tale of development in
Sign-Ianguage. By
Fetishism the
present writer means the reverent regard for amulets, talismans, mascots,
charms, and
Iuck-tokens
that were worn or otherwise employed as magical signs of protecting power.
Fetishism has
been
classified as the primal, universal religion of mankind. It has also been
called " the very last
corruption of
religion". (Max Muller, Nat. Rel., page 196.) But it will not help us to
comprehend the
position of
the primitive races by simply supposing them to have been in an attitude of
worship when they
were only
groping mentally on all fours. On the contrary, we consider the so-called
"fetishes" to be a
residual
result of Sign-Language and Totemism, and do not look on Fetishism as an
organized religious
cult. The
name of Fetishism was given by de Brosses, in his work on the cult of the
fetish gods, published
in 1760. The
word fetish is said to be derived from a root which yields our word faith.
Feitico, in
Portuguese,
is the name for an amulet, a talisman, or magical charm. The word would seem to
have
been adopted
by the West Coast natives and applied to their gru-grus, ju-jus, enquizi, or
mokisso, which
are worn for
mental medicine as the representative type of some protecting superhuman power.
But
Fetishism did
not originate with the Portuguese. Also the same root-word is found in the
Irish as fede. An
ancient Irish
wedding-ring in the shape of two hands clasped together was called a fede. This
too was a
fetish, as a
sign of fidelity or faith. The same thing was signified. by the Egyptian
"Sa" for the amulet or
Page 89
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
magical
charm. The word "Sa", variously illustrated, denotes protection, aid,
backing, defence, virtue,
soul,
efficacy. An earlier form of the word is Ka: there was a divinity named Sau, or
Ka, who was the god
of
fetish-figures which are identifiable as amulets, charms, knots, skins, and
other things that were worn
as types of
protective power. In Egypt, Sa or Ka was the author or creator of the types
which became
fetishtic.
(Rit., ch. xvii.) Nothing can be more pathetic than the appeal that was made to
Sa, the god of
amulets. The
word Sa also signifies touch. Thus the protecting power appealed to as the god
of the fetish
was the god
of touch. The amulet brought the power nearer to be laid hold of, and made its
presence
veritable to
this sense. Thus, Fetishism was a mode of Sign-Ianguage which supplied a
tangible means
of laying
[Page 112] hold of the nature powers that were to some extent apprehended as
superhuman
without being
comprehended. Hence the talisman, the amulet, or magical charm is worn as
something
tangible, a
thing to touch or clutch hold of, on purpose to keep in touch with the power
represented by the
fetish. This
god of touch is still extant in the Church of Rome, as well as his amulets and
charms, the
cross, the
rosary, and other fetish figures that are yet worn for protection, and are
touched in time of
need, to
establish the physical link with the invisible Power with which it may be
thought desirable to
keep in
touch.
But, it was
not, as de Brosses said in his early generalization, that anything would serve
promiscuously
for a fetish.
On the contrary, there was no fetish without some special symbolic value known
to those who
read these
natural hieroglyphics. We see by the Zunis that one great reason for making
fetish images
and honouring
them was that the so-called worship was a mode of laying hold upon the powers
which
they
represented. This is common. The images are a means of taking tangible
possession of the powers
themselves
through their hostages. The devotees thus have them in their power and hold
them as it were
in captivity,
to control, command, and even coerce or punish them. Hence the gods were
sometimes
beaten in the
shape of their fetish images. The appeal was not always prayerful. Certain
magical
formulae in
the Egyptian Ritual were repeated as words of command. In saluting the two
lions, the
double-uraei
and the two divine sisters, the deceased claims to command and compel them by
his
magical art
(xxxvii. I).
Magic is the
power of influencing the elemental or ancestral spirits. Magical words are
words with which
to conjure
and compel magical processes were acted with the same intent. If the process
consisted in
simply tying
a knot, it was a mode of covenanting and establishing a bond with the object of
compelling
fulfilment.
The Fetishism of Inner Africa, with its elemental powers, its zootypology, its
science of magic
and mental
medicine, its doctrine of transformation, its amulets and charms, came to its
culmination in
the typology,
the mythology, the magic, the religious rites and customs of Egypt. Egypt will
show us the
final phase
and perfect flower of that which had its rootage in the remotest past of
humanity in the Dark
Continent.
Wearing the fetish as a charm, a medicine, a visible symbol of power, is common
with the
Negro races.
Many of them delight in wearing a beltful of these around the body. If the
Negro has to bear
a heavier
load than usual, he will clap on a fresh fetish for every pound of extra weight
- thus adding to
his burden by
his mode of outsetting the weight, because the fetishes represent a helpful
power. If he has
to carry 100
pounds weight he will want, say, half-a-dozen fetish images in his girdle. But
if the weight be
doubled he
will require a dozen fetishes to enable him to sustain it. His fetishes
represent power in
various
forms, whether drawn from the animal world or human, whether the tokens be a
tooth, a claw, a
skin, a horn,
hair, a root, a bone, or only a stone. They represent a stored up power, for
the Negro has
faith in his
fetishes, and that acts as a potent mental influence. If he has only a
gree-gree of cord, he will
tie it into
knots, and every knot is the sign of increase in power [Page 113] according to
his reckoning.
When it was
known what the type or fetish signified as a representative figure, it could
make no direct
appeal to
religious consciousness, nor evoke a feeling of reverence for itself, any more
than the letters of
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Ancient
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the alphabet.
Mere fetishism in the modern sense only comes in with ignorance of
Sign-language. The
Arunta have
an emblem in their Churinga which is a very sacred fetish. This is associated
with the
Alcheringa
spirits. When there is a battle the Churinga is supposed to endow its owner
with courage. "So
firm is their
belief in this, that if two men were fighting, and one of them knew that the
other carried a
Churinga
whilst he did not, he would certainly lose heart and without doubt be
beaten" (Spencer and
Gillen). We
know that the Inner African custom of carrying a number of amulets and charms
strung upon
the body for
protection was continued in ancient Egypt, because we see it employed in the
equipment of
the dead for
their journey through the nether world. When the deceased enters the presence
of the
Typhonian
powers in Amenta he exults in being prepared with "millions of
charms", or fetish images,
which
friendly hands have buried with his body, such as the terrible Eye of Horus,
the Beetle of
Transformation,
the Tablet of Tahn, the Sceptre of Felspar, the Buckle of Stability, the
Ankh-cross of Life,
and other
types of protecting power. With his fetishes outside and inside of his mummy,
he exclaims "I
clothe and
equip myself with thy spells, O Ra!" and so he faces the darkness of death
in defiance of all
the evil
powers. Each amulet or fetish signifies some particular way of protecting of preserving,
transforming,
reproducing, or renewing life, and re-establishing him for ever, the sun being
representative
of the power
that revivifies for life eternal. We learn from the chapter on bringing the
charms of a person
in Hades that
the amulets, spells, and talismans are equivalent to the powers of the mind,
heart, and
tongue of the
deceased. He says, "I have made the gods strong,. bringing all my charms
to them" (ch.
23). In the
chapter on stopping the crocodiles that come to make the deceased "lose
his mind" in
Amenta, we
see how the earlier zootypes that once represented the powers of destruction
have still kept
their place,
and can be turned to good account by him, as when the deceased cries,
"Back, Crocodile of
the West !
There is an asp in my belly! There is a snake in my belly!" - the one
being the symbol of royal
supremacy,
the other of transformation into new life. The primitive mode of portraying the
powers in
nature that
were superior to the human was continued in this typology of the tomb. Thus the
Manes cling
to powers
beyond the human, which were first represented by the natural types that have
now become
fetishtic; a
means of claiming alliance with them and of clothing themselves in death with
their shield of
protection
and panoply of power. In spirit-life the deceased clutches at the same types
that were fetishes
in this life,
and holds on by the same assistance. He not only clothes himself with their
images as
talismans and
spells, he transforms into their likeness to personate their superhuman forces.
Thus he
can pass
underground as a tortoise, a beetle, or a shrewmouse; make way through the mud
or the nets
as an eel,
through the water as a crocodile, through the dark as a jackal, or see in it as
a cat; fly swiftly as
a swallow,
and soar through [Page 114] the air or solar fire as the golden hawk; shed his
past life like the
tail of the
tadpole that turns frog, or slough it like the skin of the serpent. In making
his passage by means
of manifold
manifestations he exclaims, "I have flown as a hawk", "I have
cackled as a goose", "I am the
swallow"
(as the soul of swiftness). He runs through the zootypes which represented the
powers of the
soul in
various stages of development, and says: I.) I am the jackal. 2.) I am the
hawk. 3.) I am the great
fish. 4.) I
am the phoenix. 5. I am the serpent. 6. I am the ram. 7. I am the sun. In this
passage the
deceased
transforms into these zootypes of the nature powers in order that he may go
where the merely
human
faculties would fail to carry him through. He assumes their power by wearing
representative
images or
fetishes - by impersonation of their parts and by incorporation of these
potencies which are
beyond the
human, and therefore superhuman. Hence the exclamation, "I have
incorporated Horus" i.
e., the
youthful god who was for ever re-born in phenomenal manifestation as
representative of the
eternal in
time, in whose likeness the mortal transformed into an immortal to realize the
type. The Ritual
contains many
references to magic as a mode of transformation. The Osiris says: "My
mouth makes the
invocation of
magical charms. I pray in magical formula" (31, 2-3). That is the precise
explanation of the
primitive
modes of invocation and evocation,"I pray in magical formula". And
these magical formula were
acted,
performed, and signified by a thousand things that were done in place of being
said: "My magical
power gives
vigour to my flesh" (64, 27). "Masters of Truth, who are free from
evil, living for ever, lend me
your forms.
Give me possession of your magical charms", "for I know your
names" (72, I, 2). Chapter 64,
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Ancient
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is spoken of
as a hymn that caused the reader to go into a state of ecstasy. "He no
longer sees, no
longer hears,
whilst reciting this pure and holy composition" ( 50, 33), which obviously
points to the
condition of
trance that was attributed to the magical power of the formula. Urt-Hekau,
great in magical
words of
power, is a title of Isis, who was considered the very great mistress of spells
and magical
incantations.
It is said of her: " he beneficent sister repeateth the formula and
provideth thy soul with her
conjurations.
Thy person is strengthened by all her formula of incantation".
It is the
power beyond the type that goes far to account for the origin and persistence
of fetishism. The
African knows
well enough that the power is not necessarily resident in the fetish, which
fails him
continually
and in the times of greatest need. But his trust is in the power that is
represented by the
fetish, the
power that never dies, and therefore is eternal.
The magical
incantations which accompany the gesture signs also prove that the appeal,
whether in
dumb show or
in words, was being made to some superior superhuman force - that is, one of
the
elemental
powers in mythology which became the goddesses and gods in the later
eschatology. The
hawk will
show us how a fetish image was educed from a type or sign of superhuman force.
The bird in
Egypt was a
symbol of the Horus sun on account of its swiftness and its soaring power. It
was used to
signify
height, excellence, spirit, victory. And just as letters are reduced
ideographs, so the hawk's [Page
115] foot and
kite's feather will denote the power first represented by the bird itself, and
as such they are
worn upon the
person. They are the visible signs of swiftness or upward flight, and therefore
a true
medicine or
fetish to speed one on. Also, when superhuman powers in nature were represented
by the
superhuman
types or zootypes, it was not that the deceased changed into an animal or bird
or reptile,
either in
this life or the next, when he is self-assimilated to the type. When the
deceased in the Ritual
says, "I
am the lion", he is clothing himself in the strength of the great power
that had been represented
by the lion,
which might be that of Shu or of Atum-Ra. The wearers of the fetish images,
whether on earth
or in Amenta,
are affiliated or assimilated to the power beyond by means of the type, whether
this is
represented
by wearing the whole skin or. a piece of it, the horn, the hoof, the tooth, or
tail of the animal,
the feathers
of the bird or rattle of the snake. Thus, the horn of the bull, or a portion of
it, might be worn to
assimilate
the "'wearer to Osiris" , " the Bull of Eternity". An old
Fan hunter gave Miss Kingsley a little
ivory
half-moon which was specially intended "to make man see bush", otherwise
for her to see her way
in the night
of the forest (Trav. page 102). So the eye of Horus which images the moon is
given to the
deceased for
his night-light in the darkness of death. Horus presents the (solar) eye by day
and Taht the
lunar eye by
night (Rit., ch. 144, 8). The eye was an emblem of great magical and protecting
power. With
many of the
West Coast Africans the eye-balls of the dead, more particularly of Europeans,
constitute a
great
medicine, fetish, or charm. Dr. Nassau told Miss Kingsley that he had known
graves to have been
rifled in
search of them (Kingsley, M. H., Travels in West Africa, page 449).
The amulets,
charms, and tokens of magical power that were buried with the Egyptian dead
became
fetish on
account of what they imaged symbolically, and fetishtic symbolism is
Sign-language in one of its
ideographic
phases. The Usekh-collar indicated being set free from the bandages and rising
again from
the dead in
the glorified form of the Sahu-mummy. The Tam-sceptre signified union with the
loved and
lost. As
Egyptian, one of the fetish figures buried with the dead is the sign of the
corner or angle, named
Neka
.It is the
mystical corner-stone of the Masonic builder, and a sign of building on the
square, for
which the
symbol stands. Building on the square, or a fourfold foundation, is to build
for ever, Paul
speaks as a
Mason or a gnostic when he makes the mystical Christ the "chief
corner-stone" in the temple
that is
builded "for an habitation of God in the spirit" (Eph. ii, 20-22 ).
The Ankh-cross signified the life to
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Ancient
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come, that
is, the life everlasting. The Shen-ring imaged continuity for ever, in the
circle of eternity. The
heart of
green basalt showed that the deceased in this life was sound-hearted. The
beetle Kheper
typified the
self-reproducing power in nature which operates by transformation according to
the laws of
evolution.
The jackal-headed user-sceptre was buried as an image of sustaining power, the
vertebral
column of Sut
or Osiris that supported the heavens. The Tat, a pillar or tree-trunk, was an
emblem of
stability and
type of the god Ptah as the fourfold support of the universe. We have heard
much of the
savage who
was able to secrete his soul in a stone [Page 116] or a tree, but without the
gnosis by which
alone such
nursery-tales could be explained. Now, in one of the numerous changes made by
the Osiris in
Amenta he
transforms into a stone (Rit., ch. 161), saying. " I am the tablet of
felspar." This was the Uatamulet
that was
placed in the tomb as a type of that which was for ever green, fresh and
flourishing,
equivalent to
the green jade found in Neolithic graves. In this an evergreen was, so to say,
made
permanent in
stone, and buried with the dead as a type of eternal youth. The deceased
exclaims. "I am
the column of
green felspar" (Rit., ch. 160), and he rejoices in the stone being so hard
that it cannot be
crushed or
even receive a scratch saying, "If it is safe, I am safe; if it is
uninjured, I am uninjured”. The
power of this
amulet was in its impenetrable hardness, which represented eternal permanence
for the
soul which it
imaged. One of the most sacred fetishes in Egypt was an amulet of red stone
which
represented
the blood of Isis. That is the mother-blood in theology - the blood by which
salvation came to
give eternal
life - a sublimated form of the mother-blood in totemism. which came to give
the human life.
Isis, moreover,
is the virgin divinized. We speak of the blood tie between mother and child.
This was first
figured by
means of the totem and naturally the figure became a fetish. The Egyptians,
being more
advanced,
were able to manufacture fetishtic types like the Ankh-image of life, the
Tat-emblem of stability,
the
Nefer-amulet of good luck, the Scarabeus of transformation, the serpent of
eternity.
It must have
been a work of proud accomplishment for primitive man when first he made a
string of hair
or of any
fibrous material and could tie a knot in it. We might say primitive woman, hers
being the greater
need. It is
the goddess Ankh who wears the hemp-stalks on her head, the goddess Neith who
is the
knitter
divinized. The knotted tie is one of the most primitive and important of all
the African fetishes to be
found in
Egypt. It is the gree-gree of Inner Africa. The Ankh-tie itself is originally
merely a piece of string
called a
strap. It is the sign of dress, of undress, to tie or fasten, and of linen hung
up to dry. The tie in
Egypt takes
several forms in the Ankh, the Tet, the Sa. The Ankh denotes life. The Sa has
ten loops or
ties, which
in the language of signs might signify a period of ten lunar months. The
Tet-tie, now a buckle,
represents
the blood of Isis, the saving blood, the soul of blood derived from the virgin
mother, which was
imaged in the
human Horus. The tie was the earliest form of the liku or loin-belt first worn
by the female
as the mother
of life at the period that was indicated by nature for propagation and
connubium.
Necklaces
were worn by the Egyptian women to which the tie-amulet of Isis formed a
pendant, and
indicated her
protecting power. In others the amulet suspended was the Ankh of life, or the
heart (Ab);
the Tat-sign
of stability, or the Neferu-symbol of good luck. These were all fetishes that
were worn to
establish the
personal rapport and alliance with the respective powers, ,which are known by
name when
divinized.
Fetishes
generally are objects held in honour as the representatives of some power that
was worshipped
when the
feeling had attained that status. Thus a stone may be the sacred symbol of
eternal duration; the
frog a living
symbol of the power of transformation; [Page 117] the serpent a symbol of the
power of self-
renewal; the
crocodile a zootype of the power that could see when itself was unseen. The
sword-fish is
sacred to the
negroes of Guinea. This they do not eat. But the sword when cut off and dried
becomes a
fetish. That
is as a type of the superhuman power whose symbol is the sword. In the final
phase amulets,
charms,
talismans, mascots, and tokens became fetishtic through being adopted and worn
as visible or
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Ancient
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secret signs
of some protecting power. They are as much ideographs as any others in the
Egyptian
hieroglyphics,
and as a mode of representation they belong to the ancient language of
pre-verbal signs.
In Egypt the
great First Mother Apt was propitiated as the "Mistress of
Protection". And the "protection"
was signified
by types of permanence and power that were natural at first, then artificial
when the horn
and tooth
were succeeded by the ivory that was carved into amulets and charms, which
objectified the
power of
protection for the living or the dead. The power of Apt was portrayed in nature
by the
hippopotamus,
and a tooth of the animal would symbolize its strength. Hence we find that
figures of the
animal were
shaped in ivory, or stone to be worn as types of the "Mistress of
Protection". Figures of
hippopotami
carved out of red stone have been discovered lately in the prehistoric sites of
Egypt, which
were
obviously intended to be worn as amulets.
Thus the fetish
was at first a figure of the entire animal that represented the protecting
power as the
superhuman
Mother Apt (Proc. S. of B. A., xxii., parts 4 and 5, page 460). Afterwards the
tooth, the horn,
the hoof
would serve to image the power when worn upon the person of the living or
buried with the
mummy of the
dead. A tooth is one of the most primitive types of power. Lions' teeth are
worn by the
Congo blacks
as talismans or amulets. Crocodiles' teeth are worn by the Malagasy; dogs'
teeth by the
Sandwich
Islanders; tiger-cats' teeth by the Land Dyaks; boars' teeth by the Kukis;
hogs' teeth by the
natives of
New Guinea; sharks' teeth by the Maori. All these were fetish types as images
of superhuman
strength.
When the Esquimaux Angekok goes forth to battle with the evil spirits and
influences inimical to
man, he arms
himself with the claws of bears, the beaks of birds, the teeth of foxes, and
other types of
the nature
powers which were primarily represented by the zootypes that bequeathed these,
their
remains, to
the repertory of fetishism. Thus the primitive Inner African mode of
representation was not
only
preserved in the wisdom of Egypt, it became eschatological in one phase just as
it remained
hieroglyphical
in the other, and in both it was the outcome and consummation of African
Sign-language.
That which
has been designated telepathy and the transference of thought by the Society
for Psychical
Research was
well known amongst the aboriginal races and that knowledge was utilized in
their system
of mental
magic, or what the red men term their medicine. The earliest medicine was
mental, not
physical, not
what we term physic. The effects that were sought for had to be educed by an
influence
exerted on
the mind, rather than by chemical qualities found in the physics. Hence the
fetishes of the
black or red
aborigine are his medicine by name as well as by nature. These things served,
like
vaccination,
traction-buckles, or "tar-water and [Page 118] the Trinity", as
fetishes of belief so long as that
belief might
last. They constituted a mental medicine, and an access of strength or
spiritual succour
might be
derived from the thought. Belief works wonders. Hence the image of power
becomes protective
and
assisting; it supplies a medicine, as it is termed, a medicine to the mind; and
the fetishes, therefore,
are properly
called a medicine. Thus the earliest healing power was mental. It was the
influence of mind
on mind, that
operated chiefly by suggestion. This was extant before the time of drugs, when
mental
influence was
considered magical, and the man whose power was greatest was the mage or the
magician.
When the fetish-monger came to think that the healing or helping power resided
in the fetish
itself, one
of two things had occurred. Either the devotee had lost sight of the original
representative
value of the
fetish, and in his ignorance had gone blind with superstition, or it had been
discovered that
certain
natural products did contain stimulating properties and healing virtues in
themselves, and thus the
medicine of
physics began to supplement the more primitive mental medicine of the earlier
fetishism. But
the mass of
fetishes do not possess their power intrinsically or inherently; they have only
a representative
value, which
continues to make successful appeal to belief long after it has passed out of
knowledge.
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Ancient
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Thus we have
the fetishism of a primitive intelligence mixed up and confused with the
fetishism of later
ignorance.
The first mental medicine was derived by laying hold of the nature powers in
some typical or
representative
way. For example, the fire-stone from heaven was a sign of primary power. This
was worn
as a mental
medicine at first, but it becomes physic at a later stage when, as with the
Burmese, a cure
for
ophthalmia is found in the scrapings of thunderbolts or meteoric stones. A
medicine of immense
power for the
muscles is still made by the Chinese from the bones of a tiger which have been
dug up
after lying
some months in the earth and ground into a most potent powder, whilst the blood
and liver of
the same
animal supplies a medicine of mighty power - i.e., to the mind that can derive
it by typical
transference
from the tiger. It is one of the most curious and instructive studies to trace
this
transformation
of the earliest mental medicine into actual physics. For example, the nose-horn
of the
rhinoceros is
an African fetish of the greatest potency. This represents the power of the
animal, and when
carried as a
fetish, charm, or amulet it is a type of the power looked upon as assisting and
protecting no
matter where
this power may be localized mentally. The rhinoceros being a persistent
representative of
power in and
over water, its horn would naturally typify protection against the drowning
element for
boatmen and
sailors. In the next stage the medicine is turned into physic by the horn being
ground down
and swallowed
as a powder. Our familiar hartshorn derived its primal potency as a mental
medicine from
the horn of
the deer, which was adopted as a type of renovation on account of the animal's
having the
power
periodically to shed and renew its horns and the horn itself as an emblem of
renovation was a
good mental
medicine long before essences were extracted or drugs compounded from it in the
chemistry of
physics. One might point to many things that supplied the mental medicines of
fetishism
before they
were [Page 119] ground down or calcined for the physic prescribed by our
learned leeches of
later times,
who played the same ignorant part in dealing with these leavings of the past in
this
department of
physics that the priests have played with the sweepings of ancient
superstitions with which
they have so
long beguiled and ignorantly doctored us. The mode of assuming power by wearing
of the
skin as a
fetish is still extant. The skin was worn as the only genuine garment of the
magician or sorcerer.
As we read in
the Discovery of Witchcraft, the wizard's outfit included a robe furred with
fox skin, a
breast-plate
of virgin parchment, and a dry thong of lion's or hart's skin for a girdle. The
skin also survives
as a part of
the insignia worn in our law courts, colleges, and pulpits, where it still
serves in Sign-
language to
determine a particular status; it likewise survives as the cap and tails on the
head of the
clown in a
less serious kind of - pantomime. Some years since the present writer was
making an inquiry
at the
Regent's Park Zoological Gardens respecting the sloughing of the serpent, when
the attendant
thought it
was the "slough" of the serpent that was wanted. The writer then
learned that this cast-off skin
of the
reptile was still sold in London as a charm, or fetish, a medicine of great
potency, and that the sum
of Ł 5 was
sometimes paid for one.
The fetishes
acquired their sacred character, not as objects of worship, but from what they
had
represented
in Sign-language; and the meaning still continued to be acted when the language
was no
longer read.
The serpent was a symbol of renewal and self-renovation from the first, and
thus the slough
or skin
remains a fetish to the end. We are so bound up together, the past with the
present, and the
doctrine of
development is so vitally true, that we cannot understand the significance of a
thousand
things in
survival which dominate or tyrannize over us to-day, until we can trace them
back to their origin
or learn
something satisfactory about their primal meaning and the course of their
evolution. Many queer
customs and
beliefs look unreasonable and irrational now which had a reason originally,
although their
significance
may have been lost to us. Many simplicities of the early time have now become
the
mysteries of
later ignorance, and we are made the victims of the savage customs bequeathed
by
primitive or
prehistoric man, now clung to as sacred in our current superstition. It was a
knowledge of
these and
kindred matters of the ancient mysteries that once made sacred the teachers of
men, whereas
it is the
most complete ignorance of the natural beginnings that characterizes the
priestly caste to-day
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Ancient
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concerning
the primitive customs which still survive and dominate both men and women in
the fetishism
which has
become hereditary now.
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Ancient
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BOOK 3 of 12
ELEMENTAL AND
ANCESTRAL SPIRITS, OR THE GODS AND THE GLORIFIED
[Page 120]
The Fetishism and Mythology of Inner Africa, left dumb or unintelligible, first
became articulate
in the Valley
of the Nile. Egypt alone preserved the primitive gnosis, and gave expression to
it in the
language of
signs and symbols as mouthpiece of the old dark land. From her we learn that
amulets,
talismans,
luck-tokens, and charms became fetishtic, because they represented some
protecting power
that was
looked to for superhuman aid, and that this power belonged to one of two
classes of spirits or
superhuman
beings which the Egyptians of the Ritual called “the Gods and the Glorified”.
The first were
elemental
powers divinized. The second are the spirits of human ancestors, commonly called
the
ancestral
spirits. The present object is to trace the origin of both, and to distinguish
betwixt the one and
the other, so
as to discriminate elsewhere betwixt the two kinds of spirits, with the
Egyptian wisdom for
our guide.
According to
the historian Manetho, who was a master of the secrets that were known to the
Hir-Seshta,
the keepers
of chronology in Egypt had reckoned time and kept the register for a period of
24,900 years.
This period
Manetho divides under three divine dynasties with three classes of rulers,
namely, the
“Gods”, the
“Heroes” and the “Manes”. The reign of the gods was sub-divided into seven
sections with a
deity at the
head of each. Now, as will be shown, the “Gods” of Egypt originated in the
primordial powers
that were
derived at first from the Mother-earth and the elements in external nature, and
these gods
became
astronomical or astral, as the Khus or Glorious Ones in the celestial
Heptanomis, or Heaven in
seven
divisions.
In their
stellar character they became the Seven Glorious Ones whom we read of in the
Ritual (ch. 17),
who were
seven with Horus in Orion; seven with Anup at the pole of heaven; seven with
Taht, with Ptah,
and finally
with Ra and Osiris, as the Seven Lords of Eternity. These two divine dynasties,
elemental and
Kronian, were
followed in the list of Manetho by the Manes or ancestral spirits. In his
Hibbert Lectures,
Renouf denied
the existence of ancestor-worship in Egypt. Nevertheless, he was entirely
wrong. The
New Year's Festival
of the Ancestors determines that. This is referred to in the Calendar of Esne.
It was
solemnized on
the 9th of [Page 121] Taht, the first month of the Egyptian year, and was then
of unknown
antiquity.
The Egyptians
entertained no doubt about the existence, the persistence, or the personality
of the human
spirit or
ghost of man ; and as we understand Manetho's account of the Egyptian religion
in the times
before Mena,
the worship of the ghosts or spirits of the dead was that which followed the
two previous
dynasties of
the elemental powers of earth and the Kronidae in the astronomical mythology.
For the
present
purpose, however, the three classes mentioned fall into the two categories of
beings which the
Egyptians
designated “the Gods and the Glorified”. The gods are superhuman powers,
whether
elemental or
astronomical. The glorified are the souls once mortal which were propitiated as
the spirit-
ancestors,
here called the Manes of the dead. Not that the Egyptian deities were what Herbert
Spencer
thought, “the
expanded ghosts of dead men”. We know them from their genesis in nature as
elemental
powers or
animistic spirits, which were divinized because they were superhuman, and
therefore not
human. Sut,
as the soul of darkness; Horus, as the soul of light; Shu, as the soul of air
or breathing force;
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Seb, as soul
of earth; Nnu (or Num), as soul of water; Ra, as soul of the sun, were gods,
but these were
not expanded
from any dead men's ghosts. Most emphatically, man did not make his gods in his
own
image, for
the human likeness is, we repeat, the latest that was applied to the gods or
nature-powers.
Egyptian
mythology was founded on facts which had been closely observed in the
ever-recurring
phenomena of
external nature, and were then expressed in the primitive language of signs. In
the
beginning was
the void, otherwise designated the abyss. Darkness being the primordial
condition, it
followed
naturally that the earliest type in mythical representation should be a figure
of darkness. This
was the
mythical dragon, or serpent Apap, the devouring reptile, the monster all mouth,
the prototype of
evil in
external nature, which rose up by night from the abyss and coiled, about the
Mount of Earth as the
swallower of
the light; who in another phase drank up all the water, as the fiery dragon of
drought. The
voice of this
huge, appalling monster was the thunder that shook the firmament (Rit., ch. 39)
; the drought
was its
blasting breath that dried up the waters and withered vegetation. As a mythical
figure of the
natural fact,
this was the original Ogre of the North, the giant who had no heart or soul in
his body. Other
powers born
of the void were likewise elemental, with an aspect inimical to man. These were
the spawn
of darkness,
drought and disease. In the Ritual they are called the Sami, demons of
darkness, or the
wicked Sebau,
who for ever rose in impotent revolt against the powers that wrought for good.
These
Sami, or
black spirits, and Sebau supplied fiends and spirits of darkness to later
folklore and fairy-ology ;
and, like the
evil Apap, the offspring also are of neither sex. Sex was introduced with the
Great Mother in
her hugest,
most ancient form of the water cow, as representative of the Mother-earth and
bringer forth of
life amidst
the waters of surrounding space. Her children were the elemental powers or
forces, such as
wind and
water, earth and fire; but these are not to be confused with the evil progeny
of Apap. Both are
[Page 122]
elemental in their origin, but the first were baneful, whereas the latter are
beneficent.
When the
terrors of the elements had somewhat spent their force, and were found to be non-sentient
and
unintelligent,
the chief objects of regard and propitiation were recognized in the bringers of
food and drink
and the
breath of air as the elements of life. Those were the beneficent powers, born
of the Old Mother
as elemental
forces, that preceded the existence of the gods or powers divinized. The
transformation of
an elemental
power into a god can be traced, for example, in the deity Shu. Shu as an
elemental force
was
representative of wind, air, or breath, and more especially the breeze of dawn
and eve, which was
the very
breath of life to Africa. Darkness was uplifted or blown away by the breeze of
dawn. The
elemental
force of wind was imaged as a panting lion couched upon the horizon or the
mountain-top as
lifter up of
darkness or the sky of night. The power thus represented was animistic or
elemental. Next,
Shu was given
his star, and he became the Red God, who attained the rank of stellar deity as
one of the
seven
“Heroes” who obtained their souls in the stars of heaven. The lion of Shu was
continued as the
figure of his
force; and thus a god was born, the warrior-god, who was one of the Heroes, or
one of the
powers in an
astronomical character. Three of these beneficent powers were divinized as male
deities in
the Kamite
Pantheon, under the names of Nnu, Shu, and Seb. Nnu was the producer of that
later which
in Africa was
looked upon as an overflow of very heaven. Shu was giver of the breath of life.
Seb was
divinized,
and therefore worshipped as the god of earth and father of food. These three
were powers that
represented
the elements of water, air, and earth. Water is denoted by the name of Nnu. Shu
carries, the
lion's hinder
part upon his head as the sign of force; the totem of Seb is the goose that lays
the egg, a
primitively
perfect figure of food. These, as elemental powers or animistic souls, were
life-givers in the
elements of
food, water, and breath. Not as begetters or creators, but as transformers from
one phase of
life to
another, finally including the transformation of the superhuman power into the
human product.
There are
seven of these powers altogether, which we shall have to follow in various
phases of natural
phenomena and
on divers radiating lines of descent. Tentatively we might
parallel:-Darkness=Sut;
light=Horus;
breathing power=Shu; water=Nnu (or Hapi) earth=Tuamutef (or Seb); fire =
Khabsenuf;
blood=Child-Horus.
These were not derived from the ancestral spirits, once human, and no ancestral
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The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
spirits ever
were derived from them. Six of the seven were pre-human types. The seventh was
imaged in
the likeness
of Child-Horus, or of Atum, the man. Two lists of names for the seven are given
in the Ritual
(ch. 17, i.,
99-107), which correspond to the two categories of the elemental powers and the
Glorious
Ones, or
Heroes. Speaking of the seven, the initiate in the mysteries says, “ I know the
names of the
seven
Glorious Ones. The leader of that divine company is An-ar-ef the Great by
name”. The title here
identifies
the human elemental as the sightless mortal Horus - that is, Horus who was
incarnated in the
flesh at the
head of the seven, to become the first in status, he who had been the latest in
development.
[Page 123] In
this chapter of the Ritual the seven have now become astronomical, with their
stations fixed
in heaven by
Anup, whom we shall identify as deity of the Pole. “They do better”, says
Plutarch, “who
believe that
the legends told of Sut, Osiris, and Isis do not refer- to either gods or men,
but to certain
great powers
that were super-human, but not as yet divine” (Of Isis and Osiris, ch. 26). The
same writer
remarks that
“Osiris and Isis passed from the rank of good demons ( elementals ) to that of
deities” ( ch.
30). This was
late in the Kamite mythos, but it truly follows the earlier track of the great!
powers when
these were
Sut and Horus, Shu and Seb, and the other elemental forces that were divinized
as gods.
In the
astronomical mythology the nature-powers were raised to the position of rulers
on high, and this is
that
beginning which was described by Manetho with “the gods” as the primary class
of rulers, whose
reign was
divided into seven sections, or, as we read it, in a heaven of seven divisions
- that is, the
celestial
Heptanomis. Certain of these can be distinguished in the ancient heavens yet as
figures or the
constellations
which became their totems. Amongst such were the hippopotamus-bull of Sut, the
crocodile-dragon
of Sebek-Horus, the lion of Shu, the goose of Seb, the beetle of Kheper
(Cancer), and
other types
of the starry souls on high, now designated deities, or the Glorious Ones, as
the Khuti. The
ancient
mother who had been the cow of earth, was elevated to the sphere as the Cow of
heaven It was
she who gave
rebirth to the seven powers that obtained their souls in the stars. and who
were known as
“the Children
of the Thigh” when that was her constellation. These formed the company of the
seven
Glorious
Ones, who became the Ali or Elohim, divine masters, time-keepers, makers and
creators, which
have to be
followed in a variety of phases and characters. The Egyptian gods were born
then, as
elemental
powers. They were born as such of the old first Great Mother; who in her
character of Mother-
earth was the
womb of life and therefore mother of the elements of which there are seven
altogether,
called her
children. The seven elemental powers acquired souls as gods in the astronomical
mythology.
They are
given rebirth in heaven as the seven children of the old Great Mother. In the
stellar mythos they
are also
grouped as the seven Khus with Anup on the Mount. They are the seven Taasu with
Taht in the
lunar mythos,
the seven Knammu with Ptah in the solar mythos. They then pass into the
eschatology as
the seven
souls of Ra, the Holy Spirit, and the seven great spirits glorified with Horus
as the eighth in the
resurrection
from Amenta. The Egyptians have preserved for us a portrait of Apt (Kheb, or
Ta-Urt), the
Great Mother,
in a four-fold figure. as the bringer forth of the four fundamental elements of
earth, water,
air, and
heat. As representative of the earth she is a hippopotamus. as representative
of water she is a
crocodile and
as the representative of breathing force she is a lioness, the human mother
being imaged
by the
pendent breasts and procreant womb. Thus the mother of life is depicted as
bringer forth of the
elements of
life. or at least four of these, as the elemental forces or “souls” of earth,
water, fire, and air
which four
are imaged in her compound corpulent figure, and were set forth as four of her
seven children.
Apt was also
the mother of [Page124] sparks, or of souls as sparks of starry fire. She was
the kindler of life
from the
spark that was represented by the star. This, we reckon, is the soul of Sut,
her first-born, as the
beneficent
power of darkness. The power of water was imaged by Sebek-Horus as the
crocodile. The
power of wind
or air, in one character, was that of the lion-god Shu ; and the power of the
womb is the
Child-Horus,
as the fecundator of his mother. These, with some slight variation, are four of
the seven
powers of the
elements identified with the mother as the bringer forth of gods and men, whom
we
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Ancient
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nowadays call
Mother Nature. Six of the total seven were represented by
zootypes, and
Horus was personalized in the form of a child. Evidence
for a soul of
life in the dark was furnished by the star. Hence the soul and
star are
synonymous under the name of Khabsu in Egyptian. This was an
elemental
power of darkness divinized in Sut, the author of astronomy.
Evidence for
a soul of life in the water was furnished by the fish that was
eaten for
food. This elemental power was divinized in the fish-god Sebek
and in
Ichthus, the mystical fish. Evidence for a soul of life in the earth
was also
furnished in food and in periodic renewal. The elemental power
was divinized
in Seb, the father of food derived from the ground, the
plants, and
the goose. Evidence for a soul of life in the sun, represented
by the
uraeus-serpent, was furnished by the vivifying solar heat, the
elemental
power of which was divinized Apt, the First Great in Ra
Evidence for
a soul of life in blood was Mother furnished by the
incarnation,
the elemental power of which was divinized in elder Horus,
the eternal
child. Six of these seven powers, we repeat, were
represented
by zootypes; the seventh was given the human image of the
child, and
later of Atum the man. Thus the earliest gods of Egypt were developed from the
elements,
and were not
derived from the expanded ghosts of dead men Otherwise stated, the ancestral
spirits
were not
primary.
Dr. Rink,
writing of the Eskimo, has said that with them the whole visible world is ruled
by supernatural
powers or
“owners”, each of whom holds sway within certain limits, and is called his Inua
(viz., its or
his Inuk,
which word signifies “man” and also owner or inhabitant). This is cited by
Herbert Spencer as
most
conclusive evidence that the agent or power was originally a human ghost,
because the power
may be
expressed as the Inuk, or its man- “the man in it - that is, the man's ghost in
it”. The writer did
not think of
the long way the race had to travel before “the power” could be expressed by
“its man”, or
how late was
the anthropological mode of representing the forces of external nature. “The
man” as
type of power
belongs to a far later mode of expression. Neither man nor woman nor child was
among
the earliest
representatives of the elemental forces in external nature. By the bye, the
Inuk is the
power, and in
Egyptian the root Nukh denotes the power or force of a thing, the potency of
the male,
as the bull;
thence Nukhta is the strong man or giant. Sut was a Suten-Nakht. Horus was a
[Page 125]
Suten-Nakht,
but neither of them was derived from man. The elements themselves were the
earliest
superhuman
powers, and these were thought of and imaged by superhuman equivalents. The
power
of darkness
was not represented by its man, or the ghost of man. Its primal power, which
was that of
swallowing
all up, was imaged by the devouring dragon. The force of wind was not
represented by its
man, but by
its roaring lion; the drowning power of water by the wide-jawed crocodile, the
power of
lightning or
of sunstroke by its serpent-sting, the spirit of fire by the fiery-spirited
ape. In this way all
the elemental
forces were equated and objectified before the zootype of Sign-Ianguage was
changed
for the human
figure or anyone of them attained its “man” as the representative of its power.
The
earliest type
of the man, even as male power, was the bull, the bull of his mother, who was a
cow, or
hippopotamus.
Neither god nor goddess ever had been man or woman or the ghost of either in
the
mythology of
Egypt, the oldest in the world. The Great Mother of all was imaged like the
totemic
mother, as a
cow, a serpent, a sow, a crocodile, or other zootype, ages before she was
represented
as a woman or
the ghost of one. It is the same with the powers that were born of her as male,
six of
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Ancient
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which were
portrayed by means of zootypes before there was anyone in the likeness of a
man,
woman, or
child. And these powers were divinized as the primordial gods. The Egyptians
had no god
who was
derived from a man. They told Herodotus that “in eleven thousand three hundred
and forty
years [as he
reckons] no god had ever actually become a man” (B. 2, 142). Therefore Osiris
did not
originate as
a man. Atum, for one, was a god in the Iikeness of a man. But he was known as a
god
who did not
himself become a man. On the other hand, no human ancestor ever became a deity.
It
was the same
in Egypt as in Inner Africa; the spirits of the human ancestors always remained
human,
the glorified
never became divinities. The nearest approach to a deity of human origin is the
god in
human
likeness. The elder Horus is the divine child in a human shape. The god Atum in
name and
form is the
perfect man. But both child and man are entirely impersonal - that is, neither
originated in
an individual
child or personal man. Neither was a human being divinized. It is only the type
that was
anthropomorphic.
The two
categories of spirits are separately distinguished in the Hall of
Righteousness, when the
Osiris pleads
that he has made “oblations to the gods and funeral offerings to the departed”
(Rit.,. ch.
125). And
again, in the chapter following, the “oblations are presented to the gods and
the sacrificial
meals to the
glorified” (ch. 126).
A single
citation from the chapter of the Ritual that is said on arriving at the
Judgment Hall, will furnish
a brief
epitome of the Egyptian religion as it culminated in the Osirian cult.- “I have
propitiated the
great god
with that which he loveth; I have given bread to the hungry, water to the
thirsty, clothes to
the naked, a
boat to the shipwrecked. I have made oblations to the gods and funeral
offerings to the
departed”, or
to the ancestral spirits (Rit., ch. 125). The statement shows that the divine
service
consisted [Page
126] of good works, and primarily of charity. The gods and the glorified to
whom
worship was
paid are: (I) The Great One God (Osiris) ; (2) the Nature-Powers, or Gods; and
(3) the
Spirits of
the Departed. But the order in development was: (I) The Elemental Forces, or
Animistic
Nature-Powers
; (2) the Ancestral Spirits; (3) the One Great God over all, who was imaged
phenomenally
in the Kamite trinity of Asar-Isis in matter, Horus in soul, Ra in spirit,
which three were
blended in
the Great One God. In the Hymn to Osiris (line 6) the ancestral spirits are
likewise
discriminated
from the divine powers or gods. When Osiris goes forth in peace by command of
Seb,
the God of
Earth, the mighty ones bow the head; the ancestors are in prayer.“These latter
are the
commonalty of
the dead, the human ancestors in general, distinguished from the gods or powers
of
the elements
that were divinized in the astronomical mythology. In one of the texts the
“spirits of the
king”, the
ever-Iiving Mer-en-Ra, are set forth as an object of religious regard superior
in status to that
of the gods,
by which we understand the ancestral spirits are here exalted above the
elemental
powers as the
objects of propitiation and invocation. The Egyptian gods and the glorified
were fed on
the same diet
in the fields of divine harvest, but are entirely distinct in their origin and
character. The
glorified are
identifiable as spirits that once were human who have risen from the dead in a
glorified
body as
Sahus. The gods are spirits or powers that never had been human. We know the
great ones,
female or
male, from the beginning as elemental forces that were always extant in nature.
These were
first
recognized, represented, and divinized as superhuman. The ghost, when
recognized, was human
still,
however changed and glorified. But the Mother-earth had never been a human
mother, nor had
the serpent
Rannut, nor Nut, the celestial wateress. The god of the Pole as Anup, the moon
god Taht,
the sun god
Ra, had never been spirits in a human guise. They were divinized, and therefore
worshipped or
propitiated as the superhuman powers in nature, chiefly as the givers of light,
food, and
drink, and as
keepers of time and season. These, then, are the goddesses and gods that were
created by
the human mind as powers that were impersonal and non-human. Hence they had to
be
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Ancient
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envisaged
with the aid of living types. Spirits once human manifest as ghosts in human
form. It follows
that the gods
were primary, and that worship, or extreme reverence, was first addressed to
them and
not to the
ancestral spirits, which, according to H. Spencer and his followers, had no
objective
existence.
Neither is there any sense in saying the Egyptian deities were conceived in
animal forms.
This is to
miss the meaning of Sign-Ianguage altogether. “Conception” has nought to do
with Horus
being
represented by a hawk, a crocodile, or a calf; Seb by a goose, Shu by a lion,
Rannut by a
serpent, Isis
by a scorpion. The primary question is: Why were the goddesses and gods or
powers
presented
under these totemic types, which preceded the anthrotype in the different modes
of
mythical
representation? Three of the seven children born of the Great Mother have been
traced in
the portrait
of Apt, the old first genetrix, as Sut the hippopotamus, Sebek the crocodile,
and Shu the
lion. But
there was an earlier phase of representation with her two children [Page 127] Sut
and Horus,
who were born
twins. It is the same in the Kamite mythology as in external nature. The two
primary
elements were
those of darkness and light: Sut was the power of darkness, Horus the power of
light.
In one
representation the two elements were imaged by means of the black bird of Sut
and the white
bird, or
golden hawk, of Horus. Thus we can identify two elemental powers, as old as
night and day,
which are
primeval in universal mythology; and these two powers, or animistic souls, were
divinized
as the two
gods Sut and Horus with the two birds of darkness and light, the black vulture
and the gold
hawk depicted
back to back as their two representative types or personal totems.
The beginning
with these two primal powers is repeated in the mythology of the Blacks on the
other
side of the
world. With them the crow and hawk (the eagle-hawk) are equivalent to these two
birds of
darkness and
light; and according to the native traditions, the eagle-hawk and crow were
first among
the ancestors
of the human race. That is as the first two of the elemental powers which
became the
non-human
ancestors in mythology. They are also known as the creators who divided the
Murray
Blacks into
two classes or brotherhoods whose totems were the eagle-hawk and crow, and who
now
shine as
stars in the sky. (Brough Smyth, v. i., 423 and. 431.) This is the same point
of departure in
the beginning
as in the Kamite mythos with the first two elemental powers, viz., those of
darkness and
light. These
two birds are also equated by the black cockatoo and the white cockatoo as the
two
totems of the
Mimukjarawaint in Western Australia. The two animistic souls or spirits of the
two
primary
elements can be paralleled in the two souls that are assigned to man or the
Manes in the
traditions of
certain aboriginal races, called the dark shade and the light shade, the first
two souls of
the seven in
the Ritual. These, as Egyptian, are two of the seven elements from which
the-enduring
soul and
total personality of man is finally reconstituted in Amenta after death. They
are the dark
shade, called
the Khabsu, and the light shade, called the Sahu. A Zulu legend relates that in
the
beginning
there were two mothers in a bed of reeds who brought forth two children, one
black, the
other white.
The woman in the bed of reeds was Mother-earth, who had been duplicated in the
two
mothers who
brought forth in space when this was first divided into night and day. Another
version of
the mythical
beginning with a black and white pair of beings was found by Duff Macdonald
among the
natives of
Central Africa. The black man, they say, was crossing a bridge, and as he
looked round he
was greatly
astonished to find that a white man was following him (Africana, vol. i., p.
75). These are
the powers of
darkness and day-light, who were portrayed in Egypt as the Sut-and-Horus twins,
one
of whom was
the black Sut, the other the white Horus, and the two “men” were elementals.
The
natives on
the shores of Lake Rudolf say that when it thunders a white man is born. But
the white man
thus born is
the flash of light or lightning imaged by an anthropomorphic figure of speech.
The
aborigines of Victoria likewise say the moon was a black fellow before he went
up into the sky to
become light,
or white. Horus in Egypt was the white man as an elemental power, the white one
of
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Ancient
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[Page 128]
the Sut- and-Horus twins, who is sometimes represented by an eye that is white,
whereas
the eye of
Sut was black. In the mythos Horus is divinized as the white god. The children
of Horus,
who are known
to mythology as the solar race, are the Khuti. These are the white spirits, the
children
of light. The
solar race at last attained supremacy as chief of all the elemental powers, and
in the
eschatology
the Khuti are the glorious ones. The Khu sign is a beautiful white bird. This
signifies a
spirit, and
the spirit may be a human ghost, or it may be the spirit of light, otherwise
light imaged as a
spirit;
thence Horus the spirit of light in the mythology, or the glorified human
spirit, called the Khu, in
the
eschatology. The symbols of whiteness, such as the white down of birds, pipe
clay, chalk, flour,
the white
stone, and other things employed in the mysteries of the black races and in
their mourning
for the dead,
derive their significance from white being emblematic of spirit, or the spirits
which
originated in
the element of light being the white spirit. The turning of black men into
white is a
primitive
African way of describing the transformation of the mortal into spirit. It is
the name in the
mysteries of
the Aleutians, who dance in a state of nudity with white eyeless masks upon their
faces,
by which a
dance of spirits is denoted. With the blacks of Australia the secret wisdom “is
the same as
that of the
dark race in Africa. According to Buckley, when the black fellow was buried the
one word
Animadiate”,
was uttered, which denoted that he was gone to be made a white man. But this
did not
mean a
European. Initiates in the totemic mysteries were made into white men by means
of pipe clay
and birds'
down, or white masks, the symbols of spirits in the religious ceremonies. This
mode of
transformation
was not intended as a compliment to the pale-face from Europe. Neither did
white
spirits and
black originate with seeing the human ghost. Horus is the white spirit in the
light half of the
lunation, Sut
in the dark half is “the black fellow”, because they represent the elements of
light and
darkness that
were divinized in mythology. Hence the eternal contention of the twins Sut and
Horus in
the moon. It
is common in the African mysteries for the spirits to be painted or arrayed in
white, and in
the custom of
pipe claying the face, on purpose to cause dismay in battle, the white was
intended to
suggest
spirits, and thus to strike the enemy with fear and terror. Also, when spirits
are personated in
the mysteries
of the Arunta and other tribes of Australian aborigines, they are represented
in white by
means of pipe
clay and the white down of birds. It is very pathetic, this desire and
strenuous
endeavour of
the black races, from Central Africa to Egypt, or to the heart of Australia, to
become
white, as the
children of light, and to win and wear the white robe as a vesture of spiritual
purity, if only
represented
by a white mask or coating of chalk, pipe clay, or white feathers. Many a white
man has
lost his life
and been made up into medicine by the black fellows on account of his white
complexion
being the
same with that assigned to the good or white spirits of light. In a legend of
creation
preserved
among the Kabinda it is related that God made all men black. Then he went
across a great
river and
called upon all men to follow him. The wisest, the best, the bravest of those
who heard the
invitation
[Page 129] plunged into the wide river, and the water washed them white. These
were the
ancestors of
white men. The others were afraid to venture. They remained behind in their old
world,
and became
the ancestors of black men. But to this day the white men come (as spirits) to
the bank
on the other
side of the river and echo the ancient cry of “Come thou hither!” saying,
“Come, it is
better over
here!” (Kingsley, M. H., Travels in West Africa, pp. 430, 431.) These are the
white spirits,
called the
white men by the black races, who originated in the representation of light as
an elemental
spirit, the
same term being afterwards applied to the white bird, the white god, and the
white man.
This legend
is also to be found in Egypt. As the Ritual shows, there was an opening day of
creation,
designated
the day of “Come thou to me”. The call was made by Ra, from the other side of
the water,
to Osiris in
the darkness of Amenta – that is, from Ra as the white spirit to Osiris the
black in the
eschatology.
But there was an earlier application of the saying in the solar mythos. In the
beginning,
says the best-known
Egyptian version, the sun god Temu, whose name denotes the creator god,
having awoke
in the Nnu from a state of negative existence, appeared, as it were, upon the
other side
of the water,
a figure of sunrise, and suddenly cried across the water, “Come thou to me!”
(as spirits).
Then the
lotus unfolded its petals, and up flew the hawk, which represented the sun in
mythology and
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Ancient
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a soul in the
eschatology. Thus Tum the father of souls, being established in his spiritual
supremacy,
calls upon
the race of men to come to him across the water in the track of sunrise or of
the hawk that
issued forth
as Horus from the lotus. From such an origin in the course of time all nature
would be
peopled with
“black-spirits and white”, as animistic entities, or as the children of Sut and
Horus ; as
the black
vultures or crows of the one, and the white vultures or gold hawks of the
other. Thus we
have traced a
soul of darkness and a soul of light that became Egyptian gods in the twin
powers Sut
and Horus,
and were called the dark shade and the light of other races, the two first
souls that were
derived as
elementals. The anima or breath of life was one of the more obvious of the six
“souls”
whose genesis
was visible in external nature. This was the element assigned to Shu, the god
of
breathing
force. In the chapter for giving the breath of life, to the deceased (Rit., ch.
55) the speaker,
in the
character of Shu, says: “I am Shu, who conveys the breezes or breathings. I
give air to these
younglings as
I open my mouth”. These younglings are the children whose souls are thus
derived
from Shu,
when the soul and breath were one, and Shu was this one of the elemental powers
divinized as
male.
Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen have shown that up to the present time the Arunta tribes of
Central
Australia do
not ascribe the begettal of a human soul to the male parent. They think the
male may
serve a
purpose in preparing the way for conception, but they have not yet got beyond
the
incorporation
of a soul from the elements of external nature, such as wind or water - that
is, the power
of the air or
of water, which was imaged in the elemental deity. Spirit children, derivable
from the air,
are supposed
to be especially fond of traveling in a whirlwind, and on seeing one of these
approaching a
native woman who does not wish to have a child [Page 130] will flee as if for
her life, to
avoid
impregnation. (Native Tribes, p. 125.) This doctrine of a soul supposed to be
incorporated from
the elements
is so ancient in Egypt as to have been almost lost sight of or concealed from
view
beneath the
mask of mythology. The doctrine, however, was Egyptian. The insufflation of the
female
by the spirit
of air was the same when the goddess Neith was impregnated by the wind. With
the
Arunta tribes
it is the ordinary woman who is insufflated by the animistic soul of air. In
Egypt, from the
earliest
monumental period, the female was represented mythically as the Great Mother
Neith, whose
totem, so to
call it, was the white vulture; and this bird of maternity was said to be
impregnated by the
wind.
“Gignuntur autem hunc in modum.Cum amore concipiendi vultur exarserit, vulvam ad
Boream
aperiens, ab
eo velut comprimitur per dies quinque” (Hor-Apollo, B. I, II).
This kind of
spirit not only entered the womb of Neith, or of the Arunta female; it also
went out of the
human body in
a whirlwind. Once when a great Fijian chieftain passed away a whirlwind swept
across
the lagoon.
An old man who saw it covered his mouth with his hand and said in an awestruck
whisper,
“There goes
his spirit”. This was the passing of a soul in the likeness of an elemental
power , the spirit
of air that
was imaged in the god Shu, the spirit that impregnated the virgin goddess
Neith. According
to a mode of
thinking in external things which belonged to spiritualism, so to say, in the
animistic
stage, the
human soul had not then been specialized and did not go forth from the body as
the Ka or
human double.
It was only a totemic soul affiliated to the power of wind, which came and went
like the
wind, as the
breath of life. To quote the phrase employed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, a
spirit-child
was
incarnated in the mother's womb by the spirit of air. The doctrine is the same
in the Christian
phase, when
the Holy Spirit makes its descent on Mary and insufflates her, with the dove
for totem
instead of
some other type of breathing force or soul. There is likewise a survival of
primitive doctrine
when the
Virgin Mary is portrayed in the act of inhaling the fragrance of the lily to
procure the mystical
conception of
the Holy Child. This is a mode of inhaling the spirit breath, or anima, the
same as in the
mystery of
the Arunta, but with the difference that the Holy Spirit takes the place of the
spirit of air,
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Ancient
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otherwise
that Ra, as source of soul, had superseded Shu, the breathing force. Such
things will show
how the most
primitive simplicities of ancient times have supplied our modern religious
mysteries.
We learn also
from the Arunta tribes that it is a custom for the mother to affiliate her
child thus
incorporated
(not incarnated) to the particular elemental power, as spirit of air or water,
tree or earth,
supposed to
haunt the spot where she conceived or may have quickened. (N. T., pp. 124 and
128.)
Thus the
spirit-child is, or may be, a re-incorporation of an Alcheringa ancestor, who
as Egyptian is the
elementary
power divinized in the eschatology, and who is to be identified by the animal
or plant
which is the
totemic type of either. Not that the animal or plant was supposed by the knowers
to be
transformed
directly into a [Page 131] human being, but that the elemental power or
superhuman spirit
entered like
the gust that insufflated the vulture of Neith or caused conception whether in
the Arunta
female or the
Virgin Mary. The surroundings at the spot will determine the totem of the
spirit and
therefore of
the spirit-child. Hence the tradition of the Churinga-Nanga being dropped at
the place
where the
mother was impregnated by the totemic spirit, which, considering the sacred
nature of the
Churinga, was
certainly a form of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of air rushed out of the gap
between the
hills; or it
was at the water-hole, or near the sacred rock, or the totemic tree, that the
mother
conceived,
and by such means the child is affiliated to the elemental power, the animistic
spirit, the
Alcheringa
ancestor, as well as to the totemic group. The mother caught by the power of
wind in the
gap is the
equivalent of divine Neith caught by the air god Shu and insufflated in the gorge
of Neith.
The element
of life incorporated is the source of breath, or the spirit of air, which would
have the same
natural
origin whether it entered the female in her human form, or into that of the
bird, beast, fish, or
reptile. It
was the incorporation of an elemental spirit, whether of air, earth, water,
fire, or vegetation.
In popular
phraseology running water is called living water, and still water is designated
dead. There is
no motion in
dead water, no life, no force, no spirit. Contrariwise, the motion of living
water, the
running
spring or flowing inundation, is the force, and finally the soul of life in the
element. Air was the
breath of
life, and therefore a soul of life was in the breeze. In the deserts of Central
Africa the breeze
of dawn and
eve and the springs of water in the land are very life indeed and the givers of
life itself, as
they have
been from the beginning. These, then, are two of the elements that were brought
forth as
nature powers
by the earth, the original mother of life and all living things. When the
supreme life-
giving,
life-sustaining power was imaged as a pouring forth of overflowing energy the
solar orb
became a
figure of such a fountain-head or source. But an earlier type of this great
welling forth was
water. Hence
Osiris personates the element of water as he who is shore less. He is
objectified as the
water of
renewal. His throne in heaven, earth, and Amenta is balanced upon water. Thus
the primary
element of
nutriment has the first place to the last with the root-origin of life in
water. Birth from the
element of
water was represented in the mysteries of Amenta by the rebirth in spirit from
the water of
baptism. It
is as a birth of water that Child-Horus calls himself the primary power of
motion. Also “the
children of
Horus” who stand on the papyrus plant or lotus are born of water in the new
kingdom that
was founded
for the father by Horus the son. This too was based upon the water. Hence two
of
Horus's
children, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf, are called the two fishes (Rit., ch. I 13),
and elsewhere
the followers
of Horus are the fishers. One of the two lakes in Paradise contained the water
of life. It
was
designated the Lake of Sa, and one of the meanings of the word is spirit,
another is soil or basis.
It was a
lake, so to say, of spiritual matter from which spirits were derived in germ as
the Hammemat.
This lake of
[Page 132] spirit has assuredly been localized in Europe. The superstition
concerning
Spirits that
Issue from the water is common, and in Strathspey there is a lake called Loch
Nan
Spoiradan,
the Lake of the Spirits.
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Ancient
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When
spirit-children were derived from the soul of life that was held to be inherent
in the element of
water, they
would become members of the water-totem - unless some pre-arrangement
interfered. For
example, a
water-totem is extant in the quatcha-totem of the Arunta tribe. A child was
conceived one day
by a lubra of
the Witchetty-grub clan who happened to be in the neighbourhood of a quatcha,
or water
locality. She
was taking a drink of water near to the gap in the ranges where the spirits
dwell, when
suddenly she
heard a child's voice crying “Mia, mia!” the native term for relationship,
which includes that
of
motherhood. She was not anxious to have a child, and therefore ran away, but
could not escape. She
was fat and
well-favoured, and the spirit-child overtook her and was incorporated
willy-nilly. In this
instance the
spirits were Witchetty-grub instead of water spirits of the quatcha-totem
locality, otherwise if
the totem had
not been already determined locally, this would represent the modus operandi of
the
elemental
power becoming humanized by incorporation. The water spirit is a denizen of the
water
element,
always lying in wait for young, well-favoured women, and ready to become
embodied in the
human form by
the various processes of drinking, eating, breathing, or other crude ways of
conversion
and
transformation.
The several
elements led naturally to the various origins ascribed to man from the
ideographic
representatives
of earth, water, air, fire such as the beast of earth, the turtle or fish of
water, the bird of
air, the tree
or the stone. The Samoans have a tradition that the first man issued from a
stone. His name
was Mauike,
and he is also reputed to be the discoverer of fire. Now the discoverer of
fire, born of a
stone,
evidently represents the element of fire which had been found in the stone, the
element being the
animistic
spirit or fire, to which the stone was body that served as type (Turner, Samoa.
p. 280, ed. 1884).
The
derivation of a soul of life from the element of fire, or from the spark, is
likewise traceable in a legend
of the
Arunta, who thus explain the origin of their fire-totem. A spark or fire, in
the Alcheringa, was blown
by the north
wind from the place where fire was kindled first, in the celestial north, to
the summit of a
great
mountain represented by Mount Hay. Here it fell to the earth, and caused a huge
conflagration.
When this
subsided, one class of the Inapertwa creatures issued from the ashes. These
were “the
ancestors of
the people of the fire totem”, the people born from the element of fire (N. T.,
p. 445). The
tradition
enables us to identify an origin for children born of fire, or the soul of
fire, that is the power of this
element.
Moreover, it is fire from heaven. It falls as a spark, which spark falls
elsewhere in the fire-stone.
These
particular Inapertwa, or pre-human creatures, were discovered by two men of the
Wungara or
wild-duck
totem, and made by them into men and women of the fire-totem. Such, then, are
the offspring
of fire or
light, where others are the children of air or of water, as one of the
elemental or animistic
powers; and
the pre-human creatures [Page 133] became men and women when they were made
totemic.
The
transformation is a symbolical mode of deriving the totemic people from the
pre-human and pre-
totemic
powers which were elemental.
There is a
class of beings in the German folk-tales who are a kind of spirit, but not of
human origin, like
so many
others that are a product of primitive symbolism, which came to be designated
elementals
because they
originated in the physical elements. These little earth-men have the feet of a
goose or a
duck. Here
the Kamite wisdom shows how these are the spirits of earth who descended from
Seb, the
power,
spirit, or god of earth, whose zootype in Egypt was the goose. Thus the earth
god or elemental
power of the
mythos becomes the goose-footed earth man of the Märchen and later folk-lore,
which are
the débris of
the Kamite mythology. The cave-dwellers in various lands are likewise known as
children of
the earth.
Their birthplace may be described as a bed of reeds, a tree, a cleft in the
rock, or the hole in a
stone. Each
type denotes the earth as primordial bringer forth and mother of primeval life.
Children with
souls derived
from the element of earth are also represented by the Arunta as issuing from
the earth via
“the Erithipa
stone”. The stone, equal to the earth, is here the equivalent for the
parsley-bed from which
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Ancient
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the children
issue in the folk-lore of the British Isles. The word Erithipa signifies a
child, though seldom
used in this
sense. Also a figure of the human birthplace is very naturally indicated. There
is a round hole
on one side
of the stone through which the spirit-children waiting for incorporation in the
earthly form are
supposed to
peep when on the look-out for women, nice and fat, to mother them. It is
thought that
women can
become pregnant by visiting this stone. The imagery shows that the child-stone
not only
represents
the earth as the bringer forth of life, but that it is also an emblem of
emanation from the
mother's
womb. There is an aperture in the stone over which a black band is painted with
charcoal. This
unmistakably
suggests the pubes. The painting is always renewed by any man who happens to be
in the
vicinity of
the stone (N.T., p. 337). These Erithipa stones are found in various places.
This may explain
one mode of
deriving men from stones, the stone or rock in this case being a figure of the
Mother-earth.
In such wise
the primitive representation survives in legendary lore, and the myth remains
as a tale that
is told.
Earth, as the birth-place in the beginning, was typified by the tree and stone.
A gap in the
mountain
range, a cleft in the rock, or the hole in a stone presented a likeness to the
human birthplace.
The mystery
of the stone affords an illuminative instance of the primitive mode of thinging
in Sign-
language, or
thinking in things. Conceiving a child was thought of as a concretion of
spirit, and that
concretion or
crystallization was symbolized by means of the white stone in the mysteries. It
is the
tradition of
the Arunta tribe that when a woman conceives, or, as they render it, when the
spirit-child
enters the
womb, a Churinga-stone is dropped, which is commonly supposed to be marked with
a device
that
identifies the spirit-child, and therefore the human child, with its totem.
Usually the Churinga is found
on the spot
by some of the tribal elders, who deposit it in the Ertnatulunga, or
storehouse, in which the
stones of
conception are kept so sacredly [Page 134] that they must never be looked upon
by woman or
child, or any
uninitiated man.“Each Churinga is so closely bound up with the spirit
individual (or the spirit
individualized)
that it is regarded as its representative in the Ertnalutunga” or treasury of
sacred objects.
In this way
the Arunta were affirming that, when a child was conceived of an elemental
power, whether
born
figuratively from the rock or tree, the air, the water, or it may be from the
spark in the stone that fell
with the fire
from heaven, or actually from the mother's womb, it was in possession of a
spirit that was
superhuman in
its origin and enduring beyond the life of the mortal. This was expressed by
means of the
stone as a
type of permanence. Hence when the stone could not be identified upon the spot,
a Churinga
was cut from
the very hardest wood that could be found. The stones were then saved up in the
repository
of the tribe
or totemic group, and these Churingas are the stones and trees in which
primitive men have
been
ignorantly supposed to keep their souls for safety outside of their own bodies
by those who knew
nothing of the
ancient Sign-language.
A magical
mode of evoking the elemental spirit from material substance survives in many
primitive
customs.
Whistling for the wind is a way of summoning the spirit or force of the breeze,
which was
represented
in Egypt as the power of a panting lion. Touching wood or iron, or calling out
“Knife!” to be
safe, is an
appeal to the elemental spirit as a protecting power. Setting the poker upright
in front of the
grate to make
the fire burn is a mode of appeal made to. the spirit of fire in the metal.
This, like so many
more, has
been converted to the superstition of the cross. The Servians at their Coledar
set light to an
oak log and
sprinkle the wood with wine. Then they strike it and cause sparks to fly out of
it, crying, “So
many sparks,
so many goats and sheep! so many sparks, so many pigs and calves! so many
sparks, so
many
successes and so many blessings!”. (Hall). These in their way were seekers
after life, the
elemental
spirit of life in this instance being that of fire from the spark. The element
of fire was evoked
from both
wood and stone. It was their spirit-child. Now, it is a mode of magic to evoke
a spirit from these
by rubbing
the wood or stone, or the totems made from either. And this way of kindling
fire is applied by
the Arunta
for the purpose of calling forth the spirits of children from the Erithipa
stones, which are
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Ancient
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supposed to
be full of them. By rubbing a man can cause them to come forth and enter the
human
mother.
Clearly the modus operandi is based on rubbing the stone or wood, to kindle
fire from the spark
that
signified a germ or soul of life.
Another mode
of evoking the spirit of and from an element may be illustrated by a Kaffir
custom. When
the girls
have come of age and have suffered the opening rite of puberty, it is the Zulu
fashion for the
initiate to
run stark naked through the first plenteous down-pour of water, which is
characteristically called
a “he-rain”,
to secure fertilization from the nature power. In this custom a descent of the
elemental spirit
for
incorporation is by water instead of fire ( or earth, air, or light), but the
principle is the same in primitive
animism. Whichever
the agent, there is a derivation from a source that is superhuman, if only
elemental.
It was the
elemental powers that [Page 135] supplied pre-human souls in the primitive
sociology. These we
term totemic
souls, souls that were common to the totemic group of persons, plants, animals,
or stones,
when there
was no one soul yet individualized or distinguished from the rest as the human
soul. They
could not be
“the souls of men” that were supposed to inhabit the bodies of beasts and
birds, reptiles and
insects,
plants and stones. when there were no souls of men yet discreted from the
pre-human souls in
old totemic
times. The human lives, or souls, are bound up with the totemic animal or bird,
reptile or tree,
because these
represented the same animistic nature power from which the soul that is imaged
by the
totem was
derived. The soul in common led to the common interest, the mysterious
relationship and
bond of unity
betwixt the man and animal and elemental powers, or the later gods. It was this
totemic
soul, common
to man and animal, which explains the tradition of the Papagos that in the
early times
“men and
beasts talked together, and a common language made all brethren”. (Bancroft,
vol. iii., p. 76.)
In the
primary phase the soul that takes shape in human form was derived directly from
the element as
source of
life. In a second phase of representation the powers of the elements were
imaged by the
totemic
zootypes. Thence arose the universal tradition, sometimes called belief, of an
animal ancestry in
which the
beasts, birds, reptiles, fish, plants, trees, rocks, or stones were the
original progenitors of the
human race,
through the growing ignorance of primitive Sign-language. Spirit-children
derived from the
elemental power
of air are described in the Ritual as “the younglings of Shu”, the god of
breathing-force.
And as the
lion was the totem of Shu, the children would or might be derived from the lion
as their
totemic type.
Germs of soul might ascend from the water of life in the celestial Lake of Sa,
or soul, as the
children of
Nnu. The children of Horus are emanations from the sun. As such they have their
birth in
heaven to
become incorporate on the earth, Child-Horus being first, according to the
eschatology. It is
because the
sun was looked upon at one stage as the elemental source of a soul that its
power could be,
as it was,
represented by a phallus. Thence also arose the belief that the sun could
impregnate young
women This
will partly explain why the female at the time of first menstruation must not
be looked on by
the sun. The
young and fat Arunta woman, fleeing to escape from the embraces of the wind for
fear of
being
impregnated with the elemental spirit-child, suggests a clue. She did not wish
to bear a child,
therefore she
fled from the elemental power. In the other case the maiden must not be caught,
for fear a
soul should
be made incarnate under the new conditions. For this reason the young girls
were taught that
terrible
results would happen if they were seen by the sun in their courses; and they
were consequently
kept in the
shade, or were instructed to hide themselves when the time arrived. They were
not merely
secluded at
puberty, but were shut up sometimes darkly for years together, and suspended on
a stage
betwixt earth
and heaven, as Tabu, until the period of pubescence came, at which moment they
must not
be shone upon
by the sun, nor breathed on by the air, nor must they touch the elements of
earth or
water. They
were secluded and consecrated for puberty, and were shut up from the elements
to which
generation
had been [Page 136] attributed by the early human thought, a superior element
of soul being
now
recognized in the blood of the virgin.
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Ancient
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Blood was the
latest element of seven from which a soul of life was derived. This followed
the soul of air,
water, heat,
vegetation, or other force of the elements, and a soul derived from blood was the
earliest
human soul,
derived from the blood of the female. Not any blood, not ordinary menstrual
blood, but that
blood of the
pubescent virgin who was personalized in the divine virgin Neith, or Isis, or
Mary. In the
Semitic
creation man, or Adam, was created from a soul of blood. Blood and Adam are
synonymous, and
the previous
races,“which are but spittle”, had derived their souls, in common with the
animals, from the
elements of
external nature that were represented by totems, not by the blood of the mother
nor the
ancestry of
the father. Several forms of an external soul had been derived from the
elements of earth, air,
and water,
and at length a human soul was differentiated from the rest. This was the soul
of blood which
has been traced
to the pubescent virgin. The virgin mother in mythology is only typical, but
the type was
founded in
the natural fact that the mother-blood originated with the virgin when the
blood was held to be
the soul of
life. This, to reiterate, was the pubescent virgin ready for connubium. The
virgin Neith was
represented
by that bird of blood, the vulture, who was said to nurse her young on her own
blood. The
virgin Isis
was portrayed as the “red heifer, when Child-Horus was her red-complexioned
calf. The first
rendering,
then, was pre-anthropomorphic, and at last the human likeness was adopted for
the soul of
blood, and
this was imaged in Child-Horus as the soul born in the blood of Isis, the
divine blood-mother,
who was the
typical virgin. This was the creation of man in the mythology, who was Atum the
red in the
Egyptian,
Adam in the Hebrew version; and in man this seventh soul was now embodied in
the human
form.
The human
soul never was “conceived as a bird”, but might be imaged as a bird, according
to the
primitive
system of representation. The golden hawk, for instance, was a bird which
typified the sun that
soared aloft
as Horus in the heavens, and the same bird in the eschatology was then applied
to the
human soul in
its resurrection from the body. Hence the hawk with a human head is a compound
image,
not the
portrait of a human soul. The celestial poultry that pass for angels in the
imagination of
Christendom
have no direct relation to spiritual reality. A feathered angel was never yet
seen by
clairvoyant
vision, and is not a result of revelation. We know how they originated, why
they were so
represented,
and where they came from into the Christian eschatology. They are the
human-headed
birds that
were compounded and portrayed for souls in Egypt, and carried out thence into
Babylonia,
Judea,
Greece, Rome, and other lands.
In the Contes
Arabes, published by Spitta Bey, the soul of a female jinn who has become the
wife of a
human husband
goes out of her as a beetle, and when the beetle is killed the female dies.
Again, in a
German tale
the soul of a sleeping girl is seen to issue from her mouth in the form of a
red mouse, and
when the
mouse is killed the maiden dies. In both cases we find Egyptian symbolism
surviving in folklore.
[Page 137]
The red mouse was a zootype of the soul of blood, the soul derived from the
mother of flesh,
and, being
such, it was consecrated as an image of Child-Horus, who was born in the blood
of Isis ; and
because it
was the figure of an elemental soul in the ancient symbolism, the mouse
remained the
emblem of the
human soul in the Märchen of other nations. The scarabeus placed in the chest
of the
deceased to
signify another heart was given to the Manes in Amenta, and the giving of this
other heart to
the Manes was
dramatically represented on the earth by inserting the beetle in the embalmed
body as a
typical new
heart, the beetle being a type of transformation in death. According to Renouf
on Parables in
Folk-lore, we
have here the notion of “a person's life or soul being detached from the body
and hidden
away at a
distance”. “The person” he continues, “does not appear to suffer in the least
from the absence
of so
essential a part of himself”. (Proceedings Soc. Bib. Arch., April 2, 1889, p.
178.) But this is not the
genesis of
the idea. What we find in folklore is not contemporary evidence for current
beliefs. In this the
ancient
wisdom is continually repeated without knowledge, and the symbols continue to
be quoted at a
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wrong value.
The soul or heart of the witch, the jinn, or the giant never was the soul of a
mortal. The
Arabic jinns
originate as spirits of the elements. They appear in animal forms because the
primary nature
powers were
first represented by the zootypes; hence such animals as jackals, hyenas,
serpents, and
others are
called “the cattle of the jinn”.No human soul was ever seen in the guise of a
mouse or a
beetle, hawk
or serpent, turtle, plant or tree, fire-stone or starry spark, if but for the
fact that no one of the
souls had
been discreted separately as a human soul from the elemental, animistic, or
totemic powers
which were
pre-human. It was on the ground of a pre-human origin for such souls that a
doctrine of preexistence,
of
transmigration, of reincarnation for the soul could be and was established,
i.e., because it
was not the
personal human soul. This account of an elemental origin for the earliest souls
of life may
help to
explain that pre-existence of the soul (erroneously assumed to be the human
soul) which crops
up in
legendary lore. In the Book of the Secrets of Enoch it is declared that “Every
soul was created
eternally
before the foundation of the world”. (Sclavonic Enoch, ch. 23, 5.) The
pre-existence of souls is
an Egyptian
doctrine, but not of human souls already individualized and possessing each a
personal
identity.
They were the elemental souls, not the ancestral human spirits. The Egyptian
Hammemat
survived in
Talmudic tradition as a class of pre-human beings. It was held as a Jewish
dogma that the
souls which
were to enter human bodies had existed before the creation of the world in the
Garden of
Eden, or in
the seventh, i.e. the highest, heaven (Chagiga, 12 b). So the primordial powers
in the Ritual
are
identifiable with the divine ancestors who preceded Ra (ch. 178, 22), and who
are called the
ancestors of
Ra. “Hail ye, chiefs, ancestors of Ra!” Elsewhere they are the seven souls of
Ra, when
Atum-Ra
becomes the one god in whom all previous powers are absorbed and glorified. The
religious
ceremonies of
the Arunta date from and represent the doings of these ancestors in the
Alcheringa at a
time when the
ancestor as kangaroo was not directly distinguishable from the kangaroo as man.
The
derivation
[Page 138] of souls from elemental and pre-human powers is marked when the
Arunta claim
that each
individual is a direct reincarnation of a totemic ancestor who is still living
in the Alcheringa. And,
as the same
origin is assigned for the totemic animal, it follows that the man and animal
are brothers,
born of the
same ancestral and pre-human soul (N.T., p. 202). This is indicated when it is
said that the
spirit kangaroo
enters the kangaroo animal in just the same way in which the spirit kangaroo
man enters
the womb of
the kangaroo woman (N.T., p. 209). These totemic souls are the pre-human
ancestors of the
Arunta tribes
who lived in their pre-human as well as prehistoric past. “Every native thinks
that his
(mythical)
ancestor in the Alcheringa was the descendant of, or is immediately associated
with, the
animal or
plant” “which bears his totemic name”. So intimately in the native mind are
these ancestors
associated
with the totemic types that “an Alcheringa man says of the kangaroo totem that
it may
sometimes be
spoken of either as a man kangaroo or a kangaroo man” (N.T., pp. 73, 119, and
132). The
present
explanation is that these ancestors in the Alcheringa originated in the
superhuman nature powers
or elemental
souls that were first represented by the totems which are afterwards (or also)
representative
of the
totemic motherhood. Thus the origin of the totemic men, in this phase, was not
from the tree or
animal of the
totem whose name they bore, but from the elemental power or pre-human
nature-soul from
which both
the man and animal derived a soul of life in common, as it was in the
Alcheringa or old, old
times of the
mythical ancestors which in other countries, as in Egypt, have become the gods,
whereas in
Australia,
Inner Africa, China, India, and elsewhere they remained the ancestors derived
from animals,
plants, and
other zootypes that were totemic and pre-human. The derivation and descent of
human souls
from these
superhuman elemental nature powers was at first direct , afterwards they were
represented
by totemic
zootypes in ways already indicated and to be yet more fully shown. Thus a clan
of the
Omahas were
described as the wind people. The Damaras have kept count of certain totemic
descents
(or eandas)
from the elemental powers when they reckon that some of their people “come from
the sun”
and others
“come from the rain” (Galton, Narrative,137); others come from the tree. The
progenitor, as
male, may and
does take the mother's place in later ages, but the bringer forth was female
from the first.
So is it with
the types. Hence the mount,. the tree, the cave, the water-hole, the earth
itself were naturally
female; indeed,
we might say that locality is feminine as the birth-place, and the elemental
power was
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brought forth
as male. In Scotland, persons who bore the name of “Tweed” were supposed to
have had
the genii of
the River Tweed for their ancestors (Rogers,Social Life in Scotland, iii.,
336), which denotes
the same
derivation from the elemental source, in this instance the spirit of water, as
when the Arunta of
the
water-totem claim descent by reincorporation from the elemental ancestor in the
Alcheringa, or as it
might be in
the Egyptian wisdom, from the God N nu, or N um, or Hapi, the descent being
traceable at
first by the
totem, and afterwards by the name.
Primitive man
has been portrayed in modern times as if he were a [Page 139] philosophic
theorist. He has
been charged
with imagining all sorts of things which never existed, as if that were the
origin of his spirits
and his gods,
whereas the beginning was with the elemental powers. These were external to
himself.
There was no
need to imagine them. They were And with this cognition his theology began.
Primitive
men were
taught by the consistency of experience. However primitive, they neither had
nor pretended to
have the
power of taking the soul out of the body when in peril, and depositing it for
safety in a tree, or
stone, or any
other totemic type. Such a delusion belongs to the second childhood of the
human race
rather than
to the first. It never was an article of faith even with the most benighted
savages, as will be
exemplified.
Bunsen was one of those who have cited the “Tale of the Two Brothers” to prove
“how deep-
seated was
the Egyptian belief in the transmigration of the human soul”. But, as before
said, Bata, the
hero of the
transmigrating soul, is not a human being! He is a folk-lore form of the
mythical hero, the
young solar
god who issued in the morning or the spring-time from the typical tree of dawn.
In like
manner the
golden hawk, in the Ritual brings his heart = soul from the Mountain of the
East, where it had
been
deposited in the tree of dawn upon the horizon. Externalizing the heart or soul
in this way was not
the act of
men who were out of their minds or beside themselves, but simply a mode of
symbolism which
remains to be
read in order that the error based upon it may be dispelled. When the nature
powers are
represented
as human in the folk-tales they assume a misleading look, and primitive thought
is charged
with puerilities
of the most recent fashion. It is these elemental souls that have been mixed up
with the
human soul by
Hindus and Greeks, by Buddhist, Pythagorean, and Neo-Platonist, and mistaken
for the
human soul in
course of transmigration through the series which were but representatives of
souls that
were
distinguished as non-human by those who understood the types. The mantis, the
hawk, the ram,
the lion, and
others in the Ritual are types of souls, may be of human souls, but not on this
earth. Such
were types of
elemental powers first, and next they were continued as indicators of the
stages made in
the seven
transformations of the Manes in Amenta, the earth of eternity. This imagery was
first applied to
the powers of
external nature, and when it is continued in a later phase the mythical
characters become
mixed up and
confounded with the human in the minds of those who know no better, or who are
at times
too knowing
ever to know. Once a year the Santals “make simple offerings to a ghost [or spirit]
who
dwells in a
Bela-tree” (Hunter). This is taken by Herbert Spencer to show that the spirit
in the tree was
derived from
the human ghost which, according to his theory, never existed save in dreams.
He points to
certain
Egyptian representations of “female forms” “emerging from trees and dispensing
blessings” (Data,
ch. 23, 182).
But in no case has the female any human origin or significance. The females are
Hathor
and Nut, who
personate the divine mother, not the human mother, in the tree, as the giver of
food and
drink
provided by the Mother-earth. As to the “ghost in the tree”, neither was that
derived from the human
spirit or the
shadow seen in dreams. Egypt will tell us what it signified, and thereby prove
that it did not
originate in
the human ghost or the Spencerian phantom [Page 140] born of sleep. “Plant
worship”, says
the same
writer, “is the worship of a spirit originally human”. “Everywhere the plant
spirit is shown by its
conceived
human form and ascribed human desires to have originated from a human
personality”. In
reply to this
it can be shown from the oldest representations known, viz., those of Egypt,
that the
anthropomorphic
mode of rendering was not primary, but the latest of all. Rannut, the goddess
of plant
life, was
depicted. as a serpent, before the human figure was assigned to her, the
sloughing, self-
renovating
serpent being a zootype of renewal in a variety of phenomena, including
vegetation. Nut in a
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female form
gives the water of life from the tree, but she was previously Heaven itself in
very person or
Heaven
typified as giver of the water from the tree or milk from the cow. Neither Nut
nor Rannut was
derived from
a spirit originally human, but from a power in external nature that was known
to be
superhuman.
Hathor in the tree was a divinity not derived from any mortal personality, and
her figure of
the divine
female in the tree was preceded by that of the wet-nurse as a milch-cow and
still earlier as the
water-cow. In
the Osirian mysteries the so-called “corn spirit” is derived from the water. At
Philae the god
= the corn
spirit is represented with stalks of corn springing from his mummy, and,
according to the
inscription,
this is Osiris of the mysteries who springs from the returning waters - as the
bringer of food in
the shape of
corn. In a vignette to the Book of the Dead the power of water also is
portrayed in “the Great
Green One”, a
spirit represented by the hieroglyphic lines that form a figure of water. This
when divinized
is Horus as
the shoot of the papyrus plant, or the branch of endless years - a type of the
eternal
manifested by
renewal in food produced from the element of water in the inundation (Pap. of
Ani, p. 8).
What the
picture intimates is that water was the source of life to vegetation, and the
figure in green
arising from
the element of water is the spirit of vegetation that was divinized in Horus as
the “shoot” or
“natzar”, - a
figure that survives as “Jack” in the green who dances in the pastimes on
May-day. Nowhere
in the range
of Egyptian symbolism does “the plant spirit” originate in or from a human
personality. Mighty
spirits were
supposed to dwell in certain trees by the Battas of Sumatra, who would resent
and revenge
any injury
done to them. Such mighty spirits or powers of the elements had grown up, as
Egyptian, to
become the
goddesses and gods, as Hathor and Nut in the sycamore, Isis in the persea tree,
Seb in the
shrubs and
plants, Horus in the papyrus, or Unbu in the golden bough.
A soul of
self-renewing life in the earth or the tree had been imaged by the serpent, a
soul of life in the
water had
been imaged by the fish, a soul of life in the air by the bird, the elements
being represented by
the zootypes
which afterwards became totemic and finally fetishtic. Thus, if the tree were
the Nanja of an
Australian
tribe it would stand for the life of the tribe and be the totem of the
pre-human soul. And when
the human
soul had been discreted as an individual soul from the general or tribal soul,
the sacred tree
which imaged
the life or soul of the tribe might be claimed to represent the soul of a man.
This was what
did occur. A
definite case is known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in which a black [Page
141] fellow
earnestly
pleaded with a white man not to cut down a particular tree, because it was the
Nanja-tree, and
he feared
that if it were destroyed some evil would befall him personally. The tree quâ
tree had been a
type of
self-renewing superhuman power, then a tribal totem bound up with the life of
the tribe, and lastly
it is said
that the man believed his separate or discreted soul was in the tree, which
furnished a place of
refuge when
his tree soul (or Miss Kingsley's “bush soul”) was in danger.
The reader
may depend upon it that primitive man who fancied he had a separate soul which
he could
hide for
safety in a tree, a stone, or an egg is a very modern product indeed, the sheerest
reflex image of
his
mis-interpreters, who are but speculative theorists that have never mastered
the language of the
primitive
signs. As already said, the supposed transmigration of human souls, of turtles,
or of other
zootypes was
impossible when as yet there was no human soul. The soul that might
transmigrate was
pre-human,
elemental, and totemic; a soul that was divisible according to its parts and
elemental powers,
but common to
life in general and in all its forms in earth and water, air and tree, to man
and reptile, fish,
insect, bird,
and beast. When the sacred bear is killed for food at Usu, Volcano Bay, by the
Ainu, they
shout, “We
kill you, O bear! Come back soon into an Ainu”. That is as food, which in a
sense is the
transmigration
of soul, but it is that elemental soul of food which is represented by the bear
of eternity,
and not a
human soul. There was a doctrine of the transmigration of soul, or souls that
were not human,
to warrant
the language of the Zuni Indian which he addressed to the turtle: “Ah ! my poor
dear lost child,
or parent, my
sister or brother to have been ! Who knows which? May be my own
great-grandfather or
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Ancient
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mother”.
(Cushing, F. H., Century Magazine, May, 1883.) This, however, was no
transmigration of human
souls. We
repeat, at that primitive stage of thought no soul was specialized as human.
There were only
animistic or
totemic souls; and if the element derived from should be water and the totem be
the turtle,
the type
would represent the soul that was common to both man and animal, as brother
turtles of the
water totem,
the elemental power over all being imaged as the turtle that was eternal, one
of the mythical
ancestors in
the Arunta Alcheringa, or one of the gods in Egypt. Moreover, when once the
soul of blood
born of woman
had been discriminated as a human soul, it was no longer possible to postulate
a return
of that same
soul to the pre-human status. It was discreted for ever from the soul of the
animal, fish, bird,
and reptile.
The kangaroo-man would no longer have the same soul as the kangaroo. There was
no
ground for
thinking that the human soul would be reincorporated or reincarnated in the
body of the beast
or reptile,
and therefore no foundation for the doctrine of reincarnation which has been
applied to human
souls, and
consequently misapplied by modern reincarnationists who do not know one soul
from another.
But the
metempsychosis of soul or souls did survive as a doctrine long after the human
species had been
discreted and
individualized, and when the primitive significance was no longer understood.
Readjustment
of the standpoint was made in the Egyptian wisdom, but seldom if ever elsewhere.
Thus,
in Buddhist
metaphysic the soul continued to pass (theoretically) [Page 142] through the
same “cycle of
necessity”
with the totemic souls which had been the pre-human creatures of the elements,
like the
“Inapertwa”
of the Arunta. As a result of the soul, here termed totemic, having been at one
time common
to men and
animals and the elemental powers, this led to a perplexing interchange of
personality, or at
least of
shape, betwixt the superhuman powers, the men, and animals in the primitive
mysteries and in
the later
folk-tales or legendary lore, in which we seem to hear the very aged
mother-wisdom, or her misinterpreters,
maundering in
a state of dotage.
It must be
borne in mind that the earliest mode of becoming was not by creating, but by
transforming. For
instance,
when Ptah is imaged as the frog, or beetle, he is the deity as transformer, but
when portrayed
as the embryo
in utero he images the creator or creative cause. A drama of transformation was
performed in
the totemic mysteries. The boy became a man by being changed into an animal,
which
animal was
his totemic representative of the providing and protecting power. This was a
mode of
assimilating
the human being to the divine or superhuman power when it had been imaged in
the
elemental
stage by means of the particular totemic zootype, whether animal, bird, fish,
insect, reptile, or
plant. We
gather from the magical practices of the western lnoits that when the sorcerer
or spirit medium
clothes
himself in the skin of animals, the feathers of birds, teeth of serpents, and
other magical emblems
it is done to
place himself en rapport with the kings of the beasts and the powers of the
elements, for the
purpose of
deriving superhuman aid from these our “elder brothers”. This, of course, was
the natural fact
that has been
described as making the transformation into animal, bird, or reptile. Spirit
mediums, as
sorcerers and
magicians, witches and wizards, are great transformers who make their
transformation in
the mystery
of trance. In that state they were assimilated to and united in alliance with
one or other of the
primordial
powers, each of which was represented by its totemic zootype. There were spirit
mediums
extant when
the superhuman powers were elemental (not the ancestral spirits), and these
were imaged
by the
animals and other zoo types. Thus the spirit mediums in alliance with certain
of these powers
might be said
to assume their likeness as animals, just as in modern times the witch is reputed
to
transform
into a cat or hare, or the wizard into a wolf. The blacksmiths in Africa, who
are thought to work
by spirit
agency, are supposed in Abyssinia to transform themselves into hyenas. The
sorcerers and
witches,
otherwise the spirit mediums, of the Mexicans were said to transform themselves
into animals.
The Khonds
affirm that witches have the power of transforming themselves into tigers.
Again, when
the goddess Neith and the Arunta women were insufflated by the wind the soul
was thus
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Ancient
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derived
directly from the element. But when the bird is introduced as the white vulture
of Neith or the
dove of
Hathor the insufflation may be attributed to the bird of air or soul. So with
the element of water.
The descent
of soul may be direct from the element or derived from some type of the
element. For
example, the
Karens hold that the waters are inhabited by beings whose proper shape is that
of dragons
or crocodiles,
but occasionally these appear as men and take wives of the children of men, as
[Page 143]
do the sons
of heaven in the Book of Enoch. Indeed, it is quite possible that this
self-incorporation of the
elemental
powers in a human form through the mothers is the source of the Semitic legend
relating to the
sons of God
who cohabited with the daughters of men. Of course, the phrase “sons of God”
belongs to a
later
nomenclature. The elemental powers knew no God the Father. These in the Book of
Enoch are the
seven primary
powers that were the Holy Watchers once in heaven and the heirs of life
eternal, but
whose origin
was as powers of the elements such as pursued the Arunta daughters of men. And,
whether
elemental or
astronomical, they were seven in number. They are charged with having forsaken
their lofty
station and
with acting like the children of earth. They have “lain with women” and
“defiled themselves
with the
daughter of men”. In the Book of Enoch the seven have acquired the character
that was attained
by the
elemental powers, and have to be followed in the phase of legendary lore which
obfuscates the
ancient
wisdom, though far less so than does the Book of Genesis. It was not as
astronomical powers
that the
story could be told of the seven. But as elemental forces pursuing nice fat
women - like the
Arunta
spirits of air - to incorporate themselves they could be described as beings
who polluted
themselves
with women; they being spiritual or superhuman, whereas the daughters of men
were of the
earth earthy.
This legend was represented finally in literature by what has been termed “the
loves of the
angels”. The
complexion of these external spirits is likewise elemental. Their various
colours are copied
straight from
nature, and not from the complexion of human beings. The spirit of darkness was
black. The
spirit of
light was white. The spirit of water or vegetation was green. The spirit of air
was blue. The spirit
of fire was
red. The spirit of the highest god upon the summit of the seven upward steps is
golden, as Ra
the divine or
holy spirit in the final eschatology. Thus we can trace the black spirits and
white, red spirits
and grey,
green, or blue, to an elemental origin, and show that the spirit as a green
man, a blue man, a
black man
(where there are no blacks), a white man (where there are no whites), a red
man, or a golden
child ,was
derived directly from the elements and not from a ghost that was called into
existence by the
wizardry of
dreams. When human spirits were recognized and portrayed the same types and
colours
were used.
The human spirit issuing from the red flesh in death is painted blue. Not
because spirits were
seen to be of
that complexion when “all was blue”, but because the spirit of air or anima had
been an
elemental
spirit in the blue. The spirit in green (vegetation) remains the “green man as
wood spirit in
Europe. The
spirit of darkness is black as the bogey man, the black Sut in Egypt. The Zuni
Indians
described by
Mr. Cushing have a system of praying to the seven great spirits, or nature
gods, by means
of the seven
different colours which are painted on their prayer-sticks. Six of these
colours represent the
six regions
into which space was divided, the four quarters, together with the height and
depth or zenith
and nadir.
The powers thus localized are called the “makers of the paths of life”, on
account of their
relationship
to the supreme one of the seven, who sits at the centre of [Page 144] all, and
who is the only
one of them
portrayed in the human form as the highest of the seven. Each of these has its
own proper
complexion,
and the fetishes that represent the human powers are also determined by colours
in the
material from
which they are modelled or the pigment with which they are painted. The
particular power
prayed to is
identified to the ear by imitating the roar or cry of the beast that served for
zootype, as well
as to the eye
by its own especial colour. And here it may be possible to trace what might be
termed the
“golden
prayer” of the Zunis. In the ceremonies of their ancient mysteries an ear of
corn is typical of
renewal in a
future life. In praying for plenty of food two ears of corn are laid on the
body of a dead deer
close to the
heart. “Prayer meal” made from maize is held in the hand and scattered on the
fetish image
of the deer
whilst the prayer is addressed to the deer divinity or prey-god, as the power
beyond the fetish.
The
corn-pollen is offered so that the spirit may clothe itself in yellow or in the
wealth of harvest gold. If
this prayer
in yellow (equivalent to a prayer-book bound in gold, or at least gilt-edged)
were addressed to
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Ancient
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the corn god
by the Zuni when he prays for his daily bread and offers the flower of the
yellow maize, the
colour of the
offering would identify it with the colour of the fetish, and therefore with
the yellow lion as a
zootype of
the vivifying sun that ripened the corn to clothe the earth with vegetable
gold. Like the Zuni
Indians, the
Tibetans still pray in accordance with a scheme of colours. A prayer was lately
found upon a
“praying
wheel” addressed “To the yellow god, the black god, the white god, and the green
god. Please
kindly take
us all up with you. and do not leave us unprotected, but destroy our enemies”.
Some such
colour scheme
is apparent in Egypt when Horus is the white god. Osiris is the god in black,
Shu the god
in red, Amen
the god in blue, Num the god in green.
In the
Egyptian series of colours yellow likewise represented corn, which gave the
name to the “yellow
Neith”. The
nature gods were appealed to and invoked in want or sickness as a primitive
kind of doctors
who were
looked to as superhuman and whose powers were medicines. The power of the deer
god was
the deer
medicine, and each medicine represented the special power that was besought in
hunting each
particular
beast. These are the kind of “spirits” that were prayed to in colours by
primitive races of men,
and these
colours, like the glorified globes in the druggist's window, represented the
powers of the
different
spirits as medicines. The native doctors of New Guinea have a scale of colours
with which they
paint their
patient with the complexions of corresponding spirits. Different colours
denoted different spirits
of healing
forces in nature that were representative of the seven elements and seven
localities of the
spirits. When
the Omaha medicine-men are acting as healers of the sick they will use the
movements
and cry with
the voices of their totemic animals. Not because the animals were a source of
healing power
in
themselves, but because the totems had a spiritual relationship and were the
representatives of
powers beyond
the human. Thus, in one case the spirits prayed to are identified by their
colours, and in
the other by
their totemic zootypes. If we interpret this according to Egyptian symbolism,
when the sick
person was
[Page 145] suffering from asthma he would plead his suit in blue to the god of
air or breathing-
force whilst
panting like a sick lion, and the medicine would be equivalent to a blue pill.
In case of fever
he would pray
in green to the god in green, that is, to the water spirit, and would be going
to the green
god for a
drink, as the thirsty soul in our day might seek the sign of the Green Dragon
or the Green Man.
And if he
prayed in red it would be to the red Atum, or Horus, the child that was born
red in the blood of
Isis, as the
saviour who came apparelled in that colour. The main object at present,
however, is to
distinguish
animism from spiritualism by tracing the difference betwixt the elemental souls
and the
ancestral
spirits” although animism is a most unsatisfactory title. The “anima” signifies
one of the seven
elemental
souls, but does not comprehend the group. Here is one of several clues. The
animistic nature
powers were
typified; the ancestral spirits are personalized. The elemental powers are
commonly a
group of
seven, but spiritualism has no experience nor knowledge of seven human spirits
that visit earth
together, or
traverse the planetary chain of seven worlds; nor is there any record of the
dream
personages
coming and going in a group of seven, or in seven colours, not even as a
septenary or
nightmares
born of seven generations of neurotic sufferers from sevenfold insomnia. In
animism,
mediums could
not interview the serpent, bull, or turtle of eternity in spirit form. On the
contrary, the
animistic
powers have had to be objectified and made apparent by means of these totemic
types. Thus,
in animism
there are no spirits proper - that is, no spirits which appear as the doubles
of the dead or
phantasms of
the living. It may be allowed that the spirits of the elements - of air, water,
earth, fire, plant
or tree -
were in a sense ancestral, though not ancestral spirits. But the one were
pre-human, the others
are
originally human. These animistic powers in the Arunta Alcheringa are called
the ancestors who
reproduce
themselves by incorporation in the life on earth in the course of becoming man
or animal. It
was
inevitable that there should be some confusion here and there betwixt the
elemental souls and the
ancestral
spirits when the power to differentiate the one from the other by means of the
type was lost or
lapsing. It
was Kalabar “fash”, the natives told Hutchinson, that the souls of men passed
into monkeys.
The Zulus
also say there are Amatonga or ancestral spirits who are snakes, and who come
back to visit
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Ancient
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the living in
the guise of reptiles. Such “fash”, however, is just the confusion that follows
the lapse of the
most
primitive wisdom. Both the monkey and the snake had been totemic types not only
of the human
brotherhoods,
but also of the elemental powers or souls. Thus there was an elemental soul of
the snake-
totem and the
ancestral spirits of that same ilk; and the snake remained as representative of
both, to the
confounding
of the animistic soul with the ancestral spirit at a later stage. But those who
kept fast hold of
the true
doctrine always and everywhere insisted that their ancestral spirits did not
return to earth in the
guise of
monkeys, snakes, crocodiles, lions, hawks, or any other of the totemic zoo
types. They did not
mistake the
“souls” of one category for “spirits” in the other, because they knew the
difference. [Page 146]
The same
distinction that was made by the Egyptians betwixt the superhuman powers and
the Manes, or
the gods and
the glorified, is more or less identifiable all the world over.
Thus, the
origin of spirits and of religion is two-fold. At first the elemental powers
are propitiated; next the
ancestors are
worshipped. The earliest form of a religious cult was founded in evocation and
propitiation
of the great
Earth-mother, the giver of life and birth, of food and water, as the primary
power in
mythology,
who was represented in Egypt by her zootypes the water-cow of Apt; the
fruit-tree of Hathor,
the sow of
Rerit, the serpent of Rannut, who was first besought in worship as “the only
one”, the great
goddess, the
Good Lady, the All-Mother who preceded the All-Father. The gods and goddesses of
the
oldest races
were developed from these superhuman nature powers which originated with and
from the
earth as the
Universal Great Mother, and not from the ancestral human spirits. Also the one
is universally
differentiated
from the other. The two classes of gods and spirits, elemental and ancestral,
are still
propitiated
and invoked by the natives of West Africa. As Miss Kingsley tells us, one class
is called the
Well-disposed
Ones. These are the ancestral spirits, which are differentiated from the other
class, that is
referred to
as “them”, the generic name for non-human spirits. (West African Studies, p.
132.)
The religion
of the Yao is now pre-eminently a worship of the ancestral spirits, but “beyond
and above the
spirits of
their fathers and chiefs localized on the hills, the Yao speak of others that
they consider
superior;
only their home is more associated with the country which the Yao left in the
beginning”. (Duff
Macdonald,
vol. i., p. 71.). This was that land of the gods who were the primordial
elemental powers, the
old home or
primeval paradise of many races.
The Yao also
distinguished clearly betwixt the elemental power and its zootype. “It is
usual, ,says Mr.
Macdonald,
“to distinguish between the spirit and the form it takes. A spirit often
appears as a serpent.
When a man
kills a serpent thus belonging to a spirit he goes and makes an apology to the
offended god,
saying,
“Please, please, I did not know that it was your serpent!”(Africana, vol. i.,
pp. 62, 63.) The
Thlinkeets
emphatically assert that the ancestor of the wolf clan does not reappear to
them in the wolf
form. The
Maori likewise are among those who distinguish betwixt the Atuas that represent
the ancient
nature powers
and the spirits which re-appear as spectres in the human form. They recognize
the
difference
between the totemic type and the ancestral human spirit. It is our modern
metaphysical
explanation
and the vague theories of universal animism that confuse the gods and ghosts
together,
elemental
spirits with human, and the zootypes with the pre-totemic ancestors. Them Ainu
people
recognize two
classes of gods and spirits. The first are known as the “distant gods”, those
who are
remote from
human beings. The others are the “near at hand”, corresponding to the spirit
ancestors of
other races.
(Batchelor, Rev. Y., The Ainu of Japan, p. 87.) The Shintoism of the Japanese
shows the
same dual
origin of a cult that is primitive and universal, which was based first on a
propitiation of the
nature
powers, and secondly on the worship of ancestral spirits.The number and the
nature of these
powers as the
Great Mother and [Page 147] the seven or the eight Kami are the same in Japan
as in the
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
land of Kam.
The Veddahs of Ceylon, who worship “the shades of their ancestors and their
children”, also
hold that
“the air is peopled with spirits; that every rock, every tree, every forest,
and every hill, in short
every feature
of nature, has its genius loci”. Here again we have the two classes of
ancestral spirits,
human in
origin, and the animistic spirits derivable from the elements. The “gods” of
the Samoans were
those
elemental powers that were represented by the zootypes. “These gods”, says
Turner, “are
supposed to
appear in some visible incarnation, and the particular thing (or living type)
in which the god
appeared was
to the Samoan an object of veneration. It was, in fact, his “idol' (or his
totem), One, for
instance, saw
his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the lizard”, and so on
through all the
range of
external nature. (Turner, Samoa, p. 17, ed. 1884.)
With the
Eskimo the nature spirits are quite distinct from the ghosts of human beings.
Some of the former
are allowed
to the common people as objects of religious regard, but it is the spirits of
human beings, the
dead
ancestors or relatives of the living, who inspire or otherwise manifest through
the abnormal medium
called the
Angekok. Everywhere it is the reappearing spirits of the dead, and they alone,
who can
demonstrate a
continuity of existence for the living. The original powers or gods of the
elements that
were
represented by the zootypes are very definitely discriminated by the Tongans
from the spirits of
human beings.
They do not mix up or confuse their gods with their ghosts. Their primal gods
were not
ghosts. These
do not come as apparitions in the human likeness, or as shadows of the dead.
When they
appear to
men, it is said to be in their primitive guise of lizards, porpoises,
water-snakes, and other
elemental
totemic types; whereas the ghosts of nobles and chiefs, who alone are supposed
to have the
power of
coming back, or of being on view, are not permitted to appear in the shape of
lizards, porpoises,
and
water-snakes, the representatives of the original gods. So the Banks Islanders
recognize and
distinguish
two classes of supernatural powers, in the spirits of the dead and those that
never have been
human. These
are their gods and ghosts, the gods and the glorified. The nature powers are
called
Tamate, the
ghosts are designated Vui. As with the Tongans, the Papuan ghosts of the nobles
are
nearest in
status to the great or primary powers, but are not to be confounded with them;
being of
different
origin in this world, they do not blend together in the next. This shows that
in both cases the
gnosis is not
quite extinct, (Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Institute, February, 1881.) Kramer
tells us that
the Niassans
worship both gods and ancestors, and that the two kinds of super-human beings
are never
confounded by
them. The two are kept perfectly distinct, and each has a different
terminology. (Cited by
Max Muller in
Anthropological Religion, Lecture X,) This distinction made betwixt the
elemental gods and
the ghosts of
ancestors is shown by the Institutes of Menu. “Let an offering to the gods be
made at the
beginning and
end of the Sraddha. It must not begin and end with an offering to ancestors,
for he who
begins and
ends it with an oblation to the Pitris quickly perishes with his progeny”.
(Works of Sir W.
Jones, vol.
iii., pages 146 and 147). Amongst [Page 148] all the “spirits”, the apparition
or ghost is solely
human. There
is no pretence of seeing the ghosts of animals. The great spirit or great bear
of the Ainus
remains a
bear. The great spirit as the turtle of the Zunis remains a turtle. The great
spirit of the Samoans
remains an
owl. Their representatives are the bear, the turtle, the owl, and not the
apparition of a bear, a
turtle, or an
owl. The zootypes have no spiritual manifestations or phantasms. Only the souls
of human
beings
reappear as ghosts. Thus we demonstrate that the worship of human ancestors
alone was not the
primary phase
of religious worship.
We must needs
be careful not to get the “divinity” confounded with the “divine personage”.
But we may
say there was
no killing of the god, the tree spirit, the corn spirit, or the spirit of vegetation,
in the
Frazerian
sense, and of putting the deity to death to save him from old age, disease, and
decay, and
magically
bringing him to life again in a more youthful form. This is another result of
mixing up the two
classes
together by the modern non-spiritualist. The aborigines knew better. The death
of the sacred bird,
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Ancient
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with the
Samoans, was “not the death of the god. He was supposed to be yet alive, and
incarnate in all
the owls in
existence”. (Turner, Samoa p. 21.). So was it with the turtle of the Zunis, the
panes-bird of the
Acagchemen
Indians, and the bull of Osiris, called “the Bull of Eternity. .In killing the
goose of Seb or the
calf of
Horus, the bull of Osiris or the meriah of the Khonds, the partakers of the
sacrament had no more
thought of
killing the god or nature power as a mode of rejuvenation than they had of
killing the earth
which
produced the food.
Also the
spiritual theory will most satisfactorily explain the motive for killing and
eating the divine
personage,
whether as the mother or the monarch, whilst the victim was comparatively
young, in good
health, and
wholly exempt from any bodily infirmity. The slaying and eating were performed
as a religious
rite and a
mode of spiritual communion. This implies a sacrificial offering to the gods or
spirits, which had
to be as pure
and perfect as possible. In the rubrical directions of the Hebrew ritual it is
expressly
commanded
that the sacrificial offering shall be presented “without blemish” otherwise it
is unacceptable
to the Lord.
The death or dying down of the food-producing power as Osiris was a fact of
annual
occurrence in
external nature. This death of the self-devoted victim was solemnized and
mourned over in
the
mysteries, where the chief object of celebration was the resurrection of
Osiris, as the sun from the
nether world,
or the returning waters of the inundation; or as Horus in the lentiles, or Unbu
in the branch
of gold, or
the human soul resurgent from the mummy in the mysteries of Amenta. This was
the divinity
who has to be
distinguished from the typical divine personage. We learn from the eschatology,
by which
the mythology
was supplemented and fulfilled, that there were seven food-givers altogether in
a female
form. These
are grouped as the seven Hathors, or milch-mothers, in the mythology called
“the providers
of plenty”
for the glorified elect, in the green pastures Aarru, or the Elysian Fields. The
earliest
representation
being totemic and pre-human, the mythical mother was portrayed by means of the
zootype.
[Page 149] The wet-nurse was imaged as a cow or a sow. The mother of aliment
was figured in
the tree. The
earth itself was imaged as the goose, or other zootype, which laid the egg for
food. The Red
Men say “the
bear, the buffalo, and the beaver are manitus (spirits) which furnish food”.
(Schoolcraft,
Indian
Tribes, vol. v., 420.) They were totems of the elemental powers that were propitiated
as the givers
of food. Now,
the first giver of food and drink was the Mother-earth, who was represented by
the
zootypes
which furnished food and drink. The elemental spirits as producers of food may
be seen in the
Aztec “Popul
Vuh” as “they that gave life”, a group of primordial powers, with such names as
shooter of
the coyote,
opossum, and other animals with the blow-pipe - a naďve way of describing the
superhuman
providers of
food in the character of the hunter. The Zuni “prey-gods” are also propitiated
as superhuman
powers in
animal forms, the gods of prey that are the givers of food. (Amer. Bureau of
Ethnology,
1880-81.) In
the Arunta stage of mythical representation there are no goddesses or gods. The
powers of
the elements
were not yet divinized; they are only known, like the human groups, by their
totemic types.
Whereas in
the wisdom of ancient Egypt we can identify the elemental powers and trace them
by nature
and by name
into the phase of divinities, whether as goddesses or gods.
Thus we are
enabled to reach back to the superhuman powers in totemism that preceded the
gods and
goddesses in
mythology. Instead of gods and goddesses, the Arunta tribe have their mythical
ancestors,
who were
kangaroos, emus, beetles, bandicoots, dingoes, and snakes, as totemic
representatives of
elemental
forces, especially those of food and drink, in the primordial Alcheringa, who
were incorporated
or made flesh
on earth in both men and animals. In the Egyptian eschatology these primordial
powers
finally
became the Lords of Eternity. But from the first they were the ever-Iiving ones
under pre-
anthropomorphic
totemic types. Osiris, for example, remains in the Ritual as “the Bull of
Eternity”. Atum
was the Lion
of Eternity. And when both had been personified in the human likeness the
zootype still
survived.
Thus the beast, the bird, the fish, which represented the powers of the
elements, which were of
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
themselves
ever Iiving, furnished natural types of the eternal. Again, the human descent
from the
elemental
powers is indicated by the tradition of the Manx which asserts that the first
inhabitants of their
island were
fairies, and that the little folk, called the good people, still exist among
them and are to be
seen dancing
on moonlight nights, the same as in the Emerald Isle:
“Wee folk,
good folk,
Trooping
altogether;
Green jacket,
red cap,
And white
owl's feather”.
In relation
to spiritism, the present demonstration has hitherto been limited to the
animistic “spirits” or
elemental
powers that were pre-human, superhuman, and entirely non-human. We now come to
the
spirits of
human origin which manifest as phantoms of the living and as doubles of the
dead. [Page 150]
The origin of
the “gods” was in the powers of the elements, with a magical evocation and
propitiation of
these powers
ever manifesting in external nature, especially as givers of food and drink,
with the ritual
based on
blood. But the most essential part of religion assuredly originated in the
worship of the
ancestral
spirits. Only there must be the spirits of human origin discriminated from the
animistic spirits or
elemental
powers as the raison-d'ętre of the worship. The feeling of fear and dread of
the destroying
powers was
followed at a later stage of development by the natural affection for the
mothers, the fathers,
and children,
who were universally propitiated as the ancestral spirits. Spiritualism proper
begins with the
worship of
ancestral spirits, the spirits of the departed, who demonstrate the continuity
of existence
hereafter by
reappearing to the living in phenomenal apparition, the same to the races
called civilized as
to those who
are supposed to “believe in ghosts” because they are savages. Herbert Spencer
proclaims
that “the
first traceable conception of a supernatural being is the conception of a
ghost” (Data, p. 281).
Here in
passing we may note that the word “supernatural”, continually employed by the
agnostics,
belongs, like
many others to an obsolete terminology which has no meaning for the
evolutionist. There
was no
supernatural when there could have been no definition of the natural. In the
present work the
word superhuman
is made use of as being more exact. The elemental powers were superhuman yet
they
were entirely
natural.
A brief but
comprehensive account of Inner African spiritualism is given by the author of
Three Years in
Savage
Africa, who says: “The religion of the Wanyamwezi is founded mainly on the
worship of spirits
called the
'Musimo'. Their ceremonies have but one object, the conciliation or
propitiation of these spirits.
They have no
idea of one supreme power or God-personal or impersonal - governing the world,
and
directing its
destinies or those of individuals. They believe in the earthly visitation of
spirits, especially to
announce some
great event, and more generally some big disaster. Thus they tell how the Chief
Mirambo one
day met a number of Musimo carrying torches, who invited him to follow them
into the
forest, which
he did. Once there, they attempted to dissuade him from proceeding with a war
which he
was then
contemplating, and in which he subsequently lost his life. The dead in their
turn become spirits,
under the
all-embracing name of Musimo. The Wanyamwezi hold these Musimo in great dread
and
veneration,
as well as the house. hut, or place where their body has died. Every chief has
near his hut a
Musimo hut,
or house of the dead, in which they are supposed to dwell, and where sacrifices
and
offerings
must be made. They are constantly consulting oracles, omens, and signs, and
attach great
importance to
them. “When desirous of consulting the spirits”, the party betakes itself to
the Musimo
house, in
front of which the Mfumu (medium) stands with the others arranged in a circle
behind him. The
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Ancient
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Mfumu then
holds a kind of religious service: he begins by addressing the spirits of their
forefathers,
imploring
them not to visit their anger upon their descendants. This prayer he offers up
kneeling bowing
and bending
to the ground from time to time. Then he rises and commences a hymn of praise
to the
ancestors and
all join [Page 151] in the chorus. Then, seizing his little gourd, he executes
a pas seul, after
which he
bursts into song again, but this time singing as one inspired. Suddenly he
stops and recovers
himself. All
this time, except when chanting, the spectators observe a most profound
stillness. After a
brief
interval of silence the Mfumu proceeds to publish the message which he has just
received from the
Musimo. This
he does by intoning in a most mournful and dreary manner. The congregation then
retire,
and wind up
the proceedings with a noisy dance in the village”. (Lionel Décle, Three Years
in Savage
Africa, pp.
343-345.). According to Giel, the pigmies of the Ituri Forest, at the lowest
point in the ascent of
man, propitiate
and invoke the spirits, of their ancestors; they also build little huts for
them to rest in and
make
offerings of food to their spirit visitants (Giel, W. E., A Yankee in Pigmy
Land). The Lendu to the
west of Lake
Albert, who are worshippers of the ancestral spirits, are accustomed to carry
rough wooden
dolls
supposed to represent the departed, and place them in the deserted huts in
which their dead lie
buried
(Johnston).
African
spiritualism, which might be voluminously illustrated, culminated in the
Egyptian mysteries. The
mystery
teachers were so far advanced as phenomenal spiritualists, and say so little
about it in any direct
manner, that
it has taken one who owns to having had a profound experience of the phenomena
many
years to come
up with them in studying the eschatology of the Ritual. If spiritualism proper
is based on
phenomenal
and veritable factz in nature, as it is now claimed to be, then the past
history of the human
race has to
be rewritten, for it has hitherto been written with this the most important of
all mental factors
omitted,
decried, derided, or falsely explained away. Current anthropology knows nothing
of man with a
soul that
offers evidence for a continuity of its own existence. The Egyptians had no
more doubt about it
than the
Norsemen who used to bring legal actions against the spirits of the dead that
came back to
haunt and
torture the living, and were accused on evidence and adjudged to be guilty.
There is a like
case in a
papyrus translated by M. Maspero ( Records of the Past, vol. xii., 123). In
this an Egyptian
widower cites
the spirit of his deceased wife to a law court, and forbids her to torment or
persecute him
with her
unwelcome attentions. He asks what offence did he ever commit in her lifetime
that should
warrant her
in causing him to suffer now. He speaks of the evil condition he is in, and of
the affidavit he
has made.
This writing is directed to the gods of Amenta, where it is to be read in
judgment against her.
M. Maspero
suggests that the writ would probably be read aloud at the tomb, and then tied
to the statue
of his wife,
who would receive the summons in the same way that she was accustomed to
receive the
offerings of
prayer and food by proxy at certain times of the year. The Egyptians were
profoundly well
acquainted
with those abnormal phenomena which are Just re-emerging within the ken of
modern
science, and
with the hypnotic, magnetic, narcotic, and anaesthetic means of inducing the
conditions of
trance. Their
rekhi or wise men, the pure spirits in both worlds, are primarily those who
could enter the
life of
trance or transform into the state of spirits, as is shown by the determinative
of the name, the
phoenix of
spiritual transformation. [Page 152]
Ancestor
worship is made apparent in the Book of the Dead by the speaker in the nether
world, who asks
that he may
behold the forms of his father and his mother in his resurrection from Amenta
(ch.52). And
when he
attains the domain of Kan-Kanit on Mount Hetep, where the joy is expressed by
dancing, he
prays that he
may see his father and intently view his mother (Rit., ch. I 10). It is said of
one of the
magical
formula:, “ If thou readest the second page it will happen that if thou art in
the Amenta thou wilt
have power to
resume the form which thou hadst upon the earth”. (Records of the Past, vol.
iv., 131-134).
In one of the
Egyptian tales the writer describes the dead in the tombs conversing about
their earth life,
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
and as having
the power of leaving the sepulchre and mixing once more with the living on this
earth. The
Egyptian Book
of the Dead is based upon a resurrection of the soul in Amenta and its possible
return to
the earth at
times, for some particular purpose, as the double or ghost. The deceased when
in Amenta
prays that he
may emerge from the world of the dead to revisit the earth (Rit., ch. 7 I). He
asks that he
may come
forth with breath for his nostrils and with eyes which can see, and that he may
shine upon his
own ka-image
from without, not that he may become a soul within an idol of wood or stone.
The
persistence
of the human soul in death and its transformation into a living and enduring
spirit is a
fundamental
postulate of the Egyptian Ritual and of the religious mysteries. The burial of
the mummy in
the earth is
coincident with the resurrection of the soul in Amenta, which is followed by
its purifications
and refinings
into a spirit that may be finally made perfect. In the opening chapter the
departing soul of
the deceased
pleads that he may be conscious in death, to see the lords of the nether world
and to
inhale the
“incense of the sacrificial offerings made to the divine host - sitting with
them”. He prays: “Let
the priestly
ministrant make invocations over my coffin. Let me hear the prayers of
propitiation”. Not as
the dead
body, but as a living spirit (ch. I). He also pleads that when the Tuat is
opened he may “come
forth to do
his pleasure upon earth amid the living” (ch. 2). The Egyptians know nothing of
death except
in the evil
that eats out the spiritual life. The dead are those that do not live the
spiritual life, no matter
where. These
are called the twice dead in the spirit world. It will suffice to show how
profound the
spiritualism
must have been when the prayers and invocations are made, the oblations and the
sacrifices
are offered,
not to the person of the deceased (who is represented by the dead mummy), but
to the kaimage
of his
eternal soul, which was set up in the funeral chamber as the likeness of that
other spiritual
self to whose
consciousness they made their religiously affectionate appeal. They make no
mistake as to
the locality
of consciousness. Their funeral feast was a festival of rejoicing, not of
mourning. When Unas
makes his
passage it is said, “Hail, Unas ! Behold, thou hast not departed dead, but as
one liv/ing thou
hast gone to
take thy seat upon the throne of Osiris” (Budge, Gods of Egypt, vol. i., 61).
The sacred rites
were duly
paid to the departed not merely “in memory of the dead”, but for the
delectation of the reembodied
ka that lived
on in death. The dead were designated the ever-Iiving. The coffin was called the
chest of the
living. No eye might look on the prepared [Page 153] mummy in its last resting
place but the
eye of its
spiritual owner , who came back to see that it was properly preserved in
sepulchral sanctity, a
small
aperture being left in the wall of the Serdab through which the returning
spirit alone might pass, to
see the
mummy, when it returned on a visit to the earth. We learn from the vignettes to
the Ritual that the
soul might
revisit the earth when it had attained the status of the Ba, which is imaged as
the hawk with a
human head.
In this shape it descends and ascends the ladder or staircase that was erected
as the way
up from the
Kâsu or burial place to the boat of souls.
In the first
stage of continuity hereafter the soul persists visibly as the shade. This form
of the Manes is
commonly
associated with the mummy in the tomb where it received the mortuary meals that
were
offered to
the dead. It was held by some that the shade remained as warder of the mummy,
or corpse,
and never
left the earth. When the deceased has passed the forty-two tribunals of the
Judgment Hall he
is told that
he can now go out of the Amenta and come in at will as an enfranchized spirit.
It is said to the
Osiris,
“Enter thou in and come forth at thy pleasure like the Glorified Ones; and be
thou invoked each
day upon the
Mount of Glory” (Rit., ch. 126,6). He has now become one of the glorified, the
spirits who
are appealed
to as protectors - that is, the ancestral spirits, the host of whom he joins
“to become the
object of
invocation and propitiation or of worship on the Mount of Glory. The
clairvoyants in the Kamite
temples were
designated seers of the gods and the spirits. In speaking of his forced
exclusion from office
in the Temple
of Amen, Tahtmes the Third says: “So long as I was a child and a boy I remained
in the
Temple, but
not even as a seer of the god did I hold office” (Egypt under the Pharaohs,
Brugsch, English
translation,
volume 1, page 178). In the “Second Tale of Khamuas” there is a contest between
the
Ethiopian and
Egyptian magicians. Amongst other tests of superiority, the Ethiopians bring
writing as a
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challenge to
the Court of Pharaoh. This has to be read without opening the letter or
breaking the seal.
Then said
Si-Osiris to his father, “I shall be able to read the letter that was brought
to Egypt without
opening it,
and to find what is written on it without breaking its seal”. The father asks
what is the sign that
he can do
this. Si-Osiris answers, “Go to the cellars of thy house every book that thou
takest out of the
case I will
tell thee what book it is and read it without seeing it”. This he does, and
then he shows the
superiority
of Egyptian magic over the sorceries of the Ethiopians by reading the contents
of the letter
without
opening it or breaking the seal. (Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of
Memphis, pp. 51-60.)
The mode in
which the clairvoyant faculty was made use of in the mysteries for seeing into
the world
beyond death
is also illustrated by the priest who is portrayed as the dreamer with the
dead. He is called
the
Sem-priest, and is represented as being in the tomb and sleeping the sleep in
which he was visited
by the
glorified. The recumbent Sem awakes when the other officiating ministrants
arrive at the
sepulchre.
His first words are, “I see the Father in his form entire”. That is Osiris in
his character of Neber-
ter. In his
demise Osiris was represented as being cut in pieces, by his enemy Sut, as a
[Page 154]
mode of
depicting death to the sight of the initiates. That which applied to Osiris
also applied to the dead
in Osiris.
They were figuratively cut in pieces as the tangible equivalent for abstract
death. “ I see the
Father in his
form entire” was the formula of the Sem-priest as sleeper and seer in the tomb
and as
witness and
testifier that the dead in Osiris were living still. “How wonderful! He no
longer existed”. And
now, “ What
happiness! He exists, and there is no member missing to the Manes” (i.e., the
human soul in
Amenta).
(Prof: E. Lefébure, Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., vol. xv., pt. 3, p. 138.)
All ancestor
worshippers have been spiritualists in the modern sense who had the evidence by
practical
demonstration
that the so-called dead are still the living in a rarer, not less real form.
The ancestral spirits
they invoke
and propitiate were once human, not the elemental or animistic forces of
external nature,
which under
the name of spirits have been confused with them. Their belief in a personal
continuity has
ever been
firmly based on phenomenal facts, not merely floated on ideas. The evidence
that deceased
persons make
their reappearance on the earth in human guise is universal; also that the
doubles of the
dead supplied
both ground and origin for a worship of ancestral spirits that were human once
in this life
and still
retained the human likeness in the next, and manifested in the human form. The
Karens say the
Lâ ( or
ghost) sometimes appears after death, and cannot then be distinguished from the
deceased
person. In
the opinion of the Eskimo, the soul (or spirit) exhibits the same shape as the
body it belonged
to (Rink),
but is of a more subtle and ethereal nature, as is the Egyptian Sahu or
spiritual body. The
Tonga
Islanders held that the human soul was the finer, more aeriform, part of the
body - the essence
that can pass
out as does the fragrance from a flower. The islanders of the Antilles found
that the ghosts
vanished when
they tried to clutch them. The Greenland seers described the soul as pallid,
soft, and
intangible
when they attempted to seize it.“Alas! then”, says Achilles, as he tries to
embrace the spirit of
Patroclus,
“there is indeed in the abodes of the shades a spirit and an eidôlon, but it is
unsubstantial”. Mr.
Cushing tells
us that, whatsoever opinions the ancestors of the Zunis may have held regarding
the so-
called
“transmigration of souls”, their belief today relative to the future life is
spiritualistic. When a corpse
had been
burnt by the Hos they still called upon the spirit to come back to the world of
the living. It is held
by them that
the spirit lives on, although the dead body is reduced to ashes. The author of
Africana
testifies
that the Central African tribes among whom he lived were unanimous in saying
there is
something
beyond the body which they call spirit or pure spirit, and that “every human
being at death is
forsaken by
the spirit”. Hence they do not worship at the grave. “All the prayers and
offerings of the living
are presented
to the spirits of the dead” (voume 1, page 59). It is common for the Yao to
leave an offering
beside the
head at the top of their beds intended for the spirits who it is hoped will
come and whisper to
the sleeper
in his dreams. Their spirits appear to them in sleep and also in waking
visions, which are
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carefully
discriminated from dreams of the night by them as by all intelligent
aborigines, and not confused
the one with
the other, as is generally done by the European [Page 155] agnostic. (Duff
Macdonald,
Africana,
vol. i., pp. 60-61.) The Banks Islanders pray to their dead men, and not to the
elemental powers
or animistic
spirits. The Vateans call upon the spirits of their ancestors, whom they invoke
over the kava
bowl - that
is, the divine drink which is taken by the seers for the purpose of entering
into rapport with the
spirits. When
the Zulu King Cetewayo was in London he said to a friend of the present writer,
“We believe
in ghosts or
spirits of the dead because we see them”. But when asked whether the Zulus
believed in
God, he said
they had not seen him. For them the ghost demonstrates its own existence; the
god is but
an inference,
if necessary as a final explanation of phenomena. The ghost can be objectively
manifested;
the deity
must be ideally evolved. The Amazulu say the same thing as Cetewayo: “We worship
those
whom we have
seen with our eyes, who lived and died amongst us. All we know is that the
young and
the aged die
and the shade departs”. These shades were propitiated. That is the universal
testimony of
all races,
savage or civilized. They believe in ghosts because they see them. The ghost is
the supreme
verity in
universal spiritualism. As Huxley says, “there are savages without God in any
proper sense of
the word, but
there are none without ghosts” - (Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 163). The
colossal
conceit of
obtuse modern ignorance notwithstanding, the ghost and the faculty for seeing
the ghost are
realities in
the domain of natural fact. The seers may be comparatively rare, although the
clairvoyant and
seer of
spirits (as a product of nature) is by no means so scarce as either a great
painter or great poet.
These
abnormal faculties are human, and they can be increased by cultivation. Their
existence is for
ever being
verified like other facts in nature, and the truth is ultimately known by the
experience which is
for ever
being repeated. It is a funeral custom of the Amandebele, one of the Bantu
tribes, to introduce
the spirit of
a deceased person to his father, his grandfather, and other relatives, of whose
conscious
existence and
personal presence no doubt is entertained. These are matters of life and death
with the
primitive
races. The spirits come to announce the death of individuals. They see the
ghost, they hear its
message, and
they die to the day or hour foretold. “I could give many instances which have
come within
my own
knowledge among the Fijians”, says Mr. Fison (Kamilaroi and Kernai, p. 253).
Mr. Spencer tell us
that “negroes
who when suffering go to the woods and cry for help to the spirits of dead
relatives show by
these acts
the grovelling nature of the race” (Data of Sociology, ch. 20, par.151).
Whether the spirits are
thought to be
a reality or not, this appears one of the most natural and touching of human
acts, aspiring
rather than
grovelling, especially as the relative addressed is so commonly the mother, the
African
mama. But is
it grovelling to cling to the loved and lost ? - to turn for comfort to the
dear ones gone, and
seek a little
solace if only in the memory that leaned and rested on them in the solitude of
their suffering ?
Here the
“great teacher of our age” is far behind the Negro. He did not know that the
“spirits of dead
relatives”
are and always have been a demonstrable reality, and those who do not know have
no
authority for
giving judgment on the subject. They who have no [Page 156] dead lost friends
to feed, to
invoke, or to
love may look on such ceremonies as savage or insensate, but to those who have,
and who
still offer
them the food of affection, such actions are but the primitive exhibition of
our modern
spiritualism
in its simple child-hood, and they have for us something of the tender and
touching charm of
infancy, even
when the first has now become a sort of second childhood through length of time
and lapse
of knowledge
and loss of memory.
The Peruvians
declared that the reason why they buried property with their departed friends
was
because they
had seen those who had long been dead walking adorned with the clothes and
jewels
which their
friends had buried with them. West African negroes have been so sure of their
conscious
continuity
hereafter that when they were slaves in far-off lands they have killed
themselves on purpose to
re-visit and
re-live in their old homes. We have it on the authority of Livingstone that the
Manyema tribe
of Africans
exulted in the assurance that after death the suffering ones would be able to
come back when
they were set
free to return and haunt and torture those who had sold them into slavery
during their life
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Ancient
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on earth.
Mariner mentions the case of a young Tongan chief who was pursued by the spirit
of a dead
woman. She,
having fallen in love with him, besought him to die and go to her; and he died
accordingly.
The Karens
hold that the dead are only divided from the living by a thin white veil which
their seers can
penetrate.
The Kaffirs when fighting used to leave open spaces in their line of battle for
their dead heroes
to step into
and stop the gap in fighting for them shoulder to shoulder and side by side.
First of all,
there is a class of customs intended to prevent the dead from returning in
spirit. The living will
do anything
in their power by way of propitiation, bribery, and flattery for the dead not
to come back. All
they needed
in this life was supplied to them for the next food, drink, clothes, horses,
weapons, slaves,
and wives in
abundance. For if the dead were in need of anything it was feared that they
might pursue
and haunt the
living. The Zulu Kaffirs say that diseases are caused by the spirits of the
dead to compel
the living to
supply them with offerings of meat and drink. It was a custom of the Fijians to
pour out water
after the
corpse to hinder the ghost from coming back, water being the element opposed to
breath, to
spirit or
spirits - “a running stream they daurna cross!” The Siamese break an opening
through the wall of
a house, pass
the coffin through, and carry the corpse round the house three times to prevent
the spirit
from finding
its way back. The Hottentots make a hole in the wall of their hut and carry the
dead body
through it,
closely building it up immediately afterwards. We may smile, but until lately
we had the relic of
a belief as
simple. We used to run a stake through the bodies of our suicides, buried at
the cross-roads,
to pin them
to the cross and not allow them to walk or wander as ghosts. This custom of
barring the
passage back
was practised by black men, red men, yellow men, and white men - therefore it
was
universal. An
Australian aborigine will cut the right thumb off the hand of his dead enemy,
so that the
returning
ghost shall not be able to handle a spear or club if he should come back. Many
other races
purposely
maimed their dead. When [Page 157] Clytemnestra put her husband to death she
took the
precaution of
having him “arm-pitted” - that is, of having his hands cut off and bound fast
under his arms,
which was a
Greek mode of doing an irretrievable injury to the ghost of the dead.
Nor was the
feeling of fear limited to those whom they had any reason to dread. On the
death of a
nursing child
the Iroquois take two pieces of cloth, steep them in the milk of its mother,
and place them in
the hands of
the dead little one so that it may not return in spirit from need of food to
haunt and trouble
the bereaved
parent. They also think that the sleeping infant holds intercourse with the
spirit world, and it
is a custom
for the mother to rub the face of the living child with a pinch of ashes at
night to protect it
from
nocturnal spirits. In Lapland the mothers, when committing infanticide, cut out
the tongues of the
little ones
before casting them away in the forest, lest the poor innocents should be heard
crying and
calling on
them in the night. The Chinook Indians declare that the dead wake at night and
get up in
search of
food. The Algonkins bring food to the grave for the nourishment of the shade
which remains
with the body
after death. In doing this they had an object, which was the ghost in reality
and not a
hallucination
to be resolved into nothingness by any philosophy of dreams. The Iroquois
maintained that
unless these
rites of burial were performed the spirits would return to trouble their
relatives and friends. In
one of the
cuneiform texts it is taught that the Manes which are neglected by their
relatives on earth
succumb to
hunger and thirst. As it is said, “He whose body is left forgotten in the
fields, his soul has no
rest on
earth. He whose soul no one cares for, the dregs of the cup, the remains of the
repast, that which
is thrown
among the refuse of the street, that is all he has to nourish him”. (Maspero,
Dawn of
Civilization,
Eng. tr., p. 509.) The necessity that was felt for providing the dead with food
will account for
the Buddhist
doctrine of non-immortality for the man who has no children. In this way; the
Manes need
provisioning.
The proper person to supply them is a son, and he who dies without a son to
perform the
sacrifice may
be left like the poor souls in the Assyrian story who succumb to hunger and
thirst and thus
die out
altogether as neglected starvelings. It is said in the Dattaka-Mimansa, “Heaven
awaits not one
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Ancient
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who is
destitute of a son”. The Inoits likewise have a custom of giving a new-born son
the name of
someone who
has lately died, in order “that the departed may have rest in the tomb” (Rink,
Eskimo
Tales). This
is a mode of adopting a son for the service of the dead where the deceased may
have had
no son to
make the offerings. Of all the charitable institutions on the earth's surface,
the most
remarkable,
surely, is that of the Chinese Taoists called the Yu-Lan-Ui, or “association
for feeding the
dead”, which
collects supplies for the sustenance of the needy spirits who have no relations
on earth to
offer
sacrifices to these paupers of the other world. In the Egyptian Book of the
Dead the deceased prays
that he may
take possession in Amenta of the funeral meals that were and continue to be
offered to him
by his living
friends on earth”. Let me have possession of my funeral meals. Let me have
possession of
all things
which are ritualistically offered for me in the nether world. Let me have
possession of the table
(of
offerings) which was made for me on [Page 158] earth, the solicitations which
were uttered for me that
he (I) may
feed upon the bread of Seb”. This is the refrain to a kind of litany. (Rit.,
ch. 68, Renouf) In the
vignettes to
the Ritual and other scenes it is noticeable how the female mourners expose
their breasts
and as it
were offer their nipples to the mummy on its way to the dead-house (Papyrus of
Ani). This
agrees with
the scene in a funeral procession of the Badyas, in which the women lean over
their dead
companions
and squeeze their milk into the mouth of the deceased. King Teta in the Pyramid
texts exults
in Amenta
that he is not left to suffer from hunger and thirst as a Manes. He is not like
one of those poor
starvelings
who are forced to eat the excrements and swallow the filth that is, as it were,
the sewage of
the life on
earth. “Hateful to Teta are hunger and thirst”, and from these he does not
suffer. He is supplied
with pure
food and drink in plenty. (Teta, ii. 68-9.) Homer describes the spirits as
rushing to lap or breathe
the blood
poured out in sacrifice. When Odysseus entered Hades and the blood was poured
out, the
shades that
drank of it revived and spoke. The Zuni Indians of to-day reverence certain
images or
fetishes of
the ancestral souls or spirits, which images they treat as their
representatives of the dead.
These are
dipped into the blood that is offered in sacrifice. Whilst performing this rite
they will say, “My
father, this
day thou shalt refresh thyself with blood; with blood shalt thou enlarge thy
heart!” The Indians
of Virginia
used to put children to death for a certain class of spirits to suck the blood,
as they said, from
the left
breast. The Mexicans, who would sacrifice 50,000 human beings in one year, held
that human
blood was the
only efficacious offering, and the purest was the most acceptable. Hence the
sacrifice of
infants and
virgins. Offering the blood of the innocent to save the guilty, or those who
feared for
themselves,
would lead to a doctrine of substitution and vicarious atonement which
culminated as
Christian in
the frightful formula, “Without blood there is no remission of sin!” Not merely
human blood
this time,
but the ichor of a divine being who was made flesh on purpose to pour out the
blood for the
divine
vengeance to lap in the person of a gory ghost of God. “My father! This day
shalt thou refresh
thyself with
blood!” That doctrine is but an awful shadow of the past - the shadow, as it
were, of our earth
in a far-off
past that remains to eclipse the light of heaven in the present and darkens the
souls of men
today through
this survival of savage spiritualism direfully perverted. The blood first
offered as life for the
dead was not
given for the remission of sin.
The Peruvians
spread the funeral feast, “expecting the soul of the deceased” to come and eat
and drink.
The Bhils,
among the hill tribes of India, offer “provision for the spirit”. The North
American Indians paid
annual visits
to the place of the dead, and made a feast to feed the spirits of the departed.
The Amazulu
prepare the
funeral meal and say, “There then is your food, all ye spirits of our tribe;
summon one
another. I am
not going to say, 'So-and-so, there is your food', for you are jealous. But
thou, So-and-so,
who art
making this man ill, call the spirits: come all of you to eat this food”.
(Callaway, Amazulu, 175.)
There were
economical reasons against carrying the worship back too far when worship
consisted mainly
in [Page 159]
making offerings. A Yao will excuse himself from giving even to own
grandfather. He gives to
his father,
and says, “O father! I do not know all your relatives. You know them all:
invite them to feast
with you”.
(Duff Macdonald, Africana, vol. i., p. 68.) Thus he makes his offering once for
all, and saves
expenses.
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Ancient
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The funeral
custom is almost universal for the mortuary meal to be made to feed the spirits
of the
departed, and
communion with the ancestral spirits was an object of the totemic eucharist.
The sacrifices
offered to
the dead, the burial rites and funerary ceremonies, generally imply the
existence of a living
consciousness
to which the piteous appeal was made. The fact becomes visible in the mysteries
of
Amenta. And
one of the greatest acts of sacrifice for the dead is shown in the funeral
feast. In their
funeral
ceremonies the Yucatanese fasted for the sake of the dead. Now fasting for the
sake of the dead
in the most
primitive sense was going without food that it might be given to the ghosts or
spirit ancestors.
The living
fasted that the Manes might be fed. And herein lies the true rationale of the
funeral fast. This
was no doubt
the motive for the Haker-festival of the Egyptians, when the provisions were
laid upon the
altar as an
offering to Osiris in his coffin. The word Haker denotes both a festival and a
fast; it also
signifies
starving, and starving with the view of giving the food thus saved to the
spirits of the dead would
be a really
religious sacrifice. This festival that was celebrated by starving or fasting
on behalf of the dead
comes to its
culmination in the season of Lent as a fast of forty days. In this originally
the food of the
living would
be given as a sacrificial offering to the dead, or the ancestral spirits, or to
the god who gave
his life in
food for men and animals. Here the Egyptian Lent or season of fasting for forty
days is in the
true
position, as it followed and did not precede the death of Osiris. To have any
real meaning, the fast
which was
ordained as a sacrifice of food for the dead was naturally celebrated after and
not before the
death, to
constitute a funeral offering and “to make that spirit live”. Going without the
food and giving it as
a sacrificial
offering to the dead assuredly affords the proper explanation of the funeral
festival that was
celebrated as
a solemn fast which finally passed into the Christian eucharist. The offering
of blood to the
dead is
explained on the ground that the blood is the life; and the more blood shed,
the more the life
offered, the
more precious the sacrifice. Further, the Tahitians thought the gods fed on the
spirits of the
dead, and
therefore frequent sacrifices of human beings were made to supply them with
spiritual diet.
Blood, the
liquid of life, was drink; spirit, the breath of life, was food. This should be
compared with the
Egyptian
legend of Unas, who is fed on the spirits of gods. Also with the account of
Horus-Sahu, the wild
hunter, of
whom it is said that he ate the great gods for his breakfast, the lesser ones
for his dinner at
noon, and the
small ones for his evening meal. The doctrine is identical with that of the
Tahitians. Prayers
for the dead
are continued when the offerings of food have ceased. The fasting survives when
the
practice has
become a meaningless farce. The oblation of blood is still a religious rite.
For flagellation
that causes
the blood to flow is closely akin to the self-gashings, lacerations,
amputations, and
immolations
[Page 160] of primitive mourners who made their personal sacrifice in this way
at the grave.
Also blood
and spirit as an offering to the dead are still represented by the sacramental
wine and bread.
Here it may
be remarked that when modern ritualists swing their censers heavenwards and
fill the church
with clouds
of incense, the rite, so far as it has any fundamental significance, is an act
in the worship of
the ancestral
spirits. Breath, like blood, is an element of life, and this was represented by
the smoke of
the
fire-offering and by fragrance-breathing incense in the primitive ritual of
Inner Africa, that was
continued in
ancient Egypt and afterwards in Rome. A breath of life is offered in the
ascending fumes to
give the
spirits life, because the breath was once considered to be the soul of life.
This was one of the
elemental
souls. Incense, truly typical and properly compounded in the Christian ritual,
ought to include
the seven
elements in one soul of breathing life as an offering to the spirits of the
dead, because the
elemental
souls were seven in number, and because the seven souls contributed to the
making of the
one eternal
spirit. It has been said that savages believe their weapons to have souls in
common with
themselves,
and therefore when they bury their dead they not only bury their weapons, they
also break
them, to set
free the souls of the weapons to accompany the spirits of the warriors. The
supposed reason
is purely
gratuitous and ignorantly European. The interpreters know nothing of the
ancient Sign-language
as it was
enacted in such typical customs as these. The breaking of the weapons or other
things when
offered to
the dead is done as a sign of sacrifice. The object of the offering is
sacrifice, and no sacrifice
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Ancient
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could be too
great, no property too precious, as an offering to the spirits of the dead.
When Mtesa, King
of Uganda,
died, over Ł10,000 worth of cloth was buried with him as a sacrificial offering
(Lionel Décle,
Three Years
in Savage Africa, p. 446, note).
Herbert
Spencer could find no origin for the idea of an after-life save the conclusion
which the savage
draws from
the notion suggested by dreams (Spencer, Facts and Comments, p. 210). But
whatsoever
dreams the
savage had, they would become familiar in the course of time. He would learn
that dreams
had no power
to externalize themselves in apparitions, had there been no ghosts or doubles
of the dead.
He would also
learn readily enough, and the lesson would be perpetually repeated, that
howsoever great
his success
when hunting in his dreams of the night, there was no game caught when he woke
next
morning.
Clearly no reliance could be placed on dreams for establishing the ghost, any
more than on the
result of
other dreams. Moreover, the same savage that is assumed to have panned out on
dreams for a
false belief
also reports that he sees the spirits of the dead by abnormal vision and has
the means of
communicating
with them. But all the credulity of all the savages that ever existed cannot
compete or be
compared with
the credulity involved in this belief or assumption that the ghost itself,
together with the
customs, the
ceremonies, the religious rites of evocation and propitiation, the priceless
offerings, the
countless
testimonies to the veritability of abnormal vision, the universal practices for
inducing that vision
for the
purpose of communicating with spiritual intelligences, had no other than a
[Page 161] subjective
basis, and a
false belief that the dream-shadow was the sole reality. Now, can one conceive
anything
more fatal to
the claims made on behalf of evolution as a mode of nature's teaching than this
assumption
that man has
universally been the victim of an illusion derived from a baseless delusion ?
If primitive men
were the
victims of a delusion which has been continued for thousands of years in
defiance of all
experience
and observation, what guidance or trust could there be in evolution; or how are
we to
distinguish
between the false product and the true if man dreamed the ghost into being when
there was
no ghost, if
he has been so far the victim of his own Frankenstein as to found the whole
body of his
religious
beliefs and customs on that which never existed ? Primitive man was not a
hundredth part so
likely to be
the victim of hallucination or diseased subjectivity as the modern. External
Nature is not
hallucinative
;it is the scene of continuous education in primal or rudimentary and
constantly recurring
realities.
His elemental spirits or forces were real, and not the result of hallucination;
why not his
ancestral
spirits ? Primitive or archaic man was not metaphysician enough to play the
fool with facts in
this way, to
say nothing of his manufacturing facts from the phantasies and vanishing stomachic
vapours
from which
dreams are continually made. A dreamer by night who became the condenser of his
dreams
by day, and
then manufactured the ghost that no one ever saw or handled or heard or “smelt
out”, which
ghost had no
existence in verifiable reality, and yet had the power to haunt mankind inside
of them for
ever after!
The aborigines knew better, whereas the agnostics do not know.
It is not the
people that see visions who are the visionaries. The true visionaries are the
subjective-
minded
metaphysicians, who do not know a dream of the night from a vision of the day,
and who can
most easily
blend the object and subject in one. The Kurnai distinguish betwixt the imagery
of dreams
and the
spirits seen by open vision. They say that whereas anyone may be able to
communicate with
“ghosts”
during sleep, it is only the spirit mediums or wizards who can do so in waking
hours. (Howitt.) A
priest of the
Fijian god Ndengi, describing his passing into the state of trance, said, “My
own mind
departs from
me, and then, when it is truly gone, my god speaks through me” (Williams, Fiji,
p. 228).
Unless a
profound fanatic, a modern medium would not call the spirit that controlled him
God, but the
spirit of a
person that had once been human and now was one of the ancestral spirits. There
is nothing in
all nature
but the fact that will adequately account for the universal fear of the ghost.
It is the fact alone
that gives
any rational explanation of the inarticulate faith. When once we admit the fact
as operative
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Ancient
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reality the
costly customs, the libations of life, the mysteries of belief, the
propitiations of fear and proofs
of affection,
are all duly motived or amply explicated. Modern science has let loose a deluge
of
destruction
that is fatal to the ignorant beliefs and the false faiths derived from
misinterpreted mythology,
but it will
not efface one single fact nor uproot a single reality in nature. Gods and
goddesses may de-
feature and
dislimn, to pass away as fading phantoms of the nature powers, but the human
ghost
remains, and
manifests to-day as ever, or more than ever, to the civilized as well as to the
savage. [Page
162] And if,
as we maintain, these phenomena are a part of nature's reality, the methods of
science once
applied to
them can but verify the fact and establish its veridical character. There is no
possible way of
knowing the
truth except by interrogation of the phenomena themselves, not merely in the
physical
domain, but
also in the region of intelligence, where you meet with an operator who has to
be taken into
partnership.
The spiritualistic phenomena also confute the assertion of Spinoza to the
effect that
personality has
no foothold in the world outside ourselves, for these intelligences whom we
call “spirits”
are persons.
They appear in the visible, audible, tangible, and palpable forms of
personality. Not only as
the persons
who are called “the dead”, but also as phantoms of the living, eidolons,
recognizable feature
by feature,
of individuals who were not yet dead. The ghost of the living as a visible
reality has been seen
out of the
body in this life, as Goethe saw his other self, which tends to double the evidence
for the
existence of
the ghost of the dead. The English Society for Psychical Research has collected
over a
thousand
cases of the phantasms of the living.
The “science
of religion” with the ghost left out is altogether meaningless. The ghost
offers the one
unique
objective proof of spiritual existence, and the doings and sayings of the
ghost, whether it be
apparent or
concealed, still furnish the data of modern as of ancient spiritualism.
Religion
proper commences with and must include the idea of or desire for another life.
And the warrant
for this is
the ghost and the faculties of abnormal seership. It has been urged by some
writers that
religion
began with the worship of death and the apotheosis of the corpse. But ancestor
worship in all
lands was a
worship of the ancestral spirits, not a cultus of the corpse. The spirits were
the ancestors;
the ancestors
were spirits. The awe excited by the dead is caused by the active ghost of the
dead, not by
the
motionless corpse. The sacrifices offered to the dead are made to propitiate
the living ghost of the
dead, not the
corpse. It was the fact that the ghost might return and did return and make
itself apparent,
with the
power to manifest displeasure or revenge, that made the revenant so fearsome in
the early
stages of
“ghost worship”. Dread of the ghost and the desire to placate so uncanny a
visitant will account
for
propitiation of the ghosts.
The truth is
that the Christian cult is the one and only religion in the world that was
based upon the
corpse
instead of the resurrection in spirit. In no other religion is continuity in
spirit made dependent on
the
resurrection of the earthly body. The Christians mistook the risen mummy in
Amenta for the corpse
that was buried
on earth, whereas the Egyptian religion was founded on the rising again of the
spirit from
the corpse as
it was imaged in the resurrection of Amsu-Horus transforming from the
mummy-Osiris, and
by the human
soul emerging alive from the body of dead matter. There is no instance recorded
in all the
experience of
spiritualists ancient or modern of the corpse coming back from the tomb. And
this religion
founded on
the risen corpse is naturally losing all hold of the world. It has failed
because immortality or
the
continuity of personality could not be based upon a reappearing corpse. The
so-called worship of
ancestors
[Page 163] depended entirely on the ancestors being considered living,
conscious, acting and
recipient
spirits, and not as corpses mouldering in the earth. This furnished the sole
raison-d'etre for all
the
sacrificial offerings, the life, the blood, the food, the choicest and
costliest things that could be given
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Ancient
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to the dead.
Those whom we call “the dead” were to them the veritable living in superhuman
forms
possessing
superhuman powers. The Egyptian Amenta is the land of the ever-living.
Sacrifices to the
dead were not
senselessly offered to the senseless corpse, but to the spirit personage that
was its late
inhabitant,
still alive, and supposed to be needing material nourishment from the
well-known elements of
life. In an
Australian funeral ceremony it was customary for the relatives of the deceased
to cut
themselves
until the corpse and burial place were covered with their blood. This was done,
they said, to
give the dead
man strength and enable him to rise in another country. (Brough Smyth, vol.
ii., P.274.) By
which they
meant a survival of the living spirit, not a resurrection of the buried body.
The corpse is not,
and could not
be, the starting point of worship when the sacrifice was eaten quiveringly
alive, with the
flesh warm
and the blood welling forth from every wound. That is when there was no corpse,
and neither
was there any
death. The life was taken and converted into other life, the life of the
children, tribe, or
clan, and was
continued on that line. It was also continued on another line in the spirit
life. Again we say
there was no
death in our modern acceptation of the term. The burial customs, rites, and
ceremonies one
and all, from
the remotest times, were founded in the faith that the departed still lived on
in spirit. In the
earliest mode
of interment known the dead were buried for rebirth. The corpse was bound up in
the foetal
likeness of
the embryo in utero, and placed in the earth as in the mother's womb, the type
being
continued in
the womb-shaped burial vase of the potters. This, however, did not denote a
resurrection of
the body, but
was symbolical of rebirth in spirit. Not only were the dead elaborately
prepared for the
spiritual
rebirth; many symbols of reproduction and emblems of the resurrection were
likewise buried in
the tomb as
amulets and fetish figures of protecting power. The corpse and spirit are
distinguished in the
resurrection
scenes of the Egyptian Ritual by the black shade laid out upon the ground and
the ka-image
of continued
life. The corpse and spirit are shown together as the two-fold entity when the
Chinese,
amongst
others, kindle candles round the coffin, “to give light to the spirit which
remains with the corpse”
(Doolittle,
Social Life of the Chinese, p. 126). One Egyptian picture shows the ba-soul
nestling to the
body on the
funeral couch in all attitude of the tenderest solicitude, with its hands
placed over the non-
beating heart
of the mummy (Maspero, pp. 198-199). The Australian Kurnai likewise hold that
the ghost
of the
deceased comes back to take a look at its mortal remains. A native speaking of
this to Howitt said,
“Sometimes
the Murup comes back and looks down into the grave, and it may say, “Hallo,
there is my old
'possum rug,
there are my old bones”. (Howitt, On Some Australian Beliefs.) The Fijians
practise one of
the naďvest
customs for preventing a deceased woman from manifesting as an apparition. In
life her only
garment was
the liku or waist- [Page 164] fringe which she wore as a cover for her
nakedness. In death
this little
apron is purposely left upon her body with the strings untied, so that if the
poor thing should rise
up with a
desire to return, her only bit of clothing will fall from her, and she will be
forced, from delicacy of
feeling, to
crouch down again in shame and confusion, and thus be unable to show herself to
the living.
(Fison, Notes
on Fijian Burial Customs.)
Now it was
known that no Fijian corpse had ever risen and returned from the tomb. It was
also known
that the
consciousness thus appealed to was not that of the corpse.This therefore was an
appeal in Sign-
language
pathetically made to the Manes or spirit of the departed not to come back and
trouble the living.
When the
bodies of the dead (or living) were buried at the base of a building, it was
not for any service
that could be
rendered by the rotting body, but for the spirit to become a protecting power.
In Siam when
a new city
gate was erected the first four or eight people passing were seized and buried
beneath it as
“guardian
angels”. Under the gates of Mandalay human victims were buried alive to furnish
“spirit
watchers”.
Everywhere the spirit or ghost, not the corpse, is the object of religious
regard. And as no
corpse was
ever known by any race of people to return from the grave, the practices that
were intended
to prevent
the dead from coming back were not aimed at the corpse, to whom they did not
apply, but to
the alleged
living consciousness of the spirit that was represented by the double. Hence
the custom of
eating or of
burying the victim whilst alive.
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Ancient
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Brough Smyth
describes a Birraark or medium as lying on his stomach beside the dead body
whilst
speaking to
the spirit of the deceased, receiving and reporting the messages given to him
by the dead
man
(Aborigines of Australia, vol. i., 107). The Birraark of the Kurnai were
declared to be initiated into
their
mysteries by the spirits or mrarts whom they met in the bush, and it was from
the spirits of the dead
they obtained
their replies when they were consulted by members of the tribe (ibid., p. 254).
Spirits of the
dead appear
to the living and address them in their own language, as when the Eskimo mother
comes
back to her
boy by day to cheer him and says, “Be not afraid; I am thy mother, and love
thee still”
(Crantz,.
vol. i., 209). The Mandan Indians arrange the skulls of their dead in a circle.
The widows know
the skulls of
their former husbands, and the mothers know the skulls of their children. The
skulls so
placed form
the spirit-circle in which the women sit for intercourse with the souls of the
departed. “There
is scarcely
an hour in a pleasant day but more or less of these women may be seen sitting
or lying by the
skull of
their child or husband, talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing
language that they can use
(as they were
wont to do in former days), and seemingly getting an answer back” (Cattlin,. N.
A. Indians,
vol. i., p.
90). John Tanner bears witness to the reality of these phenomena amongst the
Indian
Medamen. He
was himself inducted into the state of abnormal seership, and saw a spirit in
the shape of
a young man,
who said to him, “I look down upon you at all times, and it is not necessary
you should call
me with such
loud cries”. (Narration, p. 189, New York, 1830.) The Marian Islanders held
that the spirits
of the dead
returned to talk with them. [Page 165] The dead bodies of their ancestors were
desiccated and
kept in their
huts for the purpose of spirit-communion, and oracles were supposed to be given
from their
skulls. This
tends to identify at least one motive for making and preserving the mummy. A
custom of the
Acagchemen
Indians is peculiarly enlightening in relation to totemic spiritualism. At
seven years of age
the children
are, or used to be, thrown into a trance by the medicine-men in order that they
might learn
from their
spirit guides which of the zootypes, beast, bird, reptile, or what not, was to
be adopted for the
child's own
personal totem. This, according to the present reading of the data, was a mode
of identifying
the
particular power represented by the totemic zootype, and a means of affiliating
the child, now
become an
individual, to the power (the later god) for the protection thus sought, and
this power was
figured and
visualized by the totemic zootype. Thus the personal totem which was seen by
the child in
trance was a
prototype of the spiritual support extended to the novice by a protector in the
spirit world. So
when the
Inoit novice had prepared his body to become the temple of some spirit, he
would call upon the
genius (or
ka) to take up its abode with him. The spirit invoked sends some totemic
animal, an otter or
badger or
other zootype, for him to kill and flay and clothe himself with the skin. By
this means he is
supposed to
obtain the power of running wild or of making his transformation into the
animal that images
the
superhuman power. The tongue of the beast is then cut out and worn as the
medicine, the fetish,
charm, or
gree-gree of the initiate. This again, to all appearance, is equivalent to the
Child-Horus
becoming the
Word.
We now turn
to the chief human agent in the production of abnormal phenomena, namely, the
spiritual
medium. As
usual, we make use of the Egyptian wisdom for guidance in the past. A human
soul had
been
discreted and discriminated from the animistic and totemic souls and
personalized in Horus as the
Child of the
Blood-Mother. This was Horus in the flesh, or in matter. A divine soul was then
imaged as the
Horus who had
died and risen again in spirit from the dead. The powers previously extant had
been
united and
continued as “the Seven Souls of Ra”. We read of these in the Ritual, where
they are the
seven
elemental powers that were divinized as the “Ancestors of Ra”, those who
preceded him in time,
but are now
“in his following”. (Rit., ch. 178,22, 34, 180, 36.) Ra is the self-originated
invisible and eternal
being, the
father in spirit who is not to be apprehended save through the mediumship of
Horus the son;
that is,
Horus in spirit who bears witness for the father in his resurrection from the
dead by testifying to
the hidden
source of an eternal life, the Horus who says in the Ritual, ch. 42, “I am the
Everlasting One:
Witness of
Eternity is my name”. In him the human Horus divinized in death became the
spirit medium of
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Ancient
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the
father-god. Ra the Holy Spirit was now the source of a divine descent for human
souls, who were
consequently
higher in status than the earlier gods that were but elemental powers, and
higher than the
mother-soul
which had been incarnated in the human Horus. These were ever-living souls, and
born
immortals,
who were looked upon in many lands as divine beings manifesting in the human
form. A spirit
that lived
for ever was now the supreme [Page 166] type of the human soul. The king who
never dies, that
is, the-
divine personage in human form, now took the place of the turtle that never
died, or the Bull of
Eternity, or
any other totemic type of the elemental and pre-human soul. The king who never
dies
impersonates
the immortal in man, who was the royal Horus in the Kamite eschatology. “The
king is
dead, long
live the king!” is an ancient doctrine of human Horus dying to rise again as
royal Horus the
ever-Iiving,
who was the typical demonstrator of a life eternal as Horus the born immortal.
The king who
ever lives is
a human figure of the immortal born from the dead. Egyptian kings were not
directly deified.
The human Ra
was an image of the divine Ra, a likeness of the superhuman power. In various
texts the
Pharaoh is
called the ka of the god, the image and likeness, and to that the worship was
indubitably
directed. It
was as the living representative of divinity that the Ra or Pharaoh was adored
by the
Egyptians. In
this character the king himself is portrayed in the act of worshipping his own
ka, or divine
eidôlon - the
god imaged within and by himself. In both cases the worship was no mere
flattery of the
mortal man;
it was meant for the ever-Iiving immortal. The Pharaoh was the representative
of Ra on
earth. So was
it in Africa beyond. The Master of Whiddah said of himself, “I am the equal of
God; such as
you behold
me, I am his complete portrait” ( Allen and Thompson's Narrative, vol. i.,
228). This as
Egyptian
would be the ka-image of the god. The person who, as reckoned, now inherited a
soul that was
thought to be
immortal verily shared in a nature that was superior to any of the elemental
forces, such as
those of wind
and earth and water, even the sun, or the blood of Isis, the highest of them
all ; and over
these the
spirit-born, or second-born, assumed the mastery or claimed supremacy. They
themselves
were of
spiritual origin, and as spirits they were superhuman on a higher plane than
any merely animistic
powers, who,
like the Polynesian Tuikilakila Chief of Somosomo, also claimed to be a god. Mendieta
in
his report of
the Mexican gods tells us: “Others said that only such men had been taken for
gods who
transformed
themselves or (who) appeared in some other shape and did or spake something
while in
that shape
beyond (the ordinary) human power” (Mendieta, Historia Ecclest. Indiana, 1870,
p. 84). The
Mexicans were
here speaking of their trance-mediums. They entered the state of trance for
their
transformation,
and in that condition manifested super-human or spiritual powers that were
looked upon
as divine.
Amongst all races of people such men were divinized under whatsoever name, as
mediums,
mediators,
and links betwixt two worlds. In this phase the transformers were those who
entered the state
of trance.
This asserted superiority over the powers of the elements is one cause of the
claims made by
or accredited
to the divine mediums, preposterous enough at times, with regard to their
superhuman
control of
the elements as rain-makers and rulers of the weather. The supernormal faculty
of the seer and
sorcerer is
the sole root of reality from which the fiction springs. The Mexican kings on
assuming the
sovereignty,
were sworn to make the sun shine, the clouds to give forth rain, the rivers to
flow, and the
earth to
produce abundantly (Bancroft, vol. ii., 146). The Inoit Angekok has to [Page
167] play the part of
“great
provider” to the people, as master of the elements on which plenty of food
depends, the water for
fish and the
air for returning birds of passage. Such mediums were a sort of titular, not
actual, masters
over the
elemental powers, as a result of their asserted higher origin. A line of
priest-kings founded on
this basis of
divinity was at one time extant in the island of Niué, in the South Pacific.
Being the
representative
of deity, the monarch was made responsible for the growth of food, and in times
of dearth
he was put to
death because of a failure in the crops. So exigent were the people that at
last no one
would consent
to become king, and so the monarchy expired. (Turner, Samoa.)
The immortal
in man being more immediately demonstrated by spiritual manifestation and the
abnormal
phenomena of
trance and interior vision, the mediums were the first divine persons who
demonstrated
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Ancient
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the facts of
spirit existence and spirit intercourse. And such were the earliest born
immortals. They had
the witness
within. But those who were not mediums had to attain assurance as best they
could; they
had to make
use of the others. Paul speaks of not being certain of his own immortality. But
he presses on
to see if by
any means he may attain to the resurrection from the dead. This led to a
doctrine of
conditional
immortality that was universal, and to a theory of the mediums or mediators
being divine
personages or
born immortals, like the second Horus, who was the first fruits of them that
previously
slept. The
earliest guidance then was spiritual on this ground. The aboriginal priest-king
or divine person
was looked to
as a ruler and leader in this world on account of his abnormal relationship to
the other. He
was the
demonstrator of a soul that was the first considered to be ever-Iiving. This
divine descent was
based upon the
derivation from the god in spirit who was now superior to all other gods, and
who in the
Egyptian
religion is Ra the Holy Spirit. The three highest ranks in Egypt were the
divine, the royal, and
the noble,
and the three were distinguished from each other by their peculiar type of
beard. Thus the
loftiest rank
was spiritual, and this primacy originated not in men becoming bishops, but in
their
possessing
those spiritual powers and faculties which have been repudiated and expurgated
by the
Churches of
orthodox Christianity, but which were looked upon of old as verily divine. We
also learn from
Synesius's
Logos Aiguptios, quoted by Heeren (Ideen, vol. ii., Egypt, p. 335), that in
electing a monarch,
whereas the
vote of a soldier was reckoned as one, the vote of a prophet or seer was
counted as one
hundred. The
Egyptian priesthood pre-eminently exemplifies the idea that the incarnating
power made
use of
certain persons as sacred agents, male or female, for such a purpose. Hence the
higher order of
priests were
known as fathers in god. They were supposed to share in the divine nature, with
power to
communicate
the holy spirit to others who desired to partake of its benefits. The
insufflation of the Holy
Spirit with
the laying on of hands by modern religious impostors who do but parody the
ancient custom
without
knowledge is a relic of the sacred rite. The spiritualistic medium was
originally revered not
because he
was a priest or king, not on account of his earthly office, but because of his
being an
intercessor
with the super-human powers on behalf of mortals. Among the Zulu Kaffirs the
[Page 168]
mere
political chief has been known to steal the medicines and fetish charms, the
information and the
magical
vessel of the diviner and seer, on purpose to confer the sacred authority on
himself and then to
put the
spiritual ruler to death and take his place, which is similar to the method of
the Christians in
getting rid
of the pagans and stealing the appurtenances of their religion, and ruling
without their “open
vision”.
Among the Hottentots the “greatest and most respected old men of the clan” are
the seers and
prophesiers,
or the mediums of spirit intercourse. Their practical religion, says Dr. Hahn,
consists of a
“firm belief
in sorcery and the arts of the living medicine-man on the one hand, and on the
other belief in
and adoration
of the powers of the dead” (Hahn, Tsuni Goam, p. 24). That is the religion of
all ancient
spiritualism
distinguished from animism, and it is universal amongst the aboriginal races.
The spirits of
the dead are
accepted as operative realities. They are dreaded or adored according to the
mental status
of the
spiritualists, and the sorcerers, magi, the medicine-men, the witches, and
witch doctors are the
spirit
mediums employed as the accepted and established means of communication. Also
witches,
wizards,
sorcerers, shamans, and other abnormals who had the power of going out of the
body in this life
were feared
all the more after death by many tribes because they had demonstrated the facts
which
caused such
fear and terror; they had also been their exorcists and layers of the ghost
whose protective
influence was
now lost to the living. One way of denoting that such beings were heavenly or
of divine
descent was
signified by the custom of not allowing them to touch the ground with their
feet. This was not
an uncommon
kind of tabu applied to the divine personage as representative of the god. It
was a mode of
showing that
he was not of the earth earthy, and therefore he was heavenly, or something
betwixt the
earth and
heaven, like Horus, who was “the connecting link” in spirit (Rit., ch. 42). It
was because he was
reckoned of
divine descent that the king or other form of the ruler was not allowed to show
the ordinary
signs of age,
decay, and decrepitude, nor to die a natural death like any mere mortal, but
was put to
death in his
prime whilst robust and vigorous, and, as the saying is, “full of spirit”. The
Japanese Mikado
was carried
on men's shoulders because it was detrimental to his divinity for him to go
afoot. One
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Ancient
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account of
him says, “It was considered as a shameful degradation for him even to touch
the ground with
his foot”
(Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, vol. vii. p. 613). These were the divine
kings, like the Egyptian
Ank, the
everlasting ones, the born immortals among men. This mode of doing honour and
conferring
dignity has
its survivals in the custom of “chairing” or carrying the hero of the hour on
the shoulders of
those whose
desire is to elevate him beyond a footing of equality with themselves on common
ground;
also in the
practice of taking the horses out of the hero's carriage, when human beings
take the place
and position
of the beasts.
It may be
that there were other reasons than the one assigned upon a previous page for
the crucial
seclusion of
the girls at the period of puberty. It is probable that they were at the same
time initiated in the
mysteries of
mediumship. Seeing that it was a practice for pubescent lads to be initiated
into the
mysteries of
seership and made mediums [Page 169] of at the time they were made into men, it
is more
than probable
that the girls were also inducted into the mysteries of trance at the time of
their pubescent
transformation.
This would explain the extreme length of time during which the girls were often
secluded
from all eyes
save those of their female overseers. We hear of the boys being kept in their
isolation and
practised
upon until they did see. Why not the girls ? Clairvoyance was “the vision and
the faculty divine”,
the “beatific
vision” of all the early races. It was sought for and cultivated, prized and
protected, as the
most precious
of all human gifts, and the possessor was held to be divine. The girls who were
secluded
for the
serpent's visit would, as spirit mediums, become the oracles of the serpent
wisdom, and as
mediums they
would attain to primitive divinity. Moreover, when the typical serpent visits
the Basuto virgin
her limbs are
plastered over with white clay and her face is covered by a mask. This denotes
her
transformation
into a superior being of a spiritual order, which she would become as a spirit
medium. This
suggestion
finds support from a story that is told by the Kirgis of Siberia. The daughter
of a khan was
kept shut up
in a dark iron house so that no man might look upon her. She was attended by an
old
woman. When
the girl attained her maidenhood she said to the old woman, “Where do you go so
often?”
“My child”,
said the old woman, “there is a bright world. In that bright world your father
and mother live,
and all sorts
of people dwell; that is where I go”. Obviously this other world was entered in
the state of
trance as
well as at the time of death. The maiden said, “Good mother, I will tell
nobody, but show me
that bright
world”. So the old woman took the girl out of the dark iron house. But when the
girl saw the
bright world
she fainted and fell. And the eye of God fell on her and she conceived. This
was evidently in
the hypnotic
swoon that was induced by the aged woman, who thus initiated the maiden into
the
mysteries of
mediumship at the period of her puberty. (Radloff, W., cited in The Golden
Bough, vol. ii., p.
237.)
According to
Mansfield Parkyns, the greater number of the mediums or possessed persons among
the
Abyssinians
were women. It is the same today in modern spiritual phenomena. Also in ancient
Egypt the
woman was
held to be the superior medium as seer and diviner. Duff Macdonald (volume 1,
page. 61)
says of the
Yao people: “Their craving for clearer manifestions of the deity is satisfied
through the
prophetess.
She may be the principal wife of the chief. In some cases a woman without a
husband will be
set apart for
the god (or spirit). The god comes to her with his commands at night. She
delivers the
message in a
kind of ecstasy. She speaks (as her name implies) with the utterance of a
person raving
with
excitement. During the night of the communication her ravings are heard
resounding all over the
village.“It
was as a medium for spirit communication that the witch or wise woman attained
her preeminence
in the past
and her evil character in the present. Witchcraft is but the craft of wisdom;
witches
were the wise
in a primitive sense and in ways considered to be magical for assignable
reasons But
witchcraft
and wizardry, magic and “miracle”, would be meaningless apart from primitive
spiritualism. The
witch as
abnormal seer and revealer was the most ancient form of the mother's wisdom.
The [Page 170]
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
spirit medium
was the nearest approach to a human divinity. He or she was the born immortal
who
demonstrated
the existence in this life of a soul or spirit beyond or outside of the body
for a life hereafter.
And as he or
she was the demonstrator of that soul, they were the first to be accredited
with the
possession of
such a soul, and this possession constituted him or her as born immortal. The
Tongans
hold that it
is not everyone who possesses a spiritual part capable of living a separate
existence in
Bolutu, the
Tongan Amenta. Only the Egi or chiefs are credited with the possession of
enduring souls in
the life on
earth. The status of these souls of the nobles is well shown when it is said
they cannot return
to earth in
the old totemic guise of lizards, water-snakes, or porpoises. Not these, but
the ghost, or
double, is
the one witness for the ever-living souls. (Mariner, Tonga Islands, vol. ii.,
pp. 99-105.) The
Fijians,
amongst others, declare that only the select few have souls which are
inherently immortal. Thus,
when the ordinary
Egyptian entered Amenta he, like Paul, was by no means certain of his enduring
soul.
This had to
be attained, and his pilgrimage and progress to that end are portrayed in the
drama of the
Ritual, as
will be hereafter shown. It is quite common for the old dark races to be
despised and badly
treated by
the more modern as the people who have no souls. They are not looked upon as
human
beings, but
are denounced as wild beasts, reptiles, monkeys, dog-men, bush-men, men with
tails, and it
is here
explained how it was they had no souls. They were the preliminary people, who
only had totemic
souls which
were born of the elements and only represented the elemental or pre-human soul.
An
arresting
instance is mentioned by Howitt in which a group of the Australian aborigines
ceased to use
their own
totemic name and called their children after a celebrated seer or medium. In
doing this they
were
affiliating the fatherless ones to a higher type than that of the old totemic
elemental soul. This was
the soul
whose origin was held to be divine, as demonstrated by the supranormal
faculties of the Birraark
or spirit
medium. The Incas of Peru were a superior race, who had souls, whereas the
aborigines were
looked down
upon as the people without souls. The Incas, on account of this superior soul,
were also
born
immortals or the ever-Iiving ones, whose name of the Inca agrees with that of
the Egyptian Ank, the
king, or the
Ankh, as the ever-Iiving. Such persons did not originate in kings and emperors
or as earthly
rulers merely
mortal. Under whatsoever personal title or type, the divine or semi-divine
character was
primarily
derived from intercourse with spirits or the gods, and the consequent extension
of human
faculty in
the abnormal phase of mediumship. The people of East Central Africa, says
Santos ( 1586), “
regard their
king as the favourite of the souls of the dead, and think that he learns from
them all that
passes in his
dominions. This identifies the king in this case with the spiritual medium, and
points to the
origin of the
priest-king in the same character. The Fitaure of the Senegambian Sereres, who
is the chief
and priest in
one, is a spirit medium, with power over the souls of the living and the
spirits of the dead.
“Every West
African tribe”, says Miss Kingsley, “has a secret society - two, in fact, one
for men, one for
women. Every
free man has to pass through the secret society of his tribe. If during [Page
171] this
education the
elders of the society discover that a boy is what is called in Calabar an
ebumtup (a
medium), a
person who can see spirits, they advise that he should be brought up to the
medical
profession”.
(Kingsley, W.A. S. p. 214.) In Kimbunda the Sova or chief is the religious
centre of his tribe.
He is their
wise man, their seer, their supreme man of abnormal powers. The religion,
according to
Magyar,
consists in making sacrifices to the ghosts of their ancestors, the richest
offerings being made to
the Sova. The
faculty of seeing and foreseeing formed the basis of their power over the
common people.
The mchisango
or witch-doctor of the Yao and other Central African tribes, who is called by
Stanley the
“gourd-and-pebble
man”, is the person sought by the people in all their profoundest perplexities.
The
man of mental
medicine still keeps his place and holds his own against the doctors who deal
in physics
(Africana,
vol. i., p. 43). He invokes his spirits by means of a rattle made of a dried
gourd with small
pebbles
inside it. “Some of these diviners”, says the Rev. Duff Macdonald, “are the
most intelligent men
in the
country”. The same account is given by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen of the Arunta
spirit mediums
and
medicine-men in Central Australia.
Page 134
Ancient
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The divine
man was the diviner, the seer, the sorcerer, the spirit medium with all the
early races. In the
Marquesan and
the South Sea Islands the divine man was supreme, whether he was a priest, a king,
or
only a person
of inferior birth and station. If he had the supernormal faculty, the mana, he
was the human
representative
of divinity on that account. “Among the Solomon Islanders”, says Mr. Codrington
(J. Anth.
Inst., x.,
3), “there is nothing to prevent any man becoming a chief, if he can show that
he is in
possession of
the mana - that is, the abnormal, mediumistic, or supernormal power”. The
Egyptian
magical power
will explain the mana of the Melanesians, described by Dr. Codrington as a
power derived
from all the
powers of nature that were recognized. They are not in the mental position of
thinking they
can derive
their mana directly from a god that is postulated as the one spiritual source
of power. The
powers
recognized in nature are various, and were recognized because they were
superhuman though
not
supernatural. Hence their influence was solicitously sought to augment the
human. The unseen
powers were
operant in nature from the first as elemental forces which man would like to
wield if he only
knew the way
to gain alliance with them and to share the power. “The mana”, says Dr.
Codrington, “can
exist in
almost anything. Disembodied souls or supernatural beings have it and can
impart it, and it
belongs
essentially to personal beings who originate it, though it may act through the
medium of water, or
a stone or a
bone” (2. 119). That is, it can be gathered from the powers that were
pre-personal and
elemental, as
well as from the ancestral spirits who are personal. The Melanesian gathering
his mana
may be seen
in the Manes of the Egyptian Ritual in the act of collecting his magical power.
Here the
mana is
magical, and it is described as the great magic Ur-heka which is formulated for
use as the word
of power that
can be directed at will by the Manes in possession of it. The soul of the
deceased has great
need of this
superhuman power in his passage through Amenta. It is by means of this he opens
the doors
that are
closed against him, makes [Page 172] “his transformations, and conquers the
direst of all
difficulties.
He collects his magical charm or word of power from every place and thing in
which it exists
and from
which it rays out (ch. 24. 2, 5). “Behold”, he exclaims, “I bring my magical
charms which I have
collected
from every quarter”, more persistently than the hounds of chase and more
swiftly than the light.
In this way
he is drawing influence from the nature powers as well as from the ancestral
spirits.
At a later
stage of the present inquiry it will be shown how the Egyptian eschatology was
formulated in
the mould of
the mythology. The typical seven souls in the one are repeated as a type in the
other. The
seven
elemental powers were continued as the seven souls of Ra, and are described as
“the ancestors
of Ra”. Thus,
when the personality of the deceased is reconstituted in Amenta for the after
life, it is on the
foundation of
these seven external souls, the highest of which is represented by the “Ka”.
The seventh in
the series of
souls was personified in the human Horus, and this is the first soul to rise
again and to be
repeated
after death as Horus in spirit. When it is said of the Egyptian king that
spirit constitutes his
personality,
he is Horus in spirit, the representative of Ra - the ka, or living likeness of
the god on earth.
The ka-image,
then, is the type of this, the enduring personality. With the Pelew Islanders
the divine man
is a spirit
medium called a korong - that is, if the power be permanent; in other words, if
he is naturally a
medium, he is
a korong. But they distinguish betwixt the born korong and a person who may be
temporarily
possessed. The office of korong is not hereditary, and when the korong dies the
manifestation
of the spirit or the divine afflatus in another medium is eagerly awaited. This
is looked upon
here, as
elsewhere, as a new incarnation of the god, which shows that the reincarnation
was one of the
power and not
the personality of the korong. It was the power of seership, not the individual
soul of the
seer, that
returned in the new avatar; hence the same power was not dependent on the
return of the
same person.
The power may be manifested by some one of very lowly origin, but he is
forthwith exalted
to the
highest place as a divine being. Those who are ignorant of the facts of
abnormal experience are
entirely “out
of it”, both as students and teachers of anthropology. The most important of
all data
concerning
the origins of religion have to be omitted from their interpretation of the
past of man, or, what
is far worse,
obfuscated with false or baseless explanations.
Page 135
Ancient
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The wizards
who are reverenced by the Australian Kurnai are those who can “go up aloft” and
bring back
information
from the spirits of the departed commonly known in many lands as “the ancestral
spirits”.
The spiritual
medium ruled as a seer, a sorcerer, a diviner, a healer, who foresaw and
uttered oracles,
revealed
superior knowledge by supernal power, and was looked up to as a protector, a
guardian spirit,
because he
was held to be in league with the spirit world; very divinity in a human form.
The divine kings,
the spiritual
emperors, the gods in human guise, the “supernatural” beings, the intercessors
for common
people,
whether male or female, were incalculably earlier than the physical force hero,
the political ruler,
or the
ritualistic [Page 173] priest. Hence it is amongst the most undeveloped races,
like the African and
Melanesian,
that these preserve their early status still. We have a survival of this status
of the spirit
medium in a
modified form when the priest is called in as exorcist of spirits because he
represents the
wise man or
wizard, in whom Latinity has taken the place of the ancient wisdom. Thus when
the ghost of
Hamlet's
father appears, Marcellus says, “Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio!”
Some of the most
degraded
aborigines among the dark races of India still keep the position of superior
people in relation to
the
neighbouring tribes on account of their being the masters or magical arts and
the mediums of spirit
intercourse.
The Burghers of the Neilgherry Hills have the custom of getting one of the
neighbouring tribe
of Curumbars
to sow the first handful of seed and to reap the first sheaf of corn, evidently
for mystical
reasons, as
the Curumbars are reputed to be great sorcerers, and therefore the influence
sought is
spiritualistic
which they are accredited with possessing. From the first sheaf thus reaped
cakes are made
to be offered
as an oblation of first-fruits and eaten together with the flesh of a
sacrificial animal in a
sacramental
meal. (Harkness, Description of a Singular Aboriginal Race inhabiting the
Summit of the
Neilgherry
Hills, p. 56.) Spirit mediums being considered divine beings, or immortals in a
mortal guise,
like the
Manushya Devah, have been looked to as the purveyors of a diviner essence than
the protozoa
of the
ordinary mortal male for the procreation of children. “Roman ladies”, says
Réclus, “flung
themselves
into the arms of the thaumaturgists, whom they took for quasi-divine beings
able to bestow
intenser
pleasure and superior progeny”. The medium was looked upon as a being loftily
transcendent, a
channel of
communication for the gods and the glorified in their intercourse with mortals.
The Eskimos
are not only
willing but anxious that their Angekoks or spirit mediums should have sexual
intercourse with
their wives,
so that they may secure children superior to those of their own personal
begetting. The
Angekok is
looked upon as a medium for the descent of the holy spirit, and as such he is
chosen to
initiate
young girls into the mystery of marriage. Those men who afterwards take the
young women for
wives
consider this connection with the divine man a preparatory purification for
motherhood. With other
races it was
looked upon as a religious rite for the bride to cohabit with the holy man or
medium on the
night before
her marriage. There are instances, as on the Malabar coast, in which the
bridegroom fees
the holy man
to lie with his wife the first night after marriage. With the Cambodians, the
right to spend the
first night
with the bride was the prerogative of the priest. The Burmese great families
have each their
spiritual
director, to whom they send their daughter before her wedding night, and,
according to the
official
phrase, “pay him the homage of the flower of virginity”. A Brahman priest
complained to
Weitbrecht
the missionary that he was the spiritual purifier in this sense to no fewer
than ten different
women
(Journal des Missions Evangélistiques, 1852), not one of whom was his own wife.
According to
Wilken, the
Arabs act in the same way in order that the offspring may be ennobled. This
practice - this
desire for
being ennobled-may have led to its being clarified as a right, the [Page 174]
jus prima noctis, or
right of the
feudal lord to sleep the first night with his vassal's new-made bride. The primitive
religious
feeling would
give the profoundest sanction to the phallic rite. Descending from the chief as
a medium to
the man whose
supremacy was acknowledged on account of his courage, we find it was a custom
with
the Spartans
for a husband to select a hero or brave man to lie with his wife to beget
heroic offspring.
The offices
of king, priest, or clergy-man remain, but the vision and the faculty divine
have fled. The king
survives
without the seal of sovereignty, the priest without his spiritual influence,
divines without divinity.
Page 136
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
The religious
doctors still practise, but they are no longer of the healing faculty. The
curates cannot cure.
False
diplomas take the place of the genuine warrant. The once living link considered
to be the ever-
living one is
now the missing link betwixt two worlds. Indeed, this was pre-pensely broken by
the
Christians,
and that spiritualism was cast out as devilish which all gnostics held to be
divine. Blindness
through
believing a lie has taken the place of the ”open vision” which was sought of
old. The priests
remain as
mediums, without the mediumistic faculty; but they still take the tithe and
receive payment for
performing
the magical rites as qualified intermediaries betwixt the gods and men or
women. Nor is the
belief in
their spiritual potency as fathers in God entirely extinct.
The theory
and practice of magic were fundamentally based on spiritualism. The greatest
magician or
sorcerer,
witch or wizard, was the spirit medium. The magical appeal made in mimetic
Sign-language
was addressed
to superhuman powers as the operative force. The spirits might be elemental or
ancestral,
but without the one or the other there was no such thing as magic or
sovereignty. In one of its
most
primitive aspects magic was a mode of soliciting and propitiating the
superhuman elemental powers
or animistic
spirits, the want, the wish, the intention, or command being acted and chiefly
expressed in
Sign-language.
In another phase it was the application of secret knowledge for the production
of
abnormal
phenomena for the purpose of consulting the ancestral spirits. The hypnotic
power of the
serpent over
its victims was recognized as magical. This is shown in the Ritual when the
speaker says to
the serpent
that “goeth on his belly” ( ch. 149), “I am the man who puts a veil ( of
darkness) on thy head”.
“I am the
great magician”. “Thine eyes have been given to me, and through them I am
glorified”. He has
wrested the
magical power called its strength from the serpent by taking possession of its
eyes, and by
this means he
is the great magician.
Black magic
has its secrets only to be muttered in the dark. In the mysteries of the Obeah
and Voudou
cults it was
held that the starveling ghosts could be evoked by offerings of blood, and that
they were able
to
materialize the more readily and become visible in the fumes of this physical
element of life. Other
mysteries of
primitive spiritualism might be cited. For example, Miss Kingsley, who was so
profoundly
impressed on
the subject of African “fetishism”, mentions a class of women who had committed
adultery
with spirits,
and who were recognized as human outcasts by the natives of West Africa, and
consequently
accursed ( West African Studies, page 148). [Page 175] Sexual commerce betwixt
human
sensitives
and spirits is known alike to the aboriginal races and to modern mediums.
Telepathic
communication
of mind with mind directed by the power of will even without words was a mode
of magic
practised by
the primitive spiritualists. All that is nowadays effected under the names of
hypnotism,
mesmerism, or
human magnetism was known of old as magic. In Egyptian the word Heka, for
magic,
means to
charm, enchant, or ensnare; it also signifies thought and rule - ergo, thought
as ruling power
was a mode of
magic; and the God Taht, the ruling power of thought, the thinker personified,
was the
divine
magician, mainly as the transformer in the moon. One mode of exercising magical
power practised
by Australian
medicine-men, though not limited to them, is to point at the person who is
being operated
on with a
stick or bone. This is done to render the person unconscious. Therefore the
“pointing-stick” thus
used is a
kind of magic wand, equivalent to the disk of the modern mesmerist intended to
fix attention
and induce
the condition of coma. Pointing with the stick was naturally preceded by
pointing with the
fingers, as
in modern hypnotism. The “magnetic fluid” of the modern mesmerist was known to
the African
mystery-men
from time immemorial. This again corresponds to the magical fluid of the
Egyptians called
the “Sa”,
which was imparted from one body to another by the laying on of hands or making
passes as in
hypnotizing.
The Sa was a sort of ichor that circulated in the veins of the gods and the
glorified. This they
could
communicate to mortals, and thus give health, vigour, and new life. Maspero
says the gods
themselves
were not equally charged with the Sa. Some had more, some less, their energy
being in
Page 137
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
proportion to
the quantity. Those who possessed most gave willingly of their superfluity to
those who
lacked, and
all could readily transmit the virtue of it to mankind. This transfusion was
most easily
accomplished
in the temples.“The king or any ordinary man who wished to be impregnated
presented
himself
before the statue of the god, and squatted at its feet with his back to the
statue. The statue then
placed its
right hand on the nape of his neck, and by making passes caused the fluid to
flow from it and
to accumulate
in him as in a receiver”. By transmitting their Sa of life to mortals the gods
continually
needed a
fresh supply, and there was a lake of life in the northern heaven, called the
Lake of Sa, “whither
they went to
draw the magical ichor and recruit their energies, when exhausted, at this
celestial fount of
healing.
(Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, Eng. tr., p. 110.) Khunsu Nefer-hetep, the
great god, giver of
oracles in
Thebes, was the caster-out of demons, the driver-away of obsessing spirits; and
in the story of
“The
Possessed Princess” his statue is sent for by the Chief of Bakhten to exorcise
an evil spirit that has
taken
possession of his daughter. This is effected by the god imparting the Sa, from
the magical power of
which the
evil demon flees. (Records, vol. iv., p. 55.)
Magic has
been described as a system of superstition that preceded religion. But magical
ceremonies
and
incantations are religious,inasmuch as they are addressed to superhuman powers.
Magical
ceremonies
were religious rites. If religion signifies a propitiation or conciliation of
powers superior to
man, it is
not necessarily opposed to magic, which supplied the most ready means of
influencing such
[Page 176]
powers that were postulated as extant. Various modes of so-called “sympathetic
magic” have
been
practised in making a primitive appeal to the powers. The Tshi-speaking people
have a magical
ceremony, the
name of which denotes an invocation to the gods for pity and protection. In
time of war the
wives of the
men who are with the army dance publicly stark naked through the town, howling,
shrieking,
gesticulating,
and brandishing knives and swords like warriors gone insane. And from head to
foot their
bodies are
painted of a dead-white colour. (Ellis, A. B., The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p.
226.) Dancing in a
state of
nudity was a mode in which the women showed the natural magic of the sex. Being
all in white,
they danced
as spirits in the presence of the powers, whether sympathetic or not, whilst
soliciting aid and
protection
for their men engaged in battle. In magic there was also a sense of binding as
the root idea of
religion far
beyond the meaning of the word re-ligio in Latin. The bond or tie had been
magical before it
was moral, as
we find it in the “bonds of gesa” and other modes of binding by means of
magical spells.
One mode of
compelling spirits was by the making of a tie, and or tying knots as a mode of
acting the
desire or of
exhibiting controlling power. The most primitive and prevalent type of the
African gree-gree is
a magical
tie. The magic of this proceeding was on the same plane as the utterance of the
“words that
compel”, only
the intent was visibly enacted in the language of signs, howsoever accompanied
in the
language of
sounds. The character of the fetish-man was continued by the Christian priest.
According to
the promise
made to Peter in the Gospels, it is said, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound
in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. xvi.
19). And thus
in the latest
official religion the power to bind, tie up, and make fast was reconferred on
Rome, where
theological
beliefs became identical with spiritual and intellectual bondage.
This attitude
of controlling, commanding, and binding of the super-human powers by means of
magic
also points
to the lowly origin or these nature powers which became more and more inferior
and of less
and less
account in later times when they were superseded by other “spirits” or gods,
and the practices
of magic were
less and less appropriate to a deepening sense of the divine”.
The earliest
human soul which followed those that were derived from the external elements
had not
attained the
power of reproduction for an after-life, on which account the likeness of the
Elder Horus in
Page 138
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the mythos is
an impubescent child. But when he makes his transformation in death Horus has
acquired
the
reproducing power, as shown by his figure of the virile male, portrayed in the
person of Amsu, who
arises from
the tomb in ichthyphallic form. In the eschatology the reproducing power is
spiritual. It is the
power of
resurrection and of reappearing as a spirit - that is, the divine double of the
human soul, which
was tabulated
as the eighth in degree. The soul that could reappear victoriously beyond the
grave was a
soul that
could reproduce itself for “times infinite”, or for eternity. When Horus rose
again from the dead
as the divine
double of the human Horus he exclaims, “I am he who cometh forth and
proceedeth. I am
the
everlasting one. I am Horus who [Page 177] steppeth onwards through eternity.
(Rit., ch. 42.) “I am the
link”. This
is he who had passed and united a soul that was elemental with the spirit that
was held to be
divine. This
is the soul beyond the human, which has power to reproduce itself in spirit and
prove it by
the
reappearance of the Ka or double of the dead. The Kamite Ka is portrayed in the
Egyptian drawings
as a
spiritual likeness of the body, to identify it with the soul of which it is the
so-called double - the soul,
that is,
which has the power to duplicate itself in escaping from the clutch of death,
and to reappear in
rarer form
than that of the mortal, as the soul or spirit outside the body to be seen in
apparition or by the
vision of the
seers. The ardent wish of the deceased in Amenta to attain the power of
appearing once
more on the
earth is expressed again and again in the Ritual as the desire to become a soul
or spirit that
has the power
to reproduce itself in apparition, or as the double of the former self, which
was imaged in
the Ka ; the
desire for continual duration after death, or in other words for everlasting
life, also with the
power to
reappear upon the earth among the living.
“My duration”
the speaker calls his Ka ( ch. 105). All life through it was an image of the
higher spiritual
self, divine
in origin and duration. The speaker continues, “ May I come to thee (the Ka)
and be glorified
and
ensouled?” It was a soul that could be drawn upon and lived on in this life as
a sort of food of heaven
or sustenance
for a future life. The Ka was propitiated or worshipped - that is, saluted with
oblations - as
a divine ideal.
It was the Ka of the god that was “propitiated according to his pleasure”.
(Rit., ch. 133.) It
was the Ka of
the Pharaoh that was worshipped as the image of Ra. So when the Manes
propitiates the
Ka-image of
himself it is not an offering to his mortal self, but to that higher spiritual
self which was now
held to be an
emanation of the divine nature, and which had the power of reappearing and
demonstrating
continuity
after death. The Kamite equivalent for eternal life is the permanent personality
which was
imaged by or
in the Ka. With the Tshi-speaking tribes the Ka is called the Kra, which name
answers to
the Kla of
the Karens. The Kra, like the Ka, is looked upon as the genius or guardian
spirit who dwells in
a man, but
whose connection with him terminates when the Ka transforms or merges into the
Sisa or
enduring
spirit. According to Ellis, “ when a man dies his Kra becomes a Sisa, and the
Sisa can be born
again to
become a Kra in a new body” ( Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 149.) The Ka was common
to Inner
Africa as a
statue or portrait of the spiritual man. Whilst the mummy of a king of Congo
was being made,
an image of
the deceased was set up in the palace to represent him, and was daily presented
with food
and drink.
This was his living likeness, his spiritual double, which the Egyptians called
the Ka. And this,
not the dead
corpse, was propitiated with the offerings. The object of worship or
propitiation was the Ka,
not the
mummy. The Ka imaged the ghost or double itself, and not a spirit supposed to
be residential in
the mummy.
The Esquimaux, the Lapps, and other northern races also preserved the Egyptian
Ka,
especially in
relation to the Shaman or Angekok, who has his Ka or double like the Egyptian
priest. With
this he unites
himself in soul when about to divine and make his revelations in the state of
trance.[Page
178] Uniting
with the Ka or genius is a mode of describing his entrance into the spirit or
the entrance of
the inspiring
spirit into him. The practice of the Mexicans and others, who made an image of
the dead
and placed it
on the altar and offered oblations to it, shows that their effigy also
represented the Ka or
spiritual
likeness. Amongst many races an image of the deceased person was set up to
receive the
oblations of
food and drink. All primitive spiritualists held that in death the spirit rose
again and lived on
still, and
for this reason the Ka statue was erected in the funerary chamber as it had
been in the forest
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The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
hut. A black
shadow of the body cast upon the ground could not demonstrate the existence of
an eternal
soul; neither
could the hawk or serpent or any other symbol of force. But the Ka is the
double of the
dead. It is a
figure of the ghost. The Ka, then, was an image of the only soul of all the
series that ever
could be seen
outside the human body. This was wholly distinct from the soul of life in a
tree, a plant, a
bird, a
beast, or a reptile, because it was an apparition of the human soul made
visible in the human
form. The
Battas of Sumatra have the seven souls like the Egyptians. One of these is
outside the body,
but when it
dies, however far away it may be from the man, he also dies, his life being
bound up with it.
But the
origin and significance of the Ka, together with the doctrine of its
propitiation, are explicitly stated
in the
rubrical directions to ch. 144 of the Ritual. At this stage of his spiritual
progress the deceased has
reached the
point where the mummy Osiris has transformed into the risen Horus, the divine
one who is
the eighth at
the head of the seven great spirits. Thus, in the mysteries of Amenta, human
Horus dies to
rise again as
lord of the resurrection and to manifest as double of the dead. He is divinized
in the
character of
the ghost, and as such he becomes the spirit medium for his father, the holy
spirit; his
“Witness for
Eternity”, who is called the only-begotten and anointed son. In this character
the deceased is
Horus in
spirit, ready for the boat of Ra. An effigy of the boat was to be made for the
deceased. Amongst
the other
instructions given it is said that “a figure of the deceased is to be made” in
presence of the
“gods”. This
figure is the Ka. Hence the oblations of flesh and blood, bread and beer,
unguents and
incense, are
to be offered; and it is stated that this is to be done to make the spirit of
the deceased to
live. It is
also promised that the ceremony, if faithfully performed, will give the Osiris
strength among the
gods and
cause his strides to increase in Amenta, earth, and heaven. Thus the Ka image
to which the
offerings
were made was representative of the deceased who lived on in the spirit,
whether groping in the
nether world,
or walking the earth as the ghost, or voyaging the celestial water in the boat
of Ra on his
way to the
heaven of eternity. Naturally enough, the sustenance of life was offered to
feed the life of
those who
were held to be the living, not the dead. Amongst the other things it is
commanded that four
measures of
blood shall be offered to the spirit or Ka image of the deceased. The doctrine
is identical
with that of
the other races who gashed and gored their bodies to feed the spirits of the departed
with
their blood,
because the blood was the life, and because it was the life they desiderated
for their dead. In
the same
rubrical directions it is ordered that incense shall be burned in presence of
the Ka image as
[Page 179] an
offering to the spirit of Osiris-Nu, and in Sign-language incense represents
the breath of life;
in that way
another element of life besides blood was offered the deceased “to make that
spirit live”. And
the offerings
are to be presented to the Ka image of the deceased. Thus the Egyptian wisdom
witnesses
and avouches
that the primitive practices of offering food and drink to the dead, and more
especially the
soul of life
in blood, were based upon the postulate that the so-called dead were living
still in spirit form.
And,
obviously enough, the sustenance of life was offered to feed the life of those
who were held to be
living
because seen to be existing in the likeness that was represented by the human
figure of the spirit-
Ka.
It is one of
the various delusions recrudescent in our day that theology began with the
self-revelation to
the world of
a one and only god. No delusion or mania could be a grosser birth of modern
ignorance,
more
especially as the “only one” of the oldest known beginning was female and not
male; the mother,
not the
father - the goddess, not the god.
The Egyptians
gave a primary and permanent expression to the dumb thought of the
non-speaking, sign-
making races
that preceded them in the old African home. But they did not begin by
personifying any
vague
infinite with a definite face and form, nor by worshipping an abstraction which
is but the shadow of
a shade, and
not the image of any substance known. In the Book of the Dead (ch. 144) the
adorations
are addressed
to the Great Mother Sekhet-Bast as the supreme being, she who was uncreated by
the
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gods and who
was worshipped as the “Only One” ; she who existed with no one before her, the
only one
mightier than
all the gods, who were born of her, the Great Mother, the AII-Mother when she
was the
“Only One”.
By a cunning contrivance this Great Mother is shown to be the only one who
could bring
forth both
sexes. As Apt, and again as Neith, the genetrix or creatress is portrayed as
female in nature,
but also
having the virile member of the male. This was the only one who could bring
forth both sexes.
She was
figured as male in front and female in the hinder part (Birch, Egyptian
Gallery). Here we may
refer to the
Arunta traditions of the Alcheringa ancestors relating to the beings who were
half women and
half men when
they first started on their journey, but before they had proceeded very far
their organs
were modified
and they became as other women are (N.T., p. 442).
The mother
was indeed the Only One in the beginning, however various her manifestations in
nature.
She was the
birthplace and abode. She was the Earth-mother as the bringer forth, the giver
of food and
drink who was
invoked as the provider of plenty. As the Great Mother she was depicted by a
pregnant
hippopotamus.
As a crocodile she brought the water of the inundation. As Apt the water-cow,
Hathor the
milch-cow, or
Rerit the sow she was the suckler. As Rannut she was the serpent of renewal in
the fruits of
earth. As the
Mother of Life in vegetation, she was Apt in the dom-palm, Uati in the papyrus,
Hathor in the
sycamore-fig,
Isis in the persea-tree. In one character, as the Mother of Corn, she is called
the Sekhet or
field, a
title of Isis ; all of which preceded her being imaged in the human likeness,
because she was the
mother [Page
180] divinized. This is the “only one” who is said to have been extant from the
time when as
yet there had
been no birth (Brugsch,. Theosaurus In. Eg., p. 637). The mother gave birth to
the child as
Horus, who
came by water in the fish, the shoot of the papyrus, the branch of the tree,
and other forms of
food and
drink that were most sorely needed. Hence the child as bringer was a saviour to
the land of
Egypt.
In the
beginning of the Egyptian theology, then, the Word was not the god, but the
goddess. The
fecundity,
the power, the glory, and the wisdom of the primordial bringer forth were
divinized in the Great
Mother, who
was worshipped at Ombos as the “Living Word”. In one of her many forms she is
the
lioness-headed
Sekhet-Bast, who was the object of adoration in Inner Africa as “the Only One”.
Following
the mythical
mother, the son became her word or logos, and in Sebek-Horus the Word was god.
This was
in the
mythology that preceded the eschatology. The earliest mode of worship
recognizable was in
propitiation
of the superhuman power. This power of necessity was elemental, a power that
was
objectified
by means of the living type; and again of necessity the object of propitiation,
invocation, and
solicitation
was the power itself, and not the types by which it was imaged in the language
of signs.
But if we use
the word worship at all, then serpent worship is the propitiation of the power
that was
represented
by the serpent as a proxy for the superhuman force. The power might be that of
renewal in
the fruits of
earth which was divinized in the serpent goddess Rannut or in the serpent of
the inundation.
“Tree
worship” was the propitiation of a power in nature that was represented by the
tree and by the
vegetation
that was given for food. Although the votive offerings were hung upon its
branches, the tree
itself was
not the object of the offering, but the power personified in Hathor or Nut as
giver in the tree.
Waitz tells
the story of a Negro who was making an offering of food to a tree, when a
bystander remarked
that a “tree
did not eat food”. The negro replied: “Oh, the tree is not fetish; the fetish
is a spirit and
invisible,
but he has descended into this tree. Certainly he cannot devour our bodily
food, but he enjoys
its spiritual
part, and leaves behind the bodily part which we see”. This, then, was not tree
worship as
commonly
assumed; the tree was not the object of religious regard. There was a spirit or
power beyond
that
manifested in the tree. In like manner, earth worship was the propitiation of
the power in nature that
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was
worshipped as the Great Mother, the bringer forth and nurse of life, the “only
one” who was the
producer of
plenty. The most primitive man knew what he wanted. The objects of perpetual
desire and
longing were
food and fecundity.
It has been
shown that the Egyptian gods were primarily the elemental powers, and how the
ancestral
spirits
became the glorified elect in the Egyptian eschatology. It is now possible to
trace the one god of
the Osirian
religion as the final outcome from the original rootage, the culmination and
consummate
flower of
all.
Before the
human father could be personalized as the progenitor it would seem that
causation was
represented
by the embryo in utero, the child, whom the Egyptians called the fecundator of
the [Page 181]
mother. The
eternal child is thus addressed in one of the solar litanies: “ 0, thou
beautiful being, who
renewest
within thyself in season as the disk within thy mother Hathor”; as “the Heir of
Eternity, self-
begotten and
self-born”. According to the Ritual, life was apprehended as a mode of motion
or renewal
coming of
itself, in the water welling from the earth, the vegetation springing from the
water, or, more
mystically
manifested, in the blood of the pubescent virgin. The type of this self-motion
is the eternal,
ever-coming
child. Hence Child-Horus claims to be (( the primary power of motion” (Rit.,
ch. 63A). This
was as the
child of her who came from herself, the seventh soul that was imaged as Horus,
the mortal
who was
incarnated in the virgin blood. There is another curious thing worth noting.
The seven elemental
powers or
animistic souls were all male, and male only, which may account for the
tradition that women
have no
souls, unless they derive them from the male; whereas the second Horus, Horus
in spirit,
represented a
soul of both sexes, as the typical witness for the parent in heaven. With the
Egyptians (of
the Ritual)
real existence and enduring personality were spiritual, and these were imaged
by the Ka type
of an
existence and personality which could only be attained in spirit. The Ka image
represented an
enduring or
eternal soul as a divine ideal that was already realized, even in this life, by
the born
immortals who
were mediums of the spirit. But for others it was a type of that which had to
be attained by
individual
effort. On entering Amenta the soul of the deceased was not necessarily
immortal. He had to
be born again
as a spirit in the likeness of Horus divinized. Thus the man of seven souls was
said to be
attended or
accompanied all life through by the Ka likeness of an immortal spirit, which
was his genius,
guardian,
guide, or protector, to be realized in death, when he rose again and manifested
as the Ka or
eidolon of
the dead - that is, as the ghost, the eighth man, the man from heaven, the
Christ or risen
Horus of the
gnosis.
The process
of compounding the many gods in one is made apparent when Osiris says, “I am
one, and
the powers of
all the gods are my powers” (Rit., ch. 7). In the course of unifying the nature
powers in one,
the mother
goddess with the father god was blended first in Ptah, the biune being, as a
type of dual
source such
as was illustrated by the customs of couvade and subincision, in which the
figure of the
female was
assumed by the man with a vulva or the divinity as parturient male. the type
that was
repeated in
both Atum and Osiris, as well as in Brahma and Jehovah. In the inscription of
Shabaka from
Memphis,
Ptah, in one of his divine forms, is called “the mother giving birth to Atum
and the associate
gods” (line
14).
The highest
of the elemental powers was divinized as solar in the astronomical mythology.
This was the
Elder Horus,
who had been the soul of vegetation in the shoot of the papyrus plant as
product of the
inundation.
As the young sun god he was now the calf or child upon the Western Mount and
leader of the
seven
glorious Khuti (Rit., ch. 17). In his second advent, at his resurrection from
Amenta, he became the
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Ancient
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Horus in
spirit, Horus of the resurrection, he who arose hawk-headed on the Eastern
Mount. This was
Atum-Horus
[Page 182] he in whom the spirit or ghost was blended with the elemental power
in Atum-Ra,
who had
attained the status of the holy spirit in the Egyptian eschatology. The eighth
was now the highest
of the series
as the god who demonstrated the power of resurrection by his rising from the
dead, first as
the sun, next
as the soul which was represented by the Ka as the image of the reappearing
other self.
The gods were
thus “essentialized in the one” (as Thomas Taylor phrased it): the seven in
Horus the
mortal, the
eight in Horus of the resurrection, the nine in Ptah, or, as Damascius
observed, “speaking
Chaldaically”,
“ in the paternal peculiarity” (lamblichus on the Mysteries, by Thomas Taylor,
note, p. 74,
ed. 1895).
This god was impersonated as the one in Atum-Ra, the “Holy Spirit”. There was
no god
personified
as the father in spirit until the All-One was uniquely imaged in Atum-Ra as the
first wearer of
the Atef
crown, and in him the god in spirit was based upon the ghost instead of the
earlier elemental
soul. Not
only was the “paternal peculiarity” represented in Atum as a begetter, he was
the begetter of
souls, or
rather of soul and spirit; the one being personalized in his son Hu, the other
in his son Sa (or
Ka). The soul
of man the mortal had been derived from the seven elemental powers, including
the
mother blood
(Rit., ch. 85). This was divinized in Horus, who was Atum as the child (Tum)
the first Adam
in the Hebrew
creation. The soul of man the immortal was now derived from Atum-Ra, the father
in spirit,
and imaged in
Nefer-Atum, the Hebrew second Adam. This was Horus of the resurrection as an
eighth
soul, the
outcome of the seven. The soul with power to reproduce itself in death was now
an image of
eternal life
as Horus who became the resurrection and the life to men.
The one god
in spirit and in truth, personified in Atum-Ra, was worshipped at Annu as Huhi
the eternal,
also as the
Ankhu or ever-living one in the character and with the title of the Holy
Spirit. He is described
as the
divinized ghost. Hence it is said that “it is Atum who nourishes the doubles”
of the dead, he who is
first of the
divine ennead, “perfect ghost among the ghosts” (Hymn to Osiris, lines 3 and
4.) There was no
father god or
divinized begetter among the seven primordial powers. They were a company of
brothers.
Ptah was the
first type of a father individualized as the father who transforms into his own
son, and also
as a father
and mother in one person. Ra, as the name implies, is the creator god, the god
in spirit
founded on
the ghost. He is god of the ancestral spirits, the first to attain that
spiritual basis for the next
life which
the Ka or double in this life vouched for after death. Hence Atum-Ra was
deified as “the perfect
ghost among
the ghosts”, or the god in spirit at the head of the nine. The elemental souls
were blended
with the
human in the deity Ptah, and in Atum-Ra, his successor, the ancestral spirit
was typified and
divinized as
a god in perfect human form, who became the typical father of the human race
and of
immortal
souls proceeding from him as their creator, who is now to be distinguished from
all previous
gods which
had reproduced by transformation and by reincorporation or incarnation of the
elemental
powers.
Thus the gods
of Egypt originated in various modes of natural [Page 183] phenomena, but the
phenomena
were also
spiritual as well as physical, the one god being ultimately worshipped as the
holy spirit. Both
categories of
the gods and the glorified were, so to speak, combined and blended in the one
person of
Atum-Ra, who
imaged the highest elemental power as soul of the sun in the mythology, and was
divinized as
Ra the holy spirit, the ghost of ghosts, in the Egyptian eschatology. The
reappearing human
spirit thus
supplied the type of an eternal spirit that was divinized and worshipped as the
Holy Ghost in
Egypt and in
Rome.
Maspero has
said of Egypt that she never accepted the idea of the one sole god beside whom
there is
none other (
The Dawn of Civilization, Eng. tr., p. 152). But here the “one god” is a
phrase. What is meant
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Ancient
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by the phrase
? Which, or who, is the one god intended ? Every description applied to the one
god in the
Hebrew
writings was pre-extant in the Egyptian. Atum-Ra declares that he “is the one
god, the one just or
righteous
god, the one living god, the one god living in truth. He is Unicus, the sole
and only one (Rit.,
chs. 2 and
17), beside whom there is none other; only, as the later Egyptians put it, he
is the only one
from whom all
other powers in nature were derived in the earlier types of deity. When Atum is
said to be
“the Lord of
oneness”, that is but another Way of calling him the one god and of recognizing
the
development
and unification of the one supreme god from the many, and acknowledging the
birth of
monotheism
from polytheism, the culmination of manifold powers in one supreme power, which
was in
accordance
with the course of evolution. In the Ritual (ch. 62) the Everlasting is
described as Neb-Huhi
Nuti Terui-f,
the Eternal Lord, he who is without limit. And, again, the infinite god is
portrayed as he who
dilates
without limit, or who is the god of limitless dilation, Fu-Nen-Tera, as a mode
of describing the
infinite by
means of the illimitable. And it is this Nen-tera that we claim to be at the
root of the word
Nnuter or
Nűter. Here the conception is nothing so indefinite or general as that of
power. Without limit is
beyond the
finite, and consequently equal to the infinite. Teru also signifies time. The
name, therefore,
conveyed the
conception of beyond time. Thus Nnuter (or Nuter) denoted the illimitable and
eternal in
one, which is
something more expressive than mere power. Power is of course included, and the
Nuter
sign, the
stone axe, is a very primitive sign of power.
Of this one
supreme god it is said in the Hymn to the Nile or to Osiris, as “the water of
renewal”: “He
careth for
the state of the poor. He maketh his might a buckler. He is not graven in
marble. He is not
beheld. He
hath neither ministrants nor offerings. He is not adored in sanctuaries. No
shrine is found with
painted
figures. There is no building that can contain him. He doth not manifest his
forms. Vain are all
representations”.
(Records of the Past, vol. iv.) Also, in the hymn to the hidden god Amen-Ra, a
title of
Atum, he is
saluted as “the one in his works”, “the one alone with many hands, lying awake
while all men
sleep to seek
out or consider the good of his creatures” ,“the one maker of existence”, “the
one alone
without a
peer”, “ king alone, single among the gods” (Records of the Past, vol. ii.,
129). Surely this is
equivalent to
the one god with none beside him, so far as language can go. The Egyptians had
all [Page
184] that
ever went to the making of the one god, only they built on foundations that
were laid in nature,
and did not
begin en I'air with an idea of the “sole god” in any abstract way. Their one
god was begotten
before he was
conceived. Egypt did not accept the idea. She evolved and revealed it from the
only data
in existence,
including those of phenomenal spiritualism which supplied the idea of a holy
ghost that was
divinized in
the likeness of the human - the only data, as matter of fact, from which the
concept could
have ever
been evolved; and but for the Egyptians, neither Jews nor Christians would have
had a god at
all, either
as the one, or three, or three-in-one. There is no beginning anywhere with the
concept of a
“one god” as
male ideationally evolved. But for thousands of years before the era called
Christian the
Egyptians had
attained the idea, and were trying to express it, of the one god who was the
one soul of
life, the one
self-generating, self-sustaining force, the one mind manifesting in all modes
of phenomena;
the
self-existent one, the almighty one, the eternal one; the pillar of earth, the
ark of heaven, the
backbone of
the universe, the bread of heaven and water of life ; the Ka of the human soul,
the way, the
truth, the
resurrection, and the life everlasting; the one who made all things, but
himself was not made.
But, once
more, what is the idea of the one god as a Christian concept ? The one god of
the Christians is
a father
manifesting through one historic son by means of a virgin Jewess. Whereas the
father was the
one god of
the Egyptians in the cult of Atum-Ra which was extant before the monuments
began ten
thousand
years ago. Only, the son of the one god in Egypt was not historic nor limited
to an individual
personality.
It was the divine nature manifesting as the soul of both sexes in humanity. The
one god of
the
Christians is a trinity of persons consisting of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, and these three
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Ancient
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constituted
the one god in the religion which is at least as old as the coffin of
Men-Ka-Ra, who is called
“Osiris
living eternally, king of the double earth, nearly six thousand years ago.
Finally, in
the Egyptian theology Osiris is Neb-U a, the one and only lord. All previous
powers were united
in his power.
Where Ra had seventy-two names denoting his attributes, Osiris has over one
hundred and
fifty. All
that was recognized as beneficent in nature was summarized in Osiris. All the
superhuman
powers
previously extant were combined and blended in the final form of the all-in-one
- the motherhood
included. For
in the trinity of Osiris, Horus, and Ra, which three are one, the first person
is imaged in the
likeness of
both sexes. Osiris as male with female mammae is a figure of the nourisher and
source of life,
who had been
from the beginning when the mother was the “only one”. The one god of the Egyptian
theology
culminated as the eternal power of evolution, reproduction, transformation,
renewal, and rebirth
from death to
life, on earth in food, and to a life of the soul that is perpetuated in the
spirit. The oneness
of the
godhead unified from all the goddesses and gods was finally compounded in this
supreme one
inclusive
deity, in whom all others were absorbed - Horus and Sut, as twins of light and
darkness; the
seven
elemental powers, as the seven souls; [Page 185] Nnu, father of the celestial
water, as the water of
renewal in
Osiris ; Seb, the father of food on earth, as the father of divine food or
bread of heaven in
Amenta. The
mother and father were combined in Ptah as the one parent. Atum-Horus assumed
the form
of man, as
son of Seb on earth; Osiris-Sekeri that of the mummy in Amenta, as god the
ever-Iiving in
matter; and
Ra, bird-headed, as an image of the holy spirit. Horus the elder was the
manifestor as the
eternal child
of Isis the virgin mother and his foster-father Seb, the god of earth; and at
his second advent
in Amenta
Horus became the son of the father in heaven as a final character in the
Osirian drama. Taht
gave place to
Osiris in the moon, Ptah to Osiris in the Tat, Anup to Osiris as the guide of
ways at the
pole. It is
said in the Hymn to Osiris that “he contains the double ennead of the double
land”. He is “the
principle of
abundance in Annu ; he gives the water of renewal in the Nile, the breath of
life in the blessed
breezes of
the north, the bread of life in the grain. And, lastly, he is the food that
never perishes; the god
who gives his
own body and blood as the sacramental sustenance of souls; the Bull of Eternity
who is
reincorporated
periodically as the calf, or, under the anthropomorphic type, as Horus the ever
reincarnating,
ever-coming child who rose up from the dead to image an eternal soul. Such was
the god
in whom the
all at last was unified in oneness and as One.
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Ancient
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BOOK 4 of 12
EGYPTIAN BOOK
OF THE DEAD AND THE MYSTERIES OF AMENTA
[Page 186]The
Egyptian Book of the Dead contains the oldest known religious writings in the
world. As it
comes to us
it is mainly Osirian, but the Osirian group of gods was the latest of all the
divine dynasties,
although
these, as shown at Abydos (by Prof. Flinders Petrie), will account for some ten
thousand years
of time in
Egypt. The antiquity of the collection is not to be judged by the age of the
coffins in which the
papyrus rolls
were found. Amongst other criteria of length in time the absence of Amen, Maut,
and
Khunsu
supplies a gauge. The presence and importance of Tum affords another, whilst
the persistence of
Apt and her
son Sebek-Horus tells a tale of times incalculably remote.
As a key to
the mysteries and the method of the book it must be understood at starting that
the
eschatology
or doctrine of Last Things was founded in the mould of the mythology, and that
the one can
only be
unravelled by means of the other. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to
prove that the Ritual
was based on
the mythology, and not the mythology upon the Ritual. The serpent, of darkness,
was the
evil reptile
in mythology. In theology it becomes the deluder of mankind. Here the beginning
was with
darkness
itself, which was the deceiver from the first. The serpent, being a figure of
darkness, was
continued by
theology as the official adversary of souls in the eschatological domain. The
eschatology of
the Ritual,
then, can only be comprehended by means of the mythology. And it is the mythos
out of view
that has made
the Ritual so profoundly difficult to understand. Reading it may be compared
with a dance
seen by a
deaf man who does not hear the music to which the motion is timed, and who has
no clue to
the
characters being performed in the dumb drama. You cannot understand what they
are doing and
saying as
Manes in another world without knowing what was thought and said by human
beings in this
concerning
that representation of the nature powers, the gods and goddesses, which
constitutes
mythology.
Amenta is a
huge fossil formation crowded with the dead forms of a past life in which the
horny
conspectuities
of learned ignorance will only see dead shells for a modern museum. As a rule,
Egypt is
always
treated differently from the rest of the world. No Egyptologist has ever
dreamed that the Ritual still
exists under
the [Page 187] disguise of both the gnostic and canonical gospels, or that it was
the fountainhead
and source of
all the books of wisdom claimed to be divine. In the mythology - that is, in
the
primitive
mode of rendering the phenomena of external nature - Osiris as light-giver in
the moon was tom
in fourteen
pieces during the latter half of the lunation by the evil Sut, the opposing
power of darkness.
He was put
together again and reconstituted by his son, beloved Horus, the young solar
god. This
representation
could not have been made until it was known that the lunar light was
replenished monthly
from the
solar source. Then Horus as the sun god and the vanquisher of Sut, the power of
darkness,
could be
called the reconstituter of Osiris in the moon. In that way a foundation was
laid in natural fact
according to
the science of mythology, and a mystery bequeathed to the eschatology which is
doctrinal.
For as it had
been with the dismembered, mutilated god in the mythos, so it is with the
Osiris deceased,
who has to be
reconstructed for a future life and put together bit by bit as a spiritual body
in one of the
great
mysteries of Amenta. In the mythos Har-Makhu was the solar god of both
horizons, or the double
equinox, who
represented the sun of today that rose up from the nether world as conqueror of
darkness
to join the
west and east together on the Mount of Glory, as the connecting link of
continuity in time
betwixt
yesterday and tomorrow. The type was continued in the eschatology, when
Har-Makhu became
the Horus of
the greater mysteries, Horus of the religious legend who suffered, died, and
was buried in
Amenta, and
who rose again from ,the dead like the winter sun, as Horus in spirit, lifting
aloft the insignia
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
of his sovereignty.
This was he who made the pathway, not merely betwixt the two horizons, but to
eternal life,
as son of Ra, . the holy spirit in the eschatology. The intermediate link in
the mythos, which
"connects
the solar orb with yesterday", is now the intermediary betwixt the two
worlds and two lives in
time and
eternity. This is he who exclaims, "I am the link! I am the everlasting
one! I am Horus who
steppeth
onwards through eternity.”(Rit., ch. 42.) This was he who, in the words of the
gnostic Paul,
"broke
down the wall of partition" and "made both one", "that he
might create in himself one new man"
and reconcile
them both in one body", even as the double Horus, Har-Sam-Taui, was made
one when
blended and
established as one person in another mystery of Amenta (Rit., ch. 42).
The mythology
repeated in the Ritual is mainly solar and Osirian, but with glimpses of the
lunar and the
stellar
mythos from the beginning. For example, Apt the ancient genetrix, as goddess of
the Great Bear
constellation,
and leader of the heavenly host, was the kindler of the starry sparks by night
in the
mythology. In
the eschatology she is continued as the mistress of divine protections for the
soul, and she
who had been
the kindler of the lights in the darkness of night was now propitiated as
rekindler of life
from the
spark in the dark of death (Rit., ch. 137B). Ra in the mythos is the solar god
represented by the
sun in
heaven, and in the eschatology he became the god in spirit who is called the
holy spirit and first
person in the
trinity which consisted of Atum the father god, Horus the son, and Ra the holy
spirit; the
three that
were also one [Page 188] in the Osirian cult, first as three forms of the solar
god and next as
three forms
of the god in spirit. It is thus we are enabled to trace the formation of the
Egyptian
eschatology
in the mould of the mythology.
There is no
death in the Osirian religion, only decay and change, and periodic renewal;
only evolution
and
transformation in the domain of matter and the transubstantiation into spirit.
In the so-called death of
Osiris it is
rebirth, not death, exactly the same as in the changes of external nature. At
the close of day
the solar orb
went down and left the sun god staring blankly in the dark of death. Taht the
moon god met
him in Amenta
with the eye of Horus as the light that was to illuminate the darkness of the
subterranean
world. In the
annual rendering on the third day light was generated by renewal in the moon.
Thus Osiris
rose again,
and a doctrine of the resurrection on the third day was bequeathed to the
eschatology. The
sun in
sinking was buried as a body (or mummy) in the nether world of Amenta. When
rising again at
dawn it was
transformed into a soul, a supreme elemental soul, that preceded the god in
spirit. This was
in the
mythology. In the eschatology the same types were reapplied to the human soul,
which was
imaged in the
flesh as the inarticulate, blind, and impubescent Horus, who died bodily but
was preserved
in mummy form
to make his transformation into the luminous Sahu, when he rose again in glory
as Horus
the divine
adult. "I am the resurrection and the life" is the perfect
interpretation of an Egyptian picture that
was copied by
Denon at Philć. (Egypt, vol. ii., pl.40, No.8, p. 54-) (Lundy, fig. 183.)
Divine Horus is
portrayed in
the act of raising the deceased Osiris from the bier by presenting to him the
Ankh sign of life.
He was the
life in person who performed the resurrection, and therefore is "the
resurrection and the life".
As such he
simply stands for a soul considered to be the divine offspring of god the
father, not for any
historical
character that makes preposterous pretensions to possess miraculous power.
Previously he
had been the
resurrection and the life as solar vivifier in the physical domain, or
otherwise stated in the
mythology. It
was this difference betwixt the mythology and eschatology that constituted the
lesser and
the greater
mysteries. The lesser in their origin were partly sociological. They were the
customs and the
ceremonial
rites of totemism. The greater mysteries are eschatological and religious. For
instance, the
transformation
of the youth into the adult or the girl into a woman in the totemic mysteries
was applied
doctrinally
to the transformation of the soul in the mysteries of Amenta. With the more
primitive races,
such as the
Arunta of Australia, the mysteries remain chiefly totemic and sociological,
though interfused
with the
religious sentiment. The greater mysteries were perfected in the Egyptian
religion, to be read of
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Ancient
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in the Ritual
as the mysteries of Amenta.
From the
beginning to the end of the written Ritual we shall find it is based upon the
mythical
representation
which was primary.The mythical representation was first applied to the
phenomena of
external
nature, and this mode of representation was continued and [Page 189] re-applied
to the human
soul in the
eschatology. Egyptian myths, then, are not inventions made to explain the
Ritual. Totemic
representation
was earlier. This mode was continued in the mythology. Ritual arose from the
rendering
becoming
religious in the phase of eschatology, and did not originate as an explanation
of mythology and
totemism. But
not until the different phases are discriminated can the Ritual be read, that
which has been
founded on it
under-stood, or the mental status of the thinkers ascertained. In the mythology
the solar
god, who in
his primary form was Ptah (Khepr), is the maker of a complete circle for the
sun as founder
and opener of
the nether earth, this solar pathway being a figure of for ever, a type of the
eternal working
in time. In
the eschatology the god in spirit who is Ra the holy spirit is "the god
who has created (or
opened out)
eternity" (Rit., ch. 15). The one is on the physical basis, the other on
the spiritual plane. In
the mythology
the seven primordial powers that pass through various phases, elemental,
stellar , or
lunar, always
in a group of seven, finally become the seven souls of Ra, who attained
supremacy as the
sun god in
mythology and also as the holy spirit. Thence came the doctrine of the seven
souls in man, as
seven gifts
of the holy spirit in the eschatology. In the mythical representation Sothis on
New Year's Day
was the
bringer forth of the child that was mothered by Hathor or Isis. The type is
employed in the
eschatology
of the Ritual when the Manes in Amenta prays for rebirth as a pure spirit and
says, "May I
live ( or
rise up and go forth) from between the closed knees of Sothis". The
rebirth of the child in Sothis
was the
renewal of the year, Sothis being represented in the feminine character by Hathor
as the bringer
forth from
betwixt her knees or, as elsewhere rendered, her kheptu, i.e., her thighs. So
the Manes are
reborn from
between the thighs of Nut in the mysteries of Amenta, and here the visible
birthplace of
spirits
perfected is localized in Sothis, the opener of the year and bringer of the
babe to birth upon the
horizon or
the mount of glory. In this way the skies of night were made luminous with
starry lore that was
mythical in
the astronomy and the words of a divine wisdom in the later eschatology when
the mysteries
were
represented in Amenta. Instead of flashlights showing pictures on the housetops
of a city after dark,
the stars
were used by the Egyptians to illustrate the mysteries that were out of sight.
The triumph of
Horus over
Sut or over the Apap dragon of drought and darkness was illustrated in the
stellar mythos
when in the
annual round Orion rose and the Scorpion constellation set upon the opposite
horizon. The
Egyptian
nearing death could lie and look upon a future figured in the starry heavens.As
it was with Osiris
or Horus so
would it be with him. The way had been mapped out, the guiding stars were
visible. His bier
or coffin of
new birth could be seen in the mesken of the mother. He rose again in spirit as
the babe of
Sothis.
"He joined the company of the holy Sahus" in Orion with the pilot
Horus at the look-out of the
bark. He saw
the golden isles in a heaven of perpetual peace to which the pole was the
eternal mooring
post. Whilst
he was passing from this life the bark of Ra was making ready for his soul to
go on board.
The
foundation of Amenta itself has yet to be delineated. It is a [Page 190]
tangible threshold to the other
world, the
secret but solid earth of eternity which was opened up by Ptah when he and his
seven
Khnemmu
erected the Tat pillar that was founded in the winter solstice as the figure of
a stability that was
to be
eternal. In the mythos the Tat is a type of the sun in the winter solstice that
has the power of
returning
from the lowest depth and thus completing the eternal road. In the eschatology
it is the god in
person as
Ptah-Sekeri or Osiris, the backbone and support of the universe. Horus erecting
the Tat in
Sekhem was
raising Osiris from the sepulchre, the father re-erected as the son in the
typical resurrection
and
continuity of the human spirit in the after life. The figure of Amsu-Horus
rising in the resurrection or
"coming
forth", with member erect, has two characters, one in the mythology, one
in the eschatology. In
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the mythology
he images the phallus of the sun and the generative force that fecundates the
Mother-
earth. In the
eschatology the image of erection is repeated as a symbol of resurrection, and
in this phase
the supposed
phallic god, the figure of regenerative force, is typical of the resurrection
or re-erection of
the mortal in
spirit.
Horus the
child with finger to mouth is portrayed in the sign of the Scales at the autumn
equinox, the
point at
which the sun begins to lessen and become impotent. This the Egyptians termed
the "little sun",
which when
personified was infant Horus, who sank down into Hades as the suffering sun to
die in the
winter solstice
and be transformed to rise again and return in all his glory and power in the
equinox at
Easter. This
was matter of the solar mythos, also of life in vegetation and in the water of
the inundation.
In the
eschatology Horus the child is typical of the human soul which was incarnated
in the blood of Isis,
the
immaculate virgin, to be made flesh and to be born in mortal guise on earth as
the son of Seb, and to
suffer all
the afflictions of mortality. He descended to Amenta as the soul sinking in the
dark of death, and
as the soul
he was transfigured, changed, and glorified, to rise again and become immortal
as a spirit
perfected
according to the teachings in the eschatology. A brief list will show how
certain zootypes that
were founded
in the mythological representation were continued in the eschatology :
Type of power
Mythical Eschatological
The beetle =
The sun as transformer = The god as self-evolver
The serpent =
Renewal = Eternal life
The ibis =
Messenger = Word or logos
The jackal =
Seer in the dark = Guide in death
The heifer
=The moon =Virgin mother
The hawk =
Soul of the sun = Ra the divine spirit
Fish,calf,or
lamb = Youthful solar god re-born =The messiah
In the
mythology the Apap reptile lies in the Lake of Darkness, where the sun goes
down, as the eternal
adversary of
the light with which it is at war all night and all the winter through. He
seeks to bar the way
of the sun in
the nether world. In the eschatology it is the human soul instead of the sun
that has to
struggle with
the [Page 191] opposing monster in making the passage of Amenta. The same
scenery
served, as
already shown, to illustrate the mystery in a religious and spiritual phase.
Chapter 64 of
the Ritual is known to have been extant in the time of King Septi, of the first
dynasty, the
Usaiphais of
Manetho. That was over 6,000 years ago. It is a chapter from the Book of Life
"to be recited
on coming
forth to day, that one may not be kept back on the path of the Tuat, whether on
entering or in
coming forth;
for taking all the forms which one desireth, and that the person may not die a
second time".
If this
chapter be known, the person is made triumphant on earth (as in the nether
world), and he
performeth
all things which are done by the living. The chapter was then so ancient that
it had been lost
sight of, and
was discovered "on a plinth of the god of the Hennu (or Sekru) bark, by a
master builder in
the time of
King Septi the Victorious". When this chapter was composed the primary
nature powers had
been unified
in the one god, who was represented as the lord of two faces, who "seeth
by his own light",
the
"Lord of Resurrections, who commeth forth from the dusk, and whose birth
is from the House of
Death".
That is, as the solar god who was Atum on one horizon and Horus on the other;
hence the lord of
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
two faces.
The supreme god thus described is the father in one character, the son in the
other. The
Manes
speaking in the character of the son says of the father, "He is I, and I
am he". At that time the
earth had
been tunnelled by Ptah and his pigmy workers, and a spirit world created on the
new terra
firma in the
earth of eternity, over which the solar god effused his radiance nightly when
he lighted up the
Tuat with his
indescribable glories (ch. 15). The "Lord of Resurrections" as a
solar god had then become
the lord of
resurrections as the generator of ever-Iiving souls. Egyptian theology, then,
was based upon
the mythology
which preceded it and supplied the mould. So is it with the Hebrew and
Christian theology.
But here is
the difference betwixt them. The mythology remained extant in Egypt, so that
the beginnings
of the theology
could be known and tested, and were known to the mystery teachers, and the
origins
referred to
for the purpose of verification. The commentary which has been partially
incorporated with the
text of
chapter 17 survives to show the development of the theology from mythology and
the need of
explanations
for the Ritual to be understood; and it was these necessary explanations which
constituted
the gnosis or
wisdom of the " mystery teachers of the secret word", whereas the
Hebrew and Christian
theologies
have been accepted minus the necessary knowledge of the origins, the means of
applying the
comparative
method and checking false assumptions. In Christianity the mysteries have been
manufactured
out of mist, and it has been taken for granted that the mist was impenetrable
and never to
be seen
through, whereas the mysteries of the Ritual can be followed in the two phases
of mythology
and
eschatology. The main difference betwixt the mythos and the eschatology is that
the one is
represented
in the earth of time, the other in the earth of eternity. And if we take the
doctrine of a
resurrection
from the dead, the soul that rose again at first, in mythology, was a soul of
the returning light,
a soul of
life in vegetation, or other of the [Page 192] elemental powers; a soul in
external nature. For
instance, a
soul of life, as source of drink, was apprehended in the element of water, seen
also in the
plant and
figured in the fish. The superhuman type was divinized in Horus.A soul of life,
as source of
breath, was
apprehended in the breeze, and imaged as the panting of a lion. The superhuman
type was
divinized in
Shu. A soul of food was apprehended in the earth, and represented by the goose
that laid the
egg. The
superhuman type was divinized in Seb.
In the
Masonic and all other known mysteries, ancient or modern, the initiate has his
eyes bandaged so
that he may
enter the reception room blindfold. This figure, in the Egyptian mysteries, is
Horus in the
dark,
sometimes called the blind Horus, An-ar-ef. In the mythos Horus is the sun in
the darkness of
Amenta and
the depths of the winter solstice. He is the prototype of "blind Orion
hungering for the morn",
and of Samson
"eyeless in Gaza". The character was founded in the mythical
representation of natural
phenomena,
and was afterwards continued in the eschatology. The same type serves in the
two
categories of
phenomena which are here distinguished as the mythical and the eschatological.
In the
latter the
sightless Horus images the human soul in the darkness of death, where it is
blind from lack of
outer vision.
This duality may serve to explain the two-fold rendering of the eyes. According
to the
hieroglyphic
imagery, Horus is without eyes or sightless in one character. He is also
portrayed in another
as the prince
of sight, or of double sight. This, according to the mythos, is a figure of the
risen sun and of
dawn upon the
coffin-lid of Osiris in Amenta. In the eschatology it is Horus, lord of the two
eyes, or
double
vision-that is, of second sight-the seer in spirit with the beatific vision
which was attained by him in
death. The
change from one character to the other is represented in the mysteries by the
unbandaging of
the
initiate's eyes, which are intentionally dazzled by the glory of the lights.The
Egyptian Book of the
Dead is the
one sole record of this two-fold basis of the mysteries.
Enough has
now been cited to show the method of the Ritual and the mode in which the
eschatology of
the Egyptian
religion was founded in the mould of the pre-extant mythology. The Book of the
Dead is the
Egyptian book
of life. It is the pre-Christian word of God. This we learn from the account
which it gives of
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Ancient
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itself. It is
attributed to Ra as the inspiring holy spirit. Ra was the father in heaven, who
has the title of
Huhi, the
eternal, from which we derive the Hebrew name of Ihuh. The word was given by
God the father
to the ever-coming
son as manifestor for the father. This was Horus, who as the coming son is
lu-sa or
lu-su, and,
as the prince of peace, lu-em-hetep. Horus the son is the Word in person. Hence
the speaker
in the
character of Horus says, "I utter his words - the words of Ra - to the men
of the present generation,
and I repeat
his words to him who is deprived of breath" (ch. 38). That is, as Horus,
the sayer or logos,
who utters
the words of Ra the father in heaven to the living on earth, and to the
breathless Manes in
Amenta when
he descends into Hades or the later hell to preach to the spirits in prison.
The word or the
sayings thus
originated with Ra the father in heaven. They were uttered by Horus the son,
[Page 193] and
when written
down in hieroglyphics by the fingers of Taht-Aan for human guidance they
supplied a basis
for the Book
of the Dead. It had been ordained by Ra that his words, such as those that
bring about " the
resurrection
and the glory" (Rit., ch. I ), should be written down by the divine scribe
Taht-Aan, to make the
word truth,
and to effect the triumph of Osiris against his adversaries; and it is
proclaimed in the opening
chapter that
this mandate has been obeyed by Taht. The Ritual purports to contain the gnosis
of salvation
from the
second death, together with the ways and means of attaining eternal life, as
these were acted in
the drama of
the Osirian mysteries. Hence the Osiris says that freedom from perdition can be
assured by
means of this
book, in which he trusts and by which he steadfastly abides. The object of the
words of
power, the
magical invocations, the funeral ceremonies, the purgatorial trials, is the
resurrection of the
mortal to the
life which is everlasting. The opening chapter is described as the " words"
which bring about
the
resurrection on the Mount of Glory, and the closing chapters show the deceased
upon the summit of
attainment.
He has joined the lords of eternity in "the circle of Osiris", and in
the likeness of his own
human self,
the very "figure which he had on earth", but changed and glorified
(ch. 178). Therefore the
most exact
and comprehensive title for the Book of the Dead now put together in 186
chapters would be
"The
Ritual of the Resurrection", The book of the divine words written down by
Taht are in the keeping of
Horus the
son, who is addressed as " him who sees the father". The Manes comes
to him with his copy
of the
writings, by means of which he prevails on his journey through Amenta, like
Pilgrim with his roll. He
exclaims:
"O thou great seer who beholdest his father! O keeper of the books of
Taht! Here am I glorified
and filled
with soul and power, and provided with the writings of Taht", the secrets
of which are divine for
lightening
the darkness of the nether earth (Rit: ch. 94). With these the Manes is
accoutred and
equipped. The
Word of god personified in Horus preceded the written word of god and when the
words of
power were
written down by Taht the scribe of truth, they were assigned to Horus as the logia
of the Lord,
and preserved
as the precious records of him who was the word in person; first the word of
power as the
founder, then
the word in truth or made truth, as the fulfiller. The divine words when
written constituted
the
scriptures, earliest of which are those ascribed to Hermes or Taht, the reputed
author of all the sacred
writings. And
now we find that both the word in person and the written word, together with
the doctrine of
the word
according to the ancient wisdom, are more or less extant and living still in
the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. The
magical words of power when written down by Taht became the nucleus of the
Ritual,
which is late
in comparison with the astronomical mythology and other forms of Sign-language,
and
belongs
mainly to the Osirian religion.
The mystical
word of power from the first was female. Apt at Ombos was worshipped as the
"the Living
Word".
The supreme type of this power borne upon the head of Shu is the hinder part of
a lioness, her
sign of sexual
potency. The thigh or khepsh of Apt is also the typical Ur-heka, and it is a
symbol of the
great magical
[Page 194] power. The Ur-heka or magical sign preceded words, and words
preceded the
writings.
Great magical words of power are ascribed to Isis, whose word of power in the
human sphere
was
personified in Horus the child, her word that issued out of silence. This is
the word that wvas made
flesh in a
mortal likeness, the soul derived from blood. Child-Horus, however, manifests
in divers
phenomena as
the Word-of-Power emaned by Isis, in the water, in vegetation, in food, and
lastly in the
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virgin
mother's blood. The first Horus was the Word-of-Power, the second is the
Word-made-Truth in
Horus, Mat,
t-Kheru, by doing it. Horus the Word-of-Power was the founder, who was followed
by Horus
the
Fulfiller.This title does not merely mean the Word of Truth, the True Logos
(Celsus), or the True Voice
(Plutarch),
but denotes the Word-made-Truth or Law by Horus the Victorious, the father's
own anointed
son, who
fulfilled the Word of Power. It is Horus the Word-of-Power personalized as a
little child who
survives as
the miraculous worker two or three years old in the apocryphal gospels. He is
credited with
doing these
infantine marvels as the Word-of-Power in person. He also utters the word of
power in
performing
his amazing miracles.
The magical
words were orally communicated in the mysteries from mouth to ear, not written
to be read.
They were to
be gotten by heart. In the Book of the Dead memory is restored to the deceased
through
the words of
power that were stored up in life to be remembered in death. The speaker in
chapter 90
says: “O thou
who restorest memory in the mouth of the dead through the words of power which
they
possess, let
my mouth be opened through the words of power which I possess". That is,
by virtue of the
gnosis,
memory was restored by the deceased remembering the divine words. Now, Plato
taught that a
knowledge of
past lives in a human pre-existence was restored to persons in this life by
means of
memory. The
origin of the doctrine is undoubtedly Egyptian, but it was made out by a
perversion of the
original
teaching. This restoration of or through memory occurs to the Manes in Amenta
after death, and
the things
remembered appertain to the past life on earth. Plato has misapplied it to the
past lives and
pre-existence
of human beings dwelling on the earth. The words of power were not only spoken.
They
were likewise
represented in the equipment of the mummy, sometimes called its ornaments, such
as the
word of
salvation by the blood of Isis with the red Tet-buckle, the word of durability
by the white stone, the
word of
resurrection by the scarabaeus, the word of eternal life by the cross, called
the ankh. These were
forms of the
magical words expressed in fetish figures.
The Manes in
Amenta begins his course where he left off on earth when his mouth was closed
in death; it
is opened
once more for him by Ptah and Tum, and Taht supplies him with the great magical
words of
power that
open every gate. These were written on the roll of papyrus that is carried in
his hand by the
pilgrim who
makes his progress through the nether regions in the subterranean pathway of
the sun. The
so-called
Book of the Dead, then, here quoted as the Ritual for the sake of brevity, is
the Egyptian book
of life: life
now, life hereafter, everlasting life. It was indeed the book of life and
salvation, because it
contained the
things to be done in the life here [Page 195]. and hereafter to ensure eternal
continuity (Rit.,
ch. 15, hymn
3). The departing soul when passing away in death, or, as the truer phrase is,
when setting
into the land
of life, clasps and clings to his roll for very life. As the book of life, or
word of salvation, it was
buried in the
coffin with the dead when done with on earth. It showed the way to heaven
objectively as
well as
subjectively, as heaven was mapped out in the astral mythos. The Manes enters
Amenta with a
papyrus roll
in his hand corresponding to the one that was buried in his coffin. This
contains the written
word of
truth, the word of magical power, the word of life. The great question now for
him is how far he
has made the
word of god (Osiris) truth and established it against the powers of evil in his
lifetime on the
earth. The
word that he carries with him was written by Taht-Aan, the scribe of truth.
Another word has
been written
in his lifetime by himself, and the record will meet him in the Hall of Justice
on the day of
weighing
words, when Taht will read the record of the life to see how far it tallies
with the written word and
how far he
has fulfilled the word in truth to earn eternal life. The sense of sin and
abhorrence of injustice
must have
been peculiarly keen when it was taught that every word as well as deed was
weighed in the
balance of
truth on the day of reckoning, called the Judgment Day. The questions confronting
the Manes
on entering
Amenta are whether he has laid sufficient hold of life to live again in death ?
Has he acquired
consistency
and strength or truth of character enough to persist in some other more
permanent form of
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personality ?
Has he sufficient force to incorporate his soul anew and germinate and grow and
burst the
mummy
bandages in the glorified body of the Sahu ? Is he a true mummy ? Is the
backbone sound ? Is
his heart in
the right place ? Has he planted for eternity in the seed-field of time ? Has
he made the word
of Osiris,
the word that was written in the papyrus roll, truth against his enemies ?
The chapters
for opening the Tuat, for dealing with the adversary in the nether world, for
issuing forth
victoriously
and thus winning the crown of triumph, for removing displeasure from the heart
of the judge,
tend to show
the ways of attaining the life everlasting by acquiring possession of an eternal
soul. The
Manes is said
to be made safe for the place of rebirth in Annu by means of the books of
Taht's divine
words, which
contain the gnosis or knowledge of the things to be done on earth and in
Amenta. The truth
is made known
by the words of Horus which were written down by Taht in the Ritual, but the
fulfilment
depends on
the Manes making the word truth by doing it. That is the only way of salvation
or of safety for
the soul, the
only mode of becoming a true being who would endure as pure spirit forever. The
Egyptians
had no
vicarious atonement, no imputed righteousness, no second-hand salvation. No
initiate in the
Osirian
mysteries could possibly have rested his hope of reaching heaven on the
Galilean line to glory.
His was the
more crucial way of Amenta, which the Manes had to tread with the guidance of
the word,
that step by
step and act by act he must himself make true. It is said in the rubrical
directions of chapter
72 that the
Manes who knew it on earth and had it written on his coffin will be able to go
in and out by
day under any
form he chooses in which he can penetrate his dwelling-place and also make his
way to
the Aarru
fields of peace and plenty,[Page 196] where he will be flourishing for ever
even as he was on
earth (Rit.,
72, 9, II). I f chapter 91 is known, the Manes takes the form of a
fully-equipped spirit (a Khu) in
the nether
world, and is not imprisoned at any door in Amenta either going in or coming
out. (Chapter 92)
is the one
that opens the tomb to the soul and to the shade of a person, that he may come
forth to day
and have the
mastery over his feet. The book of giving sustenance to the spirit of the
deceased in the
under-world
delivers the person from all evil things (Rit., 148). There was another book
wherewith the
spirits
acquired strength by knowing the names of the gods of the southern sky and of
the northern sky
(chs. 141-3).
The Ritual was pre-eminently a book of knowledge or of wisdom, because it
contained the
gnosis of the
mysteries. Knowledge was all-important. The Manes make their passage through
Amenta
by means of
what they know. Deceased in one of his supplications says: "O thou ship of
the garden
Aarru, let me
be conveyed to that bread of thy canal, as my father the great one who
advanceth in the
divine ship,
because I know thee" (ch. 106, Renouf). He knew because, as we see by (ch.
99,) he had
learned the
names of every part of the bark in which the spirits sailed. Knowledge was
power, knowledge
was the
gnosis, and the gnosis was the science of the mystery teachers and the masters
of Sign-
language.
Ignorance was most dire and deadly. How could one travel in the next world any
more than in
this without
knowing the way ? The way in Amenta was indicated topographically very much in
keeping
with the ways
in Egypt, chief of which was the water-way of the great river. Directions,
names, and
passwords
were furnished in writing, to be placed with the mummy of the deceased. Better
still, if these
instructions
and divine teachings were learned by heart, had been enacted and the word made
truth in
the life,
then the Book of the Dead if life became the book of life in death. The word
was given that it
might be made
truth by doing it as the means of learning the way by knowing the word. The way
of life in
three worlds,
those of earth, Amenta, and heaven, was by knowing the word of god and making
it true in
defiance of
all the powers of evil. According to this earlier Bible, death came into the
world by ignorance,
not by
knowledge, as in the Christian travesty of the Egyptian teaching. As Hermes
says: "The
wickedness of
a soul is ignorance. The virtue of a soul is knowledge" (Divine Pymander,
B. iv., 27,
28).There was
no life for the soul except in knowing, and no salvation but in doing. the
truth. The human
soul of
Neferuben in the picture is the wise or instructed soul, one of the Khu-Akaru :
he is a master of
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the gnosis, a
knower or knowing soul, and therefore not to be caught like an ignorant fish in
the net.
Knowledge is
of the first importance. In all his journeyings and difficulties it is
necessary for the deceased
to know. It
is by knowledge that he is lighted to find his way in the dark. Knowledge is
his lamp of light
and his
compass; to possess knowledge is to be master of divine powers and magical
words. Ignorance
would leave
him a prey to all sorts of liers in wait and cunning enemies. He triumphs
continually through
his knowledge
of the way, like a traveller with his chart and previous acquaintanceship with
the local
language;
hence the need of the gnosis and of initiation in the mysteries. Those who knew
the real name
of the god
were in possession of the word [Page 197] that represented power over the
divinity, therefore
the word of
power that would be efficacious if employed. Instead of calling on the name of
god in prayer,
they made use
of the name as the word of god. And as these words and mysteries of magic were
contained in
the writings, it was necessary to know the writings in which the gnosis was
religiously
preserved to
be in possession of the words of power. Hence the phrases of great magical
efficacy in the
Ritual are
called "the words that compel". They compel the favourable action of
the super-human power
to which
appeal is made. To make magic was to act the appeal in a language of signs
which, like the
words, were
also intended to compel, and to act thus magically was a mode of compelling,
forcing, and
binding the
superhuman powers. Magic was also a mode of covenanting with the power
apprehended in
the
elements.The quid pro quo being blood, this was a most primitive form of
blood-covenant. Giving
blood for
food was giving life for the means of living.
The Ritual
opens with a resurrection, but this is the resurrection in the earth of Amenta,
not in the heaven
of eternity.
It is the resurrection of a body-soul emerging in the similitude of the
moon-god from the dark
of death. The
first words of the Ritual are, "O Bull of Amenta [Osiris ], it is Taht,
the everlasting king, who
is
here!". He has come as one of the powers that fight to secure the triumph
of Osiris over all his
adversaries.
After the life on earth there was a resurrection in Amenta, the earth of
eternity, for the human
soul evolved
on earth. I t was there that the claim to the resurrection in spirit and to
life eternal in heaven
had to be
made good and established by long and painful experiences and many kinds of
purgatorial
purification,
by which the soul was perfected eventually as an ever-Iiving spirit. The word
of promise had
to be
performed and made truth indeed, for the Ma-Kheru of immortality to be earned
and endless
continuity of
life assured. Everyone who died was in possession of a body-soul that passed
into Amenta
to become an
Osiris or an image of the god in matter, although it was not every one who was
reborn or
regenerated
in the likeness of Ra, to attain the Horushood, which was portrayed as the hood
of the divine
hawk
.Emergence in Amenta was the coming forth of the human soul from the coffin and
from the gloom
of the grave
in some form of personality such as is depicted in the Shade, or the Ba, a bird
of soul with
the human head,
which shows that a human soul is signified. Osiris the god of Amenta in a mummy
form
is thus
addressed by the Osiris N. or Manes: "O breathless one, let me live and be
saved after death"
(ch. 41).
This is addressed to Osiris who lives eternally. Though lying as a mummy in
Amenta, breathless
and without
motion, he will be self-resuscitated to rise again. Salvation is renewal for
another life; to be
saved is not
to suffer the second death, not to die a second time. According to Egyptian
thought, the
saved are the
living and the twice dead are the damned. Life after death is salvation of the
soul, and
those not
saved are those who die the second death - a fate that could not be escaped by
any false
belief in the
merits of Horus or the efficacy of the atoning blood. There was no heaven to be
secured for
them by
proxy.
The Ritual is
not a book of beautiful sentiments, like the poetic literature of later times.
It is a record of the
things done
by the [Page 198] dramatis personae in the Kamite mysteries. But now and again
the beauty
of feeling
breaks out ineffably upon the face of it, as in the chapter by which the
deceased prevails over
his
adversaries, the powers of darkness, and comes forth to the day, saying,
"O thou who shinest forth
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from the
moon, thou that givest light from the moon, let me come forth at large amid thy
train, and be
revealed as
one of those in glory. Let the Tuat be opened for me. Here am I". The
speaker is in Amenta
as a mummy
soul appealing to the father of lights and lord of spirits that he may come
forth in the
character of
Horus divinized to delight the soul of his poor mother. He wishes to capitalize
the desires of
those who
“make salutations" to the gods on his behalf. These in modern parlance
would be the prayers
of the
priests and congregation ( ch. 3) for his welfare and safety in the future
life, otherwise for his
salvation. In
the chapter by which one cometh forth to day he pleads: "Let me have
possession of all
things soever
which were offered ritualistically for me in the nether world. Let me have
possession .of the
table of
offerings which was heapt for me on earth - the solicitations which were
uttered for me, that he
may feed upon
the bread of Seb,' or the food of earth. Let me have possession of my funeral
meals", the
meals offered
on earth for the dead in the funerary chamber (ch.68).
The chief
object of the deceased on entering Amenta is the mode and means of getting out
again as
soon as
possible upon the other side. His one all-absorbing interest is the
resurrection to eternal life. He
says, “Let me
reach the land of ages, let me gain the land of eternity, for thou, my Lord,
hast destined
them for
me" (ch. 13).Osiris or the Osiris passed into Amenta as the lord of
transformations. Various
changes of
shape were necessitated by the various modes of progression. As a beetle or a
serpent he
passed
through solid earth, as a crocodile through the water, as a hawk through the
air. As a jackal or a
cat he saw in
the dark; as an ibis he was the knowing one, or "he of the nose".
Thus he was the master
of
transformations, the magician of the later folk-tales, who could change his
shape at will. Taht is termed
the great
magician as the lord of transformations in the moon. Thus the deceased in
assuming the type
of Taht
becomes a master of transformation or the magician whose transformations had
also been made
on earth by
the transformers in trance who pointed the way to transformation in death. When
Teta comes
to
consciousness on rising again in Amenta he is said to have broken his sleep for
ever which was in the
dwelling of
Seb - that is, on the earth. He has now received his Sahu or investiture of the
glorious body.
Before the
mortal Manes could attain the ultimate state of spirit in the image of Horus
the immortal, he
must be put
together part by part as was Osiris, the dismembered god.He is divinized in the
likeness of
various
divinities, all of whom had been included as powers in the person of the one
true god, Neb-er-ter,
the lord
entire. Every member and part of the Manes in Amenta has to be fashioned afresh
in a new
creation. The
new heart is said to be shaped by certain gods in the nether world, according
to the deeds
done in the
body whilst the person was living on the earth. He assumes the [Page 199]
glorified body that
is formed
feature by feature and limb after limb in the likeness of the gods until there
is no part of the
Manes that
remains undivinized. He is given the hair of Nu, or heaven, the eyes of Hathor,
ears of Apuat,
nose of
Khenti-Kâs, lips of Anup, teeth of Serk, neck of Isis, hands of the mighty lord
of Tat tu, shoulders
of Neith,
back of Sut, phallus of Osiris, legs and thighs of Nut, feet of Ptah, with
nails and bones of the
living Uraei,
until there is not a limb of him that is without a god. There is no possibility
of coming back to
earth for a
new body or for a re-entry into the old mummy. As the Manes says, his
"soul is not bound to
his old body
at the gates of Amenta" ( ch. 26, 6). Chapter 89 is designated the chapter
by which the soul
is united to
the body. This, however, does not mean the dead body on earth, but the format
or bodily type
of the mummy
in Amenta. "Here I come", says the speaker, that “I may overthrow
mine adversaries upon
the earth,
though my dead body be buried" (ch. 86, Renouf). "Let me come forth
to day, and walk upon
my own legs.
Let me have the feet of the glorified" ( ch. 86). At this stage he
exclaims, "I am a soul, and
my soul is
divine. It is the eternal force". In chapters 21 and 22 the Manes asks for
his mouth, that he
may speak
with it. Having his mouth restored, he asks that it may be opened by Ptah, and
that Taht may
loosen the
fetters or muzzles of Sut, the power of darkness (ch. 23). In short,' that he
may recover the
faculty of
speech. In the process of transforming and being renewed as the new man, the
second Atum,
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Ancient
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he says,
"I am Khepera, the self-produced upon his mother's thigh". Khepera is
the beetle-type of the sun
that is
portrayed in pictures of the goddess Nut proceeding from the mother's khepsh. The
name of the
beetle
signifies becoming and evolving, hence it is a type of the becomer in making
his transformation.
The mouth
being given, words of power are brought to him, he also gathers them from every
quarter.
Then he
remembers his name. Next the new heart is given to him. His jaws are parted,
his eyes are
opened. Power
is given to his arms and vigour to his legs. He is in possession of his heart,
his mouth, his
eyes, his
limbs, and his speech. He is now a new man reincorporated in the body of a
Sahu, with a soul
that is no
longer bound to the Khat or dead mummy at the gates of Amenta ( ch. 26). He
looks forward to
being fed
upon the food of Osiris in Aarru, on the eastern side of the mead of
amaranthine flowers.
In one phase
of the drama the deceased is put together bone by bone in correspondence to the
backbone of
Osiris. The backbone was an emblem of sustaining power, and this reconstruction
of
deceased is
in the likeness of the mutilated god. The speaker at this point says, "The
four fastenings of
the hinder
part of my head are made firm". He does not fall at the block. There are
of course seven
cervical
vertebrae in the backbone altogether, but three of these are peculiar, "
the atlas which supports
the head, the
axis upon which the head turns, and the vertebrae prominens, with its long
spiral process" (
ch. 30,
Renouf).No doubt the Osiris was rebuilt upon this model, and the four joints
were fundamental,
they
constituted a four-fold foundation. In another passage the Osiris is apparently
perfected "upon the
square",
as in the Masonic mysteries. It is the [Page 200] chapter by which one assumes
the form of Ptah,
the great
architect of the universe. The speaker says, "He is four times the arm's
length of Ra, four times
the width of
the world" ( Rit., ch. 82, Renouf), which is a mode of describing the four
quarters or four
sides of the
earth, as represented by the Egyptians. There were seven primary powers in the
mythical
and
astronomical phases, six of whom are represented by zootypes, and the seventh
is imaged in the
likeness of a
man. This is repeated in the eschatology, where the highest soul of seven is
the Ka-eidolon
with a human
face and figure as the final type of spirit which was human on the earth and is
to be eternal
in the
heavens. The Manes who is being reconstituted says, "The [seven] Uraeus
divinities are my
body. ...My
image is eternal" (ch. 85), as it would be when the seven souls were
amalgamated into one
that was
imaged by the divine Ka. The seven Uraeus divinities represented the seven
souls of life that
were anterior
to the one enduring soul. In the chapter of propitiating one's own Ka the Manes
says, "Hail
to thee, my
Ka! May I come to thee and be glorified and made manifest and ensouled ?"
( ch. I03)-that is,
in attaining
the highest of the souls, the unifying one. These souls may be conceived as
seven ascending
types of
personality. The first is figured as the shade, the dark soul or shade of the
Inoits, the
Greenlanders,
and other aboriginal races, which is portrayed personally in the Ritual lying
darkly on the
ground. The
shade was primary, because of its being, as it were, a shadow of the old body
projected on
the ground in
the new life. It is portrayed as a black figure stretched out in Amenta. In
this way the earth
shadow of the
body in life served as the type of a soul that passed out of the body in death.
This may
explain the
intimate relationship of the shade to the physical mummy, which it is sometimes
said to cling
to and remain
with in the tomb, and to draw sustenance from the corpse so long as it exists.
Thus the
shade that
draws life from the dead body becomes the mythical prototype of the vampire and
the
legendary
ghoul. It may be difficult to determine exactly what the Egyptians understood
by the khabit or
shade in its
genesis as a soul, but the Inoit or Aleutians describe it as "a vapour
emanating from the
blood” and
here is wisdom for those who comprehend it. The earliest human soul, derived
from the
mother when
the blood was looked upon as the life, was a soul of blood, and the Inoit
description
answers
perfectly to the shade in the Egyptian Amenta. Amongst the most primitive races
the typical
basis of a
future personality is the shade. The Aleutians say the soul at its departure
divides into the
shade and the
spirit. The first dwells in the tomb, the other ascends to the firmament.
These, wherever
met with, are
equivalent to the twin-souls of Sut the dark one, and Horus the soul of light.
For we reckon
the Egyptian
seven to be earliest and old enough to account for and explain the rest which
are to be
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found
dispersed about the world. The soul as shade or shadow is known to the Macusi
Indians as the
"man in
the eyes" who "does not die". This is another form of the shadow
that was not cast upon the
ground. Dr.
Birch drew attention to the fact that whilst the deceased has but one Ba, one
Sahu, and one
Ka, he has
two shades, his Khabti being in the plural (Trans. Society of Bib. Arch.,
volume viii., page
391). These
two correspond to the dark and light shades [Page 201] of the aborigines. They
also conform
to the two
souls of darkness and light that were imaged by the black vulture and the
golden hawk of Sut
and Horus,
the first two of the total septenary of powers or souls. The shade, however, is
but one-
seventh of
the series. The other self when perfected consists of seven amalgamated souls. Some
of the
Manes in
Amenta do not get beyond the state of the shade or Khabit; they are arrested in
this condition
of mummied
immobility. They do not acquire the new heart or soul of breath; they remain in
the egg
unhatched,
and do not become the Ba-soul or the glorified Khu. These are the souls that
are said to be
eaten by
certain of the gods or infernal powers. "Eater of the shades" is the
title of the fourth of the forty-
two
executioners (ch. 125). The tenth of the mystical abodes in Amenta is the place
of the monstrous
arms that
capture and carry away the Manes who have not attained a condition beyond that
of the shade
or empty
shell. The "shells" of the theosophists may be met with in the
Ritual. The Manes who is fortified
with his divine
soul can pass this place in safety. He says, "Let no one take possession
of my shade [ let
no one take
possession of my shell or envelope ]. I am the divine hawk". He has issued
from the shell of
the egg and
been established beyond the status of the shade as a Ba-soul. With this may be
compared
the
superstition that in eating eggs one should always break up the empty shell,
lest it should be made
evil use of
by the witches. There are wretched shades condemned to immobility in the fifth
of the mystical
abodes. They
suffer their final arrest in that place and position, and are then devoured by
the giants who
live as
eaters of the shades. These monsters are described as having thigh-bones seven
cubits long (ch.
149,18,19).
No mere shade has power enough to pass by these personifications of devouring
might; they
are the ogres
of legendary lore. who may be found at home with the ghoul and the vampire in
the dark
caverns of
the Egyptian under world. These were the dead whose development in spirit world
was
arrested at
the status of the shade, and who were supposed to seek the life they lacked by
haunting and
preying upon
human souls, particularly on the soul of blood. In its next stage the soul is
called a Ba, and
is
represented as a hawk with a human head, to show that the nature of the soul is
human still. This is
more than a
soul of shade, but it was not imagined nor believed that the human soul as such
inhabited
the body of a
bird. In one of the hells the shades are seen burning, but these were able to
resist the fire,
and it is
consequently said, "The shades live; they have raised their
powers".They are raised in status by
assimilating
higher powers.
Following his
taking possession of the soul of shade and the soul of light the Osiris is
given a new heart,
his whole or
two-fold heart. With some of the primitive folk, as with the Basutos, it is the
heart that goes
out in death
as the soul that never dies. Bobadilla a learned from the Indians of Nicaragua
that there are
two different
hearts; that one of these went away with the deceased in death, and that it was
the heart
that went
away which "made them live" hereafter. This other breathing heart,
the basis of the future
being, is one
with the Egyptian heart by which the reconstituted person lives again. The
heart that was
weighed in
the Hall of Judgment could not have been [Page 202] the organ of life on earth.
This was a
second heart,
the heart of another life. The Manes makes appeal for this heart not to bear
evidence
against him
in presence of the god who is at the balance (chs. 30A and 30B). The second is
the heart
that was
fashioned anew according to the life lived in the body. It is said to be the
heart of the great god
Tehuti, who
personated intelligence. Therefore it would seem to typify the soul of
intelligence. Hence it is
said to be
young and keen of insight among the gods, or among the seven souls. The
physical
representation
comes first, but it is said in the text of Panchemisis, "The conscience or
heart (Ab) of a
man is his
own god" or divine judge. The new heart represents rebirth, and is
therefore called the mother
(ch. 30A);
and when the deceased recovers the basis of future being in his whole heart he
says, although
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he is buried
in the deep, deep grave, and bowed down to the region of annihilation, he is
glorified (even)
there (ch.
30A, Renouf).
Now if we
take the shade to image a soul of blood, the Ba-hawk to image a soul of light,
and the hatiheart
to represent
a soul of breath, we can perceive a raison d’ ętre for the offering of blood,
of lights, and
of incense as
sacrifices to the Manes in three different phases or states. Blood was
generally offered to
the shades,
as we see in survival among the Greeks and Romans. The shade was in the first
stage of
the past
existence, and most needing in Amenta the blood which was the life on earth and
held to be of
first
necessity for the revivifying of the dead as Manes or shades. The Sekhem was
one of the souls or
powers. It is
difficult to identify this with a type and place in the seven. Pro tem we call
it fourth of the
series. It is
more important to know what force it represents. The name is derived from the
word khem,
for potency.
Khem in physics signifies erectile power. The man of thirty years as typical
adult is khemt.
Sekhem
denotes having the power or potency of the erectile force. In the
eschatological phase it is the
reproducing,
formative power of Khem, or Amsu, to re-erect, the power of erection being
applied to the
spirit in
fashioning and vitalizing the new and glorious body for the future resurrection
from Amenta. The
Khu is a soul
in which the person has attained the status of the pure in spirit called the
glorified,
represented
in the likeness of a beautiful white bird; the Ka is a type of eternal duration
in which the
seven-fold
personality is unified at last for permanent or everlasting life.
It is the Khu
that is thus addressed in the tomb as the glorified one: "Thou shalt not
be imprisoned by
those who are
attached to the person of Osiris [that is, the mummy], and who have custody of
souls and
spirits, and
who shut up the shades of the dead. It is heaven only that shall hold
thee". (Rit. ch., 92.) The
shade of
itself could never leave the tomb. For this reason it was commonly held that
the shade
remained with
the corpse or mummy on the earth. But here the tomb, the mummy, and the shade
are not
on earth;
they are in Amenta. Without the Ba-soul, the shade remains unvivified. Without
the Sekhem, it
lacks
essential form or power of re-arising. Without the Khu-spirit the person does
not ascend from the
sepulchre or
prison-house of the nether world. But when this has been attained the deceased
is glorified.
If chapter 91
is known, "he taketh the form of a fully-equipped Khu [spirit ] in the
nether [Page 203] world,
and does not
suffer imprisonment at any door in Amenta, either in coming in or going
out" (Renouf, ch.
91). It is
only when the Manes is invested as a Khu that he ascends to the father as a son
of god. So we
gather from
the following words addressed to Horus by the person who is now a Khu: "O
mighty one,
who seest thy
father, and who hast charge of the books of Taht, here am I. I come, and am
glorified and
filled with
soul and power, and am provided with the scriptures of Taht", his copy of
the book of life, his
light in the
darkness of Amenta. He now ascends to Ra his father, who is in the bark, and
exclaims again
and again,
"I am a powerful Khu; let thy soundness be my soundness" (Renouf, ch.
105). When the
deceased has
been made perfect as a Khu, he is free to enter the great house of seven halls
(ch. 145).
Likewise the
"house of him who is upon the hill", and who is "ruler in the
divine hall". The great house is
the heaven of
Osiris based upon the thirty-six gates or duo-decans of the zodiac. The other
is the house
of Anup at
the summit of the mount in Annu. "Behold me", he exclaims;
"behold me, I am come to you,
and have
carried off and put together my forms", or constituent parts of the
permanent soul, which were
seven
altogether. These are: (1) The Khabit or dark shade; (2) the Ba or light shade;
(3) the breathing
heart; (4)
the Sekhem; (5) the Sahu; (6) the Khu; (7) the Ka. When the Manes has become a
Khu, the Ka
is still a
typical ideal ahead of him; so far ahead or aloof that he propitiates it with
offerings. In fact, he
presents
himself as the sacrificial victim that would die to attain conjunction with his
Ka, his image of
eternal
duration, his type of totality, in which the seven souls were permanently
unified in one at last. The
Ka has been
called the double of the dead, as if it simply represented the Doppel-ganger.
But it is not
merely a
phantom of the living or personal image of the departed. It serves also for the
apparition or
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Ancient
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revenant ; it
is a type rather than a portrait. It is a type that was pre-natal. It images a
soul which came
into
existence with the child, a soul which is food and sustenance to the body all
through life, a soul of
existence
here and of duration for the life hereafter. Hence it is absorbed at last in
the perfected
personality.
It is depicted in the Temple of Luxor, where the birth of Amen-hetep III. is
portrayed as
coming from
the hand of god. The Ka of the royal infant is shown in the pictures being
formed by Khnum
the moulder
on the potter's wheel. It is in attendance on the person all life through, as
the genius or
guardian
angel, and the fulfilment of the personality is effected by a final reunion
with the Ka. As already
shown, when
divine honours were paid to the Pharaoh the offerings were made to his Ka, not
to his
mortal self.
Thus the Manes in Amenta makes an offering of incense to purify himself in
propitiation of his
Ka ( ch.
105). There is a chapter of "providing food for the Ka". Also the
mortuary meal was eaten in the
chamber of
the Ka, the resurrection chamber of the sepulchre. Food was offered to the
Ka-eid..lon as
the
representative of the departed, instead of directly to the spirits of the
ancestors. It was set up there as
receiver-general
of the offerings. Also the food was presented to it as a type of the divine
food which
sustained the
human soul. Thus, when the divine sustenance is offered by the god or goddess
to the soul
of the mortal
on the [Page 204] earth, or to the Manes in Amenta, it is presented by the
giver to the Ka.
Certain
priests were appointed to be ministers to the Ka, and these made the offerings
to the Ka of the
deceased on
behalf of the living relatives. This is because the Ka was the type of
personality, seventh of
the seven souls
attained as the highest in which the others were to be included and absorbed.
In the
vignettes to
chapter 25 of the Ritual (Naville, Todt., Kap., 25, vol. i., p. 36) the
deceased is shown his Ka,
which is with
him in the passage of Amenta, not left behind him in the tomb, that he may not
forget
himself (as
we might say), or, as he says, that he may not suffer loss of identity by
forgetting his name.
Showing the
Ka to him enables the Manes to recall his name in the great house, and
especially in the
crucible of
the house of flame. When the deceased is far advanced on his journey through
Amenta, his
Ka is still
accompanying him, and it is described as being the food of his life in spirit
world, even as it had
been his
spiritual food in the human life. "Thou art come, Osiris; thy Ka is with
thee. Thou feedest thyself
under thy
name of Ka" (128,6). When the Osiris has passed from the state of a shade
to the stage of the
Ka, he will
become what the Ritual designates a fully equipped Manes who has completed his
investiture.
As a Sahu he
was reincorporated in a spiritual body. As a Khu he was invested with a robe of
glory. As a
sacred hawk
with the head of a Bennu he was endowed with the soul of Horus (ch. 78). It was
here he
exclaimed
"Behold me; I am come to you [the gods and the glorified], and have
carried off my forms and
united
them". But in chapter 92 he was anxiously looking forward to the day of
reckoning, when he said,
"Let the
way be open to my soul and my shade, that I may see the great god within his
sanctuary on the
day of the
soul's reckoning", "when all hearts and words are weighed". He
is not yet one of the spirits
made perfect,
being neither judged nor justified. He has to pass his last examination, and is
now
approaching
the great hall of judgment for his trial. He says, "I am come that I may
secure my suit in
Abydos",
the mythical re:-birthplace of Osiris. This is the final trial of the long
series through which he has
hitherto.
successfully passed (Rit, ch. II 7, Renouf). He has now arrived at the judgment
hall. It has been
asserted that
the deeds which the deceased had done here on earth in no wise influenced the
fate that
awaited the
man after death (Maspero, Egyptian Archaeology. Eng. tr., p. 149). But how so,
when the
new heart
which was given to the deceased in Amenta, where he or she was reconstituted,
is said to be
fashioned in
accordance with what he has done in his human life ? And the speaker pleads
that his new
heart may not
be fashioned according to all the evil things that may be said against him
(Rit., ch. 27). He
is anxious
that the ministrants of Osiris in the Neter-Kar, "who deal with a man
according to the course of
his
life", may not give a bad odour to his name (ch. 3OB). And again he
pleads,"Let me be glorified
through my
attributes; let me be estimated according to my merits" (ch.72). It is
plainly apparent that the
future fate
of the soul was dependent on the deeds that were done in the body, and the
character of the
deceased was
accreted according to his conduct in the life on earth.
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Ancient
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The jury
sitting in the judgment hall consisted of forty-two masters of truth. Their
duty was to discover the
truth with
fierce interrogation [Page 205] and the instinct of sleuth-hounds on their
track. Was this Manes a
true man ?
Had he lived a true life? Was he true at heart when this was tested in the
scales ? His viscera
were present
for inspection, and these keen scrutinizers in their animal-headed forms were
very terrible,
not only in
visage, for they had a vested interest in securing a verdict of guilty against
the Manes,
inasmuch as
the viscera of the condemned were flung to them as perquisites and prey,
therefore they
searched with
the zeal of hunger for the evidence of evil living that might be found written
on this record
of the inner
man. Piecemeal the Manes were examined, to be passed if true, to be sent back
if not, in the
shape of swine
or goats or other typhonian animals, and driven down into the fiery lake of
outer darkness
where Baba
the devourer of hearts, the Egyptian "raw-head-and-bloody-bones", was
lying in wait for
them. The
highest verdict rendered by the great judge in this most awful Judgment Hall
was a testimony
to the truth
and purity of character established for the Manes on evidence that was
unimpeachable. At
this
post-mortem the sins done in the body through violating the law of nature were
probed for most
profoundly.
Not only was the deceased present in spirit to be judged at the dread tribunal,
the book of the
body was
opened and its record read. The vital organs, such as the heart, liver, and
lungs, were brought
into judgment
as witnesses to the life lived on earth. Any part too vitiated for the
rottenness to be cut off
or scraped
away was condemned and flung as offal to the powers who are called the eaters
of filth, the
devourers of
hearts, and drinkers of the blood of the wicked. And if the heart, for example,
should be
condemned to
be devoured because very bad, the individual could not be reconstructed for a
future life.
In order that
the Osiris may pass the Great Assize as one of the justified, he must have made
the word of
Osiris truth
on earth against his enemies. He must have lived a righteous life and been
just, truthful,
merciful,
charitable, humane. In coming to the Hall of Judgment or Justice to look on the
divine
countenance
and be cleansed from all the sins he may have committed he says, "I have
come to thee, O
my Lord. I
know thee. Lord of Righteousness is thy name. I bring to thee right. I have put
a stop to
wrong".
His plea is that he has done his best to fulfil the character of Horus-Makheru.
Some of his pleas
are very touching.
"He has not exacted from the labourer, as the first-fruits of each day,
more work than
was justly
due to him. He has not snatched the milk from the mouths of babes and
sucklings. He has not
been a
land-grabber. He has not dammed the running water. He has caused no famine, no
weeping, no
suffering to
men, and has not been a robber of food. He has not tampered with the tongue of
the
balance, nor
been fraudulent, mean, or sordid of soul. There is a goodly list of
pre-Christian virtues
besides all
the theoretical Christian ones. Amongst others, he says, "I have
propitiated the god with that
which
he'loveth". This was especially by the offering of Maat, viz., justice,
truth, and righteousness. "I
have given
bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and a boat to
the shipwrecked"
(ch. 125).
Yet we have been told that charity and mercy were totally unknown to the pagan
world. He
asks the
forty-two assessors for the great [Page 206] judge not to go against him, for he
did the right thing
in Tamerit,
the land of Egypt. His heart is weighed in the scales of justice.He passes
pure, as one of
those who are
welcomed by Horus for his own faithful followers, the blessed of his father, to
whom it is
said,
"Come, come in peace". Horus the intercessor, advocate, or paraclete,
now takes him by the hand
and leads him
into the presence of Osiris in the sanctuary. The Manes in the Judgment Hall is
black-
haired, as
seen in the pictures of Ani (Papyrus of Ani, pI. 4). But when he kneels before
Osiris on the
throne his
hair is white. He has passed as one of the purified and is on his way to join
the ranks of the
just spirits
made perfect, who are called the glorified. The attendants say to him, "We
put an end to thy
ills and we
remove that which is disorderly in thee through thy being smitten to the
earth" in death. These
were the ills
of mortality from which he has now been freed in spirit. Here occurs the
resurrection of the
Osiris in the
person of Horus, and it is said, "Ha, Osiris ! thou hast come, and thy Ka
with thee, which
uniteth with
thee in thy name of Ka-hetep" ( ch. 128). An ordinary rendering of
"Ka-hetep" would be
"image
of peace" = type of attainment; but as the word hetep or hepti also means
number seven, that
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Ancient
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coincides
with the Ka being an image of the septenary of souls, complete at last to be
unified in the
hawk-headed
Horus.
In the book
or papyrus-roll for invoking the gods of the Kerti, or boundaries, we find the
speaker has now
reached the
limit of Amenta. He says, "I am the soul of Osiris, and rest in him"
(ch. 127). He is hailed as
one who has
attained his Ka and received his insignia of the resurrection. It is now said
to the Osiris, "Ha,
Osiris! thou
hast received thy sceptre, thy pedestal, and the flight of stairs beneath
thee" (Rit., ch. 128).
The sceptre
was the hare-headed symbol of the resurrection first carried by Ptah the
opener. The
pedestal is
the papyrus of Horus, and the stairs denote the means of ascent from Amenta to
the summit
of the Mount
of Glory.He is now prepared and empowered to enter the bark of Ra which voyages
from
east to west
by day and from west to east by night. Before entering the bark the Osiris has
attained to
everyone of
his stations in Amenta previously to sailing for the circumpolar paradise upon
the stellar
Mount of
Glory.
Chapter 130
is the book by which the soul is made to live for ever on the day of entering
the bark of Ra,
which means
that it contains the gnosis of the subject. It was made for the birthday or
re-birthday of
Osiris.
Osiris is re-born in Horus as the type of an eternal soul. Hence the speaker
says, in this character,
"I am
coffined in an ark like Horus, to whom his cradle [or nest of reeds] is
brought". He is reborn as
Horus on his
papyrus, an earlier figure on the water than the bark of Ra. He prays,
"Let not the Osiris be
shipwrecked
on the great voyage; keep the steering tackle free from misadventure".
When he entered
Amenta the
deceased in Osiris bore the likeness of the god in mummy form. Before he comes
forth from
the lower
Aarru garden he can say, at the end of certain transformations in type and
personality, "I am the
soul of
Osiris, and I rest in him" (ch. 127). This is in the character of Horus.
"I am Horus on this
auspicious
day" at the "beautiful coming forth from Amenta". He [Page 207]
has reached the boundary,
and now
invokes the god who is in his solar disk, otherwise in the bark of Ra. He died
in Osiris to live
again in
Horus, son of god, or in his likeness. Chapters 141 and 142 begin the book of
making the Osiris
perfect. And
this, as the Ritual shows, was in the likeness of Horus the beloved sole-begotten
son of Ra,
the god in
spirit. Now, when the Manes had included his Ka in the name of Ka-hetep (Rit.,
ch. 128) it is
said to the
deceased (in the Pyramid texts, Teta, 284, Pepi 1.,34), "Horus hath
brought to pass that his
ka, which is
in thee, should unite with thee in thy name of Ka-hetep", which shows the
Ka within him was
the image of
Horus divinized. This corroborates the suggestion that the ka-type was derived
from Ka
(later Sa)
the son of Atum-Ra, who was earlier than Horus as the son of Osiris. Thus the
divine sonship
of humanity
which was personified in Horus, or Iu, or Sa, was also typified in the ka-image
of a higher
spiritual
self; and when the Manes had attained the status of a spirit perfected it was
in the form of the
divine son
who was the express image of the father god. He was Horus the beloved, in all
reality, through
perfecting
the ideal type in his own personality.
He now enters
the divine presence of Osiris-Ra to relate what he has done in the characters
of human
Horus,
Har-Tema, and Har-Makheru on behalf of his father which constitutes him the
veritable son of
god. When the
Manes had attained the solar bark he has put on "the divine body of Ra”
and is hailed by
the
ministrants with cries of welcome and acclamations from the Mount of Glory (
ch. 133). In travelling
through the
under-world he had passed from the western horizon of earth to the east of
heaven, where
he joins the
solar boat to voyage the celestial waters. There is a change of boat for the night.
Hence the
speaker says
he is "coming in the two barks of the lord of Sau" (ch. 136B,
Renouf). There may be some
difficulty
about the exact position of the chapter numbered 110 in the Ritual, but there
is no difficulty in
identifying
the fields of peace upon the summit of Mount Hetep as the lower paradise of
two, which was
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the land of
promise attainable in Amenta. This was the sub-terrestrial or earthly paradise
of the legends.
When the
Manes comes to these elysian fields he is still in the earth of eternity, and
has to prove himself
an equal as a
worker with the mighty Khus (Khuti), who are nine cubits high, in cultivating
his allotment of
arable land.
The arrival at Mount Hetep in this lower paradise or heaven of the solar mythos
precedes the
entrance to
the Judgment Hall which is in the domain of the Osiris below, and the voyage
from east to
west in the
Matit and the Sektit bark of the sun, therefore it is not in the ultimate
heaven or the upper
paradise of
eternity upon Mount Hetep. We see from the Pyramid texts (Pepi I., lines 192,
169, 182,
Maspero, Les
Inscripions. des Pyramides de Sakkarah) that there were two stages of ascent to
the upper
paradise,
that were represented by two ladders : one is the ladder of Sut, as the ascent
from the land of
darkness, the
other is the ladder of Horus, reaching to the land of light. King Pepi salutes
the two:
"Homage
to thee, O ladder of Sut. Set thyself up, O ladder of God. Set thyself up, O
ladder of Sut. Set
thyself up, O
ladder of Horus, whereby Osiris appeared in heaven when he wrought protection
for Ra.
"Pepi
likewise enters heaven [Page 208] in his name of the ladder (Budge, Book of the
Dead, Intro., pp.
117, 118).
The Manes also says, in ch. 149, "I raise my ladder up to the sky, that I
may behold the gods".
But, having
traced the reconstruction of the deceased for a future life, we now return, to
follow him once
more from the
entrance to Amenta on his journey through the under-world. His mortal
personality having
been made a
permanent as possible in the mummy left on earth, the Manes rising in Amenta
now sets
out to attain
the personality that is to last for ever. He pleads with all his dumbness that
his mouth may be
opened, or,
in other words, that his memory, which he has lost awhile, may be given back to
him, so that
he may utter
the words of power (chs. 21-23) with which he is equipped. The ceremony of
opening the
mouth after
the silence of death was one of the profoundest secrets. The great type of
power by means
of which the
mouth is opened was the leg of the hippopotamus goddess, the symbol of her
mightiness as
primum mobile
in the Great Bear having been adopted for this purpose in the eschatology. The
ceremony
was performed
at the tomb as well as in Amenta by the opener Ptah as a mystery of the
resurrection.
And amongst
the many other survivals this rite of "opening the mouth" is still
performed in Rome. It was
announced in
a daily paper not long since (the Mail, August 8th, 1903) that after the death
of Pope Leo
XIII. and the
coronation of Pius X. "a Consistory would be held to close and open the
lips of the cardinals
newly
created", or newly born into the purple. The Osiris also prays that when
his mouth is opened Taht
may come to
him equipped with the words of power. So soon as the mouth of the Manes is
freed from
the fetters
of dumbness and darkness (or muzzles of Sut) and restored to him, he collects
the words of
power from
all quarters more persistently than any sleuth-hound and more swiftly than the
flash of light
(chs. 23, 24,
Renouf). These words of power are magical in their effect. They paralyze all
opposition.
They open
every door. The power is at once applied. The speaker says, "Back, in
retreat ! Back,
crocodile
Sui! Come not against me, who live by the words of power! " ( ch. 31).
This is spoken to the
crocodiles or
dragons who come to rob the Manes and carry off the words of power that protect
the
deceased in
death. The magical mode of employing the words of power in the mysteries of
Taht is by the
deceased
being assimilated to the character and assuming the superhuman type as a means
of
protection
against the powers of evil. The speaker in the Ritual does not mistake himself
for the deity. He
is the deity
pro tem. in acted Sign-Ianguage, and by such means is master of the magical
power. It is the
god who is
the power, and the magician employs the words and signs which express that
power; but
instead of
praying to the god he makes use of the divine words attributed to the god, and
personates the
god as Horus
or Ra, Taht or Osiris, in character. He puts on the mask of a crocodile, an
ibis, a lion, or
other zootype
of the primary powers, and says to his adversaries: I am the crocodile (=
Sebek), or, I am
the lion (=
Atum), or, I am Ra, the sun, protecting himself with the Uraeus serpent, and
consequently no
evil thing
can overthrow me (ch. 32). Repeating ch. 42 was a magical way of escaping from
the slaughter
which was
wrought in Suten-Khen, and the mode of magic was for the deceased in his [Page
209] re-birth
to become or
to be assimilated to the divine child in his rebirth. He tells the serpent Abur
that he is the
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divine babe,
the mighty one. Not a limb of him is without a god. He is not to be grasped by
arms or
seized by
hands. "Not men or gods, the glorified ones or the damned; not generations
past, present, or to
come, can
inflict any injury on him who cometh forth and proceedeth as the eternal child,
the everlasting
one"
(Rit., ch. 42), or as Horus, the son of Isis. These divine characters are
assumed by the Manes when
he commands
his enemies to do his bidding. According to the magical prescriptions, in
fighting the devil,
or the evil
Apap, a figure of the monster was to be moulded in wax with the name inscribed
upon it in
green (Budge,
Proceedings Soc. of Arch., 1866, po 21). This was to be spat upon many times,
spurned
with the
foot, and then flung into the fire, as a magical mode of casting out the devil.
When the Apap
reptile is
first encountered and addressed in the Ritual it is said, "O one of wax!
who takest captive and
seizest with
violence and livest upon those who are motionless, let me not become motionless
before
thee"
(Rit., ch. 7). This is because the presence of the devouring monster is made
tangible by the image
of wax which
represents the power addressed, that is otherwise invisible. The ideal becomes
concrete in
the figure
that is thus magically employed. It is in this magical sense that the opening
chapters of the
Ritual are
declared to contain the "words of power" that bring about the
resurrection and the glory of the
Manes in
Amenta. This mode of magic is likewise a mode of hypnotism or human magnetism
which was
universally
common with the primitive races, especially the African, but which is only now
being timidly
touched by
modern science. The power of paralyzing and of arresting motion was looked upon
as
magical
potency indeed. Hypnotic power is magical power. This is described as being
taken from the
serpent as
its strength. In one passage (Rit., ch. 149) the serpent is described as he
"who paralyzes with
his
eyes". And previously, in the same chapter, the speaker says to the
serpent, "I am the man who
covers thy
head with darkness, and I am the great magician. Thine eyes have been given to
me, and I
am glorified
through them. Thy strength [ or power] is in my grasp". This might be
termed a lesson in
hypnotism.
The speaker becomes a great magician by taking possession of the paralyzing
power in the
eyes of the
serpent. The description seems to imply that there had been a contest betwixt
the serpent-
charmer and
the serpent, and that the man had conquered by wresting the magical power from
the
reptile. The
Manes has much to say about the adversary of souls whom he meets in Amenta.
This is the
Apap of
darkness, of drought and dearth, disease and death. It is the representative of
evil in physical
phenomena
which was translated as a figure from the mythology into the domain of
eschatology. In
(chapter 32)
the "Osiris standeth up upon his feet" to face and defy the crocodiles
of darkness who
devour the
dead and carry off the words of power from the glorified in the under-world.
They are stopped
and turned
back when the speaker says: "I am Atum. All things which exist are in my
grasp, and those
depend on me
which are not yet in being. I have received increase of length and depth and
fulness of
breathing
within the domain of my father the great one. He hath given me the [Page 210]
beautiful Amenta
through which
the living pass from death to life" (ch.32). Thus the Osiris appears,
speaks, and acts in the
characters of
a drama previously extant in the mythology. He comes forth: As the bull of
Osiris (ch. 53A);
as the god in
lion form, Atum (ch. 54); as the jackal Ap-uat, of Sothis or Polaris; as the
divine hawk,
Horus (ch.
71); as the sacred hawk (ch. 78); as the lotus of earth (ch. 81); as the
bennu-bird or phoenix-
soul of Ra
(ch. 83); as the shen-shen or hernshaw (ch. 84); as the soul that is an image
of the eternal
(ch. 85) as
the dove or swallow ( ch. 86); as the crocodile Sebek ( ch. 88); as the khu, or
glorified spirit
( ch. 91);
and many more. But the individual is shown to persist in a human form. He comes
forth by day
and is living
after death in the figure, but not as the mummy, that he wore on earth. He is
portrayed staff
in hand,
prepared for his journey through the under-world (Naville, Todt., Kap 2,
vignette). Also the kaimage
of man the
immortal is portrayed in the likeness of man the mortal. The human figure is
never lost
to view
through all the phantasmagoria of transformation (Naville, Todt., vignettes to
Kap 2 and 186).
From
beginning to end of the Ritual we see it is a being once human, man Or woman,
who is the traveller
through the
nether-world up the mount of rebirth in heaven, at the summit of the stellar
paradise, where
the effigy of
the earthly personality was ultimately merged in the divine image of the ka,
and the mortal
puts on
immortality in the likeness of the dear old humanity, changed and glorified.
This shows the ghost
was founded
on a human basis, and that it continued the human likeness in proof of its
human origin.
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Ancient
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Resurrection
in the Ritual is the coming forth to day (Peri-em-hru), whether FROM the life
on earth or to
the life
attainable in the heaven of eternity. The first resurrection is, as it were, an
ascension from the
tomb in the
nether earth by means of the secret doorway. But this coming forth is in, not
from, Amenta,
after burial
in the upper earth. The deceased had passed through the sepulchre, emerging in
the lower
earth. He
issues from the valley of darkness and the shadow of death. Osiris had been cut
to pieces in
the lunar and
other phenomena by the evil Sut, and the limbs were gathered up and put
together by his
son and by
the mother in Amenta, where he rose again as Horus from the dead. And
whatsoever had
been
postulated of Osiris the mummy in the mythology was repeated on behalf of the
Osiris in the
eschatology.
Osiris had
originated as a god in matter when the powers were elemental, but in the later
theology the
supreme soul
in nature was configurated in a human form. Matter as human was then considered
higher
than matter
unhumanized, and the body as human mummy was superior to matter in external
nature.
Also the
spirit in human form was something beyond an elemental spirit; hence the god as
supreme spirit
was based, as
already shown, upon the human ghost, with matter as the mummy. Osiris as a
mummy in
Amenta is
what we might call the dead body of matter invested with the limbs and features
of the human
form, as the
type to which the elemental powers had attained in Ptah, in Atum, and in the
human featured
Horus, which
succeeded the earlier representation by means of zootypes. Osiris is a figure
of inanimate
nature,
personalized as the mummy with a human form and face, whilst being also an
image [Page 211] of
matter as the
physical body of the god. The process applied to the human body first in death
was
afterwards
applied to the god in matter, in the elements, or in the inert condition at the
time of the winter
solstice,
awaiting corpse-like for his transformation or transubstantiation into the
young and glorious body
of the sun,
or spirit of vegetation in the spring. The solar god as the sun of evening or
of autumn was the
suffering,
dying sun, or the dead sun buried in the nether earth. To show this, it was
made a mummy of,
bound up in
the linen vesture without a seam, and thus imaged in a likeness of the dead who
bore the
mummy form on
earth, the unknown being represented by the known. The sun god when descending
to
Amenta may be
said to mummify or karas his own body in becoming earthed or, as it were,
fleshed in the
earth of
Ptah. Hence the mummy-type of Ptah, of Atum, and Osiris, each of whom at
different stages was
the solar god
in mummied form when buried in Amenta. It has now to be shown how it was
brought about
that the
final and supreme one god of the Egyptian religion was represented as a mummy
in the earth of
eternity, and
why the mystery of the mummy is the profoundest of all the mysteries of Amenta.
An
essential
element in Egyptian religion was human sympathy with the suffering god, or the
power in nature
which gave
itself, whether as herself or himself, as a living sacrifice, to bring the
elements of life to men
in light, in
water, air, vegetation, fruit, roots, grain, and all things edible. Whence the
type was eaten
sacramentally
at the thanksgiving meal. This feeling was pathetically expressed at "the
festival of the
staves",
when crutches were offered as supports for the suffering autumn sun, otherwise
the cripple deity
Horus, dying
down into Amenta and pitifully needing help which the human sympathizers tried
to give.
Can anything
be more pathetic than this address to the sufferer as the sun god in Amenta:
"Decree this,
O Atum, that
if I see thy face [in glory] I shall not be pained by the signs of thy
sufferings". Atum decrees.
He also
decrees that the god will look on the suppliant as his second self (Rit., ch.
173; Naville).
The legend of
the voluntary victim who in a passion of divinest pity became incarnate, and
was clothed in
human form
and feature for the salvation of the world, did not originate in a belief that
God had
manifested
once for all as an historic personage.It has its roots in the remotest part.
The same legend
was repeated
in many lands with a change of name, and at times of sex, for the sufferer, but
none of the
initiated in
the esoteric wisdom ever looked upon the Kamite Iusa, or gnostic Horus, Jesus,
Tammuz,
Krishna,
Buddha, Witoba, or any other of the many saviours as historic in personality,
for the simple
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Ancient
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reason that
they had been more truly taught. Mythology was earlier than eschatology, and
the human
victim was
preceded by the zootype; the phenomena first rendered mythically were not
manifested in the
human sphere.
The natural genesis was in another category altogether. The earliest Horus was
not
incorporated
in a human form. He represented that soul of life which came by water to a
dried-up,
withering
world upon the verge of perishing with hunger and with thirst. Here the fish or
the first-fruit of
the earth was
the sign of his incorporation in matter; hence the typical shoot, the green
ear, or the branch
that were
imaged [Page 212] in Child-Horus. The saviour who came by water was Ichthys the
fish. The
saviour who
came in fruit as product of the tree was the Natzer. The saviour who came by
spirit was the
soul of the
sun. This was the earliest rendering of the incorporation of Horus as the
primary life and light
of the world
made manifest in external nature, before the doctrine was applied to biology in
the human
domain, where
Horus came by blood, as the mode of incarnation in the human form. In the later
myth
Osiris is the
deity who suffered as the winter sun, assailed by all the powers of darkness.
He also
suffered from
the drought as imaged in the fire-breathing Apap-reptile, and in other ways as
lord of life in
water,
vegetation, and in various forms of food. This suffering deity or provider was
the god in matter. Ra
is the god in
spirit, Osiris in matter. Not only in the matter of earth, but also in the
human form - the form
assumed by
Horus as the child of earth, or Seb. Osiris, the great sufferer in the dead of
winter, was not
simply the
sun, nor was Osiris dead, however inert in matter, lying dumb in darkness, with
non-beating
heart. He was
the buried life of earth, and hence the god in matter imaged in the likeness of
a mummy
waiting for
the resurrection in Amenta. Such was the physical basis in the mythos of the
mystery that is
spiritual in
the eschatology. Mummy-making in Egypt was far older than the Osirian cult. It
was at least as
old as Anup
the divine embalmer of the dead. Preserving the human mummy perfectly intact
was a mode
of holding on
to the individual form and features as a means of preserving the earthly
likeness for
identifying
the personality hereafter in spirit. The mummy was made on purpose to preserve
the physical
likeness of
the mortal. The risen dead are spoken of in the Ritual as "those who have
found their faces".
The mummy Was
a primitive form of the African effigy in which the body was preserved as its
own
portrait,
whereas the ka Was intended for a likeness of the spirit or immortal - the
likeness in which the
just spirit
made perfect was to see Osiris in his glory. Both the mummy and the ka were
represented in
the Egyptian
tomb, each with a chamber to itself. From the beginning there had been a
visible endeavour
to preserve
some likeness or memento of the earthly body even when the bones alone could be
preserved.
Mummy-making in the Ritual begins with collecting the bones and piecing them
together, if
only in a
likeness of the skeleton. It is at this stage that Horus is said to collect the
bones of his father
Osiris for
the resurrection in a future life by means of transubstantiation. The same
primitive mode of
preparing the
mummy is implied when it is said to the solar god on entering the under-world,
"Reckon
thou thy
bones, and set thy limbs, and turn thy face to the beautiful Amenta" (ch.
133, Renouf). Teta,
deceased, is
thus addressed, "O Teta, thou hast raised up thy head for thy bones, and
thou hast raised
up thy bones
for thy head". Also the hand of Teta is said to be like a wall as support
of Horus in giving
stability to
his bones. Thus the foundation was laid for building the mummy-type as a
present image of
the person
who had passed.
Amongst other
types, the Yucatanese made little statues of their fathers. The head was left
hollow, so
that the
ashes of the cremated [Page 213] body might be placed in the skull, as in an
urn; this, says Landa,
was then
covered "with the skin of the occiput taken from the corpse".The
custom is akin to that which
has been
unearthed in the European bone caves, where the skulls of the adult dead are
found to have
been
trepanned, and the bones of little children inserted instead of human ashes. In
Sign-Ianguage the
bones of the
child were typical of rebirth in a future life. The desire to live and the
longing for a life after
death, in
earlier times, are inexpressible and the efforts made to give some kind of
expression to the
feeling are
ineffably pathetic.D' Acugna relates that it was a custom with the South
American Indians to
preserve and
keep the dead bodies of relatives in their homes as long as was possible, so as
to have
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Ancient
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their friends
continually before their eyes. For these they made feasts and set out viands
before the dead
bodies. Here,
in passing, we would suggest that in the Egyptian custom as described by both
Herodotus
and Plutarch
it was not the dead mummy that was brought to table as a type of immortality,
but the image
of the ka,
which denoted what the guests would be like after death, and was therefore a
cause for
rejoicing.
Carrying the ka image round the festive board was just a Kamite prototype of
the elevation and
carrying
round of the host for adoration in the Church of Rome. Indeed, the total
paraphernalia of the
Christian
mysteries had been made use of in Egyptian temples. For instance, in one of the
many titles of
Osiris in all
his forms and places he is called "Osiris in the monstrance" (Rit.,
ch. 141, Naville). In the
Roman ritual
the monstrance is a transparent vessel in which the host or victim is
exhibited. In the
Egyptian cult
Osiris was the victim. The elevation of the host signifies the resurrection of
the crucified
god, who rose
again in spirit from the corpus of the victim, now represented by the host.
Osiris in the
monstrance
should of itself suffice to show that the Egyptian Karast (Krst) is the
original Christ, and that
the Egyptian
mysteries were continued by the gnostics and Christianized in Rome.The mode of
conveying the
oral wisdom to the initiate in the mysteries of young man making was continued
in the
mystery of
mummy making. Whilst the mummy was being prepared for burial, chapters of the
Ritual were
read to it,
or to the conscious ka, by an official who was known as the man of the roll.
Every Egyptian
was supposed
to be acquainted with the formula, from having learned them during his
lifetime, by which
he was to
have the use of his limbs and possession of his soul restored to him in death,
and to be
protected
from the dangers of the nether-world. These were repeated to the dead person,
however, for
greater
security, during the process of embalming, and the son of the deceased, or the
master of the
ceremonies,
took care to whisper to the mummy the most mysterious parts, which no living
ear might
hear with
impunity. (Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, Eng. trans., pp. 510, 5 I I.)
But it is an
error to suppose with some Egyptologists, like M. de Horrack, that the new
existence of the
deceased was
begun in the old earthly body (Proceed. Society of Bib. Archaeology, vol. vi.,
March 4,
1884, p.
126). The resurrection of the dead in mummy form may look at first sight as if
the old dead
corpse had
[Page 214] risen from the sepulchre. But the risen is not the dead mummy, it is
a type of
personality
in the shape of the mummy. It is what the Ritual describes as the mummy-form of
a god. The
Manes prays,
"May I too arise and assume the mummied form as a god", that is, as
the mummy of
Osiris, the
form in which Amsu-Horus rose, a type of permanent preservation, but not yet
one of the
spirits made
perfect by possession of the ka. It was this mistake which led to a false idea
that the
Egyptians
held the dogma of a corporeal resurrection of the dead which became one of the
doctrines that
were fostered
into fixity by the A-Gnostic Christians. The Osiris as mortal Manes, or
Amsu-Horus as
divinity,
does rise in the mummy form, but this is in another life and in another world,
not as a human
being on our
earth. It has the look of a physical resurrection in the old body, and so the
ignorant
misinterpreters
mistook it and founded on it a corporeal basis for the future life. In the
Christian scheme
the buried
dead were to rise again in the old physical corpus for the last judgment in
time at the literal
ending of the
world. This was another delusion based on the misrendering of the Egyptian
wisdom. The
dead who rose
again in Amenta, which was the ground floor of a future state of existence,
also rose
again for the
judgment; but this took place in the earth of eternity which was mistaken by
the Christians
for the earth
of time, just as they had mistaken the form of the risen sahu for the old body
of matter that
never was
supposed to rise again by those who knew. The earthly mummy of the deceased
does not go
to heaven,
nor does it enter the solar boat, yet the Osiris is told to enter the boat, his
reward being the
seat which
receives his sahu or spirit mummy (Rit., ch. 130). Clearly this can only refer
to the spiritual
body, as the
earthly mummy was left on the earth outside the gates of Amenta. Not only is
the corporeal
mummy not
placed on board the boat of souls, the deceased was to be represented by a
statue of cedar
wood anointed
with oil, or, as we might say, Christified (134,9, 10).There is no possible
question of a
corporeal
resurrection. The object, aim, and end of all the spiritualizing processes is
to become non-
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corporeal in
the earthly sense - that is, as the Ritual represents it, to defecate into pure
spirit. The word
sahu (or the
mummy) is employed to express the future form as well as the old. But it is a
spiritual sahu,
the divine
mummy. Even the bones and flesh of souls are mentioned but these are the bones
of Osiris,
the backbone
of the universal frame, and the flesh of Ra. The terms used for the purpose of
divinizing
are antipodal
to any idea of return to corporeality as a material mummy. The mummy of the
Manes is a
sahu of the
glorified spirit. This state of being is attained by the deceased in chapter
73: "I am the
beloved son
of his father. I come to the state of a sahu of the well-furnished Manes".
He is said to be
mummified in
the shape of a divine hawk when he takes the form of Horus (78, 15, 16), not as
the earthly
mummy in a
resurrection on our earth. The resurrection of Osiris was not corporeal. The
mummy of the
god in matter
or mortality rises from the tomb transubstantiated into spirit. So complete is
the
transformation
that he is Osiris bodily changed into Horus as a sahu or spirit. The Egyptians
had no
doctrine of a
physical resurrection [Page 215] 1of the dead. Though they retained the mummy
as atype of
personality,
it was a changed and glorified form of the earthly body, the mummy that had
attained its feet
in the
resurrection. It was the Karast mummy, or, word for word and thing for thing,
Amsu-Horus was the
Kamite Christ
who rose up from the mummy as a spirit.
Also it is
entirely false to represent the Egyptians as making the mummy and preserving it
for the return
of the soul
into the old earthly body.That is but a shadow of the true idea cast backwards
by Christianity.
Millions of
cats were made into mummies and sacredly preserved around the city of Bubastes,
but not
with the
notion of a bodily resurrection. They were the totems of the great cat clan or
its metropolis, the
Egyptian
"Clan Chattan", which had become symbols or fetishes of religious
significance to later times
when the
totemic mother as the cat, the seer by night, was divinized in the lunar
goddess Pasht, and the
worshippers
embalmed her zootype, not because they adored the cat, but because the deess
herself
was the Great
Mother typified by the cat. Both the mother and the moon were recognized beyond
the cat,
which was
their totemic zootype and venerated symbol. Osiris was the mummy of Amenta in
two
characters;
in one he is the khat-mummy lying laid out with corpse-like face upon the
funeral couch, in
the other he
is the mummy risen to his feet and reincorporated in the glorious body. These
two characters
were
continued as the Corpus Christi and the risen Christ in Rome. Hence in the
iconography of the
catacombs the
Egyptian mummy as Osiris-sahu, and as Horus the new-born solar child, are the
demonstrators
of the resurrection for the Christian faith, where there is no testimony
whatever to an
historical
event. Any time during the last 10,000 years the mummy made for burial in the
tomb was
imaged in the
likeness of Osiris in Amenta, who, though periodically buried, rose again for
ever as the
type of life
eternal. In making the mummy of Osiris the Egyptians were also making an image
of the god
who rose
again in spirit as Osiris-sahu or as Horus divinized, the risen Christ of the
Osirian cult. When
the
lustrations were performed with water in Tattu and the anointings with oil in
Abydos, it was what may
be termed a
mode of Christifying or making Horus the child of earth into Horus the son of
god who
became so in
his baptism and anointing that were represented in the mysteries. The first
Horus was born
of the
virgin, not begotten. The second Horus was begotten of the father, and the
child was made a man
of in his
baptismal regeneration with the water and with unction, with the oil of a tree
or the fat of a bull.
We have now
to show that in making the mummy the Egyptians were also making the typical
Christ,
which is the
anointed. The word karas, kares, or karis in Egyptian signifies embalmment, to
embalm, to
anoint, to
make the mummy. Kreas, creas, or chros, in Greek denotes the human body, a
person or
carcase, more
expressly the flesh of it; cras, Gaelic and Irish, the body; Latin, corpus, for
a dead body;
these are all
preceded by the word karas or karast, in Egyptian, with the risen mummy for
determinative
of the
meaning. Each body that had been embalmed was karast, so to say, and made into
a type of
immortality
in the likeness of Osiris-sahu or Horus, the prototypal [Page 216] Christ. It
will be made
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Ancient
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apparent by
degrees that the religion of the Chrestoi first began at Memphis with the
cultus of the
mummy in its
two characters, which represented body and spirit, or Ptah in matter and
Kheper(Iu-emhetep)
in spirit.
Hence the hawk as bird of spirit issuing from the karast-mummy was an image of
the
resurrection.
The origin of the Christ as the anointed or "karast“ will explain the
connection of the Christ
name and that
of the Christiani with unction and anointing. Horus the Kamite Christ was the
anointed
son. The oil
upon his face was the sign of his divinity. This supplied a figure of the
Christ to Paul when he
says that for
those who "put on Christ” "there can be no male and female, for ye
are one [man or
mummy] in
Christ Jesus“ (Gal., iii. 28). The Christ was "put on" metaphorically
in the process of anointing
which
originated with the making of the mummy. Whether the dead were represented by
the bones
invested with
a coating of blood, of flesh-coloured earth, or by the eviscerated and
desiccated body that
was bandaged
in the cloth of a thousand folds, the object was to preserve and perpetuate the
deceased
in some
permanent form of personality. The Egyptians aimed at making the mummy
imperishable and
incorruptible,
as an image of durability and continuity, a type of the eternal, or of
Osiris-karast in the
likeness of a
mummy. Hence the swathe without a seam and of incredible length in which the
mummy
was enfolded
to represent unending duration. Some of these have been unwound to the extent
of seven
or eight
hundred yards, and one of them is described as being a thousand yards in
length. But, however
long, it was
made without a seam. This vesture is alluded to in the chapter of the golden
vulture. The
chapter is to
be inscribed for the protection of the deceased on “the day of his burial in
the cloth of a
thousand
folds" (Rit., ch. 157 1 3).
This cloth
was the seamless swathe of the Egyptian karast, which became the vesture or
"coat without a
seam woven
from the top throughout “( John, xix. 23) for the Christ. Even the poorest
Egyptian, whose
body was
steeped in salt and natron and anointed with a little cedar oil, was wrapped in
a single piece of
linen equally
with the mummy whose swathe was hundreds of yards in length, because the
funeral
vesture of
Osiris, his body of matter, was without a seam. The dead are often called
"the bandaged
ones".
On rising from the tomb the deceased exclaims triumphantly, "O my father!
my sister! my mother
Isis! I am
freed from my bandages ! I can see ! I am one of those who are freed from their
bandages to
see Seb"
(158, I). Seb denotes the earth, and the Manes is free to visit the earth
again, this time as the
ghost or
double of his former self. Covering the corpse with the transparent tahn, or
golden gum, was
one way of
turning the dead body into a type of the spiritual body which was imaged as the
glorified. One
cannot doubt
that this was a mode of showing the transformation of the Osirian dead mummy
into the
luminous body
called the sahu of Osiris when he was transfigured but still retained the mummy
form in
Amsu-Horus at
his rising from the sepulchre. Mummies buried in the tomb at Medum had been
thus
enveloped.
This was one form of investiture alluded to in the Ritual as distinguished from
the mummy
bandages. One
of these mummies is now to be seen in the Royal College of Surgeons.[Page 217]
“The
mode of
embalming", says Prof. Petrie, "was very singular. The body was
shrunk, wrapped up in linen
cloth, then
modelled all over with resin ( or tahn) into the natural shape and plumpness of
the living
figure,
completely restoring all the fullness of the form, and this was wrapped round
with a few turns of
the finest
gauze". (Petrie, Medum, Introduction, chapter 2, pages 17 and 18.) There
was no coffin present
in the tomb.
The mummy thus invested with the tahn had been buried in this primitive kind of
glass case,
in which the
form and features could be seen either directly or by means of the modelling.
The tahn, gum
or resin, as
a natural product from the tree, preceded glass, and would be fashioned for the
earlier
monstrance.
Remodelling the dead in the likeness of the living form by means of the
pellucid tahn is a
mode of
making the glorified body on earth that was imaged by the sahu in Amenta, and
thus the
mummy here
attains the two-fold type of the Osiris Khat, or corpse, and the Osiris-sahu,
or the glorified in
spirit. In
the Christian agglomerate of Egyptian doctrines and dogmas, rites and symbols,
the pellucid
tahn may, we
think, be recognized in the sacred monstrance of the Roman ritual. This is a
show-case in
which the
host or Corpus Christi is placed to be uplifted and exhibited. The eye of Horus
is yet visible in
Page 168
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the lanula or
crescent-shaped crystal of the monstrance which holds the consecrated bread.
The name of
this
show-case is derived from the Latin monstrare, "to show", and this
had been the object of the
mummy makers
in employing the transparent tahn.
In the
eschatological or final phase of the doctrine, to make the mummy was to make
the typical
anointed,
also called the Messu, the Messiah, and the Christ. Mes or mas, in the
hieroglyphics, signifies
to anoint and
to steep, as in making the mummy, and messu in Egyptian means the anointed;
whence
lah the Messu
becomes Messiah in Hebrew. There was a previous form of the anointed in the
totemic
mysteries of
young man making. When the boy attained the age of puberty he was made into the
anointed one
at the time of his initiation into the way of a man with a woman. It was a
custom with certain
Inner African
tribes to slit the urethra of the boy and lubricate the member with palm oil.
This was a
primitive way
of making the anointed at puberty. Australian aborigines are also known to slit
the prepuce
cover for the
same purpose. At this stage of the mystery the anointed one is the adult youth
who has
attained the
rank of begetter full of grace and favour, or is khemt, as it was rendered in
Egyptian.
Tertullian
claims that the name of the Christians came from the unction received by Jesus
Christ. This is
in perfect
keeping with the derivation of the typical Christ from the mummy which was
anointed so
abundantly
with oil in its embalmment. It is said of the woman who anointed Jesus in
Bethany," in that
she poured
the ointment upon my body, she did it to prepare me for my burial " (Matt.
xxvi. 12). She was
preparing the
mummy after the manner of Anup the embalmer, who prepared Osiris for his burial
and
resurrection.
But it was only as a dead mummy and not a living man that the gnostic Jesus
could have
been embalmed
for burial.
We now
proceed to show that Christ the anointed is none. other than [Page 218] the
Osiris-karast, and
that the
karast mummy risen to its feet as Osiris-sahu was the prototypal Christ.
Unhappily , these
demonstrations
cannot be made without a wearisome mass of detail. And we are bound for the
bottom
this time.
Dr. Budge, in his book on the mummy, tells his readers that the Egyptian word
for mummy is
ges, which signifies
to wrap up in bandages. But he does not point out that ges or kes, to embalm
the
corpse or
make the mummy, is a reduced or abraded form of an earlier word, karas (whence
krst for
to knot, to
make the mummy or karast (Birch, Dictionary of
the
Hieroglyphics, pp. 415-416; Champollion, Gram.
Egyptienne,
86). The word krs denotes the embalmment of
the mummy,
and the krst, as the mummy, was made in the
process of
preparation by purifying, anointing, and
embalming. To
karas the dead body was to embalm it, to
bandage it,
to make the mummy. The mummy was the
Osirian
Corpus Christi, prepared for burial as the laid-out
dead, the
karast by name. When raised to its feet, it was the risen mummy, or sahu. The
place of
embalmment
was likewise the krs. Thus the process of making the mummy was to karas, the
place in
which it was
laid is the karas, and the product was the krst, whose image is the upright
mummy = the
risen Christ.
Hence the name of the Christ, Christos in Greek, Chrestus in Latin, for the
anointed, was
derived, as
the present writer previously suggested, from the Egyptian word krst. Karas
also signifies the
burial-place,
and the word modifies into K..s or Ch..s. Kâsu the burial place "was a
name of the 14th
Nome in Upper
Egypt. A god K..s is mentioned three or four times in the Book of the Dead, the
god K..s
who is in the
Tuat" ( ch. 40). This was a title of the mummy Osiris in the funerary
dwelling. In one
passage Kâs
is described as the deliverer or saviour from all mortal needs. In "the
chapter of raising the
body"
(178) it is said of the deceased that he had been hungry and thirsty (on
earth), but he will (never
Page 169
the mummy).
The original word written in hieroglyphics is ,.krst, whence kas, to embalm, to
bandage,
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
hunger or
thirst any more, "for Kâs delivers him" and does away with wants like
these. That is, in the
resurrection.
Here the name of the god Osiris-Kâs written at full is Osiris the Karast - the
Egyptian Christ.
Not only is
the risen mummy or sahu called the karast, Osiris as lord of the bier is the
Neb-karast
equivalent to
the later Christ the Lord, and the lord of the bier is god of the resurrection
from the house of
death. The
karast is literally the god or person who has been mummified, embalmed, and
anointed or
christified.
Anup the baptizer and embalmer of the dead for the new life was the preparer of
the karastmummy.
As John the
Baptist is the founder of the Christ in baptism, so Anup was the christifier of
the
mortal Horus,
he on whom the holy ghost descended as a bird when the Osiris made his
transformation
in the
marriage mystery of Tat tu (Rit., ch. 17). We read in the funeral texts of
Anup- being "Suten tu
hetep, Anup,
neb tser khent neter ta krast-ef em set" (Birch, Funereal Text 4th
Dynasty). "Suten hept tu
Anup tep-tuf
khent neter ha am ut neb tser krast ef em as-ef en kar [Page 219] neter em set
Amenta"
(Birch,
Funereal Stele of Ra-Khepr-Ka, 12th Dynasty). Anup gives embalmment, krast; he
is lord over the
place of
embalmment, the kras ; the lord of embalming (krast), who, so to say, makes the
"krast". The
process of
embalmment is to make the mummy. This was a type of immortality or rising
again.Osiris is
krast, or
embalmed and mummified for the resurrection. Passage into life and light is
made for the karastdead
through the
embalmment of the good Osiris (Rit., ch. 162)-that is, through his being karast
as the
mummy type.
Thus the Egyptian krast was the pre-Christian Christ, and the pictures in the
Roman
Catacombs
preserve the proof. The passing of the karast into the Christ is depicted in
the gnostic
iconography.
It is in the form of a child bound up in the swathings of a diminutive Egyptian
mummy, with
the halo and
cross of the four quarters round its head, which show its solar origin. It is
the divine infant
which has the
head of Ra in the Ritual who says, "I am the babe; I renew myself, and I
grow young
again"
(chs. 42 and 43). The karast mummy is the type of resurrection in the Roman
Catacombs because
the karast
was the prototypal Christ. It is the Egyptian karast as thing and word that
supplied and will
explain the
Greek Christ, Christos, Krstos, or Latin Chrestus and account for the Corpus
Christi, the
anointed, the
Saviour, doctrinally, typically, actually in every way except historically, and
of that the karast,
Krstos, or
Christ is entirely independent. "Henceforth", said a dignitary of the
Church of England the other
day,
"Christianity has done with the metaphysical Christ". But there is no
physical Christ except the karast
mummy, which
was Osiris when laid out and lying down in death, and Horus of the resurrection
standing
up as Amsu
risen from the sepulchre, having the whip hand over all the powers of darkness
and the
adversaries
of his father.
Say what you
will or believe what you may, there is no other origin for Christ the anointed
than for Horus
the karast or
anointed son of god the father. There is no other origin for a Messiah as the
anointed than
for the Masu
or anointed. Finally, then, the mystery of the mummy is the mystery of the
Christ. As
Christian, it
is allowed to be for ever inexplicable. As Osirian, the mystery can be explained.
It is one of
the mysteries
of Amenta, with a more primitive origin in the rites of totemism.
We now claim
sufficient warrant for affirming that Christ the anointed is a mystical figure
which originated
as the
Egyptian mummy in the twofold character of Osiris in his death and in his
resurrection; as Osiris,
or mortal
Horus, the karast; and Osiris-sahu, or Horus divinized as the anointed son. The
Christ or karast
still
continues to be made when the sacrament of extreme unction is administered to
the dying as a
Roman
Catholic rite. Though but a shadow of the primitive reality, it perpetuates the
"sacred mystery" of
converting
the corpse into the sahu, the transubstantiation of the inert Osiris by descent
of Ra; the mortal
Horus, child
of the mother, [Page 220]into Horus the anointed son of god the father.
"Extreme unction", the
seventh of
the holy sacraments, is indeed a Christian rite.
Page 170
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
It will now
be necessary to give an account of certain other mysteries of Amenta and
doctrines of the
Ritual. The
Egyptians celebrated ten great mysteries on ten different nights of the year.
The first was the
night of the
evening meal (literally the last supper), and the laying of offerings on the
altar. It is the night
of
provisioning the Lord's table. Osiris had been overcome by Sut and the Sebau,
who had once more
renewed their
assault upon Un-nefer when they were defeated and exterminated by his faithful
followers.
Therefore
this was also the night of the great battle when the moon god Taht and the
children of light
annihilated
the rebellious powers of darkness. On the second night the overthrown
Tat-Cross, with Osiris
in it, or on
it, was again erected by Horus, Prince of Sekhem, in the region of Tat tu,
where the holy spirit
Ra descends
upon the mummy and the twain become united for the resurrection. On the third
night the
scene is in
"Sekhem; the mystery is that of the blind Horus or of Horus in the dark,
who here receives his
sight. It is
also the mystery of dawn upon the coffin of Osiris. We might call it the
mystery of Horus the
mortal
transfiguring into Horus the immortal. On the fourth night the four pillars are
erected with which the
future kingdom
of god the father is to be founded. It is called "the night of erecting
the flag-staffs of
Horus, and of
establishing him as the heir of his father's property". The fifth scene is
in the region of
Rekhet, and
the mystery is that of the two sisters with Isis watching in tears over her
brother Osiris, and
brooding
above the dead body to give it the warmth of new life. On the sixth night the
glorious ones are
judged, the
evil dead are parted off, and joy goeth its round in Thinnis. This is the night
of the great
festival
named Ha-k-er-a, or "Come thou to me", in which the blending of the
two souls was solemnized
as a glorious
mystery by a festival at which there was much eating and drinking. The mystery
of the
seventh night
was that of the great judgment on the highway of the damned, when the suit was
closed
against the
rebels who had failed once more and were ignominiously defeated. After the
verdict comes
the
avengement. The eighth is the night of the great hoeing in Tat tu, when the associates
of Sut are
massacred and
the fields are manured with their blood. The ninth is called "the night of
hiding the body of
him who is
supreme in attributes". The mystery is that of collecting the remains of
Osiris, whose body
was mutilated
and scattered piecemeal by Sut, and of hiding it. The mystery on the tenth
night presents a
picture of
Anup, the embalmer, the anointer, or christifier of the mummy. This is in
Rusta, the place of
resurrection
from Amenta. It may be the series is not in exact order, but that does not
interfere with the
nature of the
mysteries. In each of the ten acts of the drama the suffering Osiris and the
triumph over all
his
adversaries are portrayed as mysteries in a prototypal miracle-play or drama
that was held to be
divine. The
chapter of these ten mysteries was recited penitentially for the purification
of the Manes and
the coming
forth after death (Rit., ch. 18, rubric). With this we may compare the fact
that the Jewish new
year is
ushered in with ten days of penitence. [Page 221]
The altar or
communion-table thus provisioned was the coffin lid. This also was continued in
the ritual of
Rome, for it
is a fact that the earliest Christian altar was a coffin. According to Blunt's
Dictionary of
Doctrinal and
Historical Theology (p. 16), this was a hollow chest, on the lid or mensa of
which the
eucharist was
celebrated. This, as Egyptian, was the coffin of Osiris that constituted the
altar on which
the
provisions were laid in Sekhem for the eucharistic meal. Hence the resurrection
is described as
"dawn
upon the coffin of Osiris". Therefore he rose in spirit from the mummy in
the coffin, beneath the lid
which
constituted the table. This was the body supposed to be eaten as the eucharist,
which was
represented
by the provisions that were laid upon the altar for the sacramental meal. The
first of the ten
great
mysteries is the mystery of the eucharist, and we find that the primitive
Christian liturgies are all
and wholly
restricted to the eucharist as the one primordial sacrament of the Christian
Church. The first
of the
Osirian mysteries is the primary Christian sacrament. "Provisioning the
altar" was continued by the
Church of
Rome."The mysteries laid upon the altar "which preceded" the
communion of the body and
blood of
Christ "were then eaten in the eucharistic meal". (Neale, Rev. J. M.,
The Liturgies, Introd., p. 33).
Thus we see
in the camera obscura that the provisions laid on the altar or table
represented the flesh
and blood of
the victim about to be eaten sacramentally. The night of the things that were
laid upon the
Page 171
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
altar is the
night of the great sacrifice, with Osiris as the victim. The things laid on the
altar for the
evening meal
represented the body and blood of the Lord.These, as the bread and wine, or
flesh and
beer, were
trans-elemented or transub-stantiated by the descent of Ra the holy spirit,
which quickened
and
transformed the mummy Osiris into the risen sahu, the unleavened bread into the
leavened, the
water into
wine. Osiris, the sacrifice, was the giver of himself as "the food which
never perishes". (Rit.,
ch. 89).
The Christian
liturgies are reckoned to be the "most pure sources of eucharistical
doctrine". And liturgy
appears to
have been the groundwork of the Egyptian ritual. It is said by one of the
priests (Rit., ch. I ), "I
am he who
reciteth the liturgies of the soul who is lord of Tattu" - that is, of
Osiris who establishes a soul
for ever in
conjunction with Ra the holy spirit in the mysteries of Amenta. In one
character Osiris was
eaten as the
Bull of Eternity, who gave his flesh and blood as sustenance for humanity, and
who was the
divine
providence as the provider of food. The eating of the mother was also continued
in the eucharist,
Osiris being
of both sexes. This was typically fulfilled in one way by converting the bull
into an ox. The
duality was
also imaged in the bread and beer or wine, which is the mother blood in a
commuted guise. It
is said of
the body that was eaten in “the Roman mysteries" that it is "the body
which bestows on us, out
of its
wounds, immortality and life, and the beatific vision with the angels, and food
and drink, and life and
light, the
very bread of life, the true light, eternal life, Christ. Jesus".
"Wherefore this entrance symbolizes
at the same
time both the second advent of Christ and His sepulture, for it is He who will
[Page 222] be our
beatific
vision in the life to come", as Horus of the second sight, all of which
was portrayed of Osiris and
fulfilled.
(Neale, The Liturgies, Introd., p. 30.) Blood sacrifice from the beginning was
an offering of life,
hence the
life offering. When the mother was the victim her blood was offered as life to
the ancestral
spirits. It
was also life to the brotherhood, and partaking of it in communion constituted
the sacrament. So
in the
Christian eucharist the blood is taken to be the life, and is partaken of as
the life, the "life of the
world"
(Neale, Liturgy of Basil the Great), "the divine life that is the life
everlasting, the new life that is for
ever"
(Neale, Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, ii.). The bread broken in the Christian
sacrament represents a
body that was
"broken, immolated, and divided". This does not apply to the body of
Jesus, according to
the
"history". But it does apply to the body of Osiris, which was
"broken, immolated, and divided" by Sut,
who tore it
into fourteen fragments. The altar table, or coffin lid, was provisioned with
these parts of the
broken body
to be typically eaten as the eucharist on the night "when there are at the
coffin the thigh, the
head, the
heel, and the leg of Un-nefer". Moreover, when the mother was eaten as the
sacrifice, the flesh
and blood
were warm with life. She was not eaten in cold blood. It was the same with the
Meriah of the
Kolarians,
and also with the totemic animal. The efficacy lay in the flesh being eaten
alive, and the blood
being drunk
whilst it was warm with life which constituted the "living
sacrifice". This type of sacrifice was
also
continued in the Christian eucharist. Hot water was at one time poured into the
chalice with the wine
at the
consecration of the elements, to give it the warmth of life (Neale, Liturgy of
St. Chrysostom, p.
120.) Even
the act of tearing the flesh of the victim's body piecemeal is piously
perpetuated by the
breaking
instead of cutting the bread for the Christian sacrament. The lights upon the
coffin of Osiris are
represented
in the Roman ritual by a double taper, the dikerion, reputed to signify
"the advent of the Holy
Spirit",
which corresponds to the descent of Ra the holy spirit on the inert body of
Osiris in Tattu, where
the two souls
are blended to become one in Horus of the resurrection.
The flabellum
or fan is a mystical emblem in the Egyptian mysteries. For one thing, it
signified the shade
or spirit.
Fans are frequently portrayed for souls of a primitive type. (Birch, Trans.
Soc. Bib. Arch., vol.
viii., p.
386.) Souls burning in the hells are imaged by flabella. These fans were
brought on in the Oriental
Church. In
the Clementine liturgy they are ordered to be made of peacocks' feathers
(Neale, p. 76,
Introd., pp.
29, 30). They are called fans of the Holy Spirit, and were carried in
procession with the "veil
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
that was
wrapped about the body of the Lord Jesus" like the folds of gauze that
were wrapped round the
mummy at
Medum. But the fan or shade = spirit had been reduced in status, and was then
used as a
flapper for
whisking the flies away from the sacrifice (Durandus, iv, 33-8; Neale,
Introduction, page 29). It
is not
pretended that the second advent is historical, nevertheless it is portrayed in
the mystery of the
eucharist by
the descent of the Holy Spirit. The second advent is the coming forth of Horus
in spirit from
the [Page
223] mummy or corpse which was his image in the human form.The first is in
being made flesh
and putting
on the likeness of mortality, the second is in making his transformation into a
spirit, as the
type of
immortality. The marriage of Cupid and Psyche is a fable that was founded on
this union of the
two souls
which we have traced in the Ritual as the soul in matter, or the human soul,
and the soul in
spirit.
Cupid, under another name, is Eros, whilst Eros and Anteros are a form of the
double Horus, Eros
in spirit,
Anteros in matter, and the blending of the two in the mysteries was the
marriage of Cupid and
Psyche in the
mystery of Tattu. Now here is another of those many mysteries which have no
origin in
historic
Christianity. The agape was celebrated in connection with the eucharist. This
was not founded at
the time of
the Last Supper, nevertheless it was held to be a Christian sacrament. Paul in
speaking of the
love-feast at
Corinth as a scene of drunken revelry (1. Cor. ii. 20-22), recognizes the
celebration of two
suppers,
which he is desirous of having kept apart, one for the church, and one for the
house. These two
are the
eucharist and the agape. Ecclesiastical writers differ as to which of the two
ought to be
solemnized
first, but there is no question that two were celebrated in connection with each
other. In his
attack on the
licentiousness of the Christian agape Tertullian asks the wives, “Will not your
husbands
know what it
is you secretly take before other food?" and again, “Who will without
anxiety endure her
absence all
night long at the Pascal solemnities?". "Who will without some
suspicion of his own let her go
to attend
that Lord's banquet which they defame?" (Keating, Y. F., The Agape and the
Eucharist, p. 70.)
As Egyptian,
we can identify the two, and thus infer the order in which they stood to each
other. Whether
both were
called suppers or not, the Egyptians celebrated the last supper of Osiris on
the last night of the
old year, and
the mesiu, or the evening meal, on the first night of the new year. And this
duality was
maintained by
the gnostics and continued by the Christians. These are two of the Osirian
mysteries, and
in the list
of the ten great mysteries there are two nights of provisioning the altar -
that is, two nights of a
feast or
memorial supper. One is held in Annu, the other in Sekhem, with the
resurrection in Tattu coming
between the
two. In Sekhem the blind Horus receives his sight, or his beatific vision of
the divine glory,
which was
seen when he had pierced the veil hawk-headed in the image of Ra. Provisioning
the altar in
Sekhem is
designated "dawn upon the coffin of Osiris" (Rit., ch. 18). The
eucharist was a form of the
mortuary meal
in which the death of Osiris was commemorated by the eating of the body and the
drinking of
the blood. The agape, or phallic feast, was a mode of celebrating the
re-arising of Horus,
Prince of
Sekhem, as portrayed by the re-erection of the Tat. This accounts for the
sexual orgie of the
agape, a
primitive form of which was acted by the Eskimo in the festival of
reproduction. In their
mysteries
this was the reproduction of food. In the Egyptian it was the regeneration and
resurrection of
the soul that
was celebrated at the agape. The death, of course, came first. This was on the
night of the
great sacrifice,
and the eucharist was [Page 224] eaten in commemoration. Then followed the
triumph in
Tattu and the
regenesis of the soul, which was acted by the "holy kiss" or blending
of the sexes in the
feast of
love, as a dramatic rendering of this union betwixt the human nature and
divine, or of the brother
and sister,
Shu and Tefnut. In the totemic mysteries of young man making begettal was
included in the
modus
operandi, and in this the women invoked the spirit of the male for the new
birth. The phallic
festival of
promiscuous intercourse still survived when the mysteries became religious,
whether in Egypt,
Greece, or
Rome. In these Osiris was resuscitated as Horus the only begotten son, the
women being the
begetters or
regenerators. In the evocations of Isis and Nephthys we hear them calling on
the lost Osiris
to come back
to them in the person of the son. They plead that the lamp of life may be
relighted, or more
literally
that the womb may be replenished". Come to thine abode, god An", they
cry. "Beloved of the
Adytum! Come
to Kha" (a name of phallic significance), "oh, fructifying
Bull". This is in the beneficent
formulae that
were made by the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys, to effect the
resurrection of Osiris,
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
which are
said to have been composed by them on the twenty-fifth day of the month Koiak,
December
22nd. They
are magical evocations of the god addressed to the inert Osiris, who is caused
to rise again
by Isis in
his ithyphallic form.Most pathetic in its primitiveness is the picture of the
two divine sisters, or
mothers, Isis
and Nephthys, watching by the dead or inert brother who is Osiris in death and
Horus in his
resurrection,
crooning their incantations, brooding bird-like over the germ of life in the
egg, and breathing
out the very
soul of their own life in yearning for him, until the first token of returning
consciousness is
given, the
earliest sign of the resurrection is made in response to the vitalizing warmth
of their affection.
These
evocations follow the night of "the last supper" and the battle with
Sut and the Sebau. "Oh, come
to thine
abode!" the two dear sisters cry. "Come to thy sister! Come to thy
wife! Come to thy spouse!"
they plead
whilst stretching out their longing arms for his embrace. "Oh, excellent
Sovereign, come to
thine abode.
Rejoice; all thine enemies are annihilated. Thy two sisters are near to thee,
protecting thy
funeral
couch, calling thee in weeping, thou who art prostrate on thy funeral bed. Thou
seest our tender
solicitude.
Speak to us, Supreme Ruler, our Lord. Chase away all the anguish which is in
our hearts".
These in the
funeral scenes are the two women watching in the tomb (Records, vol. ii.,119).
Then was
the only son
of god begotten of the holy spirit Ra. The "pair of souls" were
blended in the Horus of a soul
that was to
live for ever, or to taste eternal life. The marriage rite was acted, and the
marriage feast was
celebrated in
this prototypal ceremony that was continued in the Agape of the Osirian and the
Christian
cult.
The Christian
dogma of a physical resurrection founded on the historic fact of a dead corpse
rising from
the grave can
be explained as one of the Kamite mysteries which were reproduced as miracles
in the
Gospels. If
we take the original representation in the solar mythos, the sun in the
under-world, the
diminished,
unvirile, impotent [Page 225] or suffering sun was imaged as Ans-Ra, the solar god
bound up
in linen, as
the mummified Osiris. The type remained for permanent use, but when the
transformation
had been
effected the mummy vanished. The sepulchre was empty. The sun of winter or of
night did not
remain in
Hades. Neither did it come forth as the dead body or unbreathing mummy of
Osiris. Osiris, the
hidden god in
the earth of Amenta, does not come forth at all except in the person of the
risen Horus,
who is the
manifestor for the ever-hidden father. To issue thus he makes his transfiguration
which
constitutes
the mystery, not the miracle, of the resurrection. Osiris defecates and
spiritualizes. The
mummy as
corpus is transubstantiated into the sahu, the mortal Horus into the immortal,
and the physical
mummy
disappears. But it did not disappear because the living Horus rose up and
walked off with the
dead body of
Osiris. When the transformation took place the type was changed in a moment, in
the
"twinkling
of an eye". The mummy Osiris transubstantiates, and makes his transformation
into Osirissahu.
As the Ritual
expresses it, "he is renewed in an instant" in this second birth (
ch. 182 ). The place
was empty
where the mummy had lain upon the bier, and the body was not found. This change
is
described
when it is said in the litany of Ra, he "raises his soul and hides his
body". Thus the body was
hidden in the
resurrection of the soul. "Hiding his body" is consequently a name of
Horus, "emanating
from
Hes" as a babe in the renewal of Osiris. Concealing the body of dead
matter was one way of
describing
the transubstantiation in texture and the transfiguration in form. This was one
of the greater
mysteries.
When Horus
rent the veil of the tabernacle he had become hawk-headed, and consequently was
a spirit
in the divine
likeness of Ra the holy ghost. Therefore the tabernacle was the body or mummy,
"the veil of
flesh"
(Neale, Liturgy of St. James, pp. 46-7) from which he had emerged. The speaker
in the Ritual
says, "I
am the hawk in the tabernacle, and I pierce through the veil" - that is,
when he is invested with
the soul of
Horus and disrobes himself of the mummy (Rit., ch. 71, Renouf) or the veil
which represented
the flesh, as
did the veil of gauze when folded round the mummy in the pyramid at Medum. The
"holy
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Ancient
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veil"
was carried in the Christian mysteries, together with the "holy
gifts" and "fans of the spirit", and this
is said to
represent "the veil that was wrapped about the body of the Lord
Jesus" (Neale, The Liturgies,
Introduction,
page 30, "Prayer of the Veil".) This (in the Liturgy of St. James,
Neale, page 46) is "the veil
of the flesh
of Christ", therefore the veil of the body or temple of the spirit that
was rent in the resurrection
by Horus when
he "pierced through the veil". He rends or pierces through the veil,
saying, "I am the hawk
in the
tabernacle, and I pierce through the veil. Here is Horus!" who comes forth
to the day as a hawk
( ch. 71 ).
In the form of a divine hawk the risen one is revealed and goes forth as a
spirit. In the Gospel
the loud cry
is immediately followed by the going forth as a spirit. "And behold, the
veil of the sanctuary
was rent in
twain from the top to the bottom. And the earth did quake, and the rocks were
rent and the
tombs were
opened, and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised (Matt.
xxvii.
45-53). Horus
now takes his seat at the table of his father Osiris, with those who eat bread
in Annu. He
gives breath
to [Page 226] the faithful dead who are raised by him, he who is the
resurrection and the life.
The same
scene is apparently reproduced by John. Jesus makes his apparition to the
disciples at what
looks like
the evening meal, although the meal is not mentioned. Jesus is the breather.
“He breathed on
them and
said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit” - which in the Ritual is the breath of
Atum-Ra, the father,
imparted by
lu the son, or by Horus to the faithful dead.The scene has now been changed
from Amenta
to the earth
of Seb by those who made "historic" mockery of the Egyptian Ritual,
and sank the meaning
out of sight
where it has been so long submerged. More of this hereafter. Enough at present
to indicate
the way that
things are tending. In this divine drama natural realities are represented with
no perniciously
destructive
attempt to conceal the characters under a mask of history. Majestically moving
in their own
might of
pathetic appeal to human sympathy, they are simply represented for what they
may be worth
when rightly
apprehended. But so tremendous was this tragedy in the Osirian mysteries, so
heart-melting
the legend of
divinest pity that lived on with its rootage in Amenta and its flowerage in the
human mind,
that an historic
travesty has kept the stage and held the tearful gaze of generation after
generation for
nineteen
hundred years.
Amenta, the
earth of eternity, is the land of the mysteries where Taht, the moon god, in
the nether night
was the great
teacher of the sacred secrets together with the seven wise masters. The passage
through
Amenta is a
series of initiations for the Osiris deceased. He is inducted into the
mysteries of Rusta (I, 7,
9), the
mysteries of the Tuat (130, 27), the mysteries of Akar (148, 2, 3). He knows
the mysteries of
Nekhen (I 13,
I). Deceased invokes the god who dwells in all mysteries (14, I); deceased
learns the
mystery of
the father god Atum, who becomes his own son (15,46); he is the mysterious of
form (17, 91)
and the
mysterious of face, like Osiris (133,9). "I shine in the egg", says
the deceased, "in the land of the
mysteries".
Chapter 162 contains the most secret, most sacred, the greatest of all
mysteries. Its name is
the book of
the hidden dwelling-that is, the book of Amenta or the ritual of the
resurrection. Obscure as
these
mysteries may seem, on account of the form-that of dramatic monologue and
soliloquy-and the
brevity of
statement, we can recognize enough to know that these are the originals of all the
other
"mysteries",
Gnostic, Kabalistic, Masonic, or Christian. The dogma of the incarnation was an
Egyptian
mystery.
Baptismal regeneration, transfiguration, transubstantiation, the resurrection
and ascension,
were all
Egyptian mysteries. The mystery of an ever-virgin mother; the mystery of a boy
at twelve years
of age
transforming suddenly into an adult of thirty years, and then becoming one with
the father, as it
had been
earlier in the mysteries of totemism; the mystery in which the dead body of
Osiris is
transubstantiated
into the living Horus by descent of the bird-headed holy spirit; the mystery of
a divine
being in
three persons, one of which takes flesh on earth as the human Horus, to become
a mummy as
Osiris in
Amenta, and to rise up from the dead in spirit as Ra in heaven. These and other
miracles of the
Christian
faith were already extant among the mysteries of Amenta. But the meaning of the
mysteries
could only be
known [Page 227] whilst the genuine gnosis was authentically taught. This had
ceased when
the Christian
Sarcolatrć took possession of the "Word-made- flesh", and literalized
the mystical drama
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Ancient
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as a more
tangible-looking human history, that was set forth in the very latest of the
Gospels as a brand-
new
revelation sent from God, and personally conducted in Palestine by the
"historic Jesus".
When Bendigo,
the pugilist, became converted he proposed to take up preaching as his new profession.
And when it
was objected that he didn't know anything and couldn't read or write, he
replied that he
"expected
to pick up a good deal by listening round". So was it with the early
Christians. They could
neither read
nor write the ancient language, but they picked up a good deal by listening
round. "You have
your man upon
the cross", said one of them to the Romans; "why do you object to
ours?" Their man upon
the cross
being identical with Osiris- Tat or the ass-headed lu. It is said of Taht as a
teacher of the
mysteries,
"And now behold Taht in the secret of his mysteries. He maketh
purifications and endless
reckonings,
piercing the firmament and dissipating the storms around him and so it cometh
to pass that
the Osiris
hath reached every station", and, we may add, attained his immortality
through the teachings
communicated
in the mysteries of Taht (Rit., ch. 130, Renouf). The 148th chapter of the
Ritual recounts
some of the
most secret mysteries. It was written to furnish the gnosis or knowledge
necessary for the
Manes to get
rid of his impurities and acquire perfection in the "bosom of Ra" the
holy spirit.
At the
entrance to the mysterious valley of the Tuat there is a walled-up doorway, the
first door of twelve
in the passage
of Amenta. These twelve are described in the Book of Hades as twelve divisions
corresponding
to the twelve hours of darkness during the nocturnal journey of the sun. The
first division
has no
visible door of entrance. The rest have open doors, and the twelfth has double
doors. It is hard to
enter, but
made easy for the exit into the land of eternal life. Here is the mystery: how
to enter where
there is no
door and the way is all unknown ? I t is explained to the Manes how divine
assistance is to be
obtained.
When the stains of life on earth are effaced the strength is given for forcing
the entrance where
there is no
door, and in that power the Manes penetrates with (or as) the god (Rit., ch.
148, 2, 3). Thus
Horus was the
door in the darkness, the way where no entrance was seen, the life portrayed
for the
Manes in
death. The secret entrance was one of the mysteries of Amenta. It was known as
"the door of
the
stone", which name was given to their Necropolis by the people at Siut,
the stone that revolved when
the magical
word or "open sesame" was spoken. The entrance to the Great Pyramid
was concealed by
means of a
movable flagstone that turned on a pivot which none but the initiated could
detect. This, when
tilted up,
revealed a passage four feet in breadth and three and a half feet in height
into the interior of the
building.
This was a mode of entrance applied to Amenta as the blind doorway that was
represented by
the secret
portal and movable stone of later legends. The means of entrance through what
appeared to
be a blank
wall was by knowing the secret of the nicely-adjusted stone, and this secret
was
communicated
to the initiates with the pass-word in the mysteries. [Page 228] Horus begins
his work by
carrying out
the divine plans of his father Osiris on earth. He makes firm the battlements
to protect Osiris
against the
assaults of all the powers of darkness. He makes the word of Osiris truth
against his
enemies. He
opposes Sut, his father's adversary, to the death. He makes war upon the evil
Apap, that old
serpent, and
overthrows the powers that rise up in rebellion, which are called the rebels in
the Ritual,
who are ever
doomed to failure in the fight betwixt them and the father, who is now
represented by Horus
his beloved
son, Horus of the resurrection, who is himself the door in death as the means
of entrance to
Amenta. He
covers the naked body of the breathless one. He opens the fountains of
refreshment for the
god of the
non-beating heart ( ch. I ). He wages battle on the "eater of the
arm" ( ch. II) and the black
boar Sut, two
types of the power of dearth, death, and darkness. He protects his father from
the
devouring
crocodiles (ch. 32), from the serpents Rerek, Seksek, and Haiu, also from the
apshait, an
insect that
preys upon the buried mummy (chs. 33, 34, 36). He says, "I have come
myself and delivered
the god in
his dismembered condition. I have healed the trunk and fastened the shoulder
and made firm
the leg"
(ch. 102), t..e., in reconstructing the mummy. He restores to Osiris his
sceptre, his pedestal, and
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Ancient
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his staircase
from the tomb (ch. 128). He says, "I have done according to the command
that I should
come forth in
Tattu, to see Osiris" ( ch. 78). He has kept the commandment that w as
given him by the
father. The
Manes in Amenta tell of "the fortunes of that great son whom the father
loveth", and how he
had
"pierced Sut to the heart", and how they had "seen the
death". They also tell of the "divine plans
which were
carried out by Horus, in the absence of his father", when he represented
Osiris on the earth
(ch. 78).
With his work accomplished, both on earth and in Amenta, Horus of the
resurrection goes to see
his father,
and they embrace each other. Horus addresses his father, here called
Ra-Unnefer-Osiris-Ra.
He exclaims:
"Hail, Osiris ! I am thy son Horus; I have come. I have avenged thee. I
have struck down thy
enemies. I
have destroyed all that was wrong in thee. I have killed him who assailed thee.
I stretched
forth my hand
for thee against thy adversaries. I have brought thee the companions of Sut
with chains
upon them. I
have ploughed for thee the fields. I have irrigated for thee thy land. I have
hoed for thee the
ground. I
have built for thee the lakes of water. I have turned up the soil of thy
possessions. I have made
for thee
sacrifices of thy adversaries. I have made sacrifices for thee of thy cattle
and thy victims. I have
bound thy
enemies in their chains. I have sowed for thee wheat and barley in the field of
Aarru. I have
mowed them
there for thee. I have glorified thee. I have anointed thee with the offering
of holy oil. I have
established
for thee thy offerings of food on the earth for ever". (Rit., ch. 173,
excerpt from Naville's
rendering in
Renouf’s Book of the Dead.) All this and more he claims to have done. "I
have given thee
Isis and
Nephthys". The twO divine sisters, the consorts of Osiris, the mothers and
protectors of Horus,
are thus
brought back by him to the father. They have been with him from the beginning
on earth in the
hall of Seb;
with him in his conception and incarnation [Page 229] by Isis and his nursing
by Nephthys.
They were his
ministering angels, in attendance on him as protectors from the cut-throat Sut,
or the
monster Apap,
who sought to slay the child or destroy it in the egg; with him in the agony of
his blindness
when torn and
bleeding in the garden of Pa; with him as watchers in the tomb until he wakes;
with him in
his
resurrection from Amenta. They are with him when he ascends to the father as
conqueror of death, as
ruler of the
double earth and lord of the kingdom which he and his disciples or children
have established
for ever.The
work attributed to Horus the divine exemplar, was to be fulfilled by his
followers in the double
earth of time
and eternity. That was the object of the mysteries. It is in the character of
the divine Horus
that the
human Nebseni says to Osiris, "Thou one God, behold me. I am Horus thy
son. I have fought for
thee. I have
fought on thy behalf for justice, truth, and righteousness. I have overcome
thine
adversaries".
He also claims to have done the things that Horus did as set forth in the
writings or
represented
in the drama, and thus fulfilled the ideal of self-sacrificing sonship in very
reality. making -the
word of
Osiris truth against his enemies. And it was but the word even when
personified. which to be of
any actual
efficacy must be made truth in human life, in conduct. and in character (Pap.
of Nebseni. Rit.,
ch. 173,
Budge).
If there be
any revelation or inspiration in a great ideal dramatically portrayed. the
Egyptians found it in
their divine
model set forth in Horus :
Horus the
saviour, who was brought to birth
As light in
heaven and sustenance on earth.
Horus in
spirit, verily divine,
Who came to
turn the water into wine.
Horus, who
gave his life, and sowed the seed
For men to
make the bread of life indeed.
Horus the
comforter, who did descend
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Ancient
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In human
fashion as the heavenly friend.
Horus the
word, the founder in his youth.
Horus,
fulfiller as the word made truth.
Horus the
lord and leader in the fight
Against the
dark powers of the ancient night.
Horus the
sufferer with his cross bowed down,
Who rose at
Easter with his double crown.
Horus the
pioneer, who paved the way
Of resurrection
to eternal day.
Horus
triumphant with the battle done,
Lord of two
worlds, united and made one.
It was the
object of their loftiest desires to grow in his likeness whilst looking
lovingly upon his features,
listening to
his word. and fulfilling his character in their own personal lives. A mythical
model may be no
more than an
air-blown bladder for learning to swim by. The reality lies in learning to
swim. This was how
the ideal
Horus served the Egyptians. They did not expect him to swim for them and carry
them and their
belongings as
well but learned to swim for themselves.
There is
nothing in all poetry considered as the flower of human reality more pathetic
than the figure of
Horus in
Sekhem.He has grappled with the Apap of evil and wrestled with Sut-the de-vil
or .Satan-and
been
overthrown in the passage of absolute darkne.s5. Blind and bleeding from many
wounds. he
continues to
fight with [Page 230] death itself; he conquers, rises from the grave like a
warrior with one
arm! Not that
he has lost an arm; he has only got one arm free from the bonds of death, the
bandages of
the mummy
made for the burial. But he lives, he rises again triumphant, lifting the sign
of the Dominator
aloft; and in
the next stage of transformation he will be altogether freed from the trammels
of the mummy
to become
pure spirit, in the likeness of the father as the express image of his person.
It is a
common Christian belief, continually iterated, that life and immortality were
brought to light, and
death, the
last enemy, was destroyed, by a personal Jesus only nineteen centuries ago,
whereas the
same
revelation had been accredited to Horus the anointed and to Iu-su the coming
son for thousands of
years before,
with Horus or Iu-su as the impersonal and ideal revealer who was the Messiah in
the
astronomical
mythology and the Son of God in the eschatology. The doctrine of immortality is
so ancient
in Egypt that
the “Book of Vivifying the Soul for Ever”,“ said over a figure of the
enlightened dead” , was
not only
extant some 6,000 years ago in the time of Husapti, fifth king of the first
dynasty, it was then so
old that the
true tradition of interpretation was at that time already lost.The Egyptian
Christ- Jesus or
Horus, as
revealer of immortality, was the ideal figure of a fact known to the ancient
spiritualists, that the
soul of man
or the Manes persisted beyond death and the dissolution of the present body,
and the drama
of the
mysteries was their modus operandi for teaching the fact, with Horus (or Iu-su)
as typical
manifestor.
In this character he was set forth as the first fruits of them that slept, the
only one that came
forth from
the mummy on earth, as the sahu mummy in Amenta; the only one, however, as a
type that
prefigured
potential continuity for all, the doctrine being founded on the ghost as the
phenome9al
apparition of
an eternal reality.
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The
Egyptians, who were the authors of the mysteries and mythical representation.,
did not pervert the
meaning by an
ignorant literalization of mystical matters, and had no fall of man to
encounter in the
fallacious
Christian sense. Consequently they had no need of a redeemer from the effects
of that which
had never
occurred. They did not rejoice over the death of their suffering saviour
because his agony and
shame and
bloody sweat were falsely supposed to rescue them from the consequences of
broken laws;
on the
contrary, they taught that everyone created his own karma here, and that the
past deeds made the
future fate.
The morality was a thousandfold loftier and nobler than that of Christianity,
with its delusive
doctrine of
vicarious atonement and propitiation by proxy. Horus did such or such things
for the glory of
his father,
but not to save the souls of men from having to do them. There was no vicarious
salvation or
imputed
righteousness. Horus was the justifier of the righteous, not of the wicked. He
did not come to
save sinners
from taking the trouble to save themselves. He was an exemplar, a model of the
divine
sonship; but
his followers must conform to his example, and do in life as he had done before
they could
claim any
fellowship with him in death. Except ye do these things yourselves, there is no
passage, no
opening of
the gate, to the land of life everlasting. [Page 231]
The Christian
cult is often said to be founded on the "mysteries of the
incarnation". But what teacher of
the spurious
mysteries has ever been able to tell us anything of their natural genesis ?
What has any
bibliolator
ever known about the word that was in the beginning ? The word which issued out
of Silence ?
The word of
life that came by water, by blood, and in the Spirit? For him such language has
never been
related to
any phenomena extant in nature. The wisdom of old Egypt only can explain the
typical word
and its
relationship to a so-called revelation. The doctrine of the incarnation is
Egyptian, and to the
Egyptian
wisdom we must appeal if we would understand it. No other word was ever made
flesh in any
other way
than in Horus, who was the logos of the Mother Nature as the Child-Horus, the
khart, or
inarticulate
logos, and the word that was made truth in the adult phase of his character as
Horus Mat-
Kheru, the
second Horus, the paraclete and direct representative of the father in heaven.
The
incarnation,
which is looked upon as a central mystery of the Christian cult, had no origin
and can have
no adequate
or proper explanation in Christianity. Its real origin, like those of the other
Egyptian dogmas
and
doctrines, was purely natural; it was prehistorical and non-personal, and as
the mystery of Horus and
his virgin
mother, who were equally prehistorical and non-historical, it had been the
central mystery of the
Egyptian
faith for ages, utilized by the ancient teachers for all it ever was or could
be worth, and was
continued by
the teachers of historic Christianity in ignorance of its origin and only true
significance, or
with a
criminally culpable suppression of the gnosis by which alone the inexplicable
latter-day mysteries
could have
been explained.
The primitive
mysteries were founded on the facts in nature which are verifiable today as from
the first,
whereas the
mysteries of the Christian theology have been manufactured, shoddy-Iike, from
the leavings
of the past
by the modus operandi of miracle. These remain today unverified because they
are for ever
unverifiable;
We know how Horus came by water on his papyrus; how then did he come by blood ?
The
child had
been incorporated in the fish, the shoot, the branch, the beetle, calf, or
Iamb, as the
representative
type; and in his incarnation, Horus came by blood, but not by the blood shed on
a tree, or
the
tat-cross. He came to earth by blood as representative of the human soul that
came by blood. The
Ritual tells
us that the gods issued out of silence (ch. 24): This was portrayed in the
Osirian system when
the infant
Horus is depicted pointing with his finger to his mouth, making the sign of
silence as it was
understood in
all the mysteries. Horus is not the ordinary child or khart of the
hieroglyphics. He images
the logos,
the word of silence, the virgin's word, that gave a dumb or inarticulate
utterance to the mystery
of the
incarnation. The doctrine of the incarnation had been evolved and established
in the Osirian
religion at
least 4,000 and possibly 10,000 years before it was purloined and perverted in
Christianity. It
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Ancient
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was so
ancient that the source and origin had been forgotten and the direct means of
proof lost sight of
or
obliterated except amongst the gnostics, who sacredly preserved their fragments
of the ancient
wisdom, their
types and symbols and no doubt, with [Page 232] here and there a copy of some
chapters of
the Book of
the Dead done into Greek or Aramaic by Alexandrian scribes. The doctrine of
salvation by
the blood of
Isis connoted the idea of coming into existence by means of the mother's blood,
or mystically
the blood of
the virgin mother. In primitive biology all birth and production of human life
was first derived
from the
mother's blood, which was afterwards informed by the soul of the fatherhood.
The lesson first
taught by
nature was that life came by blood. Procreation could not occur until the
female was
pubescent.
Therefore blood was the sign of source as the primary creative human element.
Child-Horus
came by the
blood of the virgin Isis, in that and no other way. Jesus, the gnostic Christ,
also came by
blood that
way, not only according to the secret doctrine of John, for the Musselmans have
preserved a
fragment of
the true gnosis. In the notes to ch. 96 of the Koran, Sale quotes the Arabic
tradition that
Jesus was not
born like any other men from blood concreted into flesh, but came in the flow,
or in the
flowing
blood-that was, in the virgin's blood first personalized in Horus, who was made
flesh as the
virgin.'s
child. The doctrine of the incarnation was dependent on the soul of life
originating in the mother
blood, the
first that was held specifically and exclusively human on account of its
incarnation. This was
the soul
derived from a mother who was the mystical virgin in biology, and who was
afterwards mystified
by theology
as the mother of god, the eternal virgin typified in the likeness of the
totemic. The blood
mother had
been cognized sociologically the virgin. Thence came the doctrine of a virgin
mother as a
type. Blood
was the mother of a soul now differentiated from the external souls as human.
First the white
vulture of
the virgin Neith, next the red heifer of the virgin Isis, then the human
virginity, supplied the type
of an eternal
virgin, she in whom the mystery of maternal source was divinized as the virgin
mother in the
eschatology.
Thus
"incarnation" proper begins with the soul that came into being by
means of the virgin blood. This
was the child
of the mother only, the unbegotten Horus, w ho was an imperfect first sketch of
the soul in
matter that
assumed the form of human personality as Horus the mortal, who as blind and
maimed, deaf
and dumb and
impotent, because it was a birth of matter or the mother only, according to the
mythical
representation.
The mother being the source and sustenance of life with her own blood, this led
to a
doctrine of
salvation by the blood of Isis the divinized virgin. Thus the mystical blood
mother was the
earliest
saviour, not the male. The elder Horus was her child who came by blood. He was
her blood child
in the
eschatology; hence the calf, as his type, was painted red upon the tablets. As
the Child-Horus he
was an image
of her suffering in the human form; thence Horus the child of blood became a
saviour
through
suffering, in a mystery which had a natural origin. This origin can be followed
in the Christian
iconography
when, as Didron shows, a figure of Jesus was portrayed upon the cross, as a
little child of
two years,
naked, and with its body painted red all over, as was the Horus-calf upon the
tablets. A curious
instance of
salvation by the blood of Isis is given in the Ritual. In a vignette to ch. 93,
the saving and
protecting
power of the red tet-buckle, which [Page 233] is an image of the blood of Isis,
is shown. A pair of
human hands
are outstretched from this amulet to grasp the arms of the Manes and prevent
him from
going toward
the east, as that way lies the tank of flame, or hell in modern phrase. In the
Gospel account
of the
incarnation the "word" was "made flesh", but the blood
basis of the doctrine has been omitted.
Salvation
through the blood of Isis was imaged by the red tet-amulet that was put on by
her when she
had conceived
her blood child. This salvation was effected when the child was brought into
existence.
According to
the Ritual, the salvation of the Manes is in living- on hereafter. He pleads
that he may live
and be saved
after death ( ch. 41 ), and he wore the tet-buckle in his coffin as the sign of
his salvation by
the blood of
Isis.
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Ancient
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Further, how
did a purificatory power come to be associated with blood so that one of the
horrible
dogmas of
later theology could be expressed in lines like these :—
"There
is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from
Immanuel's veins,
And sinners
plunged beneath that flood
Lose all
their guilty stains" ?
The natural
genesis of such a monstrous doctrine can be traced on two lines of descent. One
of these
has its
starting-point in the theological victim being slain as a scapegoat in a
sacrifice that was held to be
piacular. The
blood of the sin offering thus acquired the character of the atoning blood.
According to the
Christian
doctrine, "All things are cleansed with blood, and apart from the shedding
of blood there is no
remission"
(Heb. ix., 22). On the other line of descent, the idea of purification by blood
was derived from
a human
origin, and not merely from the blood of the animal that was slain as a
sacrifice for sin. This is
one of the
origins that were unfolded to the initiated by the teachers of the secret
wisdom in the
mysteries.
The earliest form of the purifying blood was female. It was first the blood of
the virgin mother,
the blood of
Isis, the blood of the incarnation, the flowing blood, the element in which
Horus manifested
when he came
by blood, the blood on which the rite of purification was founded as a natural
mode of
cleansing.
This is the one sole origin in the whole realm of nature for the blood which
cleanseth, and it
was in this
feminine phase that a doctrine of purification by blood was established for the
use of later
theology when
the sacrificial victim had been made a male who was held to have shed the
atoning,
purifying,
saving blood upon a tree. There was no other way by which a soul was ever saved
by blood
than this act
of salvation effected by the virgin mother. There never was any other
incarnation than this of
Horus in the
blood of Isis, and no other saviour by blood was possible in the whole domain
of
unperverted
nature. Neither could the transaction be made historical, nor the saviour
personal, not if
every tree on
earth were cut into the figure of across with the effigy of a bleeding human
body hung on
every bough.
Purification by means of blood then originated in the blood of Isis, the virgin
mother of the
human Horus,
who, as the red child, calf or Iamb, personated that purification by blood
which became
doctrinal in
the eschatology. To substitute the blood of a Jew shed on a cross as a [Page
234] means of
making the
purification for sins and the mode of cleansing souls in the "blood of the
Iamb" for the natural
purification
of the mother was the grossest form of profanity, inconceivably impious to
those who knew
the mystical
nature of the doctrine and its origin in human phenomena continued as a typical
purification
by blood that
was practised in the mysteries, either by baptism or sprinkling with blood, or
drinking blood,
or eating the
"bloody wafer" of the Roman eucharist.The natural blood sacrifice was
feminine. The typical
blood
sacrifice was that of the red calf, the Iamb, or the child. The Iamb on the
cross was the Christian
victim until
the eighth century A.D., at which time the man was permanently substituted for
the Iamb, and
the blood
sacrifice was thenceforth portrayed as human and historical. A doctrine of
voluntary sacrifice
was founded
from the time when the human mother gave herself to be eaten with honour by her
children
in the most
primitive form of the mortuary meal. She offered her flesh to be eaten and her
blood to be
drunk; she
gave herself as a natural blood sacrifice on which the typical was founded when
the female
totem as a
cow, a bear, or other animal was made a substitute for the human mother. Also,
when the
earth was
looked upon as the mythical mother of food and drink who was a wet-nurse in the
water, and
who gave
herself bodily to her children for food, the sacrifice was typically continued
if! totem ism when
the animal
supplied the sacramental food. As before shown, the earliest form of voluntary
sacrifice was
female. The
human mother as victim was repeated in the mythology as divine, the mother in
elemental
nature; she
who gave her flesh and blood as life to her children was then continued as a
type in .the
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Ancient
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more mystical
phase. Hence came salvation by the blood of Isis-that is, by the virgin blood
in which
Horus was
incarnated and made flesh, as the saviour who thus came by blood.
A Spaniard,
who was paying expensively to regain the lost favour of the Holy Virgin, on being
told by his
priest that
Mary had not yet forgiven him, is said to have shaken his fist in the face of
his fetish and to
have reminded
her that she need not be so proud in her present position, as he had known her
ever
since she was
only a bit of green plum tree. The ancient Egyptians knew the natural origins
of their
symbols and
dogmas. Christians have mistaken the bit of green plum tree for an historical
virgin.
The earliest
form of god the father who became a voluntary sacrifice in Egypt was Ptah in
the character
of Sekari,
the silent sufferer, the coffined one, the deity that opened up the
nether-world for the
resurrection
in the solar mythos. As solar god he went down into Amenta. There he died and
rose again,
and thus
became the resurrection and the way into a future lire as founder of Egyptian
eschatology. Atum
the son of
Ptah likewise became the voluntary sacrifice as the source of life, but in
another way and more
apparent
form. The mother human and divine had given life with her blood, and now the
father, who was
blended with
the mother in Atum, is portrayed as creator of mankind by the shedding of his
own blood.
In the cult
of Ptah at Memphis and Atum at On there was a strenuous endeavour made to set
creative
source as
male above the female. Hence it was said of the symbolic beetles that there was
[Page 235] "no
female race
among them" (Hor-Apollo, B. I., 10). In cutting the member, Atum showed
that he was the
creator by
the blood shed in a voluntary sacrifice. Male source is recognized, but
according to what had
preceded as
the mother element, blood still remained a typical essence of creative life.
And this is
apparently
illustrated by the rite of circumcision. The custom pertains, world over, to
the swearing-in of
the youths
when they join the ranks of the fathers or begetters and follow the example of
Atum as the
father Ra,
who was previously Horus the son. Atum, like Ptah, was also the typical
sacrifice in the earth
of eternity,
who gave his life as sun god and as the master of food that sprang up for the
Manes in
Amenta.
Osiris follows. In him the human mother who first gave herself to be eaten, and
the great mother
Isis, who was
the saviour by blood, were combined with god the father in a more complete and
perfect
sacrifice as
mother and father of the race in one. Lastly, the son as Horus or as Iusa is
made a vicarious
sacrifice,
not, however, as an atonement for sin, but as voluntary sufferer instead of his
mother or his
father. For
in the Kamite scheme the mother never is omitted. Hence, when Horus comes in
the
character of
the red god who orders the block of execution with the terrifying face of
Har-Shefi. as the
avenger of
the afflictions suffered by his father ( or by himself in his first advent), it
is he " who lifteth up
his father
and who lifteth up his mother with his staff" (Rit., ch. 92, Renouf).
Egypt, however, had
anticipated
Rome in attaining the "unbloody sacrifice" that was represented by
the wafer, or loaf, of Horus
as the bread
of heaven, which took the place of flesh meat in the eucharistic meal, whilst
retaining the
beer or wine,
as substitute for blood, in representing the female element. Thus Horus was
eaten as the
bread of
life, and his blood was drunk in the red ale, or wine, as the final form in
Egypt of the sacrificial,
voluntary,
living victim that had been the human mother, the typical mother, the totemic
anima!, the cow
of Hathor,
the fish, the goose, the calf, the lamb, the victim in various forms, each one
of which, down to
the lentils
and the corn, was figurative of the beneficent sacrifice that from the first
was typical of a power
in nature,
call it mother or son, father, goddess or god, that provided food and drink,
accompanied with
an idea of
sacrifice in the giving of life when blood was looked on as the life.
“How many
sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?" is asked in the
Prayer-book, and the
answer is,
"Two only as generally necessary to salvation-that is to say, baptism and
the supper of the
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Lord".And
both of these were Egyptian thousands of years earlier. The proof is preserved
in that treasury
of truth, the
Ritual of the resurrection. In the first chapter of the Ritual (Turin Papyrus)
it is said by the
priest,
"I lustrate with water in Tat tu and anoint with oil, in Abydos". We
might call the Egyptians very
particular
Baptists for in the first ten gates of Elysium -or entrances to the great
dwelling of Osiris the
deceased is
purified at least ten times over in ten separate baptisms, and ten different
waters in which
the gods and
goddesses had been washed to make the water holy (Ritual, ch. 145). The
inundation was
the water of
renewal to the life of Egypt, and this natural fact was the source and origin
of a doctrine of
baptismal
regeneration. The salvation that came to Egypt in the [Page 236] Nile was
continued in the
Egyptian
eschatology as salvation by water. ..I. give thee the liquid or humidity which
ensures salvation",
is said to
the soul of the deceased (Rit., 155, I ). They did not think that souls were
saved from perdition
by a wash of
water or a bath of blood, but bodily baptism was continued as a symbol of purification
for
the spirit.
The deceased explains that he had been steeped in the waters of natron and
nitre, or salt, and
made
pure-pure in heart, pure in his forepart, his posterior part, his middle, and
pure all over, so that
there is no
part of him remaining soiled or stained. The pool of baptism is dual in Amenta.
In one part it is
the pool of
natron, in the other the pool of salt.Both natron and silt were used in
preparing the mummy of
the deceased,
and the same process is repeated in the purification of the soul to make it
also permanent,
which was a
mode of salvation. The deceased says, "May I be fortified or protected by
seventy
purifications“
(Mariette, Mon. divers, pl. 63, I), just as Christians at the present time
speak of being
"fortified
by the sacraments of the Church". "I purify myself at the great
stream (the galaxy), where all my
ills are made
to cease; that which is wrong in me is pardoned, and the spots which were upon
my body
upon earth
are washed away l' (Rit., ch. 86). "Lo, I come, that I may purify this
soul of mine in the most
high degree.
Let me be purified in the lake of propitiation and of equipoise. Let me plunge
into the divine
pool beneath
the two divine sycamores of heaven and earth" ( ch. 97, Renouf). The pool
of purification
and healing
that was figured in the northern heaven at the pole, and also reproduced in the
paradise of
Amenta, has
been repeated in the Gospel according to John (ch. 5) as the Pool of Bethesda.
In the
Ritual (ch.
124, part 3) one of two waters is called the pool or tank of righteousness. In
this pool the
glorified
elect receive their final purification and are healed. They are thus made pure
for the presence of
Osiris. The
healing process was timed to take place at certain hours of the night or day.
The Turin text
gives the
fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day. But there are other
readings. The
Manes, as
usual in the gospels, are represented by the "multitude of them that were
sick, blind, halt, and
withered",
waiting to be healed. The elect or chosen ones are those who are first at the
pool when the
waters are
troubled. Hence the story of the man who was non-elect.
It was a
postulate of the Christians, maintained by Augustine and others, that infants
who died
unbaptized
were damned eternally. This doctrine also had its rootage in the mysteries of
Amenta. The
roots have
hitherto been hidden in the earth of eternity which has been mistaken for our
earth of time.
We are now
enabled to exhibit them above ground and hold both root and product up to the
light like the
bulb of a
hyacinth suspended in a glass water-bottle, These can now be studied, roots and
all. The flesh
that is
formed of the mother's blood was held to share in the impurity of the female
nature. It was in this
sense solely
that woman was the author of evil. The Child-Horus born of flesh and blood was
the
prototype of
the unbaptized child-that is, the child unpurified by baptism. Without
baptismal regeneration
in Tattu
there was no blending of the elder Horus with the soul or spirit of Horus
divinized. According
[Page 237] to
the Egyptian doctrine, the development would be arrested and the soul from the
earthly body
might remain
a wretched shade that was doomed to extinction, or, in the Christian
perversion, was
damned
eternally. It was in Amenta that the dead were raised to inherit the second
life. The resurrection
had no other
meaning for the Egyptians. And in the resurrection the Osiris is thus greeted:
" Hail, Osiris !
thou art born
twice! The gods say to thee: ' Come ! come forth; come see what belongs to thee
in thy
house of
eternity' "(ch. 170). It is then that he is changed and renewed in an
instant.
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Ancient
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In blending
the two halves of a soul that was dual in sex, dual also in matter and spirit,
into one,
according to
the mystery of Tat tu, there was a return to the type beyond sex from which the
two had
bifurcated in
the human creation. This one enduring soul was typical of the eternal soul
which included
motherhood
and father-hood in one personality like that of the multi mammalian Osiris
which the Child-
Horus could
only represent in some form of duality that imaged both sexes in one, as do the
deities who
are figured
with one female bosom as a mode of en-onement. Female mummies have been exhumed
that were
made up wearing the beard of a male. This was another figure of the soul
completed by uniting
the two
halves of sex in one figure, the type affected by the Queen Hatshepsu when she
clothed herself
in masculine
attire and reigned as Mistress Aten. It was the same with the Pharaohs who wore
the tail of
the cow or
lioness. They also included both halves of the perfect soul, as a likeness of
the biune being
divinized in
heaven which they represented on the earth. The doctrine was brought on in the
iconography
of the
gnostic artists when Jesus is figured as a woman with a beard, who is
designated the Christ as
Saint Sophia
( or Charis ) (Didron, fig. 50), and also when Jesus is depicted in the Book of
Revelation as
a being of
both sexes, a youth with female paps; in the likeness of Osiris, whose male
body is half
covered with
female mammć, and who is Osiris in the upper and Isis in the lower part of the
same
mummy. Not
only was it necessary to be regenerated and reborn in the likeness of god the
father; the
Manes could
only enter the kingdom of heaven as a being of both sexes or of neither. The
two halves of
the soul that
was established for ever in Tattu were male and female; the soul of Shu was
male, the soul
of Tefnut
female. When these were united in one to form a completed Manes and a perfect
spirit the
result was a
typical creation from both sexes in which there was neither male nor female.
This oneness,
in the Horus
who was divinized, is the oneness in Christ described by Paul "As many of
you as were
baptized into
Christ, did put on Christ. There can be no male nor female, for ye are all one
in Christ
Jesus".
One of the fragments preserved by Clement Alexander and Clement of Rome from
the lost
gospel of the
Egyptians, which is more than fully recoverable in the Ritual, will show the
continuity of the
doctrine as
Egyptian in a gospel that was designated "Egyptian". The Lord having
been asked by Salome
when his
kingdom would come, replied, "when you shall have trampled under foot the
garment of shame;
When two
shall be one, when that which is without shall be like that which is within,
and when the male
with the
female shall be neither male nor female". The "garment of [Page 238]
shame" was feminine, being
as it was of
the flesh. On this the Ritual has a word to say. The impurity of matter which
came to be
ascribed to
the mother of all flesh, or female nature, is symbolically shown in the
chapters for arranging
the funeral
bed (Rit., chs. 170-171). This is exemplified by means of the feminine
garment-the apron-
which is here
considered to be a sign of all that was wrong in the deceased; the wrong that
was derived
from the
mother, as elsewhere described in the Ritual, because it is the garb of
impurity called “the
garment of
shame" in the Egyptian gospel, which was to be trampled under foot when
the male and
female were
to be made one in spirit, or as spirit. In the ceremony of “wrapping up the
deceased in a
pure
garment", the impure one being now discarded is alluded to in ch. 172.
When the deceased was
stretched
upon the funeral bed the body was divested of the apron and clothed in the pure
garment of the
khus or
spirits, “ the pure garment allotted to him for ever" (Rit., ch. 171). But
the feminine garment is still
worn without
shame by the masquerading male as the bishop's apron, which can be traced back
as
feminine to
the loin-cloth and apron first worn by the sex for the most primitive and
pitiful of human needs
at the time
of puberty. The bishop in his apron, like the priest in his petticoat and the
clergyman in his
surplice, is
alikeness of the biune being who united both sexes in one; the modern
Protestant equivalent
for the
Pharaoh with the cow's tail, and Venus with a beard, the mutilated eunuch, or
any other dual type
of
hermaphrodital deity. Men who masquerade in women's clothing are commonly
prosecuted, but the
bishop
carries on his mummery without even being suspected. He walks about as ignorant
of his
vestmental
origins as any of the passers by. Usually the custom of men dressing in women's
clothing is
limited to
our Easter pastimes, but the bishops still carry it on all through the year.
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Ancient
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The
Christians prattle about the divine "sonship of humanity", manifested
in the historical Jesus. But they
have no
divine daughtership, no origin for the soul as female and no female soul. The
Jews did all they
could to get
rid of the female part of the divine nature, and the exigency of the Christian
history has
suppressed
the feminine element altogether in the human type that represented both sexes
in humanity
as it was set
forth by the Egyptians in the mysteries. Finally, it has been frequently
asserted that only
through the
Gospel Jesus has a god of the poor man ever been revealed- a statement most
profoundly
false. A god
of the poor and suffering was personified in Horus the elder. But there is a
corollary to the
character. He
is likewise an avenger of the sufferings. Horus at Edfu is said to protect the
needy against
the powerful.
Also, in the great Judgment Hall the Osiris deceased upon his trial says,
"I have not been a
land-grabber.
I have not exacted more than should be done for me as the first fruits of each
day's work"
(Rit. ch.
125). Various other statements tend to show that the unjust capitalists of those
times had a
mortal dread
of facing Osiris the divinized judge, who was likewise god of the poor and
needy. In an
Egyptian hymn
the one god, Atum the maker of men, is described as "lying awake while all
men lie
asleep, to
seek out the good of his. [Page 239] creatures" (line 12), "listening
to the poor in their distress,
gentle of
heart when one cries to him. Deliverer of the timid man from the violent, lord
of mercy most
loving,
judging the poor, the poor and the oppressed" (Hymn to Amen-Ra, Records,
vol. ii., p. 129). Taht
was the
recorder in the Judgment Hall. At the weighing of hearts he portrayed the
character of the
deceased, and
in one of the texts it is said that when he placed the heart in the scales
against Maati, the
goddess of
justice, he leaned to the side of mercy, that the judgment might be favourably
inclined, as
though he
exerted a little pressure on the human side of the balance.
It has also
been said that the historic Jesus came to glorify the lot of labour, which
antiquity despised,
whereas the
Egyptian paradise was the reward of labour, and Horus the husbandman in the
harvest-field
of the Aarru
is the worker, personified. No one attained the Egyptian heaven but the worker,
who reaped
solely in
proportion as he had sown. The portion of land allotted to the Manes for
cultivation in Amenta
was enlarged
only for those who had been good labourers on earth. The Shebti figures in the
tombs are
equipped for
labour with the plough or hoe in their hands. As agriculturists they put their
hands to the
plough. There
was no unearned increment for loafers in the earth of eternity. A flash of
revelation lightens
from the
cloud of Egypt's past when we learn from the Ritual that a part of the work to
be performed in
the Aarru
paradise or field of harvest in Amenta was to clear away the life-choking sand.
These fighters
and
conquerors of the much. detested desert still retain that image of the earliest
cultivators, the makers
of the soil
which they enclosed and first protected from the drifting, sterilizing sand.
The Manes,
addressing
the Shebti figures, says to them, "O typical ones! If I should be judged
worthy of doing the
work that has
to be done in Amenta, bear witness for me that I am worthy to fertilize the
fields, to flush
the streams,
and transport the sand from west to east" (Rit., ch. 6). He became one of
the glorified elect
in being
judged worthy of the work. This will show that in making the primeval paradise
they were still the
cultivators
who had conquered on earth by their long wrestle with the powers of dearth in
the desert
when they
made their passage through the wilderness of sand and held on to the skirts of
Mother Nile,
who led them
to a land which she herself had made for them to turn into an oasis and a
paradise of
plenty with
her waters for assistance in the war against Apap, or Sut, the Sebau, and the
burning Sahara.
It may also
explain why the Pharaohs from the time of the eleventh dynasty were officially
entitled
"Masters
of the Oasis", the oasis, that is, which had been created in Egypt by
human labour to be
localized in
Amenta as the promised land that was to be attained at last among the
never-setting stars in
the oasis of
eternity.
The
prototypes of hell and purgatory and the earthly paradise are all to be found
in the Egyptian Amenta.
There is,
says the Christian rhymer, Dr. Watts
Page 185
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
"There
is a dreadful hell
And
everlasting pains,
Where sinners
must with devils dwell
In darkness,
fire, and chains".
[Page 240]
The darkness, fire, and chains, as well as the brimstone, which was the stone
of Sut, and other
paraphernalia
of the Christian hell, are also Egyptian. But the chains were employed for the
fettering of
Sut, the
Apap, and the Sebau, the evil adversaries of Osiris, the good or perfect being,
not for the
torturing of
souls that once were human. The Egyptian hell was not a place of everlasting
pain, but of
extinction
For those who were wicked irretrievably. It must be admitted, to the honour and
glory of the
Christian
deity, that a god of eternal torment is an ideal distinctly Christian, to which
the Egyptians never
did attain.
Theirs was the all-parental god, Father and Mother in one whose heart was
thought to bleed in
every wound
of suffering humanity, and Whose son was represented in the character of the
Comforter.
Also the
hell-fire of Christian theology, the hell-fire that is unquenchable (Mark ix.
43, 44), is a survival of
the
representation made in the Egyptian mysteries. The Osiris in Amenta passes
through this hell of fire
in
"which those who are condemned suffer their annihilation. He says, "I
enter in and I come forth from
the tank (or lake)
of flame on the day when the adversaries are annihilated at Sekhem" (Rit.,
ch. I). When
the glorified
deceased had made his voyage in heaven "over the leg of Ptah" and
reached the mount of
glory, he
exclaims, "I have come from the lake of flame, from the lake of fire and
from the field of flame".
He has made
his escape from destruction, and attained the eternal city at the pole of
heaven. This lake
of fire that
is never quenched was derived from the solar force in the mythology on which
the eschatology
was based.
Hence the locality was in the east, at the place of sunrise. The wicked were
consumed by fire
at the place
where the righteous entered the solar bark to sail the heavenly waters called
the Kabhu, or
the cool, and
voyage west- ward toward the heaven of the setting stars. The lake of flame was
in the
east, the
lake of outer darkness in the west. For when the bark of Ra or the boat of
souls had reached
the west at
sunset there was a great gulf fixed between the mount called Manu in the west
and the starry
vault of
night, the gulf of Putrata (Rit., ch. 44), where the dead fell into darkness
unless supported by
Apuat the
star-god, by Horus in the moon, and by Ra the solar deity, the visible
representatives of
superhuman
powers in the astronomical mythology.
At the
"last judgment" in the mysteries those who had failed to make the
word of Osiris truth against his
enemies, as
the formula runs, were doomed to die a second death. The first was in the body
on the
earth, the second
in the spirit. The enemies of justice, law, truth, and right were doomed to be
destroyed
for ever in
the lake of fire or tank of flame. They were annihilated once for all (Rit.,
ch. I). The doctrine
crops up in
the Pauline Epistles and in Revelation, where the end of all is \with a
destruction in the lake of
fire. In the
Epistle to the Hebrews the destruction of lost souls is compared \with that of
vegetable matter
being
consumed by fire. The doctrine, like so many others, was Egyptian, upon \which
the haze of
ignorance
settled down, to cause confusion ever since. Take away the Kamite devil, and
the Christian
world \mould
suffer sad bereavement. The devil was of Egyptian origin, both as "that
old serpent" the
Apap reptile,
the devil \with a long tail, and as Sut, w ho was Satan in ananthropomorphic
guise. Sut, the
power of
drought and darkness in [Page 241] physical phenomena, becomes the dark-hearted
evil one,
and is then
described as causing storms and tempests, going round the horizon of heaven II
like one
whose heart
is veiled" (Rit., ch. 39, Renouf), as the adversary of Osiris the Good
Being. The darkness,
fire, and
chains are all Egyptian. Darkness was mythically represented by the Apap
dragon, also as the
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Ancient
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domain of Sut
in the later theology. Darkness in the nether world is identical with the
tunnels of Sut in
Amenta. The
chains are likewise Egyptian, but not for human wear. Apap and the Sebau, Sut
and the
Sami are
bound in chains. It is said to the pre-anthropomorphic devil, "Chains are
cast upon thee by the
scorpion
goddess" (Rit., ch. 39). Sut is also imprisoned with a chain upon his neck
(ch. 108). As already
explained,
the Sebau and the Sami represent the physical forces in external nature that
made for evil and
were for ever
opposed to the Good Being and to the peace of the world. These were always
rising in
impotent
revolt as the hosts of darkness and spawn of Apap, headed by the evil-hearted
Sut. They had to
be kept
under; hence the necessity for prisons, bonds, and chains. The mythical imagery
has been
continued in
the Christian eschatology, and the sinners put in the place of the Sebau,
whereas in the
Egyptian
teaching the sinners, once human, who were irretrievably bad, were put an end
to once for all,
at the time
of the second death, in the region of annihilation (Rit., ch. 18). Coming to an
end for ever was,
to the
Egyptian mind, a prospect worse than everlasting pains, so profound was their
appreciation of life,
so powerful
their will to persist. They represented evil as negation.
Apap is evil
and a type of negation in the natural phenomena that were opposed to good. In
the
eschatology
Sut represents negation as nonexistence. Evil culminated in annihilation and
non-being for
the Manes,
and the negation of being, of life, of good, was the ultimate form of evil. The
Egyptian
purgatory,
called the Meskat, is a place of purgation where the primitive mode of purifying
may be
compared with
that of Fulling. It is effected by beating. Hence the Meskat is the place of
scourging. The
Manes pleads
that he may not fall under the knives of the executioners in the place of
extermination, as
he has
"passed through the place of purification in the middle of the
Meskat". In chapter 72 the Manes
prays that he
may "not be stopped at the Meskat", or in purgatory, but may pass on
to the divine dwelling-
place
prepared for him by Tum "above the earth", where he can "join his
two hands together", and eat the
bread and
drink the beer upon the table of Osiris. The same plea, "Let me not be
stopped at the Meskat",
or kept in
purgatory , is also uttered by the speaker in chapter 99. The enemies of the
Good Being were
likewise
pilloried. Hence the Manes says, "Deliver me from the gods of the pillory.
who fasten (the guilty)
to their
posts" (ch. 180).
A late
attempt has been made on behalf of the Roman Catholic religion to lure people
into Hades by
showing that
it is only a mitigated mourning department; that the devil himself is not so
black as hitherto
painted, and
that there is really a tolerable amount of happiness to be obtained in hell.
But this is only
looking a
little closer into the traditions of Amenta which survived in Rome.They belong
to the same
original
source as that from which the Church derived its doctrines of purgatory, the
second death, and
other [Page
242] dogmas not to be found in the Gospels. There is no everlasting bonfire of
eternal torture
in the
Egyptian hells, of which there are ten, known as the ten circles of the
condemned, in the inferno or
divine nether
region. The utterly worthless suffer a second death upon the highways of the
damned, and
are spoken of
as those who are no more. The Roman Church continued the dogma of a second
death,
and then
somewhat nullified it by adding punishment of an infinite duration, as being
more coercive to all
who did or
did not zealously believe. There was no other identifiable source for the
Christian eschatology
than the
Egyptian wisdom. The Roman Church was founded on the Ritual. Possibly a version
of the
original may
one day be found preserved in the secret archives of Rome, the text of which
would explain
numerous
pictures in the Catacombs and other works of the gnostic artists who were the
actual authors
of the
Egypto-Christian iconography, not the "few poor fishermen". The Roman
Church will yet find that
she is at
root Egyptian, and will then seek to slough off the spurious history which by
that time will be
looked upon
as solely incremental.
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Ancient
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The Egyptians
were the greatest realists that ever lived. For . thousands and thousands of
years it was
their obvious
endeavour at full stretch to reach the ultimate reality of eternal truth. Their
interrogation of
nature was
like the questioning- of children, very much in earnest: "But is it really
true?" The real was the
quest of
their unceasing inquiry. To be real was the end and aim; that was living in
truth. The only one
god was the
real god. Horus in spirit was the real Horus. Reality was royalty. In the time
of the fifth
dynasty a
certain Tep-en-ankh claims to be "the real judge and scribe", the
"real nearest friend of the
king".
For them eternal life was the ultimate reality. The Egyptian was pre-eminently
a manly religion, and
therefore
calculated to develop manhood. In the hall of the last judgment the deceased
expects justice
and equity.
His god is a just and righteous judge. He does not pray for mercy or writhe in
the dust to seek
a sentimental
forgiveness for sins, or sue for clemency. His was not a creed of that nature.
He knows it is
the life, the
character, the conduct that will count in the scales of Maati for the life
hereafter. The human
Horus put in
no plea for sinners on account of his sufferings. Divine Horus throws no
make-weight into
the scale.
Deceased is judged by what he has done and by what he has not done in the life
on earth. He
must be sound
at heart. He must have spoken and acted the truth. The word of god must have
been
made truth by
him to be of any avail at the bar of judgment. That was the object of all the
teaching in all
the mysteries
and writings which were held to be divine. The standard of law without and
within was set
up under the
name of Maati or Maat, a name denoting the fixed, undeviating law and eternal
rule of right.
Hence the
same word signifies law, truth, justice, rightfulness, and the later
righteousness. The foremost
and the final
article of the Egyptian creed was to fulfil Maati. This is the beginning, the
middle, and the
end of the
moral law.The deity enthroned by them for worship was the god of Maati, tile
name, which has
the fourfold
meaning of law, justice, truth, and right, which are one as well as synonymous.
Judgment
with justice
was their aim, their alpha and [Page 243] omega, in administering the law which
their religious
sense had
divinized for human use; and its supreme type, erected at the pole, in the
equinox, or the Hall
of Judgment,
was the pair of scales at perfect equipoise, for with them the equilibrium of
the universe
was dependent
on eternal equity.
It may look
like taking a flying leap in the dark to pass from the Egyptian Book of the
Dead to Bunyan's
Pilgrim's
Progress, but whencesoever Bunyan derived the tradition, the Pilgrim's Progress
contains all
outline of
the matter in the Egyptian Ritual. Christian personates the Manes on his journey
through the
nether earth,
with the roll in his hand containing the word of life. The escape from the City
of Destruction
may be seen
in the escape of the deceased from the destruction threatened in Amenta, when
he
exclaims.
"I come from the lake of flame, from the lake of fire and from the field
of flame" (ch. 98). The
wicket-gate
corresponds to the secret doorway of the mysteries; the "Slough of
Despond" to the marshes
in the
mythos; the "Hill Difficulty" to the Mount of Ascent up which the Osiris
climbs with "his staff in his
hand".
The Manes forgets his name; Christian forgets his roll, the roll that was his
guide book for the
journey and
his passport to the celestial city. The prototypal valley of the shadow of
death is the Aar-entet
in Amenta.
This is the valley of darkness and death (Rit., ch. 19; 13, 6). The Ritual
says, "Let not the
Osiris
advance into the valley of darkness" where the twice-dead were buried for
ever by the great
annihilator
Seb. The monster Apap is the original Apollyon. The equipment of Christian in
his armour for
his conflict
\with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation is one with the equipment of the
Osiris, who enters
the valley
"glorious and well equipped" for the battle with his adversary the
dragon. The fight of Christian
and Apollyon
is identical \with the contest between Ra and Apap. All the time of his
struggle Apollyon
fought with
yells and hideous roarings; Apap with "the voice of strong bellowings
" (Rit., ch. 39). Christian
passes by the
mouth of hell; the Osiris passes by the ten hells, with all of them, as it
were, making
mouths at him
for their prey. There are two lions at the gate of the Palace Beautiful, and in
the Ritual the
two lions
crouch at the beautiful gate of exit from Amenta (Vig. to ch. 18). The waters
of the river of life,
the green
meadows, the delectable mountains, the land of Beulah, the paradise of peace,
the celestial
city on the
summit, all belong to the mythology of Hetep or the Mount of Glory-a bare
outline, the mere
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
skeleton of
which has been clothed at different times in various forms, including this of
the Pilgrim's
Progress.
Possibly Bunyan the tinker derived the tradition from those travelling tinkers
the gipsies.
However this
may be, the Egyptian Ritual is the verifiable source of Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress.
Many
illustrations might also be given to show that the mysteries of Amenta, which
were finally summed
up as
"Osirian", have been carried to the other side of the world. In the
mythology of the [Page 244]
aborigines of
New Holland, “Grogoragally, the divine son, is the active agent of his father,
who immovably
presides over
all nature (like Osiris, the mummy god of the motionless heart). The son
watches the
actions of
men, and quickens the dead immediately upon their earthly interment. He acts as
mediator for
the souls to
the great god, to whom the good and bad actions of all are known. His office is
chiefly to
bring at the
close of every day the spirits of the dead from all parts of the world to the
judgment-seat of
his father,
where alone there is eternal light. There he acts as intercessor for those who
have only spent
some portion
of their lives in wickedness. Bayma, listening to the mediation of his son,
allows
Grogoragally
to admit some such into Ballima, "or heaven (Manning, Notes on the
Aborigines of New
Holland,
Sydney, 1883, copy from the author). Grogoragally is one with the hawk-headed
Horus, the
paraclete or
advocate who pleads for the Manes before the judgment-seat of his father.
Again, the
aborigines of
the McDonnell Ranges have a tradition that the sky was at one time inhabited by
three
persons. One
of these was a woman, one was a child who always remained a child and never
developed
beyond
childhood; the third was a man of gigantic stature called Ulthaana-that is a
spirit. He had an
enormous foot
shaped like that of an emu. When a native dies he is said to ascend to the home
of
Ulthaana the
spirit (Gillen, Notes, Horn Expedition, vol. iv., p. 183).
This is a
far-off folk tale that may be traced back home to the Egyptian myth. In this
Child-Horus never
developed
beyond childhood, and so remained the eternal child. This was Horus of the
incarnation who
made his
transformation into the Horus that rose again as the adult, the great man,
Horus in . spirit, the
prototype of
"Ulthaana". The bird type is repeated. Horus has the head of the
hawk, as a figure of the
man in
spirit;. Ulthaana, as a spirit, has the foot of an enormous emu.
The Arunta
also have a kind of Amenta or world of spirits under ground. About fourteen
miles to the south
of Alice
Springs there is a cave in a range of hills which rises to the north. This
cave, like all others in the
range, is
supposed to be occupied by the Iruntarinia or spirit individuals, each one of
whom is in reality
the double of
one of the ancestors of the tribe who lived in the Alcherinf!a. The individual
spirits are
supposed to
live within the cave in perpetual sunshine and among streams of running water,
as in the
Egyptian
meadows of Aarru. Here, as in Amenta, the reconstitution of the deceased takes
place. Within
the cave the
Iruntarinia remove all the internal organs, and provide the man with a
completely new set,
after which
operation has been successfully performed he presently comes to life again, but
in a
condition of
insanity. This, however, is of short duration, and the coming round is
equivalent to the
recovery of
memory by the Manes in the Ritual, when he remembers his name and who he is in
the great
house of the
other world (Spencer and Gillen, p. 525). There are bird-souls also in this
nether earth,
which are
favoured with unlimited supplies of down or undattha, with which they are fond
of decorating
their bodies
as spirits.The mysteries of Amenta are more or less extant in the totemic
ceremonies of the
Central
Australians at a more rudimentary stage of development, which means, according
to the present
reading [Page
245] of the data, that the same primitive wisdom was carried out from the same
central
birthplace in
Africa to the islands of the Southern Sea, and there fossilized during long
ages of isolation,
which had
been carried down the Nile to take living root and grow and flourish as the
mythology and
eschatology
of ancient Egypt.
Page 189
Ancient
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In the
mysteries of Amenta the deceased is reconstructed from seven constituent parts
or souls in seven
stages of
development.Corresponding to these in the Arunta mysteries, seven
"status-terms are applied
to the
initiate". (1) He is called Ambaquerka up to the time of his being tossed
in the air. (2) He is
Ulpmerka until
taken to the circumcision ground. (3) He is the Wurtja during the time betwixt
being
painted for
it and the actual performance of the ceremony. (4) He is Arakurta betwixt the
operations of
circumcision
and sub-incision. (5) He is Ertwa-kurka after circumcision until he passes
through the ordeal
by fire. (6)
Following this he is called IIlpongwurra, and (7) after passing through the
engwurra he is
designated
Urliara. (Spencer and Gillen, N. T., p. 638.) In the mysteries of Amenta the
mouth of the
resuscitated
spirit is opened and the silence of death is broken when the lips are touched
by the sacred
implement in
the hands of Ptah.
It is said in
the "ceremony of opening the mouth", "Let my mouth be opened by
Ptah with the instrument
of ba-metal
with which he openeth the mouths of the gods" (ch. 23). The Arunta also
perform the
ceremony of
opening the mouth by touching it with a sacred object when the initiates are
released from
the ban of
silence (Spencer and Gillen, pp. 382, 385). A mystery of the resurrection is
acted by the Arunta
in the
quabarra ingwurninga inkinja, or corroborree of the arisen bones, which bones
imaged the dead
body, whilst
the performers represented the Ulthaana or spirits of the dead (p.473). The
bones were
sacredly
preserved by those who were as yet unable to make the mummy as a type of
permanence.
Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen tell us that every Australian native has to pass through
certain ceremonies
before he is
admitted to the secrets of the tribe. The first takes place at about the age of
ten or twelve
years, whilst
the final and most impressive one is not passed through until probably the
native has
reached the
age of at least twenty-five, or It may be thirty years "(N. T., pp. 212,
213). These two
initiations
correspond to those in the mysteries of the double Horus. At twelve years of
age the Child-
Horus makes
his transformation into the adult in his baptism or other kindred mysteries.
Horus as the
man of thirty
years is initiated in the final mystery of the resurrection. So was it with the
gnostic Jesus.
The long lock
of Horus, the sign of childhood, was worn by him until he attained the age of
twelve years,
when he was
changed into a man. With the southern Arunta tribe the hair of the boy is for
the first time
tied up at
the commencement of the opening ceremony of the series by which he is made a
man. HIS
long hair is
the equivalent of the Horus lock. The first act of initiation in the Arunta
mysteries is that of
throwing the
boy up into the air-a ceremony that still survives with us in the tossing of
the new-comer in a
blanket! This
was a primitive mode of dedication to the ancestral spirit of the totem or the
tribe, whose
voice is
heard in the sound of the churinga or bull-roarer whirling round. It is [Page
246] said by the natives
that the
voice of the great spirit was heard when the resounding bull-roarer spoke. The
great spirit was
supposed to
descend and enter the body of the boy and to make him a man, just as in the
mystery of Tat
tu the soul
of Horus the adult descends upon and unites with the soul of Horus the child,
or the soul of Ra
the holy
spirit descends upon Osiris to quicken and transform and re-erect the mummy.
Where risen
Horus becomes
bird-headed as the adult in spirit the Arunta youth is given the appearance of
flight to
signify the
change resulting from the descent of the spirit as the cause of transformation.
When one
becomes a
soul in the mysteries of the Ritual by assuming the form or image of Ra, the
initiate exclaims
"Let me
wheel round in whirls, let me revolve like the turning one " (ch. 83).
The" turning one" is the sun
god Chepera
(Kheper), whose name is identical with that of an Australian tribe. Kheper is
the soul of
"self-originating
force" that was imaged under one type by the bennu, a bird that ascends
the air and flies
to a great
height whilst circling round and round in spiral wheels (Rit., ch. 85).
Whether this
be the churinga, the bribbun, turndun, or whirler in a glorified form or not,
the doctrine of
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Ancient
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soul-making
at puberty is the same in the Australian as in the Egyptian mysteries.
In the
Egyptian mythology Horus is the blind man, or rather he is the child born
blind, called Horus in the
dark. He is
also described as the blind Horus in the city of the blind. In his blindness he
is typical of the
emasculated
sun in winter and of the human soul in death. At the place of his resurrection
or rebirth there
stands a tree
up which he climbs to enter spirit life. And we are told that “near to
Charlotte Waters is the
tree that
Jose to mark the spot where a blind man died". This tree is called the
apera okilchya - that is,
the blind
man's tree, and the place where it stands was the camp of the blind, the city
of the blind, the
world of the
dead, in which the tree of life or dawn was rooted (N.T., p. 552). Should the
tree be cut down
the men where
it grows will become blind. They would be like Horus in the dark, this being
the tree of
light or the
dawn of eternal day. In one of their ceremonies the Arunta perform the mystery
of the oruncha
which existed
in the Alcheringa. These were evil spirits or "devil-devil men",
malevolent and murderous to
human beings,
especially to the women after dark (N.T., p. 329,331, 390-1). In this
performance they are
portrayed as
prowling round, crawling, peering about, and seeking whom they may devour. They
run
backwards and
forwards on all fours as beasts of prey, growling and pretending to frighten
each other.
The oruncha
are the creatures of the dark, with horns like the medićval devil, and they
correspond to the
Sebau fiends
or evil spirits of the Egyptian mythos who are the enemies of the good Osiris
in Amenta.
These
devil-devil men made war upon the lizard men, the men of the lizard totem, but
there were two
brothers who
rushed upon them as avengers, and slew the whole of the oruncha. The evil
powers were
the creatures
of chaos, the spawn of darkness, the devils of drought, with whom there was no
law or
order. The
two brothers = brotherhoods belonged to the lizard totem, together with their
wives. This was
the earliest
totem of the Arunta.
In the last
of the initiation ceremonies the Arunta raise a special [Page 247] mound,
called the parra, on
the engwura
ground, where the final rites are performed and full initiation is attained.
Here the nurtunga
was raised,
and the parra mound was, so to say, erected at the pole. Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen tell us
they were
unable to learn the meaning of the word parra. But, as the comparison is not
simply verbal, we
note that
para is an ancient Egyptian name for Annu, the place of the column, the mount
of the pole, and
of the
balance in the Maat. The Chepara tribe of Southern Queensland also throw up the
circular mound
for their
greater mystery of the kuringal, in which may be identified the baptism and
rebirth by fire (Howitt,
Australian
Ceremonies of the Initiation). Amongst the initiatory rites of the Arunta
mysteries is the
purification
by fire. When the initiate has passed through this trial he becomes a perfectly
developed
member of the
tribe, and is called an urliara, or one who has been proved by fire (N.T., p.
271).The
natives say
that the ceremony has the effect of strengthening the character of all who pass
through it.
This is one
of the most obvious survivals. Afire ceremony is described in the Ritual as an
exceeding great
mystery and a
type of the hidden things in the under world. It is an application of the fires
by means of
which power
and might are conferred upon the spirits (khu) among the stars which never set.
.These
fires, it is
said in the rubric ( ch. 137 , A), shall make the spirit as vigorous as divine
Osiris. It is a great
ordeal, and
so secret is the mystery that it is only to be seen by the males. "Thou
shalt not perform this
ceremony
before any human being, except thine own self or thy father or thy son".
Amongst other things
the fire is
good for destroying evil influences and for giving power to Horus in his war
with darkness. It is
of interest
to note the part played by the females in the ordeals by fire. In one of these
the fire is prepared
by the women,
and when the youth squats upon the fire they place their hands upon his
shoulder and
gently press
him down upon the smoking fuel (N.T., p. 259). Now in the Egyptian mysteries of
Amenta the
punishers or
purifiers in the hells or furnaces are women or goddesses, and it looks as if
this character
had survived
in the mysteries of the Arunta. When the elders shout through the darkness to
the women
across the
river, "What are you doing? " the reply is, " We are making a
fire". " What are you going to do
Page 191
Ancient
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with the
fire?" is asked, and the women shout, "We are going to burn the
men". This occurs during a
pause by
night in the ceremonies of initiation, which terminate with the ordeal by fire.
(Spencer and
Gillen.) The
concluding ordeals by fire and the "final washing" in the Australian
ceremonies can be
paralleled in
the Ritual. "Lo, I come", says the speaker, "that I may purify
this soul of mine in the most
high
degree" (ch. 97); and again, "I come from the lake of flame, from the
lake of fire and from the field of
flame, and I
live". He is now a spirit sufficiently advanced to join the ancient never-
setting ones and
become a
fellow-citizen with them in the eternal city (ch. 98). The initiate in the
Australian mysteries
having passed
through the initiatory ceremonies, joins the elders as a fully-developed member
of his
tribe.
The most
sacred ceremonial object of the Arunta is called the kaltaua.This is erected at
the close of the
engwura
mysteries. A young gum-tree, 20 feet in height, is cut down, stripped of its
branches [Page 248]
and its bark,
to be erected in the middle of the sacred ground. The decoration at the top was
"just that of
a human
head". It was covered allover with human blood, unless red ochre had been
substituted. The
exact
significance of the kauaua is not known to the natives, but, as the writers
affirm, it has some
relation to a
human being, and is regarded as common to the members of all the totems (p.630).
Its
mystery is
made known at the conclusion of the engwura, a series of ceremonies, the last
of the initiatory
rites through
which the native must pass to become a fully-developed member who is admitted
to all the
secrets of
the tribe, of which this is apparently final and supreme. All things
considered, we think the
sacred kauaua
is a form of the Egyptian ka-statue, which is a type of eternal duration as an
image of the
highest soul.
To make the kauaua, so to say, the pole is humanized. It is painted with human
blood, and
ornamented
like the human head. It has but one form, and is common to all the totems. So
is it with the
Egyptian ka,
the eidolon of the enduring soul. The name of the kauaua answers to a
long-drawn-out form
of the word
"ka", as ka-a-a.The mysteries of the Arunta, which sometimes take
four months together for a
complete
performance, constitute their religious ceremonies, their mean of instruction,
their books, their
arts of
statuary, painting, and Sign-language, their modes of preserving the past,
whether lived on earth,
or, as they
have it, in the Alcheringa, during the times of the mythical ancestors beyond
which tradition
does not
penetrate. The main difference betwixt the Australian and the Egyptian mysteries
is that the one
are performed
on this earth in the totemic stage of sociology, the other in the earth of
Amenta in the
phase of
eschatology. Also the Egyptians continued growing all the time that the
Australians were
standing
still or retrograding. Lastly, we may be sure that such mysteries as these did
not spring from a
hundred
different origins and come together by fortuitous concourse from the ends of
the earth, to be
finally
formulated as the Egyptian mysteries of Amenta.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
BOOK 5 of 12
THE
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF ASTRONOMICAL MYTHOLOGY
(THE
PRIMITIVE AFRICAN PARADISE)
[Page 249] IT
may be said that the dawn of African civilization came full circle in Egypt, but
that the earliest
glimmer of
the light which turned the darkness into day for all the earth first issued
from the inner land.
The veriest
beginning must have been coeval with the creature that first developed a thumb
to wield a
weapon or to
shape an implement for human use, when in the far-off past but little
difference could have
been detected
twixt the monkey and the Pygmy race of human aborigines. It is improbable that
we shall
get back any
nearer to a beginning for the human being among the types extant than with
those forest
dwarfs, of
whom a recent traveller says: “They have no records or traditions of the past,
no regard for
time, nor any
fetish rites; they do not seek to know the future by occult means, as do their
neighbours; in
short, they
are, to my thinking, the closest link with the original Darwinian anthropoid
apes extant” .
These little
folk of the forest are still upon the lowest step in the ascent of man. Not
because they have
retrograded,
but because they have never grown. So far as is known, the Pygmies have no
verbal
language of
their own, whatsoever words they may have gathered from outsiders. Otherwise,
language
with them is
the same as it was in the beginning,with a few animal sounds and gesture-signs.
They have
no totems, no
signs of tattu scored upon their bodies, no rites of puberty, no eating of the
parent in
honour for
the primitive sacrament. Judging from specimens of the Pygmies that have been
brought to
England from
the Ituri Forest, the foundation of the negroid features, the thick lips and
large, spreading
nostrils, was
laid in the Pygmean phase of development, but up to the present time the Pygmy
has only
reached the
“peppercorn” stage of hair, and has not yet attained the “kinky” locks of the
full-blooded
negro.
A German
traveller lately claimed to have discovered a people in the forests of Borneo
who show some
vestige of
the ancestral tail. He saw the tail on a child about six years old belonging to
the Poenan tribe.
There was the
appendage, sure enough - not very long, but plainly visible, hairless, and
about the
thickness of
a man's little finger (Daily Chronicle, August 10th, 1904). Also the persistent
[Page 250]
rumour that
some remains of a semi-simian race are yet extant among the hidden secrets of
the old dark
land is not
incredible, to the evolutionist. According to Lady Lugard, there is a tribe in
Nigeria who are
reputed not
to have lost their tails (Daily Mail, March 2nd,1904). The African Pygmies,
however, have not
publicly
proclaimed the tail.
The one sole
race that can be traced among the aborigines all over the earth, above ground
or below, is
the dark race
of a dwarf negrito type, and the only one possible motherland on earth for
these preliminary
people is
Africa. No other country possesses the necessary background as a basis for the
human
beginnings.
And so closely were the facts of nature observed and registered by the
Egyptians that the
earliest
divine men in their mythology are portrayed as Pygmies. Following the zootypes,
the primitive
human form of
Elder Horus was that of Bes, the dancing dwarf. Bes is a figure of Child-Horus
in the
likeness of a
negroid Pygmy, He comes capering into Egypt along with the Great Mother, Apt,
from
Puanta in the
far-off south, In reality, Bes-Horus is the earliest form of the Pygmy Ptah. In
both the dwarf
is the type
of man in his most primitive shape. The seven powers that co-operate with Ptah
are also
represented
as seven Pygmies. Thus the anthropomorphic type comes into view as a Pygmy!
Moreover,
Ptah, the
divine dwarf, is the imperfect progenitor of the perfect man in his son Atum.
In this way the
Egyptian
wisdom registers the fact that the Pygmy was the earliest human figure known,
and that this
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
was brought
into Egypt from the forests of Inner Africa and the record made in the
mythology. In this
mode of
registering the natural fact the Egyptians trace their descent from the folk
who were the first in
human form -
that is, from the Pygmies.
We have now
to summarize a few of the pre-Egyptian evidences for the Inner African
beginnings.
In one of the
later chapters of the Book of the Dead (No. 164) - later, that is, in
position-there are some
ancient
mystical names which are said to have been uttered in the language of the Nahsi
(the negroes),
the Anti, and
the people of Ta-Kenset, or Nubia. Dr. Birch thought this and other chapters
were modern
because of
the presence of Amen-Ra, But the later insertion of a divine name or title does
not prove the
fundamental
matter of the chapter to be late. In this the Great Mother is saluted as the
Supreme Being,
“the Only
One” , by the name of Sekhet-Bast, the goddess of sexual passion and strong
drink, who is the
mistress of
the gods, not as wife, but as the promiscuous concubine - she who was
“uncreated by the
gods', and
who is “mightier than the gods” . To her the eight gods offer words of
adoration. Therefore they
were not then
merged in the Put-circle of the nine. It is noticeable too that Sekhet is not
saluted as the
consort of
Ptah. Sekhet was undoubtedly far more ancient than Ptah. But the point is that
the outlandish
names applied
to her in this chapter are quoted from the language of the negroes, therefore
parts of the
Ritual had
been composed in those languages; and if in the languages, then in the lands
where these
languages
were spoken, including the country of the Nahsi, who were so despised by the
dynastic
Egyptians.
This we claim as a partial recognition of the [Page 251] southern origin of the
“Egyptian
mythology. In
agreement with this, the Great Mother may be identified in (chapter 143) as Apt
of Nubia,
who had a
shrine at Nepata on her way to Egypt, Khept, or Khebt. In a text upon a stele
among the
Egyptian
monuments at Dorpat it is said to the worshipper, “Make adoration to Apt of the
dum-palms, to
the lady of
the two lands” (Proc. Sac. Bib. Arch., March 6th, 1894, p. 152). In this text
the old first mother
Apt appears
as goddess of the mama-tree, that is the dum-palm, which in Egypt is a native
of the south.
This points
to the farther south as the primeval home and habitat of the most ancient
hippopotamus
goddess, she
who thus preceded Hathor in the southern sycamore as Mother-earth or Lady of
the Tree,
and who in
the dum-palm was the “mama” or mother of the Inner Africans.
The King of
Egypt as the Suten dates from Sut. The dignity is so ancient that the insignia
of the Pharaohs
evidently
belong to a time when the Egyptians wore nothing but the girdle of the negro,
and when it was
considered a
special distinction that the King should complete this girdle with a piece of
skin in front and
adorn it with
the tail of a lioness behind. The oldest and most primitive form of the sacred
house in Egypt
known from
inscriptions of the ancient empire is a hovel dedicated to Sut for a temple. It
looks like a hut
of
wattle-work without dab, and is a prehistoric type of building in the Nile
valley, belonging to a
civilization
immeasurably lower than that of Egypt. (Erman, p. 280.) Sut the son of Apt was
the deity of
the first
Egyptian nome. Sut is synonymous with the south from which he came with
Horus-Behutet, who
halted by the
way as deity of the second nome. Milne-Edwards has shown the African origin of
the ass,
and this was
preserved by the Egyptians in its pristine purity of form. The serpents of
equatorial Africa
have their
likeness in the huge reptiles portrayed in pictures of the Egyptian
under-world. The sycamore
fig of Hathor
and the palm tree of Taht were imported into Egypt from Central Africa. The
burying-places
of Abydos,
especially the most ancient, have furnished millions of shells, pierced and threaded
as
necklaces,
all of which belong to the species of cowries used as money in Africa at the
present day
(Maspero,
Dawn of Civilization, Eng. trans., p. 57). The hoes and wooden stands for
head-rests used by
the Egyptians
have their prototypes among the East Central African tribes (Duff Macdonald).
Dr. Peters
found various
customs among the Wakintu in Uganda which made him think the people were
connected
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Ancient
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with the
ancient Egyptians. One of these was the practice of embalming the dead and of
excavating the
rocks. Also
their burial “mounds are conical, he says, and look like pyramids.
One might
fill a volume with figures from Inner Africa that were developed and made
permanent in the
symbolism of
Egypt.
“My lord the
lion” is an African expression used by the Kaffirs and others in speaking of
the lordly animal,
also of the
chief as lion-lord. So likewise in Egypt Osiris as king of the gods was, “my
lord the crocodile” ,
and King Assa
is also called “my lord the king” , as a crocodile. (Rit., ch, 142, line 17,
Prisse. Pap. 41).
Again, the
lion of Motoko is a totem with the Kaffirs in the neighbourhood of Fort
Salisbury, Mashonaland.
They have a
priest of the lion-god called the Mondoro, who is venerated as a sort of spirit
in lion shape.
[Page 252]
Sacrifices are offered annually to the lion-god at the Zimbabwe of Mashonaland;
and it is held
by the
natives that all true men pass into the lion form at death, precisely the same
as it is with the
Manes in the
Egyptian Ritual, who exclaims, on living a second time, “I am the lord in lion
form” ( ch. 4),
and who rises
again when divinized in that image of superhuman power. Such types were Inner
African
when totemic,
and, as the lion of Motoko shows, they were also venerated as representatives
of spiritual
or superhuman
powers which were deified in Egypt as the crocodile divinities Apt, Neith, and
Sebek, and
the lion-gods
Shu, Tefnut, Sekhet, Horus, and Atum-Ra.
In the
Egyptian judgment scenes the baboon or cynocephalus sits upon the scales as the
tongue of the
balance and a
primitive determinative of even-handed justice. This was an Inner African type,
now
continued in
Egypt as an image of the judge. In a Namaqualand fable the baboon sits in
judgment on the
other
animals. The mouse had torn the tailor's clothes and laid it to the cat, the
cat lays it to the dog, the
dog to the
wood, the wood to the fire, the fire to the water, the water to the elephant,
and the elephant to
the ant;
whereupon the wise judge orders the ant to bite the elephant, the elephant to
drink the water, the
water to
quench the fire, the fire to burn the wood, the wood to beat the dog, the dog
to bite the cat, and
the cat to
bite the mouse; and thus the tailor gets satisfaction from the judgment of the
wise baboon,
whose name is
Yan in Namaqua, whilst that of the cynocephalus is Aan in Egyptian. This in the
European
folk-tales is
the well-known nursery legend of “the pig that wouldn't go” . How then did this
Bushman or
Hottentot
fable get into the lowermost stratum of the folk-tales in England ? We answer,
the same way
that “Tom
Thumb” did, and “Jack the Giant-killer” , the “House that Jack Built” , and many
more which are
the poor
relations reduced from the mythology of Egypt to become the märchen of the
world. Again, the
youthful hero
who is Horus in Egypt, Heitsi Eibib among the Hottentots, and the redoubtable
little Jack in
Britain, is
also an Inner African figure under the name of Kalikalange. The missionary
Macdonald says,
“We know a
boy who assumed, much at his own instance, the name of Kalikalange, the hero
about
whom there
are so many native tales, reminding one of the class of tales to which Jack the
Giant-killer
belongs”
(Africana, vol. i. p. I 15). This is the hero who slays the giant or dragon of
drought and darkness,
or cuts open
the monster that swallowed him; who rescues the lunar lady from her
imprisonment, and
who makes the
ascent to heaven by means of a tree, a stalk, or, as in the case of
Child-Horus, a papyrus
reed. In his
Uganda Protectorate (vol. ii. p. 700) Sir H. Johnston has reproduced a local
legend of
creation
derived from the natives, which contains certain constituent elements of the
nursery tale of Jack
the
Giant-killer. “Kintu” was the first man. When he came from the unknown he found
nothing in Uganda
– no food, no
water, no animals, nothing but a blank. He had a cow with him, and on this he
lived. The
cow
represented the earth as giver of food. Kintu is a form of the universal hero,
the hero to whom the
tests are
applied for discovering whether or no he is the real heir. Kintu eats or [Page
253] disposes of
10,000
carcases of roasted cows, and thus proves himself to be the man indeed, as does
Jack who
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
outwits the
giant in a similar manner. The story includes the beanstalk (or the bean), with
other fragments
found in the
European märchen, including the bringing of death into the world through the
disobedience
of Kintu, the
first man, or by his violating the law of tabu. The Wakintu of Uganda or
Rhodesia derive their
name from
Kintu, the first man of the Central African legends.
In a Zulu
legend the under-world is the land of cannibals. Here dwells the devourer from
whom the
youthful hero
makes his escape, together with his sister, by climbing up a tree into the sky
country, just
as Horus
climbs the tree of dawn in coming forth from the under-world. We read in the
Ritual of a golden
dog-headed
ape which is “three palms in height, without legs or arms” . The speaker in
this character
says, “My
course is the course of the golden cynocephalus, three palms in height, without
legs or arms,
in the temple
of Ptah” (Rit. ch. 42, Renouf). What this means no mortal knows. It is known,
however, that
the
dog-headed ape as Ani the saluter was emblematic of the moon. Now, in the
Kaffir story of
Simbukumbukwana
there is a child born without legs or arms, who obviously represents the moon
in its
changes. He
began to speak on the day of his birth. “The girl that was first born, who grew
up in the
valley and
lived in the hole of an ant-heap” , is called his sister. She has the power to
give him legs and
arms by
repeating his name and saying, “Have legs and arms!” and to deprive him of them
by saying
“Shrink, legs
and arms!” This, as a figure of waning and waxing, helps us to understand the
dog-headed
ape of gold
as an image of the moon in the waxing and waning halves of the lunation. In
“the story of the
glutton” the
conquerors of the swallower are the mother and her twins. These, in an Egyptian
form of the
mythos, are
Sut and Horus, the twin brethren, who war against the monster as two lions, the
Rehu, on
behalf of
their mother, who is the lady of light in the moon (Rit. ch. 80). In this way
we can trace some of
the oldest of
the folk-tales concerning the deluge and the lost paradise, the hero as the wonder-working
child who
climbs a tree or stalk and slays the monster of the dark, to Inner Africa, and
follow these and
others in the
mythology of the Egyptians on their way to becoming the universal legends of
the human
race. The
mythology, religious rites, totemic customs, and primitive symbolism of Egypt
are crowded with
survivals
from identifiable Inner African origins. The Egyptian ka or image of a
spiritual self was preceded
by various
rude but representative images of the dead. Livingstone tells us that the
natives about Lake
Moere make
little idols of a deceased father or mother. To these they present beer, flour,
and bhang; they
light a fire
for the spirits to sit round and smoke in concert with their living relatives.
The Ewe-speaking
natives of
the Gold Coast also have their kra or eidolon, which existed from before the
birth of a child and
is exactly
identical with the Egyptian ka (Ellis, A. B., Ewe-speaking-Peoples, p. 13). It
is a common
practice with
the Bantu tribes described by the author of The Uganda Protectorate for the
[Page 254]
relatives of
deceased persons to carve crude little images as likenesses of the dead, and
set them up for
worship or
propitiation. Offerings are made to these in place of the later ka of the Egyptians.
The earlier
type of the
departed was a bodily portrait. Hence the mummy. The ka is a later spirit
likeness. But both
imply the
same recognition of the ancestral spirits that live on after death. The spirit
huts provided for the
honoured dead
in the dense forests of Central Africa, as by the Wanyamwezi for their musimo,
by the
Congo Pygmies
(Geal), and by the Nilotic negroes, which the Portuguese called devil houses,
are
prototypes of
the ka-chambers in Egyptian tombs. Erecting a little hut for the spirits is a
recognized mode
of
propitiation. Lionel Décle, as we have seen, describes his Wanyamwezi as making
little huts of grass
or of green
boughs even when on the march, and offering them to the musimo or spirits of
their ancestors
( Three Years
in Savage Africa, pages 343-6).
One of the
funeral offerings found in Theban tombs is a loaf of bread in the shape of a
cone (our pastille),
or a model in
burnt terra-cotta that images the loaf. Why the offering should be conical is
admittedly
unknown. This
typical cone is Inner African, and in a most peculiar way. The Yao people have
the custom
of making an
offering to the dead in a conical form. They do not know how to make bread, but
their
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
offering to
the spirits consists of a little flour. This they let fall slowly from the
fingers on the ground, so
that it may
form a pile in the shape of a sugarloaf. If the cone should shape perfectly it
is an omen that
the offering
is acceptable to the spirits. It may be suggested in passing that the conical
shape of the pile
in flour and
the funerary loaf was derived from that of the grave-mound of earth or stones
dropped over
the buried
corpse as the still earlier tribute offered to the dead. British peasants give
the name of “fairy
loaves” to
the fossil echini or sea-urchins found in Neolithic graves. Obviously these
loaves were
representative
of funerary food that was likewise offered to the dead. The skeleton of a young
woman
clasping a
child in her arms was discovered in a round barrow on Dunstable Downs, the
burial mound
being edged
round with these fairy loaves.
Again, in the
mysteries of the Yao people the young girls are initiated by a female who is
called the “the
cook of the
mystery” (mtelesi wa unyago). This is the instructress who makes the mystery or
is the “cook”
that prepares
it, and who is mistress of the ceremony. She is the wise woman who initiates
the girls, and
anoints their
bodies with an oil containing various magical ingredients. She clothes them in
their earliest
garment, the
primitive loin-cloth, that was first assumed at puberty with proud pleasure,
and afterwards
looked upon
askance as the sign of civilized woman's shame. Now this primitive personage
has been
divinized as
the Cook in the Kamite pantheon. In Egyptian, tait signifies to cook, and this
is the name of a
goddess Tait
who is the cook in paradise and the preparer of the deceased in the greater
mysteries of the
Ritual, where
she is the cook of the mystery more obviously than a cook as preparer of food.
Deceased,
in speaking
of his investiture for the garden of Aarru, cries, “Let my vesture be girt on
me by Tait !” [Page
255] that is,
by the goddess who is the divine cook by name, and who clothes the initiate in
the garment
or girdle
that here takes the place of the loin-cloth in the more primitive mysteries of
Inner Africa (Duff
Macdonald,
Africana, vol. i. pp. 123-126; Rit., ch. 82, Renouf).
The Egyptian
record when correctly read will tell us plainly that the human birthplace was a
land of the
papyrus reed,
the crocodile, and hippopotamus; a land of the great lakes in Karua, the Kolôe
of Ptolemy,
or in Apta at
the horn point of the earth - that is, in Equatoria, from whence the sacred
river ran to brim
the valley of
the Nile with plenty. The track of civilization with cities springing in its
footprints is seaward
from the
south, not upward from Lower Egypt, which was a swamp when Upper Egypt was
already the
African home
of civilization. The Egyptians always gave priority to the south over the delta
in the north.
Also the
south was and is the natural habitat of the oldest fauna and most peculiar of
the sacred
zootypes. It
is in vain we judge of the race by the figures and faces of the rulers
portrayed in monumental
times.
Primary data must be sought for amongst the Fellaheen and corroborated by the
skulls. Captain
Burton wrote
to me in 1883, saying, “You are quite right about the African origin of the
Egyptians, and I
have sent
home a hundred skulls to prove it” . (Does anyone know what became of these
skulls ?)
The African
legends tell us that the Egyptians, Zulus, and others looked backward to a land
of the
papyrus reed
as the primeval country of the human race, and that on this, as we shall see,
the Egyptians
founded their
circumpolar paradise in the astronomical mythology. There is a widespread
African
tradition,
especially preserved by the Kaffir tribes, that the primeval birthplace was a
land of reeds. The
Zulus told
the missionary Callaway that men originally “came out of a bed of reeds” . This
birthplace in
the reeds was
called “Uthlanga” , named from the reed. No one knew where it was, but all
insisted that
the natal
reed-bed of the race was still extant. It was a sign of lofty lineage for the
native aristocracy to
claim descent
from ancient Uthlanga, the primeval land of birth. The Basutos identify
Uthlanga the
human
birthplace with a cavern in the earth that was surrounded by a morass of reeds.
They also cling
so
affectionately to the typical reed that when a child is born they suspend a
reed above the hut to
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Ancient
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announce the
birth of the babe, thus showing in the language of signs that the papyrus reed
is still a type
of the
primitive birthplace in which Child-Horus was cradled on the flower of the
papyrus plant or reed.
The Zulu
birthplace in the bed of reeds was repeated and continued in the nest of reeds
and the morass
that were
mythically represented as the birthplace of the child, which was constellated
as the uranograph
of Horus
springing from the reed. What indeed is the typical reed of Egypt, first in the
upper, next in the
lower land,
but a symbol of the birthplace in the African bed of reeds ? Lower Egypt,
called Uat in the
hieroglyphics,
has the same name as the papyrus reed. Also Uati is a title of the great mother
Isis who
brought forth
Child-Horus on her lap of the papyrus flower. Uat in Egyptian is the name of
Lower Egypt;
Uat is the
oasis, Uat is the water, Uat is wet, fresh, evergreen Uat is the reed of Egypt,
the papyrus reed,
and a name of
the most ancient mother in the Kamite mythology. [Page 256]
Seb, the
father of food, is clothed with papyrus reeds. The Mount of Earth was imaged as
a papyrus-
plant in the
water of space. Lastly, the Mount of Amenta in the Ritual rises from a bed of
papyrus reeds.
Hor-Apollo
says of the Egyptians, “To denote ancient descent they depict a roll of
papyrus, and by this
they signify
primeval food” (B. I, 30). This is the same as with the Zulus. The papyrus
reed, Uat, was
turned into a
symbol of most ancient descent precisely because it had been the primeval food
of the most
ancient
people, a totem of the most ancient mother of the race when called Uati in
Egypt, and a type of
the African
paradise. As the symbolism shows, people were sometimes derived from and
represented by
the food on which
they lived. Thus the papyrus reed that symbolizes ancient food and long descent
would be the
sign of the people who once lived on or who ate the shoots of the water plant.
The
Egyptians
continued to be eaters of the lotus and papyrus shoots. Theirs was the land of
the reed, and
they, like
the Zulus or the Japanese or the Pueblos, were the reed people in accordance
with the
primitive
mode of heraldry, just as with the Arunta tribes the witchetty-grub people are
those who live on
the witchetty-grub
as their special totemic food. In later times the papyrus plant was eaten by
the
Egyptians as
a delicacy. Its shoots were gathered for that purpose annually. Bread made from
the roots
and the seed
of the lotus was the gourmand's delight. Lily loaves are mentioned in the
Papyrus Anastasi.
It is said in
the Hymn to the Nile that when food is abundant the poor man disdains to eat
the lotus or
papyrus
plant, which shows that it had been his diet when other food was scarce. The
lotus and the
papyrus are
the two water plants worn as a head-dress by the two figures that represent the
Nile south
and north,
and who are often seen binding the flowers to the Sam symbol of Upper and Lower
Egypt, as
if joining
the two countries together as the one land of the reed. Uthlanga is not
irrecoverable. We glean
from other
Zulu legends that this was the African birthplace in the bed of reeds, where
the two children,
black and
white, were born of dark and day, and where the race of the reed people broke
off in the
beginning.
This cradle of creation is repeated mythically with Child-Horus in his nest of
reeds or bed of
the papyrus
plant, when the field of reeds was figured in the heavens as the primitive
paradise of food
and drink.
In the
so-called “cosmogony” of the Japanese it is set forth that the first thing in
which life appeared on
earth at the
beginning was the reed, and the earliest land or “country-place stand”
(Kunitoko tachi) was
the land of
the reed. Japan was named as the central land of the reed expanse from the
fields of reed,
whether
geographical on the earth or astronomical in the fields of heaven. The “great
reed” of the
Japanese
mythos is identical with the papyrus reed that represented the Mount of Earth
in Egypt or the
lotus of Meru
in India. Any country figured as being atop of the reed would be the midland of
the world, as
Japan is said
to be, and the Kamite reed will explain why the land of the Kami should be
called Ashi-hara,
the plain of
reeds, when the reed is identified with the papyrus plant. Ashi-hara no naka
tsu Kuni, “the
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Ancient
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Middle
Kingdom of the Reed Plain” , which [Page 257] lies upon the summit of the
globe, is an ancient
name for
Japan. This, if mundane, corresponds to the land of the papyrus reed in
equatorial Africa, the
summit of our
earth; or, if only mythical, i.e., astronomical, to the reed field of the Aarru
paradise upon the
summit of the
mount in heaven. Again, the great reed standing up out of the water is
identical with the
typical mount
of earth in the Navajo mythology. As the mount grew higher, higher grew the
reed. At the
time of the
deluge all that lived took refuge there, and were rescued from the drowning
waters by the
reed. This is
the papyrus reed which cradled Horus amid the waters, like the infant Moses in
the ark of
bulrush,
applied in a folk-tale on a larger scale (Matthews).
It is now
proposed to seek for the birthplace of the beginnings in Central Africa, the
land of the papyrus
reed, around
the equatorial lakes, by the aid of the Egyptian astronomical mythology and the
legendary
lore. In the
first place, the Kami of Egypt, like the Kami of Japan, identify themselves by
name as the
reed-people.
And the goddess Uati is the African great mother in the bed of reeds. For it
was thence, in
the region of
the two lakes and in the land of the papyrus reed, that souls in the germ first
emanated as
the soul of
life from water. The Kaffir tradition thus appears to preserve the natural fact
which the
Egyptians
rendered mythically by means of the reed plant as a symbol of the primeval
birthplace on earth
with Horus
issuing from the waters on the reed, which became the lap of life, the cradle
and the ark of the
eternal
child, who is also called the shoot of the papyrus, the primitive Natzer.
A spring of
water weIling from abysmal depths of earth, that furnished food in the papyrus
reed and other
edible
plants, is the earliest form in which the source of life was figured by the
Kamite mystery teachers.
This is
recorded in the Ritual (ch. 172). It was in the birthplace of the reeds and of
the reed people in the
region of the
reeds that light first broke out of darkness in the beginning in the domain of
Sut, and where
the twin
children of darkness and of light were born. The Mother-earth as womb of
universal life was the
producer of
food in various kinds, and the food was represented as her offspring. Horus on
his papyrus
imaged food
in the water plant as well as in the later lentils, the branch of the tree, or
in general
vegetation.
The stands of
the offerings presented to the gods in the Ritual are commonly crowned with
papyrus
plants, which
commemorate the food that was primeval. Thus the doctrine of life issuing in
and from the
papyrus reed
was Egyptian as well as Japanese. Naturally the earliest life thus emanating
from the water
was not human
life, but this would be included sooner or later in the mythical representation.
Hence the
legend of the
first man, or person who issued from a reed in the water of the deluge. In this
American
Indian
version the reed is a figure of the birthplace instead of the Zulu bed of
reeds, or Uthlanga, the land
of reeds, but
the typical origin is the same; and as Egyptian the mythos is to be explained.
The origin of
a saviour in the guise of a little child is traceable to Child-Horus, who
brought new life to
Egypt every
year as the Messu of the inundation. This was Horus in his pre-solar and
pre-human
characters of
the fish, the shoot of the papyrus, or the branch of endless years. In a later
stage the image
of Horus on
his papyrus [Page 258] represented the young god as solar cause in creation.
But in the
primitive phase
it was a soul of life or of food ascending from the water in vegetation, as he
who climbs
the stalk,
ranging from Child- Horus to the Polynesian hero, and to Jack ascending
heavenward by
means of his
bean-stalk. Now, of all the lands on earth there is no reed land to be compared
with the land
of the reeds
round the equatorial lakes, where the papyrus grows about the waters in jungles
and forests
so dense that
a charging herd of hippopotami could hardly penetrate the bush, which stands
out of the
water full
fifteen feet in height (Johnston, H. H.), and there if anywhere upon this earth
Uthlanga, the
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Ancient
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original reed
land or birth land in the reeds, will yet be found. That is the natural fact
which underlies the
mythical
representation when the Egyptians show us Horus “on his papyrus” rising from
his natal bed of
the papyrus
plant. Child-Horus on his papyrus is the reed-born in mythology who reflects
the natural fact
of the human
birthplace in the field, the bed, or nest of reeds on earth or in heaven - that
is, the African
oasis of the
beginning, whether the offspring represents food or other elemental force. Now
the Egyptian
Aarru or
paradise, established by Ra, was “a field of reeds” in seven divisions, and
these were papyrus
reeds which
sprang up from the marshes. Thus the Kamite paradise was a land of the papyrus
plant
repeated on
the summit of the mount in heaven at the north celestial pole (Naville, Destruction
of
Mankind).
According to their way of registering a knowledge of the beginnings, the
Egyptians were well
acquainted
with the equatorial regions, which they designated “Apta” , the uppermost
point, the mount, or
literally the
“horn-point” of the earth. This was afterwards reproduced at the highest point
above, when
the primeval
birth land was repeated as the land of rebirth for spirits in heaven.
It has now to
be shown that much of tile sign-language of astronomy which still survives on
the celestial
globe is
interpretable on the ground and for the reason that the fundamental data of the
underlying
mythos was
Egyptian, although the commencement in Africa may have been indefinitely
earlier than the
fulfilment in
Egypt. From the beginning certain types evolved in the Egyptian mythology have
been
configurated
in the planisphere, many of which remain extant on the celestial globe today.
As a concept
of primitive
thought life came into the world by water. Hence in the mysteries of Osiris
water is the throne
of the
eternal. Earth itself was the producer or the mother of the element, the
wet-nurse in mythology,
and water was
her child by whom an ever-renewing source was imaged as a type in Child-Horus,
the
eternal
child. Water, we shall see, was self-delineated as very heaven. Drought was
self-delineated as a
huge black
reptile coiling round the mount of earth night after night and drinking up the
water of light day
after day.
Darkness and light were self-delineated as two immense, wide-winged birds, one
black and
one white,
which overspread the earth. The great squat-headed evil Apap in the Egyptian
drawings is
probably a
water reptile, and possibly represents the mysterious monster of the lakes in
the legends of
Central Africa.
But, wheresoever its habitat in nature, it supplied one of the types that were
depicted in
the
astronomical ceiling of Kam - the types that have now to be followed [Page 259]
by means of the
mythography
in the Sign-Ianguage of the starry sphere, amongst which Apap, the “hellish
snake” of
drought and
dearth and darkness, still survives as our own constellation “Hydra” , the
enormous reptile
imaged in the
celestial waters of the southern heaven. The hero of light that pierced the
serpent of
drought or
the dragon of darkness was also represented as the golden hawk (later eagle),
and at
Hermopolis
the Egyptians showed the figure of a hippopotamus upon which a hawk stood
fighting with a
serpent
(Plutarch, On l and0., p. 50). Now, as the hippopotamus was a zootype of the
Mother-earth in
the water of
space, the hawk and serpent fighting on her back portrayed the war of light and
darkness
which had
been fought from the beginning, the war that was a primary subject figured in
the astronomical
mythology.
The hawk represented Horus, who was the bruiser of the serpent's head. Thus the
same
conflict that
was portrayed at Hermopolis may be seen in the constellation of Serpentarius as
a
uranograph
depicted in the planisphere.
The Egyptians
called the equator Ap-ta, as the highest land or summit of the earth. This, the
earthly Apta
in the
equatorial regions, was then rendered mythically as the Apta or highest point
of the northern
heavens in
the astronomical representation. And naturally the chief facts of the earthly
paradise were
repeated for
a purpose in the circumpolar highland. Hence the Aarru paradise, as a field of
papyrus
reeds oozing
with the water of life that supplied the world, from the two great lakes into
which the
element
divided at the head of the celestial river or the White Nile of the “Milky Way”
. In coming down
the Nile from
Karua, the lake country, the migrants had to pass through parching desert
sands, which
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Ancient
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made the
south a synonym for Sut, as it is in Egyptian. Their future heaven was in the
north, whence
came the
blessed breezes with the breath of healing from the very land of life. And all
the time ahead of
them was that
fixed polar star in the north-fixed, that is, as a centre of rest and peace
amidst the starry
revolutions
of the heavens. Emerging from the wilderness, they saw in Egypt an oasis
watered by the
river Nile .
Cooler breezes brought the breath of life to meet them on the way, and plenty
of sweet, fresh
water
realized the heaven of the African. The Kami found their old lost paradise in
“Uat” , the name
signifying
green, fresh, well-watered. Uat was literally the land of wet as water. Here
then was heaven in
the north,
heaven as the north, heaven in the water and the breezes of the north. And on
this they
founded a
celestial garden or enclosure, which was configurated by them in the northern
heaven as the
primitive
paradise of edible plants and plenty of water. The river Nile was traced back
by the Egyptians to
a double
source. This in later times was localized at Elephantine, but not originally.
The Nile was known
to issue from
the two great lakes which were the southern source of the river according to
the Ritual. A
tablet
discovered at Gebel Silsileh refers to two of the ancient festivals of the Nile
which had fallen into
disuse in the
time of Rameses II. In this it is said, “I know what is written in the
book-store kept in the
library, that
whenever the Nile cometh forth from the two fountains, the offerings of the
gods are to be
plenty”
(Records of the Past, vol. x, 41). The river was timed [Page 260] to come forth
from its double
welling-place
on the 15th of Epiphi,. and the inundation to reach Gebel Silsileh, or Khennut,
on the I5th of
Taht. The
first of these dates corresponds to our May the 31st; the second to August the
4th . This allows
two months
and three days for the inundation to travel from its swollen and overflowing double-breasted
source,
wheresoever that was localized, to Gebel Silsileh. The length of the river from
the Victoria
Nyanza to the
sea is now estimated at 3,370 miles. It is less than 3,000 to Silsileh, and
water flowing at
the rate of
only two miles an hour would make 3,120 miles in sixty-five days. This seems to
afford good
evidence that
the two fountains were identified with the two lakes, and that the double
source was
afterwards
repeated locally lower down at Elephantine. The Egyptians had tracked the river
to its sources
“in the
recesses” , called “the Tuat of the south” , and the inundation to the bursting
forth and overflowing
of the
southern lakes at high flood (Hymn to the Nile; also Ritual, ch. 149).
The mother of
water in the northern heaven was imaged as the water-cow. Another type of the
birthplace
was the thigh
or haunch of the cow, and one of the two lakes at the head of the Milky Way in
the region of
the northern
pole was called the “lake of the thigh” . The Osiris (ch. 149), on attaining
the divine regions
of water,
air, and food, or, as we say, heaven, exultingly exclaims, “I alight at the
thigh of the lake” . This
was the thigh
of the cow that was constellated in heaven at least twice over, as a sign of
the birthplace,
when the
birth was water, or Horus, the child of the inundation. Now the name of
Tanganyika, from the
African
“tanga” for,”the thigh” and “nyika” for the water, signifies the lake of the
thigh or haunch. But the
thigh is only
a symbol which in Sign-language denotes the birthplace that was imaged more
completely
by the Cow
itself; the water-cow of Apt, in Apta, which represented earth as the great
mother and giver of
the water
that, according to the legend, burst forth from the abyss in the deluge of the
inundation when
the lake was
formed at first. The lake of the thigh = Tanganyika was constellated in the
northern heaven
by name as a
uranograph, and this lake of the thigh or haunch was the lake of the water-cow.
Hence we
find the cow
and the haunch are blended together in one group of stars that is labelled the
“Meskhen” ,
as the womb
or birthplace at the summit of the pole. {P. 289.} And, although this lake in
Africa is a little
over the line
to the south, it is near enough to have been reckoned on it, and therefore to
have been the
earthly
prototype of the great lake at the horn-point of the northern pole which the
Ritual denominates the
“lake of
equipoise” as well as the lake of the thigh. Amongst the other signs that were
configurated at the
summit of the
northern heaven as object-pictures of the old primeval homeland were the fields
of the
papyrus reed,
the waters welling from unfathomable depths, the ancient mother as the
water-cow of Apt,
who was the
living image of Apta as the birthplace in the reeds. Thus, with the aid of
their uranographs
the Egyptian
mystery teachers showed the birthplace in the fields of the papyrus plant; the
reed bed in
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Ancient
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Uthlanga,
where the black and white twins of darkness and day were born ; the birthplace
of the water
flowing from
its secret source in the land of the two lakes called “the [Page 261] lake of
equipoise“ and “the
lake of the
thigh” , or Tanga, whence the name Tanganyika. There was the water that for
ever flowed in
fields for
ever fresh and green, which figured now the water of life that has no limit,
and the food that is
eternal in
the Kamite eschatology. In the astronomy Apta was the mount of earth as a
figure of the
equator,
whereas the summit of the circumpolar paradise was the mount of heaven as a
figure of the
pole. In the
final picture to the Ritual (ch. 186) the mount of Amenta stands in a morass of
the papyrus
reed. The cow
that represented the great mother is portrayed in the two forms of Apt the
water-cow and
Hathor the
milch-cow, as the typical mother amongst the reeds in the place of birth on the
earth and
thence of
rebirth in heaven. Thus, as we interpret it, the imagery of equatoria was
commemorated in the
uranographic
representation or Sign-language of the astronomical mythology.
Sir Harry
Johnston sees traces of the Egyptian or Hamitic influence amongst the more
primitive dwarfs
and negroes
of the equatorial regions, but this he speaks of as the result of a returning
wave from the
Nilotic
races. Assuredly the Kamite race of migratory colonizers on the lower Nile did
return in later times
in search of
the old home. Their voyages by water and travels by land had become the subject
of popular
tales. But
this was as travellers, adventurers, naturalists, and miners who explored their
hinterland, dug
for metals or
gems, imported strange animals, and transplanted precious trees to furnish
incense for the
goddesses and
gods. It was not the grown up, civilized Ruti of Egypt, who called themselves
“the men”
par
excellence, that went back to beget the ape-like race of negroid dwarfs in the
central regions of
Africa, or to
people the impenetrable forests with non-civilized, ignorant, undeveloped
manikins. That was
not the route
of evolution.
It is an
ancient and world-travelling tradition that heaven and earth were close
together in the beginning.
Now the
heaven signified in the oldest of all mythologies, the Kamite, was the starry
heaven of night
upraised by
Shu as he stood upon the mount of earth. This was the heaven in which the stars
of our two
Bears
revolved about the pole. The writer of the present work has seen in equatorial
regions how the
Southern
Cross arises and the Bears go down for those who are going south. The northern
pole-star dips
and
disappears, and with it sinks the primal paradise of mythology in general that
was configurated in the
stars about
the pole. On coming north again, the old lost paradise arose once more as
paradise
regained. At
a certain point, in regions of no latitude, the pole-star rests for ever on the
horizon in the
north, or, as
the Egyptians figured it, upon the mount of earth in Apta. The heaven of the
ancient legends
and of the
equatorial astronomers was close to the earth, because the pole-star rested on
the summit of
the mount
like Anup on his mountain. Such traditions were deposited as the mythical mode
of
representing
natural fact, however much the fact may be obscured. Now, the ordinary heaven
of night
and day could
not supply the natural fact. Heaven is no farther off from earth than ever. Yet
there is a
starting
point in the various mythologies that is equivalent to this beginning, at which
time heaven rested
on the earth,
and was afterwards separated from it by the mythical uplifter of [Page 262] the
sky. The name
of heaven
denotes the up-heaven. Nut or Nu the Egyptian name for heaven, has the meaning
and the
sign of
up-lifted. And there was but one starting point at which the heaven could be
said to rest upon the
earth. This
was in the regions of no latitude, where the pole-stars were to be seen upon
the two horizons.
As the nomads
travelled towards the north, this heaven of the pole, which touched the earth
in equatoria,
naturally
rose up from the mount, or, as mythically rendered, it was raised by Shu, who
stood upon the
steps of
Am-Khemen to reach the height, and push the two apart with his huge staff that
was the giant's
figure of the
north celestial pole. There were no solstices in Apta. Time, if any, was always
equinoctial
there. And on
this equal measure of day and dark the first division of the circle, the sep or
turn-round of
the sphere,
was founded. When Shu upraised the sky it was equally divided between Sut and
Horus, the
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Ancient
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portion of
each being half of the water, half of the mount, or half of the twenty-four
hours. And this was
the time made
permanent in Amenta, where the later register for all such simple mysteries was
kept.
There are
twelve hours light and twelve hours dark in this nether-world, the same as in
the equatorial
regions. It
is the equinoctial time of Shu and Mati. The earth was not an upright pillar in
Apta, with the
starry sphere
revolving round it on a horizontal plane. The risings and settings of the stars
were vertical,
and the two
fixed centres of the poles were on the two horizons, or, in accordance with the
Egyptian
expression,
on the northern and the southern sides of the mount of earth. The sky, as the
celestial water,
was also
divided into two great lakes, one to the north and one to the south of the
mount. These survive
in the Ritual
as the Lake of Kharu and the Lake of Ru to the south and the north of the Bakhu
hill “on
which heaven
resteth” (chs. 108 and 109). The system of dividing the celestial water was
apparently
founded on
the two great equatorial lakes at the head of the Nile, which were repeated in
the two lakes of
Amenta and in
the other pictures of the double source of the great stream now figured in
heaven at the
head of the
Milky Way as “the stream without end” .
The Egyptians
also preserved traditions of Ta-nuter, the holy land that was known by the name
of Punt or
Puanta.
Maspero spells the name Puanit. The present writer has rendered it Puanta. One
meaning of
anta, in
Egyptian, is yellow or golden. Hence Puanta the golden. The name is applied in
the Ritual (ch.
15) to the
land of dawn, or anta, as the golden = the land of gold. This was the mythical
or divine Anta in
Amenta where
the tree of golden Hathor grew. In that case, Puanta or Punt is identical with
the orient in
the mythos.
But the land of Puanta is also geographical, and there was an Egyptian
tradition that this
divine
country could be reached by ascending the river Nile (Maspero, Histoire
Ancienne, p. 5). It was
reported that
in a remote region south you came to an unknown great water which bathed Puanta
or the
holy land,
Ta-nuter. This, we suggest, was that nearest and largest of all the African
lakes, now called the
Victoria
Nyanza, from which the river Nile debouches on its journey north. We gather
from the
inscriptions
of Der-el-Bahari that the inhabitants of that Puanta for which the expedition
of Queen
Hatshepsu
sailed were lake-dwellers. The houses, built on piles, were [Page 263] reached
by means of
ladders, and
pile-dwellings imply that the people of Puanta were dwellers on the lake. Further,
it is
recorded on
the monuments that two naval expeditions were made by the Egyptians to the land
of
Puanta. The
first occurred in the reign of Sankh-Ka-Ra, the last king of the eleventh
dynasty, long before
the
expedition to Puanta was made in the time of Queen Hatshepsu (eighteenth
dynasty). The leader of
this earlier
expedition was a nobleman named Hannu, who describes his passage inland through
the
desert and
the cultivated land. On his return to Egypt from the gold land, he speaks of
coming back from
the land of
Seba, and thus far identifies the one with the other. He says: “When I returned
from Seba, or
Seboea, I had
executed the king's command, for I brought him back all kinds of presents which
I had met
with in the
ports of Puanta, and I came back by the road of Uak and of Hannu” (Inscription,
Rohan). In
the story of
the shipwrecked sailor the speaker says of his voyage: “I was going to the
mines of Pharaoh,
in a ship
that was 150 cubits long and 40 cubits wide, with 150 of the best sailors in
Egypt” . He was
shipwrecked
on an island, which turned out to be in the land of Puanta. The serpent ruler
of the island
says to the
sailor: “I am prince of the land of Puanta” . It is not said that this was the
land of the mines,
but he was
sailing to the mines when he reached the land of Puanta (Petrie, Egyptian
Tales, pp. 82, 90).
An
inscription found in the tomb of Iua and Thua (of the eighteenth dynasty ),
which tomb was rich in
gold, informs
us that the gold had been brought from “ the lands of the south” . Also the
Mazai tribes are
known to have
had relations with the people of Puanta. Puanta, as a geographical Iocality is
said to lie
next to the
spirit world, or the land of the shades, which is spoken of as being in the
south, but as far
away as
sailors could go up-stream; in fact, it was where the celestial waters came
from heaven at the
sources of
the Nile. This surely means that Puanta, the gold land, was at the summit of
this world, and
therefore
closest to the next, where there was nothing but the firmamental water betwixt
them and the
islands of
the blessed.
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Ancient
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If
Mashonaland should prove to be the gold land of Puanta, this would be the
geographical Puanta, not
Arabia, from
which the golden Hathor and the hawk of gold originally came. The symbolism of
the ruined
cities of
Mashonaland, discovered by the explorer Bent, suffices at least to show that
the Egyptians of a
very remote
age had worked the gold mines in that country. Horus on his pedestal or papyrus
is a figure
not to be
mistaken, whether the bird is a hawk or a vulture, for there was also a very
ancient Horus of the
vulture that
was the bird of Neith.
The hawk or
vulture on the pedestal or papyrus (Uat) was indefinitely older than the human
type of Horus
the child in
Egypt. Horus as the hawk or vulture, standing on the column within the necklace
zone or
cestus, was
the child of Hathor; and these two, Hathor and Horus, were the divine mother
and child. The
gold hawk of
Horus is connected with the Egyptian mines, whilst precious metals and stones,
especially
the
turquoise, were expressly sacred to the goddess Hathor. The Egyptian goddess
Hathor, as a form of
the
Earth-mother, was the mistress of the mines, and of precious stones and metals,
called mafkat. It
was here she
gave birth to the blue-eyed golden Horus as her child, her golden calf or hawk
of gold. The
[Page 264]
Egyptian labourers who worked the mines of the turquoise country in the
Sinaitic peninsula
were
worshippers of this golden Hathor and the golden Horus. These two are the
divinities most
frequently
invoked in the religious worship of the Egyptian officers and miners residing
in the
neighbourhood
of the mafkat mines. Also the name for a mine in Egyptian is ba or ba-t, and
baba, or
babait, is a
plural for mines, likewise for caverns, grottoes, and lairs underground.
Moreover, this district
of the
Sinaitic mines was designated Baba or Babait by the Egyptian miners. And this
name of Baba or
Babait, with
the plural terminal for the mines, would seem to have been preserved and
repeated for the
Zimbabwe
mines in Rhodesia, the Egyptian word being left there by the Egyptian workers.
Lastly, as
Mafekh or
Mafkhet is a title of Hathor, as mafekh is an Egyptian name for the turquoise,
for copper and
other
treasures of the mines, as well as of Hathor, one wonders whether the name of
Mafeking was not
also derived
from the Egyptian word “mafekh” . The earliest Ta-Neter or holy land of the
Egyptians, then,
was Puanta in
the south, which was sacred on account of its being the primeval home. But in
the mythos
the place of
coming forth had been given to the sun god in the east, and this became the
holy land in the
solar
mythology which has been too hastily identified by certain Egyptologists with
Arabia as the eastern
land.
At present we
are more concerned with the original race and its primitive achievement than
with the
return wave
from Egypt in the later ages of the Pharaohs. The oasis in Africa was a heaven
on earth, a
paradise in
nature ready-made in the vast expanse of papyrus reed. Egypt from the beginning
was based
on the oasis,
Uat. We might trace a form of the heptanomis with which Egypt began in the
seven oases:
the great
oasis of Abydos, called Uaht, the great Theban oasis, the oasis of the Natron
Lakes, the oasis
of EI-Kargeh,
the oasis of Sinai, the oasis of Dakhel, and the oasis of Bahnesa.
Maspero says
the Great Oasis had been at first considered as a sort of mysterious paradise
to which the
dead went in
their search of peace and happiness. It was called Uit or Uat. As late as the
Persian epoch
the ancient
tradition found its echo in the name of the “Isles of the Blessed” (Herod. iii.
26), which was
given to the
Great Oasis. “So soon as the deceased was properly equipped with his amulets
and
formulas, he
set forth to “seek the field of reeds” (D. ofC., English translation, page
183). The “field of
reeds” was
the field of Uat, the papyrus reed, which had been repeated in the heavens,
from the Uat of
Egypt; the
Uat of the oasis, the Uat of the reed land that was in the beginning. For those
who lived on the
papyrus
shoots, when this was a primeval food, there was a world of plenty in the
region of the lakes,
which would
be looked back to as a very paradise by those who wandered forth into the
waterless
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Ancient
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deserts and
suffered cruelly from thirst and hunger midst the arid wastes of burning sand.
In seeking “the
field of
reeds” Deceased was going back in spirit to Uthlanga, the cradle in the reeds,
or to Karua, the
land of the
lakes ; to Apta, .the starting-point; to Puanta, the ever-golden ; to Merta,
the land of the two
eyes, or some
other form of the primitive paradise, where, as the Ritual has it, he would
drink the waters
of the [Page
265] sacred river at the sources of the Nile. This was the land where food and
water had been
abundant
enough to furnish a type of everlasting plenty for the land of promise in the
astronomical
mythology and
the eschatology.
It is
necessary to postulate a commencement in equatorial regions, in order that we
may explain certain
primeval
representations in the land of Egypt. We see a deluge legend originating in the
woman's failing
to keep the
secret of. the water source, which was followed by an overwhelming, devastating
flood. We
see that a
legend of the first man - he who brought death into the world by disobeying the
law of tabu - is
indigenous to
the natives of Uganda. A primitive picture of “the beginning” is also presented
in an African
story which
was told to Stanley by a native of the Bashko on the Aruwimi River, and called
“The Creation
of Man” . It
is related that “In the old-old time all this land, and indeed the whole earth,
was covered with
sweet water.
Then the water dried up or disappeared. No living thing was moving on the
earth, until one
day a large
toad squatted by one of the pools. How long it had lived or how it came into
existence was
not known,
but it was suspected that the water must have brought it forth from some virtue
of its own. On
the whole
earth there was but this one toad” - which in relation to water was the frog.
Then follows the
legend of
“creation” . The toad becomes the maker of the primal human pair which came
into being in the
shape of
twins (like Sut and Horus, or the Zulu black and white twins in the bed of reeds),
and these are
said to be
“the first like our kind that ever trod the earth” . (Stanley, H. M., My Dark
Companions and their
Strange
Stories, pages 5-30.) The legend we judge to be an African original relating to
the primordial
water in
which the earth was figured as a “large toad” , or frog, at the time when no
other living thing
moved on the
earth, and there was no human creature known. The frog floating on the water in
the act of
breathing out
of it was an arresting object to primitive man, and this became a type of earth
emerging
from the
water of space. The constellation of Piscis Australis was known to the Arab
astronomers as the
frog. Indeed,
the two fish, the southern fish and the whale, were named by them as the two
frogs
(Higgins, W.
H., Names of the Stars and Constellations). But, whichever type was first, a
monstrous frog
or huge fish,
a turtle or the water-cow, it was a figure of the earth amidst the firmamental
water, in the
lower part of
which was the abyss. And here the primal pair are also born as twins, like Sut
and Horus. In
Egypt the
north celestial pole was variously imaged as a mountain-summit, an island in
the deep, a
mound of
earth, a papyrus plant or lotus in the waters of immensity, a tree, a stake, a
pole, a pillar, a
pyramid, and
other types of the apex in heaven.
In Equatoria
there was neither pole nor pole-star fixed on high in the celestial north. On
the other hand,
there were
two pole-stars visible upon the two horizons, north and south. These, according
to the
Imagery,
might be represented by two jackals, two lions, two giraffes, mountains - the
mount and horizon
being
synonymous - two trees, two pillars of the firmament, or by the two eyes of two
watchers.
“Heaven's-Eye
Mountain” is a Chinese title for the Mount of the Pole (De Groot, Fętes
d'Emoui, i. 74).
This would
[Page 266] apply when only one pole-star was visible, Rut in Equatoria there
were two poles or
mountains
with the eyes of two non-setting stars upon the summits, the only two fixed
stars in all the
firmament.
These we hold to be the “pair of eyes” or merti that were also a pair of
jackals in the Kamite
astronomical
mythology. But first of the two poles as pillars.
Josephus has
preserved a tradition concerning two pillars that were erected in the land of
Siriad. He tells
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Ancient
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us that the
children of Seth (Egyptian, Set) were the inventors of astronomy, and in order
that their
inventions
might not be lost, and acting “upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be
destroyed at
one time by
the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of waters,
they made two
pillars, the
one of brick, the other of stone; they inscribed their discoveries upon them
both, that in case
the pillar of
brick should be destroyed by the flood, . the pillar of stone might remain and
exhibit those
discoveries
to mankind, and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected
by them: Now
this remains
in the Land of Siriad to this day” .(Ant. B., i, ch. 2.) Plato likewise speaks
of these two
columns in
the opening of Timaeus The place where the two pillars, or one of them,
traditionally stood
was in the
land of Siriad. Where that is no mortal knows, but Seri in Egyptian is a name
for the south.
Seri is also
the mount that is figured as the two-fold rock which is equivalent to the
pillars of the two
horizons,
south and north, Seri is also the name of the giraffe, a zootype of Sut, the
overseer. Siriad,
then, we take
to be the land of the south where the pillar “remains to this day” . According
to John
Greaves, the
old Oxford astronomer, “these pillars of Seth were in the very same place where
Manetho
placed the pillars
of Taht, called Seiread” (English Weights and Measures). It is possible to
identify the
missing
pillar of the two, the pillar of Sut in the south. There was a southern Annu
and a northern Annu in
Egypt, and
possibly a relic of the two poles may be recognized in the two Annus, viz.,
Hermonthes, the
Annu of the
south, and Heliopolis, the Annu of the north, The original meaning of Annu
appears to have
been the
place of the pillar, or stone, that marked the foundation which preceded the
sign of
station
or
dwelling-place. There was an Egyptian tradition which connected Sut, the
inventor of astronomy, with
Annu, as the
original founder of the pillar, which makes him the primary establisher of the
pole. As an
astronomical
character Sut was earlier than Shu. The Arabs also have a tradition that one of
the
pyramids was
the burial-place of Sut. The pillar of brick, being less permanent, went down
as predicted in
the deluge as
a figure of the southern pole, whereas the pillar of stone remained for ever as
an image of
the north
celestial pole, or of Annu, the site of the pillar, in the astronomical
mythology. It is reported by
Diodorus that
Annu (Heliopolis in the solar mythos) was accounted by its inhabitants to be
the oldest city
in Egypt.
Which may have been mystically meant, as Annu was also a city or station of the
pole, the most
ancient
foundation in the northern heaven, described in the eschatology as the place of
a thousand
fortresses
provisioned for eternity.
The two pillars
of Sut and Horus were primal as pillars of the two [Page 267] poles thus
figured in the
equatorial
regions as the two supports of heaven when it was first divided in two
portions, south and
north; and
the pillar or mount of the south was given to Sut, the pillar or mount of the
north to Horus. The
typical two
pillars are identified with and as Sut and Horus in the inscription of Shabaka
from Memphis, in
which it is
said, “The two pillars of the gateway of the house of Ptah are Horus and Sut” .
The present
interpretation
is that the typical two pillars or props originated as figures of the two
poles, the single pillar
being an
ideograph of Sut, that these were established in the two domains of Sut and
Horus to the south
and north of
the land in which the veriest dawn of astronomy first occurred, and that the
types were
preserved and
re-erected in the earth of eternity as the two supports of the heaven suspended
by Ptah
for the Manes
in Amenta, even as the sky of earth had been uplifted and sustained by the two
poles of
the south and
north in Equatoria. Sut and Horus, then, were the twin props of support twice
over, once in
Equatoria as
the two poles, once in Amenta as the two tats of Ptah. Further, two brothers,
Sut and Horus,
as the
founders of the two poles in building the heavens for the ancient mother, may
explain the
American
story of the two brothers who planted each a cane in the house of their
grandmother when they
started on
their perilous journey to the land of Kibalba. The old mother was to know how
they fared by
the
flourishing or withering of the tree or cane, and whether they were alive or
dead. Grimm traced the
same legend
in the story of the two gold children who wished to leave their home and go
forth to see the
world. At
parting they say, “We leave you the two golden lilies: from these you can see
how we fare. If
they are
fresh we are well; if they fade we are ill; if they fall we are dead” . Now the
reason why this story
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Ancient
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is told in
Central America, in India, and in Europe we hold to be because it was first
told in Africa and
rendered
mythically in Egypt.
It appears
quite possible that a form of the two typical pillars which were visible at the
equator also
survives in
the two sacred poles of the Arunta natives in Central Australia. These people
“down under”
have no
northern pole or pole-star of the north, but they carry two symbolic poles
about with them, which
they erect
wherever they go as signs of locality or encampment, both of which are limited
to the south
and the
north. One is called the nurtunja. This, so to say, is the north pole of the
two, and is never met
with in the
south. The other, called a waninga, is always limited to the south. The
nurtunja is typical of the
northern and
the waninga of the southern part of the Arunta tribe. Each of these, like the
Egyptian tat-
pillar, is a
sign of establishing or founding, as is shown from its use in the ceremony of
young man
making. In
Greek myth the temple of heaven was raised on high by two brothers, who in one
version are
Trophonios
and Agamedes, the builders of the temple of Apollo. The sinking of Trophonios
into the cave
also
corresponds to the engulfing of Sut in his going down south with the
disappearing pole.
One of the
two legendary pillars of Seth disappeared, the other remained. And when the
nomads of the
equatorial
regions had begun the movement northward on the way that led them down the
[Page 268] Nile,
they would
gradually lose sight of the southern pole-star, and whatsoever else had been
configurated
with it in
the nightly heaven would sink below the horizon south, like a subsidence of
land in the celestial
waters. Thus
in astronomical mythology a fall from heaven, a sinking down in the waters
called a deluge,
and a lost
primeval home were natural occurrences as certain stars or constellations
disappeared from
sight for
those who travelled northward from the equatorial plain. And these celestial
events would be told
of as mundane
in the later legends of the “Fall” and “Flood” and man's lost paradise of
everlasting peace
and plenty.
It is enough, however, for the present purpose that a star or constellation
first assigned to Sut
sank down
into the dark abysm south, and disappeared from the ken of the observers who
were on their
journey of
three thousand miles down into the valley of the Nile. It is certain that Sut
went down south to
some sort of
nether-world, and so became the power of darkness in Amenta, when our earth had
been
completely
hollowed out by Ptah, and Amenta below became the south to the circumpolar
paradise in the
celestial
north. The ancient Egyptians had no antipodes on the outside of the earth. Amenta
in the
nether-world
was their antipodes. Their two poles were celestial and sub-terrestrial. The
north pole was
at the summit
of the mount. The south pole was in the root-land of the earth below. The
Ritual describes
the ways of
darkness in the entrance to the Tuat as the tunnels of Sut, which tends to show
that a way to
the
nether-world was made by Sut when his star and standing-ground went under in
the abyss of the
beginning in
the south, where the Egyptians localized the tuat or entrance to the
under-world, which was
the place of
egress for the life that came into the world by water from “the recesses of the
south” .
Without doubt
the contention of Sut and Horus began with the conflict of darkness and light
or drought
and water
when these were elemental powers, and the birthplace of the twin brothers, one
black, one
white, was in
the bed of reeds. This phase was continued by the twins that likewise struggled
for
supremacy in
the dark and light halves of the moon, which imaged the light eye of Horus and
the dark
eye of Sut.
But the war extended to the whole of nature that was divided in halves betwixt
the Sut and
Horus twins,
were the first-born of the ancient mother in two of her several characters. In
Central Africa
the year is
divided into two seasons of rain and drought. These are equivalent to the two
opposite
domains of
Horus and Sut as powers of good and evil. The winds of the north and south
follow suit. The
wind from the
north in the rainy season is warm and wet and beneficent; on the other hand,
the wind that
comes up from
the South Pole is witheringly dry, the wind therefore of Sut, the power
inimical to man and
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Ancient
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animal in
physical nature. (Johnston, Brit. Centr. Africa, p. 42.) The desert drought,
like darkness, was an
element
assigned to Sut. As this was the region of drought and sterility and typhonian
sands, and Sut the
tawny-complexioned
was the force that dominated in the south under the same name, we may see how
and where he
first acquired his character in Egyptian mythology as representative of the
arid desert
opposed to
water, fertility, and food. Thus Sut versus Horus imaged [Page 269] the south
versus north. Sut
was deadly as
the drought; Horus was “right as rain” . This contention of the combatants and
of the south
versus the
north was continued in the stellar mythos until their reconciliation was
effected by some other
god, such as
Shu, Taht, or Seb. When Sut, or his star, went down from the horizon, mount or
pole in the
south, he
gradually sank to the lowermost parts of the abyss which in the eschatology was
called the
secret earth
of Amenta. Here his character as the opener of roads or ways in the astronomy
was
continued
into the Egyptian eschatology by Ap-Uat or the jackal as the conductor of
souls. He was the
deity of the
dark. In the oblong zodiac of Denderah the two jackals of the south and north,
continued in
the solar
mythos, are figured opposite to each other. These represent the two forms of
Ap-Uat, the
opener of
ways, who was imaged as a jackal, the seer in the dark. One jackal was known as
guide of the
southern
ways, the other as opener of the northern ways. No Egyptologist has gone further
than to
suggest that
this north and south may have been in Amenta-as they also were. But no one has
dared to
dream of a
beginning with the primitive paradise in Equatoria.
EGYPTIAN
WISDOM
Deluded
visionaries, lift your eyes,
Behold the truths
from which your fables rise !
These were
realities of heavenly birth,
And ye pursue
their shadows on the earth.
“The wisdom
of the Egyptians” , said Augustine, “what was it but astronomy?” ( City of God,
B. 18, ch.
39). The
answer is that it was not simply the science of astronomy in the modern sense,
but astronomical
mythology was
the subject of subjects with the ancient “mystery-teachers of the heavens” , as
the
Egyptian
Urshi or astronomers were self-designated. The most puerile report of all which
has played
false with us
so long is the exoteric tradition in the Hebrew Pentateuch.
Professor
Sayce has asserted that “Babylonia was really the cradle of astronomical
observation” (
Hibbert
Lect., p. 397). To which one might reply with the wise Egyptian, “Do you really
know that, or is it
that you only
pretend to know?” The author of Researches into the Origin of the
Constellations of the
Greeks,
Phoenicians, and Babylonians also claims a Euphratean origin for these, whilst
admitting that
“Egypt was
not indebted to any foreign region for her original scheme of constellations,
which are entirely
or almost
entirely distinct” (Robert Brown, Jun.). But it is useless or puerile to
discuss the genesis of
astronomical
mythology with the African originals omitted, and without allowing for the
alterations that
were made by
Greeks and Euphrateans in the course of transmitting a celestial chart. To omit
the Kamite
“wisdom” from
the reckoning is to dispense with evolution and leave no ground for a beginning
- no
gauge of time
nor data of development. Moreover, the primary question of the origins is not
astronomical
but
mythological. The types of this Sign-language had [Page 270] been founded in
totemism. These were
first employed
for distinguishing the human motherhoods and brotherhoods. They were reapplied
to the
elemental
powers in mythology, and afterwards repeated in the constellation figures as a
mode of record
in the
heavens which can still be read by aid of the Egyptian wisdom, but not by means
of the Semitic
legendary
lore. The primitive constellations might be described as Egyptian ideographs
configurated in
groups of
stars, with the view of determining time and season and of registering the
prehistoric human
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Ancient
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past.
The principle
of representation was similar to that of the modern teachers who draw their
diagrams upon
the
blackboard. In like manner the mystery teachers of the heavens approximately
shaped the
constellation
figures on the background of the dark, to be seen at night and to be expounded
in the
mysteries.
For example, if they were desirous of memorizing some likeness of the old
primeval home in
Apta at the
horn-point of the earth, this would naturally be done by repeating the especial
imagery of the
equatorial
regions at the highest point of beginning in the northern heaven as seen in
Egypt. Or, if they
wished to
show that the river of the inundation issued from an abyss of water in the
remotest south, this
could be
accomplished by constellating the course of the stream in heaven on its long
and winding way
from the star
Achernar to the star Rigel at the foot of Orion. Hence the water of the
inundation was
depicted in
and as the river Eridanus. The contest between Horus the lord of light and the
serpent of the
dark was made
uranographic in the “ Serpent-Holder” . The conflict betwixt Horus who came by
water
and the
dragon of drought was exhibited by the Apap-reptile being drowned in the
inundation as the
monster
“Hydra” . The scene configurated in the southern heaven where the conqueror
Orion rose to
bruise the
serpent's head or crush the dragon under foot is also represented in the Ritual
when Apap is
once more put
in bonds, cut up piecemeal, and submerged in the green lake of heaven ( ch.
39). Other
imagery in
the planisphere bears witness to the drowning of the dragon Apap in the waters
of the
inundation.
The monster imaged in “Hydra” is treated as carrion by the crow that is perched
upon it,
pecking at
its dead body. Or, if we suppose the mystery teachers of the heavens wished to
constellate a
figure of the
mount of earth amidst the waters of surrounding space, and that this was in the
time of the
most
primitive mound-builders, when no conical pillar could as yet be carved in wood
or stone, how
would they
figure the object-picture forth as a uranograph ? The earth was thought of as a
mount amid
the
firmamental water, and to image this they would naturally raise a mound of
earth. At the same time
the heap of
earth had acquired a sacred character in relation to the dead, and had become a
kind of altar
mound piled
up with offerings of food. And such a figure we find in Ara, the southern altar
or the altar
mound. The
earliest altar raised had been the mound of earth, and this was used to typify
the mount of
earth.
Aratos, speaking of “the southern altar's sacred seat” , calls this
constellation “a mighty sign” .
Manilius says
of the constellation, “Ara mundi templum est” (Astron. i.427). It is
traditionally connected
with the war
of the earth-born giants or elemental powers which were succeeded by the
glorious ones or
khuti in the
astral [Page 271] mythos. The Mesopotamian mound-builders likewise show us that
the most
primitive
type of foundation was the mound, that the earth-mound passed into the
foundation of brickwork
as the
pillar, and the pillar culminated in the Ziggurat. So in Egypt the earth-mound
led up to the pyramid
with steps,
that culminated in the altar-mound of stone. The Chinese still call the altar a
mound. Because
of its being
a figure of the earth amidst the N un, the altar-mound was raised immediately
after the deluge
in the
Semitic mythos. In this way the teachers who first glorified the storied
windows of the heavens, like
some
cathedral of immensity, with their pictures of the past, are demonstrably
Egyptian, because the
Sign-Ianguage,
the mythos, the legends, and the eschatology involved are wholly Egyptian, and
entirely
independent
of all who came after them. The so-called “wisdom of the ancients” was Egyptian
when the
elemental
powers were represented first as characters in mythology. It was Egyptian when
that primeval
mythology was
rendered astronomically. It is also Egyptian in the phase of eschatology.
Speaking
generally,
and it would be difficult to speak too generally from the present stand-point,
the Egyptian
mythology is
the source of the märchen, the legends, and the folk-lore of the world, whilst
the
eschatology
is the fountain-head of all the religious mysteries. that lie betwixt the
earliest totemic and the
latest
Osirian, that were ultimately continued in the religion of ancient Rome. The
mysteries were a
dramatic mode
of communicating the secrets of primitive knowledge in Sign-Ianguage when this
had
been extended
to the astronomical mythology . Hence, we repeat, the Egyptian urshi or
astronomers
were known by
the title of “mystery teachers of the heavens” , because they explained the
mysteries of
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primitive
astronomy.
For one
thing, a later theology has wrought havoc with the beginnings previously
evolved and naturally
rendered. And
we have consequently been egregiously misled and systematically duped by the
Semitic
perversions
of the ancient “ wisdom” . There was indeed “a fall” from the foothold first
attained by the
Egyptians to
the dismal swamp of the Assyrian and Hebrew legends. In Egyptian mythology
compared
with the
Babylonian the same types that represent evil in the one had represented good
in the other. The
old Great
Mother of Evil, called the Dragon-horse in the Assyrian version, was neither
the source nor the
product of
evil in the original. The serpent-goddess Rannut, as renewer of the fruits of
earth in the soil or
on the tree,
is not a representative of evil. We hold that moral evil in the mythical domain
is an abortion of
theology
which was mainly Semitic in its birth. The Kamite beginning with the Great
Mother and the
elemental
powers which are definite and identifiable enough in the Egyptian wisdom became
confused
and
chimerical in Babylonian and Hebrew versions of the same Sign-language; the
dark of a benighted
heaven
followed day. Elemental evils were converted into moral evil. The types of good
and ill were
indiscriminately
mixed, pre-eminently so in the reproduction of the old Great Mother as Tiamat.
Originally
she was a
form of the Mother-earth, the womb of life, the suckler, the universal mother
in an elemental
phase. But
the types of good and evil were confounded in the later rendering. The creation
of evil as a
[Page 272]
mis-creation of theology is plainly traceable in the Akkadian, BabyIonian ,
Assyrian, and
Hebrew
remains. The Great Mother, variously named Tiamat, Zikum. Nin-Ki-Gal, or Nana,
was not
originally
evil. She represented source in perfect correspondence to Apt, Ta-Urt, or
Rannut in the
Egyptian
representation of the Great Mother, who, howsoever hideous, was not bad or
inimical to man;
the “mother
and nurse of all” , the “mother of gods and men” , who was the renewer and
bringer forth of
life in earth
and water. Nor were the elemental offspring evil, although imaged in the shape
of monsters
or of
zootypes. As Egyptian, the seven Anunaki were spirits of earth, born of the
Earth-mother in the
earth, but
they were not wicked spirits. The elements are not immoral. These are a
primitive form of the
seven great
gods who sit on golden thrones in Hades as lords of life and masters of the
under-world.
Moreover, the
seven Nunu or Anunas can be traced to their Egyptian origin.
In the
Cuthean legend of creation we are told that the great gods created “warriors
with the body of a
bird” and
“men with the faces of ravens”. “Tiamat gave them suck” . “Their progeny the
mistress of the
gods created”
. “ In the midst of the (celestial) mountains they grew up and became heroes”
and
increased in
number. “Seven kings, brethren, appeared. as begetters” - who are given names
as signs of
personality
(Babylonian Story of Creation: Records of the Past, N.S., vol. i. p. 149). Now
the seven
children of
the great Mother as Egyptian were produced as two plus five. The Sut and Horus
twins were
born warriors
or fighters. They are portrayed as two birds, the black vulture or raven of Sut
and the gold
hawk of
Horus. These, the first two children imaged as two birds, one of which is
black, will or may
account for
the two bird races, one of which had the face of a raven and were a black race,
or were the
black-heads”
in Akkad. The Sut and Horus twins were succeeded by five other powers, so that
there
were seven
altogether, all brothers, all males or begetters -the seven which constituted a
primary order
of gods, as
fellow-males who were the “Nunu” of Egypt, which became the Anunas or
primordial male
deities of
ancient Babylonia. But the seven nature powers evolved in the Egyptian mythos
were the offspring
of the great
Earth-mother, not the progeny of Apap. They were native to the nether earth,
but were
not wicked
spirits. They are spoken of in the Ritual (ch. 83) as'' those seven
Uraeus-deities who are born
in Amenta” .
The serpent type is employed to denote the power, but it is the good serpent,
the Uraeusserpent
of life and
of renewal, not the evil reptile Apap. These the Euphrateans changed into the
seven
evil spirits
or devils of their theology. The spawn of Apap in Egypt are the Sebau, which
were numberless
in physical
phenomena and never were portrayed as seven in number. The Euphrateans turned
the evil
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serpent Apap
into Tiamat, the old Great Mother in the abyss of birth, where she has been
supposed to
have brought
forth the seven powers of evil and to have been herself the old serpent with
seven heads.
In Egypt,
happily, we get beyond the rootage of mythology in Babylonia and Akkad. The
goddess Rannut
was a form of
the Earth-goddess as the serpent-mother. The serpent brood or dragon progeny of
Rannut
are mentioned
in the Ritual, where they have become a subject of ancient knowledge in the
[Page 273]
mysteries
(ch. 125). Elsewhere they are called the seven divine Uraei or serpents of
life. There are no
seven
serpents of death, no seven evil serpents, in the Kamite representation. The
seven Uraei, though
elemental,
born of matter, and of the earth earthy, like their mother, are not evil
powers; neither are they
in the same
category with the Sebau of Apap or the Sami-fiends of Sut ; whereas in the
Euphratean
version these
have become seven wicked spirits as the evil brood of the Great Mother Tiamat.
They are
also
portrayed as the seven heads or potencies of an infernal snake, which had been
Egyptian, but
without the
seven heads, the types of good and evil being mixed up together as Euphratean.
The Kamite
elemental
powers were just the powers of the elements represented by zootypes. They might
be
sometimes
fearsome, but they were not baneful. The inimical forces of external nature,
the evil spawn of
drought,
plagues, dearth, and darkness, called the Sebau or the Sami, had preceded
these, whereas in
Babylonia the
two categories are confused and the seven have been reproduced as altogether
evil. They
are
seven-fold in all things evil: seven evil demons, seven serpents of death,
seven evil winds, seven
wicked
spirits; seven in the hollows of the earth, seven evil monsters in the watery
abyss; seven evil
incubi, seven
plagues. But even these seven baleful and injurious spirits of Babylonia
originated as
powers of the
elements, no matter where. Hence the first is a scorpion of rain ( cf. the
curse of rain); the
second is a
monster with unbridled mouth (thunder); the third is the lightning-flash; the
fourth is a
serpent; the
fifth is a raging dog; the sixth is a tempest; the seventh is the evil wind.
Here the whole
scheme of
evil is meteorological, and is based upon bad northern weather (Sayce, Magical
Texts, H. L.,
p. 463). The
theological perversion and the degradation of the type are traceable in
Babylonia. The seven
serpent
powers were originally the same. In Egypt they are the seven spirits of the
earth. And of the
seven in
Babylonia it is said in the magical text from Eridu: “those seven in the earth
were born. Those
seven in the
earth grew up. Those seven from the earth have issued forth” (Sayce, H. L.,
pages 463 to
469). Only in
Babylonia the Great Mother as the crocodile type of water has been confounded
with the
Apap-reptile
of evil, and made to spawn the evil powers in the darkness of later ignorance.
We can watch
the change in
a Babylonian version of the mythos. The seven nature forces here originated as
seven evil
powers; they
were “rebellious spirits” and “workers of calamity” that were “born in the
lower part of
heaven” , or
the firmamental deep. (War of the Seven Evil Spirits: Records, vol. v.; also
vol. ix, 143.)They
are called
“the forces of the deep” , for ever rising in rebellion. In short, they are one
with the Sebau of
the Ritual,
who were the progeny of Apap, which have been confounded with the “seven”
elemental
spirits who
were not originally evil. The beneficent great Mother-earth who had been imaged
by the
sloughing
serpent as a type of renewal and re juvenescence was transmogrified into the
serpent of
theology, the
very devil in a female guise, the author of evil that was ultimately
represented as a woman
who became
the mother of the human race, and who doomed her offspring to eternal torment
ere she
gave them
birth in time. The Hebrews follow the [Page 274] Babylonians in confusing the
Uraeus-serpent
of life with
the serpent of death. The primal curse was brought into the world by Apap the
reptile of
drought,
dearth, and darkness, plague and disease, but the evil serpent began and ended
in physical
phenomena.
Apap never was a spiritual type, and was never divinized, not even as a devil.
The
beneficent
serpent Rannut represents the mother of life, the giver of food in fruits of
the earth or the tree.
She is
portrayed as the mother both in the form of a serpent and also as the human
mother. But good
and evil have
been badly mixed together in the Hebrew version of the Babylonian perversion of
the
Egyptian
wisdom.
The way in
which the Kamite mythos was converted into Semitic legendary lore and finally
into Biblical
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history is
palpably apparent in the story of the fall. The woman offering fruit as
temptress in the tree was
previously
represented in Sign-Ianguage as the serpent which was the symbol of renewal in
the tree, as
is shown when
the reptile offers the fruit to the man. Thence came the serpent-woman, who was
a
compound of
the zootype and the anthrotype, and who was damned as Mother Eve, and deified
as
Rannut, the
giver of the fruits of earth. Conclusive evidence of the way that changes were
made in the
appropriation
of the prototypes and their re-adaptation to the change of fauna and likewise
of later
theology, can
be shown in relation to the primordial great mother who is Tiamat in Babylonia.
One of her
typical
titles is the “dragon-horse” , and as the Egyptians had no horse, it might be
fancied at first sight
that such a
compound type as the dragon-horse, which also figures in Chinese mythology, was
not
Egyptian. The
ancient Egyptians had no horse, and their dragon was a crocodile. The
hippopotamus was
their first
water-horse as male - that is, the water-bull. As female it was the water-cow.
Now, the old first
genetrix Apt
(Khept, or Ta-Urt), when represented as a compound figure is a hippopotamus,
that is the
water-horse,
in front, and a crocodile, that is the dragon, behind. The dual type of Tiamat
the dragon-
horse is
based on the crocodile and hippopotamus, which are to be seen combined in the
two-fold
character of
the great Mother Apt, and these two animals were unknown to the fauna of Akkad
and
Babylonia.Thus
as Babylonian they are not derived directly from nature, but from the mythology
and the
zootypes that
were already extant in Egypt as African.
Horus, as
Sebek, was the great fish of the inundation, typical of food and water. This
great fish is the
crocodile,
which was applied to Horus as a figure of force in his capacity of solar god,
the crocodile in
Egypt being a
prototype of the mythical dragon - not the evil dragon, but the solar dragon,
which was
known in
relation to Sebek and to Saturn as the dragon of life. In one of the
Greco-Egyptian planispheres
this dragon
keeps its original form and remains a crocodile. It is portrayed as a
constellation of enormous
magnitude,
and is truly the great fish of Horus-Sebek that was first of all a figure of
the inundation
constellated
in the stellar mythos and reapplied to the power that crossed the waters as the
solar Horus
of the double
horizon (Drummond, Oed. Jud. PI. 2). The only form of evil to be found in the
abyss was
the dark and
deadly power of drought, that, as feared, might drink or dry up all the water.
This was
figured as
the Apap-reptile [Page 275] or some other form of the monster Hydra, the
prototypal serpent of
the sea. The
mother of life in the abyss was the giver of water as the wet nurse of the
world, not the
destroyer of
the water.
In Babylonia
the tree of life was changed into a tree of death.The serpent in the tree that
offers fruit for
food, as
Rannut, the giver of food and representative of Mother-earth, was transformed
into the evil
serpent that
“brought death into the world and all our woe” , but which had originated as a
beneficent
figure in the
Kamite representation of external nature. The transmogrifying of Tiamat, the
mother of all
and suckler
of the seven elemental powers, into the dragon of evil might be followed on
other lines of
descent, as
in the conflict of Bel-Merodach and the dragon. In the Egyptian representation
Apap the
dragon of
drought is drowned in the water by Horus of the inundation, whose weapon
therefore is the
water flood.
Now in warring with Tiamat the deluge is the “mighty weapon “wielded by Bel” .
Bel
(launched)
the deluge, his mighty weapon, against Tiamat, inundating her covering” , or
drowning the
dragon of
drought. Thus Tiamat is destroyed by Bel with the deluge, where Apap was
drowned by Horus
in the
inundation. This again shows that the great Mother Tiamat, the suckler, as the
giver of water, had
been
converted into the evil dragon of drought. The good crocodile has also been
transmuted into the
evil dragon
and portrayed as falling down head foremost from the starry summit of heaven to
be trodden
under foot
and crushed beneath the heel of Horus, who is Herakles in Greece, Krishna in
India,
Merodach in
Assyria. It was the same with other fauna. The pregnant hippopotamus was
changed for the
always female
bear or the pregnant woman. The two dogs have been substituted for the two
jackals of
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the south and
north, the first two openers of the roads in heaven. The eagle of Zeus takes
the place of
the hawk of
Ra, and the raven, the black Neh of Sut ; the legend follows, and the conflict
betwixt the
eagle and the
serpent is substituted for that of the warring hawk and serpent in the Egyptian
mythos. The
huge
Apap-reptile of drought and darkness has been supplanted by the chimerical
monster that is slain
by Gilgames
the solar god. And when the totemic matriarchate has been followed by the
patriarchate,
and the
goddess of the “living word” in heaven has been changed in the Euphratean
system for the lord
who is “the
voice of the firmament” ; when the waterman has replaced the multi-mammalian
wateress,
the cow or
sow of an earlier system of signs; when the heroes, or mighty ones, have been
superseded by
simple
shepherds of the heavenly flocks - it becomes a question of very minor import
who made the
changes and
forged the counterfeits, or whether the originals were deliberately disguised
by the
Akkadians or
Babylonians, Phoenicians or Greeks.
In the course
of the present inquiry we shall learn that the creation exoterically described
in the Semitic
legends of
the beginning was not cosmogonical. Neither was it what one writer has called
it, “the
cosmography
of appearances ,. (Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament). It was
Uranography, not
cosmography,
and uranography is Sign-language constellated in the stars. That which has been
called
“chaos” in
the “legends of creation” was a condition in which there was neither law nor
order, time nor
name, nor
means [Page 276] of representing natural phenomena. But it does not mean there
were no
natural
phenomena because there had been no mode of expression. “Things” existed even
when they
had no name
or record in the Babylonian mythology. It was never pretended in the Egyptian
wisdom that
there was any
creation of the elements. Ground to stand on, food to eat, water to drink, air
to breathe,
had always
been, and were in no wise dependent upon any mode of representation; whereas
the
mythical
representation did depend upon the elements or nature-forces being already
extant to be named
or to be
constellated and become pictorial for the purpose of the mystery teachers. In
no land or literature
has the
mythical mode of representation been perverted and reduced to drivelling
foolishness more
fatally than
in some of the Hebrew legends, such as that of Jonah and the great fish, which
is connected
with the
origin of the fish-man in mythology who was born of a fish mother whom we shall
identify with
the
constellation of the southern fish, and Horus of the inundation. The most
ancient type of the fish was
female, as a
representative of the great Mother-earth in the water. This as Egyptian was the
crocodile.
She was the
suckler of crocodiles in the inundation. She was the bringer forth as the great
fish or
crocodile in
the astronomical mythology. One of her children was the crocodile-headed Sebek,
who made
the passage
of the Nun by night as sun god in the solar mythos. The fish-man was at first
the crocodile of
Egypt, next
the crocodile-headed figure of Horus who is called “the crocodile god in the
form of a man”
(Rit. Ch.
88). The deceased assumes this form to cross the waters in the nether-world,
because it had
been a figure
of the solar god in the mythology. The conversion of the crocodile god in the
Nun to the
fish-man of
Babylonia is thus made plausible. Jonah is a form of the fish-man in the
Biblical story (which
is neither
mythology nor eschatology), and therefore a figure of the solar god who made
the passage of
the waters as
Horus the crocodile or as Ea the fish-man of Nineveh. As usual in later legend,
the
anthropomorphic
rendering refaces and thus defaces the type. It was the fish itself that swam
the waters
of the
inundation. It was the typical fish that swam the nocturnal waters, or the sun
god represented by
the mighty
fish, whereas, this being “history” , Jonah is made mere man, and therefore
needed the great
fish to carry
him across the Nun or to land him at Nineveh. Birth, or rebirth, from the great
fish in the
Lower Nun is
one of the oldest traditions of the race. It was represented in the mysteries
and constellated
in the heavens
as a means of memorial. The great fish that landed Jonah on dry ground may
still be seen
as “Ketos”
with its enormous mouth wide open at the point of emanation from the Nun, just
where the
landing-place
on earth is represented in the equatorial regions on the celestial chart.
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Ancient
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Naturally
there would be some changes in the constellations with the change of fauna as
the primitive
wisdom passed
from land to land, but that is a different matter from working the oracle of
the celestial
orrery on
behalf of false and therefore all the more virulent theology. It can be
demonstrated that the
astronomical
mythology of Egypt passed into Akkad and Babylonia, with the race of the
Cushite “blackheads”
, to become
the wisdom of the “Chaldees” and the Persian magi in after ages, including such
primary types
as [Page 277] the abyss of the beginning in the lower firmament, the Great
Mother as a fish
or dragon =
crocodile in the abyss, and the fish-man born of the fish-mother from the
abyss.
According to
the legend related by Berosos, a divine fish-man, Oannes, or Oan, who had his
dwelling in
the Persian
Gulf or Erythrean Sea, came forth from thence to teach the Chaldeans all they
ever knew,
when, as it
is said in the native tradition, the people wisely “repeated his wisdom” ( W.
A. .l, ii. 16, 37-71).
In all
probability the instructor as a fish-man in Babylonia was represented by Ea,
whose consort was
Davki or
Davkina, the Earth-mother corresponding to the Egyptian Great Mother, one of
whose names
was Tef.
“Among the chief deities reverenced by the rulers of Telloh was one whose name
is expressed
by the
ideographs of a ‘fish' and an 'enclosure', which served in later days to denote
the name of Nina or
Nineveh”
(Sayce, Rib. Lectures, p. 281). The same sign, i.e., of a fish, and enclosure
in the Egyptian
hieroglyphics,
signifies An, to appeal, to show, to teach, as did the fish-man. An in Egyptian
is a name of
the teacher,
the scribe, the priest. An was the fish in Egypt. An, with the fish for
ideograph, is an ancient
throne name
that was found by Lepsius among the monumental titles on a tomb near the
Pyramids of
Gizeh
(Bunsen, Egypts Place, vol. ii. p. 77). This An, to show, to reveal, An, the
fish of the enclosure, An,
the teacher,
as the fish, is the likeliest original of the Oan or Oannes who issued from the
waters to show
the
Babylonians how to live, as the mythos was reflected in the later legend. Horus-Sebek
was the
earliest
fish-man known to mythology. He calls himself the fish in the form of a man.
Yet he issued from
the female
fish as a fish, the crocodile as son from the crocodile as Apt the mother and
not as a man
ejected from
the mouth of a fish, as the legend reads when ignorantly literalized. The
fish-mother also
survived in
the divine lady Nina, who was represented by the ideograph of a fish enclosed
in a basin of
water (Sayce,
Hib. L., p. 37), which has the same significance as the fish-mother in the lake
at Ascalon.
But to reach
a beginning the bottom must be plumbed in the abyss or nether parts of the
firmamental
Nun upon the
outside of the mount by means of which the earth was imaged in the astronomical
mythology.
The abyss was known by various names in different versions of the mythos. It is
the
Phoenician
baev or deep. It is the bau of the Hebrew Genesis. It is the bau or bahu as
Egyptian. The
word bahu is
also a name for the god of the inundation called the power of the southern
lakes. “I am
Bahu the
Great” is said four times over (in the Magic Papyrus) at the breaking forth of
the water power
from its
southern source in the abyss of the dragon, the crocodile, or the Southern Fish
(Records, vol. x.
p. 149). The
Egyptian also has an earlier form of the word bahu in “bab” , for the well or
whirlpool as a
welling
source of water. Another term for this outrance from the Nun is the tepht,
which signifies the
abyss, the
source, the outlet. The Tiavat or Thavath of Berosos is a form of the Great
Mother as a type of
the watery
abyss which is the Egyptian tepht, the abyss, the source, the well, the hole
from whence the
water issues,
the dwelling underground where the dragon-horse gave suck to her brood of
monsters in
the earth.
Tepht or Tept is also an Egyptian name for the old first Great Mother as a
[Page 278] figure of
source. This
likewise had been applied to the place of emanation for the waters of the Nile
which issued
from the well
of source, the bahu, tepht, or tuat. But the tepht of source, the lair of the
dragon, the “hole
of the snake”
had been the outrance of the Nile from the abyss before there was a goddess
Thavath or
Tiamat in
Assyria. So was it with the bau, bahu, or bab. These names had been applied to
the source of
the
inundation itself and localized in Egypt before they were repeated in the
astronomical mythology to
become a
subject of Semitic legendary lore. The bau, the bahu, or bab is Egyptian. The
tepht and tuat
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are likewise
Egyptian; and these names had been (already) applied to the source of the
inundation and
to the facts
of earth that formed the mould of the astronomical mythology.
In the later
Semitic legend it was said the earth was founded on the flood, as if it were
afloat upon the
water of the
abyss. But according to the primary expression the earth stood on its own
bottom in the
water, at the
fixed centre, with the tree upon the summit as a figure of food and water in
vegetation. The
mythical
abyss of the beginning was the welling-place of water underground where life
was brought to
birth by the
Great Mother from the womb of the Abyss. In the Ritual this is described as the
tuat, a place
of entrance
to and egress from the lower earth of Amenta. It is a secret Deep that nobody
can fathom,
which sends
out light in the dark, and “its offerings are eatable plants” . It is the
birthplace of water and
vegetation,
and therefore, more abstractly, of life. The bottomless pit is a figure that
was derived from this
unplumbed
deep inside the earth itself. From this abyss the Mother-earth (as womb of
life) had brought
forth her
elemental progeny as the perennial renewers of food to eat, water to drink, and
air to breathe.
The tuat in
the recesses of the south is likewise identified in the hymns as the secret
source of the river
Nile, which
is thus traced to the abyss. Such was the birthplace of the beginning, the
birthplace of water
in the
beginning from which the papyrus plants arose as the primeval food, and as the
fact is registered
in the
Ritual. In the Magic Papyrus the abyss is comprehensively spoken of as “the
water's well” . It is the
habitat of
the dragon called “the crocodile coming out of the abyss” . It is also the lair
of the Apapmonster,
of whom it is
said by Shu, “If he who is in the water opens his mouth, I will let the earth
fall into
the water's
well” , being the “south made north, or the earth turned upside down” (Records,
vol. x.). Here
the two
dragons can be identified together as the crocodile-dragon of water and the
Apap-dragon of
drought, that
were at war from the beginning as antagonists in the abyss. The strife in the
abyss was
betwixt the
crocodile of water and the fiery dragon of drought, the two dragons of good and
evil, Sebek-
Horus and the
dragon or reptile of Apap. Both were born of the abyss; hence the Scholia on
ch. 17 of the
Ritual add,
“The devourer comes from the lake of Puanta” , or the water of the abyss which
the Egyptians
traced to the
“recesses” in the south. The beginning in heaven, as on earth, was with water.
Water was
the first
thing rendered uranographically, not created, in the southern hemisphere. This
when gathered
into one
place “ was localized as “the water” . The [Page 279] Egyptians had a huge
southern constellation
dedicated to
Menat the wet-nurse, called “the Stars of the Water” (Egyptian Calendar of
Astronomical
Observations
). The “Southern Fish” and “Ketos” are both depicted in this water of the south
or the abyss.
Aratos,
speaking of the stars in the neighbourhood of these great fishes or monsters of
the deep, says
“they are all
of them called' the water'” (Aratos, line 399, Brown). Earth, the Great Mother,
was imaged as
the breeder
of life and the bringer forth from this abyssal water in the south. She was
represented in two
mythical
characters. In one she is the mother who brought forth on dry ground, as the
hippopotamus (or
its
equivalent type) ; in the other she was the mother of life in water who is
figured as the Southern Fish
low down in
the deep of the southern heaven.
In mythology
that which has been called “creation” begins with duplicating by dividing:
darkness was
divided from
light, dry land as breathing-place was divided from water; the north was
divided from the
south, and
earth was divided from heaven, as in the Japanese creation. So the power of the
two
monsters (in
the Book of Enoch) “became separated on the same day, one being in the depths
of the sea
and one in
the desert” - that is, one in the water, as Leviathan ( the crocodile or dragon
), and one as the
hippopotamus
on dry ground. Enoch asks the angel to show him “the power of those monsters
and how
they became
separated on the same day of creation, one in the depths of the sea, above the
springs of
waters, and
one in the dry desert” . It is said of the two monsters that they had been
prepared by the
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Ancient
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people of God
to become food. In this there is a broken ray of the refracted mythos. The two
monsters
had
represented food and drink from the first, one as the mother of life in the
earth, the other in the
waters. These
two monsters were prepared for food in the garden or enclosure of the
beginning. The
name of one
is Behemoth, the name of the other Leviathan. Behemoth is the Egyptian
Bekhamut, the
female
hippopotamus,. and Leviathan answers to the crocodile or dragon of the deep.
The rabbis
repeated a
true tradition when they rendered the Biblical “Behemoth” not as a plural of
majesty, but as a
pair of
beasts. They were a pair of beasts in the mythology of Egypt. The female
Behemoth was the
original
Great Mother Kep, or Apt; the male was her son. The crocodile also, as zootype,
was both male
and female.
For his purpose, however, Enoch makes Leviathan male monster and Behemoth
female. Of
course the
type is or may be differentiated by the sex. The two monsters in the Egyptian
starry scheme
are both
female as two forms of the Great Mother, who was the hippopotamus in her
fore-part and the
crocodile
behind, or the crocodile in the south and the hippopotamus in the north. Thus
the
hippopotamus
and crocodile which were natural in the Nile had become two huge, indefinite
monsters of
legendary
lore in the Book of Enoch, and the two survived as the types of dry and wet,
for land and
water. The
suggestion now to be made is that the two monsters of dry and wet, or earth and
water, were
constellated
as the Southern Fish and Ketos, or the Whale, but that the whale has been
substituted for
the
hippopotamus by the Euphrateans or the Greeks.
The Southern
Fish on the celestial globe is portrayed in the act of [Page 280] emaning a
stream of water
from its
mouth, whereas the monster Ketos is depicted as the breather out of the water,
the two being
representative
of the earth as the mother of life in the water called the abyss. In the Sut
and Horus
mythos the
first two children of the ancient mother represent the conditions of dry and
wet. They were
born twin
because the conditions were co-extant in earth and water. In the course of time
everything that
was dry,
desiccative, or of the desert was ascribed to Sut, whereas the products of
water were assigned
to Horus.
Hence the two monsters were continued as types of the twins. The hippopotamus
of earth as
male was
given to Sut. The crocodile of water was given to Horus, to typify the fish as
food of the
inundation.
The “abyss of
waters” is described by Berosos as the habitat of most hideous beings, which
had been
produced by a
“two-fold principle” that was as yet undiscreted into wet and dry. “The person
who was
said to have
presided over them was a female named Omoroca” . Then came Belos “and cut the
woman
asunder, and
of one half formed the earth, and of the other half the heaven or firmament” .
This is a
mode of
discreting the two-fold principle of the dry earth and the celestial water. The
story told by
Berosos is a
later legendary form of the mythos. The duplication of the mother-hood is the
same, but with
a change of
type. The later woman has taken the place of the cow that was cut in two,
divided, or made
twain as the
water-cow of earth and the milch-cow of heaven. Omoroca is the Great Mother who
was
one as the
representative of earth, and was then divided to become the representative of
earth and
water. The
formation of earth and heaven out of the halves is identical with separating
earth and water
and
distinguishing wet from dry.
The
“creation” with which we are now concerned is uranographic as a mode of
fashioning and giving
names to the
earliest constellation figures, those that were truly primitive. Thus in the
beginning of the
astronomical
mythology there is a figure of uncreated ground that stands in space or amidst
the
firmamental
water.
If we use the
word “creation” , which has been so ignorantly abused, the first creation
figured in the
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astronomical
mythology was the birth of water or, more abstractly, of life from the water,
the source
whence came
the inundation with its blessings to the rain less land of Egypt. As Plutarch
reports, the
Egyptians
held that water was “the beginning and origin of all things” - that was, as an
element of life.
Hence in the
Osirian mysteries the throne of the Eternal rested on the element of water, and
Horus the
child-saviour,
the Messu or Messiah, came by water in the power of the southern lakes. So in
the building
of the
heavens the beginning was with water, or the firmament imaged in its aerial
likeness. Thus it might
be said the
heaven was made from water, as it is said in the Babylonian “legends of
creation” , the water
based on
being the abyss of source. According to the present reading of the data, water
had been
recognized as
the first and most vital element of life. Hence the beginning of all recorded
human thought
with water. Water
in Africa was life indeed, where drought was very death. Horus on his papyrus
as lord
of water was
the lord or life. One Egyptian name for [Page 281] heaven is kabhu, derived
from water, or
the
inundation, as “the cool” and that which makes cool. Paradise was where water
was plenteous.
Hence water
was divinized as heaven, and heaven is figured in the hieroglyphics as water
suspended
overhead, the
firmament being held aloft on four sustaining props as water lifted up. There
was no such
crying want
of water in Babylonia, no such devouring dragon of drought in Akkad, therefore
no such
raison d'etre
for the origin from water as in Africa.
The birth of
water from the abyss of earth is figured in the “Southern Fish” . The star
Fomalhaut at the
mouth of the
Fish denotes the point of emergence whence the stream is seen ascending from
its source
beneath the
constellation of Aquarius. A soul of life from the element of water was
manifested by the fish
as Horus the
crocodile, also by Horus cradled on the water-plant. Thus the water element was
fundamental
in the making of the heavens. This was as the firmamental water. Earth as the
mother of life
and giver of
water was portrayed in the abyss as a great fish emaning water from its mouth,
which
represents
the fact that the earth in the abyss had been already recognized as giver of
life because it
was the
source of water, the primary wateress or the wet-nurse of mythology. She, the
Great Mother, as
we read the
heavenly story-book, was next constellated in the Southern Fish as the producer
of life and
sustenance
from water in the unfathomable abyss.
In various
legends there is a beginning with a world all water. This is one with the
Egyptian Nu or Nun. In
the beginning
was the Nun. Thus saith the primordial word. Not in the beginning of the
heavens and
earth, but in
the beginning of the uranographic representation or entification in the
astronomical
mythology.
The Nun is a name in Egyptian for the firmament when imaged in the similitude
of water, the
world that
was all water at the intellectual starting-point. There is a relic of the
ancient wisdom on one of
the Assyrian
tablets, the gnosis of which we hold to be Egyptian, and that as such it can be
unriddled and
read. As it
is said, “the heaven was created from the waters” . The earth was pre-existent.
This is called
the work of
“Ansar and Kisar” , Who ” created the earth“, i.e., when “creation” had been
rendered
cosmogonically.
But “the heaven was created from the waters” which were firmamental and
uranographic.
The non-Semitic legend of Cutha describes the beginning with a condition of
non-entity or
pre-entity;
there was nothing but an amorphous world of water. As it is said, “the whole of
the lands were
sea” ; “the
abyss had not been made” below, nor was there any seat of the gods above. There
was no
field of
reeds; no tree of life had been planted in the midst of an enclosure. There
flowed no stream from
the abyss
“within the sea” of the celestial water (Pinches, T.G., Records of the Past,
2nd Series, vol. vi.
page 107;
Sayce, Assyrian Story Of Creation, New Series, vol. i. pages 133 to 153). This,
when
bottomed,
means that configuration of the signs in the astronomical mythology had not as
yet begun. But
as space the
firmamental water was extant, and dry earth itself had stood for ever in the
midst thereof;
earth and
water were the uncreated substance which had no beginning, any more than they
had in the
Egyptian Nun.
The monsters born of Tiamat had their home in the ground of earth. It was there
she
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suckled [Page
282] them. Earth as the natural fact preceded the abyss in the astronomy. As
Professor
Sayce
observes, somewhat naďvely, “There was already an earth by the side of the
deep” (H. L., p. 377).
No. Earth was
the ground to go upon in the deep, and this was the Mother-earth which brought
forth in
and from the
deep that was depicted as the abyss, or as the Great Fish in “the water” of the
southern
heaven. It
was in the extreme south that the Babylonians also placed their entrance to the
under-world or
the abyss.
That is where the Egyptians had already localized the outrance from this
mysterious region
whence the
inundation came. Here was the “Ununait” or place of springing up that was first
applied to
water in the
pre-solar mythos, the water that was pictured in its rising from the fish's
mouth.
The abyss or
great deep of the beginning was represented in the mysteries as the Lake of the
Great
Fish. It was
related by Ktęsias of Knidos that the sacred lake was seen at Bambykę or
Hierapolis. It was
also said
that in this lake the life of Derketo, daughter of Aphrodite, was saved by the
fish. And as the
great fish of
Kam was the crocodile, the likelihood is that the Lake Meoris, sacred to the
crocodiles in
Egypt, was
also a form of the lake which represented the place of birth that was
commemorated in the
mysteries and
told of in the legends as the abyss of the beginning, the birthplace or fontal
source of
water=life. A
figure of the “abyss” or “deep” survives still in the “basin” . Large ewers
filled with water were
used for
purificatory rites in the Babylonian temples. These were called apsu, for
“deeps” or “abysses” .
Tanks were
used by the Egyptians for their baptistries. The baptismal font still images
the fount of source.
As a mythical
or celestial locality the Gulf of Eridu is a mundane form of the abyss that was
in the
beginning. This
was the birthplace where the Earth-mother brought forth as a dragon or great
fish, the
mistress in
the abode of the fish. Hence it was the place from whence not only the fish-man
Oannes, but
the seven
fish-like men or annedoti, ascended before the time of the Assyrian deluge. The
source of
water
underground most naturally suggested the idea of a primordial deep, an
unfathomable gulf, a
bottomless
pit. This was then applied to the point of beginning in the lower Nun or
firmamental water
where the
abyss was figure in the uranographic representation.
If, as we
suggest, the story of the heavens was written by the race here generalized as
“the Egyptians” ,
and if that
race descended from the equatorial regions like the great river flowing from its
source, it is to
the southern
hemisphere we must look for the imagery which first reflects the mythology. The
southern
constellations
are comparatively few, but their character in relation to the Egyptian wisdom
is
unmistakable.
Besides which, these uranographs of the beginning, or the first time, could not
all have
originated as
Euphratean, because so many of the stars were too far south to be seen or
constellated in
Akkad or
Babylonia.
The Southern
Fish is figured as the bringer forth of water - that is, of life or of Horus
the fish from the
abyss. Ketos
the monster represents the mother in another character. This, as we suggest, is
the mother
in the water
emaning life upon dry land as did the water-cow. The head of the monster is half
out of the
deep, with
jaws agape and gasping like a fish on dry ground, sufficient to show that [Page
283] these are a
fish-form of
the dual motherhood that was imaged as a crocodile and water-cow, as two cows,
as two
women, or as
the woman Omoroca, who was cut in halves by Belos. If the sphere is carefully
examined it
will be seen
that a stream of water is gushing upwards from the fish's mouth and apparently
ascending
towards the
figure of Aquarius on the ecliptic. Hitherto it has been assumed that water in
heaven always
ran downwards
from the northern pole into the abyss of the south; that the water from the urn
of Aquarius
was being
poured into the mouth of the Southern Fish, and the river Eridanus started from
the star Rigel
at the foot
of Orion and came to an end at the star Achernar, its course being from north
to south, or from
right to left
of the sphere. But this reckoning has now to be reversed.
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Ancient
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'
On the
celestial globe, then, the life of the world that was born of water and imaged
as Ichthus the fish is
represented
still as issuing from the mouth of “the Southern Fish” . The word that issued
from the fish's
mouth is
mentioned by the writer of a hymn to Merodach, in which it is said, “The holy
writing of the
mouth of the
deep is thine” (Sayce, Hib. Lectures, p. 99). If this is rightly rendered, the
word of Ichthus
had then
become the written word. Still, it issued from the mouth of the deep, which was
that of the fish-
mother, or
the fishs mouth. Now, the mystical emblem known by name as the vesica piscis is
still a form
of the fish's
mouth , or outrance into life. The present writer once thought the vesica was
uterine. And
it is such as
a co-type, but not in its origin, because the child first born of it was not
the human child! It is
the emaning
mouth of that fish which gave birth to water as the life of the world and to
the saviour who
came to Egypt
by water as the fish of the inundation. In the language of obstetrics, the
outrance of birth is
called the os
tincae or tench's mouth. That is the mouth of the fish, not because the origin
in this instance
was uterine,
but because the fish's mouth was first, and this has been continued as a symbol
of the
birthplace
when that which was pre-human was reapplied to the human organ. In the course
of doctrinal
development
geometrical and anatomical figures are blended in the vesica as a symbol of the
womb. It
was not so
when the great mother (of life in water) was imaged in the Southern Fish. It
becomes so, to all
appearance,
when the door of life is figured in the shape of a vesica at the feminine (or
western) end of a
Christian
church. The fish's mouth was figured in the heavens as the primordial door of
outrance into life
when the soul
of life came to the world by water. And although the true meaning may have been
suppressed by
over-laying the doctrine, enough survives in the symbols to show that the child
Christ in
the Virgin's
arms encircled by the vesica piscis has the same significance as had the figure
in the
planisphere
where the water of life is issuing from the fish's mouth, and the star of
annunciation is the
star
Fomalhaut. Only the water of life, still represented by Ichthus the fish, is
personalized in later
iconography
by the human child as the type of eternal re juvenescence. The oval being a
co-type with the
fish's mouth,
the Virgin and her child are a later equivalent for the divine mother bringing
forth her fish in
the lake,
piscina, basin, or other water type of the primordial abyss, as in the
astronomical mythology.
The vesica
survives in Freemasonry as well as in the [Page 284] Christian Church, which
was founded on
the fish and
font in Rome. It represented an archetypal and ineffable mystery as a
geometrical symbol,
not one that
was simply anatomical. Speaking of the vesica, Dr. Oliver says this mysterious
figure vesica
piscis
possessed an un-bounded influence on the details of sacred architecture, and it
constituted the
great and
enduring secret of our ancient brethren. The plans of religious buildings are
determined by its
use, and the
proportions of length and height were dependent on it alone (Oliver Descrip.,
p. 109).
The springs
of water issuing forth as from the breast of the Mother-earth made her the
wet-nurse to her
children. As
Apt she nursed her hippopotami; as Rerik she gave milk to her young swine; as
Neith she
was the
suckler of her crocodiles; as Hathor, the cow-headed, she was the milch-mother
who was said to
give the
white liquor that the glorified ones love. In each of these forms she was a
type of Mother-earth,
as we learn
from the mythology.
The mundane
source of water touches the origin of what has been designated the worship “of
wells and
springs,
which was at first a propitiation of the superhuman power of Mother-earth by
those who needed
water, and
who, like the Egyptians, sought to be nursed at the dugs of the cow when reborn
above as the
glorified. In
Ireland there could be no religious place without a holy weIl. St. Columbkille
is said to have
“sained”
three hundred well-springs that were swift [running]” (Whitley Stokes, Three
Middle Irish
Homilies). “
Well worship” , so called, is propitiation of the power in the well. This was
the spirit of running
water, which
as an element had the credit of giving life and the power of purifying. The
doctrine is extant
as Osirian in
the Ritual (ch. 17), where the water is a lake of healing at which all defects
are washed
away and all
stains obliterated. The speaker says, “I am purified at the two great lakes”
(the lake of
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Ancient
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natron and
the lake of salt) which purify (or sain) the offerings that living men (on
earth) present to the
great god who
is there - that is, Osiris, who had taken the place of the mother as the source
of life in
water. The
point is that the water purified or sained the offerings that were made to the
power in the lake
or well or
living spring. But the Great Mother was the first to be solicited for water -
she who was the
wateress in
the abyss, the primary Great Mother in mythology, the water-cow as Apt in
Egypt, the water-
horse as
Tiamat in Babylonia.
The
primordial abyss had originated as the source of water in the earth. The
well-spring underground
was the fact
in nature upon which the fabled fount of immortality and the subterranean lake
of the waters
of life were
founded in the divine nether-earth. Water generated by the earth was that which
came from
very source
itself thus visualized as wet-nurse of the world. Every spring or bubbling
fount of liquid life
that issued
from this source below was suggestive of a deep without a bottom; the tepht,
the bab, or bau
of source
that was afterwards represented in the astronomical mythology and constellated
at the very
foundation of
the southern heaven as the mystical abyss. The first abyss was in the earth.
The abyss of
firmamental
water is outside the earth; it is figurative because celestial. The Nun was
heaven entified as
water. But
there had [Page 285] been two waters actual in external nature, as the waters
that rose up in
the
fountains, wells, and springs of earth, and the water that fell in dew and rain
from heaven. This was
portrayed as
falling from the tree of wet, which is the Egyptian tree of N ut or of heaven
as water. Thence
water from
the well was the water of earth, and water from the tree was the water of heaven.
These two
water sources
in earth and heaven were figured as the abyss or well below and the tree of
rain above,
with Apt or
Hathor the Mother-earth in the abyss, and Nut the heavenly mother in the tree
of wet above.
And these two
types seen in the well and tree are universal signs of so-called “water
worship” with the
oldest races
in the world. The holy Well or water-hole is commonly found beneath the sacred
moisture-
dropping
tree. The stone erected as an altar underneath the tree is almost as common.
This was a place
of
propitiation and appeal to the elemental power. Libations of blood were poured
out on the stone.
Offerings
were suspended on the tree; gifts were cast into the well and magical
invocations made. The
well suffices
to establish the fact that the primitive want was water. But the source was
dual in the water
of earth and
the water of heaven. The source in earth was imaged in the well as a form of
the abyss. The
water that
fell from heaven was imaged by the tree of Nut. The altar-stone is
representative of earth.
Thus it is a
meeting-point for the sycamore of Nut (the tree of celestial water, as
Egyptian), the altar of
earth, and
the abyss of water under the earth. The object of the rite is the spirit or
power that sends the
water from
its “double source” in earth and heaven, with the stone as altar for the
sacrificial offering. The
Egyptian old
first mother, who is a hippopotamus in front and crocodile behind, and who is
repeated in
the
Babylonian dragon-horse Tiamat, still survives in British tradition as the
water-horse or kelpie, and
also as the
dragon. The river Yore near Middleham is held to be haunted by a water-horse
(Longstaffe,
Richmondshire,
p. 96). The River Auld Grandt, that springs from Loch Glaish in Ross-shire, is
dreaded as
the abode of
the water-horse. Sometimes the presiding power of the water in the well is
indicated by the
fish,
sometimes by the frog. Once the dragon of drought left his co-type in a
northern holy well. At the
Devil's Causeway
between Ruckley and Acton there is a well in which the animal type is the frog,
and the
largest of
these, which naturally enough appears but seldom, represents the devil Apap. In
one instance
two old women
are said to keep the secret of the water. These are equivalent to the two fish,
the two
cows, and the
woman who was cut in two.
The double
source of water having been identified as the water of earth and the water of
heaven, the
type of
duality was applied to the firmamental water in the astronomical mythology, and
heaven, as water,
was divided
into the two waters of the lower and upper firmament, the typical being founded
as a figure of
the actual.
These two waters are also constellated in the two celestial rivers of Eridanus
and the Milky
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Way. The one
reflects the river of the inundation, therefore the water of earth below,
emaning from the
lower Nun or
the mythical abyss. The other is the “great stream” of the Via Lactea. The
inundation rose
up in the
south. Its ebullient superhuman forces in the Ritual are called the powers of
the south. These
powers [Page
286] of the south are in attendance “at the moment when the lord of his flood
is carried forth
and brings to
its fulness the force that is hidden within him” (ch.64). And when once we know
which way
the river
runs in heaven, Achernar in Eridanus becomes our guide star from the south.
From that the river
travels
northward to Orion's foot, or rather to the point at which Orion rises up as
Horus of the inundation.
Otherwise
Horus is brought to birth on his papyrus, as depicted in the Egyptian drawings.
The two
waters of earth and heaven are both recognizable in the double source assigned
to the river
Nile. In some
of the traditions it is described as emanating from the abyss of earth, in
others as falling
from the
skies. Both origins are mentioned in the Hymn to the Nile. In the first stanza
the water is said to
descend from
heaven. In line thirteen we are told that “the Nile has made its retreat in
Southern Egypt. Its
name is not
known beyond the Tuat” . Thus the retreat of the Nile in the south is
identifiable with the
abyss as the
earthly source of the inundation, and its name is not known beyond the boundary
of that
other world
from whence it issues. In Inner Africa the rains came from the cool heaven
(Kabhu) of the
north, and
therefore in that quarter (or half) was the creatory and source of the
celestial waters, as the
fact was
figured for ever in the constellation of the Water-Cow. In the hymns of
adoration to the Nile the
river is
addressed as coming forth and bringing all good things to Egypt from the north,
whereas the
geographical
Nile came with the inundation from the south. The Nile that issued from the two
lakes of a
double source
was celestial in the north. The Nile that “made its retreats in Southern Egypt”
(hymn 13)
was the
mundane Nile which came from the north to the south above, and from the south to
the north
below. As
Hor-Apollo shows, two of the Egyptian vases denoted water from a double source,
one being
the earth as
generator of water, the other heaven when the rains fell in the southern parts
of Athiopaeia
(B. I. 2 I ).
The urn was a figure of the inundation.
Aquarius was
called the constellation of the Urn by the Arab astronomers. We shall
understand the sign
of “Krater”
better if we take it is an extra-zodiacal image of the urn, which not only
represented the
inundation
and its bounty, but also the abyss of source from which the weIling waters
came. The two urns
are followed
by the two vases at a later stage. Howsoever poured out, water was the primary
means of
fertilization.
When the goddess pours out a libation from her vase - or two divine personages
from two
vases - on
the water plant or shoot of palm, the signification is the same as when the
wet-nurse Hathor
suckles Horus
as a child of Neith the crocodile as a calf. According to the most primitive
imagery in
Egypt, the
waters of the inundation issued from the Mother-earth as the water-cow, the
wateress in the
primordial
abyss or water source. But when the sky was looked to as a source of water,
heaven was
represented
as the milch-cow, and the river flowing from the highest source was imaged as
the Milky
Way.
Thenceforth there were two cows. The cow of earth was the water-cow, and the
milch-cow was the
cow of
heaven. The water-cow of earth was constellated in the stars of the Great Bear,
the milch-cow of
heaven in the
group now known as Cassiopoeia, or the Lady in the Chair, which [Page 287] was
the earlier
constellation
of the Haunch or Meskhen as a figure of the birthplace when the birth was
typical of life in
water (see
fragment from a Theban Tomb, p. 289).
THE DROWNING
OF THE DRAGON.
The “mystery
of evil” , about which theologians ignorantly prate, was very simple in its
origin. Water, food,
and light
were naturally good. Their opposites - thirst, hunger, darkness, and disease -
were as naturally
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bad. In this
way the origin of evil had its rootage in the conditions of external nature for
which man could
nowise be
held responsible. The rest is mainly the result of a primitive doctrine being
developed in the
domain of
theology. For example, Sut, the anthropomorphic devil of the later Egyptian
religion, was
previously
the pre-anthropomorphic representative of drought, dearth, and darkness long
before the type
of evil had
been personalized in the figure of a satanic Mephistopheles as the tempter of
womankind.
Thus the
representative of evil, “that old serpent” in mythology, became the author of
evil in theology, and
the devil was
evolved in the moral domain according to the eschatology.
At the
commencement of mythical representation in Africa we meet the adversary of man
in the shape of
a monstrous
serpent or devouring dragon. This in Egypt is the Apap-reptile, the dragon of
drought or the
serpent of darkness.
In one phase Apap is the devourer of the moon in her eclipse, in another it is
the
destroyer of
vegetable life, and in a third it drinks or dries up all the water, or there is
a mortal fear lest the
monster
should do so. This was the primal adversary or prototypal Satan. There is a
saying that “the devil
is known by
his long tail” , and the long tail of Satan may be seen as the appendage of
Apap the serpent
of evil in
the southern constellation Hydra. The Egyptians also have a class of evil
beings called the
Sebau. These
were the spawn of the reptile Apap, born of darkness, drought, and other
malefic
influences in
physical phenomena that were found to be inimical to man. The type of Apap, a
flat-headed
Inner African
snake, is universal. It is the Bushman all-devourer Kwai Hemm, who swallows the
mantis-
deity at
night and brings him forth again alive by day; it is the Norse dragon or worm,
the Greek python,
the
throttling ahi or vrittra of the Vedas. With the Indians of Brazil it is still
“the great serpent who is the
owner of
night” . It is the snake, toad, or frog (in the legends) that swallows all the
water in the world.
Possibly the
Apap-monster of Africa may be recognized even by name in Australia. In the
centre of the
continent
whirlwinds occur that lift up columns of dust two or three hundred feet in
height. The Arunta call
them Apapa.
The Warramunga say an unfriendly spirit, an Orantja, travels about in these on
the look-out
to kill
black-fellows. Whether this be the old dragon of the desert or not, it is
noticeable that the name of
the Apap in
Egyptian signifies to mount on high, become tall, vast, gigantic, like the
swirling dust and
darkness of
the sand-storm (S. and G., N. Tribes, p. 632). [Page 288] Here begins the war
betwixt the evil
serpent and
the woman, who is the Great Mother in mythology. It was the Apap-reptile who
brought
darkness,
drought, and death into the world. The mother was the earliest slayer of the
dragon, and the
son of the
woman followed as her helper. She may be seen as Isis, a form of the lunar
goddess, spearing
the head of
Apap in the dark waters of night (Wilkinson). She may also be heard in this
character as the
Lady of
Light, who exclaims, “lighten up the darkness and overthrow the devouring
monster” (Rit., ch.
80). In the
Kaffir folk-tales we find the original mythos of the monster in three of its
phases. In the story of
“The Great
Chief of the Animals” (Theal, page 163) the victim swallowed by “ the terrible
monster” is the
moon-mother.
She tears her way out of the monster as the deliverer of herself, and sets free
all her
children whom
the devourer as dragon of darkness had previously swallowed. The bows and
arrows with
which the
twin brothers kill the monster tend to identify their weapon with the lunar bow
that was
periodically
drawn and nightly employed to overcome the power of darkness. There is perhaps
a further
hint that the
mother represents the moon, inasmuch as the children of the woman had been left
for safety
in charge of
the hare, which is a lunar zootype. In another Kaffir tale the woman is mother
of the twins
who
correspond to Sut and Horus as the twin powers of light and darkness brought
forth by the mother-
moon in her
dual lunation. In a third the swallower, called “the Inabulele” (Theal, page
79), is slain by the
hero Sikulum,
who answers to Horus as slayer of the Apap-dragon.
Propitiation
of a superhuman nature power for food and drink was the most primitive form of
the
appeal that
ultimately culminated, as we know, in worship. The gods of Egypt from the
beginning
represented
food and drink, not only as givers of sustenance - they were the sustenance in
food and
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Ancient
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liquid. The
Great Mother was the suckler or wet-nurse. Hathor offered food in the
sycamore-fig and Isis
in the persea
tree of life. Child-Horus was the shoot, the branch, the calf, lamb, or fish.
Seb, god of
earth, was
the father of aliment. Plenty of food and water first made heaven palpable to
primitive or
archaic men
on earth. Hence the primitive paradise was imaged as a field of food. At one
stage seven
cows were
configurated as the type of plenty that was eternal in the heavens. The tree of
life was
planted in
the midst of the celestial oasis. Upon this grew the fruit as food on which the
gods and the
glorified
were fed. The mother of food in the oasis of the papyrus plant, Uat, was
divinized in the
goddess Uati,
as a mother of all things, fresh, flourishing, and ever-green. The deity
Atum-Ra, who first
attained the
status of “holy spirit” in the eschatology, says of himself, “I am the food
which never
perishes”
(Rit., ch. 85). Horus of the inundation was constellated on his papyrus as the
ever-coming
shoot (Plan.
of Denderah) he was also the giver of food as the fish, the calf, and the lamb,
that were
made
celestial types in the astral mythology. An infinitude of water was an African
ideal of the divine. A
spring of water
weIling from the bosom of the earth made her the mother of life, and life that
came by
water was
then divinized in Horus on his papyrus plant as the food-bringer. Thence came a
saviour to
the land of
Egypt as Horus of the inundation Horus the shoot or [Page 289] natzer, Horus as
Ichthus the
fish, Horus
the mother's child who came by water. It is possible to show that Horus on his
papyrus or
lotus was the
African original of Jack who climbed the bean-stalk. It may be premised that
the stalk up
which the
spirit of vegetation climbs to furnish food was an earlier type than the tree
of life, and that
the fact was
preserved in the Egyptian mythos. Also the tree of Tammuz in Eridu was “a
stalk” . Now
the lotus in
Egypt was literally a bean-stalk. Its large seed was known as the bean of
Egypt. Thus
when the
lotus = papyrus was employed for the figure of food, and Horus, as the
elemental spirit of
vegetation,
ascended the stalk to take his seat upon “the flower” , he was the youth who
climbed the
“bean-stalk”
to slay the giant Apap at first in nature, next in the mythos, and lastly in
the legends.
When water
was the life, and Mother-earth was the source, she was imaged as the great
fish, and her
young one was
the lord of life as the food-bringer in the inundation. Horus of the inundation
was a real,
ever-coming
saviour of the world as periodic bringer of water and the food of life, who
came in several
characters.
In one of which he was the fish. In one he climbed the stalk of the papyrus
plant as the
soul of
vegetation. As the young hero it was he who fought and overcame the dragon of
drought at one
season and
the serpent of darkness at another. A power of perennial renewal was perceived
in nature.
This was
manifested by successive births. Hence the child-god of Egypt became a type of
the eternal,
ever-coming
by rebirth in time and season and the elements of life and light, which in the
character of
Horus was at
first by food and water. This was the eternal, ever-coming, ever-renewing
spirit of youth.
birth to her
child, Horus, Har-
Ur, as the
young crocodile
poised on end
in front of her. It
is a picture
of the young child
that was
brought forth
annually from
the water by the
mother, who
was constellated
as the
Crocodile or
Hippopotamus
at the northern
centre of the
planisphere. The
history of
Horus is depicted in
the heavens
as if upon the
walls and
windows of some
vast
cathedral of immensity.
Page 223
In the
illustration from a Theban tomb the Great Mother, who in one form is a
crocodile, has just given
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
This was the
subject of subjects in the astronomical mythology. He was conceived of a virgin
mother in
the sign of
Virgo. His birth or advent was announced by the star Phact in the constellation
Columba. The
[Page 290]
earliest mother who conceived as a virgin in mythology was represented by the
sacred heifer of
the
immaculate Isis. Also by the white vulture in the cult of the Virgin Neith. She
was the dove of Hathor
in the
worship of Iusaas, the mother of Iusa. The human only comes in as a challenging
element when
the mythos is
related as history. When the woman took the place of the heifer, the vulture,
the dove, or
other zootype
of virginity - that is, when the type was humanized and Horus imaged as a child
- the
doctrine of
incarnation, or the incorporation of a spirit of life in matter, had entered
into the human sphere.
Thus the
mystical virgin and child in human guise, whether in Egypt or in any other
land, was a result of
doctrinal
development, and the doctrine itself could not be understood without a
knowledge of the earlier
phase. When
the type of the Great Mother and her youngling had been changed from the
totemic
zootype to
the anthrotype, and the goddess was imaged as a woman, a child became the
figure of a
superhuman
power that was ever-coming, ever-renewing, ever-repeating, ever-incorporating
or
incarnating,
ever-manifesting in phenomena. Then~ the youthful god was naturally born as a
child. This
was Har-Ur,
the child of Isis or the Virgin Neith. Horus the child or shoot, on the papyrus
or on his
mother's lap,
is representative of the resurrection and renewal of life for another year. Horus
came to
Egypt as
saviour of the people from the dreaded drought. He came, invested with “the
power of the
southern
lakes” to drown the dragon in the inundation. In one phase Horus is the saviour
as the bringer
of the water.
In another he is the child of light. In both he comes to wrestle with the enemy
of man in
various
natural phenomena on earth, and likewise in the internecine struggle which is
represented by the
astronomical
mythology as the war in heaven, and which maybe summed up as the war of Horus
and the
dragon. Horus
brings the water of the inundation which is the source of life to Egypt. The
little one is
cradled on
the Nile in his ark of the papyrus reed. He is assailed by Apap, the dragon of
drought, who lies
in wait to
destroy the young deliverer when he is born. As bringer of the waters Horus
slays the dragon of
drought,
which would otherwise have drunk the inundation dry. He also treads the serpent
of darkness
under foot as
the renewer of light. Under the name of Iu-m-hetep, Horus came as the
proverbial “prince
of peace” .
The word hetep denotes peace or rest, plenty of food, and also good luck. His
coming in this
character had
a very tangible significance, for the inundation brought the season of rest to
Egypt, which
was
celebrated by the Uaka festival, when the prince came out of Ethiopia as the
giver of rest to the
weary, bread
to the hungry, water to the thirsty, and wine for the periodic wassail. In the
solar mythos
Horus became
the lord of light, but food and drink were first, according to the human needs.
The fabled
“war in heaven” began with the contending elements that strove with each other
for
supremacy,
whether as light and darkness, water and drought, or food and famine.
Thus Horus of
the inundation came by water as the deliverer when the land was suffering from
the
dragon of
drought. The picture was then constellated in the southern heaven. Horus the
victor was
represented
by Orion [Page 291] rising from the river and wielding the insignia of his
sovereignty. His
weapon is the
club of Herakles in Greece; it was the whip of ruling power as the Egyptian
khu. He rises
from Eridanus
as conqueror of the hydra-dragon that is overwhelmed beneath the waters when
the
drought was
put an end to by the lord of life with the water for his weapon. Here is a
motive for the war
betwixt the
dragon and the infant that was born to universal rule or predestined to be
king. Horus also
came as
conqueror of the dragon of darkness. But it is of more importance to know that
the evil reptile
Apap
represented drought and famine, disease and death. This was the mortal enemy of
man that drank
up all the
water in the world ; hence the battle for the water. All the earth round the
warfare of the hero
with the
monster is for water as well as for light, because the monster is
representative of drought as well
as darkness.
At first it is the water-reptile in the African lake; then the “hellish snake
Apap” drinks up the
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Ancient
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water of the
Nile. In Australia it is the monstrous frog that drinks up all the water. It is
also the chimerical,
malignant
wild beast that is slain by Gilgames. This struggle, as some of the drawings
show, is literally
over the
water. Lastly, it becomes the sea-monster of the Greek mythology, whereas the
original conflict
was for
drinking water.
When Horus
came by water as Ichthus the fish who gave himself for food, he swam the deluge
of the
inundation
when there was no boat or ark to breast the waters. But when the bark was built
Argo is
constellated
as the ark of Horus. This is figured in the planisphere with the child on board
and the
devouring
Apap coiling round it seeking to destroy the babe, the infant saviour of the
world, who brings
the food and
water as the lord of life.
Now Sothis in
its heliacal rising was not the only star of annunciation at the birth of Horus
the child.
Farther
south, the Dove, or rather the star Phact, was also a harbinger of the
inundation. Still farther was
the glorious
star Canopus, the pilot of the Argo at the starting-point of the journey by
water, which was
the river
Nile as the terrestrial water imaged uranographically. The Egyptians
commemorated the birthday
of the world
- that is, of the age, the cycle, the beginning of time, as the day when Horus
rose up on the
lotus, or
papyrus, from the waters of the Nun. Otherwise stated, this was the natal day
of Horus in the
inundation,
which was afterwards applied to Atum by the priests of On or Annu in the
eschatology. Thus
the birthday
of the inundation was the birthday of a primordial year, or the birthday of the
world. The
constellation
Hydra represents the Apap-reptile of the Egyptian mythos. This is a monster
extending over
some one
hundred degrees in the planisphere. From lack of better knowledge, this type of
evil has been
called the
“water-serpent” , which gives no clue to its character. It is figured in the
water of the southern
heaven, and
is that fearsome monster which in various legends drinks up all the water. In
the later solar
mythos Apap,
the enemy of Ra, is the blind devourer darkness. But as the adversary of the
elder Horus he
of the
inundation - Apap or Hydra is the dragon of drought. Drought in the old dark
land was veritably
“the curse” ,
and the evil dragon as its deadly image was the primitive type of physical, not
of moral evil.
The
inundation was the source [Page 292] of life to Egypt. It was her annual
salvation, and Horus, or
Sebek the
fish-man, was her saviour. The earliest saviour ever known was the giver of
food and drink to
those who
were famishing. This is the origin of a saviour as the shoot of a water-plant,
the branch of a
tree, or a
great fish - the bigger the better, as a sign of abundance. This was how a
saviour could be
represented
as Ichthus the fish. This was how a saviour could come by water to the world;
hence the
subject of
subjects was the war of elements, of darkness in conflict with the light, of
drought with the
waters, of
sterility with fertility, of dearth with plenty.
The powers of
good and evil, represented in the mythos, were also figured in the stars and
portrayed in
the religious
drama as the eternal conflict of the twins Sut and Horus, of Shu and the
impious rebels, of
Ra and the
Apap-reptile. In the earliest mythos Horus precedes Ra as the eternal
antagonist of the
dragon or
serpent. This is the first Horus who was the seed of the Great Mother, whom the
Semites call
“the woman” .
He bruised or pierced the serpent's head at one season, and was bitten by the
serpent in
the heel at
another. One was the season of renewal for the waters, for food, for the
growing light, and for
the breezes
of the north.
The other was
the season of drought, of sterility , of darkness, and for the withering blast
of the desert.
“In Upper
Egypt” , says Maspero, “there is a wide-spread belief in the existence of a
monstrous serpent
that dwells
at the bottom of the river Nile” (Dawn of Civilization, Eng. trans., p. 90).
This is the Apapdragon
of evil,
especially of drought. Hence the crumbling of the banks and the falls of earth
in the dry
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
season are attributed
to the great serpent which lies at the bottom of the river, where it was
drowned by
the
inundation with great rejoicings of the people every year. It is as the fiery
dragon of drought that the
Apap is
spoken of in an inscription of Amenhetep III. In this, vengeance is threatened
on those royal
secretaries
who neglect their duties to the Theban god Amen-Ra, and it is said, “They shall
become like
the hellish
snake Apap on the morning of the new year , they shall be overwhelmed in the
great flood”
(Brugsch,
Egypt, p. 210, Eng. trans. in one vol.). The morning of the new year was at
that time
determined by
the heliacal rising of Sothis as announcer of the inundation in which the
Apap-dragon of
drought was
drowned. This picture is to be seen in the planisphere with the figure of the
fiery Hydra
overwhelmed
in the water of the inundation. It was represented in the mythology that when
Horus had
conquered
Apap in one of his great battles the reptile sank, pierced with wounds, into
the depths of the
waters, and
this event was said to have occurred at the very moment of the new year (cited
by Maspero
from Birch
and Chabas, The Dawn of Civilization, Eng. trans., p. 159). This is the exact
position of Hydra
in the waters
of the south, as still shown on the celestial globe. Thus Hydra, as the
drowned, dead reptile,
forms a
fellow picture in the planisphere to that of Apap drowned in the lake of
heaven, according to the
description
in the Ritual (ch. 39).
That Apap was
cut up and drowned in the waters of the inundation is likewise shown by the
constellation
Corvus, or
the Crow. The bird stands on the body of the monster, and, as Aratos remarks
(line 449) [Page
293] “seems
to peck the folds of its prey. Corvus thus plays its part as scavenger of the
inundation, and at
the same time
demonstrates that Hydra is drowned and dead. Thus far we see that certain
natural facts
were given a
celestial setting as object-pictures in the stars. The abyss of the beginning
was constellated
as “the
water” low down in the south. The birth of water from the Mother-earth was
figured in the
Southern
Fish. Horus, the young deliverer who came by water periodically as the bringer
of food, was
shown in the
shoot of the papyrus plant; he also figures as Ichthus the fish. The river of
the water of life
was
represented by Eridanus, which can be traced back to its birthplace in the
abyss, with the inundation
rushing from
the southern lakes. Various herald-stars of Horus and the waters, like Fomalhaut,
Achernar,
Canopus, and
Phact, can also be identified according to their rising at different stages of
the progress
made by Horus
down into the valley of the Nile.
We will now
take a turn round the zodiac, with a view of briefly identifying its signs with
the seasons of
Egypt and the
characters in the mythology, the first and foremost being that of Horus, the
eternal, ever-
coming child.
As represented in the zodiac, Horus of the inundation was conceived by his
virgin mother in
the sign of Virgo.
This was the promised prince of peace who came to rest the weary from their
work and
to labour for
them while they rested, listening to the waters and the welcome word the
inundation
brought. Then
was the message of good tidings sent as if from heaven itself, which was made
known by
the mother of
the babe. She first sang the song of invitation, “Come unto me, all ye that
labour and are
heavy laden,
and I will give you rest” . The mother of life was now descending with the
waters, or with
Horus in
utero, as the most blessed among women, the virgin brooding over her conception
and inwardly
working out
the mystery of fertilization and fulfilment. In the mythical rendering of
natural fact a child or
youngling had
been made prime mover of the universe. “I have set myself in motion” , says
Child-Horus
(Rit., ch.
42). “I am the heir, the primary power of motion and of rest” (Rit., ch. 63A).
The doctrine is
repeated when
the Greeks maintained that Eros was the primal cause of all things (Hesiod,
Theogony).
Babe-Horus in
his coming forth is compared with the lotus or papyrus issuing from the great
stream.
The
birthplace of water (and of food) in the abyss of source became the birthplace
of Horus in the
inundation.
This was represented in the later mythos by the swamps and marshes in which
Isis hid
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Ancient
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herself with
her babe and suckled Horus in a secret place. The water in which Horus came to
Egypt was
the inundation
of the Nile that burst up from the abyss - the bau, the tepht of source in the
recesses of
the south.
And as we
read the signs, the river Nile was constellated in Eridanus as the river of the
inundation. The
name of
Eridanus, like the celestial river itself, is very sure to have had an Egyptian
origin. Eri, later Uri,
was an
Egyptian name of the inundation, meaning the great, the mighty; whilst tun or
tanu signifies that
which rises
up in revolt, the bursting forth from the gulf or well of the south. Thus
rendered, Eri-tana or
Iarutana
would be the mighty river rising up in the inundation and bursting forth from
out the birthplace in
the abyss, as
is depicted in the Ritual. If we [Page 294] glance at the river constellated on
the celestial
globe, we see
that Eridanus runs one way, from the foot of Orion to the star Achernar, which
has been
called “the
end of the river” . But, if looked at the other way, Achernar marks the point
of departure from
the south
towards the north. And if this river representing the earthly Nile, the replica
would naturally run
the way of
the original. That alone will explain the course of the water and its ending at
the foot of Orion,
who rises
from the river as did Horus of the inundation coming “out of Ethiopia” (or
Equatoria), or from
that ancient
south in which the tepht of source was localized at first as “the water” , and
afterwards
configurated
in the stars that indicate the river of the inundation winding on its northward
way. Other stars
announced the
coming of the Nile, or the birth of Horus in the water of the inundation. The
star Phact,
says Lockyer,
“so little familiar to us northerners, is one of the most conspicuous stars in
the southern
portion of
the heavens, and its heliacal rising heralded the solstice and the rise of the
Nile before the
heliacal
rising of Sirius was useful for the purpose. In Phact we have the star
symbolized by the ancient
Egyptians
under the name of the goddess Tekhi, whose figure leads the procession of the
months”
(Dawn of
Astronomy, p. 224). In the Arabic names of the stars the star Phact is named
from a word that
signifies
“the thigh” , and the thigh was an Egyptian type of the birthplace, as we shall
find it also figured
in Egypt as
well as in the northern heaven. Here it denotes a place of birth and a goddess
in the southern
heaven. Now,
the so-called sacred year of the Egyptians opened at a certain starting-point
on the first of
the month
Taht, or Tehuti, equivalent to our 20th of July. But this month in an earlier
star calendar is
called the
month of the goddess Tekhi. Tekh or tekhi is an Egyptian word for liquid, to
supply with drink,
and Tekhi is
the month of the inundation. But the month Tekhi, or Taht, was not named from
the first
beginning of
the inundation. The previous month, the last of the twelve in the sacred year,
was named
Mesore, or
Mesuri, from mes, for birth, and uri, later eri, the inundation. Thus the
actual birth of the river
(in one place
or other) is marked in the last month of the Egyptian year instead of the
first, the question
being, At
what point of the course did the actual birth take place ? The birth of water,
of Horus as Ichthus,
had been
indicated by the star Fomalhaut at the Fish's mouth; the star Phact was a
herald of Horus in the
inundation;
Canopus, the pilot of Argo Navis, showed that Horus was on board the ark, or on
his cradle of
the papyrus
plant; and the dog-star Sothis was the later guide to the watchers of the
heavens in Egypt. If
the arrival
of the inundation at some particular point is dated by the heliacal rising of
the dog-star in the
month of
Tekhi or Taht (July), the name of the previous month shows the birth of the
waters was
reckoned to
be earlier. This is the month Mesore or Mesuri, and Mesore answers roughly to
the month of
June. In the
sacred year the Ist of Mesore corresponds to our June 15th and to July 25th in
the
Alexandrian
year. Obviously the name of Mesore refers to the birth of the waters farther
south, which was
announced by
the herald star Fomalhaut, Achernar, Canopus, or Phact, according to their
position and to
the stage of
high water at the different times along the route.[Page 295]
The seasons
in Egypt have been previously compared with the imagery in the planisphere
(Nat.
Genesis), but
might have been more closely verified. There were but two in the beginning with
the Great
Mother and
her Sut and Horus twins. These were the seasons of the summer waters and the
winter
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Ancient
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drought. The
season of the waters and of rest is as plainly pictured in the southern heaven
as ever it was
actual in the
valley of the Nile. That quarter on the celestial globe is full of the inundation
and its signs, as
it will be
for all time. The inundation was not only pictured in the southern heaven
rising from its most
secret source
in the abyss “down south” , which was figured with the mouth of the Fish, and
continued
running
northward in the river named Eridanus ; it was also constellated in the zodiac,
and can be traced
there in
accordance with the seasons of the year. The earliest hint of the inundation is
given zodiacally in
the month
Mesore.
In the
Greco-Egyptian planisphere according to Kircher, Horus is figured in the decans
of the Twins, at
death-grips
with the Apap-reptile which the inundation comes to drown. Thus the battle is
portrayed twice
over, once as
the struggle of Horus (or Ra) and the serpent constellated in the decans of the
Gemini.,
and once on
the ecliptic as the contest of the Sut and Horus twins.
Amongst the
harbingers of the inundation were the beetles that rolled up their seed in
little balls of dung
and buried
them upon the river bank for safety against the coming flood. The Nile-beetle
was figured
where the
Crab is constellated now. Here begins the imagery of the inundation in the
zodiac, with the
month Mesore.
The beetle, busy on the banks of the Nile, was set above as a uranograph which
showed
the beginning
or the birth of the new inundation at some well-known point in time and
locality. The figure
of the beetle
rolling up its seed with its tentacles is apparently repeated in the Akkadian
name of this
same month,
which is Su Kulna, the seizer of seed, with Cancer (or the beetle) for its
zodiacal sign. An
earlier type
of Sirius than the dog was the bennu or nictorax. This was a beautiful
water-bird that came to
Egypt as a
herald of the inundation, and was given the most glorious of extra-zodiacal
signs. The bennu
was the
prototype of the mythical phoenix. The ibis as a bird of passage also came to
fish the waters of
the
inundation. This too was constellated for a symbol. We find it figured in a
zodiac attributed to the
second Hermes
- that is, Taht, the lunar deity (Nat. Gen. Plate). In this the sign of Cancer
is the ibis-
headed god.
The ibis was a typical fisher, and therefore a sign of coming plenty to the
fishers waiting for
the waters,
and their wealth of food.The lion in the hieroglyphics is a figure of great
force, and when the
sun had
reached the lion sign the rushing waters had attained their fullest volume. As
Hor-Apollo tells us,
the Egyptians
portray a lion as a sign of the inundation, “because when the sun is in Leo it
augments the
rising of the
Nile” . Indeed, he says it happens at times that one half of the new water is
supplied to Egypt
while the sun
remaineth in that sign (B. I. 21). At the same time of year the lion was a
figure of the solar
force at
furnace heat, an image therefore of a double force. In the next sign is the
Virgin who conceived
the child
that represented the food which was dependent on the waters of the inundation.
This was
indicated by
the later ear of [Page 296] corn, the green wheat ear of the mysteries, which
is held in the
hand of Neith
or Isis in Virgo, and still survives in the star Spica of this constellation.
The elder
Horus came not only in the water. He was also the Kamite prototype of Bacchus
as the lord of
wine. When
Horus came the grapes were ripe in Egypt and ready to be converted into wine.
The season
of grapes is
dated July 13th in the Egyptian calendar. There is but little left upon the
modern globe of the
ancient
constellation of the Vine, but the star Epsilon, called Vindemiatrix, is still
the sign of grape-
gathering,
and as we read in the calender - “July the 9th: the Nile begins to rise
abundantly. July 28th:
abundance of
grapes” (Egyptian Calendar. A.D. 1878, p. 19). Vindemiatrix, the sign of grapes
being ripe
is described
by Aratos as being so large in size and bright in splendour as to rival the
stars in the Great
Bear's tail,
whereas at present it is but a star of the third magnitude (lines 130 to 140).
The grape-
gathering in
Egypt is depicted in or near the signs of Virgo and the Vine. It is said of
Horus at Edfu, “Thou
didst put
grapes into the water which cometh forth from Edfu” . From that day forth the
water of Edfu was
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called the
water of grapes - that is, wine. So anciently was the metaphor of the gospel
miracle founded
on the
natural fact. Uaka is a name of the inundation, and also of the festival at
which the deluge of drink
was
symbolically celebrated by the libation that was correspondingly colossal. The
vine was not only set
in heaven to
denote the vindemia or time for gathering the grapes, the overflow was also
figured in the
constellation
Crater, or the Goblet, as a sign of the “uaka” that was held in Egypt when the
land was full
of water and
the folks were full of wine. When the constellation Crater rose it showed that
the urn or
vase, an
artificial type of the inundation, was overflowing with the waters that
restored the drooping life of
Egypt. At
that time the Egyptians celebrated a feast in honour of Hathor, at which a
deluge of drink flowed
freely. It is
frankly described in the inscriptions as “the festival of intoxication” , and
was commemorated
at Denderah
in the month of Taht, the month of the year that opened with the inundation and
the heliacal
rising of
Sothis. Various other fruits were ripe, including dates. Also water-melons were
abundant. But
Horus is the
vine, whose advent was celebrated at the uaka festival with prodigious
rejoicings and a
deluge of
drink of which the vine and cup, or mixing-bowl, were constellated as celestial
symbols. The
juice of the
grape was the blood of Horus or Osiris in the Kamite eucharist. Hence the
sacramental cup
was figured
in the constellation “Crater” , the Goblet, or it may be the jar, from the
Egyptian karau, a jar,
the cup
having two characters, one in the mythology and one in the eschatology.
In an ancient
planisphere reproduced by Dupuis (Planches de l'Origine de Tous les Cultes,
No.10) the
swallow
appears in close proximity to Isis the virgin of the zodiac. In the Egyptian
mythos the swallow
represented
Isis in her character of the widow, when she was wandering like the bird of
passage from
one land to
another' seeking for her lost Osiris. Thus Isis in her two characters of the
virgin and the
widow was
figured in the zodiac and in the decans [Page 297] of Virgo, which two
characters are only to
be found in
Egyptian mythology.
Libra, or the
Scales, was at one time a figure of the equinox, but its more probable origin
is in relation to
the supremely
important waters of the inundation. The four months of the water-season, the
first of the
three
tetramenes, began with the lion, and ended with the scorpion. The inundation
reached its point of
equipoise
coincidently with the entrance of the sun into the sign that was figured as the
Balance or the
Scales. The
tortoise or abtu of the Nile had been an earlier zodiacal sign than that of the
Scales, by
which it was
superseded. When the Nile-tortoise climbed the banks of the river to give
itself for food, it
naturally
became a self-constituted sign of the inundation to be figured in a group of
stars. Thus the
tortoise =
Libra would denote the point at which the earth was emerging like a tortoise or
a turtle from the
deluge of the
waters which periodically overspread the land.
The scorpion
was not a type of evil in the zodiac. It represented Isis-Serkh who fought for
Horus when
the birthplace
was in Scorpio. A fragment of the myth survives in the Ritual. It is the merest
allusion, but
suffices to
show that in the wars of the solar god (Horus or Ra) with the enemy Apap,
Isis-Serkh joined in
the battle
and was wounded. The passage is confused but, as rendered by Renouf, it runs:
“Apap falleth;
Apap goeth
down. And more grave for thee is the taste (tepit) than that sweet proof
through the scorpion-
goddess
(Isis-Serkh) which she practised for thee, in the pain that she suffered” .
When the summer
solstice was
in the sign of Leo the autumn equinox occurred in Scorpio, and it would be then
and there
the
scorpion-goddess gave proof of her sympathy and suffering on behalf of Horus or
of Ra in the latter
mythos. It is
evident that Scorpio was the sign at one of the cardinal points, for it is said
of Apap in this
battle,“Apap
is in bonds” . The gods of the south, the north, the west and the east have
bound him” .
These include
the goddesses as helpers. Hence it is said to Apap: “Thy whole heart is torn
out by the
lynx-goddess.
Chains are flung upon thee by the scorpion-goddess. Slaughter is dealt upon
thee by
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Maati” .
(Rit., ch. 39.) About the time of the autumn equinox the water of the
inundation began to subside.
At this point
the power of Horus in the light was on the wane, and both were represented now
by him who
was born to
die down in the dwindling water and the lessening light. The word Serkhu, which
is the name
of Isis as
the scorpion-goddess, signifies to breathe, and to supply breath. Thus Scorpio
is the sign of a
breathing-space
which followed the water-season. Whilst the sun was in the constellation Libra
(or the
tortoise) the
waters had attained their height and were resting at the equipoise. Then it
entered the sign
of Scorpio.
The scorpion lived in dry earth, and was only to be seen when the waters had
subsided.
In some
Egyptian zodiacs (zodiac of Esné) the Sagittarius, or Archer, is the compound
figure of a centaur
based on the
lion instead of the horse, with the human face of Shu in front and the face of
Tefnut the
lioness
behind. Shu was the elemental power of breathing force, and his twin-sister
represents moisture.
Her name
Tef-nut signifies the dew of heaven, and the dew of heaven was now the water
[Page 298] of
earth in
Egypt, the breath of Shu and moisture of Tefnut being imaged as the power of
the twin brother
and sister.
Tefnut, the sister of Shu, was joined with him in his battles on behalf of
Horus. “She is like fire
against the
wicked ones” - the Sami and the Sebau, “thundering against those who are to be
annihilated
for ever” ,
as it is said in the magical texts. When the sun entered this sign the Nile was
failing, the day
grew shorter
than the night; and Horus needed all the help that could be given. Hence Shu
the fighting
force was
configurated as the Archer. Shu, the power of the Air, had been divinized as
the warrior-god
who fought
for Horus as leader of the war against the rebel powers of darkness and of
drought now
mustering
their forces in the nether-world for renewing the assault.
Nowhere is it
more necessary to compare the face of the underlying fact with the mask of the
mythos to
see how
closely the mould was fitted to the features of nature by the Egyptians. In
Egypt, and in that
country only,
can the time of drought be absolutely identified with winter. Now the
Apap-dragon in
Egyptian
mythology is the dragon of drought, and the dragon of drought is the fiery
dragon. Hence Apap
in the form
of Hydra is cut in pieces to be drowned in the water of the inundation. In
Egypt only did the
figure
correspond to fact as the image of drought in winter caused by the dragon of
darkness. And it is
this
correspondence of natural fact to the symbolical figure which will account for
the fire-breathing
dragon of
winter in Europe which survives where it does not apply from lack of the
necessary climatic
conditions.
The Norse mythology preserves the fiery dragon as a representative of winter in
countries
where it
cannot be correlated with heat or drought. It survives with us in the pastime
of snap-dragon
sacred to the
winter season at Christmas. Here the dragon keeps its character as the
representative of
drought in
relation to the proper season of drought in Egypt as the fire-breathing dragon.
Moreover, the
dragon of
drought and of darkness are one and the same in winter; on that account only
did the dragon
of darkness
apply at winter-time in Europe, and not as the dragon of drought.
Yet, the
drowning of the dragon of drought became a European pastime in many lands where
there was
seldom any
lack of water, and never any want of it in winter. According to the seasons of
Egypt, at the
time when the
sun had reached the sign of the sea-goat not only had the fresh water of the
inundation
ceased to
flow, the water from the Mediterranean travelling upwards from the sea was now
the stronger
current,
bitter and brackish and detestable. The sea-goat is a compound type of goat and
fish. The fish
signifies
water; the water was now coming from the sea, and the sea-water was naturally
imaged by the
sea-goat.
Further, it is possible that the salt nature of the water at this point was
indicated by the goat.
seeing that a
young goat is an Egyptian ideograph of the word Ab for thirst; or it may be the
offensiveness
of the goat represented the repellent nature of “Salt Typhon's foam” .
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When the sun
was in the sign of Aquarius the moon at full had taken up the leadership by
night in
heaven, as
the mother-moon. This was she who fetched the water of life from the lower
regions and gave
re-birth to
vegetation in the upper-world. The great goddess [Page 299] that renewed the
light above was
also the
renewer of the waters from the springs of source in the abyss below. In one
legend which, like
several
others, is common to Egypt and Babylonia, the Great Mother, as Isis, also as
lshtar, descends
into the
under-world in search of the water of life, otherwise represented as her child,
who was Horus or
Tammuz
according to the cult. The “Descent of Ishtar” is dated in the Aramaic-Akkadian
calendar by the
month
Ki-Gingir-na, “the errand of Ishtar” , which was dedicated to the goddess with
“Virgo” as its
zodiacal
sign. This descent in search of the vanished water, the lost light, the
disappearing child, was
obviously
made by the goddess in her lunar character. It was as the moon that Ishtar
passed through the
seven gates
on her downward way when she was stripped of all her glory. (Talbot, The Legend
of Ishtar;
Records of
the Past, vol. i.) This search for the water of life occurs some five months
earlier in the
Babylonian
calendar than in the Egyptian year. Plutarch, in speaking of the mysteries,
tells us that “on the
eve of the
winter solstice” the Egyptians “carry the cow seven times round the Temple” ,
which is called
“the seeking
for Osiris” . (lsis and Osiris, 52.) This in the pre-Osirian mythos was the
elder Horus as the
mother's
child. Plutarch adds that the goddess who in one character is the earth-mother
was in great
distress from
want of water in the winter-time. The lost Osiris of the legend was not only
signified by the
loss of solar
potency that lsis went to seek for, it was also the renewal of water that she
sighed for and
wept in the
first drops of the new inundation. The disappearance of the water in Egypt was
coincident
with the
sinking of the sun in the winter solstice; both were commemorated in the
mourning of Isis. The
journey of
Isis in search of the water of life was about the time of the winter solstice;
when the water
disappeared
from Egypt and the coming time of drought began. The season coincided with the
sun in the
sign of
Aquarius when the lost Osiris or Child-Horus was re-discovered by the weeping
mother seeking
for the water
in the nether-world. The same errand is ascribed to Ishtar in the Babylonian
version of the
mythos. But
in the re-adjustment to the change of season in the Akkadian calendar, the
search is given to
the month
Ki-Gingir-na when the sun was in the sign of Virgo.
The renewer
of the water from the beginning was female. At first it was Apt the water-cow.
Then Hathor
or Nut the
milch-cow, then Isis as the weeping-mother who had lost her child. In the
legend of Leylet en-
Nuktah, or
“Night of the Drop” , a miraculous tear was supposed to fall from Heaven on to
the Nile, and,
according to
Pausanias, it was taught that the rise of the river was dependent on the drops
that fell from
the eyes of
Isis. In the Coptic calendar the “Night of the Drop” is dated Baouneh 11th =
June 17th , by
means of
which the first drops of the inundation could be traced to the Great Mother
weeping for the lost
Osiris, or
the earlier Horus of the inundation. Now, when the tail of the Great Bear
pointed northward and
the sun
coincided with the sign of Aquarius there was a re-birth of water from the abyss
that issued from
the mouth of
Piscis Australis. The picture of source in the abyss was now repeated, and the
wet-nurse or
wateress was
constellated in the zodiac as the multimammalian Menat, who was a later form of
Apt the
water-cow.
[Page 300] The imagery shows the perennial source of water in the under-world.
and that
which
proceeded from the mouth of the fish now emanates from the numerous mammć of
the wet-nurse
on the
ecliptic. Thus the birth and re-birth of water are represented six months apart
with the Great Bear
presiding
over both. In other words the water (or Child-Horus) that was lost to Egypt in
the upper world
was now
re-found by the Great Mother seeking in the abyss of source from whence she
drew the water
of renewal
for another year. The abyss was founded in the south. Aquarius is a southern
sign, and it took
six months
altogether to bring the water from the abyss to its fulfilment in the
inundation. The sun had
reached its
“Utat” at the point of southing for the region where the Urn of the waters was
to be refilled; the
Nile
replenished from the abyss of source configurated as the fish's mouth. When the
winter-sun was low
down in the
solstice it was southing slowly through the deep outside the earth. The hidden
source of
water was the
same, when represented by the wet-nurse in the zodiac, as that from which the
inundation
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issued in the
south. There was but one abyss, whether this was indicated by the fish's mouth,
the dugs of
Apt, the
female breast of Hapi-Mu, or the multi-mammae of the suckler Menat. At the time
when the
inundation
had run dry in Egypt the February rains were re-commencing in the equatorial
regions. The
lakes began
to swell and the waters of the White Nile to rise and rush forth on their
joyful journey towards
the north.
The new flood only reached the Delta just in time to save the country from
drought and sterility.
“Krater” was
the urn or water-pot of the inundation. This in the south was brimming full.
But when the sun
had reached
Aquarius, behold! the urn was empty. Hence the reversal of the vessel in his
hands. The
inundation
was poured out. The urn needed to be replenished anew from the well of secret source,
or the
mouth of the
abyss. Hitherto it has been conjectured that water from the urn was pouring
down-ward
toward the
mouth of the abyss. But this would have no meaning in the mythos by which the
imagery has
to be
interpreted. The water comes up from that welling-source depicted low down in
the south now
looked to for
the future inundation. When the uranograph of Aquarius is rightly read, we see
the last of
the
inundation in Egypt. The water poured out from the urn has come to an end. The
urn, or bucket,
being at
times reversed, is consequently empty. Also the mode of replenishment from the
tepht of source,
or well of
the deep, is indicated in the planisphere. On studying the figure of the
“southern fish” we see a
stream of
water springing up from its mouth in the direction of Aquarius. And this is met
by Aquarius with
his empty urn
held in position to receive the water of the new inundation from the
welling-source in the
abyss.
In the
Osirian mythos Isis, or the cow-headed Hesi, had become the wateress or
wet-nurse to the world
in place of
Apt the water-cow and Hathor the milch-cow; and now the New Nile was attributed
to the tears
which Isis
shed for the lost Osiris or the earlier Child-Horus. when he vanished with the
sinking water in
the
under-world.
It is
possible to take one step further round the zodiac and thus include the sign of
the fishes. But it has
to be
explained that Horus in the zodiac was not simply the lord of life, as the
bringer of food [Page 301]
and water in
the inundation. Horus in the zodiac was also the solar god, who was the child
conceived in
Virgo, as
Horus of the inundation, who was Horus of the resurrection, lord of the
harvest, in the sign of
Pisces: In
the Greco-Kamite zodiacs the fish-mother gives re-birth to her child as a fish
in the
constellation
of the fishes. (Book of the Beginnings, Plate.) Also in other monuments, the
mother, as
Hathor-Isis,
bears the fish upon her head. Thus the fish-man or fish-god was re-born of the
fish-mother in
the abode of
the abyss or the house of the fish, and the point of emergence for the sun-god
in the zodiac
was indicated
by the sign of the fish or fishes at the time when the crocodile was the fish
of Neith as
Sebek-Horus.
No representation of the inundation or the drought is directly apparent in the
sign of Aries
and Taurus.
But the drama was not limited to the zodiac. The rising Pleiads and the “rainy
Hyades” have
ever been the
harbingers of water or of spring. One name of the Hyades in Greek is Hues, the
Sows or
Suculae, and
in Egypt, Rerit the Sow was a figure of the Great Mother as the wet-nurse or
suckler, who
was
represented at one time by the seven sows, at another by the seven cows, at
another by the many-
breasted
Menat as the typical provider of plenty.
In certain
old Egyptian calendars, the periodic triumph of Horus over the plagues of
drought and
darkness was
commemorated by a festival called “the wounding of Sut” . The event is referred
to as
occurring on
the first of the month, Epiphi - May 16th in the sacred year; June 25th in the
Alexandrian
year. This
was exactly one month previous to the birth of the new inundation dated July
25th. And as the
month Mesore
agrees with the sun in the sign of Cancer or the beetles, so the month Epiphi
coincided
with the sun
in the sign of the Gemini, who were Sut and Horus as the twins contending for
supremacy in
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the equinox
or on the mount. At this point Sut was mortally wounded, and the victory of
Horus, the
bringer of
water and food and the renewer of light, was perfectly complete. (Festival
Calendars of Esné
and Edfű.)
Now the worst was over. The long holiday celebrated by the Uaka festival had
come at last
with its
relief. And here the Egyptian holiday was one with a holy day as the time of
rest from labour, and
the great
feast of eating and drinking was a mode of giving thanks as well as of making
merry. The
fulfiller in
the water and the grapes was welcomed in the drink he brought, with the
drinking and the
eating, at
the festival of intoxication, dedicated to the goddess Hathor. The history of
Horus the child-
hero, the
eternal Messu who became incarnate as a typical saviour of the world, was thus
portrayed and
could be
repeated by all who understood the mythos which was depicted in the book above.
His birth
from the
water was imaged by the figure of Horus on his papyrus, which is represented
astronomically in
a scene from
the rectangular zodiac of Denderah. Horus in this is represented by the hawk on
the
papyrus-plant
emerging from the water. By means of this we can identify the birth of the babe
who was
born “from
between the knees of Sothis” (Rit., ch. 65) as Horus of the inundation.
The walls and
windows of the house on high have been emblazoned like all Italy with pictures
of the
Virgin Mother
and her child; the [Page 302] Virgin Mother in one character who conceived, and
the Great
Mother as
bringer-forth in the character of gestator. The planisphere contains a whole
pantheon of
Egyptian
deities. They are the gods and goddesses of Egypt, the mythological personages
and zootypes
that make up
the vast procession which moves on for ever round and round according to the
revolutions
of the earth
or the apparent revolution of the sphere. Taking the same order in which the
signs on the
ecliptic are
read today when Aries has become Princeps Zodiac: we can identify at least a
dozen deities
of Egypt with
the twelve signs.
(I) The
ram-headed Amen with the constellation Aries;
(2) Osiris,
the Bull of Eternity, with the sign of Taurus;
(3) the
Sut-Horus Twins with the Gemini;
(4) the
beetle-headed Kheper-Ptah with the sign of the Beetle, later Crab;
(5) the
lion-faced Atum with the sign of Leo;
(6) the
Virgin Neith with the constellation Virgo;
(7) Har-Makhu
of the Scales with the sign of Libra;
(8)
Isis-Serkh, the scorpion goddess, with the sign of Scorpio;
(9) Shu and
Tefnut figured as the Archer with the sign of Sagittarius;
(10) Num, the
goat-headed, who presided over the abyss with the sign of Capricornus
(I I) Menat,
the divine wet-nurse with the sign of Aquarius;
(12) Horus of
the two crocodiles with the sign of Pisces.
Enough to
show that the zodiac was a lower gallery in the pantheon of the Egyptian
planisphere. And it is
not humanly
conceivable that all these gods and goddesses and nature powers of Egypt were
constellated
as figures in the starry vast by any other than the Egyptian “mystery teachers”
of the
heavens.
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There may
have been some kind of stellar enclosure round the pole of Sut in the south
before a
circumpolar
paradise could have been configurated in the northern heaven by the Astronomers
in the
land of
Kamit. But, even so, it is not necessary to assume a knowledge of Precession to
explain the
sinking of
the pole and its accompanying stars that went down in the southern Deep. To
those who
travelled
northward from the equatorial regions heading for the valley of the Nile there
was an actual
subsidence
and submergence of a human fore-world in the south; This was a matter of
latitude
determinable
by the stars that sank into the abyss, the natural fact that preceded the
figure in mythology.
The abyss
became the grave as it were of some lost world which had once been real on the
earth. But
the imagery
of this far country has been preserved twice over, and is still extant; once in
the constellation
figures and
once in the double earth of Ptah's Amenta. That fore-world of the south was
reproduced by
the Egyptians
of the north when they raised their circumpolar paradise to picture for all
time some
features of
the old primeval home. The southern pole star sank into the blind abyss
together with the little
bit of
foothold that was first established. This, in later legend, would become a fall
from heaven, or
submergence
in a deluge, as the fact was figured in the astronomical mythology. Hence we
find the
legends of
the lost paradise: the primal pair as man and cow, the twin brothers, the fall
from heaven, the
deluge, and
other stories as indigenous products at the centre of the old dark land.
But the grand
scheme of uranographic representation was completed in the valley of the Nile
where the
north
celestial pole had [Page 303] become the central summit of the starry system.
The south was the
scene of
so-called “creation” . The creation which as Egyptian literally signifies “of
the first time” . And as
we learn from
the inscription of Tahtmes on the stele of the Sphinx, the first time goes back
to the days
and domain of
Sut; Sut who is traditionally “the inventor of astronomy” , and who as such had
erected the
pillar of the
pole star. The domain of Sut was in the south. And it is shown by the ancient
legends and the
primitive
constellations that the beginnings of the astral mythos were in equatoria
looking south. The
abyss of
water was figured in the south. The earth-mother in the abyss is in the south.
The monsters
representative
other hugeness were constellated in the south. The tree first planted in the
abyss was in
the south.
The fore-world that sank down beneath the waters of the deluge was in the
south, and
according to
the legend lies today beneath the waters of Tanga, or the Thigh, in the lake of
the birthplace,
Tanganyika.
Egypt was set in heaven as the upper land, and lower Egypt was repeated in
Amenta.
The name of
Egypt is at root Egyptian. It is derivable from Kep, later Kheb, whence Khept,
or Khepti, is a
plural for
the double land. Kep-Kep, another dual form, had been a name of Nubia. Kep, or
Kheb,
signifies the
chamber, the womb, the birthplace. It is likewise a name of the water-cow that
was
configurated
as a type of Egypt in the planisphere. The hieroglyphic “Khept” is a symbol of
the birthplace.
This is the
Thigh, the Haunch, or Meskhen of the Mother Khept (or Apt). Thus the Egyptian
Nome of the
“haunch” was
the Nome of the birthplace in Khept, Khebt, or Egypt. When the anthrotype had
succeeded
the zootype
we find that Egypt was figured as a female lying on her back with feet to the
northward
pointing in
the direction of the Great Bear constellation. This was the motherland in the
likeness of the
human mother
who had taken the place and position of the African water-cow, an image of the
birthplace
and abode
being thus palpably continued (Stoboeus, Ecl. Eth., p. 992, from a fragment of
Hermes) as a
figure of
Egypt thus identified by nature and by name as the birth-place and
bringer-forth. The “haunch”
or thigh is
an ideographic sign that was constellated in the northern heaven as a figure of
the birthplace,
and if so in
the celestial chart, assuredly it had the same significance for a birthplace on
the Libyan bank
of the river
Nile, hence its elevation to the sphere as a uranographic symbol of locality. A
place of
settlement is
still called the seat, and the “haunch” in sign-language was the seat.
Primordially it was the
natural seat
of the squatters who sat with heel to haunch. And the same symbol was figured
in the
northern
heaven to denote the astronome of the “haunch” as a seat or birthplace above,
whatsoever the
birth and
whosoever was the divinized Nomarch, We may be certain it was not without
intention that the
great pyramid
of Gizeh was founded by King Kufu in the nome of the “haunch” , the seat of the
Great
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Mother,
Khebt, or Egypt. The inhabitants of lower Egypt also remained faithful to the
Tree as a twofold
sign which is
the sycamore of Hathor in the south, and the sycamore of Nut in the north.
There was a
territory of
the upper and lower Oleander, also of the upper and lower Terebin tree. As
Maspero remarks,
“the
principality of the Terebin (tree) occupied the very heart of Egypt, a country
well suited to be the
cradle of an
infant civilization” (Dawn of Civilization, p. 71, Eng. tr.). [Page 304] “The
district of the white
wall, marched
with that of the haunch” alongside of each other on the Nile, as they were
likewise
constellated
in the northern heaven.
Am-Khemen,
the paradise of the eight great gods in the mythology, had its likeness in the
nome of the
hare, the
chief town of which was Khemenu, the present Ashmunein, the town of Taht, who
was an eighth
to the seven
gods in the lunar mythos.
It was upon
the steps of the mound in Khemenu that Shu stood as elevator of the cow of Nut
= the
heaven of the
eight great gods, which shows the priority of the nome in Egypt as the
prototype of the
astronome
that was constellated in the northern stars. Kenset is an Egyptian name for
Nubia, and
according to
the pyramid texts there was a celestial locality of the same name in the
astronomical
mythology
which holds the mirror aloft to reflect the Kenset that was prototypal on the
earth, as it likewise
reflected the
nomes of the haunch, the tree, the pillar, or others localized at first below.
Another
Egyptian nome was called the Serpent-mountain, which was also repeated above
with the great
serpent
winding round the tree or mountain of the north celestial pole. Thus the
beginnings of the race
and the
environment were depicted for a purpose in the heaven of the north, and the
field of the papyrus-
reed that
furnished the primeval food in the southern birthplace was set in Heaven, as
the Aarru-field of
peace and
everlasting plenty on the summit of Mount Hetep at the pole.
In the Ritual
(ch. 109) the paradise of plenty, first denoted by the water plants, has become
the harvest-
field which
is surrounded and protected by a wall of steel. The wheat in this divine domain
grew seven
cubits high
and was two cubits long in the ear. The barley from which beer was brewed, was
four cubits
in the ear,
but the original paradise, the Aarru or Allu, from which the Greeks derived
their Elysian fields,
was
constellated as the land of the papyrus reed, the shoots of which were eaten as
the primitive food
that grew in
the greatest abundance in the region of the two great lakes.The most primitive
ideal of
paradise was
that of an ever-green oasis, in the midst of the African desert, welling with
life-giving water,
and with the
large-leaved sycamore fig tree or dom-palm or the papyrus plant at the centre
as a figure of
food. Inner
Africa contains the prototype of the Egyptian paradise in a land of welling
waters where the
food came of
itself and was perpetually renewed, and there was little need for labour. And
when the
outward
movements of the wandering nomads began, and thirst and hunger were to be faced
in
waterless
wastes of rootless desert sand, there would be yearnings of regret for the old
lost home and
birth-land
left behind, now glorified by distance and the glamour of tradition. And so the
universal legend
grew which
was not absolutely baseless. The felicity enjoyed in this primeval land of
legendary lore is
such as was
possessed at one time on the earth, the upper paradise being a sublimated
replica of a
lower or
terrestrial paradise. Thus, the primitive paradise of the Egyptians, as a land
from which the
human race
had come, was constellated in the northern heaven as the top of attainment in a
world to
which they
were going for an everlasting home, and in a clime where food and air and water
never failed.
[Page 305] In
the North, an Egypt of the heavens was figured first within the circle of the
Greater Bear.
This was the
land of Khept, as a celestial locality. The circle was then divided into south
and north, as
double Egypt,
upper and lower, and the two halves were described as the domains of Sut and
Horus,
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Ancient
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who were the
first two children of the ancient Genetrix, the mother of seven offspring
altogether.
Thus,
according to the present reading of the astronomical mythology, the imagery
configurated in the
stars was
African in origin, and the teachers of its primitive mysteries were Egyptian.
The seven
astronomes in
the celestial heptanomis of the seven Egyptian nomes, we hold to have been
figured first
on earth, and
subsequently imaged in the heavens. Following the totemic sept of the sevens
Egypt
appears to
have been mapped out first in seven nomes, and this heptanomis below to have
been
repeated in
the planisphere.
Seven nomes
are said to have been, according to a later transliteration of names, those of
the
Memphites,
Heracleopolites, Crocodileopolites, Aphroditopolites, Oxyrhynchites,
Cynopolites, and
Hermopolites.
The great and lesser oases were considered to be parts of the heptanomis
(Budge, E. A.
W., The
Mummy, p. 8). The goddess of the Great Bear, Khebt or Apt, was mother of the
fields of heaven
when they
consisted of the seven astronomes. Those fields of the papyrus reed were
figured within the
circle made
by the annual turn round of the seven stars about the north celestial pole.
This, in the
mythos,
formed the enclosure of the typical tree, which was planted in the midst of the
garden - the tree
of life or
food in the celestial waters, otherwise the tree of the pole in the
astronomical mythology.The
constellation
of the female hippopotamus (or Great Bear) was the mother of the time-circles.
It was a
clock or
horologe, on account of its wheeling round the pole once every four and twenty
hours. This, or
the “haunch”
, is obscurely referred to in the text from the Temple of Denderah, as the
clock or instrument
by which the
moon-god, Tehuti, measured the hours. Hence, the hippopotamus remained a
hieroglyphic
sign for the
hour (Hor-Apollo B, 2, 20). The Great Bear was also a clock of the four
quarters in the circle
of the year,
as is witnessed by the saying of the Chinese: when the tail of the Great Bear
points to the
east it is
spring; when it points to the south it is summer; when it points to the west it
is autumn; when it
points to the
north it is winter. In Egypt, when the Great Bear pointed to the south, or,
astronomically,
when the
constellation had attained its southernmost elongation, it was the time of the
inundation, the
birthday of
the year, which was also called the birthday of the world. Now, this is the
particular point at
which
apparently the planisphere, or orrery, was set at starting, whether two
thousand or twenty-eight
thousand
years ago. As the celestial globe has come to us it looks as if a
starting-point in time might still
be made out
in the year of the Great Bear and the inundation with the tail-stars of the
Bear as pointers to
the
birthplace of the waters, coming from the south with their salvation, and with
Horus in the ark as the
deliverer
from the dragon of drought and thence doctrinally as the saviour of the world.
It is a common
assumption
that the earliest Egyptian year was a year of 360 days based upon twelve moons
of thirty
days each.
There was such a reckoning, and [Page 306] no doubt its origin was lunar. This
would be
attributed to
the moon-god, Tehuti (Taht), who was the measurer, although not only as the
reckoner of
lunar time;
hence he became the opener of the year, beginning with the first month assigned
to Taht. But,
in an older
table of the months found at the Ramesseum and at Edfu, the goddess Tekhi is
the opener of
the year, and
not the moon-god, Taht. Here the first month has the name of Tekhi versus Taht.
The word
Tekhi
signifies a supply of liquid, to supply with drink, and the goddess Tekhi is
the opener of the year
with the
inundation. We regard this year of the Great Bear and the inundation (that of
Apt, Menat or
Tekhi) as
primary. Next comes the year of 360 days, to which the five days were added by
Taht; this was
lunar, or
luni-stellar. The inundation was a primary factor in the establishment of time
in Egypt and the
foundation of
the year. The fact is recognized in the “Hymn to the Nile” when it is said
“Stable are thy
decrees for
Egypt” , that is, in the fixed periodic return of the waters. Also, as the
teacher of time, the Nile
is said to be
the inspirer of Taht, who was the measurer of time by means of the Great Bear,
the moon,
and the
inundation. Under the name of Tekhi, the Old Great Mother was the giver of
liquid and supplier of
drink; as Apt
or Khept she was the water-cow with a woman's breasts; as Neith she was the
suckler of
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crocodiles;
as Rerit she was the suckler in the form of the many-teated sow; as Hesi (Greek
Isis) she was
the
milch-cow, and as Menat she was the wetnurse. Under all these types she was
primordially the
Mother-earth,
and fundamentally related to the water-source, or in Egypt to the inundation.
This is the
Old First
Mother who was given the Great Bear as her constellation in the northern heaven
where she
became the
maker of the “starry revolutions or cycles, and thence the mother of the
earliest year in time.
It was a year
dependent on the inundation and determined by the birth of Horus as the
crocodile-headed
Sebek who,
like Arthur, was the son of the Great Bear, otherwise the crocodile of the
inundation. The
birth is
represented in the astronomical fragment from a Theban tomb. In this the Old
First Mother has
just given
birth to her young crocodile and dropped it in front of her. Thus we behold the
birth of Sebek,
which
according to the sign-Ianguage is equally the birth of another year, at the
moment when the Great
Bear's tail
is pointing to the birthplace (see fig., p. 289).
One of the
old Egyptian legends, briefly repeated by Plutarch, may afford us a hint
concerning this
beginning of
the year with the annual revolution of the Great Mother in Ursa Major as the
hippopotamus
or crocodile.
According to this the solar god discovered that the Great Mother, Rhea, had
been cohabiting
secretly with
Saturn. He consequently laid a spell upon her that she should not bring forth a
child in either
a month or a
year. Then Hermes being likewise in love with the goddess copulated with her,
and
afterwards
playing counters with the female moon he won from her the seventieth part of
each one of her
lights. Out
of the whole he composed five days, and added these to the three hundred and
sixty, which
days the
Egyptians call the additional days. Who then were the Kamite originals of the
Greek Rhea,
Saturn and
Hermes? Rhea, like Apt, or Nut, was the mother of the gods. [Page 307] Saturn
the dragon was
a form of
Sebek, the crocodile-headed Horus, the prototype of the good dragon; and Hermes
is the
Egyptian
Tehuti, the moon-god. The secret connection of the Great Mother with Saturn
agrees with the
connection
between the goddess of the Great Bear and Sebek, who was married to his mother.
The year
of the Great
Bear and the inundation, or of Apt and Sebek, was found to be wrong, and this
was righted
when
Taht-Hermes, the measurer of time by the Great Bear and the moon, had added the
five additional
days to the
earlier year, and thus established the truer cycle of 365 days to the year, by
means of his cooperation
with the moon.
Thus the mother of the revolutions established the earliest cycle of time in
the
circle of the
year which ended when the Bear was pointing to the birthplace of the water in
the south, and
the festival
of “the Tail” was celebrated for the coming of the inundation. The tail of the
Great Bear, as
pointer or
indicator on the face of the celestial horologe, was obviously still employed
and reckoned with
for the
Set-Heb festival, which was celebrated by the Egyptians every thirty years.
This feast, or a section
of it, was
known by name as “the Festival of the Tail” . It was the anniversary of some
very special year of
years. There
was a lord of the thirty-year festival, who was at one period Ptah, at another
Horus. The
birthplace of
the inundation when the Great Bear pointed to it in the southern quarter was a
point for ever
fixed in the
region of the waters, let us say (for the moment) coincident with the sign of
Leo. That point
did not
retrocede. But when the place of birth, as solar, was shifted to the vernal
equinox and the equinox
receded, the
birthplace went with it from zodiacal sign to sign. The time of the sun parted
company with
the time of
the Great Bear and the inundation, for a cycle of 26,000 years. A great change
was made
when the time
of the inundation was supplemented by the time of the sun. The birthplace of
Horus (of the
waters) had
been in the south at the season of the year when the tail of the Bear denoted
the birthplace
in that
quarter of the heavens and the Great Mother presided over the birth of the
child, the crocodile or
the papyrus
shoot. The birthplace in the solar mythos was shifted, and the point was
determined by the
position of
the vernal equinox as it travelled from sign to sign in the great circuit of
precession: from Virgo
to Leo, from
Cancer to the Twins, from the Bull to the Ram, from the Fishes to the Waterer.
Whether in
the pre-solar
or the solar mythos, whether as Apt, Tekhi or Hathor, the old Genetrix presided
over the
birth of
Horus, on this great birthday that was commemorated in Egypt as the birthday of
creation. It was
an
unparalleled meeting-point. The star Phact, in the constellation Columba, far
south, announced the
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Ancient
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inundation.
Canopus showed the babe on board the bark, ascending from the south. Heralded
by Sothis,
his dog,
Orion rose up from the river, at the north end of Eridanus, the stellar
representative of him who
came as Horus
of the inundation. This advent is depicted in the monuments (Maspero, D. ofC.,
Eng. tr.,
p. 97).
Thus the
Egyptian sacred year is that of the Inundation and the Bear. Its opening
coincided roughly with
the summer
solstice - when the solstices had at length been recognized - with the sun in
the lion-sign.
And of course
when the solstice, or the sun, was in [Page 308] that sign, the vernal equinox
was passing
through the
sign of Taurus. Now, the earliest year we read of in Babylonia is that which
opened with the
vernal
equinox in the sign of the “directing bull” . This was the same year or cycle,
sign for sign, as the
Egyptian
sacred year with the solstice in Leo, but with a different point of
commencement, the Egyptian
starting from
the solstice; or rather from what had ever been the fixed point of the
inundation; the
Babylonian
from the vernal equinox. Khebt, the goddess of the Great Bear, was said to
“preside over the
birth of the
Sun” . In the stellar mythos she had presided over the birth of Horus in the
inundation. But
when solar
time was established the child was solar too, and the sun-god Horus Har-Makhu
superseded
Sebek of the
inundation. His place of birth was shifted to the vernal equinox, and the birth
itself was
thenceforth
timed no longer to the inundation. Horus, the Child or Me~su of the inundation,
on his
papyrus, was
now brought forth by Hathor, with Sothis as the Star of Annunciation. The birth
took place in
“Sothis” ,
the birthday being determined by the heliacal rising of the star, as well as by
the Tail of Ursa
Major. Khebt,
or Apt, the Old First Mother, still presided, as great correlator over all, as
if she were the
midwife or
meskhenat in attendance at the birth when Hathor had become the mother. The
goddess
Hathor was
termed the mistress of the beginning of the year in relation to the rising of
Sothis; and Hathor
was a form of
the hippopotamus-headed mother of the beginnings in the Great Bear, with the
milch-cow
substituted
for the water-cow; both being types of the wetnurse and giver of the precious
liquid of life.
And when the
celestial figures of the astral Mythology were constellated in the northern
heaven the
ancient
Genetrix had been portrayed already in the three characters of mother-earth,
the mother of water,
and the
mother of breath. But before we have done with the Great Bear Constellation in
the northern
heaven we
have to point out a primitive symbol of her who was figured as the mother of
beginnings by
nature and by
name.
A magical implement
commonly called the “bull-roarer” is found in divers parts of the world. It is
one of
the simplest
things that ever acquired a primitive sacredness from being made use of as a
means of
invocation in
the religious mysteries and totemic ceremonies of the past; an implement that
is dying out in
England today
as a toy now called the “fun of the fair” . The Arunta Churinga shows that the
“whirler“ “
roarer” or
thun-thunie, originally represented the female. Hence it has the phallic emblem
of the vulva
figured on it
as a device in the language of signs. (N. T. P. 150.) Others of the churinga
are womb-
shaped. The
ornament of others also indicates the human birthplace. Moreover, life is
portrayed in the
act of
issuing from the wood, as tree-frogs issued from the tree. Enough to show the
primitive nature of
the symbol.
It is used in the mysteries as a means of calling the initiates who are about
to be made into
men. The
special dance of the nude young women, their exhibition of the embellished organ
and peculiar
appeal to the
youngsters, demonstrates that the call is made by female nature at the time for
that
fulfilment of
the male which was the object of the ceremony. These women were making the
visible call
that was
audible in the sound of the bull-roarer. In the course of time the implements
had changed hands
as [Page 309]
the mysteries became more and more masculine and the women were excluded from
the
ceremonies.
But the Kurnai have two kinds of “Roarer” , one of which represents the
inspiring spirit as
female; this
was primary. At first the “whirler” used in the mysteries to call the initiates
for young-manmaking
was the voice
of the female calling on the male, to become a man; to be brave in fulfilling
the
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Ancient
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laws of Tabu
and rules of personal conduct; to be true to the brotherhood, and “not to eat
the forbidden
food” . The
forms of the magical instrument differ, but all are used for whirling round to
make the call.
Now Khebt,
the Old First Mother in Egyptian mythology, who was constellated in the Great
Bear, is
portrayed
with the “bull-roarer” held in front of her womb. The name of the Egyptian
instrument is
“menait” ,
which literally signifies the whirler, from men to rotate, to whirl round. Thus
the symbol of the
whirling
round can be traced to the mother of the revolutions as a figure in the
astronomical mythology of
Egypt. The
Great Bear goddess was portrayed in this position as the “mother of the
revolutions” and the
maker of
motion in a circle. Hers was the primary power that drew or turned, hurled or
whirled the starry
system round
about the pole, as the mighty hippopotamus in the celestial waters. Her names
of Rerit and
Menait both
indicate the character of rotator, which is signified by the menait in her
hands. The goddess
of the Great
Bear (hippopotamus) was adored at Ombos as the “living word” . She is
configurated in the
planisphere
with huge jaws wide open in the act of uttering the word, or of roaring. The
Egyptian wisdom
implies that
the menait held in front of the First Mother signified the female emblem, the
original
instrument of
magical power. With the roar of Rerit the water-cow called to her young bulls,
and her roar
would be
imitated by the bull-roarer, menait or turndun, in calling them, and as the
voice of the female
calling on
the males it was continued in the ceremony of young-man-making, in the totemic
mysteries.
Thus we find
the goddess Apt, or Khebt the roarer, as a hippopotamus, the Great Bear,
“rurring” or
whirling
round, with the “bull-roarer” as her sign and symbol, at the centre of the
northern heaven ( see
fig., page
124, also page 311).
There is a
remarkable survival of what may be tentatively termed the cult of the Great
Bear amongst the
Mandaites or
Sabeans of Mesopotomia, who are worshippers of the “living word” . In the
performance of
their worship
the eyes are fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. They celebrate a kind of
feast of
tabernacles
annually, for which they erect a tabernacle called the Mishkena or Meskhen.
Lastly, the
primordial
star-cult of the Great Bear is also British. In the ancient Welsh mythology the
Great Mother
Arth is the
goddess of the Great Bear, and Arthur= Horus is her solar son who makes his
celestial voyage
with the
seven in the ark.
Hitherto
Egyptologists have been inclined to regard the female hippopotamus (our Great
Bear) and the
“haunch” - as
one and the same constellation. This premature guess is erroneous. They were
both signs
of the Great
Mother, but in two separate constellations which represented two different
characters. In the
Egyptian
planisphere, as at Denderah, the female hippopotamus answers to our Great Bear,
whereas the
sign of the
“haunch” is on the far side of the Lesser Bear, in the position of Cassiopoea,
the lady in the
chair. If
[Page 310] we take the tail-star of the Bear as guide, the constellation
Cassiopoea is almost
exactly
opposite. Thus when the tail of the bear is pointing north in winter,
Cassiopoea is at its southern
elongation.
These are two different types of the Great Mother, who was Apt the Earth-Mother
in one
character, as
the water-cow, and Nut the Mother of Heaven in the other, as the milch-cow.
Also in the
illustration
on a Theban tomb the constellation of the “haunch” is widely distinct from the
hippopotamus.
And it is
this constellation that is distinguished by name as the “meskhen” with the
hieroglyphics written
on it which
read ,
Mes-khe-n,
the womb as place or chamber of birth depicted in the
constellation
of the “haunch” or “thigh” . It is noticeable that the head of the milch-cow is
portrayed upon
the “haunch”
. This distinguishes the one cow from the other, the milch-cow of Nut from the
water-cow of
Khebt or Apt,
or our Great Bear. It also shows that the “thigh” or “haunch” belonged to the
milch-cow, and
represented
the same celestial “seat” and place of origin as the later lady in the chair.
But, whether it is
figured as
the cow or Meskhen. the “thigh” , “haunch” , or leg of the cow, it signified
the birthplace of the
celestial
waters in the mythos and the place of re-birth for souls in the heaven of
eternity. Then follows
the tampering
and retouching process of the Euphrateans, Greeks, or other modern claimants to
the
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Ancient
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ancient
wisdom. The place of the “seat” or “thigh” was given to a woman sitting in a
chair, and the lady of
the chair
usurps the throne of Isis with her seat and the pre-anthropomorphic type that
was constellated
ages on ages
earlier in Egypt as the cow of Nut or heaven. The “thigh” in sign-language is a
type of birth
and thence of
the birthplace, when the birth was water, as we find it constellated in the
northern heaven.
The star
“Phact” (in Arabic, the thigh) shows us that this birthplace had been
constellated in the southern
hemisphere as
the sign of Tekhi the giver of water in the inundation. Thus the “thigh” was
figured both in
the south and
in the north to signify the birthplace and the birth of water. In the south the
water was the
river Nile,
and in the north it is the river of the Milky Way. These are the two waters of
earth and heaven
proceeding
from the cow that was the water-cow of Apt or Tekhi in the earth, and the
milch-cow of Nut in
heaven. As
before said, one of the two great lakes at the celestial pole is the Lake of
the “Thigh” or
“Haunch” ,
which is mentioned by name in the Ritual (ch. 149). It is also called the Thigh
of Khar-aba, at
the head of
the canal, or Milky Way. The Lake of the Thigh was the birthplace of the waters
above, where
the milch-cow
or her “haunch” was a constellated figure of source whence flowed the great
white river of
the Via
Lactea. The leg (thigh, seat, womb, or haunch) of Nut, the celestial cow, once
stood where the
lady in the
chair is seated now. Nut, or the milch-cow, was the bringer to re-birth in this
region of the pole.
The Seven Powers
brought to their re-birth in Seven Great Spirits were constellated as her
children in the
Lesser Bear,
as seven stars that never set, but were fixtures for eternity. The two
constellations of the
hippopotamus
and the “haunch” , or Meskhen, are also found in the rectangular zodiac that
was carved
upon the
ceiling of the Great Temple at Denderah. - [Page 311]. As may be observed, the
two figures of
the
hippopotamus and the “haunch“ ( or milch-cow) are yoked together by a chain,
one end of which is
held by Apt,
and the other is made fast to the “haunch” or cow. This is in the position of
the pole which
was the yoke
or bond of heaven, and which was known in Babylonia as “the yoke of the
enclosure” . The
chain shows
that the Great Bear was made fast to the pole for security in its swing round.
It also shows
that the pole
was once imaged either in or by the constellation of the “haunch” , the seat,
or milch-cow in
that region.
The leg or thigh was an Egyptian figure of the pole, as we find it in “the leg
of Ptah” , a
“over the
pole” (Ritual, ch. 7, 74, and 98, Renouf).
Heaven as a
source of liquid life that dropped in dew
and rain upon
the earth was likened to a cow, or, in sign-
language, was
the cow. Apt is the cow of earth and Nut
the cow of
heaven. Apparently the cow of heaven, or
Nut, supplied
the earliest foundation for the pole
which, as the
figure of the cow dislimned, was represented by the leg of Nut (otherwise
called the
“thigh” , the
“haunch” or “seat” ) as the central figure of support in heaven. The cow being
primary, it
follows that
the “leg of Nut” was an earlier image of the pole than the “leg of Ptah” , the
staff of Anup, or
the backbone
of Osiris - which were also figures of fixity whether at or as the pole of
Heaven. The leg or
haunch of the
cow was then left standing in the midst of the Milky Way. The speaker in the
Ritual thus
addresses it,
“Oh, thou leg in the northern sky, and in that most conspicuous but
inaccessible stream” ,
which is
elsewhere termed the canal. In the pyramid texts it is called “the leg (Uarit)
of the Akhemu-Seku”
, the stars
that never set - the eternals, as a type of stability (Pepi I, 411).
Cassiopoea, the lady in the
chair, also
sits in the midst of the Milky Way. Thus the “seat” remains, if only as a
chair; the white river
flows, with
nothing to account for it; and the lake of milk, the cow, the haunch, thigh or
leg of Nut are all
dislimned or
have passed away.
The Great
Bear made her circuit on the outside of the never-setting stars, whereas the
“leg” or “haunch”
Page 240
constellation
which has been identified with the lady of the seat. Hence, “above the leg” is
equivalent to
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
was a constellation
in the circle of perpetual apparition. It never set below the horizon, nor
[Page 312] did
any of its
stars go down through all the period of the long great year. Thus the bit of
foothold in the watery
vast of space
was figured as the “seat” , the Meskhen, womb, or re-birth-place in the heaven
of eternity.
The deceased,
when speaking of his going forth from the tomb, identifies this constellation
with the place
of re-birth
above, saying, “I shall shine above the' haunch' as I come forth in heaven”
(Rit., ch. 74). That
is, at the
point where the “leg” was constellated to show the upward way upon the starry
map to him who
lay looking
heavenward “with a corpse-like face” . Deceased in Amenta pleads for his
re-birth above
betwixt the
thighs of the divine cow as a type of heaven (Rit: ch. 148), The Old Great
Mother, as the
hippopotamus,
we repeat, was not within the circle of the never-setting stars, in the
circumpolar
Paradise, It
was the milch-cow Hesit not the water-cow, that “gave the white liquor which
the glorified
ones love” ;
the milk that flowed from the cow, whether she was divinized as Nut, or Mehurit
the Heaven,
or Hathor, or
Isis the cow-headed goddesses. The cow Hesit was designated “the Divine Mother
and fair
nurse” as
giver of the liquid of life when this was represented in heaven by the milk of
the celestial cow.
This
identification of the “thigh” as a totally different constellation from the
Greater Bear will alter the
reading of
certain inscriptions in which the “thigh” and “Bear” have been mixed up
together. For example,
when the
alignment was made for the Temple of Hathor to be rebuilt at Denderah, in the
time of
Augustus, the
King tells us that he oriented the corners and established the temple as “it
took place
before” ,
whilst looking to the sky and directing his gaze to the Ak of the “thigh”
constellation. Here the
“Ak , denotes
a central point, the axis or middle of the starry group. Also when the temple
at Edfu was
refounded
(about 257-37 B.C.E.) the King who “stretches the measuring-cord” and lays the
foundation-
stone is
represented as saying, that when doing this his eye was fixed upon the Meskhet
or Meskhen,
which has
been supposed to be in the Great. Bear. This also was in the constellation of
the “haunch” , as
may be seen
by the fragment from a Theban tomb (p. 289) where the “haunch” is labelled the
“Meskhen”
or chamber of
birth which the constellation indicated; the birth chamber of the cow above,
that was
copied in the
temple of the cow-goddess below (Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, p.172).
The cow of
heaven as the milch-cow was portrayed standing or resting on the summit of the
mount which
was
“connected with the sky” , as portrayed in the monuments. This, in the Persian
rendering, was the
cow upon the
summit of Mount Alborz, In the Norse mythology it is the cow Audhumla. As the
Prose
Edda
describes it, “immediately after the gelid vapours had been resolved into
drops, there was formed
out of them
the cow named Audhumla. Four streams of milk ran from her teats, and thus she
fed Ymir ”
(Prose Edda
6), just as the cow of heaven suckled Horus. Heaven, as the cow, is called the
spouse upon
the mountain.
She is the mother of the solar bull, and, as goddess, is described as suckling
her child
Horus, and as
having “drooping dugs” (Renouf, B. of D., ch. 62. note 1 ). The Milky Way was
pictured as
the celestial
water, now called milk, that flowed from the cow of heaven couched upon the
[Page 313]
summit of the
mount, the apex of which was at the celestial pole whether the cow was called
Nut or
Hesit, the
Arg Roud, Audhumla, or the good lady. Now if we take the lady on the seat and
the “haunch” or
“thigh” as a
figure of the cow, the position on the globe is this the lady of heaven = the
cow, or the
mistress of
the mount, is constellated in the middle of the Milky Way, which runs in two
directions
downwards
from the summit of the pole. If we restore the figure of the cow or its co-type
the “haunch” ,
this is the
exact spot at which the river of milk once issued from the cow of heaven that
gave her white
liquid to
Horus and the glorified ; or water to the world in dew and rain. The Milky Way
has been
disfigured
sadly by the Greeks, but still runs visibly as the river of the Nun or great
deep, the white river
that
engirdles all the earth. The river Ganges, issuing from the mouth of the cow,
retains the primitive
type of a
celestial source for the water that fell from heaven, as it was seen by night
descending in the
river of the
Milky Way, or in four streams that issued from the udder of the cow, which
supplied a figure of
Page 241
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
four quarters
to the-mount. The cow of heaven, or Nut, as giver of liquid life, was the
earliest mistress of
the mountain,
or divine lady of the mound. Then the type of the good nurse, the suckler, was
made
anthropomorphic
and the udder of the cow was superseded by the mammae of the human mother. But
it
was a long
way from the African cow or sow, as the suckler, to the wet-nurse divinized in
human form.
Lastly, the
cow of earth was the mother of salt water as well as fresh ; both fresh and
salt water being
found in the
African lakes. The Albert Nyanza, for instance, is a salt-water lake, and one
of the two lakes
of the cow or
“haunch” at the pole was evidently a salt-water lake, as the primitive lake of
purifying and
healing. One
of these, repeated in Amenta, is called the salt-water lake (Rit., ch. 17). The
Zulu form of
this
celestial “source” is a young woman who makes the water. “Leave it to me” says
- Lu, the Samoan
Nut, when
there was no water, and she makes the water, which was salt (Turner, Samoa, p.
12). This
may account
for the origin of salt water in heaven. To very primitive-folk urine was the
first salt water
used for
cleansing, purifying, and healing. The earliest soap was made from the alkali
in urine – mixed
with oil from
the human skin. The Inoit, amongst others “still wash themselves with urine” .
The Banians
of Momba wash
in cow's urine, because, as they say, the cow is their mother. An early type of
the mother
as wateress
in heaven was the cow, and first of all it was the water-cow. Urine was a very
primitive form
of holy water
as a means of purifying. At the present time holy water is yet sained and made
sacred by
adding the
ingredient of salt to water that is fresh. Urine is also a means of purifying
when the English
schoolboy,
about to bathe in the stream, will micturate down his left leg as a protective
charm against the
raw-head-and-bloody-bones,
our form of the Apap monster, lurking at the bottom of the water. Thus, as
the pitiful
human need was primitively reflected in the African heaven, the earliest water
of purification,
the salt
water, the source of the lake of purification, [Page 314] was made by the cow.
And so unbreakable
is the chain
with which the human race, its customs, its theology, and religious symbolism
are bound
together from
the beginning that we may be absolutely certain that this is why salt is put
into the
baptismal
font to make the water holy. This, we think, also touches the origin of the
“salt woman” in the
Navajo legend
who is described as resting at the top of the reed mountain which rose up
beyond the
reach of the
deluge. When the anthropomorphic type had been adopted the woman that made the
water
on the summit
of the mount took the place of the cow. In such ways the matter of mythology
was
continued in
the heavens on the grand scale of uranographic representation. In this
celestial sign-
language, the
oldest book of wisdom in the world was written by the mystery teachers and can
still be
read upon the
starry scroll of ancient night.
The
“upliftings of Shu” , are spoken of and portrayed in the Egyptian Ritual. The
first of these is said in
ancient
legends to have taken place at Hermopolis, where Shu stood on the mound to
raise the
firmament.
This was the mound by which the mount of earth was imaged in Egypt as the altar
of the
mound-builders,
constellated in Ara. At least two of Shu's upliftings can be identified. In his
rôle of An-hur,
Shu was the
uplifter of heaven, or Nut, by name. He is portrayed upon the mount or mound in
the act of
raising up the
cow of Nut with his two hands, or pushing up the heaven assisted by his
support-gods. And
Kepheus
standing on the mount with the rod in his uplifted hand remains a
representative of Shu, who
stood upon
the mound to raise the firmament of Am-Khemen. In his character of An-hur, he
was the
uplifter of
the sky or firmament in the pre-solar mythos. In the solar mythos he becomes
auxiliary to Ra,
and is called
his son, Shu-Si-Ra. He is now the supporter of the sun-god who uplifts the
solar orb upon
the mount of
dawn, or, as it is also phrased, he brings the eye of light to Ra. In doing
this he kneels upon
the horizon
as the uplifter. He is the helper of the solar god (Horus or Ra) upon the
horizon when the
great battle
was waged against the Apap of darkness, who fought so long and fiercely that
the god came
staggering
upwards fainting from his wounds. (Rit., ch. 39.)
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Ancient
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It has been
said that all tradition respecting the personage known as “the kneeler” has
been lost. Aratos
knew nothing
of the character. (Brown, Phainomena of Aratos, Introd., p. 5.) But in the
Egyptian
astronomical
mythology the god Shu IS “the kneeler” personified. In this form he is
portrayed upon the
horizon or
mount of dawn stooping on bended knee to uplift the solar disk, or to bear it
on his head. He
who had
uplifted the starry firmament with his two hands, or with the forked stick
called his rod, now
represented
the force that heaved up the sun in the position of “the kneeler” . In the
“Phainomena” Aratos
describes
“the kneeler” in an attitude of worship with arms upraised “from both his
shoulders each
stretching on
its side about a full arm's length” . (Brown, lines 66, 69. ) This is the
attitude of Shu, but with
the solar
disk omitted.“The kneeler” , then, who is Al Jatha in Arabic and Engonansin in
Greek, we
identify with
Shu, the deity who kneels upon the horizon to support his father Ra, the solar
god, an his
battle with
the hosts of darkness. He also passed into the [Page 315] Eschatology as the
typical kneeler ;
thence the
keeper of the door in the hall of judgment is named after Shu, “the kneeler” .
The keeper says
to the
initiate in the mysteries, “I open not to thee, I allow thee not to pass by me,
unless thou tellest my
name” . The
password, given in reply, is “the knee of Shu” , which he hath lent for the
support of Osiris, is
the name,
that is as the supporter of the sun-god in the character of “the kneeler” . (Rit.,
ch. 125.) Shu-
Anhur, in his
twofold rôle may still be recognized on the celestial chart in the
Constellations of Kepheus
and Leo,
partly by means of the double Regulus. As An-hur in Kepheus he stands upon the
mount to lift
up heaven
with his rod or staff, and as Shu or Regulus in Leo he is the supporter and
uplifter of the solar
orb on the
horizon as “the kneeler” .
A picture in
the constellation Lyra has survived to show us how the stories of the solar god
were given a
starry
setting on the background of the dark. If we refer to this group upon the
celestial globe we find a
figure of the
winged Disk or Hut which still identifies the constellation with Horus of Edfu,
who is now
called
Horus-Behutet. What then was the story told of Horus in the stars by night
which could be read in
Lyra when
conjoined and illustrated with the winged Solar Disk? We are
shown a
picture of Horus with his lyre, the prototype of Apollo with his lyre, and
Orpheus with
his lute. Horus with the lyre or harp of seven strings was the
sevenfold one
as a divine type of attainment, the octave and the height in
music. as
well as in the building of the heavens. This Horus was the first form
of the
AIl-One, or Pan, in whom the Seven Powers were unified in perfect
harmony, or
in the music of the spheres. It was Horus who tore out the sinews
of Sut and by
depriving him of power turned the discord of the universe to
harmony. He
was consequently depicted in the constellation of Lyra as the
maker of music
that was played on the harp, the lute, the lyre, or the sevenfold
pipes of Pan
as a figure of the AIl-One.
The
Serpentarius, or “Ophinchus huge” was constellated in the Decans of Scorpio as
a figure of Horus
wrestling
with the serpent of darkness. At this stage in the periodical display of the
celestial pictures the
sun was about
to descend into Amenta from the point (say) of the Autumn Equinox in Scorpio,
to grapple
with the
powers of darkness, decay, and dearth now rising in rebellion and gathering
together for the
annual
assault. The drama could not be rendered in imagery directly solar; hence the
representation
figured as an
object picture in the rising stars that showed the Lord of Light at death-grips
with the
serpent of
the dark, in that sign where Horus or Osiris received his mortal wound. Thus,
all along, the
Gnosis was
pictorially portrayed in heaven. Hence when the Osiris obtains [Page 316]
command over the
celestial
water he says, “Collector of souls is the name of my Bark. The picture of it is
the representation
of my
glorious Journey upon the canal” . The bark of salvation in which the souls of
the glorified were
gathered, we
repeat, was solar, whilst the picture shown by night was stellar. The canal is
the name of
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the Milky
Way, and on this the glorious voyage was made by the Manes “to the abode of
those who had
found their
faces as the glorified” . In another illustration the great ship of heaven, in
the solar mythos, is
the Ark of
Ra. When seen by day, the solar orb is carried on board together with the solar
god and the
spirits
perfected. But the literature of the subject, so to say, was represented, and
the story was repeated,
nightly in
the stars.
The blind god
“hungering for the morn” is a Greek figure of Orion, which explains nothing of
itself. But
Orion is the
stellar representative by night of Horus the solar god in the darkness of
Amenta who is An-aref
the sightless
Horus, or Horus as the blind god whose sight was restored to him at dawn.
Several
constellations,
Orion the hunter, Herakles, Serpentarius, Bootes, are portraits of Horus
configurated in his
various
characters both mythical and eschatological. Amsu-Horus was the husbandman
twice over as
Egyptian;
once in the mythology which sets forth the natural facts according to the
seasons in Egypt; and
once in the
eschatology which figured the same facts typically in relation to the harvest
in the after-life.
Amsu, we
consider, was the original of Boötes. On the celestial globe, high over Spica,
Boötes rises with
the sickle in
his right hand as a symbol of the husbandman. Amsu issues from the tomb as the
divine
harvester,
with the flail in his right hand. He is also the good herdsman, as is shown by
the crook,
whether as
goat-herd or shepherd, and this character of the husbandman as guardian is
repeated by
Boötes in the
character of Bearward.
Some
Egyptologists have conjectured that the wars of Horus in the Astronomical
mythology were
historical in
Egypt. But this is to follow the will-o'-the-wisp of a popular delusion. The
mass of primitive
“history” in
many lands has been derived from nursery legends and as folk-tale versions of
the Egyptian
wisdom. The
lords of light and life that overcame the powers of drought and darkness were
converted
into ethnical
personages and glorified as natural heroes. We are told by Diodorus of Sicily
that the
Egyptians
looked upon the Greeks as impostors who reissued the ancient mythology as their
own
history; in
this they were not alone. But the wars of Horus were fought in heaven and
Amenta against the
Sebau, the
Dragon, the Serpent, with Orion for one of his great stellar figures. If there
is anyone figure
constellated
in heaven as the hero par excellence, in various characters, it is
pre-eminently that of Orion.
This, as
Egyptian, is Horus or Heru. The word Heru signifies the chief; the one who is
the over-lord, the
ruler, the
mighty one, the hero. This hero as Horus of the inundation was pre-solar. He
was the annual
bringer of
food and drink before there was a sun-god, when the stars were the annunciators
of the
coming times
and seasons to the waiting, watching world.. Then the character was made solar,
and lastly
eschatological.
Horus the mighty conqueror, the Nimrod, the slayer of the gigantic Apap, is
[Page 317] the
giant-killer
of all later lore, not only as the solar god but also as the earlier elemental
power, and the
various legends
are the reliquary remains of his several characters.
They have to
go a long way round to work who would understand the scientific grouping of the
stars
according to
the principles of astro-mythology. For instance, Orion as the hunter and Lupus
the hare are
two southern
constellations. But Orion does not mean that a scriptural character was taken
out of the
Bible and
constellated as a typical sportsman, and the mighty hunter of a miserable hare.
It is an almost
universal
representation that the sun or solar god pursues the moon for ever daily and
nightly in a never-
ceasing
chase. This is how the story was configurated by the mystery teachers of the
heavens in the
grouping of
the stars. Such a chase implies the character of the hunter, and Orion, as
representative of
the solar
Horus, is the hunter. The pursuit of the moon is signified by the stellar
symbol of the hare. In
sign-Ianguage,
and in many lands, the hare has been a lunar zootype as the wide-eyed leaper
that was
followed night
by night, day after day, by the solar hunter in his perpetual round. Thus the
hare, known as
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Ancient
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a symbol of
the moon over half the world, is shown to have been a totemic type of the nome,
and a figure
of the lunar
deity in Egypt. The hare was imaged as a primitive constellation at the feet of
Orion, who in
one character
was the mighty hunter. But he is not the hunter of so insignificant an animal
as the hare.
Neither was Orion
the hunter only a figure of the sun pursuing the moon, or the hare. He was the
mythical
hunter in other characters. In the stellar mythos he was the hunter of the
powers of darkness
with the dogs
of Horus, Kyon and Prokyon. On coming forth from the darkness of Amenta in the
resurrection,
the Osiris says: “I come forth as a Bennu (a type of Sothis) at dawn” . “I urge
on the hounds
of Horus”
(Rit., ch. 13).
He was the
hunter of the powers of darkness on behalf of Horus in the solar
mythos, and
likewise in the phase of eschatology as Sahu-Orion, or Orion as
the Sahu,
that is Horus in his glorious body. We may look on Horus, the
original of
Herakles, as the earliest child that ever strangled serpents. He is
portrayed in
this character as the child standing upon two crocodiles and
crushing the
serpents with both hands. In later legends told of Herakles the
Greeks have
added the cradle as a further illustration of the children's story.
But, ages
earlier, before the figures were humanized, Horus pierced the
serpent of
evil when he was represented in the form of a hawk fighting with a
serpent on
the back of a hippopotamus at Hermopolis (Plutarch, I. and 0., p.
50). He also
fought the [Page 318] serpent as an ichneumon or mongoose,
and as a cat,
each of which preceded the anthropomorphic type of an infant
in the
cradle. The wars of Apap and Horus, or Ra, also of Sut and Osiris in
the
eschatology, were thus dramatically rendered in the astronomical
mythology.
The grapple first began with Horus and the reptile Apap.
This is
repeated by Horus the little hero crushing the serpent in the constellation of
“Ophiuchus” , that is
by Horus in
the character of conqueror who triumphed over drought, darkness, decay, and
finally of
death. In a
scene copied by Maspero from the zodiac of Denderah, Horus, on his papyrus,
rises from the
waters, and
is preceded by Orion in his papyrus bark. Orion was a figure of the stellar
Horus, or Horus of
the
inundation. But Horus represented by the sparrow-hawk has become the solar god
now born of
Hathor the
milch-cow. All three appear together in this scene (Dawn of Civilization, Eng.
tr., p. 97). Now if
we turn to
the celestial globe we find Orion standing club in hand as the mighty warrior
with one foot on
the waters of
the river Eridanus = Horus of the inundation invested with the majesty and
power of the
solar god. In
the Egyptian drawing the two characters are distinct, but in the Greek compound
these are
blended in
the one hero known as Herakles the slayer of serpents as an infant in his
cradle.
In very old
Egyptian traditions Sahu-Orion was represented as the wild hunter who traversed
the nether
world by
night and hunted there whilst it was day on earth. The powers of darkness, the
Sebau and the
Sami, were
the objects of pursuit. They are hunted for food; and the chase, the capture,
killing, and
cutting up of
the carcases are described in the terminology of cannibals - so ancient is the
legend of the
wild hunter,
a form of whom may probably survive with us as. Herne= Orion the hunter. In the
solar
mythos the
lord of light was Horus, or, later, Ra or Osiris, waging war upon the evil
powers in the underworld,
and hunting
them to death by night and devouring them as the mode of destruction; the drama
being
represented in the stellar phase with the figure of Orion as the lord of light
made visible by night.
The
cannibalism of the past becomes present in the language of the inscriptions.
Eating and drinking
were the
primary modes of assimilating strength and sustenance. The idea still lives in
partaking of the
eucharistic
meal in which the god is supposed to be assimilated by the eating and drinking
of the
elements. It
is said in the Book of the Dead (ch.149) that the great spirits, the khus, or
glorious ones, “live
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Ancient
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on the shades
of the motionless” . They eat the souls of the undeveloped dead; eating being
applied to
spirit as
well as matter.
It is
probable that the giant as the eater of the Shades, the as yet unquickened
souls of the buried dead,
was figured
in heaven as the ghoul. The star Beta in the group of Perseus, the hero with
Medusa's head,
is called
AI-Ghul, the ghoul, in the Arabic names of the stars (Higgins, The Names of the
Stars and
Constellations,
p. 27). In Amenta the ghoul was the eater of the Shades; and like many mythical
characters is
the denizen of another earth than ours. “O eater of the Manes” , says the
Osiris, “I am not a
thief” .
(125.17.) This is one of those who prey upon the dead; one of the forty-two
types of terror which
the guilty
had to face in the great judgment hall. Thus, the ghoul or [Page 319] vampire
of another earth
that survives
as eater of the dead in this world was also figured in the planisphere as a
type of terror to
evil-doers.
Indeed, Amenta is a museum full of such prototypes, and the ghoul secured a
starry setting
with the
rest, though the figure is not extant on our celestial globe. A striking
instance of the use of the
planisphere
in conveying the teaching of the mysteries may be seen in the Ritual. In some
recensions of
the first
chapter, when the Manes enters the Amenta, one of the first things he asks is
to see the starry
ship or
floating ark of the holy Sahus making its voyage by night in heaven. He
exclaims, “Let me see the
Sekhet-Nut of
the holy Sahus; (the ship of heaven) traversing the sky” . He was in the paths
of darkness
and desirous
of seeing the nocturnal sky with its old familiar stars by which he sought to
make out his
way to the
place of re-birth and the region of Mati upon the mount of glory, from this
valley of the shadow
of death. The
constellation of Horus as Orion was the ship of the Sahu, and ark of salvation
configurated
in the
celestial waters as a boat that saved the souls from an eternal shipwreck. This
was the sign of
spiritual
resurrection for the completed Manes. In another text the speaker prays that
his soul may shine
as a Sahu in
the stars of Orion or Horus. It is said of Horus in the “hymn to Osiris” the
whole earth
glorifies
him, when his holiness proceeds ( on the vault of the sky) “he is a Sahu
illustrious amongst the
Sahus” , that
is among the spirits glorified. The Sahu is a glorified form in which the soul
of the deceased
is
re-incorporated for the life hereafter; this was represented by Orion the
conqueror of death and
darkness in
the phase of eschatology. Now one frequently finds that this secondary stage
had been
attained by
the Egyptian mythos before it went out of Egypt into other lands as the lesser
and the greater
mysteries.
For instance, there is a constellation called the Sah or Sahu in the Babylonian
astronomy. This
is identical
by name with the Egyptian Orion, that is Horus in his resurrection as the Sahu
or glorified
likeness of
the risen god or soul; the Sahu in the planisphere who represents the Manes
rising from
Amenta to the
enclosure on the summit which was paradise above.
The descent
of Herakles into Hades to grapple with the triple-headed Kerberus was preceded
by the
descent of
Horus into Amenta, where the devourer is triple-bodied if not three-headed. The
speaker in
this
character (Rit., ch. 136 B) says, “Grant that I may come and bring (to Osiris)
the two jaws of Rusta” ,
the outrance
from Amenta. Herakles in the lion's skin is identical with Horus in the
lion-sign, and his fight
with the
Lernean hydra of the Hesperides and the great wild boar is a repetition of the
battles that were
fought by
Horus with the Apap hydra and the black boar Sut. The same speaker at the same
time says, “I
have repulsed
the Apap reptile and healed the wounds he made” , which is equivalent to the
struggle of
Horus with
the monster hydra. The twelve legends of the solar hero Gilgames relating to
the twelve signs
and the
twelve labours of Herakles are, of course, comparatively late, as they are
based upon the zodiac
of twelve
signs which belongs to the final formation of the heaven that was preceded by
the heaven in
ten
divisions, and earlier still by the heptanomis in seven. But the twelve labours
of Herakles are
zodiacal, and
the first of these was at a point of commencement in the lion-sign. [Page 320]
The Greeks
with their accustomed
indifference to the facts, and their fondness for figures and fancies, played
many
pranks with
the astronomical mythology. It was fabled by them that “an enormous-crab came
to the
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assistance of
Hydra and bit the foot of Herakles ,when he was doing battle with the dragon of
drought
(Apollodorus
2, v. 2). By re-translating Greek fable into astronomical fact, this statement
can be read,
only the
Greeks have placed the crab on the side of the evil power, which it was not,
any more than the
beetle. The
retouching by the Greeks, like that of the Semites, tended to efface the
figures or falsify the
meaning of
the mythos ; and the astronomical facts are of a thousandfold more importance
than all the
pretty
embellishments of irresponsible fancy. The forms and pictures figured in the
planisphere are not
merely
mythical, they are also celestial illustrations for the eschatology of the
Egyptian Ritual and the
oldest
religion in the world. Perhaps the worst perversion of the true mythos made by
the Greeks was in
their
treatment of the polar dragon. This, as already shown, was founded on the
crocodile, not on the
Apap reptile.
The crocodile was the good dragon, the solar dragon, the dragon of life,
represented by the
stellar
Draconis. Apap is the dragon of evil, of negation, and of death. It is not easy
to uncoil the dragon,
or rather the
two dragons, the dragon of light and the reptile of darkness, on Greek ground.
The evil
dragon was
imaged once for all below the ecliptic in the constellation Hydra. But it was
the good dragon,
not hydra,
that coiled by night about the pole of heaven to protect the golden fruitage on
the tree of life,
the Chinese
peach-tree of the pole. So far from Herakles being called upon to make war upon
the good
dragon, or
crocodile, it was a starry image of Horus (Sebek) himself, who is the prototype
of Herakles.
Naturally
there must have been some mutilation and disfigurement on the palimpsest of the
starry
heavens, but
this has not effaced the African imagery of the celestial signs, which proves
the ground-plan
of the
structure to have been Egyptian. The present purpose is to trace the raison
d’ętre and meaning of
the constellation-figures
as types of characters that were pre-existent in the mythology of Egypt. For,
as
herein
maintained, it was Egypt that peopled the planisphere and for ever occupies the
celestial globe.
The heavens
are telling nightly of her glory and her workmanship on high, which is more
marvellous even
than any that
she left upon the surface of the earth. The vast revolving sphere unfolds a
panorama of her
pre-historic
past. The constellations form a long procession of her seasons, her goddesses
and gods for
ever circling
round about a wondering world that sees but cannot read the primitive
uranographic signs.
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BOOK 6 of 12
THE
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF ASTRONOMICAL MYTHOLOGY (PART II)
[Page 321]THE
ancient Apt, the first great mother who was the bringer-forth in Apta, as the
womb of life,
was elevated
to the planisphere as bringer-forth in heaven. She was constellated in the
Hippopotamus or
Greater Bear,
and called “the mother of the fields of heaven”; “the mother of beginnings”;
“the mother of
movement in a
circle”, “the mother of the starry revolutions”, or the cycles of time. As
such, Apt was the
builder of a
heaven that was founded on the seven pillars of the Heptanomis. Now the most
primitive
Egyptian type
of building is a figure of turning round, as might be in making pottery. The
conical pillar,
pile, or
mound of earth was also a type of this turning round. Thus the heptanomis was
built on seven
pillars, and
the mother of the revolutions was the founder of the heptanomis. How this was
built has yet
to be
explained according to “The Mystery of the Seven Stars”. The heptanomis of the
old Great Mother
and her seven
sons was followed by the Octonary of Am-Khemen, the park or paradise of the
eight great
gods. This,
as we reckon, is the circumpolar enclosure which was founded when Anup, the
power of
Polaris
North, was added to the primordial rulers, or Nomarchs, and whose animal-type,
the jackal,
remained as
guide star in the Lesser Bear (planisphere of Denderah, plate in Book of
Beginnings). The
octonary was
one of the “upliftings of Shu” which are alluded to in the Ritual. The heaven,
that is also
called the
mansion of his stars, which was again and again renewed (ch. 110). Shu had been
one of the
sustaining
powers of the firmament who were known as the seven giants. He then became the
elevator
of the heaven
that was imaged as the cow of Nut; and lastly his was the sustaining power with
Atum-
Horus in the
double equinox. Apparently this change from the heptanomis of the ancient
mother and her
seven sons to
the heaven of the eight great gods upraised by Shu is indicated in the Magic
Papyrus. In
this the
giant of seven cubits is addressed. A divine command is given to him: “Get made
for me a shrine
of eight
cubits! And as thou hast been (or wast) a giant of seven cubits, I have said to
thee, thou canst
not enter
this shrine of eight cubits. And, as (or although) thou wast a giant of seven
cubits, thou hast
entered and
reposed in it. “The giant of seven cubits” in the shrine of seven cubits now
gives place to one
who “has the
face [Page 322] of a Kafi ape, with the head of hair of a monkey Aani”. The
type. that is, of
the moon-god,
Tehuti-Aani, in the shrine of eight cubits, or the heaven of the eight great
gods in the
enclosure of
Am-Khemen, the octonary of Taht, upraised by Shu (Magic Papyrus, Records of the
Past,
vol. x., pp.
151-154). Aani, the Kafi ape, was Taht's own especial monkey of the moon, and
is a sign that
the shrine of
eight cubits was the octagonal heaven or octonary of Taht, the lunar god which
tends to
identify this
with the enclosure of Am-Khemen that was upraised by Shu. In all likelihood the
giant thus
addressed is
Shu, the lion of the uplifting force.
It is related
in very old Egyptian legends that when Shu-Anhur lifted up the paradise or park
of Am-
Khemen he was
compelled to make use of a mound or staircase with steps to it in order that he
might
reach the
height. This mound, says Maspero, was famous throughout all Egypt. The event
(as supposed
history) took
place at Hermopolis, the city of which Taht was lord; therefore we may look to
the lunar deity
for the
origin of the step-mound. A figure of this mound may be seen in vignettes to
the Ritual as a
pyramid with
seven steps called the ladder or staircase of Shu. How then did the steps or
stairs of the
mound
originate as a lunar type of the ascent ? and why should the steps be seven in
number ? The
answer is
because they were lunar. The moon fulfilled its four quarters in twenty-eight
steps; fourteen up
and fourteen
down. For this reason, Osiris in the moon was represented by an eye at the top
of fourteen
steps. The
moon in its first quarter took seven steps upward from the underworld to the
summit, which in
the annual
reckoning was the equinoctial mount. In other words Shu now made use of a lunar
reckoning
previously
established by the moon-god Taht, when the ark of seven cubits was superseded
by Am-
Khemen. There
are two sets of names in the Ritual given to the seven primordial powers in two
of their
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Ancient
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astronomical
characters.
The first
seven are called: ( I) An-ar-ef the great. (2) Kat-Kar. (3) The Bull who Loveth
in his fire.(4) The
Red-eyed One
in the House of Gauze. (5) Fiery face which turneth backwards.(6) Dark face in
its hour,
and (7) Seer
in the night.
The second
seven are: (I) Amsta. (2) Hapi. (3) Tuamutef. (4)Kabhsenuf (5) Maa-tef-f (6)
Karbek-f (7) HarKhent-
an-maa-ti.The
first four of the latter seven are the gods of the four quarters, who stand on
the
papyrus of
earth and who became the children of Horus in a later creation.
In this new
heaven raised by Shu another god was born as eighth one to the seven. This was
Anup (a
form of Sut),
as a deity of the north celestial pole. The Egyptian eight great gods consist
of 7 + 1. The
Phoenician
Kabiri were 7 + 1. The Japanese Kami are 7 +1 In the Vâyu-Purana the group of
Rishis, who
are usually
reckoned as seven, are spoken of as eight in number, and are therefore another
group of the
7 + 1. The
company of eight British gods were seven with Arthur as the eighth. The seven
powers plus
one are also
to be seen in the seven sleepers of Ephesus and their dog. Moreover, the dog
can be
identified
with Anup as the golden dog or jackal at the pole. When the god of the polestar
was appointed
in the north
it was as an eighth to the seven, and he who was the eighth became the [Page
323] supreme
one, the head
over all, like the occiput at the top of the seven vertebral joints in the
back-bone of Anup,
Ptah or
Osiris (which was a figure of the pole.) The head or headland in Egyptian is Ap
(or Tep), and the
same word
signifies the chief, the first, and also the number eight or the eighth. Anup
was distinguished
from the
seven earth-born powers. He is expressly called “the son of the cow”. That is
the son of Nut the
cow of
heaven; the heaven that was lifted up by Shu in the shape of the cow which
brought forth Anup at
the pole.
Ap-ta-Urt, the cow of earth, had been the mother of the seven, who were
reproduced by Nut as
the Khuti or
glorious ones who are eight with Anup added as the power of Polaris. Anup the
highest
power at the
pole, then becomes arranger of the stars in this new heaven of the eight great
gods, that
was upraised
by Shu the giant. who had been one of the primary seven powers. Anup, the
eighth, is said
to fix the
places of the seven glorious ones, who follow after the coffin of Osiris, on
the day of “Come thou
hither”;
which was the first day of some new creation in the Astronomical Mythology.
(Rit.ch. 17). In the
solar mythos
the sun-god took the place of Sut-Anup, who was the earlier maintainer of the
equipoise
and
equilibrium in the revolving system of the heavens. The speaker in the Ritual (
ch. 54) says, - “ I am
the god who
keepeth opposition in equipoise, as the egg which circles round”. The egg is
the sun. .But
he continues
- “ For me there dawneth the moment of the most mighty one Sut” (or Sut-Anup ),
who was
the most
mighty one as prevailer on the side of order at the pole before the equilibrium
of forces was
known to
depend upon the power of gravitation and the revolution of the sun. What the
sun is at the
centre of the
solar system, the pole-star had been at the centre of the stellar universe in
the most ancient
astronomy. In
place of gravitation the force that swung the system round was represented by a
cord or
chain
attached to the pole as its symbol of controlling power. This eighth one added
to the seven primary
powers came
at times to be designated father of the seven. Thus the eighth was raised to
the headship
over the
seven Japanese Kami. Anup, as representative of the polar star, is lord over
the seven Akhemu
or
non-setting stars. The Phoenician Sydik is father to the seven Kabiri, and he
is the just, the righteous
one. Which
means that he also was a representative of the pole, identical with Anup, who
is the judge.
The character
is the same in relation to the seven earlier powers now called the sons, as the
just one, or
the judge.
“King of the seven sons of earth” is a title of Anu. Reference is also made to
the king of the
seven
Lu-Masi. (Maspero - Dawn of Civilisation. page 631. Note I, English
Translation) This was the god
who, as
eighth to the seven and the highest of all, was the chief, the Suten or King,
that is, Sut-Anup,
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Ancient
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chief to the
Kamite seven in the circumpolar heaven of the eight great gods. The Assyrian
seven are
likewise
designated the sons of Bel as the seven Annunaki or earthly Anunnas. Anup the
jackal-headed
was the
primordial judge, but so anciently that he had been superseded by Atum and
Osiris in that
character.
The pictures to the Ritual show him in the judgment-hall reduced to the
position of inspector of
weights and
measures in the presence of Osiris, who has now become the great judge in
Amenta. But
allusions to
the earlier status still remain. As [Page 324] it is said in the inscription of
Khnumhetep “all the
festivals on
earth terminate on the hill” or over the hill of Anup. That is in the eternal
feast upon Mount
Hetep, the
mount of glory in the polar paradise. (Inscription. Line, 96. Records, v. 12.
p. 71.) In the Rig-
Veda (x. 82,
2) the habitation of the one god is placed in the highest north “beyond the
seven Rishis”.
These are
often supposed to be represented by the seven stars in the Great Bear, but
erroneously so.
The seven
Rishis, Urshi or divine watchers were grouped in the Lesser Bear, the stars of
which
constellation
never set. These were the chief of the Akhemu under Anup, god of the pole-star.
The
Subbas or
Mandozo, the “Ancients” of Mesopotamia, are what is called worshippers of the
pole-star. To
this they
turn their faces in prayer, and in going to sleep. The reason assigned is that
when Hivel Zivo the
Subban
creator assumed the government of the worlds which he had formed, he placed
himself at the
limits of the
seven Matarathos, at the extreme point of the universe where the pole-star was
then created
to cover him.
(Siouffi. La Religion des Soubbas. Paris 1880.) The original old man of the
mountain was
unquestionably
the ancient deity of the pole-star. Hence the group of seven stars which
accompany the
head of the
“Old Man” on the Gnostic stones showing that he was the head over the seven
glorious ones.
(King.
Gnostic Remains. ) The old man of the mountain then, is Anup, who arranged the
stations of the
seven on the
day of “Come thou to me” (Rit., ch. 17). It is just possible that we may now
discover the
origin of the
mystical eight-rayed star in the numerical symbol of the eight great gods, who
consisted of
the seven,
with Anup, on his mountain, as the eighth and highest in the stellar mythos. In
this way: there
is a gnostic
gem of loadstone figured in King's Book on which Anup is portrayed like Horus
holding two
monstrous
scorpions in his hands. He is accompanied by the sun, as a winged scarab, the
crescent
moon and a
star with eight rays. (Second Ed. pI. 9.) This emblem was given to the solar
god in Egypt,
Assyria,
India and in Rome, but here it is assigned to Anup the supreme one of the eight
great gods, and
the first who
was the eighth to the seven in the octonary of Taht or the ark of eight
measures that was
lifted up by
Shu in the paradise of Am-Khemen.
As the
pictures show, the zodiac was founded on the inundation. The mother of water
figured in the
southern
fish, as the womb of source itself, was afterwards repeated on the ecliptic, as
the wateress
(later
Aquarius) with all her myriad mammae streaming from the fount of liquid life,
in the abyss. the
Tepht, or
Tuat, that was localized in the recesses of the south from whence the
inundation came, and
from which it
was perennially renewed. When the zodiac was established, she who had been the
mother
of water in
the south would naturally be given a foremost place. The waterer was now
repeated as the
multi-mammalian
wet-nurse in the sign of Aquarius; the same in character, whether as the
southern fish,
the
water-cow, or the suckler divinized. However represented, earth as the giver of
water was the type,
and in Egypt
the water was the inundation. The first two children of the great mother came
into existence
as the twin
brothers, who contended with each other in the opposite elements of [Page 325]
drought and
water, or
darkness and light, and in other phenomena. These twin powers were constellated
in the sign of
the Twins at
the station where the two combatants were first reconciled, that was at the
equinoctial level.
These then,
we reckon, were amongst the earliest founders of the zodiac on some old common
meeting-
ground of
night and day, or drought and inundation which is yet visible for us in the
sign of the Gemini.
Moreover it
is related in the ancient legends and folk-tales that once upon a time there
was a pair of
brothers who
were twins, and these twin brethren were the builders of a city. A typical
illustration may be
cited in
Romulus and Remus as the mythical twins who are the reputed founders of the
city of Rome. In
Egypt the
brother builders are the Sut and Horus twins. The city which they built was in
the heavens, not
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on earth, and
this, the Gemini remained to show, was in the circle of the ecliptic. Thus Sut and
Horus,
following the
great mother, are also founders of the zodiac. The first pair of twins were
male. These were
followed by a
pair in Shu and Tefnut, that were male and female, called the brother and
sister. These
were twinned,
back to back, Shu in front. Tefnut behind, to form the figure of Sagittarius on
the other side
of the zodiac
exactly opposite the Gemini (oblong zodiac of Denderah).
We reckon
Shu, the lion of breathing force and uplifter of the firmament. to be third of
the elemental
powers born
of the ancient Genetrix. Shu upraised the heaven of day in one character and
the heaven of
night in the
other. He is a pillar of support to the firmament as founder of the double
equinox. He sustains
the heaven
with his two-pronged stick, his two arms, or with the two lions of force which
represent
himself and
his sister Tefnut the lioness. It was at the equinoctial level that the quarrel
of Sut and Horus
was settled
for the time being by Shu. Shu thus stands for the equinox as the link of
connection betwixt
Sut and Horus
in the north and south. The heaven in two parts. south and north, as the
domains of Sut
and Horus was
now followed by the heaven in three divisions that was upraised by Shu as
establisher of
the equinox
in the more northern latitudes. And this heaven in three divisions was the
heaven of the
Triangle
which preceded the one built on the square, by Ptah. Horus and Sut had been the
twin builders
and the
founders south and north. Shu followed with the new foundation in the equinox,
which was
double, east
and west. Sut, Horus, and Shu then, aided by his sister Tefnut, founded the
heaven of the
triangle
based upon the two-fold horizon and the crossing. Shu as the equinoctial power
is the third to
Sut and Horus
of the south and north. With him a triad was completed and the two pillars with
a line
across would
form the figure of the triangle .” .Thus, the twins in Gemini and Shu in
Sagittarius, being
the three
first of the seven powers, point at least to the equinoctial line being laid in
those two signs of the
zodiac. More
particularly as his sister Tefnut. a form of the great mother. is joined with
Shu in constituting
the sign of
Sagittarius. Thus the three brothers Sut, Horus and Shu with one female (as the
mother or
sister) are
found together in these two fundamental signs of the zodiac. A third power born
of the [Page
326] great
mother in heaven was now added to the other two. Another of her seven sons was
born, or the
lion of force
(Shu) joined the crocodile (Sebek-Horus) and the hippopotamus Sut, in a trinity
of powers
that
sustained the firmament.
As elemental
forces Sut and Horus had been ever lawless combatants and claimants, always
fighting for
supremacy.
When Shu bad lifted up the heaven of Am-Khemen as the paradise of peace upon
Mount
Hetep, “he
reconciled the two warrior gods with each other” and “with those who had charge
of the
beautiful
creation which he raiseth up”. Law and order were established by putting
“bounds to the
contentions
of the powers” and by dividing the whole universe from Zenith to Nadir into the
two domains
called the
portion of Sut and the portion of Horus. The contention betwixt Sut and Horus
had originated
ages before
the satanic character of the Evil One in his anthropomorphic guise had been
assigned to
Sut. The twin
opponents had been on a footing of equality in the stellar, lunar, and solar
mythos. But
there always
was a question of boundaries to be settled. Shu is the arbitrator in the stellar
phase. (Rit,
ch. 110.) In
the lunar stage Taht the moon god was the judge and reconciler of the warring
twins. And in
the solar
mythos Seb, the god of earth, adjudicates - as shown in the mythological text
from Memphis
(Proceedings
Society of Bib. Archy., v. 23, parts 4 and 5.) When Ptah had built his mansion
in the double
earth the two
horizons were united, or, as it is said, the double earth became united, “the
union is in the
house of
Ptah”, and “the two pillars of the gateway in the house of Ptah are Horus and
Sut”. The united
ones made
peace; they fraternized completely. They made a treaty.“Seb says to Horus and
Sut”, “there
shall be an
arbitration between you”. Seb said to Horus, “come from the place where thy
father was
submerged”, that
is in the north. Seb said to Sut, “come from the place where thou wast born”,
that was
in the south.
“A mountain in the midst of the earth unites the portion of Horus to the
portion of Sut, at the
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division of
the earth”. This, in the solar mythos, was the mount of the equinox. Now Horus
and Sut each
stood upon a
hillock; they made peace saying “the two earths meet in Annu for it is the
march (border) of
the two earths”.
In this legend there is a shifting of boundaries from south and north to east
and west in
the union
that is now contracted in the house of Ptah, “in the house of his two earths in
which is the
boundary of
south and north” that was drawn from east to west by the equinoctial line.
“Here the united
ones
fraternized completely. They made a treaty”; which was sustained by Seb. And
henceforth the twin
powers, Sut
and Horus, now called Horus and Sut, who had stood as the two pillars, south
and north, for
the two poles
in Apta, are now “the two pillars of the gateway to the house of Ptah”; which
two pillars are
afterwards
portrayed as the double Tat of eternal stability in the making of Amenta (Text
from Memphis).
In this phase
the quarrel of Sut and Horus represents the difference betwixt darkness and
light in the
length of
night and day which went on round the year and was rectified at the point or on
the Mount of
Equinox.
Before the solar god attained his supremacy as the [Page 327] determiner of
time Shu was the
readjuster of
the power of the equinox. Hence Shu is said to have kept the contention of
these warring
powers within
bounds and brought about their reconcilement (Rit., ch. 110). Thus the
“reckonings of Shu”
involved the
readjustment of the equinoctial point and re-establishing the equilibrium of
the equinoxes in
the different
reckonings of time. Taht the lunar time-keeper does the same thing when he
“balances the
divine pair”,
and puts a stop to their strife in the circuit of precession (Rit., ch. 123).
All the year round,
except at
this point of place, it was one scale up and the other down in the contention
of Sut and Horus
for the
mastery. But at the vernal equinox the scales were at the perfect level and the
twins were exactly
equal in
power for the time, with Horus the fulfiller about to rise in the ascendant.
Horus was the bringer
of the golden
age to earth. This in Egypt was the time of the inundation; in other lands and
later days it is
the
spring-time of the year. The Saturnalia was a mode of celebrating this equality
at the time of the
equinoctial
level, by means of various kinds of levelling customs. Slaves were equal with
their masters
and
mistresses. Women were equal to men, the sexes changed clothing with each
other, on the natural
ground of
equality. This Saturnalia survived as a relic of the Golden Age called
Saturnian by the Greeks
and Romans.
In Egypt Sut
and Horus changed positions and were figured as Har-Suti, with the hawk of
Horus in front
and the black
Neh or typhonian animal of Sut behind. This reversal represented the change of
seasons in
relation to
the north and south. In Equatoria the desert and the drought were given to the
south, which
was the
domain of Sut. Refreshing rain and cooling breezes came from the domain of
Horus in the life-
giving north.
In Egypt the water and the food of life were brought by Horus of the inundation
from the
south.
Whereas the north in winter was the realm of darkness and of drought, and therefore
the domain
of Sut became
that of the evil elemental power of the twins. The three powers of earth,
water, and breath,
or Sut,
Horus, and Shu, were given stations in the zodiac; the twins, Sut and Horus, in
the sign of
Gemini, and
Shu, as the Archer, in the sign of Sagittarius. The heaven founded on the south
and north by
Sut and
Horus, the Twin Builders, was now followed by the heaven that Shu uplifted in
the equinox as the
lion of
sustaining power, or rather as the dual lion of Shu and Tefnut, his sister, who
is seen to be
conjoined
with him in Sagittarius. Thus far the zodiac was founded on the Great Mother
with two pairs of
twins; Sut
and Horus as the Rehiu lions, with Shu and Tefnut as the Ruti or lions of the
double horizon,
one at each
end of the equinoctial line or level where the lost balance of the contending
Twins was
periodically
restored by the reconciler Shu. In one character Horus is designated “Horus of
the Triangle”,
and a theory
has been put forward in Germany to the effect that the figure represents the
pillar or cone of
the zodiacal
light. But the unexplained peculiarity of Horus of the Triangle is that his
triangle is figured in
a reversed
position with the apex downwards and the base above, .”. Whereas the pillar of
zodiacal light
was never
seen [Page 328] bottom-upwards in that way, and never could have been so
represented. On
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the other
hand, the triangle which was constellated in “Triangula”, is, we hold, the
figure of a tripartite
division of
the Ecliptic, and the triple seasons of the Egyptian year. The water-season
being represented
by Horus; the
season of wind, or breathing life, and of the equinoctial gales by Shu; and the
season of
dryness or
drought, by Sut. These were called the water season, the green season, and the
dry season.
The three
signs of which are (1) “water”, (2) “growing plants”, and (3) a barn or
storehouse, which
showed the
crops were harvested. Four months for the water season gives the correct length
of the
inundation.
The Egyptian harvest occurred in the eighth month of the year. Then followed a
season of
drought and
dearth, which came to be assigned to the destroyer Sut. These three seasons can
be traced
as a basis
for the zodiac that was afterwards extended to one of four quarters and twelve
signs. Horus of
the
inundation was given the Lion as a solar zootype. The Archer four signs further
round, was assigned
to Shu, the
god of breathing force, and four signs are the correct measure of one season,
or a tetramene.
The Lion and
Archer, or Horus and Shu, represent the two seasons of the inundation and of
breathing
life. The
name of the Archer in the Hermean Zodiac is Nephte, and Neft signifies the soul
or breath. Sut
was continued
in conflict with Horus in the constellation of the Twins, the power of drought
that was
opposed to
the water of life. Shu was the reconciler of these two continually warring
powers, and in the
zodiac he
represents the green season of vegetation and breathing life that came betwixt
the two
seasons of
water and of drought. This was fundamental, the rest is filling in. The three
seasons of four
months each
would naturally lead to the circle of the Ecliptic being measured and divided
into three parts,
which
tripartite division was followed, at a distance, by the Babylonians in their
mapping out of the
sphere, and
continued by them in afar later calendar of twelve signs. The Egyptian month
was divided
into three
weeks of ten days each, which obviously corresponded to the heaven of the
triangle, the
tripartite
ecliptic, and the three seasons in Egypt. Then followed a heaven of four
quarters or sides. in
which may be
traced the houses of Sut, Horus, Shu and Taht; but the division of the month or
moon and
the Ecliptic
in three parts equated with the three seasons in a circle or zodiac that was
measured monthly
by the lunar
god with his 3 X 10= 30 days. The two roads of heaven had been divided between
the twin
brothers Sut
and Horus. The three roads were next divided between Sut, Horus, and Shu in the
heaven
of the
triangle that stood as it were upon a tripod = three roads of the south, north,
and equinox.
Type after
type, the mythical Great Mother and her children passed into the legendary lore
of the whole
world. The
mother and her twins were followed by the mother in the character of sister,
who is the
companion of
three brothers, our Sut, Horus, and Shu in the triangular heaven or triple
division, the
uranographic
symbol of which was constellated in “Triangula”, composed of three stars held
in the hand
of Horus
(Drummond,Oed. Jud.., pl. 3). Three brothers with one female, then, as an
Egyptian group, are
representatives
of the [Page 329] Great Mother and her first three sons or elemental powers;
the powers
represented
in her portrait by the water-cow, the crocodile, and lioness. The mother being
indicated by
the pregnant
womb. The same group is also Japanese, consisting of the three ( out of seven
or the eight)
Kami, with
their sister Izanani. The three Kami, called the “All-alone-born Kami”, our
stellar Trinity, were
gods of the
beginning, and are connected with the sister in the raising up of heaven
(Satow, Pure Shinto,
p. 67;
Chamberlain, Kojiki, p. 19)- And when the Christian divinity of a triune nature
is portrayed with a
triangular
aureole upon his head, that figure relates the deity once more to the phenomena
in which a
god of the
Triangle had originated. The god of the Triangle was of a threefold nature in
the trinity of Sut,
Horus, and
Shu, which three were one with the mother in the heaven of the Triangle, the
mount with the
triple peaks,
the Ecliptic: in three divisions, the year in the three seasons, the month in
three weeks. The
Triangle,
like the Oval, is a figure of the female, as it was on the Goddess Nana in
Babylonia. The trinity
of three
males. associated with one female, who was originally the Great Mother,
survives in two ways
still, for
whilst they are performing in church four more primitive representatives of the
same dramatis
personae
still keep it up in the pantomime, as in the dumb show of the more ancient
mysteries, in the
characters of
columbine, clown, harlequin, and pantaloon. Harlequin is Har (or Horus) the
transformer.
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We might say
the double Horus, one with and one without the mask. The clown is Sut, the sly
and
cunning one,
whose zootype was the jackal. Pantaloon and his crutch are the remains of Shu
and his
celestial
prop of the pole. Columbine corresponds to Tefnut, the sister of Shu, which
explains her peculiar
relationship
to pantaloon, whom she rejects in favour of harlequin. Now these four appear
upon Mount
Hetep when
the later heaven is portrayed in the ten divisions that preceded the final
twelve as a trinity of
primeval,
powers united with the Great Mother, who was the abode as Triangle when the
heaven was not
yet builded
on the square (Rit., ch. 110). The other four brothers who make up the group of
seven great
gods (at
least in one form) are Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, who stand on the
lotus or
papyrus, and
are the four gods, paddles or eyes of the four quarters. Thus, the seven are:
(I) Sebek-
Horus, the
crocodile; (2) Sut, the water-bull; (3) Shu, the lion; (4). Hapi, the ape; (5)
Tuamutef, the jackal;
(6)
Kabhsenuf, the hawk; (7) Amsta, the man, who, together with the Great Mother,
were the founders or
the zodiac -
three in the Triangle and four in the Square.
Whatsoever
the seven khuti were as individual stars, they were also configurated as a
group in Ursa
Minor and
called the followers of the coffin of Osiris, which was imaged in the Greater
Bear. The seven in
the stellar
mythos had become the lords of rule, devoid of wrong, and living for eternity.
This was as
spirits
perfected under the type of stars that never set (Rit., ch. 72). And here it
may be explained that we
have all been
persistently wrong about the seven glorious ones, the seven Rishis, the seven
Lu-Masi, the
seven Elohim
or the seven Kabiri, the “Seven Sleepers” being the seven stars in the Great
Bear. For this
reason, in
all the starry vast there is but one group of seven non-setting [Page 330]
stars, and these are in
the Lesser,
not in the Greater Bear. Polaris was at one time chief of all the heavenly
host, on account of
its being
fixed at the centre as a type of stability and uprightness. The characteristics
and qualities
assigned to
the divinity were first seen in the steadfastness of the pole. The stars in
Ursa Minor were
circumpolar.
These showed the seven in a group who never could be drowned by the deluge of
darkness. The
waters did not reach them. Not so the seven in the Greater Bear, the seven that
were not
circumpolar
stars. About 5,000 years before the present era there was but one, the star
Dubhe in Ursa
Major that
was circumpolar or non-setting (Lockyer, Dawn of Astronomy, p, 152). These,
therefore, could
not have been
the seven never setting stars, who were the watchers and the rulers in the
great year of
the world;
the starry type of the eternal powers. The typical seven were grouped in the
Lesser Bear as an
object
picture of something out of sight, with Anup as El-Elyon at the pole. In all
the mythologies the Polestar
is an emblem
of stability, a seat or throne of the power who is the highest god pro tem., as
was Anup
in Egypt,
Sydik in Phoenicia , Anu in Babylonia, Tai-Yih (the arch-first) in China,
Avather, or Zivo, in
Mesopotamia,
and others. It was not the seat that was worshipped, but the power; the
sustainer and the
judge that
was enthroned upon the stellar Mount of Glory as the god.
The Pole-star
was a type of the eternal, because apparently beyond the region of time and
change. It
was the
earliest type of a supreme intelligence which gave the law in heaven that was
unerring, just and
true; if only
as the law of equipoise or, as we should now say, of gravitation. This was the
sole point at
which there
seemed to be any certainty of foothold in that moving ocean of the starry
infinite. And this
became a
standpoint in the heavens for the mind of man to rest on at the centre and
radiate to the
circumference.
The summit was well-named the Mount of Glory. Around this island-mount the
hosts of
heaven
appeared to wheel by night in one vast, glorious, never-ceasing ”march past” in
the presence of
the “Royal
Arch” or, more religiously regarded, the Most High God. The earliest law in
heaven was given
on the mount
because the mount was an image of the pole.It was administered by the judge,
whether as
Anup, in the
north, or Sut as jackal of the south, because the jackal in Egypt was a zootype
of the judge.
It is not the
mount, then, that was the divinity. but the power that dwelt upon it, as the
deity called by the
Japanese “
the God Eternal-Stand of the heavens” (Ame-no-Foko-Tachi Kami). The power of
stability
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Ancient
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fixed as the
centre of the universe was the typical eternal. This was represented by the
jackal, which is to
be seen at
the centre of the Denderah planisphere. The jackal also is a type, not a
divinity, and a type
may be
variously applied. The jackal itself is “Ap-Uat”, the opener or guide of roads;
probably as the seer
and crier in
the dark and leader of the pack. But it was the dog of Sut and of Sothis as
well as of Anup.
Thus the type
in Sign-language may not always determine the nature of the deity. But, as
Hor-Apollo
rightly says,
the jackal denotes the judge (B. i., p. 39). The governor at an early period
was the judge,
with the
jackal as his sign. There were several kinds of judges in Egypt, and the
“Totem” of each is the
sab or [Page
331] sapient jackal. Hence the jackal, representative of Polaris, was placed
above the seven
as the judge
of heaven because he had imaged the judge on earth. Naturally the type was not
always
repeated;
other countries, other fauna. Besides which, the anthropomorphic succeeded the
zoomorphic
in an
indefinitely later time; and the Semitic, Hindaic, Greek, and various other
renderings are mainly
anthropomorphic.
But the judge
quâ judge thus set in heaven by the Egyptians at the polar centre, with his
seat upon the
summit
underneath the tree, was repeated and continued in other mythologies upon the
stellar
mount.Anup
became the great judge in heaven, and the seven are his ministers, as
executioners, upon
the judgment
day. They are termed the seven “arms of the balance on the night when the eye
is fixed”
that is the
eye of the judge, who saw through the dark (Rit., ch. 71). The Eye of Heaven
that Judges the
Wicked is the
name of a Chinese constellation; and the god Anup was the judge whose eye was
the
Pole-star in
the north. He was the seer in the dark, therefore the jackal was his zootype;
and the jackal
was followed
by the later dog as a symbol of Polaris.
The lunar
mythos succeeded the stellar, but the moon-god Taht was not reckoned as the
ninth one.
Neither was
Horus. The eighth was the highest power till the time of Ptah arid the
Put-cycle of the nine.
The group of
seven remained intact. Anup, as the eighth, was the highest in the stellar
mythos; Taht-
Khemen (later
Smen) was highest in the lunar mythos; and Horus was the highest in the solar
mythos,
the highest
being worshipped as the “Only One”. Anup and Tehuti then became two witnesses
to the
supremacy of
Horus, the one as the eighth, who in turn became the witness for his father,
Ra-Unnefer.
The deity of
the Pole-star was known to the Chinese as the supreme god in nature, who has
his abode
on the Great
Peak of Perfect Harmony. When Dr. Edkins asked a schoolmaster at Chapoo who was
the
lord of heaven
and earth, the reply of the Chinaman was that he knew of none but Tien-hwang
Ta-ti, god
of the
Pole-star. (Religion in China, p. 109.) Shang-ti, the supreme ruler, was the
highest object of
worship. His
heavenly abode, Tsze-wei, is “a celestial space round the north pole” (Legge,
Chinese
Classics, v.
iii., pt. I., p. 34) and his throne was indicated by the polar star (Chinese
Repository, v. iv. p.
194). This is
the most sacred as well as most ancient form of Chinese worship. A round
hillock is the altar
on which
sacrifice was offered to him. It is said in the archaic Chow Ritual (Li) that
when the sovereign
worshipped
Shang-ti he offered up on a round hillock a first-born male, as a whole burnt
sacrifice
(Douglas,
Confucianism, and Taouism, pp.82-87). Both the mount and the first-born male
are typical. Sut
was the
first-born male, and, as Sut-Anup, he was the first male ancestor. The hillock
is an image of the
mount. This
deity was also known to the Chinese as the “Divine Prince of the Great Northern
Equilibrium”,
who promulgated “the laws of the silent wheels of the heavens palace”, or the
cycles of time
determined by
the revolutions of the stars (De Groot, Fętes d' Emoui, v. i., pp. 77, 80).
[Page 332]
HORUS OF THE
DOUBLE HORIZON
One of the
profoundest secrets in the Egyptian astronomical mythology was the mystery of
the twofold
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Ancient
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horizon, or,
more exactly the mystery of the double equinox, and one of the earliest forms
of the solar
god in the
zodiac was Horus of the double equinox, when this had been established by the
sky-uplifter
Shu, with the
aid of his sister Tefnut.
Until the
time of Har-Makhu the fatherhood of god had not been individualised in Ra.
Har-Makhu was the
mother's
child when she was a virgin, represented by the white vulture of Neith, or the
sacred heifer of
Isis. The
child could be self-generated as the spirit of life in vegetation, or in light,
the phenomena being
pre-human
from the first. Child-Horus in the solar mythos was the little autumn sun
conceived upon the
western mount
as the calf or child. Adultship was attained upon the horizon east with what
was termed
the double
force.The cult was that of Hathor and Horus, the mother and the child, who was
the calf on
one horizon
and the bull of the cow upon the other. In these two characters he was the
double Horus, or
the “double
Harmachis”, the solar god of both horizons, and fulfiller annually in the
double equinox. The
power of
evolution was portrayed in Kheper, the transformer. Kheper showed the old
beetle changing into
the young;
the tadpole transfiguring into the frog the human embryo developing in utero;
the enduring
spirit
emanating from the mortal mummy. Kheper was a form of Har-Makhu, as we learn
from the
inscription
of the Sphinx. From Har-Makhu, the father-god, Ra-Har-Machis was developed in
the
mythology
which preceded the Egyptian eschatology. Atum was Ra in his primordial
sovereignty. The
divine
fatherhood was developed from Har-Makhu, who became the great god Ra in his
primordial
sovereignty:
Har-Ur, the elder, first-born Horus in the mythos, was the child of the mother
when she had
no husband,
and he had no father; hence she was the virgin mother who conceived but did not
bring
forth. There
was nothing human in the transaction except the terminology. Horus in the
eschatology was
he who died
and was buried, and who rose again in spirit at his second advent. This time he
was imaged
in the
likeness of the father as the beloved only begotten Son of God, who manifested
as the fulfiller of
his word and
doer of his will. Two types in this way were deposited and made permanent in
Horus, the
child of
twelve years, and Amsu-Horus, the man of thirty years. Both characters were
united and made
one as solar
in Horus of the double horizon. This character of Horus, as Repa or
Heir-Apparent, may be
traced
historically at a later time as that assigned to a Pharaoh of the 12th dynasty,
who represents the
double
Harmachis, the sun-god of the two-fold horizon. He claims a divine origin as
the virgin's child that
was not
begotten by God the Father. As an infant “in the egg”, he was exalted to be
“the Lord of both
parts”, or
both horizons, like Har-sam-taui. Speaking of the god he says “he anointed my
forehead as
Lord of men,
creating me as chief of mortals. He placed me in the palace as a youth not yet
come forth
from my
mother's womb”. He was born in the likeness of elder Horus to be king, or to.
become the royal
Horus in the
horizon of the vernal equinox, where [Page 333] the two parts were united as
east and west in
the solar
mythos, which followed the stellar Peseshti, or two halves, that were the south
and north of Sut
and Horus
(Records, v. 12, pp. 53, 54).
Without a
fundamental knowledge of the mythology as framework it is impossible to
comprehend the
doctrines of
the Egyptian religion. Horus of the double horizon, or the double equinox, was
the solar
prototype of
the double Horus in the eschatology. As sun-god on the western horizon in the
autumn
equinox
Har-Makhu was born, conceived or incorporated as the virgin's child. It was at
this point, that
Horus entered
earth or the matrix of the mother in the mount, and thus became the child of
Seb and Isis
by adoption,
though not by begettal. In the eastern equinox he rose again as Horus of the
double force
and master of
the double feather, or the later double crown. When the sun set at night, or in
the autumn
season, it
sank down into the waters of the abyss below the horizon, which Horus-Sebek
swam as the
fish. The
crocodile, then, expressed the un-paralleled power by which the sun-god crossed
the waters
and rose
again. The crossing was from equinox to equinox, from the western to the
eastern side of the
mount, let us
say from the sign of Virgo in the autumn to the sign of Pisces in the vernal
equinox.
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Ancient
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example, to
take up serpents and other poisonous reptiles in his hands without receiving
any hurt. Thus,
Neith, the
suckler of crocodiles, was an earlier form of the Virgin Mother than Isis, and
by her aid we may
obtain a
foothold in the zodiac, like that of Horus resting on the mystical two
crocodiles, which became
the two
fishes in the sign of Pisces. When the autumn equinox occurred in Virgo that
was the place of
conception
for Sebek, the fish of the inundation. Six months later the sun rose in the
sign of Pisces, and
in the
eastern equinox, where the fish, as child and consort, or as the two
crocodiles, became the two
fishes with
Neith as the mother on one horizon and Sekhet on the other. Thus as we read the
signs, the
virgin Neith
conceived her child as Sebek-Horus, the fish of the inundation, which was
duplicated to
express the
adultship, and there were two typical fishes. A well-known picture of
Child-Horus shows the
youthful
sun-god standing on two crocodiles, which we take to express the power of the
double, or, more
exactly, the
doubled Horus. In this representation Har-Ur is described as the old child who
becomes
young. That
is the elder who transforms into the younger Horus on the Mount of Glory in the
vernal
equinox.
Standing on the two crocodiles Har-Ur has now acquired the double power-the
power, for
the
crocodile-headed Sebek as the child attributed to Neith in
Virgo,
crosses the gulf of darkness or the abyss of waters to rise
up in the
east as Horus of the twofold horizon which he had united
in the double
equinox as Horus of the doubled power. The
doubled power
of the sun or god in symbolism was expressed by
duplication
of the type. For example, it was in the autumn equinox,
or, as more
primitively imaged, on the western mount - the mount
of the cow
which was covered with crosses indicating the equinox
(Wilkinson)
that Child-Horus was conceived in the mythology or
incarnated in
the eschatology. In the first he was the little suffering
sun of the
crossing, or the cross, who went down into the
underworld to
die See fig. of Horus, p. 317. [Page 334] and be
buried; to
transform and to rise again. In the zodiac of Denderah,
the sign of
the “Scales” contains a portrait of Har-pi-Khart, or
Horus the
child, who was conceived or incorporated in that sign as
Horus of the
double equinox called Har-Makhu. The name
identifies
Child-Horus with the sign. The word for the scales or
balance in
Egyptian is Makhu, Further, the scales denote the
equinox, as
the point of equipoise, The Greek name of Harmachis
is derived
from the Egyptian word Makhu, for the balance or
scales and
thence for the level of the equinox, where the balance
was erected
on the day of weighing words and of reckoning the
years. The
Horus of the double equinox was also termed “the
double
Harmakhu” (Records, v. 12, p, 53), and this duality was
also imaged
in the two-foldness of the Sphinx, with its tail to the west and its head to
the east, pointing to
the equinox
each way. But how was the crossing from west to east effected at the time when
no Amenta
had as yet
been opened in the under world ?
The passage
of the sun-god through the mountain had been imaged as a passage through the
cow of
earth. We
have a perfect survival of the mythos in the Märchen of Tom Thumb or Little
Tom, whom we
claim as a
British form of the solar Tum (or Nefer-Atum), In the Egyptian mythos Tum makes
his passage
through the
mount by means of the cow, and is reborn as Little Tum =Tom Thumb, from the
Khepsh of
the cow
Meh-ur. It is said of him in setting from the western horizon, “Earth stretches
her arms to receive
thee”. He is
embraced by the mother, whose womb is the Meskhen of rebirth (Magic Papyrus, p,
6, lines
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Ancient
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3 and 4),
And, again, at his going forth to the eastern horizon, it is said, “Thou hast
rested in the cow;
thou hast
been immerged in the cow Meh-ur” (lnscription of Darius, lines 27, 28).
Sebek-Horus swam the
water as a
crocodile, The eel of Atum made the crossing through the mud of the morass.
Kheper the
beetle bored
his passage through the earth; Behutet rode upon the vulture's wings; Horus
made the
aerial voyage
as a hawk, and Har-Makhu crossed from one horizon to the other through the
hollow body
of the
Sphinx, These were modes of making a passage when the nether earth had not been
opened up
by Ptah, and
the Sekru-sledge, which preceded the boat, had not been laid upon the stocks as
the
means of
travelling by land which was illustrated in the mysteries of Memphis. But,
however represented,
the Horus who
crossed the abyss was named Har-Makhu, the god of the double horizon, or the
double
equinox, The
principle of this duplication on the horizon of the East can be established by
means of the
two lions.
which express the double glory of the double Horus, who was lord of the solar
force that was
double in the
vernal equinox. Horus of the double horizon was also Horus of the two lions, In
the Ritual
Horus rises
again saying, “I am the twin lions, the heir of Ra”. (ch. 38, I). He is Horus
rising in the
strength of
the two lions as the “ lion of the luminous course”. Again, he says: “I am the
twin lions” (62.2),
“I am the
double lion” (72, 9), “I go out from the dwelling of the two lions to the house
of Isis the divine”
(which was in
Sothis), “ I complete the greatness of Shu the lion” (78, 22, 24). In a
vignette to the Ritual
the sun of
to-day rises betwixt two lions, which represent Safre the sun of yesterday and
Tua the sun of
to-morrow.
This is the Horus -[Page 335] sun, and the two lions image the double strength
or glory of
Horus in the
sign of Leo.
One title of
Har-Makhu, or Horus of the double horizon, is Har-Khuti-Khepera, the Horus who
made his
transformation
as the beetle-headed Khepera. The astronomical locality for this particular
transformation
would
naturally be in the sign of Cancer, which the Egyptians sometimes represented
by two beetles, at
others times
by one. Either way, the beetle was the sign of Khepera as Horus of the two
horizons. Thus,
two beetles
mark another station in which the Horus of the double horizon manifests, as the
solar deity,
with
reduplicated power; just as he emerges on the double horizon from betwixt the
two lions or Kherufu,
in the sign
of Leo, as the lion of the double force. Under one of his zootypes, child-Horus
was “the Iamb,
son of a
sheep”; and the Iamb on the western horizon or mount attained the double power
of the adult,
as a ram in
the opposite sign of Aries on the eastern mount. Indeed, Pisces is the first of
six signs in all of
which this
duplication of the solar power was represented in the zodiac. In the sign of
Aries, Horus was
the Iamb upon
the western mount who became a ram upon the horizon east, as the adult figure
of
reduplicated
power. In the sign of Taurus he was the calf which became a bull. A vignette to
ch. 109 of
the Ritual
shows the “Horus of the solar mount” as the calf in presence of the god, and of
the morning
star upon the
western mount. Hathor, the divine cow, is also present with the calf upon the
mount. This is
the calf that
is to become a bull, “ the bull of the mother” on the Mount of Glory in the
double equinox,
where Horus,
the fulfiller, attained the double power. Now, if we suppose the autumn equinox
to coincide
at the time
with the sign of Scorpio, the vernal equinox would then occur in Taurus, and in
that sign the
Horus calf
would become a bull as symbol of the solar power that was doubled in the vernal
equinox.
When the
autumn equinox coincided with the sign of Virgo the place of double glory was
in the sign of
Pisces on the
opposite horizon. The god was conceived as the child, calf, or youngling, in
the west. As
Sebek, his image
was the crocodile of Neith, the virgin in the sign of Virgo. The crocodile in
the Ritual is
the Kamite
“great fish”. Two crocodiles are therefore the two fishes. These are exactly
opposite the sign
of “Virgo”,
and the two fishes = two crocodiles are the dual sign of Horus in his double
glory, as the
expression of
his double power in Pisces, like the two lions in the sign of Leo. This
principle of
duplication
may be traced in six of the solar signs. There are two lions as supporters of
the sun-god in
the sign of
Leo; two beetles in the sign of Cancer; two twins in the sign of Gemini.
Further, Horus was the
calf on the
western horizon, who became the bull on the horizon east; also the Iamb on one
side and the
ram upon the
other. Thus the duplication extends from the sign of Leo to the sign of Pisces
inclusive,
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which
represents the sun-god as Horus the child and Horus the adult, whose double
power or glory was
expressed by
two lions, two crocodiles, and other types of twinship, in addition to the
twins or Gemini
who were
figured in the human form.
Or if we read
- the signs the forward way the two fishes correspond to the two crocodiles of
Horus. The
sun in Aries
answers for the ram and Iamb; in Taurus for the bull and calf. In the sign of
the [Page 336]
Gemini there
is a pair of twins. The sign of Cancer or the Crab was represented by two
beetles in
Egyptian
planispheres. In the lion sign two lions, called the Kherefu, supported the
young solar god in his
resurrection
on the horizon in Leo. Thus, when Horus of the double horizon was conceived
with the
autumn
equinox in the sign of Virgo, he was twinned and brought forth with the vernal
equinox in Pisces,
where two
fishes = two crocodiles, mark the birthplace. The lamb and ram are twinned in
Aries; the calf
and bull in
Taurus. If we take these six signs in the circle of precession the two lions
correspond to the
duality of
Atum-Horus; the two beetles to Kheper-Ptah; the two Gemini to Sut and Horus;
the bull and calf
to Osiris and
Horus; the ram and lamb to Ammon-Ra and Khunsu, and the two fishes to the twin
crocodiles,
as six different illustrations of the sun of the two horizons at six different
landing-stages on the
other side of
the celestial deep. Thus, the double Harmakhis includes two characters
corresponding to
the two
equinoxes on the double horizon. In one he is the concept of a virgin, in the
other he is brought
forth by the
parturient mother. In one he was the calf in time, in the other he is the bull
of eternity. In the
one he is
Horus in matter, in the other he is Horus in spirit. In the one he is the child
of twelve years; in
the other he
is the adult of thirty years. The first was the founder, the second is the
fulfiller. The first was
Horus of the
incarnation, the second is Horus of the resurrection. Horus of the resurrection
in the solar
mythos was
the prototype of Amsu in the eschatology, who rose up in spirit from the inert
condition of the
mummy, as
conqueror of death and all the banded powers of evil. In both phases of
character this is
Horus of the
double force, the double crown, the double feather, the double Uraei, the
double life, or
other types
of duplication, including the double equinox.
Thus the
doctrine of a two-fold advent for an ever-coming child, born of a virgin
mother, can be traced in
the solar
mythos to a beginning with Horus of the double horizon. Whatsoever the point in
precession,
the horizon
of the resurrection or the mount of glory coincided with the vernal equinox.
The little sun, the
calf, or the
child Horus entered the mount at the beautiful gate of entrance in the West,
for breeding
purposes, and
rose again as the great sun, the bull, the lion, the adult Horus, that went
forth at the
beautiful
gate of exit in the East to become the bull of the mother when the godhood
consisted of the
mother, the
child, and the divine adult.
The mystery
of the double horizon was indeed a riddle of the Sphinx. The great Sphinx of
Gizeh is
traditionally
reputed to symbolize the river Nile at its rising, when the sun coincided with
the signs of Leo
or Virgo in
the water-season of the year. It is now known, however, to be a representative
image of the
god
Har-Makhu. The Sphinx itself has spoken once. On the stele of Tahtmes IV it is
“called” the Sphinx of
Khepera, the
very mighty, the greatest of the Spirits and the most august. “Now Kheper, the
son of Ptah
is, as
already said, a form of Tum-Harmakhis who was not simply a solar god of the
double horizon. In
the
eschatology he became the god in spirit, the one god living in truth, the sole
power that was
worshipped as
eternal. This is the “greatest of spirits” represented by the Sphinx of
Khepera. [Page 337]
There had
been a sort of hollow under-world made out before Amenta was established as
“the earth of
eternity” by
the opener Ptah. This was the Akar, Khar, or Kar, over which the Sphinx
presided brooding in
her mysteries
of birth - the birth of light, of water, of food, of the young solar god, and,
lastly, of an ever-
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Iiving soul.
We learn from the Ritual that the mystery of the Sphinx originated with the
mount of earth as
the place of
passage, of burial, and re-birth for the solar god.
An ancient
Egyptian name for the Sphinx is Akar. This also was a name for the hollow of
the under-world.
The speaker,
in the character of the newly-risen solar god, exclaims, “I am the offspring of
yesterday. The
tunnels of
the earth have given me birth, and I am revealed at my appointed time” in the
coming forth to
day ( ch. 64,
Renouf). It is said that the very bones of the deities quake as the stars go on
their
triumphant
courses through the tunnels of the Akar (Pyramid Texts, Teta, 319). It is
demonstrable that a
passage
through the mount of earth, the same that was made through the Cow, was
followed by the
passage
through Akar, the Sphinx, which was built for the god Har-Makhu, the Horus-sun
that was
immeasurably
earlier than Ra. The speaker is in Akar, which is represented by the goddess
Akerit
because it
was the place of burial and re-birth. The tunnel through the mount of the
Sphinx is oblong; and
it is
noticeable that the oldest known pyramid in Egypt, that of Medum, is neither
conical nor
quadrangular,
but oblong. To understand the nature of the Akar, says Renouf, we have to
imagine a
tunnel
starting from the spot where the sun sets and extending through the earth as
far as where the sun
rises. Each
end of the tunnel has a sphinx-like form. A human-headed lion couches at the
entrance and
also at the
end. It is through the paws of this double sphinx that the galley of the sun-god
enters on the
western
horizon and comes out on the eastern mount. In the picture, Plate 14, taken
from the tomb of
Rameses IV. “
Fair entrance” (Aka Nefer) is written atone end of the tunnel, “Fair exit” (Par
Nefer) at the
other
(Proceedings, Society of Biblical Archy., vol. xv. Pt. 8, p. 385). These two
gates of entrance and exit
on the
horizon were called the gates of Akar, and sometimes the gates of Seb, the god
of earth. They
were the two
gates of earth for the sun in the mythology, and the two gates of Akar for the
manes in the
eschatology.
Thus the twofold horizon was imaged for Har-Makhu in the figure of the double
Sphinx. The
traditions
lead one to think that profound secrets were buried in the building of the
Sphinx, as was the
way with
these builders, who put all they knew into all they did. We gather from the
stele of Tahtmes that
the monument
was built to commemorate the sacred place of creation, or, literally, “of the
first time”, an
Egyptian
expression generally used for the creation or “in the beginning”. This sacred
site is said to go
back to the
days of the masters of Kher or Kar, which as a divine locality was the
Neter-Kar of the underworld
or the abyss.
Kher is likewise an ancient name of the Egyptian BabyIon, old Cairo. Like
Babylon,
this was the
gate or pathway of the gods - the place of exit, as we read it, for the seven
elemental powers
who issued
from Amenta, as the uraeus-deities, or seven spirits of earth. (Rit., ch. 83.)
In the
beginning was the Mother-earth as. the womb of universal [Page 338] life;
vegetable, animal, reptile,
fish, bird,
and human life. The uterine figure was repeated in the making of Amenta as “the
Tuat” for the
birthplace of
water and for edible plants, or, more generally, the elements of life. Thirdly,
this type was
imaged as the
abyss of the beginning in the uranographic representation of the southern
heaven. Earth
was the womb
of life when life was born of water. The birth-place was imaged by the abyss of
the Tuat,
the well, the
gorge, or other type of utterance, from the secret source in the sacred place
of creation, the
creatory of
the Mother-earth. The water of life became a type of the eternal, the fabled
fount of
immortality
that was so preciously preserved in the divine under-world; the living water
that was sought
for by the
mother when she periodically lost her child who was the same to her as the
water of life, and
who was found
in the abyss, which was indeed the place of its rebirth. The generation of life
by water, the
birth of
Horus by water and in food, was the profoundest of mysteries. This was the way
that life actually
came into the
world, before the subject was made doctrinal. This was a life which did save
the world
when Horus
the Messu was the saviour who naturally gave fulfilment periodically to the
promise that he
made. In
various legends the secret of this water of life that wells up in the
subterranean regions
jealously
guarded by dragons, crocodiles or other monsters of the deep. In the Chaldean
versions the
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seven anunaki
or spirits of earth are the guardians appointed to keep the secret of the
waters of life in
this
under-world to which the dead descended and from which the elemental powers
first ascended to the
surface of
the upper earth. There is warrant for assuming that the mystery of the
beginning from the
abyss was
also one of the great secrets that was guarded by the Sphinx at Gizeh. The
final fact is that
the Sphinx
was carved out of the rock at the exact centre of the earth to commemorate
“that sacred place
of the
creation” or beginning which goes back to the domain of Sut, and to “the days
of the masters of
Kher”. That
is the beginning in and with the primordial mundane abyss from which life
emanated and
from which
the elemental powers or seven uraeus-deities were born of Mother-earth. The
Sphinx, then,
like the cow
of earth, or the hollow mount, was a means of crossing the abyss in which human
handiwork
had succeeded
to the natural type as the figure of a passage. It was made as the means of
crossing for
Horus of the
two horizons or the double equinox. Thus, the Sphinx is a monument that
commemorates
the founding
of the equinox in the double horizon, and as this was assigned to Atum
Harmachis, it may
account for
the Hebrew tradition which associated Adam with the equinox, Adam being a
Jewish form of
the Egyptian
Atum. Harmachis entered the Sphinx at sunset in the west or hinder part, and
was reborn in
the east as
Horus of the fore part, lion-faced. The means of crossing the dark gulf in the
solar mythos
was now the
bridge in death and the mode of uniting the two worlds in one, when the
re-arising of the
sun was
succeeded by the resurrection of the soul, the lion having been adopted for the
Sphinx upon the
horizon east
as an emblem of the double power which made the passage for the sun-god or the
soul.
The Sphinx is
male in front and female in the hinder part. It is a compound image of the
Mother-earth and
the young god
whom she brought [Page 339] forth upon the horizon of the resurrection. Without
the
mother there
was no rebirth. Where the earth opens for the sunrise it was called the unnu or
outrance of
Neith. As the
Sphinx appears to us it has the human face. But the god Tum-Harmachis was the
lion of the
solar glory,
and his bringer-forth as Sekhet was the lioness. The perfect type was dual as
the lion and the
lioness
combined, only the forepart has been rendered anthropomorphically in the
likeness of the
Pharaoh who
was the lion-ruler at the time. The great Sphinx as keeper of these secrets was
couched in
mountainous
repose upon the horizon in the eastern equinox, when the gate of “fair exit” was
in the lion-
sign and the
gate of “fair entrance” was in Aquarius, the water-sign that is figured over
the abyss of
source on the
celestial globe. The Sphinx then is a figure of the double horizon and the
duality of Har-
Makhu when
the place of conjunction was at the point of precession in the lion-sign. And
if, as is the
Egyptian way,
the fact was registered forthwith, we may date the Sphinx as a monument which
was
reared by
these great builders and thinkers, who lived so largely out of themselves, some
thirteen
thousand
years ago.
The “Aten” of
the so-called disk-worship was an ancient form of Har-Makhu, god of the double
horizon.
This,
however, was not a worship of the solar disk. The disk was but an emblem of the
circle made by
Aten as the
god of both horizons. His was a compound type of godhood, in which the mother
was dual
with the son
who was her child on one horizon and her bull or fecundator on the other. The
word Aten,
from At, was
an ancient name for the child. Horus-Behutet, god of the hut or winged disk, we
take to have
been the
earliest form of Aten. This is the solar god who crossed from the horizon west
to the horizon
east upon the
vulture's wings, which were an emblem of the motherhood. The “hut” was a dual
emblem
of the divine
infant and the mother as bearer of the child. As the bird she carried him over
the intervening
void of
darkness where the Apap lay in wait. Thus the godhood of Aten consisted of the
mother, her child,
and the adult
male or bull of the mother, in a cult which preceded that of the fatherhood of
Atum-Ra. The
glory of Aten
as the power that is doubled on the horizon of the Resurrection was the object
of regard in
this
religion, not the disk.
This cult of
the mother and the child who was worshipped in Egypt as Har-Makhu, the child
commonly
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called Horus
on the horizon, had an unsuspected development amongst the Mediterranean races.
The
Mycenaean
Tree and Pillar Cult is the title of a somewhat recent work by Arthur J. Evans
( London,
1901).The
title implies the common notion that trees and pillars, “stocks and stones”
were directly
worshipped
instead of the power that was represented by them in sign-language. But a
volume of
evidence
might be collected showing that the supreme object of worship in this cult was
the deity of the
double
equinox, the youthful solar god who in Egypt was called “the double Har-Makhu”.
Both tree and
pillar had
been figures of the pole before they were erected in the equinox. The tree was
planted in the
abyss as a
figure of the southern pole, the “tall sycamore of Sut” or tree of the south.
The column of
stone was
raised in Annu, as the pillar of the northern [Page 340] pole. When the
equinoxes were
established,
tree and pillar both were continued and often blended at the point of equipoise
as figures of
the
birthplace that was shifted to the zodiac in the solar mythos. The Mithraic
monuments show us that
the tree was
a figure of the equinox, and that two trees represented the double equinox when
this was
resting in
the signs of Scorpio and Taurus (Drummond, pI. 13). Both tree and pillar had
been types of
Hathor as the
abode of Horus. In the Egyptian Ritual the tree marks the place of coming forth
and point
of emergence
from Amenta in the equinox. “I am the babe”, says Horus four times. “I am the
god within
the ash
tree”. “I am the link which connecteth the solar orb with yesterday” - and also
with to-morrow, as
is shown by
the two lions (ch. 18). This connecting link is Horus of the two horizons, who
is here brought
forth from
the ash tree. When columns could be carved, tile raising of the stone pillar
took the place of
planting the
tree, or was added to it as a co-type of station. In the twelfth dynasty the
foundation of a
solar temple
is described. Amenemha and his son Usertsen I, were on the throne conjointly as
representatives
of the solar god of both horizons. The King says, “Henceforth I will make
monuments and
erect carved
columns to the double Harmachis”. (Records of the Past, vol. xii., p. 53.) That
is, to the sun-
god of the
two horizons or the double equinox, who was here represented by the Pharaoh and
his son.
The Mycenaean
symbolism of the two lions with the central tree or pillar can be read if
followed as
Egyptian, but
not otherwise. The tree, the pillar, or the mount was female as a figure of the
birthplace, the
place of exit
for the babe born from the mount, the meskhen, or its equivalent (in wood or
stone). For
example, a
birthplace in the stellar mythos was in Sothis, the star that showed the
birthplace of the babe.
Both child
and mother met in Sothis as Hathor and her infant Horus. She was the house of
Horus. The
house was
imaged as a cone or a tree. This will explain why the Mycenaean figure
accompanying the
tree-pillar
is at times a woman and at other times a child. They are the goddess and her
babe, identical
with Hathor
and Child-Horus in the place of birth. In the gold shrine found at Mycenaea
(Evans, fig. 65)
the figures
on each side are two doves. Now the dove in Egypt was the very ancient bird of
Hathor, and
the two doves
are a figure equivalent to the mother and the child that was born within her
shrine, her
house, her
pillar, or her tree, as her dove of the generative spirit, or the later Holy
Spirit. The cult of the
mother and
child is also illustrated on the impression of a gem from Knossos. A sheep
represents the
mother as
suckler of the child beneath her - that is, her lamb, as Horus was called when
this type had
taken the
place of the calf (Evans, fig. 17). In two of the Mycenaean pictures the
goddess in person is
placed
betwixt the two lions (Evans, figs. 44 and 45). This is she who was the tree or
pillar, shrine or
birthplace,
whether as Hathor-Sothis or as bringer forth of the deity of the double horizon
in the vernal
equinox.
Hathor was continued as the Venus of the Mediterranean races. What then was the
object of
the supposed
“worship” ? Was it the tree, the pillar, or both ? or was it the goddess who
was represented
by the tree
and pillar ? or was it the child who was re-born from the birth-place in the
tree or rock or
shrine ? The
solar birthplace on the [Page 341] horizon had long been represented by the
tree, the mount,
the cone,
shrine, gate, portal, the unnu or other forms of the opening which was always
female, and a
figure of
childbirth in the mythos, when the mother was the earth. As Egyptian the
goddess herself is
some-times
portrayed; sometimes the child, and sometimes both the mother and the child,
are imaged
inside the
pillar or cone which stands for the place of birth (Schiaparelli, Piramidi
Egiziane, Plates). The
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cult, then,
whether as Egyptian or Mycenaean, was a worship of the mother and child, the
divine duad
that was so
prevalent amongst the Mediterranean races, and not a tree-and-pillar cult; not
a worship of
“stocks and
stones”.
The double
axe of what has been called “the Mycenaean tree-and-pillar cult” is an emblem
of the
doubled
power, and the so-called god of the double axe is consequently a god of the
double equinox,
who was
Har-Makhu, the Horus who passed into Atum-Ra as the Egyptian Zeus. The sun that
made its
way through
the earth or the abyss was known as the divider, or the cleaver, This was the
solar power
which clove
its way from west to east and from horizon to horizon as Har-Makhu, god of the double
horizon or
double equinox in the annual round. He was the cleaver of the earth, who was
represented by
the cleaver
as an axe which, we take it, was a sign of Horus, the cleaver of the way. The
god of the
double
equinox who completed the course from horizon to horizon was Horus of the
double force, which
doubled force
was variously imaged by the double crown, the double uraei, the double feather,
the two
lions, the
two crocodiles, and other dual types. Hence the god himself is called “the double
Harmachis”.
He was
cleaver of the way, whose double power was likewise imaged by the two-headed
weapon which
has been
termed the “divine double axe” of the Mycenaean cult. The type itself may have
been derived
from the
Egyptian nuter-sign of divinity or power divinized, which was the stone axe of
the paleolithic age;
and a double
axe would be the visible symbol of the power that was doubled in the vernal
equinox. On a
Mycenaean
vase from Old Salamis the double axe is figured between two bull's heads, each
of which
supports a
double axe. If we take the double axe as a sign of the power that was doubled
in the equinox,
it seems to
follow that this representation indicates an equinox in the sign of Taurus; and
as the bull's
head and the
axe are both dual, this will be the equinox that was double at the time of
celebration,
therefore the
double equinox determined by the two bull's heads and the double axe as signs
of the solar
power that
was doubled in the vernal equinox.
The reader has
but to take up Count d' Alviella's book on the Migration of Symbols to see how
widely
spread this
equinoctial imagery became. In this we find -
Fig. 58 The
tree standing betwixt two lions (from the Cathedral of Torcello).Figure H.
Plate 4 -The tree
betwixt two
lions (from a bas-relief of Bharhut).Figure 35-Gilgames flanked by two lions,
which he holds
at arm's
length. Figure 65 -The tree between two goats (Assyrian cylinder).Figure A,
Plate 4 -Tree
between two
cherubs (Chaldean art). Tree betwixt two winged unicorns (bas-relief of
Nineveh), Figure B,
Plate 4 -Tree
between two cherubs (from a Phoenician bowl). Fig D. Plate 4 - Tree between two
rams
(from a
bowl). [Page 342] Figure 67 -Tree betwixt two giraffes (vase from Curium).
Figure 71-Tree or stalk
and winged
solar disk betwixt two hare-headed looking animals (Khetan cylinder).
Two figures
guarding the tree upon a Syrian amulet (figure 110). The tree here is shaped
like the ankh-
cross, thus
showing it to be the tree of life upon Egyptian ground.
The Assyrian
combination of the sacred tree and winged solar disk unites the tree of dawn
with the rising
sun, and the
symbol has the same significance no matter whether the sun-god climbs the tree
or the disk
is borne on
wings above its branches. The tree of dawn stands in the solar birthplace. This
is in the
vernal
equinox as birth-place of the annual sun. That which brings forth is the
female, and the feminine
nature of the
type explains the fecundation of the tree by the two acolytes or geni who take
the place of
the two
lions, crocodiles, dragons, beetles, cherubs, birds, and other types of the
supporting pair.
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Ancient
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Amongst the
co-types of the tree may be reckoned the figure of a god or child, a cone or
across, a pillar,
papyrus-reed,
a lotus or a vase, the unnu or opening”, the meskhen or birthplace, whence
issued the
youthful
solar deity now fulfilled of his duplicated power. The two confronted lions are
common on the
Mycenaean
gems as two heraldic supporters of the central figure. This in one instance is
the radiating
solar orb
itself (figure 41, Evans). In another a male divinity stands betwixt the two
lions (fig. 43, Evans).
In others the
figure standing or seated between the two lions is the divine mother who
brought forth in the
equinox. On
two different glass plaques from Mycenaea (Evans, figs. 13 and 14) the supports
on either
side of the
tree-pillar are two lions. Amongst other figures may be seen:
Two lions
with the sun rising from between them, the same as in the Egyptian
representation. (Evans,
figure 42, A
and B. Ritual, Vignette, ch. 18.)
Two lions
supporting a tat or tree-pillar. (Evans, figure 35.)
Two lions
back to back with the tree-pillar between. (Evans, figure 39.)
Two lions
with the tree-pillar. (Evans, figure 40. )
Two lions
pouring out libations on the pillar. (Evans figures 12, 13, 14)
Two lions
with the god in person between them in place of the tree or pillar. (Evans,
figure 43. )
Two lions,
with the goddess in person between them in place of the symbols. This is she
who was the
tree, the
shrine, pillar, or birthplace. (Evans, fig. 44.)
Two lions
with the goddess seated between them. (Evans, fig. 45.)
Other
pictures show the mount of the equinox, the tree at the meeting point of sun
and moon in the
equinox
(Evans, fig. 4), the equinox, as mount, betwixt two bulls (Evans, fig. 3). In
another scene two
bulls support
a tree-pillar (Evans, fig. 34). In one instance two sphinxes support the
tree-pillar (Evans, fig.
33). The
solution now to be propounded is that the mount or pillar-the shrine or the
tree - determines the
point of
equinox that the dual nature of the symbol shows it to be the double equinox as
place of re-birth
for the god
of the double horizon, and that the two lions, two sphinxes, two beetles, two
bulls, rams, or
goats denote
the particular sign of the zodiac in which the vernal equinox and the re-birth
of Har-Makhu
occurred at
the time that is thus visibly portrayed.
The mystery
of Har-Makhu and the double equinox was known to Paul, who was a master of the
secret
wisdom. The
doctrine concerning [Page 343] Tum-Harmachis is well stated by him, only it has
been
rendered
Hebraistically. The two Atums, or Atum and Nefer-Atum, are replaced by the
first and second
Adam as the
man of earth and the man from heaven. The second Atum was “he who is our peace”
with
the title of
Iu-em-hetep. This, as the second Horus, was “he who made both one” and “ broke
down the
middle wall
of partition”, “that he might create in himself of the twain one new man”.The
middle wall of
partition “is
a figure in the eschatology of that which was a fact in the equinoctial mythos
(Eph. ii. 14, 15).
Whatsoever
the type, the double equinox was indicated by the twofold figure. Thus, if a
tree were the
symbol, then
two trees were the sign of the double equinox, and when Horus of the
resurrection rises, let
us say, as
the good shepherd betwixt two trees, it is, as now suggested, a portrait of
Har-Makhu, the
connecting
link between the two horizons or two lives. Now, one of the commonest scenes in
the Roman
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Ancient
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catacombs is
this of the two trees betwixt which rises the so-called Good Shepherd, who is
sometimes a
goatherd.
There is a scene from the Roman catacombs in which the good shepherd is the
central figure
betwixt the
two trees, two birds, and also the lamb and ram, by which the resurrection is
to be identified
with the
vernal equinox in the sign of Aries (Lundy, fig. 76). In another of the
pictures from the catacombs
the good
shepherd is accompanied by both the lamb and the ram, which are at least
equivalent to the
dual type of
the equinox in Aries. He carries the lamb upon his shoulders, whilst the ram is
resting at his
feet (Lundy).
Horus was the lamb upon the western and the ram upon the eastern horizon, both
being
united in a
figure of the double power. A kindred representation is portrayed upon agnostic
stone now in
the British
Museum. This is Horus the gnostic Jesus as Ichthus the fish. That the scene
occurs in the sign
of Pisces is
shown by the two fishes, one of which is over the head of Horus, the other
under his feet.
The latter
also repeats the ancient type of the crocodile on which the divine child was
supported in the
Cippi of
Horus. There is also an altar of the Palmyrene at Rome which has the image .of
the solar god on
one side, and
on the other a conical cypress tree, the foliage of which exhibits a child
carrying a ram
upon its
shoulder ( d' Alviella, Mig. of Symbols), which shows a singular reversal in
the position of the
child and
adult. But it was the child = the lamb that issued from the maternal tree, to
be followed by the
adult as the
ram. When Horus rises from the dead in the Egyptian
tombs it is
as the good shepherd. The crook and whip ( or flail) of
rule are the
insignia of his sovereignty. According to the Ritual (ch.
109), he
rises up between two trees called the “two sycamores of
emerald”.
Thus he is the perfect prototype of the good shepherd in
the Roman
catacombs. The god who rises in this character is
Horus of the double
equinox in the mythology, and Horus in spirit
in the
eschatology, who by his resurrection joined the [Page 344]
two lives
together and the two worlds in one. The good shepherd
in the
catacombs is self-identified by the cloak he wears, which is
the cloak of
royalty, as a figure of the royal Horus, the child who
was born and
predestined to be king.
The doctrines
of the incarnation and the resurrection had already
been
established in the cult of Har-Makhu, the Horus of the double
equinox.
Horus the child in one equinox, who was Horus the adult in
the other,
constituted the double Harmachis, one as the founder and
one as the
fulfiller - one as Horus of the incarnation, the other as Horus of the
resurrection. The doctrine
was at first
solar, and next eschatological. In both phases it was earlier than the
fatherhood of Ra. The
incarnation
was at least as ancient as the virgin in the zodiac, who conceived in Virgo,
and the mother
who brought
forth in Pisces, which we calculate may have been some six-and-twenty thousand
years
ago. The
solar god who united the two horizons was the fulfiller of the annual circle,
and came to reign as
the king of
one year, first in the inundation, then in the zodiac. He also came in the
character of the great
judge to see
that justice should be periodically administered. In the stellar mythos Anup
had been the
judge, with
the seat of judgment at the place of equipoise which was then at the celestial
pole. In the
solar mythos
this was shifted to the vernal equinox, and the mount of glory to the east. An
ideal of justice,
truth, and
righteousness, imaged by the balance or scales, was postulated as established
and eternal in
the heavens
as the reign of law, and there was an annual attempt to make that justice
visible and
veritable on
earth. Har-Makhu came as the great judge, accompanied by the seven great
spirits who
were his
executioners, called “the seven arms of the balance”.The balance was erected as
a figure of the
equinoctial
level, for the weighing of hearts and of words. The unjust were punished,
wrongs were
righted,
restitution was enforced. The judgment day in the Easter equinox was similar in
point of time to
what we in
Europe call the “March Assizes”. This was represented as the judgment in
Amenta.
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Ancient
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THE MAKING OF
AMENTA
The
puzzle-picture of the astronomical mythology had to be collected from its many
scattered parts and
put together
piecemeal, and the method of presentment is panoramic. It was not practicable
to tell the
story
straight through with chronological sequence. For instance, in portraying the
eschatology of the
Ritual, in
the fourth book, the existence of Amenta had to be taken for granted, before
the making of this
under-world
had been described as the excavation made by Ptah the opener and his seven Ali
or coworkers.
As a group,
the eight great gods of Am-Khemen were followed by the Put-cycle or Ennead of
the Nine. The
word Put, whence the name of Putah or Ptah, denotes the number nine, and the
Put-cycle
was formed
when Ptah was added to the earlier eight great gods. Neither Anup nor Taht was
now the
highest one.
The groups of seven and eight, however, were not submerged. The group of seven
survived
as [Page 345]
the seven Khnemmu, moulders or metallurgists who assisted Ptah the divine
craftsman, and
the group of
eight to which he was the ninth god are sometimes described as the children of
Ptah. In an
inscription
at Edfu they are called “the most great of the first time; the august who were
earlier than the
gods,
children of Ptah, who issued forth from him, engendered to take the north and
the south, to create
in Thebes and
in Memphis; the creators of all creation”, according to the later, i.e. solar,
mythology. The
earliest form
of a divine father-hood was outlined though not perfected in the pygmy Ptah;
hence one of
his titles is
“the Father of the Fathers”, which indicates the father-hood that was founded
on the eldest
brother. Ptah
was a solar god who did not attain the status of Ra.
Now, until
the time of Ptah, Amenta was not founded as the earth of eternity in the
subterranean regions,
nor excavated
from one horizon to the other as a pathway for the nocturnal sun and the Manes.
Sebek,
the
crocodile-headed god, swam in the water round about the earth from west to east
upon the outside of
the mount.
Horus crossed the waters on the wings of the hawk. Behutet or Aten of the disk
rode on the
wings of the
vulture, Tum-Horus was the calf that issued from the cow of earth, and
Har-Makhu passed
from one side
of the mount to the other through the body of the Sphinx. The Amenta had not
then been
hollowed out.
The passage through the mount from west to east was tunnelled now by Ptah and
his coworkers,
who in this
character might be called his seven navvies. When Ptah, the supreme craftsman
of
the gods,
constructed his terrestrial and subterranean house of the double earth he built
it on the earlier
foundations,
such as the Akar and Tuat of the abyss that were previously extant. The two
pillars of the
south and
north were likewise utilized. As it is said in. the mythological text from
Memphis, “the two pillars
of the
gateway of the house of Ptah are Horus and Sut”, which had previously
represented the two poles
of Sut and
Horus, the twin founders, as we show, in the beginning.
An
inscription found both at Edfu and Esne mentions the “festival of the
suspension of the sky” by Ptah,
which was
connected with a celebration of the winter solstice. It has been suggested by
Krall that this
had descended
from the time when “the winter solstice marked the beginning of the year and
also of the
creation”
(cited by Lockyer, Dawn of Astronomy, p. 284). Under another figure this
suspension of the sky
by Ptah in
Amenta was celebrated in the mysteries of Memphis by the erection of the double
Tat-pillar
which
supported the sky and was originally a twofold figure founded on the pole, but
the sky now
suspended in
the double earth of Ptah was not the sky of day. It is the firmament of the
nocturnal sun
through which
it passed at night when in the nether world which is for the first time fully
opened up by
Ptah the
great architect of the universe, who followed the earlier sky-supporters, Sut,
Horus, and Shu.
The Kamite
Amenta is “the grave of man's lost world”, where his legendary garden of the
beginning may
be
rediscovered. In this subterranean country will be found a copy of the primary
paradise of all
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Ancient
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mythology,
which can be restored from the Ritual and the imagery set in the stars of
heaven, and proved
to be the
work of ancient [Page 346] Egypt's wisdom. The most primitive imagery was
sacredly preserved
in Amenta,
which makes the Book of the Dead an eschatological record of the beginnings in
mythology
that is
unparalleled, and not until we have mastered the wisdom of Egypt as recorded in
Amenta shall we
be enabled to
read it on the surface of the earth. First comes the natural fact, next the
mythical
representation,
and lastly the eschatological application of the type, be it the mount, or
tree, the Deluge,
the ark, the
evil serpent, or the victorious young hero. All three phases have to be
studied, collated, and
compared; and
for this purpose the Egyptian Books of the Dead and of Amenta are worth all
other sacred
writings in
the world. The primal paradise of universal legend was above the earth upon the
summit of
the mount, up
which the spirits climbed to reach the region of eternal rest among the stars
that never set.
It was
configurated round about the pole of heaven. This has yet to be depicted as the
mount of glory.
The later
paradise was sub-terrestrial, the earthly paradise of legendary lore. The first
was stellar, the last
is solar, and
it is this last that was founded on the subterranean path of the nocturnal sun
first opened up
by Ptah. The
duplicating of paradise was partly a result of repeating the imagery of the
stellar
representation
in the solar mythos. The mount of glory in the east was added to the mount of
glory in the
north, with
the wide water of the heavens flowing round between the terrestrial and
celestial paradise
Kosmas
Indikopleustis (A.D. 535) tells us that beyond the ocean in every direction
there exists another
continent
which cannot be reached by man, but of which one part was inhabited by him
before the
Deluge. To
the east, just as in other maps of the world and in later systems, he placed
the terrestrial
paradise and
the four rivers that watered Eden which came by subterranean channels to water
the postdiluvian
earth (Blake,
Astronomical Myths, pages 266-7). This can be followed by means of the upper
paradise of
Am-Khemen, that was raised by Shu, and the lower one now configurated by the
opener
Ptah, who
suspended a sky overhead in Amenta.
In the
mythology, Amenta is the subterranean country of the sun by night. The dawn and
sunset were its
gates of
glory. It is called the beautiful Amenta, the earth of eternity. It was the
passage of the sun that
made the
pathway of the solar circle which was completed in the eastern equinox. Hence
it is said of the
sun-god, “The
junction of the double earth is the head of the coffin of Osiris, the
beneficent soul in
Sutenkhen,
who hath determined the paths of eternity”, that is in completing a circle by
making the
passage
through Amenta (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf). The road to heaven for the manes now
began with a
pathway
through the nether earth, from the place of sunset to the gate of sunrise.
Previously the way to
heaven was up
the mount which was a figure of the north celestial pole. There was no solar
passage
through the
nether regions in the stellar mythos; the sun went round the mount of earth,
not through it.
Ptah the
opener added earth to earth and heaven to heaven, the solar mythos to the
stellar. The sky
upraised by
him is indicated by the figure of heaven reversed. It is called the firmament
of Ptah. Hence it
is said by
the Osiris in Amenta, “Mine is the radiance in which Ptah floateth over his
firmament” (Rit., ch.
64), his
firmament [Page 347] being that of the nocturnal sun in the under-world. There
was now a
firmament
above and one below the earth. The firmament uplifted first by Sut, Horus, and
Shu was
supplemented
by a nether sky up-raised and suspended by the opener Ptah. The nnu, nun, or
heaven is
the celestial
water, and this, as sky, was both above and below the earth. Now, the account
of creation in
the book of
Genesis, with its waters above the firmament and its waters below the
firmament, could not
have been
written until the division of these waters of heaven above the earth and of
Amenta below the
earth was
effected when Ptah created the firmament of the nether-earth and raised another
heaven in
Amenta. In
many places the name of Nut has the sign of heaven
in the
reversed position, thus
Renouf asks,
is this one more proof that the Egyptians believed in a sky below the horizon ?
(Book of the
Dead, ch. 15, note 7). This, however, does not touch bottom. The Egyptian wise
men did not
believe in
this nether sky; they created it as a figure in sign-language. Thus in the
making of Amenta
there was a
sky above the under-world as well as over the upper earth; this is the nether
sky that was
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Ancient
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suspended
overhead by Ptah and memorized in the mysteries.
When the sun-god
Atum-Ra mounts into heaven from the garden of Aarru it is from the lower Aarru
in the
secret earth
of Amenta. Hence it is said at the same time he “goeth to the field of Aarru,
approaching to
the land of
spirits in heaven” (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf), i.e., to the upper Aarru, which was
in the heaven of
eternity, not
in the nether-land of the double earth, called the earth of eternity. This
duality has to be
completely
comprehended before the Ritual can be read, or its traditions followed round the
world, as for
example, in
the Hebrew Genesis and the Assyrian legends of creation.
Paradise in
Amenta is said by the deceased to be the “beautiful earth of eternity”. But the
deceased does
not stay in
it as his place of repose. It is not the eternal dwelling. In passing through
Amenta he is bound
for the
heaven of eternity above. This below is but the earthly paradise, and there is
an upper paradise to
be attained
across the celestial waters by those who can secure a seat in the boat of Ra. The
typical
mount was
doubled; a mountain east was added to the most ancient mount of the north,
which
sometimes
makes it look as if the site of the primitive paradise had been shifted and
slewed round from
the north to
the east. The mistake hitherto made regarding the mount is in supposing the
mount of earth,
or Amenta, to
be identical with the mount of the north, whereas the two belong to two
distinct systems of
the mythos,
stellar and solar. The mount of heaven was stellar in the north; the mount of
earth is solar in
the east. The
mount of heaven had its summit at the north celestial pole; the mount of Amenta
was level
with the
sky-line on the horizon. There is also a double judgment seat, and a twofold
judgment. One
great hall
was in Amenta. The other was at the apex of the hill of heaven, the maat of the
final judgment
that was
given on the last great day. When the two are sundered, we sometimes find the
judgment seat
is imaged at
the north celestial pole; at others, the great judge is seated as the
Rhat-Amenta or
Rhadamanthus,
in the maat of the nether-earth. This double maat or seat [Page 348] of
judgment can be
explained by
the Egyptian wisdom. It was the individual judgment that now took place in the
maat of
Amenta. This
was the first judgment of two; the second is the last great judgment in the
maat above. The
first is
beneath the tree of dawn, the second is under the tree of the pole. Those who
were condemned
as guilty in
the primary trial of the dead suffered the second death in Amenta. They went no
farther, but
were
extinguished in the tank of flame or annihilated on the highways of the
damned.Thus the two
different
resurrections are differentiated the one from the other, in the Gospel
according to John, when it
is said the
dead are to come forth; they that have done evil to “the resurrection of
judgment”, and they
that have
done good unto “the resurrection of life”. Both resurrections occur in the
Ritual; one for the
judgment in
Amenta, the other on the mount for the last judgment. and the resurrection to
eternal life.
The garden of
Aarru or paradise of the eight great gods, whom we identify as a group with the
seven in
the Lesser
Bear, plus the deity of the pole-star, was in the north. Not on the horizon north,
but at the
celestial
pole that was figured as the summit of a very lofty mount, the mythical
mountain of the north,
diamond-pointed
at the apex with the polar star, whereas the Semitic Eden is the garden
eastward. This
is relatively
late, because it belongs to the solar and not to the stellar mythos. It is not
the circumpolar
paradise of
earlier tradition. That may be the reason why the mount is omitted from the
book of Genesis.
It is not
Am-Khemen, the paradise of the eight great gods. It is the enclosure of the
pair who in the solarmythos
were Atum =
Adam and the Great Mother Kefa = Chavah.
The earth
itself was figured as a mount; its highest point was in Apta, at the equator.
When tunnelled for
a passage
through it, this became the mountain of Amenta, also the funeral mount. The
place of entrance
for the sun
or the manes of the dead was in the west, or, as it was termed, the western
hill. The mount of
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Ancient
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earth is the
mount of birth for Horus in the solar mythology. The mount of heaven is the
mount of rebirth
for souls in
the eschatology. Both have been linked together but not blended in the Egyptian
representation,
when the Osiris makes his journey from the base of the mount in Amenta to the
summit of
the heavenly
hill, the topmost peak of which is at the pole. In this ascent from the
root-Iand of the mount
of earth, or
of Amenta, to the summit of Mount Hetep it may look as if the mount were all in
one, but it is
not so. There
was a double mount; the mount of earth which was solar, and the mount of heaven
which
was stellar.
In the Ritual (ch. 108) the mount of earth is said to be “the hill on which
heaven resteth”. This
is called the
hill Bakhu, the solar mount. Its dimensions in length and breadth are given in
some of the
early papyri.
In the Papyrus of Nebseni the hill is 300 cubits in breadth. In the Turin
Ritual it is 140 cubits
in breadth.
Now it happens that in the Mexican mythology there is a “mountain of the
locust” or the mount
of
Capultepec, and the ideographic signs of this mountain include the following
numerical figures:
These figures
are Egyptian. The sign
is a figure
of ten, which goes [Page 349] back to
the origin in
digital reckoning, as it is derived from the two hands clasped and cut off at
the wrists. The
Mexican
figures therefore repeat the Egyptian at the value of 10 X 14 = 140, whatsoever
the numbers
may mean
(Kingsborough, I, part 3, page 10, figure 218).
The Japanese
also have the double Mount Kagu; one is on the earth, or rather it is the
earth, the other is
in Ame or
heaven, the divine mount, that is the heaven, which had the North Pole for its
highest peak (
Trans. As.
Soc. Jap., vii., p. 431). The Japanese likewise have the eight great gods of
the mount, who are
said to have
been produced by Kagutsuchi, which we take to be a form of the original eight
Kami that
correspond to
the Kamite Khemenu, the eight great gods in Am-Khemen, the heaven upraised by
Shu.
The same
duality of the mount is illustrated in the two Chinese Kwenluns. Here the
terrestrial paradise is
described as
being at the centre of the earth. The Queen-Mother dwells there alone in its
midst. At the
summit there
is a resplendent azure hall, with lakes enclosed by precious gems. Above the
clear ether
rules the
ever-fixed, the polar star (Chinese Recorder, vol. iv., P.95). This is the
Egyptian mount of
Amenta in
which Hathor was queen. The “azure hall” is the empyrean over the summit of the
mundane
mount, which
is here identified as the mother-mount The other mount is celestial; on its
summit at the
north star is
the heavenly palace of Shang-ti at the centre of the circumpolar paradise, with
its circle of
thirty-six
gods or rulers, which answer to the thirty-six decans of the zodiac.
The Todas
also have the twofold mount. Their mountain of the world is the Makurti, or
navel of the earth,
the pillar of
the firmament. It is a towering rock, upon the table-land of which the souls of
the dead
assemble for
the leap into the abyss of waters that lies betwixt them and the mount of
heaven. Either
they, in
common with some other races, have lost, or never had, the solar boat of the
Egyptian
eschatology,
by which the base of one mount was reached from the summit of the other. But,
sink or
swim, the
journey is the same. So is the celestial chart. Hence the Todas can see the
cows that graze the
fields of
heaven in the nebulae of the Milky Way. These correspond to the Kamite cows,
the givers of
plenty in the
meadows of Aarru, that rest by the still waters at the head of the river of
light and the twin
lakes in the
region of the north celestial pole.
This stellar
mountain in the northern heaven and solar mountain in the east will likewise
account for the
twofold mount
of the Babylonians. Lenormant describes the two somewhat confusingly, but no
explanation
of their duality has ever been given. He says, “Above the earth extended the
sky, and
revolving round
the mountain of the east, the column which joined the heavens and the earth and
served
as an axis to
the celestial vault. The culminating point of the heavens, the zenith (Nuzku)
was not this
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Ancient
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axis or pole.
On the contrary , that was situated immediately above the country of Akkadia
(in the north),
and was
regarded as the centre of the inhabited lands, whilst the mountain which acted
as a pivot to the
starry system
was to the north-east of this country. Beyond the mountain, and also the
north-east,
extended the
land of Aralli, which was rich in gold, and was inhabited by the gods and
blessed spirits”.
(Lenormant,
Chaldean [Page 350] Magic and Sorcery, Eng. Tr., pp. 151,152.) The mount of
earth and
mount of
heaven become the double mount in the Babylonian version. . As it is said of
Gilgames, “To the
mountains
whose name is double, to the twin mountains in his course he came”.The mount of
earth or
Amenta below
was entered in the west. The upper mount was also, entered at the west in the
heaven of
the setting
stars. There is probably an astronomical datum in the Babylonian legend. The
scorpion-men
are said to
keep the gate and guard the sun. “Over them rising was the threshold of heaven.
Below them
the tomb sank
down”. The tomb is Arali (or Amenta) in the mount. The threshold of heaven was
at the
summit of the
mount. We take the scorpion-men to denote the western equinox in the sign of
Scorpio
when that was
the gate to the twin mountains, otherwise the mount of earth and heaven, the
mount
whose summit
was the rise in Hetep at the pole. In Pahlavi the two mountains of heaven and
earth are
known as
Mount Taęra, the centre of the universe, and Kakad-i-Dâîtîk, the centre of the
earth ( West.
Pahlavi Texts
i. pp. 22, 36). Here the earth centre is distinct from the centre of the
universe or mount of
heaven which
preceded the mount of earth, and the two different centres correspond to the
two different
forms of the
mount of earth and the mount of heaven.
The heaven of
the beatified had been apparently shifted from the north to the east when
certain chapters
of the Ritual
were written, which is the same as saying the solar had then succeeded and to a
great
extent
superseded the stellar mythos. The sun in its supremacy obscured the stars.
Anup was merged in
Osiris; the
seven glorious ones became the servants of Horus and subsidiary souls of Ra.
The place of
sunrise in
the east was figured as the mount of glory in relation to Amenta instead of the
mount in the
celestial
north; otherwise said, it was interpolated in the solar mythos. Paradise now
was both terrestrial
(or
sub-terrestrial) and celestial; in the east as well as on the northern summit,
because it was solar as
well as
stellar. Not that the upper paradise was obliterated or really lost. That only
happened in the
absence of
the gnosis. Am-Khemen remained aloft, and the upper paradise of two was still
led up to by
the mount,
the tree, the way of souls, or the river of the Milky Way.
One form of
this duality was represented in the Ritual by the mythical two houses, the
great house and
the house of
flame. The speaker says, “Let my name be given to me in the great house. Let me
remember my
name in the house of flame on the night when the years are counted and the
months are
reckoned one
by one” (ch. 25). The great house was stellar in the heaven at the celestial
north; the
house or
flame (Pa-Nasrut) was solar in the east. Egyptian temples were built upon this
dual plan, and
each had its
great house and its house of flame. The great house was central, like the
lady-chapel in
European
churches, and the house of flame was on one side of it. The great house in a
central position
corresponds
to the mount of heaven with its spire at the celestial pole. The house of flame
was a kind of
side entrance
to the mount in the east, which is equivalent to the gate of sunrise. The
church to-day
remains a
dual figure of this double house when both are blended together in one
building. The nave with
its doorway
to the east corresponds to the mount of earth, and the [Page 351] spire is a
figure of the pole
or mount of
heaven. One of the most perfect ways of illustrating this duality is shown by
the mode of
burying the
dead in the Pyramid of Medum. Prof. Petrie says the bodies were laid on their
left side with
the head to
the north and the face turned to the east (Medum, pp. 17, 21). This position of
the dead is
also
indicated by the prayer of the manes that he may feed on the food of Osiris, on
the eastern side of
the mead of
amaranthine flowers” (the kaiu of the oasis) (Rit., ch. 26, Renouf). The face
is here turned
after death
to the eastward side of the paradise that was primarily figured in the northern
heaven.
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Ancient
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When it was
discovered that the earth rotated on its axis and was afloat in space, it was
known to revolve
on the double
poles, and what we call the two poles of the earth were signified by the
twofold tat-pillar of
Ptah. The tat
is a type of stability. The double tat is the sign of tattu as the place of
establishing for
eternity, and
tattu, like other mythical localities, was doubled when Amenta was founded. It
is noticeable
that when
Queen Hatshepsu had erected her two pillars she says she has made two obelisks
for him
who is the
lord of the thrones of the two worlds, or, as we should say, of earth and
heaven (Records, vol.
ii. p. 132;
2, Pap. of Ani, PI.). This touches the origin of the well-known double pillar,
the significance of
which is not
known. The double obelisk is a co-type with the twofold mount, and the two
pillars of Tattu,
the place
where it was shown that earth was fixed and heaven made stable for ever, on the
two pillars of
Sut and
Horus, which had been the two poles in Equatoria. The two obelisks then imaged
the thrones of
two worlds.
the double earth, or earth and heaven; and in Amenta the two pillars form the
doorway from
the one world
to the other. So in the Japanese mythology the divine pillar of earth,
Kuni-no-mi-Hashira,
was added to
the divine pillar of the heavens. Arne no-mi-Hashira (Kojiki, Chamberlain's
Version, p. 19).
How it was added
can be explained by the Egyptian wisdom. The pillar of heaven was first
erected. Shu-
Anhur lifted
up the heaven from the earth with that which constituted the divine support as
prop, pillar, or
lion-like
strength in sustaining the paradise above.
The pillar of
heaven naturally stood upon the earth to support the heavens; but when the
earth was
hollowed out
by Ptah, the excavator, there was another earth below in which the pillar had
to be re-
erected, and
this pillar of the double mount was represented by the double Tat of Ptah as
the backbone
of that god,
or later of Osiris. The Japanese also have the two pillars called the awful
pillar of heaven, the
pillar being
a co-type with the mount. “Heaven's one pillar” was an ancient name for the
Japanese island
of Ski
(Chamberlain, Kojiki, page 23). The Japanese have also a pillar whose
foundation is at the centre
of the world,
where stands the tat or pole of Ptah supporting the nether sky. In Chinese
legendary lore
there is a
pillar that sustains the earth. They also have a pillar which sustains the
heaven. These two
correspond to
the pillar of Shu that supports the firmament above and the tat-pillar of Ptah
which
supports the
earth in Amenta below. These are distinct from each other; they belong to two
entirely
different
mythical creations and cannot be resolved into one single pillar derived from
the mount of earth
as axis -
[Page 352] pillar of the heavens. Heaven had rested on the pillar of the earth
or the pillars raised
upon the
mundane mount by Shu. But the tat-pillar of Ptah was erected in the nether
earth of two.
Consequently
our earth was then supported on the pillar of Ptah. This will explain the
tradition of the
Chinese, the
Tlinkeet Indians, and others, that the earth rests upon a pillar. Thus, as
Egyptian, there are
two divine
pillars answering to the double mount, which we call the pillar of Shu and the
tat-pillar of Ptah.
One is the
sustainer of the firmament above the earth, the other is the support of the firmament
below the
earth. The
two together are the double pillars of earth and heaven. This will enable us to
read one of the
many Greek
märchen, which reflect and refract the Egyptian mythos.
There is a
legend of Herakles relieving Atlas as sustainer of the heavens, or, in the
original, the ceilings
of the double
earth. Atlas is the Egyptian Shu-Anhur, the elevator of the sky. And the relief
of Atlas by
Herakles is
equivalent to the relief of Shu by the sun-god Ptah as sustainer of all things
in Amenta, when
the pillar of
earth or tat of Amenta was added to the pillar of heaven. When the earth was
doubled and
the nocturnal
sun god passed through Amenta as Ptah or Sekari with his tat, he was the
sustainer in the
nether earth
who might be said to relieve Shu of his burden in the upper earth. Horus is the
prototype of
Herakles, and
Horus or Ptah in Amenta is the mighty Herakles of this Greek fancy which so
often takes
the place of
fundamental fact. There is no trusting the märchen in their Greek or Hindu,
Hebrew or
Christian
guise, without comparing them with the originals. Greek legends also assert
that Herakles
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Ancient
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separated two
mountains to form the two columns or pillars which were a dual figure of the
twofold
mundane and
celestial mount. This helps to identify the double columns with the mount of
earth and the
mount of
heaven. Many illustrations could be cited of these two pillars erected at the
entrance to the
temple or
house of a god. Herakles, says Herodotus, was worshipped in a temple at Tyre,
and in the
temple “were
two pillars, one of fine gold, the other of emerald stone, both shining
exceedingly at night”
(Bk. ii.,
44). These are, to say the least, somewhat suggestive of the green mount of
earth, the Egyptian
mount of
emerald, and the golden mount of heaven, which survive as the “green hill” far
away and
“Jerusalem
the golden” in the Christian hymns.
The backbone
was a figure of the pole: it is at one time the backbone of Sut, at another the
backbone of
Anup, at
another of Ptah or Osiris - the backbone being a natural type of sustaining
power. This at first
was single as
a figure of the pole. It was duplicated in Amenta, the same as was the pillar
of support and
other figures
of sustaining power. The power of Ptah in Amenta is not simply that of the
pillar or
backbone.
These are doubled in the earth of eternity to express his power as sustainer of
the universe.
The figure is
referred to in the magic papyrus as the long backbone of Ptah, the Nemma. “O
Nemma of
the great
face, of the long backbone, of the deformed legs! O long column which commences
in (both)
the upper and
the lower heaven. O lord of the great body which reposes in Annu”, the place of
the
column or
pole, now doubled in Amenta (Magic Papyrus, Records, vol. x., p. 152). There
was a tendency
to blend the
twofold mount in one as in the double Mount [Page 353] Meru, which is sometimes
denominated
the North Pole, but was primarily a figure on earth of the pole in heaven, like
the mound of
earth and the
cone or pillar. But Meru was doubled or divided into upper and lower, called
Su-Meru and
Ku-Meru, when
it imaged the mount that was opened for the passage of the heavenly bodies
through the
nether earth.
One mountain standing in the east and one in the north were not vertically
blended in one.
They were
symbolical of the double mount of earth and heaven as a figure, but this was in
the end, not.
at the starting-point.
The Kamite
teachers also imaged the two poles as the two trees called the two sycamores of
the south
and north.
The later tree in Eridu, as well as the Norse tree Yggdrasil, was compounded of
the two as the
tree which
had its roots down south or in the under-world, and its branches high up in the
northern
heaven; a
two-fold tree that corresponded to the double mount. Again, the rock is a
co-type with the
mount, and
the double rock is equivalent to the two-fold mount. These two were also
blended in one as in
the rock that
“begat” the Israelites. The rock and the double rock are both mentioned in the
Ritual (ch.
134). Taht
the moon-god is said to be the “son of the rock proceeding from the place of
the two rocks” in
Anruti (Renouf,
ch. 134). The name of Anruti identifies the double rock with the double
horizon, which
was also
called the double mount,
.The son of
the rock who proceeds from the two rocks is the
moon-god as
the son of earth and heaven, or son of the double mount of earth and heaven,
the two
rocks having
been blended in one as a typical figure of Osiris, the rock of eternity, imaged
as the pole of
heaven. The
two-fold origin of the mythical mount is now sufficiently established in
relation to identifiable
natural facts
which alone can furnish the proof that the mount, the pole, the tree, the
paradise, pillar,
column, or
backbone were single in the stellar and are duplicated in the solar mythos, and
that this
duplication
followed on the making of Amenta. The Rig-Veda speaks of “him who, as the
collective pillar
of heaven,
sustains the sky” (Wilson, 3. 143, 144). This collective pillar was the dual
type of the two-fold
mount of
earth and of heaven imaged in one figure of support. The Hebrew pillar of the
lower and upper
paradise that
is called “the strength of the hill Zion“ was another form of the collective
pillar. As Egyptian,
this
collective pillar was the double tat of Ptah erected in Amenta. The tat-pillar
of Ptah and Osiris was
continued in
the ancient Germanic Irmin pillars, which were mostly made of wood. The
mythical pillar
Irminsul was
that which joined together earth arid heaven, like the mount of Amenta and the
tat-support
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Ancient
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of the gods.
The Irmin-pillars were a form of the Hermae in Greece that were set up as
boundary signs at
cross roads
and street corners to mark the extent of certain lands. This points to an
origin for their name.
In Egyptian
the word remen or ermen denotes the extent as far as the limit or boundary.
Rema or erma is
a measure of
land. The deity Irmin, like Hermes of the pillar, was a god of boundaries.
If the mount
or the pillar had been single and not double, there would have been no voyage
across the
water that
flowed between the mount of earth and the mount of heaven; no need of boat or
bridge [Page
354] or place
of “jumping off” from one side to the other. If the mythical mount had simply
been a single
figure of the
universe axis (as O'Neil describes it), the climbers would have gone straight
up to heaven,
whereas the
solar mount of glory in the east did not and could not blend vertically with
the stellar mount
of glory in
the north. The mount was dual; the water ran betwixt the two, and that
necessitated the means
of crossing
from one to the other. Nothing could make the universe axis twofold, in keeping
with the
double mount
of earth and heaven. And this duality alone will explain why one type should be
considered
female, the
other male. The mount or pillar of earth was an image of the Great Mother as
bringer-forth,
and the mount
or pillar of heaven was typical of the fatherhood, the “rock that begat”, or
rather of two
sexes in one
nature as they were blended in the deity Ptah, Atum, Osiris, Ihuh, and Brahma.
The type of
this duality
is to be seen in the navel, the umbilicus, and the nabhiyoni united and imaged
in one as a
figure of the
birthplace and prototype of the navel mounds; the pit below and the pile of
stones above, the
well and
pyramid, the church and steeple, the grave and monument.
When the
solar mythos had been added to the stellar, the pathway to paradise was through
the netherworld.
The road of
the sun in the mythos now became the road of souls in the eschatology. The
entrance
to the
under-world was consequently in the west. The maker of the road was the
nocturnal sun as the
bull or god
of the west. One name of the western hill is Manu. It is said to Ra when
setting, “Wake up
from thy
rest; thine abode is in Manu” (Rit., ch. 15). This apparently survives in the
Samoan Mane. At
death, the
soul went to a paradise in the western horizon called Mane= Manu. “The dying”,
says the
missionary
Turner, “were urgent in begging those around them to see and make the tapunea
or
pessomancy go
all right, and so secure an entrance to the Mane paradise” ( Samoa, p.294). If
the
pebbles used
for divination turned out odd instead of even it was thought that the soul
would be caught
and crushed
between two great stones at the entrance to the mount. The “hollow pit” was a
name of the
Samoan Hades.
At the bottom there was a running stream which floated the spirits away to the
Hades of
Polotu. They
were but little more than alive and only half conscious until they reached
Polotu, where
there was a
bathing-place called Vaiola or “the water of life”. In this water all
infirmities were washed
away and the
aged recovered their lost youth. Their new bodies were singularly volatile,
like the Egyptian
sahu. They
could ascend to earth at night, become luminous sparks or vapour, revisit their
old homes
and retire
-at early dawn to the bush or to Polotu (Turner, Samoa, pp. 258, 259). The
subterranean world
of the Lapps
is identical with the Amenta of the Egyptians. Jabma-Aimo is the house of the
dead in the
nether-earth,
which is a place of transition for those who have their bodies renewed, who
pass on and
are taken up
to heaven. Their home of the gods, Taivo Aimo, also answers to the upper
Aarru-paradise of
the Ritual.
The jackal or dog is the guide of the dead through the paths of darkness in the
nether-earth,
and the Inoit
dead are said to descend by the “dog's path” into their underworld. This is a
most obscure
road,
answering to the path of darkness in Amenta. The subterranean region described
at times as being
[Page 355]
submarine is the common sub-terrestrial paradise of the Inoit people generally.
When the
nether-world had been completely excavated by Ptah, Amenta was established as
the lower
storey of two
in the mount of earth which henceforth becomes the mount of Amenta. The name
denotes
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Ancient
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the hidden or
secret (Amen) earth (ta). It is also called the earth of eternity, the land of
the living; for the
Egyptians
call those the living whom the less spiritualistic moderns designate the dead.
The mount of
earth became
the mount of Amenta because Amenta had been tunnelled through the lower earth.
It
became the
funereal mount because Amenta was the earth of the manes. In the Egyptian chart
the west
is the
beautiful gate of entrance to this divine nether-world, otherwise called the
land of life. It is not
paradise
itself, but the way to it through purgatory. The beautiful gate of exit was at
the place of sunrise,
not sunset,
in the garden eastward, and this was the locality of the terrestrial paradise,
which was a copy
of the garden
of Aarru first configurated in the circumpolar heaven of the stellar mythology.
The dead in
Egypt were
called “the westerners”. On the way to the place of burial the mourners sang
the funeral song
“To the west,
to the west, to the west!” The mummy was ferried over the water to the western
mount,
where
Hathor-lsis or the cow waited to receive the solar god, and in his track the
souls of the departed.
The entrance
to the mount was shown as the mouth of the cow, or cleft in the rock, such as
was seen in
the immediate
neighbourhood of Abydos, which was reached through a narrow gorge in the Libyan
range, whose
“mouth” opened in front of the temple of Osiris-Khentamenta a little to the
north-west of the
city
(Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, English translation, page 197). Here the souls
of the departed were
supposed to
enter and descend into the nether-world. The sun-god is described in his
passage to the
western
horizon (or mount), whilst earth, as the mother, stretches her arms out to
receive him. “In rapture
is thy
mother, the goddess Meru, as thou dost emit the irradiation of light till thou
reachest that mountain
which is in
Akar”, i.e., till sunset, when he will enter the female receptacle for his new
birth. Taking this to
be imaged by
Isis as the sacred heifer, the place of entrance is her mouth, and the place of
exit was
uterine, to
the east of the mount (Magic Papyrus, p. 5, Records, vol. x. 145.)
The entrance
into the mount of earth which was personified as the old first mother is one of
the exploits
of Maui in
the märchen of the Maori. Maui, at the end of his victorious career, that is at
sunset, comes
back to the
country of his father and the land of his great ancestress Hine-neu-te-Po, the
great woman of
the
under-world, who is to be seen in the horizon, “flashing, and, as it were,
opening and shutting”. So
Apt the
hippopotamus and Hathor the cow may be seen in the cleft of the mount that
opened at sunset
for the
passage of the solar god, the mouth of the cow being equivalent to the cleft in
the mount. Maui
came to where
the ancient giantess lay sleeping, with the object of passing through her
without waking
her. He
entered her body, but when he was half in and half out, a little bird, the
Tiwakawaka, laughed
aloud to see
the sight, and woke the sleeper, who closed her thighs on Maui and crushed him
so [Page
356] that he
died, and thus brought death into the world; otherwise it was fabled that the
solar hero died to
rise again in
passing through the nether-world of darkness, and this was a primitive mode of
portrayal.In
the Kamite
mythos he passes through the female hippopotamus or cow, or the sphinx, all of
which were
figures of
the mother in the mount, otherwise the ancient Mother-earth. It is common for a
cavern or
entrance in
the west to be pointed out as the way into spirit-world that leads to the
fields of paradise. This
is found in
the Aztec Mictlan or land of the dead. The Fijian descent into the under-world
is exactly the
same as the
Egyptian. The dead go down in the west on their way to the judgment seat of
Ndengei
(Williams,
Fiji,.vol. i. p. 239), just as the Egyptian dead embark in the west for the
judgment seat of Osiris.
The
nether-earth, Ngamat, of the Australian Woiworun also corresponds. to the
Kamite Amenta. It is the
receptacle of
the sun beyond the western edge of the earth, and likewise an abode for the
departed, who
do not remain
there permanently, but come back to our earth at times as the ngamaget, like
the manes in
the Ritual.
(Howitt on Australian medicine-men.)
In various
märchen and other irresponsible legends derived from mythology we hear of
heaven being
situated in
the west - that is, as the place of sunset. The Buddhists have their western
paradise. The
paradise of
the Ottomacks of Guiana and of the Araucanians is in the west. The heaven of
the Todas, the
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Ancient
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Kalmucks, the
Samoans, and others was localized in the west. The Iroquois and Ojibwas
describe the
souls of
their dead as travelling westward till they come to the plains of paradise. The
sekhet-hetep or the
fields of
rest in Aarru are represented in the noble island of Flath Innis, the place of
rest from storm and
strife to
which the Keltic heroes went in death, as a paradise in the western ocean. The
elysian fields and
golden isles
of the Greeks were in the west. But that is only because the entrance to the
earthly paradise
was in the
west, according to the solar mythos. At Samoa, says Gill, a spirit leaving the
dead body at the
most easterly
island of the group would be compelled to traverse the entire series of
islands, passing the
channels
between at given points, ere it could descend to the subterranean spirit-world
at the most
westerly
point of Savaiki (p. 160), which rightly identifies the west with the gate of
entrance to the earth or
eternity.
In the wisdom
of “Manihiki” it is related as another of the exploits of Maui that he found
out the way to the
nether-world.
He had watched and seen his father go according to his wont to the main pillar
of his
dwelling and
say “O pillar! open, open up, that Manuahifare may enter and descend to the
nether-world”,
which was the
heptanomis or seven sunken islands of Avaiki. The pillar immediately opened,
and
Manuahifare
descended. Maui repeated the magic words of his father, and to his great joy
the pillar
obediently
opened, and he boldly made his descent into the lower regions. Whilst exploring
this
subterranean
spirit-world, Maui fell in with a blind old woman, who turned out to be his own
grandmother.
Here also was
the paradise in which the tree of healing grew, and with the fruit of which
Maui restored
sight to the
eyes of Ina-the-blind. (Gill .Myths and Songs, pp. 64-66.) The incident of a
rock or door that
[Page 357]
opens when the magic formula is uttered, and in no other way, is well-nigh
universal. It may be
termed the
“open sesame” legend. In a Chinese version Chang discovers the entrance to the
underworld
by finding
out the secret of the stone door in the cave of Kwang-siu-fu in Kiang-si. “One
day he
overheard a
genie saying, “Stone door, open ! Mr. Kwei-ku is coming”. Thereupon the door
opened and
the genie
went in, When he came out he said, “Stone door, shut! Mr. Kwei-ku is going”.
Chang tried the
charm, and
found a vast paradise within, and there he lost his old grandmother. (Denny's
Folk Lore of
China, p.
134-) In a Zulu tale the word is “Rock of two holes, open for me, that I may
enter” (Callaway,
Tales, pp.
140-142), In a Samoan rendering it is “Rock, divide! I am Talanga: I have come
to work”
(Turner,
Nineteen Years In Polynesia, p. 252). The sacred hole-stone, the needle's eye,
the chimney, or
the cow, and
other apertures through which the twice-born was passed as an initiate in the
mysteries
derive their
symbolical significance from this passage through the rock or mount of earth.
It was the same
with the
human soul in the eschatology as it had been with the soul of the sun in the
mythology.
Sometimes the
hole in the dolmen or other stone that people wriggled through was very small.
This
increased the
difficulty, and was a practical illustration of the trials in the passage of
Amenta. There was
one near the
summit of a rocky mountain island in Ireland called the “eye of the needle”,
which is
described as
“a narrow opening like a chimney”. To understand the custom we must read the
Ritual.
The sun-god
made his passage through the mount of earth, or the sphinx, for his rebirth and
resurrection
on the eastern
side, and the opening- in the rock was at the end or at the summit, in the Tser
hill, the rock
of the
horizon. In the Russian märchen Prince Ivan = Horus the prince, climbs up the
magical ladder to
get into the
“great house” of the “tremendously high steep mountain”. His sister = the
princess, or lunar
lady, calls
to him from the balcony. “See, there is a chink in the enclosure. Touch it with
your little finger
and it will
become a door! ” This he does, and obtains entrance into the mountain of
Amenta. (Ralston,
Russian
Folk-tales, 102.)
The cleft or
opening in the mount was also termed the grotto. And it is possible that this
survives in the
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Ancient
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“grotto” that
is exhibited in England, and is made of oyster-shells at the time when oysters
are supposed
to be first
opened on one particular day of the year. This illustrates an ancient custom
but not a legal
enactment
respecting oysters. The opening of the oyster= the annual opening of the earth
in the equinox.
The grotto is
an interior or shrine, and the light, which is kindled within it points rather
to the sun than to
the lamp in
any Christian sanctuary. The day and the ceremony have been assigned to St.
James, but
that is only
one more item in the total system of falsification designated Christian. Osiris
also had his
shrine “which
standeth in the centre of the earth”. (Rit., ch. 64, Renouf, and Book of
Hades.) The underworld
of the Karens
of Burmah is the Egyptian Amenta. They also have the double mount into which
the
sun enters at
sunset (or in the equinox). The mount consists of two great strata of rock, one
lower and
one upper,
which continually open and shut as with an upper and a lower jaw, but the [Page
358] Karens
have no idea
how the upper stratum is supported. At their departure from earth the Manes are
thus
addressed:
“Thou goest unto Thama. Thou goest through the crevices of rocks. At the
opening and
shutting of
the western gates of rock, thou goest in between. Thou goest below the earth
where the sun
travels”.
(Mason, “Karens”, Journal of the Asiatic Soc., Bengal, pt. 2, pp. 233-4, 1865.)
The dead descend
to Khu-the
and appear before Thama the great judge in Hades, who may be identified with
the Egyptian
Tumu or Atum,
the great judge in the Kamite Amenta, who is the representative of the setting
sun as
Atum-Ra and
of the rising sun as Atum-Horus (Nefer-Atum).
The
difficulty of obtaining entrance to the mount was insuperable to mortals. Hence
the need of divine
assistance.
The sun-god as opener in the mythology led up to the god as opener for souls in
the
eschatology.
In this character Horus became the door and the way of life to the manes, who
followed in
his wake of glory
through the dark of death. The principal subject of the inscriptions written on
the
sarcophagus
of Seti I., now in the Soane Museum, is the nocturnal passage of the sun or the
sun-god
through the
nether-earth by night, having the blessed on his right hand, the damned upon
his left. There
are twelve
divisions to the passage, which correspond to the twelve hours of the night.
But the first of
these
divisions, that of entrance, is without a door, whereas the last of the twelve,
that of exit, has a
double door.
Here the entrance to Amenta consists of a blind doorway or a door which neither
mortal nor
manes could
know the secret of, and no one but the god, primarily solar, could open. Hence
the need of
a deity as
the opener, or a god who is the door and the way on grounds as tangible as
those of the door
in the
mythology of Amenta. (The Book of Hades, Records of the Past, vol. x. p. 81.)
When the god
comes to
illuminate the valley of darkness the doors open one after the other and he
enters with his
followers,
those who were equipped or, as the legend of the Ten Virgins has it, whose
lamps were
already
trimmed. The door then closes, “and they who are left behind in their porch cry
out when they
hear it
shut”. Thus we attain a natural origin for the mythos, the eschatology, and the
folk-tales told
concerning
the hidden door that was sometimes represented by a revolving stone, and the
secret
password or
“Open sesame! ” that was communicated to the initiates in the mysteries. If
properly
equipped, the
Osiris is in possession of the magical words of power that secure the opening
of every
gate,
including this hidden entrance to Amenta. These words he carries in his hand,
in death, as his
papyrus roll;
or, better still, he knows them by heart, and has made them truth in his own
life and death.
He exclaims,
“I am accoutred and equipped with thy words of power, O Ra”, the god, that is,
who says of
himself, “I
am he who closeth and he who openeth, and I am but one” (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf).
In the lower
paradise was the land of gold, not as metal, but as the glory of the sun by
night. The sun god
rising from
this land that was yellow with gold is thus addressed, “Adoration to thee, who
arisest out of
the golden
and givest light to the earth” (Rit., ch. 15, Renouf). Still, mining for metals
had commenced
when Ptah and
[Page 359] his pygmy workers hollowed out the under-world. Amenta was based
upon the
mine. It was
the secret earth in which the treasures were concealed. These were guarded by
the dragon,
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Ancient
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but they were
likewise known to the dwarfs, the wee folk, the fairies, the Tuatha de Danan.
Amenta was
the land of
precious metals and the furnace of the solar fire. Hence Ptah, the miner,
became the
blacksmith of
the gods, the Kamite Vulcan. Some missing details respecting the work of Ptah
the
metallurgist
may be found in the Greek rendering of this god as Hephaistos. Ptah, working in
concert with
the goddess
Mati, built the great double hall of Truth and Justice, which was gilded and
glorified with his
precious
metal. Hephaistos is the architect of the house of the gods. As a proof that
his place and work
are in the
nether earth, Hephaistos does not know what occurs until he learns it from the
coming sun.
Following the
burial on earth, deceased enters as a manes into Amenta, the land of the
living. He seeks
to get on
board the boat of souls. The priest says, “O ye seamen of Ra, at the closing of
day let the Osiris
live after
death as Ra does daily”. Here the helmsman: “As Ra is born from yesterday, so
he too is born
from
yesterday, and as every god exults in life so shall the Osiris exult even as
they exult in”.(Ch. 3,
Renouf)
A
subterranean pleasaunce opened to the eastward of the mount of earth called
now, the earth of
eternity.
This is a paradise to which the manes look forward on their path of progress.
It was the field in
which they
had to till and grow the divine harvest as the food of the gods. For Aarru was
apportioned on
the small
allotment system. Each one had a share of arable land to cultivate, and by the
fruit was known
and judged at
the great harvest-home as a true worker or a lazy one; and by their labour in
this spirit-
world
Egyptians earned their living for the life hereafter. The lower Aarru, the
garden eastward in Amenta,
is that
earthly paradise of legendary lore in search of which so many heroes sailed. In
the Erik Saga, Erik
sets out in
search of Odainsakr, a form of the Norse paradise, which is said to be
encircled by a wall of
fire. He
enters a dark forest-land in which the stars are seen by day. A dragon bars his
way across the
river - the
Apap of darkness in the valley of darkness (Rit., ch. 7). He rushes into the
monster's mouth
and passes
through its body - a common way with the solar hero. Erik emerges with his
companions in
the land of
light, the lower paradise of the mythos. After awhile they come to a tower that
is suspended in
the air
without any visible supports; access to it was obtained by means of a ladder
that enabled the
seekers to
reach the top of the tower, which had neither foundations nor pillars. They had
now attained
Odainsakr,
the earth of living men, the Egyptian land of the living, but not the upper
paradise, the place of
spirits
perfected, which is said to be so glorious that Odainsakr in comparison was but
a desert. Erik's is
but the
journey of the nocturnal sun or the annual sun in the inferior hemisphere
represented in the
primitive
form of a passage through the nether-earth.
The aim and
end of the Osiris on the journey by water or by land is to reach the
circumpolar paradise and
secure a
place among the stars that never set, the glorious ones that “beacon from the
abodes [Page 360]
where the
eternals are”. The mount of earth was the point of emergence in the mythology.
It was the
place of
birth for the sun upon the mount to the east where the temple of Sebek-Horus
stood. In the
eschatology
it was the place of rebirth for the souls or manes who ascended by the mount or
by the tree
of dawn to
the summit from which they entered the bark of the sun to make the voyage over
the waters
round to Manu
in the region of the west. This under-world, with its mount of birth as a point
of departure
for the sun
and manes in the east, became the traditional birthplace and point of departure
in the legends
of various
supposed ethnical migrations of a similar nature to that of the Jews in the
exodus from Egypt.
The passage
from the mount or island of earth to the mount of the upper paradise across the
water was
already
mapped out in the time of Pepi I., as the following extract from his pyramid
shows: “Hail thou who
(at thy will)
makest to pass over to the field Aarru the soul that is right and true, or dost
make shipwreck
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Ancient
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of it (if
wrong).Pepi is right and true in respect of the island of the earth, whither he
swimmeth and where
he ariseth”.
(Budge.)
This is not
very clear, but the island of the earth is the mount on the eastern summit of
which the manes
joined the
solar bark to make the voyage from Mount Bakhu east to Mount Manu in the west
on their way
to the mount
of glory at the north celestial pole. Thus the pathway for the dead from this
life to the upper
paradise was
laid down by the Egyptians. It was they who tunnelled the mount of earth and
hollowed out
Amenta with
its places of purgatory, its hells, its paradise of plenty in the Aarru
meadows; its means of
ascent for
the Manes by the mount or up the tree; its solar bark and boat of souls that
voyaged over the
waters of the
Nun from east to west; its steps or ladder that was raised at the landing-place
by night for
the ascent to
heaven in the upper Aarru paradise. This pathway of the dead is well-nigh
universal in
mythology,
and it can be traced from beginning to end by means of the Egyptian mythology
and the
eschatology.
Led by the jackal Anup as guide through all the ways of darkness, and lighted
by Taht, the
lunar god,
who carries in his hand the lamp of light and eye of Horus as the moon of
Amenta shining
through the
night, we emerge at length from underneath the upper earth. We are now outside
the mount
of earth,
which stands upon a vast illimitable plain of the nether-world. We thus retain
our foothold in the
Nun where
upper earth comes to an end. We follow the track of the sun and therefore issue
on the
eastern side
of the . mountain, which the solar god ascends at sunrise when seen by the
dwellers on the
upper earth.
Now we are facing the solar east and the garden eastward, which originated in
the oasis of
Inner Africa.
The Book of
the Dead is primarily based on the Amenta and the journey through its
under-world. The
track of the
all-conquering sun is followed by the soul of the deceased. He enters the mount
in the west
by the
opening in the rock, or at a later stage is carried on the boat. He is
accompanied by those who
have gone
before as guides. He does battle with the adversary, and is victorious in the
character of
Horus. He
opens all the paths and gates with his words of magic power and spells of
might. He cleaves
open the
earth for [Page 361] the resurrection. He is delivered from the devouring demon
who lurks
invisibly in
the lake of fire and feeds upon the damned (ch. 17). The caverns of Putrata,
where the dead
fall into
darkness, are opened for him. He is supported by the eye of Horus or lighted by
the moon. Apuat,
the opener of
roads, raises him up and acts the part of the giant Christopher in carrying him
across the
waters ( ch.
44). He wanders in the wilderness where nothing grows. He obtains command of
the water
in the
nether-world and prevails over the deluge. He escapes the second death (ch.
58). The double
doors of
heaven are opened for his coming forth ( ch. 68). Still following the course of
the sun, the
passage of
Amenta endeth with the garden eastward and the ascent by which the Manes enter
the bark
of Ra. “O
great one in thy bark”, says the suppliant, “let me be lifted into the bark”, “
let me make head for
thy
staircase” (ch. 102). Deceased has here attained the summit of the solar mount
of glory on his way to
the circumpolar
heaven and the stars that do not set. There is a voyage now in heaven from east
to west,
and as the
sun was lifted up to enter the maatit bark at dawn, so is it in the
eschatological rendering. The
souls of the
departed who were pure enough in the presence of the sun now entered the maatit
bark to
continue the
voyage round the mountain to the region of Manu. They were now the westerners
in another
sense which
was eschatological. All day the manes make their voyage in the solar bark, and
come at
sunset to the
land of the west about which the song was sung in the funeral procession, “To
the west! To
the west I”
At this landing-stage they leave the maatit for the sektit bark. The sun goes
down to Amenta in
the west each
night, but their sun sets no more. They have done with the mount of earth in
the
mythology,
and come to the mount belonging to the heavens. But there is a great gulf fixed
between the
mount of
Amenta and the stellar mount of glory. This is the lake of darkness and the lair
of the Apapdragon.
The void is
spoken of as the cavern of Putrata, where the dead fall into darkness. It is
also called
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Ancient
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the void of
Apap. In strict accordance with natural phenomena, the gulf or void of Putrata
lay betwixt the
place of
sunset on the western side of the mount of earth and the heaven of the setting
stars. It is the
prototype of
the abyss or lake of outer darkness, the pit, in the Christian version of the
legend; the great
gulf that was
fixed betwixt those who remained in the lower Amenta and those who had attained
the
bosom of Ra,
an Egyptian expression for the boat. On the other side of the water “Shu
standeth erect,
and the
non-setting stars are instantly active in raising the ladder” by which the
sinking souls or setting
stars are
saved from destruction in the lake of outer darkness. These steps are carried
round from east
to west for
that purpose on board the solar bark. (Vignettes to Ritual.)
With the
change of boat another voyage begins by night, along the great stream of the
Milky Way. This is
described as
“that most conspicuous but inaccessible stream” when contemplated from the
earth. (Rit.,
ch. 98.) When
the departed reach the starry shore, the seven steps or ladder for ascending
the mount of
heaven is now
erected in the boat. This ladder, as Egyptian, was double in the time of King
Pepi. It is
called the
ladder of Sut for the ascent from [Page 362] Amenta, and the ladder of Horus
for the ascent to
heaven. A
bark that can ascend the stream awaits the voyagers. This picture of the bark
that made its
glorious
journey upward to the circumpolar paradise was obviously constellated as the
Argo Navis, which
is figured in
the position of ascending backwards on the white waters of the Milky Way. The
cavern and
gulf of
Putrata no doubt existed when there was as yet no boat or bridge extant. Hence
in various
legends the
manes have to spring from one side of the chasm to the other . The “jumping-off
place” for
departed
spirits is known in several legends of the aboriginal races, and this was the
rock on the western
side of the
mount. There is a stone at the west end of Upolu called “the leaping-stone”,
from which
departed spirits
in their course leaped into the sea, swam to Manono, sprang from another stone
on that
island,
crossed to Savaii and went overland to the Fafâ, at Falealupo, as the western
entrance to their
other world
is called. (Turner, Samoa, p. 257.) With the Greeks, “to leap from the
Leucadian Rock “was a
proverbial
equivalent for death. In the Khond representation, the souls of the dead “have
to jump across
the black
unfathomable gulf to gain a footing on the slippery leaping rock, where. Dinga
Pennu, the judge
of the dead,
sits writing his register of all men's daily lives and actions”. The Guinea
negroes tell of a
divine judge
whose judgment seat was on the other side of the water that spirits crossed in
death,
analogous to
the Egyptian maat in the circumpolar region. Those who had religiously kept the
laws of
tabu were
conducted into paradise, whereas those who had not were sunk headlong in the
waters like
the damned
that went down headlong in the waters of Putrata. (Bosman, Pinkerton, vol. xvi.p.401;Rit.,
ch. 44)
The souls
that ascended from the mount of Amenta by the Milky Way , the path of spirits,
were hawk-
headed like
the Horus-soul, and with the Lithuanians this way of souls was called the “road
of birds”,
along which
the departed went like birds, or AS birds in the Kamite representation, to the
regions of
eternal rest.
As Egyptian, this road was a great stream, because with them the water was
their earliest
way ( ch.
86). Another Egyptian name for the heaven as water is urnas or uranus. This we
claim to be the
Kamite
original of the Greek uranus. Dr. Birch renders it in his dictionary “Urnas,
Ouranos, the celestial
water”. The
Egyptians did not personalize it under that name; still, the urnas is the
celestial water, and
urnas=uranos.
The okeanus that flows around the world was neither a fabulous sea nor a stream
of
water, but
the firmament itself, that was figured as the celestial water surrounding the
mount of earth.
Through this
ocean ran the great stream of the white water or the Milky Way. Thus we have
the okeanos
and the ocean
stream of Homer for the first time separately identified. Again, the water
appeared divided
into two
lakes at the head of the celestial river united to form one stream in the Via
Lactea. The system of
the waters in
the Bundahish is identical with the Egyptian. It is said that all the waters in
heaven and
earth had
their origin in the heavenly mount of Ardvi Sura at the summit of Alborz upon
which the red cow
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Ancient
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rested. There
is but one source and only place of discharge for all the rivers in the world.
This was the
river of the
Milky Way, which the Egyptians figured as [Page 363] descending from the celestial
lakes to be
continued in
the lakes and in the Nile below. In China the Yellow River is looked upon as a
continuation of
the Tien Ho,
or Milky Way, the river of heaven continued as the river of earth (Mayers'
Manual, page 98).
The Osirian
looking heavenward in death exclaims, “O very high mountain! I hold myself in
thy enclosure”
(Rit., 149,
14). He also says, “A divine domain hath been constructed for me. I know the
name of it; the
name of it is
the garden of Aarru”. (Rit., ch. 109, Renouf.) But the enclosure at the summit
of the mount
was not only
figured as a paradise of plenty. It was a dwelling-place which had expanded to
a city; the
city of the
blessed, the holy city, the city of the great king, the heavenly city, the
eternal city, that was the
model of
Memphis and Annu, Thebes and Abydos, Eridu and Babylon, Rome, Jerusalem, and
other
sacred cities
of the world. On approaching this, the Osirian says, “I stand erect in the bark
which the god
is piloting,
at the head of Aarru, and the non-setting stars open to receive me and my
fellow-citizens
present to me
the sacred cakes with flesh” ( ch. 98, Renouf). In an earlier chapter he had
said, “I arrive at
my own city”
( ch. 17). On the Stele of Beka the speaker says, “I reach the city of those
who are in
eternity”.
That is the eternal city. When the Osiris has attained the land of eternity he
says his future is in
Annu. That is
Annu as a celestial locality, Annu as the eternal city, not Heliopolis in
Egypt. (Rit., ch. 133.)
Annu, like
Tattu, was a form of the celestial city at the pole. An is a name of the mount
and the column,
the pole, and
in Annu was the pillar, fortress, or rock of eternity.
In one form
the polar mount was called the white mountain. It was Mont Blanc in heaven. The
Koreans
term it
“mount ever white”. As a house it was the white house. As a city it was the
city of the white wall.
As the seat
it was the great white throne of the eternal. As a country' it is the land of
the silver sky. It is
also known as
the mountain of white limestone, the stone of Sut. The house constructed by
Ptah was
double-storied,
a house of the lower and upper paradise combined in one. Finally, the heaven of
astronomical
mythology was figured as the great house of Osiris. This included all the
previous
formations:
the circle of the Bear; the heaven of Sut and Horus, south and north; the
triangular heaven of
the ecliptic;
the heaven built on the square; the double house of Amenta below the earth, and
the eternal
dwelling-place
above, whence the house of Osiris at Abydos, called the mansion of Seb and Nu,
or earth
and heaven,
was built in two stories. (Magical Texts, page 6; Records, vol. vi. page 118)
In the year 22 of
the reign of
King Aahmes, his majesty gave the order to open the rock-chambers anew, and to
cut out
thence the
best white stone (limestone) of the hill country (called) Annu, for the houses
of the gods,
“including
the house of Ptah at Memphis” (Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. trans.
in one vol., p.
130). The
mountain of white limestone was an actual fact on earth to the Egyptians. It
was in a spur of
the Arabian
range which projected in a straight line towards the Nile as far as the village
of Troiu, and
contained an
inexhaustible supply of the finest and whitest limestone. The Egyptians had
quarried the
white
limestone mountain from the earliest ages to obtain materials [Page 364] for
their pyramids.
(Maspero,
Dawn of Civilization, Eng. trans., p. 383.) It furnished the limestone for
building the city of the
white wall,
which represented the celestial city on the summit of the mount in heaven. The
name of Troiu,
modern Turah,
is suggestive of the Greek city of Troy, which in its mythical aspect was
another form of
the city on
the mount. The deceased are lifted up in the white house or within the circle
of the white wall
by Sekhet the
lioness-consort of Ptah (Rit., chs. 42 and 106), which was an astronomical
foundation that
followed the
heaven of the eight great gods. The Osiris says, “May Sekhet the divine one
lift me up, so
that I may
arise in heaven and deliver my behest in Memphis” (Rit., ch. 26, Renouf). With
the Chinese
Taoists the
city on the summit of the mount is “the metropolis of pearl mountain”. (Edkins,
Religion in
China, p. 15
I, 2nd. ed.) This corresponds to the Kamite city of the white wall, the
celestial Ha-Ptah-Ka.
To the
dweller in Annu the eternal city was Annu on the summit of the celestial mount.
To the dweller in
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The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Thebes the
eternal city was Thebes on high. To the dweller in Jerusalem the eternal city
was Jerusalem
above. Only
once was there a mundane original for the paradise or later city set in heaven
at the pole.
That is
demonstrably derived from the land, the river, the Annu, the Troy or Teriu of
Egypt. The Egyptians
set “the
pattern in the mount”, and from this the later builders of the sacred cities,
the ark cities, on the
mount of
heaven, derived the plan. The city of Troy on earth was a type of the eternal
Troy upon the
summit of the
mount. Both city and name are demonstrably Egyptian, as Troy= Terui. Terui
denotes the
circumference
or enclosure, and this was a name of Sesennu, and consequently of Am-Khemen -
the
paradise of
the eight, the enclosure on the mount of heaven which afterwards supplied a
name for the
city of Troy
in Greece. The “Tale of Troy” is based on the downfall of the great city on the
summit, which
was the lofty
dwelling-place of those whom we may term the people of the pole. The Greeks are
solarites,
with the sun-god Achilles as their leader. This fall occurred when the stellar
representation was
followed by
the luni-solar mythos. The fall of Babylon in the book of Revelation is another
form of the tale
of Troy; and
both were representations of the one great original in the astronomical mythos.
The Semites
would have
had no heaven on the summit of the mount to go to if the Egyptians had not
enclosed it and
planted it,
and showed the way in their astronomy. They would have had no Sheol if the
Egyptians had
not excavated
the Amenta for the passage of the sun in their mythology and for the souls in
the
eschatology.
And it is by means of the Egyptian imagery that we shall be able to restore
something of the
lapsed sense
to the Hebrew writings.
Entrance into
the eternal city was preceded by baptism, with Anup, father of the inundation,
as the
baptiser and
sprinkler both in one. On approaching the two lakes the speaker says, “Lo, I
come that I
may purify
this soul of mine in the most high degree. Let me be purified in the lake of
propitiation and
equipoise.
Let me plunge into the divine pool beneath the two divine sycamores of heaven
and earth”.
(Rit., ch.
97, Renouf.) This precedes the sacrament or eating of the sacrifice consisting
of bread, beer,
and meat. He
also [Page 365] says, “Give me bread and beer. Let me be made pure by the
sacrificial joint,
together with
the white bread”, that is, by partaking of the sacrament. (Rit., ch. 106,
Renouf)
Heaven as a
house had been founded by Sesheta or Sefekh, a form of the old First Mother as
co-worker
with Taht in
the lunar mythos. Atum-Ra was also a builder of the house in the solar
mythos.His son luem-
hetep, the
Egyptian Solomon, was the builder or designer of the temple to whom The Book of
the
Model of the
Temple is ascribed (Dümichen, Temple Inschriften, vol. i., pi. 97). It was the
temple in
heaven that
was built without the sound of workmen's tools; “there was neither hammer nor
axe nor any
tool of iron
heard in the house while it was building” ( I Kings, vi. 7). This only applies
to the mythical
building,
which was astronomical, and which is still continued in esoteric Masonry. When
such language
is applied to
building on earth it has no direct meaning. The eternal city was preceded by
the place of
assembly.
Before the time of building on the mount there was a gathering-place under the
tree that
represented
the roof of heaven. This was the Egyptian maat or judgment seat when it
consisted of a
stone beneath
a tree. The seat of assembly, the seat of judgment on the summit of the mount,
was
continued as
a sacred tradition by races who never saw the pole star of the northern heaven.
The
Australian
blacks have no north pole to look to for their paradise. It sank out of sight
for them long ages
since, when
they were emigrants from the old world, nor have they replaced it with the
southern pole. But
they still
turn to a mount of the north as the gathering place for the souls of the
departed. The Tundi, a
judicial
assembly of the tribe, is there - an equivalent in its way for the Egyptian
maat. When an old
Australian
aborigine was dying he pointed upward and said, “My Tundi is up there!”
(Taplin, Native Races
of South
Australia, p. 36). The great pyramid was built as a replica of this eternal
home. One name of this
is khut, a
word which does not merely signify “light”, or the horizon. It was the mount of
glory permanently
fixed in
stone; a type of heaven perfected which included all the mansions in the great
house of Osiris.
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Earth being
figured as a mount or island in the abyssal water, it seems probable that the
island in the
water
mentioned by Herodotus (B. ii. 127), where they say “the body of Cheops is
laid”, was imaged in
the
subterranean chamber of the great pyramid. And if so, it follows that the
pyramid itself is a figure of
the mount
that stood amidst the water of surrounding space. For example, the “Queen's
Chamber” is
seven-sided,
and therefore a figure of the Heptanomis. Of the “King's Chamber” Sandys says,
“The
stones are so
great that eight floor it, eight flag each end, and sixteen the sides”. It is
therefore a figure of
the lunar
octonary, or the heaven of Am-Khemen. The Amenta of Ptah was imaged below as
the abyss or
well of the
nether world. The steps or pathway to heaven were figured in the passage
looking upward to
the pole. In
such monuments the architecture of the heavens found its supreme expression on
the earth.
He whom
Herodotus calls “the priest of Vulcan” is obviously the deity Ptah. The Greek
writer speaks or
the temple of
Vulcan at Memphis (ii. 153) when he means the temple of Ptah. Thus the reign of
the priest
of Vulcan
refers to the dynasty [Page 366] of Ptah. Herodotus says, “The Egyptians having
become free,
after the
reign of the priest of Vulcan - for they were at no time able to live without a
king - established
twelve kings,
having divided all Egypt into twelve parts” (B. ii. 147). This was in the Egypt
of the heavens.
The divisions
were zodiacal. The twelve kings are those that rowed the solar bark around the
twelve
signs now
established in the circle of the ecliptic. “The twelve kings”, continues
Herodotus, “determined
to leave in
common a memorial of themselves, and having so determined, they built a
labyrinth, a little
above the
lake of Moeris”. This labyrinth “surpasses even the pyramid”. It has twelve
courts enclosed
with walls,
with doors opposite each other, six facing the north and six the south, “which
points to a
building that
represented the heaven of the twelve kings and twelve zodiacal signs, that is,
the heaven of
Atum-Ra the
son of Ptah. The starry roof was taken, so to say, indoors, to glorify the
temples of the gods,
and was
reproduced more or less as in the ceiling of Denderah. This has been shallowly
described as
Greek,
because Greek artists were employed in the workmanship when the chart was last
repeated, “as
it had been
before”, according to the text. But the types in this planisphere are Egyptian,
not Greek. To
mention only
a few: At the centre is the old first mother of all, the pregnant hippopotamus,
Apt or Khebt,
with the
jackal Ap-Uat, the guide of ways in heaven; and the haunch or leg of Nut the
celestial cow. Anup
and Tehuti
are figured back to back on the equinoctial colure; Shu and his sister Tefnut,
back to back,
constitute
the sign of Sagittarius. Child-Horus is enthroned on his papyrus plant; he is
also portrayed as
Har-Makhu in
the sign of the Scales. Khunsu-Horus offers up the black boar of Sut as a
sacrifice in the
disk of the
full moon. Enough remains intact to show the origin of the constellation
figures and to prove
their
derivation from the astronomical mythology of the Egyptians, by means of which
they can be read
to-day and
forever, but not as Greek or Euphratean (Book of the Beginnings, Planisphere).
THE IRISH
AMENTA
Anyone who
cares to become familiarly acquainted with the Kamite mythology and the scenery
of
Amenta can
have little difficulty in recognizing the source of the ancient British and
Irish legendary lore.
Arthur, who
owes his birth to what has been termed the shape-shifting of his father, is
identical with
Horus, who
owes his birth to the transformation of Osiris, his father. Finn the posthumous
child, who is
reared in the
woods to become the avenger of his father, is one with Horus born in the reeds
to become
the avenger
of Osiris. Gawain as the child “born to be king” is brought up in the forest to
which his mother
had fled for
concealment, as Isis fled to hide herself and bring forth Horus the
heir-apparent in the
marshes of
Amenta. The battle of the brothers Sut and Horus is paralleled in the fight
between Gawain
and his
brother Gareth. The “loathly lady” who transforms from a reptile at Gawain's
kiss answers to the
frog-headed
Hekat, who represents the moon that changes into Sati at the sun-god's kiss.
[Page 367]
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Ancient
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In an Irish
legend the heroes Diarmait and Finn Mac-Camail set out on a voyage in search of
the men
that had been
carried off by a wizard chief or a giant called the Gruagach. The Gruagach is a
Keltic ogre,
or giant, who
disappears at dusk into the well. The fight is the same as the conflict long
continued betwixt
Horus, lord
of light, and the Apap-dragon of darkness in the land where the dead have “gone
to the
dragon”. Also
when the conflict ceases for a time the beaten Gruagach sinks down into the
well, just as
Apap sinks
into the gulf or void and is drowned in the lake of darkness. (Joyce, Old
Celtic Romances,
“Pursuit of
the Gilla Dacker”. ch. 4.) Assuredly the dragon of drought survived as British
in the dragon of
Wantley, who
is reputed to have been ”a formidable drinker”. He , was slain by , More, of
More Hall, “who
hid himself
in the well of the under-world where the dragon came to drink”. (Percy, Relics
of Ancient
Poetry.)
Entrance to Amenta was opposed by the giant lurking in the “gulf of Apap” (ch.
7). Immediately
after
entering the valley of darkness Horus, the solar conqueror in the mythology or
the soul that followed
him in the
eschatology, had to contend with the black monster and pass through him one way
or the
other. The
hero is depicted in the act of piercing the Apap's head (Naville, Todt,vol. i.
Kap 7. Vignette).
This monster
of drought and darkness becomes the huge black giant in the legends which are
related of
Kynon and of
Cuchulain the victorious invader of the black fellow's domain.
The lady of
the tree that stands in the pool of the persea-tree of life, who is Hathor in
Egyptian mythos
and Nut in
eschatology, is one with the lady of the fountain in the Welsh Mabinogei, who
was won by
Owen when he
slew the black knight of the fountain and performed the same deed as Horus who
rescued
Hathor from her devourer, the dragon of darkness, otherwise the black giant.
Horus enters
Amenta by the
blind door of death and darkness as the deliverer of the manes who are held
captive by
the powers of
evil, Apap the giant, Sut the black man, and their confederates. To effect the
rescue he, like
Diarmait,
goes down to the “land beneath the billow” in the lower parts of the Nun. This
liberation of the
captives in
Amenta is common in the British legends. The Aarru-paradise is the land of
promise in a lake-
country. This
lakeland is Lochlan of the Welsh version, “a mysterious country in the lochs”
or waters
beneath the
earth. In this realm of faerie Finn and Diarmait found their lost friends all
safe upon the island
that was
known as the Promised Land, which is identical with the Land of Promise that
was sought for by
the Jews, and
by all who ever set out for the terrestrial or sub-terrestrial paradise, which
never was and
never could
be found outside the Egyptian earth of eternity; and finally in the upper
paradise or heaven of
eternity on
the other side of the celestial water. There is also a numerical note in the
statement that those
who succeed
in snatching some of the fruit from the tree of life in the under-world
returned forthwith to
the typical
age of thirty years, even though they had completed their hundredth year: and
in the Egyptian
representation
Amsu the victor of Amenta, the conqueror of the black fellow, is the Horus of
thirty years,
the divine
homme fait, that anointed son of god who is always thirty years of age. [Page 368]
When going
over the ground previously the present writer was not sufficiently versed in
the mysteries of
Amenta, and
Akar had not yielded up its secret treasures.
Application
of the comparative method to the voyages of Maelduin and Bran will show that
one of the
most
satisfactory survivals of the Kamite wisdom is to be met with in the Irish
mythology and märchen.
The voyage of
Horus and his companions in the solar bark that makes a circle is repeated in
the Imram
or “rowing
about” of the Irish heroes and their associates in the boat, or of British
Arthur with the seven in
the ark. The
voyage of Maelduin is undertaken by him in search of his father's murderers.
This is the
object of
Horus or the deceased in the Egyptian Ritual. They sailed together over the
waters to the west
until they
came to a cliff so steep and high it seemed to touch the clouds. Diarmait
undertook to climb the
cliff and
search for the missing men. He looked inland and saw a lovely country. He sets
out to walk
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Ancient
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across the
plain; he sees a great tree laden with fruit. This is surrounded by a stone
enclosure, a circle of
pillar-stones,
with a large round pool of water clear as crystal in the midst which bubbled up
at the centre
and flowed
away to nourish all the land. The story need not be followed any farther as a
story, but now for
the
interpretation. The missing men who were spirited away denote the manes. The
way across the water
to the west
was the road of souls along the solar track. The steep and very lofty cliff was
the mountain of
Amenta, which
is said to reach the sky. The lovely country or the plain was the field of
Aarru in the
Egyptian
lower paradise, with the enclosure that protected it from Apap; its well of
water as the living
source of all
supply; its tree of life that bore the un-forbidden fruit, and other features
of the mythos are all
identifiably
Egyptian.
In the
opening of the Ritual (chs. 3 and 4) the hero enters the vessel of the Kamite
Charon and
addresses the
helmsman and sailors. He is in search of his father, Osiris, who has been
murdered by
Sut, and
says: “I am the beloved son. I have come to see my father Osiris, to pierce the
heart of Sut”,
and to slay
the conspirators (Rit., ch. 9, Renouf), Horus being, like Maelduin, the avenger
of his father
(Rit., chs.
I, 17,92, Renouf). Amenta is the land of life (ch. 15); the sun sets into the
land of life; it is the
land of the
tree of life and the water of life, in which the dead become the living,
resting in the land of life.
The mount in
the west is called Mount Ankhu, the mountain of life. One name for the mount
(otherwise
the horizon)
in Egyptian is Sut or Set,
, the rock,
hill, or mount, which agrees with the
Irish Síd for
the hillock and the mound of the unseen world. The mounds were made as
dwellings for the
dead, and in
the Irish legends the people of the other earth, the Tuatha de Danan, the wee
folk and
fairies, are dwellers
in a world that is represented by the hillock or mound. “Tis a large Síd in
which the
Aes Síde
dwell”, therefore equivalent to the mount, and their hollow in the mount is one
with the Kamite
Amenta. There
is no consciousness of time in this happy other-world. Those who have dwelt
there for
centuries
seem to have been there no time. This is one way of identifying the land with
the earth of
eternity. The
Irish [Page 369] nether-world is the land of the ever-living ones; as an
irresistible lure to men
it is set
forth as the land of ever-living, ever-lovely women.
In the
Egyptian Ritual Anup, the jackal-god, the swift runner, who as the earliest
form of Mercury
preceded
Taht-Hermes, is the guide of ways in the astral mythology and the conductor of
souls in the
eschatology.
Anup was not only the guide through Amenta; he is also god of the pole-star and
therefore
lord of the
polar paradise, before he fell from heaven and his station was assigned to Asar
in the later
solar cult.
In our British and Irish mythology, Manannan, the son of Lir, is a form of
Mercury. And in the
legend of
“Cormac and Faery” he is lord of the promised land. He also acts as guide to
Cormac, and
says to him,
“ I am Manannan, son of Lir, lord of the land of promise, and I brought you
here that you
might see the
fashion of the land”. This is the guide of ways, Ap-Uat, whom Cresar calls the
“patron of
roads and
journeys”, who was worshipped by the Gauls above all other gods.
The great
adversary of the solar god whom Horus went forth to slay is the Apap-serpent or
dragon of
darkness, a
huge water reptile lying at the bottom of the abyss. We get a glimpse of this
monster in the
following
description. In the Tale of Laegaire the land of heart's delight is described
as being under the
waters
instead of across them, or in the hollow of the mount. This, however, involves
no discrepancy. The
nether-world
of Ptah-Tanen was below the waves. When the sun entered the mount it descended
into the
hollow earth toward
the bottom of the mount, which stood on its own fixed base in the abyss or
surrounding
waters of the Nun. The title of Ptah-Tanen indicates the land (ta) in the Nun
or Nnu which
engirdled the
earth outside. Thus the outer world was below the level of the waters at the
same time that
it was in the
nethermost parts of the mount of Amenta. This necessitated the rampart that was
erected by
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Ancient
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the builder
Ptah against the deluge and other incursions of Apap the destroyer. The
mythical water round
about the
earth is described with exquisite delicacy of touch in the Voyage of Maelduin:
“It seemed like a
clear thin
cloud, and it was so transparent, and appeared so light, that they thought at
first it would not
bear up the
weight of the curragh” (ch. 23, Joyce). Looking down through this water of
aerial tenuity, they
saw a
beautiful country, and in one place “a single tree”, and on its branches “they
beheld an animal
fierce and
terrible to look upon”, and whilst they looked they saw the monster stretch
forth his neck, and,
darting his
head downward, he plunged his fangs into the back of the largest ox of a whole
herd. This he
lifted off
the ground into the tree, where he “swallowed him down in the twinkling of an
eye”. When
Maelduin and
his people saw this from the boat they were in fear lest they “should not be
able to cross
the sea over
the monster on account of the extreme mist-like thinness of the water; but after
much
difficulty
and danger they got across it safely” (Joyce, ch. 23). This lovely country seen
beneath the
waters, the
sunken city of so many märchen, is the “beautiful Amenta” of the Ritual. The
tree is the tree of
life in
Amenta, and the monster is the Apap-reptile. The ox as victim represents the
bull of Amenta, a title
of Osiris.
The herd here answers to the herd of cows to which the bull [Page 370] is lord.
There is also a
man on guard
at the tree with shield and spear and sword, who corresponds to Ra, the
guardian who
defends the
persea tree (Rit., ch. 17) against the devouring monster Apap. The passage over
the pellucid
water with
the monster lurking darkly down below is described in the Ritual. “O thou who
sailest the ship
of heaven
over the gulf which is void, let me come to see my father, Osiris” (Rit., chs.
44 and 99). Horus
and his
companions had to cross the abyss of Apap, and the insubstantial element of the
Irish version
answers to
the hollow void of the original.
When the
deceased is making his way through Amenta, Hathor the goddess of love and
loveliness = the
amorous
queen, emerges from the tree and offers him a dish of the fruit which she has
gathered to woo
him with. By
accepting this he is bound to remain the guest of the goddess and return no
more to the
world of the
living, unless by her permission. Hathor is identical with the amorous queen of
the Keltic
legends.
Seventeen grown-up girls attend on her and prepare her bath. These in the
original mythos are
the seven
Hathors, and it looks as if the seven had been changed to seventeen, which is a
number
otherwise
unknown to the original mythos. Hathor is the goddess in the tree who furnishes
the fruit on
which the
souls are fed. The amorous queen gives the magical fruit from her apple-tree to
visitors from
the human
world. The Queen of Love was called the Golden Hathor, and in the Tale of
Teague the
gracious
queen is “draped in vesture of a golden colour”. Hathor was the goddess of
music, and the
approach of
the amorous queen of faerie is announced by music magically sweet. Hathor was
the
goddess who
drew men with the golden cords of a love that was irresistible. This is naďvely
rendered in
the Irish
märchen. When Maelduin and his men have stayed for three months with the
amorous queen
and enter
their boat to sail away, she rides after them and “flings a clew” which the
hero catches. It clings
to his hand,
and he is drawn back again to the land he was leaving. Three times over he is
drawn back to
the queen by
the magical clew that represents the cord of love. Hathor the queen of love is
the provider
of food and
drink for the manes in Amenta, who have, or who pray to have, whatsoever heart
can wish.
So the
amorous queen provides food and drink for the wanderers, which has every savour
that each one
may desire.
Hathor was the goddess of beauty, to whom the mafkat and other precious stones
were
sacred. The
necklace was her typical ornament, the predecessor of the cestus of Venus. And
it is
noticeable
that the treasure snatched at by the foster-brother of Maelduin, which cost him
his life, was the
magical
necklace that was in every sense irresistible. The lower paradise in which the
tree of Hathor
grows is in
Amen-Ta. Ta is the earth or land. Amen signifies the secret or hidden. May not
this be
represented
by Emain the nomen regionis in the voyage of Bran ? From Emain comes the branch
of the
apple-tree,
or fruit-tree that may have been a fig-tree, which would correspond more
closely to the
sycamore-fig
of Hathor.
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There is
unlimited love-making in the land of the amorous queen, who is the Irish
Aphrodité. She is a
direct
survival from the time when the divine female was the ruler of men and the
object of their kneeling
adoration.
She is the queen of faerie, who was once the [Page 371] queen of love. Hathor
in the Ritual is
especially
the sovereign. The speaker says, “Let me eat under the sycamore of Hathor the
sovereign (ch.
52), among
those who rest there”. It is promised to the mortal who attains the elysium
with the amorous
queen that he
shall enjoy the delights of love “without labour”. Even in the Egyptian Ritual
the speaker
pleads that
he may have the investiture of the garden, that he may be glorified there, eat
and drink, and
have his fill
of sexual intercourse.
The text in
the Nebseni papyrus reads nahap am, not mere love “in the abstract”, for nahap
signifies
coition. This
is in agreement with the unlimited love-making in the land of women which was
the primal
paradise. The
Kelt remains to-day a true child of the matriarchate that was piously
transferred from earth
to heaven. In
this religion the mother with the child is the object of supreme desire, the
religion that
began as and
still continues to be uterine. This divine ideal has fired the imagination of
the Kelt as whisky
fires the
blood and brain. It was this that ultimately made him so devout a Roman Catholic
with Mary for a
portrait of
the earlier amorous fairy queen. The Keltic land of promise is a land in which
deep-bosomed,
ever-Iiving,
glorious women dwell and make it worth while for men to strive and reach that
heaven in the
land of
heart's desire.
In the
Ritual, ch. 17, the nocturnal sun is represented as a cat, the seer in the dark
who keeps the watch
by night in
Amenta. The cat especially protects the tree of life and its food and drink
from the assaults of
the serpent
Apap and the encroachments of those prowling thieves the Sebau. The cat is said
to “govern
the Sebau,
and regulate that which they do”. The tree, be it remembered, is Hathor's in
the Ritual, and
she is the
queen of love who reappears in Irish Legends as the amorous queen. Now in the
voyage of
Maelduin they
come to the “island of the amorous queen”. They also come to a fort which is
encompassed
by “a great white rampart” wherein there is nothing to be seen but a cat that
keeps on
leaping from
one to another of “four stone pillars”.
The fort
itself is full of food and drink and shining raiment. As the voyagers are
leaving, one of them tries
to steal a
necklace, whereupon the protecting cat “leaps through him like a fiery arrow,
burns him up so
that he
becomes ashes”, and then the cat “goes back to its pillar”. This description
indicates the nature of
the type. As
in the Ritual, the cat represents the protecting solar god. The cat in Amenta
is going round
the
night-side of the solar circle. The four pillars were the supports at the four
corners called the four
pillars of
Shu. The solar god as watchful cat consumes the thief (one of the Sebau) to
ashes, and “goes
back to his
pillar” or goes on his way.
It is the
zootypes that tell the nature of the origins in sign-language and identify them
as Egyptian. Two or
three of
these may be dwelt on for a moment. The cat as a protector of the “property” in
Amenta; the
ancient bird
that renews its youth, not as the phoenix of fire, but by bathing in the lake
of the water of life;
the seven
cows that give their milk in sufficient abundance to feed the whole inhabitants
of the land of
promise; the
Apap-monster, the youthful solar hero, the mount of Amenta, and lastly the tree
of life in the
garden
eastward of the mount. “When Maelduin was on his [Page 372] voyage he came to
an island on
which there
stood at the centre of it - a single apple tree, very tall and slender. Its
branches were likewise
slender and
exceeding long, so long that they grew up over the circular high hill and down
to the sea that
bounded the
island”. (Joyce, Celtic Romances, “Voyage of Maelduin”, ch. 8. ) So long were
the branches
that for
three days and nights, whilst the ship was coasting the island, Maelduin held a
branch all the
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Ancient
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time, letting
it slide through his fingers, till, on the third day, he came to a cluster of
apples at the very
end. This was
the fruit of the tree of life.
Alfred Nutt
remarks on the gigantic stature of the people who are met with by Finn and his
men in the
land of
marvels, but does not think the trait has any traditional significance (Bebind
Story). But the giants
of the
promised land are identical with those in the Hebrew märchen, and the
prototypes of both are to be
found in the
Kamite mythos. One origin will account for all. There are two classes of giants
in the Ritual,
the glorified
and the wretched giant shades. The glorified ones are those who reap the fields
of divine
harvest in
the lower Aarru and in presence of the powers of the east. These are said to be
each nine
cubits in
height, i.e., fifteen or sixteen feet. The giants of the fore-world were not
magnified men, but
representatives
of the elemental powers, like the gigantic Apap of darkness, the hippopotamus
of Sut, the
crocodile of
Horus, the giant ape of Hapi, the lion of Shu, in the pre-anthropomorphic
phase. This was the
race of
giants that preceded the pygmies of Ptah in the Egyptian mythology. So in the
Irish legends the
Brobdingnagian
race of the Fena, the mighty heroes of enormous stature, passed away and were
followed by
the little men who were Lilliputians in comparison; there are also dwarfs as
denizens of the
land beneath
the waters. (Joyce, Old Celtic Romances,” The Last of the Fena”)
Africa, the
home of the pygmies, is presumably the birthplace of the dwarf races now
represented by the
diminutive
wee folk of the Dark Continent. The earliest emigrants who made their way out
of that land
and wandered
over Europe would be akin to these in stature, like the Lapps who follow them
at a short
distance.
These were the wee folk in human form. But there is another factor to be taken
into account
before we can
ascertain the origin of the wee folk as spirits in a tiny fairy shape. These do
not simply
represent the
pygmy race of human beings, but are the same primitive people translated into
spirit-world,
from the time
when the race was of the pygmy stature. We gather from the secret wisdom that
the
earliest
beings who entered the nether earth were dwarfs or dwarfish people. The god
Ptah, who opened
the
under-world by tunnelling the mount of Amenta, is himself a dwarf. The seven
khnemmu that assisted
him were
pygmies. First come the African pygmies. Second, the mythical pygmies of Ptah.
Third, the
human souls
that are the same in stature. Fourth, the wee folk of the legends, who inhabit
the mounds,
who work the
mines, who dwell beneath the sea, the natural, the mythical, and spiritualistic
dwarfs being
somewhat
mixed up together. The märchen or folk-tales of the Asiatic and European races
are the débris
of Egyptian
mythos. Fairyland is no conception of the Kelt, nor original product of the
Aryan imagination;
it is the
Kamite earth of eternity in the lower world of the mount of earth [Page 373]
which was excavated
by the
pygmies of the opener Ptah. From no other land or literature than the Egyptian
can we explain the
wee folk in
the fairy mound or Síd. (Síd, pronounced shee. Cf: the Egyptian she or shu, for
the hollow, the
void, and
sheta, the sarcophagus.)
Various
episodes of the passage through the nether earth and over the waters to the
upper paradise that
were
represented in the drama of the mysteries and detailed in the mythos have been
reduced to mere
allusions in
the Ritual. For example, there is a land of weeping, a dwelling-place of the
god Rem-Rem, or
Remi the
Weeper. (Rit., ch. 75, and Litany of Ra, line 21.) The manes on his way to Annu
says, “I have
come out of
the tuat. I am come from the ends of the earth. I pass through the noble
dwellings of those
who are
coffined. I open the dwelling of Rem-Rem, that is the place of weeping. (Rit.,
ch. 75, Renouf) In
the Irish
legendary “Yarn” the voyagers come to the Island of Weeping. This island is
large and “ full of
human beings
black in body and raiment, and resting not from wailing and weeping. Whosoever
lands in
this place
falls a-weeping”. This lot happens to one of Maelduin's foster-brothers and
others of the
wanderers who
are sent to bring him off. The coffined ones in the Ritual, chief of whom was
Osiris in his
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
coffin, offer
a raison d' ętre for the weeping in Rem-Rem (as a place).
In their
thirty-first adventure Maelduin and his companions come to an island of which
it is said, “Around
the island
was a fiery rampart, and it was wont ever to turn around and about it”. This
was evidently the
revolving
sphere. “Now, in the side of that rampart was an open door, and as it came
opposite them in its
turning
course, they beheld through it the island and all therein, and its indwellers,
even human beings,
beautiful,
numerous, wearing garments richly dight, and feasting with golden vessels in
their hands. The
wanderers
heard their ale-music, and for long did they gaze upon the marvel, delightful
as it seemed to
them”. This
is a glimpse of the pleasant plain, the promised land, the land of heart's
delight and ever-
Iiving women,
with their lure of love - in short, the Aarru paradise. There was a protecting
rampart reared
around this
garden, the lower paradise in the earth of eternity. “A divine domain hath been
constructed for
me; the name
of it is the garden of Aarru. I know the garden of Aarru; the wall of it is
steel ” or the bright
shining
ba-metal. (Rit., ch. 109.) Inside the rampart were the glorified ones, “each of
whom is nine cubits
in height.
.Also the manes were there as workers in the human form, who cultivated each
their field of
corn and fed
upon the food and drank the beer that were made from it and divinized as
sustenance for
souls.
The two-fold
paradise, terrestrial and celestial, is also extant in Irish legendary lore.
Not as an Irish
conception,
pagan or Christian, not as a “vision of the great young godland-haunted Irish
imagination”,
but as a
survival from the Kamite source that once supplied the world with a system of
representation,
mythical and
eschatological, which remains almost intact as Egyptian, whilst it has gone to
wreck and
sea-drift
elsewhere on other shores. The typical mount of earth with its hollow of the
under-world has its
representative
in the Irish mound of the Síd, and the elysium across the sea is one with the
paradise of
Hetep over
the celestial water. [Page 374]
Alfred Nutt
points out the difference betwixt the Irish paradise in the hollow hill and
their paradise that is
over-sea. “In
the hollow hill type (The Wooing of Etain) the wonderland is not figured as
lying across the
sea, but
rather. ...within the Sid or fairy hills. No special insistence is laid upon
the immortality of its
inhabitants”,
nor is there any portion of this land in which the amorous women dwell alone,
as in the
elysium over
sea. (Nutt, The Voyage of Bran. The Happy Otherworld, ch. 9.) This is exactly
as it would be
if derived
from the Kamite original. The lower paradise of two is in the mount of earth,
also called the
funeral mount
of Amenta. The departed are not born immortals in that land; immortality is
conditional.
They have to
fight and strive and wrestle with the powers of evil to compass it. These, like
the Irish
manes
dwelling in the Síd or hollow hill, were the “folk of the goddess”, who was
Hathor in the mount;
whereas the
spirits made perfect in the upper paradise are more expressly children of the
supreme god,
who was
Horus, or Ra, or Osiris, according to the cult. We can trace the voyagers on
the water way to
this upper
paradise. When Horus, or Ra, and his companions have conquered Apap, the Sebau,
and
other
monstrous progeny of darkness, the solar bark emerges from the under-world upon
the horizon of
the orient
heaven, and enters the water of dawn which is designated the “ lake of
emerald”. The speaker
says, “O ye
gods in your divine cycles who travel round the lake of emerald, come and
defend the great
one who is in
the shrine from which all the divine cycle proceedeth” - that is, the god on
board the solar
bark. So in
the voyage of Maelduin, after passing the islands of monstrous animals, the
giants and
devourers,
the companions come to a sea of green crystal sparkling in the sunlight, and so
transparent
that they
could see the sand quite clearly at the bottom. In this water they saw neither
monsters nor any
ugly animals.
In like manner the crystal water is described in the Ritual as having neither
fishes nor
snakes in it.
(Rit., ch. 110; Voyage of Maelduin, ch. 22, Joyce.)
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Ancient
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The “Isle of
Truth” is a name of the divine land across the waters, “ Whosoever set foot on
it was unable
to tell a
lie”. A naif way of indicating its truth-compelling influence. Surely this must
be the Egyptian Maat,
the land of
truth. In starting on his voyage over sea it is the desire of the speaker to
“attain the region of
Maat” (Rit.,
ch. I), which may be the region of truth, law, or righteousness. The celestial
bridge betwixt the
two is described
in the Voyage of Maelduin as a bridge of crystal leading to a palace ( ch. 18,
Joyce ). It
also appears
in the form of a solid arch of water which spans the elysian island from side
to side. Under
this the
travellers walked without ever getting wet. (Ch. 25, Joyce.) This in heaven is
the archway of the
galaxy that
was represented as the river overhead. It is related that when the voyagers
came at last in
sight of land
it was a little island with a large palace on it. Around the palace was a wall
white all over
without stain
or flaw, as if it had been carved out of one unbroken rock of chalk, and it was
so lofty that it
seemed almost
to reach the clouds. “A number of fine houses, all snowy white, were ranged
round the
inside,
enclosing a level court in the middle on which all the houses opened”. (Joyce,
Old Celtic
Romances, pp.
131-133.) This in the Egyptian is the city of the white wall of the [Page 375]
celestial
Memphis that
was seen in the northern heaven at the summit of the mount. The Osiris looking
up to this,
his journey's
end, exclaims “May Sekhet the divine one (consort of Ptah) uplift me so that I
may arise in
heaven and
issue my behests in Memphis, the city of the white wall”. (Rit., ch. 26.)
The mount or
rock of Anup, also called his cliff (Rit., ch. 31), survives as the rock or
fortress of Manannan
in the land
of promise.One title of the Irish mount is “the hill of two wheels in the
pleasant plain of the
Land of
Promise”. (Clidna Dinnshenchas, Nutt, Voyage of Bran, p. 197.) This promises to
shed light on a
crux in the
Ritual. In the description of the mount and the two portions of Sut and Horus
the sign O is
employed
ambiguously. (See Book of the Dead, Renouf, pp. 193-199.) But if the halves of
night and day
were figured
as two cycles or circles of time the reading would be perfected, and the mount
of Hetep
would also be
the hill of two wheels in the pleasant plain. It is said in the Rig-Veda (ch.
3, p. 6), “the two
adorable
Krishnas successively revolve”. It is also said, “the dark day and the light
day revolve alternate”.
The
table-land which is called the plain of joy, the great plain, is one with
Hetep, the table of the mount, in
the Kamite
paradise. The bathing on the great table-land in the island of the amorous
queen is
particularly
noticeable. All who reach that summit bathe. Cormac was bathed, “though there
were none to
bathe him”.
This answers to the place of final baptism in the lake of propitiation and of
equipoise, where
souls are purified
“in the most high degree” (Rit., ch. 97). The tree of food in the midst of the
garden of
Hetep grows
the fruit on which the gods and the assembled multitude of the manes feed and
live. This,
as
aforementioned, is repeated in the Tale of Teigue as a “thickly-spreading
apple-tree bearing fruit and
ripe blossom
alike”. This tree is to “serve the congregation that is to be in the mansion”.
It also bore a fruit
for the gods
and spirits. Beer is the divine drink of the beatified, not only in Amenta, but
also in the upper
paradise.
Osiris in the mythical Memphis, Hat-Ptah-Ka, says “O thou God of nutriment, O
Great One who
presidest
over the mansions on high, give me bread and beer” (Rit., ch. 106). And beer
was supplied in
overflowing
abundance. In the Wooing of Etain Mider the lover sings of beer as the divine
drink in the
earthly
paradise. “Heady to you the ale of Erin, but headier is the ale of the Great
Land”. “When thou
comest,
Woman, to my strong folk, fresh swine's flesh and beer shall be given thee by
met, O white-
skinned
Woman”. It is also said of this wonderland, “When it rains, 'tis beer that
falls”. Now, the beer that
rained in the
Irish paradise is identical with that which came down from the Egyptian heaven.
Notwithstanding
the difference betwixt the number of attendants on the amorous queen and the
number
of Hathors,
the seven have been correctly preserved in their primitive shape and character
as the seven
cows in the
Irish paradise, the same as in the meadows of the Egyptian Aarru. In the
adventures of
Cormac in
Faëry, the old wife tells the true tale of her seven cows, the milk of which is
plentiful enough to
supply all
the inhabitants of the land of promise with nutriment. These are the cows of
the elysian fields in
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Ancient
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the Ritual
who are called the seven cows, providers of plenty. They are portrayed [Page
376] along with
the bull who
is personified as the hero in the folk-tales (Papyrus of Ani., pI. 35; Rit.,
ch. 148), and are
invoked by
the spirit of the Osiris to give him food and drink and sustenance for ever.
Thus the “Irish
version of
the happy otherworld” becomes a dim-eyed memory of the old Egyptian
astronomical
mythology and
eschatology. And as it is in Ireland so was it in Babylonia, India, China,
Greece, Britain,
and other
lands that were lighted by the rays of Egypt's wisdom that went down as the
sunset of an
ancient
world, and rose again unrecognized by name as dayspring of the new. And thus
the nearness to
nature in its
tenderest traits, the nobility of manners, the serene placidity, to be found in
the Welsh and
Irish
fragments of the antique lore, were not necessarily native to the soil, but may
have belonged to the
higher
civilization that was elsewhere developed, as now we know it to have flourished
in the valley of the
Nile. Neither
was the painted Pict or woad-stained Briton the source of all this gentilesse
and chivalry
imported in
the mythos and replanted in the islands by the “men of peace”. Such characters
as Arthur
and his
twelve knights were not the products of men who dwelt in caves and wore the
skins of animals.
His mother
Arth was goddess of the Great Bear - she who was Ta-Urt, the oldest form of the
Great
Mother in the
astronomical mythology of Egypt. And as the characters were imported in the
mythology, so
likewise were
the traits of character, and therefore these would not be indigenous to the
islands of the
north.
THE UPPER
MOUNT OF GLORY
Whatsoever
shape was taken by the eternal dwelling-place on high, it was only attainable
at the summit
of the mount
that reached up to the never-setting stars. And there is a consensus of
widely-scattered
evidence to
show that the paradise of peace and plenty, of reunion and rejoicing, which is
the object in
view of “the
Osiris” all through his journey outlined in the Ritual, is the upper paradise
of a legend that is
universal,
the origin of which can be discovered in the astronomical mythology of Egypt
The general
tradition is
that this paradise was a primeval place of birth, and that it was in the north,
upon the summit
of a mount
now inaccessible to the living anywhere on earth. This circumpolar paradise is
known to the
oldest races
in the world as an initial starting-point for gods and men.
We have
sought to trace an origin for the primitive paradise of this universal legend
to the human
birthplace on
the mount of earth, or Apta, with the beginning in the time and the domain of
Sut, which
was
commemorated as a secret of the Sphinx. This place of birth, as we suggest, was
thus repeated as
a place of
rebirth by the Egyptian mystery-teachers in the astronomical mythology, from
which the
universal
legend spread around the world.
The Namoi,
Barwan, and other tribes on the Darling River, in Australia, point out a
paradise up the Milky
Way to which
the spirits of the righteous are welcomed by Baiame, who corresponds to the
Kamite god of
the polar
paradise. He is called “the great master” [Page 377] and is the maker. It is he
who sends the rain;
and it was he
who initiated the black-fellows into their mysteries (Brough Smyth, vol. ii.
p.285). The
aborigines of
New Holland describe the dwelling-place of “Bayma” as a paradise to the
north-east in a
beautiful
heaven. His throne is a crystal mountain of vast magnitude, the base of which
is fixed in the
great water,
and its stupendous summit rises to the stars. In addition to this upper
paradise upon the
mount they
also have an earthly paradise below. Moodgeegally, the first man, who lives in
this nether
paradise, is
alone immortal; the same as human Horus in the lower paradise of Amenta. He has
the
power and
privilege of visiting the upper heaven of Ballima, which is a three days
journey from the happy
land below.
He climbs up to the heaven north-east by a lofty and precipitous mountain
covered with
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Ancient
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beautiful
trees. His ascent on foot is made easier by a path winding round the mountain
which he
ascends. A
ladder or flight of steps erected at top of this mountain, leads up to heaven
itself. Ballima,
where the sun
shines by night beneath our earth, is the Egyptian Hades. The exceeding high
mountain is
the mount of
Amenta, and the great water out of which it rises with the steps up to heaven
is the Egyptian
Nun. But
neither the aborigines of New Holland, nor the missionaries, nor Mr. Manning
knew anything of
the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, or of the Nun, or the mount of Amenta, or the Aarru-fields,
the double
paradise, or
the steps that led up to the solar boat. Yet these and other features of the
Kamite mythos are
all
identifiable in the version here recovered from the aborigines of New Holland.
(Notes on the
Aborigines of
New Holland made by James Manning in 1844-5. Copy presented by the author.)
The mount of
the gods and the glorified is common in Africa, where, as we hold, the
foundations of
Egyptian
mythology were laid; and there, as in other lands, it is a point of departure
in the beginning for
the race.
Duff Macdonald says of the Yao tribes: “Some distinctly localize Mtanga as the
god of
Mangochi, the
great hill that the Yao people left. I regret much that I did not see this hill
before leaving
Africa, as I
have heard so much of it. To these people it is all that the many-ridged
Olympus was to the
Greek. The
voice of Mtanga, some hold, is still audible on Mangochi. Others say that
Mtanga never was
a man, and
that Mtanga is another word for Mulungu (god or spirit). He was concerned in
the first
introduction
of men into the world, and he is intimately associated with a year of plenty”.
Thus we find the
main features
of the mythical mount extant in Inner Africa, which culminated in Mount Hetep
as Egyptian.
It is the
seat of the gods and the glorified. It is the primeval birth- place. It is the
land of promise, of peace
and rest, of
water and eternal plenty, the scene of the Golden Age. It is the primitive
paradise of the
aborigines
(Africana, i. 71). The god whose seat or station was the pole is the power that
gives the water
of heaven to
our world. Anup in Egypt is the master of the inundation (Rit.,ch. 97). The
pole was imaged
by the mount,
the cone, the round hillock, the artificial mound. Now the Gold Coast Africans
worship a
deity or
nature-power named Bobowissi, whose seat or stool is the conical hill near
Winnebah known as
the Devil's
Hill, a title given by the Portuguese. He is the maker and sender of rain,
which [Page 378]
descends in a
devastating deluge when he is provoked to anger by those who break his law.
Bobowissi
also appoints
the local deities, even as Anup assigned their places to the seven on the
opening day of
creation in
the Egyptian solar mythos (Rit., ch. 17; Ellis, The Tshi-speaking People, p.
22).
The heaven of
the western Inoits, in which good spirits dwell, is a paradise above the
firmament. This
revolves
about a mountain of prodigious magnitude and majesty, a meru that is situated
in the remotest
part of the
polar regions. Here, as in the Egyptian circum-polar paradise, the spirits
whose innate
excellence
has been proved by an extraordinary activity for good go to mingle with the
never-setting
stars.
Various other features of this heaven are Egyptian. Mount Hetep as the land
that is blest with water
and the
breezes of the north is an African, but not an Esquimaux, ideal. The god, as
Num, is the breath of
those who are
in the firmament. The Inoit supreme being Torngarsuk, the Great Spirit, is the
“lord of the
breezes”.
Still more remarkable is the fact that the souls of the Inoit are drawn from an
atmospheric
reservoir of
soul, to which in death the spirits of the just return. This is identical with
the Egyptian lake of
Sa, one of
the two lakes in the polar paradise, which is the source of spirit-life and of
life to the gods and
the
glorified. They also have the earthly and celestial paradise, one at the root
of the mount, the other at
the summit;
the same as the Egyptian Aarru in Amenta below, and Aarru in the polar paradise
of the
northern
heaven (Réclus, Primitive Folk, Eng. Trans., p. 106). This upper world of the
Esquimaux, says
Dr. Rink, may
be considered identical with the mountain about the summit of which the vaulted
sky for
ever circled
round. This is the celestial mountain as a figure of the pole. It was their
mount of glory lighted
with the
aurora borealis.
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Ancient
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The Egyptian
Ta-Nuter or divine land of the gods is usually described as being in the
Orient. But there
was also a
Ta-Nuter Meh-ti, which is rendered by Brugsch, “das nördliche Gottesland”,
(Brugsch, Astron.
and Astrol.
Inscript., p. 179). This was the land of the gods in the north - that is, the
polar paradise in
heaven, not
an elevated part of our earth. The breeze of the north was the breath of life
to the Egyptians.
It is
synonymous with blessedness. The paradise of Hetep is the garden blessed with
breezes. The
breeze of the
north, however, would not represent heaven to the dwellers in the northern
quarter of the
world. But
the paradise was figured in the north originally, and there it remained in
every land to which
the wisdom of
Old Egypt went. This will explain the paradise of Airyana Vaęjô described in
the Avesta.
Ahura-Mazda
tells Zarathustra that he has created a delectable spot which was previously
unapproachable
or nowhere habitable. But in this first of regions and best of countries there
was winter
during ten
months of the year. “Ten months of winter are there, two of summer, and these
(latter) are cold
as to water,
cold as to earth, cold as to plants; then as the snow falls around there is the
direst disaster”
(Vendidad,
Fargard, i.). The good god made the good creation, and Angro-Mainyus, the dark
and deadly,
is said to
have formed a mighty serpent and brought on the frost that was created by the
Daevas, who
correspond to
the Sebau in the Ritual as agents of evil in physical phenomena. It is also
said in [Page 379]
the Minokhird
(p. 322, ff.) the Dev of winter is most vehement in Airyana Vaęjô. Which does
not mean
that the
primal paradise was created at the northern pole of the earth, to be overtaken
by the glacial
period. The
true interpretation is that the legendary paradise was astronomical, and that
it was an
enclosure at
the north celestial pole, and not in the northern regions of the earth. In the
Vendidad version
it has been
made geographical and rendered according to climate in some northern region of
the earth;
the evils of
a winter world being then attributed to the devil, or the opposition of the
black mind, Angro-
Mainyus.
There was no frost or winter in the circum-polar paradise, nor in the African
birthplace of the
legend in the
oasis, whereas frost and winter were both met with in the highlands of the
north, whether in
Asia or in
Europe, and this leads to a paradise in which there are ten months of bitter
winter weather,
which is the
result of rendering the celestial by the terrestrial north. In a supplement to
the first Fargard of
the Vendidad
the time has been changed to suit a milder climate: “Seven months of summer are
there;
five months
of winter were there”, which is in direct contradiction to the original text,
and also opposed to
the
prototypal paradise with the life-giving breeze of the north in Africa, but is
suitable to a milder climate,
although one
that is still in the cold north. The Chinese paradise, like the Egyptian, is at
the north pole,
the apex of
the celestial mount. The summit is the seat of the gods. Heaven divided into
the ten regions
of space is
identical with the Kamite heaven at the summit of Mount Hetep, that was divided
into ten
divine
domains (Rit., ch. 110) which followed the celestial heptanomis and the
enclosure of Am-Khemen,
and preceded
the zodiac with twelve signs. In no country is the mount of the north more
sacred than in
China. For
thousands of years the Chinese emperors have ascended the holy mountain T'ai to
offer
sacrifice to
heaven. This mount is designated “Lord of the World”. To the north there is
nothing but hills
upon hills.
It has 6,000 steps of hewn stone, each fifteen feet in length, leading upward like
a staircase to
the skies,
exactly the same as the throne of Osiris, who “sits at the head of the
staircase”.
The pole-star
determined the one visible fixed centre of the starry universe, and the name of
the Ainu as
Ai-no-Ko is
said to signify the “offspring of the centre”. That centre was the circumpolar
paradise. The
Japanese god
of the pole-star, Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi-no-Kami, is likewise “the lord of the
centre of
heaven”. The
tradition of the Ainu is that they came from the northern summit of the world.
So high and
inaccessible
are those lofty tablelands that none of the living can attain them now. But the
ancestral
spirits go
back to them after death. This, of course, identifies the circumpolar paradise
of all the legends
that had but
one and the same origin - in the astronomical mythology. The region is
identified still further
by the bears.
The ancestors of the Ainu are said to have married the bears of the mountains
in this high
homeland of
the north (Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, pp. 27-29). We have the bears to-day,
seven in the
lesser and
seven in the larger constellation, still revolving round the stellar mount of
glory.
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Ancient
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The Koreans
possess the same tradition of the human birthplace in the circumpolar paradise.
Their first
man, as ruler
of Korea, [Page 380] descended from the great white mountain Tę Pek San. This
also was
the point of
migration or beginning for the race, as it is in various other versions of the
primeval tradition
(Lowell,
Percival, Choison, p.09). The Badagas say that in the north arises Mount
Kaylasa, their Meru. In
the north
infinity opens on the kingdom of the shades. If four men be dispatched to the
four cardinal
points, three
will return, but never will he who has walked beneath the rays of the polar
star. He makes
the ascent of
the north, which is not a quarter, but the summit to a mountain, as in Egypt.
All that is great
and powerful
comes from the north. The mother of the cow-goddesses dwelt on the Amnor, and
the
ancestors of
the Badagas followed the cow. They came from the paradise of the north. Between
the
invisible
mountains of Kaylasa and Kanagiri flows the dread river that divides the world
of the living from
the world of
the dead. That is the celestial water, the river of souls, which runs betwixt
Mount Manu and
Mount Hetep
on the Egyptian map of heaven. This is not the north of the geographers. At the
top of
Mount Kaylasa
is the palace of souls, the home of the blessed, in which their efforts are
crowned with
final
success. This palace of souls answers to the royal palace referred to in the
Ritual, where the
speaker says,
“I have made my way into the royal palace, and it was the bird-fly (or Abait)
who brought
me hither”
(Rit., ch. 76, Renouf).
Montezuma the
elder, in repeating an ancient tradition to Cortez, said, “Our fathers dwelt in
that happy
and
prosperous place which they called Atzlan (a word that signifies whiteness). In
this place there is a
great
mountain in the middle of the water which is called Culhuacan, because it has
the peak turned
somewhat over
toward the bottom; and for this cause it is called Culhuacan, which means
'crooked
mountain'.
“The rest of the description of this delightful country shows that it was the
circumpolar
paradise upon
the summit of the mount. And when it is identified with the mount of Hetep we
may
surmise that
it became the mountain with its apex leaning over because it imaged the pole;
so that when
the pole-star
changed, the bent posture of the summit would become the curved figure by which
Culhuacan was
portrayed. In an Assyrian prayer this celestial mount is called the silver
mountain. It is
said, “Grant
ye to the king, my lord, who has given such gifts to his gods, that he may
attain to grey hairs
and old age!
And after the life of these days, in the feasts of the silver mountain (at the
white summit of
the pole),
the heavenly courts, the abode of blessedness; and in the light of the happy
fields may he
dwell and
live a life eternal, in the presence of the gods” (Records, vol. iii. pp.
133-4). Gwynnwesi, the
blissful
white abode of the Welsh, is another form of the paradise on the summit of the
celestial mount in
the north,
which answers to the white mountain of the Koreans, the city of the white wall,
the peak of
pearl, and
the Assyrian land of the silver sky. Another form is Gwasgwyn, the white
mansion, which is the
happy abode
of the beatified dead. The imagery survives in the legends of Merlin, where we
meet with
the glass
house, the bower of crystal; the tower without any wall, or without any
“closure”; the transparent
prison that
was aerial as “a smoke of mist in the air”. Also the typical tree appears as a
noble whitethorn,
all in bloom
- a figure, as we take it, of the starry pole. [Page 381] When Merlin died he
is said to have
taken with
him the thirteen treasures of Britain, as he passed into the house of glass
(Guest, Mab. ii. p.
354). The
ancient British Avalon was represented as an island in the north on which the
“Loadstone
Castle”
stood. This identifies the island with the celestial mount and the magnetic
pole of the north.
Another local
figure of the same significance is the Monte Calamitico, a magnetic mountain in
the sea to
the north of
Greenland (Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 659, Bohn's Ed.). In the Apocalypse of
Zosimas the
Hermit there
is a description of the paradise in which the blessed dwell. The seer was
conveyed across
the water
that divides our earth from heaven by means of two trees which bent down and
lifted him over
in their arms
(James, The Revelation of Peter, p. 69). The two trees are Egyptian, but as
usual in
Christian
documents, the miracle has been added. “Lo, I come”. says the seer in the
Ritual. “Let me
plunge into
the divine pool beneath the two divine sycamores of heaven and earth”, when he
is about to
ascend that
“'most conspicuous but inaccessible stream”, the Milky Way (chs. 97, 98).
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Ancient
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One ideograph
of Hetep, the mount of glory, is a table heaped with provisions as the sign of
plenty. In the
mythical
rendering it is a table-mountain. This will explain the round table of King
Arthur and that table of
the sun which
was said to exist among the Ethiopians as described by Herodotus. “There is a
meadow in
the suburbs”,
he says, furnished with the cooked flesh of all sorts of quadrupeds. It is
filled with meat at
night, “and
in the day time whosoever chooses comes and feasts upon it. The inhabitants say
that the
earth itself
from time to time produces these things”. Such is the description given of what
is called the
table of the
sun. (Book iii. 17, 18.) This table of the sun is referred to in the Ritual
(rubric to chs. 1 and
72). If the
deceased has kept the commandments, it is said that there shall be given to him
bread and
beer and
flesh upon the table of Ra - that is, the table of the solar god, which was the
table-land upon the
summit of
Mount Hetep, the mount of peace and plenty, where the followers of Horus as the
spirits of the
just made
perfect gathered together at the table of the Lord for their eternal feast.
When the beatified
spirit
attains the meadow of Aarru and the “table of the sun”, he says, “ I rest at
the table of my father
Osiris”
(Rit., ch. 70). The deceased asks that he may be made strong with the
“thousands of loaves,
beer, beef
and fowl, and the flesh of the oxen and various kinds of birds upon the table
of his father” (ch.
69). Thus, as
the Egyptian Ritual of the Resurrection shows, “the Lord's table” was an
institution in the
Osirian
mysteries which did not wait to be founded at the beginning of the present era.
It has, of course,
been remarked
that the fellowship of Jesus with the twelve in the Gospels is a
table-fellowship, and that
he uses the
image of a supper to symbolize the meeting in his father's kingdom. The gorging
in a
paradise of
plenty described by later legends is indicated in the Pyramid Texts (Pepi I.
432; Merira, 618).
When the
deceased is on his way to the mount of glory, he is borne to a region where he
is filled with
food by being
fed from evening until daybreak, and then he is said to seize upon the god Hu,
the god of
aliment, of
corn, of food - in short, the [Page 382] bread of life in a spiritual sense.
The gorging and
guzzling
which are customary accompaniments of the Christmas festival in the north are a
survival from
the time when
the primitive paradise was portrayed as a place of the grossest plenty. Even
the more
refined
Egyptian gloried in the prospect of the earthly abundance being repeated for
ever in heaven. This
is what he
says on sitting down at the table of the Lord: “I sit down in the midst of all
the great gods of
heaven. The
fields lie before me; the produce is before me; I eat of it. I wax radiant upon
it, I am
saturated
with it to my heart's content”. (Rit., ch. 77.)
The mount or
altar in Hetep which is imaged as a pile of plenty, a table of offerings, a
mountainous heap
of food, is
the prototype of those artificial mountains exhibited, for example, in Naples
at the public
festivals,
from which all kinds of eatables are distributed in the wildest profusion among
the people, whilst
the goddess
Tait, who is the cook of divine dainties in that land of Brobdingnagian
abundance, will
account for
the paradise of cooks and cookery which survives in various versions of Le Pays
de
Cocagne,
where the most delicious food already cooked is spontaneously produced like
fruit upon the
tree of life.
A version of this promised land is current in the Southern States of America,
amongst the
negroes, who
preserve the tradition of a tree of life, on the branches of which hot buck-wheat
cakes hang
over a lake
of molasses that takes the place of the Kamite lake of the waters of life. This
land of the
goddess Tait,
the cook of the cakes and joints of meat already cooked, is the Kamite original
of
Cockaigne,
the land of laziness and luxury, in which the streets were paved with pastry.
The name is
probably
derived from the cookery: coquo, in Latin, to cook; Kuchou, in German, for a
cake; and
cocaigne in
Old French, signifying abundance. The witches' Sabbath, however degraded, was a
mode of
celebrating
this great festival according to the most primitive ideal of a paradise which
overflowed with
food and
drink, and the glory of the sex was celebrated with Titanic women, fierce as
Sekhet, in evoking
and matching
the animal passion of primitive men. Even in the Rig Veda (ch. x. p. 154) it is
said of the
man who wins
this heaven of blessedness, “Non urit ignis membrum virile nec arripit deus
Yama semen
ejus ” (much
womankind shall be his in heaven). The witches' festival was held on the
hill-top or high
place, which
is Mount Hetep in miniature. Each one brought an offering of food and drink to
the feast,
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Ancient
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and Mount
Hetep is an altar, heaped with oblations and offerings for a feast that was to
last for ever. The
food was
brought in raw for this celestial banquet. The speaker says, “I net the ducks
and I eat the
dainties. I
take care to catch the reptiles”. With these we may compare the reptiles in the
witches'
cauldron.
There is also a gruesome witch-like Kamite goddess Tseret, with long, flowing
red hair, who is
armed with
Horus. The divine drink that was brewed in Hetep as beer is imitated by the
witches as a
product of
the magic cauldron, the cauldron of Keridwen in the ancient British mysteries,
which survived
to some
extent in the witches' Sabbath.
The milk of
seven rich-uddered cows was typical of eternal plenty in the green pastures of
this African
paradise; or,
in the later anthropomorphic [Page 383] imagery, seven women, young and
beautiful as
Hathor the
goddess of love and loveliness, of music and dancing and sexual delight, were
the figure of
infinite
felicity in this heaven which Mohammed so successfully adopted for the Turks.
In both phases the
seven were
seen as the seven great stars of Ursa Major that were in attendance on “the
bull of the seven
cows”, or the
spirit of the glorified deceased who had risen to heaven in the image of
Amsu-Horus. The
Hebrew paradise
upon the summit of the mount in the promised land is the same ideal of
primitive
blessedness.
“In this mountain”, says the prophet Isaiah, “shall the Lord of Hosts make unto
the people a
feast of fat
things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow; of wines on
the lees well
refined” (Is.
25, 6). Papias, that ignoramus of a primitive Christian, also recounts how “the
elders who
saw John, the
disciple of the Lord, related that they had heard from him how the Lord used to
teach in
regard to
these times, and say: The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each
having ten thousand
branches, and
in each branch ten thousand twigs and in each true twig ten thousand shoots,
and in each
one of the
shoots ten thousand clusters, and on everyone of the clusters ten thousand
grapes, and every
grape when
pressed will give five and twenty metretes. of wine. And when anyone of the
saints shall lay
hold of a
cluster another shall cry out, ' I am a better cluster; take me: bless the Lord
through me.' In like
manner (the
Lord declared) a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every
ear should
have ten
thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds (quinque bilibres) of
clear, pure, fine
flour; and that
all other fruit-bearing trees, and seeds and grass, would produce in similar
proportions
(secundum
congruentiam iis consequentem). And these things are borne witness to in
writing by Papias,
the hearer of
John, and a companion of Polycarp, in his fourth book, for there were five
books compiled
(syntetagmena)
by him. And he says in addition, ' Now these things are credible to believers'
”. (Irenaeus,
B. 5, ch. 33,
3-4, Ante-Nicene Library.)
The Kamite
paradise was the place of plenty and of strong drink. The Indian's idea of
future felicity, which
consisted in
being eternally intoxicated, is but an extension from this primary basis. The
“cauldron of
regeneration
for spirits” was derived from the brewing-vat. Also it is noticeable that the Egyptian
garden
of Aarru or
Allu, in the Ritual, has the same name as the grape, the vine-branch, and the
wine. Hetep was
the land that
flowed with milk and honey, and the imagery is demonstrably Egyptian. It flowed
with honey
because the
flowers were always in bloom. A curious illustration of this land of honey and
its Egyptian
origin may be
drawn from the Ritual. There is a typical conductor that leads the spirits to
their home in
the Egyptian
fields, called the abait or bird-fly, which in one form is the praying-mantis
and in another the
honey-bee.
This divine guide is called in ancient texts the tiller of the rudder of the
neshemit ship of Osiris
in which the
spirits made their voyage across the waters to the land of honey, guided by the
bee (Rit.,
chs. 76 and
104). The land flowing with milk is indicated by the seven cows of plenty,
whilst the heavenly
Nile would
represent the honey, as it was the water that was likened to honey for
sweetness. Indeed,
there is a
tradition that [Page 384] in the time of Nefer-Ka-Ra the Nile ran with honey or
the taste of it for
eleven days.
(Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. trans. in one volume, p. 30.) The
Egyptian
paradise of
Hetep is mapped out in ten divine domains which correspond to a heaven in ten
divisions.
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Ancient
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These ten
divisions were lost, or superseded, like the ten islands of the lost Atalantis,
when the zodiac of
twelve signs
was finally established. And naturally there would be ten populations lost, as
in the Assyrian
deluge. It
follows that the ten tribes of Israel, who preceded the twelve, were lost at
the same time and in
the same way,
the legend being one as astronomical, wheresoever met with in the märchen.
There is a
tradition
that they will be found again in the Aarru-Hetep or Jerusalem above, the
promised land which
they attained
at last. In the “Aethiopic Conflict of Matthew” it is said that the ten tribes
“feed on honey and
drink of the
dew”. “The water we drink is not from springs, but from the leaves of trees
growing in the
gardens”
(James, Texts and Studies, 70). These were they who passed in death like all
the rest across
the waters
“into a farther country where mankind never dwelt”, because it was in the
spirit-world. (2
Esdras, ch.
xiii. 40-42.)
The 110th
chapter of the Ritual suffices of itself to prove the Kamite origin of the
mount of glory and the
circumpolar
paradise. This is the chapter of coming forth from the nether-world by day, or
with the sun,
and arriving
in the garden of Aarru, on the mount of resurrection in Hetep, and at “the
grand domain,
blest with
the breezes”. This was the heaven lifted up by Shu of old as the summit of
attainment. It is
called “the
beautiful creation which he raiseth up”, the mansion of his stars which had
been again and
again renewed
in the heaven of astronomy. In the eschatology it was the heaven of
reconciliation,
reunion, and
of rest. It had been the heaven of Abydos, of Annu, Thebes, Memphis,
Hermopolis, and
other cities
on earth, and now it was the heaven of eternity, the heaven of spirits
perfected; also the
heaven of
Chaldean, Hebrew, Hindu, Japanese, Greek, and all the others who repeated the
astronomical
imagery and
founded their religious teaching on the wisdom of ancient Egypt. The summit of
Hetep was
the seat of
Hathor, queen of heaven and mother of fair love on earth. She who had drawn the
world in
offering her
full breast as nurse to Horus now offered it upon the mount of glory to the
weary spirits whom
she gathered
in her motherly embrace. She was also represented by those seven cows or meris,
as the
giver of
plenty in the meadows of Aarru, so abundantly that the river called the Milky
Way was as the
overflowing
plenitude from this perpetual source. On a tablet in the Louvre (ch. 14) this
divine mother of
gods and men
is asked for “the white liquor that the glorified ones love”. This is
distinctly called milk upon
a Florentine
tablet (2567), and vases of her milk are mentioned in the inscriptions of
Denderah (Rit., ch.
110, note 9,
Renouf). Hesit the cow is identified with Hathor the divine mother, the fair
nurse, the mistress
of heaven and
sovereign of the gods. She was the cow-mother, and her child was the calf who
became
her bull as
fertilizer. Hence the deceased as Horus in Hetep exclaims, “I am the bull,
raised on high in the
blue, lord of
the bull's field ” (Rit., ch. 110, Renouf), whose cow or nourisher is Hesit.
(Dümichen, [Page
385]
Resultate, 27, 6.) In this way the cow of heaven supplied not only milk for the
infant Horus, but for all
who were
reborn as babes in the new life, and the heaven of plenty and of rest was
tenderly pictured in
the welling
bosom of the motherhood, thus divinized upon the mount. When the departed have
reached
the summit of
life upon the mount of spirits perfected, they emerge in the garden of Hetep or
paradise of
Aarru. Here
they attain the land of promise in the highest sense of spiritual fulfilment.
They eat of the fruit
of the tree
and drink the water of life, or the milk of the old First Great Mother, who
yields it in the form of
Hesit the
cow: the ancient mother of gods and men to whom the Egyptians assigned a
foremost station in
the starry
heavens. Here the beatified spirits who sat upon their thrones of ba-metal,
“raised on high in
the blue”,
among the never-setting stars, extended the hand of welcome to the coming
generations of
human beings.
Three classes of human beings are recognized in the past, present, and future
of
existence:
the Pait are those of the past, the Rekhit are the living, and the Hamemet are
the future
generations.
In one of her inscriptions Queen Hatshepsu appeals to these latter as future
witnesses to
the glory of
her present work. She says, “I make this known to the Hamemet, who will live in
times to
come”.
(Records, vol. xii. pp. 131-136.) The name denotes the unembodied, or, more
literally, the unmummied,
from Ha,
before, and mem or mum, the mummy. These are the future beings to whom the
glorified
spirits extend their welcome in the garden of beginning and rebirth; and it is
in this enclosure or
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Ancient
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paradise that
we shall at last discover the garden on the summit of the mount in the north
that has
become a
traditional cradle and creatory of life itself as the rebirth place of the
glorified. It is said to Ra,
who had
become the highest god, “ Glory to thee upon the mount of glory. Hail to thee
who purifiest and
preparest the
generations yet unborn, and to whom this great quarter of heaven offereth
homage”. (Rit.,
ch. 130.)
This great quarter was the northern summit in the region of the two lakes of Sa
and of
Purification.
The divine re-birthplace of the soul constellated in the meskhen was converted
by the later
races,
Asiatic, European,. American, Polynesian, into the primeval place of human
birth, from whence the
successive
migrations were supposed to have issued forth, because the localities and the
scenery of
earth had
been substituted for those of the divine or mythical world of the Egyptian
eschatology.
The “original
Aryan home”, the Iranian paradise, the Semitic garden of Eden, the Greek
elysian fields are
each derived
from the Egyptian Sekhet-hetep, the fields of peace and plenty, or the Sekhet
Aarru, where
amid the
still waters are portrayed the islands of the blessed, the amaranthine meads
and pastures ever
green. When
Assyriologists speak of Urdu the mountain of the world as the primitive cradle
of the human
race (Trans.
Soc. Bib. Arch., vol. vi. p. 535), they are oblivious of the fact that there
are fifty or a hundred
such cradles
of the race. Hence over eighty different sites have been assigned to the garden
of the
beginning,
called Edin or Eden by the Semites. The Akkadian Urdhu is one with or
corresponds to the
Egyptian
Urtu, a name both for the ascent or mount and the thigh or haunch, as a figure
of the birthplace,
human or divine.
The [Page 386] emigrants from Urdhu, like the Meropes, were the people of the
thigh.
The
Hyperboreans were reputed to dwell above the north wind, as Festus says, “supra
aquilonis flatum”,
which gives
us an astronomical hint. Apparently the bird aquila represents the Egyptian
vulture mut,
which is
described in the Ritual (ch. 149) as being on or above the leg constellation:
“I am the divine
vulture who
is on the uarit”. But whether it does or does not, the Hyperboreans are
localized above Aquila
in the
northern heaven in the celestial pole-land, where dwelt the ancestors of the
Ainu, and the
Hamemet of
the Egyptian theology. Again, the constellation of the thigh, as sign of the
meskhen, womb,
or
birthplace, will show us the origin of the Meropes. The word µ...pe. ; (or
people of the thigh) was a
sacred
expression used by the Greeks to denote mankind. It is said of the Hyperboreans
by Hellanikos
(fragment 96)
that they dwelt beyond the Ripaian mountains, and were the teachers of justice,
and ate
the fruit of
trees. This identifies them with the glorified spirits in the polar paradise by
two unmistakable
determinatives
of locality. One is the tree, or wood, of life, on the fruit of which the gods
and glorified
were fed; the
other is the maat or judgment seat upon the summit of the mount, where sat the
great
judge as
Anup, or Atum, or Osiris, in succession according to the reigning dynasty of
gods, that were
stellar,
lunar, or solar.
Mythical
monsters like the Cyclops have descended from this birthplace of the beginning.
According to
Hesiod, the
Cyclops were Titans, and the Titans are the giants who were properly a group of
seven in
later
tradition. They were the assistants of Hapaestus, the worker in fire, who was
the Greek Vulcan. This
tends to
identify them with the seven Khnemmu, who were the assistants of Ptah, the
metallurgist; the
seven who
were the giants of an earlier time as turners of the sphere in huge and
monstrous form.
Homer calls
Mycenae, the ark-city on the summit, the altar of the Cyclops; and the altar is
a final form of
the mount
which was figured in the constellation “Ara”. In one character the seven powers
that were
grouped in
the Lesser Bear were the giants, and the giants as Cyclops had but one eye
between them.
Naturally
Polaris as the one eye to the seven was said to be the one eye of the seven,
and the giants
were then
said to have been one-eyed. This would account for the Arimaspoi and other
one-eyed people
as dwellers
in the uttermost vertical north. All was golden in the primal paradise, and
according to Hesiod
there was a
“golden race of men”. These were they who came the first. This race was
stellar, like the gold
that made the
circumpolar heaven golden. They were the glorious ones, the never-setting ones,
the born
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Ancient
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immortals in
the everlasting “golden-hued region whose food never fails”, described in the
Vendidad
(Fargard ii.,
line 103).
Now, the
question for those who looked up longingly to this paradise of peace and plenty
as the summit
of attainment
for another life was how to reach that landing-place of souls and haven of
supreme desire.
There was
heaven, but by what means could the height be climbed or the water crossed when
as yet
there were no
boats or bridges built ? Clearly there was nothing for it, from the first, but
to leap or swim
the waters
flowing twixt the mount that was [Page 387] mundane and the mount of glory.
Hence the Great
Mother Apt
and Sut her son were figured as totemic hippopotami, and Sebek as the
crocodile, for the
passage of
the water. This was in a mythical representation of natural phenomena, the same
mode of
progression
being continued in the eschatology. When the deceased is about to cross the
water betwixt
the two
worlds he says, “It is I who traverse the heavens. May I have command of the
water”. (Rit., ch.
62.) But,
previous to being self-invested with the necessary power, he prayed to be
carried across by the
Great Mother,
who was imaged as the pregnant hippopotamus in the constellation of the bear,
or as the
milch-cow in
the meskhen, or the moon. For this reason the Great Bear was also called the
coffin of
Osiris, as
the typical place of rebirth. She is the ark of souls who saved them from the
waters in the cabin
which was
uterine. The mother of life as Apt the water-cow was followed by Hesit the
milch-cow, and in a
later though
very ancient representation it is the domesticated cow that carries the dead
across the
waters to the
summit of the mount. But the earliest carrier of souls across the waters in
death is Apt, the
most ancient
mother of life. In the astronomical phase she is the goddess of the seven stars
in Ursa
Major and mother
of the seven typical eternals who were safe for ever from the deluge in the
never-
setting stars
(Rit., ch. 17). In lands of lower latitude than ours the Great Bear, i.e., the
female
hippopotamus,
set at times beneath the horizon or was hidden behind the mount of earth, to
rise again
as the
bringer-forth of life from the waters, because the reproducer of souls for a
future life. It is as the
bringer of
human souls to their rebirth that she, the hippopotamus, is portrayed as human
in her
abundant
breasts and procreant womb. In that guise she was the womb of life, great with
the souls she
carried
across the waters on their way to the upper paradise, when there was neither
boat nor bridge
extant. This
is generally represented by the mummy being borne upon the back of the cow that
carries it
off full
speed by land or water till the islands of the blessed are in view. In these
scenes the dead are
carried
out-side the cow, whereas with Apt the souls were carried in the uterus or
meskhen. In the
mysteries of
the Ritual (ch.64) when the Osiris (deceased) is crossing the waters that have
burst forth in
a deluge, he
exclaims, “Anup is my bearer”. In this instance the jackal is the carrier, the
psychopompus,
because it
represents the power of the pole as the support of the soul in death. In
consequence of being
raised up by
Anup, the guide of roads (Ap-Uat), deceased also exclaims, “ I hide myself
among you, O ye
stars that
never set”. Which shows that he was raised to the region of the eternals, the
Akhemu-Seku, or
non-setting
stars (ch.44) whose position was fixed for ever as the most ancient lords of
eternity, with
Anup at their
head. When the concept of an atmosphere succeeded the likeness of water, the
birds of air
could be employed
as types. The sun was represented by the golden hawk, the moon by the black and
white ibis;
the stars, that did not set, as beautiful white birds a-floating on the lake in
the paradise of Aarru
on the summit
of the mount. Deceased also exclaims, “ I am the swallow! I am the swallow! ”
as one
particular
form of a bird of passage, on his way to the celestial country (ch. 86). Or he
assumes the
power of the
bennu-bird, or the [Page 388] shen-shen, both of which ascend the air to a
great height in
spiral
whirls. Deceased in this character prays that he may “wheel round in whirls”
and circle heavenward
with the
spiral motion of the bennu, i.e., the typical phoenix (ch. 83). It was in this
guise the soul of Osiris
rose again to
ascend the tree of life or of dawn, hence the soul of the Osiris does the same.
The moon
was imaged
also as the ibis on whose wings the orb made its celestial ascent. The Osiris
pleads that he
may ascend to
heaven in the disc of the moon, or in the power of Taht, the lunar god who
showed the
way by night.
The ibis now bears off the deceased across the water on its wings, and does
battle with
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Ancient
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Sut, the
power of darkness, for a passage.
The natives
of Torres Straits Islands have a tradition that at death the spirits of their
departed wing their
northward way
in the shape of flying-foxes to the polar paradise of all the aboriginal races.
The power of
wings is thus
added to the spirit as the superhuman mode of flight. Swimming and flying are
the two
modes of
locomotion here illustrated, until we come to the tree as means of climbing.
The natural human
way of ascent
is climbing. But by no direct means could the helpless watchers climb the
heavens with
their hands
and feet, and they had no wings of their own. As they were frugivorous, they
could climb the
tree, and the
tree supplied a mental means of ascent for those who climbed the heavens as the
souls of
the departed.
Dawn on the summit was imaged as a great green tree upon the mount. Thus the
ascent
was
represented by both the mountain and the tree. Both were means of the ascent at
the coming forth
by climbing
from the dark land of Amenta. It may be premised that the papyrus-reed which
rose from out
the water was
an earlier type of climbing heavenward than the tree. Child-Horus on his
papyrus was a
figure of
this ascent by means of the plant or stalk. When the Messu came by water it was
by climbing up
the stalk
like little Jack. The pedestal of Horus, made of stone, was based on the
papyrus-plant emerging
from the
water, and when this was buried with the mummy it was a type of the ascent to
heaven. The
ascent
emerging from the deep, as Mount Meru in India, was called “the lotus (=
papyrus) of immensity”,
which also
shows the water-plant to be a co-type with the mount or tree as the figure of
the ascent. The
tree is
portrayed as a means of salvation amid the over-whelming waters which had to be
crossed by the
manes in the
Ritual. The tree, then, like the mount and steps, was a typical means of ascent
to heaven
by which
spirits attained the polar paradise. It was a natural ladder. There is no race
so primitive but has
a tree-type
of the ascent to heaven. With the Mbocobis of Paraguay the souls of the dead
ascend the
llagdigua
tree, which is a connecting link betwixt their earth and heaven (Humboldt). The
same water and
tree occur in
the Rig-Veda (ii. 66 and 183), when Bhuggu, son of Tugra, has to cross the
great waters
and is “cast
headlong into the deep and plunged into inextricable darkness”. He likewise
clings for
support to
the tree “stationed in the midst of the ocean”. The Australian natives make use
of the tree as a
mode of
ascent to heaven for the spirits of the departed. The wizards also profess that
they go up to
consult the
spirits of the dead by ascending a tree. Some of them make a pathway for the
spirits to
ascend and
descend the tree of earth and [Page 389] heaven by cutting out a strip of bark,
taken spirally
from the top
of a large tree down to the ground. (Howitt, On ,some Australian Ceremonies of
Initiation.)
The tree or
pole as means of climbing is variously illustrated. The Yao-Miao people bind
their dead with
withies to a
tree for the soul to make the ascent. At other times the branch of a tree or
bamboo pole is
stuck in the
grave for the soul of deceased to climb by (Colquhoun, A. R., Across Chrysę,
vol. ii. p. 369).
The Guarinis
of Brazil were the worshippers of the god Tamoi who ascended the tree of dawn,
like Tum
his Egyptian
prototype. Up this the spirits were to follow in his wake, and he would welcome
them to
paradise when
they attained the summit of the tree. The Polynesians tell of the tree that
reached up to
the moon.
When the deluge of Raitea occurred and the world of the seven divisions was
submerged the
survivors
were saved by the tree that reached up to the moon or on an island (the mount)
named Toamarama,
the moon-tree
or the tree reaching to the moon (Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol .ii. p.
58). So
that both the
mount and tree are here described together under one name. The Samoans have
various
legends of
the way to heaven. One of these describes it as a mount, the summit of which
reached up to
the skies.
Another tells of the tree that measured sixty miles in height. According to one
account, when
the topmost
branches of the tree were reached the climbers had to wait for a high wind
which swayed
them to and
fro for a while and all of a sudden slung them into paradise. The Samoans also
had a tree
with steps
that formed a sort of ladder up to heaven. Thus the mount, tree, and ladder
were all extant in
one group
amongst the people of the Pacific islands (Turner, Samoa, pp. 199,200). Both
the mount and
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Ancient
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tree were
modes of ascent in thought, and physical means of reaching a little higher
towards heaven in
making
offerings to the powers. In Africa the prayer-tree is a common institution. The
Yao people lay their
offering of
first-fruits at the root of the prayer-tree before they themselves begin to eat
the new crop of
maize or
pumpkins. In another widespread custom the offerings were hung upon the branches
of the
tree. The
Molucca Islanders have the typical tree of ascent to heaven. This tree stood at
the place of
sacrifice
where the offerings were made. Thus with them, as with various other primitive
races, the tree
was the first
natural altar and stairs that figured the way and means of ascent to heaven.
The Kasia of
Bengal hold
the opinion that the stars are souls which once were men who climbed up to
heaven by
means of the
tree, and were left aloft in the branches when the trunk was severed below. In
the Huron
version given
by Brebeuf, the tree of ascent to the upper world has passed into the trunk of
a tree that
enables the
departed to cross the water of death. Here, too, we find the guide of roads for
the spirits as
the dog that
is both the guardian and the guide of souls. In the Choctaw rendering the tree
has become a
log of pine
stripped of its bark - that is, a kind of slippery pole by which men cross or
climb to paradise or
else falloff
into the chasm that awaits the wicked down below.
Then the tree
type passes into the pole and staff. But the most tangible figure for mental
foothold in
climbing
based on natural fact was the mount. I n almost every land there is a mountain
known as the
mount by
which the souls of the dead ascend to the paradise first [Page 390] mapped out
astronomically
at the
celestial pole. This in mythology is the mount of the north, the mount of the
cow, of the haunch, the
navel, the
womb, the leg, the meskhen and other images of the birthplace on earth applied
to the place of
rebirth in
heaven. In Borneo the native guides pointed to the summit of Mount Kina-Balu as
the landing-
place of the
ancestral souls. They showed the meat on which the spirits fed, but did not
dare to pass the
night in this
abode of the re-arisen dead, or rather the local likeness of the celestial
mount. In the Rocky
Mountains,
near Denver, is the “garden of the gods” and the mount of ascent up which the
manes climb
to attain the
summit of life and happiness. So is it in West Java, where the mountain Gunung
Danka is
described as
being the site of paradise, which means, here as elsewhere, that the
paradisaical mountain
was the
earthly local representative of the celestial mount of glory. “The Path of the
Shades”, by Basil
Thomson, in
the New Review, April, 1896, page 417, contains an account of the Fijian sacred
mountain
Nakauvandra,
together with the motive for rearing it. According to local tradition, the
ghosts of the dead
were great
disturbers of the living. They were willing to leave this earth if they could
but make their way to
the sacred
mountain by which the heaven of rest was reached. The tribes then banded
together to make
a road for
the ghosts to travel over on their last journey, so that they might trouble the
living no more. In
the year 1892
a surveyor employed to traverse the boundaries of native lands in Fiji
re-discovered this
most ancient
Via Sacra, or pathway of the shades. He was taken by his guides along the crest
of a high
ridge, the
water-shed between the Rewa river and the eastern coast of the island of
Vitilevu. Cutting
away through
the undergrowth, he found that the path on which he walked was level, and was
seldom
more than two
feet wide; that hill top was joined to hill top by a razor-edged embankment. He
reflected
that nature
never works in straight lines with so soft a material as earth: that natural
banks of earth are
always washed
into deep depressions by the rains until they become mere rounded uneven
slopes. And
when his
guides had cleared away a patch of the undergrowth, he came upon unmistakable
proof that
the
embankment on which he stood was artificial. The little glens had been bridged
with causeways,
thirty or
forty feet in height in the deepest parts, tapering to a feather-edge at the
top, so as to form a
winding path
along the line of the hill tops that extended, so the natives said, clear to
Nakauvandra, the
sacred
mountain, forty miles away. For a people without spades or picks, the piling of
this embankment
must have
been a gigantic task. Every pound of earth must have been carried up
laboriously in little
cocoanut-leaf
baskets, and paid for in daily feasts to the workers. And all to represent the
road to heaven.
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Whatsoever
the means of ascent, the toil of climbing up to heaven was stupendous. The
Mexican Mount
Culhuacan,
for instance, is a Hill Difficulty indeed. The upper part is formed of sand so
fine that it offers
no foothold
for any mortal tread. This is a mode of showing, not merely saying, how hard it
is to climb,
and none but
righteous spirits could attain the paradise upon the summit.
Naturally the
staircase, as the work of human hands, is comparatively late. But it follows,
as the pathway
from the
tomb. At [Page 391] Abydos, the seat of Osiris as god in the highest is at the
head of the
staircase,
when he was the power presiding over the pole of heaven (Rit., chs. 7 and 22).
Thebes was
another city
in which the celestial staircase was imaged. As it is said in the inscription
of Queen
Hatshepsu,
“Thebes is a heaven upon earth. It is the august staircase of the beginning of
time. It is the
Utat of the
universal Lord, his heart's throne, which sustains his glories and holds within
it all who
accompany
him” in the circle of Osiris, who presided at the top of the steps above the
pole of heaven.
(Rit., ch. 7;
Records, vol. xii. page 133) The mound or stairway with the seven steps was
permanently
figured in
the seven-stepped pyramid of Sakkarah as an image of the mount with steps that
showed the
way to heaven
in the astronomical mythology. The ambition of the Babel-builders, described in
the book
of Genesis,
is to erect “a tower whose top may reach to heaven” (Gen. xi. 4). Here the
tower with seven
tiers takes
the place of the mount with seven steps or tree of seven branches, or the
ladder, as a mode of
reaching the
summit of attainment.
The pillar
follows the mount as a co-type of the pole, first as a pillar of wood, then as
a pillar of stone, or
metal, or of
glass. In various legends the celestial pole is imaged as a pillar of glass or
other slippery
substance,
which also indicates the difficulty of getting to heaven. This is the pillar by
which the manes
make their
ascent every Sabbath day from the lower to the upper paradise; and having got a
glimpse of
all the
glory, they slide down again into the subterranean world (Yalkut Kadash, f. 57.
c. 2, Stehelin, vol. ii.
p. 25).
It is related
in a Taoist work that once upon a time a Chinese king endeavoured to climb up
to heaven by
a pillar of
enormous height, but it was so slippery that he always slid back again to the
ground (Chinese
Repository,
vol. vii, page 519). And without doubt this slippery pillar still survives as
the greasy pole of the
British
pastimes, which are not continued for their grossness, but because they once
had a sacred
significance.
In this, the heaven of eternal plenty on the mount is represented by the leg of
mutton at the
top of the
pole.
The slippery
pole or pillar of glass can be paralleled in the Odyssey. “One rock reaches
with sharp peak
up to the
wide heaven, and a dark cloud encompasses it. No mortal man may scale it or set
foot thereon,
for the rock
is sheer and smooth as if it were polished”.
This is not
the mundane mount where mortals find their foothold, but the celestial mount,
which none but
spirits ever
scaled in any form of the mythology. When glass began to be manufactured it
would supply
the material
for a very perfect likeness to the aerial mount of heaven. The tower of glass
would succeed
the tower of
brick and the mound of earth. There is a story told by Nennius in his Historia
Britannium of
“Nimeth the
second who came to Erin”, and who, in sailing the ocean with his thirty vessels
(luni-solar
month), sees
a glass tower in the midst of the waters, with men on it who give no answer
when they are
addressed.
This seems to have been because of its height. So in Taliessin's account of the
glass fort of
Arthur,
“three score hundreds stood upon the wall; it was hard to converse with the
watchmen”. Nimeth
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Ancient
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attacks the
tower, and all his thirty vessels are sunk or wrecked. (Rhys, Hibbert Lectures,
pp. 263-264;
Skene. [Page
392] Book of Taliessin, vol. ii. 155.) Taliessin the Bard professes to have
been in the tower of
glass as well
as in Amenta or Hades. This juxtaposition of the tower with the nether-world
shows that the
dome of glass
was a form of the celestial summit. There is a glass hill in the Norse
folk-tales. The
princess is
only to be won by the youth who can ride up the hill of glass. The ash-Iad, a
male counterpart
of
Cinderella, is the only one who at all succeeds. At the first trial he rides a
third of the way up, and the
king's
daughter rolls a golden apple down to him. On the second day he rides
two-thirds of the way up,
and wins a
second golden apple. On the third day he ascends to the top of the hill, and
takes the third
apple from
the lap of the princess. Of course he wins the daughter of the king and half
the kingdom
besides. In
this version the glass hill is the mount of the pole. The king in these märchen
is Ra in the
Egyptian
mythos. The princess was Hathor, goddess of love. The kingdom in two halves was
the double
earth. Horus
wins the second half, and unites the two into one kingdom by climbing the hill
of glass and
winning the
princess as his wife. The tree on which the golden apples grew is the tree of
dawn, the tree
of Hathor the
princess. The hero, who is the king's son, sometimes lives as a kitchen-Iad
beneath the
stairs; and
in the mythos the staircase is a co-type with the mount or hill of glass. This
shows that the
stairs stand
in the lower world, where the fire of old suns and moons will explain the ashes
in which the
cinder-girl
or ash-Iad proverbially sit in their poor and lowly estate when the moon and
sun are in the
nether earth.
One typical
mode of rising to heaven was by means of a dense column of smoke! This was
acted by
kindling a
fire on the grave of the deceased, so that the spirit might ascend as it were
in a chariot of
cloud.
(Samoa, Turner, pp. 199 and 335.) The Samoans explained that this was done to
save the soul
from sinking
into the pit. The same type was obviously continued in the smoke of incense
rising from the
altar. Other
illustrations might be cited to show that the ladder by which the wizard,
witch, or conjurer
sought to
reach the land of spirits was imaged by means of something drawn out of or in
some way
emitted from
his mouth, a mere thread, a film, a substance like gossamer, which probably
represents the
spirit in a
filamental form, when the soul was identified with the breath or under the same
name as it is in
the Egyptian
word “nef” for breath and spirit. Thus the substance drawn from the mouth of
the wonderworker
represented a
kind of ladder as the visible mode of ascent for the soul exhibited in
primitive
mysteries.
The mystery is still extant and still performed to a gaping crowd in the
English market-place,
when the
conjurer, who is now an acrobat, draws from his mouth a ladder or spiral pole
made of
shavings, or shall
we call it the cone of the pole, which was once a figure of the ascent to
heaven, that
was followed
by the ladder and the steps, the pyramid, the Babel-tower, the minaret and
spire, until its
final form
upon the lowermost line of descent became the pinnacle made in spiral coils of
shavings
proceeding
upward from the conjurer's mouth by dexterous sleight of hand, as the great
mount of god,
the staircase
of Osiris, the figure of the pole at its final vanishing point. Thus the
conjurer's twist of
shavings
drawn from his mouth may illustrate a mode of the mysteries when it [Page 393]
was taught that
the soul of
breath came forth from the mouth as its own ladder or means of ascent to the
upper world.
Another
illustration of the difficulty in climbing up to heaven may be seen in the
ladder formed of knives
which is made
use of by the Taoist jugglers in China. This is constructed of two upright
bamboos, with
knives or
sword-blades set between, edge uppermost, for steps. The ladder was a co-type
with the
mount and
steps of ascent. The Japanese have a mythical mountain called Kurahashi, the
dark ladder.
The speaker,
in a passage quoted by O'Neil, says he climbs this vertical ladder by the aid
of his sister.
“Steep though
Kurahashi be, steep it is not when I climb it with my sister” (The Night of the
Gods, vol. ii.
p. 1015). The
sister is a goddess whom we look upon as lunar. There was also a ladder-mount
near
Ptolemais
which is mentioned by Josephus Jew. War, ii. 70). Certain sacred hills in
England, called the
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
“Step Hills”,
repeat the ladder of ascent to heaven. There is one near Ivinghoe (Bucks) which
is evidently
an artificial
formation. Cader Idris is reputed to have had 365 steps from bottom to summit.
The
Egyptians
solemnized a feast of the dead or festival of the steps, by which they
celebrated the ascent of
the manes
from the valley of Amenta to the summit of the mount.
When bridges
were built, a bridge supplied the typical means of crossing the celestial
waters. The
earliest
figure of a bridge in heaven was probably the rainbow. This was the Norse
bridge made by the
gods that
reached from earth to the height of heaven and down again to the earth, and was
therefore a
visualized
way for the coming and going of souls. In the Prose Edda, Gangler asks, “Which
is the path
leading from
earth to heaven?”. The answer of Har is,“ Hast thou not been told that the gods
made a
bridge from
earth to heaven and called it Bifrost ? But perhaps thou callest it the
rainbow”. (Prose Edda,
13.) The name
of Bifrost denotes the evanescent aerial bridge. The rainbow is certainly a
form of the
celestial
bridge, though possibly the type may not have been Egyptian. It is a pathway
for spirits to the
Brahmanic
Svarga. It is the snake-bridge that crosses the river of the dead to the
dwelling beyond in a
North
American Indian version of the mythos. Also, the souls of Maori chieftains are
supposed to mount
heavenward by
means of the rainbow. The Samoans called the rainbow Laa Maomao, the great step
or
the long step
of the god (Turner, Samoa, p. 35). Wang-liang, or the king's bridge, is a
constellation in the
Chinese
planisphere which is described as the bridge that spans the moat of the ruler's
castle. This is
crossed by
kings and chieftains when they go to pay their homage to the monarch. The moat
was also
crossed by
boat. This moat corresponds to the waterway of the Egyptians, and to the “way
which is
above the
earth”; in short, the galaxy on which the souls of the dead were carried in the
bark of Ra (Rit.,
ch. 4). The
bridge, boat, and water, together with the tree of life, and other symbols of
the garden of
peace,
including the kissing doves, may be seen portrayed upon the ordinary
willow-pattern china plate.
The bridge
survives in some old British ballads as the “Brig 0' Dread”. One of these is
called “a Iyke-wake
dirge”, in
which the journey of the dead is described. In “Lady Culross's Dream” it is “a
narrow bridge of
tree”
suspended over an unfathomable gulf. But, as Scott [Page 394] points out, the
most minute
description
of “the Brig 0' Dread” occurs in the legend of Sir Owain, who, after many
frightful adventures
in St. Patrick's
purgatory = Amenta, arrives at the bridge which, in the legend, is placed
between
purgatory and
paradise.
“Lo ! Sir
Knight, see'st thou this?
This is the
Brigge of paradis.
Here over
thou must go.
Whoso falleth
off the Brigge adown,
For him is no
redemption”.
He falls into
the void of Apap, or the lake of outer darkness. The moral of the dirge is that
whatsoever
good works
have been done on earth will be waiting at the bridge and help the deceased to
cross the
gulf. (Scott,
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.)
The pyramid
is an artificial figure of the mount as means of the ascent to heaven. And now,
if we place
ourselves
with the mummy at the bottom of the Well, we shall see that the tubular shaft
of the great
pyramid at
Gizeh represented the way to heaven as it was imaged to Egyptian thought. The
Pharaoh
resting at
the foot might scan not merely the starry vast, but could fix his gaze in death
upon the heaven
of spirits at
the summit of the mount, the paradise of peace, the enclosure that was finally
configurated in
the circle of
the seven pole-stars that crossed his telescope (the passage pointing
northward) one by one
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
in the
circuit of precession, or the heaven of eternity. The pole-star, a Draconis,
was not the only one that
would come
within range of that great tube. The great pyramid was founded on the Egyptian
astronomy,
but was not
built simply to register the fact that a Draconis was the fixed point and polar
pivot of all the
stellar
motion during some 3,700 years in the vast circuit of precession. The ceilings
of the pyramid
chambers were
sprinkled over with stars to resemble the face of the sky by night.
Astronomical tables
gave the
aspect of the heavens tenat by tenat throughout the year. So that the manes
“had but to lift their
eyes” and see
in what part of the firmament the course lay night after night. Thus, lying in
his
sarcophagus,
the dead man found his future destinies depicted thereon, and learned to
understand the
blessedness
of the gods. (Maspero, Egyptian Archy. Eng. trans., pp. 158-160.) The chief
course was
mapped out
along the river of the Milky Way, as is shown in the Ritual, by the boat of
souls ascending to
the polar
paradise. The deceased, who is about to rise again and set his legs in motion,
prays that he
may “go up to
Sekhet-Aarru, and arrive in Sekhet-hetep”. Lying as the mummy in Amenta, he
says “I
shine above
the leg as I come forth in heaven, but (here, meantime) I lie helpless with a
corpse-like face.
I faint. I
faint before the teeth of those whose mouth raveneth in the nether-world”. (Ch.
74, Renouf.) The
cynosure of
the watcher is a point above the constellation called “the leg” by the Egyptian
astronomers.
This was a
constellation in the northern sky which has been identified by Renouf with the
group of
Cassiopeia,
and which the Egyptians named the meskhen or creatory of the cow. The earliest
figure of
an ark in
heaven, or on the waters of the Nun, was that of Horus on his papyrus-reed, who
issued as the
soul of life
in vegetation from the abyss. As the sacred bark borne heavenward in the
mysteries shows,
this was a
figure of the papyrus [Page 395] flower which had been the cradle of
Child-Horus previous to its
being imaged
in the eschatology or astronomy. When the boat was built the souls of the
deceased were
ferried over
the waters in the mythical bark which was at first stellar, next lunar, and
lastly solar. There is
a bark that
voyaged round the pole as Ursa Minor, with seven souls or glorious ones on
board, seen in
the seven
stars that never set, a primary type of the eternals. In another text we find a
prayer for the
deceased,
“that he may reach the horizon with his father the sun, in the solar bark; that
his soul may rise
to heaven in
the disc of the moon; that his Sahu (or celestial body) may shine in the stars
of Orion, on the
bosom of
heaven” (Book of Sen-Sen Records, vol. iv. p. 12 I ). Here are three forms of
the boat of souls,
one in the
stellar, one in the lunar, and one in the solar representation, at three
different stages of the
mythos.
Modern astronomy speaks of the starry vast as a revolving sphere, where the
ancient wisdom
called it the
ship of heaven or the bark of eternity. At first the superhuman force that
hauled the system
round was
thought of as a mighty monster swimming the celestial lake - a hippopotamus or
a crocodile,
or a compound
of both. This was the Great Mother of the revolutions, who was constellated as
the
primum
mobile, the goddess Apt depicted in the Great Bear as the procreant womb of
life, the mother
and nurse of
universal life. Seven powers were born of her, and represented under different
types as
hippopotami,
crocodiles, jackals, apes or uas-eared animals. Seven such were figured as the
pullers
round the
pivot of the pole. When the boat was launched the seven were grouped as seven
kabbirs or
sailors in
the Lesser Bear that made the voyage nightly, annually, and for ever round the
mount. They
were likewise
portrayed as seven tow-men of the starry vast, and haulers of the solar boat,
the bark of
millions of
years, the vessel that was rowed by the twelve kings or twelve great gods
around the final
zodiac. We
learn from the solar mythos that the rope of the towers was made fast to the
star Ak, which is
to be
identified with the pole. The tow men say, “The rope is with Ak”. “ Ra calls
it, and the rope puts itself
in its
place”. Ra is then in Amenta, and the rope of the towers is fastened at the
upper end to the pole. Ra
says, “Power
to you, towers. Tow me to the dwelling of stable things. Free yourselves on
this mysterious
mountain of
the horizon”. This towing upward of the solar bark is one of the great
mysteries of Amenta.
(Book of
Hades, vi. pp. 8-32.) The “navigators for this great god” who tow the boat are
also said to take
their oars
and row for Ra. Ra says to them, “Take your oars, unite yourselves to your
stars”. “O my pilots,
you shall not
perish, gods of the never-setting stars” (Akhemu-Seku). Thus the solar boat or
ship of
heaven was
navigated by the gods of the non-setting stars who voyaged round about the
pole; who did
not sink
below the horizon, but became the lords of eternity.
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A Chinese
constellation in the Milky Way is called “the ship of heaven”, and the “ship of
Nu” as Egyptian
IS the ship
of heaven by name. It is sailed over the void of the Apap-reptile or dragon of
darkness, also
called the
lake of Putrata, into which the souls fall headlong who do not secure salvation
on board the
bark, and
have no other means of attaining the “tip of heaven” in the Aarru-paradise
[Page 396](Rit., ch.
99). The ship
Argo Navis, as a constellation, is a reduced form of “the ark of heaven” which
is described
in the Ritual
( ch.99). Four parts of the ship of Nu remain in the Arabic figure of Argo
Navis, viz., the
“poop”, the
“keel”, the “mast”, and the “sail”. In the Ritual the “ship of Nu” is described
in all its parts.
“Backbone of
Apuat” is the name of the keel. Akar (in Amenta) is the name of the hold. “Leg
of Hathor” is
the name of
the hull. The “two columns of the nether-world” is the name of the stem and
stem posts, or
masts.
“Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf” are the names of the ribs; “Nut” is the
name of the sail.
“Bearer of
the great one whilst she passeth” is the name of the mast. “Lord of the double
earth in the
shrine” is
the name of the mooring-post. The foundation was laid on, or in, the backbone
of Anup, which
was once the
type of stability as a figure of the pole, the earliest fixed foundation laid
in the building of the
heavens. Akar
is another name for Amenta, the hollow nether-world of three, this ship being a
three-
decker.
Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf are the supports of the sky at the four
comers or sides of
the vessel.
They are also the four oars of the vessel. The mooring-post was an image of the
pole, to
which the
stellar ark or solar bark was fastened by the cable, as it made the voyage
round the starry
mount. The
ship of heaven, then, is a figure of the nether-world in its hold and of the
four quarters in its
ribs, which
are also represented as the four paddles, one at each of the cardinal points.
This was
constellated
in the heavens as an ark that made the voyage up the Milky Way to the tip of
heaven and
the place of
coming forth upon the mount of glory. The ship of heaven was an ark of
salvation for souls.
Those who did
not find safety on board are described as falling headlong into the gulf of
Putrata where
the dragon
Apap lurked to devour them. Now, in the planisphere the constellation Hydra is
next to the
ship Argo,
and Hydra the water-snake is identical in character and position with the
Apap-reptile who
devoured
those that fell into the void, otherwise the bottomless pit of the abyss. A
knowledge of this ship
and its
constituent parts, together with the course of its journey through the heavens,
was necessary to
the initiate
in making his passage to the paradise of the pole. The Osiris was not allowed
to pass on
board unless
he could answer every question put and tell the name of every part of the
vessel. The
names given
show that the different parts of the vessel were configurated in the stars
according to the
mythical
types, and that the mystery was astronomical. Finally, the great bark of
salvation was solar, with
Horus at the
out-look. The deceased prays to the god who is on board, “O Ra, in that thy
name of Ra,
since thou
passest through those who perish headlong: do thou keep me standing on my
feet”. “Are you
coming into
the bark?” says the great god Atum-Ra, with a naďve familiar invitation that
reminds us
somewhat of
the invitation “come with us” of more recent salvationists. “The bark
advanceth. Acclamation
cometh from
the mount of glory and greeting from the lines of measurement”. These are the
cheers with
which the
boat is hailed and welcomed by the inhabitants of the upper paradise. “Lo, the
lamp is lifted up
in Annu” as a
light by night to lead them on the way when they come to the heaven of the
stars that set,
and [Page
397] they have to steer by the pole-star as their guide of ways. While the
Osiris passes over the
waters to the
west the Khabsu gods get ready for lighting up the heavens with their starry
lamps, to greet
the
passengers approaching in the bark with acclamations of great joy. “All right
is the Osiris; his future is
in Annu”, the
eternal city at the pole. The glorified deceased sails in the great bark on the
stream of the
god Hetep,
the White Way, until he comes to the ten divisions of the circumpolar paradise.
These he
enters to
take possession of them one by one. As an astronomical foundation, the upper
paradise of all
mythology
upon the mount of glory was dependent on establishing the celestial pole for a
fixture in the
waters of
surrounding space, or, as' the Ritual phrases it, “a mooring-post” for the ship
of souls. Here was
the rock of
safety and the tree to which the sinking spirits clung for their salvation.
Here the mariner says,
“I make
myself fast to the block of moorage on the heavenly stream”. That is, to the
pole which was
figured as
the final mooring-post upon the landing-stage of an eternal shore.
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The Kamite
paradise, as an enclosure of the water and the tree of life upon the summit of
the mount, is
traceable in
four different forms. At first it was the primitive paradise of the Oasis in
the south. Next it is
the
circumpolar paradise of Am-Khemen, upraised by Anhur in the north. The third
one is the paradise of
Atum in the
garden of Amenta. The final paradise was founded on the mount of glory for the
spirits of the
just made
perfect in the heaven of eternity. Thus there are four types of paradise. And
these apparently
are
enumerated and described in Irish legendary lore when Cesair, “ the first woman
who landed in
Ireland
before the Flood”, says of her great knowledge, “Truly I am well versed in the
world's history, for
Inis Patmos
is precisely the earth's fourth paradise, the others being
( I) Inis
Daleb in the world's southern,
(2) Inis
Escandra in its boreal part, and
(3) Adam's
paradise”.
The fourth
paradise is that in which the righteous dwell who have attained to everlasting
life (Adventures
of Teigue,
Son of Cian, Nutt, The Happy Other world, page 203). In such ways relics of the
astronomical
mythology
remain unrecognized in many scattered fragments of the ancient wisdom.
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BOOK 7 of 12
EGYPTIAN
WISDOM AND THE HEBREW GENESIS
[Page 398]
The Egyptian system of uranographic representation has been outlined and many
of its details
have been
identified in the chapters on the astronomical mythology. It has now to be
shown that the so-
called
"legends of creation" chiefly known as Semitic are the detritus of
the Egyptian wisdom. These
legends did
not wait for their beginning until the Mosaic Pentateuch had been carried round
the wide
circumference
of the world either by the scattered Jewish people or the Christian
missionaries. As we
have seen, the
Semitic theologians did not know enough of the ancient sign-language to
distinguish the
evil serpent
from the good, the great Earth-mother from the chimerical dragon of the deep,
or the
beneficent
spirits of elemental nature from the Sebau, the Sami or fiendish forces of
external
phenomena.
The Semitic versions of the legends, Babylonian, Assyrian, or Hebrew, mainly
reproduce the
débris of the
astronomical mythology, which has so often been reduced to the status of the
nursery-tale.
It is their
fatal defect that they are not the original documents, and have no first-hand
authority. In these
the primitive
wisdom of old Egypt has been perverted, and the mythical beginnings, which had
their own
meaning, have
been transmogrified into what is herein termed a cosmogonical creation. For
example, the
mythical
abyss or deep was not the mother of all things. That was the Mother-earth in
the abyss, the nun,
or
firmamental water. As the Mother-earth she brought forth her elemental progeny
in and from the
abyss. Hence
she was the wateress, or wet-nurse who suckled her young within the earth, as
it is said of
the monster
Tiamat, because, as primordial bringer-forth, she was the Mother-earth. In the
Babylonian
legends of
creation the seven associate-gods, who are the creators in the Egyptian mythos,
have been
converted
into the seven evil spirits of a later theology. And on one of the tablets
(W.A.I.4.I.I.36, 37) it is
said of these
seven evil spirits, "The woman from the loins of the man they bring
forth". Thus the creation
of woman is
made to be the work of seven evil spirits, who, as the Kamite wisdom witnesses,
did not
originate as
wicked spirits or as powers of evil. (Sayce, H. L., p. 395.) The legends of
creation are known,
more or less,
as Hebrew, Phoenician, Babylonian, and Assyrian, but as Kamite they have not
been
known. And
when the mythical representations of natural phenomena first [Page 399]
portrayed by the
Egyptians
were turned into cosmo graphical creations by the Semites, they had no
verifiable meaning
either as
history or mythology. Even Lenormant held that the Chaldaic and Hebrew versions
had one
common origin
and we not derived from each other, but he made no attempt to trace the origin
to the
Egyptian
astronomical mythology, which was to him a sealed and secret book. Egypt's
knowledge of
beginnings
was laboriously derived by the long, unceasing verification of scientific
naturalists. Their
ancient
wisdom did not fall from heaven ready-made, nor had it any claims to a
miraculous birth. It was
dug for and
quarried out from the rock of reality.It was smelted, shaped, stamped, and
warranted for
current coin
as perpetual symbol of the truth, however primitive. It was and is, to-day and
for ever, a
coinage genuinely
golden, though the figures on it may be sometimes difficult to decipher. The
ancient
wisdom in the
Hebrew books has been converted into a spurious specie, and passed off on the
ignorant
and
unsuspecting as a brand-new issue from the mint of God. According to Egyptian
thought, "creation"
was mainly
limited to the bringing forth of life - the life of water, fish and fowl,
animal, reptile, and other
forms from
the meskhen or creatory of earth, when this was represented by the womb of Apt
the
pregnant
water-cow. This idea of birth from the womb is portrayed in Apt the first Great
Mother (fig.,
P.124). Next
the idea of birth from the womb is repeated in the making of Amenta with the
Tuat as the
creatory or
the place of rebirth for the manes. And thirdly, in the astronomical mythology
the meskhen,
womb or place
of birth, was constellated in the "thigh" of the cow as the sign of
rebirth in the celestial
rebirth
place. We have now to formulate the Egyptian origins of the creation legends
that have come to
us in a
Semitic guise or disguise.
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Ancient
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In their
account of "the beginnings" the Egyptians make no pretence of knowing
anything about a
cosmical
creation. Theirs is the natural genesis. A common Egyptian phrase for creation
was "of the first
time",
and the expression is well represented in the opening words of the Hebrew book
of Genesis, which
are rendered
"in the beginning" (Stele of the Sphinx, "Of the first
time"). This beginning was "in the
domain of
Sut", "that sacred place of the first time". This first time,
says the inscription, goes back to the
domain of Sut
and to the days of the masters of Khar, the later Akar and,Neter-kar of the
under-world.
Darkness was
the domain of Sut, as a condition of commencement, and the birthplace was where
light
broke forth
from out the darkness. It was the African birthplace of the black and white
twins of night and
day.
Otherwise the beginning in "the first time" described by the Ritual
was with birth from the abyss,
which was the
birthplace of water within the earth. It is portrayed as "the Tuat which
nobody can fathom",
the place
that "sent out light in the dark night", which was the birthplace of
water and of eatable plants
(Rit., ch.
172) Thus we have the Deep, the darkness on the face of the deep, the light
breaking out of the
darkness; the
waters and the life springing forth from the waters in eatable plants, grouped
together in
Amenta the
earth of eternity. Water had revealed the secret of creation in the life which
came as food by
water from
the Mother-earth in the unfathomable deep. The [Page 400] secret of water as
the source of life
was the
primal mystery to the Egyptians, as is shown by Kep (or Apt), the ancient
mother of mystery,
when the
mystery was that of fertilization by means of water, as in the inundation of
Egypt by the river
Nile.
That secret
of the precious water-source, the divulgence of which was the cause of the
deluge at Lake
Tanganyika,
the secret that is so persistently preserved as a matter of life or death by
the Bushmen
amongst other
African races, had been entrusted with occult significance to the keeping of
the Sphinx.
The Sphinx
was a figure of the primitive abyss called Akar, the unfathomable deep of earth
or womb of
life, and it
is a monument that marked the sacred place of creation or "the first
time". As the inscription
says,
"The Sphinx reposes in this very place" - the place, that is, where
life came into the world by water
with food
from the unfathomable abyss and light from the primeval darkness. This was also
the sacred
way by which
the elemental powers or gods came into being, who originated as the masters of
the nether
earth. The
number is not given, but these are known under several types and names as the
primordial
seven powers,
the seven spirits of earth, or seven Uraeus divinities, who were born in the
lower earth
before this
had been hollowed out by Ptah in the making of Amenta.
In the
several Semitic accounts of the first time, or in the beginning more especially
that of the Hebrew
Genesis, the
astro-mythological representation has been merged in a material creation, as
the result of a
later and
more literal rendering of the subject matter; the later the version, the more
exoteric the
rendering. In
the Assyrian epic the upper and lower firmaments called "Ansar and
Kisar" are described as
a
cosmogonical creation. "Ansar and Kisar were created". This is
identical with the creation of the upper
and lower
firmament in the Hebrew Genesis. But in the Egyptian wisdom only can we make
out what
"creation"
means as a mode of representation in the ancient sign-language. There are some
remains,
however, of
the astronomical mythology in the Babylonian and Assyrian legends. One of these
is the
beginning
with a world all water as an image of the firmament, or when otherwise
expressed, with the
lands that
were wholly sea. This is followed by the stream that divided the celestial
Okeanos and the
consequent
formation of a firmamental abyss, where the lower waters were gathered together
into one
place. In the
Babylonian account of creation there was a time when the upper region was not
yet called
heaven; the
lower region was not yet called earth and the abyss was not yet formed. So, in
the "non-
Semitic”
version the abyss had not been fashioned, the waters had not been gathered into
one place; the
whole of the
lands were sea, and there was no stream yet configurated in the celestial ocean
(Talbot,
Records of
the Past. . vol. ix.; Pinches, Records of the Past, 2nd series, vol. vi.).
Beginning in the
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Ancient
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heavens was
with the uncreated Nun. When this was divided into an upper and lower firmament
so-
called
"creation"' had commenced. When the waters were gathered into one
place the firmamental abyss
had been
opened, and a basis laid for the astronomical mythology or uranographic
representation. The
same
beginning with the uncreated undivided Nun as in the Egyptian myth and
Babylonian legend, is
apparent in
the book of Genesis. The Nun, or Nnu. was the firmamental [Page 401] water.
This is "the
water "
of the Hebrew "version"; the water on which darkness brooded and from
which the spirit of the
Elohim
emerged; the water that was divided into the upper and lower firmaments, as an
act of so-called
"creation".
The Nun was likewise the celestial water of the Akkadians and Babylonians, as
well as the
Egyptians.
When Nuna or Anuna signifies the sky that is as the primordial water, the same
as in the
Kamite Nnu or
Nun. The Irish firmament or celestial water is also called the Nion, an
equivalent for the
Kamite Nun.
The first
three of the seven powers born of the Kamite mother of the elements were
represented by Sut
the power of
darkness, Horus the power of light, and Shu the power of the air or breathing
force. These
three Ali or
Elohim appear in the opening statement of Genesis. Though unpersonified, they
are present
as the
primary elemental powers. In the Hebrew beginning, darkness brooded on the face
of the deep,
and the
spirit of the Elohim moved upon the waters. The beginning, therefore, is with
night or darkness.
The spirit of
Elohim was the breathing force of Shu or the breeze of dawn. The name of
Tefnut, who was
born twin
with him, denotes the dews of dawn. Thus the powers or elements of dawn emerged
from out
the darkness
of the firmamental deep with Shu and Tefnut as the elemental powers of breath
and liquid
life. The
next two offspring of Neb-er-ter, the AIl-one in the Egyptian account of
creation, are Seb and
Nut, or earth
and heaven. These were unformulated by night, but the two were separated by Shu
at dawn
when Nut was
lifted up from Seb, and heaven and earth were thus created or distinguished in
the only
possible way.
It is this "beginning" that was followed in the book of Genesis and
in what has been made
to look like
a cosmical creation of the physical universe.
This creation
is a representation of natural phenomena which might have been seen any day and
night.
But the gods
of Egypt have been defeatured and dislimned and resolved into their elements of
darkness
and the
firmamental deep, the breeze of Shu, the moisture of Tefnut; and the earth of
Seb distinguished
from the
heaven of Nut. The action of the spirit moving on the waters had been perfectly
expressed in the
Egyptian
version, when Neb-er-ter says that he created by means of divine soul, and that
in founding a
place where
he could obtain foothold, he "worked with the spirit which was in his
breast". This, according
to Egyptian
thought, was the breathing spirit first divinized in Shu as the power of the
air or animistic soul
of life. In
the Hebrew version the elements of earth, heaven, darkness, light, water,
spirit (or breathing
force) are
directly called into being, whereas in the Egyptian, four of these come into
existence or are
made apparent
by means of divine types. Shu was the figure of breathing force with which the
darkness
was dispersed
at dawn. This likewise was the breathing spirit with which Neb-er-ter created.
In a vignette
copied by
Maspero ( Dawn of Civilization, p. 169) Shu is accompanied by a group of gods
in lifting up the
firmament.
There are seven altogether, chief of whom is Shu himself standing underneath
the upraised
heaven. These
seven as the Ali who are co-workers with Shu are equivalent to the Elohim in
the Hebrew
book. Shu is
called the separator of heaven from the [Page 402] earth, the elevator of
heaven for millions
of years
above the earth. He is the conqueror of chaos and the progeny of darkness.
Instead of the
Elohim
saying, "Let there be light" with this uplifting of the firmament, the
Egyptian version represents
Shu first as
raising the firmament and next as bringing Ra his eyes to see with after the
nocturnal heaven
had been
raised. In a Japanese account of creation the starting-point is also with the
uplifting of the
heaven from
the earth. In the preface to the Japanese Kojiki this beginning with the
separation of heaven
and earth is
described by Yasumaro, the editor: "Heaven and earth first parted, and the
three Kami
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Ancient
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performed the
commencement of creation. The passive and active essences then developed, and
the
two spirits
became the ancestors of all things". These two are identified with Izanagi
and Izanami in the
Japanese
system, and with the Yin and Yang in the Chinese. The three Kami called the
"alone born
Kami, who hid
their beings", are one with Sut, Horus, and Shu, whilst the twin brother
and sister are
identical
with Shu and Tefnut, who represented breathing power, or air, and moisture, as
the two halves
of a soul of
life - Shu of breathing, Tefnut of liquid life, the active and passive essences
which blended
and became
the creative spirit moving on the face of the firmament. In Genesis the powers
of darkness
and light are
present when the drama opens, not as powers personified, but as elements.
"Darkness was
upon the face
of the deep", and the Elohim said, "Let there be light". These,
as Sut and Horus, were the
first of the
primordial powers in an elemental phase, the black Neh being the bird of night
or Sut, and the
solar hawk of
Horus the bird of day. There was Sut the power of darkness on the one hand, and
on the
other Horus
the hawk of light; these are equivalent to "there was evening and there
was morning one
is
alsothenamefor theraven,the ...day".Itis
noticeable,too,thattheHebrewwordfor evening,<>
black bird of
Sut. It is said in later texts that these nature-powers were derived from the
primeval stuff or
matter of the
Nun, which means that they originated in and were embodied from the physical
elements,
such as Sut
from darkness, Horus from light, Shu from air, Hapi from water, Kabhsenuf from
the solar
fire,
Tuamutef from earth, Amsta from the mother-blood.
Certain
matters of mythology were differently manipulated in various versions of the
mythos. The process
had already
begun in Egypt. In the creation performed by Kheper-Neb-er-ter the first two
powers
produced as
breathing force and moisture, or wind and water ,are divinized in Shu and Tefnut.
The next
two are Seb
the god of earth and Nut the goddess of heaven. These are now portrayed in the
afterthought
as having
been emaned or emitted from the body of the one Supreme Being who had now
become the
Lord over all, whereas in an earlier myth the earth and heaven came into
existence or were
discreted
when Shu upraised the heaven, or Nut, and separated her from Seb the god of
earth. The
coming into
being of these four, Shu and Tefnut, Seb and Nut, is traceable in the Hebrew
Genesis, but in
a different
mode and order of setting forth. "In the beginning Elohim created the
heaven and the earth".
These in the
original are Nut and Seb, who were divided from each other (not created) and
permanently
propped apart
by Shu and the supporting [Page 403] powers or Elohim. But, instead of a
cosmogonical
creation, the
Egyptian wisdom shows that the making of heaven and earth was a mode of
representation
in the
astronomical mythology. Some hints of this natural origin may be gathered from
the Babylonian
fragments of
legendary lore. In the first tablet of the Chaldean account of creation,
rendered by Talbot,
the process
is partially described (Records of the Past, vol. ix. I 17). It is said of the
Creator, "He fixed up
constellations,
whose figures were like animals". It is also said on the seventh tablet,
"At that time the
gods in their
assembly created (the beasts). They made perfect the mighty (monsters)".
These, as is
shown by the
context, were figures of the constellations. But in the Hebrew rendering the
living creatures
of the water,
air, earth, or other element have been literalized, whereas they were as much
figures in the
astronomical
mythology as were the two firmaments, the abyss, or the constellated lights of
heaven. The
Chaldean
account of creation also describes the construction of "dwellings for the
great gods”. These
were
celestial habitations, as we say "houses" of the sun and moon. In the
Kamite creation by Ptah they
are called
the shrines of the gods. "He formed the gods, he made the towns, he
designed the nomes, he
placed the
gods in their shrines which he had prepared for them" ( Inscription of
Shabaka, lines 6, 7).
Thus
"creation" in this phase was a mode of representation in the heavens.
It began with the abyss and
the water,
the creatures of the abyss, such as the southern fish and ketos, the
water-serpent, and other
"constellations
whose figures were in the likeness of animals": and the habitations of the
gods that were
built upon
"a glorious foundation". When the abyss had not been made, and Eridu
had not yet been
constructed,
it is said that the whole of the lands were water. But when a stream was
figured within the
firmamental
sea, "in that day Eridu was made; E-Sagila was constructed which the god
Lugal-Du-Azaga
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had founded
within the abyss". Two earthly cities were built upon a heavenly model,
and the earthly Eridu
corresponded
to a celestial or divine original. Thus the earliest seats of civilization
founded in Babylonia
were modelled
on cities that were already celestial and therefore considered to be of divine
origin; the
seats in
heaven that were founded first in the astronomical mythology, as we hold, of
Egypt.
But it was
not the genesis of the universe that is imaged in astronomical mythology. The
firmament was
there;
already waiting to be distinguished as upper and lower, and divided into the
domains of night and
day, or Sut
and Horus, or Ansar and Kisar. The constellations were not created from nothing
when they
were figured
out of stars. The firmamental water was not created by being divided into upper
and lower.
The earth was
not created because distinguished from water as ground to go upon. Darkness was
not
created when
it was portrayed as a devouring dragon. The pole of heaven was not created in
being
represented
by a tree or mount or altar-mound. Heaven and earth existed when these were
nameless,
and did not
come into existence on account of being named. Things were not created when
images were
assigned to
them, nor because names were conferred upon them. The confusion of names and
things is
modern, not
ancient; Aryan, not African. [Page 404]
The
starting-point of a beginning was from the Nun, the firmamental water, which
encircled all the world
with the
aerial ocean of surrounding space. This was the world all water. The earth was
imaged mentally,
thence
figured mythically, as a fixed and solid substance in the waters of the Nun.
These have been
mixed up
together by recent writers in a watery mass or mush of primordial matter, from
which the
cosmos is
assumed to have been solidified or created out of chaos. But that is an
exoteric
misinterpretation
of the ancient wisdom. There was no such creation. The earth stood on its own
foundation in
the lower Nun. The name of earth or land in Egyptian is Ta. Hence, land or
earth in the Nun
is
"Ta-nen", which is the name of the earth in the waters of the Nun,
the lower earth of the Egyptian
Tanen. Tanen
as a locality was earlier than Amenta, and the name was continued in the title
of Ptah-
Tanen, the
opener of the earth, which had been founded in the Nun by the order of gods or
powers called
the
"Nunu", as fellow-males, and a form of the first company, who were
seven in number. In the Hebrew
account of
creation, the earth and firmament were already extant, but "the earth was
waste and void; and
darkness was
on the face of the deep". Therefore the beginning is with the formlessness
of the
unfeatured
Nun. Darkness existed. Light came forth. The light was then divided from the
darkness as a
mode of
differentiating and describing day and night. Next, the upper firmament was
separated from the
lower, or, as
it is otherwise stated, the waters above were divided from the waters below;
whereas in the
genuine
mythos the upper and lower waters were the upper and lower firmament because
the water was
a figure of
the firmament. Then follows the formation of the abyss, the waters "under
heaven" being
gathered
together unto one "place" - the same as in the Chaldean account of
creation (first tablet, line 5).
The dry land
is made to appear. "And the Elohim called the dry land, earth, and the
gathering together of
the waters
they called seas".
In the
beginning, then, was the unformed firmament or uncreated Nun. This was the
universal, undivided
water of the
mythos and the legends. Creation, as uranographic formation, followed in the
astronomical
sign-Ianguage.
A stream was seen and figured in the atmospheric ocean as a dividing line. The
firmament was
discreted into upper and lower. In the lower the celestial abyss was formed.
This was
figured, as
the Chaldean and Semitic legends tell us, when the waters were gathered into
one place and
were given
the constellation of The Water as their uranographic sign in astronomical
mythology.
According to
Esdras (2 Es. vi. 41-2), the waters were "gathered in the seventh part of
the earth". In this
seventh part,
"where the waters were gathered together", the two monsters of the
deep were figured,
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which are
here called "Enoch and Leviathan", who represent the water and dry
land, as do Leviathan and
Behemoth in
the book of Enoch, and whose images, as we have suggested, still survive in
"the southern
fish"
and the monster "Ketos". Taking the foothold of earth as a basis of
beginning, there was nought
around it but
the firmamental water of space. This was without form or void throughout
pre-constellational
time. In an
Aztec version of the beginning earth is separated from the waters in the form
or under the
type of
shell-fish emerging from the deep. [Page 405] In other legends, one of which is
Japanese, this
shell-fish
was the earth-tortoise amidst the waters. The earth emerging from the waters
under the fish-
type is
constellated, as we show, in the gasping "Ketos", or it was
represented by the hippopotamus
which came up
from the water to bring forth its young upon dry ground.
The firmament
at first was thought of as water raised on high. In the Hebrew Genesis the
water is one
with the
firmament. This celestial water was figured by the Egyptians as a lake, the
largest water known
to Inner
Africa. In Greece the firmamental water became the Okeanos of Homer, flowing
round the earth.
It is the
water that was first divided in twain. If we call the one water a lake, we find
the one was divided
into two
lakes, one to the south and one to the north of the circumpolar enclosure. The
Okeanos was
divided by a
river that encircled all the earth. This is visible in the river of the Milky
Way. In the Ritual it is
called
"the stream which has no end". It is also described as "the
stream of the lake in Sekhet-Hetep" or
paradise (ch.
149). Further, the two lakes are portrayed as "the lake of Sa and the lake
of the northern
sky (Rit. ch.
153, A). It was observed that a stream came forth from the great lake in a
white river that
divided the
one water into two great lakes. In this we see "the stream of the lake in
the Sekhet-Hetep",
just as
"the river went out of Eden to water the garden".
As previously
said, the Babylonian accounts of the so-called creation did not begin as
cosmogonical.
They are
legends of the first time, when as yet the heavens were not mapped out to
illustrate the
mythology.
There were no types yet constellated in the firmament. The glorious dwelling of
the gods was
not yet
built. The abyss was not yet formed; the waters were not yet gathered into one
place. They were
universal.
The whole of the lands were sea, or the celestial water of the Nun. There was
no stream or Via
Lactea limned
in the aerial vast. The upper region was not yet called heaven; the lower
region was not
yet called
earth. Then the dwellings were constructed (in heaven) for the great gods.
Constellations were
fixed up
whose figures were like animals. One of the figures constellated is that of the
Great Mother,
Tiamat. As it
is said in the Assyrian story, "Then the Lord measured the offspring of
the deep (Tiamat); the
chief prophet
made of her image the house of the firmament ". So in the Egyptian mythos
the house of
the firmament
had been made in the image of Nut, the cow of heaven, or previously of Apt, the
water-
cow. In the
Egyptian documents creation generally is attributed to Ptah, the first form of
the god who was
lord of all;
one of whose zootypes was the beetle, as a figure of the former or the moulder
of matter,
which
preceded the anthropomorphic image of the potter. Kheper was a title of Ptah as
the former. The
Egyptian word
Kheper signifies formation, causing to assume a shape, as when the potter
moulds his
clay or the
beetle rolls its eggs up in a ball of earth. Ptah is portrayed as a beetle in
the matrix of matter
shaping the
product. At this stage the seven elemental forces enter his service as the
moulders who are
called his
seven assistants or associate-gods, the Ali = Elohim. In one of the hymns it is
said to Ptah, as
Tanen,
"There was given to thee a power over the things of earth that were in a
state of inertness, and
thou didst
gather them together after thou didst exist in thy form of [Page 406] Ta-tanen,
in becoming the
uniter of the
double earth, which thy word of mouth begot and which thy hands have
fashioned". This was
in making the
lower earth of the Nun as the ground floor of Amenta, when the command to
"let the earth
come into
being" was uttered by the God. It is also said, "When the heaven and
earth were not as yet
created, and
when the waters had not yet come forth, thou didst knit together the earth;
thou didst find
thyself in
the condition of the one who made his seat and who fashioned, or moulded, the
two earths"
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Ancient
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(Budge, Gods
of the Egyptians, vol. i., pages 509to 510) or who duplicated the earth.
In the
Egyptian mythos Ptah was the great architect of the universe. But not the
universe as a
cosmological
creation. The building, so to call it, was begun when the two pillars of the
south and north
were raised
up by Sut and Horus, in that creation '"of the first time" which is
ascribed to Sut on the stele
of the
Sphinx, and in the creations that were indicated by the "upliftings of
Shu" or the uniting of the
double
horizon by Har-Makhu. Various structures and structural alterations preceded
the work of Ptah,
the architect
of the double earth and finisher of the building on a new foundation perfected
for all eternity.
Creation in
the book of Genesis is described as an event, or a series of events, occurring
once upon a
time and once
for all, whereas the genuine mythos represents the natural phenomena as
constantly
recurring. The
earth was seen emerging every morning from the firmamental water, but not once
for all.
Darkness was
seen rising up and coiling like some black reptile round about the earth at
night, but not
once for all.
When Shu divided heaven and earth, or Nut from Seb at morning, this went on for
ever : Nut
descended on
a visit to her lover every night. There was a first time to the uranographic
representation of
the myth as
Egyptian, but not to the phenomena in external nature. In a sense there was no
Horus or
Orion in the
heavens either figured or named until the type was constellated by the
mystery-teachers, but
the group of
stars was always there ready to be called into being by name in what is termed
"creation", or
the
astronomical mythology. As Egyptian, then, the only creation of the heavens and
the earth was
mythical, not
cosmological. It was uranographic formation, not the making of matter. But to
show how the
mythical
creation was rendered cosmogonically we have only to take the title of Kheper-Ptah
in his
character of
"Let-the-earth-be", or let the hidden earth come into being. This in
the Genesis becomes "Let
the dry land
appear (i. 9,10), and the Elohim called the dry land earth".
There is an
Egyptian account of "creation" to be found in the Papyrus of Nes-Amsu
(British Museum,
No.10, 188),
which was written for a priest of Panopolis in the thirteenth year of
"Alexander the son of
Alexander",
or about B.C. 312. It is called "The Book of Knowing the Evolutions of Ra,
and the
Overthrowal
of Apap". It purports to contain the words that were spoken by Neb-er-ter,
a title of Osiris, the
entire or
all-one god, as lord over all. There are two versions of the legend. In the
first the creator-god is
Kheper-Ptah.
In the second he is Osiris; the same legend being applied in two different
cults, at Memphis
and Abydos.
In the second version Osiris-Neb-er-ter is the speaker as creator. He says,
"I produced [Page
407] myself
from primeval matter. Osiris is my name. There existed no created things in
this land". A land
is here
described in which the plants and creeping things of earth had no existence.
Neb-er-ter was alone
by himself in
that land, and there was no other being who worked with him in that land. This
was in
Tanen, the
nether earth of Ptah. The beetle-headed Ptah was the Egyptian creator in his
primary form,
the so-called
maker of the heaven and the earth, but in a creation that was not cosmogonical.
These,
then, are the
words that were also spoken in the first version by Kheper-Ptah, who formed the
earth of
eternity and
discreted the two earths in the making of Amenta, on his coming into existence,
when,
according to
the current phraseology, neither heaven nor earth was yet extant, and when the
soil of
earth, the
plants and creeping things of earth, had not yet been created in that land.
Kheper-Ptah then
found a
co-worker in the goddess M<>a, the Egyptian Wisdom, whom the present
writer had previously
identified
with the Hebrew Kochmah in "A Book of the Beginnings". Working with
Mă denotes creation
according to
eternal law or undeviating rule.
Evidence for
the non-cosmogonical nature of Kheper-Ptah's creation may be gathered from the
fact that
the celestial
bodies, sun, moon, and stars, were not among the things that were called into
being by him.
The sun as
"the eye of Nu", the Nun or firmament, and the primeval matter of the
paut were pre-extant.
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Nor does
either of the two versions mention the creation of birds, or beasts, or cattle.
Moreover, a male-
god who
existed alone in the Nun as Kheper the begetter or father-god is impossible on
the face of the
inscription,
because Nu the god of the celestial water was already extant in the character
of a begetter.
Kheper calls
him "my father Nu", and the solar orb is also called "the eye of
Nu". Besides which Kheper-
Ptah was
preceded by several dynasties of deities, lunar, stellar, or elemental. The
Put-company of the
nine gods was
preceded by that of the eight; the eight by that of the seven Ali, or
associates; the seven
Uraeus-divinities;
the seven Khuti; and these by the mothers Apt, Neith, Tefnut, and the seven
cows or
Hathors.
The
foundation of monotheism was laid when the various powers were combined in a
single deity to be
worshipped as
the one true eternal spirit. These were primarily the Great Mother and her
seven
elemental
powers. And when the goddess was superseded by the god Ptah, both sexes were
included in
the one
Supreme Being who was now the Lord over all. It was the same with Osiris, as
the pictures
show. Asar
was the mother and child (Hes-Ar) in one, and the perfect triune type was
completed in God
the father.
There was no God the father without God the mother and God the child. In the
mythological
text from
Memphis we read of Ptah in his divine forms. In one of these he is designated
"Ptah of the
earth".
"The Mother giving birth to Atum and his associate-gods" (line 14).
Ptah of the earth was then "in
the great
resting-place" as the maker of Amenta. This was the place of that new
creation and
rearrangement
of the things that were pre-extant before the time of Ptah the opener, and this
one god
who was
latest is now considered to be the source of all the gods and goddesses who had
preceded him.
Ptah became
the god who was born of his own becoming, or of his own self-originating [Page
408] force,
and who came
into existence in the person of his own son - as a mode of representing the
eternal
manifesting
in the sphere of time. According to the school of thought, the male had been
substituted for
the mother as
the begetter in matter. Hence the beetle of Kheper was solely male, that is, as
the type of a
divine
parent; and the female now became subsidiary to the male. Illustrations of
Kheper in this phase of
male-creator
can be seen in the great French work on Egypt, a copy of which may be consulted
in the
British
Museum. In these pictures, as in the legend of creation translated by Dr.
Budge, the imagery
shows with
sufficient plainness how creative source was figured in the likeness of male
nature. This has
been rendered
with all its naked crudity, but needs the gnosis for an explanation. By the
gnosis here is
meant that
science of Egyptian symbolism which alone enables us to read the palimpsest of
the past that
was scribbled
over and over again by the teachers of the ancient wisdom. For example, Kheper
in the
pictures is
the male, as beetle, who emanes the matter of creation from his own body, as
does the spider
or the
silkworm. In the later legend of Ra and Apap the anthropomorphic type replaced
the beetle;
Kheper has
been imaged in the likeness of a masturbating male, and then the act has been
attributed in
reality to
the black-skinned race ( Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, vol. i., p. 3040) But as
the beetle was a
pre-anthropomorphic
type of Kheper, we might ask if that also was a masturbating male, as the
producer
of matter
from itself? So necessary is the gnosis of the primitive sign-language for the
reading of these
remains, to
prevent debasement of the type and perversion of the meaning.
After coming
into being himself Kheper-Ptah is called the creator of all things that came
into being. And
here, if
anywhere, we may identify the Word that was in the beginning, and was God. For
Kheper says he
brought his
name into his own mouth; he uttered it as the word that was in the beginning.
Other things
were spoken
or called into being by the word of his mouth. Of these things he says, "I
raised them up
from out the
Nun (or Nu) and from a state of inertia". He had found no place where he
could stand. But
he laid a
foundation with Mă, who, as we know, became the co-worker with Ptah the divine
artificer. In
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Ancient
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version B. of
the Egyptian document the creator, as Kheper, says, "I made what I made by
means of
divine soul;
I worked with the spirit", which is the action assigned to the Elohim,
however differently
stated. Soul,
it is said in one of the texts, is "the breath of the gods" (Budge,
Gods of the Egyptians,
Vol.I.. i.,
ch. 8). Creation by means of the word was the work of Ptah in his character of
"Let the earth
exist".
Stated in modern language, he might be said to have called his creations into
being by word of
mouth in
uttering the word to his co-workers. This word, as Egyptian, was the well-known
Hekau or great
magical word
of power, which was female before it was assigned to the deity as male; the
living word of
Apt; the
great magic power of Isis or of Mă, before it was ascribed to Ptah in the
monotheism of
Memphis.
Creation by the word is calling into being things which did not pre-exist or
were not previously
entified,
figured, or known by name. In the Ritual the word of power becomes a ceremonial
act, and, as a
mode of sign
- [Page 409] language, to be said or uttered magically, is to be performed.
Creation by the
word is
expressed in the character of Ptah by his title of
"Let-the-earth-be". This is the creation by fiat, or
the word, in
the book of Genesis, when the Elohim say, "Let there be light"
-"Let there be a firmament" "
Let the dry
land appear" - "Let the earth put forth grass" - "Let the
earth bring forth" - "Let us make man
in our
image" - and it was so. The word and act were one. And this was the Kamite
creation by the word
that was in
the beginning; the word of Kheper-Ptah, who said, "Let the earth come into
existence" - that
is, the lower
of the two, called Amenta, the secret earth. This mode of calling and coming
into being by
means of the
word explains how the god could issue forth from silence as a word, how created
things or
beings could
be said to have emanated from the mouth of the god, and how the divine wisdom,
whether
as Mă or
Kochmah, could be said to come out of the mouth of the most high. It is known
that the name
was often
held to be an equivalent for the thing, the act, or person, and in the text
from Memphis the
creation by
Ptah is in a measure resolved into a process of naming. In this it is said,
"Now the creation of
all the gods
(that is to say, of Atum and his associate-gods) was when proclamation was made
of all the
divine names
in his wisdom" - the wisdom of Ptah. Thus things, in this case gods, or
powers, were
created when
names were given to them. The principle is applied in the book of Genesis, when
it is said
that
"out of the ground lahu-Elohim formed every beast of the field and every
fowl of the air, and brought
them to the
man to see what he would call them. And the man gave names to all cattle, and
to the fowl of
the air, and
to every beast of the field" (ch. ii. 19-20). In these and other texts
creation is reduced to a
process of
naming as a mode of representation, and in this way the uranographic mythology
was
founded on
the figuring and naming of the constellations.
When the
Supreme Being had been imaged or personified, the powers previously extant were
represented as
his offspring, his names, or members of his body. Hence the seven
associate-gods, the
Ali or
Elohim, are now called the limbs, joints, the hands, the fingers, the lips, the
teeth, the breath of the
god, or,
reversely stated, these parts of the one god become the associate gods, as a
seven-fold
emanation
from Kheper-Ptah. "Now Ptah was satisfied after his making of all things,
and conferring all
the divine
names. He formed the gods, he made the towns, he designed the nomes, he placed
the gods
in their
shrines. He made their company flourish", "All the limbs moved when
he uttered the word of
wisdom which
came forth from the tongue and worked a blessing upon all things". The
word (lit Speech)
became the
making of men and the creation of gods for Ptah- Tatanen-Sepu.
"Let-the-earth-be"
is one of the titles of Ptah as the god who calls the earth into existence.
Which looks,
at first
sight, like a cosmo-graphical creation. But the earth which was evolved by Ptah
and his associate-
gods, the Ali,
Phoenician Elohim, is not this world, not our earth. If it were, it would not
be the double
earth, the
earth that was duplicated in the making of Amenta. In the text from Memphis
(line 6) it is said
that
"Ptah was satisfied after making all things, all the divine names".
He saw that it was good, and this
[Page 410]
satisfaction of the creator in his work is repeated in the book of Genesis.
Seven times over
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Elohim saw that
the work was good, and like Ptah, or the Put-company of gods, he or they were
satisfied.
But the
making of Amenta by Ptah and the great paut of gods or Ali was an actual
creation of
imagination,
not a mere "calling" of things into existence by naming them. It was
also the creation of an
earth, but
not of the earth on which we stand. It was known as Ta-nen, the earth in the
Nun; also as the
lower earth
distinguished from the upper earth, to which it was added when the earth was
duplicated as
the work of
Ptah and the associate-gods. The firmament of upper earth was raised aloft by
Shu, when
establishing
the pole of Am Khemen. The firmament of the nether earth was lifted up by Ptah.
This was
celebrated as
his suspension of the sky. But the lower firmament is the sky that was raised
up by him in
Amenta, the
earth of eternity, not in the upper earth of time.
Thus, the
creation of Amenta was not the commencement of the external universe, although
another
heaven and
earth were then called into being. At first there was no heaven and no earth in
this
unformulated
realm of desert darkness. Or, as the Hebrew version has it, "the earth was
waste and void".
There was no
light of day or lamp of night, as neither sun nor moon could pass that way
until the earth
was hollowed
out and a sky suspended overhead by Ptah the opener and his Ali, or companions,
who
were
afterwards repeated in the Elohim of the Hebrew Genesis. So in the enclosure of
Yima there was at
first no
light of stars, or moon, or sun. This was the condition of primeval darkness in
which the Elohim
said,
"Let there be light, and there was light". The question being where
and how? In the making of
Amenta Ptah
was the uplifter of the lower firmament, with which he roofed the under-world
within the
earth. This
is recognized in the Ritual (ch. 64), when the speaker down in Amenta says,
"Mine is the
radiance in
which Ptah floateth over his firmament" - that is, the light of this new
heaven and earth, which
were solely a
creation of the astronomical mythology. In another text we read, "Hail to
thee, Ptah-Tanen.
The heaven
was yet uncreated, uncreated was the earth, the water flowed not; thou hast put
together the
earth, thou
hast united thy limbs, thou hast reckoned thy members; what thou hast found
apart, thou hast
put into its
place. O let us give glory to the god who hath raised up the sky, and who
causeth his disk to
float over
the bosom of Nut, who hath made the gods and men and all their generations, who
hath made
all lands and
countries, and the great sea, in his name of Let-the-earth-be" (cited by
Renouf, Hibbert
Lectures, pp.
222-3). This, being late, has the look of cosmology. But the sky raised up by
Ptah was over
the earth in
Amenta; the sky that was imaged by the sign of heaven reversed. When Ra is
being exalted
above all
previous gods in the glosses to the seventeenth chapter of the Ritual it is
said that he had
exercised his
sovereignty as Unen the opener when there was as yet no firmament. That is
before Ptah
had created
the firmament below the earth, which is called the "lower firmament"
in the Babylonian
legends of
creation. This beginning with the raising of the firmament is alluded to in the
name of the gatekeeper
to the second
hall in the House of Osiris, who is designated "Him who raised up or
created [Page
411] the
beginning" (Rit., 147, 7). But, as before shown, there were two upliftings
of the firmament, one
above the
earth and one below.
There is
hieroglyphic evidence that the Egyptian creation of the earth by Ptah was not
cosmical but a
mode of
hollowing out Amenta in the lower earth", and of tunnelling the mount to
make a passage
through. The
sign for Ta, the earth, is a hollow tube, a pipe, a reed, or the tibia (leg-bone).
Thus, a
passage
hollowed out is an ideograph of the earth that was formed by Ptah and his
Khnemmu, "the
moulders. It
was the tunnel of Ptah with its gates of entrance and exit that first gave
significance to the
expression,
"the ends of the earth". The manes in the Ritual who has passed
through exclaims, "I have
come out of
the tuat : I am come from the ends of the earth” (ch. 75, I). The opening of
Amenta was a
primitive
mode of thinking through the ground of solid earth, as it stood in the waters
of the Nun, and of
making out a
pathway for the sun or solar god to travel by in passing through from one
horizon to the
other. Thus,
the making of Amenta was a work of imagination based upon a ground of natural
fact.
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Before the
earth was known to float and revolve in space, it was thought of as a fixture
like a mountain or
an island, a
tree or a stalk of papyrus standing in the firmamental water. Then it was made
out, as
mythically
rendered, that somehow the sun passed through the under-world of earth by
night. This was
portrayed in
several ways. In one, a tortoise was the type. With Kheper-Ptah, the beetle was
the
burrower in
and through the hidden earth. Ptah, as the divine worker, shaper, or creator in
this
subterranean
world, was also imaged by an embryo-in-utero as way-maker in the womb of
matter, or the
earth. Fire
was another solar type. Hence Ptah was the worker with that element, and his
associate-gods
became the
blacksmiths and metallurgists, who blazed their way below from west to east
through Tanen,
earlier
Tanun, termed the earth of Ptah. Then followed Ra in his primordial sovereignty
as Atum, son of
Ptah. He
crosses (later) in the solar bark that sailed the Urnas water by night. But
first of all he had to
wriggle
through the mud of the abyss in the likeness of an eel.
Before Amenta
had been moulded by the Put-cycle of powers there was a secret and infertile
earth
conceived of in
the Nun, where nothing grew and nought was cultivated, as no soil or sata had
been yet
prepared, and
no light had then appeared. But this earth of eternity was not the world of
human life, and
consequently
no human beings were created in Amenta. Atum, though a man in form, was not a
human
being. This
will explain why neither man nor woman was created or formed by Kheper-Ptah, in
the Book
of Knowing
the Evolutions of Ra. There was no man or woman in the genuine mythos. These
only came
into existence
when the gods and manes had been euhemerized and creation was set forth as
cosmogonical
through literalization of the astronomical mythology and adulteration of the
ancient
wisdom.
It has been
assumed by some Egyptologists that the two earths, or the double earth, were
limited to the
division of
space into south and north by the passage of the sun from east to west. But in
the making of
Amenta the
one earth was divided into upper and lower, with a firmament or sky to each,
and thus the
earth was
duplicated; [Page 412] hence the making of Amenta was the creation of a double
earth or an
earth that
was doubled. An apt illustration of this double earth may be seen in the
vignettes to the
papyrus of
Ani, where scenes in the upper earth life are portrayed at the head of the
page, with scenes in
the life of
Amenta underneath. Thus on pages 5 and 6 the funeral procession of Ani is to be
seen
wending its
way to the sepulchre, carrying the laid-out mummy, whilst Ani as the manes is
to be seen on
his journey
through the nether earth accompanied by Tutu, his wife in spirit-world.
The nether
earth, when not yet excavated, was a world of solid darkness, because unvisited
by sun or
moon. When
Amenta was hollowed out by Ptah it was for his son Atum, who is Ra at his first
appearance
in Amenta as
the solar god, the first to pass through this realm of subterranean night.
Naturally when the
sun appeared
"there was light", and darkness with its host of evil powers fled, as
related in the legendary
lore. It is
to this old netherland of darkness, with no outlet, that the goddess Ishtar
descended in search
of the water
of life. It was a land without an exit, through which no passage had been made;
from whose
visitants,
the dead, the light was shut out. "The light they behold not, in darkness
they dwell". "Dust is
their bread;
their food is mud". Still the secret source of water, and thence of life,
was hidden in that land.
This was the
world of the gnomes, the goblins, and other elemental sprites, which, as
Egyptian, are
summed up,
under the serpent-type, as seven Uraeus-powers born in the nether earth (Rit.,
ch. 83). As
Babylonian
they were the seven "spirits of earth", or anunnaki. The beginning in
this region was with the
abyss inside
the earth from whence the water welled that was to be most sacredly preserved
as very
source
itself. This subterranean realm had somewhat the character of a mine with the
water welling
upward from
the unplumbed depths below. It was a mine of hidden treasure, one form of which
was gold.
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But first of
all the treasure was water, the primary element of life. Hence a fount of the
water of life was
localized in
the well of this under-world which the Egyptians divinized as the Neter-Kar
because it was
the source of
water and the way by which life came into the world. Here the spirits of earth,
the powers of
Khar, the
Assyrian anunnaki, were portrayed as watchers over the water of life and
protectors of the
hidden
treasures underground. It was these spirits of earth that peopled our mines and
became the
jealous
guardians of their metals. These were the elemental spirits, not the spirits of
the dead who were
worshipped as
the human ancestors; the gods, not the glorified. It is distinctly stated in
the great Harris
papyrus
(plate 44, lines 4 and 6) that Ptah the opener "formed the hollow of the
under-world, so that the
sun could
pass through as revivifier of the dead , and that he also encircled the earth
with the
firmamental
water on which the solar bark might ride all round". The sun-god here was
Atum in his
eschatological
character. Also, in a hymn to the earlier elemental powers found upon the walls
of the
temple in the
oasis of El-Khargeh, it is said to Ptah, "Thou hast made the double earth.
Thou hast placed
thy throne in
the life of the double earth. Thy soul is the four-fold pillar and the ark of
the two heavens".
Ptah the
excavator of the nether earth is now the builder of the ark in which the dead
are borne [Page 413]
across the
waters of Amenta to the other world. The speaker in this character (Rit., ch.
I) says, "I am the
arch-craftsman
on the day in which the ship of Sekari, or the coffined one (whether as Ptah or
Osiris), is
laid upon the
stocks". This was represented in a ceremony at Memphis, where the coffin,
ark, or shrine of
the god was
placed upon a sledge and drawn in a procession round and round the great
sanctuary when
the drama of
the resurrection was performed. It was as the maker of Amenta that Ptah became
the
architect of
the universe. When completed, the Egyptian universe consisted of heaven, earth,
and the
under-world,
but it was not finished until he had formed the under-world or made the nether
earth and
heaven. Then
Ptah, as the maker of Amenta, was called the architect of the universe. The
tat-symbol,
which was
erected in Amenta as a type of eternal stability, was the backbone of Ptah as a
figure of the
god who was
now the vertebral column and sustaining power, under, as well as over, all. The
tat was also
duplicated to
form the gateway of eternity in the region of Tattu, when the double tats took
the place of
the two
pillars of Sut and Horus in the house of Ptah. Ptah is described as the former
of the egg of the
sun and the
moon. He is depicted in one of the representations, at Philae, sitting at the
potter's wheel in
the act of
giving shape to an egg (Rosellini, Mon. del Culto, 21). But this is not to be
taken literally. The
representation
is symbolical. Ptah was the creator of the circle in which the sun and moon
revolved,
when the
passage through the under-world was finished; and the egg is a hieroglyphic
sign of the circle,
which ,
circle was also a figure of the eternal pathway. This solar pathway made by
Ptah reminds one of
Vaughan's
magnificent image :
"I saw
eternity the other night,
Like a vast
ring of pure and endless light”.
Now, no
Egyptologist whose work is known to the present writer has ever discriminated
betwixt the
"making
of Amenta" and the cosmological creation in the Hebrew book of Genesis,
which is a chief object
of the
present section. In his work on The Dawn of Civilization (Eng. Tr., pp. 16-19)
M. Maspero has
given a
version of what he supposes the Egyptians thought of the earth. He tells us
"they imagined the
whole
universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest diameter
was from south to
north, and
its least from east to west. The earth with its alternate continents and seas
formed the bottom
of the box;
it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with Egypt in its
centre". M. Maspero's
oblong box,
which is longest from the south to the north, is just a figure of the Nile
valley, reproduced in
the nether
earth of Amenta as a mythical locality, not as a picture of the universe. He
has taken the cover
off Amenta
and exposed its depths to the stars of heaven, as if it were the cavity of an
immeasurable
crater, and has
left no ceiling to the lower earth, no nether sky of Nut for the sun to
traverse when it was
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day in the
under-world; consequently he has failed to reproduce the double earth that was
the creation of
Ptah and his
co-workers.
The creation
of Amenta by Ptah the opener was the cutting, carving, and hollowing out of the
earth as
tunnel for
the heavenly bodies and the manes,. which were now to make the passage through
[Page 414]
instead of
round the mount. This for the first time renders the fundamental meaning of the
Hebrew Bara (
) tocreate,as
whenitis said(Gen.i.I)thattheElohim createdtheheavenandtheearth.Bara, .. .
applied to
the creation of the world by the Elohim, signifies to cut, carve, fashion, and,
in the form of Bari,
to divide.
The Elohim are the Ali or companions who, as the Khnemmu or moulders with Ptah
the opener,
were the
cutters, carvers, or potters, as fashioners of Amenta in the work of dividing
the upper from the
lower earth.
The divine creation of the world resolves itself into the creation attributed
to Ptah the opener
and his
co-workers the Ali, who divided the earth into upper and lower, and thus
created, shaped, or
moulded a
nether world as the secret earth of eternity, the next world made tangible for
foothold in spirit
life. There
was no use for one firmament above and one below until the double earth was
created by the
opener Ptah,
and it was in the making of Amenta that the firmament was duplicated.
It was on
account of this new arrangement when the double earth was formed or the house
of the two
earths was
built by Ptah that the fresh treaty was made by Seb betwixt the two opponents
Sut and Horus.
Seb, as
arbitrator, calls on Sut and Horus to come from where they were born in the
south and north,
their
original stations, to the mountain in the middle of the earth, which joined the
portion of Sut to the
portion of
Horus in the equinox. This was the solar mount in Annu or Heliopolis. "The
two earths meet in
Annu, for it
is the march or border-land of the two earths". Peace was there proclaimed
betwixt the
warring
twins. "This union is in the house of Ptah"; "the house of his
two earths" in which is the boundary
of south and
north, and also the meeting-point of the two earths, lower and upper, as well
as the junction
of the
domains of the north and south in the earlier division of the whole. When
Amenta was made out
the east and
west were added to the south and north, and the heaven of four quarters was
thus
established
on the solstices and equinoxes as the house of Ptah. The two earths are the
upper earth of
Seb and the
lower earth of Ptah-Tatanen, lord of eternity. "Now Seb gave the
inheritance (of his earth) to
Horus".
So Horus became the chief of the land, "which henceforth consisted of the
two earths. Horus
wears the
double diadem as ruler of the double earth. He is now called "the
traverser of the two earths"
and is no
longer merely the uniter of both horizons. In the preface to the inscription
from Memphis he is
hailed thus,
"Live Horus, the traverser of the two earths; the conquering Horus, the
traverser of the two
earths"
(Stele of Shabaka). On this the English translations of the text remark, "
We are not aware that
this epithet
occurs elsewhere than in the titles of Shabaka". It could only apply to
the solar god who
shone upon
the earth of time by day and on the earth of eternity in Amenta by night. The
title was
dependent on
the creation of the two-fold earth by Ptah. Broken as is the inscription, it is
evident that the
Osirian
mythos has been tacked on partially to an earlier version relating to Ptah, his
son Atum-Horus,
and the Ali
or associate gods of the Put-cycle. Thus Horus, the son of Osiris, takes the
place of Atum-
Horus, the
son of Ptah, who was the earliest traverser of the two earths. [Page 415]
Amenta was
not entirely "the happy other-world"; it was a world of various
states and many parts. These
included an
upper and lower Egypt, the seven nomes of the Heptanomis, also the fourteen
domains that
were based
upon the lower half of the lunar circle, and the fifteen domains that belonged
to the solar
reckoning
(Rit., ch. 142). The inferno, the purgatory, and the paradise of Dante
Alighieri are extant
recognizably
in the Book of the Dead as domains of Amenta. The manes had to go through the
purgatory
and pass by,
if not through, the hells before they came to the outlet from the mount of
earth in Amenta.
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This outlet
was to the east; and here the Aarru field was planted to produce the harvest of
eternity. In this
field, which
the garden followed as a type of tillage, stood the sycamore-tree of wisdom. We
also meet
with the two
sycamores of the north and south that correspond to the tree of knowledge and
the tree of
life in the
Garden of Eden. The tree of dawn was figured rising up above the horizon of
earth with its
rootage in
the secret earth of Amenta. Here also rose the mount of rebirth, and either by
climbing the
mount or the
tree in the wake of the sun-god the manes made their ascent to the upper
paradise of Aarru
in the fields
of heaven. When Horus, or lu, the Egyptian Jesus, came up from Amenta for his
manifestation
in the vernal equinox, it was from the terrestrial paradise of the lower Aarru.
If we would
get a glimpse of the old lost earthly paradise we must descend in thought with
the sun or
manes in the
west and traverse the subterranean passage to the east. There we emerge in the
Aarrufields
to find
ourselves in the Eden of Egypt glorified as the nether land of dawn. The great
tree that
towers
evergreen above the horizon has its rootage here, and underneath this tree the
blessed find rest
and drink of
the divine life-giving liquor which was afterwards called the homa, the soma,
nepenthe,
nectar, or
other name for the drink which made immortal. In the mythology it was Hathor
the goddess of
dawn who gave
the dew of the tree for drink and the fruit of the tree for food; which tree in
Egypt was the
sycamore fig.
In the eschatology it is the heaven-mother Nut who pours out the liquid of life
from the tree.
The evidence
for the Egyptian origin is four-fold. First, the green dawn is African, without
parallel. Next,
the tree is
the sycamore fig, the tree of knowledge and of life in one. Thirdly, the
imagery belongs to the
mythical
representation of the beginning; and lastly, it is repeated for a religious
purpose in the
eschatology.
It is a common charge brought against the paradise of theology that it does not
provide for
progress and
development in the life hereafter. But the Egyptian paradise in Amenta was not
a place of
unchanging
bliss considered to be a kind of unearned increment. For them the world to come
in Amenta
was what they
made it here. And the world to be in the upper paradise was what they made it
by hard
labour and by
purification in Amenta. The sub-terrestrial paradise was mapped out for the
manes to work
in and work
out their salvation from the ills of the flesh and blemishes of the life on
earth. This was the
promised land
depicted at the end of the journey through the nether-world, whether as a
garden, a
vineyard, a
harvest-field, or a table-mountain piled with food and drink. Every purpose of
the primitive
paradise had
been summed up in the [Page 416] promise of everlasting plenty, but in the
Egyptian Aarru
the plenty
was the reward of industry. This was the field of divine harvest, no mere
pleasure ground,
where
abundance was the result of toil. The soil was apportioned by the Lord of
Eternity , and each one
had to
cultivate his share, no one lived upon another's labour (164, 13). Indeed, the
allotment in this life
was
cultivated magically whilst the workers were yet upon the upper earth. The
Egyptians had out-grown
the African
custom of killing slaves for the purpose of sending their spirits as avant
courriers to prepare
the way for
the potentate in spirit-world, but the modus operandi was symbolically
practised.
Amenta may be
said to open with the funeral valley in the west, and to end with the mount of
resurrection
in the east.
In the Osirian mythos when the sun god enters the under-world it is as the
mummy or the
"coffined
one" upon his way to the great resting-place.
Except when
lighted by the sun of night, Amenta was a land of darkness and a valley of the
shadow of
death. It
remained thus, as it was at first, to those who could not escape from the
custody of Seb, the god
of earth,
"the great annihilator who resideth in the valley" (Rit., ch. 19).
The resurrection in this nether
region was
the issuing forth to day which followed the burial on earth.
As it comes
to us, the Ritual is comparatively late. The pre-Osirian mythos. solar, lunar,
and stellar, is
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obscured by
the Osirian eschatology. It lives on, however, in the Litanies and other
fragments, which
show that
Atum-Horus, the son of Ptah, was the earliest representative of the nocturnal
sun that made
the passage
of Amenta and rose again upon the horizon of the resurrection as the master;
and, as was
also said,
the maker of eternity, by perfecting the circle through and round the double
earth. Amenta, in
the solar
mythos, was looked on as the graveyard of the buried sun that died or became
inert upon his
journey
through the under world. In the eschatology it was also depicted as a sort of cemetery
or burial-
place. Hence
the chapter of "introducing the mummy into the tuat on the day of
burial" (Naville, Todt.
Kap. I. B) -
not the earthly mummy, but the mummy of the dramatic mystery as a figure of the
living
personality.
In the book of knowing that which is in Amenta there is a description of the
sandy realm of
Sekari and of
those who are resting on their sand. This points to the sandy district as a
primitive burial-
place in
which the bodies of the dead were first preserved from corruption and decay.
Before the
mummies could
have been embalmed in Egypt, the dead were buried in the sand for preservation
of the
body; and the
burial-place in a sandy district was repeated in Amenta as the sandy realm of
Sekari, the
silent or the
coffined one, who was Ptah-Sekari in the pre-Osirian religion.
It is the
creation of Amenta, then, not of the universe, that is the subject of the
mythos which was made
cosmical in
the Hebrew book of Genesis. The speaker is the god who came into being in the
form of
Kheper the
creator or maker of all things that came into existence after he came into
being. He was in Tanen,
the earth of
the Nun, the abyss within the upper earth. This was a land of darkness, the
place where
nothing grew,
a type of which was preserved in the region of Anrutef. In this land there was
no heaven,
no sun or
moon over-head, nor earth beneath the feet. Or, as the text has it, there was
[Page 417] nothing
to stand on.
And as there was no earth, there were no plants nor creeping things of earth.
No created
things yet
existed in this land, this lower earth that was waste and void; and there was
only darkness on
the face of
the deep. There was nothing but the primeval matter for Kheper-Ptah and his
assistants to
mould into
shape for the making of the secondary earth in Amenta. Whilst the under-world
was yet the
primordial
abyss, it was the void of Apap, the dwelling-place of the things of darkness;
but now it was the
work of Atum
as the master of Amenta to make war on Apap; to protect the tree or plants and
the water of
life; to
bruise the serpent's head or slay the dragon of drought and the destroyer of
vegetation.
Now ,
according to a very ancient myth, there had been war in heaven from the time
when the slayer of
the dragon
was female, and the Great Mother protected her child from the devouring reptile
of the dark
with her
arrow or lance of light in the moon. This is seen when Isis pierces the head of
Apap in the
firmamental
water. Also when Hemt-Nu, the lady of heaven, lightens up the firmament by
overthrowing
the devouring
monster of the dark (Rit., ch. 80). The two opponents Sut and Horus also fought
their battle
in heaven
when an eclipse befell the moon, and when Sut flung his filth upon the face of
Horus, and
Horus seized
the genitals of Sut with his own fingers to emasculate him (Rit., ch. 17). But
when Amenta
was formed
the scene of strife was shifted to the new earth that was shaped by Ptah the
divine artificer.
As it is said
in the Book of the Dead (ch. 17), when Amenta was created, and Ra assumed the
sovereignty,
Amenta also became "the scene of strife among the gods". The speaker,
who is Atum-Ra,
says, "I
am Ra at his first appearance. I am the great god self-produced. A scene of strife
arose among
the gods when
I assumed command" (ch. 17). The great cause of strife in Amenta is
depicted as the
Apap-reptile,
of whom it is said, "Eternal devourer is his name". It is the serpent
of darkness, the fiery
dragon of
drought, the destroyer of vegetable life. Night by night the evil reptile
attacks the tree of life in
the midst of
the garden, as shown in the vignettes to the Ritual. This, in the eschatology,
is the adversary
of Osiris and
the enemy of souls. The nocturnal sun as seer in the darkness of Amenta is
depicted as the
great cat in
conflict with the evil serpent. Ra says, "I am the great cat who
frequenteth the persea-tree (of
life) in
Annu, on the night of battle when the defeat of the Sebau is effected and the
adversaries of the
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inviolate god
(Osiris) are exterminated". On the night of conflict occurs the defeat of
the children of
failure. And
it is added, "There was conflict in the whole universe, in heaven and upon
the earth". The
conflict
betwixt Ra and the Apap is identified as being fought for the water as well as
for the light; the
mortal enemy
of man being drought as well as darkness. The strife in heaven, earth, and
Amenta was
the raison d'
ętre of his coming who is called the prince of peace, and, who, as Iu-em-hetep,
is the
bringer of
peace because he came to stop the war that was elemental, not tribal or racial,
but the war of
darkness
against light, the war of drought against water, the war of famine against
fertility, or, as
mythically
rendered, the war of Apap against Ra, the Sebau against Un-Nefer, Sut against
Horus, or the
serpent
against the seed of the woman. The types had been evolved in the [Page 418]
mythology which
were
continued in theology. Horus of the inundation had come as the prince of peace
who slew the
dragon of
drought as the young solar god he pierced the serpent of darkness. As prince of
peace he
passed into
the eschatology. This is he who in his incarnation says, "I am the lord on
high, and I descend
to the earth
of Seb that I may put a stop to evil. I come that I may overthrow my
adversaries upon the
earth, though
my dead body may be buried” (Rit., ch. 85). lu-em-hetep, as is indicated by the
name,
comes to
bring peace and goodwill to earth as conqueror of drought, and dearth, and
darkness. He
grapples with
the dragon in the constellation Hydra, and vanquishes it with the water of the
inundation.
He bruises
the serpent of darkness as "Ophiucus”; he wrestles with the evil Sut and
overcomes him in
the
constellation of the Twins.
The first
chapter of the Book of the Dead was repeated on the day when the Osiris N. was
buried. His
entrance into
the under-world as a manes corresponds to that of Osiris the mummy of Amenta,
who
represents
the inert or breathless god, and who also enters the place of burial called the
K..su. In the
absence of
the sun there would be nought but darkness visible, in this the land of the
dead, but for the
presence of
Taht the moon-god. In this character the manes greets Osiris, saying, "O
bull of Amenta, it is
Taht the
everlasting king who is here! ''-as the night-light of the sufferer dying in
the dark. "I am the great
god in the
bark who have fought for thee" - that is, against Apap and all the powers
of evil. Apuat is also
present to
uplift and save the manes who might otherwise fall headlong into the lake of
Putrata, where
the monster
lies in wait to devour its prey. (Rit., ch. 44.) It was as the moon in Amenta
that Ra is said to
have created
Taht - a far older god - as a beautiful light to show the face of Apap, his
evil enemy. But this
was not the
moon that was made and hung up in the Hebrew Genesis as a creation of
four-and-twenty
hours. Taht
carried the lunar lamp called "the eye of Horus” in the darkness of the
nether earth, to show
the hidden
lurking-place of the adversary. Thus, in the opening chapter of the Ritual the
manes rises in
Amenta after
death on earth in the character of Taht the god who is the lunar light as
representative of
the supreme
god in the dark of death and in the ways of darkness in the under-world, which
means that
the Osiris N.
deceased enters the nether earth, in the likeness of Taht, to make war upon the
dragon on
behalf of the
sun-god struggling with the monster coiling round him in the darkness of
Amenta. In this
way the war
that is fought out in the night of the nether earth was dramatized in the Book
of the Dead,
where the
souls of the deceased carry on the battle on behalf of the good Unnefer,
whether as Horus or
Osiris-Ra.
After the
making of Amenta there followed a re-division of the earth betwixt the two
contending twins,
which, as
herein maintained, was now the double earth of day and night, of Seb and Ptah,
of time and
eternity. The
war that broke out in Amenta, when Atum took possession of this nether earth
that was
prepared for
him by Ptah includes the conflict of Ra and the Apap-reptile which is portrayed
in the
vignettes to
the Ritual, and the battles of the twin-brothers Sut and Horus for possession
of the Aarrugarden,
the same that
they had fought in external nature. [Page 419]
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In a document
translated by Chabas there is an account of the agreement between Horus and
Sut. This
is a calendar
of lucky and unlucky days with mythological allusions. Under the date of Athyr
27th, it is
said that
Kamit, the cultivated land, was given to Horus as his domain; and the Tesherit,
the red land or
desert, was
given to Sut as his domain (Papyrus Sallier, IV., Chabas, Le Calendrier des
jours fastes). The
black land of
rich fertile loam, and the red land, or desert, thus divided were a form of the
double earth as
the upper and
lower land which followed on the founding of Amenta; the division being no
longer limited
to south and
north, or to the two halves of the lunation. The upper and lower crowns, white
and red, were
also brought
to bear as symbols of the upper and lower earth.
Hence we are
told in this papyrus that on the 29th of Athyr the white crown was given to
Horus and the
red crown to
Sut, as the rulers of the two territories here assigned to the two opponents
warring for
supremacy in
the Egypt of Amenta. The red and white crowns had been previously given to Sut
and
Horus as the
rulers of the south and north; Sut being Suten in the south, and Horus king of
the north. But
in the
Sallier Papyrus a change is made in the disposition of the two crowns. The
white crown was now
given to
Horus and the red crown to Sut, as the symbols of the upper and lower lands,
the desert of Sut
and the
fertile land of Horus, or the wilderness of Anrutef and the paradise of plenty
in the Sekhet-Aarru.
In one of his
battles with Sut, Horus, having got the better of him, takes possession of both
the upper and
lower land.
He says, "I am Horus, the lord of Kamit (the black land) and the heir of
Tesherit (the red land),
which I have
also seized. I who am the invincible one" (Rit., ch. 138). It is also said
to Horus in "the crown
of
triumph" (Rit., ch. 19), "Thy father Seb hath decreed that thou
shouldst be his heir. He hath decreed for
thee the two
earths, absolutely and without condition". Horus thus becomes the ruler of
the double earth
and the
wearer of the double diadem, who united the white and red crown of the upper
and lower earths,
not merely as
the two crowns of the north and south in the earlier mythos.
A new type of
deity had been evolved in Atum-Horus, the son of Ptah. As solar god, he was the
first that
went both
under and over in making the eternal round of night and day. "It is thou
who hast created
eternity",
is said to Atum-Ra, the divider and traverser of the double earth. This is the
god "who goeth
round in his
orb, and giveth light to the whole circumference which the solar orb
enlighteneth”. He who
had been
Horus of the two horizons and also Kheper the self-originating force was now
the traverser and
enlightener
of the double earth with his rays (Rit.. ch. 15).
After being
concealed from men by night he presents himself each day at dawn; his glories
are too great
to be told as
he "arises out of the golden". "The land of the gods, the
colours of Puanta are seen in them,
that men may
form an estimate of that which is hidden from their faces" (ch. 15,
Renouf). He divides the
earths by his
passage through. He lights up the tuat with his glories and wakens the manes in
their
hidden abodes
by shining into their sepulchres and coffins. He opens the tuat and disposes of
all its
doors in the
under-world. The Litany of Ra is described as being the book of the worship of
Ra and the
worship of
[Page 420] Tum, that is Atum-Ra, in Amenta. He is worshipped as the master of
the hidden
spheres who
himself is invisible in darkness and who causes the principles (of life) to
arise. He is the only
one that
unites the generative substances. His body is so great that it conceals his
shape. He is born of
his own
becoming and manifests as his own son. In the adoration of Ra it is said to
Atum as he entereth
Amenta or
"setteth in the land of life". "All the gods of Amenta are in
exultation at thy glory”. They of the
hidden abodes
adore thee, and the great ones make offerings to thee, who have created for
thee the soil
or ground of
earth". That was in the making of the double earth, not in the making of
the earth itself as a
cosmogonical
creation. In short, it was not earth-making, but the framing of the double
earth, with
Amenta as the
pathway of eternity.
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With the
opening of Amenta, not only was a new world established in the double earth of
Ptah - a new
dynasty of
deities was also founded. This was the Osirian group of five, consisting of
Osiris, Isis and
Nephthys,
sightless Horus and Sut, who were called the children of Seb. Here, again, the
twin
opponents,
Sut and Horus, were far older than Osiris, but were brought on with the great
gods, the Great
Mother, and
the two sisters, in this newer combination of the powers effected in the
under-world, the
nether
portion of the double earth.
Amenta in one
aspect was the world of the dead, the Kâsu or burial-place in the Osirian cult.
In this it
was claimed
to be "the great resting-place" of Osiris the mummy-god, which it
became. But it had been
created by
Ptah for his son Atum before the Osirian dynasty was founded at Abydos. It was
the way of
the Egyptians
to put all they knew into all they did in bringing on and aggregating their
wisdom of the
past. Thus
the circumpolar paradise is repeated in the earthly paradise of Amenta. The
stellar mount of
glory in the
north was reproduced as solar in the east. The Heptanomis with its seven
entrances; the
twenty-eight
lunar stations, fourteen in the upper and fourteen in the lower hemisphere; the
house of
Osiris with
its thirty-six gates. Various stars and constellations known on high, such as
Orion, Sothis, and
Polaris, were
repeated as the guiding stars in this firmament of the lower earth to which the
looks of the
manes were
directed in death. Amongst other reproductions in Amenta we find the Aarru
garden; the
abyss of the
Nun as the womb of earth; the tree or edible plants in the water of the abyss;
the dragon of
drought or
the serpent of darkness; the old first mother; the warring twins, Sut and
Horus; the company of
seven
elemental powers; the lower firmament; the two pillars of Sut and Horus erected
in Tattu, the
house of
eternity; Taht, the bearer of the lunar light; the Sebau, or powers of
darkness, fog, mist, cloud,
plague,
storm, and eclipse - all of which were pre-extant before Amenta had been made
by Ptah. The
primary group
of seven elemental powers was succeeded by the eight great gods, and the eight
by the
Put-circle of
nine. Ptah was then considered to be the one supreme god, begotten by his own
becoming,
the maker of
all things, who himself was not made. The eight were looked upon as his
children. The nine
formed the
Put-circle or cycle of Ptah, who are equivalent to the Elohim of Genesis. In
this connection we
may [Page
421] note that No.9 was the full Egyptian plural. The word for nine is Put, and
Putah (or Ptah) is
of a nine-fold
nature. Ptah was indeed the full Egyptian plural as a group or Put of powers
that were
combined in a
supreme self-originating force whose mode of becoming was by transforming from
the
elemental
power or powers through the human into the divine. As "creators",
Ptah and his company of
artisans did
not originate in that which had no previous existence. They were the
transformers of that
which had
always been as elemental in matter. The element of earth was pre-extant,
likewise the power
that brought
forth life from the earth in water. This power operated by transformation, and
one of its types
was the
serpent of Rannut (a form of the Mother-earth), which was a type of
transformation because it
periodically
sloughed its skin and renewed itself. The element of water was pre-extant, also
the power
that
transformed in the water to bring forth life in food. This transforming power
in the water was
objectified
by the tadpole visibly turning into the frog. It was the same all nature
through. The "creators"
were the
formers and transformers as unseen forces operating in the physical domain,
with each one
traceable to
an elemental origin. First the elements themselves. Next the elemental forces
or self-
originators
in two categories, the baleful and the beneficent. Then the goddesses and gods
that were
portrayed
totemically, and afterwards personalized as divinities in the human likeness.
Ptah was the
divine artisan. In his time the masons, builders, potters, blacksmiths were at
work, each in
their
companionship, or brotherhood, as they are seen, hard at it, when the workers
in the valley of the
Nile come
into view. He is especially called the father of beginnings. He was the former
in the likeness of
the
scarabeus, the transformer in the image of a frog, and as the embryo in utero
Ptah exhibits the
earliest
attempt at imposing the human likeness upon the shaping power that was
previously imaged by
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means of the
typical insect, or symbolical animal, as in totemism. There is a group of
primeval powers
described in
later times who are said to be "the first company of the gods of
Aarru", or the fields of
heaven. They
are addressed as the mighty ones, the beneficent ones, the divine ones, who
test by their
level the
words of men as the lords of law, justice, and right; or as the lords of Maat.
They are saluted in
these words,
"Hail to you, ye gods, ye associate-gods, who are without body, ye who
rule that which is
born from the
earth, and that which is produced in the house of your cradles. Ye prototypes
of the image
of all that
exists; ye forms, ye great ones, ye mighty ones, first company of the gods of
Aarru, who
generated men
and shaped the type of every form, ye lords of all things. Hail to you, ye
lords of
everlasting"
(Louvre Papyrus, 3283; Renouf, Hib. Lectures, pp. 208-209). In this text the
Aarru is
celestial,
not the Aarru in Amenta, but the Aarru of the fields above, of which the goddess
Apt is said to
have been the
mother as the bringer-forth of the seven primeval powers in their stellar
character. As lords
of Maat they
are identical with the seven lords of rule or divine governors who are called
"the arms of the
balance on
the night when the eye is fixed" (Rit., ch. 71). This first company of the
gods in the fields of
heaven were
the Ali or Ari as [Page 422] in the seven Kab-ari) by name, and the Ali are a
group of
companions
who are herein set forth as co-creators of all that exists in heaven or in
earth. The primordial
nature-powers
are mentioned under several types and names. They are the seven Uraeus-gods,
born of
Mother-earth
as non-sentient elemental powers (Rit., ch. 83). They are the seven Khus or
glorious ones
whose place
in heaven was appointed by Anup on the day of "come thou to me"
(Rit., ch. 17). They are
the seven who
assist the great judge in the Maat at the pole on the night of the judgment
day, called "the
seven arms of
the balance", as executioners of the guilty, who accomplish the slaughter
in the tank of
flame when
the condemned are exterminated (ch. 71,7). They are the seven wise masters of
arts and
sciences who
assisted Taht in his measurements of earth and heaven. In the solar mythos they
are to be
seen in
several characters with Horus, Ptah, and Ra. They were portrayed as the seven
with Horus, in
the eight
great stars of Orion. They are the seven souls of Ra, also the seven divine
ancestors in the boat
of the sun,
the seven who support Osiris in Amenta. In whichever phase of phenomena, they
are a group,
a
brotherhood, a companionship of powers originally seven in number. It is now
proposed to identify this
"first
company" of creators who passed through these several phases in the Egyptian
mythos as seven
elementals,
seven with the ancient Genetrix, seven with Anup, seven with Taht, seven with
Horus, seven
with Ptah, as
the group of companions called the Elohim in the Hebrew Genesis, who were known
to the
Gnostics and
Kabalists as seven in number, with Ialdabaoth, a form of Sut, at their head.
The word
Elohim in Hebrew is employed both as a singular and a plural noun for god and
gods, or spirits,
with no known
origin in phenomena by which the plurality could be explained. For this we must
consult
the Egyptian
wisdom in the mythos which preceded the eschatology. In the "Dispatches
from Palestine"
there is a
perfect parallel to the twofold use of Elohim in the plural and singular forms
employed in the
Hebrew book.
The scribe addressing the Egyptian Pharaoh says, "To the king, my lord, my
gods, my sun-
god".
(Records of the Past, vol. ii., p. 62, 2nd series.) Here the gods were the
powers gathered into the
one god as
supreme. These when seven-fold were called the souls of Ra. They become the
eight in the
paradise of
Am-Khemen. They are nine in the Put-cycle of Ptah, they were ten as the
sephiroth of the
kabalists,
they are twelve in the final heaven of Atum-Ra. In a word, they are the Elohim
as a form of the
Egyptian Ali
or Ari, a companionship of workers, and later creators. "In the beginning
Elohim created the
heaven and
the earth". The astronomical mythology of Egypt, from the time of Sut to
that of Ptah, is
involved in
that brief statement. There are at least three different groups of the Elohim -
that is, the Ali or
Ili - with
the plural ending of the name as Semitic. The first group of these creators was
seven in number,
with Sut at
their head. The second was that of the eight in Am-Khemen, with Anup added to
the seven.
The third is
the company of Ptah, who formed the Put-circle of the nine. These preceded
Atum, who was
Ra in his
first sovereignty. And to show how the past of Egypt opens into immensity, Ptah
is credited with
being the
supreme ruler for 9,000 years. Still earlier [Page 423] the followers of Horus
reigned for 14,000
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years and, as
the astronomical legends show, the primary seven creators had previously marked
out one
great year in
the circle of precession before they could become those lords of eternity at,
the north
celestial
pole, which were represented by a group of seven stars that never set. Under
the title of Elohim,
both the one
god and the company of gods are present, though concealed, just as Ptah and his
associates
the Ali were included in the Put-cycle, as Ptah the god, .u the son of god, and
the paut as the
group of
gods. And if the Put-cycle of the Ali, as now maintained, are the originals of
the Phoenician and
Hebrew
Elohim, it follows that the deity Ptah is the one god of the group in the
Genesis as well as in the
original
mythos. Although the name of Ptah may not be given, yet the creator as the
worker in earth, the
potter, the
moulder or carver, is plainly apparent in the Hebrew Genesis. Also it may be
parenthetically
remarked that
the Hebrew word [
], puth, or
peth, for the opening, is identical with Put, in Egyptian,
to open; and
that Ptah or (Putah) was named from this root as the opener, whether as opener
of the
nether earth
for the sun to pass through, or for the resurrection of the manes from Amenta
in the coming
forth to day.
Moreover, there is a biblical name, that of Puthahiah [ ], which apparently
proclaims
the fact that
Iah is the opener, or that he is identical with Ptah (I Chron. xxiv. 16; Ezra
x. 23; j Neh. ix. 5
and xi. 24).
The same root
enters into the name of Pethuel, which is equivalent to Ptah-EI or the divine
opener, who
was the
Egyptian god Ptah ( Joel i. I ).
In the
Egyptian divine dynasties Ptah is god the father in one character and Iu the
son in the other. In the
person of .u
he is the youthful deity who rises from the dead both as the sun-god and as the
soul which
was imaged
for the resurrection in the form of a sahu-mummy risen with the solar hawk for
its head, as
symbol of the
soul issuing from the body of Kheper-Ptah. .u, in the character of the son, is
also
representative
of the Put-cycle, that is of the Elohim or company of the creators. Thus the
Elohim are
represented
in the first creation of man by the maker = Ptah, and in the second by Iu the
son of Ptah; and
Iu the son of
Ptah is equivalent to Iahu-Elohim, who becomes the creator of the second Adam
in the
second
chapter of the Hebrew Genesis. In the first of two creations Ptah and the Ali
who are his
associate-gods,
the Ali or Elohim, are the creators of Atum, the Hebrew Adam, who in the first
phase was
created male
and female, man and woman in one. The associate-gods or Elohim are said to
become the
lips, the
teeth, the joints, the hands, of Atum the son of Ptah. In another version they
are the seven souls
of man. In
the second creation it is Atum and his associate-gods who are the creators of
man, the same
as
Iahu-Elohim in the Genesis. The parallel is perfect; only in the Hebrew
rendering the gnosis is omitted.
Still there
are two Adams, man the mortal on earth, and man the manes in Amenta. It is the
present
writer's
contention that the Elohim in the plural are the Ali or associate-gods of Ptah,
and that lahu-Elohim
is the deity
lu, who was a form of Ptah as god the son, and who afterwards became the father
god in
Israel under
the name of Ihuh or Jehovah. Iu or lu-em-hetep, he who comes with [Page 424]
peace, is the
Kamite
original of the promised prince of peace, whose coming was periodic and aeonian
for ever and
ever, or from
generation to generation. The writer further maintains that the creation in the
first chapter
answers to
the creation of Kheper-Ptah and his Ali, that the creation of lahu in the
second chapter is
identical
with that of Iu or Atum and his associate-gods, and that the garden in Eden is
the Aarru garden
which Ptah
and his Ali or Elohim created for Atum the son to cultivate as the earthly
paradise in Amenta.
Thus, the two
different creations in the first two chapters of Genesis are in their proper
order. In the first
"the
heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them". Man, or
Adam, also was made. All
through this
chapter the creators are the associate-gods, the Egyptian Ali, the Phoenician
Elohim. In the
second
chapter, one of the Elohim is individualized by name as lahu or lahu-Elohim,
translated "the Lord
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
God",
which might be rendered the god lahu = Iu-em-hetep. After the Elohim had
finished their work, it is
said in the
second chapter of Genesis that Iahu-Elohim now made the earth and heaven which
had
already been
assigned to the Elohim as makers in the previous chapter. This also may be
explained by
the Egyptian
mythos. Ptah the creator and father of the Ali, or Elohim, was one with lu in
the person of
the son.
Ptah, the speaker for the group in the first chapter, is the father, and lahu
in the second chapter
is the same
one god continued as the son, Iu lusa, or lu-em-hetep. Thus the dual character
of Ptah-Iu
was continued
in Atum-Iu as the divine father and son. Also, there are two Atums, corresponding
to the
two types of
Adam, one human, one divine. One was the Atum who died = the Adam in whom all
men
die, as Paul
expresses the doctrine; the other is the second Atum, called Nefer-Atum, or fu
the son, who
rose again to
change the earthly into the heavenly man, in whom the dead were to be made
alive again
in Amenta, as
it was taught in Egypt some ten thousand years ago. In the Hebrew version
Atum-Iu has
been divided
and brought on in two characters which really correspond to the two Adams,
human and
divine, the
first Adam or man, who was of the earth earthly, the second Adam or man, who is
of heaven
heavenly, the
"life-giving spirit", who became Atum-Ra the "holy spirit"
in the Kamite eschatology. More of
the Genesis
survived amongst the Kabalists.
Atum at Annu,
like Ptah at Memphis, was the one god in the two characters of father and son;
the eternal
father who
was personalized in time as the ever-coming son. The birth was periodic in
phenomena.
Horus of the
inundation on his papyrus came as the shoot; lu as the fish. Thus to have any
meaning the
coming son
was the ever-coming one as a type of the eternal. The title of Ptah as Kheper
has the
meaning of
becoming. The name of the son Iu signifies the coming one. This was he who came
for ever,
first as
manifestor for the mother, "the seed of the woman", and then as the
representative of the father.
In the cult
of Ptah both characters of the father and son were combined in one god, and
both were
continued in
Atum. lu the bringer of peace was god the coming son in both religions. The
coming son, we
repeat, was
the ever-coming one. There was no advent once for all. Food and
vegetation,[Page 425] water
and light,
depended on continual repetition and renewal. This was a subject of the
astronomical
mythology, in
which the "coming" according to time and season had perennial
fulfilment. The war of
Horus the son
with the serpent of darkness was fought out nightly. His conflict with the
dragon of drought
was repeated
annually. But in the Hebrew version the "coming" has been relegated
to the domain of
prophecy. The
saviour or deliverer is to come to bruise the serpent's head once for all; and
in this passing
of mythology
into the later eschatology the ever-coming was changed into the long-expected
and, as it
turns out,
never-coming son of the Holy Spirit and a mother who was ever-virgin. It was
not the object of
the adapters
to be more explicit, but to all intents and purposes the two characters of Atum
the father-
god, who was
designated "the father of mankind", and of lu the son have been
reproduced in Genesis as
Adam the
human father and lahu-Elohim as the god.
It is the
making of Amenta by Ptah and his associate gods that has been converted into a
creation of the
heaven and
the earth in the book of Genesis. This is shown by the firmament that was
suspended in the
midst of the
waters which were under the firmament and separated from the waters which were
over the
firmament.
This is the firmament that was made by Ptah when he divided the heaven of Nut
below from
the heaven of
Nut on high, and thus suspended a lower sky above the nether earth. But when
the
heaven and
the earth were made and the work was finished, the result was a world so
unfurnished and
unfit to live
in that "no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the
field had yet sprung up" :
no rain had
fallen, and "there was not a man to till the ground" (ch. ii. 5).
This was in Amenta, the hidden
earth that
was opened by Ptah for Tum (Atum) and his associate gods to cultivate. Now the
impossibility
of the Hebrew
creation being cosmical is fixed for ever, inasmuch as the heaven and earth are
made
twice over.
In the second chapter there is a second creation of heaven and earth, and the
first creation is
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followed by
the making of a second man. The creation of the garden, in the Egyptian mythos,
is a
separate and
subsequent creation from the calling of a nether earth into existence. Amenta
was first
made, and
then the Aarru-garden was planted in Amenta. This twofold creation will account
for the two
Adams, the
man of earth and the man from heaven, or man the mortal and man the manes. In
the
mythology the
first Atum was solar. In the eschatology the second Atum is spiritual. The
garden was
made for the
manes to cultivate, and the manes represents the second Adam, who as Egyptian
is Nefer-
Atum, or Atum
in spirit - otherwise man the manes in the garden of Amenta.
In the book
of Genesis there are six creations or acts of creation, set forth as the work
of six days or
periods. (I)
The light was divided from the darkness, and there was evening and morning -
one day. (2)
The
firmamental water was divided into upper and lower, and there was a second day.
(3) The waters
were gathered
into one place for the dry land to appear; the earth put forth grass and herbs
and trees,
and there was
a third day. (4) The lights were set in the firmament for signs and seasons,
and there was
a fourth day.
(5) The creatures of the waters were brought forth and the fowls of the air,
[Page 426] and
there was a
fifth day. (6) The earth brought forth the living creatures after their kind,
including man, and
there was a
sixth day. Then in the moralizing of the mythos the work of creation being
ended on the sixth
day, the
seventh is to be solemnized as a day of rest. In the course of literalizing the
pre-extant mythos it
is said that
when Elohim finished his work he rested on the seventh day from all the work
which he had
made.
"And Elohim blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because that in it he
rested from all his
work which
Elohim had created and made" (ch. ii. 2, 3). So in the book of Amenta it
is said that the nether
earth was
created by the solar god, who rested in that which he had made, just as Ptah
was satisfied
after making
all things, and all the divine names, when like the Elohim he had finished the
work and saw
that it was good.
There is no
great difficulty in discovering the origin of the day of rest which has been
ascribed to the
Elohim upon
the seventh day of creation. Amenta was created as the place of rest for the
sleeping dead,
and also for
the god of the resting heart. It had been the work of Ptah and his associate
gods to create
the great
resting-place in the under-world. And consequently this character of Ptah, as
the maker of
Amenta, is
determined by his designation of "Ptah in the great resting-place" (Stele
of Shabaka, line 16).
The great
resting-place was created for the god who rested there, as did Atum and later
Osiris of the
resting
heart. This was the work which the creator or craftsman Ptah completed in seven
stages or
periods that
were ultimately reduced to seven days. The mount called Hetep in the earthly
paradise is
named as the
mount of rest. It was a kind of "rest-and-be-thankful" half-way up
the ascent from the world
of the dead
to the summit on the mount of glory. The word Hetep has the various meanings of
rest,
peace,
plenty, all of which were to be realized in Hetep, the garden of the blessed
dead. The great object
is "to
take possession there". The manes says, "I am united there with the
god of rest" - that is, with
Osiris, god
of the resting heart. "I take my rest in the divine domain. There is given
to me the plenty which
belongeth to
the kau and the glorified". "Rise in Hetep (the mount) blest with the
breezes, I arrive in thee,
my head is
uncovered. I am in my own domain". One of the blissful islands of this
earthly paradise is
expressly
called the isle of rest or Hetep. The voyager makes fast his bark to "the
block of moorage on
the
stream", and utters his praises to the gods who are in the garden of rest.
The garden of Amenta was
a place of
rest in the refreshing shade of Hathor’s tree. It was called the garden of
Hetep. The word
Hetep is also
spelt Hept. In fact, to judge from the hieroglyphical inscriptions in the
Pyramid of Medum, it
seems that
this was the earliest spelling of the word. Thus Amenhetep would be Amenhept.
Now Hept
(Gr.<>.pta)
in Egyptian also signifies the number seven. This may be related to the work of
creation in
seven days,
which according to the non-biblical Jewish legends represented the earthly
paradise in
seven
divisions as a figure of the celestial heptanomis, the work in seven parts
being computed as a
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Ancient
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work of seven
days, and Hept the place of rest transformed into the seventh day of rest. In
the later
Semitic
märchen, Assyrian and Hebrew, a division in time has been [Page 427]
substituted for the division
in space -
that is, the seven divisions of the astronomical heptanomis have been converted
into a
creation of
seven days, and a great day of rest has been substituted for the great
resting-place. We can
perceive the
Semitic Sabbath in the making and also where it was made. In the elder version
of the
Assyrian
legend of creation there was no Sabbath. The seventh day is a day of labour,
not a day of rest.
But
whatsoever was signified by the seven successive divisions, acts, stages, or
periods of creation that
were
ultimately commemorated by the festival of the seventh day, the Semitic Sabbath
belongs to the
superstructure,
not to the foundation, and is not original, either as Hebrew or Assyrian. Time
did not begin
with Sunday,
either as the first or the seventh day of the week. The week was preceded by
the month or
a moon, and a
moon by the year of the inundation that was commemorated by the festival of the
Great
Bear's tail.
In the Chaldean account of creation there is a hint of the solar origin of the
Sabbath. In this it
is said of
the creator, "On the seventh day he appointed a holy day. And to cease
from all business he
commanded.
Then arose the sun on the horizon of heaven". (Lines 17, 18, 19.) The day
dedicated to the
sun was
Sunday, but the solar calendar was the latest. An indefinitely more ancient
version than anything
Semitic has
been preserved in the Hawaiian legend of creation. This is said to have begun
on the 26th
day of the
month, on the day of Kane, and continued during the days named Lono, Manli,
Maku, Hilo,
and Hoaka. In
six days the creation was completed, and the seventh day, the day of Ku, became
the first
holy day. The
first and sixth of these seven days have been kept sacred ever since by all
generations of
Hawaiians.
Yet the Polynesians generally did not solemnize a weekly Sabbath, and had no week
of
seven days.
(Fornander, vol. i. p. 121; Natural Genesis, vol. ii. p. 56.) More than once we
meet with a
sixth-day
Sabbath in Africa. Dos Santos described this sixth day of rest as being
observed in the
ploughing
season by the Monomatapa, which, according to Bent (p. 341), is continued among
them today.
"At
Mangwedis during the ploughing season they only work for five consecutive days.
They observe
the sixth and
call it Muali's day. and rest in their huts and drink beer. These days are feasts
of the
ancestral
spirits or muzimos, called "the days of the holy ones who are already
dead".
A week of
seven days concluding with the Sabbath, which was at first a festival, is more
expressly
Semitic. Not
that the Egyptians had no seven-day period in their reckonings of time. The
tenait was a
period of
seven days, as well as of fourteen days or a half-moon; but a cycle of seven
days as the
measure of a
cosmogonical creation had no meaning. The seven periods of creation did not
originate
with seven
days of twenty-hours each. As will be seen, when all is put together, the
Egyptians reckoned
time upon a
scale so vast that it included the great year of the world. That is, the
heptanomis founded
upon seven
astronomes had been repeated in the great year with its seven periods in
precession which
were
represented by the seven changing pole-stars before the backward movement could
have been
calculated by
the position of the equinoctial colure. The reduced scale of the Semitic seven
days is but a
one-inch-to-the-mile
sort of [Page 428] rendering of the seven stages in precession which have yet
to be
explained.
The traditions show that one type of the under-world was the heptanomis, which
had been
mundane in
Egypt and was made celestial in the astronomical mythology. This was likewise
reproduced
in the making
of Amenta. Ptah is said to have designed the Nomes (Text of Shabaka, line 6).
The Nomes
were seven in
number. The Knemmu who assisted Ptah were seven. The creations that culminated
in
man the
speaker were seven. Also in one of the Rabbinical traditions concerning the
lower and upper, or
the earthly
and heavenly, paradise, it is said that before his fall Adam was the heavenly
dweller in a
habitation
which contained seven palaces or mansions. These, according to the Sohar, were
afterwards
rearranged to
become the abodes of the blessed. This contains a fragment of the genuine
legend when
rightly
interpreted. Adam is here considered to have been a dweller in the paradise of
the celestial
heptanomis.
This was repeated in Amenta when the lower paradise of the solar mythos was
mapped out
in seven
domains for Atum = Adam, as the land of promise destined for the glorified
elect. It is related by
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Rabbi
Manasseh Ben-Israel that the souls of men were created during the six days of
the beginning,
independently
of bodies, like the first company of the Kamite gods. These were the spirits
derived from
the external
elements that preceded the embodiment of a special soul in human form. (Nat.
Genesis, vol.
ii. p. 282.)
"True Israelites believe", says the Rabbi, "that all the souls
which have existed from the first
time, and
which shall be to the end of the world, were generated in six days of
creation". These are the
six souls of
the fish, the fowl, the beast, the reptile, and other forms of life which
preceded the seventh
soul of the
speaker, man, or Atum = Adam. The seventh of the elemental powers, in the human
shape, is
described in
the gnostic systems of the Ophites and Sethians when they teach that Ialdabaoth
called
upon the rest
of the Elohim, saying, "Come, let us make man after our own image".
They also relate that
Ialdabaoth in
the character of elder brother as the would-be father created six sons, he
himself being the
first person
in the group. They further declare that these are the seven mundane demons who
always
oppose and
resist the human race, because it was on their account that their father
(Ialdabaoth) was cast
down to this
lower world. (Irenaeus, Bk. I. ch. 30, 8.)
It is also
represented in the Rabbinical writings that the souls of the Israelites had a
higher origin than the
souls of the
Gentiles. The souls of the Goim, they say, have their origin from the external
powers,.. the
power of
klippoth or the demons, whereas the souls of the Israelites are derived from
the Holy Spirit. The
first
originated from the elemental powers that were imaged by the zootypes, and were
denounced as
evil spirits
by the later theology. As for Atum-Ra, the father of Iu, he was the Kamite holy
spirit. The souls
of the
idolators were not called men, because they were born in the totemic stage of
sociology and were
derived from
the spirits of the elements which had been imaged by the zootypes. More simply
stated,
they were not
men only because the mode of representation was pre-anthropomorphic, and the
soul of
blood was not
yet traced [Page 429] to the maternal source, or the spirit of man to the
father. In the
Babylonian
legends the totemic zootypes, which preceded the man derived from the soul of
blood, have
been confused
with the beings born of the abyss as the creatures of darkness. "Then
Belos the sun-god
came, and the
animals died, as they were not able to bear the light. Belos seeing a vast
space
unoccupied,
though by nature fruitful, commanded one of the gods to cut off his head and to
mix the
blood with
the earth, and from thence to form other men and animals which should be
capable of bearing
the
light". (Eusebius, Chron. i. 4.) This in its way is a mythical creation of
the man who was made from
the soul of
blood. In another legend a great destruction follows a rebellion called
"the revolt in heaven",
which is only
mentioned here for the sake of citing the statement that when the rebels were
destroyed or
driven out by
the supreme god, "in their room he created mankind". As we understand
the gnosis, a
group of six
totemic powers was extant before the seventh, the soul of man, was specialized
as a human
soul that was
incarnated in the blood of the motherhood, the first soul, so to say, that
could talk. This
group of six
zootypes with no human figure included is widely extended over the world. As
the Arunta tell
us, in the
Alcheringa, or Auld Lang Syne, there were no men or women, only pre-human
creatures
designated
the Inapertwa. In the Egyptian mythos the six zootypes of Sut, Horus, Shu,
Hapi, Tuamutef,
and Kabhsenuf
are followed and completed by the human figure in Amsta the man or Horus the
child.
The Arunta
version comes fresh from an almost unknown world. It may have been carried
there from
Africa, but
it is certain that the Egyptians did not derive their mysteries, mythical
legends, and sign-
language from
the natives of Central Australia. The tradition of the Inapertwa only applied
to certain
totems, six
in number (this will bear repeating). The preliminary pre-human creatures who
were made
into men and
women by the Ungambikula belonged to the six following totems: Akakia, or plum
tree;
inguitchika,
or grass-seed; echunpa, or large lizard; erliwatchera, or little lizard;
atninpirichina, or
Alexandra
parakeet; and the untania, or small rat. Here are six totemic types of
creatures that preceded
the human
voice and image. There were six groupings of elemental spirits based upon six
elemental
powers that
were imaged by means of zootypes before ever an elemental power was imaged in
the
human
likeness, or, as it was rendered at a later time, before the creation of man,
who was seventh in a
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series of
seven, or as the earliest human soul.
Miss Kingsley
gives it as the opinion of Dr. Nassau of Gaboon that the. nature-spirits
commonly affecting
human
affairs, which are believed in by the natives on the West Coast, can be
classified "fairly
completely"
in six orders (Kingsley, M. H., Travels in West Africa), The Damaras derive
from six pre-
human powers
by means of six descents or eundas. Six descents from superhuman powers would
naturally
follow for those who derived their descent from the powers, gods, or spirits
that might be
represented
by six totemic zootypes such as the serpent, crocodile, hippopotamus, lion,
hawk, and other
figures of
the elemental forces that preceded the human image as a primitive type of
power. Afterwards
the six
powers would [Page 430] account for six different classes of spirits recognized
in the animistic
interpretation
of external nature according to religion in the fetishtic phase. In India there
was a first form
of the
Aditya, six in number, who preceded the groups of seven and eight. There was
also an Egyptian
"mystery
of the six" which has not been unveiled. The seventh of the series is the
soul that was first
considered to
be human because it was the soul of man, the speaker, which in this phase was
discreted
from the
totemic souls by means of language. No distinction could have been more
natural. As we have
previously
seen in Book IV., the Osiris deceased is reconstituted for the life hereafter
by the blending of
his seven
souls. which correspond to the seven souls of Ra. And when he has become a
spirit by the
seven being
put together at last in the likeness of the ka, it is said to him, "Thy
perfect soul, O Nefer-
Uben- f
triumphant. hath the power of speech" (Rit., ch. 149, 15).
Speech was
the property of the perfect soul - that is, the highest of the seven souls -
which was
consequently
human. The Chinese also have the very ancient "six honoured ones", or
six Tsung. The
Zuni Indians
adored the six powers that preceded the seventh in the likeness of man. In
"The Wisdom of
Jesus"
or the book of Ecclesiasticus there is a description of the creation of man. It
is said that men
"received
the use of the five operations of the Lord, and in the sixth place he imparted
to them
understanding,
and in the seventh speech" (Eccles.xvii. 5). This contains a fragment of
the Egyptian
wisdom. The
creation of man from seven souls takes place in Amenta for the next life, with
speech as the
seventh
constituent. In the mythological text from Memphis there is an account of
Ptah's creation, in
which it is
said that all the limbs moved (i.e., as parts of the pauti or company of the
gods) when he
uttered the
word of wisdom which came forth from the tongue and worked a blessing upon all
things.
Speech caused
(or literally became) the making of men and the creation of the gods for Ptah
(Proc. Soc.
Bib. Arch.
vol. xxiii. pts. 4 and 5, pp. 173-4). Thus the making of man qua man is
attributed to speech in
this Kamite
creation of man as the speaker, the same as in "The Wisdom of Jesus".
This may account for
the custom,
or religious rite, performed by the Hindu father, who puts his lips to the
right ear of the newborn
babe and
mutters three times, "Speech! Speech! Speech!" This gives it a name.
The previous souls
were only
known by totemic types and semi-human sounds, not by proper names. (Kelly,
Indo-European
Folk-Lore,
pp. 145-6.)
Hindu sages
tell us that six of the seven primordial souls were born twins; the seventh
alone came into
existence as
a single soul. This too can be read by means of the gnosis. The six souls were
pre-human.
That is, they
were totemic souls. Now , the totemic zootype was the representative of both
sexes;j the
male stood
for the men, the female for the women. "Of those that are born together ,
sages have called
the seventh
single-born, for six are twins" (Rig-Veda, Wilson, ii. 131, 132). Totemic
man was born twin as
represented
by the zootype of both sexes. Six of these preceded the human figure, which as
homo or
man was born
single and had to be divided into man and woman according to the mythical
representation
of the cutting out in the second creation by Iahu-Elohim [Page 431] (Gen. ch.
ii). The twin-
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soul was what
the Egyptian Ritual describes as the one soul in two bodies (ch. 17). One of
these was
male as Shu,
the other female as Tefnut. This was the man or Adam of the first creation in
Genesis, who
was figured
as both male and female (Gen. i. 27). Shu and Tefnut were born twins, he as
brother, she as
sister, and both
under one type, that of the lion. In the same way the crocodile was female as
Apt and
male as
Sebek. Thus a single totemic type denoted a soul that was born twin when souls
were pre-
human. It is
the same doctrine when the Kabalists assert that in the beginning of the world
souls were
created by
God in pairs consisting of a male and female. The twin-soul here is a product
of the primary
creation; the
single soul belongs to the second creation.The doctrine is apparent in the
first chapter of
Genesis, when
Adam was created in the likeness of the Elohim, and was both male and female.
Whereas in
the second creation (ch. ii.) man, or Adam, is not a twin soul; he is fashioned
singly, and the
woman is
taken from the body of the man to form a consort for him. When the supreme
power of seven
was imaged in
the human likeness this constituted a mythical man as the seventh in a series
of seven
prototypes.
Thus Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is pre-eminently the man. Also, when the
group of
manes travel
round the zodiac, in the Hindu astronomy, the seventh is a divine man or a
Buddha. The
seventh
Buddha is always the man who is held to be divine. The seven Buddhas are often
portrayed in
the temples
and monasteries of Tibet, where they are better known as the seven Sang-gye,
meaning
increase of
purity, who are named: (I) He who saw through and through, (2) he who had a
crest of fire,
(3) the
preserver of all, (4) the dissolver of the round of life, (5) golden might, (6)
the guardian of light, (7)
the mighty
Shakya. The seventh is that pre-eminent personage known as Sakya-Muni or
Gautama,
whose life
and history were evolved from the pre-extant mythos, like those of the Christ
in the gospels the
true Buddha,
who could no more become historical than the Christ of the gnosis. If Buddhism
could
but explicate
its own origins it would become apparent that it is both natural and
scientific. But the blind
attempt to
make the Buddha historical in one personality will place it ultimately on the same
level with
historical
Christianity at the bottom of the ditch. The seventh Buddha that comes once in
a phoenix-cycle
-of 500 years
is the divine man, who can only be repeated as an astronomical figure - a
measurer for the
eternal in
the cycles of time. But the manifestation of the seventh, the man of the group,
has been made
exoteric as
an incarnation of the seventh Buddha in the human form on earth. The divine man
as the
seventh of a
series is yet extant and operative in British folk-lore when the seventh son of
a seventh son
is always the
great healer. The totemic soul was twin.
The human
soul was singly born as the soul of the man or woman. It was not as the Hebrew
Adam that
man was made,
but as the Egyptian Atum, earlier Tum; and Tum in Egyptian means "created
man".
Adam is a
later rendering of the name. And this "created man" was made as Atum
son of Ptah with the
aid of his
Ali or co-creators. It was they who created the senses of man, the breathing of
the nostrils, the
sight of the
eyes, the hearing of the ears, the thought of the heart, and utterance by the
tongue. [Page 432]
Man was made
according to the outline of Child-Horus sketched by Ptah; the anthrotype that
was to
supersede the
zootype. Man that is composed of seven souls, according to the doctrine, was
the product
of seven
elements. These were recognized at first as nature-powers that were ultimately
divinized as
makers or
creators. They had been divinized as the first company of the associate-gods
before the time
of Ptah, and
when Kheper-Ptah, Neb-er-ter, became supreme, the seven Ali were associated
with him in
the work of
creation, the evolution of man, and the making of the garden in Amenta. Thus
man in the
Egyptian
mythos was a late creation, which is in agreement with the legends of the
aborigines. Man was
also made
twice over, once as mortal on the earth, and once as the spirit-man or manes in
Amenta.
Hence the
first and second Adam or Atum, the man of earth and the man from heaven. These
will also
explain the
two forms of Adam in the book of Genesis (ch. i. 27 and ii. 7). The seventh of
the elemental
powers was
the soul of blood. This was represented in the elder Horus as the soul of
matter by a child
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Ancient
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that was
unseeing, inarticulate, and altogether imperfect. The soul of blood as paternal
source was
added to the
rest when Atum cut himself to produce his offspring Hu and Sau (Rit., ch. 17).
In the
Assyrian legend,
when the head of Belos is taken off the blood that gushes out is mingled with
the soil of
earth or
matter. "Thence men were formed. On this account it is that men are
rational, and partake of
divine
knowledge". That is as human beings born of the soul of blood, which in
this later creation was
added to the
six pre-human souls of Mother-earth, when the human origin was recognized as
higher than
the earlier
and pre-human source of soul, such as air, water, and earth. The blood now
mixed with the
soil of earth
is the soul of blood united with the earth or matter in the märchen. The
highest of the seven
was but a
soul descended from the mother-blood, with no immortal spark of spirit that was
afterwards
derived from
God the Father who is Atum-Ra; but it was reckoned the superior of any soul
that was
previously
derived from the external elements.The seventh alone was consequently given the
human
likeness in
Child-Horus, or in Atum.
Man is
created twice over in the book of Genesis. The first Adam is formed in the
image of the Elohim or
elemental
powers. The Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness" ( ch. i. 26). In the
second
creation man is formed by Iahu-Elohim, who "breathed the breath of life
into his nostrils and man
became a
living soul" (ch. ii. 7). These are the first and second Adams of Paul's
doctrine. "The first man
Adam became a
living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first man is of the earth,
earthy; the
second man is
of heaven" (I Cor. xv. 45-8). These two as Egyptian are Atum - Horus and
Atum-Ra, who
are identical
in nature with the first and second Horus - the soul in matter and in spirit.
The first man was
a failure. In
a gnostic version man was formed, but could not stand erect, because the seven
workmen,
the Ali or
Elohim, were unable to inspire him with an enduring soul. He writhed and
wriggled like a worm
upon the
ground. Then the "power above" took pity on him, seeing the creature
had been fashioned in his
likeness, and
shot forth a spark of life which enabled him to rise erect and live. (Nat.
Genesis, vol. ii. p.
39.)
The seventh
power in the human image can be traced in [Page 433] legendary lore. For
example,
Apollodorus
the Athenian grammarian relates that there was at one time a tradition current
in heaven that
the giants or
Titans could only be conquered by the aid of a man; and as he wrote his work on
mythology
before the
era called Christian, this has been taken as pointing to the incarnation of a
Jewish Jesus. It
was a
floating fragment of old Egypt's wisdom. In the battle with the Sebau or the
rebels, and the Sut-
Typhonians,
the powers of evil are conquered by Horus, who was incarnated in the human form
on earth
as son of the
woman, and who is victor in Amenta over death and darkness and typical rebels,
in the
person of
Amsu-Horus; the man in spirit - son of the god in human form.Thus the Titans or
rebels, called
the children
of defeat, had already been conquered by the god, who became incarnate not as a
man but
in the form
of man, from the time when Atum-Horus first assumed the human type as vehicle
of the
divine.
In the
Egyptian mythology the great change in the mode of becoming and of representing
was effected in
the cult of
Ptah - the change, that is, in the genesis of souls from the incorporation of
totemic souls by the
elemental
powers to the creation of souls in the human image by the one god, Neb-er-ter.
This change,
which runs
through all later mythology, is traceable in Egypt. Ptah is the link betwixt
the elemental powers
and the
spirit-ancestors; the link by means of which the zootype passed into the
anthrotype; the gods as
Elohim into
the one god, Atum, called the son of Ptah, or Iahu-Elohim in the book of
Genesis. Ptah is the
first one god
of the Egyptian religion whose totality was compounded from the pre-existent
powers. The
Ali or
associate-gods were now combined in him who was the one god and who comprised
the group in
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one. The
group were now the nine or the Put, and Ptah, as the all-one that was named
from the Put. The
Put-cycle of
gods, which was summed up in Ptah the one god, as father, will explain why and
how the
Elohim are
plural as a company called the Ali, and single as the one in whom the powers
were unified
called Ptah,
who was the biune parent of Atum-Horus in Amenta, and the maker of man, or
Atum, with
the aid of
the seven powers that were previously extant. The Elohim, then, we take to be a
form of the
Put-cycle of
Ptah the opener of Amenta. As a company of associate-gods they originated in
the
primordial
powers, which were seven in number; seven with the Great Mother; seven with
Anup; seven
with Taht; seven
with Horus; seven with Ptah. When grouped in the Put-cycle, with Ptah and
Atum-Horus
added as
father and son, the associate-gods are nine in number; sometimes called the
ennead of
Memphis, or
of Annu. Thus Ptah and his Ali answer to the Phoenician Elohim, who were one as
the
highest El
(in the singular) and plural in the group of the Elohim. Ptah was now portrayed
as the author of
becoming in
the human form, and thence the mythical maker of man. He had been represented
by the
beetle and
the frog as the transformer in matter. Afterwards he is imaged as the human
embryo in utero,
when he had
become the creator of a human soul distinguished from the totemic or elemental
soul,
which had
been common to man and beast.
Ptah is
portrayed in the monuments as the creator of the seventh, or human soul.
Wilkinson met with a
very rare
picture of the god [Page 434] who is alone, and who was engaged in sketching
with a pen the
figure of
Child-Horus. In other words, he is outlining an image of the human soul that
was incarnated in
the
mother-blood and personalized in Horus as the child of Isis, one form of whom
was Tum or Atum-
Horus.
Ptah is also
portrayed in the image of a male-mother. He is the earliest type of the god
with a womb in
whom the male
and female nature were united in a biune parent who was divinized as the
all-one. We
learn from
Joseph Thomson's travels that when the Masai of Central Africa get married it
is a native
custom for
the bridegroom to dress himself in women's clothes and wear them for a month
after the
marriage. He
is assuming the phase of parentage in the guise of the mother, and literally
following suit to
the female,
because the maternal type and imagery of parentage are still dominant, and thus
the father
comes into
existence, so to say, as the male-mother. The significance is the same as in
the custom of
couvade. The
father was assuming the parentage in the likeness of both sexes. Thus Ptah, or
Atum, or
Osiris,
presents a form of the same duality as the Australian "man with a
vulva", who in his primitive way
was a two-
fold figure of the all-one. To recapitulate: in the Egyptian Genesis
"created man" is Tum, later
Atum, the
original of the first man Adam. Atum was the son of the creator Ptah, the
earliest biune parent
divinized.
The seven primordial powers had been previously recognized in nature as the
offspring of the
mother. Six
of these were pre-human powers or souls developed from the external elements.
The
seventh was
the earliest human soul, born of the mother-blood. This was the blind imperfect
soul in
matter that
was imaged in Child-Horus, An-ar-ef. The soul of all the seven was matriarchal;
they were the
children of
the mother only. Two other powers were added to make up the total in the
Put-cycle or
ennead of
Memphis. The "double primitive essence" had been assigned to Ptah.
Doctrinally this was the
soul of blood
derived from the maternal source, in combination with the spirit of the male.
Thence came
the human
soul that was constituted in two halves, the soul in matter and in spirit. This
bi-unity was first
personified
in Ptah as the mother and father in one divinity, and, as the biune parent,
Ptah gave birth to
man, or
created his son Atum. In the text from Memphis the god is called "Ptah of
the earth. The mother
giving birth
to Atum" (line 14). Here Atum=Adam has a mother , an item which is omitted
from the Hebrew
version. Thus
Atum-Horus is the product of this biune parent; and the seven powers that
contributed the
seven souls
or constituent parts of created man with Ptah and Atum, and the seven
associate-gods
compose the
cycle or ennead of Annu. In this way the Put-cycle of the nine gods consisted
of Ptah and
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Ancient
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his eight
sons; an eighth one being added to the primary seven as the highest because he
was the son of
god the
father, not merely the product of the mother, like the seven Ali or Elohim.
That son of Ptah was
Tum or Atum,
born as Child-Horus, and one of Atum's names or titles is Iu the coming son, or
Iu-emhetep,
he who comes
with peace. And in this Iu we propose to identify the Jewish divinity and also
the
name of Iah,
or Iahu, distinguished from ( ) (Ihuh). The compound title Iahu-Elohim shows
that
Iahu [Page
435] is one of the Elohistic group who was continued in a new r..le as the
planter of the
garden in the
second of the two creations in the book of Genesis.
In the making
of man by Ptah and the Ali or associate-gods, it may be said that man or Tum
was created
by their
being converted into man, Tum, or Adam. It was they who made "the
dexterity of the hands and
the walking
of the feet"; also they "created the sight of the eyes, the hearing
of the ears, and the
breathing of
the nostrils". In other words, they contributed those faculties to the
creation of the human
being. Such
faculties as the sight of the hawk (Horus), the breathing force of the panting
lion (Shu), the
ears of the
jackal (Anup ), the nose or neb of the knowing ibis, the hand of the ape, and
others which had
been exalted
as superhuman and were now made use of in the creation of man or Atum by the
Kamite
Elohim. These
powers in themselves were indefinitely earlier than Ptah, but in the theology
of Memphis
they became
auxiliaries to the supreme one god, and were then held to proceed from him and
to become
his members
and his attributes. The change is indicated when it is said of Ptah, "His
associate-gods in
his presence
are the teeth and lips, the joints and hands of Atum, for these become the
associate gods"
(line 10).The
same doctrinal change is apparent in the Ritual (ch. 17,4), when it is said of
the supreme
one god,
"It is Ra creating his members, which became those gods who are with
Ra", Iu, the coming one,
is the
ever-coming son of the father who was re-born as his own son; and lu (or Atum)
with his associate-
gods
corresponds to lahu-Elohim in the Hebrew Genesis, who follows the gods of the
primary creation in
the first
chapter. Thus Ptah and his Ali are the prototypes or originals of the Elohim,
in both the singular
and the
plural use of the word; whilst lahu-Elohirn answers to lu and his
associate-gods in the second
creation.
This development in the divine character may supply a rational explanation of
the discrepancy
concerning
the name of lahu in the first two books of the Pentateuch. It is related in
Exodus (ch. vi. 2, 3)
that
"lahu spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am lahu. I appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and
unto Jacob as
EI-Shaddai, but by my name lahu I was not made known to them'". Whereas
the name of
lahu had most
certainly been known from the time of the second creation (Gen. ii.). This
therefore must
be a question
of the nature, not merely of the name of the deity. If lahu were one of the
group of the Ali =
Elohirn he
would be a son of the mother, one of the Baalim who preceded the fatherhood of
Ihuh or
Jehovah. The
god who was known by the name of El was also one of the Baalim, Elohim, or Ali;
the first
company of
the associate gods, who ruled under the matriarchate. Atum was born
"Iu" as the son of Ptah
at Memphis,
and the same god became the father as Atum-Ra at On. The development is to be
traced in
the fact that
the first Iu as Egyptian was only a form of god the mother's son, whereas the
later Ihuh had
attained the
status of the maker, as god the father, who was Atum-Ra in Egypt.
Chapter v.
announces that "this is the book of the generations of Adam". In this
the previous "generation
of the heaven
and the earth" are represented as the generations of Adam, who meanwhile
had been
transformed
from the divine Atum of Egypt into the human [Page 436] Adam of the Jewish
writings, and the
genuine
mythos transmogrified into a spurious history. The translators of the Memphian
text point out the
extreme
likelihood that there were two "originally independent texts" which
have been artificially blended
to produce a
deceptive appearance of unity. This agrees with the fundamental difference
betwixt the
Elohistic and
Jehovistic versions in the book of Genesis, those of the Elohim and
lahu-Elohim, in which
two accounts
of the creation have been run into one. It is plainly apparent in the book of
Genesis that two
originally
independent legends of creation have been imperfectly welded together to give
an appearance
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Ancient
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of unity.
This is proved by the two different beginnings in which the heaven and earth
are formed, and
man is made
twice over. The first chapter contains the generations of the heaven and the
earth when
these were
created by the Elohim. The second contains the generations of the heaven and
the earth
when they
were created in the day that earth and heaven were made by lahu-Elohim. As
Egyptian, these
were (I) the
Ali, or associate-gods with Neb-er-ter or Kheper-Ptah; and (2) lu the son of
God, who
became the
one god of both the Egyptians and the Jews, who, as we shall show, were the
worshippers
of Iu = lahu.
The man
created by the Elohim, or Ali, was totemic man, like the legendary Adam with
the tail of an ape,
a lion, or
other zootype. It was thus the elemental powers were represented: Sut by the
hippopotamus;
Sebek by the
crocodile; Atum by the lion; lu by the ass; Seb by the goose; Taht by the Ibis;
Anup by the
jackal;
Kabhsenuf by the hawk, in whose likenesses totemic men were imaged. This first
man was the
Adam, who
failed and fell from lack of the vitalizing spark of the individual fatherhood;
the man who was
only born of
the group in communal marriage under the matriarchate. These totemic forbears
of man may
also account
for a Rabbinical tradition in which it is related that previous to the creation
of Eve the man
Adam entered
into sexual intercourse with the animals. Which is doubtless an ignorant
misinterpretation
of the
totemic status of man and animals made by theologians who were ignorant of
totemic sign-
language.
Some of the Rabbins asserted that the first man, Adam, was created in the
Garden of Eden
with a
taillike that of an ourang-outang. His tail was afterwards cut off to improve
his appearance. The
legend
contains a fragment of the mythos which has been reduced to the status of Jewish
märchen. This
may furnish
another link betwixt the Hebrew Adam and the Egyptian Atum, as the
fiery-spirited ape was a
type of Atum,
the solar god of the garden in Amenta.
The
pre-existent superhuman powers or associate-gods contributed all that they had
previously attained
for
themselves to constitute the higher type of god as father. Atum was born as
Horus or lu, child of the
mother, and
afterwards developed into Atum-Ra as god the father. Hence he became the maker
or
creator of
gods and men as the begetter, who succeeded the transformer Kheper-Ptah. The
seven
primordial
powers had been recognized and divinized as offspring of the old First Mother.
The Great
Mother was
combined with the male in Ptah. Atum, or "created man", was formed by
Ptah as an
evolution
from the seven elemental [Page 437] powers. These became the seven souls of
Atum-Ra,
otherwise
called the seven souls of man; the seven as elements or powers that went to the
making of the
manes in
Amenta, or the human being: when the rendering was literalized. Thus the
evolution of man
according to
the Egyptian wisdom, was from seven powers of the elements, on which a doctrine
of the
seven souls
was founded. Six of these had been pre-human souls. The seventh alone attained the
human type
and status, whether as Child-Horus or the man as Atum the first father. These
souls of life
had been
identified and divinized in the mythology: the soul of water as the fish of
Sebek; the breathing
force as the
lion of Shu, the "creeping thing" of earth as the beetle of
Kheper-Ptah. Such was the creation
of man.
according to the Egyptian wisdom. The seven elemental powers. then furnished
his seven
constituent
parts, or seven souls, as co-workers with Ptah, and merged themselves in Atum
or were
absorbed in
created man. In the second chapter of Genesis the god Iahu succeeds the Elohim.
As an
Egyptian
deity Iu = Iahu was the son of Ptah. The oneness of the father and son, with
the son as
representative
of the father, is a doctrine that was founded in the cult of Ptah at Memphis
and
perpetuated
in the religion of Atum-Ra at Annu. It is Atum who says he is both the closer
and the opener,
and he is but
one (Rit., ch. 17). And it is the father, whether as Ptah or Atum, who comes into
being as his
own son.
Also, when Osiris has been mutilated by the murderer Sut he is reconstituted by
Horus, and the
father lives
again in and as the son. It was by his ever-coming and continual rebirth that
the son brought
life and
immortality or continuity to light as demonstrator in phenomena on behalf of
god the father.
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The earliest
Egyptian type of a creator is the moulder or potter. The god Khnum, for
example, is depicted
as the potter
in the act of forming man from the matter of earth. Ptah, sometimes called the
son of
Khnum, is
likewise the divine potter. He is portrayed at Philae in the act of heaping
plastic clay upon the
potter's
table from which he is about to form the image of man, which he had sketched in
the likeness of
Child-Horus.
Previously the goddesses and gods were shaped in the likenesses of zootypes.
Khnum
himself was
ram-headed; Kheper, the former, was beetle-headed. Up to the time of Ptah, or
Bes, the
negroid
pygmy, the human likeness was not given to any god; and his son Atum-Horus is
the earliest
divinity in
perfect human form. Now, as Egyptian Atum is the original of the Hebrew Adam,
it follows that
we are
witnessing the creation of Adam from the earth in a mythical representation,
when Ptah, the
potter,
shapes the archetypal man as his son Atum from a lump of plastic clay.
We are also
witnessing the creation of man, or of Tum, the son of Ptah, in the human
likeness, when "the
associate-gods
as the Ali or EIohim created the sight of the eyes and the hearing of the ears,
the
breathing of
the nostrils, and sent up that which gave pleasure to the father". That is
to Ptah, who is the
father of Tum
in this creation of man by the Put-cycle of the primordial powers, which
corresponds to the
first
creation of Adam by the Elohim in the first chapter of the Hebrew Genesis.
"Then was ordained the
utterance of
every decision of the tongue, which repeats the deliberation of the
heart". [Page 438]. "Now
the creation
of the gods", that is to say "of Tum and his associate-gods, was when
proclamation was
made of all
the divine names in his wisdom". "The associate-gods in his presence
are as the teeth and
lips, the
joints and hands of Tum, for these become the associate-gods", or the
associate-gods became
the members
and powers of Tum, Atum or Adam the created man, who was formed in the likeness
of
lahu-Elohim.
We are told in the texts that "men are mortal since the time of Ra",
that is since the time
when a father
in heaven or in Amenta was depicted in the image of man instead of being
represented by
some
pre-human and totemic type. This was Atum. Atum in the solar mythos was Ra in
his first
sovereignty,
and Atum = Hebrew Adam was primordial man. Otherwise stated, Atum was the first
god
delineated in
the form of man. Hence men are mortal or human since the time of Atum-Ra (Rit.,
ch. 17).
Previously
they might be imaged as beetles and frogs in the time of Ptah, kaf-apes in the
time of Taht,
crocodiles in
the time of Sebek, and hippopotami, giraffes, or black vultures in the time of
Sut. This
difference
betwixt the animal and human types is also recognized in relation to Ra (Rit.,
ch. 153, A) when
the first
creatures or beings are called "the ancestors of Ra" and "the
ancestors of Seb", and are
designated
"worms” to express their inferiority. They were mere reptiles in
comparison with the human
type. In the
Hebrew Genesis, when the man as Adam was created ( ch. i. 26) he was to have
dominion
over all
creatures of the water, air, and earth. And Atum, or Tum in the Ritual ( ch.
79), is designated "the
Lord of all
creatures", that is when he makes his appearance in the figure of man, who
is described as
being
"in the form of the Lord of all creatures" (Rit., ch. 82 ). Atum, who
comes as the unique one god in
the form of
man, is hailed in the Ritual as the lord of heaven who "issues forth from
the earth and
createth
whatever is begotten", and "who giveth vigour to the men now
living". "I am summed up as
Atum",
says the speaker (Rit., ch. 83). As Atum he exclaims, "I am a soul, and my
soul is divine. It is the
self-originating
force". The speaker, in the character of Atum-Ra, who makes his advent as
a man,
explains that
the seven Uraeus- divinities formed his body, but his soul is divine. It is an
image of the
eternal.
These Uraei were a type of the seven primordial powers that were grouped and
unified in one,
whether as
god or man. They are companions, seven in number, who became the associate-gods
of
Ptah in his
creative work, and who were afterwards absorbed in Atum as constituents of his
body, or the
means of his
embodiment as man.
The ascent of
soul through various elemental phases of existence is alluded to in one of the
"sayings of
Jesus"
when it is said that the fowls of the air, the beasts of the earth, and the
fishes of the sea all "draw
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Ancient
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us" to
the kingdom. These led the way as elemental and pre-human souls. A soul of the
air was imaged
by the bird;
a soul of earth was imaged by the beast, or reptile; a soul of water by the
fish; a soul of
vegetation by
the shoot or branch; and so on through the series, all of which were offspring
of the Great
Mother. But
the highest soul was now derived from god the father as an effluence of the
holy spirit.
Therefore it
is said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you; and whosoever shall know
himself shall find it"
. "Know
yourselves (then), and you shall be aware that ye are sons of [Page 439] the
Father". Horus in his
resurrection,
at his second advent, came to proclaim the father as the begetter of a spirit
that should
attain
eternal life. He also came to personate that spirit in the likeness of the
father to the manes in
Amenta. Atum,
the Egyptian holy spirit, was the author of that spirit by which totemic man
became a
living soul.
With the Egyptians the soul was of both sexes. The divine being, as Ptah, Atum,
or Osiris,
was of a
biune nature. Hence Ptah and Osiris are portrayed as the male and female in one
image, and
this one
prototypal soul was discreted as human in the two sexes. In passing through
Amenta the human
soul is
represented as the male accompanied by the female, the wife, sister, or some
other female as
supplemental
to the male. This soul, divided in the two halves of sex, was united again in
establishing an
eternal soul.
One form of the dual type is imaged by the twins, Shu and his sister Tefnut,
who are
blended in
Tattu. They represent the soul that had been discreted in two sexes which is
joined in one
again to
fulfil the likeness of the eternal spirit Atum-Ra, who was self-divided in
creating the two sexes.
Tefnut, the
sister soul, was absorbed in Shu the brother who wears her emblem on his head,
and who is
the two-fold
type of a dual soul now unified in one. Thus the soul that lived for ever was
held to be
established
for eternity by the female being blended with the male. Now amongst the
primitive races,
African,
Melanesian and others, the women will volunteer to be strangled at the funeral,
or buried alive in
the graves of
their husbands (or the chiefs), believing it to be solely in company with the
male that they
can reach the
realms of bliss; and the favourite wife in the abode of the blessed is held to
be the one who
meets her
death with the greatest fortitude. That is, by the female being blended with
the male in death,
as Tefnut was
blended with, or absorbed in, Shu.
When the
human soul had been derived from the essence of the male instead of the blood
of the female,
the woman was
naturally derived from the man, as she is in the second of the Hebrew creations
described in
the book of Genesis. A soul derived from Atum was dual in sex. This soul was
divided into
Adam and Eve,
the typical two sexes of the Hebrew legend. Adam was Atum in the original
mythos, and
the soul
derived from Atum was discreted in Adam and Eve, as the two sexes derived from
the one
primordial
soul, which was figured first as the soul of Shu and Tefnut in the Egyptian
mythos. Tefnut was
not cut out
of the side of Shu, but she was depicted as the hinder half of the lion with
Shu as the forepart.
Atum was the
lion as representative of the soul or force, and the lion was severed in two
parts, head
and tail, as
the dual type of Shu and Tefnut, which preceded the anthropomorphic
representation in Adam
and Eve. So
late is the Hebrew rendering compared with the Egyptian. The
"self-splitting" of Atum is
shown in the
mutilation of his members. Hence we have made the suggestion that in the rite
of sub-
incision
practised by the most primitive of races, like the Australian Arunta, this
"self-splitting" of the male
denoted the
claim of the man to being the potential source of both sexes, and that, whereas
the male
was derived
from the female under the matriarchate, it was now asserted that the woman was
made from
the man in a
process of self-splitting illustrated by the practice of sub-incision, and by
the later creation of
the female
from the male in the mythology. [Page 440] Queen Hatshepsu claimed that the
true image of
the creator
was formed by a combination of the mother and the male in one, which image she
personated
under her title of Mat-Ka-Ra, the true image of Ra, but gave pre-eminence to
female nature
as the
bringer-forth from the beginning. The picture of the male endeavouring to take
the place of the
female as
producer of the child is at times exceedingly pathetic. He carved the likeness
of the female
member on his
own, as do the Arunta in their rites to-day, and masqueraded as'' the man with
a vulva".
He wore the
woman's garb in marriage. In the custom of couvade he went to bed to become a
mother
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Ancient
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like Ptah,
and to nurse the new born little one.
In the
earliest mythology the woman was dominant. Men derived their descent from the
mothers. This
was in the
time of the first creation. In the second, when the woman was derived from the
man, (even by
a surgical
operation), the male comes uppermost, the matriarchal woman succumbs to
patriarchal man.
This is
glanced at obliquely in the doom pronounced upon the woman by lahu-Elohim for
"plucking the
forbidden
fruit". "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and conception; in sorrow
shalt thou
bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee". There
is to be an
end of matriarchal supremacy, and descent, as previously reckoned from the
motherhood, is
to be
suppressed in this the second of two creations for the Adamic race. The two
races of Adam are
referred to
by Esdras (I I. vi. 55-56) : "O Lord, thou madest the world for our sakes.
As for the other
people, which
also come of Adam, thou hast said that they are nothing, but be like unto
spittle". Both
were Adamic,
however, but the first came from the red earth or the mother-blood only; the
second were
derived from
the fatherhood. In the Latin version of Esdras those who are nothing are the
people of the
first-born
world, whereas those of the second creation are called the
"only-begotten". In the mythical
rendering of
this two-foldness the first Horus was born but not begotten. He was the child
of the mother
only. The
second Horus is the only begotten of the father, twice born and once begotten.
In the primary
phase he
corresponds to the totemic people who were born under the matriarchate, those
of the firstborn
world. In the
second he is a representative of the people who are called the "only
begotten"
because they
are the children of the fathers. The two primary castes or classes of Aryas in
India, the
sons of light
and the children of darkness, were based upon the same original distinction
betwixt those
who were born
of the matriarchate and those who are begotten under the divinized fatherhood.
The
Rabbins have
retained some fragments of totemic tradition without the gnosis. It is said in
the Targum of
Palestine,
"The Lord God created man in two formations". This dual formation, or
creation, is common to
the märchen,
which we are tracing to the original mythos. The first men recognizable were
made of red
earth, which,
when interpreted, means that flesh was shapen from the mother's blood. Then,
say the
Melbourne
blacks, the god Pungel blew the spirit of life into the man at his navel (Nat.
Gen. vol. ii. pp.
34-40). The
Arunta tribes likewise hold. that the animistic spirit enters the navel to
cause conception in
their women.
In the Egyptian texts it is [Page 441] also said of those who derive from the
mother, the Amu,
the Tamehu,
and the negroes, "Sekhet has created them and she creates their
souls", the souls that were
created under
the matriarchate, and were only souls of blood, whereas the Ruti were derived
from Ra the
holy spirit.
In a magical text supposed to be of Akkadian origin there is a version of the
"cutting out" of the
woman from
the man which is a little nearer to nature than the creation of the female from
a rib of the
male in the
Hebrew Genesis. It is said the woman was derived from the flank of the man.
(Boscawen.)
Scattered
fragments of the ancient wisdom now identified as Kamite are often to be found
in what the
Christian
writers ignorantly scout as the wild and foolish fables or the absurd fancies
of egregious
Talmudists.
Here is an instance. It is related that the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on
Adam whilst he
extracted
something from his members which was dispersed over the globe so that the whole
earth might
be inhabited
by his seed (Endeckt. Judenthum). This account is nearer to the original than
the version
given in
Genesis. The creation of the human race by Atum is biological. The "double
primitive essence” of
life was
first assigned to Ptah. This consisted of blood and protozoa, and the twin
source was
personalized
in Atum, who as creator was an image of the male and female blended in one
person. Atum
is described
as producing his children by spontaneous emission, and also by the drawing of
blood from
his members,
which was a way of showing the duality of source that was made one in the
primal parent
thus
personified in Atum or in Adam, and in the male with the image of the female
cut twice over on his
member, once
in the ovoid figure and once in the opening by sub-incision.
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According to
the second Hebrew account of creation, "Iahu-Elohim formed man of the dust
of the ground
and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life" (Gen. ii. 7), which can have no
direct relationship to aught
that ever did
occur in this our human world, nor had it any such signification in the
esoteric version of the
mystery
teachers. But this can be followed in the mysteries of Amenta, in which Ptah
was the vivifier of
the manes for
the after-life. The process of vivification was by opening the mouth of the
dead and
inspiring the
breath of life into the nostrils. In the chapter by which the mouth of a person
is opened for
him in the
earth of Ptah the Osiris pleads, "Let my mouth be opened by Ptah, and let
the muzzles which
are on my
mouth be loosed by the god of the domain. Let my mouth be opened by Ptah with
that
instrument of
steel or ba-metal wherewith he openeth the mouths of the gods and the
manes". (Renouf,
Rit., ch.
23.) Breath was restored to those who had been deprived of it. In the chapter
by which air is
given in the
nether-world it is said, "O Atum, let there come to me the air which is in
thy nostrils" (chs. 54
and 56).
Again, the Osiris says, "My nostrils are opened in Tattu", the place
of being permanently
established;
and by these ceremonies performed in mysteries man became a breathing soul
after he had
passed into
the land of life. For it was the man who had died on earth to reappear as a
sahu-mummy in
Amenta whose
mouth was opened and his nostrils inspired with the breath of a second life
derived from
Atum-Iu = Iu-Elohim.
Atum likewise is the giver of breath in the new life of [Page 442] Amenta. He
gives it
to the spirit
in the egg. This is a re-creation of Adam, or man, as manes in the earth of
eternity, not the
creation of a
human being from the dust on the surface of our earth, as it has been
misrendered in the
Hebrew
version.
The legend of
the fall is not reproduced in the first account of the Hebrew creation. In
this, homo had
been created
male and female in the likeness of the Elohim or the powers which were imaged
by
zootypes. The
first Adam was totemic man with a tail, who is said to have had connection with
all or any
of the
animals. In the second chapter of Genesis the first formation by the Elohim is
not recognized in the
human figure
as man. For it is said "there was not a man to till the ground". Now,
the real man comes into
being as
"a living soul". Iahu-Elohim breathes into his nostrils the breath of
life. Iahu-Elohim is the author
of a new
creation; and it is this second Adam for whom the garden eastward is planted in
Eden. "And
there he put
the man whom he had formed", into the garden of Eden to cultivate it, or
"to dress it and to
keep it"
(ii. I 5). These two creations answer to the two creations in the Egyptian
Genesis, which are the
creation of
Amenta by Ptah and his associate-gods the Ali = Elohim, and the creation of the
garden for
Atum and his
associate-gods. In the Hebrew, Iahu and his Elohim take the secondary place of
Tum and
his
associate-gods in the original. And however shadowy some of this may seem, the
shadow is all there
was to go
upon so long as the substance was out of sight - the substance which is
Egyptian.
The Litany of
Ra describes itself as being "the book of the worship of Ra", and
identifies Atum with Ra in
Amenta. It is
said that "when anyone reads this book, the porcelain figures are placed
upon the ground at
the hour of
sunset - that is, of the triumph of Ra over his enemies in Amenta" (Litany
of Ra). When he
arrives in
the Amenta at sunset, "his form is that of the old man"; in his
resurrection his form is that of the
lion. He sets
as Ra ; he rises again as Horus. Atum in Amenta is the hidden soul of life that
was imaged
by the
nocturnal sun. He is the supreme power who dwells in darkness and causes the
principles to
arise. He is
"the pillar of Amenta", like the Tat with which Ptah supported the
sky. He is manifested or
born as his
own son; he who was Ra as father is Horus as the son - Atum in the western
mount, and
Horus in the
east. He is worshipped as the supreme power in seventy-five characters, under
the same
number of
names. Atum is the one god who is always depicted in the human form, and who
therefore
enters Amenta
in the shape of man for the overthrowal of Apap the monster and all the powers
of evil.
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Atum not only
passed into the Hebrew legends as the earthly father in the book of Genesis,
but also as
the Adam
Kadmon ( ) of the Kabalah, who is the primordial, archetypal man, the heavenly
man or man
from heaven. The first Adam, like the first Horus, was finite and imperfect;
the second was
infinite and
perfect. These are the first and second Adam according to the doctrine of Paul,
who tells us
that
"the first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is of heaven".
The first man Adam became a
living soul.
[Page 443] The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit, that is not
first which is spiritual,
but that
which is natural. Now, as Atum is the god who followed Ptah as a birth of the
Put-cycle, he is the
tenth, and
the god of the ten circles of Ra (Rit., ch. 18) is now called the creator of
the nine. This was
done in the
process of compounding and unifying the powers, and of exalting the latest in
the
development
to the position of the first in status. The present point is that in an address
to Amen, a form
of Atum, it
is said, "The gods proceeded from thee. Thou didst create the nine gods at
the beginning of all
things, and
thou wast the lion-god of the twin lion-gods". (Budge, The Gods of the
Egyptians, vol. ii. p.
88.) This was
in the course of making the latest in development first in status, which was
the common
course in the
evolution of Ra. Thus in the cycle of Ptah the gods were nine in number. With
Atum added
as Ra, the
number is ten; and as Ptah was called the father of the eight, so Atum is the
father of the nine.
In the hymns
to Amen-Ra he is adored as one and the same with Atum; hence we infer that
"Amen" is a
later title
of Atum as the hidden god of Amenta, the secret earth, the garden in which was
made for him
by his father
Ptah. The object of the present comparison is to suggest that these ten powers
or potencies
were the
originals of the ten sephiroth which constituted the heavenly Adam Kadmon of
the Kabalists,
and which,
according to the metaphysical doctrine, were the means whereby the En-Soph, the
infinite or
boundless,
manifested within bounds (Ginsburg, The Kabalah). Atum, as we reckon, was the
builder of
the heaven in
ten divisions which preceded the final one in twelve.
There is no
garden of Eden created in the first chapter of Genesis. No tree of life or
knowledge was
planted, nor
is there any prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree. On the contrary,
the primal pair,
the male and
female, are told that every herb and every tree are given to them for food. The
theology of
the Elohim
differs from that of Iahu-Elohim. This agrees with a non-Semitic version of the
creation legend
(Records, New
Series, vol. vi.), in which there is no garden created, no mention of man being
placed in
the garden to
tend it; no tree of life, nor tree of knowledge; and no temptation by the
serpent, or story of
the Fall. The
primal paradise, that of Shu and the seven support-gods in Am-Khemen, is thus
differentiated
from the garden of Ptah in the secondary creation or representation. To reach
the Kamite
root of the
matter we have to distinguish betwixt the making of Amenta and the planting of
the garden
eastward.
When "the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them", man was formed;
then
Iahu-Elohim planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom
he had formed, to
dress it and
to keep it. We have now to tell the story of Eden from the indefinitely older
documents,
legendary
fragments of which have been mixed up together by the Elohistic and Jehovistic
narratives in
the book of
Genesis.
Amenta and
the garden of rest were not created for man the mortal, as mortal, on this
earth. The man
who was
brought into being and placed in the garden to protect the tree of life and
defend it from the
depredations
of the evil Apap, the serpent of darkness, the dragon of drought, the devouring
reptile, was
man in the
likeness of Atum, or [Page 444] man the manes; the only man in the garden of
Amenta,
whether this
is called the Aarru-Sekhet (field) or gan-Eden. The primal paradise was founded
on the
natural fact
of the oasis. Following this, the fundamental idea of a paradise made by human
workmanship
is an
enclosure in which there was a tree or plants for food and an unfathomable
well-spring of water for
drink. It was
the oasis with some kind of fence about it, which survives in the "little
garden walled around"
that is sung
of in a modern hymn. Now, when the nomads of the equatorial regions wandered
northward
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they left
their primal paradise behind them as a geographical locality. This suffered a
subsidence, in
common with
the southern pole, and was hidden beneath the horizon to become the legendary
paradise
that sank
down under the waters and was lost, as would be indicated by the disappearing
guide-stars, to
become a
subject of the Egyptian astro-mythology.
The legend of
a paradise, or state of supreme blessedness, that was lost through the eating
of forbidden
food, or in
not keeping the law of tabu, is indigenous to Inner Africa. It is the story of
the first man,
Khentu, in
Uganda, previously cited. Dr. Nassau offers evidence that the Bantu tribes (who
extend over a
quarter of
the continent) have the legend of a great chief who always warned people not to
eat the fruit of
a certain tree,
but who ate of it himself and died. In another native legend it was a woman who
brought
the fruit of
a forbidden tree to her village. She swallowed it to hide it, and then became
possessed of an
evil spirit,
which was the beginning of witchcraft. (Nassau, F., Fetishism in West Africa,
p. 40.) It is an
ancient
tradition that the homeland of the human race was actual at the sources of the
Nile. Milton
alludes to
and repeats it in his "Paradise under the Aethiop line by Nilus'
head". The Rabbins likewise
affirm that
"Paradise is localized under the middle line of the world, where the days
are always of equal
length".
That is in equatorial regions. Such a tradition, however true, could only come
to us by means of
mythology and
the folk-tales. The Sekhet-Aarru or field of papyrus-reed was one name of this
oasis on
high, which
was a heaven of boundless food and drink, and therefore a paradise of plenty.
The point to
be
established now is that water and vegetable food were the primeval elements of
life in equatorial
Africa in
such abundance as to constitute a permanent ideal; and these were constellated
later in the
northern
heaven by the Egyptians as a picture of an earthly paradise that "once
upon a time",
somewhere or
other, had been geographical. Now, this circumpolar paradise upraised by Shu in
Am-
Khemen was
reproduced with improvements and additions in the earthly paradise or garden of
Amenta,
the stellar
imagery being repeated in the solar mythos. The mount of glory, the tree on the
summit, the
source of the
water of life, the Apap-reptile of drought, the youthful hero and other types
established in
the upper
paradise, were duplicated in the paradise below - the garden enclosed by Ptah
for Atum his
son to
cultivate. The upper was the circumpolar paradise upon the stellar mount of
glory in the region of
the stars
that never set. At first there was the water only, called the celestial sea or
lake. The pole was
imaged by the
stalk, the reed or papyrus that was planted in the waters as the sign of a
fixed support in a
double sense.
This [Page 445] became the later tree in the midst of the garden or cultivated
enclosure. In
the Pyramid
Texts it is called the khat-en-ankhu or tree of life, on the fruit of which the
gods and the
glorified
were fed. When the garden in Amenta was created by Ptah this paradise of rest
was repeated in
the earth of
eternity, to become the earthly paradise of the manes in the Book of the Dead.
As previously
shown, the Jewish Kabalists preserve the tradition of an upper and a lower
paradise.
Manasseh
Ben-Israel says, "Those who are learned in the Kabalah affirm that there
is a paradise here on
earth
below". Between the two it is said there is a pillar fixed that joins the
two together, which is called "
the strength
of the hill Zion" (Nishmath KaJim, ff. 25, 26; .Stehelin vol. ii. pp.
2-8), and which corresponds
to the ladder
and the mount in the Ritual. The upper paradise, he says, is called by seven
names: ( I) The
bundle of
life, (2) the tabernacle of the Lord, (3) the holy hill, (4) the courts of the
Lord, (5) the house of
the Lord, (6)
the hill of the Lord, (7) the holy place. He likewise gives the seven
appellations of the lower
paradise :
(I) The garden of Eden, (2) the palace of the Lord, (3) the land of the living,
(4) the sanctuary
of God, (5)
the city of God, (6) the dwelling of the Lord, (7) the lands of the living.
Notwithstanding the
vagueness of
a later generalization, we may see ( I) the garden of Amenta in "the
garden of Eden"; (2)
the palace of
the prince in " the palace of the Lord" (Rit., ch. I); (3) the earth
of the living in "the land of
the
living"; (4) the shrine in the midst of the earth in "the sanctuary
of God". The ladder that is raised up in
Amenta for
the glorified to get a glimpse of the gods (Rit., ch. 149), when the manes
says, "I raise my
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Ancient
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ladder up to
the sky to see the gods", is repeated in the pillar that is the means of
communication betwixt
the lower and
the upper paradise. By this (says the Jalkut Kodash, f. 57, C. 2) they are
joined together,
and it is
called " the strength of the hill Zion", the hill which touches the
sky being another Egyptian figure
of the means
of ascent. "By this pillar, on every Sabbath and festival, the righteous
climb up, and refresh
themselves
with a glimpse of the divine majesty, till the end of the Sabbath or festival,
when they slide
down and
return to the lower paradise". The heptanomis is repeated in the plan of
both the lower and
upper
paradise. In both there are seven mansions or dwellings for the reward of the
righteous. All the
glory, the
excellency, the delight which the righteous obtain in the upper paradise is
prepared for them in
the lower
paradise. In the vignettes to the Ritual the ba-soul is seen ascending and
descending the
ladder to
visit the mummy in the tomb. In like manner it is said in Nishmath Kajim
(F.28.c. I) that every
twelve months
after leaving the body the deceased descend and visit it, because they cannot
be
absolutely
separated from their mummies.”
Like other
mythical types, the two-fold paradise passed on into the legendary lore of
various lands. It is to
be seen in
the enclosure of Yima in the Avesta. In one form this is Eran Veg, the paradise
that was in the
beginning, or
in the first time, the paradise upon the mount of glory answering to the
Am-Khemen that
was upraised
by Shu. Amenta, the secret earth of eternity, is also identifiable when it is
said the human
race shall be
reconstituted in Yima's enclosure; and for that reason it was made in a secret
place=Amenta
(Avesta). [Page 446] It was in Amenta, the secret earth, that Osiris and the
Osirified were
reconstituted
for the life hereafter. The garden of Eden in the Hebrew Genesis is called the
garden
eastward.
This is the position of the Aarru-garden in Amenta. It was on the eastern side
of the mount of
glory , in
the very depths of dawn. According to the Ritual, life originated in the garden
eastward. Hence it
is there the
man as manes inhales the breath of a new life (ch. 57), and drinks the water of
life and
plucks the
fruit from the tree of life. An oasis is the figure that was followed by Ptah
in making the garden
of Aarru in
Amenta. A mound or rampart is described as built around the water and the
plants or tree at
the centre,
to protect them and to keep the Apap-serpent from the sacred precincts where
Atum-Ra
"frequenteth
the persea tree of life". "I know this field of Aarru, with the
ba-enclosure", says the Osiris in
the Ritual (
ch. 109, 4). The enclosing wall was made of ba, a word that meant earth at one
time, then
iron, and
lastly steel, as the rampart was characterized according to the progress made
in work from
earth to iron
and from one metal to another. This zeriba or barrier notwithstanding, the
destroyer night by
night and
year after year was continually breaking into the beautiful garden of Aarru, to
drink up the water
and to wither
the tree of life. The abyss within the earth from whence the water welled with
life in the
beginning,
the abyss that is configurated in the southern heaven, was repeated in making
the garden of
Amenta. It is
described in the Ritual as the Tuat "which nobody can fathom", which
"sends forth light in
the dark
night", and "the offerings from which are eatable plants" (ch.
172). Also there are two lakes of
water in
Amenta, one of which is designated "the great Deep" (Rit., ch.17).
This agrees with the abyss
which nobody
can fathom (ch. 172). Thus the beginning with the abyss, the breaking forth of
light, the
water welling
from the abyss, and the primeval food issuing from the water were repeated and
preserved.
The tree of
life was planted in the water of life as the persea or ash, which is the tree
of life by name in
Egyptian, and
which had taken the place of the papyrus-reed as the sign of vegetation.
When the
garden of Eden was created the tree of life is said to be in the midst of the
garden, "and a river
went out of
Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became four
heads". We shall
find the same
water going forth from the Aarru-garden in Amenta. The original river that
issued from the
lake of the
abyss at the centre of the garden is determined by the 150th chapter of the
Ritual, in which it
is said the
fourteenth division is "the domain of Kher-aba; the deity in it is the
Nile". The river that went
forth from
the circumpolar paradise represented the Milky Way, whereas the water that
issued from the
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midst of the
garden in Amenta is the divinized river Nile (Rit., ch. 149). Also in this form
the celestial Nile
is traced to
its earthly source in the lakes and to the powers of the inundation or high
flood in the south.
Thus the
Egyptian Ritual, which is not to be gainsaid, indubitably shows that the river
which " went out of
Eden to water
the garden" in the original version of the mythos was the river Nile
reproduced as the
water-source
of life in the garden of Amenta.
On entering
the lower earth the departed spirit prays, "May there [Page 447] be given
to me a homestead
in the fields
of Aarru" (Rit., ch. 15). And again, the speaker for the pair says,
"Open ye to the gods (or
divinized
spirits) who come to cultivate the soil and grow the food" (in this earth
of eternity). "Let the god
Amsu, the
divine husbandman, give me the ground to till. Let the god of green things open
his arms to
me", as
giver of abundance. (124,5.) In the Egyptian original this delightful garden is
the place in which
the spirit
was refreshed "under any type it wished" - a mode of saying that it
offered all that heart could
desire, and
to wish was to have. It was the typical land of grapes and peaches, where the
plenty flowed
in rivers of
milk and honey according to the Hebrew report. But it was likewise a land of
labour and
industry - no
lubber-Iand of lotus-eating laziness. In the true Egyptian representation
worship is work, and
in these
fields of food —
"They
suck no honeycomb of drowsy peace
Because
ennobling natural cares all cease,
They live no
life, as many dream, caressed
By some vast
tideless sea of endless rest;
For there, as
here, unbusy is unblest".
In proceeding
to this elysium the Osiris takes the good path to the fields of food. He says,
"A divine
domain hath
been constructed for me; I know the name of it, the name of it is the garden of
Aarru" =
Eden ( ch.
109 ). "I know the place where to plough the earth and mow the corn, to
collect the harvest in
it daily. I
am in it, I prevail in it, I understand in it; food is in my hands from the
lord of earth". (Ch.110).
This
agricultural mode of earning an eternal living was typified by every one of the
shebti figures set up in
the tombs
with the hoe of the husbandman in their hands. It is said, "When thou hast
mowed with the
souls, having
kept their stride to the closed gates, thou art acquitted, and approachest thy
house after thy
labours, to
the delight of thy two souls".
The Aarru
paradise in Amenta is also the garden of the two trees, the same as the Hebrew
garden of
Eden. A form
of Eden is undoubtedly Babylonian, even by name. According to 'the native
tradition, the
type was
localized in Eridu, the place of the eternal tree or stalk at the centre of the
circumpolar paradise,
or of Eridu
in the firmamental water termed "the abyss". In the mythos the Great
Mother is called " the
divine lady
of Edin", and also "the goddess of the tree of life". As the
tree she brings forth her child, the
branch, the
same as Hathor does in Egypt. The name of Hathor signifies the house of Horus,
as the tree.
So the Great
Mother Zikum is the house of Tammuz, as the tree that grew in Eridu. But the
Egyptian stalk
of the uat or
papyrus plant is indefinitely earlier than the typical tree. One fact of itself
will serve to show
that the
biblical Eden was not derived from the Assyrian Edin, because in this garden
there is but a single
tree, which
is apparently the tree of life. The divine lady of Edin is the goddess of the
tree of life, and
there is no
mention of a tree of knowledge. Secondly, the serpent as a type of evil in the
book of Genesis
is not the
Babylonian dragon Tiamat. The biblical dragon is of neither sex, whereas Tiamat
is female. The
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Ancient
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Hebrew dragon
or evil serpent is the Apap of Egypt from Genesis to Revelation. Apap is a
water-reptile
whose
dwelling [Page 448] is at the bottom of the dark waters called the void of
Apap, from which it rises in
rebellion as
the representative of drought. This is the serpent described by Amos:
"Though they be hid
from my sight
in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite
them" (Amos
ix. 3).
Another reason. The Hebrew Eden is in a land that was watered by a mist that
went up from the
ground, and
where no rain fell on the earth (Gen. ii. 5-6). That land above all earthly
prototypes was
Egypt, which
assuredly did not suffer like Babylonia from the "curse of rain",
from which the Akkadian
month
"As-an" was named. But there was a pre-solar paradise enclosure which
had but one tree in it.
This as
Egyptian is the paradise of Am-Khemen, which Shu uplifted with his two-pronged
prop that
images the
pole, when he divided earth from heaven and raised the upper circumpolar
paradise.
Paradise,
says Ibn Ezra, is the place of one tree. Mount Hetep in the northern heaven is
a kind of typical
one-tree-hill.
In some of the Mexican drawings there is a point of departure by water from the
mount
which has a
single tree upon its summit This we look on as the tree which represents the pole,
the "onetree-
hill" of
a legend that is universal. This typical one-tree-hill is also to be found at
Sakapu in
Manchuria,
where it is represented by a mountain designated "lone tree hill".
The Norse tree Yggdrasil is
single. Nor
is there more than one tree or stalk in the garden of Eridu, where the Great
Mother is the lady
of the
eternal tree. The eternal tree was certainly the pole. Its seven branches show
it to have been a
numerical
type of the heptanomis. Hence we infer that in the circumpolar paradise there
was but one tree
as a figure
of the northern pole of heaven. The Chinese Fu-tree, the self-supporting, is
likewise a figure
of the pole.
Hence it is said to grow on the summit of a mountain in mid-ocean at the north,
and it is 300
Chinese miles
in height. (Schlegel, Prof. G., Fou-Sang Kono.) There is nothing gained by
calling this the
tree of the
universe instead of the pole. That is only to lose in vagueness all that the
astronomers had
gained by
their definiteness.
The two trees
in the garden of Eden can be accounted for upon Egyptian ground, but on no
other; one
being the
tree of the pole in the stellar mythos, the other the tree of life or of dawn
in the garden
eastward. The
two typical trees are recognizable as Egyptian in the Book of the Dead. In one
chapter
(97th) they
are called the two divine sycamores of heaven and earth. The sycamore of heaven
is
identified as
the tree of Nut. It stands in "the lake of equipoise", which is at
the celestial pole. The tree of
earth is the
tree of Hathor and of dawn. Atum-Ra, the solar god, is also described as coming
forth from
betwixt the
two trees. "I know those two sycamores of emerald, between which Ra cometh
forth as he
advances over
the firmament" ( ch. 109). The tree of earth, or Hathor, and the tree of
heaven, or Nut,
were brought
on together and united in the tree of burial for the mummy. Wherever it was
possible the
Egyptian-coffin
was made from the wood of the sycamore tree, the khat-en-ankhu, or tree of life,
so that
the dead
might be taken in the embrace of the mother of life, who was represented by the
tree. This was
Hathor as
bringer to birth in the mythology, and Nut the bringer of-souls to [Page 449]
their rebirth in the
eschatology.
The relative positions of these two goddesses with the tree were illustrated by
the pictures
painted on
the coffin. Hathor as a form of the mother-earth, the tree-form, is portrayed
inside the coffin on
the board
upon which the mummy rested, taking the dead to her embrace as the mother of
life. Nut, the
mother-heaven,
was represented on the inner part of the coffin-lid arching over the mummy as
bringer of
the manes to
new life above. It was burial in the tree when the tree had come to be
elaborately carved in
the shape of
a coffin. This symbolized a resurrection of the spirit from the tree of life as
Horus rose again
from out the
tree of dawn.Now when Amenta was planted by Ptah, the father of Atum, several
features of
the
circumpolar paradise, as before said, were not only repeated, they were
duplicated. One of these
was the
typical tree. The tree of the pole remained as the central support of the
universe, the tree of the
three worlds,
i.e., of Amenta, earth and heaven (Egyptian) Arali, earth and heaven
(Babylonian) hell, mid-
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Ancient
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gard and
heaven (Norse), and others that might be added. In Egypt this was almost
superseded by the
tat of Ptah,
which is a pillar of the four corners based upon the tree as type of the pole
when this was
erected in
Amenta. Thus, the primal paradise was the place of one tree. The paradise or
garden in
Amenta is the
place of two trees - because the ground-rootage had been doubled in phenomena.
These
two trees
appear in the Ritual as the tree of Hathor and the tree of Nut; the tree of
earth and the tree of
heaven; the
tree of the north and the tree of the east.
The tree of
Hathor was a tree of life in Egypt.It was the sycamore-fig tree; from the fruit
of which a divine
drink of the
mysteries was made. Therefore it was a tree to make one wise, which became a
tree of
wisdom or
abnormal knowledge. The tree of Nut was the tree of heaven and eternal life,
hence it was
designated
the eternal tree. As herein suggested, the two trees originated as a dual
symbol of the two
poles in
Equatoria. These were continued in two tree-pillars called Sut-and-Horus by
Ptah in his making
of Amenta.
Again they are repeated in the garden or cultivated enclosure of Eden. Here
they are called
the tree of
knowledge and the tree of life. As shown in the vignettes to the Book of the
Dead, the tree or
eatable plant
and the water supplied the elements of life to the manes in the lower paradise.
The
goddess Nut pours
out the water and offers the fruit of the tree to Ani and his wife, when he has
reached
the garden of
Amenta (Pap. of Ani, Plate 16). The pole had been the tree first planted in the
astronomical
mythology. It
was the tree of Nut, or heaven, in the stellar phase, and being astronomical it
was naturally
the tree of
knowledge. But in the making of the nether earth a second tree was planted in
the garden
eastward. The
mythos now was solar, and this was the tree of dawn, the tree of wet or dew,
which was a
veritable
tree of life in Egypt. It was the emerald sycamore of Hathor in her character
of goddess of the
leafy-green
dawn. The first was the tree in the most ancient stellar mythos, the second was
added as an
equinoctial
type, the sycamore of earth now rooted in the land of dawn. This is the tree in
which Child-
Horus, the
young solar god, proclaims himself to be the new-born babe (Rit., ch. 42) at
his coming forth
as the sun of
another day, [Page 450] or the offspring of Hathor. He comes forth from between
the two
sycamores
just as the good shepherd or royal Horus issues from betwixt the two trees in
the symbolism
of the Roman
catacombs (Bosio, Rom. Sott., p. 311; Lundy, in Mon Christy.). It is related in
a legend cited
by M. de Gubernatis
that the tree of Adam reaches to hell, Sheol, or Amenta with its roots, and to
heaven
with its
branches, and that the infant Jesus lives in the top of the tree (M. des PI.,
vol. i. 18), like Horus,
Unbu, and
Bata. This, like a thousand other things related of the divine, that is
mythical, child, would be
extremely
interesting if the legend had not been put forth under the false pretence of
its being historical.
The only
infant in the tree, who finally supplied the subject of a nursery song, "Hush-a-by
Baby on the
Tree-Top",
was the youthful god whose cradle was the tree of dawn, and who says in the
Ritual (ch. 42),
"I am
the babe. I am the god within the tamarisk". The tree of Adam was the tree
of Atum in the garden of
the lower
Aarru which Horus or Jesus (the Su of Atum) climbs when he goes upwards from
the garden to
the eastern
heaven. The infant was also Horus on his uat-papyrus, a symbol of the earth
amidst the
waters of the
Nun, and a co-type of the tree of dawn (Rit., ch. 17). In one representation,
the child issues
from the
papyrus or lotus, in another from the tree. The sun as soul of life in the tree
of dawn is probably
the
nature-type of the soul in the bush, the "bush-soul" of various
African races, i.e., the spirit of
vegetation
and food. The name of Heitsi Eibib the Hottentot deity in his solar character
signifies the one
who appears
in the tree, mis-rendered by Hahn as the "one who has
the
appearance of a tree". The god was not the tree itself but the of
power
appearing in the tree as giver of food. This tree that springs up
below the
horizon on the eastward side of the earth may be meant by
the bush of
the Australian blacks who, on being asked by a missionary
where the
soul went when it left the body, said it went "behind the bush",
the same bush
that was signified in the custom of the Hottentots. Behind
the bush was
equivalent to our "beyond the veil". The typical two trees in
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the enclosure
are both
Egyptian, and both are represented in Amenta. The tree of earth is Hathor's,
called the
sycamore of
the south. The tree of heaven is the sycamore of Nut, who pours the water from
it for the
revivification
of the manes. Water, as the supreme element of life. retains its primacy of
place in The
Amenta in
relation to the two waters of earth and heaven and the two goddesses Hathor and
Nut. The
sycamore of
Hathor, had been the discoverer of water with its deep rootage in the desert
sand. The
sycamore of
Nut dropped down the liquid of life in dew and rain as water of heaven. These
two-are both
represented
by two lakes or pools of water welling in the garden of Amenta from the fount
of source itself
in the abyss.
The tree of life is imaged standing in a pool of the water of life in the midst
of the Aarrugarden
and the
goddess in the tree who gives the water also gives the fruit for food and
sustenance to
the Osirified
deceased. The tree is thus portrayed with its roots in the water of earth and
its branches
dropping down
with the life-giving dew or [Page 451] divine drink of heaven. In some of the
Egyptian
drawings the
goddess Nut is represented in the tree of knowledge, gathering baskets-full of
figs from the
sycamore-fig
tree, and presenting them to the souls of the departed. At other times she
offers fruit directly
from the tree
itself. Nut in the tree offering its fruit to the pair in the garden, who are
Ani (male) and Tutu
his wife, in
the papyrus of Ani (Plate 16), are the nearest likeness to the woman tempting
Adam to eat the
fruit of the
tree; and Nut is the goddess feeding souls with the fruit of the tree of life
here figured as the
sycamore-fig
tree. No name of species is given to the tree of knowledge in the book of
Genesis, but we
assume it was
the fig-tree that furnished the leaves from which the loin-girdles of the
primal pair were
made. And the
fig-tree as now traced was the sycamore-fig of Egypt. This was the tree of
Hathor in the
Aarru-paradise.
Moreover, the goddess lusaas, the consort of Atum-Ra and mother of the coming
son,
lusa, or
lu-em-hetep, was a form of the cow-headed or cow-eared Hathor, lady of the
sycamore-tree in
the temple of
the sun at Annu.
Doubtless one
cause of the curse pronounced upon the tree was on account of its being the
tree of
Hathor, the
goddess of fecundity. No better or more beautiful description of Hathor in the
tree could be
found than
the one in the "Wisdom of Jesus". This Jesus, as lu the son of Atum,
was brought forth by
Hathor-lusaas
from the tree. As Wisdom, she identifies herself with the tree of knowledge.
The paen of
her
exultation might be called the hymn of Hathor. Hathor was the Egyptian goddess
of love, though the
love first
personated by her was not the sexual passion. It was the love of the mother for
her offspring;
the love of
the mother of life who fed the child in the womb and at the breast as the
divine wet-nurse. In
her
pre-anthropomorphic form she is the mother imaged as the milch-cow (this being
preceded by the
water-cow)
and therefore not a type of sexual human love. As the wet-nurse she was also
depicted in the
tree of life
and the tree of dawn, which dropped the dew as very drink of life. Hathor is
the habitation
(from hat,
the abode), one primitive form of which was the tree, and hence the tree of
dawn was a typical
abode of the
young god born of her, or from her sycamore as the branch of endless years.
"I was exalted
like a cedar
in Libanus, and as a cypress-tree upon the mountains of Hermon. I was exalted
like a palm-
tree in
En-gaddi, and as a rose-plant in Jericho, as a fair olive-tree in a pleasant
field, and grew up as a
plane-tree by
the water. As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the
fruit of honour
and riches. I
am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope; I
therefore, being
eternal, am
given to all my children which are named of him. Come unto me, all ye that be
desirous of
me, and fill
yourselves with my fruits. For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine
inheritance than
the
honeycomb. They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall
yet be thirsty". ("The
Wisdom of
Jesus", ch. 24,13-21, translated in the time of Euergetes.) The woman who
offers the fruit of
the tree of
knowledge in this book of the secret doctrine is in one form the goddess
Hathor, and if the
Hebrew
version of the tree of knowledge had been true, this would be the song of the
siren tempting her
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Ancient
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lovers to
perdition. [Page 452]
The tree of
knowledge being the sycamore-fig tree of Hathor the goddess of love, we see in
that fact the
raison-d’ętre
of its being degraded by the Semitic bigots and turned into the tree of
temptation and the
cause of the
fabled fall. Very proper physiological knowledge was also taught by means of
the fable, but
the primary
motive for the perversion of the tree was the religious hatred of the
motherhood by those who
exalted the
fatherhood as unique and alone. Precisely the same spirit is shown in the
cursing of the fig-
tree, which
is the sycamore-fig, in the Gospels. "If ye had faith as a grain of
mustard-seed, ye would say
unto this
sycamore tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea" (Luke,
xvii. 6). Cursing and
casting out
the sycamore-fig was damning the tree of the woman, the emerald sycamore of the
lovely
Hathor, and
also the sycamore of Nut, whether in the Old Testament or the New. And this was
a mode of
destroying
"the works of the female" (Gospel of the Egyptians).
The tree of
the upper paradise was held to have been thorn less. As it is said in the
Persian Revelation,
on the nature
of plants and trees, "before the coming of the destroyer, vegetation had
no thorn or bark
about it. And
afterwards when the destroyer came, it was coated with bark and grew
thorny" (Bundahish,
ch. 27,
West). Thus the tree in the celestial paradise was differentiated from the tree
in the earthly
paradise,
which became thorny as the result of Adam's fatal fall. Egypt is not a cloudy
land, though there
is sufficient
morning-mist, however thin and filamental, for the golden rays of the sun to
blend with the
azure tints
of upper heaven and produce a greenish colour from the mixture of the two. This
was
represented
as the great green sycamore of dawn, of Hathor or Nut, which in Egypt was a
tree of life that
struck its
roots down to the eternal springs and would find moisture even in a Sahara of
desert sand. And
from this
tree of heaven the earth was watered with refreshing dew. This imagery of Egypt
is virtually
repeated in
the book of Genesis (ii. 5, 6) when the writer tells us that "Iahu-Elohim
had not caused it to
rain upon the
earth, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of
the ground".
The sycamore
of dawn is mentioned in the Ritual. It is also spoken of as the sycamore in the
eastern sky
(Pyramid
Texts, Pepi, I, 174). Few things in literature are more lovely than the way in
which the imagery
of dawn was
thus utilized as the road to travel by in attaining the other upper land of
life. So far as the
Babylonian
and Assyrian versions of the mythos have been recovered we find no written
account of the
creation of
man or the placing of the man in the garden of Eden "to dress it and to
keep it". But the
garden is
represented on one of the cylinders in what has been termed the scene of the
temptation by
those who
read the subject backwards according to the Hebrew story of the fall. The tree
in Eridu is
called the
shrine of the two, whom we understand to be the primeval mother and her son,
who as
Egyptian was
called the bull of the mother. The pair are also described as "the lady of
the eternal tree"
and the great
supreme bull, he who was both the child and consort of the mother. These two,
we now
suggest, are
the male and female pair who are seated underneath the tree as the scene is
pictured on
the Assyrian
cylinder. The bull of the mother is obviously represented by the pair of horns
upon the figure
of the male.
A tree with seven branches is portrayed with [Page 453] the pair of male and
female figures
seated
underneath, and the serpent erect at the back of the female, as if posed and
holding forth in the
character of
the legendary tempter. The reptile corresponds to the flat-headed Apap of the
Egyptian
drawings,
which signifies evil because it is the serpent of darkness, drought, dearth,
and negation. One
cannot resist
the impression that this representation may be responsible for the legend of
the serpent,
the
temptation and the fall that is found in
the Hebrew
book of Genesis. The
Babylonians
were such perverters of the
Kamite
mythology in relation to woman
and the
serpent. But instead of a human
pair, the
male and female seated under
the tree are
two divinities. The figure next
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Ancient
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the serpent
is a form of the Great Mother.Thence we infer that the male is a form of the
son, and that the
pair are the
well-known duad of mother and son, as in Ishtar and Dumuzi or Zikum and Tammuz,
the
genetrix with
the son who became his own father, as did Sebek-Horus, the son who was the
husband of
his mother.
Also, on the third tablet of the creation series there is a Babylonian
prototype for the Hebrew
legend of the
fall that followed on the eating of forbidden fruit. In this it is said that
"the command was
established
in the garden
of the
god". But, "in sin one with the other in compact joined".
"The asnan fruit they ate, they broke in
two; its
stalk they destroyed. Great is their sin. Themselves they exalted. To Merodach,
their redeemer,
he (the god
Sar) appointed their fate" (Boscawen). The doctrine of a fall and of a
redemption therefrom
is plainly
apparent in this inscription which the Hebrew compilers apparently followed and
in that way
the
later
theological legend would get intermixed with the original mythos in a Semitic
moralizing of the
Kamite
mythology.
Various
vignettes to the Ritual show us Ani and his wife, the pair, as spirits, in the
Aarru-garden eating the
fruit of the
tree and drinking the water of life, but with no relation to a fall from
paradise through plucking
the forbidden
fruit. The pair of beings in the Semitic versions are supposed to have fallen
from the garden
of the
beginning through eating the forbidden fruit of the asnan tree. And according
to the rendering of
the myth in
Hebrew, the pair are driven forth lest they should also eat of the tree of
life. "And Iahu-Elohim
said, Behold,
Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now lest he put forth
his hand
and take also
of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever: therefore Iahu-Elohim sent him
forth from the
garden. So he
drove out Adam". As there is no mention of the woman in this expulsion,
the man must
have gone
alone upon his "solitary way", unless the woman is included in
Adam-homo as in the first
creation.
"So he drove out Adam, and he placed at the [Page 454] east of the garden
of Eden the
cherubim, and
the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of
life" (Gen. iii.
22-24). The
tree of life, we repeat, was the tree of dawn with its rootage in the garden of
Amenta. In the
Hebrew
Genesis, the tree is to be protected by the flame of a sword that turns in all
directions, which
conveys the
idea of a swordsman dexterously making the moulinet figure of defence. Now let
us turn to
the great
original symbolism which has been so mutilated. The tree of life, the emerald
sycamore of
dawn, stood
with its roots below the horizon in the garden eastward. It needed protection
by night from
the insidious
assaults of the Apap of darkness, drought, and dearth, as shown in the
illustrations to the
Book of the
Dead. The precious water and tree of life were protected within the enclosure
formed by Ptah
that was
raised against the incursions of Apap, the eternal devourer.
The
prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree would have had no meaning for
Ani and his wife. They
were there to
eat of it and live as spirits. For that purpose the water and fruit are being
given to them by
Nut or Hathor
in the vignettes. The protector of the tree of life by night is Atum-Ra, the
solar god, whose
weapon is the
flaming orb of the nocturnal sun (Rit., ch. 15). The sword that turned in every
direction is
depicted in
the radiating disk which is set all round as it were with sword-blades of the
solar flame
"Salutation
to Ra radiating in his disk as the light that issues out of the horizon",
is a greeting made by
the
worshipper (Rit., ch. 148). In the pictures to the Ritual the sun is imaged by
a radiating disk that rises
up from the
tree of life, the emerald sycamore-fig or the fig-tree of the garden eastward,
and this is
described as
being a symbolical representation of Atum-Ra. The radiating life-giving disk is
a sworded
flame which turns
every way, seeing that it is rayed and darting fire all round. The way of the
tree of life is
towards the
eastern horizon where the sun goes out of the garden eastward, and the sworded
disk is not
only in the
way of the tree of life, it also rises out of the tree, and is described as
turning round when it
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Ancient
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rises. The
"flame of a sword which turns every way" is no doubt an adaptation of
the radiating disk which
is here
portrayed at the summit of the tree of life. Ra "circulating in his
disk" ( 15, 32-3), who "radiates in
his disk: who
fashions himself in his metal and turns round so soon as Shu upraises him on
the horizon"
(Rit.,
17,50).In one passage it is said that the flame of the solar disk
emblematically designed saves the
god Ra from
Apap (Rit., ch. 149, 12, Pierret), which is the prototypal equivalent of the
sworded flame that
revolves to
keep the way of the tree of life in the book of Genesis. The way of the tree of
life that goes out
of Eden can
be identified with the way that goes out of the field of Aarru in Amenta. The
speaker in the
Ritual had
travelled that way, as one of the manes, but NOT AS A MORTAL. He says
(149,5-9), "I know the
way of the
field Aarru by which Atum-Ra goes forth to the east of heaven" (or from
the garden eastward).
The "way
of the tree of life" in Genesis is the "road of the disk" in the
Ritual (ch. 129, I). We learn from
Origen that
there was a certain diagram current amongst the gnostic Ophites, which
contained the seven
ruling
daemons. Amongst the other matters [Page 455] mentioned is the flaming sword
that kept the tree of
life at the
gates of paradise. Of this he says the picture in the accursed diagram was impiously
unlike the
figure drawn
in "Sacred Writ" The flaming sword was depicted as the diameter of a
flaming circle, and as
if mounting
guard over the tree of knowledge and of life" (B. 6, ch. 33). From this
description of the figure
we perceive
that the gnostic diagram contained a copy of the Egyptian original.
As first
pointed out in the Book of the Beginnings (1881),
the word
cherub, or kerub, is Egyptian. It signifies a
primary
figure, a model form. The type may vary, but the
word denotes
primacy whatsoever the figure. The variant
kherp means
the first, chief, principal, forepart or
foremost.
Still more to the purpose the Kamite kherefu =
kherebu are a
pair of lion-gods joined back to back that
keep the
gates of dawn, or we might say, the way of the
tree of life,
which is the green sycamore of dawn. The
Egyptian
kherefu lift up the solar orb upon their backs;
they form the
primary figure of support for the god that
preceded the
ark or chariot, which consisted of an ark
that rested
on the boat. The twin lions or kherefu form the
natural
throne or seat of the solar deity "Atum-Iu" (Vig. to
ch. 18, Rit.;
Pap. Ani., PI. 7).
According to
Josephus (Ant. i. ii. 6, 5), Moses had seen such things as the cherubs near the
throne of
Iahu; and
here we find the kherefu, in the form of twin lions, are the throne of Atum in
the Easter equinox
when it
coincided with the Lion sign. These things are not merely matters of philology.
The kherub as a
determinative
type passes into the griffin. A pair of griffins still keep the gate or gateway
of the avenue of
trees that
leads up to the great house. Also the crab and the scarab still represent the
kherub both by
name and
type. In some of the ancient Egyptian zodiacs the scarabeus takes the place of
the crab. In
others the
sign is represented by a pair of scarabs or beetles; and two scarabs are also
equivalent to the
two cherubs.
Thus when the equinox had passed into the sign of Cancer the two kherefu or
kherubs as
lions were
succeeded in the astronomical mythos by the two scarabs that now kept the way
of the tree of
life at the
point in precession where the vernal equinox was stationed for the time being -
namely, in the
sign of the
Crab or the beetles.
The mother of
beginnings, the primordial parent in the abyss of earth and the height of
heaven, was also
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Ancient
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),
reproduced as
the Great Mother in Amenta. In the vignettes to the Ritual Apt is portrayed in
both forms of
the cow, the
hippopotamus and the milch-cow, among the papyrus plants of the morass at the
foot of the
mount of
Amenta, as the bringer to rebirth for the upper paradise (Papyrus of Ani., PI.
37). The mother of
life on earth
was now made protector of the dead in Amenta, and she who was the kindler of
the stellar
sparks in
[Page 455] heaven by night became the re-kindler of the sparks of life from the
eclipse of death
(Rit., ch.
137, B; Papyrus of Ani, Pap. Nebseni). Thus ,ve can identify Eve, or Chavvah,
as Kefa or Kep,
the Great
Mother, with Adam or Atum in the garden of Amenta. The name of Eve in Hebrew (
Chavvah,
signifies life or living, whence Eve is the mother of life. Life, however, is a
somewhat abstract
term. Still
the mother of life, as Egyptian, was Khep, Kep, or Kefa = Chavvah by name. Kep
signifies the
ferment of
life, the mystery of fertilisation, the enceinte mother; and Khep, Khev, or
Kefa, as Egyptian, we
hold to be
the original of the Hebrew Chavvah. Kefa appears along with the great scarab in
the thirteenth
domain of
Amenta (Renouf, Book of the Dead, ch. 149, pl.52). Moreover, the lioness Kefa,
or Kheft, is a
form of
Sekhet the solar goddess, who ,was the beloved consort of Ptah and the mother
of Atum-Ra.
According to
the Jewish legends Adam had two wives, one named Lilith, the other Chavvah, or
in the
English
version, Eve. Atum also had two wives. These at Annu are Neb-hetep and lusaas,
the mother of
the prince of
peace, in her two characters of "lady of peace" and she who is great
with lu the coming son
(or su), who
was the prince of peace as conqueror of the serpent and all the evil powers in
earth, in
heaven, and
in Amenta; otherwise in drought, in darkness, and in death. We can identify the
wife of
Adam with the
old first genetrix of gods and men and mother of beginnings in at least three
of her
mythical
characters. In one she was imaged as Rerit the sow. In another she is Kefa, or
Kheft, the
lioness.
Lastly, she was portrayed as the mother of life in human form, the prototype of
Eve. Now, as the
mother of
Atum was the lioness Sekhet, as the mother of "the princes of Israel"
was a lioness (Ez. xix. 2)
who nourished
young lions for her whelps, the inference is that Eve or Chavvah represents the
lioness
Kefa. In
Rabbinical tradition Lilith is known as Adam's first wife, but only Chavvah has
been brought on
as Eve in the
garden of the beginning. The Great Mother was single in herself, but may be
dual or
several in type.
She remained single in the fields of heaven, the upper Aarru, where the Great
Bear was
her
constellation, but she might be represented as Rerit the sow, or Kep the
hippopotamus, or Kefa the
lioness,
according to phenomena. Father Atum is connected with the sow. He also has two
wives. One of
these,
Iusaas, is a form of the goddess Hathor, and in one character Hathor was Shaat
the sow. The SOW
was sacred in
Israel because it had been a zootype of the multi-mammalian Great Mother in
Egypt.
According to
the totemic law of tabu, the eating of the sow as ordinary diet was prohibited
because it was
sacred to the
periodic celebration which passed into the eucharistic meal, at which it was
religiously
eaten once a
year. For a long time the Jews remained faithful to the Great Mother in their
sacramental
eating of
swine's flesh among the graves (Isaiah lxv. 4, and lxvi. 17). The graves
identify the mortuary
meal, and the
swine's flesh will answer for the mother, who was imaged in one form as the many-teated
sow, the
flesh of which was prohibited in later ages because it was sacred and had
originally represented
the mother,
who was at one time eaten with honour in propria persona. This also tends to
identify Eve, or
Chavvah, with
Kep or Kefa, the first mother in the [Page 457] Egyptian astronomical
mythology. The story
of Lilith,
Adam's first wife, has been omitted from the book of Genesis. There are two
wives involved,
however, in
the two different creations, although no name is given to the first. Man, as
homo, was created
"male
and female" by the Elohim (ch. i. 27). The Rabbinical tradition relates
that the woman was created
out of the
ground together with the man, and was named Lilith. She obviously represented
the first Great
Mother, one
of whose Egyptian names was Rerit = Lilith, and whose zootype was the sow as
well as the
hippopotamus.
The submerged gnosis respecting the priority of the matriarchate comes to the
surface in
the story of
the contention betwixt Lilith and Adam for marital supremacy. The two wives of
Adam answer
to the two
consorts of Atum, who were Neb-hetep, the lady of peace, and Iusăas, she who
was great with
Iu-em-hetep,
the bringer of peace, the Kamite Jesus, as Iu-sa the coming son.
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In the Hebrew
legend it is the woman Eve who offers the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In
other versions,
especially
the Greek, the fruit is offered to the man by a serpent in the tree. Now the
serpent was another
type of the
Great Mother, Kep, who was earlier than the serpent-woman, Rannut; and whether
portrayed
in the shape
of a serpent or in the human form, she was the primordial giver of fruit from
the tree. The
serpent, the
crocodile or dragon, the hippopotamus, the sow, the cow, the lioness and woman
all meet as
one in Kep,
the earliest mother of life. The primal mother in the Kamite representation was
the bringer-
forth of Sut
and Horus as her first two children, who were born twins. These, as the powers
of darkness
and light, or
drought and fertility, were a pair of combatants who fought for the supremacy
until one
brother slew
the other. This is one of those primary legends that became universal, but not
because it
had a hundred
different origins at different times. Sut and Horus were indefinitely earlier
than the solar
Atum. But in
the cult of Atum-Ra at On or Annu they were fathered on him and continued as
his sons. Sut
and Horus
offer an instructive instance of evolution in mythology. They were born sons of
the first Great
Mother as two
of the primordial powers, the twin powers of darkness and light. But in the
re-cast of their
theology the
priests of Annu brought them on as the warring sons of Atum-Ra, who fought each
other "up
and down the
garden" until, as here related, one of them was slain. In various
inscriptions Sut and Horus
are called
the sons of Atum (Renouf, Hib. Lectures, p. 84). Otherwise stated, they became
two of the
associate-gods,
the constituent parts and powers of Atum, as the sons of Ptah and members of
the Put
company of
the Ali.
The battle in
Amenta was not only fought betwixt the Apap of darkness and the sun-god Ra.
When the
two brothers
Sut and Horus were repeated in the solar mythos, as the sons of Atum, the
conflict was
continued for
possession of the garden. This was now the motive of the warfare. Previously it
was for the
water of the
inundation or light in the moon. Now it was for the water and the tree of life
in the Aarrugarden.
In one
version of the mythos, Sut is the murderer of the good brother as Osiris. In
the other, Sut
pierces and
puts out the eye of Horus. This is represented as the contest between Cain and
Abel, the two
sons of Adam,
in the book of Genesis. Sut [Page 458] and Horus represented two contending
nature-
powers. They
fought each other as the two rehus or lions in the light and dark halves of the
moon, with
Taht as the
adjudicator of the landmarks. They also fought as two dragons, or as the crocodile
of water
and the
dragon of drought, both of which were rightly represented in the astronomical
mythology. "Hydra"
remains for
all time as the "hellish Apap" who drank up the water. And
"Draconis" is a figure of the good
dragon or
Horus-crocodile. Lastly, the two opponent powers were portrayed as
twin-brothers, fighting for
the
birth-right, or seeking to overcome each other. Thus they contended for
possession of the garden in
Amenta, where
they fought upon the mount of glory or were constellated as the Gemini
contending in the
zodiac. The
conflict of the brothers was continued in the garden of Eden, and Cain fulfils
the character of
the murderer
Sut, the slayer of his brother. There is an attempt even to discriminate
betwixt the two
domains of
Sut and Horus, when it is said that "Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain
was a tiller of the
ground"
(Gen. iv. 2,3).
The
Aarru-garden, or paradise, planted in Amenta by Ptah for Atum his son, was
founded on food and
liquid, that
is on the water, and the tree, or plant, as food of life. These, in the Hebrew
version, are called
"the
trees in the midst of the garden", and "the river that went out of
Eden to water the garden". They
represent the
mythical tree and the water of life, which had their beginning in actual food
and drink and
were
afterwards repeated, on earth, in heaven, and in the making of Amenta. The well
or water-spring
that was the
source of life to primitive man was here continued as a basis for the
re-beginning of life in
the earth of
eternity. In the Ritual the manes, or Osiris N.. says,"I am he whose
stream is secret". This
was the
hidden source of water in the earth itself that was repeated as divine source
in Amenta. In some
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of the
vignettes to the Ritual Osiris, god of Amenta. is portrayed upon his throne
within a shrine that rests
upon the
water welling from the underworld. One of his titles was the water of renewal.
So supreme an
element of
life was water, by the aid of which the Aarru-paradise was made."I know
the names of the
streams
within the garden” exclaims the manes; "I utter my praise to the gods who
are in the garden"
(Rit., ch.
110). The water issues now from underneath the throne of Osiris. But in the
earlier cult the
source of
life as water was the secret of the great god Ptah. In a hymn on the walls of
the temple at El-
Khargeh, Ptah
is saluted as the lord of all, from the very beginning. It is said, "Thou hast
made the double
earth".
"Thou hast placed thy throne in the life of the double earth". It is
also said of this one god, "Thy
secret is in
the depths (or the deep) of the secret waters and unknown" (Renouf.
Hibbert Lectures, p.
231). This
secret rests in the beginning with water. The source of water was the well
within the earth, the
well-spring
of life in the Neter-Kar, the secret water emanating from the Nun, as if it
broke up through the
solid. earth.
It was the secret guarded by the Sphinx, by the seven spirits of the earth, the
seven
Anunnaki
seated on their golden thrones. It was the water of the tuat in the Ritual
called "the deep which
no one can
fathom" ( Rit..ch. 172). This is the beginning of life with water and
vegetation now repeated at
the point of
a new departure in the making of Amenta by [Page 459] Ptah the planter of the
Aarru-garden.
The four
waters into which heaven was divided are portrayed in the Sekhet-hetep or
fields of peace. Cool
water,
eatable plants, and refreshing breezes constituted the Egyptian heaven as it
had been from the
first time in
Inner Africa. And according to the pictures, paradise in Amenta is mapped out
in four divisions
of land
amidst the cooling waters of the Aarru meadows or Elysian fields, the Semitic
garden of Eden.
The sign of
heaven or the sky is to be seen above a vertical table which is divided into
four parts. The
garden is
intersected by the four waters of the book of Genesis. The great water is the
celestial Nile,
called the
father of the gods, the giver of plenty. The other three are designated the
power of the water,
innumerable
waters, and great place of the water (Rit., ch. 110, and vignettes).
But the
paradise depicted in the vignettes to the Ritual is sub-terrestrial, not
celestial or circumpolar; it is
the earthly
paradise. This is the garden of the lower Aarru, not the garden on the summit
of the stellar
mount of
glory. In that, the one water was divided into the two lakes. with the river
running down from the
north to the
south. The terrestrial paradise in Amenta is based upon the four quarters of
the sky that was
suspended by
Ptah, and the four quarters are equivalent to the four waters or rivers in the
vignettes to
the Ritual.
The four rivers of Eden belong to this later heaven that was divided into four
parts and are a
co-type with
the four quarters. Hence they are portrayed as issuing from the four sides of
the mythical
mount in
pictures of the garden. In a Buddhist legend, cited by Hardy, a tree takes the
place of the mount
and four
great rivers flow unceasingly from the four boughs of this tree of immensity.
The river names, in
the biblical
version, belong to a later geography, which has to be allowed for; they are a
mixture of
Egyptian and
Assyrian. "A river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence
it was parted and
became four
heads". The first is Pishon, the second is Gihon, the third is Hiddekel,
the fourth is
Euphrates. Of
the water or fountain-head Pishon it is said, "That is it which compasseth
the whole land of
Havilah,
where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there (also) is
bdellium and the onyx
stone"
(Genesis, ii. I I, 12). This land of the good gold corresponds to the Egyptian
Puanta or Ta-Neter
the divine
land which is called "the golden" in the Ritual (ch. 15). But this
land of gold was the land of the
solar glory.
Adorations are offered to Atum as he rises out of "the golden" or
comes up from Puanta to
illumine the
earth.
Atum was the
god in spirit, the one god in spirit and in truth; and Atum or Adam in the
garden was the
man in spirit
striving as manes for assimilation to the god. The man of earth as the first
Adam passes into
the Amenta to
become the second Adam in the garden as the heir of life eternal. Atum in
Amenta
represents
generic man and individual manes. He is the god-man, both human and divine, the
man in
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matter and
the man in spirit. The French Egyptologist, M. Lefébure, who has lately
identified Adam with
the Egyptian
Atum, as the present writer had done seven years earlier in A Book of the
Beginnings, refers
to a scene on
the coffin of Penpii in the Louvre, which is similar to the history of Adam in
the sub-
terrestrial
[Page 460] paradise, where a naked and ithyphallic personage called "the
lord of food" (Nebtefa)
is standing
before a serpent with two legs and two arms, and the reptile is offering him a
red fruit, or
at least a
little round object painted red. The same scene is again found on the tomb of
Rameses VI. And
on a statue
relatively recent in the museum at Turin it is to Atum=Adam that the serpent,
as tempter, is
offering the
round object, or fruit of the tree. The same writer says, "The tree of
life and knowledge was
well known in
Egypt". And "whether the scene of Neb-tefa can be identified with the
history of Adam or
not, we can
see that the greater number of the peculiar features of this history existed in
Egypt - the tree
of life and
knowledge, the serpent in paradise, Eve thinking of appropriating divinity to
herself, and in
short Adam
himself, are all there" (Trans. S. Bib. Arch. vol. ix., pt. i. p. 180).
The entrance
to the hidden earth was in the western region, founded on the pathway of the
sun. The
garden of
Aarru was the land of promise, peace, and plenty on the eastward side of the
Amenta. The
manes carries
the title-deeds of his allotment with him. In later copies of the Book of the
Dead some lines
were added to
ch. 109: "There are writings in thy possession for the grant of fields, of
corn land in which
there
springeth corn from the effluxes or sap of Osiris". "Enter boldly at
the mysterious portals, and be
purified by
those who are there". The promise is that when the purified deceased comes
forth to the
Sekhet-Aarru
wheat and barley shall be given to him there, and he will sow and reap it with
the glorified
(Rit., rubric
to ch. 72). In another chapter, when the speaker has arrived, he exclaims,
"I am the great
owner in the
garden of Aarru. O this garden of Aarru, the walls of which are of steel (or
ba-metal)". "I
know the
inner gate of the garden of Aarru, out of which cometh Ra, in the east of the
sky". "I know those
two sycamores
of emerald, between which he cometh forth as he advanceth to the eastern gates
of the
sky, through
which he proceedeth" (ch. 149). This is the garden to the eastward of
Amenta, or of Eden in
Genesis. The
speaker also describes it as the garden which is a field of divine harvest.
"I know this
garden of Ra
(Atum): the height of its wheat is seven cubits, the ears are two cubits, the
stalks five
cubits, the
barley is seven cubits. It is the glorified ones, each of whom is nine cubits
in height, who reap
there in
presence of the powers of the east" ( ch. 149). Whether imaged as the
garden or the harvest-
field, this
was the earthly paradise, the land of promise and of plenty; and Atum in the
harvest-field or
Aarru-garden
represented not the man of earth, but the manes of Amenta, the man who died and
was
buried and
who rose again in spirit to cultivate his plot of ground for edible plants, or
the wheat that grew
seven cubits
high in this the earth of eternity. The manes makes his way towards those who
have
become the
lords of eternity living for ever, the spirits made perfect, or the gods and
the glorified. And it is
probable that
when he says, "Let me go up to the Sekhet-Aarru and arrive in
Sekhet-hetep" (ch. 72),
there is a
reference to the ascent from the lower to the upper paradise by way of the
mount, the tree, or
ladder of Ra
which reaches to the sky - that is, from the garden of the vine in Amenta to
the field of rest in
heaven. Hence
the need of the ship. [Page 461] The ship of Nu is thus addressed by the manes
in chapter
106: "O
thou ship of the garden of Aarru, let me be conveyed to that bread of thy canal
like my father, the
great one,
who advanceth in the divine ship, because I know thee", as was shown from
the examination
of the
initiate in chapter 99.
The garden
was divided into fourteen portions called domains, a number which indicates a
foundation in
one half of
the lunar circle. The first of these is entered by the manes in the character
of Atum = Adam.
He enters
with the crown of Atum on his head. He says, "Doff your headdress in my
presence. I am the
great one; I
am the lord among the gods". "Horus has crowned me with the diadem of
Atum.' "The garden
of Aarru
itself is the second of the fourteen domains in Amenta. The manes in the
character of Atum =
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Adam enters
the second domain as the owner of it, saying, "I am the great proprietor
in the garden of
Aarru".
This he goes on to describe. It is on the horizon of the east = the garden
eastward. The god who
is in the
garden with the manes is Har-Makhu, that is Atum. And as Atum is the Kamite
original of the
Hebrew Adam
so the garden of Atum is the Gan-Eden of Adam (ch. 149 and vignette). The third
is the
domain of
"the glorious ones", the seven great companion-spirits who assisted
Ptah as his craftsmen in
the making of
Amenta. In this, the third domain, the manes assumes the divinity of Atum
himself, saying,
"I am
the lord of the red crown which is on the head of the shining one, he who gives
life to mankind with
the breath of
his mouth". It was Atum who gave life to mankind or the manes with the
breath of his mouth.
This is
repeated (Gen. ii. 7) when Iahu-Elohim breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and man
became a
living soul. In the fourth domain there is a great and lofty mountain of the
nether world, the
mountain of
Amenta, three hundred measures in length and ten in width, the highest point of
which ends
with the sky.
There is a serpent coiling on it seventy cubits in its windings. "He with
sharp knives is his
name",
or, in a word, it is the piercing "serpent". He lives by slaughtering
the glorious ones and the
damned in the
nether world". This is the Apap-reptile who may be seen in a vignette to
the Ritual facing
Sebek on the
mount (ch. 108). The manes addresses the monster in the fourth domain, saying,
"I see the
way towards
thee. I gather myself together. I am the man who put a veil upon thy head,
without being
injured. I am
the great magician. Thine eyes have been given to me, and through them I am
glorified.
Who is he
that goeth on his belly ? Thy strength is on thy mountain; behold, I march
toward it (the
mountain), and
thy strength is in my hand. I am he who takes possession of thy strength. I go
round the
sky; thou art
in thy valley, as was ordered to thee before". He has deprived the serpent
of his magical
power and
cast him down in the dust, or into the valley.
No sooner was
Amenta made and the tree of life, which represented vegetation, planted in the
water of
life than the
Apap-reptile, the serpent of darkness or the dragon of drought, broke into the
enclosure. As
the
representative of drought, its fangs were fastened on the tree of food, of dew,
of life. As the
representative
of darkness it warred against the light of Atum, Horus, Ra, and Taht. And, as
the [Page 462]
Ritual has it
(ch. 17), "There was conflict now in the entire universe", in heaven,
upon earth, and in
Amenta,
inclusive of the garden. In the great battle betwixt Ra and Apap, described in
chapter 39 of the
Ritual, Atum
as Horus the son fights for the father Ra. When the victory is won Atum says,
"Lift up your
countenance,
ye soldiers of Ra!" The same part is taken by Atum in the garden of Aarru
when he delivers
Ra from Apap
in the third domain. There is a scene in the vignette to ch. I7 (Pap. of Ani,
plate 10), in
which Atum Ra
appears as god the father and Atum-Horus as god the son. The youthful solar god
is
imaged in the
form of a cat, the seer in the dark, and is grappling with the serpent and
cutting off or
bruising its
head. Ra the father is intently gazing at his son whilst the battle is raging.
The group of gods
looking on
are watching the struggle betwixt the great cat and the serpent Apap. The god
in conflict with
the serpent
is Iu the son of Atum, otherwise Atum in the person of the son. And here we
have delved
down to a
tap-root of the Jesus legend. lu-em-hetep in the cult of Atum-Ra is the coming
son, the ever-
coming su or
son of the eternal; and Iu the su = Iusu, or Iusa the son of Iusăas, is the
original of lusu or
Jesus. In one
phase the battle was fought nightly betwixt lu the son of Atum, or, in the
Osirian version,
betwixt Horus
the son of Asar and the loathly
reptile. In
another phase of the mythos the great
battle was
fought annually between the saviour-
son and the
serpent in the garden of Aarru hard by
the tree of
life, as described and portrayed in the
Ritual (ch.
17,20-22). This war betwixt the
serpent and
the son
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who came to
save went on for ever, every night, every year, and every other period of time;
hence the
bruiser of
the serpent's head was the saviour who for ever came as the lord of light, the
giver of life,
protector of
the tree of life at its rootage in Amenta.
There is
another personification of the woman who wars against the serpent as Sekhet,
otherwise Pasht.
This goddess
is sometimes depicted standing at the prow of the boat in the act of spearing
the serpent
as he raises
his head and tries to hypnotise the passengers with his evil eyes (ch. 108, II.
3, 4). It is
Sekhet who is
mistress of the water in which the Apap lurks by night (ch. 57, I. I), because
she was a
lunar
goddess, the seer by night, who was also imaged as the cat that killed the
serpent or the rat
abominated by
the sun. Thus there are two versions, lunar and solar. In one the woman or
goddess is the
slayer of the
serpent, in the other it is the son of the woman that bruises the reptile's
head. The Romish
Church has
perpetuated the former; the latter survives in the Protestant world, and, as
here shown, both
are Egyptian.
Moreover, Sekhet the cat-headed consort of Ptah was the mother of Atum-Ra. When
we
have
identified the son in this disguise of a great cat killing a serpent as
defender of his father, we may
perhaps
experience less surprise on learning that the cat was also continued in the
Christian Church as a
[Page 463]
living type of the "historical Christ". At Aix, in Provence, the
great cat was a representative of
the
newly-born Jesus. On the solemn festival of Corpus Christi the finest tom cat
to be found in the
canton was
exhibited in this character. It was wrapt up like a child in swaddling-clothes
and made a show
of in a
gorgeous shrine. Every knee was bowed in adoration to this effigy, who was Iu
in Egypt, and Iahu,
cat and all,
in Christendom. (Hampson, Medii Ćvi Kalendarium ; Mill, History of the
Crusades).
In the
pre-Osirian mysteries of Amenta Atum the father was re-born as his own son Iu,
the bringer of
peace and
plenty and good luck, as manifestor for the eternal in time. The birth was
periodic because the
phenomena
were first recurrent in external nature-in the renewal of the light, the return
of the waters, the
rebirth of
vegetation. Hence the Messiah was known as "the king of one year".
The son, as Horus, son of
Isis, or Iu
the su (son) of Atum, was incorporated or incarnated in matter as a spirit from
heaven to
become the
second Atum, Iu-em-hetep, the ever-coming son, whom we identify as the original
Iu-su, the
Egyptian
Jesus. His mission is sufficiently set forth in the texts and pictures of the
Ritual, more expressly
as the
opponent and the conqueror of Apap, the evil serpent. The fight is several
times alluded to in
which Horus,
or the deceased who impersonates him, defends the enclosure against the
Apap-serpent.
"He
makes his way. He repulses the attack of Apap. He crosses the enclosure and
repulses Apap" (Rit.,
144, 20).
"He puts an end to the rage of Apap and protecteth Ra against him
daily" ( ch. 130 ). Again, he
says, "I
have repulsed Apap, and healed the wounds he made" ( ch. 136, 3). Ra is
identical with Atum,
but the
character is duplicative. In one Atum-Ra is the father-god, in the other
Atum-Horus, or Iu, is the
son; and as
the son he is the protector and deliverer of his father when he staggers forth
upon the
horizon from
his conflict with the serpent, bleeding with many wounds (Rit., ch. 39).
There is
hardly any more precious document on the face of the earth at the present
moment than the
Papyrus of
Ani (published by the British Museum). In this the happy garden is portrayed
with the pair of
souls, once
human, passing through the various scenes which are depicted in the Ritual. The
soul, or
manes, makes
the journey through Amenta in the two halves of sex; "male and female
created he them".
Thus Ani is
accompanied in the pictures by his wife Tutu, who had died eight years before
him, and who
comes to meet
him at the entrance to Amenta, to protect him on the way she travelled first,
and to scare
away all evil
spirits with the shaking of her sistrum as she guides him to the heaven of the
glorified elect.
As gods, the
divine pair in the garden of this late beginning, called Gan-Eden, were Atum
and Iusăas. As
human, they
may be any pair of manes, or translated mortals like Ani and his wife, to whom
an allotment
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in the Sekhet
Aarru was given for them to cultivate. In the Hebrew version the divine pair
have been
humanized in
Adam and Eve, as beings on this earth, and thus the mystery of Amenta loses all
the
meaning,
which has to be restored by reading the mythos once more in the original. The
male and
female pair
are portrayed together in the vignettes to chapters 15, 15a, 2; 15a, 3; 15a, 4;
15b 1; 15b 2, all
of which
[Page 464] scenes belong to the earth of eternity. (Naville, Das Egypt., Todt.
pp.
14,15,16,17,18,19.)
The primal pair of human beings, who are Adam and Eve in the Semitic version of
the legend,
had been represented in the Papyri as Ani and his wife Tutu, the man and woman
that once
were mortal
on the earth, but have passed into the state of manes, who are on their way to
or in the
terrestrial
paradise. They enter the Aarru-garden. They drink the water of life at its
secret source in the
tuat.They eat
the fruit of the tree of life, which is offered to Ani, the man, by the divine
woman in the tree,
who may be
Nut or Hathor. If it be Hathor who offers the fruit of the tree, there is a
possible link betwixt
this scene
and the story of Adam's temptation by the woman in the book of Genesis.
Hathor's was the
tree of
earth, Nut's was the tree of heaven. The pair are pictured in the earthly
paradise, and therefore in
the place of
Hathor's tree, the sycamore-fig tree. Now Iusăas, the wife of Atum=Adam and
mother of Iu at
Annu, was a
form of Hathor. So that Hathor-Iusăas offering the fruit of the sycamore-fig to
Atum in the
Sekhet-Aarru
is equivalent to Eve, who offers the fruit of the tree of knowledge to Adam in
the garden of
Eden, which,
as shown by the apron of fig-Ieaves, was a fig tree.
When Ani and
his spirit-consort, who had been his wife on earth, appear together in the
happy garden,
they drink
the water of life and eat the fruit of the tree, as spirits among spirits. They
nestle in the green
bower of
Hathor the goddess of love, and the pleasures of the earthly paradise are
denoted by their
playing games
of draughts together in the garden. In one scene the pair are portrayed hard by
the tree of
life, both of
them drinking the water of life that flows from beneath the tree. In the next
vignette the man is
kneeling
alone before the tree, which is a sycamore-fig tree. A woman in the tree is
offering some of its
fruit to
Ani.This is the goddess Nut, the lady of heaven, who presents the fruit of the
tree to the man in the
garden of the
earthly paradise (Pap. of Ani, PI. 16), and who has been converted into the
woman that
tempted Adam
to eat of the tree as the cause of the fallacious fall. The biblical rendering
of this
representation
is a blasphemy against the Ritual, against womankind, against nature, and
against
knowledge.
The goddess Nut, who offers the fruit of the tree of knowledge to the kneeling
man, is in
shape a
woman, and the meaning could be only too easily misread, as it has been in the
legend of the
first woman
who tempted the first man to eat of the forbidden fruit and to cause the loss
of paradise.
According to
the Ritual the manes who receive food in the garden of Aarru (ch.99, 32,38) or
who eat of
the fruit of
the sycamore-fig tree of Hathor (ch. 52) are empowered to make what
transformation they
please, and
go out of it as spirits. They literally become spirits among spirits as a
result of eating the fruit
of the tree.
The manes says, "Let me eat under the sycamore of Hathor ! Let me see the
forms of my
father and
mother" (ch. 52), as he would when the spirit sight was opened for him to
perceive with the
beatific
vision. This is sufficient as a text for the serpent when it says, "Ye
shall not surely die; for God
doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof, then [Page 465] your eyes shall be opened and
ye shall be as
gods, knowing
good and evil" (Gen. iii. 4, 5). Instead of being damned eternally through
eating the fruit of
the tree, the
manes in Amenta are divinized piecemeal as the result of eating it (82, 2, 5).
In the rubrical
directions at
the end of chapter 99 we read, "This chapter being known, the deceased
appears in the field
(or
cultivated enclosure) of Aarru. He receives food there, the produce of its
fields. His members become
like to those
of the gods. He goes forth pure spirit". (Lines 32-34.) Instead of
referring to the fall of man
from the
terrestrial paradise, this relates to the ascent of souls from a lower heaven
won by hard labour in
Amenta to an
upper heaven attainable at last by spirits perfected. When the manes have
literally done
their digging
in cultivating the fields of Aarru, they ascend the mount of re-birth in heaven
to enter the ark
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or bark of
souls, and sail or row themselves to the Hesperian isles.
It follows
that the hiding of the guilty pair in the garden is derived from the manes
being overshadowed
and concealed
by the foliage of the tree of Hathor under which they were refreshed. If these
do not hide
themselves,
they make their refuge and secret resting place beneath the tree. "I
embrace and make my
asylum of the
sycamore", says the speaker in the Ritual (64, 24).
In the book
of Genesis the fruit of the tree is the means of knowing good from evil, and in
the Ritual both
the good and
evil are determined by the nature of the food presented to the cultivators of
the garden, or
field of
divine harvest, in Amenta as it was on earth. The speaker has a choice between
the good and the
evil - that
is be-twixt the food offered by the Apap-serpent of evil, which is denounced as
detestable, vile,
excrementitious,
and the fruit of the tree, upon which the gods and all good spirits feed. The
speaker
repudiates
the typhonian diet. He only accepts that which is offered to him by a messenger
who comes
from the gods
and not from the Apap-serpent. He subsists on the food which is the bread of
Horus and
Taht.
"The Osiris feeds on the fruit which is produced by the sycamore-fig tree
of Hathor". On that he is
nourished in
his turn. In Egyptian the wise spirits are the akeru, which are the wise
spirits of the
instructed
dead, and in eating the fruit of the tree - the eaters are to become the wise
as spirits. This
therefore is
the tree of wisdom, or of knowledge. In this was, eating of the tree is a part
of the process by
which the
manes in the garden make their transformation into pure spirits. Certain of the
baser sort of
manes were
represented as feeding in Amenta on the excremental foulnesses of human life In
chapter
32 the
speaker exclaims, "Back, crocodile of the east, who livest upon those that
devour their own
excrement
!" There is a Mangaian representation of some poor wretches in Savaiki who
are doomed to
endure the
indignity or being befouled by the feces that fall from the more fortunate
spirits who are happy
in their
world of plenty overhead. (Gill, p. 164). The doctrine is native to the Book of
the Dead. The
Egyptians
held that those who were foul and filthy in this life would be fed on
excremental matter in the
next. The
dirty would be dirty still. The Catamite and Sodomite would devour the feces
that are probably
denoted
figuratively by the words hesu and ushem, which [Page 466] the deceased
abominates when he
asserts that
he does not eat the dirt or drink the lye.
It is
possible that hints for the story of eating that which was prohibited, and the
becoming aware of their
nakedness by
the guilty pair, and their hiding under the trees, were taken from chapters 53
A and B and
124 of the
Ritual. The speaker who has been constituted a soul by Osiris says, "hat
which is forbidden I
do not eat :
I do not walk upon it with my sandals". Here the forbidden thing: is
odious because it is evil,
filthy,
excremental. For those who abstain, from such repulsive food, the object of
unclean appetites,
there are
pure foods and proper nourishment provided. To these the manes, man and wife,
the pair seen
in the
pictures, uplift their hands. The speaker for both says they eat under the
trees and beautiful
branches of
the tree upon which the fruit grows within reach (124, I, 4). The notion of a
tree that grew
forbidden
fruit is probably of totemic origin, with a mystical application to sexual
uncleanness.The people
whose totem
was a particular tree would be forbidden to eat of its fruit, or if it were
eaten it must be
sacramentally,
because it was, sacred to them. "Do not eat forbidden food", is a
command sternly spoken
to the young
men in the initiation ceremonies of the Arunta tribes.
In one
episode the guilty pair, having eaten of the tree that was to make them wise,
perceive themselves
to be naked
in the garden, and are then clothed with skins by Iahu-Elohim. This also, may
be explicated
by the
gnosis. The manes in the Ritual consist of the clothed and the naked. Those who
pass the
judgment hall
become the clothed. The beatified spirits are invested with the robe of the
righteous, the
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stole of Ra,
in the garden. There was a special investiture by the god in the garden of
Aarru. This clothing
in the garden
is likewise apart of the process by which the manes pass into the state of
spirits. The
investiture
in the garden of Hetep denotes a spirit made perfect in the likeness of the
Lord. This is
followed at a
distance in the Hebrew Genesis. When the man and woman are invested in their
coats of
skin they
also become spirits, if not as the spirits of the just made perfect. And
Iahu-Elohim said, "Behold,
the man is
become as one ofus, to know good from evil" . ”The deceased pleads that he
may attain the
"investiture
of the garden" (ch. 110). When clothed they issue in what is termed the
"coming forth from
the swathings
in the garden of Aarru, and the coming forth in exultation" (Renouf, ch.
99). "I hasten to the
land, and I
fasten my stole upon me, that I may come forth and take possession of the
wealth assigned to
me" (ch.
110). "I range within the garden of Hetep; I fasten my stole upon me"
(ch. 110). "I am the girdled
one, coming
forth in triumph" (ch. 117). Now in the judgment scenes there is a skin
called the nem-skin
suspended
over a sign that represents the ba-soul (Hor-Apollo, i. 40). The word nem
denotes another, a
second, also
to repeat. Thus the nem skin is a second skin, covering, or investiture. That
which it hangs
on in the vignette
signifies a soul. So that the nem-skin means another garment for the soul.The
lord of
transformations
is said to have numerous skins, as the re-habiliments of souls. A new skin as
equivalent
to a new
lease of existence. It is this clothing [Page 467] of the manes in a coat of
skin that is repeated in
the book of
Genesis.
Whatsoever
astronomical data there may have been for the typical rendering of a fall in
heaven, or from
the garden of
Eden, it is the Semites, not the Egyptians, who are responsible for introducing
a fall into
the moral
domain and calling it the veritable fall of man in the beginning.
The
Babylonian handling of the Egyptian wisdom was begun by falsifying it on behalf
of an indefinitely
later system
of theology, which was continued on the Hebrew line of descent in the book of
Genesis.
Besides
which, if the fall of Adam from paradise is identifiable with the falling away
of Atum in the
astronomical
mythology, it becomes at once apparent that the restoration from the effects of
such a fall is
equally
astronomical and a matter of scientific verification.Atum, as father, sank down
to Amenta every
night, and
every morning there was a restoration of the light made by the second Atum in
his character of
the youthful
solar god. In the same way Atum, the closer of the year, was the autumn sun
that went down
in the
winter, solstice and rose again in the equinox as opener and restorer in the
person of Nefer- Tum,
the coming
son, who was Iu-su = Jesus as Egyptian. So was it through all the cycles of
time, including
finally the
cycle of the great year of the world. On the scale of precession he who made
the lapse at first
as Atum or
Adam would naturally make the restoration as Iu at the end of 26,000 years for
those who
rightly kept
the reckoning and did not mistake this great ending in time for an actual
ending of the world.
It was the
subject of astronomical prophecy that Atum in person of the son (that is, the
su or sa) would
come again to
restore that which was lost of old, when time had once more travelled to the
place of the
beginning in
the Lion sign, the station of the sphinx in heaven, who kept the secret for the
mystery
teachers of
the eternal, or in whichever sign the cycle was to be fulfilled, when paradise
would be
regained, and
all would be once more as at the first; when, as Vergil sang of the great
cyclical renewal,
"There
shall be another ark, steered by another pilot, hearing the chosen heroes"
(the twelve kings or
gods that
voyaged in the solar bark),"and there shall be other wars, and great
Achilles shall be sent once
more to
Troy" (Vergil, Eclogue iv). In other words, the wandering Iu or Horus,
Prince of Eternity, would
travel once
more round the cycle of precession as divine manifestor and fulfiller in the
great year of the
world. The
tree of life retained its place and prominence in the new heavens of Hebrew
prophecy as in
the old
heaven of the astronomical mythology. "For unto you is paradise opened;
the tree of life is
planted, the
time to come is prepared, plenteousness is made ready, a city is builded, and
rest is allowed.
Sorrows are
passed, and in the end is shown the treasure of immortality" (2 Es. viii.
52-54). All of which
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had been
realized for the Egyptians in the garden of Hetep, the Aarru-paradise upon the
stellar mount of
glory.
Apart from
the astronomical allegory, the only fall of man was that of the Adam whom the
seven Elohim
tried to make
out of the red earth, but failed from lack of the immortal spark of spirit,
which was ascribed
to the father
in heaven when the human father had been [Page 468] individualized on earth.
This was the
man of flesh
who was born, not begotten; the man who descended from the mother only - that
is, totemic
man, who was
shaped by the apprentice hands of the seven powers, together with their mother,
and who
preceded the
supreme being. The first-formed Adam was of the earth earthy, of the flesh
fleshly, the man
of matter =
the mother. This was the origin of an opposition betwixt the flesh and spirit,
the man of earth
and the man
from heaven, which led to a doctrine of natural depravity and pollution of the
flesh when
compared with
the purity of spirit. The doctrine of natural depravity did not originate in
the moral domain,
it originated
in matter considered to be at enmity with the spirit. The cause of this
depravity in the flesh
was ascribed
to the woman after the soul or spirit had been assigned to the fatherhood. The
mother was
the maker of
flesh from her own blood or the red earth, and in one particular phase the
blood of the
woman was
held to be vile and filthy. Job asks, "How can man be clean that is born
of a woman?"
(xxv.4). But
this "depravity" was a result of confounding the blood as virgin
source of life with the
menstrualia.
There is a hint of the doctrine in the Ritual. In the chapter "whereby one
cometh forth to day
from
Amenta", the manes says, "Shine thou on me, O gracious power; as I
draw nigh to the divine words
which my ears
shall hear in the Tuat, let no pollution of my mother be upon me". The
speaker is making
his
transformations into the glorious body of a manes who will be perfected in
becoming pure spirit, which
is the
antithesis of the earthly body that was made flesh in the blood of the mother.
"Let no pollution of
my mother be
upon me" is equivalent to saying, "Deliver me from all fleshliness of
the old earth life".
Here,
however, the utterer of this prayer is one of the manes who has risen in the
shape of the old body,
but changed
in texture, and who is desirous of being purified and perfected in the likeness
of the holy
spirit, which
is personalized in Amenta as Horus, the anointed son of god the father. A
hundred times
over one sees
how these utterances pertaining to Amenta have been perverted through being
assigned
to human
beings in the life on earth.
The
additional features added by the Semites to the original version of the mythos
consist in the
introduction
of a primal pair of mortals eating the forbidden fruit; the temptation and
seduction of the
woman by the
deceiving serpent; the turning of the woman into the tempter of the man; the
criminality of
the first parents,
who lost the world and damned the race before a child was born; the creation of
an
original sin
which was destined to overshadow the human family with an antenatal cloud of
guilt and of
hereditary
depravity, and thus prepare the way and the need for the Christian scheme of
redemption to
regain a
paradisaical condition which was never lost and never had existed. These were
the crowning
achievements
of those who falsified the teachings of the Egyptians. Nothing could better
illustrate the
difference
between the two versions than the opposite treatment of work. In the biblical
travesty the curse
is to come to
the man in the shape of work and to the woman with the labour pangs of
maternity.
Whereas in
the Ritual work is the blessing and the workers in Aarru are the blessed. They
cultivate their
own allotted
portions in the field of divine harvest, and may be said to [Page 469] make
their way and win
their other
world by work. For the Egyptian could find his heaven in the satisfaction of
accomplished
work. Again,
if we take Ani and his wife, Tutu, as representatives of the pair, once human,
and now
manes, in the
garden, we shall find that so far from the "woman" having been the
cause of a fall in the
Egyptian
Genesis, so far from her having been an agent of the evil serpent, or of Satan,
as the Christian
fathers
ignorantly alleged and brutally maintained, she, the only one who ever had been
a woman in this
or in other
forms of the pair, is portrayed as defender of the man all through the trials
and temptations
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that beset
him in his passage through the nether world. She is his guide and protector.
She propitiates
the powers
with offerings on his behalf. She makes his music and his magic all the way.
The pair in
Eden or the earthly paradise fulfil two characters in the Kamite myth and
eschatology. They
are either
two of the gods, as Atum and Kefa (Kep), or two of the glorified, as Ani and
Tutu. But in neither
are the male
and female in the garden a pair of human beings; both as the gods and the
glorified they
are
supra-mundane and doubly non-human. Finally, if the "fall" had ever
been a veritable fact, the
subsequent
history of man might be summed up as one long, vast, unceasing, vain endeavour
to remedy
the disaster
and the failure that befell the divine government of the universe in such a
helpless way as
would destroy
all future trust. The vessel would have been lost in the act of being launched,
and not a
hand reached
forth to save the victims until some nineteen centuries ago, when God himself
is said to
have come
down in person for a long-belated rescue of shipwrecked humanity. But the
Semitic story of
the fall is
false, and the scheme of redemption founded on it is consequently fraudulent.
As it comes to
us, the book
of Genesis is based on misappropriated legends. It is responsible for an
utterly erroneous
account of
creation and the origin of evil, and its damnation of the race through Adam's
fall is the sole
ground on
which the Christian world can now find foothold for its coming Saviour. And,
however long or
however short
a time the imposition lasts,
"The
same old lie, for ever told anew,
will never
serve to make the falsehood true".
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BOOK 8 of 12
THE EGYPTIAN
WISDOM IN OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS
[Page 470]
The Kamite mythos of the old lost garden may be seen transforming into Hebrew
legendary
lore when
Ezekiel describes an Eden that was sunk and buried in the lowermost parts of
the earth. “Thus
saith the
Lord. ..When I cast him (Pharaoh) down to Sheol with them that descend into the
pit: and all the
trees of
Eden, ...and all that drink water were comforted in the nether parts of the
earth. ...”, “To whom art
thou thus
like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden ? Yet shalt thou be
brought down with
the trees of
Eden into the nether parts of the earth; thou shalt lie in the midst of the
uncircumcised”. (Ez.
xxxi. 15, 16,
18.) This is the garden of Eden in Sheol, and Sheol is a Semitic version of the
Egyptian
Amenta. That
is why the lost Gan-Eden is to be found in the nether parts of the earth as an
outcast of the
later
theology.
When the word
Sheol in the Old Testament is rendered in English by “the grave”, it is
inadequate times
out of
number. The Hebrew writers were not always speaking or thinking of the grave
when they wrote of
Sheol, which
has to be bottomed in Amenta, the divine nether-earth, not simply in the tomb.
The grave is
not identical
with hell, nor the pit-hole with the bottomless pit. The pangs and sorrows of
Sheol, like the
purging pangs
of the Romish purgatory, have to be studied in the Egyptian Ritual. Many of the
moanings
and the
groanings in the Psalms are the utterances of Osiris or the Osiris suffering in
Amenta. They are
the cries for
assistance in Sheol. The appeals in the house of bondage for help from on high,
and for
deliverance
from afflictions and maladies more than human, were uttered In Amenta before
they were
heard in
Sheol, and the Psalmist who first wrote the supplications on behalf of the
manes was known as
the divine
scribe Taht before the Psalms in Hebrew were ascribed to David. The speaker of
Psalm xvi. is
talking pure
Egyptian doctrine in Amenta concerning his soul and body when he says, “My
flesh shall
dwell in
safety, for thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy
holy one to see
corruption;
thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is the fulness of joy, in
thy right hand there
are pleasures
for evermore”. As we see from the Ritual, this is the manes expressing his
confidence in
the duration
of his personality, the persistence of his sahu or mummy-soul in [Page 471]
Amenta, and his
hope of being
vivified for ever by the Holy Spirit and led along the pathway of eternal life
by Horus the
Redeemer to
the right hand of his father, Atum-Ra. He is the sleeper in Amenta when he
says, “I shall
behold thy
face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake”
(Ps. xvii. 15). The
Osiris woke
in Sekhem, where he saw the likeness of his Lord who left his picture there;
his true likeness
as the risen
one transformed, transfigured, and divinely glorified, that looked upon the
manes, smiling
sun-wise
through the defecating mist of death, for the Osiris to come forth and follow
him. The speaker
was in Amenta
as the land of bondage when the “cords of Sheol” were bound about him. He was
assimilated
to the suffering Horus, sitting blind and helpless in the utter darkness,
pierced and torn and
bleeding from
the wounds inflicted on him by Sut, who had been his own familiar friend, his
twin-brother,
and who had
turned against him and betrayed him to his death. The most memorable sayings in
the
Psalms, and
the most misleading when misunderstood, are uttered in this character of
Osiris, who was
the typical
victim in Amenta, where he was tormented by the followers of Sut, the forsaken
sufferer who
was piteously
left to cry, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me ? Why art thou so far
from
helping me?”
The sufferer is in Sheol, the miry pit, when he says, “I sink in deep mire”.
“Deliver me out of
the mire, and
let not Sheol shut her mouth upon me” (Ps. Ixix. 2,14, 15).
Sheol, then,
is one with Amenta, and the drama with its characters and teachings belongs to
the
mysteries of
Amenta, which are attributed to Taht, the Egyptian psalmist, who is the great
chief in
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Sekhem, the
place where Horus suffered or Osiris died. Taht was the writer of the sayings
attributed to
Horus in his
dual character of the human sufferer in Amenta and of Horus-Tema, the divine
avenger of
the
sufferings that were inflicted on Osiris by the “wicked”, the Sami, the
co-conspirators with Sut, the
Egyptian
Judas. This will account for the non-natural imagery and hugely inhuman
language ascribed to
the supposed
historic David, who as writer was primarily the psalmist Taht, and who called
down the
divine wrath
upon the accursed Typhonians for what they had done in binding, torturing, and
piercing
Horus (or
Osiris) and pursuing him to death.So far as the language of Taht remains in the
Psalms of
David, it is
inhuman because the characters of the drama were originally non-human. This is
one of the
many
misrenderings that have to be rectified by means of the Egyptian Ritual, when
we have
discriminated
between the earth of time and the earth of eternity, between the denizens of
Judea and the
manes in
Sheol, and learned that the Hebrew and Christian histories of these mystical
matters have been
compounded
out of the Egyptian eschatology.
It is
noteworthy that certain of the Psalms, in two different groups (xlii. to xlix.
and lxxxiv. to lxxxviii.), are
specialized
as “Psalms of the Sons of Korah”. These were the rebels, once upon a time, who,
according
to Hebrew tradition,
disappeared when the earth opened and swallowed them up alive. This is a legend
of Amenta.
The only earth that ever swallowed human beings was the nether-earth of Sheol;
and if we
take our
stand with the sons of Korah in Amenta we can [Page 472] read these Psalms and
see how they
should
especially apply to those who were swallowed by Sheol in the nether-world. “One
thing”, says a
commentator,
“which added to this surprising occurrence, is that when Korah was swallowed in
the earth
his sons were
preserved”.They went down to the pit in death, but lived on as did the manes in
Amenta.
The sons of
Korah are in Sheol. But, says the speaker,“God will redeem my soul from the
power of
Sheol” (Ps.
xlix. 15). He exclaims, “Bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles”.
Psalm xlv. is a
Psalm
addressed to the anointed son, the king=the royal Horus, who comes as a
conqueror of death and
Sheol. Psalm
xlvii. is a song of the resurrection from Amenta. “God is gone up with a
shout”, to sit upon
his holy
throne, in the eternal city “on his holy mountain”, which was the way up from
the dark valley for
those who,
like “the sons of Korah”, sank into the nether-earth, but who lived on to rise
again and reach
the summit of
the sacred mount. The Kamite steps of ascent were buried as a fetish figure in
the coffins
with the dead
for use, typically, when they woke to life in Amenta. It is said to the Osiris
in the Ritual,
“Osiris, thou
hast received thy sceptre, thy pedestal, and the flight of stairs beneath
thee”; this was in
readiness for
his resurrection. These images of the stand on which the gods were elevated,
like Anup at
the pole, the
tat of stability, and the steps of ascent to heaven, were buried with the mummy
as emblems
of divine
protection which are with him when he emerges from the comatose state of the
dead. The steps
thus buried
stand for the mountain of ascent. We are reminded of this by the Psalmist when
he sings, “O
Lord, thou
hast brought up my soul from Sheol. Thou, Lord, of thy favour hadst made my
mountain to
stand strong”
(Ps. xxx. 37) the mountain that was imaged in the tomb by the steps with the
aid of which
the deceased
makes the ascent from Amenta, and can say, “I am the lord of the stairs. I have
made my
nest on the
horizon” (Rit., ch. 85). The Pharaoh Unas exults that the ladder or steps have
been supplied
to him by his
father, Ra, as means of ascent to spirit world. When King Pepi makes his exodus
from the
lower earth
to the elysian fields Sut sets up his maket, or ladder, in Amenta by which the
manes reaches
the horizon;
and, secondly, Horus erects his ladder by which the spirit of Pepi reaches up
to heaven. This
divides the
steps of ascent into halves of seven each as these are figured in the seven
steps of the solar
boat. Thus
the total number is fourteen, as it was in the lunar mythos when the eye of the
full moon was
attained at
the summit of fourteen steps or top of the staircase. The number, as may be
explained, was
fifteen in
the soli-lunar reckoning of the month. Thus in one computation there were
fifteen steps to the
ladder of
ascent from the depths of Amenta to the summit of the mount. Now, fifteen of
the Psalms (cxx.
to cxxxiv.)
are termed “Psalms of degrees”. In the Hebrew they are called “a Song of
ascents”. In the
Chaldee they
were designated “a song that was sung upon the steps of the abyss”. These are
the steps
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from the
abyss or depths of Sheol mentioned by the speaker. who says, “Thou shalt bring
me up again
from the
depths of the earth” (Ps. Ixxi. 20). “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee,
O Lord” (Ps. cxxx.
I). Thus the
steps constituted a means of ascent from Sheol or Amenta, [Page 473] and in the
song of
ascents we
can identify the staircase of the great god by which the summit of the mount
was attained.
The speaker
has dwelt long in the death-dark land. He will lift up his eyes to the
mountains, or the mount:
“Unto thee do
I lift up mine eyes, O thou that sittest in the heavens”. “The Lord hath chosen
Zion: he hath
desired it
for his habitation'' - as he had already done when his name was Khnum, or
Osiris, the lord of
Sheni (Rit.,
ch. 36). The celestial mountain is the place where the throne was prepared for
the last
judgment in
the mysteries of Amenta, and figured in the maat upon the summit of the mount.
It was there
Osiris sat
“in his throne judging righteously as king for ever”. The mount was also called
the staircase of
the great
god. Osiris is said to sit at the head of the staircase, surrounded by his
circle of gods (Rit., ch.
22 ). In the
pre-Osirian cult it was Atum-Ra who sat as the great judge in the maat, the
hall of truth, law,
and justice.
As we have seen, the mount on high was also imaged by other types of the ascent
to
heaven.
The speaker
in the song of ascents or the psalms of fifteen degrees is at the base of the
mythical mount
in Sheol =
Amenta. The lord whom he addresses is upon the summit of his holy hill, just as
Osiris or Atum
or Sebek, is
the great god seated at the head of the staircase. In his distress he cries
unto the Lord for
deliverance
from the enemy, who is Sut the liar and deceiver; “him that hateth peace”. “My
soul”, he says,
“hath long
had her dwelling with him that hateth peace. I am for peace”. “Woe is me!” he
cries, “ that I
sojourn in
Meshech” (Ps. cxx. 5). Meshech, or meska in the Egyptian, as a place-name
signifies the
place of
scourging and purifying in Suten-Khen. It is the Kamite purgatory as a place of
rebirth in Amenta
(Rit., ch.
17)for the soul, on its resurrection from the dead prior to the ascent of the
steps, the ladder,
staircase,
column, or mount. On passing through the sixth abode of Amenta (Rit., chs. 72
and 149) the
speaker
pleads, “Let me not be stopped at the meska; let not the wicked have mastery
over me”. “Let me
join my two
hands together in the divine dwelling which my father Atum hath given me, he
who hath
established
an abode for me above the earth, wherein is wheat and barley of untold
quantity, which the
son of my own
body offereth to me there as oblations upon my festivals”. And when the manes
has
passed
through the meska or place of purifying he prays to be delivered from the hells
that await the
damned. In
Meshech or the meska the sufferer says he will lift up his eyes unto the
mountains from
whence his
help shall come. The mount is pluralized, but it is the summit upon which
stands the heavenly
Jerusalem,
“builded as a city that is compact together, whither the tribes go up, even the
tribes of .huh, to
give thanks
unto the Lord”. There were set “the thrones for judgment, the thrones of the
house of David”,
which are the
twelve thrones in heaven, as described in the book of Revelation. The single
mount is Zion.
the Egyptian
shennu, or hetep, the mount of rest.
“For the Lord
hath chosen Zion,
He hath
desired it for His habitation;
This is my
resting place for ever”. -Ps. cxxxii.
On the last
of the fifteen steps of ascent a call is made upon the starry luminaries to
praise the Lord.
“Bless ye the
Lord, all ye [Page 474] servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house
of the Lord.
Lift up your
hands to the sanctuary, and bless the Lord. The Lord bless thee out of Zion”
(Ps. cxxxiv.).
These are
they who stand by night around the throne at the top of the steps, and this
last finishing touch
is very
definitely astronomical. As Egyptian, there was an upper circle of the great
spirits round the throne
upon the
summit of the mount, who were called the shennu, and the mount of the shennu =
Mount Zion.
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Under one of
its Egyptian names the valley of Amenta or Sheol is called “Akar”. This valley
of Akar we
identify with
Achor, the valley of sorrow in the Hebrew. “Achor's gloomy vale” , is sung of
in the Christian
hymn, and
this is the essential character of Akar. It has been observed by Renouf that
the notion of
obscurity is
connected with Akar, whereas the notion of brightness is essentially associated
with the
mount (Proc.
Soc. Bib. Arch., March 7, 1893, p. 223). The two gates of Akar are mentioned in
the
pyramid texts
of Pepi (line 72) as equivalent in sense to the two gates of Seb or the earth
(Renouf, Rit.,
ch. 39,
note). The difference lies betwixt the mythical and eschatological application.
The gates of Seb
refer to our
earth, and the gates of Akar to Amenta, the land of shades in the earth of eternity.
When the
valley of
Achor is to become a door of hope it is in the wake of the solar god who goes
forth from the gate
of Akar to
the summit of the mount. Israel was to be judged and to make answer in the
judgment hall
(which stood
at the place of exit in the topography of Amenta), “as in the day when she
(previously) came
up out of the
land of Egypt”, which was one and the same thing in the mythical representation
of the
Exodus
(Hosea, ii. 15). In fact, the supposed history is identified with the mythos by
Esdras, who portrays
the last
judgment, which is to be as it was in the time of Achan when he was doomed die
in the valley of
Achor, the
Egyptian valley of the shadow in Akar (2 Es. vii. 26-37). In this valley was
the sepulchre of
Osiris,
betwixt the two mountains or horizons of the west and east. So the graves of
the Hottentot deity
Heitsi-Eibib
were made in a valley or narrow pass between two mountains, and from these he,
like Osiris,
rose again
and made his transformation in the tree of dawn.
The nature of
Achor is indicated by Hosea when he says of Israel, (ii. 14, 15), “I will
allure her and bring
her into the
wilderness, and I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope, and she
shall make
answer in the
judgment there”. It was in Achor that the stoning of Achan occurred, in the
valley of
vengeance,
and it is there that Israel was to answer for all her iniquities. Thus,
whatsoever events had
occurred in
Achor's gloomy vale took place in the Akar or Ati-kerti of the nether-earth,
which was a place
of passage
for the manes through Amenta. In the distance lay the Aarru-paradise with the
seven cows
called the
providers of plenty resting in the green fields of peace and prosperity. The
vale of Akar led to
the
Aarru-meadows, and out of “these arose the mountain of the Lord, upon the
summit of which was the
place of
rebirth in the upper paradise, the abode of the blessed. This is the imagery
made use of by
Isaiah (Ixv.
9, 12): “Thus saith the Lord: I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out
of Judah an
inheritor of
my mountain; and my chosen [Page 475] shall inherit it, and my servants shall
dwell there. And
Sharon shall
be a pasture for flocks, and the valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down
in, for my
people that
have sought me. But ye that forsake the Lord, that forget my holy mountain,
that prepare a
table for
fortune and that fill up mingled wine unto destiny, I will destine you to the
sword”. This is the
mountain of
Amenta. Fortune and Destiny are two Egyptian deities who are mentioned here by
the name
of Gad and
Meni, but only mentioned to be abjured. As Egyptian the goddess of fortune was
Rannut, who
was also the
giver of good fortune in the harvest. The god of destiny or fate was Shai, the
apportioner of
the lot.
These are to be cast out and their worshippers destroyed, but the mould of the
imagery remains
in the valley
of Achor. Indeed, the chart of Judea looks like a copy of the scenery in Amenta
as it would
be if the
land had been originally mapped out by the emigrants from Egypt. Amenta and the
Aarruparadise,
with its
heaven on the summit of the mount, have been repeated at innumerable sacred
places
of the world,
such as the garden of the gods and the holy mountain of Shasta in Colorado.
The first
resurrection of two and the coming forth to day occur in the valley of Akar.
The valley of
passengers,
the burial-place for Gog and his multitude; the valley of Elah, the valley of
giants, the valley
of the Rephaim,
the valley of death, the valley of judgment, the valley of Siddim, the valley
of Hinom - are
all figures
of Amenta in the nether-earth of the mythos and eschatology, and therefore of
the Hebrew
Sheol. The
“valley of decision” Joel, iii. 14) is likewise the valley of Amenta associated
with the mount of
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Ancient
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the Lord, the
valley of the lower earth in which the great judgment was delivered at the end
of the world,
or age, or cycle
of time, which was annual in the mysteries, as it still is in the Jewish
ceremonies
celebrated at
the end of every year. The Lord is about to judge the whole world in the valley
of judgment,
here called
Jehosaphat. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, for the day of
the Lord is near in
the valley of
decision. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their
shining. And the
Lord shall
roar (as the god in lion form - Rit., 54, I) from Zion, and utter his voice
from Jerusalem; and the
heavens shall
shake; but the Lord will be a refuge unto his people, and a stronghold to the
children of
Israel. So
shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion my holy mountain.
And it shall come
to pass in
that day that the mountain shall drop down sweet wine, and the hills shall flow
with milk, and all
the brooks of
Judah shall run with waters, and a fountain shall come forth out of the house
of the Lord
and water the
valley of the acacias”. Every feature of this imagery is and ever had been
Egyptian. The
valley of
decision is the Egyptian valley of judgment in which the great hall of mati,
the house of the Lord
in the solar
mythos, was the judgment-seat. The lord who sat in judgment was Atum, in his
lion form as
lord of
terrors. The lord enthroned upon his holy mountain was Atum-Ra upon the
mountain of Amenta
which the
manes climbed for their rebirth in heaven. The mountain that souls are
commanded to flee to
for safety in
the time of trouble and threatened destruction - which is repeated in the New
Testament - is
the mountain
of the manes, who fled to its summit in the likeness of [Page 476] birds. This
is expressed in
Psalm xi. “In
the Lord put I my trust. How say ye to my soul flee as a bird (or birds) to
your mountain. For
lo, the
wicked bend the bow; they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may
shoot in
darkness at
the upright of heart. The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord, his throne is
in heaven”, on the
summit of the
solar mount to which the hawk-headed manes fled and were out of the reach of
the rebels,
the sebau,
the wicked, the Sut-Typhonians who pursued and shot at them in the darkness,
and who were
rained upon
with fire and brimstone and the burning blast, or overwhelmed with the
inundation in the Red
Sea or lake
of Putrata in Amenta. According to the ancient Osirian mythos, there was a
cleft in the hillside
at Abydos,
through which the manes passed as human-headed birds in the shape of hawks or
herons. This
was a proto-typal representation of the souls fleeing for refuge to the
mountain, that was
afterwards
repeated in Semitic legends, Hebrew and Arabic.
The typical
valley, then, goes with the mythical mountain or mountains in the Hebrew
writings. The valley
of Amenta is
the dwelling-place of the manes, which are represented as the rephaim who
answer to the
Egyptian
repait. The repait, or pait, are the dead below the earth who are in the
custody of Seb. The
rephaim are
the dead in the Hebrew Sheol. In the day of vengeance, says Isaiah, “it shall
be as when the
corn is
reaped and the ears are gleaned in the valley of Rephaim”. In the valley of
Amenta was the field
of divine
harvest and the vintage of vengeance. In tracing the Israelites on their
journey out of Lower
Egypt we
shall meet with the rephaim, who are the giants and at the same time shades of
enormous
stature.
Meanwhile, whatsoever battles were fought or vast events occurred in the valley
of the rephaim,
they took
place in the earth of the dead, and not upon the upper earth. The giant king of
Bashan was one
of the
rephaim; Goliath, the colossus, was another of the rephaim; and these giants
dwelt in the valley of
the rephaim.
Consequently, the conquerors of the rephaim, whether called Moses or Abraham,
Joshua or
David, who
warred with the giants as shades of the dead in the valley of the rephaim,
could no more be
historical
characters than were the rephaim themselves.
On entering
the dark valley of Amenta the Egyptian manes most assiduously seeks for the
place of
refuge and
safety provided by the great god, and for the entrance to the ark or tabernacle
of Osiris-Ra.
This is a
secret covert in the midst of Akar. Osiris is denominated “lord of the shrine
which standeth at the
centre of the
earth” (Rit.ch.64). It is said by the speaker in the Litany of Ra, “Here is the
Osiris; carry him
into the
hidden sanctuary of Osiris, lord of eternity who is under the care of the two
divine sisters that
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Ancient
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give
protection in the tomb! Carry him into the hidden dwelling where Osiris
resides, and which is in
Amenta, the
mysterious sanctuary of the god at rest. Bear him, open your arms to him,
stretch out your
hands to him,
take off your veils before him, for he is the great essence whom the dead
spirits do not
know”, but to
whom they are indebted for the resurrection to new life. In the Psalms the
tabernacle or
sanctuary in
Sheol takes the place of the ark or secret shrine of Osiris in Amenta. “Lord,
who shall
sojourn in
thy Tabernacle ? ,. (Ps. xv. I). “In the court of his tabernacle shall he hide
me” ( xxvii. 5).[Page
477] “In
Salem is his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion” (Ps. lxxvi.2). The
resurrection of the
manes took
place in Sheol or Amenta. And it is as the risen manes in Sheol that the
speaker seeks to
dwell in the
sanctuary of the Lord and to contemplate his temple. Hence he says, “In the
covert of his
tabernacle
(or dwelling) shall he hide me. He shall lift me upon a rock. I will offer in
his tabernacle
sacrifices of
joy” (Ps. xxvii.). Such sacrifices or offerings are made to Osiris in his
shrine of earth or
tabernacle in
Amenta, as shown by the vignettes to the Ritual. This was the “stronghold of
salvation to his
anointed” in
the earth of eternity. This we take to be the tabernacle, sanctuary, or house
of the lord in
Sheol, of
which it is said, “Who shall sojourn in the tabernacle?”. “In the day of
trouble he shall keep me
secretly in
his pavilion. In the covert of his tabernacle shall he hide me” (Ps. xxvii. 5,
6), “in the place
where the
divine glory dwelleth” (Ps. xxvi. 6).
The
mummy-Osiris in Amenta is the figure of a sleeping deity. This, as the mummy-Ptah
or Putah, we
hold to have
been the prototype of the sleeping Buddha. The mummy-image of divinity was
continued in
Osiris-Sekeri.
He is the inert in matter, the sleeping or resting divinity, the breathless
one; Urt-Hat, the
god of the
non-beating heart, the silent Sekeri. Such also is the divine sleeper who is
piteously appealed
to by the
human sufferer in Sheol, and who is identical with Osiris sleeping in Amenta.
The speaker in the
Psalms cries
“unto the Lord with his voice”, “Arise, O Lord! save me, O my God”, “Arise, O
God, judge
the earth. O
God, keep not thou silence. Hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God” ( Ps.
lxxxii. 8; lxxxiii.
I ). The
waking preceded the great judgment. “Arise, O Lord, in thine anger; lift up
thyself against the
rage of mine
adversaries, and awake for me. Thou hast commanded judgment” (Ps. vii. 6). “O
Lord,
when thou
awakest thou shalt despise their image”. “Awake; why sleepest thou, O Lord ?
Rise up for our
help” (Ps;
xliv. 23, 26). “Then the Lord awaked as one out of a sleep, and he smote his
adversaries
backward”
(Ps. lxxviii. 65). This is the awaking of the god as Amsu, whip in hand, when
he arises and
asserts his
sovereignty over all the opposing powers. The speaker is in the position of the
Osiris, as the
mummy
sleeping in Amenta when he pleads with the protecting power, “Keep me as the
apple of the eye.
Hide me under
the shadow of thy wings from the wicked that spoil me, my deadly enemies that
compass
me about”.
“As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied with
thy likeness when
I awake” (Ps.
xvii. 8-15). In these passages Osiris the mummy-god as sleeper in Amenta and
the Osiris
as a manes
are both represented, and are both distinguishable each from the other. The
speaker in
Psalm xvii.
is in Sheol waiting to awake in the living likeness of this redeemer from
death, and he is
surrounded by
“the wicked”, who are the “deadly enemies” that compass him about. He cries,
“Deliver my
soul from the
wicked which is thy sword '' - as power of punishment (xvii. 13). It is the
wicked who come
upon the
sufferer “to eat up his flesh”, not as cannibals on earth, but as evil
spirit-powers of prey (Ps.
xxvii. 2).
The opponents of the sun and the manes appear in the Psalms as the adversary
and the
adversaries.
The individual adversary is discriminated from the [Page 478] adversaries. Also
the individual
adversary is
reproduced in the two characters of the Apap-dragon and of Sut or Satan, once
the familiar
friend or
twin brother of the good Osiris, and afterwards his betrayer and inveterate
personal enemy.
Now, the
adversaries of Osiris, or of souls in Amenta, include the Sebau, and these are
the “wicked” by
name, for the
word in Egyptian signifies the profane, impious, blasphemous, culpable, or
wicked. They
rise up from
Amenta as the powers of darkness in revolt, but are for ever driven back into
their native
night by
Horus or Ra, Taht or Shu. These are the wicked of whom it is said in the Psalm,
“They shall
return or be
driven back to Sheol” (Ps. ix. 17).
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Ancient
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The
comparative process shows that, like Taht, the Psalmist opens in Amenta, the
place of the wicked
who have no
power to “stand in the judgment. .The “wicked” in Amenta are the adversaries of
the sun
and the soul
of man. These are the rebels who for ever rise in impotent revolt against the
Lord and his
anointed,
Osiris-Ra and Horus in the Ritual, .huh the father-god and David the beloved in
the Psalms.
The “wicked”
rage against the Lord and his anointed, saying, “Let us break their bands
asunder and cast
away their
cords from us” (Ps. ii. 3). These are the “cords of death”, the “cords of the
wicked” (Ps. cxxix.
4), the cords
with which the manes are fettered in the land of bondage and the depths of
Sheol. The Lord
that sitteth
in the heavens has these children of failure in derision. He has set his son as
king upon the
holy hill of
Zion, who is to break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a
potter's vessel.
These are
they of whom it is said to the Lord, “Thou hast broken the teeth of the
wicked”. That is in
defence of
the sufferer in Sheol, who exclaims, “I cry unto the Lord with my voice, and he
answereth me
out of his
holy hill. I laid me down in death and slept; I awaked, for the Lord sustaineth
me” ( Ps. iii. 4, 5 ).
Osiris the
typical sufferer in Amenta was imaged as the mummy bound up in the bandages of
burial. As
Osiris the mummy
he was the Karest or prototypal Corpus Christi. As Osiris-Sekeri he was the
coffined
one. As
Osiris-Sahu he rose again in a spiritual body. As Osiris-tat he was a figure of
eternal stability. For
reasons now
to be adduced, Osiris, or the Osiris, represents that typical sufferer whose
cries and
ejaculations
are to be heard ascending from Amenta in the Egyptian Ritual and from Sheol in
the Hebrew
Psalms.
David
pleading in the cave is equivalent to Osiris crying in the caverns of Sut in
Amenta. He says, “I cry
with my voice
unto the Lord. With my voice unto the Lord do I make my supplications. I said,
Thou art my
refuge, my
portion in the land of the living” (he being in Sheol, the land of the dead).
“I am brought very
low. Deliver
me from my persecutors. Bring my soul out of prison” (Ps. cxlii.). The prison
here is identical
with the
deep, the pit, the miry clay of Sheol, elsewhere specified. The sufferer in
Amenta is Osiris or
Horus in the
Egyptian eschatology. He is also the Osiris as the suffering manes. Both have
to be taken
into account
in tracing the sufferer in Sheol. He enters Amenta as a prison-house. He prays
that it may
be opened for
him to come forth, so that he [Page 479] may be finally established with those
who have
secured a
place among the stars that never set, and who are called the masters of
eternity. He cries, “O
Ra, open the
earth! Traverse Amenta and sky! Dissipate our darkness! O Ra, come to us!”
(Book of
Hades, 4th
div. tablets 2, 7, and 8). Amenta or Sheol was the prison-house of the soul in
death, and the
soul of the
deceased is portrayed as a prisoner in the bandages of the mummy, like Osiris
in the Kâsu.
The Osiris,
says to the warders of the prisons, “May I not sit within your dungeons, may I
not fall into your
pits” (Rit.,
ch. 17). Horus, the deliverer of the “spirits in prison”, comes to set the
prisoners free from their
sepulchres,
to dissipate the darkness and open all the pathways to the land of light. In
the chapter by
which the
prison-house of Amenta is opened to the soul and to the shade of the person,
that he may
come forth by
day and have the mastery over his feet, the speaker prays that the eye of Horus
may
deliver his
soul. He cries to the keepers, “Imprison not my soul, keep not in custody my
shade. Let the
path be open
to my soul. Let it not be made captive, by those who imprison the shades of the
dead”
(Rit.,ch.92).
Horus is the Kamite prototype of the chosen one, called the servant by Isaiah,
who came “for
a light of
the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and
them that sit in
darkness, out
of the prison-house” (Is. xlii. 7). It is not pretended that mortal Horus was
born on earth of a
mother who
was a human virgin in the house of bread at Annu, or that he lived as Unbu the
branch at
Nazareth or
its Kamite equivalent. Such localities in the Ritual are in Amenta, and the
transactions take
place there,
not on this earth. There was the prison-house of death, and from thence the resurrection
to a
future life
by transformation of the human soul into an immortal spirit, as it was
represented in the greater
and most
solemn mysteries.
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When the
mortal entered Amenta, it was in the likeness of Osiris, who had been bodily
dismembered in
his death,
and who had to be re-constituted to rise again as the spirit that never died.
The mortal on earth
was made up
of seven constituent parts. The Osiris in Amenta had seven souls, which were
collected,
put together
and unified to become the ever-living one. The deceased in the image of the
ba-soul asks
that he may
be given his new heart to rest in him (Rit., ch. 26). He becomes a sahu, or
glorified body (ch.
47). He
pleads that the way may be made for his soul, his khu (glory), his shade, and
his ka (chs. 91 and
92). These
have to be united in the likeness of the typical divine soul which was
personalized as Horus ,
the son of
Ra, in whose image the spirits of the just made perfect finally became the
children of God.
When the
deceased enumerates his souls, he is a manes in Amenta, and! it follows that
when the
speaker in
the Psalms does the same, he is in Sheol, the Hebrew. Amenta, not on earth, and
therefore is
neither a
King David nor any other mortal. This identifies the doctrine as Egyptian.
As we have
seen, man, formed in the image of God, had seven souls. Seven souls were
assigned to
Atum-Ra, and
the human being who was made in his likeness had seven component parts. These
were
described as
the ka, the l or ego; the ba a human-headed soul; the hati, or breathing heart;
the sahu, or
spiritual
body , the khu [Page 480] or glory; the khabit, or shade; and finally, the
perfect spirit. At least six of
these can be
identified in a passage of the sixteenth Psalm. “Because he (the Lord) is at my
right hand, I
shall not be
moved. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh (the
mummy-form) also
shall dwell
in safety. For thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer
thine holy one to see
corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life”. In this passage we can perceive a
reference to the hati or
breathing
heart, the khu or glory, the sahu or mummy-form, the ba-soul, the Horus-spirit,
and the ka. If
the khabit or
shade had been mentioned, there would have been seven altogether, which
constituted the
totality of a
future personality. The speaker in Psalm vii, had said, “Let the enemy pursue
my soul” (or
human-headed
ba); “let him tread my life (ankhu) down to the earth, and lay my glory (khu)
in the dust”,
but for all
this he will be avenged upon his adversaries in the judgment. The khu is the
particular soul of
the seven
that was known as the luminous one, or the glory-the soul that was brought up
from Sheol or
Amenta when
it had attained the glory or become one of the glorified. At this stage the
speaker in the
Ritual says,
“Here am I; I come, and am glorified and filled with soul and power” ( ch. 94).
He has
attained the
glory of the khu. In the book of Psalms the speaker, who has passed through
Sheol, says,
“Thou hast
brought up my soul from Sheol”. “Thou hast girded me with gladness, to the end
that my glory
may sing
praise to thee” (Ps. xxx. 3, I I, 12). “Awake up, my glory” (Ps. lvii. 8). “I
will sing praises with my
glory” (Ps.
cvii. I ). The language is akin to that of the manes in the Ritual, who says he
may be buried in
the deep,
deep grave and be bowed down to the region of annihilation, yet he shall rise
again and be
glorified (
ch. 30, A), or he will attain the glory of the venerable khu.
Sheol is a
land of darkness and the shadow of death. So is Amenta, until lighted up with
the presence of
the sun by
night in its nether firmament. Sheol is the place of the rephaim or shadows of
the past. The
rephaim are
to be found in Amenta as giants, huge shades of enormous stature; types of
terror, made
more
formidable by their exaggerated size. Sheol is the place of the shades, the
under-world to which the
souls of the
departed went, and from which the dead were summoned by the consulters of oboth
or
familiar
spirits. It includes purgatory and hell, the Ethiopic Siol and Assyrian Saul.
There were deeper
abysses in
the abyss, and chambers of death in the house of death. “Tophet” is another
Hebrew name for
Sheol. “A
Tophet is prepared of old. ...deep and wide ” (Is. xxx. 33), which may be
traced to the Egyptian
Tepht, a name
of the abyss, the cavern of Apap or hole of the serpent. It was from Amenta,
the hidden
earth, that
the ghosts of the dead were summoned by the magi, or rekhi-khet, not as evil
demons, but as
ascended when
invoked by the witch, pythoness, or of Endor. “And the
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pure, wise
spirits. It is from this nether earth of Amenta that the soul of Samuel is
supposed to have
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
woman said
unto Saul, I see a god (or Elohim) coming up out of the earth”, but which earth
of the two is
not stated in
the Hebrew (1. Samuel, xxviii. 13). In several of the Psalms the singer utters
the cries of a
soul that
suffers purgatorial pains in Sheol. As we have seen, the Egyptian purgatory is
a [Page 481]
domain in
Amenta called the meska=meshek. It was a place of spiritual rebirth by
purgation - a meaning
that survives
in the name of purgatory. This is described in the Ritual (ch. 17) as “ the
place of scourging
and
purifying”. “Let not the Osiris advance into the valley of darkness”. “Let not
the Osiris enter into the
dungeon of
the captives”. “Let him not fall among those who would drag him behind the
slaughtering
block of the
executioner” are cries of the manes.
Amenta is the
land of monsters, chief of which in the mythos is the Apap-dragon, which has
its lair in the
lake of outer
darkness. In Amenta the crocodiles have to be repelled ( ch. 31). Also the
serpent Seksek
(ch. 35);
Apshait the devourer of the dead (ch.36); the serpent Rekrek (ch. 39); the
serpent Haiu (ch. 40);
the serpent
Abur (ch. 42); the crocodile-dragon in the land of bondage (ch. 72); the raging
bull (ch. 78);
the devouring
monsters (ch. 80); the howling dogs (ch. 102); the piercing serpent (ch. 108);
the black
boar of Sut
(ch. 112). Baba, the eternal devourer of the condemned, is the monster most
eminent in the
eschatology.
“Deliver me from the crocodile (or devouring monster) of this land of bondage”
(Rit., ch. 72).
“Grant that I
may come forth and have the mastery of my two feet. Let me advance to the goal
of
heaven”.
“Deliver me from Baba, who feeds upon the livers of princes, on the day of the
great reckoning”.
These are
also the cries of the manes.
The appeals
for divine protection during the passage of Amenta and for deliverance from the
pangs of
purgatory and
the terrors of the hells are echoed in the land of Sheol. “Many bulls have
compassed me.
Strong bulls
of Bashan have beset me round. They gape upon me with their mouth (Ps. xxii.
12, 21).
“Thou hast
sore broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of
death” (Ps. xliv.
19). “My soul
is among lions. I lie among them that are set on fire” (Ivii. 4). “Deliver not
the soul of thy
turtle unto
the wild beast” (lxxiv. 19). There is a description in the Ritual of the torn
and mutilated Osiris
encompassed
by the howling dogs of Amenta. “Salutation to thee, Ur-ar-set, in that voyage
of heaven
and the
disaster in Tennu, when those dogs were gathered together, not without giving
voice”. The dog is
a prominent type
of the devourer in Sheol. The sufferer exclaims, “Deliver my soul from the
sword; my
only one (or
my soul) from the power of the dog” (Ps. xxii 20). The dog in Amenta represents
the
devourer “who
lives upon the damned. His face is that of a hound and his skin is that of a
man. Eternal
devourer is
his name” (Rit., ch. 17). He seizes upon souls in the dark, and is therefore
said to be
invisible, as
a type of very great terror. Osiris bound as a mummy in Amenta prays to be
released by the
god who had
tied the cords about him in the earth. That is, by Seb, the god of earth, who
was custodian
of the
mummies in the earth, whose hands and feet were bound up typically in Amenta in
the likeness of
the earthly
mummy. The sufferer in Sheol cries, “My God! Why hast thou forsaken me? All
they that see
me laugh me
to scorn. They shoot out the lip, they wag the head, saying, “He trusted on the
Lord that he
would deliver
him”. “Thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have encompassed
me. The
assembly of
evil-doers have enclosed me.They bound my [Page 482] hands and my feet. They
look and
stare upon
me. They part my garments among them, and upon my vesture do they cast lots”.
“Yea, mine
own familiar
friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted his heel
against me”. “I looked
for some to
take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none”. They gave
me also “gall
for my meat;
and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink”. These are the pitiful cries
and ejaculations
of the
suffering Osiris or Horus, the saviour in the Egyptian wisdom, and these
scenes, circumstances,
and sayings
have been reproduced as the very foundations of the “history” in the Gospels.
They were
confessedly
found among “the parables and dark sayings of old”, which, as the scribe
admits, “we have
heard and
known and our fathers have told us”. That is, they were found in the writings
of the divine
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scribe and
psalmist Taht, which were preserved in the psalms of the Hebrew David. The
matter of the
mythology
goes with the mythical characters, and this has been mistaken for prophecy that
was to be
fulfilled in
some future human history.
There is a
chapter in the Ritual on not letting the mummy decay - that is, the mummy as a
type of the
personality
continued in a future life (ch. 154). In this the mummy-god Osiris is addressed
as the father
by the Osiris
as the manes in Amenta. The speaker says, Hail to thee, my father Osiris ! Thy
limbs are
lasting, thou
dost not know corruption”. And as with the god so is it with the manes. In
spite of death, he
says, “I am,
I am; I live; I live; I grow, I grow; and when awake I shall awake, I shall
awake in peace. I
shall not see
corruption. I shall not be destroyed in my bandages”. “My limbs are lasting for
ever. I do not
rot. I do not
putrefy. I do not turn to worms. My flesh is firm; it shall not be destroyed;
it shall not perish in
the earth for
ever”. (Ch. 154, Naville.) In the parallel passages of the Psalms the speaker
says, “My heart
is glad and
my glory rejoiceth; my flesh shall dwell in safety (or confidently). For thou
wilt not leave my
soul to
Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt
show me the path of life”.
“As for me, I
shall behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied with thy likeness
when I awake”.
(Ps. xvi. and
xvii.) The “flesh” in the Psalm takes the place of the mummy in the Ritual. The
speaker in
the Psalms
“cries out” continually, and calls on the ka or image of the eternal, in the
likeness of which he
expects to
rise again and live as Horus or as Jesus the beloved son.
Another type
of the beloved son in Sheol is the turtle-dove. The speaker cries to the god of
his salvation,
“Oh, deliver
not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the wild beast. The dark places of the
earth are full of the
habitations
of violence” (Ps. lxxiv. 19, 20). The soul of the turtle-dove is the dove that
was a symbol of the
soul. When
the transformation from the mummy was made in Amenta the deceased became
bird-headed
as a soul,
and thus assumed the likeness of Ra the holy spirit. This bird of soul in the
later eschatology
was the hawk,
the sign of a soul that was considered to be male, the soul of god the father.
The dove of
Hathor was an
earlier type of a soul derived from the mother. This is the turtle-dove of the
Psalmist. In
one of the
Egyptian drawings the soul is portrayed in the process of issuing from the
mummy in the
shape of a
dove, instead of the usual hawk. [Page 483] Both are emblems of the risen soul,
but the dove in
monumental
times was almost superseded by the hawk of Ra and Horus.
In the Ritual
snares are set and a net is prepared to catch and destroy the manes. The
deceased prays
that he may
not be taken like a foolish fish in the net. In the Psalms the speaker, who is
David in the
cave,
exclaims, “They have prepared a net for my steps” (Ps. lvii.). “Pluck me out of
the net that they
have privily
laid for me” (Ps. xxxi. 4). These are the liers in wait (Ps. v. 8) who privily
lurk to catch the
passing
souls. In vignettes to the Ritual the souls of the ignorant are shown in the
guise of fishes being
caught in the
net by cynocephali, who are allowed to capture them because of their ignorance.
The waters of
the deep were in Amenta. The deep is identical with the pit, the pit with
Sheol, and Sheol
with Amenta.
“Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire,
there is no
standing. I
am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me”. “Deliver me out of the
mire, and let
me not sink.
Let me be delivered from them that hate me. Let not the water-fIood overwhelm
me, neither
let the deep
swallow me up”. In the Psalms the Hebrew deity is he who sitteth on the waters.
“The Lord
sitteth on
the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth as king for ever”. “He hath founded the earth
upon the waters
and
established it upon the floods” (Ps. XXIV.2). “Even the Lord upon many waters”.
This is the picture of
Osiris in
Amenta sitting on his throne of the waters as lord of all the earth. The earth
itself is imaged by
the lotus
rising from the water as the mount arose from out the Nun, and the water
springs up and flows
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Ancient
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from
underneath the seat which is the throne of the god. The representation in the
great hall of judgment
is precisely
the same as that described in the book of Revelation: “And he showed me a river
of water of
life, bright
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God” (Rev. xxii. I ). The action of
the god throughout
nature is
imaged as a welling and a flowing forth of water from its secret source. .huh
the Lord is
described by
Jeremiah as “the fountain of living waters” (ch. xvii. 13). When it is said
that the Lord sitteth
on the flood
(Ps. xxix. 10, II), or that “Ouranos (...a.d.)is the throne of God” (Matt. v.
34, 35), the
imagery is
Egyptian, with certain features defaced. The Ouranos is heaven as the celestial
water, upon
which the
lord has been left sitting without the solar boat. The lord as .huh is one with
Atum-Huhi or Ra,
who is
described as making his voyage nightly on the Urnas = Ouranos, leaving the
trail of other-world
glory in the
river of the Milky Way. It is the same solar deity that rode through the
deserts of the underworld,
but again the
modus operandi is omitted In this way the Egyptian imagery has been divorced
from
the natural
phenomena which it was intended to portray. In the Ritual the waters are
described as
bursting
forth in an overwhelming deluge; “Knowing the deep waters is my name”, exclaims
the sinking
manes ( ch.
64). “Do thou save me!” he cries to the Lord. Then he exults in not being one
of those who
drown.
“Blessed are they that see the bourne. Beautiful is the god of the motionless
heart (Asar), who
causeth the
stay of the overflowing waters. Behold! there cometh forth the lord of life,
Osiris my support,
who abideth
day by day. I embrace the sycamore, I am [Page 484] united to the sycamore”.
The tree is a
type of
stability and safety in Amenta. In Sheol the refuge of the sinking soul is
depicted amidst the waste
of waters as
the everlasting rock, but both have one and the same significance as the means
of safety
from the
flood.
The mummy
sleeping in Amenta as the god or as the manes waits the resurrection there.
Horus wakes
the manes in
their coffins for the coming forth, when they are freed from the cerements,
which he rends
asunder. This
resurrection is attained in Sheol when the speaker says, “I will extol thee, O
Lord, for thou
hast raised
me up. Thou hast loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, to the end
that my glory
(the khu) may
sing praise to thee and not be silent” (Ps. xxx.). In the Kamite resurrection
there was a
change from
the earthly body. The bandages of burial were cast aside and the sahu mummy was
invested in
the robe of immortality. In fact, to be invested thus was to become a spiritual
being. The
“glory”, as
one of the Egyptian seven souls called the khu, was now attained by the Osiris
in the course
of his being
reconstituted. Salvation for the Egyptian was being saved from the fate of the
irredeemably
wicked, the
doom of the second death, which was annihilation. Salvation was continuity of
life hereafter,
and this was
only attainable by the righteous - those who did the right and acted justly,
those who
effected the
truth of the word in their own life and pursued it through Amenta. They
attained eternal life by
personal, not
by imputed, righteousness. Hence the deceased pleads his righteousness; before
the lord
of
righteousness in the great hall of righteousness. He pleads not what he
believes, but what he has
done. “I have
done that which maat (the law) prescribeth, and that which pleases the gods. I
have
propitiated
the god with that which he loveth. I have given bread to the hungry, water to
the thirsty,
clothes to
the naked, a boat to the shipwrecked”. “I am one of those to whom it is said,
Come, come in
peace, by
those who look upon him” - that is, the divine company of the gods. He passes
in peace, and is
invested with
the robe of the righteous on account of his own righteousness. This is the
doctrine of the
Ritual, and
it is likewise the doctrine of the Psalms. “Answer me when I call, O God of my
righteousness”.
( Ps. iv. I).
“Judge me, O Lord according to my righteousness and to mine integrity” (Ps.
vii. 8). “As for
me, I shall
behold thy face in righteousness” (Ps. xvii. 15). “The Lord rewardeth me
according to my
righteousness”
(Ps. xviii. 20). This is not Christian doctrine, but it is Jewish, because it
was Egyptian.
Personal
righteousness is pleaded in the Psalms, the same as in the Ritual. “Judge me, O
Lord..
according to
my righteousness” (Ps. vii. 8). “The Lord rewarded me according to my
righteousness” (Ps.
xviii. 24).
In the Kamite judgment hall the speaker says, “I have done the righteousness of
a lord of
righteousness.
There is not a limb in me which is void of righteousness” (ch. 125). This, as
we interpret
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the Hebrew
version, is the position of the speaker in Sheol who is awaiting judgment
amidst the trials and
the terrors
that beset the manes in the caverns of Sut, through which he has to grope his
way. On
arriving at
the judgment hall the Osiris says, “Hail to thee, mighty god, lord of righteousness..
I am come
to thee, O my
Lord; I have brought myself that I may look upon thy glory”. He pleads in
presence of those
whose natural
[Page 485] prey is the souls of the wicked, “devouring those who harbour
mischief and
swallowing
their blood, upon the day of searching examination in presence of the good
Osiris. Behold
me; I am come
to you void of wrong, without fraud; let me not be declared guilty; let not the
issue be
against me. I
subsist upon righteousness. I sate myself with uprightness of heart. I have
propitiated the
god with that
which he loveth. I am come, and am awaiting that inquisition be made of
righteousness”
(ch. 125). In
the Psalms “God is the judge” .(Ps. vii. II). “Righteousness and judgment are
the foundations
of his
throne” (Ps. xcvii. 2, xcviii. 2). “Thou sat test in thy throne judging
righteously” (Ps. ix. 4). “The Lord
sitteth as
king for ever. He hath prepared his throne for judgment, and he shall judge the
world in
righteousness”
(Ps. ix. 7, 8).
In one form
of the mythos Sut and Osiris, in the other Sut and Horus, are born twin
brothers. Sut
becomes the
adversary of Osiris, the Good Being. This conflict of the two opponent powers
reappears in
the Psalms as
well as in the book of Job. “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,
which did eat
my bread,
hath lifted up his heel against me (Ps. xli. 9-11). But thou, O Lord, have
mercy upon me, and
raise me up,
that I may requite them. By this I know that thou delightest in me, because
mine enemy doth
not triumph
over me”. “It was thou, a man mine equal, my companion and my familiar friend.
We took
sweet counsel
together, we walked in the house of God with the throng”. “He hath put forth
his hands
against such
as were at peace with him; he hath profaned his covenant. His mouth was smooth
as butter,
but his heart
was war; his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords” (Ps.
Iv.20, 21).
Nothing could
more aptly reproduce the figure of fact as a figure of speech than the
quotation from the
Psalmist to
the effect that he. the intimate friend and very brother, had “lifted his heel
against” the Christ,
the Lord's
anointed. In the double figure of Horus and Sut they are twinned together back
to back and
therefore
heel to heel. David and the adversary are equivalent to Osiris and Sut, or to
Horus and Sut in
another phase
of the mythos, the twin brothers being characters in both.
When Sut and
the Sebau had compassed the death of Osiris, a day of dissolution followed the
great
disaster.
There was an overthrowal of the pillars - the tat-pillar at the centre of all,
and the four supports
at the four
corners. Then Horus came as the avenger of his father and as the judge of the
wicked, who
after trial
were annihilated on the highways of the damned. The tat was re-erected, and the
four pillars
(posts or
flagstaffs) were set up once more “on the night of setting up the pillars of
Horus and of
establishing
him as heir of his father's property”. This was at the time when Horus, as
Har-Tema, came to
judge the
adversaries of his father Osiris (Rit., ch. 18). A fragment from this would
seem to have strayed
into the 75th
Psalm, like many other wandering words that have lost their senses. “When I
shall find the
set time, I
will judge uprightly. The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved.
I have set up the
pillars of
it” - which looks as if the Osiris deceased in Sheol were speaking in the
character of Horus who
re-erected
the pillars. In the Ritual the dissolution and re-establishing of the earth by
setting up [Page 486]
the pillars,
immediately follows the battle with the Sebau, the Apap, and Sut; and in the
preceding psalm
(lxxiv.) the
war with the dragon is described. “Thou breakest the heads of the dragons in
the waters”.
“Thou
breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces; thou gavest him to be meat to the
people inhabiting the
wilderness”.
The dragons in the psalm are the evil crocodiles in the Ritual.
A profound
study of the Ritual reveals the fact that the wisdom of Egypt was the source
and fountain-
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Ancient
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head of the
books of wisdom assigned to Moses and David, to Solomon and Jesus; and also
proves the
personages or
characters to have been Egyptian.
It is chiefly
the wisdom bf Egypt that gives a value to the Hebrew writings, as will be
indubitably
demonstrated.
In Psalm xxiv. there is a glorification of the coming king of glory:
7. Lift up
your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye
lift up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King
of Glory shall come in.
8. Who is the
King of Glory ?
The Lord
strong and mighty,
The Lord
mighty in battle.
9. Lift up
your heads, O ye gates;
Yea, lift
them up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King
of Glory shall come in.
10. Who is
the King of Glory ?
The Lord of
Hosts,
He is the
King of Glory.
This king of
glory was the sun-god in the astronomical mythology. The Hebrew repeats the
king of glory,
the gates,
and the doors, but omits the astronomical foundation; and in this way the
wisdom of Taht was
deprived of
its scientific value. But who is this king of glory ? and what are the gates
that are called upon
to open and
let him in ? As the “Lord of hosts” we know him for .ao-Sabaoth, lord of the
seven great
spirits;
therefore he is the solar god; but we must turn to the Ritual to understand the
nature of the gates.
There are
thirty-six altogether, corresponding to the thirty-six decans of the zodiac. At
the same time the
gates are
thirty-six doors in the great house of Osiris. Chapter 145 is devoted to the
passage of the sun-
god through
twenty-one of these celestial gates. The sun-god is the king of glory in the
Ritual. In “the
book that was
made on the birthday of Osiris”, in which “glory is given to the inviolate
one”, Taht, the
Kamite
psalmist, sings, “Opened be the gates of heaven! Opened be the gates of earth!
Opened be the
gates of the
east! Opened be the gates of the west! Opened be the gates of the southern and
of the
northern
sanctuaries! Opened be the gates and thrown wide open be the portals as Ra
ariseth from the
mount of
glory, the swift of speed and beautiful in his rising, and almighty through
what he hath done”.
“Glory to
thee, O Ra, lord of the mount of glory”. (Rit., ch. 129.) The gates and doors
are those that open
as the solar
god comes forth at dawn. He is the king of glory; these are the gates of glory
that were
opened on the
mount of glory “at the beautiful coming forth of his powers”. “It is the gate
and the two
doors and
openings through which Father Atum issueth to the eastern horizon (or mount) of
heaven”.
(Rit., ch.
17.) That is Atum-Huhi= .huh. The mythology is absolutely [Page 487] necessary
all through for
us to
understand the eschatology, whether in its Egyptian guise or Hebrew disguise.
When the
Psalmist says, “The Lord is my shepherd”, it has become a mere phrase. The
Egyptians
presented the
portrait. Horus was the lord as leader of the flock and guardian of the fold,
because he
represented
the first who rose again from the dead, though not at any particular historic
date. Amsu-
Horus, with
his crook in hand, shepherded the flocks of Ra beyond the grave. After the
resurrection in
Amenta he
says to his first four followers, who are called his children, “Now let my fold
be fitted for me as
one
victorious against all those adversaries who would not that the right should be
done to me, the only
one” (Rit.,
ch. 97). He is the “master of the champaign” and “of the inundation”, and
therefore of the
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Ancient
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green
pastures and the still waters of life. Horus, the son of god, came into the
world as shepherd of his
father's
sheep, to lead them through the darkness of Amenta to the green pastures and
still waters of the
final
paradise upon Mount Hetep in the heaven of eternity. It was not supposed that
he came to secure
the Jew his
cent. percent., or the Christian capitalist the power to rob the workers of the
fruits of their
labour, or
the Boers and Belgians to eat up the aborigines and lie down as loafers in the
still pastures of
their stolen
lands.
Psalm xxiii.
contains a description of the green fields of pasture and the still waters that
run
through that
paradise of plenty, peace, and rest:
The Lord is
my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me
beside the still waters.
He restoreth
my soul:
He leadeth me
in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I
walk through the valley of the shadow of death (Amenta or Sheol),
I will fear
no evil: for thou art with me;
Thy rod and
thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
And I will
dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
The staff of
Amsu was a symbol of Osiris who rose again as Horus. It was buried with the
deceased, and
is found in
the oldest coffins together with other weapons that were interred with the dead
as types of a
protecting
power. “The Osiris receiveth the Amsu staff wherewith he got round the heaven”
(Rit., ch.
130..). This
elsewhere is called the palm of Amsu. It was the support of the Osiris in life
and in death.
This psalm is
one of those that have been least denuded of the original object-pictures. The
valley of the
shadow of
death is the Ar-en- Tet or valley of the dead in the Ritual, where those who
suffer the second
death are
buried for ever (Rit., ch. 19) by the great annihilator Seb. Horus in one
character is the good
shepherd, but
the lord, as leader in the green pastures, is the bull of the seven cows, who
are the
providers of
plenty. He is called the lord of the pastures, or fields of the bull, the green
meadows of Aarru.
He also says,
“I am the bull, the lord of the gods”. This answers to “The Lord is my
shepherd; I shall not
want”. “He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures”, says the Psalmist. The speaker in the
Ritual says,
“I take my
rest in the divine domain”. “I sail upon its stream, and I range [Page 488]
within its garden of
peace”. The
speaker sings for joy, it may be, in the Psalms of Taht. He exclaims, “I utter
my praise to the
gods who are
in the garden of peace”. The “still waters , are in Hebrew the “waters of
rest”; these, in the
Egyptian, are
the waters of Hetep = the waters of rest or peace. The departed rests beside
these waters
in the green
fields where Hetep, as the god of peace, is “putting together the oblations”
for the spirits of
the just made
perfect. “Thou preparest a table before me”, says the Psalmist. The table
likewise was
prepared upon
Mount Hetep, and piled with heaps of imperishable food. Hence the Osiris says,
“I rest at
the table of
my father Osiris” (Rit., ch. 70). Mount Hetep was itself the table-land of the
oblations. The
“house of the
lord” is designated by the speaker in the Ritual “the mansion where food is
produced for
me”, the
mansion that was lifted up by Shu, the paradise of Am-Khemen. Two paths led up
to it, called
the “double
path”. These are the “paths of righteousness”. The deceased in the Ritual is seen
ascending
the mount
with the supporting rod or staff in his hand. Where the Psalmist says, “He
restoreth my soul”,
the speaker
in the Ritual says rejoicingly, “My soul is with me”. This in Egyptian is the
ka, that was
ultimately
attained in the garden of peace. The ka is the final form of the soul restored
to the departed
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when they are
perfected in the assembly or congregation on the mount. The speaker in Hetep
says,
“There is
given to me the abundance which belongeth to the ka and to the glorified”. It
was in Amenta
that the
lord's anointed was begotten: one mode was by the transformation of Horus the
mortal into
Horus the
beloved Son. In the Hebrew Psalms the same transaction is repeated in the place
of the
“wicked” who
rebel and rage against the Lord and his anointed. The son begotten by the
father is born to
become the
ruler over them, and to effect the triumph of the father over all his
adversaries on the day of
judgment, the
same as in the Ritual ( ch. I ). The Lord himself that sitteth in the heavens
“shall have them
in derision”,
yea, he has also set the son as king upon the holy hill of Zion, the mountain
of the Lord.
Here it may
be remarked that the change from Horus the human youth with the side-Iock to
Horus the
divine
avenger would lend itself to the euhemerists for the conversion of David the
shepherd boy into the
solar hero
who made war upon the giant and slew the Philistines.
The Jews, we
are told, believe in a twofold kind of immortality, the one being in a state
immediately
following
death, the other in the resurrection from Sheol at the judgment-day. These two
aspects of
continuity
after death are to be explained by the Egyptian eschatology. The Hebrew Sheol
is the Egyptian
secret earth
of eternity, the divine nether-world. In death the manes passed into the Amenta
as a body-
soul that
survived the body and became a ghost or shade with power to reappear as an
apparition on the
earth. After
passing through purgatory and all the other places and modes of purification,
and making the
necessary
transformations as an Osiris, or human Horus, the manes rose from Amenta to the
paradise of
spirits
perfected in the likeness of Horus the divine. The immortality that was
previously potential for the
human Horus
or manes was established in Tattu and assured by the resurrection of the
glorified spirit
[Page 489]
from the Akar (Rit., 30, A). The manes in the Ritual says of himself, “After
being buried on earth
I am not dead
in Amenta”. He is there “reunited to the earth on the western side of heaven”,
to become a
“pure spirit
for eternity” (ch. 3, A). This is the original doctrine of a body, soul, and
spirit - a body on earth,
a manes soul
in Sheol, and an immortal spirit in the resurrection on high. Horus was
incarnated in the
human body on
earth. He died and rose again in Amenta as a sahu or soul in a rarer but
corporeal form.
This was a
resurrection from the first death. Then he made his transformation into Horus
the pure spirit,
and ascended
to his father in heaven, hawk-headed or dove-headed, from the mount of Amenta
or the
double earth.
These things were visibly portrayed upon the walls and in the papyri of Egypt, not
to be lost
sight of
there; but, away from Egypt, the pictures were no longer present, and the Jews
lost their living
memory of
Amenta. They had only words, without the means of verification in the
representative signs
which had
given a palpable reality to the most ancient mysteries in the chambers of
Egyptian imagery;
and gradually
Sheol dwindled to the dimensions of the grave, as we find it continued in the
Old
Testament. In
the mythology the messianic resurrection from Sheol was the annual re-arising
of the
Horus-sun at
Easter. In the eschatology it was the resurrection of Horus divinized as son of
Ra the holy
spirit who
ascended with his followers to the fields of peace in the upper paradise of the
celestial Aarru.
And just as
the colours in Egyptian tombs remain at times as fresh as if the paint had
never dried, so do
the pictures
and portraits survive in the mythology and eschatology, unfading in colour and
imperishable
in form,
after they had grown dim and dead for the Hebrews and Greeks, to be
counterfeited as historic
for the
Christians, who had no means of detecting the imposition by any reference to
the prototypes, that
are as living
to-day as the hues in which the imagery was painted by Egyptian scribes, whose
drawing
was a means
of bringing on and on the most ancient wisdom down from the days of
gesture-language,
when there
was as yet no possible registry in words, to the time of the Egypto-gnostics.
There is
plenty of proof that the same fundamental matter belonging to the wisdom of
Egypt, in which
Osarsiph of
On was an adept, appears thrice over in the Hebrew writings. It is mythological
in the books
of Genesis,
Exodus, and Joshua. It is eschatological in the Psalms. And in the later books
it is converted
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into matter
of prophecy. All three phases were Egyptian. With this difference: the sole
possible fulfilment
of prophecy
was astronomical, not humanly historical. To illustrate two of these phases:
the land of
bondage - in
the book of Exodus is the Amenta of the solar drama, the lower Egypt of the
double earth,
the scene of
the never-ceasing battles between the powers of light and darkness, the sun-god
and the
Sebau, Ra and
the dragon, or Horus and Sut; Amenta in the mythology becomes Sheol in the
Hebrew
eschatology.
The land of bondage, then, is the place of suffering souls that seek
deliverance from the
desert of
darkness, the prison-house of death and hell. It is the sufferer in Sheol, the
Osiris of the Ritual,
who says,
“Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy beloved to
see [Page 490]
corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life” (Ps. xvi.10, I I). That thy beloved may be
delivered, save
with thy
right hand and answer us” (Ps. Ix. 5). There is the same assimilation of the
manes to the
suffering
Horus, or Osiris, as in the Ritual. There is also the same mixture of the
mythical and
eschatological.
This especially marked in the I8th Psalm, which purports to contain the words
that were
spoken by
David on the day the Lord delivered him from all his enemies.
According to
the Egyptian wisdom, whoever the speaker may be in the Hebrew Sheol, it is the
suffering
Osiris or the
Osiris in Amenta; and the god appealed to by him in his trouble is the god who
was Ra the
father in
heaven as Atum-Huhi in the Egyptian and .huh in the Jewish cult. Also it is the
solar god alone
that will
account for the imagery. Not only are the ground-plan and total scheme
Egyptian, the mythology
and
eschatology can be followed in innumerable details. It looks at times as if the
scribes were directly
citing the
earlier scriptures, from which the mythos is quoted and converted into
prophecies, chiefly
concerning
the coming judge and avenger, who in the Egyptian original is the avenger of
Osiris-Un-Nefer,
and his
followers, the chosen people, or the glorified elect, who suffer in Amenta from
the persecution of
Sut and the
Sebau, his co-workers in iniquity.
Let the 34th
and 35th chapters of Isaiah be compared with the Hymn to Osiris. (There are two
versions of
this hymn in
the Records of the Past, first series, vol. iv, and 2nd series, vol. iv., that
by Mallet being
much the
closer rendering.) “Seek ye out the book of the Lord and read”, exclaims Isaiah
in his
description
of the coming one - The day of vengeance for long-suffering had obviously been
foretold in
this book.
And at the advent of the Lord who was to bring deliverance to his people, it is
said, “The
wilderness
and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom
as the rose”.
“They shall
see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God”. “Behold, your God will
come with
vengeance: he
will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the
ears of the
deaf shall be
unstopped”. The dumb are to break forth into singing, and the lame to leap for
joy. Waters
are to well
forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert, and the mirage on the sands is
to turn them to a
pool. All
this belongs to the mythical representation of the advent in the earth of
eternity which was
celebrated in
the mysteries as occurring once a year. And it is this coming of Messiah as
Horus the
prince of
peace on earth and the avenger who makes Osiris triumphant over his adversaries
in Amenta
or Sheol that
is described in the Hymn to Osiris. When he has gone forth in peace by the
command of
Seb (that is,
as the human Horus born of Seb, god of earth), the divine company of the gods
adore him,
the
inhabitants of the Tuat prostrate themselves to the ground, the loftiest bow
the head, the ancestral
spirits are
in prayer. When they behold him, the august dead (in the nether-world) submit
to him.The two
lands (of the
double earth) unite in one to give him the glory, marching before his majesty:
glorious, noble
(or highest)
among the sahus, from whom proceeds all dignity, who establishes supreme
authority;
excellent
chief of the divine company of the gods [Page 491] with beautiful aspect,
beloved of him who has
contemplated
him, extending his terror through all countries that may proclaim this name
before all
others. The
great prince, eldest of his brothers, the chiefs of the divine companies, who
establishes the
truth in the
double land, who seats the son (himself) upon the throne of his father, the
favourite of his
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Ancient
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father Seb,
the beloved of his mother Nut (heaven, one of whose names is Meri). Very
valiant, he
overthrows
the impious; strong of arm, he immolates his adversary (Sut=Satan); breathing
terror upon his
enemies,
conquering the distant frontiers of the wicked. Firm of heart, his feet are
vigilant. Flesh (or heir)
of Seb !
Royalty of the double earth! (Horus of the royal countenance). Seb contemplates
his benefits
(the benefits
of his advent to the earth); he has ordered him to govern all countries to
assure their
prosperity.
...The desert carries its tribute to the son of Nut; Egypt is happy when it
sees him appear upon
his father's
throne. The author of evil (Sut) pronounces magical words and displays his
power in his turn,
but the son
of Isis makes his way to him and avenges his father, sanctifying and honouring
his name.
The paths are
cleared, the roads are opened, evil flees away. He has caused the authority of
his father to
be recognized
in the great dwelling of Seb - that is, of earth. In this abstract the advent
of Horus, which
was annual in
Egypt, whence he was the king of one year, is hymned in various phases of his
pre-
Christian
character. He comes by order of Seb, the foster-father on earth, as his
favourite of the brothers,
who were five
in number when Horus is counted as one. He comes in peace, but also brings the
sword
as a terror
to the workers of iniquity and as the immolator of his adversary Sut. He comes
also as Horus
of the
inundation; and thus the desert is made to blossom, and to carry its tribute to
the son of Nut, who
has conquered
Sut, the cause of drought and sterility, in his contest with the devil in the
wilderness in
which Horus
vanquishes his adversary and avenges his father.
Again, the
following might have been designated a song of Har-Tema, who is Horus the
fulfiller at his
second
advent. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me
to preach good
tidings unto
the poor. He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives
and the
opening of the eyes to them that are blind; to proclaim the acceptable year of
the Lord's good
pleasure and
the day of vengeance of our God” (Is. Ixi. 1,2). Horus in his second advent
came hawk-
headed in the
likeness of Ra as the anointed and beloved son. The divine hawk was his sign
that the
spirit of the
Lord was upon him. He brought good tidings for the poor and comfort for the
oppressed. He
is Horus the
compassionate. One of his titles is “the Comforter”. In one passage of the
Ritual he says, “I
have been
produced to repulse the evil powers” - literally those who grovel on their
bellies.“I come as the
forerunner or
messenger of the Lord, as councillor of Osiris”. He goes forth from the state
of the disk to
bring light
and liberty to the manes who are darkling in their prison cells. He solaces
those that mourn, he
wipes away
the tears from those who weep, and opens the eyes of those who are breathless,
bound, and
blind.
At the same
time he was the stern avenger of injustice. The judgment day and dread assize
were annual,
in accordance
with the [Page 492] natural fact, and there was a time of terrible vengeance
once a year.
The
“acceptable year of the Lord” was based upon this judgment and readjustment,
the setting of the
captives free
and punishing the guilty once a year; and both the first and second advents of
Horus were
of annual
occurrence in the year of “the Lord's good pleasure”.
The
fundamental doctrines and the imagery of the book of Job are also Egyptian.
These include the
Amenta or
secret earth of eternity (the hidden place) (xI. 13), which is the land of
darkness and the
shadow of
death (x. 21). The sufferer in Amenta, the redeemer from the dust of earth, the
resurrection of
the righteous
and annihilation of the wicked (xix.25-26, xviii. 5). The house of the prince
(Hat-Saru) (xxi.
28).
Stretching out the heavens (ix. 8). The day-spring on high ( xxxviii. 12). The
group of the glorious
ones, the
sons of God, including Sut or Satan, the adversary (i. 6). The Lord as a lion
in his terrible
majesty (x.
16). The serpent pierced by the hand of God (xxvi. 13). The nest and the
phoenix (xxix. 18).
The papyrus
plant (viii. II). The pyramid tombs (iii. 14). Leviathan, the crocodile-dragon
(xli. I), and the
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rephaim
beneath the waters. These are one and all Egyptian.
That which is
non-human as matter of the mythos becomes inhuman when retailed as history, and
it is
inhuman in
the one phase because it was not human in the other. This criterion is
infallible. For example,
the
persecution of Job by Satan the adversary repeats the treatment of the good
Osiris by the evil Sut.
This of
itself suffices to show that the drama was non-human in its oldest form. The
Osirian drama
unfolded in
the mysteries of Amenta likewise furnished matter for the book of Job. The land
of darkness
described as
Sheol by Job is one with Amenta in its secret un-illumined parts. It is the
land of darkness
and the
shadow of death, a land of thick darkness, as darkness itself, a land of the
shadow of death (Job,
x. 21,22).
This is the Ar-en-Tet of the Ritual (ch. 19), the valley of darkness and death,
whose unmitigable
gloom
conceals the secrets that are absolutely unknowable, and where those who died
the second death
were buried
for ever in their mummied immobility. This is the condition threatened in the
book of Job (xlix.
19) for the
wicked: “He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see the
light”. This
region of
impenetrable darkness becomes the whole of Sheol, or Sualu, in this version of
Amenta. Sheol
is especially
described as the land of shade, which suggests a Kamite origin for the name. As
Egyptian,
the root-word
“shu” signifies shade, shadow, to be destitute, dark, void. Thence, the void,
the hollow, the
land of
shade, is the land of Shual or Sheol as a Semitic place-name. The book of Job
has been
described as
the most profound and wonderful drama of humanity ever written, yet those who
so
described it
could not have told us what it is actually about. Fundamentally Egyptian, it
has been readapted
without the
wisdom of Egypt. All has been changed by making the sufferer Job a human
personage on
this earth; and when we know the true nature of mythical characters like those
of Job or
Samson, David
or Jonah, or Jack the Giant Killer, it lessens the interest we might otherwise
take in them
as human
heroes. We must resort to the original. The drama of Job and Satan contains a
euhemerized
version of
the [Page 493] ancient conflict betwixt the prince of darkness, Sut, and Osiris
or Horus, who
suffers from
the adversary in Amenta. The Hebrew Satan was the Egyptian Sut, who became the
evil one
of the later
theology as an anthropomorphic rendering of Apap the serpent of evil. Sut was
one of the
seven sons of
the old First Mother, the goddess of the Great Bear in the astronomical
mythology. He was
not one of
“the sons of god”, as there was no god extant when he was born. Sut was brought
forth twin
with Horus,
and first born as the adversary of his brother Osiris. In a truer version of
the mythos the
conflict was
in phenomena that were physical, not moral. There are no morals in mythology,
when the
characters
are non-human, and when the mythical heroes and monsters have been represented
as
human
characters we need to know the mythology once more. The Bible is full of such
characters, and
Job is one of
them. In the Ritual Sut is the adversary of Osiris, or, still earlier, the
opponent of Horus. He
undoes what
the Good Being does. He is the malicious destroyer; the author of disease. He
is permitted
to persecute
Horus or Osiris to the death. In his character of the adversary, the power of
darkness, he
says, “I am
Sut, who causeth the storms and tempests, and who goeth round the horizon of
heaven, like
one whose
heart is veiled” (Rit., ch. 39). Which is equivalent to saying, “I am
black-hearted”. Sut is here
the prototype
of Satan, who “goes to and fro in the earth”, and of whom it is elsewhere said,
“Your
adversary the
devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (I. Peter, v.
8). So
Satan the
destroyer plays the devil with the person, the possessions, the belongings of Job,
who
answers to
the suffering Osiris in this development of the ancient drama, in which Horus
or Job was no
more a human
personage than is Sut or Satan. They can be studied in the Ritual without
disguise or
falsification
of character, and without a long series of disputations, lamentations, and
sermons taking the
place of the
primitive mystery. The “parable” taken up by Job is the battle of Sut and
Osiris in the mythical
representation.
Job the afflicted one is the suffering Osiris who passed into Amenta as the
victim of the
power of
darkness, Sut the tormentor, the tempter, the desolator, the destroyer. Amongst
other devilries,
Sut flung his
ordure at Horus (Rit., ch. 17); he also pierced him in the eye; but. where
Osiris suffered
dumbly and
opened not his mouth, Job laments his lot, and takes to cursing the day of his
birth and
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Ancient
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wishing that
he had been addled in the egg. The character of Job is fathomlessly inferior to
that of the
good Osiris,
called the motionless of heart.
The suffering
Horus transforms in “the west” and becomes the bennu Osiris or the phoenix. Job
does the
same, or
expects to do so, when he says, “I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply
my days as the
phoenix”. The
phoenix was the emblem of the solar god who died to resuscitate in the nest of
Amenta.
He enters the
nest as a hawk and issues forth as a phoenix (Rit., 13, 1 ). When the battle
with Sut is over
and Horus
rises again triumphant over all his trials that were inflicted on him by the
adversary, his
property is
doubled; he is crowned with the double crown as conqueror and king of the
double earth. This
is puerilely
represented by the Lord restoring to Job two-fold of all he had before and
overwhelming him
with material
wealth. [Page 494]
The drama in
the mysteries of Amenta was a stupendous representation, true to nature; but
when the
chief
character has been turned into a human personage covered with putrefying sores,
when the
adversary is
made equally personal, and the Lord commissions the Devil to try to torment and
to tempt
this poor
human sufferer because he was a perfectly just, good, and upright man, the
drama becomes a
stupendous
misrepresentation not only of divine justice, but of the original setting forth
and rendering of
the mythos.
The name of Job is commonly taken to signify “the assailed one”, which
perfectly describes
the type of
the suffering Osiris. He is the assailed one, and Sut is the assailant. How the
good Osiris was
assailed by
the evil Sut and his sami, the Apap-dragon and the sebau, may be seen through
all the
mysteries of
Amenta or of Sheol.
Sut the
prototypal adversary is the evil one personified in Amenta as opponent of the
deliverer Horus; he
is the keeper
of the prison-house for death, to which Horus comes as lord of life and
liberty. The speaker
in the Ritual
cries to Ra, “O deliver me from the god who seizes souls. The darkness in which
Sekari
dwells is terrifying
to the weak”. This god is Sut (the Hebrew Satan), and darkness is the breath of
his
domain. In
this darkness the Osiris suffers, supplicating Ra for light. Job sitting in the
ashes, covered with
boils from
head to foot, and scraping himself with a potsherd, is a gross physical
rendering of the manes
in Amenta,
who is scraped to get rid of the impurities and uncleannesses with which the
soul from this
world finds
itself afflicted in the other life. The querulous, complaining Job is but a poor
portrait of the
speaker in
the Ritual, and the Egyptian wisdom has to be restored before the genesis of
the drama can
be
understood.
Osiris was
the great god in matter as source or well-spring of life. He rested as the
perfect one in
Amenta, without
sign of breath or beat of heart, but as the fount of motion and the fulfiller
of existence in
the nether
earth, where he suffered in his death and burial, though not directly. Deity
could not die nor
suffer in
itself and this part of the character was represented by the human Horus. He
was the sufferer in
various
natural phenomena; and being portrayed in human guise as the mortal, this led
the way to the
later
euhemerizing of the mythical representations and the reproducing of the drama
as human history. It
was the human
Horus who was pierced and tortured by Sut in death when it was his time to
triumph and
he became the
king and conqueror in his turn. The suffering Horus only conquered Sut when he
transformed
and became the god in his turn and made his resurrection from Amenta. Job is
this fearfully
afflicted
Horus or Osiris, suffering every evil that could be let loose on him by his
adversary. But the
scene is in
Sheol, not on earth. Job is the “servant”, like the suffering Messiah described
by Isaiah, and
like the
human Horus, who was maimed and deformed, dumb and blind, as An-ar-ef in the
land of
darkness.
When Job “takes up his parable” he is the sufferer in Amenta, the Hebrew Sheol.
He goes
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blackened
where there is no sun. He is a brother to the jackals in the paths of darkness,
and a
companion to
ostriches which furnish the feathers of Mati in the Egyptian judgment hall. He
is cast into
the mire of
the pit. He exclaims, “Why do ye persecute me as a god, and are not satisfied
with my flesh ?
And after my
skin hath been thus destroyed, out of [Page 495] my flesh shall I see God”
(Job, xix. 22, 26).
A skin for
the body is an expression peculiarly Egyptian. The god who is called the divine
soul in the
Ritual (ch.
165, A) is addressed as the “concealer of skins” - that is, a hider of the body
of those who rise
again
transformed in the divine likeness of a soul eternalized. In the judgment scenes
a second skin = a
second body
is the sign of re-embodiment after death, as a sahu or divine mummy. That is
the shape in
which
Amsu-Horus rises from the tomb as vindicator and avenger of Osiris and the
buried dead, the
naked who
become the clothed in the hew body. In the case of Job, it seems that the Lord
has taken the
skin or body
of flesh, but is not satisfied. Job is a manes in Sheol. Nevertheless his
resurrection from the
pit is
assured. Hence his exclamation, “I know that my vindicator liveth, and that he
shall stand up at the
last upon the
earth. And after my skin hath been thus destroyed. yet from (or without) my
flesh shall I see
God” - for
himself, and not vicariously by means of another (Job, xix. 25-27).
There is an
imposing picture in the book of Job (ch. xxvi) which is purely Egyptian. “The
dead tremble
beneath the
waters, and the inhabitants thereof in the presence of the deity. Sheol is
naked before him,
and Abaddon
hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over empty space and hangeth the
earth
upon nothing.
He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under
them. He
closeth in
the face of his throne and spreadeth his cloud upon it. He hath described a
boundary upon the
face of the waters
unto the confines of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble and are
astonished at
his rebuke. He stilleth the sea by his power, and by his understanding he
smiteth Rahab.
By his spirit
the heavens are established. His hand hath pierced the fleeing serpent”. The
stretcher of
heaven for
covering was Atum-.u (or Ra) when he attained the solar sovereignty. He is
addressed in this
character by
the manes, who is in dread of the deluge: “O thou great coverer of heaven, in
thy name of
stretcher (of
the sky) grant that I may have power over the water and not be drowned” (Rit.,
57). The
heaven thus
stretched over-head was represented as water, hence the greatness of the power
that held
it aloft in
safety. The deceased beneath the waters are the manes in Amenta, where the
waters are an
image of the
lower Nun, the sky as water below the horizon. Abaddon or destruction lurked
below in the
shape of the
Apap-reptile, the destroyer, the great serpent in the waters of darkness, who
was pierced
and smitten
through and through when he rose up in rebellion against Ra or Horus or
Atum-.u= lahu.
Atum-.u the
Lord, whom we shall identify with .huh, was the architect who finished the
building of the
heavens; and
in the book of Job it is .huh the Lord who claims to have laid the foundations
of the earth
and says,
“Declare, if thou hast understanding, who determined the measures thereof, or
who stretched
the line upon
it. Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the corner-stone
thereof
when the
morning stars sang and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job, xxxviii.
4,7.) To “stretch the
line” is an
expression peculiarly Egyptian, used frequently as synonymous with laying the
foundations of
the temple.
The last chapters of the book contain the chief zootypes belonging to [Page
496] the Egyptian
astronomy.
“The Bear with her sons” (ch. 38, 32) is a picture of the ancient mother in the
celestial
heptanomis
with her seven sons. The first and foremost of these was Behemoth the
hippopotamus of Sut
(and his
mother), who is described here as “the chief of the ways of god”. His fellow
was the crocodile of
Sebek-Horus,
which is here called Leviathan. The foundations of the heavens were certainly
laid in or by
the bear and
her seven sons, the first two of which were the twins Sut and Horus, the
hippopotamus and
the
crocodile; and it is equally certain that these foundations were laid in the
Egyptian astronomy. This
will show
that the writer is employing the Egyptian wisdom, and therefore it may be that
he refers to the
course of
precession, albeit vaguely, in the following allusion: “Hast thou commanded the
morning since
thy days
began, and caused the dayspring to know its place, that it might take hold of
the ends of the
earth?” which
looks like the equinox upon its travels, although treated as the “morning” and
the visiting
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Ancient
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“dayspring”
from on high that makes its all-embracing circuit in the great year of the
world.
When Job
“took up his parable” he found it in the Book of the Dead, and is himself the
speaker as the
manes in
Amenta, where we obtain foothold once more in the phenomena of nature, which
were
represented sanely
and scientifically by the Egyptian sages, who laid the ground so that the
eschatological
rendering could follow the earlier mythos. Names have been omitted, the
prototypal
figures
effaced, wisdom turned into ignorance, and the remains of Egyptian mythology
and eschatology
have been
foisted on the world as an original revelation given in the Hebrew tongue;
whereas the
fundamental
subject-matter of the sacred writings and the very God himself who is supposed
to have
revealed the
truth in them are non-original as biblical, and only recognizable as Egyptian.
The prayer of
Jonah in the
belly of the fish shows him to be another form of the Afflicted One who is for
three days and
three nights
in the lowermost depths at the time of the winter solstice. In this legend the
belly of the fish is
identical
with the belly of Sheol, the womb of the under-world. In the ancient fragment
quoted in the
second
chapter Jonah says, “I called out of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he
answered me; out of the
belly of
Sheol cried I; thou heardest my voice. For thou didst cast me into the depth,
in the heart of the
seas, and the
flood was round about me; all thy waves and thy billows passed over me. And I
said, I am
cast out from
before thine eyes; yet I will look again towards thy holy temple (i.e., on the
mount). The
waters
compassed me about, even to the soul. The deep was round about me; the weeds
were wrapped
about my
head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; earth with her bars (closed)
upon me for
ever; yet
thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God”. There is nothing
whatever about the
fish in this
fragment. On the contrary the speaker is in the belly of Sheol, which is the
Kamite Amenta. In
this
nether-world he is at the roots of the mount of earth which stands in the
waters of the abyss. The
womb of Sheol
might be represented as it was by the water-cow or a great fish. A great fish
in the form of
a crocodile
was one of the types of the ancient mother who brought forth Sebek-Horus from
the Nun as
her young
crocodile, just as she [Page 497] brought forth Sut as her young hippopotamus.
The sufferer in
Sheol is the
same here as in the Psalms and the book of Job, and both are identical with the
suffering
Osiris in the
mysteries of Amenta. We have now to take a backward look in the course of
establishing the
links between
the Egyptian wisdom and the Hebrew writings.
Religion in
Egypt first began in worship or propitiation of the primal providence that was figured
as the
Great Mother
who brought forth the seven elemental powers called her children. These powers
in Egypt
were the
seven Ali. In Phoenicia they are the seven Elohim, in Assyria they are seven
forms of the Ili, and
in Israel the
seven Elohim, Kabirim, or Baalim. Sut was one of these, and Sut upon his
mountain at the
pole became
EI-Shadai in his Hebrew form of Seth. The company of seven (with the great
mother)
passed into
the astronomical mythology as the seven great spirits which were divinized as
star gods with
Anup, a form
of Sut, at the pole. Under the figure of Israel, the abandoned female, later
writers in the Old
Testament
denounce the pre-monogamous great mother as the harlot of promiscuous sexual
intercourse.
Jeremiah
rejoices furiously because “she that hath borne seven languisheth”, ashamed and
confounded,
and hath
given up the ghost” (ch. xv. 9). When the one god had been “lifted up” as Ra in
the solar mythos
and Huhi the
eternal in the eschatology by both the Egyptians and the Jews, or by the
Egyptian Jews, the
previous
divinities called the ancestors of Ra were superseded, or their powers were
absorbed in or
blended with
the one great power, who was now the all-one as Neb-er-ter.
“When the
children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” (.huh),
and served the Baalim
and Ashtoreth
(Judges ii. II, 14), they were returning to the worship of the most ancient
great mother and
her sons the
Ali, the companions, the brothers in the first circle of the gods; the Baalim
being one with the
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Elohim and
the Kabirim. “Return (says .huh), O backsliding children (the two sisters Judah
and Israel),
for I am a
husband to you ” (Jer. iii. 14). This backsliding, however, was itself a return
to Israel's earlier
love -
“Israel”, that is, as a part of the “common, dim populations” of Syria,
Phoenicia or Canaan, and
Palestine.
The change from Baal to .huh is indicated by Hosea (ch. ii. 16, also by
Jeremiah iii.) when it is
said to
Israel, “And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, thou shalt call me 'my
husband', and thou shalt
call me no
longer Baal. For I will take away the names of the Baalim out of her mouth, and
they shall nomore be memorialized by name”. The Baalim, like the Elohim and
Âbirim, were the Ali, companion gods
or powers,
that were originally a group of seven, to whom El or Baal was added as the
eighth or highest
God. They
existed in the time of the totemic matriarchate before the husband or the
father could be
known
personally, whether as human or divine. In this passage the deity becomes
monogamous, and
Israel, as a
feminine equivalent for the suppressed goddess, is to be his wife. The language
of the
“prophets”
concerning the whoredom of Israel cannot be comprehended apart from the status
of the
woman in
communal connubium. The whore of later language is the representative of the
totemic
woman, who
might cohabit with seven or any other appointed number of consorts. The harlot
in
mythology was
the great mother, [Page 498] whose own children were her consorts in the
beginning.
When the
fatherhood was divinized the god became the husband, the one instead of the
seven or eight,
who were the
Ali, Illi, Elohim, Âberim, or Baalim. Israel had consorted with the Baalim, and
therefore
cohabited
promiscuously. And after the one god was made known to her as a father and a
husband, she
still went
a-whoring after the earlier gods. Hence the denunciations of Israel as the
whore who would not
truly play
the part of wife.
Hebraists
have surmised, and some Hebrews (known to the writer) have admitted, that the
prefix B in B'
Jah (B' Jah
is Jehovah, Is. xxvi. 4,. and B' Jah is his name) is an abbreviation for the
name of Baal. If
written out
fully this would read, Baal - Iah = Baal is Jah. Bealiah is a proper name in
the book of
Chronicles I.
xii. 5, in which we see that Baal-Iah as divinity supplied a personal name.
Thus the Baal
who is .ah–
would be the
.ah who was one of the Baalim; and the earliest Baalim were a form of
the seven
companions, like the Kabarim and Elohim, which are followed in the book of
Genesis by the
god named
Iahu-Elohim. The one god in Israel is made known to Moses by the two names of —
and
.huh and .ah.
Now a priest of On (Osarsiph) would naturally learn at On of the one god Atum-
Ra, who was
Huhi the eternal in the character of God the father and .u in the character of
God the son,
which two
were one. In accordance with Egyptian thought, that which was for ever was the
only true
reality. This
was represented by Huhi the eternal. And Huhi is the god made known to Israel
by the priest
of On.
Gesenius derives the name of .huh from a root huh, which root does not exist in
Hebrew. But it
does exist in
Egyptian. Huh or heh signifies ever, everlastingness, eternity, the eternal.
Huhi was a title
that was
applied to Ptah, Atum-Ra, and Osiris, as Neb-Huhi the ever-lasting lord, or as
the supreme one,
self-existing,
and eternal god,. which each of these three deities represented in turn as one
divine
dynasty
succeeded another in the Egyptian religion. An eternity of existence was imaged
by the
Egyptians as
ever-coming or becoming; hence ever-coming or ever-becoming was a mode of
imaging
the eternal
being. Thus the one god as their Huhi was not only he who is for ever as the
father, but also
he who comes
for ever as the son. This visible mode of continuity by means of coming
naturally involved
becoming,
according to the Egyptian doctrine of kheper, which includes ever-evolving,
ever-transforming,
ever-perpetuating,
ever-becoming, under the one word kheper. Thus the name of an eternal,
self-existent
being which
is
in Hebrew can
be traced as Huhi, the name for the one eternal, ever-Iiving, everlasting
god as
Egyptian. And now for the first time we can distinguish the one name,
from the
other
, if only on
Egyptian ground. “ .u”, with variants in Au, Iau, Aui, and others, is also an
Egyptian
word, but with no linguistic relationship to the word Huh. .u is likewise the
name of an Egyptian
god, as
.u-em-hetep, he who comes with peace, who was primarily the son of Ptah, and
who was
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Ancient
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repeated in
the cult of Atum-Ra as Nefer-Atum. In fact, Atum-Ra is both Huhi and .u as the
one god living
in truth, the
father manifesting as the ever-coming son, who was .u-sa the son of .usaas in
the cult of
On. All that
was ever represented to the Jewish mind by the name of .huh [Page 499] (.hvh or
Jehovah)
had been
expressed to the Egyptian by the word huhi or, later, hehi. As Egyptian, “huh”
signified
everlastingness,
millions of times, eternity, and “Huhi” was also a name of their god the
eternal. It had
been a title,
we repeat, of Ptah, of Atum, and of Osiris, each in turn, in three different
cults at Memphis,
On, and
Abydos. Huhi, then, was the eternal as the father; he who always had been, ever
was, ever
should be,
and hence the everlasting god.
.u was the
ever-coming son, .u-sa or .u-em-hetep, the son who comes with peace as periodic
manifestor
for the
eternal father. Thus the One God of the Jews was Egyptian in this twofold
character, both by
nature and by
name.
The change in
Israel from the worship of El-Shaddai to the worship of .huh, from the Eloistic
to the
Jehovistic
god, corresponds to the change from the stellar to the solar worship in the
astronomical
mythology. El
in the highest was the star-god on the summit of the mountain, who in the
Kamite mythos
might be Sut,
Seth, or Anup at the pole. The pole was represented by the mount, one Egyptian
name of
which is Sut,
denoting standing-ground. The ruler of the pole-star was the lord of
standing-ground or
station at
the fixed centre of the heavens. The highest El was the eighth of the Ali or
Baalim. In Hebrew
he is called
El-Shaddai, commonly rendered the powerful or mighty one. Another rendering,
however, of
the name is more
than probable. This was the most high god, El-Elyon, whom the Phoenicians also
called
Israel. As Egyptian, it was Anup on the mount, or at the pole, the highest of
the star-gods or Elohim
who preceded
the solar sovereignty of Ra. El-Shaddai, who was Phoenician, and had been
co-worker
with the
Elohim in the legends of creation, was succeeded and superseded by the god of
two names who
is made known
to Israel as “.huh” and lahu, or “lao” = Egyptian .u. The Egyptian word .u is
also written í,
with u
inherent, and has the meaning of coming, come, to come, and is the name of the
ever- coming
and eternal
child, .u-em-hetep, or .usa, the coming son. In the Phoenician version the
deity lao= .u is the
coming son,
the well-beloved, the only-begotten son of El, who was to be called leoud (or
), the
supposed
prototype of “something to come” in Christianity (see Bryant). The word .u with
these meanings
in Egyptian
agrees with lah or lahu in Hebrew, signifying come and to come. Thus Huhi is
equivalent to
, and .u is
equivalent to
as Ihu or
lao, the two forms of which name are different from each
other at the
root, but could be applied as two titles of the one god. lah is portrayed as
the god who is
operative,
audible, and visible in material phenomena. His are the mighty deeds. He is the
manifestor for
the father,
the opener of Amenta in the solar mythos. The Song of Moses shows that lah was
the divine
deliverer who
triumphed gloriously over the adversaries of the father, as did this deliverer
in the exodus
from the
lower Egypt of Amenta (Ex. xv. 2). lah is the opponent of Amalek, with whom he
makes war for
ever, as did
Horus with Apap, the eternal enemy (Ex. xvii.16). lah is the god who rides as
conqueror
through the
deserts, (Ps. lxviii. 4) and goes forth before his people marching through the
wilderness. It
was he who
led his people “like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. lxxvii. 20).
lah is called
upon as
deliverer [Page 500] from death and as the saviour from the sufferings of Sheol
(Ps. cxvi.). He is
the coming
one who is looked to and watched and waited for as the redeemer of Israel. It
is to Iah the
Hallelu-Iah
of the Psalmist is raised. In short, the character is that of God the son, and
therefore lah is
one with fu
the son of Atum-Huhi. Iah is god the son, and the son in Egyptian is the Messu.
Thus, Iah the
Messu is the
Mes-Iah, hence the Messiah in Hebrew. The Messiah as Iah the Messu was the
ever-
coming son,
like .u, and .u as Egyptian is he who comes as manifestor for the eternal
father.
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Ancient
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The duality
of Ptah, also of Atum as Huhi the eternal father, and .u the ever-coming son,
is repeated and
preserved in
the “Pistis Sophia” of the Egypto-gnostics. Ptah is not mentioned by name. But
the great
forefather is
called the father of all fatherhood, the god who was “parentless”; and Ptah is
the one god,
who, being
gotten by his own becoming, was the self-existent and eternal one, Huhi (Eg.),
.huh
(Hebrew), .ao
(Phoenician), or leou (Egypto-gnostic). The one god in two persons, or, as the
Ritual'
expresses it,
with two faces, becomes twain in the father and son. These are called Ieou the
greater and
.ao the lesser.
Ieou the elder is “the overseer of the light”; .ao the younger is the good
Sabaoth, who
emanates from
Ieou as a son from the father (B. ii. 193). .ao is also designated
Sabaoth-Adamas, who is
the gnostic
and Jewish deity .ao-Sabaoth thus identified with Atum-Ra, lord of the heavenly
host. The
same duality
of father and son was figured in the twofold Athamas at Samothrace. “The two
great books
of Ieou” are
mentioned in Pistis Sophia, “which are said to have been written down by Enoch
when
Jesus” spoke
with him from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, which were the two
trees in the
paradise of
Adam” (B. ii. 246). The paradise of Adam was the garden of Atum, and the Jesus
who spoke
and uttered
the sayings was the wise youth .u, or .u-em-hetep, the son of Atum, or Atum in
his earlier
character of
.u as the son of Ptah.
Moreover, it
is not improbable that a version of these is extant in two books of the
apocrypha, viz, the
Wisdom of
Jesus and the Wisdom of Solomon. The expounder of the mysteries in these
writings was the
Egyptian
Jesus, who is the Sayer, word or logos, twice over as Egyptian, once as .u the
son of Ptah, at
Memphis, and
once as the son of Atum-Ra, .u-em-hetep, the prince of peace, and prototype of
the
Hebrew
Solomon, at On. The Egyptian Jesus was equally the Egyptian Solomon, the
youthful sage, as
sayer and
teacher of the oral wisdom. When Iamblichus describes the one god who was
worshipped at
Heliopolis or
Annu as “Ichton and Emphe”, he refers to Atum in his two characters of father
and son or Ra
and Horus.
.Atum was represented at Annu by the fish of the inundation, and also by
.u-em-hetep, the
bringer of
peace and plenty, as Ichton the fish that typified the saviour to Egypt. And
now if for the
modern Jews
we read the ancient worshippers of Atum-.u or, still earlier, of Ptah, we shall
be able to
follow Isaiah
in his survey of the great dispersion of the Jewish people over all the earth.
“The Lord shall
set his hand
to recover the remnants of his people which shall remain from Assyria, and from
Egypt, and
from Pathros,
and from Kush, [Page 501] and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and
from the
islands (or
coast-lands) of the sea. He shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather
together the
dispersed of
Judah from the four corners of the earth”. ( Is. xi. I I, 13. ) It is
noticeable that the prophet
calls the
Lord who is to gather the Jews together from all lands by the double name of
lah-Jehovah. .ah is
the Egyptian
.u, whose followers were the primeval Jews of Egypt north and south (Pathros),
of Ethiopia
and Chaldea,
of the islands of the sea, and the remotest shores of the earth, including the
Jews of
Cornwall.
These are the prehistoric Jews who are to be known by the name of the god they
worshipped.
This range
will include the black Jews of Africa and India, and all the rest of those
whose god we identify
with .u the
Egyptian original and prototype of all; .u as god the son, whether of the
father as Atum or as
Ptah. No such
world-wide dispersion of the Jewish race from Palestine or Judea had ever
occurred in the
time of
Isaiah. It is the religious community, not the race, that will account for the
Jews who emigrated to
the ends of
the earth, and for the names of the Jewish god, who was the Egyptian .u,
Phoenician lao,
Hebrew lah,
Assyrian lau, Egypto-gnostic leou (greater and lesser), Chinese laou,
Polynesian .ho-.ho,
Dyak laouh,
Nicobar Islands Eewu, Mexican Ao, Toda Au, Hungarian lao, Manx lee, Cornish
lau, Welsh
lau (greater
and lesser), Hebrew lao-Sabaoth, Chaldean lao-Heptaktis, Greek la, and IE,
Latin Jupiter
and Jove.
To follow the
Jews as the Aiu of Egypt in their world-wide dispersion, we shall have to think
in continents
rather than
in Petticoat Lanes and Ghettos.
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The
worshippers of lao in Phoenicia, of lau in Assyria, of lao in Syria, lau and Hu
in Britain, la or .u in
Greece,
Jupiter in Italy,.ho-.ho in Polynesia, lau in America were each and all of them
Jews in a sense,
but the sense
was religious, not originally ethnical; and religion does not determine race
any more than
language does
in later ages of the world. There was a religion of the god .u or lao in Egypt
thirteen
thousand
years ago. That god was Atum-.u, born son of Ptah. He was the earliest father
in heaven
because he
was the divine Ra in his primordial sovereignty. He is the god in two persons
who was first
figured as
the sun upon the double horizon =the father in the west, the son in the east.
This god went
forth from
Kam by several names and various routes. Those who worshipped him as Atum
became the
Adamites, the
Edomites, the red men; those who worshipped him as lao, lah, or .u became the
Jews in
many lands
and these are the Jews of that world-wide dispersion recognized by Isaiah,
which did not
follow any
known historical exodus from Egypt or captivity in Babylon, or migration from
Palestine. The
Jews were
only ethnical at root when the root was the vine in Egypt, or in Ethiopia
beyond, and the Jews
were one of
its branches. They were only ethnical at root when the race was black, whether
these were
the black
Jews in Africa or in India.
From the
beginning the Jews were as they are to-day, a religious community. It is the
worship of .u in
Egypt
thirteen thousand years ago and the going out from thence that will account for
the supreme being
amongst the
Dyaks of Borneo being known to them as Yavuah, which name was not derived from
the
Hebrew
Jehovah, but [Page 502] from the original of both (A. M. Cameron, Proc. Soc. of
Bib. Arch.). The
Dyaks also
preserve the tradition of a great ancestor who was determined to construct a
ladder that
should reach
up to heaven, but one night a worm ate into the foot of the ladder, and it fell
like the tower of
Babel. The
Dyaks also have the legend of a great deluge which drowned the chief part of
mankind and
divided the
rest. These two catastrophes mark the endings of two vast periods in time which
preceded
the supremacy
of Atum-.u in the Zodiac of twelve signs. Thus amongst a people so isolated as
the Dyaks
they have the
god Yavuah and the tradition of the two catastrophes which are represented in
the book of
Genesis by
the destruction of the tower and the deluge of Noah. Naturally the “wisdom” was
carried into
the island of
Borneo with the cult of the god laouah, whose worshippers are elsewhere called
the .us or
Jews from the
Egyptian deity who was .u or Aiu by name both in the cult of Ptah at Memphis
and of
Atum-Ra at
On. The same god is found in the Babylonian mythology with the name la, or lau=
lah in
Hebrew
(Pinches, T. G., Proc. Soc. of Bib. Arch.). But it is not necessary to suppose
the Assyrian god lau
was derived
from the Hebrew deity lahu, or vice versa, when there is a common origin for
both in the
Egyptian god
lu. This is not a matter merely of philology, but of the characters in the
mythology. lau is “the
sage of the
gods” (Assyn. Fragments). He is also described as the divine artisan or
art-workman,
especially in
the character of the potter. This is Ptah all over. He was pre-eminently the
potter, and the
head of the
Khnemmu or divine moulders. Further and finally, it was Ptah-.u who, with his
Ali, the Elohim,
created the
Aarru-garden as a paradise of pleasure in the earth of eternity. And in the
Assyrian
eschatology
it is lau, “the sage of the gods”, who transports the justified spirits after
death to the “place of
delights”,
where they are fed on butter and honey and drink the water that gives eternal
life (Records, vol.
xi. 161-2).
Our British Druids worshipped a deity of the same name and dual nature as the
Egyptian I u,
the Assyrian
lau, the Hebrew lahu. This divine duality, consisting of the father and the
son, was called by
them lau the
elder and lau the younger, corresponding to the gnostic leou and lao.
The god .u,
as son of Ptah, was an astronomical builder and architect of the heavens. .u
the son of Atum
was also
reputed to be a great builder. As the Kamite Solomon he was not only the prince
of peace and
the divine
healer; he was also said to have designed the Temple. The stages of building on
earth were
reflected in
the heavens. The mound-builders were first. They raised the seven mounds of the
heptanomis.
Shu raised the four pillars of the four quarters. Ptah was the architect who
based his
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building on
the pole and the four cardinal points = the four-square tent and tent-staff
Atum, his son, was
the builder
of heaven as the house, the Father's house on high” of which the Christian
sings. This in the
Ritual is
called “the dwelling of my father Tum” (ch. 17). It is also said to the
deceased, “Tum hath built
thy house”
(ch. 17, 30). “The double lion-god hath founded thy habitation”. Lastly, the
temple was
designed by
.u-em-hetep the son of Atum, as the builder in the astronomical mythology.
Thence the
people named
after the deity .u as the Aiu, [Page 503] or later Jews, would come to be
recognized in
Egypt, the
land of temples, as the great builders. And according to Rabbinical traditions
the Jews= .us or
Aaiu were the
great typical builders. They are said to have excavated the mountains, raised
the
pyramids,
built temples and cities, and surrounded them with walls; divided the Nile into
several canals,
and
constructed dykes against the inundation (Josephus and Philo ). One of these
great works was the
canal of
Joseph, i.e. the divine architect who as son of Ptah was his sif, .u-sif=
Joseph. Also, if we have
to do with
Egyptians who are only identified by a religious name, that of the deity .u,
there is no difficulty
about their
having built the Meskenoth of Tum, or, as it is rendered, the store-cities of
Pithom and
Rameses, when
the great temple of Atum-.u was originally erected at Annu or On, which
according to the
divine
dynasties followed Memphis in attaining its supremacy. The Jew-name was
Egyptian then as .u, or
Aiu, with
other variants. Aiu is a form of the word, and Neb-Aiu, the Lord Aiu, filled
the office of high priest
in the temple
of Osiris at Abydos. The Aiu as manes in Amenta are the children of Ra, who was
Atum-
Huhi as Ra
the father and Atum-.u as Horus the son. The land of Judea or Judah was named
in
Egyptian. It
appears upon the monuments as .uta or .utah. .u is dual, ta is earth or land,
and .uta is the
double land
or double earth of the Egyptian mythos localized in Judea. The dual kingdom of
Judea was
derived by
name from the dual deity .u, whose followers in Egypt were the .us, lews, or
Jews, and given
to Joseph in
the persons of his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. “Joseph shall have two
portions” says
Ezekiel
(xlvii. 13); and these had already been assigned to the two sons of Joseph by
Jacob in the book
of Genesis.
In the mythos the two portions of the double earth were united once a year to
form the
kingdom of
the sif or son, who is Joseph in the Hebrew version and .u the sif as son of
Atum-Ra. The two
halves were
united by the son in his name of Har-sam-taui, unifier of the double land.
It has been
shown that the Hebrew deity .huh was god the father in one character and in the
other god
the son. If
the type of these was the bull, this would represent the father, and the
bullock or calf the son,
as with the
bull of Osiris and the calf of Horus. If the lion were the type, the old lion
would represent the
father, the
young lion the son. The same with the ass, which was another type of the deity
.u, the father
and the son
being represented by the ass and its foal. The symbolism of the lion, the bull,
and the ass
has its tale
to tell concerning Israel and the Kamite origins. The lion was a zootype of
Atum-.u. He is
called the
lion-faced in the Ritual. His mother was a lioness. He is addressed as a
lion-god (Rit., ch. 28),
the god in
lion form (chs. 38, 41, 53, 54, 62). It is the same with .huh in Israel. The
god is described by
Hezekiah (Is.
xxxviii. 13), as a lion: “As a lion, so he breaketh all my bones”. This is
looked upon merely
as a tropical
figure of speech, but it is a figure of fact in the original symbolism. Atum-.u
was the lion of
Judah in the
Egyptian mythos. The lion origin of Judah's totem was known to Nahum in his
inquiry for the
lion-spirit
of the past: “Where is the den of the lions and the feeding place of the young
lions, where the
old lion and
the lioness walked with the lion's whelp and no one made them afraid ? The
[Page 504] lion
tore in
pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lioness and filled his
caves with prey”.
(Nahum, ii. I
I, 12, 13.) These are equivalent to the lion as Ptah, the lioness as Sekhet
Merptah, and
Atum as the
whelp. .ah roareth as the typical lion: “Thou shalt walk after the Lord, who
shall roar like a
lion, for he
shall roar , (Hos. xi. 10). “The Lord shall roar from on high, he shall
mightily roar” (Jer. xxv.
30). “The
Lord shall roar from Zion” (Joel, iii. 16). “The lion hath roared: the Lord God
hath spoken”
( Amos, iii.
8). Job was hunted by the Lord in the shape of a lion. “Thou huntest me as a
lion, ,says the
fearfully-afflicted
one (Job, x. 16). The Lord was known in Israel by his roaring like a lion,
because he had
been known in
Egypt as the lion-god who was Atum-Ra, the lion of the double force which was
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Ancient
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represented
by the twin lions (Rit.. 162, I). The solar Dionysius was known by the name of
“the roarer”,
and he was
also portrayed as a lion-headed god. In the Bakchai of Euripides ( 1078) he is
invoked by the
chorus to
manifest in his might and appear as a flaming lion. The reason of this roaring
in that shape is
that the Lord
was imaged as a lion on the mount of the lions, which was the Mount Shennu =
Sinai, the
lion-mount
where the Lord was the solar lion - where, in fact, he was the two lions, the
old lion and the
young one.
These are referred to by Hosea. “I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a
young lion to the
house of
Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and there shall be
none to deliver”.
(Hosea, v.
14.) The solar birthplace in the mythos was upon the mount of the two lions.
Horus the son
was reborn
upon the horizon as “the young lion made resplendent at his birth by the two
lions” (Rit., ch.
3). Also it
is said that “Judah is a lion's whelp; he stooped down, he couched as a lion
and as a lioness”.
In this
description we have the typical lion in the triple form of a lion, the lioness,
and the whelp, as the
type was
portrayed in Egypt. There was a triple-headed lion-god at Meroe with four arms,
which may well
stand for the
dual-natured Atum-.u as the son of the lion-headed Ptah and Sekhet (Rawlinson
on
Herodotus,
ii. 35). According to the language of the Ritual, this would be the “lion of
the double lions”, or
double force.
It is proclaimed by Ezekiel that the mother of Israel was a lioness. As “a
lioness she
couched among
lions and she brought up one of her whelps; he became a young lion; the nations
also
heard of him:
he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with hooks into the land of
Egypt” (Ez. xix. I,
5). This is
another and a truer version of the mythos euhemerized in Exodus as the story of
Joseph and
his brethren.
The lion was taken in the same pit into which Joseph was cast in the “historic”
account, and
this
identifies the Egypt signified as lower Egypt in Amenta. Joseph is the .u-sif
in Egyptian - that is, .u the
son, who is
here represented as the young lion whose mother was a lioness.
The origin of
the mother as a lioness was the same as with the sow or the cow. It was totemic
and
typical. The
lioness was a zootype of the mythical Great Mother, Kefa (or Kheft), who became
the
Hebrew
Chavvah, the genetrix of life and mother of the human race. Sekhet, the Great
Mother in her
solar form,
was also a lioness, and in certain Egyptian texts the goddess Sekhet has been
represented
as an
ancestress of the human race (Lefébure, Tombeau de Seti, i. I I. PI.4,5.) –
[Page 505] She also was
the mother in
Amenta who reproduced the Aiu or Jews, as the children of Ra, for another life.
“I know”,
says the
manes, “ that I have been conceived by Sekhet and born of Neith”) (Rit., ch.
66). This likewise
was the
divine or mythical ancestry of the Jews – but only the Egyptian wisdom ever
could explain the
derivation of
the race of either Jew or Gentile, from the lioness. Sekhet was the consort of
Ptah, one of
whose types
is the lion. These two, Ptah and Sekhet, were the parents of Atum, the lion-god
in the cult of
Atum-Ra; and
Atum was the first man and reputed father of the human race, with .u, the sif,
or son, who
is the young
lion as Joseph. Thus, and in no other way, was man or mankind mothered by
Sekhet the
lioness, by
Kefa, by Chavvah, or by Eve. And in that way only was a lioness the mother of
Israel, whose
whelp is the
young lion as the lion of Judah. The Lord who was a lion as the representative of
solar force
becomes the
“lion-like” of later language. Thus the Egyptian origins of the Jews, their
gods, their
mythology,
and their symbolism were veiled from view, and philology was left without the
necessary
determinative
types and palpable figures of the underlying facts.
The Egyptian
deity .u, the son of Atum-Ra, was also portrayed as a short-homed bull-calf.
Not as the god
in person,
but as a figure to be interpreted by a necessary knowledge of the symbolism.
Osiris was
designated
the “bull of eternity”. Atum was the earlier bull-father. His consort was
.usaas, a form of the
cow-headed
goddess, their divine child being I u, the su or sif, in the image of a
bull-calf; and as here
shown .u is =
Jah in Hebrew, as god the son, who is identifiable with Joseph. The difficult
passage in
Genesis
(xlix. 22) might be more correctly rendered, “Joseph is son of the heifer”.
This he would be as .u
(em-hetep),
the sif (son) of the cow-headed Isuaas, who was a form of Hathor, the golden
heifer, in the
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Ancient
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temple of
Atum- Ra at On. The god who brought up Israel out of Egypt is not only
represented by the
golden calf;
he is also said to have the horns of the ox or wild bull (Numbers xxiii. 22).
.u was the bull in
one character
and the calf in the other; and as it was with .u in Egypt so is it with .ahu in
Israel, only we
must learn to
read the imagery aright in accordance with the Egyptian wisdom, which we are
told was so
familiar to
“Moses”. As Kuenen states it, “.huh was worshipped in the shape of a young
bull. It cannot be
doubted that
the cult of the bull-calf was really the cult of .huh in person”. This
statement, however, is not
in keeping
with the present mode of presenting the facts. The existence of types does not
of necessity
involve a
worship of the type. The whole range of sign-language lies between such an
assumption and
the possible
truth. Otherwise stated, the young bullock was one of the types under which the
god .u was
represented
by the Egyptians and the Israelites. The bullock, for example, was identified
with Joseph and
venerated as
the zootype of his divinity by certain of the ancient Jews (Kircher, Volume 1,
page 197),
Joseph being,
as herein maintained, a form of .u the son (sif), with Jacob as a figure of the
father-god.
The calves of
Beth-Aon also point to .u, the calf-headed god, and the beth or temple of
Atum-Ra in Annu,
the Hebrew On
(Hosea, x. 5). It is said by Hosea, “Ephraim is an heifer that is taught, that
loveth to tread
out [Page
506] the corn; but I have passed over upon her fair neck” (Ib. x. I I). .usaas,
the mother of u, was
the heifer on
whose neck, or between the horns of whose head, the sun-god rode. Her son was
Joseph
as the
.u-sif; and in this passage we have a casting back aimed at the origins after
the attempted casting
out of the
cult. The sons of Joseph are identified with the calves of Beth-On, and Ephraim
with the heifer.
Covenants
also were established in Israel by cutting a calf in twain and passing the
contracting persons
between the
two parts (Jer. xxxiv. 18, 19), which made the type equivalent to the two sexes
of the mother
and child or
heifer and calf, or the calf that was both male and female; also to the duality
of father and
son.
The Vignettes
to the Ritual prove that Atum-Ra the solar god and his son .u were also
represented by the
ass. The sun
or sun-god goes down to Amenta as, if not riding on, the ass. He is attacked
there by the
Apap-serpent
who devours in the dark (Vignette, Rit., ch.40). At dawn he rises and is hauled
up by the
ass, or by
the young solar god with ass's ears. Thus we have the old ass and the young,
the Hebrew ass
and the foal
of an ass, on which the sun-god in the later legend rode when he came up from
Amenta
riding on the
ass in the mythology which preceded the eschatology. The ass and the young
sun-god also
were both
named .u, and .u was the son of Atum-Ra, the ass being his zootype. .u, as Egyptian,
is
represented
by .ao in Phoenician and in Hebrew. Clement Alexander, who was an Egyptian,
spells the
name of
Jehovah as lau. Thus, “.u” is the ass in Egyptian, lao is a name of the god
with an ass's head,
and lau is
Jehovah, the god of the Jews and the Christians also Epiphanius asserts that
the deity
Sabaoth had
the face of an ass. He calls it “the gnostic Sabaoth”. But Sabaoth was also the
Jew-god, or
god .u, who
was known by the name of lao-Sabaoth. The ass-god is portrayed on some of the
talismanic
stones that
were copied by King in his work The Gnostics and their Remains. In one of these
lao is ass-
headed in the
character of Horus grasping the two scorpions as he stands upon the cippus (PI.
G.,2). But
King, who
calls this “the ass-headed typhon, or the principle of evil”, is hopelessly
wrong. According to
the
Egypto-gnostic “Pistis Sophia”, lao-Sabaoth is god the son to leou (.huh) as
god the father, both of
whom were
forms of the ass-headed deity. And lao, or Abrakas, is likewise portrayed upon
the gnostic
gems in the
shape of a double-headed ass, which is equivalent to the father-god and son in
the same
image as leou
and lao, .huh and lah, or Huhi and .u with their duality blended in one figure
(King, G. R.,
PI. B.). It
represented Horus, or .u in the cult of Atum-.u. King knew only of one ass,
which to him was a
type of the
evil Sut or Typhon.
But this was
not the ass of .u, .ao-Sabaoth or Atum-Ra.
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Ancient
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In the Museum
of the Collegio Romano to-day there may be seen a figure of the ass-headed god
who
was Egyptian,
Jewish, and Gnostic. It is the image of a man extended cross-wise on the Roman
cross.
The figure is
being saluted by a worshipper of the god, who was thus portrayed with the head
of an ass.
It was
discovered some years since scratched roughly on the wall of a room in a house
that was buried in
ancient times
beneath the buildings of the Palatine Hill, and was cut out from the wall and
deposited in
the Roman
[Page 507] Museum. King, in describing it, tries hard but vainly to make out
that the animal is
not an ass,
but was intended for Anubis, the jackal He says: “In reality the production of
some devout but
illiterate gnostic,
it is construed into a shocking heathen blasphemy and a gibe upon the good
Christian
Alexamenos,
because they mistake the jackal's head for that of an ass, and consequently
imagine an
intentional
caricature of their own crucifix”. There is no mistaking the ass for Anubis.
There was no
caricature in
the crucifix. The ass is a type of the solar sufferer in Amenta, who came to be
called the
crucified.
The Roman or Latin cross is a figure of the longest night and shortest day when
the sun was in
the winter
solstice. The ass-headed god upon the cross is the exact equivalent of
Osiris-tat, and in this
crude
representation we find the divine victim on or as the cross instead of the tat,
or instead of being
devoured by
the “eater of the ass”, as in the Vignettes to the Ritual. The adoration of
Alexamenos was
directed to
the god who is portrayed upon the cross, not of the equinox, but of the winter
solstice, as the
sufferer in
Amenta, and as the form of the solar deity who made himself a sacrifice like
Ptah, or Osiris in
the
cross-tree of the tat. (King, The Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed., pp.
229-30).
It was
charged against the Christians in Rome that they also were worshippers of the
ass-god. Tertullian
in a passage
of his reply says to his opponents, “Like many others, you have dreamed that an
ass's head
is our god,
but a new version of our god has lately been made public at Rome, ever since a
certain
hireling
convict of a bull-fighter put forth a picture with some such inscription as
this, 'The god of the
Christians
.........S. He was portrayed with the ears of an ass, and with one of his feet
hoofed,
holding in
his hand a book, and clothed with a toga” (Apol. 16). Diodorus says, according
to the fragment
of Lib. 34
preserved by Photius, that when Antiochus Epiphanes, after conquering the Jews,
went into the
inner
sanctuary of God, he found there a stone statue of a man with a long beard,
holding a book in his
hand and
sitting on an ass. This he took to be an image of Moses. We should rather take
it to have been
the image of
the ass-headed god Atum-.u, w ho passed out of Egypt as .ao, .au, or
.ao-Sabaoth, the
solar god who
as lord of hosts in Egypt, before going forth, had attained the status of Huhi
the eternal,
the one god
in spirit and in truth; Ra in the mythology, the holy ghost in the eschatology;
Atum-Huhi as
the father,
.u as the son, and Ra as the holy spirit. But the ass was not the god, whether
of the Egyptians
or the Jews,
the Gnostics or Christians. It was but a type of the power that was recognized
at first as
solar, the
power that was divinized in Atum, who was Ra in his primordial sovereignty, and
whose son
was the
ass-headed .ao, .au, or .u.
But we must
make a further digression on account of Joseph as a form of the young solar god
in Israel
who was .u,
the ass-headed sif or son of Atum-Ra, in Egypt. Not one of the legends in the
Hebrew
writings
attributed to Moses could be understood apart from the mythology from which
they were
fundamentally
derived. Nor does the mythology remain intact in the form of the märchen. The
story of
Joseph, for
example, is a collection of fugitive fragments, each one of which is separately
identifiable.
Joseph is not
simply one of [Page 508] ten or twelve or seventy brethren in the family of
Jacob or Israel.
Joseph-El as
the beloved son of Jacob was divine, and would be a divinity if there were any
possibility of
all the other
sons being human. It is now known that Jacob-El and Joseph-Ei were worshipped
as two
divinities in
Northern Syria, and it is there we find a remnant of the seed of Israel or
Isiri-El, and therefore
of Jacob-El
whose son was Joseph. But it is not to be supposed that Jacob was a human
father, and that
Joseph was
his human son, who were divinized by adding the divine El as a suffix to their
names. This
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Ancient
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leaves us
with nothing but the two divinities to go upon. These probably originated with
.u in Kheb, or
Lower Egypt,
as Jacob, and .u, the sif, or son, as Joseph; the two divinities being
humanized in the later
legends of
the .u, Aiu, or Jews, as was the common way in converting mythos into history.
It can be
shown that
Joseph was a form of the divine, the beloved son, whose father was one version
of
the mythos
and Jacob in another. Io or Jo= .u in the name of Joseph ( )is taken by
Hebraists as
the
equivalent of lahu; and in Ps. lxxxi. 5, the name of Joseph is written lahusiph
( )-that is,
lah the siph
or sif, which in Egyptian denotes the son. Also the names that is Joseph-lah
and of
Josephiah (Ez. viii. 10) proclaim the fact, in accordance with the use and wont
of the Hebrew
language,
that Joseph is lah = I u in Egyptian. In the same way the name of El-.asaph
(Num. i. 14 and iii.
24)
identifies the deity of Joseph, and affirms that .asaph is one with lah, and
therefore is Joseph-El.
Joseph as son
is .u the sif, or the coming son, in Egyptian. These names show the identity of
Joseph and
I u the sif,
and denote that Joseph was the son of the same father, who is Jacob in the one
version and
.huh in the
other. The descent of the sun-god into the lower Egypt of Amenta is portrayed
in the märchen
as the
casting of Joseph into the pit, and the ascent therefrom in his glory by the
coat of many colours. In
Egypt Joseph
plays the part of Repa to the Ra or Pharaoh. In this character he rides in the
second
chariot when
he goes forth as the Adon, or Aten, over all the land. But as Joseph-El he is
the divine
Repa, the
Horus of thirty years - that is, I u the sif in the cult of Atum-Ra. At thirty
years of age the son as
Horus, or .u
the sif = Joseph, took his seat upon the throne beside the father, and went
forth as ruler over
all the land
of Egypt, the halves of which were united when the young god assumed the
sovereignty of
the double
country in the mythos, and is called Har-sam-taui, uniter of the double earth,
or earth and
heaven, in
the eschatology. His relationship to Neith likewise attests his divinity. When
the throne-name
of “Zaphenath
Paneah” = Sif-Neith the living, is conferred upon him he is identified as the
son who
became the
consort of the cow-headed Neith, a form of whom was the goddess .usaas, the
mother of I u
the sif =
Joseph, at Heliopolis. This relationship to the great Neith is fulfilled when
he becomes the
consort of
Asenath or Asa-Neith, whose name identifies her as the great goddess Neith, the
daughter of
Ra, or, as
“historically” rendered, the daughter of Potiphar.
As mythical
characters, Joseph and Jesus are two forms of one original. Joseph in Israel
was a name of
the Messiah
who was [Page 509] expected as the ever-coming son. Now, in Egyptian there are
two names
for the
coming son: one is .u the su = Jesus – the other is .u the sif = Joseph. And
when the wandering
Jew, named
Kartaphiles, became a Christian he is called Joseph, and was said to have
fallen into a
trance once
every century, and to have risen again at thirty years of age. That is the age
of Horus the
adult in his
second advent; also of Jesus in the Gospels, as well as of Joseph when he
became the Adon
over all the
land of Egypt, the double land or double earth of Egypt in Amenta.
Joseph being
identified as a god in Joseph-El, the god Joseph is further identifiable as an
Egyptian deity
who was .u,
the ever-coming son, both in the dynasty of Ptah at Memphis and also of Atum-Ra
at On. It
may be seen
from Josephus against Apion (B. i., ch. 32) that the Hebrew hero Joseph was the
Jewish
form of .u,
the sif or son. .u the typical son was the su or sif of Atum, also of Ptah. In
either case he is the
resuscitated
form of the father who becomes his own son, .u the sif, as he who is the
bringer of peace.
The name of I
u the coming son would be written in Egyptian either as .usa, .usu, or .usif.
The one form
passes into
the name of lesous, the other into the name of Joseph, chief among the twelve
sons
assigned to
Jacob or Israel. The form .usa may be found in the name of .usaas, the mother
who was
great with
the Egyptian Jesus or .usa in the cult of Atum-Ra at On. The divine nature of
Joseph-El may
explicate a
passage from Cheremon, cited by Josephus, who records a tradition that one of
the two
leaders of
the Israelites, in an exodus from Egypt which can no longer be considered
historical, was
Joseph.
Cheremon was one of the most learned men in Egypt, and the contemporary of
Apion, against
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
whom Josephus
wrote his reply. He was keeper of the rolls and books. He was an Egyptian
historian in
the library
of the Serapaeum. He also composed a hieroglyphical dictionary, fragments of
which are still
extant and
have been of service to Egyptologists. Cheremon, therefore, was one of those
who knew. He
not only
asserts that one of the two leaders was Joseph, but also that his Egyptian name
was Peteseph,
and that he
was a sacred scribe. Now, as may be seen, the name of Ptah was rendered by Pet
in the
Greek name of
Petesuchis for the Ptah (Putah) of crocodiles; and Joseph = Peteseph in
Egyptian is the
sif or son
In, i.e. .usif, whilst Peteseph is the son of Ptah, which he was as .u the sif
of Ptah in the
Egyptian
divine dynasties-that is, .u-em-hetep. Peteseph as I u the son of Ptah (or Ptah
the son) was the
divine scribe
in person who is portrayed in that character with the papyrus-roll upon his
knee and the cap
of wisdom on
his head. The fact of Joseph being the son of Ptah, or Ptah in the character of
the divine
son, was
certainly not derived from the biblical history of the Jews, but it was derived
by Josephus from
an
unimpeachable Egyptian authority, viz., that of Cheremon. Thus, .u the sif of
Ptah, with Moses, is
equivalent to
the youthful solar god with Shu-Anhur in the exodus from the lower Egypt of
Amenta. Of
course,
Joseph and Moses could not be contemporaries as historical characters according
to the book of
Exodus, but
they could as mythical divinities. And when Moses and Joseph are restored to
their proper
position as
deities there need be no difficulty about dates. As gods they could be
contemporaries I [Page
510] (see
“The Exodus”, in Book x.). Joseph is the typical dreamer and diviner in his
youth. And if .u the
sif of
Atum-Ra be not an interpreter of dreams, he was the revealer of the future by
means of dreams.
One of the
Ptolemaic tablets records the fulfilment of the promise that was made in a
dream by this god
to
Pasherenptah concerning the birth of a son (Renouf, Hib. Lect., page 141 ).
This would be ground
enough for
the “inspired” writer to go upon in establishing the character assigned to
Joseph as the
dreamer and
interpreter of dreams. The dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars making
obeisance to
Joseph shows
the astronomical relationship of the twelve to the signs of the zodiac.
Doubtless
there was “corn in Egypt”, which was at all times par excellence the land of
corn, but the
typical
corn-land of the religious mysteries is in Amenta, where the corn germinates
periodically from the
buried body
of Osiris. We need go no farther than the Papyrus of Ani to see from whence the
legend of
the seven
kine was derived. In the Hebrew märchen it is related that Pharaoh - which Pharaoh
is never
specified,
and this is as it would or should be if Ra, the solar god, is meant - dreamed
that seven kine
came up out
of the river that were fat and well-favoured, and seven other kine that were
lean and ill-
favoured.
When interpreted by Joseph, the seven fat kine are said to signify seven years
of plenty and
the seven
lean kine seven years of famine. The dream was fulfilled in proof that Joseph
was an historical
personage,
and that all the rest of the mythos reduced to märchen was matter of fact. Now,
in the Ritual
these are the
seven cows which are the givers of abundance in the Egypt of the lower earth,
through
which the
river runs as the celestial Nile. This then is the river out of which the seven
cows arose, and
the country
is in the other world, the lower Egypt of the double earth, from which the
original exodus was
made in the
going forth of the manes from Amenta. The land of Egypt, the river and the
seven cows, all
go together
in the mythical representation from which the “history” has been manufactured.
The seven
cows are
associated with the bull in the Aarru-paradise of plenty. The bull was the
young solar god as
Horus, or the
bullock-headed deity .u, who passed out of Egypt as Joseph, the bull of Israel.
If there ever
had been a failure of the Nile for seven years together, the biblical account
is none the less a
pious fraud
(see the fraudulent “Tablet of the Seven Years of Famine”, Proc. Soc. of Bib.
Arch.). For the
fact is there
was no real famine in the land of Egypt - “And the seven years of famine began
to come,
according as
Joseph had said: and there was famine in all lands: but in all the land of
Egypt there was
bread. And
the famine was over all the face of the earth. And all countries came into
Egypt to Joseph to
buy corn,
because the famine was sore in all the earth”. (Gen. xli, 54-57.) But not in
Egypt. That is, not in
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Ancient
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the Egypt of
eternal harvest, where the corn grew seven cubits high with ears some
eighty-four inches
long. There
is no historical sense in which such a statement could be truly interpreted.
The mythos only
can render it
intelligibly. As may be seen in the Vignettes to the Ritual, the seven cows,
called the
providers of
plenty, are depicted in the Aarru-paradise. This is in the lower Egypt of
Amenta, and it is a
land
abounding with corn, the [Page 511] only harvest-field in all the earth of
eternity. There was nought
but arid
desert and the wilderness of sand in the domain of Sut. The Aarru in Khebt was
the harvest-field
of Horus=
Joseph, of the twelve who are his reapers. and the people who are his
followers, amongst
whom we shall
at last discover the Jews as the Aaiu in Egypt.
Joseph in
Egypt has been assigned the place of Horus in the Egypt of Amenta. “Joseph was
thirty years
old when he
stood before Pharaoh, King of Egypt”, and went forth as the Repa to buy up the
corn against
the coming
famine. This is the age of Horus when he rises in Amenta as Amsu the
husbandman, the
master of
food, or lord of the harvest, to become the ruler for Ra, the divine Pharaoh,
with the flail or khu
sign in his
hand. Pharaoh makes Joseph ruler over all the land of Egypt, second only to
himself; that is,
according to
Egyptian usage, Joseph becomes the Repa to the Ra.
In the Stele
of Excommunication “Tum the creator god” is said to be “the duplicate of Aten”.
This tells us
two things.
First that the duality of the god, which is expressed by the names of Huhi and
.u, was also
expressed by
the names of Atum and Aten. Atum was god the father, and Aten the Nefer-Atum,
the Repa,
or royal son.
Thus .u the sif is Aten = Adon by name, and Aten is the Adon to Atum-Ra, the
divine
Pharaoh. Now
we are told that it is, or was, a practice of the Jews to use the word Adon
instead of the
word .huh in
calling on the sacred name. And Adon, we repeat, is the Hebrew equivalent of
the Egyptian
Aten as a
title of .u, the son of Atum-Ra, or of Atum who was the duplicate of Aten” in
the person of the
father. The
Aten in Egyptian is the lord, one with the Hebrew Adon, and when Joseph rode in
“the second
chariot” as
lord over all the land of Egypt, and second only to the Ra, the Adon
represented Aten the son
to Ra, the
father who was Atum-Ra or Atum-Huhi the eternal. Atum was adored at On or Annu
as the
living god
who in Egyptian was p-ankhu, the living god. Now when the Egyptian titles are
conferred on
Joseph, and
Pharaoh is said to have called him by the name of Zaphenath-Paneah, whatsoever
Egyptian
word may be
represented by Zaphenath, it is generally agreed by Egyptologists that Paneah
or Paneach
is a
rendering of p-ankhu, the living god, which was the especial title of Atum-.u
in the temple of On.
Joseph was
thirty years of age when he “went out over the land of Egypt. Horus was thirty
years of age
when he went
forth over all the land of Egypt. Thirty years was the age of full adultship.
It is the typical
age of the
Sheru, the Prince, the Messiah in the Egyptian, Persian, and Christian
mythology. Joseph was
the Adon of
the Pharaoh, the Aten of Atum-Ra, and therefore he was thirty years of age when
he went
forth as
ruler over all the land of Egypt. Joseph as the Aten was the lord over Egypt,
with Atum-Ra as
over-lord.
The divine Ra and Horus were impersonated in the human Pharaoh and Repa: these
were
previously
extant as Atum and Aten, Tum and Nefer-Tum, who were the divine Ra and .usif in
the pre-
Osirian
religion of the Egyptian .us who became the unclean, the accursed, the lepers,
the outcasts of
Egypt in
later monumental times. Seek for the Jews in Egypt as the .u, or Aaiu, and they
will be found
there in the
same character that they assign to themselves as a people suffering terribly
from leprosy and
other
diseases said to have been the result of [Page 512] uncleanness in their
religious rites, which are so
fervidly
denounced in the Old Testament. The conclusion that Joseph was the young solar
divinity, fu the
Son of
Atum-Ra at On, may be clinched by the story related of Potiphar's wife, which
is the same that is
told in
various other legends of this same mythical personage. The märchen that do
exist in Egyptian, as
shown by the
“Tale of the Two Brothers”, prove themselves to be the deposit of indefinitely
earlier myth,
the tale in
this instance being a literary version of the Sut-Horus legend, and of the two
brothers, the
twins of
light and darkness, which is found world-wide as myth or märchen. The tale contains
its own
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Ancient
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evidence of
ancientness in the fact that the sun-god invoked is not Ra, but the Horus of
both horizons,
Har-Makhu,
who preceded the earliest form of Ra. The seven Hathors, who are otherwise the
seven
cows of
plenty, are also present with Bata, the bull of the divine company.
The history
of Joseph can be partly traced to the Egyptian story of “The Two Brothers”,
written by the
scribe Anna
in the time of Seti II., nineteenth dynasty, on a papyrus now in the British
Museum (Records
of the Past,
vol. ii. p. 139). In this story we find a form of the Sut-Horus myth reduced to
the status of the
popular
märchen. Sut appears in his later character of Sut-Anup or Anup (to drop the
name of Sut). Anup
is the elder
brother of Bata, who is Horus as the younger brother. Like Horus, he is the
bull of the divine
company of
the gods who went down into Egypt or the dark land of Ethiopia. The double Sut
and Horus
imaged back
to back is repeated when Anup is described as sitting on the back of Bata “Anup
his elder
brother sat
upon his back at dawn of day”, that is, in the twilight which was represented
when Sothis rose
heliacally,
or, as it is imaged, sat upon the back of Horus the young solar god. The dual
nature of Child-
Horus is
repeated in Bata when he says to his consort, “I am a woman even as thou art”,
and declares
that his male
soul or his heart is in the flower of the acacia tree. This soul of Bata in the
flower of the tree
of life can
be paralleled in the Ritual, where Horus is the golden Anbu, the flower of the
hidden dwelling
(ch. 71).
Anup is the guide of Bata in the märchen, as of Horus in the myth. Anup is the
attendant on Bata
in the mountain
and his mourner in death, as he is of Horus in the Ritual. Anup is the master
of the fields
of food, and
he ordains that those who are in charge of the food shall be with the Osiris
(ch. 144). Bata
follows the
beautiful cattle, who tell him where the greenest grasses and the richest
herbage grow. These
are the seven
cows who are the providers of plenty, to whom Bata, like Osiris or Horus, is
the
fecundating
bull. The seven cows likewise appear in the same story as the seven Hathors.
Bata the
strong one
can be identified with Horus in the character of Amsu the husbandman, who is
portrayed as
the preparer
of the soil and sower of seed. Bata does the ploughing and other labours in the
fields of
Aarru, and
his equal was not to be found in all the land. Thus the myth of Sut-Horus the
twin brothers can
be traced in
the ancient folk-lore of Egypt, and this can be followed into the “historic” or
euhemeristic
phase in the
book of Genesis, where it reappears as the story of Joseph [Page 513] the beautiful
youth
and
Potiphar's wife. Bata was the bull of the divine company that went down into
the Egypt of Amenta
Joseph is the
bull or chief one of the children of Israel who went down into Egypt. Bata is
the divine
husbandman
and lord of the harvest. Joseph is the one to whose sheaf the other sheaves
bowed down
in
recognition of his supremacy as lord of the harvest (Gen. xxxvii. 5-8). The
seven cows or Hathors are
the
foretellers of fate consequent on their being the bringers of good fortune. Also
the bull of the cows is
the diviner
of fate. Bata the bull divines and foretells the events that will occur to him.
This is the
character
ascribed to Joseph as the diviner in the biblical version. If the parallel had
been perfected,
Potiphar, whose
name denotes the servant of Ra in Egyptian, should have taken the rôle of Anup,
who is
the servant
of Ra. In the Hebrew version we read that “Joseph was comely and well-favoured.
And it
came to pass
after these things that his master's wife cast eyes upon Joseph, and she said,
Lie with me.
But he
refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master knoweth not what is
with me in the
house, and he
hath put all that he hath into my hand: there is none greater in this house
than I; neither
hath he kept
anything from me but thee. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God ?
And it came
to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to
lie by her, or
to be with
her. And it came to pass about this time that he went into the house to do his
work, and there
was none of
the men of the house there within. And she caught him by his garment, saying,
Lie with me;
and he left
his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out” (Gen. xxxix. 9-12). In the
Egyptian folk-tale
Bata goes
into the house of Anup to fetch seed, and the wife of Anup cast her eyes upon
him. “And she
spoke to him,
saying, “What strength there is in thee; indeed, I observe thy vigour every
day. Her heart
knew him.
...She seized upon him, and said to him, Come, let us lie down for a little.
Better for thee.
...beautiful
clothes. Then the youth became like a panther with fury on account of the
shameful discourse
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Ancient
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which she had
addressed to him. And she was alarmed exceedingly. He spoke to her, saying,
Verily, I
have looked
upon thee in the light of a mother, and thy husband in that of a father to me.
(For he is older
than I, as
much as if he had begotten me.) What a great abomination is this which thou
hast mentioned
to me. Do not
repeat it again to me, and I will not speak of it to anyone. Verily , I will
not let anything of it
come forth
from my mouth to any man” (Records, vol. ii. pp. 140, 141). Joseph being
identified as the
same
character with Bata, it is Bata who will explain that character. Bata signifies
the soul of the earth. In
the Egyptian
mythos this was the sun. “I am Bata”, says the manes in the character of the
solar god who
is renewed
and reborn daily as the soul of the earth and multiplier of the years (Rit.,
ch. 87). He might be
reborn under
the serpent type, or as the soul of Atum from the lotus, or the soul of Bata
from the flower of
the tree of
dawn. But the myth is not merely solar. In fact, there is no bottom to the
solar myth except in
the lunar.
Anup and Bata must be identified with Sut and Horus as the brothers in the two
halves of the
lunation
before the tale can be correlated and correctly read.[Page 514] Sut-Anup was
the elder brother of
the two. His
consort was Nephthys, the lady of darkness, who is charged with soliciting the
young lord of
light. There
was some scandal respecting her and Osiris. The typical wanton who seduces or
tries to
seduce the
youthful hero is the lady of the moon, who overcomes or who assails the lord of
light. The
character is
determined in relation to Anup = Sut, the elder of the twin brothers in the
mythos which
passed into
the eschatology and finally survived in the märchen of the two brothers. The
story was
represented
three times over: (I) as mythical, (2) as eschatological, and (3) as a
folk-tale, before it was
narrated of
Joseph in Egypt as Hebrew history or biblical biography. The origin of the
mythos rests with
the darkly
beautiful Nephthys, consort of Sut (or Anup), the power of darkness in the
nether-earth. That
she had a
character somewhat aphrodisiacal assigned to her, which became the subject of
the legend,
may be
gathered from her being a divinity of the Egyptian town Tsebets, called
Aphroditopolis by the
Greeks. But
she has been degraded as a wicked wanton in later representations of the dark
lady who
was
originally the lady of darkness, at first in complexion, afterwards in
character. The Semites began it
with their
scandal - mongering concerning Ishtar (or Shetar, the bride in Egyptian),
because she had
been the
pre-monogamous great mother whose child and spouse were one. The Greeks
followed them
either
directly or indirectly. Plutarch repeats a tale in which it is charged against
Nephthys that either she
seduced
Osiris or he succumbed to her wiles. It is represented in the romance that
after Nephthys had
become the
wife of Anup she fell in love illicitly with Horus, and besought him to stay
with her when he
came to
plough and sow the seed-fields of Amenta. It is as the sower of seed that Bata
goes to the house
where Anup's
wife is sitting at her toilet. He says, “Arise and give me seed, that I may go
back to the
field”. Nephthys
is literally the house of seed personified. She carries both the house and the
seed-bowl
on her head,
and her name of Nebthi signifies the seed-house or granary of the earth. The
story of
Joseph and
Potiphar's wife contains a mutilated fragment of this ancient Egyptian märchen
reduced from
the mythos
into a romance. In this Potiphar is Anup, the wife is Nephthys, and Joseph is
Bata or Horus,
who is called
the bull. Bata was the bull, and Joseph is also the bull, in Israel; hence the
totem of the tribe
of Ephraim
was the bull. Bata is the bull of the seven cows which come to him as the seven
Hathors,
and, to make
use of the Egyptian figure, Joseph likewise is the bull of the seven cows that
were seen in
Pharaoh's
dream. He was also the bull as the adult of thirty years. In the Egyptian story
Bata becomes a
bull. “And
Bata said to his elder brother, Behold, I am about to become a bull with all
the sacred marks,
but with an
unknown history. The bull arrived, and his majesty the Pharaoh inspected him
and rejoiced
exceedingly,
and celebrated a festival above all description; a mighty marvel and rejoicings
for it were
made
throughout all the land. To the bull there were given many attendants and many
offerings, and the
king loved
him exceedingly above all men in the whole land. And when the days were
multiplied after this
his majesty
was wearing the collar of lapis lazuli with a wreath of all kinds of flowers on
his neck. He was
[Page 515] in
his brazen chariot, and he went forth from the royal palace. Bata was brought
before the
king, and
rejoicings were made throughout the whole land. They sat down to make a holiday
(and they
gave him his
name); and his majesty at once loved him exceedingly, and raised him to the
dignity of
Prince of
Aethiopia. But when the days had multiplied after this, his majesty made him
hereditary prince
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Ancient
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of the whole
land. And the sun-god Horus of both horizons said to Khnum, 0, make a wife for
Bata, that
he may not
remain alone. And Khnum made him a companion, who as she sat was more beautiful
in her
limbs than
any woman in the whole earth; the whole godhead was in her”. And now a tale is
told of this
consort of
Bata which tends to identify her with Neitochris, that is primarily with the
goddess Neith, and
thence with
Asenath the wife of Joseph. These quotations from the Egyptian tale contain the
gist of the
following
statement. “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph. ...Thou shalt be over my house, and
according to
thy word
shall all my people be ruled; only in the throne will I be greater than thou.
And Pharaoh said
unto Joseph,
See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his
signet-ring from his
hand and put
it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen and put a gold
chain about
his neck; and
he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had: and they cried before
him Abrech:
and he set
him over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and
without thee
shall no man
lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called
Joseph's name
Zaphenath-Paneah
( ), and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potiphera.
And Joseph
went out over the land of Egypt. And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood
before
Pharaoh the
King of Egypt” (Gen. xli. 40, 46). The passage in which Joseph makes himself
known to his
brethren
should be compared with the scene in which the lost Rata reveals himself and
says, “Look upon
me; I am
indeed alive. Look upon me, for I am really alive. I am a bull! “and Bata
”reigned for thirty years
as king over
Egypt”. “And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet
live ? And he
said, I am
Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into the land of Egypt” (Gen. xlv. 3, 4).
Joseph also had
become a bull
or typical adult like Horus the man or god of thirty years. The fact is
admitted when it is
said that
“Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, King of Egypt”. In
the solar
symbolism the
sun as a calf in the winter solstice became a bull in the vernal equinox, where
he found
his heart,
his soul, his force, sometimes imaged as phallic, upon the summit of the tree
of dawn. In the
human sphere
the boy became a bull when he was Khemt as a man of thirty years. In Amenta,
Amsu is
the bull of
his mother, “Ka-Mutf”, as the anointed Horus, thirty years of age. Joseph,
raised to the Repaship,
also became a
bull - that is, a typical adult of thirty years. Asenath we take to be a form
of the great
Neith, who
was represented at On (Annu) by .usâas the mother of the young bull Aiu (or .u=
Io), who as
her sif or
son was .usa. Professor Sayce in his “History of Joseph” says, with an
unabashed effronteth,
“What is
important” (in this episode) “is that the incident which played so large a part
in Joseph's [Page
516] life
should have been preserved in Egyptian tradition ! It became part of the
literary inheritance of the
Egyptians ! ”
(p. 36). Thus suggesting that the Egyptians derived their mythology and
folk-tales from the
Hebrew
Pentateuch.
But to
resume: the dramatis personae in the Hebrew books of wisdom are chiefly the
father and the son.
The father is
.huh, the self- existent and eternal god, and .u (or .usa) is the messianic son
as manifestor
in the cycles
of all time. I t is the father that is speaking of one of these periods,
possibly a sothiac cycle,
who says to
Esdras, “The time shall come”. “My son Jesus shall be revealed with those that
be with him,
and they that
remain shall rejoice within 400 years”. This was long thought to have been a
prophecy of a
Christ that
was to come as an historical personage. But this son of god, whether named I u,
lao, .usa,
Jesus, or
Joseph, could no more become historical than god the father, both being one.
And if this divine
son could
ever have become historical, he would have been Jesus the son of Atum-Ra at On,
or, still
earlier,
Jesus the son of Ptah at Memphis. The “Wisdom of Jesus ., in the Apocrypha is,
according to the
Prologue, the
wisdom of two different Jesuses, the one being grandfather of the other. This
can be
explained by
the Kamite mythology and the two representatives of that name in the two divine
dynasties
of Ptah and
Atum-Ra. As Wilkinson remarked, “The Egyptians acknowledged two of this name (
Jesus ),
the first the
grandfather of the other, according to the Greeks, and the reputed inventor of
medicine, who
received
peculiar honours on a certain mountain on the Libyan side of the Nile, near the
City of
Crocodiles,
where he was reported to have been buried” (The Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii.
page 205).
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There are not
only two with the name of Jesus who represent the sayer for the father god;
Solomon is
likewise a
form of the wise youth who uttered the wisdom in the sayings or logia kuriaka.
We are told in
the prologue
that “this Jesus did imitate Solomon”. But .u-em-hetep, the Egyptian Jesus, as
the prince of
peace, was
Solomon by name. Thus the Jesus and Solomon of the Apocrypha, to whom the
Wisdom of
Jesus and the
Wisdom of Solomon are ascribed, were two forms of the Word or Sayer, who was .u
the
son (su) of
Ptah, and .u-em-hetep, the prince of peace, otherwise known to the Hebrews by
name as
Jesus and
Solomon.
The most
ancient wisdom was oral. It was conveyed by word of mouth, from mouth to ear,
as in the
mysteries.
This consisted of the magical sayings or the great words of power. Following
the oral wisdom,
the earliest
known records of written wisdom were collections of the sayings, which were
continually
enlarged, as
by the Egyptian Jesus, or “the two of this name”. The Osirian Book of the Dead
is largely a
collection of
sayings which were given by Ra the father in heaven to Horus the son, for him
to utter as
teacher of
the living on earth and preacher to the manes in Amenta. The wisdom of Ptah the
father was
uttered by
the son, who is the Word in person. The names for the son may be various in the
several
religious
cults, but the type was one, no matter what the name. The sayings collected in
some of the
Hebrew books
of wisdom, such as the book of Proverbs, are spoken as from the father to his
son. “My
son, attend
to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings” (Prov. iv. 20). “Hear me, O my
son”, [Page 517]
is the
formula in the book of Ecclesiasticus. It has now to be suggested that the
mythical or divine
originals of
this father and son in the books of wisdom were the wise god Ptah and the
youthful sage .u,
the sayer or
logos, who was his manifesting word as the son. Egyptian literature as such has
been
almost
entirely lost, but amongst the survivals lives the oldest book in the world.
This is a book of
wisdom, in
the form of sayings, maxims, precepts, and other brief sentences, called the
Proverbs of
Ptah-Hetep,
which was written in the reign of Tet-Ka-Ra or Assa, a Pharaoh of the fifth
dynasty, who lived
5,500 years
ago. The author's name denotes that he was the worshipper of Ptah, and his
collection
contains the
ancient wisdom of Ptah, although it is not directly ascribed to the god or to
his son, the
sayer,
.u-em-hetep. In this volume Ptah-hetep collects the good sayings, precepts, and
proverbs of the
ancient
wisdom; the words of those who have heard the counsels of former days and the
counsels heard
of the gods.
He addresses the god Ptah for authority to declare these words of wisdom, speaking
as from
a father to
his son; and in reply “the majesty of this god says, Instruct him in the
sayings of former days”
(Records of
the Past,2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 17). Ptah-hetep, then, the author who wrote a
book with his
own name to
it 5,500 years since, assumes the position of the wise god Ptah addressing his
son .u-emhetep,
to whom the
wisdom was communicated which was uttered in “the wise sayings, dark sentences,
and
parables”, and collected in such books as the Sayings of Jesus, the Wisdom of
Jesus, the Wisdom
of
Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Psalms, and the Book of the Dead. We
quote a few of the
sayings from
Ptah-hetep, which give us a glimpse of the intellectual height attained by the
Egyptians
5,500 years
ago. “No artist is endowed with the perfections to which he should aspire”. “He
who perverts
the
truthfulness of his way, in order to repeat only what produces pleasure in the
words of every man,
great or
small, is a detestable person”. “If thou art wise, look after thy house. Love
thy wife without alloy.
Fill her
belly, clothe her back, anoint her, and fulfil her desires as long as she
lives. It is a kindness which
does honour
to its possessor”. “ if thou art powerful, command only to direct”. “To be
absolute is to run
into evil”.
“The gentle man penetrates all obstacles”. “each the man of great position that
one may even
do him
honour”. “ If thou hast become great who once was small, and rich after having
been poor, grow
not hard of
heart because of thy prosperity. Thou hast only become the steward of the good
things of
God”
Ptah was the
father of Atum-Ra, therefore an earlier god. Memphis was an older foundation
than On, the
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
northern
Annu. And the wisdom of Ptah-.u was indefinitely older than the writings of the
Aiu or Jews
which had
been preserved in the library at On and brought forth thence by Osarsiph as the
basis of the
Pentateuch.
But the sayings of Jesus or logia of the Lord did not come to an end with the
collection
called the
Wisdom of Jesus, that was translated “when Euergetes was king”, and ascribed to
two of the
name of
Jesus, with Sirach interposed between. The first gospel of the Christians began
with a collection
of the
Sayings of Jesus, fatuously supposed to have been an historic teacher of that
name. Every sect
had its
collection of the sayings that were uttered as the word of God [Page 518] by
the Word in person,
who was Horus
in the Osirian religion, or .u, the Egyptian Jesus, to whom the books of wisdom
were
attributed
thrice over, once as the son of Ptah, once as the son of Atum-Ra, and once as
the son of leou
in the Pistis
Sophia. The veil is being torn away from the eyes of those who were unable or
unwilling to
see through
it, and dead Egypt speaks once more with a living tongue. Explorers are just
beginning to
find some
missing links betwixt the Ritual and those “gospels” that were canonized at
last which were
needed to
complete the argument concerning the Egyptian origin of the Christian legend
herein
presented,
and to demonstrate beyond doubt that the historic rendering of the mythos does
but contain
an exoteric
version of the esoteric wisdom. Only the other day a loose leaf was discovered
in the rubbish-
heaps of
Oxyrhynchus which had belonged to some unknown collection of the sayings or
logia of “the
Lord”, who
was not Jesus, a Jew in Palestine, but Jesus or .u-em-hetep, a god of the Jews
in Egypt
(Sayings of
our Lord, Grenfell and Hunt). It was at Memphis, we suggest, the book of
wisdom, known to
later times
as Jewish, originated as the wisdom of Ptah, whose manifestor was .u the coming
son, who
was his
logos, his word, the teacher of his wisdom and sayer of his sayings. Atum-Ra
was born son of
Ptah as
.u-em-hetep in his primary form. When raised to the dignity of Ra, .u-em-hetep,
the typical
bringer of
peace and all good things, was continued as his son. Both Ptah and Atum had the
title of Huhi
the eternal,
and each of them was also a figure of the one supreme god who was both father
and son in
one person.
In the gnostic representation the propator was known to Monogenes alone, who
sprang from
him. It was
also taught by the Egyptian Valentinus that the father produced in his own
image without
conjunction
with the female (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, B. I. ch. ii. I, 4, Ante-Nicene
Library). The
following
brief list will serve to give an aperçu of this divine duality in various
phases. Huhi the eternal
god the
father, .u the ever-coming son; Atum-Ra as father, Nefer-Atum as the son;
Osiris the father,
Horus the
son; .huh the eternal father, lah the messiah or ever-coming son; Jacob- El the
father, Joseph-
El the son;
David the father, Solomon the son; .huh the father, Jesus the son (Christian);
leou the father,
lao the son
(Pistis Sophia); Jehovah as the father, Jesus as the son. These are all twofold
types of the
same great
one god in the religion that was established, first at Memphis, with Ptah as
Huhi the eternal,
the
self-existent, lord of everlastingness, “he who is”, or the “I am”, and
.u-em-hetep as his su, sif, or son,
continued in
the cult of Atum-Ra at On, and brought forth from Egypt as the religion of the
.us or Jews,
who were the
worshippers of Huhi the eternal and of .u the ever-coming messianic son, which
dual type
was also
represented by the old lion and the young one, by the bull and the bullock, and
by the ass and
the foal of
an ass. Moreover, it is recorded in the Hebrew legend that the one god of
Israel was made
known to
Moses under two entirely different names. In two passages the name given is [
] (Ex. xv.
ii. and xvii.
16). Moses says, “lah is my strength and song”. “This is my God and I will
praise him”. The
other name is
[
], rendered
Jehovah. Under both names it is the one lord. Under both names
the god is
celebrated in the Psalms. Then [Page 519] the name of lah is dropped
altogether, except by
Isaiah, who
combines the two names under the one title of [
], rendered
“Jehovah - Jah”,
or the Lord
Jehovah (Is. xii. 2). These two names, we repeat, represent the Egyptian names
of .u = lah
for god the
ever-coming son, and Huhi = .huh the eternal father, who was the one god as
Atum-Ra. Thus
Isaiah's
.ah-Jehovah combines the names of both the father and the son in the name of
Israel's one god.
And now, as
the two characters of Huhi (.huh) and .u (lah) met in one person and the two
names were
combined in
lah-.huh, it appears probable that both the names were blended in one word to
form the
divine name
of .huh [ or
] in Hebrew,
by compounding those of .u and Huh, thus, I u- Huh,
as a title of
the eternal one. .u would then be represented by the Ď or yod alone, and the
final form would
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be .huh,
which, with the introduction of the Hebrew letter vav, was extended into Javeh
and Jehovah for
Jewish and
Christian use.
An
insuperable difficulty was bequeathed to the later monotheists of Israel in the
mystery of a biune
being
consisting of a father and son who were but one in person. This needed a
knowledge of the
ancient
wisdom to explicate the doctrine. How could the one god be two, or the twain
one, to the plain
and
unsophisticated man ? There was no abstract conception of anyone god in two
persons. or three, or
153 (Rit.,
ch. 141) as a spiritual entity. The origins are rooted in the phenomena of
external nature, and
have to be
interpreted by means of sign-language and the mythical mode of representation.
The Jews
had got the
father and son, and finally knew not what to do with both. The son was a
perpetual difficulty
in their
writings, which repeated fragments of Egyptian mythos in the old dark sayings
without the oral
wisdom of the
Gnostics, and left a stumbling- block that has remained to trip up all good,
dunder-headed
Christians.
Still the son is present, as the anointed Son of God, the Christ that was, who
has been all
along mistaken
for the Christ that was to be and is not yet, although the reign of the son as
Ichthus in
Pisces is
nearly ended now, and the Pisciculi are gasping for breath like little fishes
out of water. Jewish
theologians
did their utmost to suppress the sonship of the god-head, as well as to get rid
of the
motherhood.
This was preparatory to the rejection of the sonship altogether when presented
in the
scheme of
“historic” Christianity. They pursued their messianic phantom to the verge of
the quagmire, but
drew back in
time to escape. They left it for the Christians to take the final fatal plunge
into the bog in
which they
have wallowed, always sinking, ever since; and if the Jews did but know it, the
writings called
Jewish have
wrought an appalling avengement on their ignorant persecutors, who are still
proving
themselves to
be Christians. as in Russia, by ignominiously mutilating and pitilessly
massacring the
Jews. Their
god, like the Mohammedan deity, was to be a father who never had a son. To put
it in
Egyptian
terms, they held to their one god .huh the eternal, as the fixed and
everlasting fact, and dropped
the .u or
ever-becoming son, together with the modus operandi of becoming, whether
astronomical or
eschatological,
and so they parted company with the followers of Ptah-.u and of Atum-.u. Or
rather the
son was
turned into the subject of prophecy, whose [Page 520] ultimate coming was
supposed to be
fulfilled in
the cult of Christianity. Thus the Jews are worshippers of the father, whereas
the Christians
substituted
the son. These are two branches of the original religion in which the one god
connoted the
father and
the son, who was Huhi or .huh the eternal, with .u as the ever-coming cyclical
manifestor for
the father in
the sphere of time.
Celsus casts
it up against Moses, as leader of the Israelites, that he deceived them with
his magical
tricks, and
misled them into the belief that there was but one god (Origen, Contra Celsum,
ch. 23). For
good or evil,
however, the one god was established on the ground herein set forth, and this
as [
] the Hebrew
god, the eternal, self-existent, supreme one, whose other name is [
],
lah, lao, or
.u. These are the two lords who constitute the one god in the Hebrew version of
the Egyptian
doctrine. In
destroying the cities of the plain it is said, “The Lord rained upon Sodom and
upon Gomorrah
brimstone and
fire from the Lord out of heaven” (Gen. xix. 24, 25), which is identical with
Horus the lord
as Har-Tema,
the son who avenges his father Osiris in the great judgment and destruction of
the
condemned,
who are overwhelmed in the cities of the plain because the occurrence is on the
level at the
place of
equilibrium in the equinox of which there was a yearly representation in the
mysteries of Amenta.
There may be
an attempt at times to conceal the dual personality in the phraseology, as when
the
Psalmist
says, “God standeth in the congregation of gods”. “He judgeth among the gods”
(Ps. lxxxii. I).
But the
writer lets in a flood of polytheism at the same time that he acknowledges the
duality of .huh. In
one psalm the
anointed son is begotten (Ps. ii.); in another he is appointed (Ps. lxxxix.) as
the holy one of
Israel. In
the latter instance it is David who is made the anointed son. Isaiah proclaims
the god of Israel to
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be “the
everlasting father” or father of eternity at the same time that he is the
“prince of peace” who was
the ever-coming
son as Horus or .u-em-hetep, the prince of eternity in the astronomical mythos
of Egypt
and the
prince of peace in the eschatology. - “For unto us a child is born, unto us a
son is given; and the
government
shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called [
]” (rendered
wonderful),
“councillor, mighty God, the father of eternity, prince of peace” (Is. ix. 6,
7). This song, uplifted
so
majestically by the music of Handel, might have been sung at On, or Memphis,
many thousand years
ago, as
regards the subject-matter, which is purely Egyptian. Atum was the father of
eternity, and .u-emhetep,
the su or
son, was the prince of peace, and these two were one. Probably the Hebrew word
(pehla)
represents the Egyptian pera or pela=to appear, show a great sight, in relation
to the messianic
manifestor,
who was the messu or child, the prince of peace, and who “bore the government
upon his
shoulder” in
a symbolical way peculiarly Egyptian. Atum, in his dual character of father and
son, is he
who says, “I
am he that closeth and he that openeth, and I am but one” (Rit., ch. 17).
This doctrine
of divine duality was based upon the Egyptian Pharaoh as the father and the
repa or heir-
apparent as
the son - the ever-coming king in the person of the prince who was always born
to be a king.
The father
was king of Egypt, the son was the prince of [Page 521] Ethiopia, which was the
birthplace of
an earlier
time and remained the typical birthplace of the young prince of eternity for
all time. The messu
was the root
of the Messiah by nature and by name. The prince of Ethiopia is the messu
whence the
Messiah is .u
the son, messu or messu-.ahu-that is, .ahu as the son or repa. In the mythical
representation
Horus was reborn each year as the messu, and the rebirth was celebrated by the
festival
called the
Messiu. The repa symbolized the succession of Ra, or the sun, to himself, in a
mode of
showing that
the god or the king never died, but continued for ever by transformation of the
father into the
son. The
transformation was also seen in the old moon changing into the new, and the sun
that set or
died, to rise
again as the old one who became young. This was symbolically rendered as the
old beetle
that went
underground to hatch its seed and die, to issue forth again renewed in its
young. The Pharaoh
transformed
into his own son and manifestor as the repa, Atum into .u-em-hetep, Osiris into
Horus, Jacob
into Joseph,
and .huh into the Messiah. This transformation occurred in natural phenomena
periodically,
therefore at
the end of some particular cycle of time which was always indefinite for those
who knew not
the method of
measurement astronomically.
The Lord and
his anointed as father and son had been already represented at Memphis by Ptah
and .uem-
hetep, at On
by Atum and Nefer-Atum, at Abydos by Osiris and Horus of the resurrection. The
lord's
anointed was
the second Horus, Horus the adult, Horus who rose again in spirit after death
to manifest
the glory of
the father with the holy oil upon his shining face which made him the anointed.
The Lord's
anointed,
called the Messiah in Hebrew, the Kristos in Greek ,and Chrestus in Latin, is
the Messu in
Egyptian.
Messu signifies the son, the child, or heir-apparent, the prince of Ethiopia.
As human he was
the repa, son
of the Pharaoh. As divine he is the son of god. Messu is also an Egyptian word
signifying
the anointed
and to be anointed. The Lord and his anointed are frequently mentioned in the
Hebrew
writings. These
are the father and son, equivalent to Osiris and Horus his son; also to Ptah
and I u the
prince of
peace. “The Lord shalt exalt the horn of his anointed” (I. Samuel, ii. 10).
“Here I am: witness
against me
before the Lord and before his anointed” (I. Samuel, xii. 3). “The kings of the
earth set
themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his
anointed” ( I. Ps. ii.
2 ). “The
Lord showeth loving-kindness to his anointed” (Ps. xviii. 50). “ The Lord
saveth his anointed; he
will answer
him from his holy heaven” (Ps. xx. 6). “He is a strong-hold of salvation to his
anointed” (Ps.
xxviii. 8).
“Behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of thine anointed” (Ps.
lxxxiv. 9). “Thine
enemies have
reproached the footsteps of thine anointed” (Ps. lxxxix. 51), who was the
witness and the
messenger
that showed the way of the Lord in the heavens, in the earth, in the waters and
in the
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nethermost
depths of Sheol. The “anointed of the Lord” was the very breath of their
nostrils to them who
had said,
“Under his shadow we shall live among nations” (Lam. iv. 20). “The Lord goes
forth or the
victory with
his anointed” (Hab. iii. 13). This duality of .huh and the Messiah or reborn
son was the source
of a great
dilemma to the Jews, and the cause of a conflict betwixt their monotheism and
the
Messiahship.
They knew of a [Page 522] doctrine concerning the Messiah, but were afraid of
the
astronomical
fulfilment being mistaken for the humanly historical, and thus insisted all the
more upon the
divine unity
in its simplicity. In the Ritual Horus is described as the son who converses
with the father. He
is thus
addressed, “O son who conversest with thy father!” ( ch. 32 ). This character
is ascribed to David
as the divine
son in the Psalms he who declares, “ the Lord said unto me, Thou art my son,
this day have
I begotten
thee” (Ps. ii. 7). In the same psalm the Lord is said to have begotten his
anointed son and set
him as the
king upon his holy hill in Zion. This is the son as the divine avenger of whom
it is said, “Kiss
the son, lest
he be angry and ye perish by the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled”. The
father says to
his son, “Ask
of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the
uttermost parts of the
earth for thy
possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in
pieces like a
potter's
vessel” (Ps. ii. 7, 8, 9). In the Ritual (chs. 17 and 175), this avenger is the
son who “cometh red
with wrath as
the heir of Osiris seated upon the throne of the dweller in the lake of twofold
fire”. This is
Horus who
says to his father after the periodic battle with the evil powers, “I, thy son
Horus, come to
thee”. “I
have avenged thee. I have overthrown thy foes, I have established all those who
were of thy
substance
upon the earth for ever”. That is when he returns to the father in heaven with
his work
accomplished
on the earth and in Amenta. In the time of Isaiah and of the Hebrew psalmist
the type of
the son, the
chosen one, the servant who became the beloved of the Lord, was extant as a
man, not
merely as the
lamb or the branch. It is the same type in the gospels, which were written with
reference all
through to
the figure that was pre-extant (Ps. ii. 7, 12; Is. xlii. I; Matt. chap. iii. I
to 3). Moreover, the same
things were
said of that type in the earlier as in the later time. He was equally the
crucified or suffering
Messiah; gall
was given to him for meat, and vinegar for drink (Ps. lxix. 21). He was bound
in his hands
and feet; his
garments were parted amongst his spoilers, who cast lots for his vesture (Ps.
xxii. 18). All
that was
fabled to have been historically acted at a later period had been already
fulfilled with non-
historical
significance. It is the same also with the character of John the Baptist as
with Jesus in the
gospels. In
defiance of the fact that the event is contemporary with or had occurred
previously in the
prophetic
writings, the Christian world supposes that the so-called prophecies simply
refer to a Messiah
who is to
come in a “personal and historical character”. Thus it is assumed that the
“prophecy” of Isaiah,
“The voice of
one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord! Make
straight in the
desert a
highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill
shall be made
low, when the
uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain, and the glory of the
Lord shall
be revealed”
(Is. xI. 3-5; Matt. iii. 3); it is assumed that this was historically fulfilled
when the passage is
quoted in the
gospel according to Matthew and applied to John the Baptist, whereas the alleged
history
in the New
Testament is based upon the supposed fulfilment of this prophecy in the Old.
Yet it is only a
fragment
repeated from the Egyptian mythos, in which Anup was the crier in the
wilderness and [Page
523] the
guide in the ways of darkness through which the road was made from equinox to
equinox in the
desert of the
under-world. When reduced to their proper level, the elevation of the valley
and the lowering
of the
mountain are but another mode of describing the equinoxes. Anup was the
precursor, the
forerunner,
the prophet of Horus the Lord who came in glory, and the preparer of his way.
As such he
appears in
the opening chapter of the Ritual, where we read, “O openers of roads! O guides
of paths to
the soul made
in the abode of Osiris (the house of heaven with thirty-six gates), open ye the
roads! Level
ye the paths
to the Osiris” That is, bring the lofty low in process of levelling or making
the road equal in
the mount of
the equinox at the coming of Horus the lord. Horus as lord of the two horizons
was Har-
Makhu, lord
of the equinoctial level. At the time of the Easter equinox the path was made
level, the valley
exalted, and
the mountain brought low at the coming of Har-Makhu who revealed the glory of
the lord.
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If the Jews
had only held on to the sonship of .u, the su or sif, they might have spoiled
the market for the
spurious
wares of the historic “Saviour, and saved the world from wars innumerable, and
from countless
broken hearts
and immeasurable mental misery. But they let go the sonship of [ ] with the
growth of
their
monolatry. They could not substitute the “historic” sonship; they had lost
touch with Egypt, and the
wisdom that
might have set them right was no longer available against the Christian
misconstruction.
They failed
to fight the battle of the gnostics, and retired from the conflict dour and
dumb; strong and firm
enough to
suffer the blind and brutal Juden-Hetze of all these centuries, but powerless
to bring forward
their natural
allies the Egyptian reserves, and helpless to conclude a treaty or enforce a
truce. The Jews
have suffered
and been damned along the line of 1,800 years on account of the false belief
which they
unwittingly
helped to foster; and if they should still suffer slinkingly for gross gains
instead of turning
round and
rending their persecutors and helping us to win the battle for universal
freedom, when once
the truth is
made known to them, they will, if such a fate were possible, be deserving of
eternal
damnation in
the Christian hell. The rootage of matters like these lies out of sight, and is
not to be
bottomed in
the Hebrew scriptures, but such passages as those quoted show the existence of
a god the
father and a
god the son. Not a son who is to be begotten at some future period by
miraculous
interposition
of divine power playing pranks with human nature in a female form. The anointed
son was
then begotten
and already extant. It was he who suffered like Horus in one character, and who
came like
Horus in the
other as the arm-Iifter of the lord, the avenger red with wrath, to rule with a
rod of iron, not
on this earth
but in the earth of eternity, the Sheol of the Psalms, And on account of this
language in the
Cursing
Psalms, as they have been called, the militant Christians have claimed a divine
sanction for all
their
brutality in going forth with fire and sword to blast the face of this fair
earth and slay the utterly
astonished
natives of other lands who would not or could not accept a doctrine so damnable
as a
revelation
emanating from the most high God. The Psalmist celebrates this son of God, his
begettal, his
advent, but
offers no real clue to the nature of the sonship; and the Christians, knowing
[Page 524] nothing
of the
astronomical mythology or of the Egyptian eschatology, could only conclude that
it must be
historical.
No “Jewish monotheist” could explicate the duality of the deity. The Psalmist
celebrates the
coming of the
Lord, but who the Lord is or what the advent may be it is impossible to tell
when the
mythical
background has been left out of view by the adapters of the ancient matter. As
Egyptian, .u the
son is the
ever-coming one as the means by which the father of eternity manifests in time
and other
natural
phenomena. As Egyptian, the divine duad of father and son had been Ptah and .u,
or Atum and
.u, or Osiris
and Horus, according to the cult through pre-Hebraic and pre-Christian ages. In
Israel it
might be
Jacob-El the father, with Joseph-El as the beloved son; or Abraham with Isaac,
the sacrificial
son; or .huh
and David, the divinely-begotten son; or David and Solomon, the wise youth and
prince of
peace.
It has now to
be shown that these two represent the father and his beloved son who are .huh
and David
in the book
of Psalms. These are the two lords as the Lord and the Lord's anointed in Psalm
cx.: “The
Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy
footstool. The Lord shall
stretch forth
the rod of thy strength out of Zion. In the beauty of holiness from the womb of
the morning
thou hast the
dew of thy youth. Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek”
(Ps. cx. 4). That
is the Lord
who is the “coming son” in all the so-called prophecies; and David is the son
who thus
converses
with the father as Horus did with Ra, or as Jesus is represented in converse
with Jehovah. As
a divine
personage David is a form of the beloved son; hence perhaps the origin of his
name. David,
Daoud, or
Dood means the beloved; and as a mythical character the beloved one, the Lord's
anointed,
the Messiah,
is the son of .huh, not the son of Jesse, who is not mentioned in the Psalms. This
is the
typical
character with which we are now concerned, the original in the mythos who
afterwards became a
subject for
the popular märchen. The inscription on the Moabite Stone shows that the
Israelites of the
northern
kingdom worshipped a deity named Dodo or Dod ( = David) by the side of .huh,
“or rather they
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Ancient
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adored the
supreme god under the name of Dodo as well as under that of .huh” (Sayce, Hib.
Lectures,
pp. 56, 57).
Mesha, the Moabite king, announces that he has carried away the altars of Dodo
and
“dragged them
before Chemosh”, Dodo and .huh being David and .huh as two divinities, or the
one god
in the dual
character of father and son. And if, like Jacob-EI, Joseph-EI, and Israel,
David was a god, it
follows that
the son assigned to him as Solomon was so likewise. Only a divinity could be
the prince of
peace.
Solomon was also a form of the divine son called the beloved. Hence the prophet
Nathan gives
him the name
of Jedidiah, the “beloved of the Lord” (11. Sam. xii. 24, 25). And the beloved
son was the
messianic or
anointed son.
In addition
to the divine duality of father and son which was imaged in Ptah and Kheper,
Atum and .u,
Osiris and
Horus, .huh, and lah, and the Egypto-gnostic leou and lao, there was a twofold
nature
manifested in
the sonship human and divine. This has been one of the most profound of the
ancient and
most
perplexing of [Page 525] modern mysteries. It is to the Egyptian wisdom we must
turn if we would
trace the
origin of this messianic mystery to the root in nature. But there is no
beginning with the solar
mythos. As it
is said of Jesus, there are three which bear witness that the Messiah came in
the water, in
the blood,
and in the spirit (I. John, v. 6, 7). As Egyptian, the first was Horus who came
by water in the
inundation,
the second was Horus who came in the blood of Isis, the third is Horus of the
resurrection,
who came
again in the spirit; and, as Horus in these characters, “the three agree in
one”. The Book of the
Dead
describes the source and origin of life as water and the water-plants. This was
religiously
commemorated
as a mystery of Amenta. The water-spring was imaged in the tuat of the nether-world,
“which nobody
can fathom”, and the offerings of which are “edible plants” (Rit. ch. 172), the
water-plant
being a form
of primeval food. Thus Horus on his papyrus springing from the water represents
the soul of
life that
came by water in or as primeval food. Hence he was depicted as the shoot. He
would now be
called the
spirit of vegetation, born of water. Horus is also imaged as the child that
issues from the plant
or from the
mother earth. The child = the shoot was typical of an ever-renewing and eternal
youth; hence
Horus the
eternal child. The Egyptian “eternal” was aeonian and ever-coming, whether
figured by the
shoot or as
the child. Horus came by water annually, and brought abundant food. There was
famine
when the
water failed, and therefore Horus as the spirit of vegetation was a kind of
saviour to the world.
He came from
Ethiopia as the messu. The messu in Egyptian is the child, and Horus was the
messu of
the
inundation, the water-born upon his papyrus, and an image of the source and
sustenance of life born
of a mother
who was ever-virgin but non-human. Such is the root origin of the messianic
mystery, and
also of the
mythical virgin and her ever-coming child. But the ever-coming child not only
came by water.
He also came
by blood as Horus who was incarnated in the blood of Isis. Thus Horus of the
incarnation
was the child
that came by blood and was made flesh by her who doctrinally was the
ever-virgin mother.
This is the
elder Horus, the eternal child of her who was known to the gnostics as the
eternal virgin. This
duality in
the sonship of Horus has its origin in his twofold advent and his twofold
character, which implied
a twofold
motherhood. In the first he was the child of the virgin mother as the soul of
the mother only. In
the second he
was Horus in spirit, the beloved only-begotten son of the father in heaven, who
was Ra
the Holy
Spirit. Horus in two of his characters is palpably depicted in the Hebrew
scriptures. In the first he
is Horus, who
in the Ritual (ch. I 15) is called the “Afflicted One”. This was the Horus of
the incarnation,
the god made
flesh in the imperfect human form, the type of voluntary sacrifice, the image
of suffering;
being an
innocent little child, maimed in the lower members, marred in his visage, lame
and blind and
dumb, and
altogether imperfect. No man upon the cross or in the Tat-tree could ever make
appeal to
equal this,
the most pathetic picture in the world. And Horus, “lord of resurrections” from
the house of
darkness
(Rit. ch. 64), who as the first “of them that slept” woke up in death as the
“soul most mighty”
and burst the
mummy-bandages and rent the tomb asunder and arose as Horus divinized, [Page
526] the
victor over
death and hell and all the powers of evil, is the most triumphant figure in the
world.
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A piteous
portrait of the first Horus, the afflicted sufferer, is depicted by Isaiah.
“Behold, my servant shall
deal wisely;
he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Like as many were
astonished at
thee (his
visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of
men)”. “ Who
hath believed
our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ? For he grew up
before
him as a
tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor
comeliness; and when we
see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected of
men; a man of
sorrows and
acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their face he was
despised, and we
esteemed him
not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem
him
stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for
our
iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we
are healed. He was
oppressed,
yet he humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and
as a sheep
that before her shearers is dumb: yea, he opened not his mouth. And they made
his grave
with the
wicked and with the rich in his deaths. Thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin” ( ch. 53). The
character
here portrayed for the Mess.ah is that of the Messu-Horus in every feature,
except that he was
not “wounded
for our transgressions” nor “bruised for our iniquities”. The Egypt.ans were
indefinitely
older than
the Semites, but had never heard of the world being lost by Adam's fall, or its
need of an
historic
saviour who should take the place and act the part of the Jewish scapegoat. The
later doctrine of
vicarious
atonement has been added. That is Semitic, not Egypt.an. Osiris of the
mysteries was
dramatically
represented as a victim, but not as a vicarious sacrifice on account of human
“transgressions”
or “iniquities”. Osiris, the good being, gave his life that men and animals
might live,
which was in
providing the elements of water and food. This was commemorated in the sacramental
meal, at
which his body was eaten as the bread of life and his blood was drunk in the
red wine or beer.
The doctrine
itself is indefinitely older. The Great Mother was imaged earlier still as the
giver of life and
sustenance in
or as the tree by Hathor, who was imaged in the sycamore fig as the tree of
life, which was
her body; and
by the Cypr.an Venus, who was apparently bound upon the tree. In neither case
is there
any doctrine
of the scapegoat, neither as animal, human being, or divine Horus is said to be
the altar and
the offering
in one, and a form of the altar is the tat. The tat-cross was the tree, whether
of Hathor or
Horus, of
Osiris or Ptah. But there was no sufferer on it or in it who bore the sins of
the world. That is a
doctrine of
barbarous, non-Egypt.an ignorance, only fit for cowards, slaves, and criminals.
The only
substitution
in the Osir.an religion is when Horus becomes the voluntary substitute for the
suffering god
the father as
a type of divine sonship and an example for all men to follow in the war of
good against evil.
But there is
no scapegoat and no innocent victim of divine wrath, no exp.atory sacrifice in
the Egypt.an
eschatology.
That was a perversion of the Egypt.an doctrine. There is a sacrific.al victim
as Child-Horus,
but it was a
voluntary sacrifice. [Page 527] He comes to earth and takes upon himself the
burden of
mortality,
and is conscious that he has to suffer and die in order that he may demonstrate
the resurrection
in spirit to
the manes in Amenta and to men on earth. He comes as the calf of the
sacrific.al herd, and in
a body that
will be eaten at the sacramental meal (Rit., ch. 105). “In his deaths”, which
are periodic, he
comes to an
end on behalf of the father in heaven, at whose table he will ultimately rest
(Rit.,ch. 70). The
elder Horus
in the Osir.an cult is that child of the virgin mother who in a second phase
and at the second
advent is the
father's own begotten and beloved son, who takes upon himself to suffer in the
father's and
the mother's
stead, not only in the phenomena of external nature, but also as a figure of
the human soul
immersed in
matter. This involved the doctrines of the incarnation, the virgin mother,
baptismal
regeneration,
the begettal of the anointed son as Horus of the resurrection, Horus the great
judge, Horus
the avenger,
Horus the spirit glorified in the likeness of the father. He dwelt on earth as
mortal Horus in
the house of
Seb (earth) until he was twelve years of age. He went down to Amenta as the
human soul in
death, or as
the sun of winter sinking in the solstice. He rose again from the dead in
search of his father,
whom he had
not known on earth. The father, as Osiris in Amenta, had been overcome by Sut,
the power
of darkness.
Horus rises in Amenta as the avenger; he rises as “the living soul”, Horus who
now comes in
the spirit
(Rit., ch. 5). He comes to see Osiris and to drive away the darkness (ch. 9).
He comes as the
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beloved son
to seek for Sut, the adversary of Osiris, in the nether earth, and pierce him
to the heart ( ch.
I I ). The
teaching of the Ritual is that sacrifice was of a twofold nature. In one aspect
of the doctrine it
was voluntary,
in the other it was vengeful and piacular. This doctrine was brought on at
second-hand in
Rome as the
bloody and unbloody sacrifice, both being associated with one victim there
instead of two.
But as
Egyptian there were two, one innocent and one guilty. Osiris or Child-Horus of
the mysteries was
the voluntary
victim of the unbloody sacrifice, and Sut the victim of the vengeful sacrifice
that is
celebrated in
the Ritual on the night of the great slaughter and the manuring of the fields
with blood.
Osiris was
the voluntary sacrifice. He was the god who gave himself in all the elements of
life that all his
creatures
might have life. He came to earth or manifested in the water, and in flesh and
blood, in
vegetation
and cultivated corn, or, more abstractly, as the bread from heaven.For the
later providence
was imaged in
some likeness of the primitive provider. Hence Osiris is depicted as the
wet-nurse with a
myriad
mammae. The Great Mother as the bringer of plenty might be superseded together
with her
seven cows,
and Isis, the good lady, by Osiris as Un-Nefer, the good being, with whom she
was united in
one; but
still the figure of food and drink remained as an eternal type, when the god
gave “the food that
never
perishes” by the incorporation, or the later incarnation, of himself. This was
the voluntary victim
who was made
a sacrifice in the Osirian mysteries. As represented, he was slain by Sut, the
leader of the
evil powers,
on the night of the great battle. Then followed the vast vengeful sacrifice of
Sut and his coconspirators,
who in the
form of the Typhonian animals were slain upon the highway of the damned so
long as there
was any blood to flow. [Page 528]
The vengeful
sacrifice is also shown when Apap, the enemy of Ra, is slain. It is said, “Apap
is stricken
with swords;
he is sacrificed” (Book of Hades, Records, vol. xii). Horus the child was the
typical babe and
suckling that
was accredited with a revelation beyond the range of human faculty concerning
things that
were hidden
from the wise and understanding. That was in a mystery, not meant for an
apotheosis of
infants or
simpletons and bibliolators. Horus the human was the child, and the divine
Horus was the
prince, the
repa with the kingly countenance; and these are alluded to disparagingly by
lahu when he
says of the
people of Israel, “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall
rule over them” (Is. iii.
4). Human
Horus came to earth in the character of a little child, a type of gentleness
otherwise figured as
a lamb or a
calf. This typical little child is described by Isaiah in his millennial
account of the Messiah who
came
periodically as the bringer of peace, .u-em-hetep or Horus, or the Hebrew
Mes-.ah, which is
equivalent to
Mes-.u the coming child in Egyptian, who is otherwise the .u-su, son of Atum
and .usaas.
“And the wolf
shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the
calf and the
young lion
falling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear
shall feed; their
young ones
shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. “And the
sucking child shall
play on the
hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
They shall not
hurt nor
destroy in all my holy mountain” (Is. xi. 6, 9). This little child was the
human Horus in the
Egyptian
mythos. The tender plant that springs up out of the dry ground, in the prophecy
of Isaiah, is also
represented
both in the Osirian religion and in the earlier cult of Atum-Ra. Horus, the
branch, or natzer,
was the
branch of the unbu or golden bough. The speaker in this character says (Rit.,
ch. 71, Renouf), “ I
am unbu of
An-ar-f, the flower in the abode of occultation”. An-ar-f denotes the abode of
the sightless
Horus, who
was encircled by darkness and obscurity. It was there, in a waste place where
nothing; grew,
that the
golden unbu, or golden bough, burst into blossom as the living shoot from out
the soil or the
annually decaying
tree of vegetable life, as offspring of the sun. Child-Horus as the natzer or
Messiah
was the
“tender plant” that literally grew up “as a root out of a dry ground”. As the
plant of Anrutef he is
rooted in the
dry desert (Rit., ch. lxxi; cf Is. Iviii. II) which precedes the place of
emergence from Amenta
in the east.
The dry ground was intensely actual in Egypt at the time of the winter
solstice, when the land
was left
waterless. It was the season of coming drought that was reflected in the wilderness
of Anrutef,
through which
the suffering sun god had to pass. It was there that Isis sought the water of
life which was
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Ancient
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imaged as her
lost Osiris. In this desert Horus suffered his great thirst, and here he sprang
up as the
tender plant
from a root in the dry ground when nourished at the breasts of his mother. He
had no form or
comeliness,
because he was that amorphous product of the virgin that lacked the soul and
seal of the
authenticating
fatherhood which conferred the grace and favour upon Horus the divinized adult.
This was
the human
Horus who was but human in the way already indicated as the maimed, crippled,
shapeless,
dumb, blind,
impubescent product of the mother nature only. It was the ancient Child-Horus
who was
continued in
the catacombs [Page 529] as the little old and ugly Christ. “ He hath no form
nor comeliness”
(says
Isaiah), “and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him; as
one from whom
men hide
their face he was despised. .Or as one who hid his face from men. The man of
sorrows who
had neither
form nor comeliness was but a typical, not a natural man, still less an
historic personage who
hid his face
and opened not his mouth; and the type was identical with that amorphous birth
of the
gnostic
Sophia which she produced when flowing away into immensity until she was
crossed and stayed
by Stauros,
who stopped the issue of blood. Both were the same as the imperfect,
inarticulate child of
Isis. The
tender plant of Isaiah is one with Horus the shoot, who is also called a plant
out of the Nun. The
Hebrew man of
sorrows is thus doubly identified with the human Horus, and only in the human
Horus do
we reach the genesis
in nature of that Jesus who was reputed to have been born of flowing not of
concreted
blood. For mystical reasons this was the child who never could become a man,
and never did;
the typical
victim of this sacrifice always remained a child. And because the Horus was but
a type, he
could be
represented by the red shoot, the red fruit, the red calf or lamb, the red
crown, or the red sun as
sufferer in
the winter solstice. Various types of this meek and lowly Horus made divine
appeal to human
tenderness
and melted their way to the heart on behalf of the suffering mother and her
dear, deaf, dumb,
and sightless
little one, the child of silence, who was her Logos in sign-language.
The duality
represented by Horus the Messiah in his two-fold character is described in the
Ritual from the
root. This is
the chapter (Renouf, 115) by which the manes cometh forth into heaven, or the
Child-Horus
changes into
the Arm of the Lord, the mortal Horus into Horus the immortal. The speaker
says, “I know
the powers of
Annu. Doth not the all-powerful issue forth like one who extendeth a hand to us
? It is with
reference to
me the gods say, Lo the Afflicted One, who is the heir of Annu ! I know on what
occasion the
lock of the
male-child was made. Ra was speaking with Amhauf, and a blindness came upon
him. Ra
said to
Amhauf, Take the spear, O offspring of men. And Amhauf said, The spear is
taken.“Whatsoever
the meaning
of this instruction, the result was that” two brethren came into being. They
were Heb-Ra and
Sotemanes,
whose arm resteth not. As Child-Horus, he assumed the form of a female with the
lock,
which became
the lock in Annu. Sotemanes is an image of Horus as the arm of Osiris. This is
the arm
that takes
the spear to wield the weapon mightily. The Child-Horus might be of either sex,
and the lock of
childhood was
worn by him as the type of both sexes. In his condition of blindness Horus of
the lock was
the afflicted
one, but he is still the heir of Annu. That is the city where the transformation
takes place in
the temple.
“Active and powerful is the heir of the temple, the active one of Annu. The
flesh of his flesh is
the all-seer,
for he hath the might divine as the son whom the father hath begotten. And his
will is that of
the mighty
one of Annu” (Gr. Heliopolis). This, we repeat, is the account given by the
Ritual concerning
the origin of
the divine duality that was manifested in the double Horus, as the child of
twelve years and
the adult of
thirty years, the wearer of the lock and the victorious lifter of the arm.
Now, Horus in
these two characters can be as clearly traced in [Page 530] the Psalms as he is
described
in the
Ritual. As Horus the human he is the child with the side-Iock, the afflicted
one, the maimed dumb,
and blind
sufferer who is persecuted by Sut. As Horus divinized, Horus the king's heir,
“he hath the might
divine as the
son whom the father hath begotten” - that is, begotten in spirit for the
resurrection from the
dead. This is
he whom the Psalmist celebrates: “My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter: I
speak the
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things which
I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art
fairer than
the children
of men; grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for
ever. Gird thy
sword upon
thy thigh, O mighty one, thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride on
prosperously.
Thou hast
loved righteousness and hated wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed
thee with
the oil of
gladness above thy fellows” (Ps. xlv. 1-9). This in the original was Horus the
anointed, the son of
god, the oil
of gladness on whose face was typical of his divinity. The person addressed in
the 45th
Psalm is also
recognizable as “the royal Horus”, Horus of the beautiful countenance. The
Psalmist
continues:
“All thy garments (smell of) myrrh and aloes and cassia; out of ivory palaces
stringed
instruments
have made thee glad. Kings' daughters are among thy honourable women: at thy
right hand
doth stand
the queen in gold of Ophir” (Ps. xlv. 2, 9). Isaiah has likewise reproduced a
portrait of Har-
Tema the
mighty avenger in his second advent, who came at the end and re-beginning of
the period
which is
called the year of redemption: “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with
garments crimson from
Bozrah; he
that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength,
mighty to save?”.
“Wherefore
art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the
wine-vat ?”. “I
have trodden
the wine-press alone; and of the people there was no man with me: yea, I trod
them in
mine anger
and trampled them in my fury: and their life-blood is sprinkled upon my
garments, and I have
stained all
my raiment. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my
redeemer is come.
I looked, and
there was none to help; and I wondered if there was none to uphold; therefore
my own arm
wrought salvation
unto me, and my fury it upheld me; and I trod down the people in my anger and
made
them drunk in
my fury, and I poured out their life-blood on the earth” (Is. lxiii. 1-6). This
in the original is
magnificent;
in its perversion it is bewildering, but no bibliolator could possibly have
known what it was
about. Hence
the endeavour to make it a matter of prophecy by means of marginal
misinterpretation; a
feast of
vengeance for good Christians to look forward to at the second coming of their
long-belated Lord.
It is not
prophecy: it has no other meaning and had no other origin than that of the
Egyptian mythology
and the
mysteries of Amenta. Horus in his human personation was the mother's suffering
son, the victim
as described
by Isaiah (chs. l ii. l iii.) and by the Psalmist as the sacrificial victim in
the present, not in a
future. near
or far (Ps. xxii.17,18; xxxi. 5; xli. 9; lxix. 21). After his death, a
representative of the Osiris
rises again
triumphant as the maker of justice visible. He does not merely speak of
righteousness. He is
the just and
righteous judge who does justice in the judgment hall of Mati on the [Page 531]
day of doom.
As the divine
avenger of the suffering Osiris or the human Horus he arises in the person of
the red god,
who is thus
addressed: “O fearsome one, thou who art over the two earths, red god who
orderest the
block of
execution, to whom the double crown is given”, as Horus at his second coming
(Rit., ch. 17). He
comes back in
his second advent as the lifter of the arm, great in his glory, as wearer of
the double
crown, the
terrible avenger of the wrongs that were inflicted by the wicked on the
suffering Osiris, or on
humanity in
that appealing and pathetic representative in the god of humanity who gave
himself a
sacrifice to
show the way that others might have life. The way of salvation was revealed by
the human
Horus being
divinized in death, and emerging as an immortal on the horizon of the
resurrection, safe
beyond the
valley of the shadow and the darkness of Sheol. The drama from which scenes are
given in
the Hebrew
writings, as if these things occurred or would occur upon the earth, belongs to
the mysteries
of the
Egyptian Amenta, and only as Egyptian could its characters ever be understood.
We have to bear
in mind that
the typical teacher of Israel is alleged to have been learned in all the wisdom
of the
Egyptians.
Unfortunately, the key of the Mosaic writings was mislaid, and the Bible has
become a lock-up
of bondage
for the prisoners of the Christian faith. Isaiah asks, “Who hath believed that
which we have
heard, and to
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” To none, we reply, save those who
know
the god who
lifted up the arm in death, who bared the holy arm in retribution, and who
wrought salvation
with it for
the oppressed who suffered from the adversaries in Amenta. Horus-Amsu is the
god who uplifts
the arm of
Osiris the lord, which he has freed from the swathings of the mummy as he rises
from the
tomb. The
buried Osiris represented the god in matter, the earthly half of the divinity,
so to say, earth
being termed
his body and heaven his soul. Hence he is imaged by one arm, one leg, one side.
Hence
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Ancient
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also the
typical right and left arms. Osiris buried in Sekhem is represented with the
left arm still bound
and
powerless. Horus in his resurrection is the right arm that was lifted when he
had burst the bonds of
death and got
the better of Sut as conqueror of the grave and manifestor in phenomena both
natural and
eschatological
for the father in Amenta, the father of eternity, or the eternal father, he
whose son was
manifestor by
periodic repetition in the sphere of time. The tat-type of support and
stability on which all
rested in
Tattu is said to be the arm or shoulder of Horus in Sekhem (Rit., 18), whose
figure with the fan
or khu in his
right hand will show us how the government was on his shoulder. The abstract
language of
the Jewish
writings takes the place of the earlier concrete representation and the
Egyptian symbol, which
were figures
or the facts that dislimn and ultimately fade away in words. Amsu-Horus, who
rises from the
grave in
Amenta with his right arm freed from the mummy-swathe, is designated the
“lifter of the arm”,
and in this
connection we may compare a Fijian burial custom. When a hero or distinguished
“brave” is
buried, the
body is interred with the right arm lifted up above the mould of the grave
mound. The people
passing by,
on seeing this, exclaim, “Oh, the hand that was the slayer of men” (Lorimer
Fison, “Notes on
Fijian Burial
Customs,” [Page 532] Journal of the Anthropological Institute). The natural
fact was first
rendered in
sign-language, and this supplied the type to the mythical or eschatological
phase. The Fijian
custom shows
the figure, straight from nature, of the arm-Iifter as the conqueror in life
thus imaged
memorially in
death; Amsu-Horus is the lifter of his right arm as the victor over death. Such
a custom is
by no means
“ghastly” when interpreted by the Egyptian wisdom, but a mode of honouring the
brave
spirit, which
in Amsu-Horus is exhibited as triumphant over death and all the ills of
mortality, as the arm of
the lord, the
conqueror of his father's enemies, triumphant over death and the grave. It was
Amsu-Horus
who “hath
showed strength with his arm”, for he has wrenched and raised it from the
leaden grasp of the
burial-place
and the bondage of the mummy, holding aloft the sign of rule and government as
the
express image
of potency personified. Amsu personates the “arm of the lord” outstretched from
the
mummy of
matter. He is called the arm-raiser, and through his potency the other arm
bound up in the
mummy case is
set free, and the Osiris emerges pure spirit, with both arms intact and both
feet in
motion.
“Behold” ,says the prophet; “Behold, the Lord God will come as a mighty one,
and his arm shall
rule for him”
(Is. xI. 10). In this aspect he comes as the good shepherd. “He shall feed his
flock like a
shepherd; he
shall gather the lambs in his arm and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead
those that
are with
young” (Is. .xI. 11). This was Horus the lifter of his arm for Osiris, upon
whose shoulder rested
the insignia
of his government, which included the whip ( or flail) and the shepherd's
crook.As the Good
Shepherd
Horus tends the sheep of his father, and comes to gather them in his fold. He
was personified
as the
delegated power that drove with the whip and drew them with the hek of rule,
which became the
shepherd's
crook. The portrait of Horus the good shepherd, who was likewise the arm of the
lord in this
picture of
pastoral tenderness, was readapted by the Hebrew writer for the comforting of
distressed
Jerusalem.
The character and the picture belong to the Amenta in the Ritual, and these
have been
represented
as if belonging to this earth, whereas the good shepherd and the sheep, the
fields of peace
and pastures
of plenty beside the still waters, pertain to hetep, the paradise of peace. Of
the “prince of
peace”, who
is proclaimed by Isaiah as having come (he came annually or periodically in the
mythos), it
is said, “The
government shall be upon his shoulder” (ch. 9, 6). So was it with the Egyptian
prince of
peace as
Horus the “sustainer of his father”. On the night of setting up the tat and of
establishing Horus
in the place
of the dead Osiris, Horus takes the government upon his shoulder. It is said,
“The setting up
of the tat
(of stability) means the shoulder of Horus” - that is, the shoulder with which
he sustains the
government
(Rit., ch. 18). In this sense he was the arm of the lord, “the lifter of the
arm,“called” the
avenger of
that left arm of Osiris which is in Sekhem”. Horus images the mummy-Osiris in
the
resurrection.
With the right arm lifted he wields the sceptre of his power that signifies his
triumph over
death and
hell and the grave; he also bears the sign of government upon his other shoulder.
What a
portrait of
level-browed justice is that of Amsu-Horus, who is [Page 533] described as the
god “whose
eyebrows are
like the two arms of the balance (or scales) upon that day when outrage is
brought to
account and
each wrong is tied up to its separate block of settlement” ( ch. 17). This is
the judge in
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person of the
son, the god who lifteth up his arm, and who is the arm of the lord made
manifest for the
execution of
justice. And this is the arm of the lord invoked for the same purpose by
Isaiah, which alone
explains the
expression, “Mine arm shall judge the peoples”. The veil of words in the Hebrew
constantly
conceals the
wisdom of the Egyptians that lies beyond it in the Jewish scriptures, and this
is the rending
of the veil.
One needs must observe in passing that if the divine victim and the redemption
from sin were
historical
and once for all, these must certainly have already taken place when Isaiah
wrote; and if it had
been once for
all it could not have occurred once afterwards. Besides, the same victim is
described in the
Psalms as
suffering or having suffered as the same sacrifice. And how the Sarkolatrae
have gloated and
are gloating
ghoul-like over this cowardly doctrine of the divine victim suffering in a
human form to
ransom the
guilty with the blood of the innocent, and save them from the Nemesis of
natural law and the
consequences
of their own sins. But we have to do with no historical transactions, prophetic
or fulfilled.
Horus is
described in the Ritual (ch. 17) as making his first and second advent in the
two characters of
blind Horus
(An-maati) and Horus the avenger or reconstituter of his father. These two
forms of the
Messiah, the
founder and fulfiller of the kingdom of heaven on behalf of the father, can now
be traced in
the Hebrew
scriptures, especially in the books of the Psalms, Isaiah, Zechariah, and
Daniel. Mortal Horus
in his
humanity was born as the servant. He was the divine heir in the likeness of the
child that from the
earliest
totemic times was born to be a servant or a slave, which was its natural
status. He is portrayed
as blind and
deaf and dumb. This is the coming Messiah described by Isaiah as the servant
who is blind
and deaf and
dumb. “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter , and as a sheep that before her
shearers is
dumb” (ch.
liii. 7) “Who is blind as my servant, or deaf as my messenger that I send ? Who
is blind as he
that is made
perfect, and yet is blind as the Lord's servant?” (ch. 42). As was Horus the
child, who
suffered in
his mortality as the servant and was deaf and dumb and blind in the earth of
Seb to attain the
beatific
vision of the Horus perfected in spirit. The blind messenger described by
Isaiah is the sightless
Horus, whose
zootype was the mole or shrewmouse because it was an eyeless digger
underground, and
therefore a
likeness of Horus in the darkness of the nether earth. Human Horus, called the
elder because
the first
born, and who “had no form nor comeliness”, was the virgin's amorphous child.
Horus divinized
was the god
with the beautiful face, who was “fairer than the children of men”, and
blooming with eternal
youth as the
type of immortality. In the Jewish traditions concerning the Coming One we find
the doctrine
of a Messiah
in two aspects: in one character he was born to suffer, in the other he was
destined to
triumph. In
the one he is identical with the maimed and suffering [Page 534] Horus, in the
other with the
victorious
Har-Tema. In the first he was to come as Joseph's son, who would make war on
the adversary
and himself
be slain (as was the elder Horus) at Jerusalem. Then the second Messiah, called
the son of
David, was to
defeat the enemy, called by the Gentiles Antichrist, and, according to the
solar imagery
employed,
consume him with the breath of his mouth. This consummation was to be on the
grandly
indefinite
scale, but the tradition preserves details of the annual representation. When
Messiah came as
conqueror in
the glory of his strength there was to be a reign of nine months. At the end of
the nine
months,
Messiah Ben-Joseph was to be revealed - that is, the sufferer who was
fore-doomed to fall, and
who was
followed by the Messiah Ben-David, who was destined to succeed. Now, the annual
cycle in the
Kamite mythos
was divided into nine months and three. The elder Horus was born about the time
of the
winter
solstice, answering to the birth of Christ at Christmas. This is a form of the
victim who was slain or
blinded by
Sut the prince of darkness. Three months afterwards the risen Horus was
revealed upon the
mount of
glory as the vanquisher of Sut. And after his reincarnation it was nine months
before the next
rebirth at
Christmas. Thus the circle was completed both in time and space according to
the facts in
nature upon
which the myth was founded (Avkath Rochel apud Huls., pp. 22, 23, 35, 36;
Eisenmenger,
Endecktes
Judenthum), and the two births or advents of Messiah Ben- Joseph and Messiah
Ben-David,
at the end of
nine months, and again at the end of three, are exactly the same as the advent
of the elder
Horus in the
winter solstice and the second coming of Horus triumphant in or following the
vernal
equinox. So
necessary is the mould of the astronomical mythology for understanding the
eschatology,
whether we
call it Jewish, Egyptian, or Christian. It is the ruler for one year in the
solar mythos that will
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account for
“the year of the Lord” which was ..the acceptable year of the Lord and the day
of vengeance
of our God”
proclaimed in Israel by Isaiah (Is. 1 xi. 2). But the doctrine of a coming
Messiah who came to
rule for one
year has no meaning apart from the mythos, in which the coming was annual,
whether as
Horus of the
inundation or as .u the youthful solar god. It was this reign of Messiah on the
scale of one
year that
bequeathed the tradition of the one year's ministry of Jesus re-announced by
Luke (iv. 19) from
Isaiah. The
gnostics Ptolemaeus and Herakleon, also the Christians Clement Alexander and
Origen, who
were both
from Egypt, held this view of the reign that lasted only one year. And it was
this foundation in
the mythical
representation which has made it impossible to build the gospel history on any
other basis,
or to
conclusively define any other length of time for “our Lord's public ministry”.
Whether
written by Paul or not, the Epistle to the Hebrews contains the Egypto-gnostic
doctrine of the
Christ which
was taught by Paul in accordance with “the beginning of the first principles of
the oracles of
God” - that
is, of the divine wisdom which was communicated in the mysteries, and in which Paul
was an
adept and
perfect. This, for example, is a brief sketch of the two-fold Horus who
suffered as Horus in his
mortality and
overcame as Horus in spirit, who personates the redeemer from death. This was
he ..who
in the days
[Page 535] of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with
strong crying and
tears unto
him that was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly
fear, though he
was a son,
yet learned he obedience by the things whim he suffered: and having been made
perfect, he
became unto
all them that obey him the author of eternal salvation” (Heb. v. 7). This in
the Egyptian was
the maimed
and suffering human Horus who was saved from death in becoming the anointed
son, the
glorified
sahu, the spirit perfected, the typical initiator into an existence hereafter
that was called salvation
to eternal
life. The change from Horus the mortal to Horus in spirit is plainly described
by Isaiah ( ch.
xlii. ).
“Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delighteth; I have
put my spirit
upon him; he
shall bring forth judgment to the nation. He shall bring forth judgment in
truth”. The meek
and lowly
one, the virgin's lamb, the suffering Messiah, was Horus in a maimed and most
imperfect
human form.
This was the typical sufferer for the mother and the servant of the Lord, who
in his changed
and glorified
estate became the only begotten from the father; his beloved son. The spirit of
God was “put
upon him”
when he was a divine hawk of soul or became dove-headed; and he who was so dumb
and
gentle that
he would not break a bruised reed was transformed into the Horus who as Tema
was the
terrible
judge, the red god, and as Horus-Makheru the judge in very truth.
It was on the
mount of glory in the east, the mount that rose up from Amenta, that Messiah in
his second
advent came
in the glory of his father with his angels, who were represented as spirits of
fire in
attendance on
the sun or solar god. This in the annual fulfilment was in the vernal equinox,
at the point
where the two
earths were united in one. It is also said in the Talmud (Talmud. Cod.
Sanhedrin, ch. 3, p.
38) that the
Messiah called the son of David “will not come till the two houses of Israel
shall be extinct”.
Here the two
houses answer to the double horizons in the Egyptian mythos which were united
and made
one in the
new heaven and earth established at the advent of Horus Sam-taui, the uniter of
the two
houses of the
double earth. The following “prophecy” contains an appeal to the father god on
behalf of
the anointed
son. “Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's
son. He
shall judge
thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall
bring peace
to the
people. He shall break in pieces the oppressor. In his days shall the righteous
flourish, and
abundance of
peace. ...All kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him.
There shall be
abundance of
corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains, and the fruit thereof shall
shake like
Lebanon. And
they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. His name shall endure
for ever; his
name shall be
continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him; all nations
shall call him
happy”
(Ps.lxxii.). The reign of justice, law, and righteousness was renewed at the
advent of the prince,
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the repa or
heir-apparent, who came to represent the father god. The maat or hall of
justice was erected
on the plain
as the seat of Har-Tema the great judge. The kingdom or house of heaven was
refounded for
the father
once a year by Horus, or by Jesus, the Messiah-son. It was [Page 536] founded upon
the four
quarters,
which were represented by the four mystical creatures, by four flag-staffs or
pillars, or by the
four-fold
Cross of the tat.
Horus is
described in both characters by Zechariah at the second coming. “And they shall
look unto him
whom they
pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and
shall be in
bitterness
for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born” (Zech. xii. 10, II).
He is to come in the “day
of the Lord”,
to fight the battle called the battle of Har-Magedon in Revelation, which was
fought annually
in the
astronomical mythology. Har-Makhu was the ancient Horus of both horizons, more
exactly of both
equinoxes,
and most exactly of the double earth that was united annually in one at the
eastern equinox
upon the
Mount of Olives, or Bakhu in Egyptian. Person, place, event, and circumstances
are all the
same as in
the original. This is the avenger Har-Makhu, otherwise described as Har-Tema,
executor and
executioner
of divine justice in the maat upon the mount of glory. And it is to be as in
the previous
manifestations.
They shall look upon him whom they had pierced. In the Kamite representation
Horus
came
periodically in the vernal equinox as the king's son, who was called the prince
of eternity, the royal
Horus, Horus
of the kingly countenance, now made judge of all the earth. He took his seat
upon the
summit; the
balance was erected in the hall of righteousness or of maat, where judgment was
delivered
and undeviating
justice done. But this was the annual assizes of “all souls” held in the earth
of eternity,
not in Judea
nor the earth of time. Isaiah foretells that in the great day that will come
there is to be “a
vineyard of
wine”: “sing ye of it. I the Lord do keep it night and day”. “And in the
mountain shall the Lord
of hosts make
unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat
things full of
marrow, of
wines on the lees well refined” (Is. xxv. 6, and xxvii. 2, 3). And the coming,
which was actual in
Egypt, and
was celebrated yearly with the Uaka or Nile festival, is to be fulfilled at
some indefinite future
time that was
chiefly known to prophecy as the day of doom and the ending of the world.
The vine and
fig were two especial forms of the typical tree in the garden of Hetep, Aarru,
or Eden.
According to
the prophecy of Micah, every man was to sit beneath his own vine and fig-tree
in the
paradise of
peace, with none to make them afraid (ch. iv. 4). But this garden of the gods
and the glorified,
which is
relegated to the future by the biblical writers, had been planted by the
Egyptians in a far-off past.
The vine and
sycamore-fig were two types in the Kamite paradise. In the papyrus of Nu he
prays that he
may sit under
his “own vine and also beneath the refreshing foliage of the sycamore fig tree
of Hathor.
The garden of
Aarru is a garden of the grape, and the god Osiris is sometimes seated in a
Naos
underneath
the vine, from which bunches of grapes are hanging. Moreover, Osiris was the
vine, and his
son
Horus-unbu is the branch. The solar mount was called the mount of glory. This
is in accordance with
the natural
fact. It is the same in the Hebrew writings. The mount of God in Exodus is the
mount of glory.
It is called
the mount of the glory of God: “The glory of the Lord abode upon Mount [Page
537] Sinai” (Ex.
xxiv. 16).
The solar nature of the glory is apparent in certain passages. “The glory of
the Lord went up
and stood
upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city” (Ez. Xi.23). This
identifies the solar
mount of
glory. “And in appearance the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the
top of the mount in
the eyes of
the children of Israel” (Ex. xxiv. 17). The law was given to Israel on the
mount in the shape of
the
Commandments, that were written on two tablets. This corresponds to the law of
maati given in the
great
judgment hall upon the mount of glory at the place of equilibrium, or the
scales of justice in the
equinox. The
two tablets image the duality of maati, or the two-fold law and justice. The
mount is
identified
with the Egyptian judgment-seat by the statement made to Moses in the mount:
“Now these are
the judgments
which thou shalt set before them” (Ex. xxi. I) - these being the laws
distinguished from the
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Ten
Commandments. The maat was the judgment-seat, the great hall, the place or city
of truth and
righteousness.
The scales of justice were periodically erected on the mount, whether at the
vernal
equinox in
the solar mythos or at the pole in the earlier stellar representation. Hence
the application of
the maat to
Jerusalem by Zechariah. “Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth (maati),
and the
mountain of
the Lord of hosts the holy mountain” (Zech. viii. 3, 4). The Lord, he cometh,
“He cometh to
guide the
earth; he shall judge the world with righteousness; righteousness and judgment
are the
foundation of
his throne” (Ps. xcvi. and xcvii.). These are the foundation of maati, truth,
righteousness,
law, and
justice all being expressed by the one word maati. The doctrine of maati could
not be more
perfectly
illustrated than it is in Psalm xlv. 6. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever; a sceptre of equity
is the
sceptre of thy kingdom”. From the time of Tum, ie. Atum- .u, the Egyptian one
god was the deity of
justice,
truth, and righteousness. He is still the god of maat or maati, which has the
meaning of law, truth,
justice, and
right. In this wise the mythos and the eschatology of Egypt were converted into
matter of
prophecy that
was to be fulfilled on earth as the mode of future realization.
The mythical
mount is also typical of two different characters, female and male: one was the
mount of
earth, the
other the mount of heaven. The worship of the Great Mother never died out
wholly with the
children of
Israel. The high places, the asherim, the sacred prostitutes, the heifer, the
sow, and other
types were
indestructible, all the Protestantism and Puritanism of the monotheists
notwithstanding.
Hence we are
told, as something very terrible, that Solomon built a temple to Ashtoreth “on
the right hand
of the mount
of corruption” (II. Kings, xxiii. 13), the mount of the Great Mother. The
female nature of the
mount of
earth was shown when the Lord “covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his
anger and
cast down the
beauty of Israel”, and is said to have “forgotten his footstool”. She was the
footstool of .huh
as a type of
the earth-mother, just as Isis is the seat of Osiris. There is a general
casting out of the divine
motherhood by
the Hebrew writers, especially under the type of the female mount. For the Lord
of hosts
was to reign
in Mount Zion after the casting out of the woman Wickedness, whose emblem was
an
abomination
in all the earth (Is. xxiv. 23). “Behold, I am against [Page 538] thee, O
destroying mountain,
saith the
Lord. I will make thee a burnt mountain. ...Thou shalt be desolate for ever”
(Jer. li. 25). “O my
mountain in
the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures for a spoil, and thy
high places,
because of
sin throughout all thy borders” (Jer. xvii. 3). This was the mount of earth and
of the
motherhood,
and the seat of the Great Mother in the mount of earth or Jerusalem below is
now to be
superseded by
the throne of God most high in the holy mount of Jerusalem above. The change is
described in
the book of Zechariah. Jerusalem that was forsaken in one sense, and her mount
of the
motherhood
cast down, is to be restored to Israel, in another character, by the erection
of another mount
and
sanctuary. “Thus saith the Lord: I am reTumed to Jerusalem with mercies; my
house shall be built in
it. The Lord
shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem” (Zech. i. 17). The
mother in the
earlier cult
was cast out and her seat denounced as the mount of corruption because she had
been
worshipped
and fecundated beneath every green tree on this mons veneris of the earth (II.
Kings, xxiii.
13), in all
the high places that were consecrated to Ashtoreth and the asherim, as the
mount of the
mother. This
was the hill of Jerusalem on which her whoredoms were committed by the daughter
of Zion
(Is. x. 32).
It is the hill of Esau, and of her that “dwelt in the clefts of the rock” as
the old earth-mother,
who was now
to be swept away in the coming day of the Lord, the mountain that before
Zerubbabel was
to become a
plain for the foundation of a new house of heaven (Zech. iv. 7). The
preparation for the
building -
the four horns or corners, the four smiths, the man with a measuring-Iine in
his hand - show
that the new
Jerusalem signified is celestial or astronomical. It is to be built by Zerubbabel,
whose hands
“have laid
the foundations of this house”. The mount that had been is to be levelled by
him and become a
plain. This
was the mount of the woman called Wickedness, whose emblem was to be removed to
the
land of
Shinar, where her house was to be built, and when it was established she was to
be set upon her
own base. The
new house of heaven or the new Jerusalem is built upon the mountain of the
Lord, who is
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about to
bring forth his servant, the Branch. And now we learn that, notwithstanding the
historic-looking
instructions
given by “the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel” concerning the building, the
actual builder is
the man whose
name is the Branch. “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man
whose
name is the
Branch; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of
the Lord; and
he shall bear
the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest
upon his throne,
and the
counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zech. vi. 12, 13). As Egyptian,
this builder of the
temple was
.u-em-hetep, the prince of peace. In one of its various meanings the word hetep
signifies
gathering and
uniting together. Hence hetep is the mount of congregation. This was continued
as a
Hebrew title
of the mount. Isaiah identifies “the mount of congregation”, or place of
gathering together, as
the mount in
the uttermost parts of the north - that is, with the summit of rest at the
celestial pole (Is. xiv.
13). As is
said by the Psalmist, “The wicked shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners
in the
congregation
of the righteous” (Ps. i. 5). In the [Page 539] midst of the congregation will
I praise thee” (Ps.
xxii. 22).
“God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth amongst the gods” (Ps.
lxxxii. I). The final
landing-place
in the Egyptian paradise, where the souls of the departed reach an anchorage in
the still
waters of
hetep or peace eternal in the heavens, is a divine district called “the isle of
corn and barley”
(Rit., ch. I
10). This was attainable only at the summit of Mount Hetep, the mount of peace
and
everlasting
plenty in the circumpolar paradise, not on any local mount of Zion in Judea or
in Palestine,
although it
was thus literalized in the biblical prophecies. The great and glorious good
time coming for the
Egyptians was
not in this life nor the present world. It was in the heaven of eternity. It
was a picture of the
paradise
awaiting the blessed dead. This was portrayed twice over; once in the nether
earth of the solar
mythos, once
in the highest, earlier heaven, in the garden of hetep on the stellar mount.
The pictures of
this paradise
in the Hebrew writings, the Psalms, the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah,
Zechariah, and
Revelation,
were pre-extant long ages earlier as Egyptian. What the so-called “prophets” of
the Jews did
was to make
sublunary this vision of the good time in another life. There were already two
Jerusalems
from the time
when Judea and Palestine were appendages of Egypt. Two Jerusalems were
recognized
by Paul, one
terrestrial, one celestial. The name of Jerusalem we read as the Aarru-salem or
fields of
peace,
equivalent to Aarru-hetep or Sekhet-hetep, the fields of peace in Egyptian.
Jerusalem below was
the localized
representative of Jerusalem above, the Aarru-salem or Aarru-hetep on the mount
of peace
in the heaven
of the never-setting stars. The burden of Jewish prophecy, which Tumed out so
terribly
misleading
for those who were ignorant of the secret wisdom, is that the vision of this
glorious future
should be
attained on earth; whereas it never had that meaning. But the Hebrew
non-initiates came to
think it had;
they also prophesied as if they thought it had. Thus Jerusalem on earth was to
take the place
of Jerusalem
above, and the Aarru-hetep become the Jeru-salem simply as a mundane locality.
Jerusalem is
to be rebuilt, and to be called the City of Truth, which had been the Maat upon
the mount in
the Egyptian
eschatology (Zech. i. 16; ii. I, 2, and 10; viii. 3). The bringer of peace is
to reTum and build
the temple of
the Lord, and the counsel of peace is to be between him and the Lord. And
“There shall be
the seed of
peace; the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase,
and the heavens
shall give
their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to inherit all these
things” (Zech. viii. 12),
“all these
things” being the things predicated of the promised land of the mythos, the
fields of peace or
gardens of
Hetep in the eschatology, the abode of the blessed in Jerusalem above. In this
new
Jerusalem on
earth it was to be as it had been in the maat upon the mount, where Atum or
Osiris imaged
the eternal
on his seat who presided over the pole of heaven (Rit., ch. 7). Every man was
to speak the
truth with
his neighbour, and execute the judgment of truth and peace in their gates after
attaining the
maat. Amongst
the Egyptian sayings that have been taken literally by the Jews and Christians
is the
statement
that the meek shall inherit the earth. We read in the Psalms, “Those that wait
on the Lord, they
shall inherit
the land. Yet a little [Page 540] while and the wicked shall not be. But the
meek shall inherit the
land, and
shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Their inheritance shall be
for ever. But the
wicked shall
perish. Such as be blessed of him shall inherit the land, and they that be
cursed of him shall
be cut off.
The righteous shall inherit the land. Wait on the Lord, and he shall exalt thee
to inherit the
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land” (Ps.
xxxvii.). If such promises and prophecies had applied to the lands of this
world (which they did
not), our
English race would have proved itself to have been the most righteous people on
earth, and the
landless Jews
the most utterly deceived by the Lord on whom they waited, like the hungry
animal in the
fable, when
he depended on the word of the nurse who threatened to throw the child to the
wolf, and was
deceived
regarding his supper. It never was our earth that the meek or the righteous
were to inherit, but
the land in
the earth of a future life, the land that was promised to the doers of right
and the fulfillers of
justice on
this earth, who became the cultivators in the fields of divine harvest for
eternity. In the Egyptian
teaching this
land of promise, of plenty, and of peace was the land of Hetep, the garden of
Aarru, the
elysian
fields, the paradise of spirits perfected who were the only righteous on the
summit of the mount,
which had to
be attained by long climbing in the life hereafter as well as in the life on
earth. That was the
only land to
be attained by those who waited on the Lord. It was a land of pure delight
mapped out in the
northern
heaven, to be seen through the darkness that covered the earth by night. In
that land every
worker had
his appointed portion given to cultivate and bring forth his share of produce.
There were no
Feringhees or
eaters of the earth up there. But change the venue and pervert the teaching by
making this
land of
promise an earthly possession, as is done all through the biblical writings,
and you have an
alleged
divine sanction and warrant for all the robbery of land and all the iniquity
that has been
perpetrated
against the weaker races of the aborigines by God Almighty's favourite whites.
The Jews
professed to
wait upon the Lord, therefore they were to inherit the land. The Spaniards
like-wise waited
on the Lord,
and therefore the lands of the Peruvians and Mexicans were theirs by divine
right. So has it
been with the
English in America, in Australia, in Africa. They who wait upon the Lord once a
week, or
once a year
upon Atonement Day, without atonement, shall inherit the earth. And all the
time such
teaching is
not only utterly immoral, not only ethically false; it never had the
significance assigned to it by
the Jews and
Christians when first taught by the Egyptians. A false bottom has thus been
laid by this
perversion of
old Egypt's wisdom, and on that false bottom have the Jews and Christians built
for this
world,
whereas the Egyptians laid their foundations for eternity.
The Egyptian
wisdom, to which the whole wide round of the world is one vast whispering
gallery, has
been looked
upon by the bibliolator as “the materials that Revelation had to deal with”
(Cobb, Origines
Judaica) -
that is, the wisdom pre-extant, for which the Egyptians had toiled during a
dateless antiquity,
becomes
divine revelation when mutilated and misrendered in the biblical version. For
the sounder
inference to
be drawn from the comparatively late origin of the Hebrew letters is not that
the subject-
matter of the
documents is necessarily [Page 541] late, but that it was preserved in the
hieroglyphic
language
which was read by Osarsiph and his fellow-priests from On, before it was
transcribed in the
later
letters. The truth is that the primary records on which the Bible was based
were not a product of the
Palestinian
Jews. In the original scriptures no mistakes are made by the speaker as to the
nature of the
promises or
the place of performance. In one of the rubrics to the Ritual it is said: “If
this chapter be
recited over
him (the deceased), he will make his exodus and go forth over the earth, and he
will pass
through every
kind of fire, no evil thing being able to hurt him”. But this was in making his
progress over
the earth of
Amenta, the land of life, as a manes, and not as a human being in the earth of
time. The
secret of the
whole matter is that in both the Old and the New Testaments the mysteries of
Amenta have
been
literalized and shifted to the human dwelling-place, and the readers have been
left groping and
wandering in
the wrong world.
It is the
people of Israel who were in Sheol, not in Palestine, that speak in the
following words of Hosea:
“Come, and
let us return unto the Lord (who is described in the preceding chapter as the
double lion); for
he hath torn
and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days
will he revive us;
on the third
day he will raise us up, and we shall live before him. And let us know, let us
follow on to know
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Ancient
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the Lord. His
going forth is sure as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as
the latter rain
that watereth
the earth” (Hos. vi. 1-3). These were the people of Israel who suffered their
captivity in the
prison-house
of Amenta. They have suffered death from the lion god, who has laid them low in
Sheol, but
will raise
them upon the third day to live with himself. This was the captivity of Job the
sufferer from Satan
in Sheol, and
also the sufferer in the Psalms whose soul is a prisoner bound in Sheol,
waiting for
deliverance
and for the salvation that cometh out of Zion (Ps. xiv. and xvi.). It is a
captivity that never was
historical,
in a land of bondage which may be called Babylon, Egypt, or Sodom; but, as
Hosea shows, it
was a bondage
from which the prisoners were set free after two days - that is, in the
resurrection on the
third day. A
knowledge of the matter at first hand in the Egyptian rendering will
disintegrate the historical
captivity and
exodus, leaving but little to set foot upon beyond a heap of ever-shifting
sand. In Alexandria,
about the
year 140 B.C., the Sibyl was giving forth her oracles in a farrago of the
ancient wisdom,
concerning an
advent of the righteous king who was to rise up in the east, as all such
personages ever
had done in
the solar mythos, and found his kingdom of perpetual peace. The Jews in
Alexandria, being
in
subjection, cultivated this idea, and did their utmost to convert the mythical
Messiah into an ethnical
saviour.
Their falsely-excited hopes, however, ended in a few desperate endeavours to
fulfil the
supposed
prophecies respecting a political deliverer who should free them from the Roman
yoke. And
the same
delusion, mainly born of misinterpreted mythology, lived on afterwards as
Christian. More
especially
after the alleged historic fulfilment. It broke out as a belief in the second
advent and the
establishment
of the millennium which had not been historically realized the first time. The
Christian
opinion most
prevalent for [Page 542] many centuries was that the Messiah would come again,
like Arthur
and other
Aeonian heroes of the astronomical mythology, and that his kingdom was to last
one thousand
years. After
that the deluge, or the dragon. Christian Chiliasim was unwittingly founded on
the periodic
return of the
ever-coming one who had been Horus or .u the prince of peace in the “house of a
thousand
years”, an
earthly likeness of which was restored for Amen of Nepata by King Harsiatef of
the 26th
dynasty
(Stele, Records of the Past, vol. vi. p. 85). This ever- recurring advent was
dated for those who
kept the
chronology, but the ignorant Christian Chiliasts were left literally dateless
from their lack of the
gnosis. That
which had been in the astronomical mythos was yet to come according to the
biblical
prophecies.
In the Kamite eschatology the mountain of the Lord's house had been established
at the
summit of
Aarru-hetep, the paradise of peace, the country that is called the “tip of
heaven” (Rit., ch. 99).
The house of
the Lord upon the mount was the great hall of judgment called the maat, from
which
proceeded the
law and the word of the Lord and the son of God who came to make the word of
the Lord
truth against
his adversaries. But in the latter days it shall come to pass that the mountain
of the Lord's
house shall
be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the
hills; and
peoples shall
flow unto it. And many nations shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to
the mountain
of the Lord,
and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we
will walk in
his paths;
for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem. And he shall
judge between
many peoples, and shall rebuke strong nations afar off: and they shall beat
their swords
into
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up
sword against nation,
neither shall
they learn war any more. They shall sit every man under his vine and under his
fig-tree, and
none shall
make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it”, “and the
Lord shall reign
over them in
Mount Zion from henceforth even for ever” (Micah, iv. 1-8). But whilst the
prophet is
apparently
peering forward into some indefinite future, he is only looking into the camera
obscura in front,
which is all
the while reflecting things that lie behind him in a far-off past. Ages on ages
earlier the feast
of fat
things, with the heaps of food, the thousands of geese and ducks, the corn and
beer in huge
abundance,
had been spread in the Egyptian paradise for the eternal feast, with Mount
Hetep for the
table. This was
the heaven of all good things that were imaged as provisions in the land of
promise that
could not be
attained in Jerusalem below, but only at the summit of another life. This was
the mount of
peace where
the Lord of all things rested, he whose name was Neb-Hetep, the lord of peace.
That was
the land in
which there was no more night and the tears were wiped from all faces, and pain
and sorrow
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Ancient
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ceased, and
sighing had for ever passed away. A close acquaintance with the Ritual shows
that the .us
brought out
of Egypt certain writings that contained the Egyptian eschatology, the wisdom
in which they
tell us their
giver of the law was learned. That wisdom of the other world was converted into
history for
this, and all
turned topsy-turvy by changing the earth of (Page 543) eternity into the earth
of time and the
manes into
mortals. In this way the noble, full, flowing river of old Egypt's wisdom ended
in a quagmire of
prophecies
for the Jews and a dried-up wilderness of desert sands for the Christians. And
on those
shifting
sands the historic “Christians reared their temple of the eternal, which is
giving way at last
because it
was not founded on the solid rock, and because no amount of blood would ever
suffice to
solidify the
sand or form a concrete foundation or even a buttress for the crumbling
building.
The secret of
the ancientness and sanctity of the writings is that they were originally
Egyptian, like the
Jewish
community. They are not the product of any ground-rootage in the land of Judea.
They come to
us masked and
in disguise. The wisdom of old, the myths, parables, and dark sayings that were
preserved,
have been presented to us dreadfully defeatured and deformed in the course of
being
converted
into history. An exoteric rendering has taken the place of the esoteric
representation which
contained the
only true interpretation. The past was known to Philo, the learned Jew, who
when speaking
of the Mosaic
writings told his countrymen that “the literal statement is a fabulous one, and
it is in the
mythical that
we shall find the true”. To understand their own books, their religious rites,
festivals, and
ceremonies,
the Jews will have to go back to Egypt for the purpose of comparison. The
Egyptian Ritual
will show
them why their New Year's Day is the annual judgment day, the great day of
doom; and why it
is also the
great day of memorial “for celebrating the creation of the world, as it was in
Egypt. Their “great
day of
atonement” is identical with that on which the Sut-Typhonians and adversaries
of Osiris were slain
in a bloody
sacrifice that was offered up as pleasing to the Good Being, Un-Nefer, who was
annually put
to death by
these emissaries of the evil one and annually avenged by Har-Tema and his
faithful followers.
The blowing
of the trumpet, or Shofar, is the signal for the resurrection from Amenta, or
Sheol, and has
been so since
the vernal equinox entered and the solar resurrection occurred in the sign of
the Ram,
4,300 years
ago, to say nothing of the earlier stations in precession. The Rabbins have
preserved the
tradition
that the dead are summoned before the divine tribunal to be judged upon the day
of doom,
which occurs
each New Year's Day.
Gleams of the
ancient glory are afloat in Jewish eyes that still turn Zionward, still
mistaking the earthly for
the heavenly
vision of the eternal city, a promised land in Palestine for a celestial
locality that is still en
l'air or in
the clouds of prophecy. If they were to see the promised land in Palestine
to-day, they would not
find the
eternal city of their dreams at Jerusalem any more than at Rome or Thebes, at
Memphis, at
Annu, or any
other foundation upon which the celestial home of rest was portrayed in heaven
or localized
in a pattern
on this earth. On the other hand, the Jews in their religious mysteries go back
to Jerusalem
once every
year; and once a year Messiah comes to them, from generation to generation as
“the
persistent
traveller upon heaven's highways, who steppeth onwards through eternity” (Rit.,
ch. 42). The
yearning for
Zion by these homeless lodgers who [Page 544] are aliens in all lands did not
arise from love
of country or
desire to cultivate its soil. It originated in religious feeling and the
following of a heavenly
mirage that
could be pursued over all the earth and its deserts, independently of locality
or of race. This
view is also
enforced by the persistence of the Messianic craze that yet survives amongst
the Jewish
victims of
misinterpreted mythology, who still await that fulfilment of the impossible
which the persecuting
Christians
fatuously suppose they have secured for all time and for eternity.
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Ancient
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VOLUME 2
BOOK 9 of 12
THE ARK, THE
DELUGE, AND THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
[Page 545] AT
first sight the general effect of the innumerable deluge-legends is to suggest
the existence
of a
primitive kind of catastrophobia resulting from fear of the water-flood. The
arkite symbolism
originated in
the mount and tree, the cave or enclosure being a natural place of refuge when
the waters
were out upon
the earth; and these were followed by the raft, the boat, or ark that swam the
waters as a
means of
human safety. Before the legends of a deluge could have been formulated, the
deluge as an
overwhelming
flood of water had become a figure used in sign-language to express the natural
fact in a
variety of
phenomena to which the type might be and was applied. It is expressed in
English still by what
is termed a
“flooding”. But a deluge is not only an overflow of water. There is a deluge of
blood (both
Egyptian and
Polynesian). Night brings its deluge of darkness, and dawn lets loose the
floods of day. The
so-called
deluge-legend comprises a hundred legends and a hundred applications of the
same type, from
one single
origin in sign-language as the primitive mode of representing a fact in nature.
The deluge is
universal
because it was not local. The human race spread out over all the earth would
not have been
greatly
troubled about an excessive overflow of water once upon a time in Mesopotamia.
The legend is
coeval with
all time, and current amongst all people, because the deluge did not occur
“once upon a
time.” On the
grand scale it was the mythical representation of the ending and submergence of
an old
order of
things in the astronomical mythology; but there were various distinct deluges
with that meaning,
and not
merely one. The Egyptian deluge in the so-called “destruction of mankind” is
described as
continuing
for three nights and days. The time is measured by three days’ length in
navigation through a
deluge of
blood (Records of the Past, 6, 103). Now, three nights and days is the length
of time that was
computed for
the monthly absence of the moon in the nether-world. Hence there was a deluge
of
darkness on
that scale in mythology. But the deluge occurred in at least four categories of
phenomena.
There was a
deluge of blood and a deluge of darkness, as well as a deluge of water. There
is also the
deluge that
was a type of periodic time; and by no black art of bibliolatry can these four
kinds of deluge
be combined
in one.
A deluge
being an ending of a cycle in time, we can understand the [Page 546] language
of the Codex
Chimalpopoca
(translated by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg) concerning the flood, when it
says, “Now
the water was
tranquil for forty years plus twelve.” “All was lost. Even the mountains sank
into the water,
and the water
remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.” In this account, the well-known
Mexican cycle of
fifty-two
years is measured by means of a deluge at the end of the period. In Inner
Africa the year was
reckoned by
the periodic great rain; in Egypt by the inundation; and a deluge, we repeat,
became the
natural type
of an ending in time in the uranographic representation. In India, a solar
pralaya, in which
the waters rise
till they reach the seven Rishis in the region of the pole, is of necessity
kronian, and
applies
solely to the keeping of time and period astronomically. The Assyrian deluge is
described as
lasting seven
days. This agrees with the seven days’ silence in the Wisdom of Esdras, by
which the
consummation
of the age, or ending of the period, was to be commemorated “like as in the
former
judgments,”
deluges, or endings of the cycle or age in time. The flood of Noah is on the
scale of the year
or thereabouts.
The deluge of time, as it was called by the Chaldean magi, is a breach of
continuity, a
phase of
dissolution. It was a period of negation that was filled in with a festival as
a mode of
memorialising
the dies non or no time. It was a condition of the lawlessness of misrule, of
promiscuous
intercourse,
of drunkenness, that characterized the saturnalia by which it was celebrated.
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Ancient
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There is a
Kamite prototype in “the destruction of mankind” for the woman who is the
reputed cause of a
deluge in the
Egyptian mythos. This is Sekhet the avenger. She is the very great one of the
liquid
domain. No
one is master of the water of Sekhet, which she lets loose as an element of
death and
destruction.
She was the great mistress of terror in fire and flood. In “the destruction of
mankind” it is
said, “There
was Sekhet, during several nights, trampling the blood under her feet as far as
Heracleopolis.”
Ra, the solar god, “ordered the goddess to slay the evil race in three days of
navigation.”
“And the
fields were entirely covered with water through the will of the majesty of the
god; and there
came the
goddess (Hathor) in the morning, and she found the fields covered with water,
and she was
pleased with
it, and she went away satisfied and saw no men” (i.e., none of the exterminated
evil race).
This is a
form of the Egyptian deluge designated a great destruction, but with no earthly
application to the
human race.
In the African legend relating to the origin of Lake Tanganyika, that was told
to Stanley by
the Wagigi
fishermen, it was a woman, to whom the secret of the water-spring had been
entrusted, who
was the cause
of the deluge. Possibly this woman was the earth as mother of the waters,
seeing that
Scomalt is
the earth-mother of the Okanagaus, and that she also was charged with letting
in the deluge.
Scomalt is a
form of the primordial genetrix, equivalent to Apt in Egypt. Long ago, they
say, when the sun
was no bigger
than a star, this strong medicine-woman ruled over what appears to have become
a lost
continent.
Her subjects rose against her in rebellion. Whereupon she broke up the land,
and all the
people but
two met with their death by drowning. A man and a woman escaped in a canoe and
arrived on
the mainland,
and from this pair the Okanagaus are descended (Bancroft, vol. III, 149). [Page
547]
A
starting-point in various deluge-legends is from the world all water. This
originated with the firmament
as the
celestial water that was called the Nnu, or Nun. Now one meaning of the word
Nun in Egyptian is
the flood.
Thus the water of heaven is synonymous with the deluge. In one aspect the
deluge, as a figure
in the
sign-language of the astronomical mythology, was a mode of representing the
sinking of the pole in
the celestial
ocean which was figured as the world of water. This is the world all water in
the legendary
lore. The
flood upon which Jehovah sat as king was no other than the firmamental Nun (Ps.
XXIX. 10).
So the throne
of Osiris was based upon the flood, that is upon the Nun. In the vignettes to
the Ritual
Osiris sits
upon the throne in Amenta as the great judge and ruler, and his throne is
“balanced” as it is
described,
upon the flood. Water being the primary element of life, it was also based on
figuratively; and
Osiris with
his throne resting on the water takes the place of the earlier Nnu, or later
Noah, resting in his
ark as master
of the deep. Nnu was god of the celestial water. The wateress in one form was
the
goddess Nut.
This, then, and nothing short of it, is the root of the matter when, as in the
Navajo-Indian
legend,
certain persons, who are so often one female and one male, make their escape
from the
overwhelming
waters by climbing up a reed to the land of life which, as a land of reeds, was
the primal
paradise, or
the fields where the papyrus was in flower above the waters of a universal
deluge, as
represented
in the veriest drawing of mythology.
We have to
learn the sign-language before we can understand the nature of mythology. When
it is said
that Horus
inundates the world like the sun each morning, that is with the light as the
deluge of day.
There is a
white water and a black, equivalent to the white bird of light and the black
bird of night, as
opposite
figures of Sut and Horus for the dark and the day. The evil Apap, who drinks
the water cubit by
cubit at each
gulp as the sun goes down, is slain by Horus at daybreak, when he once more sets
free the
waters of
light which are designated the waters of dawn. In like manner, the waters of
day rush forth
when Indra
slays the serpent of darkness, who was thought of as the swallower of the
light=water of
heaven.
Osiris is called the “over-flower,” the “great extender,” the “shoreless one,”
who in this imagery of
the deluge
“brings to its fulness the divine force which is hidden within him” (Rit., ch.
64, 13-15, Renouf).
Thus, in
continuing the primitive mode of thinging the concept, Osiris is the
water-force personified,
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Ancient
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instead of
being represented as a crocodile, which was also one of the primal types of
water.
“The deluge”
is only single as a type. There are various deluges known to mythology, and
various agents
who are held
responsible for causing them. In one legend or folk-tale it was the mischievous
monkey. In
another it
was the tortoise, who sank in the waters and drowned the people who had their
dwelling-place
upon its
back. In another it is caused by the killing of a sacred bird, which might be
the vulture or cygnus.
In a fourth
the fountains of the great deep are opened by the taking out of the star,
whereupon the deluge
follows. A cause
of the deluge is attributed to the star-gods, Sut in Egypt and Bel in
Babylonia. It was
caused by a
failure in keeping time, and the failure is followed in a number of legends by
the [Page 548]
new heaven,
in which the supreme time-keeper is the moon or the lunar divinity who is Taht
in the Kamite
representation.
Some most
precious remains of the primitive wisdom now extant outside of Egypt are
preserved by the
oldest races
of the world. Much of the matter is found amongst the people of the Polynesian
islands, far
more to the
purpose than anything to be found in the Hindu or the Hebrew sacred books. The
Samoans
have what
may, in a symbolical sense, be termed a deluge legend. Tangaloa, the originator
of the
heavens, was
the builder. Of old the heavens were always falling down when they consisted of
water
without any
bulwark or embankment. To put a limit, to build or make any firm enclosure, was
to
circumscribe
the waters and secure a place of refuge from the dreaded deluge. In the time of
Ptah, their
great
architect, the Egyptians were advanced enough in craftsmanship for the
enclosure formed by him
to keep out
the waters of the deluge in Amenta to be made of either iron or steel, called
the ba-metal. An
ark was a
primitive enclosure formed in the celestial water. This, as Egyptian, is the
ark of Nnu, and Nnu
is heaven, as
water, also a name for the deity of the celestial water. In the Samoan legend,
an ark is built
before there
was any water or water-flood, or before the firmament had been figured as
water. ”Tangaloa
of the
heavens and his son Lu=Shu built a canoe or vessel up in the heavens.” When the
vessel was
finished
there was no water to float it. Gaogao, the ancient mother, told her son Lu to
have the vessel
ready and she
would make the water. She then gave birth to a lake, or the water of life, and
also to the
salt water,
as it is said there was no sea at that time.” The lake we identify with “the
lake of the thigh,” or
the meskhen
of the water-cow. Sea and lake imply both salt and fresh water, the two waters
of earth and
heaven that
were repeated in the two lakes of Amenta. The Samoan deluge lasted until the
seventh day,
like the
Babylonian. As it is said of Lu, “He was not many days afloat, some say six,
when (on the
seventh) his
vessel rested on the top of a mountain called Malata” (Turner, Samoa, p. 12).
In a papyrus
at Turin the
god who claims to be self-existent says, “I make the waters and the Mehura
comes into
being. ” That
is heaven as the celestial water. In a hymn to Ptah it is said, “The waters of
the inundation
cover the
lofty trees of every region.” These, however, are the waters of Nnu or the Nun
(Renouf, H. L.,
pp. 221-2),
and not the overwhelming flood of water on the earth. When the mehura first
came into
existence it
was a heaven imaged as the water that was undivided by the astronomers, the
islands or
other
land-limits that were figured in the aerial vast; and heaven as the celestial
water was the Nnu or
Nun. A “true
explanation of the world-wide deluge myths” no longer need be sought for in the
book of
Genesis or in
the tradition of a great flood that swept the plains of Mesopotamia; nor in any
vast
cataclysm
that might have been caused by the melting of the ice at the close of the
glacial period
(Huxley,
Nineteenth Century, 1890, pp. 14-15). We find by the Egyptian wisdom that “the
deluge,” as it is
commonly
termed, belongs neither to geography, nor geology, nor history. Geology, the
latest of the
sciences, was
comparatively unknown to the early world. Geology did not furnish the kind of
fact with
which the
ancient science was concerned. Whatsoever [Page 549] the Egyptian
“mystery-teachers of the
depths” may
have known of mines and metals, mythology was not geological in the least
degree. Neither
did the
Kamite chronology include the computation of geological time.
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Ancient
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It was
confidently asserted by Bunsen that the deluge legend was unknown to the
Egyptians. But they
had all the
deluges that ever were, as the Hir-Seshta informed Solon, including the “great
deluge of all,”
whereas the
Greeks could only muster two. But in no case were these geological
catastrophes. M.
Lenormant asserted
that the story of the deluge was unknown to the black race, and that “while the
tradition
holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the
Aryan people,
the monuments
and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not
afforded
one even
distant allusion to this cataclysm.” The statement sounds authoritative, but it
is not true.
Professor
Sayce, following Lenormant, asserts that “no tradition of a deluge had been
preserved by the
Egyptians”
(Fresh Light from the Monuments, p. 47). This comes of raking for human
history, and for
nothing else,
in the Semitic débris of the Kamite astronomical mythology. Both are wrong, and
both were
equally
misled through looking for the deluge with the Semitic versions for their
determinatives. Bibliology
has gone
perilously near to ruining Assyriology and Egyptology for the first generations
of students in this
country. It
is fortunate for genuine scholarship that there are livers out of Bible-burdened
Britain.
To identify
the deluge-legend in Egypt you must know how to look for it; no use in peering
through the
Semitic
spectacles. The legend of Atlantis re-told by Plato in Timaeus was Egyptian,
and no doubt with
the legend
came the name of lost Atlantis, transliterated through the Greek. As Egyptian,
the word atr=atl
has several
meanings in relation to water. Atru is the water, the water-flood, the
water-boundary, limit,
measure,
frontier, embankment. Egyptian in the early stages had no sign of . But by
substitution of the
later letter
for r the
word atr becomes atl, the root of such names as Atlantis and Atlantic. With
this
change of
letter the Atarantes of Africa become the Atalantes. The word antu or anti
signifies a division of
land. Thus
Atlanti, whence Atlantis, as a compound of two Egyptian words, denotes the land
divided by
the waters,
or canals of water. Now the earliest nuit or nomes of Egypt were seven in
number, and these
were seven
territories marked out, limited, and bounded by the atlu (atru) as river,
canal, conduit, or
water-boundaries.
In the valley of the Nile, the land was bounded first by water as the natural
boundary,
and seven
nomes would be enclosed by seven atlu, long before the land limit was marked
out by the
boundary-stones
or stelae. And atl-antu, we suggest, is the original for the names of Atlantis
and the
Atlantic
Ocean. It is noticeable that in the Nahuatl vocabulary atl is also the water
name, and that atlan
denotes the
border or boundary of the water (Baldwin, Ancient America, p. 179). Atlan thus
becomes a
name for the
mound, island, or tesh that was placed as a limit to the water in Egypt. This
would be the
land of
Atlan, as we find it both in Africa and America. There were seven such water
limits to the land in
Egypt when it
was [Page 550] divided into seven nomes. And seven astronomes named after these
become the
seven islands of the lost Atlantis, which sank in the celestial waters, the
heptanomis of the
seven lands
below having been repeated in the mapping out of heaven in seven astronomes.
The
heptanomis
above, like the one below, was formed of seven lands that were divided by the
seven waters,
canals, or
atlu (atru), and both together constituted the Atlantis of uranography, the
only one that could
ever be lost
by the celestial waters overflowing the celestial lands. The seven rulers of
the astronomes
attained the
status of divine princes in the celestial heptanomis. And among the nomes of
Lower Egypt
we find the
nome of the Prince of Annu; the nome of the prince of Lower Egypt; the nome of
Supti (Sut);
the nome of
Samhutit (Horus); the nome of Sebek; the nome of Shu; the nome of Hapi. Here
then, if
anywhere on
earth, we find a geographical prototype for the Atlantis that was lost in seven
islands,
according to
the records kept by the astronomers, which are preserved in the mythography.
Among the
many types of
the heptanomis and its septenary of powers and stations of the pole may be
enumerated:
— A mount
with seven caves; seven islands in the sea; the seven-headed serpent whelmed
beneath the
waters; a
tree with seven branches; a fish with seven fins; a pole with seven horns; a
cross with seven
arms; the
seven supporting giants; the ark of seven cubits; the boat with seven kabiri on
board; the group
of seven
cities.
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It is not
necessary to suppose that the Egyptians were the helpless victims of their own
symbolism, who
lived in
mortal dread of the celestial waters falling down and overwhelming them in a
deluge once for all.
But there can
be no doubt that the water-flood on earth against which the early race was
powerless
produced a
profound and permanent impression, so that the deluge idea became associated
with the
firmamental
water. This can be proved by the mythical deluge dramatically represented in
the Ritual. “I
am the Father
of the Inundation,” says Anup at the northern pole, whence the waters issued in
the deluge
of the Milky
Way, or White Nile of the Nun. The Egyptian Ritual affords a study of the
deluge mythos in
the phase of
eschatology. The passage for the soul in death has long and universally been
likened to a
river or some
dark water flowing betwixt the two worlds of earth and heaven. This in Egypt
was the Nun.
The way of
the gods in their ascent and descent to earth was by water. The way of souls in
their ascent
to heaven is
equally by water, whether in the ark of the moon, the bark of Orion, or the
boat of the sun.
The manes on
entering the other life thus addresses the sailors of the solar bark, “O ye
seamen of Ra, at
the gloaming
of day let me live after death, day by day, as doth Ra.” That is by means of
the boat which
keeps the sun
or the soul of the deceased afloat upon the drowning element (ch. 3). In the
chapter for
travelling on
the road which is above the earth (ch. 4), the speaker says, “It is I who
voyage on the
stream which
divideth the divine pair.” These are the two sisters Isis and Nephthys, whose
stations in the
Osirian solar
mythos were at the western and eastern sides of the river which ran north and
south in
heaven as in
Egypt. Some prophetic tableaux show the deceased in his funeral bark, speeding
[Page 551]
before the
wind with all sail set, having started on his way to the next world the very
day that he took
possession of
his new abode in death (Maspero, Egypt. Arch., p. 120). Amongst the words that
are said
on the day of
burial to bring about “the resurrection and the glory,” the deceased asks that
he may see
the ship of
the holy Sahus traversing the sky; that is, the ark of souls represented in the
constellation of
Orion. He
also pleads, “Let the divine vessel Neshemet advance to meet me.” The Osiris
tells us that the
name of his
bark is “Collector of Souls.” “The picture of it is the representation of his
glorious journey
upon the
canal” (ch. 58). Safe in the ark, he crosses the waters in which the helpless
souls are wrecked.
In the chapter
by which the ship is sailed in the nether-world, the speaker not only sails
across the water
of Nnu, for
he says, “I come from the lake of fire and flame, from the field of flame,” and
he stands erect
and safe “in
the bark which the god is piloting, at the head of Aarru,” that is, on the
summit of the mount,
or final
resting-place of the ark (Rit., ch. 98, Renouf), which the deceased had safely
reached through fire
and flood. On
entering the solar bark the Osiris says, “I have come myself and delivered the
deity from
the pain and
suffering that were in the trunk, in shoulder, and in leg. I have come and
healed the trunk
and fastened
the shoulder and made firm the leg. And I embark for the voyage of Ra.” The leg
of Osiris,
like the leg
of Nut or the leg of Ptah, imaged the supporting power of the pole. The manes
pleads, “Let
not the
Osiris Nu be shipwrecked on the great voyage” (ch. 130). ‘Let not disasters
reach him.” “May the
steering be
kept clear from misadventure.” “Let me come to see my father Osiris” (ch. 99).
“O, thou ship
of the garden
of Aarru, let me be conveyed to that bread of thy canal as my father, the great
one, who
advanceth in
the divine ship” (ch. 106, Renouf). “Lo, I sail the great bark on the stream of
the god Hetep.
I took it at
the mansion of Shu” — the starry heaven (ch. 110, Renouf). “I sail upon its
stream and range
within the
garden of Hetep” (ch. 110). When about to enter the bark of Ra, the speaker
says, “O great
one, let me
be lifted into thy bark. Let me make head for thy staircase. Let me have charge
of those who
convey thee,
who are attached to thee, and who are of the stars which never set “ (Rit., ch.
102). These
are the seven
that pull at the rope, or as we should say, that keep the law of gravitation
and equipoise;
the seven
arms of the balance, or the seven bonds of the universe; the seven tow-ers that
became the
later seven
rowers, sailors, or Kabiri. These are sometimes called the seven spirits of
Annu, that is at the
pole, the
mount of glory in the stellar mythos. Four of the seven can be identified as
Amsta, Hapi,
Tuamutef, and
Kabhsenuf (Rit., ch. 97). “Said at the bark: Staff of Anup, may I propitiate
those four
glorified
ones who follow after the master of all things?” These are four of the seven
that pulled the bark
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up to the
landing-stage upon the summit with the primitive rope, who are afterwards
stationed as the four
oars at the
four cardinal points, in a later heaven, and also as the children of Horus, who
had previously
been his
brothers. There is a great bursting forth of the floods in Amenta, described in
the Ritual as a
vast and
overwhelming inundation. This [Page 552] passage of the waters shows the
deluge-legend in the
Kamite
eschatology. The Osiris calls upon the lord of the flood, “the great one who is
shoreless,” to save
him. “Do thou
save me!” “I who know the deep waters” is my name. But “I am not one who
drowneth.
Blessed are
they who see the bourne. Beautiful is the god of the motionless heart who
causeth the stay
of the
overflowing — or the flood. Behold! there cometh forth the lord of life, Osiris
thy support, who
abideth day
by day.” “The tunnels of the earth have given me birth.” This overflow of the
great waters
called the
flood also occurs in Sheol amongst the other trials and tribulations of the
sufferer represented
in the Hebrew
book of Psalms. “The channels of waters appeared, and the foundations of the
world were
laid bare”
(ch. 18). “He drew me out of great waters.” As one means of salvation from the
overwhelming
waters the
manes clings to the sycamore-tree which standeth in the lake of Akeb. He
exclaims, “I
embrace the
sycamore, I am united to the sycamore-tree.” That is, to Osiris in the tree,
the tat or pole,
the type of
fixity to be clasped for safety amid the waters rising round the soul in death
and in the
darkness of
the nether earth. Sufficient mythical matter for a legend of the deluge and the
ark may be
found in the
64th chapter of the Ritual. It is recorded in the rubrical directions appended
to the chapter
that it “was
discovered on a plinth of the god of the Hennu-bark by a master-builder of the
wall in the time
of King Septi
the victorious.” Septi, or Seti, was a king in the first dynasty who lived and
ruled in Egypt
from 6,000 to
7,000 years ago. At that time the chapter was rediscovered as an ancient
writing. We learn
from this
that the bursting forth of the waters in an overwhelming flood was based upon
the natural fact of
the
inundation in Egypt. The imagery had been reproduced in heaven, and also in
Amenta, the lower
Egypt of the
nether-world. A great catastrophe caused by the waters that have broken out of
bounds is
more than
once referred to in the Ritual. The Osiris says to the powers, “Grant ye that I
may have the
command of
the water, even as the mighty Sut had the command of his enemies on the day of
disaster to
the earth.
May I prevail over the long-armed ones in their (four) corners, even as that
glorious and ready
god prevailed
over them” (Renouf, ch. 60). The bursting forth of the waters is described as a
great
disaster. In
this chapter there is an application of the deluge imagery to the sun in the mythos
and the
departed soul
in the eschatology. With the Egyptians, the supreme type of helpfulness and
charity, or of
love to the
neighbour, was an ark or boat that offered safety to the shipwrecked amidst the
waters.
Hence, when
pleading in the Hall of Judgment the speaker claims to have “done the right
thing in
Tamerit”
(Egypt), he clinches it by saying, “I have given bread to the hungry, water to
the thirsty, clothes
to the naked,
and a boat to the shipwrecked” (ch. 125).
The
subject-matter is very ancient. It belongs to that early time when Sut was a
pre-Osirian form of the
Good Being,
in relation to the pole, the dog-star, and the inundation of the Nile. Here the
deluge of the
inundation is
a deluge of destruction directed against the workers of evil. In short, it does
what the [Page
553]
inundation did for Egypt in washing away the result of drought, in cleansing
from corruption and
restoring a
healthy new life to the land. Hence the deceased desires to have the same
command over
the waters in
Amenta that Sut had when they burst forth in a drowning flood. Thus, 6,000
years ago the
so-called
“deluge legend” was ancient in Egypt, and it belonged to the time when Sut, in
command of the
waters, had
not lost his place in glory; and his deluge was employed to destroy the Sebau,
the Sami, the
Apap-dragon,
the long-armed ones, and other evil enemies of God and man who were not human
beings. In
the same chapter Osiris has superseded Sut as lord of the flood. Further, the
two divine sisters
Isis and
Nephthys were imaged as two birds. The ark of Nnu described in the Ritual is
conducted over
the Nun by
two birds which represent the two sister-goddesses Isis and Nephthys. It is
said to these in
relation to
the inundation, “Ye two divine hawks upon your gables, who are giving attentive
heed to the
matter, ye
who conduct the ship of Ra, advancing onwards from the highest place of the ark
in heaven.” It
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is also said
to Osiris, “Thy two sisters Isis and Nephthys come to thee, and they convey to
thee the great
extent (of
the waters) in thy name of the great extender as lord of the flood (Teta,
274).” These allusions
show that
there was an ark to which the two birds were attached as conductors. They are
represented as
hawks, but as
the birds of east and west, or the earlier south and north, are equivalent to
the dove of day
and the raven
of night in Semitic tradition. Isis was the lady or bird of dawn, and Nephthys
the lady of
darkness. In
this, the solar phase, the passage of the ark was from west to east, where it
was conducted
by the two
birds or goddesses of the west and east. Heaven was flooded with a deluge of
light at
daybreak, and
the nether earth was inundated with a deluge of darkness. The ark conducted
through the
waters by the
two birds of light and darkness, or east and west, is described in a twofold
character as the
shrine of
Osiris in the centre of the earth, and also as the ark of Ra that reaches the
highest point in
heaven (ch.
64, lines 5-8). It is the ark of the “lord of resurrections, he who cometh
forth from the dusk
and whose
birth is from the house of death,” or, from Amenta, as the re-arising solar
god. The ark that
rested on
Mount Nizir in the Babylonian legend, or Mount Ararat in the Hebrew version,
and on Mount
Manu in the
Hindu account, is described in the Ritual as the “ship of Ra” which attains
“the highest place
of the ark in
heaven,” with the mount of glory for anchorage and the pole for mooring-post.
The deceased
in the
character of Nnu repulses the water of the deluge. “He is the image of Nnu,
lord of the inundation
and father of
the gods” (Rit., ch. 136A). He manoeuvres the ark or bark with which he voyages
in heaven.
“He turns
back the deluge” that “devastates the leg of Nut,” and “brings back strength to
the fainting
gods” by such
means of dealing with the waters. In this chapter of the Ritual the devastating
deluge is
also alluded
to (in line 1) as a mode of judgment. It is directed against the rebels. Those
who are in the
ark or the
solar bark are saved from the great cataclysm which “devastates the leg of Nut”
or sweeps
away the
support of the celestial waters, whilst the rebels are overthrown and reduced
to non-existence.
The rebels
against Ra are identical with the “men” or the “race” that spoke and plotted
[Page 554] evil
against him
in another version of the deluge myth. After the deluge of devastation there is
a renewal,
rejuvenescence,
and rebirth. Seb and Nut (earth and heaven) are pleased at heart; they grow
young
again. The
leg of Nut, which the deluge devastated, was a very early type of the celestial
pole, as the
bulwark,
prop, or mainstay against the waters of the firmament. In one phase the ark of
Nnu is the ark of
the Nun as
the celestial water. It is depicted in chapter 44 crossing the water of
Putrata, the lake of
darkness, and
cutting its way through the coils of the Apap-dragon. The speaker is one of the
manes in
Amenta about
to embark on board the boat of souls. He says, “O thou who sailest the ship of
Nnu across
that gulf
which is void, let me sail the ship; let me fasten the tackle in peace, in
peace. Let me fasten my
tackle and
come forth.” “The place is empty into which the starry ones fall down headlong
upon their
faces and
find nothing by which they can raise themselves up.” The ship of Nnu is facing
the west, where
it has to
cross the lake of darkness, or the great gulf of the waters, by night, the
lurking-place of the
devouring
dragon, into which the setting stars go down, also the human souls that have
not attained
salvation on
board the ark. We learn previously that the deluge is imminent. In other words,
the waters of
the Nun are traversed
by the ark at night with the rescued souls on board. The shrine at the centre
of the
earth is one
with the shrine in the ark of earth, and the ark of earth in one character is
the ship of Nnu in
the other; it
is the ark of Osiris or Ptah in Amenta, and the ark of Ra in heaven, when “it
comes forth in
the east.”
But whether in the depth or height, the bark of inert Osiris or the living Ra
would still be the
bark of Nnu,
the ark that swam the deluge of the celestial water. It is said that the bark
of Ra is in danger
of the
whirlwind and storm, which affords a glimpse of the tempest commonly associated
with the deluge
in the
legends and traditions of the great disaster. But the Osiris-Nu, or Nnu as god
of the inundation,
turneth back
the water-flood, the deluge that has nearly overwhelmed the “leg of Nut” (or
the pole) which
supports the
firmament; and he keeps the companions safe who are on board the bark until the
resting-
place is
finally attained upon the summit of the mount. The land that is reached at last
by the mariners in
the ark of
Nnu is called the “tip of heaven,” at the place of “coming forth from the
swathings in the garden
of Aarru,”
and the “coming forth in exultation. ”These are the names of that celestial
country for which the
bark or ark
of Nnu was sailed (ch. 99). It is also called the ship of the garden of Aarru
(ch. 106). The
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speaker in
chapter 98 says, “I stand erect in the bark which the god is piloting . . . at
the head of Aarru.”
This is the
Aarru of spirits perfected in the eschatology, the summit of which is in the
region of the never-
setting stars
at the highest point of heaven. In the various deluge legends the ark was stranded
on the
top of the
mount, as it was on Ararat and Nizir, Manu and Malata. Here the ark of Nnu
becomes the bark
of the
blessed, whose landing-place in heaven is called Mount Hetep, at the summit of
the pole. The pole
is the
mooring-post to which the cable of the vessel was made fast. The voyage cometh
to an end, and
praise is
uttered to the gods who are in the garden of everlasting peace and [Page 555]
plenty. When the
passengers
approach the landing-stage, Heaven opens its embracing arms; the lamps of
heaven are
lighted, the
Khabsu gods rise up to offer acclamations. The “old ones” and those who have
gone before
are said to
welcome the voyagers at their arrival on the mount of assembly and reunion.
These are the
two classes
of spirits, superhuman and human, elemental and ancestral, otherwise called
“the gods and
the
glorified.” There was no need for an altar to be raised at this landing-stage
upon the summit at the
moment of
debarkation to complete the parallel with the landing on Mount Ararat or Nizir
in the Semitic
versions.
The Ritual
preserves the astral mythos in the form of drama. The voyagers who land upon
Mount Hetep
are souls of
the departed, and not human beings. The rendering in the Ritual is not
historical, not merely
mythical, not
simply astronomical. Sacrificial ceremonies are performed upon the altar and
offerings
made at the
moment of debarkation. These are in two categories. In one Noah, Nnu, or the
Osiris-Nu
presents the
oblation in propitiation to the gods upon the mount. In the second, those who
have gone
before as the
ancestral spirits make offerings of the sacred cakes and other forms of food to
the newcomers
whom they
welcome as their fellow-citizens to the eternal city (ch. 98, Renouf) on their
landing
from the ark
of Nnu. Thus far we trace the deluge-legend and the ark of Nnu in the phase of
eschatology
by means of
the Ritual.
We now turn
to representations of the subject in the astronomical mythology which in
earlier ages
preceded those
of the eschatology.
In several
chapters of the Ritual a breaking forth of the celestial waters in a typical
deluge is alluded to or
described. In
chapter 136A it is said of the god who has the mastery over the inundation, “He
turneth
back the water
flood which is over the thigh of the goddess Nut at the staircase of Seb.” The
overwhelming
water has here ascended to the summit of the mount or staircase, which, like
the leg of
Nut, was a
figure of the pole. Thus the deluge is portrayed as submerging the pole when
this was figured
as the leg of
Nut, and the water flood was then turned back by Nnu, the lord of the celestial
water, whose
ark of
salvation from the deluge is the ship of heaven by name. Howsoever
constellated, the bark of Nnu
was the ark
of heaven on the celestial water. Now when the change was made from a heaven of
seven
divisions to
one of eight, as described in the very ancient papyrus containing the hymn to
the god Shu, it
is portrayed
as superseding the ark of seven cubits with an ark of eight cubits, or the
heptanomis by the
octonary.
This also indicates a change of pole, the pole that was imaged by the staff of
Shu the giant.
The hymn to
Shu includes the legend of a deluge. It is called “a chapter of the excellent
songs which
dispel the
immerged,” that is, those who were drowned in the deluge as the evil creatures
of darkness
(Magic
Papyrus, Records of the Past, vol. X, p. 137). It is said, “Those who are
immerged do not pass
along. Those
who pass along do not plunge. They remain floating on the waves like the dead
bodies on
the
inundation of the Nile, and they shut their mouths as the seven great dungeons
are closed with an
eternal
seal.” Now, there is reason to suppose that these seven great dungeons, sealed
with an eternal
seal, were a
form of the superseded heaven in seven divisions answering to [Page 556] the
seven caves
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in the
Mexican mount, and to the book of seven seals in Revelation. In the same
papyrus there is “a book
of magical
spells for remaining as dwellers in the country” where the great catastrophe
occurs; it is said
that “Horus
has given the warning cry,” ”subsidence of the country!” This, as we interpret
the text, is at
the
cataclysmal ending in time and space that was mythically dramatized as a deluge
or inundation which
overwhelmed
the land above and effaced certain landmarks in the celestial waters. The cubit
may stand
for a general
measure. Four measures or cubits typified an ark of the four quarters in space.
Seven
cubits were a
fourth of twenty-eight measures in the circle of twenty-eight lunar signs. Thus
seven cubits
or measures
in an ark, shrine, or tabernacle formed a figure of heaven in seven divisions.
And when the
heptanomis
was followed by the heaven of Taht, the ark of eight cubits superseded the
shrine of seven
cubits, and
the ape became the type of Taht in the octonary instead of in the heptanomis.
The ark of
seven cubits
was continued as a sacred type in the religious ceremonies. For instance, it is
commanded
by the rubric
to chapter 133, Papyrus of Nnu, that this chapter shall be recited over a boat
four cubits in
length on
which the divine sovereign chiefs of the cities have been painted and a heaven
with its stars
portrayed.
But in the Papyrus of Ani the boat is ordered to be made seven cubits in
length. This, then, is
a figure of
the ark of seven cubits which preceded the ark of eight cubits and the heaven
of four quarters
that was
imaged by the boat of four cubits. The heptanomis had been figured as an ark of
seven
measures in
the waters of heaven, and this was followed by the ark of eight measures as the
shrine of
the kaf-ape,
a zootype of Taht the lunar god, after there had been “a subsidence of the
country” and the
“secret
abysses of the Nun” and the foundations of the deep had been laid open at the
time of the
deluge.
There had
been no moon established in the stellar mythos. Otherwise stated, time was not
yet computed
by the lunar
reckoning, or by Taht, the reckoner of time. In this sense the moon was not
created until after
the deluge.
Thus, in some of the legends the moon becomes a resting-place or ark of safety
riding on the
waters. At
Hawaii the typical deluge was called “the flood of the moon.” Meru is likewise
shown to be a
form of the
mythical mount that reached up to the moon. Also it is related in one of the
Hebrew legends
that paradise
was exempt from the deluge or was preserved from the great disaster because it
was
planted on
the summit of a mountain reaching to the moon.
In the
Egyptian inscription called “the Destruction of Mankind” there is a rebellion
against Ra, the sun-
god, followed
by a great destruction and a deluge. Atum-Ra had been established as the king
of gods
and men, the
god by himself. There is a revolt against his supremacy. He calls the elder
gods around him
for
consultation, and says to them, “You ancient gods, behold the beings who are
born of myself; they
utter words
against me. Tell me what you would do in these circumstances. Behold, I have
waited, and I
have not
destroyed them until I should hear what you have to say.” The elder gods advise
that they may
go and smite
the enemies who plot evil against Ra, and let none remain alive. The rebels are
then
destroyed “in
[Page 557] three days of navigation.” When the deluge of blood is over it is
said by the
majesty of
Ra, “I shall now protect men on this account.” “I raise my hand (in token) that
I shall not again
destroy men.”
The rebel powers, headed by the coiling and constricting Apap-reptile vomiting
the deluge
of the dark
by night, were always in revolt against the lord of light, and this legend
commemorates their
overthrowal
in a deluge of blood. The chief agent in the work of vengeance is Hathor, the
lunar goddess,
who is aided
by the solar goddess, Sekhet, in executing the commands of Ra. The goddess
started; she
smote the
enemies over all the land because they had plotted evil against the majesty of
Ra. These
enemies are
drowned in the deluge then poured out; “the fields were entirely covered with
water through
the will of
his majesty the god. And there came the goddess (Hathor) in the morning, and
she found the
fields covered
with water; and she was pleased with it, and drank to her heart’s content. She
saw no
more of the
enemies, who were sunk in the waters that represented the flood of light which
was now
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poured forth
by Ra at dawn, and in which the creatures of the dark were drowned. It is said
by his
majesty,
living and well, to his followers, “ I call before my face Shu, Tefnut, Seb,
Nut, and the fathers and
mothers who
were with me when I was yet in the Nun, and I prescribe to Nnu, who brings his
companions
with him”; these are the instructions given by the god to Nnu: “Bring a small
number of them
(his
companions), that the beings may not see them” — these beings are the creatures
about to be
destroyed in
the coming flood — “and that their heart may not be afraid, thou shalt go with
them into the
ark or
sanctuary until I shall go with Nnu to the place where I stand,” or to the
summit of the mount on
which the
legendary ark at last was safely landed. The ark or sanctuary here indicated is
the figure of a
newly founded
heaven which follows the deluge by which a previous world was wrecked. The
inscription
is very
dilapidated, nevertheless it obviously contains a creation of “the men,” as in
the Assyrian revolt in
heaven in the
place of the creatures thus destroyed. When “his majesty arrived in the
sanctuary,” “the
men” were
going forth and bearing their bows and shooting their arrows against his
enemies. These were
not the
enemies but the defenders of Ra. Hence it was said to Ra by “the men,” “Let us
smite the
enemies, the
rebels.”
The celestial
water was primarily assigned to the female Nu or Nut. Her heaven was imaged as
the cow.
At first it
was the water-cow, and afterwards the milch-cow. And there was Nut (with) the
“majesty of Ra
on her back”;
she was carrying the god in her form of the cow. This mode of locomotion on the
cow’s
back or
between the cow’s horns (see the pictures) is now to be superseded by the
building of the solar
bark. “Said
by the majesty of the god, I have resolved to be lifted up.” “Who is it that
Nut will trust with it?”
i.e., with
the new ark or sanctuary of the god. “Carry me, that I may see.” Said by the
majesty of the god,
“Let a field
of rest extend itself,” and there arose a field of rest. “Let the plants grow
there,” and there
arose the
Sekhet-Hetep, or fields of the papyrus-reed. The beings who were destroyed were
Sebau and
Sami,
representatives of the plagues of Egypt. The men who are created in their place
are of the starry
race. “The
majesty of the god saw the inner part of the [Page 558] sanctuary in which he
had been lifted
up” (or the
ark in which he made his voyage over the celestial waters), and he said, “I
assemble and give
possession of
these multitudes of men, I establish as inhabitants all the beings which are
suspended in
the sky, the
stars,” and Nut began to tremble very strongly. “I assemble there the
multitudes that they
may celebrate
thee,” and there arose the multitudes. These are stars in one category, and in
the other
souls that
were collected in the ark of salvation (Rit., ch. 58) or the ark of Nnu — that
is, the ark of
heaven and of
the god of the celestial water. “Said by the majesty of Ra, My son Shu, take
with thee my
daughter Nut,
and be the guardian of the multitudes which live in the nocturnal sky. Bear
them on thy
head, and be
their fosterer. This is an allusion to his raising overhead the beautiful
creation of the starry
firmament
which Shu sustains, whether in the form of the cow of Nut, the water of the
Nun, or the ark of
Nnu. After
the destruction there is to be a new creation, and Ra is in need of support
from Nnu and his
companions.
“Said by the majesty of the god (or his majesty) to the majesty of Nnu, My
limbs have
suffered
long; I cannot walk without support, or have others to support me.” This will
show that Nnu
occupies the
place of Noah in relation to the building of the ark or sanctuary, and in
accordance with the
instructions
received from Ra. Ra informs Nnu that he needs some other means of supporting
himself
than the back
of the cow. He calls upon Nnu and his three sons to assist him against his
enemies the
rebels. Thus
the cow of Nut was to be superseded by the ark of Nnu when he became the
representative
of the
heavenly water and master of the inundation. Nut says dutifully that she will
act as it seems good
to her father
Nnu (l. 30). There had been various kinds and forms of the celestial or
astronomical ark that
was at first
necessitated as the means of carriage for the gods, because the heavens had
been imaged
as the
firmamental water. The great mother Apt, who was the image of all firstness
both by name and
nature in the
likeness of the pregnant hippopotamus, was a kind of ark, and possibly the
earliest that ever
crossed the
waters of the Nun. She carried her young ones in the cabin that was uterine.
Child-Horus on
his
papyrus-reed was in the ark that saved him from the waters, as the sign was
constellated in the
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planisphere
of Denderah. The Pleiades formed an ark as constellation for the Khuti; the
Lesser Bear for
Anup and the
seven voyagers round about the pole. Orion was the ark of the holy sahus, with
Horus at
the look-out.
The ark of Taht was in the crescent moon that sailed the azure deep by night.
Then Ra, the
solar deity,
resolved on being lifted up as god alone, the only one, who superseded all the
elder powers.
A new heaven
was to be his tabernacle. This was the ark of Nnu. The change from one heaven
to the
other implied
a great destruction of the rebels. A deluge was the modus operandi, and the ark
the means
of safety for
the few just men and true, together with their consorts, who were saved from
the
catastrophe.
As a symbol in sign-language the ark was built by Nnu, the master of the
firmamental water,
for the means
of safety in the world all water against the coming flood and the subsidence of
land, which
was the land
of Nnu. [Page 559]
In space it
was the ark of the four quarters that was propelled by the four paddles of
Hapi, Tuamutef,
Kabhsenuf,
and Amsta. Hence Seb (or the earth) “abideth stably” by means of the four
rudders or oars
(Rit., ch.
99). Hence also the four-square box that imaged the ark of Noë on the
well-known Apamean
coin. In
Akar, or Amenta, it was the ark of Osiris; in earth the ark of Seb; in heaven
the ark of Ra. Its
mainmast was
the pole. The nightlight on the masthead was the pole-star. In the myth it was
the ark of
Ra, “the bark
of millions of years”; in the eschatology it is the ark of salvation, the
refuge for eternity.
The sinking
ones had looked for their deliverance from the waters to the bark of Anup,
voyaging round
the pole;
also to the crescent-shaped arc of Taht seen in the new moon; then to the ark
of Horus and the
“holy sahus”
constellated in Orion; and finally they sought salvation in the ark which Nnu
and his three
sons, Shu,
Taht, and Seb, were now to build for Ra, the solar god.
The Egyptian
ark or ship of Nnu is the ark of heaven, or, conversely stated, the ark of
heaven is the ship
of Nnu; and
the ark of heaven was the revolving sphere configurated as a sailing vessel
with two masts
as we have
found it figured by the mystery-teachers in their uranographic imagery of the
celestial deluge.
The ark is
portrayed in the act of sailing over a vast, unfathomable, hollow void of
formless space; as it is
said, “the
place is empty.” Into this the helpless ones fall headlong unless they are
saved on board the
ark. In a
vignette to the Papyrus of Anhai, it is Nnu that is seen uplifting the boat of
the gods with seven
persons on
board, besides the beetle and the solar disk. The figure of Nnu in this drawing
is both male
and female,
Nnu and Nut in one figure (Budge, Papyrus of Anhai, pl. 8). Among the Assyrian
fragments
there is
reference to a legend which has not come down to us. In this it is said that
Ishtar counselled the
destruction
of mankind, whereas in the extant account of the deluge the goddess bewails
their
destruction
and grieves bitterly over the loss of her children. Now Ishtar is an
Akkado-Assyrian form of
the goddess
Hathor, who in the Egyptian mythos counsels the destruction of the beings, and
executes
the judgment
passed upon them by the gods, with no wailing or weeping afterwards. This
points back to
the Egyptian
original of another Akkado-Assyrian version.
According to
the Hebrew reading of the legend, the deluge was provoked by the sins of men.
“The Lord
saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and he determined to blot out and
obliterate the
race; . . . .
“but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. VI. 5-8). The Chaldean and
Hindu
legends know
nothing of human sin as a cause of the deluge. The sin against the gods,
however, is
described as
the cause of a deluge in the so-called “destruction of men.” Ra says to Nun and
others of
the elder
pre-solar gods, “Behold the beings who are born of myself; they utter words
against me.”That
is, they are
in rebellion against the one true god. But these beings in this case were
elemental, not
mortal, and
the sin was not human. When the deluge or destruction is over and past, Ra
swears that he
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will not
again destroy men. “Said by Ra: I now raise my hand that I shall no more
destroy men.” [Page 560]
“I shall now
protect men on account of this.” So the Hebrew deity promises that he “will not
again curse
the ground
any more for the sake of men: neither will I again smite any more any living
thing,” as in the
“deluge of
destruction.”
This is the
same thing, only written out large and told as if it were a human history,
whereas the original is
mythological.
It relates to the superseding of the earlier gods, Nnu, Seb, Shu, and Taht, by
Ra as the
supreme
being, or rather these old gods and elemental powers are to become the servants
of his
majesty Ra in
the new heaven now established for the keeping of perfect time, with Ra as the
head over
all.
Ra had
resolved to be lifted up in an ark or sanctuary. Nnu and his small number of
companions who
enter the ark
or sanctuary are eight in number, four male, Nnu, Seb, Shu, and Taht, and four
female,
Sekhet, Nut,
Hathor, and Tefnut, who can be paired thus:— (1) Nnu with Sekhet, (2) Shu with
Tefnut, (3)
Seb with Nut
(4) Taht with Hathor. Nnu was the deity of the heavenly water, and Sekhet is in
possession
of the water
on the night of the great disaster or the deluge (Rit., 57, I, 2); Sekhet is
also called the “very
great one of
the liquid domain” (149). These are certainly a pre-Semitic form of the eight
in the ark, and
as Nnu was
the first-born of these gods, he may be called the father of the other three in
the ark as
represented
in the biblical version. The whole world, however, that was divided between the
three sons of
Nnu, Shu,
Seb, and Taht, was not on our earth; was not in Africa, Asia, or Europe. Shu
was to be the
guardian of
the multitudes in the nocturnal sky, Seb of the serpents in the cycles of time,
and to Taht were
assigned the
nations of the north. Taht had a double portion. Ra says, “I shall give thee to
raise thy hand
in the
presence of the gods. I shall give thee to embrace the two parts of the sky. I
shall give thee to turn
thyself
toward the northern nations.” This looks as if Taht were the prototype of
Japheth. Shu, whose
name signifies
shade, and who was to be the guardian of those who are in the sky of night,
agrees with
Ham, the dark
of colour or black. It was Shu who might have seen his father Nnu by night with
his person
exposed, as
it was his work to lift up the nocturnal heaven or Nnu. This leaves Shem as the
representative
of Seb. Seb is the father of Horus on earth, and, as it was supposed, the
Hebrew Messiah
was to
descend from Shem. Thus it is possible to identify the new point of departure
for the threefold
human race
derived from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, considered to be the fathers of three
different and
diverse races
of mankind. Ra describes the group of elder gods who preceded him as the
fathers and the
mothers.
“Said by his majesty, I call before my face Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, and the
fathers and mothers
who were with
me when I was still in Nun,” or previously to his issuing from the lotus in the
bosom of the
heavenly
water. Here we have the “fathers and mothers” of the new race or races in the
new world that
followed the
flood ready to the hand of the “sacred historian.” These fathers and mothers
are eight in
number all
told, who are mentioned by name: Nnu and Sekhet, Seb and Nut, Shu and Tefnut,
Taht and
Hathor. These
are eight persons in four pairs of consorts, exactly the same as the eight
consorts in the
ark of Noah.
[Page 561]
The moon-god
Taht becomes the enlarger of the domains of Ra, as his lunar representative by
night. Ra
calls Taht
before him: “Said by the majesty of the god (or his majesty) to Taht, Come, let
us leave the sky
and my abode,
because I wish to make a luminary in the inferior sky and in the deep region
where thou
inscribest
the inhabitants, and thou art the guardian of those who do evil . . . . . the
followers whom my
heart abhors.
But thou art my abode, the god of my abode: behold, thou wilt be called Tehuti,
the house
of Ra. I
shall give thee to send (lacuna) . . . . and there arose the ibis of Taht. I
shall give thee to raise thy
hand in
presence of the gods, and there arose two wings of the ibis of Taht. I shall
give thee to embrace
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the two parts
of the sky with thy beauty and thy rays, and there arose the lunar crescent of
Taht. I shall
give thee to
turn thyself towards the northern nations, and there arose the cynocephalus of
Taht which is
in his
escort. Thou art under my dominion.” This was written in the Book of Atum-Ra,
who was also the
god
Huhi=Ihuh. Thus, in this new creation of Ra which was established after the old
heaven had been
overwhelmed
by the deluge, the moon-god Taht was made the enlarger of the domains of Ra. As
we
read in the
texts, “Ra created him a beautiful light to show the name of his evil enemy,”
the Apap-dragon
of darkness.
This enlargement turns on the moon-god becoming the ruler for Ra by night and
establishing
his sovereignty over the black race in the domain of Sut and in the inferior
hemisphere. The
“enlarging”
in the Hebrew version is at the expense of Ham (=Kam, the black): “A servant of
servants
shall he be
unto his brethren,” but “God enlarge Japheth.” Ham is treated in the märchen as
the “evil
enemy” Apap,
or the black Sut in the mythos, thus making the legend ethnical by this
perversion of the
meaning.
Enlargement of the world denotes the formation of a heaven on a larger scale.
Thus Taht, like
Japheth, was
the enlarger or the enlarged. Also one mode of the enlarging was by Taht
becoming a
luminary in
the inferior sky and in the region of Amenta. And here we come upon the
probable origin of
the cursing
of Canaan in the Semitic travesty. Ham=Kam represents the power and the people
of
darkness.
Taht is to enlarge the borders of light at the expense of the domain of darkness.
It is said to
Taht by Ra,
“In the deep region where thou inscribest the inhabitants, thou art the keeper
of those who do
evil, the
followers whom my heart abhors.” These were the darkies and the “black-heads”
in the dark land
of Amenta,
who are to be subject to the rule of Taht by night, which has been converted in
the Semitic
perversion of
the mythos into the servitude of Canaan and the children of Ham.
When it had
been discovered that the moon derived its light and glory from the unseen sun
there was a
change of
status for them both. The moon was previously a mother to the child of light
whom she was
unable to
affiliate. And now, as it was mythically rendered, she learned that she was a
wife (hemt) as well
as a mother,
and that her infant was begotten by the solar god. The transaction is portrayed
as one of the
mysteries of
Amenta in the Ritual (ch. 80). The lady who gives light in darkness by night
and [Page 562]
overthrows
the devouring monsters describes herself as a kind of ravisher to Hu the solar
god. She
retires with
him to the vale of Abydos when she goes to rest. She seized upon the sun-god in
the place
where she
found him. The result of this is that the twins Sut and Horus, the powers of
darkness and light,
that were
previously born of the mother alone, are now attributed to the sun-god Hu or Ra
as his children.
Hathor had
been the lunar lady, the slayer of the evil powers of darkness, and now the
male god Taht is
equipped in
the house or ark of the moon as the teller of time for Ra. He is designated the
“teller of
decrees which
Ra hath spoken in heaven” for Horus to execute on earth and in Amenta, with
Taht and
Anup as his
two chief witnesses.
After the
deluge in “the destruction of mankind” the god Ra establishes a covenant with
those who have
escaped from
the flood. He says that what he commanded is well done, and that the
destruction of his
enemies
removes destruction from themselves. “Said by the majesty of Ra, It is well
done, all this. I shall
now protect
men on account of this. Said by Ra, I now raise my hand that I shall not
destroy men” i.e. not
again. The
making of this covenant after the deluge is followed by the establishment of
the New Year’s
festival
under the direction of the young priestesses of Hathor. “Hence comes it that
libations are made
under the
directions of priestesses at the festival of Hathor through all men since the
days of old,” (line
25). When the
lunar orb has been converted into the abode of Ra by night it is said, “And
there arose the
crescent moon
of Taht.” Now the lunar crescent is the mythological bow (Proc. Soc. Bib.
Arch., vol. VI, p.
131). The
speaker in the character of the solar god issuing from the crescent moon
exclaims, “ I am the
lion-god issuing
from the bow, and therefore I shot forth.” (Rit., ch.132) When this was written
it had been
apprehended
that the moon derived its light from the hidden sun, and shot the arrows forth
with the
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growing,
stretching crescent that was drawn bow-like to the full with all the force of
the young lion-god. It
was for this
that Taht the lunar deity was wanted by Ra as his bowman by night to shoot the
arrows of his
light with the
crescent of the monthly moon for his bow. For this the bow was set in the
nocturnal heaven
by Ra: “And
there arose the crescent moon of Taht”=the bow. The crescent moon was figured
as the bow
in heaven for
a sign that there should be no further deluge of destruction, because the
keeping of time
and season
did not now depend upon the setting or non-setting stars. When time was
reckoned by Tehuti
the teller,
by means of the dual lunation, a power was established that no flood which had
submerged the
pole or
drowned the heptanomis, or the heaven in ten divisions, could in future
overwhelm. Thus the
deluge in the
stellar mythos being over, and the powers of darkness being defeated and
destroyed,
chiefly
through the direct agency of the lunar goddess Hathor, the bow of Taht was set
in heaven with its
promise that
the waters of the wrath of Ra should not again cover the earth. This, like all
that is Egyptian,
was true
mythos, not false explanation of natural fact. It does not mean that the moon
was actually
created there
and then to give light for the first time.[Page 563] That would not be
mythology, but fictitious
history. The
Kamite account of this ancient wisdom is mythological; the biblical is
pretended history.
It has now to
be shown that the bow in the Kamite mythos, which we look upon as the original,
was not
the rainbow,
which was afterwards substituted as more natural by those who knew no better.
The lunar
crescent was
not only the bow of the deluge and sign of promise for all future time, it was
also an ark of
safety from
the waters of the Nun, in which the young child of light was bosomed and reborn
of the lunar
virgin
mother. In the Osirian cult Osiris was reborn in an ark of crescent shape which
was a figure of the
crescent
moon. It is said to Osiris in the preparatory pangs of birth, “Taht is a
protection for thee. He
placeth thy
soul in the lunar bark in that name which is thine of god Moon” or god An,
another name of
Osiris
(Records, vol. II, p. 119). The ark of the new moon was a means of resurrection
for Osiris on the
third night
after his death, if we count the 17th Athyr as one. The priests brought out the
sacred coffer
containing a
little golden ark. They also modelled a little image of the crescent moon.
The lunar
mythos followed the stellar and preceded the solar, and in this the lunar
crescent was an ark.
In relation
to which, the twin birds of light and darkness meet as it were in one when the
black and white
ibis is the
typical bird of the dual lunation, because, as Plutarch says, its feathers
resembled the halves of
the moon as
the bird of light in one half and in the other half the bird of darkness. Now
the ibis or hebi in
Egyptian is
the messenger by name, and the crescent moon was the ark of the lord of light
upon the
waters of
night. In the “Destruction of Mankind” Ra says to the moon-god, “Thou art my
abode (his lunar
ark), the god
of my abode; behold, thou art called Taht, the abode of Ra. And there arose the
ibis. I shall
give thee to
raise thy hand (Taht is also the hand of the gods) in presence of the gods. And
there arose
the two wings
of the ibis of Taht. I shall give thee to embrace the two parts of the sky.”
The one white and
black bird,
as representative of the moon in the Egyptian rendering, was the white bird of
the new moon
and the black
bird of the old moon, equivalent to the dove of light and the raven of darkness
in the other
legend. The
moon was the ark on the waters as the abode of Ra by night or during the deluge
of the
dark. The
bird that was given by Ra for Taht to send forth from the ark was the bird of
light and the bird of
darkness. In
the latter half of the lunation, when the moon was renewed in its crescent
shape, out flew
the bird as
messenger of light across the waters of the Nun, and in the dark half of the
disk, the bird was
of raven hue.
Such, we suggest, was the genesis of the two birds, or the double-feathered
one, that
issued from
the lunar ark in the original mythos, which preserved the representation of the
deluge and
the ark and
the two birds of day and night in the cult of Osiris or of Atum-Ra and Nnu. In
the Chaldean
account of
the deluge the swallow is sent forth from the ark in addition to the raven and
the dove. This
also is a
bird of the two sisters. In ch. 86 the manes makes his transformation into the
swallow, when
Horus is in
[Page 564] command of the bark (line 5). But in the Vignette (Pap. of Ani) the
bird called a
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swallow is a
martin, another type of the white and black bird in one, like the ibis of the
lunar ark. There is
a chapter of
the Ritual to be recited “when the moon renews itself on the first day of the
month,” the day,
therefore, on
which the lunar ark was launched upon the waters of the Nun and had to face the
deluge.
As it is
said, “Osiris is enveloped in storm and rain; he is enveloped. But the
beautiful Horus lendeth
succour
daily. He driveth off the storm from the face of Osiris in the moon. Behold him
coming. He is Ra
on his
journey. He is the four gods who are over the upper region.” The Osiris
arriveth at his own time,
and by means
of his ropes is brought to the light of day (Renouf, ch. 135). The ark of
Osiris on the waters
is described
as a kind of house-boat with gable ends, and the gable ends suggest that from
this particular
form of the
house and boat in one may have descended the well-known children’s toy of
Noah’s ark, as
the ark of
Noah in which eight souls, four males and four females, were saved from the
deluge, and the
ark of Nnu in
the Kamite astronomy.
The new
heaven was established on the four quarters that were founded upon the
solstices and
equinoxes by
the great architect Ptah. Thus the teba or square box is a figure of the heaven
that was
based upon
the four quarters which followed the ark of seven cubits, the ark of eight
cubits, and other
types of the
ark that floated on the celestial Nun or is said to be carried on the back of
the cow (Nut). The
eight on
board were not human beings, but four gods and four goddesses, or eight
heavenly bodies. It is
not the
Hebrew Noah, as such, who will account for several other Noahs in different
countries, but the
Kamite Nnu,
the “lord of the primordial water” — Nnu who is designated the father of the
gods. By aid of
the Kamite
Nnu we can more fully identify the Hottentot Noh, who, as they told Kolben (in
1713), “had
entered the
world by a sort of window.” The god Nnu of the Egyptian mythos will explain why
the hero of
Polynesian
legend has the same name. The story is told by both Ellis and Fornander. The
survivors from
the deluge of
Raiatea were saved on an island or mount called the tree reaching to the moon.
In this
version the
mount and tree of the Ritual are identical, the island being named after the
tree, whilst the
tree that
reaches up to the moon corresponds to the mount of Am-Khemen and the
establishment of
lunar time.
In the Hawaiian version, when Nnu had left his vessel, like Noah and Xisuthrus,
after the
flood, to
offer sacrifice to the god Kane, he looked up and saw the moon in the sky, and
he thought this
was the god,
saying to himself, “You are Kane, no doubt, though you have transformed
yourself to my
sight!” so he
made his offering and adored the moon. Then Kane descended on the bow and spoke
reprovingly
to Nnu, but, on account of it being a mistake, Nnu was forgiven by Kane, and
the bow was
left above in
token of the god’s forgiveness.
It was
natural for those who knew nothing of the Egyptian wisdom to suppose that the
deluge, the ark,
and the
character of [Page 565] Nevid, Nav, or Nevion, in the British mythos, was
derived from the Hebrew
records. But
the true and final explanation is that both were derived from the Egyptian on
separate lines
of descent.
The Druids were teachers of the wisdom of Egypt in the British Isles ages
before the Bible
was heard of
in Europe. The ark of Nnu, Noë, or Noah was the ark of the celestial waters. An
ark with the
Ali, or Ari,
was an ark with the seven on board who were rulers in the heptanomis. This is
extant as the
ark of the
seven Kabiri and the seven Hohgates, the seven who in Britain were the
companions of Arthur
in the ark.
When we understand that the Hebrew ark of Noah (or
) was the ark
of Nnu in Egypt, and is
the ark of
heaven by name in the astronomy, we are on the track for the first time to
learn how certain
later races
of mankind could be said to issue from the ark of Noah after a particular form
of the deluge in
which the
heaven in ten divisions was superseded by the heaven in twelve divisions, the
birthplace as an
ark being a
geometrical figure of the contemporary heaven. The deluge legend in the book of
Genesis
can be
directly traced to its Egyptian origin. Nnu was the master of the celestial
water. Under the same
name, and
also as Num, lord of the inundation, he was master of the water in the Nile on
earth. The
deluge, all
the deluges, and the whole of the arkite imagery, together with Noah himself in
very person,
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Ancient
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are dependent
on the beginning of creation with the water of the Nun or Nnu, and on heaven
being the
celestial Nnu
by name in the Egyptian language. In the Adoration of the Nile it is Nnu the
deity of the
heavenly
water that is invoked as mythical source of life and not simply the flowing
river. The object of
religious
regard as element or place or person was the celestial Nnu or Nun, who when
personified was
the giver of
the Nile and all its gifts. Nun or Nnu was the inundator of Egypt by means of
the Nile.
Moreover, the
god Num who is lord of the earthly inundation was preceded by the ancient deity
Nun (or
Nnu), who had
an ark or shrine, but was not worshipped in any temple hitherto discovered. It
appears
from
inscriptions of Tahtmes III at Thebes that Nnu the deity of the deluge and the
ark had been
continued in
the character of Num as the lord of the inundation of the Nile, with his ark or
teba
represented
by the city of Thebes, that “heaven on earth,” as it was designated by the
Queen Hatshepsu.
From these
inscriptions we learn that Tahtmes rebuilt the sanctuary of Nnu, or rather that
he built the
temple of
Amen-Ra at Thebes on the site of the ancient shrine. This, we are told, had a
circuit wall of
brick, and a
canal which conducted the water of the inundation “to the shrine of the god Nun
(Nnu) on the
arrival of
his season,” which shows that Nnu was one with Num as the elder pre-solar god,
and that Nun
(Nnu) passed
into the god Num as a solar god associated with the inundation. The temple
built by
Tahtmes was a
shrine of Nnu and Amen, as in “No-Amen,” the name of Thebes. In laying the
foundation
stone of the
new temple Tahtmes records the fact that he had to remove the older shrine of
the god Nun
(or Nnu), and
divert the course of the water that flowed to the shrine of the god Nnu,
because [Page 566] it
was in the
way (inscription cited by Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, p. 178, Eng. tr.).
Brugsch calls
this shrine
of Nnu the temple of the god; other Egyptologists tell us that no temple was
ever raised to Nnu
or Num. But
whether termed a temple or not, this ancient sanctuary was an ark-shrine and a
type of
protection
from the waters. The ark of Num is called his lordly bark. It is said that with
the inundation “he
brings once
more his lordly bark” (verse 5). Also, “Thou art the august ornament of the
earth, letting thy
bark advance
before men and lifting up the heart of women in labour” ; “All is changed by
the inundation;
it is a balm
of healing for mankind” (verses 9 and 11). Thus Nnu as deity of the heavenly
water was
represented
by the Nile as river and by Num as divinity when the sun-god was united with
the water-god
in Num or in
Amen-Ra at Thebes. But the main point here is the ark of Nnu that comes again
with the
inundation
once a year to Egypt. And if no temple of Nnu is known, he was expressly
associated with a
shrine which
originated in an ark that was a means of safety to the ancient lake-dwellers of
Africa. In the
Papyrus of
Nefer-uben-f (Budge) the god of the inundation is described as “the old man
Nnu.” Deceased
is standing
in the water and holding the sail of breath in his left hand. He prays that he
may have power
over the
seven divine princes who dwell in the place of the god of the inundation — that
is, of Nnu the
lord of the
celestial water as builder of the ark. He says, “I have power with my father,
the old man Nnu.
He hath
granted that I may live.” This is the father Nnu as Egyptian who became father
Noah in the
Hebrew
version.
Noah was a
just or righteous man, and perfect in his generations. This statement is put in
the forefront of
the Hebrew
deluge legend. In the Ritual it is granted to the Osiris Nnu that he shall
“carry maat at the
head of the
great bark and hold up maat among the associate gods.” Maat stands for justice
and
rightfulness;
and this is borne aloft upon the bark by the spirit of the just man made
perfect, right up to
the summit of
the mount which is the landing-place for those who are in the ark. “And so it
cometh that
the
Osiris-Nnu hath reached every one of his stations” in the ark that rests at
last upon Mount Hetep,
Mount Nizir,
Mount Meru, or the Mount of Ararat. Nnu is identified with Noah by the Arab
writer Murtadi
(1584), who
related that Num-Kufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, dreamed of a coming
deluge, and
built the
Pyramid as his ark of safety. He then “made his abode in the maritime pyramid
along with Noah”
(Nat. Gen.,
vol. II, p. 226). That is along with Nnu, the god of the ark and the
inundation, who was earlier
than Num, and
who had his teba in Thebes. This points to the pyramid of Num-Kufu being also a
form of
the ark, or
rather to the ark of earth and heaven in several of its successive forms that
were ultimately
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Ancient
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combined in
one consummate figure of the heavens and earth as a stupendous monument and
imperishable
register of the astronomical mythology. And, if so, it becomes apparent that
the
sarcophagus
at the centre was a co-type with the coffin, shrine or ark of Osiris in the
midst of Amenta.
This may help
to show how fragments of the astronomical mythology have been [Page 567] put
together in
the book of
Genesis without key or clue, and the old dark sayings of the ancient wisdom
repeated minus
the necessary
knowledge for enlightening the world.
Earlier
deluges than this of Noah are alluded to in one of the Jewish Haggadoth, which
relates that in the
time of Enos,
as in that of Cain, a great tract of land was flooded by the sea. Which is but
the end of a
patriarchate
described in terms of the deluge. (Encyclopaedia Biblica, col. 1297.) Items
from several
deluges are
included in the Hebrew versions. For instance, the animals are said to enter
the ark seven by
seven, and
also two by two. Here the numbers belong to two entirely different deluges, the
one from
which the
seven (or eight), the other from which the pair, were saved. There is no such
incongruous
mixture in
the Avesta. In this version Yima the shining is commanded by Zarathustra to
“make a circle to
all four
corners as a dwelling-place for all mankind,” and stock and store it against
the deluge, which is
the evil work
of the destructive serpent of darkness. All forms of life that enter this
enclosure do so in
imperishable
pairs. A lofty wall is to be made around it, and a window that gives light
within. The one
window we
take to be the pole-star. The lofty wall answers to the high white hall of
Ha-Ptah-Ka. It is
lighted with
self-created and eternal lights that shine above, and the created lights below
(Farg. II, l. 131).
These
correspond to the Kamite Urtu-Seku, the setting stars, and the Akhemu-Seku, or
stars that never
set, the
everlasting self-created lights. The window of Yima’s enclosure in heaven is
repeated in the one
light of
Noah’s ark (Gen vi, I) It is related in a Jewish legend that after the deluge
two animals came out
of the ark
which were not among the twos or sevens that went into it. These two were the
cat and the pig.
And they
belonged to the new creation of Atum-Ra. The cat, as solar type, is a symbol of
Atum-.u. It is
said in the
Ritual (ch. 17) the cat is Ra himself. It was in that form of the seer by night
that the sun-god
overcame the
evil Apap in the darkness of Amenta. The pig or boar in the Osirian mythos is a
type of the
evil Sut, the
opponent of the Good Being in Amenta. Amenta is the lower deck of an ark in
which the pig
of Sut was
present. This is in an ark that could not be built until Amenta had been
hollowed out by Ptah,
the father of
Atum-Ra, who was represented by the cat. Thus the addition of the cat and pig
to the
previous
denizens will help to identify which ark it was they came out of after the
deluge of Noah. As
Egyptian, it
was the ark in which Ra had resolved to be lifted up as “god alone,” and the cat
and pig were
types
belonging to the new creation that followed the “destruction of mankind.” This
was the ark of Nnu.
The
description of Noah’s deluge is an agglomerate compounded from the mythical
data and the actual
inundation.
The waters flowed in Egypt during a certain number of days. It is probable that
the fullest flow
was reckoned
at forty days and nights (see Hor-Apollo). In a fragment of the Melchizedekian
literature,
found by
Professor Sokolov, and appended to the Slavonic book of Enoch, the ark of Noah
“floated forty
days.” And it
is added, altogether they were in the ark 120 days. This is the exact length of
the water
season in the
Egyptian year of 360 days, which was first divided into three [Page 568]
tetramenes of 120
days each. It
may also be noted that outside of Egypt rain took the place of the inundation,
and the
deluge of
Noah consists of forty days and nights of rain. Fifteen cubits of fresh water
constituted a good if
not a perfect
Nile, and this is the measure applied to the flood of rain-water in the book of
Genesis.
Fifteen
cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered (ch. VII,
20). Fifteen cubits
of water,
however, could be no measure for a flood that covered all “the high mountains
that were under
the whole
heaven” (ch. VII, 19). The waters that prevailed on the earth for 150 days are
also equal to an
abundant
inundation of the Nile, but these have been mixed up with the waters of the
celestial Nun. Also
the fifteen
cubits of measure on the earth would be confused with the fifteen cubits,
measures, or days in
the
half-circle of the luni-solar month of thirty days, in which the lunar crescent
was the ark that is entered
by Osiris, on
the third day, to spread the actual water of life and light, not that deluge of
destruction which
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Ancient
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was entirely
mythical.
After the
deluge, according to the euhemerizing of the mythos in the book of Genesis,
Noah began to be
a husbandman,
and planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine and was drunken; and he was
uncovered
within his tent, and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his
father, and told his
two brethren
without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment and covered the nakedness of their
father
(ch. IX, 20,
24). “And their faces were backward, and they saw not the nakedness of their
father.” Now in
the mysteries
of Amenta, Osiris is covered by his son Horus to conceal his nakedness. “I am
with Horus,”
says Taht,
“on the day of covering Tesh-Tesh,” one of the names of Osiris (Rit., ch. 1).
It is also said to
Horus, “O
thou who coverest (or clothest) Osiris and hast seen Sut, O thou who turnest
back” (ch. 28).
Here the
adversary of Osiris is present with Horus in this scene of concealing the
father’s nakedness,
and the bad
character of the black, evil-minded Sut appears to have been given to Ham as a
son of
Noah. In the
Chaldean account of the deluge a sacrifice is offered at the coming forth from
the ark.
Hasisadra
says, “I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the peak of a mountain.
Seven jugs of wine I
took. At the
bottom of them I placed reeds, pines, and spices. The gods collected at its
burning, the gods
like Sumbe
gathered over the sacrifice.” (Deluge, Tab., col. 3, Smith.) The basis of the
oblation in the
Kamite
sacrifice is the blood of the beings that have been destroyed. “Said by the
majesty of the god, Let
them begin
with Elephantine, and bring to me the fruits in quantity. And when the fruits
had been brought
they were
given . . lacuna.” The sekti (miller) of Annu was grinding the fruits, while
the priestesses poured
the juice
into the vases; and those fruits were put into vessels with the blood of the
beings, and there
were seven
thousand pitchers of drink. “And there came the majesty of the king of Upper
and Lower
Egypt, with
the gods, to see the drink after he had ordered the goddess to destroy the
beings in three
days of
navigation.” Instead of the Assyrian seven jugs of wine the Egyptian has 7,000
pitchers of drink,
and this is
brewed from the blood of the massacred beings mingled with the juice of the
fruits of the
earth; and
here, as in the later version, the gods gather over the [Page 569] sacrifice
“to see the drink.”
Shedding the
blood of the wicked, in this great slaughter of the evil beings, was a mode of
offering the
oblation to
the Good Being. Blood and the fruits of the earth were the two primitive forms
of the offering,
and these are
blended together in a deluge of intoxicating drink.
A most
primitive representation of this sacrifice which followed the deluge is made by
the Ovaherero, an
African tribe
adjoining that of the Bushmen. They claim to have issued from the typical tree
of the
beginning,
which is said by the missionary Reiderbecke to be a kind of Ygdrasil. The
Ovaherero say that
the sky was
once let down in a deluge, by which the greater part of mankind were drowned.
This they
attribute to
the Old Ones in heaven, whose wrath was appeased by the sacrifice of a black
sheep (South
African
Folk-Lore Journal, vol. II, pt. 5, p. 95). When the deluge of darkness had
passed away at dawn,
the black
sheep was offered to placate and pacify the power of darkness, which exhibits
the deluge and
the
deluge-legend in their most primitive forms. The sacrifice does not merely
celebrate the return of
light, as in
a later phase, but is also a petitionary offering for future protection from
the deluge of the dark.
Before ever
man appeared on earth, a feeling of joy and thankfulness had been expressed by
the apes
at the return
of the light, whether lunar or solar; and when man came he followed on the
track of the
monkey in
feeling thankful for the return of day. In the Egyptian hieroglyphics the word
tua, to adore, is
figured as a
salutation to the dawn or morrow-day, and the typical adorer is the Kaf-ape,
the saluter of the
gods.
Primitive worship signified salutation and sacrifice from the beginning. In
various traditions,
Babylonian,
American, Hebrew, and others, the deluge is followed by a sacrifice, and this
sacrifice after
the flood has
been configurated in the stars of heaven in a picture of the far-off past, with
the offering laid
upon the
altar at a point where the actual inundation in Egyptian annually came to an
end. In the Hebrew
account of
the thanksgiving sacrifice it is said, “Noah built an altar unto Jehovah, and
took of every clean
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Ancient
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beast and of
every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings upon the altar, and Ihuh smelled
the sweet
savour.” The
typical imagery derived from the actual seasons in Egypt, repeated in the
planisphere, will
also account
for the Hebrew story concerning Noah’s planting the vine and getting drunk
immediately
after the
inundation. The vine that Noah is said to have planted may be seen in the
decans of Virgo,
where the
star Vindemiatrix denotes the time of vintage in Egypt. It is a version of the
mythos in which
the water of
the deluge was turned into wine by Horus, the ripening soul of the sun, that
has been most
pitifully
vulgarised in the story of Noah’s intoxication after the deluge. According to
the planisphere Noah
was on the
water of the inundation, or he might have just landed when the grapes were
ripe, and he got
intoxicated
apparently for the purpose of cursing Ham and consigning the dark race to the
doom of
never-ending
slavery. Hebraists tell us that the name of Noah signifies rest, which leads to
nothing in
Hebrew.
Whereas, in Egyptian, the same word Nnu is a name of the inundation, the deity
of the celestial
waters, and
also for rest or repose. As natural fact this was the season of rest or of Nnu
because of the
deluge,
during which the [Page 570] god was resting in his ark upon the waters, or, as
might be, in his
Teba of the
Southern Apta at Thebes. The natural fact was formulated in a legend such as
that of Nnu,
Num, Noah, or
Vishnu resting on the waters during a deluge in the course of a new creation;
that is,
during the
Hindu period of Pralaya, when this was figured on the grand scale as described
in the
Puranas. For
instance, Vishnu is said to repose in slumber during four months of every year,
borne up by
the
seven-headed Naga-serpent Sesha (Kennedy, Hindu Mythology, p. 228; Moor’s Hindu
Pantheon).
The four
months of the inundation is historical in Egypt; the deluge in mythology is
typical, and the type
was variously
applied to a natural phenomenon as a mode of measuring time. Nnu or Nu had
become an
Egyptian
personal name. There is a papyrus of Nu in the British Museum containing
various chapters of
the Ritual.
In these the speaker calls himself the Osiris-Nu, and, as the subject-matter
shows, the manes
here combines
the two characters of Osiris and Nnu. Moreover, he is Nnu in the ark or bark,
as lord of
the
inundation and victor over the deluge (Rit., ch. 36 A). The Osiris-Nnu is the
speaker; not merely Nnu
of the
papyrus, but Nnu of the celestial water, or Nnu as THE Osiris. He says the
Osiris-Nnu is strong to
direct the
ship of the gods, here called the boat of the sun, in which he comes forth from
Amenta into
heaven. Nnu
saileth round about the heaven and “voyages along with Ra.” Thus the mythos
merges into
the
eschatology of the Ritual.
The water of
the deluge in the Assyrian legend was not terrestrial. It is said in the
opening lines:
Then arose
the water of dawn at daylight;
It arose like
a black cloud from the horizon of heaven.
It was a
deluge feared by the gods themselves because the waters were celestial. Hence
they sought
refuge in the
highest heaven. “They ascended to the heaven of Anu,” the enclosure at the
Pole. This was
the heaven of
the stars that never set; the heaven, the enclosure or ark of refuge, which is
said to have
rested on the
mount when the flood subsided. It was Bel, the wise one, the counsellor of the
gods, who
caused the
deluge, and he is a pole-star god, equivalent to Sut or Anup the judge, whose
seat was above
the summit at
the north celestial pole. The deluge here was evidently the result of a change
in the polestars;
hence the
tree re-planted in a circle by the gods. If Bel made the deluge when he
represented the
pole-star a
change in the pole-star would be as the letting in of waters, otherwise called
the flood. The
ark was built
against this contemplated change. The Greek tradition included two legends of
the great
deluge or
cataclysm by which the race was destroyed. One of these was the flood from
which Ogyges
escaped with
a few companions in a vessel. The other is known as the deluge of Deucalion,
from which
he escaped
with Pyrrha his wife. Ogyges with his few companions are equivalent to Horus
with the seven
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Ancient
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great spirits
who were saved from the deluge in the ark of Orion. Deucalion and Pyrrha are
equivalent to
Atum and his
consort Hathor-Iusâas. Among the Californian Indians they tell of a great flood
(i.e., heaven
all water)
from which only a coyote survived and a feather that was seen floating on the
vast expanse of
water. As the
coyote looked at it the feather became an eagle which [Page 571] joined the
coyote on the
“Reed-Peak,”
and these two were the creators of men (Bancroft, vol. III, pp. 87, 88). The
reed-peak also
answers to
the Kamite field of reeds upon the summit of Mount Hetep and the Japanese
“mid-land of the
reed-expanse.”
The papyrus-reed or lotus-flower is a cradle or ark in which the Child-Horus
was uplifted
from the
water of the Nun and saved from drowning. This becomes the mythical reed in
various legends,
which is a
co-type with the tree as a means of emergence from the flood. The Navajo Indians
have
piously
preserved an account of the ascent from the waters of the deluge, not by means
of the tree or
tower, but by
building a huge mound of earth to make a tall mountain in the north. Their
tradition is that
the men of a
world before our own, on being warned of an approaching flood, resolved to
build a place of
refuge. “They
took soil from the four corner-mountains (quarters) of the world, and placed it
on the top of
the mountain
that stood in the north; and thither they all went, including the people of the
mountains, the
salt-woman
and such animals as then lived in the third world. When the soil was laid on
the mountain the
latter grew
higher and higher, but the waters began to rise and the people climbed upwards
to escape
from the
flood. At length the mountain ceased to grow, and they planted on the summit a
great Reed, into
the hollow of
which they all entered. . . . At the end of the fourth night from the time it
was planted the
reed had
grown up to the floor of the fourth world, and here they found a hole through
which they passed
to the
surface” and were saved. The great reed evidently imaged the celestial pole. It
grew by night and
did not grow
in the daytime. The turkey was the last to enter the reed, and the deluge rose
and rose until
the water
wetted the tip of his tail (W. Matthews, American Antiquarian, 1883, p. 208).
The tree had been
an actual
refuge for the human race. Hence it became a typical refuge that was figured in
the astronomy
and
eschatology. Salvation from the deluge by means of both the reed and the tree
is a mode of escape
from the
waters in the Ritual. The deceased is one who knows the deep waters. But he is
not to be
drowned. He
exclaims, “I embrace the sycamore-tree. I am united to the sycamore” (Rit., ch.
Ixiv). The
sycamore is
the tree of dawn, and the speaker escapes from the waters just as the young
sun-god
escaped from
the deluge of darkness by climbing the tree or mounting his papyrus-plant; the
one as solar
in the
mythology, the other as a soul in the eschatology. This mode of ascent goes
back to the time when
there was
neither a bridge of heaven nor a boat upon the waters of earth, nor a tower
that was built to
reach to
heaven. In the Norse mythos the ash-tree is called “the Refuge of Thor,”
because it caught and
saved the
young god when he was being swept away by the overflowing waters of the river
Vimur. This is
the same
typical tree as in the Ritual, where it is the mainstay of the Osiris, who is
well-nigh drowned by
the deluge of
the inundation, but who escapes by laying hold of the tree. We need to know in
what sense
the reed or
tree in heaven was a type of safety during the deluge before we can interpret
the Arawak
version, in
which it is said the waters had been confined to the hollow bole of an enormous
tree by
means of an
inverted basket. The mischievous monkey saw this basket, and thinking it
covered
something
good [Page 572] to eat he lifted it up, whereupon the deluge burst forth from
the tree. The
monkey is
charged with being the culprit in several of the legends and märchen that we
show to be
survivals of
the Kamite mythos, in which Hapi was the ape that brought the deluge of the
inundation, and
was also in
command of the celestial water in the mythology (Rit., ch. 57). In a Red-Indian
story of the
deluge,
Manabozho escaped from drowning by climbing to the top of the tallest pine-tree
on the highest
mountain in
the world and waiting till the flood subsided. It is related in a Taoist legend
that “one
extraordinary
antediluvian saved his life by climbing up a mountain, and there and then, in
the manner of
birds
plaiting a nest, he passed his days on the trees, while all the country below
him was one vast
expanse of
water. He afterwards lived to a very old age, and could testify to his late
posterity that a whole
race of human
beings had then been swept away from the face of the earth” (The Chinese
Repository, v.
8, p. 517).
In this legend we have both the tree and the mountain used as means of escape
in the same
ascent. They
were distinct as Egyptian types, but afterwards were sometimes fused in one, as
the tree or
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Ancient
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reed upon the
summit of the mount. The Indian tribes of Guiana say that when the great waters
were
about to be
sent forth the chief Marérewána was informed of the coming flood, and he saved
himself and
his family in
a large canoe. In order that he might not drift over the ocean far from the
ancestral home he
prepared a
long cable of “bush-rope” and made his vessel fast to the trunk of an enormous
tree, so that
when the
waters subsided he found himself at no great distance from his former abode.
His canoe had
been tied up
to the pole, here represented by a tree. The reed-type also takes the form of
the canoe as
well as the
tree. It is related in a Mexican tradition that the coyote, a co-type with the
jackal and the dog,
got wind of
the coming deluge. To save himself from drowning he gnawed down a large cane
that was
growing on
the bank of a river. This he entered, and then stopped up the end of it with a
kind of gum to
keep the
waters out. Thus, at the time of the Chaldean deluge it is said that the great
god Nera “tore up
the Stake” —
that is, the pole or mooring-post which is here represented by a stake, and a
change of
pole-star by
the uprooting of the stake. Nera is a form of Nergal, the great Nera.
The legends
of the deluge show that the primal paradise was an enclosure on the summit of
the highest
mountain,
that of the pole, as a place of safety midst the celestial waters, which was
typical of the refuge
sought for on
the hill-top when the floods were out on earth. The enclosure might be an ark,
or palisade
of wicker-work,
a nest of reeds, or a city, walled and fortified, an island, a group of seven
islands, or ten,
or a zodiac,
the idea of the deluge was ever present. And this had been the dominant idea in
the burial of
old Egypt’s
dead amidst the waters of the inundation. Every figure of the ark and every
mode of arking or
enclosing are
extant somewhere or other in the astronomical mythology. Take the cave for
example. In
the Mexican
version the seven who are saved from the deluge found safety in the seven caves
of the
celestial
mount, the mount which toppled over at the summit with the changing of the
pole. The cave was
one of the
natural types of the ark that preceded any form of refuge made [Page 573] by
the hand of man.
And there
were seven of these altogether as a figure of the celestial heptanomis. The
Welsh Barddas
ascribe the
building of an ark to Menwyd, who is called the dragon-chief of the world in
the ancient British
mythology.
Menwyd is described as forming the ark by means of serpents joined together
(Nat. Gen., vol.
2, p. 253).
An ark is the means of safety amidst the waters whatsoever its formation may
have been.
Such an ark
may be seen in the Sesha Nag-serpent with seven heads that bears up Vishnu
during the
deluge. This
is a figure of the fore-world which preceded a great flood. Here the
seven-headed serpent is
likewise a
figure of the heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions, which sank in the
celestial waters. The
same great
serpent in the waters with seven heads is also Akkadian.
A principle
of arking, so to call it, was established when the great Bear, as the mother of
the revolutions
or
time-cycles, and mistress of the waters, made the circle of the year in turning
round “the Atlantean
Pole.” She,
as the pregnant water-cow, was herself an ark of life that might be looked to
as a divine type
of safety by
the sufferers from the water-floods on earth. The mother of time and station
was the mistress
of the
firmamental waters; the mistress therefore of the enclosure in the waters which
in the later
rendering is
a park, a garden, a paradise, or a harvest-field. In the Uganda legend it was a
palisade of
reeds around
a spring of fresh water, the secret of which the women knew, but failed to
keep. When the
circle of the
bear was found to be untrue, and time was more correctly measured by the
moon-god Taht,
she, the
mother of time and the mistress of the waters, was accused of being unfaithful
to her trust, of
letting in
the deluge and losing the primeval home. As we have seen, she philandered with
the moon-god
Taht, who
superseded Sut in her affections and in keeping time. The twins as Sut and
Horus were reborn
of her as
lunar in the dark and light halves of the moon — the light eye of Horus and the
dark eye of
Sut. Apt had
been the mistress of the waters in the stellar mythos from the first, and when
it was found
out that she
was keeping time unfaithfully and incorrectly she was charged with betraying
the secret to
her lover,
with overthrowing the bulwark and with letting in the deluge. This supplied the
matter of sundry
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Ancient
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deluge-legends.
The Egyptians
always kept on building closely in accordance with some primal type like this
of the ark. In
the beginning
the earth itself was a mount or table-land that rose up out of the abyss as a
kind of ark
amidst the
waters of space, an ark of one story. But when Amenta had been hollowed out by
Ptah the
opener of an
underworld, there was an ark of two stories, fixed or floating. Whether called
an ark or a
house, it was
two-storied. It was double-decked like a ship. It was also a house of two
stories for Osiris in
Abydos. With
heaven added over all it becomes three-storied or triple-decked, with Amenta,
earth and
heaven
answering to the three stories of the triple-deck. Now, it is commanded that
the ark of Noah, or
Nnu, shall be
built “with lower, second and third stories,” like the ship with three decks.
This is a fragment
of the
genuine mythos which tends to show that it was the ark here identified as the
figure of three
worlds, viz.,
Amenta, middle-earth and heaven; a figure that agrees [Page 574] with the
typical tree of the
Akkado-Assyrian
and the Norse mythology which had its roots in the nether-world, its stem in
middle-
earth and its
branches high in heaven. But did the Egyptians ever launch this three-decker,
and get it
afloat in
space? or did it remain a fixture in the mythical abyss?
It was argued
in the Natural Genesis that the Kamite astronomers had measured the earth and
knew it to
be a globe
rotating in space. It is now suggested that the ark of three stories was a
compound image of
the three
regions built up deck by deck and completed by the arch-craftsman Ptah in a
vessel that is
called the
ship of heaven in the Ritual. In the words of M. Lieblin, the Egyptians “knew
that the earth
circulated in
the great ocean of heaven.” And as the earth was the sekru-bark of Osiris in
Amenta, it was
the ark
afloat upon the waters of the Nnu (Nat. Gen., vol. 2, pp. 60-61). In the time
of Neb-Ka-Ra of the
fourth
dynasty the fact must have been a familiar one for a common peasant to call the
king “the helm, or
pilot of the
earth which he navigates in space as the second brother of Taht” who was the
navigator of the
lunar bark.
The ark of Nnu, which Ra commanded to be built for him when he was about to be
lifted up
upon the
heavenly water, may be seen on the sarcophagus of Seti, in the Soane Museum.
“The boat,”
says
Lefébure, the translator of the text, “is supported by Nnu, whose bust and arms
only are to be seen.
The arms
issue from the water and bear up the god. The entire scenes are surrounded by
the waves of
Nnu, which
shows that the Egyptians looked upon the earth as a spherical body floating
through the air.
The boat is
directed, as a passage made through the waves indicates, towards a spot where a
disk is
represented
on a band. This band, studded with points, represents the earth as a
landing-place for which
the ark is
bound” (Book of Hades, Records of the Past, vol. XII, p. 16). There is also a
description of the
ship of Nnu
in the chapter of the Ritual by which one saileth a ship in the nether-world.
In this the nature
of the three
decks as “lower, second and third stories” is described. The vessel is
described in chapter 99
as the ship
in which the abyss or void of Apap the devourer may be safely crossed. This is
an empty
space into
which the starry ones fall down headlong to find nothing by which they can
raise themselves
up again. The
manes supplicates the god: “Oh thou who sailest the ship of Nnu over the void,
let me sail
the ship. Let
me be brought in as a distressed mariner, and go to the place which thou knowest.”
As
previously
shown, he has to know each part of the bark by name and to repeat the name of
each before
he is
admitted on board. From this examination in the judgment-hall we learn the
nature of the Ark and its
three
stories. The name of the lowest story is “akar,” that is, the lower earth. The
posts at stem and stern
are “the two
columns of the nether-world.” The ribs, also called the four paddles, image the
gods of the
four corners,
Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf. These are the four who row the bark, and
it is said
that Seb, the
earth, abideth stably by means of their rudders or oars. The “patrol who goeth
round” is “he
who piloteth
the double earth.” The “mooring-post,” which represents the pole, is designated
“the lord of
the double
earth in the shrine,” that is, Osiris as the power of the pole. The double
earth is the earth of
Amenta and
the earth of Seb, or two [Page 575] of the three stories, the third of which is
celestial. Hence
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Ancient
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Nut, or
Heaven, is the name of the sail. Thus the three stories are identified with
Amenta, earth and
heaven, that
were figured in the ark of Nnu which floated (earth and all) upon the waters of
the
firmament.
This, when represented by the constellation Argo Navis, was an object-picture
of the ark upon
the great
stream of the Via Lactea, by means of which the manes reached “the tip of
heaven” at the pole,
and after all
the rowing and the voyaging attained the realm of rest upon the eternal shore.
The Jewish
Kabalists
have a tradition that Noah’s ark embodied an image of the world or was a figure
of the whole
universe.
This IS the ark of Nnu in the astronomical mythology, the ark of Nnu that is
described in the
Egyptian
Ritual as a subject of examination in the Mysteries of Amenta.
According to
the Bhâgavata Purana (1, 3, 15), the ship of Manu was the earth itself. The
“ship of the
world” is a
title given by the Barddas to the enclosure of Stonehenge, which points to its
including an
image of the
earth as a form of the ark amidst the waters of heaven, like that of Seb which
abideth stably
in space by
means of the four oars or paddles at the four cardinal points. An ark of the
four quarters is
described in
the magic papyrus. It is said, “There are four mansions of life at Abydos,” the
mythical
birthplace of
Osiris in Amenta. In this we find another group of the four gods Nnu and Shu,
Taht and Seb.
The eternal
city on the summit of the Mount of Glory was the final form of the ark in
heaven. And after the
Babylonian
deluge when the ship touches the shore and its occupants have landed, as it is
said,
Gilgames
“collected great stones,” “he piled up the great stones.” Instead of piling the
mound of earth, or
planting the
typical tree, or launching the ark, the survivors now are the builders of a
city with stones.
They landed
and “left the ship by the shore. They journeyed a stage of twenty kaspu. They
made the
stage ascent
of thirty kaspu. They came to the midst of Erech Suburi.” Then follows the
building of Erech,
the ark-city
on the summit; or the new heaven that was divided into three parts; “one
measure for the
circuit of
the city, one measure for the boundary of the temple of Nantur, the house of
Ishtar; three
measures
together (for) the divisions of Erech” (Records, v. 7, 148—9). In Africa a
conical hut like an ant-
heap is the
primeval type of a dwelling made by human hands. This was continued by the
Egyptians in
the cone of
Hathor and the conical pyramid, or Ben-Ben of Sut-Anup as a figure of Polaris
or Sothis
surmounted by
its star. This may be seen in the lake-dwellings of Africa, which are conical
huts built on
piles in the
water of the divine land of Puanta as portrayed in the inscriptions of
Hatshepsu’s temple at
Deir-el-Bahari.
The reason given for such a type of house, says Sir John Kirk, is that the
country at times
is flooded
(Lockyer’s Dawn of Astronomy, p. 348, note 3), and thus the inhabitants escape
the
inundation.
The conical hut is common in Africa both on land and water, and this is a
figure of the
primitive
paradise and of the celestial pole, which was continued in Egypt as the round
pyramidion, a cotype
with the
circular mound and conical cairn. Thus an ark on the firmamental water in the
shape of a
cone, a
figure that represents the pole, crowned with its star, is identical with the
pile-dwelling of the [Page
576] African
lakes, and images the same mode of escape from the waters, according to the
mythos and
eschatology
of the Egyptians, as does the primitive lake-dwelling of the Inner Africans.
The earliest ark of
Nnu, or
heaven, is an enclosure in the water of the Nun; the latest is a paradise on
piles; we might say
seven piles
or poles which are co-types with the seven mountains or seven pyramids. But an
ark, as a
means of
refuge in relation to a deluge of water, is not limited to the boat-type. The
ark of Noë on the
Apamean coin
is figured as a box four-square. This, in Egyptian, is a Teba, Hebrew Thebah,
the name of
Noah’s ark,
and of Thebes as a form of the eternal city. There was an ark of the sphere
which is
described in
the Thlinkeet legend as a vast floating building. At the time of the deluge it
struck on the
mount, or was
driven on the rock and broken in two halves by its own weight. This agrees with
the
division of
the heaven into north and south between Sut and Horus, as their two divine
domains.
In several of
the legends it is made known beforehand and announced that a deluge is coming,
and with
the warning
instructions are given to build an ark or prepare some sort of refuge and means
of escape for
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Ancient
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a favoured
few. According to the Marquesan version, the lord ocean, or Fatu-Noana, who is
like Nnu, lord
of the
celestial water, when about to send the devastating deluge, allows seven days
for preparation. A
tall building
is to be erected which will tower above the reach of the waters. Cattle of all
kinds are
collected in
pairs and marched into a vessel called the “Long Deep Wood.” In this there is a
family of four
males and
four females saved; the same as in the ark of Noah, and of Nnu. The storm
burst. The “sacred
supporter” of
the universe slumbered during the night of dissolution, as does Vishnu or
Brahma in the
Hindu
version. A coffin on a sledge was a pre-Osirian type of the ark which was
periodically drawn round
the walls of
the great sanctuary of Ptah the coffined one in the Mysteries of Memphis. The
sledge or raft
was naturally
earlier than the boat, and the passage through Amenta, when this was imaged as
solid
earth, was
represented by the sun-god Sekari in his coffin resting on a sledge. In the
Ritual (ch. 100) the
Osiris says,
“I clear the path of the solar orb and tow along Sekari (a form of Ptah) upon
his sledge.” The
Norsemen were
accustomed to bury the bodies of their dead chiefs in boats on the hills, as a
typical
mode of
crossing the celestial waters after death. The Garrows of Bengal, who cremated
their dead,
used to place
the corpse in a dingy or small boat on the top of the funeral pile, for the
typical crossing of
the waters.
The word ark in Egyptian signifies a circle, to encircle, bands, enclosings,
encirclings, also
number
thirty, thence a month. Arkai is to appoint a limit, fix an end by decree. This
was applied in
measuring a
cycle of time, which might be monthly, as in the Assyrian Arkhu. From this
comes the arc, as
part of a
circle, which in Egyptian is to encircle or to make the circle. And thus the
enclosure and ark are
both forms of
the circle. The enclosure made by Yima was an ark-circle but not an ark, or
bark upon the
waters.
Still, the meaning is the same. It was the type of an enclosure and of safety
from the deluge
whether
figured as stationary or afloat; [Page 577] and the heaven built upon four
corners as a circular
enclosure was
an ark in space, we might say, the ark of space, when space was the celestial
water. An
ark of seven
cubits was a figure of the celestial heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions.
An ark of eight
cubits was a
figure of heaven in eight divisions, either as Am-Khemen or the octonary of
Taht. An ark of
four cubits
was a figure of heaven as the teba, or box of the four quarters. There was an
ark of twenty-
eight cubits
reckoned as twice fourteen, based upon twenty-eight nights to the lunar month.
This was the
ark of the
moon in which Osiris was reborn, or the child-Horus was preserved from the
waters. The cubit
was a measure
in time for a day, as well as in space for a degree. Three hundred and sixty
five cubits in
circumference
was the measure of a year of 365 days, on the tomb of Osymandyas (Diod. I, 49).
Similarly,
fourteen cubits were equivalent to fourteen days, or a half-moon, a tenat in
the lunar month of
twenty-eight
days, and therefore equal to fourteen degrees. Thus the ark of the moon is not
limited to the
orb itself as
a vessel that contained the new-born child of light. It is also the circle of a
lunar zodiac, in
which there
were twenty-eight measures in time and space, = twenty-eight cubits that were
divided into
two
fourteens, and four sevens. During fourteen days Osiris (or Horus) grew in
glory, and during the other
half of the
lunation he was torn in fourteen pieces by Sut, the power of darkness. An ark
of twice fourteen
cubits is
equal to a circle with twenty-eight stations, that is a lunar enclosure or
zodiac. No dimensions of
the ark are
directly given in the Ritual, but there is an allusion which probably underlies
the measurement
of the lunar
month or zodiacal circle of twenty-eight measures. One-half of the circle was
marked out in
fourteen
divisions corresponding to one-half of the lunar houses. Also, the divine
domain of Aarru was
divided into
fourteen sections (Rit., ch. 149), or, to put it in another way the mount of
earth had fourteen
steps to it:
seven up and seven down. This would be the measure of one-half the circle,
which was made
out in
twenty-eight lunar signs: fourteen in the lower and fourteen in the upper
hemisphere. Sunset and
sunrise were
half-way round the circle, horizontally and perpendicularly, at the level
called the summit of
the mount.
Now there is a scene at sunset described in the Ritual (ch. 108). Ra and the
reptile of
darkness
watch each other, Ra from his ark, the monster from the mount. The depth of
water underneath
the solar
bark at this, the level of sunset, is said to be seven cubits in its liquid
part. This also serves to
measure the
lower half of the circle by seven cubits, or measures, downward and seven
upward to the
level of the
mount, or the horizon. Seven steps down, applied either to the mount or to the
lower half of
the circle,
would be identical with the course of the lunar goddess Ishtar, when she made
her descent
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Ancient
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into the
Assyrian Hades and was despoiled of all her ornaments and raiment as she passed
through the
seven gates
downward, to be reclothed again in all her glory as she made the ascent through
the seven
upward gates.
The object sought to be established here is the lunar circle divided into
twenty-eight
lengths of
time, whether measured vertically by the mount of the earth or by the pathway
of the moon.
The seven
measures answer to one-fourth [Page 578] of the entire circle of twenty-eight
cubits or
measures of
time; fourteen below and fourteen above; fourteen from sunset to sunrise, and
fourteen from
sunrise to
sunset.
The lunar
measurement and ark were earlier than the solar, and these were afterwards
applied to the
luni-solar
cycle of time. In the luni-solar month, the days, degrees, measures, or cubits,
would be fifteen
instead of
fourteen to the half-circle. Thus, if the lower half of the circle contains
fifteen measures called
cubits,
instead of fourteen in the lunar reckoning, there would be fifteen measures
above the mountain-
summit on
which the level of the equinox was marked, and this may be the meaning of the
Hebrew and
Toltec
statements that the waters of the deluge prevailed fifteen cubits above the
highest mountains; the
waters being
celestial, the waters of Nnu or Noë.
We hear most
of the ark as a teba or box, which is a figure of the four corners, and as the
measures of
twenty-eight,
fourteen, and seven show, was a type of the lunar heaven that followed the
stellar; the ark
of Taht which
superseded the ark of Sut; the ark of eight cubits, or the octonary, which took
the place of
the
heptanomis. The lunar nature of the Babylonian ark is also indicated by its
measures. On the deluge
tablet, as
rendered by Smith, the builder of the ark relates that, “in its circuit it was
fourteen measures” ;
“its frame
fourteen measures it measured.” Now, as the cubit was the typical measure, this
was
equivalent to
fourteen cubits. Boscawen has it: “Two sides were raised. In its enclosure
fourteen ribs,
also fourteen
they numbered above” (The Bible and its Monuments, p. 117). In this reckoning
the ark of
twenty-eight
measures corresponds to the circle of twenty-eight lunar measures, or stations
of the moon.
Thus
numerically the ark is identified as one with the arc by the fourteen measures
below and fourteen
above, and
the ark of the moon was the ark of Osiris in the lunar mythos. As the lunar
circle was divided
in four
quarters, and these four were each subdivided into seven, that may explain the
statement of the
builder, who
says he divided the interior seven times and (its passages or parts) seven
times (later
version by
Professors Haupt and Sayce). This ark of abode is admittedly built” in a
circuit” (col. 2), which
has fourteen
measures above and fourteen below, sub-divided by seven in the interior and by
seven in its
parts or
passages. There are two fourteens sub-divided by the two sevens, equal to the
lunar circle of
twenty-eight
measures, the two lunations of fourteen days, and the four quarters of seven
days each.
And if the
measure of fourteen refers to one-half the lunar circle, it is possible that
the measure of fifteen
cubits
applied to the rising waters in the Hebrew version is a measure taken from the
soli-lunar month of
thirty
measures or days, especially as the height of Noah’s ark was to be thirty
cubits. The ark of twenty-
eight
measures would be lunar only, the ark in which Osiris rose again on the third
day after his body had
been torn
into fourteen parts and gathered together in the sekru (or ark) chest, coffin
(teba), for the
revivification
and resurrection in the ark of the moon. The ark of thirty measures (a measure
in the
hieroglyphics
is a cubit) would be soli-lunar in accordance with the thirty days to the
month; this, then,
would be an
ark of the sun and moon, which followed the lunar ark of twenty-eight cubits.
The ark of
seven [Page
579] measures was the stellar heptanomis. The ark of eight measures is the
octonary of Taht,
the lunar
god; a heaven of four quarters subdivided by eight semi-cardinal points into
stations for the four
wives,
sisters or goddesses. Then followed an ark of the sun and moon and seven stars.
Now, it is said in
the Persian
Rauzat-us-Safa that the Almighty fixed two luminous disks, one like the sun and
the other like
the moon, on
the wall of the ark, and thus the hours of the day and night were ascertained
(O’Neill, The
Night of the
Gods, p. 173). This is a mode of describing the additions made in the
soli-lunar mythos to the
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Ancient
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ark of
heaven, that was stellar at an earlier time, and is solar in its final phase.
The arkite symbolism
culminated as
Egyptian in the ark of Nnu. This was the ark that was built “with lower,
second, and third
stories” (Gen.
VI. 16), because it was a threefold figure of Amenta, earth and heaven in one,
as it is
represented
in the Ritual. Once it is shown that Noah’s ark is a geometrical figure of the
heaven, there is
no further
difficulty respecting its size or content. The beasts of the earth, the birds
of the air, the fish of
the waters,
and the human beings were all represented by the four types at the four
corners, by
Tuamutef, the
jackal; Kabhsenuf, the hawk; Hapi, the ape; and Amsta, the man. These were
accompanied
in the enclosure by their consorts, Isis, the cow; Serkh, the scorpion;
Nephthys, and Neith.
Salvation
from the deluge in the under-world is sought for by the Manes in the ark,
whether called the ark
of Osiris, or
Ra, or Nnu. The experience attributed to Osiris as the god in Amenta, is also
assigned to the
soul of the
deceased. In setting by night into the waters, the sun-god entered into the ark
of earth, which
is called his
coffin or sarcophagus, in which he was enclosed by Sut, the power of darkness.
In one form
this was
figured as the coffin-mountain, or neb-ankh, that was represented by the hill,
Bakhu, the
dimensions of
which are given in the Ritual (ch. 109). The hill Bakhu was the place of
sunrise where
dawn broke on
the coffin-lid; and the length of this coffin, or ark of earth, was 300 cubits.
It is stated in the
papyrus of
Nebseni that the hill is 300 cubits in breadth. In other papyri it is said to
be 300 cubits in
length. This
is connected with the measurement of the earth. Thus the ark of Osiris in the
earth, and the
ark of Noah
are identical in length. The ark being also a figure of heaven, the 300
countries in Yima’s
kingdom are
an astronomical measure equivalent to the 300 cubits of Noah’s ark, and
likewise to the
area of 300
cubits of the Egyptian hollow hill, or ark of earth. It is possible to identify
the constellation of
Argo-Navis as
the object-picture in the nightly heaven of the ark that Nnu constructed for
the great god
Ra, and
thence the ark of Noah in the Hebrew version of the legend. In the pictures of
the planisphere,
which still
remain on the celestial globe, it may be seen that the figurehead of the vessel
is a ram. This
was the type
of the ram-headed Num, lord of the inundation, and Num was the later form of
Nnu, the god
of the
celestial water, who was the builder of the ark for Ra. By day the solar orb
was carried on the ark
of Nnu, and
by night the gods and glorified were seen in Argo-Navis on its voyage, as the
“collector of
souls” sailed
upward for the circumpolar paradise along the river of the Milky Way. Now,
Argo-Navis is the
only
constellation that is figured hind-before on the celestial globe. As [Page 580]
Aratos describes the
vessel, “Argo
by the great dog’s tail is drawn; for hers is not a usual course, but backward
turned she
comes, as
vessels do when sailors have transposed the crooked stern on entering harbour;
all the ship
reverse. And
gliding backward on the beach it grounds sternforward, thus is Jason’s Argo
drawn” (Aratos,
Phainomena,
R. Brown, lines 342-348). But, what can be the meaning of an ark or ship that
makes its
voyage
through the firmamental waters in this hindward way? We can but infer that it
was an object-
picture of
the ark of Nnu, as “the bark of millions of years” receding in this backward
fashion as it made
the circuit
of Precession.
THE WORLD’S
GREAT YEAR.
Once every
six-and-twenty thousand years “the world’s great age begins anew, the golden
years return”
(Shelley),
but in no other than the astronomical sense of a re-beginning at the same point
of departure as
in the
beginning. This will re-begin again and again in the great cycle of precession,
but only as a matter
of
chronology. Nothing will be repeated except the cycle of time and the same
phenomena belonging to
the
astronomical mythology. The divine fulfiller of the millennium in “the house of
a thousand years,” or in
any other
period, will no more come in person during the next 13,000 years than it was
possible for him
to manifest
that way in the past half of the present cycle of 26,000 years. A knowledge of
the facts
constitutes
the sole data of the truth, and such knowledge will ultimately put an end to
the great delusion
of the false
faith that was founded in the uttermost ignorance of the astronomical facts.
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Ancient
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In the great
year of precession there are seven stations of the celestial pole, six of which
are still
identifiable
in the constellations of Draconis, the Lesser Bear, Kepheus, Cygnus, Lyra, and
Herakles. The
pole changes,
and its position is approximately determined by another central star about each
3,700
years. Seven
times in the great year the station of the pole was raised aloft as land-mark
amid the
firmamental
waters in the shape of an island, or a mound; a tree, a pillar, horn, or
pyramid. Whichever the
type this was
repeated seven times in the circuit of precession, to form the compound and
collective
figure of the
celestial heptanomis, so that the heaven rested, or was raised, at last upon
the seven
mountains or
seven mounds; seven islands, seven giants, seven caves, seven trees, seven
pillars, or
other
structures of support, as seven figures of the all-sustaining pole. Seven
golden isles emerged from
out the
watery vast, or wisdom reared the seven pillars of her house; the heavens were
borne upon the
backs of
seven giants, or the eternal city was built upon the seven hills.
It would take
some six-and-twenty thousand years to build the heptanomis on the support of
the seven
poles. These
were added one by one and figured collectively as seven sustaining powers of
the heavens,
such as seven
hippopotami; seven crocodiles; seven bears; seven mountains; seven mounds of
earth;
seven trees
or a tree with [Page 581] seven branches; a serpent with seven heads; a fish
with seven fins;
seven horns
of Sesheta the foundress; seven pillars; seven giants; seven cyclops, with
polaris for a
single eye;
and lastly, there are the seven divinities called “the lords of eternity.”
Seven periods in
precession
correspond to seven stations of the pole. The length of time in each when
measured by the
changing
pole-stars is about 3,700 years. Seven times the “Atlantean pole” sank in the
waters of the
deluge during
the great year. This was figured as the seven sunken islands of the lost
Atlantis. But there
is another
lost land of Atlantis, that passed away in ten islands, imaging a vanished
heaven in ten
divisions.
The first was the heptanomis of the seven kings or rulers. The second is the
heaven in ten
divisions
which ended with the deluge of the ten kings or patriarchs in the Semitic
legends. These two
vanished
heavens will account for two great years, or two-and-fifty-thousand years of
time.
The pole and
equinox are travelling pari passu, one in the upper circle of the heavens, the
other in the
larger lower
circle of the ecliptic, and the shifting of the equinox was correlated more or
less exactly to
the changing
of the pole-star. The power that presided over the pole as Osiris was given
rebirth as Horus
in the vernal
equinox. The pole-star symbolized the lord of eternity. Horus in the equinox
(or the double
equinox) was
a traveller of eternity manifesting in the sphere of time; in the Han-cycle of
120 years; in the
house of
1,000 years; in the sothic cycle of 1,460 years; or in the change from sign to
sign, each 2,155
years. For
two thousand years and more the pole-star in the Lesser Bear has coincided with
the vernal
equinox in
the sign of Pisces. Previously the pole in Draconis coincided with the vernal
equinox in the
sign of the
ram or the bull. A seventh of the ecliptic, not merely a third part, was
assigned to one or other
of the pole-star
gods who became the seven lords of eternity. This will explain how the ram
could be the
special
constellation of the god who was at the same time the ruler of the north
pole-star. So, in the
celestial
drama portrayed in the book of Revelation, the fall of the dragon, or,
astronomically, the change
of pole-star,
when a-Draconis was superseded, is followed by the exaltation of the lamb upon
the solar
mount of
glory. The longer one dwells in presence of Egypt, the older grows the face of
her unveiled
antiquity.
Not fifty merely, but more like a thousand centuries look down upon us from her
summit of
attainment,
the pyramid of her glory, that she built for ever in the highest heaven of her
heavens. It was
asserted by
Martianus Capella that the Egyptians had secretly cultivated the science of
astronomy for
40,000 years
before it was made known to the rest of the world (Lewis, Astronomy of the
Ancients, p.
264). As
time-keepers, the astronomers of Egypt had thought and wrought, observed and
registered on
the scale of
the great year of the universe. The circuit of precession first outlined by the
movement of the
celestial
pole was their circle of the eternal, or seven eternals, that was imaged by the
Shennu-ring, and
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Ancient
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likewise by
the serpent of eternity, when this was figured with tail in mouth and one eye
always open at
the centre of
the coil. They not only laid great bases for eternity in this way, they built
upon the basis of all
time which
culminated in the cycle of precession. When Herodotus was in Egypt, the
“mystery teachers
of the [Page
582] heavens” told him that during a certain length of time which had been
reckoned by the
Egyptian
astronomers, “the sun had four times risen out of his usual quarter; that he
had twice risen
where he now
sets, and twice set where he now rises. Yet, that no change in the things of
Egypt had
been
occasioned by this, either in the productions of the earth ‘or the river’ “ And
he adds, the Egyptians
say, they
know these things with accuracy because they always compute and register the
years (B. 2,
142 and 145).
Now there is no cycle in astronomy, save the circle of the precessional
movement in which
the phenomena
thus unwittingly described by the faithful old chronicler could occur. One such
cycle is
certain, two
are not improbable, and three are possible. After long study of the whole
matter one sees
perforce that
the science of astronomy in Egypt, with its observed and registered cycle or
cycles in
precession,
is actually older than any race of men on earth outside of Africa.
The Book of
the Dead (chs. 114 and 123) not only proves the ancient Egyptians to have been
acquainted
with the
precessional movement, it also gives us an account of the actual changing of a
pole-star. The
god Taht, the
measurer of time, by means of the moon and the Great Bear, is to be seen in the
midst of
his
mysteries, which are here described as those of keeping the chronology for the
guidance of posterity.
There is a
change in the position of the Maat, or judgment-hall, which in the stellar
mythos was at the
station of
the pole, and was shifted with the shifting pole. On account of this change,
Taht comes as the
messenger of
Ra in the soli-lunar mythos to make fast that which was afloat upon the Urnas
(Greek
Ouranos)
water; to re-adjust the reckoning and to “restore the eye” (Rit., ch. 114) by
making it ”firm and
permanent”
(ch. 116) once more for keeping time and period correctly on the scale of the
great year. The
backward
motion of precession is described when Taht says to Atum-Ra, “ I have rescued
the Atu from
his backward
course. I have done what thou hast prescribed for him.” As Renouf remarks, “I do
not think
any
astronomer would hesitate to say that precession is meant,” by this “backward
course” (Rit., ch. 123.
Notes). The
Atu is a mythical fish with some relation to the course of the solar bark; that
is to its
backward
course, the course of Argo-Navis. Taht has “rescued the Atu from his backward
course.” He
has allowed
for this retrograde motion in precession, and has made the eye firm and fixed
once more by
means of his
reckonings as a guide to posterity. Taht also says at the same time, “I have
equally
balanced the
divine pair, (Sut and Horus) and put a stop to their strife.” This changing of
the pole occurs
once every
3,714 years, or, in the round numbers of the outsiders, every 3,000 years. This
is alluded to
by
Theopompus, who tells us that “according to the Magi,” “one of the gods shall
conquer, the other be
conquered,
alternately for 3,000 years; for another 3,000 years they shall fight, war, and
undo one the
works of the
other; but in the end hades will fail, and men will be happy, neither requiring
food, nor
constructing
shelter; whilst the god who hath contrived all this is quiet, and resting
himself for a time”
(Plutarch, Of
Isis and Osiris, 47). The conflict is identical with the battle of Sut and
Horus on the grand
scale. Three
thousand years in round numbers with a surplus known to the Urshi, point to a
period in
precession
[Page 583] (3,714) equivalent to a change from one pole-star to another, in the
station of the
pole, only
the length of time is now applied to souls in the eschatology, passing through
the astronomical
cycle of the
proverbial 3,000 years. The Chinese “peach-tree of the gods” is a magnificent
image of the
pole. It has
seven branches that bear the fruit of immortality, the fruit which ripens once
in 3,000 years.
Three
thousand, we repeat, being a round number for the cycle, where 4,000 would not
have answered
when the
exact number is 3,714 years. The peaches from this tree of time or knowledge
were seven in
series, as is
shown by the seven peaches which were brought by the mythical Wang-Mu when she
visited the
equally mythical Emperor Wa Ti. Also the seven peaches as total fruit of the
tree tend to prove
that the
figure was employed as a round number in thousands, near enough for the
non-initiated and the
surplus
allowed for in reckoning the total combination.
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Ancient
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It is
feasible to suppose that the hanging and suspending power of the firmament was
an earlier source
of wonderment
than even the revolution of the heavenly bodies. There is a passage in the
Argonauticon
(2, 296)
which appears to show that the notion of suspension preceded that of revolving.
“And so it is that
men call
those isles, the isles of turning, though aforetime they called them the
floating isles” (Pilotes).
These were
the islands figured in the firmamental sea. Thus under one image groups of the
revolving
stars were
thought of as the golden isles afloat in the celestial waters of the firmament.
A typical floating
island called
Chemmis was shown to Herodotus in the deep broad lake, near the precinct of the
temple
of Buto,
where it represented the place of refuge in which the infant Horus (Apollo) was
concealed and
saved when
sought for by the devouring Apap (Herodotus, B. 2, 156). This place of birth
was first figured
in the
stellar mythos as a floating island of the pole. The islands of Atlantis,
whether seven or ten in
number, would
not have become the sunken islands unless they had been floating isles at
first; and they
were floating
as formations in the water of heaven. The earliest foothold in the infinite had
been
physically
attained amongst the stars that do not set. This was a place of refuge and of
safety from the
deluge of the
firmamental deep whenever the catastrophe occurred.
It may sound
a paradoxical thing to say, but it is true that according to the mythical
representation the
earliest
earth was a bit of ground solidified in the celestial waters for the planting
of a stake, or tree, or
building,
raising a pile, or some kind of bulwark against the overwhelming water-flood.
The Egyptian
hieroglyphic-sign
of land, locality, or station is the well-known cake, that looks like our
Easter hot-cross
bun, and is a
figure of the land that was caked or coagulated amidst the waters. This first
formation in the
waters of the
Nun was constellated at the place of equipoise and fixity, when this was at the
pole. And in
the Osirian
mythos this first standing place remained as a throne of the Eternal on the
mount amid the
water of the
upper deep. In what is termed the Japanese “Cosmology” there is a primitive
rendering of
this
beginning. Two of the Kami-deities, Izanagi and Izanami, the brother and sister
corresponding to the
Egyptian Shu
and Tefnut, who lifted up the paradise of Am-Khemen, [Page 584] are divinely
deputed to
make,
consolidate, and give birth to the island of Japan. For this purpose they were
provided with a
heavenly
spear made of a jewel; a dual figure of the pole and polaris. Thus equipped,
the pair stood on
the “floating
bridge” of heaven, and churned the Isle of Onogoro from the waters. This is the
earth or
ground that
was constellated in an island called “the self-curdled.” (B. H. Chamberlain,
Kojiki, 18, 19.)
The matter
that was condensed around the spear or pole with which they churned the waters
formed the
land of
Nippon, or Japan. Onogoro, says Hatori Nakatsune, a native commentator, was
originally at the
north pole,
but was afterwards shifted to its present position. (E. M. Satow, Pure Shinto,
p. 68.) That is
when the
island which was “self-curdled” in the celestial ocean gave its name to an
earthly island in the
Yellow Sea.
To see that the jewelled spear was an emblem of the pole we have but to compare
this
legend with
the Indian version called “the churning of the ocean,” in which a mountain (the
mount of the
pole) takes
the place of the spear as the typical churning-stick. (Moore’s Hindu Pantheon.)
But this was
no cosmical
creation of the earth itself amidst the waters of space. Such an interpretation
is only an
erroneous
literalization of the legendary lore. When the primal pair of the Japanese Kami
took
possession of
the island which had been coagulated from the deep, they stuck the spear into
the ground
or earth.
This was a mode of planting the tree or establishing the pole as a primary
foundation in the
water of
heaven, that was now repeated in the resting-place on earth as a likeness of the
pole above. (B.
H.
Chamberlain, Kojiki, pp. 18, 19.) Garcilasso de la Vega relates that the Inca
told him how “Our Father”
sent two of
his children, a brother and sister, down from heaven. He gave them a golden
rod, two fingers
thick and
half an ell long, and when they desired to rest anywhere they were to stick
this into the ground,
and wherever
it entered the earth at one push, there they were to halt, establish
themselves, encamp,
and hold
their court or build the city. Here the brother and sister are another form of
Shu and Tefnut. In a
Dog-rib
Indian myth a planting of the pole occurs. It is said that the divine hero,
Chapewee, stuck a piece
of wood in
the earth, which became a fir tree, that grew and grew until it reached to
heaven. Then
Page 445
Ancient
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Chapewee
ascended the tree, and at the summit found a fine large plain and a beaten road
to travel on.
The present
writer contends that the deluge-legends of the world are based upon the
astronomical
mythology of
Egypt, but that in the isolation of the primitive emigrants the ancient wisdom
lapsed and the
deluge as a
mode of symbolism in astronomy was more or less lost sight of; and, from lack
of knowledge,
the mythical
deluge was confused with the primitive concept of heaven as the water overhead.
With the
knowers the
deluge was a typical figure; with the ignorant it was an actuality that might
at any time recur,
as did the
water-flood on earth. The chief contribution made by the Semites to the
astronomical
mythology was
in literalizing the legends which originated with the mythical mode of
representation, and
in putting
forth an exoteric version of the ancient wisdom. Thus it was natural that in a
country like
Babylonia
where the winter rains were held to be a curse the typical deluge of Nnu in the
celestial waters
should be
confused [Page 585] with the flood of Bel or Noah on the surface of the earth.
Pliny calls Belus
the “inventor
of sidereal science” (N. H. 6, 26), and Belus as the elder Bel was a form of
the Egyptian
Bar, a name
of Sut. As Diodorus relates (I. 28, 29), the Egyptians claimed to have taught
the science of
astronomy to
the Babylonians, and declared that Belus and his subjects were a colony from
Egypt. Belus
(the first
Bel) being identified with Bar=Sut, this means that the colonising of Babylonia
from Egypt was
during the
reign of Sut, or at least in the time of the primordial pole-star one great
year ago, when the
pole-star was
previously in the Lesser Bear or the male hippopotamus. In astronomy the status
of an
arch-first
depended on being foremost in time, and Sut was first as bull of the mother, or
the male
hippopotamus
with the female. We hold the founder of astronomy to have been the establisher
of the
pole, whether
as Sut, in the southern, or Sut-Apap in the northern heaven. And the most
profoundly
important of
all the deluges was that which took place at the subsidence and submergence of
the pole
and changing
of the pole-star, the star that fell from heaven, according to the astronomical
mythology.
The Book of
Enoch says that, previously to the Noachian deluge, Noah saw that the earth
became
inclined and
that destruction approached. Then he lifted up his feet and went to the ends of
the earth, to
the dwelling
of his great grandfather Enoch (ch. 64). The “Ends of the Earth” was an
expression for the
two poles —
he dwelling of Enoch being equivalent to that of Sut at the southern pole. The
beginning,
however, was
not with boats or arks as a means of crossing the celestial water of the Nun.
Islands were
figured
earlier. Typical heaps of earth were raised by the mound-builders as ground to
go upon, like
stepping-stones
in the celestial deep. These eventually were seven in number. The structure
also ranged
from seven
mounds at first to seven cities finally. Naturally the mount or mound of earth,
the tree, the
papyrus-reed,
or island was a type of emergence from or amid the waters earlier than the building
of a
boat or an
ark in the celestial sea. The first ideas were those of suspension, fixity, and
foothold in the
liquid vast.
In various
primitive legends the bulwark was raised against the waters but was overthrown
because the
faithless woman
failed to keep the secret with which she had been entrusted. We have already
cited one
or two
American and African instances. In a Muyscas myth, Huythaca was the old first
mother who ruled
when there
was as yet no sun or moon. She is described as a very wicked woman who
maliciously loved
to spoil the
work of her husband. It was she who caused a flood from which but a few persons
escaped
by seeking
refuge on the mountain-tops. Bochica, the solar god, then put a stop to the
deluge, and, being
very wroth
with Huythaca, drove her from the earth and changed her into the moon. The
result of the
flood, in
this case, was the same as in the “Destruction of Mankind,” viz., the
establishment of solar time.
When the
earth was dry again Bochica gave the year and the periodic sacrifices and the
worship of the
sun to the
people who survived the flood. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. I, pp. 318-319.)
Page 446
Ancient
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Nut, the
celestial wateress in the Ritual, was a keeper of the waters which the women of
the legends
failed to
guard. Hence “the leg of [Page 586] Nut” is a figure of the pole. In one of the
legends the children
of Nut, that
is the stars, have failed in keeping proper time, and been the cause of
confusion and strife.
This is in an
address to the moon-god Taht, who succeeded Sut the star-god as reckoner of
time by
means of the
moon. “Hail, Taht! what is it that hath happened to the divine children of Nut?
They have
done battle,
they have made strife, they have wrought evil, they have created the fiends,
they have made
slaughter,
they have caused trouble; in all their doings the mighty have worked against
the weak. Grant,
O might of
Taht, that that which the god Tum hath decreed may be done. Thou regardest not
evil, nor art
thou provoked
to evil, nor art thou provoked to anger when they bring their years to
confusion, and rush
in and
disturb their months; for in all that they have done unto thee they have worked
iniquity in secret”
(Rit., ch.
175, Budge). When the pole-star changed the bulwark would be overthrown, and
the mistress of
the waters
would be charged with causing a catastrophe by which the “bulwarks” of her
consort, who was
Sut in the
Egyptian astral mythos, were submerged. The blame, of course, in after-times,
was laid upon
the woman,
that is when the woman had taken the place of the primitive zootype, such as
the water-cow
or crocodile.
In Amenta Ptah is the builder of the bulwark that was raised against the
waters, or to keep
out the
Apap-reptile. But Sut-Anup, as a ruler at the pole, was an indefinitely earlier
god who raised the
bulwark to
keep out the deluge. In later ages, when Anup had become the son of Ra, one
name for his
dwelling-place
upon the mountain, that was on the solar mount of glory, is called Ut, the
“Town of the
Embankment,”
which is equivalent to the pile of earth that was heaped up by the mythical
mound-
builders in
seven mounds that formed the bulwarks or embankments at the seven stations of
the pole in
the circuit
of precession. When the deluge occurred at the celestial pole the type of
stability and fixed
foothold on
land was whelmed beneath the firmamental waters. If this was an island or a
tree it sank and
was lost
sight of. Hence the tree of the pole had to be replanted, or the embankment was
to be raised
anew when the
deluge was over. It is related by the Miztec tribe of Indians that “in the day
of obscurity
and darkness
the gods built a palace which was a masterpiece of skill, and made their abode
upon the
summit of a
mountain. The rock was called ‘the Place of Heaven.’ It was the primary
dwelling of the gods.
The children
of the gods planted a garden with fruit-trees. But it is the old universal tale:
there came a
deluge; the
happy garden was submerged, and many sons and daughters of the gods were swept
away”
(Bancroft,
Native Races, vol. III, p. 71). Inevitably, at times our earth gets substituted
for the mound, the
island, or
the earth-heap piled as a fixture for foothold in the celestial waters. The
mound of earth was
followed by
the pyramidion of brick, wood, or stone, the earliest figure of the tower that
was built to reach
the sky.
Thus, when the flood of Noah came to an end, the tower of brick was raised by
the survivors in
the land of
Shinar. In this version we see the tower succeeding the mountain, and the mound
as a typical
figure of the
station at the pole. After the Assyrian deluge the tree was replanted in the
circle or
enclosure,
and to replant the tree was to re-establish the pole in its new station; the
tree or wood that
was said
[Page 587] to be eternal. Noah likewise planted the tree which in his case was
the vine. In the
book of Enoch
it is said the portion of Noah (in time) has ascended up to God, and now “the
angels shall
labour at the
trees” (or tree) and “the seed of life shall arise from it.” This may likewise
be taken to denote
a replanting
of the tree as symbol of the pole. Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, is called the
King of
Surippak, the
ship-city, the city of refuge that was represented by or as an ark upon the
waters. The
building on
land was earlier than the boat upon the waters, and when the gods decide to
make a deluge
it is said,
upon the Chaldean tablet, “O man of Surippak, son of Ubarratutu, destroy the
house and build
a ship.” Here
the ship or ark on the waters succeeds the dwelling-place on land. And both the
ark and
house were
united in Surippak, the ark-city, or “City of the Ship.” After the Babylonian
deluge, Hasisadra
says, “I
built an altar on the peak of a mountain,” and there he offered a sacrifice to
the gods. The altar-
mound, we
repeat, is a figure of the pole. The structure overthrown by the deluge is
rebuilt in several
ways, the
types ranging from the mound to the metropolis. Not only is the typical altar
of the pole erected
on the
mountain-peak, but the structure was finally rebuilt on the scale of the
eternal city. Thus, the ark-
city of
Surippak is succeeded by the city of Erech-Suburi. In raising this, “great
stones”; are dragged for a
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Ancient
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long distance
to where the wall of the new enclosure is to be erected, on the summit of the
ascent, in the
midst of
Erech-Suburi. Seven such structures were raised in the course of precession, at
seven stages of
the pole, and
the journey from one stage to another is described in the legend of Gilgames
(Deluge
Tablet,
column 6, George Smith, Records, vol. VII, p. 133). In the Noachian version the
deluge is followed
by the
building of “an altar to the Lord” (ch. 8, 20). There is also a journey made to
“a plain in the land of
Shinar where
the generations of Noah came to dwell. And they said one to another “Go to . .
. Let us
build us a
city, and a tower whose top may reach to heaven, and let us make us a name lest
we be
scattered
abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” In this account we find three figures
of the pole, the
altar-mound,
the tower, and the city; also the migration of the survivors to another station
of the pole;
which is a
common feature in the astronomical mythos, particularly in the Aztec, Peruvian,
and Mexican
legends. So
ancient was this erection and re-erection of the pole, which signified another
station fixed in
the celestial
journeyings, that the erection of a pole in the earth became a sacred mode of
marking the
station and
the camping-place for the wanderers over the surface of the earth, as with the
two poles of
the
Australian Arunta, and the stave or rod of the Inca. The Tower of Babel was a
symbol of the pole
which had
been overthrown or shifted by the waters of the deluge. To build the tower,
then, was to
replace the
pole. The tower was the Babylonian Bab-illu, which the Hebrew writer has turned
into the
tower of
“babble” and confusion. The story itself is found on an Assyrian tablet in the
British Museum,
with this
difference: In the older legend the structure is a mound, whereas in the Hebrew
version it is a
tower built
of brick. It is explained that Babylon corruptly turned to sin. “Great and
small commingled on
the mound.”
There was a revolt against the great god Anu, “king of the holy [Page 588]
mound.” The rebels
are described
as building a stronghold, but they were confounded in their work. What they did
by day
was all
undone by night. The supreme god gave a command to make strange their speech.
“For future
time the
mountain,” or the mound, was overthrown by Nu-nam-nir, the god of lawlessness
or no rule, and
the
destruction occurred, though not in the form of a deluge (Records of the Past,
vol. VII, p. 131). In the
Mexican
pictures there is an earlier type of the pole as a point of departure than the
tower of brick. It has
been called
the starting-point of the Aztecs after the deluge. In this the mount or mound
of earth rises
from the
water, like an island from the ocean, with a tree upon its summit. The mount is
thus identifiable
with the pole
by means of the typical tree. It is likewise identified with the pole as the
mount that topples
over, the
crooked mount Culhuacan, upon which the ark of Tezpi rested after the deluge.
In one drawing
the male and
female pair are portrayed with the boat waiting for them on the water. In the
other a man in
the boat is
paddling away from the point of departure. The pair are known to tradition as
Cox-Cox and his
consort. The
picture is also said to illustrate the migration from a starting-point in
Atlan, or Aztlan, the
white
mountain. Without recurring for the present to the beginning of astronomy in
the equatorial regions,
we look on
Sut (or Sut-Anup), the first-born son of Apt (Kep or Kefa), the most ancient
form of the Great
Mother, as
the founder of the celestial pole, or the eternal tree in the paradise, the
garden or cultivated
enclosure of
the northern heaven. Sut and his mother became the primal pair in the Egyptian
mythology.
Although the
mother of all living things, one of whose names, Khefa, survived in Hebrew as Chavvah
(Eve), the
primal pair of beings were not constellated as the human parents of the human
race, but as
male and
female hippopotami, or Behemoth and Leviathan, and later as the Greater and the
Lesser
Bears; she as
the maker of the circle, and he as the first to plant the tree, or erect the
pole, the pillar, or
the mound
within the circle; Job says of Behemoth, “he is the chief of the ways of God”
(ch. 40, 19). Now,
Behemoth is
the Egyptian Bekhmut, the hippopotamus. This was female as the zootype of the
Great
Mother, and
male as the image of Sut her son, who as the founders of the pole were “the
chief of the
ways” in
heaven as establishers of a guiding-star at the pole. When the primal pair are
represented in the
book of
Genesis by Adam and Eve they are the husband and wife in a later mythos that
was solar. But in
the primal
legends the descent of the human race is traced to the primal pair when these
were mother
and son, or
the brother and sister as represented in the Japanese creation of the pole.
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Ancient
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The earliest
flood, caused by the declination of the pole-star, set afloat a large number of
legends. One of
these relates
that the new world which followed was peopled by a brother and sister. The
Chins, on the
Burma
frontier, preserve the tradition of a universal deluge that was co-eval with
the origin of their race.
According to
the Haka tradition all the hills were submerged, and every person was drowned
except one
brother and
sister, who floated in a large earthen jar, and when the waters subsided
settled on the Mun
Ktlang
mountain (Pioneer, Allahabad, October 22nd, 1897). The old [Page 589]
earth-mother, who was
represented
as the bringer-forth of life from the waters in the shape of a pregnant
hippopotamus, was
imaged
astronomically as the genetrix who brought forth her young from the firmamental
water amidst
the fields of
papyrus-reed which formed the Sekhet-Aarru. The same in Apta at the northern
pole as it
was in Apta
at the equator. This old mother of beginnings in the waters of earth and heaven
was also
repeated as
the dragon-horse in the Chinese version of the astronomical uranography as well
as in the
Babylonian
remains. It is recorded in the sacred books that a supernatural dragon-horse
issued from the
waters of
heaven and made known the eight mystical diagrams of Tai-Hao, the first
mythical or celestial
ruler, who
corresponds to Sut, the inventor of astronomy in Egypt, and Bel in Babylonia.
The mother and
son were the
pair that preceded the individualising of the fatherhood; and the son was
mythically
represented
as both the child and consort, the adult or bull, of the mother.
According to
the Indian tribes of Guiana, the primal pair were a male and female, saved from
the Deluge
in a canoe.
This is a legend of the Tamanaks. It is the same representation in the ancient
British tradition.
The Welsh
first parents, named Dwyvan and Dwyvach, are a male and female who found safety
from the
Deluge in an
ark. Also on the Apamean coin the pair as Nu, or Noë, and his female consort
are portrayed
upon the
waters floating in a box or teba, accompanied by a raven and a dove. There is
also a primal pair
connected
with the tree in a legend of New Guinea who are called “the man and his
mother.” The man is
so mighty
that he thrusts a spear through the earth right into the heart of the rock,
where the pair live in
the condition
of troglodytes. The spear evidently images the pole, which is mixed up, if not
identified, with
the tree, as
is the spear of the male and female pair in the Japanese legend. The man and
his mother
climbed to
the top of the tree, and there the strong man slew the giant, the Apap-monster
slain by Horus,
and the giant
slain by Jack (H. H. Romily, My Verandah, p. 118). The giant is a co-type with
the Apapserpent
of drought
and darkness; and in another legend the monster is a serpent coiled about the
tree.
This may help
us to understand the presence of the evil serpent with “the man and his mother”
underneath
the tree in the Assyrian garden of Edin. The mother is the old first genetrix,
one of whose
titles is
“mistress of the mountains” as well as of the mount. The Samoans say that the
first of the human
race were a
woman and her son. Turner tells us they have many tales about the doings of
that woman
and her son,
from whom the race of men descended (Samoa, p. 330-1). Thus, man and woman
originated as
the mother and her son, or the sister and brother, who afterwards became the
mythical
mother and
father in the solar legends, which reflect the later sociology. In one
tradition of the Ainu it is
related that
the race originated with a primal pair of ancestors, who were a female bear and
a dog. This
is, of
course, in accordance with the totemic symbolism, only the totemic symbols were
not limited to the
human groups.
Totems of the nature-powers were also figured in the planisphere. In Africa the
great first
mother of all
was constellated as the female hippopotamus, or as a crocodile. In [Page 590]
Greece she
was imaged as
the female bear. Sut, her son, was represented by a jackal which became the dog
through
change of fauna. These can now be traced to the Greater and Lesser Bears as two
surviving
constellations
of the Great Mother and her dog, who constitute the primal pair of the Ainu,
with the bear
as the Great
Mother and the dog (or jackal) as her son or consort when the pole was in the
Lesser Bear,
we might say
one great year ago.
Sut, as ruler
of the primal pole-star, was the Arch-First in heaven, as a male. This is the
title of Tai-Yih,
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Ancient
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the Chinese
great one. It is said that among all the shin, or spirits (the Japanese shintu
gods), of the
heavens, the
highest one dwells in the star Tai-Yih of the constellation Draco (O’Neil,
Night of the Gods,
vol. I, pp.
513, 517). It is not enough, however, to identify the deity with the pole in
general. There were
seven of
these gods, and everywhere the question is, which of the seven stations of the
pole was the
seat at the
time? Draconis was the constellation of Horus-Sebek, the crocodile-dragon. Sut
was the firstborn
child of the
great mother Apt or Khep, and those two formed the primary duad that is
sometimes
called
Sut-Typhon, the nearest approach to which name in Egyptian would be Sut-Tept,
or Sut and his
mother as the
primal pair. According to one account of the origins in the Book of Genesis,
Seth, Set, or
Sut was the
first-born child of Chavvah, as he had been of Kep or Kefa in the Kamite
mythos. Sut was
the primary
ruler or over-lord, the earliest representative of power in heaven figured in
an image of the
male, or the
lord, whose name was first called upon when Sut became the backbone of the
universe, as
establisher
of the pole. He was the lord as male hippopotamus and consort to the lady who
was his
mother as the
female. And here we may perceive that a fragment of the true tradition survived
in the
biblical
statement that in the time of Seth “Men began to call upon the name of the
Lord” (Gen. IV. 26).
Sut, as male,
was first of the seven brothers who in the Babylonian legend “came as
begetters.” This fact
also is recognised
in the text when it is said that “a son was born to Seth,” or Sut, Egyptian,
who was the
first form of
the father as the elder brother with whom the fatherhood began. It is said of
Ialdabaoth that,
being
incensed with men because they did not worship or honour him as god and father,
he being the
oldest
brother only, he sent forth a deluge upon them that he might at once destroy
them all (Irenaeus,
Book I, ch.
XXX, 10). Sut acquired an evil character in later times, and became the
original form of an
anthropomorphic
Satan. He was looked upon as the fallen leader of the angelic host because he
had
been first in
glory as the ruling power at the primary station of the pole. This is the Satan
worshipped by
the Izedis in
Mesopotamia, for whom there is to be a restoration as well as a fall, which
points to an
astronomical
origin in both aspects of the character. Sut, in the Ritual (ch. 175), is
proclaimed as having
been the
first in glory. It is said “the power of Sut which hath departed was greater
than that of all the
gods.” He was
first as primary power of the pole, the first to sit upon “the mount of
congregation” as the
“most high”
in “the uttermost parts of the north,” or at the pole of heaven. Hence he was
the reputed
author of
astronomy. Thus, when the pole-star of Sut in the jackal (or the hippopotamus)
had fallen away
from the true
pole and [Page 591] lost its place as guide of ways in heaven, there was matter
for the
legend of a
fall as a fable founded on a fact in the astronomical mythology. When so read,
the fall of man
from heaven
is resolved into the fall of Sut, or Lucifer, the light-bringer, or the light
that was uplifted at the
primary
station of the pole, the woman who was the foundress being charged by the Semites,
the
Chinese, and
others with being his accomplice and instigator, a mode of unconsciously
showing that she,
the Great
Mother, was the mover, which she was, but only as the primum mobile, not as the
woman
urging the
man to his eternal misery. The following citation shows the primal pair as
Ishtar and the elder
Bel in
relation to the mount of the pole and the mountains of its different stations.
“O lady, mistress of the
mountain,
goodly stronghold of the mountains, mighty lock of the mountains, queen of the
land of the four
rivers. O
lord, the mighty mountain, Bel!” (Tablet S. 954, B. M. Budge, Babylonian). In
this imagery the
Great Mother
as Ishtar, is mistress of the mountain, and Bel is the lord, identical with the
mount itself,
which imaged
the pole, when Bel was the star. In one of the Assyrian hymns this enclosure of
the “lady of
the eternal
tree” and her comrade is spoken of as “the park of Ishtar.” Nergal, the
destroyer, is thus
addressed, “O
lord, the park of Ishtar thou establishest not” (Sayce, “Hymn to Nergal,” Hib.
Sect.), Nergal
having been
one of the overthrowers at the time of the Deluge. In the Assyrian hymns to the
gods it is
said that the
lady of the eternal tree is the comrade of the bull, the great bull, the supreme
bull. The tree
is the pole;
“the eternal wood” or Gis-Zida, which also seems to mean a mast, is the pole
(Sayce). Now, it
is a form of
this pair of founders at the pole that we think may be dimly discerned on the
Assyrian cylinder
(see p. 453).
The tree with seven branches represents the pole as a figure of the total
heptanomis, and is
consequently
late. The pair beneath the tree are the mother and son, or male and female, of
the legend
as the primal
pair who fell from heaven because they failed as keepers of the tree of
knowledge at the
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Ancient
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pole. There
is also a form of this primal pair to be seen in a drawing on one of the Greek
vases which
comes nearest
to the Hebrew version of the woman tempting the man. The Great Mother is
portrayed in
noble nudity,
Greek fashion, as divinely tall beside a youth to whom she is offering the
fruit which she has
plucked from
the tree of knowledge, the tree that represented the pole when the knowledge
was
astronomical.
The pair, like the female and male in the Assyrian garden, are underneath the
tree, about
the root of
which the serpent coils.
As Kamite, or
as Greek, the ancient genetrix was the teacher who in later legend is
misrepresented as
the tempter.
We now claim
to have recovered the natural origin of the primeval paradise with the primal
pair, the tree
and serpent
in the enclosure at the station first established at the fixed point of the
celestial pole, of which
so many
versions and perversions are extant without one of them being scientifically
correct or verifiable
from lack of
the long-lost data in astronomy. Egyptian mythology, the source and
fountainhead of all the
ancient
wisdom and legendary lore, could not be understood apart from this, neither can
the astronomy
be explained
apart from the mythology. To repeat. The garden is the enclosure at the pole
that was first
figured in
the circle of the ancient genetrix. [Page 592]
The pole itself
was represented by the tree. The evil serpent symbolizes the drought, the
darkness, and
the dearth in
physical phenomena. The reptile coils around the tree or is present in all the
pictures,
Egyptian,
Babylonian, Hindu, Red Indian, Norse, and Greek, also as described in divers
ancient legends.
The mother
brought forth her child of life as the opponent of the evil serpent and
protector of the tree,
and the
saviour in the Kamite mythology was converted into a saviour in the Semitic
eschatology. The
Chinese have
a tradition in which original sin is attributed to a woman who overthrew her
“husband’s
bulwarks
through an ambitious desire for knowledge.” As in the Book of Genesis and the
legend of the
wicked
Huythaca, the sin is ascribed to the woman. But we need to know what the
bulwark was before
we can see
how it could ever have been overthrown. She was Primus, as builder of the
bulwark or as
planter of
the pole, and, above all, as mistress of the waters which were under her
control, or should
have been,
unless she had neglected them or entered into a league with the Apap-reptile,
which was the
primary evil
power that overthrew the enclosure with the deluge of the dark or the waters of
the
firmament.
We meet with
a form of the primal pair in Stanley’s legend of Lake Tanganyika, one of the
oldest in the
world. In
this the woman had been trusted with the keeping of the waters. But she
betrayed the secret to
her lover and
the waters broke forth in a deluge of destruction, the proof of which
catastrophe remains to
this day in
Lake Tanganyika. The Khonds of Orissa have a divinized form of the primal pair
in their
ancient
goddess, Tari Pennu, and her son, Buri Pennu, who answers to a pole-star god
inasmuch as he
was called
“;the light.” These can be identified with the prototypal pair, that is with
Sut the establisher of
the pole and
his mother, because he is credited with creating a primal paradise, and she is
charged with
having
maliciously caused its destruction, which is elsewhere rendered as a deluge of
water or a fall from
heaven.
Amongst the
mummeries still religiously performed in Rome, and also by the English
Ritualists, which are
mystical at
present from lack of meaning, there is a ceremony of “the seven stations of the
cross,” which
is supposed
to commemorate the seven resting-places of the cross on the way to Calvary. But
the same,
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Ancient
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or a similar
procession, was celebrated at Abydos or Memphis when the tat-cross was carried
round the
seven
resting-places that marked and memorized the seven stations of the pole. In one
of the ancient
Chaldean
oracles the seven stations of the pole are spoken of as the seven poles. “The
Chaldeans call
the god
(Dionysius or Bacchus) .ao in the Phoenician tongue (instead of the
intelligible light), and he is
often called
Sabaoth, signifying that he is above the seven poles, that is the Demiurgus”
(Taylor,
“Collection
of the Chaldean Oracles,” Classical Journal, No. 22). As Iamblichus says of the
Chaldeans,
“they not
only preserved the memorials of seven-and-twenty myriads of years, as
Hipparchus tells us
they have,
but likewise of the whole Apocatastes and periods of the seven rulers of the world”
(Nat. Gen.,
vol. II, p.
321). It certainly was so with the Egyptians. These rulers were the seven born
of the Great
Mother as the
seven powers of earth. They were re-born of Nut, the mother-heaven, as the
seven
glorious
ones, who [Page 593] were called the Khuti; the seven with Anup at the pole who
were the
executioners
for the great judge; the seven wise masters of art and science in the lunar
mythos with
Tehuti; the
seven sahus with Horus in Orion; the seven as moulders with Ptah in the making
of Amenta;
the seven as
the souls of Atum-Ra who were the creators of man.
These are the
seven that were uranographic figures in the astronomical mythology as the seven
old, old
ones; the
seven patriarchs of enormous age; the seven giants of colossal stature; the
seven rulers of the
world; the
seven lords or masters of eternity.
In later
times the seven planets have been mistaken for the seven stars. But these
ancient pole-stars we
consider to
be “the seven stars” of which it is related in the tradition reproduced by
Plato that after many
ages they
would return and meet together again in their old places as in the beginning,
and apparently at
the time of
the last deluge of all, or, as we read it, at the end of the great year.
It was these
and not the seven planets that could ever return to an original station at the
starting point.
The planets
were but five in number and not seven in the most ancient astronomy. The sun,
moon, and
seven stars
were not the seven planets of modern science. The seven, called the first of
the stars, which
in the
beginning were in heaven, are connected with the great year according to the
book of Enoch, as is
shown by
their being cast out until the day of the “great consummation” in “the secret year,”
also called
the “period
of the great judgment.”
The seven
that were separate and single as rulers of the pole were also grouped together
as a pictorial
illustration
in the planisphere. These are the seven in the constellation of the Lesser Bear
who follow the
bier or
coffin of their lord, Osiris, in the Greater Bear. These are they of whom it is
said, “Their places
were fixed by
Anup on the day of Come thou hither” (Rit., ch. 17), who became the seven lords
of
eternity, and
who were looked up to as seven divine ancestors of Atum-Ra. The names of seven
superseded
watchers in heaven are given by Enoch as: Azazyel, Amazarak, Armers, Barkayel,
Akebeel,
Tamiel, and
Asaradel. Here also is evidence that the seven rishis who meditated and forgot
were the
representatives
of seven pole-stars. Dhruva was one of the rishis who was assigned a pole-star
by
Vishnu. He is
said to have meditated himself into forgetfulness of his identity (or ceased to
be a polestar).
The seven who
slumbered and forgot are also represented by the seven sleepers in the cave at
Ephesus with
their dog, who answer to the seven with Anup and his jackal at the pole. The
seven who
slumbered and
forgot likewise recur in the Norse mythology. These are the seven sons of Mimir
who
guard the
land of Odainsakr, the land of the ever-living. They are represented as the
smiths who forged
the primitive
weapons and who correspond to the seven Khnemmu or divine metallurgists of
Ptah.
Though
sleeping till the dusk of the last day, they keep the enclosure safe until the
final conflict comes
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Ancient
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betwixt the
powers of good and evil. Then they are to wake and rise and help to establish
the new
heaven and
rejuvenated earth. The seven under whatsoever name or type, watching or
slumbering, are
still the
keepers of the world’s great year and the enclosure of the seven never-setting
stars that marked
the seven
stations of the shifting pole. [Page 594]
Before the
building of the boat the seven had to keep their heads above water as the seven
mythical,
immeasurable
giants, equivalent in the superhuman guise to seven great mountains imaging the
seven
starry
summits. One of these giants is Ogg in Jewish legend, who is said to have waded
through the
deluge,
clinging with one hand to the ark to keep afloat. The seven giants, as figures
of seven colossal
constellations,
were tall enough to hold their heads, which are the seven pole-stars, above the
waters
that were
deep enough to drown the other people of the heavens. But when the boat was
built there was
an ark of
safety that could float upon the waters, and the primordial seven were
mythically represented
as being
saved from the deluge in an ark as seven companions, Ali, Kabiri, Hohgates, or
other groups of
the seven
which had one origin in the astronomical mythology of Egypt. And when the boat
was launched
upon the
water of earth the type could be applied to the water of heaven. Seven giants,
in one rendering
of the
mythos, bore the world of the heptanomis upon their backs, each standing at his
station as one of
seven great
props personified as giants. The unhuman hugeness of the giant was most
naturally derived
from the
enormous pre-anthropomorphic types or zootypes of superhuman power. Sut, as the
hippopotamus,
is a giant. Sebek, as the crocodile, is a giant. Shu, as the lion, is a giant.
An ape of the
seven cubits
and also one of the eight cubits is described as a giant. But the seven primal
powers as
Egyptian in
the earliest human form are pigmies and not giants. Moreover, the giants were
not human,
whereas the
pigmies are. In an Arthurian legend the Welsh Owein comes to a wide, open
clearing with a
great mound
in it where there is a black giant, who stands upon one foot, and has only one
eye in the
middle of his
forehead (Rhys, Arth. Legend). The mound, the giant with one foot and Cyclop’s
eye are
perfect
figures of the pole and pole-star, which have here been grouped together in a
later legend. The
Irish Crom,
Cromm Cruiach, “the crooked or bent one of the mound,” equates with the Mexican
“crooked
mountain” as
the figure of a falling or deflected station of the pole. The Mexican tradition
affirmed that it
was in the
first age of the world that the giants began to appear on the earth. These are
the giants of the
constellations
who had been humanized as magnified non-natural men, and then transferred to
our earth
in the
märchen that took the place of the gnosis, or science of the mythos. In the
Aztec and Mexican
versions of
the deluge myths we find that when the great calamity occurred the land was
peopled by
giants. Seven
of these who were brothers found safety by enclosing themselves in the seven
caves of
the mountain
Tlaloc. The Indians of Cholula likewise relate that only seven inhabitants of
this fore-world
of the giants
survived the deluge. In Southern California the Indians have a tradition of the
beginning in
which Quaor,
the Lord, when he created the world, or the new order of things, placed it on
the shoulders
of seven
sustaining giants (Nat. Gen., vol. II, p. 220). This world of the giants was
the celestial
heptanomis
beyond the deluge. In a tradition of the American Indians it is told that at
the close of the
deluge the
last mammoth sprang across Lake Superior at a single bound and disappeared for
ever in the
wilds of
Canada. Thus the last of the seven astronomes, or its mammoth-type, disappeared
in the great
deluge of all
with the last of the giants. [Page 595]
The giants,
who were seven in relation to the stations of the pole, are curiously
identified with the
mountains
themselves as places of birth by Sanchoniathon. He says they were beings of
vast bulk and
stature,
“whose names were given to the mountains which they occupied.” Of these, he
tells us, children
were begotten
through intercourse with their mothers, “the women of those times without shame
having
intercourse
with any man they might chance to meet.” Here the giant and the mountain as
human
birthplace
are identical as figures of the pole (Cory, Ancient Fragments, 1876, p. 6).
These, then, are a
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Ancient
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form of those
giants called the sons of God who “came in unto the daughters of men” (book of
Genesis,
also book of
Enoch).
In the Hebrew
märchen, the seven old ones who were the primordial powers, the seven wise
masters,
watchers,
judges, rishis, manus, moulders, masi, Ali, Elohim, or Kabiri are the seven
patriarchs of
Genesis who
lived for such enormous lengths of time. They are the typical old ones in the
Ritual, the
fathers in
the first and highest circle of the gods. The seven patriarchs were identified
in the Natural
Genesis (vol.
II, section 12) with the seven rishis in the lunar mythos of the Hindu
astronomy. These, as
measurers of
the precessional movement of the pole by means of seven pole-stars, were also
represented
as making a revolution of the great year in the twenty-eight asterisms or
mansions of the
moon. The
patriarchs had now been humanized. The Hindu patriarchate was a period of 71-2
years, or a
mortal
lifetime. Seven of these were the measure of a phoenix-cycle, a period of 500
years. Seven by
seven the
rishis or manus travel round the zodiac of 28 houses, in the circle of
precession. Thus the time
of their stay
in each asterism would be a twenty-eighth part of the great year of 25,868 or,
in round
numbers,
26,000 years. This would give the patriarchs or manus something over 900 years
in each of the
28 lunar
stations, which is quite near enough as astronomical data to account for the
age of the seven
patriarchs in
the book of Genesis. The age of Adam is 930 years. The age of Seth 912 years.
The age of
Enoch 905
years. The age of Kenan 910 years. The age of Jared 962 years. The age of
Methuselah 969
years. Thus,
the age of six of the seven patriarchs is over 900 years each, and in the first
list of two the
patriarchs
are seven in number. No reason has been adduced for rejecting this explanation.
If the seven
patriarchs,
like the seven rishis, the seven taasu, or the seven masi, were astronomical
characters, it is
certain their
ages are likewise astronomical. Noah, who is tenth in the second list of
patriarchs, is the
man of 500
years who never could be mortal. But it can be shown in what way he was an
astronomical
figure, like
the rest of the seven, or the ten, according to the mode of measuring by the
typical lifetime.
The human
lifetime was reckoned at 71-2 years; the age of a patriarch in human form.
Seven of these
periods in
precession made a phoenix-cycle of 500 years, the age, therefore, of a divine
or mythical man
like Noah or
the Buddha. A legend of the Jayas, in the Vayu Purana, relates, in after times,
that the
astronomical
rulers were created by Brahma as his divine assistants, but that they got lost
in meditation
and forgot to
fulfil his ordinances. On this account they were doomed to be continually
reincarnated and
reborn in
each manvantara or patriarchate up to the seventh, and thus they [Page 596]
continued to be
reborn in
successive series of sevens all through the cycle of precession. The seventh
was always
reborn as a
manu or a Buddha in the Puranas, and in the Hebrew version Noah is the man of
500 years
as a typical
measurer of time, and in this instance it is the particular period of time that
is ended with a
deluge (Gen.
V. 32). Now among the Hebrew fragments of the ancient wisdom in the book of
Genesis is
the story of
these patriarchs that was told according to the measuring by the lifetime.
Previous to the
deluge of
Noah the lifetime of man or of the old, old ones was reckoned at something like
1,000 years. As
we are told,
“there were giants in the earth in those days.” But after the deluge, time, or
the age of man,
was to be
computed by shorter lengths. This is expressed in uranographic formulae: “Yet
shall his days
be an hundred
and twenty years,” which period as Egyptian is the double Han-cycle. Thus the
change
from a
lifetime of 1,000 years to a period of 120 years is obviously related to the
double Han-period of the
Sothiac-cycle.
The double Han-cycle is a period of 120 years. Consequently the lifetime of man
after the
deluge is measurable
by the length of this period, which was made use of in reckoning the cycle of
Sothis. And
whether the lifetime is reckoned at 120 years in the Sothiac cycle, or at 3,714
in the circle of
precession,
both are astronomical. The lifetime of the patriarch was a period in
precession. Noah’s
lifetime was
a phoenix-cycle of 500 years which ended with the Noachian deluge. After this
the lifetime of
man (who
takes the place of the Bennu as an astronomical figure) was to be the Han-cycle
of 120 years.
Thus the
heaven or zodiac in twelve divisions was probably based on the Sothiac-cycle.
Twelve Hancycles
were twelve
lifetimes in the year of Sothis, round numbers being employed and the fractions
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Ancient
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gathered up
to be quoted in the total combination, or filled in with the festivals, such as
the Sut-Heb. This
was a seven
days’ festival celebrated every thirty years. At the end of each Han-cycle it
was seen that
the legal year
had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the 1st of Taht anticipated
the heliacal
rising of
Sothis by thirty days. But this had been measured, allowed for, and ticked off
by means of the
four Sut-Heb
festivals celebrated during the Hanti period of 120 years. By this intelligible
change in the
length of the
lifetime the biblical text itself affords indubitable evidence that the
lifetimes of the patriarchs
were
astronomical. If the Han-cycle of 120 years was a time-cycle, it is absolutely certain
that the
previous
periods were so likewise, the one being reduced from the other by the Hebrew
a-gnostic
literalizers.
The cutting up of time into smaller portions or shorter lengths is likewise
indicated in the
Chippewa
legend, when the slayer of the giants is described as hacking their bodies into
little bits, and
saying to the
fragments, “In the future let no man be larger than you are now” (Nat. Gen.,
vol. II, p. 240).
This is
equivalent to the lifetime being cut down to 120 years. Thus the lifetime of
the patriarch, which in
round numbers
was 1,000 years in the old, was reduced to 120 years in the reckoning of the
new cycle
which
followed the deluge of Noah.
The “seven
rulers of the world” manifested one by one at great intervals of time, and were
a means of
keeping the
reckonings on a colossal scale. The age of each, as representatives of the
successive [Page
597]
pole-stars, would be from three to four thousand years, or one-seventh part of
25,868 years. The
seven, beginning
as the Kamite Khuti, are well-nigh universal. The Japanese have seven gods of
fortune
and givers of
good gifts, called the Shichi Fukujin, who sail each New Year’s Eve as
passengers on
board the
ship called The Floating-Bridge of Heaven, that carries the seven magical
treasures, which
include the
lucky coat, the hat that makes invisible, the inexhaustible purse, and other
possessions which
are obviously
the property of spirits promised conditionally to mortals on the earth. The two
groups of
Hebrew
patriarchs which precede the deluge, seven and ten in number, correspond to the
seven and the
ten in
Babylonian legend, who were rulers in the antediluvian world — that is, in the
fore-world of the
astronomical
mythology. The seven fish-men, ascending one by one at vast intervals of time
from the
Nun or deep
that was locally represented by the Persian Gulf at Eridu, we look upon as the
seven rulers
of the
ancient pole-stars taking their stations successively in the circuit of
precession, with the fish for
their
zootype. Unquestionably the seven fish-men are a form of the seven prediluvian
kings, hence the
appearance of
the Annedoti at the same time with the king, the fish as zootype being earlier
than the title
of king. Thus
the seven as fish-men, of whose “appearances Abydenus has made no mention,”
were
followed by
the three other rulers named Amompsimus, Otiartes, and Xisuthrus, and “so the
sum total of
all the kings
is ten,” seven of whom had been figured as Annedoti, or divine rulers in the
celestial waters,
who were
afterwards completely humanized as kings. So in the book of Esdras, the Son of
God is seen
ascending
from the sea to take his stand upon the mount, here called Mount Zion, as the
man “;whom
God the
highest hath kept a great season,” and who was to regain the fish-type as
ichthus “within four
hundred
years” (2 Esdras, VII and XIII). The seven Assyrian masi are known to have been
stars in
different
constellations, as were the pole-stars. One was “the star of the eagle,” one
“the star of the wain,”
one “the star
of the shepherd of the heavenly flocks,” that might be compared with the “key
of the crown”
as first of
the seven pole-stars in the heptanomis of Sut.
Tai Hao, the
great celestial, was the first mythical or astronomical ruler in the Chinese
divine dynasties.
With him
commenced the mystic diagrams called the Yi or changes, which were eight in
number. These
were revealed
to him by the dragon-horse that issued from the Yellow river or the Milky Way
(Mayers,
Manual, 366,
44, 56). Tai Hao corresponds to Sut, the inventor of astronomy and ruler of the
first polestar;
the
dragon-horse answers to the water-horse that was combined with the crocodile in
Apt, goddess
of the Great
Bear and mother of the seven rulers. According to M. Philastre in his version
of the Yi king
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Ancient
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(p. 3), the
name of the Chow dynasty and of the Chow Yi divining-book signifies circular
movement, the
revolution
embracing the whole universe. This revolution, we think, does not merely mean
that of the
starry
spheres, but the movement of the pole. Chow Yi would then mean the changes of
the pole and
pole-stars in
the circle of precession. Thus the Chow dynasty of the sons of heaven would be
the seven
successive
rulers of the pole, who reigned for six and twenty thousand years as scientific
fact. [Page 598]
In the Vision
of Scipio Cicero has preserved something of the ancient doctrine concerning the
derivation
of souls from
above. The spirit of Africanus tells his son that souls or spirits were
supplied to men from
the eternal
fires, which are constellations and stars. Now there are seven souls, because
the elements
were seven
all told, and seven primary constellations, with seven stars for souls,
otherwise called the
seven great
spirits or seven glorious ones. These became the seven begetters in the
creation legend of
Cutha — one
to each of the seven representative constellations in which the elemental
powers had
acquired
their souls and thus become the typical transmitters of souls to human beings.
Sut, the soul of
shade in the
hippopotamus; Horus, the soul of light; Shu, the soul of breath; Hapi, the soul
of water —
such were the
begetters of a soul in totemism. Thus the Ainu are the bears, the Arunta are
the emus, the
Zuni are the
turtles. They have their totemic zootypes on earth, which also imaged the
elemental spirits
or souls in
heaven that were represented by the constellation or the star for those who had
preserved the
primitive
wisdom. Thus derivation from the tree and rock, which is mentioned by Hesiod
and Homer,
would, if
astronomical, be derivation from the pole; whereas derivation from the
hippopotamus, bear,
vulture, ape,
water-bird, jackal, tortoise, or other of the uranographic types would denote
the particular
station of
the pole, and be a time-gauge to the beginnings according to the racial
reckonings in the
astronomical
chronology. For instance, the Khatties of Central India trace their descent
from a progenitor
named Khat,
who sprang from a staff that he had fashioned from the branch of a tree
(Folkard).
Descendants
from a god whose hauling or towing force was represented by a rope would
naturally be the
ropemen. And
the Spartans claimed to be the ropemen, from spa.t..=rope. As they sprang from
the
teeth of the
dragon sown by Kadmos, it is possible that they dated from the ropeman who was
ruler of
the pole-star
in the dragon from 4,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. in round numbers. When Ra calls on
those who
pull the rope
of the solar boat in Amenta to tow him “towards the dwelling of stable things”
and free
themselves
upon “the mysterious horizon,” they say to Ra, “The rope is with Ak”=the
pole-star. The upper
end of the
rope was fastened to the pole, whilst the bark was being towed round the
ecliptic. The imagery
here does but
involve one rope and one pole-star at a time; but as the pole-stars in the
course of
precession
were seven, there were seven ropes or bonds, all reckoned, and in one character
the seven
primal powers
are called the seven Tesu or Tasu. These are the seven who hauled at the rope
and who
were the
makers of the seven ties, bonds, knots, or fastenings of the cable to the pole
when the rope was
a primitive
link of connection that preceded Newton’s law of gravitation; the rope that is
carried in the
form of a
noose by Shu-Anhur, who also carries the staff of the pole with which heaven
was uplifted. The
seven
Egyptian Tesu are a kind of seven ropemen, who passed into the Babylonian
mythology as the
seven bonds
by which the universe was bound and held together by the seven lords at the
seven
stations of
the pole. In the Hindu representation the seven powers that hauled round the
solar bark by
means of the
rope have been converted finally into the later seven horses which draw the
chariot of the
sun (Moor’s
Hindu [Page 599] Pantheon). The seven became the first company of the gods in
the Aarru
fields as the
rulers of the seven pole-stars, who were the formers or creators in the domains
of space and
time. These
were the seven great in glory called the Khuti or spirits, represented by
beautiful white waterbirds,
the prototype
of Cygnus the swan. The seven Khuti still survive in the seven swans of
legendary
lore, more
especially in India. The seven Khuti, as white birds on the celestial waters,
represented souls
or spirits,
but as star-souls, not human souls, external to human beings, and so they
became seven souls
as seven
swans in the folk-tales.
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Ancient
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At every
stage of development the tree of mythology has shed the leaves of legend that
were blown
about the
world as the märchen of many lands. Before the boat was built the swimmers were
water-birds,
crocodiles,
or hippopotami. The mode of thinking could not have been otherwise. When Anup
as eighth
was added as
the power above the pole, and therefore the supreme one in the character of the
great
judge, the
gods of the seven pole-stars were figured as “the seven arms of the balance” in
the maat of
eternal law
and justice. When the boat was built and Anup became the master over the
waters, the
company of
seven were placed pictorially on board the bark of the Lesser Bear as figures
of the never-
setting ones
that were safe for ever from the waters of the deluge. The seven now were
typical eternals
in two
categories of astronomical phenomena. They were stationary in the circle of the
seven ancient
pole-stars,
and seven as rowers, boatmen, or kabiri grouped in the bark revolving round the
pivot of the
pole. This
was in the stellar mythos. When lunar time had been made out by Taht the
measurer, the
typical seven
were advanced in status. These are his assistants as the seven Taasu, the sages
or wise
masters. They
appear on board the bark in the shape of seven hawks called the offspring of
heaven. The
bird of air
had then succeeded the water-bird as the type of the seven souls on board the
bark in the
lunar mythos.
In the solar mythos the seven are pygmies or patakoi, the little sailors on
board the bark
with Ptah.
Martianus Capella tells us the Egyptians painted on their ships the seven
pilots who were all
alike and
brothers, who are no doubt identical with the seven pygmy-patakoi or kabiri of
Ptah. These
were
represented in the boat of Anup that voyaged round the pole as the seven rulers
that were thus
grouped
together as a picture of the stars that never set. Sydik the just and the seven
called his sons are
the
Phoenician form of Anup the judge and the seven khuti. The seven were not
navigators as the seven
hawks,
jackals, apes, giants, planters of the tree, or builders of the mound.
Navigation began with the
boat or ark,
and the seven in the boat, like the seven hohgates, were seen as the seven in
the Lesser
Bear, with
Anup or Sydik, head over all, as an eighth to the seven. In one character the
seven stars were
regarded as
watchers watching solemnly aloof. A non-setting star was imaged as a
never-closing eye. In
the Ainu
legend of the god upon the summit, the watchers, who are the 6+1, are hares,
and the hare was
reputed to be
so watchful that it slept with its eyes open. In Babylonia the deluge-makers are
the seven
with the
ancient Genetrix, who is called “the mother of the seven gods,” the seven that
“heaped up the
seat” or
[Page 600] built the mounds which were overthrown, as fabled, by the deluge.
Astronomically
these were
the gods of the seven pole-stars whose seats were in the never-setting stars
around the
throne of
Anu. Thus, and in no other way, the seven powers caused the deluge, and then
ascended to
their seats
in the heaven of Anu and assumed their thrones on high as rulers in the realm
of eternity. The
seven
survivors are exactly the same in the astronomical mythos as if they had made
their escape from
drowning in a
boat, like the seven hohgates or kabiri, or any other group of the seven
companions. But
the boat or
ship is here employed for the use of the human survivors who are supposed to
have been
carried away
on board the bark of Hasisadra “to be like the gods” — that is, as manes and
not as
mortals. The
seven who are charged with causing the deluge in Babylonian legend — Bel, Ea,
Rimmon,
Nebo, Marduk,
Ninib, and Nerra — may be compared with the Egyptian seven — Sut, Sebek, Shu,
Hapi,
Tuamutef,
Kabhsenuf, and Amsta.
The tradition
of the seven founders of the heaven that was based upon the water went forth to
the ends
of the earth.
They were seven children of the old Great Mother, seven brothers or companions
when the
social status
was totemic and the fatherhood was not yet individualised. In Egypt they are
“the seven
children of
the thigh” — the sign by which we can identify the ancient Genetrix with the
birthplace of
beginning
astronomically in the circle of the Bear and the constellation called the
Meskhen, or “the thigh.”
These are the
seven brethren called “seven kings,” who appear as “begetters” in the Cuthean
legend.
That is as
begetters in group-marriage, who were the totemic fathers that preceded the
father as a known
individual.
They are the seven companions of Arthur in the ark; the seven hohgates of the
Californian
Indians, who
escaped from the deluge in a boat and were fixed in heaven as stars that never
set; the
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Ancient
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seven
dwarf-sons of the Polynesian Pinga, who correspond to the seven pygmy boatmen
and builders of
Ptah; the
seven mound builders on the American continent, and various other sevens in the
mythos that
was
astronomical and became universal in the legendary form. They were born as
seven sons of the
Great Mother,
and were her boys when she was “a mither but na wife.”
No matter in
what part of the world we discover this tradition of the seven founders and
seven stations of
the pole, it
involves at least one bygone Great Year in the circle of precession
independently of where the
astronomical
mythology originated. In the later stage of the eschatology, when Osiris was
supreme as
god over the
pole, and all other powers had become his powers (Rit., ch. 7), there are seven
arits or
mansions in
the great house of the eternal city. The seven watchers, of the astral mythos,
dwell in these;
the seven who
are called the khus, the divine princes; the seven glorious ones who stand
behind Osiris,
and who are
called the makers of the seven mansions for the god (chs. 17, 83-107, and 144).
Before
Osiris was,
these were the seven lords of law, of right, of truth, and justice: otherwise
stated, the seven
lords of maat
(judges), the seven arms of the balance (executioners), the seven eyes
(watchers), the
seven pillars
(supports); and as they were also the makers of the seven arits, they are
likewise the seven
mythical
builders of the heptanomis; the seven powers that [Page 601] can be followed as
the seven with
Anup, with
Taht, with Ptah, with Horus, and with Ra, according to the series of phenomena.
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Ancient
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the Lesser
Bear, one in Kepheus, one in Cygnus, one in Lyra, and one in Herakles, or the
Man. It is here
It is now
proposed to trace and tentatively localize the seven (or a seven) stations of
the pole on which
the
heptanomis was founded in the circuit of precession. In the circle of
precessional movement drawn
by Piazzi
Smythe, he has filled in only six out of seven stations of the pole — one in
the Dragon, one in
we have to
reconstitute and fill
in a
constellation as a first one
of the seven.
Various legends
lead us to
think that there was
an ancient
pole-star in “Corona
Borealis,” or
the northern
crown. A
crown is a symbol of
the highest,
which at the pole
would be the
highest point.
Then the star
Alpha in this
constellation
is called “Clava
Corona,” the
key of the crown;
and a
key-star at the crowning
point is, to
say [Page 602] the
least,
equivalent to the keystone
of an arch.
Moreover, “the
crown of
heaven” was an
Assyrian
title of the pole-star,
which tends
to identify the polestar
with a
constellation called
the crown of
the northern
heaven.
Apparently the pole
and crown are
also connected
by an
Akkadian expression
concerning
“the Bear making its
crownship” in
its revolution
round the
pole-star. The crown
of heaven,
however, was by no
means limited
to a single polestar,
although it
may have
originated as
the crowning-point at the pivot of the pole. The seven pole-stars in their
circle formed a
crown for the
supreme being, of whom it is said his diadem predominates at the zenith of the
starry
heaven. This
was his crown upon the summit of the stellar mount of glory (Rit., ch. 133).
The seven pole-stars
themselves did not form one constellation, but the crown would be figured
typically
as a group of
stars that told the story in the customary way, even as we find it in Corona
Borealis.
Moreover, to
the naked eye the constellation of the Crown, consisting of seven large stars,
would present
a picture of
the other seven — the crown of stars upon the summit of the mount which is so
prominent in
the
eschatology. It is said in the Ritual, “Here is the cycle of the gods (as the
seven glorious ones), and
the vultures
(or kite) of Osiris” (ch. 136B). This is where the balance was then erected at
the place of
judgment in
the circumpolar maat, and also at the point where the crown of life was
conferred upon the
spirits
perfected at the summit of the mount. It is also said of the glorified elect,
“He followeth Shu and
calleth for
the crown. He arriveth at the Aged One on the confines of the mount of glory
where the crown
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Ancient
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awaiteth him”
(ch. 131). This is the eternal crown in the eschatology which had its origin in
the seven
never-setting
stars of the mythology. In the Kabalah it is the crown of crowns pertaining to
the Aged in
which he had
incised the forms and figures of the primordial kings who reigned aforetime in
the land of
Edom, but who
could not preserve themselves and consequently passed away, “one after the
other”
(Ginsburg,
The Kabalah, 21). The pole and crown are certainly associated in the May-pole
with its
framework of
flowers always shaped in the likeness of a crown at the summit of the tree or
pole. Without
being able at
present to prove it, we suggest that a key-stone, or key-star, to the arch or
conical mount of
heaven was
first laid in the heptanomis as primary pole-star of the seven which formed the
circle of the
crown; that a
figure of the crown was constellated in the somewhat circular group of Corona
Borealis,
and that the
key to the mystery may at last be found in the star represented by name as
Clava Coronae.
Now, if we
take the island, for example, as the type of a station or place of landing,
there was a
subsidence of
the land in the celestial waters, or, in sign-language, there was a deluge at
each
declination
of the pole-star. Otherwise expressed, one of the seven mountains was
submerged, one of
the seven
provinces or patalas was drowned, one of the seven pole-stars fell, or one of
the seven rulers
was dethroned
in heaven. The earliest station of the pole may be assigned to Sut as the
hippopotamus,
or as builder
of the mound; the crown would be a later figure of the highest position. There
was a
constellation
of the hippopotamus as male, to match the mother in the Greater Bear; this was
a zootype
of Sut, her first-born
son, however difficult it is at [Page 603] present to define the group of stars
— that is,
to
distinguish the male hippopotamus from Draconis, which, by the bye, were two
zootypes of Sut and
Horus, the
twin brothers. Though now unseen on the celestial globe, it is certain that
there was a male
hippopotamus
among the circumpolar constellations, and this, as bull of the mother,
represented Sut, the
son of Apt,
the water-cow (see “Calendar of Astrl. Observations,” Trans. Soc. of Bib.
Arch., vol. III, p.
400-421). It
is apparently portrayed in a miniature drawing which was copied by Lepsius
(Lepsius,
Auswald, 23).
ladder, both
of which are types of the ascent. The hawk
that mounts
the ladder is a soul ascending to the mount of
glory in the
country of the tree. Moreover, the hieroglyphic
is a sign of
land amidst the waters; the land for which
the hawk is
bound, which, as the eight disks show, was the
paradise of
Am-Khemen that was raised on high by Shu.
As Japanese
Buddhist myth, the island of Japan might be
localized
astronomically by means of a legend in which it is
The
hippopotamus is figured in the tree, which here, as elsewhere, proves it to be
the pole; the tree and
related that
an Apsaras appeared in the clouds over a spot that was inhabited by a dragon.
An island
suddenly rose
up from the sea. The Apsaras descended on the island and was wedded to the
dragon,
which may be
interpreted as a folk-tale of the time when the island of the pole was in the
constellation
Draco.
(Handbook, Satow and Hawes.) The dragon that falls from heaven in the book of
Revelation and
goeth into
perdition is said to be one of the seven who are imaged as seven kings, seven
heads, seven
horns, seven
mountains, seven islands, seven lamp-stands, seven stars, seven eyes, or seven
ruling
powers.
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Ancient
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The myth of
lost Atlantis is Egyptian. This was told to Solon by Egyptian priests, and
afterwards retold by
Plato in
Timaeus. It contains the story of two heavens that were sunken in the waters of
the deluge. The
first was in
seven, the latest in ten divisions; the heaven of the ten lost tribes, ten sons
of Jacob, the ten
patriarchs,
and the ten Assyrian pre-diluvian kings. There is no deluge-legend of twelve
islands that were
lost or
sunken in the sea, because the heaven in twelve divisions, based on the solar
zodiac of twelve
signs, was
never sunk nor superseded. This has not passed away to leave the subject matter
for the
mythos. But
there is a dragon with twelve heads to be met with in folk-lore who evidently
images the
solar god in
the final heaven of twelve divisions which followed the heptanomis and the
heaven in ten
nomes. In the
Hungarian folk-tale of Eisen Iaezi, the hero is identical in character with
Bata in the “Tale of
the Two
Brothers,” and the wife of the twelve-headed dragon-king is one with the false
accuser in the
Egyptian
story, and with Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew version. The only point at
present is to establish
the fact that
there is a dragon with twelve heads who is the king and father of the youthful
hero. [Page 604]
As the tree
was planted anew or re-erected seven times over, it follows that there is a
typical group of
seven trees,
as well as the one tree with seven branches, to be met with in the mythological
legends.
Also, as the
law was given at the pole or the tree, there would be seven trees of the law
established in
the course of
Precession. Finally the celestial trees were twelve in number when the zodiac
of twelve
signs had
been established. (2 Esdras, II, 18). The seven trees that stood around the
mount of the pole
are met with
in a Chinese legend. Tradition says they grew upon the slopes of the Kun-Lin
mountains;
and one of
them, which conferred the fruit of immortality, was a tree of jade, the
imperishable stone that
was a type of
the eternal (Babylonian and Oriental Record, June, 1888). Seven would be the
number in
precession
which were afterwards unified in the tree of seven branches. Other circles,
other numbers.
Seven trees
would form the sacred grove or asherah-tree which is surmounted by the seven
serpent
hoods
conventionalized on the Chaldean cylinders as co-type of the seven branches
(D’Aviella, Migration
of Symbols,
figs. 63, 64, 79, etc.). It is probable that the tree of the pole-star was
known in Egypt as the
khabsu tree,
or tree of the star, signifying the pole. Renouf says that khabsu is the name
of a tree held
sacred in
various places in Egypt; and according to one reading (Rit., ch. 133), the tree
of paradise that
breathed the
refreshing air of the north were khabsu trees. If so, these were seven in
number, like all
other types
of the heptanomis, or the stations of the pole. There is a group of the khabsu
gods who were
a form of the
seven great spirits, on the mount of glory and who receive the ascending
spirits of the just
made perfect
at the summit of the hill. They are identified by name as the gods of the lamp
or the light,
which were
seven in number in the circumpolar heaven, equivalent to the seven lamp-stands
or seven-
branched
candlestick upon the mountain in the book of Revelation.
The seven
isles of the blessed were also known as seven forms of the oasis. The lords of
Thinis and
Abydos bore
the title of masters of the oasis (Brugsch). Thus the ruler of the pole-star
would be the lord
of an oasis,
or later paradise. The altar-mound was also an image of the pole. And
periodically the
Mexicans
sacrificed seven batches of children on seven hills that served for altars. The
Hebrews offered
seven bulls
and seven rams on seven altars. The Assyrian Lu-Masi were probably represented
by seven
rams of
sacrifice. Blood was sprinkled seven times as an oblation. Wherefore seven
times? We answer,
because the
powers or gods propitiated thus were seven in number, and there is a consensus
of
evidence to
prove that the seven were represented as rulers, watchers, giants, masters,
ali, elohim, or
lords of
eternity, in the seven pole-stars of the great period of precession. The seven
altars are also
identified by
Homer with the pole when he calls the ark-city of Mycenae “the altars of the
cyclops.”
Cyclops were
one with the giants, which are seven in number, and thus the altars of the
cyclops are
equivalent to
the seven mountain-altars of the Phoenicians and the Mexicans, grouped in the
seven-
portioned
city of the ark at Mycenae. Erech is called the city of the seven stones (or
zones), and seven
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Ancient
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stones [Page
605] were equivalent to the seven pole-stars (W. A. I., II, 50-55-57, Sayce.)
Seven sacred
black stones,
possibly aërolites, were the images of the seven chief gods at Uruk, the great
ones or the
mighties
(Conder, Heth and Moab, pp. 209, 210). Herodotus speaks of the seven stones
which the
Arabians
smeared with blood in making a covenant (B. 3, 8.) Naturally, the stone, as the
rock of eternity,
remained a permanent
figure of the pole, and doubtless seven precious stones were among the types.
Hence we meet
with the emerald mountain, the diamond mountain, the pearl mountain, the
mountain of
gold, the
lotus mountain, with the jewel of the pole-star at the centre or “in the
lotus.”
The Mexicans
also worshipped a class of gods who had been turned into stone. Three of these
are
mentioned by
name as Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz. And it is said of these petrified powers
that they could
resume a
movable shape when they pleased. These gods were three in the group of seven
which is so
often divided
into two groups of three and four each, and which are the seven rulers of the
pole.
Becoming
petrified as stones would denote the condition in which they stood as fixed
figures of the pole,
and if they
were figures of the pole it was known to the astronomers that all in turn would
again resume a
moveable
shape as gods of the pole-stars. The seven stones set up at Stonehenge and
elsewhere
represent the
giants that were also petrified and changed into enormous stones. These, too,
stood for the
seven
stations of the pole in the circuit of precession, or the circle of Sidi. Under
one title “Stonehenge”
was called
the circle of Sidi, or the circle of seven. These are a form of the seven
giants that were turned
into stone,
those who were the builders of the heptanomis and the supporters of the
universe, and whose
megalithic
monuments are found as witnesses in many lands. The seven stations sank with
the
heptanomis of
Atlantis in the great deluge of all, but the stones remained as monuments
called the
“stones of
the deluge,” and four of the seven powers survived in the new heaven that was
raised upon
the four-fold
foundation of the celestial tetrapolis which followed. The Roman palladium that
fell from
heaven has
its origin, not simply as an aërolite, but as a copy of the stone that was a
type of the divine
abode
established at the pal, or pole. Palladia in various other shapes are said by
Phylarcos to have
been flung
down from heaven during the war of the giants. These constituted the typical
foundations of
the
heptanomis that was built on high and repeated by the mound builders of many
lands and copied by
those who
heaped the earth or raised the stone and shaped the pillar as the palladia of
the dead. The
capital of
Maha-Bali or Great Baal, once famous on the coast of Malabar as
Maha-Bali-puram, had a
name which
signified “the seven pagodas.” These are another equivalent to the seven arits,
churches, or
other groups
of seven sacred structures that imaged the heptanomis according to the period
and the cult.
The pole of
heaven, as an image of sustaining power, was also figured in the constellation
of Uarit, the
leg. This at
one time was the leg of Nut, the cow of heaven. At another it is the leg of
Ptah, at another the
leg of
Osiris. As the leg of Nut, it is the leg of a cow, which may be seen in the
drawing from the zodiac of
Denderah
(fig. on p. 311) in which the [Page 606] milch cow and leg are blended together
in one figure.
This
supporting power of the pole was represented by King Hop, “lord of the heavenly
hosts” in an annual
ceremony of
the Siamese during which the lord of the heavenly hosts, as the power of the
pole, stood on
one foot for
three hours. If he let down his foot it betokened instability to the throne,
but if he stood firm
he was
thought to gain a victory over the forces of evil (Frazer, Golden Bough, vol.
I, p. 230). Many
mysteries
that were mythical or eschatological when first acted peter out finally in
popular pastimes and
provincial
games. The writer has collected a volume of such, but will not be able to find
room for them.
The game of
hop-scotch is a good example of the power that could stand upon one foot as
that of the
pole in the
heaven of seven divisions. It has been suggested that the seven courts which
are chalked out
on the ground
in this game represent the seven planetary heavens. But this explanation was
put forward
by a writer
entirely ignorant of the celestial heptanomis and the seven heavens or
astronomes that were
preplanetary
(paper read at the Anthropological Institute, Nov., 1885). The seven courts
thus memorized
we hold to be
the seven courts which are identified with the seven divisions of heaven and
seven stations
of the pole.
The question, if any, can be determined by the symbolical act of hopping on one
foot. The
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Ancient
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seven
footprints of Buddha also denote the seven steps in precession which are a
co-type equivalent to
the seven
stations of the pole. The writer knows of no group of seven legs, or feet, but
there is a giant
who strides
through space as the wearer of seven-league boots. Moreover, the Ritual
positively identifies
the pole with
the leg by calling it the leg of the seven non-setting stars.
Now the
pole-star being a star that did not set, in the course of the great year there
would be seven of
these that
never set: the seven who are the lords of eternity. These were beyond the ken
of ordinary
knowledge,
but an object-picture could be constellated, as in the seven stars of the
Lesser Bear. Dhruva
is the Hindu
name of a pole-star; it is also the name of the power divinized in Dhruva, the
god, who
maintained
himself upon one foot motionless as a stake=pole, until the earth inclined with
his weight, or
the station
of the pole leaned over and sank down with the declination of the star that was
Polaris at the
time. Thus
the sustainer at the pole as a power was able to stand on one foot for the
period of 3,714
years on end
(Bhâgavata-Purana, ch. VIII). There are seven mountain peaks and seven
footprints, and a
footprint on
the peak is the symbol of a station in precession. Thus the footprint of Buddha
upon Adam’s
Peak in
Ceylon tends to show that this was one of the seven annular mountains in the
seven-fold system
of Mount
Meru. Also, when the Buddhist footprint is represented by the sacred horseshoe
it has in one
form seven
gems or nails, which still preserve a figure of the seven prints on one image.
Seven footprints
were assigned
to Abraham. These are depicted on the south side of the Sakhrah rock at
Jerusalem, and
were shown to
Nasir-i-Khusran in the year A.D. 1047. (Pal. Pilgrim’s Text Society, p. 47,
1888). [Page 607]
The sun,
moon, and seven stars are frequently grouped together on the Assyrian
monuments. The
Chinese call
the sun, moon, and seven stars the nine lights of heaven. The same grouping is
observable
in the nine
pyramids of the Mexicans — one for the sun, one for the moon, and seven small
ones for the
seven stars.
The three pyramids of Gizeh answer to those of the sun, moon, and seven stars
elsewhere.
The Great
Pyramid is in itself a sign of seven, comprising, as it does, the square and
the triangle in one
figure. There
is a tradition that the Great Pyramid was designed by the Har-seshu, or
servants of Horus.
These were
the seven Khuti in the stellar mythology who had been the rulers in the
celestial heptanomis
before they
became the seven servants of the solar god. The seven periods of the pole-stars
were also
imaged by
seven eyes, in consequence of an eye being a figure of the cycle. This type is
presented to
Joshua in the
book of Zechariah in the shape of seven eyes upon one stone: “Behold, the stone
that I
have set
before Joshua; upon one stone are seven eyes.” These are the seven eyes of the
Lord; also the
seven lamps,
the same as in the book of Revelation (Zech. III. 9; IV. 1-12). As a mode of
measuring time
and period on
the colossal scale of the great year, the eye came to the full, “as at first,”
seven times at
seven
stations of the pole in the cycle of precession. As a type, the eye might be
full once a month, once
a quarter,
once a year, once in a thousand years, in 2,155 years, 3,714 years, or, as the
great eye of all,
the eye of
the Eternal, once in 26,000 years (Rit., chs. 140 and 144). Hence the seven
eyes of the Lord
in the blue
stone of the firmament. The submergence of seven pole-stars involved the same
number of
deluges in
the cycle of precession, which culminated in “the great deluge of all.”
Apparently this was the
deluge of
Manu in the Hindu version, for the Manu, whose vessel was made fast to a
stupendous horn,
i.e., the
pole, was Vaivasvata, the seventh Manu, and the seventh Manu corresponds to the
great deluge
of all, as
the latest of seven cataclysms in the world’s great year. There were seven
stations to the pole in
measuring the
circuit of precession; consequently each type or symbol of the pole may be
repeated
seven times,
or is finally a figure of the number seven. Thus the pole, when elevated seven
times as a
tree, would
be represented ultimately by the typical seven trees, or by a tree with seven
branches; if by
the mound,
the mound would be erected seven times over; if by the horn, there would be
seven horns —
hence the
dragon with seven horns; if by the fish, there would be seven fish or fish-men,
finally
symbolized by
the fish with seven fins, or by the crocodile Sebek, whose name as Sevekh also
signified
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Ancient
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the number
seven. If by the star, as Stella Polaris, this would be repeated seven times
and grouped as
the seven
stars of a typical constellation at the pole, like that of Ursa Minor or Corona
Borealis. If the eye
be a figure
of the pole-star as direct image or as emblem of the repeating cycle fulfilled
in 3,700 years,
there will be
seven eyes=seven stars or seven lights in the circle of precession. Seven eyes
become the
seven
watchers, jackals, judges, urshi, or rishis; and seven lights on one stand, or
a candlestick with
seven
branches, forms an image of the seven single pole-stars in a cluster at the
pole. If the figure is a
cave, there
would be seven caves to the mount; if it was a hall, there would be seven [Page
608] halls in
the great
house; if a church, there would be seven churches; if a city, there would be
seven cities. Other
types might
be enumerated in relation to the mystery of the seven stars. The great deluge
of all was that
by which the
total heptanomis was finally submerged; “every island fled away, and the
(seven) mountains
were not
found” (Rev. XVI. 20, 21). In this the giants, the dogs, the apes, the birds,
the tortoises or
turtles, and
the “men” were drowned, and lost Atlantis sank beneath the waters at first as
the heptanomis,
and later as
the heaven in ten which was succeeded by the heaven in twelve divisions.
The seven
stations of the pole were likewise marked as seven mounds or seven mountains,
each of
which in turn
was a type of the birthplace on high and an image of the Great Mother who
brought forth
her child
upon the mount as the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the serpent, the vulture,
the water-bird, or
other type
that was astronomical in heaven and totemic on the earth. One title of the
Great Mother was
“mistress of
the mountain” when the mountain was the pole, and this celestial mountain was
repeated
seven times
in the circle of precession; hence there are seven summits in one form or
other, as
mountains,
mounds, altars, stones, menhirs, pillars, or pyramids, answering to the seven
stations of the
pole. There
is an allusion to the seven stellar summits or mountains in one of the Assyrian
hymns. Ishtar
exalts her
glory in several phases of phenomena. Hers was the glory from the beginning.
She was the
goddess of
the double horizon, imaged in the glory of the morning and evening stars. As
queen of
heaven in the
moon, her glory is said to “glow in the clouds of heaven” and to “sweep away
(or efface)
the mountains
altogether,” as the flood of moonlight might put out the stars. These
mountains, therefore,
were
celestial; only as such could mountains be obliterated by the glory of the
goddess imaging the
moon.
The Japanese
have the group of seven mountains, which were the seats of the gods of seven
pole-stars.
These are
Ma-Saka-Yama, Odo Yama, Oku Yama, Kura Yama, Ha Yama, Hara Yama, and To Yama
(Kojiki, II,
7, 8; O’Neil, Night of the Gods, vol. II, p. 892). “These,” says O’Neil, “seem
to be alternative
mythical
names for the heaven’s-vault mountain.” But as a figure of the heptanomis the
mount of
heaven’s vault
was also seven-fold in seven stations of the shifting pole, determined by the
seven
successive
stars, one for each of the seven mountain summits. At the back of Shan-ling,
about sixty
miles west of
Canton, seven isolated limestone peaks abruptly rise up from the low green
plain. These
are called
The Seven Stars. They were once a favourite resort for pious people, who went
there to
worship at
the temples and the caves (Colquhoun, A. R., Across Chrysę, I, 37). These also
we look upon
as monuments
of the seven ancient pole-stars, which are identified with seven mountains in
the books of
Enoch and of
Revelation. There were seven mountains upon which the ark of safety rested as
the place
of landing
from the waters during the vast cycle of precession; this may explain the
Armenian tradition
that Noah’s
ark was visible at various times, first upon one mountain peak, then upon
another, including
Mount Baris,
Urdhu, Gudi, Nizir, and Ararat. Probably there were seven altogether [Page 609]
identified,
like the
seven Alban Hills, with the seven rulers of the world in their watchtowers of
the celestial
heptanomis.
The mount, or a mount of the pole, was known as the white mountain. The Alban
Hills are
the white
mountains. They are seven in number, and equivalent to the seven stations of
the pole which
were imaged
by the seven mountains of the heptanomis. The Chréais or Jaray race, who
inhabit the high
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Ancient
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plateau which
separates Cambodia from Annam, preserve a curious commemorative custom in
relation
to the seven
mountains. They have two mysterious monarchs, whose functions are of that
mystical order
which we so
often find to be astronomical. The two are known as the king of fire and the
king of water.
They inhabit
successively seven towers built upon seven mountains, and every year they pass
from one
tower to
another, never meeting each other and never seeing a human face. The kingship
lasts for seven
years, and
the offices are hereditary in one or two families (Frazer, Golden Bough, vol.
I, pp. 55-56, who
cites Le
Royaume du Cambodge, by J. Moura; also Aymonier’s Notes). Seven forts erected
on seven
mountains are
equivalent to the seven altars raised on seven mountains by the Mexicans. The
two kings
of fire and
water correspond to the two different cataclysms by fire and flood, described
by Berosos as
happening in
the course of the Great Year.
According to
the missionary Gill, the Mangaians hold that the seven inhabited islands of the
Hervey
group are the
body or outward presentment of another seven in the spirit-world of Avaiki
(Myths and
Songs of the
Pacific). These correspond to the seven sunken islands of the lost Atlantis,
and both are a
localized
earthly form of the celestial heptanomis, which sank down in the course of one
Great Year. The
name of
Mangaia signifies peace, and Mangaia in Avaiki was the paradise of peace, like
the Egyptian
Hetep. This,
therefore, was a form of the paradise lost in the form of seven islands sunk in
the Pacific as
well as in
the Atlantic Ocean and other waters, which were firmamental from the first.
Egypt began in the
form of seven
Nui, a most ancient Egyptian name for the nomes or water boundaries. And in
Polynesia
Nui or
Rapa-nui is the native name of Easter Island, where the colossal statues left
by some mysterious
race of
primitive builders have been found. Nui is also the name of a group of the Nui
as islands=nomes,
which are
found as seven in number in the seven islands or islets of Onoatoa. Each one of
these has its
own
particular name, but Onoatoa embraces the whole seven. The seven Nui as islands
in a group
called
Onoatoa offer a parallel to the seven islands of Avaiki, with the additional
fact that they have the
same name as
the most ancient nomes of Egypt, which were seven in number.
After the
septenary of pole-stars had been identified and established in the circle of
precession, six of
these were
ever moving with the sphere, and there was always one remaining a fixture at
the centre. If
we take them
as representatives of the seven Manus or Buddhas, it becomes evident that the
condition
of the
motionless or sleeping Buddha was attainable by all the six, each in turn, that
moved round the
stationary
one; and in the seventh stage of precession the true Buddha, the prince, the
Rishi or Manu,
was re-born,
and his birth was indicated by the stationary star that showed the new position
of [Page 610]
the changing
pole. In his visions Enoch sees the “seven splendid mountains which were all
different from
each other.”
These are described as six, with “the seventh mountain in the midst of them.”
In furnishing
the ark of
testimony according to the pattern seen in the mount, instructions are given
for the lamp-stand
to be made
with six branches going out of the candlestick. But it is added, “Thou shalt
make the lamps
thereof
seven” (Ex. xxv. 37); this, then, was likewise a figure of six encircling the
one that was a fixture in
the centre.
The six stars that kept revolving whilst the seventh stood or rested on one
foot are to be met
with in a
legend of the Ainu. “Suddenly there was a large house on the top of a hill
wherein were six
persons
beautifully arrayed, but constantly quarrelling (always in motion). Thereupon
Okikurumi (a name
connected
with the wheel) seized a firebrand and beat each of the six with it in turn.
Whereupon the six
all ran away
in the shape of hares” (B. H. Chamberlain, Memoirs of Tôkyô University, p. 32).
It is stated
in the Chow Ritual that the Chinese rules for divining were contained in three
books — the
Lien-shan,
the Kwei-Tsang, and the Kwei-chang. The name of the first signifies “United
Mountains,” a title
that is said
to have been derived from its first mystical and divining six-fold sign Kan
(O’Neil, The Night of
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Ancient
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the Gods,
vol. II, p. 892). These united mountains, determined, as stated, by the
six-fold sign, appear to
be a form of
the six which, with the seventh at the centre, marked the seven stations of the
pole in the
circle of
precession. The Zuni Indian system of the seven mountains is the same. These
consist of six
mountains
which are stationed round the central one. When Remus saw the flight of the six
vultures he
was standing
on the rock of the Aventine Hill — that is, the Bird-hill, which looks as if it
represented the
seventh to
the six stars; the one that was stationary on the pivot of the pole, whilst the
other six were
moving round
it with the sphere. Thus there is a central mountain and a central land to the
seven
mountains.
One of the seven united mountains is the tree-mountain. Elsewhere we meet with
the stone-
mountain, the
mount of the papyrus reed, the ever-white mountain whence the Korean people
came, the
mount of the
white wall, the pearl mountain. The mount of Saturn=Sebek, in the Dragon, was
one of the
seven hills
in Rome. A “festival of the six” is made mention of in the Ritual (ch. 136,
Pap. of Nu). This
occurs in a
chapter for making a spirit perfect, which memorizes the birth of a god who is
called the
newly-born,
as the lamp in Annu at the pole. He is described as a god of the rope. It is
said, “He is born,
he of the
strong cord. His cable is complete” (ch. 136, Renouf). This we understand to be
a god of the
rope that was
made fast at one end to the solar boat and at the other to the star Ak at the
pole. The
luminaries in
Annu are addressed. They are the seven Khus. One of these seven is newly-born,
or his
star is just
lighted, as god of the lamp and likewise of the rope, and the event is
celebrated at “the festival
of the six” —
not of the sixth. Moreover, he is called “the Prince of the inundation.” There
had been a
deluge, and
he has turned back the water-flood which had risen over the thigh of Nut at the
staircase of
Seb, god of
the earth.
This figure
of the one at the centre of the six will enable us to [Page 611] explain a
mystery of the cyclops.
These in one
version of the mythos were seven in number, therefore they are a form of the
seven giants
or powers of
the pole-stars — the seven that were 6+1. Now, it was fabled that all the seven
could see
with one
single eye, and the single eye we take to have been the pole-star for the time
being that was
fixed at the
centre as the eye of the group. The mythical unicorn was another figure of the
horn-point at
the pole. As
such it was a type of Sut, the founder of the pole. Sut being first as founder,
his was the
single horn.
It was as the symbol of sustaining power stationed at the pole that the unicorn
became a
supporter
with the lion of the royal arms in British heraldry. The unicorn has but one
eye, and thus it
became a
co-type with the cyclop as a figure of the one star of the pole. The unicorn is
associated with
the tree,
because the tree also stands for the pole. Sometimes its single horn is stuck
fast in the tree,
which
position intensifies the figure of stability at the pole. Futile attempts have
been made to show that
the unicorn
was an emblem of the moon. But though the lunar orb might be imaged as a single
eye, it
would not,
could not, be represented by a single horn. The ancients knew the moon was
double-horned
when it was
figured as the celestial cow. The horn is another of those figures which, being
single at first,
became
seven-fold as types of the heptanomis. Thus there is a group of seven horns to
add to the rest.
This group is
portrayed above the head of Sesheta, a goddess of laying the foundations, which
are seven
in number, as
figured by means of her seven horns upon a pole.
In the heaven
of the heptanomis the ancient Genetrix had seven sons. The figure is repeated
in the
seven sons of
Japheth (Gen. ch. x), the seven sons of the divine lady of the holy mound in
Babylonia, the
seven sons of
Quanwon in Japan, the seven sons of Albion, the white land in the north, and
various other
groups of the
seven on board the ark, which was earlier than the foundations that were laid
in the four
quarters. The
heptanomis came to an end with the great deluge of all; and in the book of
Genesis the
deluge of
Noah is followed by the new kingdom that was reared on a four-fold foundation,
the seven
cities on the
other side of the flood being succeeded by the cities of the four quarters
built on this. When
Nimrod or
Gilgames became “a mighty one in the earth” “the beginning of his kingdom was
Babel and
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Ancient
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Ereck and
Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shinar,” and out of that land he went forth
and built four other
cities in
Assyria. A heaven of the four quarters had then superseded the heptanomis or
heaven founded
on the seven
stars or astronomes, and this was the figure followed in the building of the
four cities on
earth.
After the
great deluge of all had taken place and the inhabitants of the heptanomis
generally were
drowned, it
was seen that the seven pole-stars kept their places in the circumpolar heaven.
And thus the
seven gods
sat in their circle round the tree of the pole, the fixed and never-setting
stars for ever safe
from all the
deluges of time, as the seven lords of eternity. These are the seven that were saved
when all
the world was
drowned. The Shenin in the Ritual are a group of spirits that surround the seat
of the
highest. The
name denotes the circle of those ministers or officials that surround the [Page
612] throne of
the god or
the king. In one text this circle is called the shenin of fire. They are the
spirits of fire=the
saluting apes
in the circle of the eternals. Their number is not directly given, but they are
the princes who
elsewhere are
a form of the seven great spirits that surround the throne. Now, there is a
stellar enclosure
or circle of
stars in the northern heaven which the Chinese recognize in the region of Draco
and Ursa
Major. These
bear the names of ministers and officers who surround the sovereign, and
therefore are
identical
with the Egyptian circle of the shenin. This is very probably the constellation
of the Northern
Crown, in
which the seven were grouped as a numerical figure of the pole-star circle. The
circle of the
seven lords
of eternity was first; the throne of the highest was erected in the centre.
Thus the seven as
servants
(seshu), khuti, uraeus-gods, saluting apes or angels, spirits, or lamps of
fire, are depicted round
the throne of
God according to the mystery of the seven stars in Revelation.
As already
said, the earliest form of an enclosure in heaven called the Aarru is depicted
as a field of
reeds, the
habitat of the water-cow, who brought forth Sut, her first-born bull, upon the
summit in a field of
reeds that
rose above the waters at the station of the pole when this was represented by
the bed of
reeds. Thus
the ancestral pair that were saved from the deluge by climbing up the
reed-mountain, like
the Navajo
Indians, would derive their origin from the reed. The main significance of the
reed as a symbol
of the pole
depends upon its being a plant that grows up through the water and flowers
above the surface
to present
the type of an ark or station or other means of escape from the mythical water
that flowed
betwixt this
world and the other. We have now to suggest that the seven stars of the rulers
were neither
in the Great
Bear nor the Pleiades, but that they were the past representatives of Polaris
in the cycle of
precession,
and to show that the mystery of the seven stars in the drama of “revelation”
was a mystery of
the celestial
heptanomis in the astronomical mythology. As we have seen, in various myths the
land
enclosed in
the celestial sea was lost because the woman betrayed the secret of the waters,
which then
burst forth
and overthrew the bulwarks that had been erected by the male, who in the
Egyptian mythos
was her son,
the founder Sut. In other legends paradise was lost by the unwatchful dog.
This, as the
jackal, was
the dog of Sut. Thus in one case the deluge was let in by the mother, and in
another by the
son, who were
the primal pair as founders of the pole. Whilst in some parts of the world it
was the dog
(as typical
guide) who let in the deluge, in Fiji it was the race of men that had tails
like dogs who were
destroyed by
the deluge. In other legends mankind were changed into dogs after one of the
several
deluges. The
Bonaks or root-diggers said the first Indians that ever lived were coyotes or
prairie-dogs.
The
Chichimecs of South America are the dogs by name. In Africa these would have
been totemic
jackals. But
without going back so far in time and space as the submergence of the southern
pole and
the
declination and disappearance of its star below the horizon for those who
travelled northward, there
is another
origin possible for the legend of the dog. The jackal or Egyptian dog was also
constellated as
the guide of
ways in Sothis, and as [Page 613] Stella Polaris at the northern pole. As the
planisphere of
Denderah
shows, the dog’s tail in which the pole-star Cynosura shines to-day was the
tail of the jackal.
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Ancient
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Twenty-six
thousand years ago the position was the same. The jackal of the mythos or dog
of later
legend was
then the watcher in the circumpolar paradise or garden of the Tree. Now,
whichever zootype
represented
the pole-star of the period — hippopotamus, jackal, ape, bird, tortoise, or
dragon (crocodile)
— it might be
held responsible for the loss of paradise or enclosure through letting in the
waters. This
would be
rendered according to the mythical mode, and afterwards related in a legend or
a folk-tale.
In the
precessional movement the celestial pole passed out of the jackal or dog into
the group of stars
now called
Kepheus. There were seven stations in the circle of precession, though one, as
we have said,
is omitted or
unidentified in the diagram drawn by Piazzi Smythe, betwixt Herakles and
Draconis, which
we have tried
to fill in with the male hippopotamus of Sut as a group of stars that included
Clavis Corona,
but only as a
stop-gap. We now pass on to the Lesser Bear. In the Egyptian eschatology (Rit.,
ch. 44,
2-3) the
jackal Ap-uat represents a power of salvation from the drowning deep. In
crossing the gulf of
Putrata into
which the helpless dead fall headlong and the sinking stars are swallowed by
the dragon, the
manes says,
“Ap-uat lifteth me up.” This power is shown to be localized in the region of
the pole by the
speaker
saying (after being saved by Ap-uat), “I hide myself among you, O ye stars that
never set” —
that is, in
the circumpolar paradise at the pole, where the jackal or the dog was the guide
of ways. When
the pole had
passed from the constellation of Ursa Minor the power of salvation would have
gone from
the jackal to
whatsoever type might represent Kepheus, and Ap-uat the guide as Cynosura would
no
longer be
looked up to as a deliverer from the drowning waters of the deep. Commentators
on the Korân
repeat the
ancient traditions concerning the Adite ancestors of the Arab race. These were
the giants or
kings of
prodigious size and stature, like the monstrous figures of the primitive
constellations in the
heptanomis.
After the deluge these were changed into monkeys. Now the Arabs claim descent
from one
Kahten or
Kaften the Adite, and Kaften in Egyptian is a name of the great ape that was
one of the seven
giants of the
pole-star constellations and a zootype of Shu, whom we identify with Kepheus.
It is also said
in the Codex
Chimalpopoca that men were transformed into monkeys as the result of a deluge
or great
hurricane. As
the pole was figured at seven successive stations in the heptanomis, it is
possible that the
Navajo Deluge
myth contains a time-gauge. In this it is related that when “the men of a world
before our
own” were
warned of an approaching flood they were living in “the third world” or station
of the pole, and
the place of
refuge which they raised against the coming deluge was in “the fourth world” or
station of the
pole, which,
according to the present reckoning, was in the constellation of Kepheus. The
turkey just
escaped,
although the water was close enough after him to wet the tip of his tail. Now,
it happens that the
next position
of the pole is in the constellation of the bird cygnus, also named the hen, the
kite, [Page 614]
and other
forms of ornis. Moreover, the star Alpha was called Dzeneb in Arabic, or the
tail. And this,
according to
the present reckoning, we consider to have been the fourth world or fourth of
the seven
stations of
the pole. When the pole passed from the constellation Kepheus into Cygnus the
swan it would
give rise to
a legend like that of the Gippsland blacks, who assert that the first lot of
men were turned into
ducks by the
wicked moon. Cygnus the swan was known as Ornis the bird, the bird of Jupiter,
and also
as the kite.
The kite is equivalent to the hawk in Egypt, and the “kite of Osiris” is
mentioned in the Ritual
by the speaker,
who is in the region of the glorious ones, the circumpolar gods or seven great
khus. He is
at the place
of the balance, “which is maat,” the stellar point of equipoise, otherwise at
the pole. He
exclaims,
“Here is the cycle of the gods and the kite of Osiris” (ch. 136 B). The name of
Osiris may be a
later
insertion, but the kite remained, and this is a name for the constellation
Cygnus or the Swan, the
fifth of the
seven pole-stars, beginning with Corona (or its equivalent) as the first. The pole-star
was in
the kite some
seventeen thousand years ago. And here, says the speaker who has attained the
summit
of the mount,
“here is the cycle of the gods and the kite (=cygnus) of Osiris.”
Fourteen
thousand years ago Polaris was the star Vega in the constellation now known as
Lyra. Vega or
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Ancient
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Wega=Waki
denotes the falling one. As vultur cadens it was the falling vulture. The
Arabic name signifies
the falling
eagle, An-nasz-al-waki. Now, the vulture as Egyptian can be identified with the
pole and
possibly as a
pole-star. The leg constellation was a figure of the pole. It is mentioned in
the Ritual (ch.
149, 11th
Aat, line 8) as the leg of the lake, and a co-type with the tree of the lake on
which the glorified
spirits
alighted in the form of birds, and there is a chapter in the Ritual for
assuming the form of a vulture
and perching
on the leg, a landing-place equivalent to the pole. “I am the divine vulture,”
says the
speaker, “who
is on the leg” or the pole. And a star known as the vulture stationed on the
leg of the pole
must be
Polaris. We see that some fourteen thousand years ago the pole was in the
constellation Lyra,
and the
pole-star was the “falling vulture” Vega. This may have a bearing on the legend
of the vulture in
the Mexican
tradition of the deluge. It is related of the American Noah, named Coxcox or
Tezpi, that he
made a bark
or, still more primitively, a raft, with which he saved himself, his wife, and
children from the
overwhelming
waters of the deluge. When the god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should
retire,
Tezpi sent
forth a vulture from the bark. The bird did not return, but stayed to feed upon
the bodies of the
drowned. He
sent out the hummingbird, which came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then
Tezpi,
seeing that
land was visible and growing verdant, left his ark upon the Mount of Culhuacan.
This was the
mountain of
the seven caves in which the seven giants or great spirits dwelt. The name
denotes the
mountain that
leans over at the summit, as it is depicted in the Aztec documents, a picture
of the pivot
toppling over
with the change of pole-star. If we suppose the change to have been made and
the deluge
to have
occurred when the [Page 615] pole-star was shifted from a Cygnus to the
constellation Lyra the
next
pole-star would be the vulture, which afterwards became the falling one. Thus
the vulture indicated
the new land
that was growing green across the water of the deluge, the mount on which
another
landing-place
was found; another altar was erected, and the sacrifice was offered up upon the
summit of
the mount by
those who had escaped the great calamity, as it was mythically represented,
whether the
mount might
be Colhuacan, Tulan, Annu, Ararat, Nizir, or Meru. And a pole-star known as the
vulture
would in the
course of precession become the “vulture falling” whose “fall” is chronicled in
the name of
vulture
cadens. If those who followed in the wake of the Egyptians, like the
Euphrateans, Greeks, and
Arabs, were
not always masters of the gnosis, they could at least transliterate the ancient
names and
thus bring on
part of the meaning. The Arabic name for the “falling vulture” was also the
“falling eagle.”
And in some
of the legends it is the eagle that foretells the coming deluge. A myth of the
Pima Indians
relates that
a prophet was warned by the eagle of a vast cataclysm or deluge then at hand;
but the
prophet took
no heed, and the waters came that overwhelmed the world. This also we might
call the
deluge that
occurred when the pole passed from its station in Cygnus into that of the eagle
or vulture.
The legend of
the eagle is also extant amongst the Kamilaroi of Australia, who tell of a
deluge from which
two human
beings only made their escape by climbing up a tree. And here the deluge is
attributed to
Pundjel, the
eagle-hawk. The tree we understand to be a figure of the pole. Williams tells
us that “the
highest point
of Koro Island has a name connected with the idea of a bird sitting there and
lamenting over
the submerged
island.” It is said in a chant, “the quiqui laments over Koro because it is
lost” (Nat. Gen.,
vol. II, p.
241). Thus the eagle is one of the seven constellations of the pole-stars, and
in the ancient
British
mythology the eagle is one of the seven Welsh old ones of the world, called the
eagle of
Gwernabwy,
who perched upon the rock he found there, pecking every evening at the stars.
There he is
said to have
remained until the rock was worn down to the height of a man’s palm. Such
legends we
suggest
originated when the rock of the pole was in the constellation of the Eagle,
which represented one
of the old
ones of the seven pole-stars or rulers of the pole. The earth is sometimes
described as having
been created
on the back of a tortoise, and when the tortoise sank in the water there was an
overwhelming
deluge. A Mandan medicine-man told Catlin that the earth was a tortoise
carrying dirt upon
its back
(Nat. Gen., vol. II, p. 195). The mother of beginnings is portrayed in a legend
of the Tuscarora
Indians as an
enceinte female in labour=Apt the pregnant hippopotamus goddess, who sank from
an
upper region
and was received on the back of a tortoise which had a little earth upon its
back, and this
became an
island upon which she bore twin sons, who correspond to the Egyptian Sut and
Horus, and
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Ancient
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then passed away.
The tortoise was a zootype of the earth itself amidst the waters of space,
which was
repeated as a
figure of land or the landing-place in the heavens at the pole. It was once an
Egyptian sign
of the
balance or [Page 616] scales in the zodiac at the point of equipoise where the
land emerged from
the deluge of
the Nile. The tortoise was likewise a type of the constellation Lyra, in which
the star Vega
was the
Stella Polaris fourteen thousand years ago (W. H. Higgins, Stars and
Constellations, pp. 22, 23).
In the signs
of the North American Indians a landing after a voyage is typified by a
tortoise. Those who
found safety
from the deluge on the turtle’s back or on the tortoise would reckon their
descent from the
mountain of
the pole when it was stationed in the constellation of the Tortoise or Lyra.
Thus the Delaware
Indians gave
precedence to their turtle clan because it descended from the great original
tortoise, not
from any
common turtle. The Iroquois turtle clan are likewise descended from a great fat
turtle which
threw off its
shell and gradually developed into a man. This is exactly what did occur when
the tortoise
Lyra sank in
the waters or the turtles were drowned, and the typical man was created at the
next station
of the pole.
If we suppose the end of the period to have come for the pole to move out of
Cygnus into the
constellation
Lyra or the Tortoise, the next landing-stage in the course of precession, the
end was with
the
submergence of the pole-star or a deluge; and those who escaped from drowning
when this station of
the pole in
Cygnus went under naturally sought a place of safety on the back of the
tortoise or its co-type
the turtle.
Evidently this was what did occur when the deluge took place in the myth of Manabozho.
The
deluge was
let in by the “black serpent monster,” the representative of evil in physical
phenomena. “At
the island of
the turtle or tortoise was Manabozho, the grandfather of men and beings.” As he
was born
creeping, he
is “ready to move and dwell in turtle land.” Then “the men and beings” all go
forth together
“on the flood
of waters, moving afloat everywhere seeking the back of the turtle.” “All
together on the
back of the
turtle then, the men were altogether. Much frightened, Manabozho prayed to the
turtle that he
would make
all well again. Then the waters ran off: it was dry on mount and plain, and the
great evil went
elsewhere by
the path of the cave.” (Nat. Gen., vol. II, pp. 180, 181.) According to the
Mexican version,
there were
seven caves in the celestial mount, which answer to the seven stations of the
pole. One of
these was the
cave of the turtle. In another account that was preserved in pictographs it is
the turtles that
declare war
on Manabozho and produce the deluge. Manabozho first carried his grandmother to
the
summit of a
lofty mountain. He himself climbed to the top of the tallest pine tree and
waited until the
waters had
subsided. Then he created an island which supported him and became a new world.
This
was the new
station of the pole, and the tallest pine was the tree of the pole that was
planted or re-
erected in
heaven when the flood was over. One of the most striking survivals is that of
the tortoise and
its legend
connected with the deluge in the religious ceremonies of the Indians. They say,
“The world was
once a great
tortoise, borne on the waters and covered with earth. One day a tribe of white
men had
made holes in
the earth to a great depth whilst digging for badgers; at length they pierced
the shell of the
tortoise, and
it sank.” The deluge followed, and drowned all the men but one, who saved
himself [Page
617] in a
boat, and when the earth re-emerged, he sent out a dove which returned to him
with a branch of
willow in its
beak. The tortoise was a Mandan image of the ark in which people were preserved
from the
waters at the
time of the deluge. That is, according to the ancient wisdom, when the pole was
resting in
the
constellation of the Tortoise, after the deluge that drowned the land and
submerged the mount in
Cygnus or the
Swan. There is no hint of the turtle in the planisphere, but the turtle and
tortoise are
equivalent
and interchangeable types, and there is a tortoise in the heavens. The Arabic
name of the
constellation
Lyra is the Tortoise, and but for the shell of the tortoise there would have
been no Lyre.
Some sixteen
or seventeen thousand years ago the celestial pole passed out of the
constellation Cygnus
or bird, and
a new guide-star was established as Vega in Lyra. In other words, when Cygnus
sank the
tortoise or
the turtle offered its broad back for a landing place amid the waters of the
deluge. Other of the
American
Indian tribes claim that their primeval home was in the old turtle land=the
island of the tortoise.
The
Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indians sing the song of the flood. In this it is
related that the Being born
creeping and
the men all went forth from the deluge swimming afloat in the deep or crawling
in the
shallow
water. Taking refuge on the back of the turtle or tortoise, when read
astronomically according to
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Ancient
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the movement
in precession, agrees with the passage of the pole out of Cygnus into the
constellation of
the Tortoise.
The Samoans
tell a tale of the woman and child who were transformed, and afterward came to
the
people of the
village, when called for, in the shape of turtles (Turner,Samoa p. 108). This
is a co-type with
the tortoise;
and when the pole passed from the sign of Cygnus, the new-born child would be
brought
forth by the
old mother in the shape of a tortoise or a turtle, in accordance with the
mythical mode of repeopling
the
planisphere. Thus the primal pair would be said to have been changed into
turtles, as the
folk that
dated from the period when the pole was in the tortoise or turtle and who were
affiliated to the
power above,
the “big brother,” the tortoise or turtle that never died, as the totemic
tortoises. The “great
original,”
whether of the turtles or hippopotami, crocodiles or jackals, apes or vultures,
and finally of men,
was
configurated in the heavens on one or other of the mountains or islands that
represented the seven
stations,
nomes, or seven heavens of the pole in the celestial heptanomis. The Hindu
drawings (Moor’s
Hindu
Pantheon, pl. 49) show a form of the pole or central conical peak that rests
upon the tortoise,
which, as
here interpreted, denotes the pole-star in the constellation Lyra, that was otherwise
known as
the Tortoise.
The tortoise supporting the pole in the shape of a tree=mount or island
standing in the water
is also a
Japanese figure of the sustaining power at the pole. In the temple of Meaco
there is a Japanese
representation
of a tortoise in the water at the bottom of a tank or artificial well, with a
tree springing up
from the back
of the tortoise. Thus the abyss of the waters, the earth at the bottom of the
abyss, and the
tree of the
pole are uniquely imaged in one picture.
There was a
tortoise-headed god in Egypt who has left his likeness in the tombs, but
nothing else is
known of him.
The animal itself [Page 618] was a type of immobility, therefore of sloth or
fixity, as a
representative
of the pole. In a Chinese myth the island of Pung-Lai was brought one day in
all its mass
by the
tortoise. A tortoise or turtle appearing from the waters of earth was
appropriate, as it was primitive
to image the
bit of land emerging from the waters of the firmament. This, however, was the
mythical not
cosmical
earth that was supported by the tortoise amid the waters. The tortoise beneath
the tree or the
mound shows
it was not our earth that is supposed to rest or to have been formed upon its
back in the
beginning. It
is possible for the tortoise or turtle as a type of the earth itself to get
mixed up in the
irresponsible
legends with the tortoise or turtle as an astronomical figure. Still the earth,
as turtle, never
was submerged
by the mythical deluge, whereas the tortoise or turtle that was a type of
station in the
celestial
water did sink down when that particular station of the pole was overwhelmed.
Some fourteen
thousand years ago the pole in Lyra or the Tortoise corresponded to the vernal
equinox in
Leo. This is
probably connoted in a plate of Lajard’s Mithra, where the zodiacal lion is
found with the star
Radiatartakhu
or Lammergeier=Vega as Polaris in Lyra (pl. 56, 3).
An
instructive example of the way in which the astronomical mythos may dislimn and
lose its shape in
later legend
is apparent in the curious narrative found on a cuneiform tablet in the British
Museum. This
has been
called “the revolt in heaven” which occurred at some time before the creation
of man. The
angelic host
has previously existed in a state of perfect harmony. “The god of holy songs,
lord of religion
and worship,
had seated a thousand singers and musicians, and established a choral band who
to this
hymn were to
respond in multitude.” “The divine being, god of the bright crown, spoke three
times the
commencement
of a psalm. With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song, spoiling,
confounding
his hymn of praise.” Then the god of the bright crown “stopped their service,
and sent them
to the gods
who were his enemies” and prohibited their return. “In their room he created
mankind.” This is
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Ancient
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a legend of
the angels so called who fell from heaven, and of whom it is said in the book of
Jude, “They
kept not
their own habitations” (Jude. vi). These in the book of Enoch are the seven
stars which
transgressed
the commandment of God and came not in their proper season; and therefore they
were
bound and
cast out until the time of the last judgment (Enoch, XVIII. XXI. XXII). It is
said in the cuneiform
text, “May
the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand those who in the midst of
his heavenly
song had
shouted evil blasphemies,” and the translator argues that there were but five
thousand. But
another
reading is possible. There may have been six thousand altogether. For instance,
in the Cuthean
story of
creation there is an allusion to another legend of the seven powers. It is said
the progeny of
Tiamat “grew
up in the midst of the mountains and became heroes and increased in number.”
“Seven
kings who
were brethren appeared as begetters. Six thousand in number were their armies”
(col. 1), and
these we take
to have included the five thousand loyal angels, “his five thousand” from whom
the rebel
thousand are
to [Page 619] be excluded thenceforth and for ever as the sixth thousand. It is
said of the
god Ashur
that he had seen the malice of those gods who deserted their allegiance to
raise a rebellion,
and “he refused
to go forth with them.” In one character Ashur is known to have been a
representative of
the pole; and
according to the present interpretation he was the god of the coming pole-star,
the seventh
in our
reckoning, the one that had not fallen away from the true pole. This would
apply if Ashur at the time
was a
representative of the seventh polar power, the one that remained true whilst
one thousand of the
six thousand
has risen in rebellion. As we interpret the mythos, the choral band who sang the
hymn of
praise, one
thousand in number, are the sixth thousand of the six thousand corresponding to
the sixth of
the seven
stars or stations in precession. At the time of the change from the sixth
pole-star to the seventh
the revolt of
the thousand that was sixth in the series coincided with the falling away of
the sixth star from
the true
eternal pole. Ashur as the seventh remained the god seven, who is re-born as
the child
considered to
be the eighth; he refused to go forth with the one thousand of the past
pole-star. And now
follows the
statement, “In their room, he, the god of the bright crown (i.e. the solar
deity), created
mankind.”
This, the seventh creation, we associate with the passage of the pole into the
constellation
Herakles, or
the Man. The “lyre” imaged in the constellation Lyra had been fashioned from
the muscles
torn from Sut
by Horus during the war in heaven. Thus the condition of harmony represented by
the lyre,
harp, or lute
corresponds to the avocations of the thousand who are expelled from
companionship with
the other
five thousand and who are described as “a thousand singers and musicians.”
These we now
suggest were
the denizens of “Lyra,” whose lapse in allegiance is attributable to the
falling away of the
pole-star
when the pole was passing out of that constellation into the sign of Herakles
in which occurred
the creation
of man. It is a saying of Orpheus, reported by Plato, that “in the sixth
creation closes the
order of
song” (Plato, Philebus, 66). That is, according to the present reckoning, when
the pole passed
out of the
constellation Lyra into Herakles or the Man.
In the
Bundahish, the deluge or a deluge takes place in heaven before the creation of
man on earth. This
saying can be
read for the first time on the theory that man was the latest of seven
creations, and that the
man figured
in heaven was the seventh in the series as a ruler of the pole and pole-star.
Thus
interpreted,
there had been six deluges prior to the creation of man. Both in the book of
Genesis and in
the Bundahish
the prototypal pair are created “man.” Ahura-Mazda says to Mashya and Mashyoi,
“You
are man.”
“You are the ancestry of the world.” They were now the ancestors with a human
soul instead of
the earlier
elemental soul of life in water, air, earth, heat, plant, or animal; otherwise
stated, the descent
was now
traced to the divine man or father in heaven instead of to Seb the god of
earth, who was the
representative
of vegetation, and the gnosis was now applied on the scale of the Great Year.
The
Tlascatans
say that after their deluge those who had been previously changed into monkeys
were
afterwards
transformed into men. Now, [Page 620] if the hypothesis here put forth holds
good, that the six
zootypes and
one human being were set in the circle of precession, it follow that at the
time the pole
passed into
the constellation of Herakles or “the Man,” the deluge took place when the
tortoises, the
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apes, and
other forms of the zootypes were transformed into human beings. This would
correspond
perfectly to
the seventh creation in the later legends, which was the creation of mankind.
If we take
the oldest record in the world, the Egyptian, we shall find that in the
mythology the creation of
man was the
latest. Amongst the seven primordial powers one alone is human. In the
constellation-
figures man
is scarcely to be found. Not until the time of Seb was the producing power of
earth portrayed
as male. Not
until the time of Atum-Ra is the divinity impersonated in the form of a perfect
man. Earth
had been
hugely imaged as a pregnant hippopotamus, a sow as the suckler, a goose that
laid the egg for
food, a
sloughing serpent that was an image of self-renewal, but not by man as the
measure of all things,
including the
elemental forces and powers of external nature. And not until the image of man
had been
adopted as a
type of divinity in place of the totemic zootypes could men have traced their
descent from
man in the
mythology. This occurs in Egypt when the hippopotamus of Sut, the crocodile of
Sebek, the
lion of Shu,
the ibis of Taht, the beetle of Ptah were followed by the human likeness that
was perfected
and divinized
in Tum or Atum, the original of Adam. In the Egyptian language the word tum
signifies man,
mankind,
created man. The Egyptians also called themselves the Ruti, or the men; the
race par
excellence,
in contradistinction to the bulls, lions, crocodiles, serpents, apes, jackals,
hawks, and other of
the zootypes
in totemism. They had attained this stage at the beginning of monumental times.
Man, the
human being,
was preeminently the creation of Atum-Ra, the father-god. Various names of
races signify
man, or the
men. The name of the Inoit, the Ainu, and other primitive folk means man, or
the men.
Descent from
woman under the matriarchate had been represented by the zootypes, and when the
fatherhood
was individualized the human descent was from man. The birthland of man on high
was
figured
astronomically as the island or nome or bit of earth, which was a station of
the pole-star in the
constellation
of Herakles or the Man, from thirteen thousand to eleven thousand years ago, at
the end of
which time
the great deluge caused the destruction of mankind. Instead of the races that
were imaged by
pre-human and
totemic types, the tortoises, the apes, the birds, the dogs, it was now “the
men” who were
drowned in
the last great deluge of all, when the pole-star in the Man or Herakles went
under.
It is stated
in the Chimalpopoca MS. that the creator produced his work in successive
epochs, man being
made from the
dust of earth on the seventh day. Here again man is created or comes into existence
in
the last of
seven periods, whatsoever the length of time or significance assigned to the
cycle, which is
one day in
the book of Genesis and three thousand seven hundred and fourteen years in the
astronomical
mythology. In all the versions of the seven creations that of man was last.
This is repeated
when the
mount [Page 621] or island of man is last of the celestial seven stations in
the heptanomis. Now
we can say
the final word concerning “the destruction of mankind” in the great deluge of
all, which put an
end to the
heaven in seven divisions that preceded the eight, the nine, the ten, and the
twelve. At the
ending in
time when Vega in Lyra (the vulture and tortoise) ceased to be the pole-star,
there was a
deluge and
subsidence of land at the pole and a change of star. The races drowned in this
and previous
deluges were
totemic, therefore pre-human, therefore the predecessors of man in the
astronomical
mythology,
the märchen, and legendary lore. Six races had been destroyed in half-a-dozen
deluges
before it
came to the “destruction of mankind” that was memorized and mythically rendered
in the
Egyptian
deluge when the pole-star was washed under in the constellation of the Man, the
one of seven
mighties, now
for the first time in the human form. This is the one star group in all the
heavens that was
figured as
“the man,” the last of the seven rulers of the pole, corresponding at this
point to the attainment
of the human
image in the last of seven so-called creations, which is that of Adam=Atum in
the zodiac
just where
the Sekhet-Aarru or garden of Eden has been localized in the solar, which
followed and
completed the
lunar and stellar mythos. Thus we can roughly trace the point at which the last
of seven
pole-stars coincided
with the creation of man in heaven which was succeeded by the creation of
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Atum=Adam (or
man) at the point of a new beginning in the zodiac. Such types of the pole-stars
as the
tortoise or
vulture (in Lyra), the swan, the lesser bear (or jackal and the dragon), were
figures of those
creations
which preceded that of the man who was mythical and astronomical. The Samoans
relate that
Tangaloa was
the originator of men. He is their god in the height, or the eighth heaven. As
a primitive way
of saying how
plucky he was and of showing how the eight powers, seven plus one, were all
combined in
him, he is
called “eight-livered Tangaloa.” A temple was built for him and termed the
house of the gods,
which was
carefully shut up all round, and therefore is equivalent to Am-Khemen, the
Egyptian enclosure
of the eight
great gods. These characteristics identify Tangaloa as deity of the pole and as
eighth to the
seven earlier
powers. Now Tangaloa is said to have come over the ocean with a crew of seven
others in
a canoe, and
to have taken up his abode in the bush inland of the settlement. Here the
migration is the
same as that
of the 7+1 Kami, the 7+1 Kabiri, the 7+1 Toltecs, the 7+1 with Arthur in the
ark. The
migration in
each instance is purely mythical, and the data are simply astronomical. Lastly,
descent from
the mount or
mound, the tree or the papyrus-reed, the enclosure or paradise of the pole, was
followed in
the Semitic
versions of the deluge legends by a descent of the human race from the ark
which was
stranded on
the mountain top of Nizir or Ararat. The ark of Nnu had then been built to
float upon the
waters of the
firmament and to be figured in the ascending stars of Argo-Navis. This is the
ark with eight
on board,
four females and four males, which was indefinitely later than the boat of the
Mexican primal
pair or the
papyrus-reed of the four brothers in Egypt.
When the
seventh station of the pole subsided, the seventh island [Page 622] of Atlantis
sank, and all the
seven were
reckoned then to be overthrown in the celestial waters. Under the other figure
of the mount,
the seven
mountains now were totally submerged. This complete catastrophe is described by
Enoch,
who
identifies the seven mountains with the seven stars and the seven great
spirits. He likewise gives
the reason
for their overthrowal. “I beheld seven stars, like great blazing mountains, and
like spirits (the
Khamite khus
are spirits), entreating me.” The stars are those which” came not in their
proper season “
(ch. 18).
Again, “ I beheld seven stars of heaven bound together like great mountains”
(ch. 21, 3). Their
crime is that
they “transgressed the commandment of the most high.” Therefore they are bound
until the
time of the
great judgment and the consummation or end of all things, which we shall find
particularly
recorded in
the book of Revelation. From thirteen thousand to eleven thousand years ago the
vernal
equinox was
passing through the Lion sign. Pari passu in the movement of precession, the
north celestial
pole was
leaving its station in Lyra, or the tortoise, and passing into the sign of
Herakles or the Man.
Thus the
creation of man or Atum in the zodiac can be partially paralleled in the cycle
of precession at a
certain
station of the pole in the constellation of the heavenly man, who is Atum or
Adam in the
astronomical
mythology. All the conjunctions, the mythical characters, the scenery of this
beginning —
the Great
Bear, sun, moon, and seven stars, together with the inundation — met in that
sign and were
constituted a
fixture for two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years.
Ten thousand
seven hundred and seventy-five years ago the equinox began to move out of the
Lion sign
into that of
the Crab, and then and there a legendary catastrophe occurred. This was the
conclusion of
an
astronomical period which, like the year in Egypt, ended with a deluge. It
occurred eight thousand two
hundred and
seventy-five years before the date of the conversation in Egypt betwixt Solon
and the Hir-
Seshta, and
seven hundred and thirty-five years short of the nine thousand, but near enough
when we
are dealing
with round numbers. The astronomical facts were so well known that in speaking
of the
inundation at
the end of the cycle it was foretold that the “deluge would take place when the
heart of the
Lion entered
the first minute of the Crab’s head at the declination of the star” — that is,
the star Regulus,
the
law-giver, in the Lion sign. At this point of readjustment the great deluge of
all was marked by the
submergence
of the last of the seven pole-stars in “the Man” just when the shifting of the
pole coincided
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with a deluge
as a typical ending in the solar zodiac. For when the heaven of Atum-Ra was
established
on the four
corners, the typical ending previously marked by the changing pole-stars was
duplicated in
the zodiac by
the precession of the equinoxes, and both went on together in two modes of
measuring the
movement. As
the type of an ending in time, a mythical deluge occurred when a pole-star was
submerged in
the celestial waters, and the great deluge of all took place at the end of the
cycle in
precession
called the Great Year of the World. It was mythically rendered as the sinking
of Atlantis in
seven islands
which [Page 623] represented the seven astronomes in the celestial heptanomis.
The last
“great deluge
of all” is the subject of the story told to Solon by the priests of Sais. Of
this, and the
conflagration
that was caused by the fall of Phaethon, they sagely said, “This takes the form
of a myth,
but in
reality it signifies a declination of the bodies moving round the earth in the
heavens.” The
astronomers
knew that the deluge was mythical and the myth was astronomical, whether the
end of the
particular
period was represented by fire or by flood. Moreover, this greatest deluge can
be
approximately
dated. Plato’s account of what the priests of Egypt said to Solon identifies
the “great
deluge of
all” as having occurred about nine thousand years before that time” i.e. about
9600 B.C., or
eleven
thousand five hundred years ago. That date was given by the Egyptian priests
with particular
precision.
They said the city of Sais had been founded eight thousand years before the
time when Solon
was in Egypt.
After carefully examining their sacred registers, they told him that the city
of Sais was eight
thousand
years old, and that it was founded a thousand years after the cataclysm called
the “great
deluge of
all.” In their account we get to the bottom of the “lost Atlantis.” According
to the present
diagnosis,
then, the primary pole-star in the northern heaven may be Clava Coronae, the
key of the
crown, when
this was in the enormous constellation of the male hippopotamus — that is, of
Sut, the firstborn
of the female
hippopotamus. Polaris in its second form was the star Alpha in the Dragon. The
third
station was
in the Lesser Bear, the fourth in Kepheus, the fifth in Cygnus the Swan, the
sixth in Lyra or
the Tortoise,
the seventh in Herakles or Man. Each of these in turn had been a station of the
pole, a
landing-place
for foothold in the firmamental waters; each had been the sufferer from a
deluge at the
declination
of the pole and consequent change of pole-star. Hence the number of deluge
legends in the
astronomical
mythology, including “the great deluge of all” as the last of the seven. If we
take the length
of the Great
Year in round numbers at twenty-six thousand years, and divide the total into
seven equal
parts, this
gives some three thousand seven hundred and fourteen years as the time for the
pole to rest
in each of
the seven signs. Six thousand years ago the pole-star was in Draconis. Three
thousand seven
hundred and
fourteen years earlier the pole had entered the Hippopotamus (or Crown), and
three
thousand
seven hundred and fourteen years earlier still it was in the constellation of
Herakles or the Man.
4,000
3,714
3,714
11,428
Thus, eleven
thousand four hundred and twenty-eight years B.C. the pole was represented
by the last
of the seven pole-stars in the constellation of the Man. The end of the Great
Year
determined by
the great deluge of all then occurred in that sign, according to the Egyptian
account,
about 9600 B.C., or nine thousand in round numbers, with various surpluses to
be
added in the
total reckoning. Naturally, the deluge that destroyed mankind instead of the
totemic
tortoises, jackals and dogs, vultures and swans, apes, crocodiles and
hippopotami,
occurred when
the pole was in or was passing from the isle of the Man. Thenceforth the deluge
would
be looked on
as a literal destruction of the human race, and was so [Page 624] construed in
the Semitic
legends, as
it still is by the Christian clergy. This is but the rough sketch of a
pioneering pen. Greater
exactitude in
dates must be left to the scientific astronomer who may have mastered the
mythology. My
suggestion is
that one Great Year in the circle of precession was reckoned to have been ended
with the
passing of
the pole from the constellation of Herakles eleven thousand years ago, which is
near as need
be, for the
present purpose, to the time assigned by the Egyptian priests for the sinking
of the lost Atlantis
in the last
great deluge of all.
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Now, the
human birthplace had been localized according to the different stations of the
pole, which were
seven in
number altogether. There were seven countries, nomes, or cities, determined by
the pole-stars.
Each race
claims a particular place for a starting point in the migration from the mount,
or the tree, or the
back of the
tortoise, and various races have preserved some fragments of the stories told
about the
wanderings
and migrations from one land to another, as in the legends of the North
American Indians,
the Aztecs,
and the Arunta of Central Australia. The so-called “primitive cradle of the
human race in
Ararat or
Urdhu, the district of the mountain of the world” (Trans. Society Bib.
Archaeology, vol. VI, p.
535), had its
prototype in the planisphere and the birthplace at the pole. Ararat is but one
form of the
mythical
mount. We derive the name from the Egyptian root “rat,” which signifies the
ascent, the steps of
ascent, the
footstool, the figure of ascent. In the developed form, Arrut or Ararat also denotes
the
staircase or
steps of ascent, which is the mount of seven steps, or the staircase=the mount.
In one form
the ark of
Ararat was the circumpolar paradise; in another it is the eternal city, like
Thebes, which is called
the “august
staircase of the beginning of time, the utat of the universal lord” which led
up to the particular
region where
the Eye was then at full as the figure of a period in precession. When the pole
had passed
into the sign
of Herakles the Man, the typical mount which had been figured in the
Hippopotamus, in
Draconis, in
the Lesser Bear, in Kepheus, in Cygnus, and in the Tortoise naturally became
“the mountain
of mankind”
by name. This was the birthplace of the human race who descended from Atum,
Admu, or
Adam as the
man, and eventually the men who descended from “the mountain of mankind.”
The giant
with his staff who figures in the popular pastimes is probably a survival of
Herakles with his
club, as one
of those old giants that imaged the sustaining power of the pole, the last of
whom was in the
likeness of a
mighty man.
The mount, as
a point of emergence from the waters, is looked up to and addressed by the
manes in the
Ritual (ch.
42) at the coming forth from Amenta. It is called “the pedestal of the gods,”
“the land of the
white crown,”
and “the land of the rod or staff” =pole. That this is the land (Rit., ch. 42)
of the celestial
pole, the
mount, or the tree is proved by the vignette in which the deceased is drawing a
cord around the
tat emblem of
stability, which is another figure of the pole to which he clings for safety in
the waters.
The mount of
migration from which the various races claim to have descended, like the Aztecs
from the
island-mountain
Colhuacan, is [Page 625] finally the pole which had seven starting-points and
stations in
the circuit
of precession. According to a Norse legend, the land of the immortals was to
the north of
Finland, in
the neighbourhood of the White Sea. That, however, does not signify the
original home and
birthplace of
an Aryan race in Europe. It is but a local representation of the paradise in
the northern
heaven and
the white water of the Milky Way or sea of solar light. The mythical birthplace
on the mount
of heaven for
the people of the pole will explain how it was that the ancient Britons could
claim that they
were
emigrants from Troy. In the true tradition this would mean the celestial, not
the mundane Troy — the
Troy that is
still figured by seven circles cut in the sod by children in Wales. Troy was
one of the forms of
the enclosure
on the summit, in the astronomical mythology which was Terui in Egyptian as a
name of
Sesennu. It
is a common tradition that the human birthplace was in paradise, and the
descent from
thence has been
misrepresented as the fall from heaven. This in the astronomical mythology was
the
enclosure of
the circumpolar Aarru around the tree upon the summit of the stellar mount,
descent from
which was
from the mountain, or one of the seven mountains, of the pole. One most fertile
source of
confusion has
been the result of the mythical legends having been converted into ethnical
traditions. This
birthplace
above belonged to the astronomical mythology, and it has been converted into
the human
birthplace on
the mountain and high places of our earth by the human child being laid in the
cradle of the
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beginnings
that were not human. That is, by the astronomical tradition being made
ethnical, the polar
paradise
being made geographical. Thus, the descent from the circumpolar paradise in the
astronomical
mythology has
been the cause of a wild-goose chase in search of man’s lost heaven at the
North Pole of
the earth, by
the usual literalizing of the legend in its Hebrew guise. The mount from which
the different
races claim
descent has been sufficiently identified as the astronomical mountain of the
north, the mount
of paradise,
the one fixed point for landing at, or launching from, the summit of the pole.
This also is the
Babylonian
“mountain of the nations.” The Babylonians at first were mound-builders. The
mount of
heaven was
imitated in the mound, the holy mound called the mound of Anu and Nebo and
Ishtar.
Afterwards
they built the tower of Babilu, and the temple called Kharsag-Kalama, the
“mount of the
nations.”
This shows that the name of the astronomical mount was given to the building
that was
afterwards
reared above the mound. The “mount of the nations” was the mount of a
starting-point, and of
the divisions
or ways in the heavens which we now trace to the station of Polaris in
Herakles. The
starting-point
of the Aztec migration is from the mythical one-tree-hill of the pole.
According to the picture-
writing, both
mount and tree are combined in one figure. In the Boturini and Gamelli Careri
copies the
mount of
earth is portrayed with the tree upon the summit. The tree on the mount (a
teocallis) is very
rudely
represented in the Aztec picture-writing as the starting-point of the migration
by water from the
mount in the
beginning. From this point also the seven Toltecs commenced their wanderings in
a boat,
like the
seven Hohgates, the seven Ali, Ari or Kabiri, the seven [Page 626] dwarf sons
of Pinga, and other
forms of the
seven in the celestial heptanomis.
The point of
departure for the mythical migration is made ethnical in the märchen. The
Navajo Indians
derive their
origin from the top of the divine mountain in the north, where the pole is
represented in their
mythology by
the great reed which saved their progenitors from the waters of the deluge in
the region of
the stars
which never set (Matthews, “The Navajo Mythology,” American Antiquarian, 1883,
p. 208). The
Ainus
descended from the region of the bears, which was at the summit of the very
lofty mountains in the
north — that
is, at the pole. They likewise claim to derive their origin from the bear as
their mother and
the dog as
their father, which can be read astronomically. The she-bear took the place of
the female
hippopotamus,
the original Great Mother of the Egyptians, whose constellation was the Great
Bear. The
dog
represents the earlier jackal, the zootype of Sut or Anup, as Apuat the guide
of ways. The jackal=the
dog in the
planisphere of Denderah still remains a figure of the pole. One of the mythical
Chinese
emperors,
Hwang-ti, was born in the bear-country and inherited the bear, the original
type of which, as
male, was the
hippopotamus of Sut, the first deity of a pole-star. Hwang-ti was the first
celestial builder,
the first to
construct an astronomical instrument. He is said to have been the inventor of
wheeled carts;
hence his
name of Hien Yuan. Now Sut, in the male hippopotamus, as already explained, was
the primal
power of the
pole-star; he was the inventor of astronomy, and first of the seven who heaped
the mound
and made his
seat upon it. He was the first of all the star-gods, and was the fixed one at
the centre of the
revolution or
hub of the wheel, and therefore the inventor of the wheel. The Dyak chief whose
name
denoted “the
bear of heaven” may be claimed to have been a descendant from the celestial
bear, whose
title was
consequently astronomical and not simply totemic (C. Brooke, Ten Years in
Sarawak, vol. I,
189). The
bear and wolf clans of the Iroquois descend from the primal pair who were
represented by the
great bear as
mother and the jackal=wolf or prairie-dog as her son and consort. The types of
totemism
had attained
to a celestial setting in the astronomical mythology. They were no longer
merely of the earth,
but also
represented the “big brothers” in the sky, from whom descent was claimed by the
totemic
groups. These
were the bear that lived again in future food, the serpent that renewed itself,
the panes
bird that
never died, the turtle of eternity, and other types of superhuman powers that
were constellated
round the
pole of heaven. Thence came the races that descended from their stations in the
mount, or
from the
circumpolar paradise, as the bears (or hippopotami) and crocodiles, the jackals
(or dogs) and
apes, the
swans and tortoises, each from the mount according to the period. In Greece the
Meropes
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were the
people of the thigh, and the thigh or leg of heaven was a figure of the pole:
thus the birthplace
of a stellar
race was figured in the meshken of the “thigh,” the group of stars now
represented in the
northern
heaven by the lady of the seat or chair in the constellation Cassiopeia. One
title of the pole was
the Mount of
the Khuti, or Mount Khuti. Thence the Khuti or Guti would supply a [Page 627]
race-name of
lofty lineage
for those who dated their descent from Mount Khuti. The Egyptian Khuti came to
be looked
upon as seven
divine ancestors who did not originate as spirits of human beings, but were the
ancestors
of Ra. Now
there is a Mount Gudi=Khuti in the north-east of Babylonia, and an ancient
widely-spread
tradition
affirms that when the deluge was over the ark of Noah rested on this mount. The
name is
obviously one
with that of the Guti or Khuti of the tablets; whence the gutim and the Hebrew
goim as a
name for
mankind, and also for the mountain of mankind. Again, Mount Shennu is another
title of the
pole as the
mount of the Shennin, who were spirits or gods of the highest order, and who
might be called
the upper
seven, from whom we should derive the Japanese and Chinese Shin and Shintu
gods, which
were
originally seven, as were the Shennin round the pole or mount of the Most High
in Egypt. Various
difficulties
that have been felt regarding the other world of Homer can be met and
vanquished when we
know from
whence the system of Greek mythology was derived. The double paradise, one in
the
subterranean
Amenta and one in the celestial garden of the gods, will explain the duality of
the Homeric
other world.
Hades proper, like Amenta is beneath the earth; the happy other world of the
dead is across
the “divine
sea” or okeanos, the celestial water of the Kamite Nun. Hesiod in the Theogony
describes the
Greek
Tartarus as being “in a recess of earth having broad ways,” which can be
identified with the dark
parts of
Amenta. The mount of the immortals called Olympus is one with Mount Hetep in
the Egyptian
representation.
Hence the Kimmerians of Homer may be derived from the Egyptian Khemi or Akhemu,
the dwellers
in the northern heaven, whether as never-setting stars or spirits of the
glorified — that is, the
Khuti. The
city of the Kimmerians in the north is described as being covered with shadow
and vapour.
The sun does
not behold them when he goes toward the starry heaven, nor when he turns back
again
from heaven
to earth. It is always night in the land of the Kimmeroi. It was after sunset
that the vessel
reached the
extreme boundary where stood the city of the Kimmerians (Odyssey, books 11 and
12). The
Akhemu are
the souls of the dead, or the never-setting stars that circle round about the
northern pole of
heaven, but
not in the arctic regions of the earth nor on the horizon of the north. The
dead were those
who voyaged
in the bark of heaven for the city of the Akhemu at the summit of the pole.
When the Osiris
deceased has
attained the summit at the head of Aarru, he exclaims, “I stand erect in the
bark which the
god is
piloting . . . and the Akhemu (stars or spirits) open to me, and my
fellow-citizens present to me the
sacred cakes
with flesh” (Rit., ch. 98). In another chapter the speaker says, “I arrive at
my own city.” This
was the city
of the glorious ones who had risen to the region of the Akhemu-Seku or
never-setting stars.
And this, it
has now to be suggested, was the city of the mythical Kimmeroi. The voyage was
the same in
the Greek,
the Irish, or Assyrian legends as in the Egyptian astro-mythos. And as the
Khemi or Akhemu
were the
northerners in this polar sense, the same origin may well account for the
people of the north, in
Chaldea,
Japan, or Britain, being named the Kami, the Gimmeroi, or the Kymry, who
derived their [Page
628] northern
name on earth from that celestial birthplace in the northern heaven. Lastly,
the dragon-
mound was
known to the Druids as a type in the astronomical mythology. Thence came the
Dracontiae
and the
serpent-mounds of Britain, which, it may be feasibly inferred, were heaped up
as images of the
pole and its
station when a Draconis became the pole-star about 4,000 years B.C.
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Ancient
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BOOK 10 of 12
THE EXODUS
FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA
The Seed
ofYsiraal . . . . .. . . . . .. . .. . .
TheTitle of
Pharaoh .. . .. . .. . . . . .. . ..
[Page 629]
WHEN roughly classified, the myths and legends generally show two points of
departure for
migrations of
the human race, as these were rendered in the stellar and solar mythology. One
is from the
summit of the
celestial mount, the other from the hollow under-world beneath the mount or
inside the
earth. The
races that descended from the mount were people of the pole whose
starting-point in
reckoning
time was from one or other station of the pole-star, determinable by its type,
whether as the
tree, the
rock, or other image of a first point of departure. Those who ascended from the
nether-world
were of the
solar race who came into existence with the sun as it is represented in the
legendary lore,
that is, when
the solar mythos was established. The tradition of the pole-star people found
in various
countries is
that they were born when no sun or moon as yet had come into existence. That
is, they were
pre-solar and
pre-lunar in their reckoning of time. These are they, as was said by the
Egyptians, who
issued from
the eye of Sut, or Darkness, the earliest type of which we reckon to have been
Polaris,
whether as
the pole-star in the southern or the northern heaven. These were the Nahsi and
the
Blackheads of
the dim beginnings in the stellar mythology. Following them, come the people
born from
the eye of
Horus, which was a symbol of the moon. These were held to be the lunar race.
Lastly came
the children
of the sun. Thus, the eye as symbol of a repeating period was stellar as the
eye of Sut; it
was lunar as
the eye of Horus; it was solar as the eye of Ra. In the stellar mythos men
descended from
the summit of
the mount, which was an image of the pole. And still in legendary lore they try
to tell us
from which of
the seven stations they descended as a time-gauge in the prehistoric reckoning
of their
beginnings.
But in the solar mythos they ascended from the under-world which had been
hollowed out
beneath the
mount of earth for the passage of the sun. Thus there are two points of
departure in the
astronomical
mythography, one from above and one from below. The oldest races that have kept
the
reckonings
are descended from one or other of the seven stations in the mountain of the
north, and in the
later mythos
men ascended from the earth below, or from below the earth; the human ascent
being
figured in
the upward pathway of the sun. These were the solar race [Page 630] who
followed the lunar
and stellar
people of the past. These, when born in Egypt, were the children of the sun-god
Atum, who
became the
Hebrew Adam as the father of the human race.
Before Amenta
was created by the excavator Ptah within the nether earth there was no typical
ascent of
man. Indeed
there were no men until the time of Tum, since which time the race has been
considered
human. When
the sun-god Ra arose up from the earth, or from the Lotus, as the father of
created man,
or man the
mortal, the legend of the human ascent was established. In the “creation” of
Atum, instead of
being
reckoned as the offspring of the old First Mother or the group of the seven
pre-solar gods, men
became the
children of Ra, who are said to have come into existence as tears from his eye,
or as germs
of an
elemental soul proceeding from the solar god. Stars were the children of Ra the
sun-god in the
solar mythos.
Souls were the offspring of Ra the holy spirit in the eschatology; and here we
may possibly
delve down to
one of the tap-roots of the legendary “Exodus.” The stars were looked on as a
race of
beings having
souls of light that emanated from the sun. To these the solar race, as human
beings, were
affiliated by
means of the totemic types, which included the crocodile of Sebek, the beast of
Bes, the
hawk of
Horus, the scarabeus of Kheper. Hence it is said by the god Ra to the righteous
in Amenta, “You
yourselves
are tears of mine eye in your person of superior men. I have shed abroad my
seed for you”
(Book of
Hades, 5th division, D). These were the seed of Ra, who, as figured, were born
like a tear from
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
his eye, as a
mode of effluence, and being solar they were the superior race of men, the
Ruti, or men par
excellence.
Under the name of Khabsu in Egyptian the stars are synonymous with souls. These
in their
nightly
rising from Amenta were the images of souls becoming glorified. They came forth
in their
thousands and
tens of thousands from the lower Egypt of the astronomical mythos, the earliest
exodus
being
stellar. Thus we can realise the leader Shu, who stands upon the height of
heaven, rod in hand,
and who was
imaged in the constellation Kepheus as the Regulus or law-giver at the pole.
In the
“Destruction of Mankind” the stars are said to be “the multitudes which live in
the nocturnal sky.” In
this
under-world Taht, the moon-god, is called the luminary of Ra “in the inferior
heaven,” and in the deep
region where
he “inscribes the inhabitants” and it is said to him, “Thou art the keeper of
those who do
evil, whom my
heart abhors” (Pl. C., lines 65-70). Taht was the reckoner of the stars here
called the
inhabitants
of the nocturnal heaven, or sky of Amenta, whose names or numbers were
inscribed by him,
possibly as
six hundred stars, which number was extended by the Jewish Kabalists to their
six hundred
thousand
souls in Guph. Be this as it may, here are the souls in Amenta represented by
stars as
inhabitants
of the underworld. And in the new creation by Atum-Ra, god of the nocturnal
sun, they are
spoken of as
“these multitudes of men.” Ra orders that his heaven shall be depicted as a
field of rest,
and there
arose the elysian fields or paradise of plenty on Mount Hetep. In this new
heaven, says Ra, “I
establish as
inhabitants all the beings which are suspended in the sky, the stars! said by
the majesty of
Ra (to Nut),
I assemble there the multitudes that they may celebrate [Page 631] thee, and
there arose the
multitudes.”
These multitudes as stars had been the inhabitants in the deep region of the
inferior sky. Ra
having been
“lifted up” as god alone in this new heaven of the astronomical mythos, the
stars that were in
the lower are
to be assembled and grouped together in the upper heaven. This is followed by
the stellar
exodus from
“lower Egypt and the desert of Amenta” under the leadership of Shu-Anhur, the
uplifter of
the sky
together with its inhabitants, the stars, called the children of Nut, or
heaven. It is said by Ra “my
own son Shu,
take with thee my daughter Nut, and be the guardian of the multitudes which
live in the
nocturnal
sky,” or the sky in the lower Egypt of Amenta; “put them on thy head and be
their fosterer,” or
sustainer.
(Pl. B, line 42.) Then, as said in the hymn to the god Shu, “Uplifted is the
sky which he
maintains
with his two arms” as “king of Upper and Lower Egypt” in his new character of
Shu-si-Ra, who,
in the solar
mythos, had become the son of Ra. In the Ritual, ch. 110, heaven is described
as the
mansion of
Shu, “the mansion of his stars,” which was nightly renewed as “the beautiful creation
which
he raiseth
up.”
We have now
delved down to an origin for the Egyptian exodus in the stellar mythos. Shu was
the uplifter
of the sky
under his name of Anhur with his rod. As raiser of the firmament he uplifts the
starry host or
multitude of
beings known as the offspring of Nut, or later, the seed of Ra, or later still,
the children of Ra.
These were
previously the dwellers in the lower Egypt of the mythos who are to be set free
from this
realm of
darkness and gathered together in the land of light, the starry heaven of Nut
on high. Their
deliverer was
Shu-Anhur, the leader up to Heaven, with his rod, as “repeller of the dragon
coming out of
the abyss.”
(p. 2, lines 5 and 6.) This exodus belongs to the rendering in the mythology,
and underlies the
Peri-em-hru
or coming forth to day according to the Book of the Dead, in which the mythos
has become
the mould of
the eschatology. The resurrection of souls has taken the place of the stars in
the stellar, and
of the sun in
the solar mythos. The exodus was now the coming forth of the Manes from “Egypt
and the
desert” as
localities in the mysteries of Amenta. This was then made geographical and
practical by
literalization
in that exodus of the Israelites from the land of the Pharaohs which has
hitherto passed as
biblical
history.
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Ancient
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In reviewing
M. Renan’s work on Israel, a recent writer asks, what then is the origin and
significance of
the exodus
and its attendant plagues and prodigies? “When did they come, where or when
were they
invented? The
monuments are never likely to tell us.” No, not if we are looking for the
Palestinian Jews in
Egypt as an
ethnological entity, or for the ancient Egyptian fables as biblical facts. But
when we get clear
of that cloud
of iridescent dust which the Jewish writings have interposed betwixt us and the
monuments,
we shall find
they do tell us more or less what was the origin of the wonderful tale by which
the world has
been beguiled
so blindly through mistaking verifiable myth for God’s own historic word. The
sufferings of
the Chosen
People in Egypt and their miraculous exodus out of it belong to the celestial
allegory of the
solar drama
that was performed in the mysteries of the divine nether-world, and had been
performed as
a mythical
representation ages before it was converted into a [Page 632] history of the
Jews by the
literalizers
of the ancient legends. The tale of the ten plagues of Egypt contains an
esoteric version of the
tortures
inflicted on the guilty in the ten hells of the under-world. We have seen
somewhat of the descent
of mankind
from a celestial birthplace that was constellated as an enclosure on the
mountain of the pole.
We have now
to trace the ascent from the regions of the nether-earth, which, as Egyptian,
is an exodus
from Lower
Egypt and the “desert” of Amenta. We shall have to make the journey through
this nether-
earth once
more in following the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the character of
the manes issuing
from Amenta.
The legend of the exodus or coming forth to-day, like those of the creation,
the deluge, and
the lost
paradise in the book of Genesis, belongs to that mythology which underlies and
is the source of
all the
märchen and the folk-lore of the world. The clue, as will be shown, has been
preserved in what is
commonly
termed the wisdom of the ancients, which we hold to be Egyptian in its origin
and derivative on
all the other
lines of its descent. We find the mythos, the legends, and the folk-tales of
the world are all
involved in
the Egyptian wisdom, and the Hebrew traditions are demonstrably the débris of
Egyptian
myth and
eschatology. But, of all the various versions of the coming forth or exodus
from out the underworld,
not one has
caused such deep perplexity as this of Israel issuing from Egypt, in which the
mythos
has been
misappropriated and converted into an ethnical history. As Egyptian, it was not
pretended that
the children
of Ra were ethnical, or that the mysteries of Amenta were transactions in the
earth of time.
The way up
from Amenta was variously portrayed as an ascent by means of steps; by scaling
a mount,
or by
climbing a tree, a grape-vine, a reed, a bean-stalk, or a papyrus reed. In the
legends of many races
we find the
tradition of a deliverance from some subterranean dwelling-place which was
their primeval
home. This
exodus from the under-world is common in the märchen of the red men. With the
Lenni
Lenape
Indians, the beginning was in a subterranean abode up out of which they were
led by the wolf as
their chief
totemic zootype. Now, the wolf is an equivalent for the jackal. In Egyptian the
wolf and jackal
(Seb) are
synonymous; and the jackal was the guide of roads in Amenta who led the people
through its
wilderness,
and showed a way for them to ascend into the world of light. All the myths and
legends of an
under-world
depend upon there being an under-world, or nether-earth, and this again depends
on there
being a
double-earth which was hollowed out by the God who represented the nocturnal
sun for the
passage
through the mount of earth by night, and who as Egyptian was Ptah, the founder
of Amenta.
In the Mandan
tradition of their origin, it is related that the whole nation once resided in
one large village
underground
beside a subterraneous lake. A grape-vine extended its roots down to their
habitation, and
gave them an
upward view of the light. Some of the more adventurous spirits climbed up the
vine, and
found
themselves in a lovely region full of buffaloes, and rich with every kind of
fruit. From this they
returned with
the grapes they had gathered, like the men who had gone forth to spy out the
land in
another [Page
633] version of the mythos. Their fellow-countrymen were so delighted with the
taste of their
newly-found
fruit that men, women, and children determined to leave their lower earth and
ascend to the
upper by
means of the grape-vine. But when the people were about half-way, a corpulent
woman who
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Ancient
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was
clambering up the vine broke it with her weight. This closed the aperture upon
herself and the rest of
the nation,
and shut out the light of the sun. But when the Mandans die, they expect to
return to this, the
original
country of their forefathers, the good reaching the ancient village of the vine
by means of the lake
which the
wicked will not be able to cross by reason of the burden of their sins (Lewis
and Clarke). This
land of the
forefathers was that of the ancestral spirits, the country of the tree of life,
here identified with
the vine. The
subterranean lake is one with the lake in Tattu. The corpulent woman is the
Great Mother,
who was the
enceinte Apt or Hathor in Egypt, whose tree is the sycamore-fig. The
double-earth is the
same as in
the ritual. Consequently the vine is the tree of dawn up which the sun and
souls ascended
from the Tuat
by means of the tree. The exodus from the nether-earth, or Lower Egypt, is the
same as in
the Hebrew
and other versions of the mythos, the original of which is provably Egyptian.
The Quiché
“Popul Vuh”
portrays the ancestors of the race as wanderers in the wilderness upon their way
to the
place where
the sun was to rise. They also crossed the water, which divided whilst they
passed, and
which they
went through just as if there had been no sea. They passed on the scattered
rocks rolled on
the sands,
that served for stepping-stones. This is why the place was called “ranged
stones and torn-up
sands,” the
name that was given to it on their passage through the waters that divided as
they went. “At
last they
came to a mountain where, as they had been told, they were to see the sun rise
for the first
time”
(Bancroft, vol. III, p. 51). This was the mount of glory in the solar mythos,
and the waters which
were crossed
were those of the celestial Nun. The “ranged stones” in the waters correspond
to the
twelve stones
that were set up by Joshua to mark the spot where the waters were held up for
the
Israelites to
pass dry-footed through the river Jordan. In the Hawaiian tradition the king of
the country,
named
Honua-i-lalo, was the oppressor of the Menehune people. Their god Kane sent
Kane-Apua and
Kanaloa the
elder brother to bring away the oppressed people, and take them to a land which
Kane their
god had given
them. The legend further tells how they came to the Red Sea of Kane,
Kai-ula-a-Kane,
and were
pursued by Ke-Alii Wahanui. Thereupon Kane-Apua and Kanaloa prayed to Lono, and
then
they waded
safely through the sea, and wandered in the desolate wilderness until at last
they reached
the promised
land of Kane, called “Aina-Lauena-a-Kane.” This, says Fornander, is an ancient
legend,
which also
contains the story of water being made to gush forth from a rock (Fornander, An
Account of
the
Polynesian Race).
The passage
of the Red Sea and the destruction of those who follow the fugitives are also
found in a
Hottentot
fable. Heitsi-Eibib was once travelling with a great number of his people, when
they were
pursued by
the enemy. On arriving at the water which [Page 634] had to be crossed as the
only way of
escape, the
leader said, “My grandfather’s father! open thyself that I may pass through,
and close thyself
afterwards.”
So it took place as he had said, and they crossed the water safely. Then the
pursuing enemy
tried to pass
through the opening likewise, but when they were in the midst of the divided water
it closed
upon them and
they perished. (Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 75.) In this the personification of
the water as
the first
father, God the grandfather, is in accordance with the Egyptian Nnu or
celestial water, who is
represented
as the primordial male divinity, the father of the fathers, including Ra the
solar god. The Nnu
or Nun
identifies the water as celestial, and it is this that divides to let the
sun-god and his followers pass
through
dryshod. These in the Ritual are pursued by the Apap and the Sebau to the edge
of the horizon.
Then the
water of day overwhelms the powers of darkness, and Apap the dragon with all
his evil host are
overthrown,
submerged, and drowned in the waters of the lower Nun (Rit., ch. 39). They are
described in
the “Magic
Papyrus” as the “immerged,” who do not “pass,” or go along, but remain floating
on the waters
like dead
bodies drifting on the inundation; with their mouths for ever shut and sealed
(Records, vol. x,
151). In
another version of the Hottentot legend a Nama woman and her brothers are
pursued by an
elephant.
“Stone of my ancestors,” cry the fleeing ones, “divide for us.” The stone opens
and they pass.
The pursuer
used the same words, and the rock opened for him also, but it closed on the
elephant and
crushed it to
death (Bleek, Hottentot Fables, pp. 64, 65). The fable can be read by means of
the Egyptian
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Ancient
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wisdom. It
belongs to the war that was waged for ever betwixt the powers of darkness and
light. In the
Egyptian
mythos the pursuing monster as the Apap-dragon of the deep, in place of the
elephant, pursues
the children
of light who are escaping from the under-world. They reach the rock of the
horizon or the
Tser-hill,
which opens for the “coming forth” and closes again when the pursued ones have
passed
through in
safety. Shu=Moses stands upon the rock to smite it with his rod, with the
result that the waters
of day gush
forth in light. This is the water of heaven set flowing from the rock of the
horizon for those
who are
followed by the Apap-reptile of darkness and consuming drought. The sun-god in
the Ritual
staggers
forth upon the mount with many wounds, but Apap is caught and crushed and cut
up piecemeal
in the place
appointed for the dragon to be drowned in the red lake of the mythos (Rit., ch.
39). Through
this Red Sea
the followers of Ra, of Heitsi-Eibib, or Jehovah, pass in triumph on their way
to the land of
promise on
the mount of glory. But the hosts of evil are continually overthrown.
The
starting-point of the Mangaian migration was from Savaiki in the shades. The
natives of the
Penrhyns
speak of going down to Savaiki in death, and they say their first ancestors
came up as heaven-
bursters from
the same country. All such origins are mythical, not historical or
geographical, although the
mystical land
gets localised on the surface of the earth as it is in the heptanomis of the
Hervey Isles.
Savaiki was
known as the home of the ancestors, but the only ancestors first known were the
ancestral
spirits, and
it was these as manes that sought deliverance from the under-world. In one of
[Page 635] the
traditions
the Egyptians were reputed to come from the land of Puanta, the Ta-neter or
country of the
gods, the
land of glory, or the golden land. When it is said to the sun-god, “Adoration
to thee who arisest
out of the
golden,” it means out of Puanta, the nether-land of dawn (Rit., ch. 15, hymn
1). This land of the
gods as a
mythical locality was in the under-world, not on the surface of our earth; it
is not the Puanta
that was
geographical in the south. The people from Puanta, the land of the gods, are
those who had a
solar origin.
They issue from the land of glory with the sun. The gods and the glorified came
up from this
divine land
when they emerged from Puanta in the Orient.
One title of
the first chapter in the Ritual is “The chapter of introducing the mummy into
the Tuat on the
day of
burial.” This applies to the mummy interred on earth, and also to the Osiris or
manes in Amenta,
who was
figured in the mummy-form. The Tuat is a place of entrance to and egress from
the under-world.
And in the
Pyramid Texts (Pepi, i. 185) those who are in the Tuat are called the Tuata.
Now, as the Tuat
was in Tanen,
the land (ta) beneath the waters of the Nen, they are the Tuata-Tanen, in whom
we
propose to
identify the Irish mythical heroes or divine ancestors called the Tuatha de
Danan. In the oldest
account of the
Tuatha it is said they came from heaven. Therefore their origin was not human.
In issuing
from the Tuat
of Amenta they came from the lower paradise of two from which they brought the
wisdom
and the
symbols of the Egyptians as their sacred treasures, including the four precious
things belonging
to the Tuatha
de Danan. The Tuatha are described as the gods and the not-gods, a title that
exactly
corresponds
to the Egyptian two classes of spirits called the gods and glorified. According
to Giraldus in
his
Topographia Hibernia, it was a guess of the learned that the Tuatha “were of
the number of the exiles
driven out of
heaven,” and if they were of those who came from the land of promise and issued
from the
Tuat, they
would come from the subterranean Aarru or earthly paradise. The hills and
mounds of Erin are
the places of
entrance to and exit from the invisible world of elfin-land, which answers to
the hidden earth
of the manes
in Amenta. When euhemerised by tradition, the Tuatha de Danan are said to have
retired
into the
hills and mounds after they were utterly defeated in battle. In other legends
Dagda and his sons
were once the
rulers over this nether-land, and they are said to lie buried there with “the
síd or fairy-
mound of the
brugh as covering for their resting-place” (Rhys). The brugh was originally the
place of
burial. He
who sleeps at Philae is he who sleeps in the brugh, the burgh, or bury. The
name written in
hieroglyphics
is Piruk=brugh, and there the mummy slept in the burgh of Amenta, or with the
Tuata in the
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Tuat of the
nether-world. The divine mother of the Tuatha is known by the name of Danan.
The Tuatha
are the tribe
or people of the goddess Danan, who is also the deëss of death. Now, there is
an Egyptian
goddess Tanan
who is a form of Hathor=the amorous queen in the earth of Tanen, the land of
the
nocturnal sun
and the domain of the dead. The god Tanen is lord of that land, and the goddess
is
identified
with Hathor by her headdress. The name of Tanan may also be written Tann. This
agrees [Page
636] with the
naming of the Welsh and Irish goddess Danu or Danan. Her name takes the form of
Don in
Welsh, and
the deities who descend from her, like Gwydion and Arianrhod, are called the
children of Don.
The Tuatha de
Danan are also termed the Fir Déa, or men of the goddess. Hence we propose to
identify
the goddess
Tanen with Danan or Danu, the Great Mother of the Tuatha de Danan, who were the
people
of the
goddess as the souls of the dead in the divine Neter-Kar, i.e. in Tanen, and
who issued from the
Tuat with the
sun or solar god as the men of the Goddess, who was Tanan in Egypt, Danan in
Ireland,
and Don in
Britain. The men of the goddess, as we suggest, were the Tuata of the Pyramid
Texts, who as
divine
ancestors become the Irish Tuatha de Danan. The same word is represented by the
Irish Tuath for
the tribe;
Breton Tud, Gothic Thiuda, Saxon Theod, for a people; the Oscan Tauta for a
community; it is
also extant
in the name of the Teutons. One of the chief attributes of the Tuatha de Danan
is the power
they have of
assuming any form at will, and this is a supreme trait of those who come forth
when the Tuat
is opened (Rit.,
ch. 2). Chapter 64 is the one by which the Tuata take all forms that each
desireth,
whether on
entering or coming forth from this womb of Amenta. The transformation of the
manes has
come to be
called shape-shifting, but there is no beginning with it as a faculty of the
wizards in Ireland.
There are
various hints in the Irish fairy-lore of the Tuatha de Danan being one with the
spirits of the
dead. Their
relation to the prehistoric mounds is the same as that of the Tuata with the
mount of Amenta.
There is also
a still prevailing confusion in the Irish mind betwixt the fairies and the
ghosts, which is very
natural when
we know that the fairies originated in the spirits of the elements which have
got mixed up
with the
manes of the dead. According to Caesar, the Druids taught the Gauls that they
were all
descended
from Dis Pater, the Demiurge — that is, from the god of Hades or Amenta, who is
Tanan as
consort of
the goddess, and whose name was taken by Ptah-Tanan, the better known Dis Pater,
who
was earlier
than Osiris in the Egyptian cult, and from whom the solar race ascended,
whether from
Puanta or
from the Tuat. Thus interpreted, the Tuatha or tribes who brought the ancient
wisdom out of
Lower Egypt
or the Tuat may have been genuine Egyptians after all, as the much-derided
traditions of
the Keltae
and the Kymry yet allege and strenuously maintain. “The oasis of Tuaut” is
another bit of
ancient Egypt
still surviving in the country of Morocco, where it testifies, like some strange
boulder on the
surface, to
the buried past.
The
birthplace of the stellar races was in the celestial north. The solar race were
they who came forth
from the
East. In going down to Amenta, as manes, they were the westerners; in coming
forth they are
the
easterners. Thus, when we are told that Abraham came from Ur of the Kasdim, or
the Magi, which
was his
birthplace, that goes far to identify him as a solar god, just as Laban, the
white one, was a lunar
deity, and Ur
a mythical locality. Ur is an Egyptian name for that which is eldest, first,
great, principal. The
course of the
sun-god by day is reckoned to run from Ta-Ur to Am-Ur, i.e. from east to west.
Ta-Ur then is
Egyptian for
the land of the east, and the migration thence is solar, that is — mythical, —
and would be
astronomical
when the [Page 637] birthplace is designated “Ur of the Kasdim” or Chaldees. Ur
of the
Kasdim is
self-identified by name with the Magi, astrologers or astronomers. Moreover,
the frequent
coupling of
Ur and Martu in the astrological tablets points to Ur as a name for the east
being juxtaposed
to Martu for
the west, “Ur and Martu” meaning east and west, and not Ur a city on earth and
Martu a
quarter in
the heavens.
It has been
pointed out by translators that various place-names in the Egyptian Book of the
Dead denote
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Ancient
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celestial
localities, and are not geographical. They are names in the astronomical
mythology which had
been first
derived from Egypt on earth, that were afterwards applied to Upper Egypt in
heaven and Lower
Egypt in
Amenta. The heaven above and Amenta below were divided into Upper and Lower
Egypt. The
Egyptian
cities of Thinis, Hermopolis, Memphis, Thebes, Annu, and others were repeated
in the
planisphere
as mythical localities which furnish place-names for the eschatology in the
Ritual. When
Osiris
triumphs, and “joy goeth its round in Thinis,” that is the celestial, not the
earthly city (Rit., ch. 18).
When the
deceased in Amenta exclaims, “May Sekhet the Divine One lift me up so that I
may arise in
heaven and
issue my behest in Memphis” (Rit., ch. 26), it is the heavenly Memphis, the
celestial Ha-ka-
Ptah, or
spirit house of Ptah, the enclosure of the white wall on high, that is meant.
When the priest says
in the first
chapter of the Ritual, “I baptize with water in Tattu, and anoint with oil in
Abydos”, the scene of
the baptism
is in Amenta, not on earth. Rekhet, the place where the two divine sisters
waited and wept
for the lost
Osiris, was a locality in the earth of eternity, but Rekhet was also
geographical in Egypt.
At first the
localities, as Egyptian, were topographical, next they were constellated as
uranographical, and
finally they
constituted a double Egypt of the other world in the earth and heaven of
eternity.
The Egyptian
Exodus is a mystery of Amenta. It is described in the Ritual as the
Peri-em-heru or “coming
forth to day”
from “the Hades of Egypt and the desert” (Records, vol. x, p. 109). Thus when
Horus comes
forth in his
resurrection it is said that “Egypt and the desert are at peace” (Rit., ch.
183). Egypt and the
desert were
the two parts in the double-earth that was divided between Sut and Horus,
betwixt whom
was
internecine war that only ended temporarily at the coming of the prince of
peace who came to set
the prisoners
free from the land of bondage, of drought and darkness, of Apap and the plagues
of Egypt
in the
under-world.
The sufferers
depicted in the mythos were at first the stars that fell down headlong into the
abyss to be
swallowed by
the dragon, of whom it is said, “Eternal Devourer is his name” (Rit., ch. 17).
This was in the
astronomical
mythology. In the eschatology the prisoners are the manes or body-souls of the
dead who
passed into
Amenta, the earth of eternity, as it were by way of the grave. Both were the
children of light,
mythical or
eschatological, otherwise the children of Ra, at war for ever with the
creatures of darkness in
the
nether-earth. The exodus or coming forth from [Page 638] this nether Egypt is
represented
astronomically
on the great Mendes Stele. On one side Horus Behutet, the great god, lord of
heaven and
giver of
life, is described as coming “out of the horizon on the side of Upper Egypt,”
and on the other side
of the Stele
“the coming out of Lower Egypt” is spoken of instead. That is the exodus from
Kheb or Lower
Egypt, which
is Amenta in the eschatology (Records, vol. viii, 91). This is the exodus from
Egypt of the
lower earth
according to the representation in the solar mythos that preceded the version
in the
eschatology
by which it was followed and enforced. In the making of Amenta the Egyptians
mapped out
Egypt in the
nether-world in accordance with Egypt on earth, only on a vaster scale. They
had their
Lower and
Upper Egypts in the other life as they had in this. But Khebt, the Egyptian
original of the Greek
Eguptos, is
more expressly the Lower Egypt, hence the lower of the two Egypts in the
mythical
representation.
This was the Egypt below, through which the nocturnal sun and the souls of the
deceased
passed on their way up to the land of liberty and light. This was the Egypt
where the Lord (as
Osiris, or
the elder Horus) was crucified in the Tat (Rev. xI. 8), or where the solar god
suffered his mortal
agony, his
death and burial; the Egypt from which he rose again. Here was the wilderness
of the
wanderings
during the forty days of the Egyptian Lent, which represented the forty days of
the seed that
was buried in
the earth to attain the new life in the regermination of Osiris, which forty
days were
disguised as
forty years in the historic version of the Jewish exodus. It is unfortunate and
humiliating to
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Ancient
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us as a
nation that Egyptology and Assyriology in England should have first fallen into
the hands of
devout
believers in the biblical “history.” Archaeology had to call itself “biblical”
in order that a society
might be
founded for the study of Egyptology and Assyriology, and Egyptian exploration
was for a long
time limited
to looking for “biblical sites” in Egypt, which are only to be met with as
mythical localities in
Amenta. Nor is
this mania of the historic-minded yet entirely extinct! Jewish or Gentile
commentators who
know nothing
of the astronomical mythology, or the Egyptian origin of the Hebrew legends,
have never
been able to
apply the comparative method to these writings. There is but one Egypt for
them. But there
was another
Lower Egypt, another Red Sea, another dragon, another deliverance from Rahab
and the
Apap-monster,
and another exodus, which have not hitherto been taken into account by the
Hebraists. It
was not to
Egypt topographically that the ransomed of the Lord were to return singing the
songs of Zion.
There is
another and a truer version of these mystical matters possible, even as there
was of old.
The creation
of Amenta in the Egyptian mythos has been already explained as the work of Ptah
and the
seven Knemmu
or navvies who were his assistants in opening up the under-world, and who in
the
Hebrew
rendering become the seven princes that digged the well, referred to in one of
the fragments of
ancient lore
(Num. xxi. 18), which seven princes in the Semitic legends are identified with
the chariot of
the Lesser
Bear. Amenta was a second terra firma for the souls of the departed, a mental
fulcrum to the
eye of faith
laid on the physical foundation of the solar mythology for [Page 639] those who
travelled the
eternal road.
Thus the origin of the exodus, as Egyptian, was in the coming forth of the
heavenly bodies
from below
the horizon in the mythical representation. This was followed by the coming
forth of the
manes from
dark to day, from death to life, from bondage to liberty, from Lower to Upper
Egypt in the
eschatology.
In the coming forth of the Israelites from “the Hades of Egypt and the desert,”
it is said the
Lord went
before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in
a pillar of fire to
give them
light: that they might go by day and by night: the pillar of cloud by day, and
the pillar of fire by
night
departed not from before the people” (Ex. xiii. 21, 22). It is possible that
the zodiacal light supplied a
natural image
for the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire described in the book of Exodus.
The zodiacal
light is a
phenomenon visible in Egypt at certain seasons of the year. It is seen as a
conical pillar of cloud
towards the
east in the morning, just before sunrise, and towards the west at sunset. In
the pale light of
dawn it is a
pillar of cloud, and in the ruddy glow of sundown it becomes a veritable pillar
of fire. It is said
of the Great
One God, “the living one, who liveth everlastingly,” and who was Atum-Huhi in
his temple at
On, “He
traverseth the heavens, and compasseth the nether-world each day; he travels in
the cloud to
separate
heaven and earth, and again to unite them” — that is, at morn and evening in
making the
passage of
Amenta. The ‘Lord of the Cloud” is also addressed as the guide of navigation.
The flame of
the sun is
the protection of those who cross the double-earth. He who “commands heaven
causes his
disk to
appear in the desert” (Rit., 99). “He who purifies the water” “appears on the
liquid abyss” (101).
“He marches
for the dead; for those who are overturned” (I.). The opening chapters of the
Book of the
Dead are
called the Peri-em-hru or coming forth to day. In other words, this was the
Kamite exodus of the
manes from
Amenta in the eschatological phase of the mythos, which has been converted by
literalization
into the “history” found in the book of Exodus. The Hebrew märchen are the
legendary
remains of
the Egyptian mythos, whether in the book of Genesis or the book of Exodus. The
“coming
forth to day”
with which the Ritual opens is the Egyptian exodus, and the Hebrew exodus is
likewise the
coming forth
to day.
An entrance
to the mythical Amenta, previously shown, was localized at Abydos as the cleft
or the mouth
of the rock,
a narrow gorge in the Libyan range of hills. Opposite this entrance stood the
temple of Osiris
Khent-Amenta,
a name which denotes the opening to the interior of Amenta. Through this gorge
the solar
bark passed
into the mountain of the west, and bore the image of the dying solar god on
board. Once a
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Ancient
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year also
there was a feast of the dead, or, as we have it in survival, of All Souls, and
there came a
funeral
flotilla to the mouth of the cleft on one of the first nights of the year. This
answers in the mythos to
the
starting-point in time of the Jewish exodus as history, in the first month of
the year.
Two ways of
entering the other world are represented in two different categories of the
ancient legend,
both of which
are derived from the same fundamental origin. One is by means of the dividing
[Page 640]
waters, the
other by means of the passage that opens and closes in the earth at evening or
in the
equinox. In
the Egyptian mythos the entrance to Amenta is both by land and water. The god
on board the
solar bark,
or the children of Ra=Israel on board the bark of souls, passed through the
cloven rock by
water.
Previously the water had to be divided for the travellers to pass. But the
waters thus divided were
celestial,
being mythical. They are the waters divided by Shu-Anhur with his rod as leader
of the manes
from Amenta
up to heaven. It is not written in the Old Testament what the Lord did for
Israel in the vale of
Arnon, but
the Targum of Jerusalem tells us that when the Beni-Israel were passing through
the gorge or
defile, the
Moabites were hidden in the caverns of the valley, intending to rush out and
slay them. But the
Lord signed
to the mountains, and they literally laid their heads together to prevent it;
they closed upon
the enemy
with a clap, and crushed the chiefs of the mighty ones, so that the valleys
were overflowed
with the
blood of the slain. Meanwhile Israel walked over the tops of the hills, and
knew not the miracle
and the
mighty act which the Lord was doing in the valley of the Arnon. Thus the
miracle of the Red Sea
was reversed.
In the one case the waters stood up in heaps and were turned into hills; in the
other the
solid hills
flowed down and were fused, whilst Israel passed over them as if they were a
level plain. In the
one miracle
the Red Sea was turned into dry ground; in the other the dry ground was turned
into a red
sea of blood.
The hills that rushed together to make a level plain are a familiar figure of
the equinox, to be
found in
varied forms of legendary lore (Book of Beginnings, vol. II, pp. 356-357). This
account therefore
is as good as
the biblical one, and it tends to prove that both belong to the astronomical
mythos, and that
the crossing
here was in the equinox.
In the mythos
of Amenta the promised land of plenty, the land of corn and wine and oil, was
the Aarrufield
of divine
harvest that awaited the righteous who had been wanderers in the wilderness and
who
fought their
way to it through all the obstacles of the under-world. These obstacles can
still be traced in
the Jewish
narrative compared with the books of Amenta and the mysteries of Taht. All
through the
journey of
this Egypt underground, the objects besought and fervently prayed for are a
good passage
through the
waters and all other hindrances, and a safe way out upon the eastern side, where
lay the
promised
land. One great object of the manes in knowing the words of great magical power
in Amenta is
to obtain
command over the waters. The deceased prays that he may have command over the
waters
which he has
to pass through, even as Sut had command of force on the “night of the great
disaster”
(Rit., chs.
57 and 62). These waters are the Red Sea of the Jewish exodus, in which the
Apap-dragon
lurks and
lies in wait. The later scholiasts tell us that the habitation of this monster
was the Red Sea.
Thus the Red
Sea is identifiable with the lake of Putrata in which the dragon lurked that
lived upon the
drowned, the
dragon that was turned into the cruel Pharaoh in the Hebrew version of the
exodus.
It is evident
that the Jews were in possession of an esoteric rendering of the same mystical
matter as is
presented
exoterically in the books ascribed to Moses. There were two versions of the
dark [Page 641]
sayings and
the hidden wisdom, the esoteric and the exoteric, amongst them, as there were
amongst the
Egyptians,
and these have doubled the confusion. The Christian world has based its
structure of belief
simply and
solely on the exoteric version; thus the door of the past just now being opened
anew in Egypt
was closed to
them and locked; they were left outside without the key, and in the darkness of
the
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Ancient
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grossest,
crassest ignorance the Christian faith was founded. We have now to recover such
“history” as
is possible
from the Pentateuch by eliminating the mythos and the eschatology. Fragments of
the original
mythos crop
up in the Haggadoth, the Kabalah, the Talmud, and other Hebrew writings, which
tend to
show that in
the earlier time and lowermost strata the same matter had been known to the
Jews
themselves as
non-historical. Thus it is provable and will be proved that “biblical history”
has been mainly
derived from
misappropriated and misinterpreted mythology, and that the mythology is demonstrably
Egyptian
which can only be explained in accordance with the Egyptian wisdom. This is not
to say that the
books of
Genesis, Exodus, and Joshua are intentional forgeries, but that the data were
already more or
less extant
as subject-matter of the mysteries, and that an exoteric version of the ancient
wisdom has
been rendered
in the form of historic narrative and ethnically applied to the Palestinian
Jews. The most
learned of
the Rabbis have most truthfully and persistently maintained that the books
attributed to Moses
do but
contain an exoteric explanation of the secret wisdom, though they may not trace
the gnosis to its
Egyptian
source. The chief teachers have always insisted on the allegorical nature of
the Pentateuch.
Two laws, they
tell us, were delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. One was committed to writing,
as in the
Pentateuch;
the other was transmitted orally from generation to generation, as is
acknowledged by the
Psalmist when
he says, “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
which we have
heard and
known and our fathers have told us.” Parables and dark sayings of old are the
allegories of
mythology and
enigmas of the ancient wisdom uttered after the manner of the mysteries. Now
the subject
of this psalm
is the story of Israel in Egypt and the exodus from the old dark land. The
plagues of Egypt
are
described. “He set his sign in Egypt; he turned their rivers into blood.” “He
sent them swarms of flies
which
devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.” He also gave their increase to
the caterpillar
and their
labour to the locust. He killed their vines with hail and their sycamore-trees
with frost, and
“smote all
the first-born in Egypt.” The coming forth is also described. The Psalmist
tells of the marvellous
things that
were done “in the land of Egypt.” How the Lord “clove the sea” and “caused them
to pass
through”
whilst the waters were made “to stand as an heap.” How he led them forth with a
pillar of cloud
by day and of
fire by night. How he clove the rock in the wilderness “and gave them drink
abundantly as
out of the
depths, “ and “ opened the doors of heaven “ and “ rained down manna upon them
to eat.” This
was heard and
known orally as a tale that is told in dark sayings of old which did not
originate in the
biblical
history of the exodus. They are “tried as silver is tried” in the refineries of
the nether-earth. They
go “through
fire and through water,” and are “brought out into [Page 642] a place of
abundance” in the
pleasant
Aarru fields. This journey is described in various psalms. “Working salvation
in the midst of the
earth, thou
didst divide (or break up) the sea by thy strength; thou breakest the heads of
the dragons in
the waters.
Thou breakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces” (Ps. LXXIV. 12-14). In the
Hebrew Song of
Moses we are
in the same nether-earth, where the matter is eschatological. The adversaries
are the
same
opponents of the chosen people — the same, that is, in the book of Deuteronomy
as in the Book of
the Dead.
Ezekiel (XX. 36) makes an allusion to “the wilderness of the land of Egypt,”
which points to the
lower Egypt
of the mythos in Amenta. Egypt itself, as the land of the living, the
cultivable land, was the
very opposite
of the wilderness.
Amenta in the
Book of Hades, and also in the Ritual, is described as consisting of two parts,
called
“Egypt and
the desert land or wilderness.” This latter was the domain of Sut in the
Osirian mysteries. One
part of the
domain, named Anrutef, is self-described as the place where nothing grows. It
was a desert of
fruitless,
leafless, rootless sand, in which “ there was no water for the people to drink”
; or, if any, the
water was
made bitter or salt by the adversary Sut or the Apap-dragon. The struggle of
Sut and Horus (or
Osiris) in
the desert lasted forty days, as these were commemorated in the forty days of
the Egyptian
Lent, during
which time Sut as the power of drought and sterility made war on Horus in the
water and the
buried
germinating grain. Meantime “the flocks of Ra” were famishing for lack of
pasture and for want of
water in the
wilderness. These forty days spent in the desert of the mythos have confessedly
been
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Ancient
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extended into
the forty years of the history. They were the forty days of suffering in the
wilderness of the
under-world
which lay betwixt the autumn and the vernal equinox. And when it is threatened
by Ihuh that
only the
children shall go forth with Joshua, it is said, “Your children shall be
wanderers in the wilderness
even forty
days, for every day a year” (Num. XIV. 33, 34).
The lower
Egypt of Amenta was a land of dearth and darkness to the manes. It was the domain
of Sut at
the entrance
in the west. Here was the typical wilderness founded on the sands that
environed Egypt.
Aarru or the
garden far to the eastward was an oasis in the desert ready for the manes who
were
fortunate
enough to reach that land of promise. The domain of Sut was a place of plagues;
all the terrors
of nature
were congregated there, including drought and famine, fiery flying serpents and
unimaginable
monsters.
There were the hells of heat in which the waters were on fire; there were the
slime-pits, the
blazing
bitumen, and brimstone flames of Sodom and Gomorrah. The desert of engulfing
sands, the
lakes of
fire, and the deluge of overwhelming waters had to be crossed, and all the
powers of death and
hell opposed
the passage of the glorified elect, the chosen people of the Lord, who were
bound for bliss
in the land
where their redemption dawned upon the summit of the mount. This then was the
land of
bondage where
the manes were in direst need of a deliverer. The typical tyrant and taskmaster
in the
Hebrew
“history” has never been identified on earth, and it may be somewhat difficult
to identify him in
Amenta, but
it is not impossible. The devourer of the people in that land takes several
forms. The [Page
643] Apap
monster lies in wait and has to be encountered at the entrance to the valley of
the shadow of
death. But
there is one typical devourer. The Red Sea is his dwelling-place, and “eternal
devourer is his
name.”
Another of his names is Mates, the hard, cruel, flinty-hearted. He is described
as having the skin
of a man and
the face of a hound. His dwelling is in the red lake of fire, where he lives
upon the shades
of the damned
and eats the livers of princes. As he comes from the Red Sea, his overthrowal
is in the
Red Sea, like
the overwhelming of Pharaoh and his host. The same typical devourer has another
figure
in the
judgment hall, where it is named Amemit. Here it has the head of a crocodile.
Where we might
speak of the
jaws of death, hell, or destruction, the Egyptians said or showed the jaws of
the crocodile.
Those who are
condemned to be devoured pass into the jaws of the devourer. Thus the crocodile
is the
devourer, the
typical tyrant, the cruel, hard-hearted monster who bars the gate of exit and
will not let the
suffering
people go up from the land of bondage. When the manes seeks his place of refuge
in Amenta
or in the
Ammah (Rit., ch. 72), he prays for deliverance from the crocodile in the land
of bondage. He
also says,
“Let not the powers of darkness (the Sebau) have the mastery over me,” and he
prays that he
may reach the
divine dwelling which has been prepared for him in the Aarru-fields of peace
and plenty,
where there
is corn of untold quantity in that land toward which his face is set. This is
the chapter “by
which one
cometh forth to day and passeth through Ammah or the Ammah” in seeking
deliverance from
the crocodile
or dragon in the land of bondage. Protection is sought in Ammah because the god
who
dwells there
in everlasting light is the overthrower of the crocodile. The crocodile is the
dragon of Egypt
to the Hebrew
scribes, who use it as an image of the Pharaoh. When Ezekiel writes, “Thus
saith the Lord
God: Behold,
I am against thee, Pharaoh, King of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the
midst of his
rivers,” the
imagery is derived from the Egypt of Amenta, however it may be afterwards
applied. The
great dragon,
as typical devourer in the land of bondage, is here identified with the Pharaoh
of Egypt, as
it also has
been in the book of Exodus.
Amenta is
spoken of at least once in the Ritual as the place wherein the living are
destroyed. It is also
described as
the Kâsu or burial-place. One of the twelve divisions of this under-world was
known as “the
sandy realm
of Sekari,” the place of interment. The dead were buried underneath their
mounds in this
domain of
Sekari, which was a wilderness of sand. This is the probable origin of the
wilderness full of
buried
corpses in the book of Numbers. For, after all the promises made to the
children of Israel, they are
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suddenly
turned upon by the Lord and told that their carcases shall fall in this
wilderness. “Your little ones
will I bring
in, but as for you, your carcases shall fall in this wilderness” (Num. xiv. 31,
32). Now, the
carcases that
were to rot in the wilderness are equivalent to the mummies buried in the sandy
realm of
Osiris-Sekari,
god of the coffin and the desert sand. In the Kamite eschatology those who made
the
exodus from
Amenta to the world of day are those who rise from the dead in the desert
called “the sandy
realm of
Sekari” = the wilderness. Moreover, they rise again as children who are [Page 644]
called “the
younglings of
Shu.” And Shu was the leader and forerunner of this new generation of divine
beings,
called his
“younglings,” from the “sandy realm of Sekari,” when their redemption from that
land of
bondage
dawned (Rit., ch. 55). The wilderness of the nether-earth being a land of
graves, this gives an
added
significance to the question asked of Moses, “Because there were no graves in
Egypt, hast thou
taken us away
to die in the wilderness?” (Ex. XIV. 11), which as the domain of Osiris-Sekari
was depicted
as a cemetery
of sand, where the dead awaited the coming of Horus, Shu, Ap-uat (or Anup), the
guide,
and Taht, the
lunar light, as servants of Ra, the supreme one god, to wake them in their
coffins and lead
them from
this land of darkness to the land of day. Amenta, as the place of graves, is
frequently indicated
in the Hebrew
scriptures, as in the description of the great typical burial-place in the
valley of Hamon-
Gog. This was
in the Egypt described in the book of Revelation as the city of dead carcases,
where also
their lord
was crucified as Ptah-Sekari or Osiris-Tat. Amenta had been converted into a
cemetery by the
death and
burial of the solar god, who was represented as the mummy in the lower Egypt of
the nether-
earth. The
manes were likewise imaged as mummies in their coffins or beneath their mounds
of sand.
They also
rose again in the mummy-likeness of their lord, and went up out of Egypt in the
constellation of
the Mummy
(Sahu-Orion), or in the coffin of Osiris that was imaged in the Greater Bear.
In the Ritual
the power of darkness called “the devourer of the ass,” which was a solar
zootype, is Am-ăă,
the great,
great devourer by name. Am signifies the devourer, of whom it is said eternal
devourer is his
name (Rit.,
ch. 17). This Am-ă-ă, the great, great devourer, is apparently the Amalek of
the biblical
legend:
Melek, the lord of rule, being suffixed to the name of Am, to describe the
character. “Then came
Amalek and
fought with Israel in Rephidim,” in the region of the Rephaim, Sheol or Amenta
(Ex. XVII. 8).
“The Lord
hath sworn he will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” These
are the two
great
opponents, who were Apap, the devourer of the ass, and Ra in the wars of
Amenta. The wars of the
lord, as
Egyptian, were waged against the adversaries of Ra or Osiris in Amenta. These
adversaries
were the
powers of evil, the Apap-dragon of drought, the serpent of darkness, the Sebau,
the Sami,
together with
Sut and his co-conspirators in the later rendering of the mythos. The
adversaries of the
Good Being
are annihilated in the tank of flame (ch. I). Osiris is thus addressed: “Hail
to thee, the great,
the mighty,
whose enemies are laid prostrate at their blocks! Hail to thee, who
slaughterest the Sebau
and
annihilatest Apap! Thou hast utterly destroyed all the enemies of Osiris”
(Rit., ch. 15). Chapter 18 is
in
celebration of the triumph of Osiris over all his adversaries, who are
slaughtered and destroyed. The
great slaughter
of the adversaries is carried out in the nether-world (ch. 41) or secret earth
of Amenta, at
a place
called Suten-Khen. Also the plagues of Egypt had previously been let loose by
the Lord on
Abram’s
account. “And the Lord plagued Pharaoh with great plagues” before “Abram went
up out of
Egypt” (Gen.
xii. 17; XIII. 1). This is a bit of the same myth of Amenta, which was earlier
than the [Page
645] Mosaic
exodus. The scenery of Sodom and the pits of bitumen may be found in the
Ritual, together
with the
night of reckoning, which is the “night of fire against the overthrown, the
night of chaining the
wicked in
their hells, the night on which their vital principles are destroyed” (Rit.,
17). In the Hebrew
version this
“reckoning” on the fatal night when the Typhonians (or Sodomites) were
destroyed in the
hells of fire
and sulphur takes the shape of “reckoning,” whether there are fifty,
forty-five, forty, thirty,
twenty, or
ten righteous persons to save the doomed city from destruction (Gen. XVIII.
24-32). In the
legend of the
monkey, the god who reposes in Amenta and traverses the darkness and the
shadows,
when he rises
gives up the pig to the plague (Book of Hades). Now the pig was a type of the
evil Typhon.
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
In one of the
pictures a pig called the devourer of the arm (of Osiris) is being driven by
the monkey, which
was a lunar
zootype. Thus the pig which is here given to the plagues shows that in the true
mythos the
plagues of
Egypt were let loose on the Typhonians or powers of evil, the Sebau, the Sami,
the
conspirators
of Sut, the children of darkness, whether from a physical or moral point of
view, and that this
was in the
lower Egypt of Amenta. These in the Hebrew version have been transformed into
ethnical
Egyptians who
so cruelly oppressed and preyed upon the suffering Israelites. Thus the plagues
of Egypt
occurred
twice over in a land which was not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and the people who
suffered
from them
were not Egyptians. This agrees with the hidden gnosis in the Wisdom of
Solomon, and also
in the book
of Revelation, where the plagues are of the same mystical nature, but are only
seven instead
of ten in
number. The “wilderness” was obviously a place or state in which the shoes and
clothes of the
people did
not wear out. This was only possible to the manes in the desert of Amenta. The
two regions of
the clothed
and unclothed are named in relation to the judgment hall of Mati. The clothed
and unclothed
are
well-known terms for the elect and the rejected manes; the children of light
and the offspring of
darkness. In
the trial scenes the spirits who are judged to be sound and pure are told that
they may pass
on as the
clothed, whilst the condemned are designated the unclothed. Thus the clothed
ones pass
safely and
freely through the desert region of the unclothed. In the Hebrew version we
read, “I have led
you forty
years in the wilderness, (and) your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and
your shoe is not
waxen old
upon your feet” (Deut. XXIX. 5). There can be no doubt about these being the
divinely clothed
and fed, as
described in the Ritual, where they eat of the tahen and drink of the water
made sweet by the
tree of life,
and pass, as the clothed, through the wilderness which is called the region of
the naked. To
say that the
clothes and shoes of God’s own people did not wear out during a period of forty
years is a
mode of
showing they were divinely made for everlasting wear, but not on earth, where
nowadays they
wear out all
too fast for Gentile as for Jew. Apparently the Hebrew manna represents the
Egyptian tahen
which was
given to the manes for food in the wilderness of Amenta. In passing through the
desert or the
region of the
unclothed, the manes tells of the tahen that was given for sustenance (ch.
124). So far as
the tahen is
[Page 646] known, it agrees well enough with the Hebrew manna. “When the dew
that lay (on
the ground)
was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness a small round thing, small
as the hoarfrost
on the
ground,” which was “like unto wafers made with honey.” Wafers made of tahen
were also
eaten
sacramentally as food of heaven in the Osirian eucharist. In the mystery of
opening the mouth and
of giving
breath to the breathless ones in Amenta, the Egyptians made use of an
instrument called the urheka,
or great
magical power. It is sometimes a sinuous, serpent-like rod without the
serpent’s head. At
others it has
the head of the serpent on it, united with the head of a ram. Both ram and
serpent were
types of the
deity Khnef, who represented the breath of life or the spirit, Nef, Hebrew
Nephesh, which
was assumed
to enter the Osiris when the mummy’s mouth was typically opened to inhale the
breath of
future
existence. Here then is a magical rod that turned into a serpent, which may be
seen figured in the
Vignettes to
the Ritual as a form of the magical rod with which the mouth of the deceased
was opened in
the mysteries
of Amenta. It is held by the tail in the hand of the magician or priest who
performs the
ceremony of
apru, i.e., opening the mouth, in illustration of the chapters by which the
mouth is opened in
the
nether-world (Vignettes to chs. 21, 22, 23). The rod is changed into a serpent
at the time when the
Lord is
desirous for Moses to become his mouthpiece. Moses objects, whereupon the Lord
asks, “Who
hath made
man’s mouth? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what
thou shalt
speak.” The
contest ends in Moses having his own way, and in Aaron becoming a mouth to
Moses.
Moses is to
take in his hand the rod wherewith he is to “do the signs” (Ex. IV. 1-17).
Here then we
identify the serpent-rod of the Egyptian priests that was known by name as the
great
magical
power, and it was sometimes a rod, at others a serpent. This we take to be the
original of that
rod with
which the tricks are played in the Hebrew märchen by the Lord God of Israel for
the purpose of
frightening
Pharaoh. “And the Lord said unto him (Moses), What is that in thine hand? And
he said, A rod.
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And he said,
Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent:
and Moses
fled from
before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand and take it by
the tail. And he put
forth his
hand and laid hold of it, and it became a rod in his hand” (Ex. IV. 2-5). The
type of great magical
power is thus
turned to account in astonishing the natives and in giving lessons to the
magicians of
Egypt. In
both scenes we have the opening of the mouth. In both we have the serpent-rod
with which the
signs and
wonders are wrought. And it is admitted that Pharaoh had wise men, sorcerers,
“magicians of
Egypt,” who
had rods which became serpents as types of transformation. These rods are to be
seen in
the hands of
the wise men portrayed in the Ritual, but not for any such fool’s play as is
described in the
book of
Exodus.
There are two
serpents in Egyptian symbolism — one is a type of evil, the other is the good
serpent. One
is the Apap
of drought, darkness, and death or negation; the other is the Uraeus-serpent of
life, that was
worn on the frontlets
of the gods and the glorified manes as a sign of protection and salvation or
safety
(ch. 34). In
[Page 647] the chapter by which a person is not devoured or bitten to death by
the eater of the
head, which
is a snake, an appeal is addressed to the solar Uraeus as the source of life,
the flame which
shineth on
the forehead of the glorified. In the seventh abode there is a serpent named
Retuk (the
cartouche in
my copy reads Ruruk or Rerek), that lives on the manes and is said to
“annihilate their
magical
virtue” (149). The speaker says, “I am the master of enchantments” (149). He is
the magician,
the prototype
of Pharaoh’s, who worked by enchantment (Ex. VII. 11). The “fiery serpent” of
the
wilderness
may be traced in this great serpent of Amenta, whose name is “dweller in his
flame.” However
rendered, the
hieroglyphics identify the mythical serpent of fire as the fiery serpent of the
Hebrew
märchen. The
lifting up of the serpent can also be paralleled in the text when the speaker
exclaims, “I am
raised up to
(or as) the serpent of the sun” — that is, the Uraeus, the good serpent when
compared with
Apap. The
serpent Aker is joined to the nocturnal sun as he traverses the Amenta (or the
wilderness) by
night. Thus
Aker, the serpent of fire, is the good serpent that is raised up as the fiery
serpent in the
exodus. The
evil serpent Apap is then told that he must retreat before this uplifted solar
serpent (which
accompanies
the orb in the Egyptian triad) and in presence of the revivifying sun. And in
this way the
mythos
furnished matter for the märchen and the folk-tales about the evil serpents
that bit the wandering
Israelites,
and how they were saved and healed by an image of the good serpent, which
always had
been lifted
up in Egypt as a solar symbol of healing and of life. In playing off the
serpent of fire against
the serpent
of darkness, the deceased anticipates Moses with Nehushtan the brazen. He
exclaims
triumphantly,
“I understand the mystical representations of things, and by that means I
repulse Apap”
(108). Also
in the zodiac of Esné fiery flying serpents are to be seen on the wing in the
decans of Cancer
as the sign
of heat and drought (Drummond, Oed. Jud., pl. 8). The children of Israel, as
followers of the
solar god,
are the children of Ra, or Atum-Ra, under whatsoever racial name; and these are
to be met
with even by
name, making the passage through the lower Egypt of Amenta on their way to the
promised
land. People
named the Aaiu, an Egyptian plural equivalent to our word Jews, are described
in the underworld.
Their god is
the ass-headed Aiu, or Iu, who was one of the gods of Israel that led the
people up
out of Egypt
— that is, the ass was one of the zootypes of the god Aiu, as the calf,
bullock, or ox was
another. We
had to dredge this nether-earth for much of the sunken treasure of Egyptian
wisdom that
has long been
lost in its authentic shape. And in Amenta we find the ass-headed god of the
Jews,
respecting
whom they have been so ignorantly derided and maligned. His name, we repeat, is
Aiu, Au,
Aai, or Iu,
both as god and as the ass in old Egyptian; and this name survived in the forms
of Iao, Iau,
Iahu, Ieou,
and others. The god was Atum-Ra in Egypt, and Aiu the ass-headed is one of the
types of the
solar god.
Aiu appears ass-headed in Amenta as a god stretched out upon the ground who has
the solar
disk upon his
head, with the ears of an ass projecting beside the disk. He is holding the
rope by which
the solar
boat was towed up from the nether-world (Lefébure, Records, vol. X, [Page 648]
p. 130). The
figure lying
on the ground denotes the god who was Atum-Aiu, the sun by night in the earth
of eternity.
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The people
who are with Aiu in this scene are amongst those “who guard the rope of Aiu,
and do not
allow the
serpent Apap to mount towards the boat of the great god.” These are the Aiu as
the people of
Iu. It is
said of them, “Those who are in this scene walk before Ra (Atum-Iu). They charm
(or catalepse)
Apap for him.
They rise with him towards the heavens.”
The Book of
Amenta, called the Book of Hades by Lefébure, shows this god in his mummied
form as one
with Osiris
in the body and with Ra in soul; otherwise it is Atum in the body, or mummy,
and Iu in soul.
And just as
Ra the holy spirit descends in Tattu on the mummy Osiris, and as Horus places
his hands
behind Osiris
in the resurrection, so Iu comes to his body, the mummy in Amenta. Those who
tow Ra
along say,
“The god comes to his body; the god is towed along towards his mummy” (Records,
vol. X, p.
132). The
sun-god, whether as Atum-Iu (Aiu or Aai) or Osiris-Ra, is a mummy in Amenta and
a soul in
heaven. The
imagery is quite natural: the nocturnal sun became a mummy as a figure of the
dead, and a
soul or
spirit in its resurrection as a figure of the living. Atum, or Osiris, as the
sun in Amenta, is the
mummy buried
down in Khebt or Lower Egypt, and Iu in the one rendering, or Horus in the
other, raises
the
mummy-god. This is the meaning of the ass-eared Aiu when he is portrayed in the
act of hauling at
the rope of
the sun or raising the mummy in Amenta. The god Aiu is represented mummified
upon the
tomb of
Rameses the Sixth — that is, in the character of Atum the father, buried as the
mummy in lower
Egypt. Thus
we identify the ass-god Aiu or Iu (an ancient Egyptian name of the ass) in
lower Egypt, and
his
followers, who are the Aiu by name. The followers of Iu=Aiu then are the Aiu,
Ius, or the later Jews.
They fight
the battle of the sun-god in the nether-earth, where the dragon Apap was the
cruel impious
oppressor;
and when they do escape from this, the land of bondage for the manes, they are
the Aaiu or
the Jews, who
“rise behind this god to heaven,” and their exodus is from Khebt, the lower
Egypt of
Amenta. The
whole story of the faithful Israelites who would not bow down to the gods of
Egypt is told in
a few words
relating to the Aiu (or Jews) in Amenta. As it is said, “These are they who
spoke the truth on
earth and did
not rise to (prohibited) adorations” or heresies (Lefébure, Book of Hades,
Records of the
Past).
The legends
of the exodus, like those in the book of Genesis originated in the astronomical
mythology, in
which the
making of Amenta is followed by the Peri-em-hru or coming forth to day from the
lower Egypt of
the
under-world and the wilderness or desert. The story of this exodus is inscribed
in hieroglyphics on the
sarcophagus
of Seti, now in the Soane Museum. The Book of Hades, or Amenta, and the Book of
the
Dead suffice
of themselves to prove that “the Egypt and the desert” of the exodus were in
Amenta, and
not in the
land of the pyramids. This was “the Egypt and the desert” in which the flocks
of Ra were
shepherded
and fed. “Horus says to Ra’s flocks, Protection for you, flocks of Ra, born of
the great one
who is in the
heavens. Breath to your nostrils, overthrowal to your coffins” (Book of Hades,
5th division,
[Page 649]
legend D). These are the manes in Amenta called the flocks of Ra, who are
shepherded by
Horus as
Har-Khuti, lord of spirits. The overthrowal of the coffins shows that this was
the deliverance of
the dead, and
that the exodus or coming forth to day was synonymous with the resurrection
from the
dead.
Amenta had
been mapped out in twelve domains, according to the twelve astronomical
divisions and the
twelve gates
which the sun passed through by night. “As it is said, the great god travels by
the roads of
Hades, to
make the divisions which take place in the earth” (Book of Hades). There are
various groups of
the twelve as
divine personages or children of Ra in this lower Egypt of Amenta.
As characters
in the mythos, Jacob and the ten tribes, sons, or children correspond to Ra the
solar-god,
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with his ten
cycles in the heaven of ten divisions (Rit., ch. 18), whilst Israel — the same
personage —
with the
twelve sons, answers to the same god, Ra, in the heaven of twelve divisions or
twelve signs of
the zodiac.
It has now to
be admitted that the twelve sons of Jacob are not historic, and the historical
exodus must
follow them,
for that is founded on the twelve sons going down into Egypt as historic
characters, and the
people of
Israel coming out of it as their direct descendants hugely multiplied. The
twelve, as sons of
Jacob, go
down to Egypt in search of corn, and in the Book of Amenta we get a glimpse of
the twelve or
their
mythical prototypes who make the journey as characters in the astronomical
mythology. Twelve
gods of the
earth are to be seen marching towards a mountain, which shows they are on their
way to the
nether-world,
as it is depicted upside down. Twelve gods in the earth of Amenta are marching
towards
another
mountain, and these two mountains form a sort of forge toward which the divine
boat voyages.
This is the
entrance to Amenta, and these are the twelve as sons of Ra, who are on their
way down to
the lower
Egypt of the mythos, the prototypal twelve who are the sons of Israel in the
Hebrew version.
These are
said to be “those who are born of Ra, born of his substance, and which proceed
from his eye.”
Thus Ra is
the father of the twelve. Ra has prepared for them “a hidden dwelling” in this
Egypt of the
lower earth
or desert of Amenta. Twelve persons called the blessed are portrayed as
worshippers of Ra.
Twelve others
are the righteous who are in Amenta. Twelve mummies standing upright, each in a
chapel
with open
doors, are “the holy gods who are in Amenta.” Twelve men walking represent “the
human souls
which are in
Amenta.” Twelve bearers of the cord with which the allotments are measured for
the glorified
elect are
represented by twelve persons carrying the long serpent Nenuti. These bearers
of the cord in
the Amenta
are those who prepare the fields for the elect. Ra says, “Take the cord; draw,
measure the
fields of the
manes, who are the elect in your dwellings, gods in your residences, deified
elect, in order to
rejoin the
country, proved elect, in order to be within the cord.” Ra says to them of the
enclosures, ...it
is the cord
of justice.... Ra is satisfied with the measurement. “Your own possessions, gods,
and your
own domains,
elect, are yours. Now eat. Ra creates your fields and appoints you your food”.
“The gods
are content
with their possessions, the glorified are satisfied with their dwellings”. The
followers of Har-
Khuti, lord
of spirits, are the twelve, who take the [Page 650] place in the solar mythos
of the earlier seven
Khuti in the
stellar mythos, five more being added to the seven. These are the twelve as the
children of
Ra, who
cultivate the fields of divine harvest in the plains of Amenta, where they reap
for Ra as followers
of Horus the
beloved son: “They labour at the harvest, they collect the corn. Their seeds
are favoured in
the land by
the light of Ra at his appearance.” Thus the twelve are the cultivators of corn
in Egypt. They
give food to
the gods and to the souls of the elect in Amenta. As the bearers of food they
are twelve in
number. In
one scene the twelve are portrayed in two groups of seven and five persons. The
seven are
the reapers.
The five are seen bending towards an enormous ear of corn. These are described
as the
twelve who
labour at the harvest in the land of corn which is in the earth of eternity.
The scene with the
twelve in a
posture of adoration suggests the sheaf of corn in Joseph’s dream. “Behold, we
were binding
sheaves in
the field, and lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and behold, your
sheaves came
round about,
and made obeisance to my sheaf” (Gen. XXXVII. 7). In one form the Aarru
enclosure was
portrayed as
the field of divine harvest, and the twelve were the typical reapers of the
corn that grew
there seven
cubits high (Book of Hades, Records of the Past, vols. X and XII). This is
sufficiently
suggestive of
the twelve enormous sheaves in Joseph’s dream, and of the reapers being a form
of the
twelve
harvesters. The twelve as gods were also rulers in the twelve signs which
formed the final circle of
the Aarru
paradise. And in Joseph’s second dream his star is greeted with obeisance like
his sheaf.
“Behold, the
sun and the moon and the eleven (other) stars made obeisance to me,” he who was
represented
by the twelfth star as well as by the twelfth sheaf (Gen. XXXVII. 6-9). Horus
in the harvest-
field of
lower Egypt has two characters, one pertaining to the mythos, one to the
eschatology. In the first
he is one of
the twelve as harvesters: the twelve who row the solar boat, the twelve to whom
the stations
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were assigned
or thrones were given in the zodiac. In the other character he is Har-Khuti,
lord of spirits,
and in this
phase he is the supreme one at the head of the twelve, who are now his
servants.
The pictures
show the children of Ra both as the group of twelve and also as the twelve with
Horus. In
one scene
Horus is depicted leaning on a staff, and eleven gods are walking towards
Osiris. These are
the twelve
altogether, of whom Horus is one in presence of the father. But on the tomb of
Rameses the
Sixth the
twelve appear, preceded by Horus, the master of joy, leaning on his staff.
These are the
harvesters:
seven of them are the reapers, the other five are collectors of the corn (Book
of Hades). Thus
the fields of
divine harvest are twelve in number; the cultivators are twelve in number; the
reapers and
bearers of
food are twelve in number; the children of Ra=Jacob-El or Isiri-El are twelve
in number. So it
was not left
for the historic Israelites to map out the land of promise in twelve allotments
betwixt the
twelve tribes
and twelve children of Ihuh. Amenta in twelve sections with twelve gates
represented the
heaven in
twelve divisions, and the chart was as old as the solar zodiac of twelve signs
that was already
in existence,
as we reckon, in the heaven of Atum-Ra some 13,000 years ago. Not only was the
promised land
mapped out in twelve divisions in [Page 651] accordance with the twelve signs
of the solar
zodiac or the
twelve pillars raised by Moses round the mount — not only did the chosen race,
as children
of the one
god Atum, take possession of the land allotted to them, or the land appointed
them by lot, as
Joshua
renders it; title-deeds were also issued to the glorified elect.
This lower
Egypt, the land of corn, in the Book of Hades is not geographical. Like Annu,
Thebes, and
Memphis in
the Ritual, it is a mythical locality in the earth of eternity. It is the lower
domain of the double
earth, the
country of the manes called Amenta that was hollowed out by Ptah the opener. It
is the lower
Egypt named
Kheb, to which Isis was warned to flee by night as the place of refuge for the
infant Horus
when his life
was threatened by the Apap-monster. Lower Egypt is the land of death or
darkness, leading
to the world
of life and light. It is here that “Horus says to the flocks of Ra, which are
in the Hades of
Egypt and the
desert”, “Protection for you, flocks of Ra, born of the great one who is in the
heavens” as
Atum-Ra.
These flocks “in the Hades of Egypt and the desert” are the chosen people, the
deified elect,
as the
children of Ra. Amenta was a land of darkness until it was lighted by the
nocturnal sun. This was
the origin of
the typical “Egyptian darkness”. But in the Egypt of this lower hemisphere the
god prepared
a secret and
mysterious dwelling for his children where the glorified elect were hidden in
the light. “Ra
says to the
earth, Let the earth be bright. My benefits are for you who are in the light.
To you be a
dwelling”. “I
have hidden you”. (Book of Hades, 1st division.) Food is given them because of
the light, in
which they
are enveloped. This divine dwelling created by Ra for the elect is entitled
“the Retreat”. As it is
said, “The
earth is open to Ra, the earth is closed against Apap. Those who are in the
Retreat worship
Ra”. This
Retreat is equivalent to the biblical land of Goshen, where the chosen people
dwelt in light. In
the book of
Exodus there is a three days’ solid darkness over the land of Egypt, “but all
the children of
Israel had
light in their dwellings” (ch. X. 22, 23). The land of Goshen in the Hebrew
version represents
the Retreat
of Ammah in the Ritual. Ammah is a locality that is traversed in knowing the
spirits of Annu or
of attaining
the garden eastward. Those who belong to the state of the elect are hidden in
Ammah. They
are described
as being concealed in light by Ra. Ammah is a region reserved for the gods and
the
glorified
spirits who are the children of light bound for the land where there is no more
night. It is a place
impenetrable
to the creatures of darkness and to those who are twice dead — dead in their
sins as well
as in the
mortal body. These are they who do not rise again from the lower Egypt. There
is no
deliverance
or exodus for them; they do not enter Ammah, or follow Shu, the lion of
strength, who leads
up the elect
into the land of light. Ammah is the sixth one of fourteen abodes in the 149th
chapter of the
Ritual. It is
an abode of peace reserved for the blessed, where the evil dead cannot enter.
It is a mystery
to the manes.
The god who is there is called the overthrower of the crocodile or dragon. The
deceased in
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Ancient
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saluting
Ammah asks that he may take possession of its stuffs in peace. “O Ammah!
Reservation of the
gods; mystery
for the manes where the dead may not enter. Hail to thee, O Ammah [Page 652]
the august.
I come to see
the gods who are there. Open to me, that I may take possession of your stuffs.”
(Cf. the
spoils.) Ammah
is the Goshen of the Ritual, reserved and set apart for the glorified as a
place
impenetrable
to the powers of evil or the dead who do not rise again, and for whom there is
no exodus or
coming forth
to day (149). It is the work of the worshippers in Amenta to destroy the
enemies of Ra and
defend the
great one against the evil Apap. They “live on the food of Ra, and the meats
belong to the
inhabitants
of Amenta. Holy is that which they carry unto the dwelling where they are
concealed.” This
divine food
is apparently repeated in the quails and manna that were sent from heaven,
according to the
biblical
account.
Dreadful
massacres are perpetrated in taking possession of this promised land mapped out
in twelve
divisions. Ra
says, “I have commanded that they should massacre, and they have massacred the
beings.” He
orders his followers to destroy the impious ones in a suppression of blood. But
these beings
are not the
human inhabitants of Canaan or any other land on earth. The wars of the lord in
these battles
of Amenta are
fought by his true and faithful followers on behalf of Un-Nefer the good being.
The
enemies who
are doomed to be slaughtered by the invaders are the Sebau and Sami, the
creators of
dearth and
darkness, who were in possession of the land, and who are for ever rising in
rebellion against
the supreme
god Ra. It was these dwellers in the ways of darkness who were to be
annihilated by the
children of
light, the glorified elect, the chosen people, who are then to take possession
of the land. Ra
says to them,
“Your offerings (made on earth) are yours. Take your refreshments. Your souls
shall not be
massacred,
your meats shall not putrefy, faithful ones who have destroyed Apap for me.”
Thus the
massacres by which the Israelites were enabled to clear out the inhabitants of
Canaan and take
possession of
their lands had been previously committed by the followers of Ra. Ra says to
those who
are born of
him, and for whom he had created the dwelling-place in the beautiful Amenta,
“Breath to you
who are in
the light, and dwellings for you. My benefits are for you.” But the beings
there massacred were
not human. In
the biblical version it is said of a mythical event, “It came to pass, when
Pharaoh would
hardly let
them go, that the Lord slew all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both the
first-born of man and
the
first-born of beast” (Ex. XIII. 15). This insane proceeding on the part of the
Lord may be explained by
reference to
the original. From this we learn that amongst the beings massacred or
sacrificed were
“quadrupeds
and reptiles” (Book of Hades, 1st division, legend E). The Hebrew historian has
discreetly
omitted the
first-born of the reptile, unless it is included as a beast. Again, one name of
the keeper of the
17th gate is
“lord of the massacre and of sacrificing the enemy at midnight!” (Rit., 145).
With this we may
compare the
passage, “And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord smote all the
first-born in the land of
Egypt . . .
and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was
not one dead”
(Ex. XII.
30).
Now, amongst
the glorified elect or chosen people who are the children of Ra, the ass-god,
Aai, or Iu,
there is a
group of his [Page 653] defenders and followers who accompany him, and who are
said to rise
with Ra
towards the heavens to be “for him in the two sanctuaries,” and to “make him
rise in Nu”
(heaven).
These are among the worshippers of the ass-headed god Iu, who are called the
Aaiu (the Ius
or Jews) by
name. Apap is threatened thus, “O impious cruel one, Apap, who spreadest thy
wickedness.
Thy face
shall be destroyed, Apap! Approach thy place of torment. The Nemu are against
thee: thou shalt
be struck
down. The Aaiu are against thee: thou shalt be destroyed”. It is these Aaiu as
worshippers of
the god Iu
that we claim to be the Ius or later Jews of the mythical legends so long
supposed to have
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Ancient
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been
historical. Thus the glorified elect, the blessed, the righteous, who are in
Amenta, that is in the lower
Egypt of the
mythos, are the chosen people of the most high god, who was Ra in his first
sovereignty as
the
ass-headed Iu=Iao, Aiu, or Iahu; Atum-Huhi as god the father, Atum-Iu as god
the ever-coming son.
The Aaiu or
Jews, then, are amongst those who “rise for Ra.” “They beat down Apap in his
bonds”. Apap
is stricken
with swords. He is sacrificed. Ra rises at the finishing hour; “he ascends when
the chain is
fixed”. Those
who are in this scene drag the chains of this evil-doer (Apap). They say to Ra,
“Come Ra;
advance
Khuti! The chain is fixed on evil-face (Neha-her), and Apap is in bonds” (Book
of Hades, 10th
division).
This is the scene of making fast the dragon in the pit which is preparatory to
the rising of Ra.
These Aiu or
Jews accompany the sun-god when he makes the journey through the valley of
darkness,
the lake of
Putrata, and the desert in “the Amenta of Egypt,” where they are protected as
the “flocks of
Ra.” Amidst
the people that dwell in darkness and black night they are the glorified elect,
enveloped and
concealed in
light, and fed mysteriously in the wilderness with food supplied from heaven.
Earth opens to
let them pass
when they are pursued by their old enemy, and closes to protect them against
the
devouring
dragon. Hence it is said by those who render the great serpent impotent by
their magic, “Earth
opens to Ra!
Earth closes to Apap!” The monuments of Egypt are as truly and honestly
historical as the
geological
record. Both have their breaks and their missing links, yet are perfectly
trustworthy on the
whole. And
these monuments, from beginning to end, have no word of witness that the Jews
or Hebrews
ever were in
Egypt as a foreign ethnical entity. They know nothing of Abraham as a Semite
who went
down into
Egypt to teach the Egyptians astronomy. They know nothing of Jacob except as a
Hiksos
Pharaoh, or a
divinity, Jacob-El, whose name is found on one of the scarabei. They know
nothing of
Joseph and
his viziership, nor of the ten plagues, nor of the going forth in triumph from
the house of
bondage to
attain the promised land. These and many other wonderful things related in the
Word of God
are known to
the Egyptian records, but not as history. There is another Egypt not yet
explored by the
bibliolaters:
the Egypt of mythology and the Kamite eschatology.
Unless we
take into account the mound of the Jew in the neighbourhood of On and the temple
of Atum-Iu
(W. M. F.
Petrie, Hyksos and Israelite Cities), the only way of identifying the Jews
[Page 654] in Egypt is by
the name of
the Iu or Aiu in the lower Egypt of the mythical Amenta, where we find the
twelve sons or
children of
Israel, under the name of the Ius or Aiu, as worshippers of the god who was
known in Egypt
as the
ass-headed Iu, Aiu=Iao, Ieou, or Iahu, and who, as we see from the scarabei,
may also have been
known in
Egypt as Jacob-El, the father of the twelve who were reapers of the corn in the
harvest of
Amenta.
The writer
has previously suggested, in A Book of the Beginnings, that Jacob represents
the god Ra as
Iu in Kheb,
the lower Egypt of Amenta. Jacob was known as a divinity in Northern Syria by
the name of
Jacob-El, and
Joseph by the name of Joseph-El. The El is a Semitic suffix to the names,
denoting the
divinity of
both, versus the ethnical origin of Jacob and Joseph. These, according to the
present showing,
were among
the gods of Egypt as Huhi the father and Iu the son, or sif in Egyptian, Iu-sif
being=Joseph
in Hebrew.
Thus we propose to identify the mummy of Jacob in Egypt with the mummy of Atum
or Osiris
as a form of
the mummy-sun that was portrayed as being carried up from Amenta. Jacob, as we
read,
was embalmed
in Egypt, and the mummy in its coffin was taken up by Joseph and carried to the
land of
Canaan. This
was the land of promise, which is the Aarru-paradise, the field of the tree of
life up which
the sun-god
climbs in his resurrection from the coffin. The “burying-place” of Jacob is
“before Mamre,”
where the
tree of Atum in the garden or meadow, the Sekhet-Hetep, is represented by the
oak or
terebinth
under which Abraham dwelt. Joseph the son (Iusif) is the same character in
carrying up the
mummy of
Jacob that Horus the beloved son is to the dead Osiris in his coffin. Horus
acts as the raiser-
up of the
mummy. This is expressed when the speaker says, “I am he who raises the hand
which is
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Ancient
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motionless”
(Rit., ch. 5). Elsewhere Horus comes to raise the mummy of Osiris. Thus the
carrying up of
Jacob out of
Egypt by the son may be paralleled by the resurrection of Osiris, coffin and
all. One name of
the burial-place
for the mummy-Osiris in the Ritual is Sekhem. The deceased is enveloped as a
mummy
in Sekhem. He
rises again and goes, as pure spirit, out of Sekhem. Also the well of Jacob
near Shechem
answers to
the water of Osiris, and the oak or terebinth in Shechem to the tree of life in
the pool of the
persea or the
water of life. The fields of Shechem correspond to the Sekhet-Hetep or fields
of peace and
plenty, the
oasis of fertility which prefigured the celestial paradise. “The parcel of
ground that Jacob gave
to his son
Joseph” was in Shechem, also called Sichem. This is a parallel to Sekhem as
place of burial
given by
Osiris the father to Amsu-Horus the son, who rose again as the living mummy or
sahu after the
burial, and
went up from the lower Egypt of Amenta and the sandy wilderness of Sekari as
the god in the
coffin or
sekeru-bark. The Egyptian Sekhem was no doubt localized as a sanctuary when
Judea and
Palestine
were sown over with the old Egyptian names. Osiris was the reputed holder of
property in
Sekhem,
unless we understand that his mummy, the body of the lord, constituted the
property that was
held in that
sanctuary (Hymn to Osiris, lines 1 and 2).
The lower
Egypt of Amenta is a land of bondage to the manes who were doomed to labour in
the
harvest-field.
Chapter 5 is [Page 655] called the chapter by which work is not imposed upon a
person in
the
nether-world. But provision is made for the work being done by proxy. Chapter 6
is the chapter by
which the
funeral statuettes may be made to do work for a person in the nether-world. “Be
thou counted
for me,” says
the speaker, “at every moment, for planting the fields, for watering the soil,
and for
removing the
sands.” Thus there was a system of enforced labour in the lower Egypt of
Amenta. The land
of bondage is
likewise alluded to as the land of rule in the Book of the Dead. In the chapter
by means of
which the
manes come forth to day and pass through Ammah or the Ammehit it is said, “Hail
to you, ye
lords of rule
(or ruling powers), living for ever, whose secular period is eternity. Let me
not be stopped at
the Meskat
(or place of punishment); let not the Sebau have the mastery over me; let not
your doors be
closed upon
me.” And amongst other pleas in this invocation it is said, “Deliver me from
the crocodile of
this land of
rule,” or, as it got interpreted, this land of bondage in the lower Egypt of
Amenta. In this
chapter the
crocodile has an evil character, and the evil crocodile is the mythical dragon,
the dragon of
Egypt, a
figure of the Pharaoh who kept the people in bondage and would not let them go
from out their
prison-house
in the Meskat where the evil Sebau had the mastery over the manes, who plead,
“Let not
the powers of
darkness obtain the mastery over me. . . . . I faint before the teeth of those
whose mouth
raveneth in
the nether-world” (Rit., chs. 72 and 74, Renouf).
The
Apap-dragon of Amenta is the real Pharaoh who held the people in bondage, but
in certain of the
Semitic legends
Atum-Ra, the great judge and punisher of the wicked, has been mixed up with the
cruel
Pharaoh who
would not let the people go. According to the Arab traditions, the name of the
Pharaoh who
detained the
chosen people, the elect children of light, was known as “Tamuzi”. Castell
gives this as the
Arabic name
of the Pharaoh who hindered the exodus of the Israelites, which name goes to
the root of
the matter,
for Tamuzi appears in the Ritual as Atum-Ra, commonly called Tum. The name of
this Ra or
Pharaoh is
derived from “tumu” to shut up, to close. Tum as the setting sun was the closer
in the western
gate. As
shutter up of day or of autumn he wears the closing lotus on his head, the
antithesis to Horus
rising out of
the opening flower of dawn. Atum was the closer as well as the opener of Amenta
by name.
Those who
were captives in his keeping down in the Amenta were hindered from making their
exodus
until the
plagues were passed or the conditions of freedom had been all fulfilled.
The entrance
to Amenta figured in the Egyptian itinerary was “the mouth of the cleft” as it
was termed at
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Ancient
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Abydos. This
is apparently represented in the Hebrew legend by the mouth of the gorge at
Pi-ha-hiroth,
“which is
before Baal-Zephon.” Thus the opening in the mount of the swallowing earth is
at the same
point as the
passage of the Red Sea which also opened for the Israelites to pass when
pursued by
Pharaoh and
his host. There are, however, two starting-points in the biblical exodus of the
Israelites. No
sooner had
they set out on the old road that ran from Rameses to Succoth (or Thuku) and
Etham or
Khetam, the
border-fortress in the land of Thuku, than they were commanded to turn back for
a fresh
[Page 656]
departure from Pi-ha-hiroth, the pass or gorge which was entered by the mouth
of the cleft. At
this point of
divergence the local topography is brought to confusion and serves no further
use for
localizing
the journey. We have to go back and start from the entrance to Amenta by the
mouth of the
cleft in the
rock that was figured at Abydos as the beautiful gate of entrance to
Khent-Amenta. This twofold
starting-point
at least coincides with the two modes of entrance, one by land and the other by
water.
At
Pi-ha-hiroth we enter the Red Sea of the mythos, the water of the west that was
red at sunset, but not
the
geographical Red Sea. This was entered by the boat of the sun and the boat of
souls which passed
through the
cleft by water as depicted in the vignettes (Maspero, Dawn of Civ., Eng. tr.,
p. 197). We are
now upon the
track of the exodus from the lower Egypt of the nether-earth, which was
mythical in the
lesser
mysteries and mystical in the greater, and able to show where and how and why
the children of
Israel pursue
the same route through Amenta as do the children of Ra in the Book of Hades
(Records of
the Past,
vols. X. and XII). At Pi-ha-hiroth the Israelites come to the mouth of the
cleft and enter on the
passage of
the Red Sea, pursued by Pharaoh the dragon and his evil host. In the book of
Exodus the
Israelites,
of course, are treated as the glorified and the Egyptians as the powers of
darkness, the
conspirators
against the elect, the chosen, the children of light. Or, according to the
Ritual, by the Apapdragon
and the
Sebau, whose habitat is in the Red Sea of the mythos and therefore was not
geographical.
The Egyptians made the passage by water, but by substituting the miracle for the
mythos,
“the children
of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea.” After crossing the
waters they enter the
wilderness,
which is true to its character in the Egyptian books of the nether earth.
When the land
that flowed with milk and honey is promised to the children of Israel, it is
said by Ihuh, “I
will send my
terror before thee — I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out
the Hivite, the
Canaanite,
and the Hittite from before thee —“ (Ex. XXIII. 27, 28). Now the hornet, wasp,
or bee was a
type of Ra
the solar god, and thence of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Hor-Apollo says, “They
depict a bee to
denote a
people obedient to their king” (B. i, 62), the force of the creature’s sting
being emblematic of the
supreme power.
Also the abait or bird-fly, a bee, wasp, or hornet, was their guide to the
Aarru-garden in
the Ritual.
“I have made my way into the royal palace,” says the Osiris” (ch. 76), “and it
was the bird-fly
(abait) that
led me hither” — that is, to the land flowing with milk and honey. Apparently
this symbolic
abait or bee
as guide to the Aarru-paradise has been turned into the hornet that drove the
people out of
the land in
the Hebrew rendering of the story. When Moses sends the explorers ahead to spy
out the
land of
Canaan, and they come back afraid because it is inhabited by the Anakim or
giants, “Caleb stilled
the people
before Moses, and said, ...Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well
able to
overcome it”
(Num. XIII. 30). Caleb the explorer who had been sent forward by Moses to spy
out the land
of promise is
another of these converted divinities. In the Semitic languages Caleb is the
dog, and the
dog as
Egyptian was the jackal, apuat, the guide of ways, the zootype which was the
guide of [Page 657]
ways in the
solar mythos, and the guide of souls to the garden of Amenta, wherein grew the
grapes of
paradise in
brobdingnagian clusters which are to be seen in vignettes to the Ritual. Shu as
son of Ra is
the great
leader of the people to the promised land; Anup the jackal=dog was the guide;
and these two
are
represented in the book of Numbers by Joshua (or Hoshea) the son of Nun, and
Caleb the son of
Jephunneh.
Those two, the leader and the guide, both in the astronomy and the eschatology,
are the only
two in the
Hebrew version that are to go forth in the exodus from the wilderness and
burial-place of the
dead. “And
they came unto the valley of Eschol, and cut down from thence a branch with one
cluster of
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grapes, and
they bare it upon a staff between two” (carriers). “And they returned from
spying out the land
at the end of
forty days”. They showed the fruit of the land to Moses and the Israelites, and
said, “We
came unto the
land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey, and
this is the fruit
of it” (Num.
XIII. 23-28). The colossal cluster of grapes seen in Eschol by those who were
sent to spy out
the promised
land is of itself almost sufficient to prove the mythical nature and Egyptian
origin of the land
that flowed
with milk and honey and bore the grapes that took two men to carry one cluster.
Not only was
the
circumpolar paradise the land of the seven cows, called the providers of
plenty; as Egyptian it was
also the
garden of the grape-vine by name. Not as Eden, but as Aarru the garden of the
vine or the
grapes. In
one of the Hebrew märchen it is said that when the explorers of the promised
land returned
they related,
“We have seen the land which we are to conquer with the sword, and it is good
and fruitful.
The strongest
camel is scarcely able to carry one bunch of grapes; one ear of corn yields
enough to feed
a whole
family; and one pomegranate shell would contain five armed men. But the
inhabitants of the land
and their
cities are in keeping with the productions of the soil. We saw men the smallest
of whom was six
hundred
cubits high. They were astonished at us, on account of our diminutive stature,
and laughed at
us. Their
houses were also in proportion, walled up to heaven, so that an eagle could
hardly soar above
them” (Baring
Gould’s Legends of the Old Testament Characters, vol. II, p. 118; Weil, p.
175). These are
based upon
the gigantic inhabitants of Amenta in the Ritual, who have been vastly
exaggerated in the
märchen. This
grand domain was constructed for the manes who as the glorified ones have
joined the
powers of the
east at the point of coming forth where Shu uplifts the sky for Ra and blows
off the divine
barge with
favouring gales. The great or glorified ones are said to be each nine cubits
(about 18 feet) in
height, and
therefore this is the land of the giants to which the Israelites were bound
under the leadership
of Joshua and
the guidance of Caleb the dog. This region of things gigantic may be found in
the mystical
abodes of the
Ritual through which the manes have to pass on their way to the world of light
and
blessedness.
The second abode is called the “greatest of possessions in the fields of the
Aarru. The
height of
this corn is seven cubits; the ears are two, its stalks are three cubits”. The
spirits also are said
to be seven
cubits in stature (ch. 149). Of the fifth abode it is said, “Hail, abode of the
spirits, through
which there
is no passage. The spirits belonging to it are seven cubits long in [Page 658]
their thighs. They
live as
wretched shades”. “Oh, this abode of the spirits”. In chapter 109 the
inhabitants are nine cubits in
height. The
passage through the Hades in the eleventh abode is described as the belly of
hell. “There is
neither
coming out of nor going into it, on account of the greatness of the terror of
passing him who is in
it”. That is,
the devouring demon, the Am-Moloch. The same fear is reflected in the faces of
the spies
from the land
of giants; they had seen the same sight. The Moabites called the giants who
dwelt there in
times past
the Emim (Deut. II. 11), and the Am-am in Egyptian are the devourers. Am is the
male
devourer,
Am-t the female devourer in the Ritual. As said in chapter 109, “It is the
glorified ones, each of
whom is nine
cubits in height, who reap the Aarru fields (in the divine domain of the
promised land) in
presence of
the powers of the east” (Renouf). The giants as Rephaim are also Egyptian
(Rit., ch. 149,
5th Abode).
These giants of Amenta and the religious mysteries still survive in the
grotesque masks of
the Christmas
pantomime, which represent the huge inhabitants of an under-world that is the
lowermost
of three, the
highest of which is on the mount of glory. Emim, Anakim, Rephaim, and Zamzummim
are all
giants” —
hence the Anakim under different names, nine cubits high; and this land of the
giants as
Egyptian was
in the nether-earth, the original of the Hebrew Sheol, in which the giants are
identifiable as
non-human
inhabitants of a foreworld that had passed away. It is to that foreworld and
its people, the
children of
darkness, that the writer of Deuteronomy refers, and as its inhabitants were
altogether
mythical (or
eschatological), the children of Israel, and of Lot, who drove them out and
destroyed them
utterly,
could not be human nor the transaction humanly historical. The land of the
mythical giants can be
localized in
Amenta, but not elsewhere.
The lower or
sub-terrestrial paradise, otherwise called the garden of Aarru, was the garden
eastward, the
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garden of the
mount in Amenta, which was in prospect throughout the journey. This was the
paradise to
which
Shu-Anhur was the leader from the western mountain and Anup-Ap-Uat was the
guide as dog or
jackal. It
was the paradise of all good things, including the gigantic grapes and grain,
the milk and honey,
as types of
food and drink in everlasting plenty.
The point of
emergence from Amenta was at the double gate of glory on the summit of the
eastern
mount;
otherwise expressed, this was the place of exit from the lower to the upper
Egypt of the mythos
as celestial
localities. Anhur was the uplifter and supporter of the heaven and its
inhabitants by night. Shu
was the
deliverer by day who brought the solar orb to the horizon. In the Hebrew
rendering Moses
sustains the
rôle of Anhur, and Joshua that of Shu, the halves of the whole round being
extended to the
circle of the
year. The earthly paradise was planted as the Allu or elysian fields to the
eastward of the
nether-earth
where stood the tree of life, and where the mountain of the double earth was
climbed to get
a glimpse of
the land of promise that was visible over-sea. Upon this mountain “Moses stood,
to view the
landscape
o’er”, or rather the skyscape. The lower paradise was but a picture and a
promise for the
wanderers in
the wilderness of Amenta. The upper was the paradise [Page 659] of all the
ancient and pre-
solar
legends. Thus far the deliverer as Anhur or as Moses was the conductor of the
children of Ra or
Israel. High
on Mount Hetep, in the heaven of eternity, was the paradise of spirits
perfected. This was the
land of
promise and final fruition both in one, the land overflowing with milk and
honey. The milk, called
“the white
liquor which the glorified ones love”, was supplied by the seven cows, providers
of plenty in the
meadows of
the upper Aarru. Here also was the land of corn in limitless abundance. No
words could say
how much.
Lower Egypt was a land of corn, but the legendary promised land of corn, honey,
and oil was
in the Aarru
fields of the mythos. These were the fields where the corn grew seven cubits
high, with ears
three cubits
long and in eternal plenty for all comers. The landing-place upon Mount Hetep
at the summit
of attainment
is called “ the divine nome of corn and barley” (Rit., ch. 110).
The Egyptians
were already tillers of the ground when Ptah laid out and planted the lower
Aarruparadise,
as their
other field of work, in an earth that was ruled or tyrannized over by the
powers of evil,
headed by the
Apap-dragon. This was the earth of the abyss, the primeval desert which had to
be
reclaimed by
the pioneers and planters of that under-world. It was laid out strictly on the
allotment
system. Each
one of the manes had a portion in which to plough and sow and reap. The seed
grown in
the
harvest-field of life on earth was garnered up to sow and bring forth a
hundredfold in this, the field of
divine
harvest, which was so magnified by tradition because its bounty had been
divinized. The Egyptian
authorship of
a paradise of peace and plenty is pre-eminently shown by their converting the
“earth of
eternity”
into a world of work, the harvest-field that was cultivated by the manes, who
dug and hoed and
sowed in it,
and reaped the corn according to their labours (Rit., ch. 6). Amenta was made
from sand
converted
into fertile soil well watered by the all-enriching Nile. It was like lower
Egypt, the land of honey,
the land of
the sycamore fig-tree, which was a veritable tree of life to the Egyptians. It
was the land of the
grapes that
grew in clusters of prodigious size. It was the country of abundant corn. Not
that the
Egyptians
thought the other world a replica of this, but such was the natural plan on
which they wrought
in making out
the unknown by the known. They dramatized another intermediate state, and acted
the
eschatological
drama in accordance with conditions familiar to them in this world. The
Aarru-paradise in
Amenta is
copied from Egypt in the upper earth. The fulfilment of all blessedness was in
its being a
likeness of
the dear old land made permanent and perfect in the spirit-world. It was the
promised land for
those who
were prepared to take possession of it and to drink of the sacred Nile at its
celestial source. Its
tree of life
was the same sycamore fig-tree that had always been the tree of life and food
in season.
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Ancient
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The journey
from the lower Egypt of the mythos through the deserts of Amenta was from west
to east,
from the
place of sunset to the point of sunrise which was called the solar mount of
glory. At sunset
Anhur-Shu
upraised his mansion of the starry firmament which he uplifted nightly,
standing on the steps
of Am-Khemen.
This presented a stellar picture of the upper Egypt or the upper [Page 660]
paradise for
which the
wanderers in the wilderness were bound. At dawn the mount of sunrise in the
garden eastward
was attained.
This was the mountain of Amenta, also called Shennu or Shenni=Sinai. Shena in
Egyptian
signifies the
point of turning in the orbit of the solar course. This point was figured on
the mountain where
the lions
rested as supporters of the solar disk at dawn, or Shu uplifted Ra from out the
darkness of
Amenta and
held the orb aloft with his two hands. At this point Anhur’s place as leader of
the chosen
people was
taken by his alter ego Shu. The Magic Papyrus describes the warrior-god as
“king of upper
and lower
Egypt” in his two characters of Anhur and Shu-si-Ra. By night Shu-Anhur was the
uplifter of
the firmament
for the Egyptian exodus or coming forth to day from out the darkness of Amenta
or of
“Egypt and
the desert” (Rit., ch. 110). (See the figure of Shu as the uplifter, p. 315.)
Under the name of
Anhur he is
the leader of the upper heaven, rod in hand. His starry image probably was seen
as Regulus
in the
constellation of Kepheus, the ruler there, arrested with the rod or staff still
lifted in his hand. He
repels the
crocodile or dragon coming out of the abyss, the crocodile that is the dragon
of Egypt and the
Pharaoh of
the Hebrew writers. This repelling of the crocodiles that issue from the abyss
corresponds to
the
overthrowal of Pharaoh or the dragon and his host in the Red Sea. Anhur is the
lord of the scimitar.
He is
designated “smiting double horns”; “the god provided with the two horns”, like
Moses. “Uplifted is
the sky which
he maintains with his two arms”, like Moses. This two-fold character of Anhur
is indicated
when he is
described as “the king of upper and lower Egypt, Shu-si-Ra”. This was the Egypt
of Amenta.
Thus, as the
king of lower Egypt he was Anhur the uplifter of the firmament for the chosen
people to
come forth.
At daybreak he assumed the character of Shu, the son of Ra, who lifted up the
solar disk at
dawn on the
horizon, otherwise upon the mount of sunrise. As Regulus on the horizon in the
zodiac the
leader of the
manes changed to Shu, who is then called “the double abode of Ra”. The Magic
Papyrus,
which
contains “the hymn of the god Shu”, is called “the chapter of the excellent
songs which dispel the
submerged”.
It is the celebration of the great victory over the Apap-reptile and all
dangerous animals
lurking in
the depths of the mythical Red Sea. It is said to Shu in the hymn, “Thou
leadest to the upper
heaven with
thy rod in that name which is thine of Anhur. Thou repellest the crocodile
coming out of the
abyss in that
name which is thine of repeller of crocodiles”. The crocodile, of course, is
the dragon of
Egypt. The
wicked are overthrown by Anhur the valiant as the lord of events. His sister
Tefnut
accompanies
him. She is a form of Sekhet, “the goddess in her fury”, the “chastiser of the
wicked”. “She
gives her
fire against his enemies, and reduces them to non-existence”. She is the Kamite
prototype of
Miriam, the
sister of Moses. Tefnut accompanies her brother in his battles with the Sebau
and the
submerged.
Elsewhere she changes her shape into a weapon of war. She shouts her defiance
against
“the wicked
conspirators”, exclaiming, “I am Tefnut thundering against those who are
annihilated for ever!
“ and against
those that “ remain floating on the waves, like dead bodies on the inundation”,
just as it was
on that [Page
661] day when “Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore” (Ex. XIV. 30).
Tefnut, the
prototype of
Miriam, “gives her fire” against her brother’s enemies to reduce them to
non-existence by
their being
submerged in the waters, where “Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron,
took a timbrel in
her hand, and
all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam
answered
them, Sing ye
to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into
the sea” (Ex.
XV. 20-21). Moses corresponds to Anhur. He is the leader of the children of
Israel during the
first part of
the journey towards the promised land. He conducts them through the Red Sea
where Israel
saw the
Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore; through the sandy wilderness, the waterless
wastes, and
the ways of
darkness. “Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim”. This, as we
reckon, was
the great
battle of the autumn equinox. It was not a battle fought by human beings once
for all on
mundane ground,
but a war betwixt the Lord and Amalek, that went on for ever, from generation
to
generation,
because it was periodic in the phenomena of external nature, and not a duel
betwixt the Lord
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Ancient
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of heaven and
an earthly potentate or people. The description of holding up the hands of
Moses to
maintain the
equilibrium shows the equinoctial nature of the conflict. The going forth at
the equinox is
further
identified by the month of the year. The Jewish new year still begins about the
time of the autumn
equinox, a
little belated in consequence of its not having been carefully readjusted. “And
the Lord spake
unto Moses
and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the
beginning of
months: it
shall be the first month of the year to you” (Ex. XII. 1, 2). This was the year
that opened with
and was
determined by the full moon nearest to the autumn equinox. For six months
thenceforth the
moon was
ruler of the year as the great light in the darkness of the double earth.
Again, at the time of the
vernal
equinox there is another poising of the scales, if not a standing still of sun
and moon, and another
great battle
in which the sun-god finally overcomes the dragon of darkness and all the evil
powers that
war against
the light of life and welfare of the world; also against the children of Ra on
their journey as
souls or
manes from the lower Egypt of the mythical Amenta to the upper heaven on the
mount of glory.
The present
writer has previously suggested that the name of Moyses, or as some Hebrews
pronounced
it, Mouishé,
was derived from the dual name of Shu, one of whose names as Ma, the other Shu,
and Ma-
Shu denotes
Anhur, who manifests in the two characters of Ma and Shu. In the address to the
god it is
said, “Thou
blowest the divine barge off with a favourable wind in that name which is thine
of the goddess
Ma”. Thus Ma,
the goddess of truth, law, and justice, is here identified with Shu in a
feminine character.
The feather
of Anhur also reads both Ma and Shu — Ma as light and Shu as shade. But, after
all, the
origin of the
name is of little importance compared with the traits of character. This female
character of
Ma-Shu has
also been assigned to Moses. There is a tradition, reported by Suidas, that the
Hebrew
lawgiver and
author of the Jewish laws was a Hebrew woman named Musu, which is equivalent to
Ma-
Shu [Page
662] in Egyptian. Shu is the very personification of light and shade. The name
reads both light
and shade.
This dual character of the god is to be read in the face of Moses, who wears
the glory on it
when in
presence of the Lord upon the mount, and who covers or shades his face when he
turns to
speak with
the people in the valley. He likewise is the personification of light and
shade: Moses under the
veil is Shu
in the shade; Moses wearing the glory of God upon his face is Shu who “sits in
his father’s
eye, the eye
of the sun; Shu-ari-hems-nefer — who keeps his residence radiant — which is a
title of Shu
at Philae.
(Pierret, Le Panthéon Egyptien, pp. 22-3.) “When Moses had done speaking with
the people,
he put a veil
on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took
the veil off
until he came
out”. And when he came out and spake unto them that which he was commanded,
they
saw the skin
of Moses’ face”. And Moses put the veil upon his face again until he went in to
speak with
him” (Ex.
XXXIV. 35). The glory on the face of Moses is described as sending forth horns,
which is a way
of portraying
the god provided with “two horns”, that is a title of Anhur. Moses performs the
same act as
Shu the
supporter of the firmament, but in the heaven with twelve supports instead of
the earlier four
erected by
Shu-Anhur, which followed a readjustment that was made by the Hir-seshti of On
in the
heaven of
Atum-Ra. Anhur was the elevator and supporter of the heavens, and Shu-si-Ra is
the upholder
of the solar
disk. Moses with his arms uplifted on the mount, or with the “rod of God” in
his hand, is the
Hebrew
version of Anhur the sustainer of heaven standing on the mount. Joshua, who
becomes the
supporter of
Iah the solar god, is identical with Shu when he is the son and supporter of Ra
upon the
horizon east
and west. Shu was at first the son of Nun, the deity of the celestial water,
who was also
called the
father of the gods. He afterwards became the son of Ra as the supporter of the
solar disk on
the horizon
“with his two hands”. Joshua also had a double character, like Shu. In the
first he is called
Hoshea, the
son of Nun. In his later rôle Joshua becomes the upholder of Ihuh and his
change of name
is connected
with the change in character. The name of Joshua or contains the name of Ihuh
united to a
word signifying assistance or help. In the form it denotes a lifting up, an
upholding,
as in the
Egyptian name of Shu, to uphold, which describes him in the character of the
uplifter to Ra the
solar god.
This should suffice to demonstrate the identity of Joshua, the son of Nun and
the supporter of
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Ihuh, with
Shu, who became Shu-si-Ra as the uplifter of the solar disk. Thus Shu, the son
of Nun and
supporter of
the firmament as an elemental power, was afterwards personalized as the
supporter of the
sun-god Ra.
Ra is Ihuh. The name of Shu denotes the supporter, and the deity whom he
supported on
the mount was
Atum-Huhi; and in this character Shu became the leader of the children of Ra
(or of Israel)
as Io-Shua,
who proclaims himself to be the supporter of Ihuh in the book of Joshua (XXIV.
15, 16). The
firmament is
the Nun by name, and Shu the uplifter of the firmament is called the son of
Nun. Thus Shu
in his
uplifting of the firmament is the uplifter of his father. Now, to show once
more how widely fragments
of the
Egyptian wisdom were scattered to become the later legends of many lands, let
us glance for [Page
663] a moment
at “the exploits of Maui”, a Polynesian form of Shu. Shu was the son of Nnu
(Nun), and in
Mangaia the
name of Nnu is rendered by Ru. Ru is the father of Maui, and one of the
exploits of Maui is
to hurl his
father Ru aloft, sky and all, to a tremendous height, so high indeed that the
sky could never get
back to earth
again. Now for the conversion of the Kamite myth into the Mangaian märchen. Nnu
or Nun
was also the
firmament upraised by Shu. Nnu as firmament was personalized in Nnu the father
of Shu;
and where Shu
uplifts the sky, now personalized, Maui is humorously described as assuming
gigantic
proportions,
and exerting prodigious strength to toss his father so far aloft that he was
for ever entangled
and suspended
among the stars of heaven, and never could come down again (Gill, Myths and
Songs, p.
58).
Various
legends derived from the Egyptian mythology were compounded in the Hebrew book
of Exodus.
One of the
most remarkable of all the parallels to be adduced is to be seen in the fact that
in one
particular
type there is a blending of Shu with Horus in Horus-Shuti, and that this is
repeated in the story
of Moses, who
represents the deliverer as Horus in the ark of papyrus, and Anhur in other
aspects of the
character.
Moses is the water-born. Josephus explains the name as signifying one who was
taken out of
the water.
Pharaoh’s daughter called the name of the child Mosheh, and said, “because I
drew him out of
the water”
(Ex. II. 10). Shu-Anhur likewise is the water-born. He is addressed in the
Magic Papyrus as
“the unique
lord issuing from the Nun”, which is the firmamental water, and from which Shu
as the
breathing-force
was born as the son of Nun.
The growth of
a legend from its source in the primitive representation or mythicizing of
natural
phenomena
down to its becoming humanized at last as biblical and historical may be
exemplified by the
story of the
child who was saved from the waters in a little ark of bulrush or papyrus-reed.
It is told of
Sargon in
Assyria, of Maui in New Zealand, and various other children who were drawn
forth from the
water at the
time of their birth. It is the myth of the child-Horus, first and far away the
oldest in the world.
The story has
to be read backward in Hebrew a very long way before its primal meaning can be
comprehended.
In going back we meet at first with the child-Horus floating in an ark upon the
waters.
The speaker
in the Ritual at the time of his re-birth says, “I am coffined in an ark like
Horus, to whom his
cradle is
brought”. This cradle is often represented as a nest of papyrus-reed=the ark of
bulrushes in the
biblical
version (Rit., ch. 130). This in its most primitive Egyptian form was the
flower of the papyrus-plant,
or later
lotus. On this child-Horus is upborne from out the waters, which led to the
Egyptian ark or boat
that was made
of papyrus-reeds. When the legend of child-Horus on his papyrus, or in his nest
of reeds,
took its
Hebrew form, the little ark in which the child was saved is made of bulrushes,
or some other form
of rush
called
, which
probably represents the Egyptian kama, a reed, the reed of Egypt, therefore
the
papyrus-reed. According to the legendary lore, repeated with a wise word of
caution by Josephus, the
young child
Moses, saved from the river in the ark, was adopted and named by Thermutis.
This name is
a title [Page
664] of the Great Mother Mut in Egyptian, the consort of Amen-Ra. But the
genesis of the
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name from Mut
the mother and Ta-Ur, which signifies the first and oldest, she who was
personalized in
Ta-Urt, shows
that the Mut or mother, Thermutis, in her primordial form was
Ta-Ur-Mut=Thermutis. Again,
we learn from
the same source that the black or Ethiopian woman who became the second wife of
Moses was
named Tharuis or Tharvis. In the Greek rendering of the Egyptian Ta-Ur (or
Ta-Urt) this name
becomes
Thoueris, and in Ta-Ur(t) we can identify the prototype of Thermutis and the
original of Thoueris
or Tharuis
(Antiq. B. 2, 10, 2). Both the foster-mother and the wife of Moses are here
traced back to the
old First
Mother as Taurt and Thermutis, who are one and the same, in the Egyptian
goddess that first
brought forth
the divine child from the waters or from the marshes and the bulrushes, as Uati
or as Apt,
the
water-cow, the most ancient form of the Great Mother in Egyptian mythology. In
the Hebrew legends
the same old
mother, under two names which are resolved into one, supplies two characters as
the
foster-mother
and the consort of Moses. Now, the old First Mother Ta-Ur-Mut, who saved the
young child
from the
waters in her primitive ark, is designated “the mother of him who is married to
his mother”. In like
manner the
mother (or foster-mother) and wife of Moses are one and the same in Taurt, who
was both
mother and
spouse of Sebek, the youthful solar god. Moses is saved from the water by
Thermutis (Ta-Ur,
as Mut, the
mother), and he was married to Thaueris, who is the same by name and nature as
Thermutis.
Thus Moses
also was both the child and the consort of his mother, which had been the
status of the
young sun-god
from the time when the human fatherhood had not been individualized. Lastly,
the two
characters of
the old First Mother were represented by the two mothers in the Osirian mythos.
These are
the two
divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys, into which the old First Genetrix was
divided as the water-
mother and
the mother-earth. Isis is the wateress. Hes, her name signifies the liquid of
life. Nephthys i,s
an
earth-mother who carries the basket of seed on her head. As it is said in the
Ritual, Horus the child is
produced by
Isis (from the water) and nourished by Nephthys (on the earth) (Rit. 17). And
these two
forms of the
divine mother can be detected even in their biblical guise as the mother and
the foster-
mother of the
young child Moses, one of whom saves him from the waters in the ark of
bulrushes, just as
Isis mothers
Horus in the element of water and Nephthys nourishes and mothers him on land.
There is
nothing human or historical about the young child saved from the waters under
any name
whatsoever,
in any kind of ark, no matter in what language the legend may be told or in
what waters the
little ark
may float. The same legend is related of the mythical Sargon in the cuneiform
tablets. He says,
“My mother
the Princess conceived me; in a secret place she brought me forth. She placed
me in a
basket of
reeds; with bitumen my exit she closed; she gave me to the river, which drowned
me not”.
When Sargon
says, “My mother knew not my father” (Records of the Past, vol. V, p. 3, First
Series), he is
claiming to
be that divine child whose only parent was the divine virgin mother, like
Neith, the bringer-
forth of
Horus (or Helios) without the male progenitorship. [Page 665]
The hidden
birth of the Child-Horus is also repeated for the Hebrew infant, of whom it is
said that when
his mother
saw that he was a goodly child “she hid him three months” (Ex. II. 2, 3), to
preserve him from
the death
decreed by the cruel Pharaoh. The time may not be given in any known
hieroglyphic text, but
the length is
correct according to the astronomical data. Child-Horus at a later time was born
in the winter
solstice and
the concealment in the nether earth came to an end in the vernal equinox.
Therefore his
mother hid
him in the marshes and the rushes of Amenta for three months. When the babe was
placed in
the ark of
bulrushes and laid in the flags by the river’s brink his sister was in charge
of him. “And his
sister stood
far off to know what would be done to him” (II. 4, 5). And in the Hymn to
Osiris it is said of the
Child-Horus,
“His sister took care of him by dissipating his enemies and repelling bad luck.
She is wise of
tongue, and
beneficent of will and words” (Records, vol. IV, p. 101), as was the sister of
Moses in her
suggestion to
the daughter of Pharaoh. Horus on his papyrus is the youthful god uplifted from
the dark
waters and
saved from the coils of the Apap-reptile — a salvation that is effected by the
two divine sisters
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Isis and
Nephthys, one of whom was the conceiver of the child, the other being the
nurse. Here as
elsewhere it
is the same in the mythos as in the “history”. In the biblical version the
daughter of Pharaoh
and the
sister of Moses take the place of Isis and Nephthys. Here the cruel Pharaoh in
the book of
Exodus plays
the same part as Herod and other tyrants who massacre the innocents, inasmuch
as he
commands the
two midwives to kill all the male children at the time of their birth by
drowning (Ex. I. 22).
The human
innocents were to be murdered en masse so as to include the divine child in the
massacre.
Only two
midwives were appointed to deliver all the parturient women of Israel in Egypt.
The mythos will
also answer
for this limited number. In the Osirian system the divine child was brought
forth by the two
sisters Isis
and Nephthys. In an earlier rendering these were Sekhet and Neith. Josephus
states that the
two midwives
given to the Jewish women by the Pharaoh were Egyptians (Ant. II. 9, 2). And as
the
midwives were
but two for all the multitude of the children of Israel, they are evidently a
form of the two
mythical
bringers-forth, who were Isis and Nephthys in the Osirian religion and Iusăas
and Neb-hetep in
the cult of
Atum-Ra.
In certain of
the extra-biblical features of the Mosaic mythos the lower Egypt of Amenta is
plainly
indicated as
the real land of the exodus. For example, when Moses went into India, he and
his army
enjoyed the
light of the sun during the night-time, and this could only occur in the lower
earth which the
sun illuminated
by night — that is, the land of Amenta. India, Sindhu and Hendu each represent
the
Egyptian
Khentu, which is a name for the interior. Thus, we identify the mythical India
with Khentu, and
Khentu is the
interior within the earth where the sun shone at night for Moses and his
warriors in the
Osirian
Khentu-Amenta. Also when Moses is identified with Shu-Anhur this may account
for his
legendary
reputation outside the Bible history as a mighty warrior. Anhur in Egypt is
Har-Tesh, the red
god Mars, or
Aręs, who passed into the Greek mythology by name as the great warrior
Onouris=Anhur.
Shu-Anhur is
addressed under [Page 666] various names connected with his deeds. “Thou
wieldest thy
spear to
pierce the head of the serpent Nekau, in that name which is thine of the god
provided with
horns”. ‘Thou
seizest thy spear and overthrowest the wicked (the Sebau), in that name which
is thine of
Horus the
striker!” “Thou destroyest the An of Tokhenti in that name which is thine of
Double abode of
Ra”. “Thou
strikest the Menti and the Sati in that name which is thine of Young-elder!”,
“Thou strikest
upon the
heads of the wicked in that name which is thine of Lord of Wounds!” (Mag. Pap.,
pp. 2 and 3).
In one of the
Rabbinical legends it is related that when Moses was condemned to lose his head
for killing
an Egyptian,
the Lord permitted that his neck should become as hard as a pillar of marble,
which caused
the sword of
the executioner to rebound and kill the wilder of the weapon. This in the mythos
is the state
of the
justified manes in Amenta, who prays that his neck may be invulnerable at the
block of execution.
In the Hebrew
märchen the Manes becomes a man called Moses.
Fragments of
the ancient wisdom survive in many foolish-looking legends. The Rabbins relate
that
Moses was
born circumcised. So the kaf-ape is said to have been born in the same
condition. “It is born
circumcised,
which circumcision the priests adopt”. (Hor-Apollo, B. I, 14.) Now Shu in one
of his divers
characters is
said to have taken the form of a kaf-ape (Magic Papyrus, p. 8, Records, vol. X,
p. 152).
Thus Shu, or
Ma-Shu, as the ape in the mythos becomes the man Moses or Mosheh, who is said
in the
märchen to
have been born circumcised, when the anthropomorphic type had taken the place
of the
zootype. In
another legend Shu the giant is portrayed as acting the part of a crazy man.
The two
characters
are coupled together when it is said, “Though didst take the form of a kaf-ape,
and afterwards
of a crazy
man” (Magic Papyrus, pp. 8, 9). This may possibly supply a gloss to the action
of Moses when
he waxed
angry and smashed the tables of the law (Ex. XXXII. 19). For this reason: Shu
in this character
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is called
“the giant of seven cubits” (or he represents a shrine of seven cubits), and he
is then
commanded to
make a shrine of eight cubits. And Moses, after breaking the tables of the law
and acting
uncommonly
like a crazy man, is commanded by the Lord to hew two other tables of stone
like unto the
first, so
that the Lord might write upon the second tables the words that were on the
first set which the
crazy man had
broken.
Shu-Anhur is
described as he “who putteth a stop to them whose hand is violent against those
who are
weaker than
themselves” (Rit., ch. 110). This is the character in which Moses begins his
personal history.
The first
thing he does is to slay an Egyptian whom he saw oppressing a Hebrew (and bury
his body in
the sand). On
the “second day” “behold two men of the Hebrews strove together, and he said to
him that
did the
wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?” (Ex. II. 11-13). This contention in
the Ritual is betwixt
the
twin-brothers Sut and Horus when Shu-Anhur reconciles the two warrior gods
where Moses tries to
reconcile two
fighting men who were fellow-Hebrews.
Moses is said
to have built an altar, and to have called it “Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord is my
banner”. This, to
say the least,
is suggestive of a title of Anhur, to whom it is said, “ Thou comest here upon
[Page 667] thy
stately stand
in that name which is thine of being in thy stately stand”, or on the standard
(Am aat). Here
there is the
same dual rendering possible as in the Hebrew, the stately stand and standard
being
equivalent to
the banner. Moses carries the “rod of God” in his hand. With this rod he
divides the Red
Sea for the
people to go over on dry ground. With this he smites the rock in Horeb, and
causes the water
to spring
forth abundantly. The plagues descend on Egypt at the stretching forth of
Moses’s wonderworking
rod.
Shu-Anhur is likewise the bearer of the rod. He is represented with the rod in
his hands, and
is designated
“Lord of the rod”. In the Hymn to Shu it is said, “Thou leadest the upper
heaven with thy rod
in that name
which is thine of Anhur,” the uplifter of heaven (Magic Papyrus, 2, 5). The
origin of smiting
the rock to
make the water come forth is connected with the rock of the Tser Hill, the
mount of sunrise.
The first
waters that issued out of this rock were the springs of dawn and the floods of
day. In the Ritual
we meet with
the hero who causes the water to gush forth. He says, in the character of the
great one,
who has been
developed into a chief, “I make the water to issue forth”, or “I make water to
come” (117).
The striker
of the rock with his rod or staff was Shu-Anhur, the impersonator of the force
that burst up out
of the rock
at sunrise when the waters of day were once more set free. The water of dawn is
called the
“water of
Tefnut”, she who is the twin-sister of Shu, and of which water the children of
light “drink
abundantly”.
As one of these — who are the prototypes of the children of Israel — says, “I
drink
abundantly of
the waters of Tefnut”. The waters of dawn (or the tree) were ascribed to the
female source,
whether as
Tefnut or as Hathor. And it is noticeable that in the Hebrew version the first
to make the water
come forth by
miracle for the people to drink is Miriam, whose relation to Moses is identical
with that of
Tefnut to
Shu. The legend of the one god who reveals himself upon a summit of a rock,
whether to Shu
or Moses, is
a matter of mythology, not a subject of human history, and as such the mythos
is Egyptian.
“And God
spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am Iahu, and I appeared unto Abraham,
unto Israel,
and unto
Jacob as El Shaddai, but by the name of Iahu I was not made known to them” (Ex.
VI. 3). In the
original
rendering of the mythos Ra reveals himself to Shu and the elders as the deity
in spirit, living in
truth. He has
become greater than the god who created him. He tells them that although later
in point of
time, he is
the one primeval source who has been giving them light all the while, and in
this new
character he
assumes his sovereignty as god over all, the one beside whom there is none
other. This is
the deity in
the Ritual who says, “I am the self-originating force. Behold me, how I am
raised upon my
throne” (ch.
85). He is no longer merely solar, or one of the seven elemental powers. He is
the god in
spirit — the
spirit that is divine, and a type of that which lives for ever. This accounts
for the change of
name or title
which follows the change in status. Ra was known by other titles in the mythos,
but as Huhi
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the eternal
he was previously unknown. In this character the god reveals his secret self as
the supreme
one, whose
name is then [Page 668] expressed by the titles of Huhi the eternal and Ra the
holy spirit. The
Hebrew deity
Ihuh was not simply the one god in a single form of personality; he is the
Egyptian one god
in his
various attributes. He is the one god both as the father and the son, who in
the words of Isaiah (IX.
6) is the
everlasting father and the prince of peace, who as Egyptian was Atum-Huhi the
eternal father,
and Iusa the
ever-coming son; Atum-Ra as closer on the horizon west, and Atum-Horus as opener
on the
horizon east.
He is the Egyptian god of Sinai as the lord of Shenni; the god who was “lifted
up” in his ark-
shrine of the
sanctuary on the mount. He is the god of the Urim and Thummim, or lights and
perfections;
the Urai or
Urur, of the winged disk and other figures of the Egyptian symbolism; the one
god who was
solar in the
mythos and the holy spirit in the eschatology. In the book of Exodus the one
god Ihuh
supersedes
all other gods, El-Shadai and the Elohim; and, like the Egyptian Ra, he assumes
the
sovereignty
as Ihuh the eternal. It was in this new character Ra issued his commands for an
ark, shrine,
or sanctuary
to be made, in which he was to be lifted up by Shu, the supporter of Ra.
Ages before
the Hebrew Pentateuch was written and ascribed to Moses, the one god had been
worshipped at
On or Annu as Egyptian under the title of Atum-Ra, and if he was made known to
Anhur by
revelation,
whatsoever that may imply, the revelation was Egyptian. This is the god who was
one by
nature and
dual in manifestation; one in the solar mythos as the closer and opener of the
nether-world;
one in the
eschatology as Huhi the everlasting father, and Iu the ever-coming son as
prince of peace; the
one god,
called the holy spirit, who was founded typically on the human ghost. This is
the living (Ankhu),
self-originating,
and eternal god. This is he who was to be lifted up as god alone in his ark or
tabernacle
on the mount
of glory — that is, as Ra-Harmakhu on the double horizon or in the dual
equinox; the deity
who gave the
law upon Mount Shenni through the intermediation of Anhur or Ma-Shu, the son of
Ra.
In the
so-called “destruction of mankind” the solar god resolves to be lifted up in an
ark or sanctuary by
himself
alone. This sanctuary is carried on the back of Nut, the celestial cow. “There
was Nut. The
majesty of Ra
was on her back. His majesty arrived in the sanctuary. And his majesty saw the
inner part
of the
sanctuary”. This creation of the sanctuary for the one god Ra upon the mount is
followed in the
Hebrew book.
Ihuh says to Moses, “Let them (the children of Israel) make me a sanctuary,
that I may
dwell among
them. According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the dwelling and the
pattern of all the
furniture
thereof, even so ye shall make it”. “And they shall make an ark of
acacia-wood”. The two
together, the
sanctuary and the ark, constituted an ark-shrine of the true Egyptian pattern.
As Egyptian,
the ark of
Ra-Harmakhu represented the double equinox in the two horizons. This was the
“double abode
of Ra” in the
dual domain of light and shade, the model of the Jewish arks or tabernacles
that were to be
erected
equally in sun and shade. The part open to the rays of light was exactly to
balance the shade or
veil of the
covering, and not to have more sun [Page 669] than shade (Mishna, Treatise
Succah, ch. 1).
This was in
accordance with the plan of the Great Pyramid in relation to the luminous
hemisphere and
the
hemisphere of shade at the two equinoxes. The sanctuary of Ra was a figure of
the heavens. The
Hebrew ark
was a portable copy, a tabernacle fitted for an itinerating deity. It was the
Kamite custom to
represent the
heaven in miniature as an ark of so many cubits. There is an ark of seven
cubits, one of
eight cubits,
another of four cubits, in which the god was “lifted up” or exalted. Inside the
ark there was a
shrine for
the deity, with a figure of the god within the sanctuary. As water was the
primary element of life,
the nature-powers
were held to have come into being by water. Hence their images were placed
within
the shrine
that was carried on board the papyrus bark and borne upon the shoulders of the
priests.
These
tabernacles, consisting of a boat and shrine, were the sacred ark-shrines of
Egypt. Thus the
beginnings
were for ever kept in view. The ark-shrine on the water represented by the boat
became a
type of
heaven as dwelling-place of the Eternal. Thus an ark of Nnu was constellated in
the stars and
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pictured on
the waters of the inundation. The ark of Atum-Ra was depicted with the solar
orb on board,
which was
always red. In the religious mysteries, as already shown, an ark of four cubits
imaged the
heaven of
four quarters or, as the Egyptians phrased it, of four sides. As we have seen,
there was an ark
of seven
cubits for the heptanomis, and one of eight cubits for the octonary. This
ark-shrine of eight
cubits is to
be built for the god to float in after there has been a great subsidence of
land in the celestial
waters. So
likewise in the “destruction of mankind”, when Ra becomes the supreme one god,
he orders
an ark or
tabernacle to be made for his voyage over the heavens. The inscription was
engraved in the
chamber of
the cow that was herself a form of the ark as the goddess Nut.
William
Simpson in 1877 called attention to the Japanese ark-shrines or mikoshi, “which
have many
points of
likeness to the Jewish ark of the covenant, and which are carried on men’s
shoulders by means
of staves.
Mikoshi signifies the high or honourable seat. Temo-sama may be translated
“heaven’s lord’ “
(Trans. Soc.
of Bib. Arch., vol. V, p. II, 550). Now, the first type of heaven’s lord that
is known to
astronomical
mythology was the ruler of the pole-star, whose high or honourable seat was at
the pole,
like that of
Anup on his mountain. In some of these arks, we are told, there is the small
figure of a deity,
which is no
doubt the “heaven’s lord” intended by the name. There were seven of these lords
of heaven
altogether,
who, as here suggested, had been rulers of the seven pole-stars in succession.
Now,
Simpson tells
us that there are seven of these arks preserved in the temple of Hachiman at
Kamakura,
Japan. “They
are said by some to be state-norimans, but as these shrines are connected with
the deified
Mikado, they
are most probably temo-samas or mikoshis as well as norimans”. This is
confirmed by a
statement of
Kaempfer’s. He says, “The mikoshi themselves being eight”, the eight seats or
ark-shrines
answer to the
Kami when the eighth one had been added to the seven as over-lord, but seven
was the
primary
number of the Kami as of the Egyptian Akhemu or never-setting ones. We infer
that seven ark-
shrines or
seats were typical of the seven rulers, in addition to all the other forms of
the septenary,
mounds,
mountains, islands, [Page 670] menhirs, towers, temples, or cities that were
raised on high to
symbolize the
seven stations marked by pole-stars in the circuit of precession. Now, Israel
is charged by
Amos with
having borne an ark-shrine that was obviously the tabernacle of a star-god or
gods who were
once the
Elohim after which she went a-whoring (Amos. V. 26). The passage in the revised
version runs
thus, “Yea,
ye have borne siccuth your king and chiun your images, the star of your god,
which ye made
to
yourselves”. The most probable rendering depends on siccuth being a tabernacle
or ark of the god,
corresponding
to the Egyptian sekhet, for an ark, shrine, or cabin, and on chiun, from chun,
denoting the
pillar or
pedestal of the star. Kűn signifies to found, set up, erect, heap up, and
establish; it denotes the
highest
point, at the centre, and is applied to the founding of the world. The name was
assigned to
Saturn as god
in the highest. But Sut was the earlier founder of a world as god of the pole,
in conjunction
with his
mother, who first represented the mount. The siccuth as tabernacle, ark, or
female abode is
equivalent to
the ben-ben or beth of the child, the god or king who as Sut was figured at
times within the
cone. The
chun as pedestal would be the pillar of the star, and the images would signify
the ark of the
pole and its
star in short, the Great Mother and her child, who were the primeval female and
male as Apt
(or the
Egypto-Semitic naked goddess Kűn) and Sut, later Sut-Anup. The so-called
tabernacle was a
“hut”, which
agrees with the conical pillar or ben-ben as a figure of the pole. The god of
the pillar
originated as
god of the pole; Sut was primarily and pre-eminently god of the pillar, and
El-Shaddai we
hold to have
been a form of Sut-Anup on his mountain of the pole.
In the solar
mythos the mount was figured on or as the horizon at the point of equinox, the
point of
turning and
returning from Amenta in the circuit of the year, or from the lower Egypt of
the mythos. Hence
it was named
Mount Shenni=the Hebrew Sinai. This was the place of crossing or passing over
the line in
the exodus or
coming forth from the land of bondage when commemorated as an historical
passover.
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The first day
of the first month was the day of the equinox. The Hebrew dual year, sacred and
civil, was
based upon
the double equinox. Hence the ark-shrine of Ihuh (Jehovah) is identifiable with
that of Atum-
Huhi, whose
title of Ra-Harmachis shows that he was the deity of the double horizon, the
double abode,
or double
sanctuary, first as Horus, next as Ra. This may be gathered from the statement,
“And the Lord
spake unto
Moses, saying, On the first day of the first month thou shalt rear up the
tabernacle of the tent
of meeting.
And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony” (Ex. XL. 1) — that is, on
the mount which
was the
equinoctial meeting-point upon the summit, the point at which the rescued
spirits went on board
the bark of
Ra, as represented in the Ritual. “The tabernacle of the tent of meeting” is
the full title of the
portable
dwelling-place that was built for Ihuh on Sinai, according to the imagery shown
to Moses in the
mount.
“Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains. The length of each
curtain shall be
eight-and-twenty
cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits”. These numbers correspond
to the
ark of heaven
in ten divisions, with the four corners and the twenty-eight measures of a
lunar zodiac. Ten
cubits also
[Page 671] was to be the length of each board of acacia-wood. The seven-fold
candlestick we
look on as a
figure of the celestial heptanomis and its mystery of the seven stars. It was
thus the
symbolism was
compounded and continued in the later rendering of the imagery.
The mount of
the horizon in the equinox was the place of the two lions called the Sheniu,
which also tend
to identify
the mount with Sinai. These two lions, the two kherufu or kherubs that support
the sun upon
the horizon,
are repeated in the two cherubim that were portrayed upon the ark of testimony.
One symbol
of Mount
Hetep is a table piled with food. This is reproduced in the table of shew-bread
that was to be
always set as
the oblation in the presence of the Lord. Ihuh was to commune with Moses from
between
the two
cherubim. The position is that of Atum-Ra-Har-Makhu in the equinox when he
rises as the sun-
god from
betwixt the two kherufu or lions on the mount (Rit., Vig. to ch. 18).
Atum-Ra-Har-Makhu was the
lion-god of
the double force, or the power and glory of the sun upon the mount of the
horizon. He rose up
betwixt two
lions which imaged the double solar force, and was also represented by the
fore-part and the
back-part of
the lion.
The lion in
sign-language was an Egyptian type of the terrible (Hor-Apollo, I, 20). This
was applied to the
sun or solar
god as an image of his double force, and represented by Anhur and Tefnut. The
hinder part
of the lion
that is carried on the head of Anhur is a sign of force. But the fore-part, the
face and front of
the lion,
which reads peh-peh, denotes the glory of the double force. The fore-part of
the lion or lion-god
being the
symbol of his glory, this was not to be seen by Moses, who is told to stand in
the cleft of the
rock whilst
the glory of the Lord, or fore-part of the lion, passes by, and he is only to
see the deity’s hinder
part. As
Egyptian, the cleft in the rock was the place of entrance to and egress from
Amenta. The solar
god who rose
again as lord of terror was the lion of the double force, the power and the
glory of the god
being figured
and differentiated by the hind-part and the fore-part of the lion. In strict
accordance with
Egyptian
symbolism, the dual nature of Ihuh was made known to Moses — that is, if the
promise was
kept and the
Lord revealed his hinder part (Ex. XXXIII. 18, 23). Moreover, it was made known
by means
of the lion
or the man-lion as zootype. Moses asks to see the glory, and the Lord replies,
“Thou canst not
see my face”
and live, so terrible was the glory imaged by the lion’s face. The glory being
in front, the
power was
behind, and this alone could be seen by the mortal who desired to live. The
unbearable glory
obviously
depended on the Lord as solar lion because he had first shown his face to Moses
“as a man”.
“And the Lord
spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Ex. XXXIII.
11). On one
occasion,
when Anhur comes into the presence of the solar god, it is said, “Turn thou
back, O Rehu; turn
thou back
from before his mightiness=the glory, or, as otherwise said, “from him who
keepeth watch and
is himself
unseen”, or is not to be seen, which is equivalent to the Hebrew “Man shall not
see me and
live”. Now,
according to the astronomical mythology — with the twin lions stationed east
and west — the
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lion of the
hinder part was to the west, the lion with the face of glory to the east, the
place of sunrise. The
entrance to
the nether earth was in the west. This [Page 672] was the side of the Amenta
through which
the first of
the two leaders was Moses; he was to see the back part only, whether of the
double horizon,
or the god in
person, or the lion of Atum-Ra. Thus, the statement that Moses was not to see
the glory or
fore-part is
equivalent to his not being allowed to enter the promised land upon the other
side of the
water, which
was visible from the mountain of Amenta that reached up to the sky.
As shown by
the Vignettes, there is an Egyptian origin likewise for “the burning bush” in
which the one
god was
manifested to Moses in Mount Horeb. The Lord as Iahu-Elohim was previously
revealed to
Moses in his
solar character. As it is said, “Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro”, and he
“came to the
mountain of
god unto Horeb”. “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of
fire out of the
midst of a
bush: and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was
not consumed.
And Moses
said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not
burned” (Ex. III. 1, 3).
Now, this
“burning bush” is to be seen full blaze in pictures to the Ritual. There is a
vignette to chapter 64
in which the
burning bush is saluted (figure, Papyrus du Louvre, III, 93; Renouf, Book of
the Dead, pl.
17). In the
texts the golden unbu is a symbol of the solar god. It is a figure of the
radiating disk which is
depicted
raying all aflame at the summit of a sycamore-fig tree which thus appears to
burn with fire, and
the tree is
not consumed. It images the lord of the resurrection going forth from the state
of the disk to
give light
(Rit., 64). The manes, without shoes on his feet, saluting the tree with the
flaming disk in or
upon it, from
which there issue tongues of flame, addresses the god concealed in the solar
fire, who is
going forth
from the state of the disk, saying, “Shine on me, O unknown soul” “I draw near
to the god
whose words
were heard by me in the lower earth” (64). This was the burning bush in which
the sun-god
manifested as
Tum, whose other name is Iu or Unbu, the burning bush being the solar unbu.
There are
two
corollaries following this identification: the one is that the god of the
burning bush is the same as the
god of the
flaming thornbush named the “unbu”, and the god being the same, the person
addressed by
the god is
the same in both versions, and the lion-god who is Shu-Anhur in the Ritual is
the prototype of
Moses in the
book of Exodus. Further, in the manifestation of the burning bush duality of
person is
implied.
First it is “an angel of the Lord” that appears “in a flame of fire out of the
midst of a bush”. Then
the Lord or
Elohim speaks in person and calls on Moses by name (Ex. III. 4). These two
correspond to
the divine
duality of Ra and Unbu in the original representation, when Unbu (Horus or Iu)
as the ever-
coming son of
god the eternal father (Huhi), is the manifestor for Ra in the flowing thorn.
The burning
bush, then,
is identical with the “golden unbu” of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the
“golden unbu” of
the Pyramid
Texts is literally the “golden bough” of later legends — as in the English work
of that name.
Here we may
say in passing, that The Golden Bough contains a learned, large, and
serviceable
collection of
data, but the theories of interpretation derived from the writings of Mannhardt
are futile.
Besides
which, mythology is not to be fathomed in or by a [Page 673] folk-tale, and The
Golden Bough is
but a twig of
the great tree of mythology and sign-language — a twig without its root. The
reception of the
work in
England served to show how prevalent and profound is the current ignorance of
the subject-
matter. It
was hailed as if it had plumbed the depths instead of merely extending the
superficies. The
writer never
once touches bottom; never traces the comparison home either in the Assyrian or
the
Egyptian
version. In the former, for example, Gilgames goes to the other world in quest
of the tree of life
and the fountain
of youth. His desire is to learn how to become immortal. In that other world
across the
water, not in
the nether-earth of Arali, there grows the tree of renewal. Like the Kamite
Unbu, it is
described as
similar to the bush of hawthorn in flower, and its thorns are said to “prick
like the viper”.
When Gilgames
touches the shore of that upper paradise, he is told of this tree, shrub or
plant, and it is
said that if
he can lay hold of it without his hand being torn, gather a branch and bear it
away, it will
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secure for
him eternal youth. The tree is identical with that which grew in the sacred
grove at Nemi, from
which no
branch was to be broken. And beyond the Babylonian legend lies the Egyptian
myth in which
the tree is
rooted. The Egyptian golden bough is a bush of flowering thorn. It is a symbol
of the young
solar god who
says, “I am Unbu, who proceedeth from Nu (heaven), and my mother is Nut” (Rit.,
ch. 42;
Pyramid
Texts, Teta 39). “I am Unbu of An-ar-ef, the flower in the abode of
occultation” (Rit., ch. 71). This
identifies
the golden bough with Horus in the dark and the bush that flowered at Christmas
like our
Glastonbury
Thorn. The golden bough or burning bush is a solar symbol of Atum-Huhi, who
says to
Anhur, “O
lion-god, I am Unbu”, and who thus identifies himself with Ihuh in the burning
bush. “I am
Unbu”, says
the Egyptian deity in the flowering thorn, where the Hebrew god announces that
he is Ihuh
from the
midst of the burning bush.
The golden
calf in Israel had also been the gilded heifer in Egypt. Hes, the sacred
heifer, was adored
under the
name of Isis in the time of the old empire. This was also a type of the golden
Hathor, the
habitation of
Horus, her calf. The setting up of the golden calf for worship is likewise
evident in “The
destruction
of mankind”. It is “said by the majesty of Ra (to the calf-headed Hathor), Come
in peace, thou
goddess, and
there arose the young priestess of Amu”. “Said by the majesty of Ra to the
goddess: I
order that
libations be made to her at every festival of the new year under the direction
of my priestesses.
Hence it
comes that libations are made under the direction of the priestesses at the festival
of Hathor,
through all
men, since the days of old” (Pl. B., lines 24-6). This was the worship of the
golden calf, thus
instituted as
Egyptian. There was a special form of the cow-headed goddess called the golden
Hathor,
and a
particular type of her child or calf known as the golden Horus. Both were
imaged in one by the
virgin
heifer, or, as in the Exodus, by the golden calf, the image of the goddess of
Amu. A dual type of
deity
originated with the child that was potentially of either sex, or both. Hence
the boy like Bacchus with
the female
mammae, and the lad in Revelation with the feminine paps and girdle, or Horus
with the
female
breasts. Also the lock of childhood, or the long hair [Page 674] of the
Egypto-gnostic Christ,
represented
this dual type of deity, as well as “the long garment in which was the whole
world”, because
it had been
the clothing of both sexes for the child. Hathor in Egypt was the goddess of
the golden calf,
or heifer
with the golden neck. One of her titles was Nub the golden (Wilk., vol. III, p.
115), and the
goddess
Iusăas, consort of Atum-Ra and mother of Iusa in the cult of On, was a form of
the golden
Hathor, as is
shown by the ears of the heifer in her headdress. Hathor was the Egyptian
Venus, also the
goddess of
music and dancing, and of female ornaments, including precious stones,
particularly the
turquoise.
The calf or heifer of gold was a befitting figure for the cult whose gods were
Iu the calf, Iusaas
the cow, and
Atum-Iu the bull — the gods which they, the Jews or Ius, brought out of Egypt
in the Hebrew
exodus. So
soon as the metal was fused, the image fashioned, and the calf set up, the
festival of Hathor-
Iusăas
followed. “And Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow shall be a feast to
Ihuh. And they
rose up early
on the morrow and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the
people sat
down to eat
and drink, and (then) rose up to play” (Ex. XXXII. 5-6). The festival was
phallic, for the
people
remembered Iusaas, the consort of Ihuh and the divine mother of the
non-ethnical Jews, who
were born
Egyptian. In connection with peace offerings, one might mention that Iusăas was
also called
Neb-hetep,
the lady of peace, and her son, Iu-em-hetep, was the prince who comes with
peace. But the
libation to
the cow-headed or calf-headed goddess was turned into waters of bitterness when
Moses,
according to
the story, “took the calf and burnt it with fire, ground it into powder and
strewed it upon the
water, and made
the children of Israel drink of it” (XXXII. 20).
There is but
one calf mentioned in the book of Exodus, but in the first book of Kings we see
the type is
dual. “The
king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said . . . Behold thy
gods, O Israel,
which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings XII. 28). These in Egypt were the
heifer that
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imaged the
mother as the goddess Iusăas, and the calf of Iu, her sa or su — that is, her
son — Iusaas
being a form
of the golden Hathor, who was the goddess of Mount Sinai. Also it was
pardonable, if not
pleasing in
the sight of Ihuh, that Jehu did not forsake the golden calves of Jeroboam (2
Kings X. 29, 31).
The golden
calf was the great symbol of sin in the eyes of the monolators, because it was
a figure of both
sexes and
pre-eminently sacred to the divine mother, Neith, Hathor, or Iusăas. Although
the one god as
the god in
Spirit was evolved in the Egyptian cult of Ptah and Atum-Ra as Huhi the
eternal, he was
compounded
with the child and mother of an earlier religion. His consort Iusaas was a form
of Hathor, the
mother of
fair love, who was the Egyptian Venus, and the child was Iu (em-hetep), the
wise youth who
became the
Hebrew prince of peace. These were the gods which brought the Hebrews up or
were
brought up by
them out of Egypt. The later monotheists sought to exclude the child and mother
from the
nature of the
deity, which was a holy family in itself, consisting of the father, mother, and
child. The
mother was
cast out, for the god to be imaged by a figure of the father alone. But the
goddess was
continued in
her types of the birthplace. Hers were the ark, the tabernacle, the [Page 675]
sanctuary, the
temple, the
meskhen, the holy of holies, as the abode of the divine child or reborn god.
Hence the
Hebrew
tabernacle or ark-shrine is the mishken, which as Egyptian is the meskhen, the
chamber of birth,
that was
imaged in the constellation of the “thigh” or haunch of Nut in the astronomical
mythology. This
change had
been made in the theology of Annu, as witnessed by the legend of the cow in the
tomb of
Seti I., in
which the god is “lifted up” in his sanctuary as male alone. Nevertheless,
there was a continual
recrudescence
of the old Egyptian cult, and a return to the worship of the mother, as is
shown in Israel by
the setting
up of the golden calf, and the denunciation of it by the later writers.
This worship
of Hathor in the mount had already extended from Sinai to Jerusalem as an
Egyptian cult.
Eusebius
relates that when Constantine was about to build the Basilica, he discovered a
“mound of
Venus”
already raised above the Saviour’s tomb (Life of Constantine). This was a mount
of the mother,
who was
Hathor-Iusaas in Egypt; and no one was buried in or born from the typical mount
of Venus
except
child-Horus, or his other self, Iu-em-hetep, whose mother was a form of the
Egyptian Venus. The
primitive
mound had been perpetuated, as it was in the Tel-el-Jehudieh (near On). The
mount which
typified the
means of ascent from the valley of Amenta to the summit where the glorified
elect were taken
on board the
bark of Ra is variously represented in the Hebrew version of the exodus. As in
the
astronomical
mythos, it is the one mountain with several names, and, being celestial, it may
be localized
in numerous
sacred sties on earth as the place of worship. The mount upon which Moses stood
in
conversation
with Ihuh is identified with the celestial height, when it is said to the
children of Israel, “Ye
yourselves
have seen that I have talked with you from heaven”. This, again, is celestial
as the mount on
which the
pattern of the divine dwelling, or ark and tabernacle of the Lord, was shown to
Moses. In the
Ritual it is
the mountain of Amenta that touches the sky. It is said almost in the opening
of the book of
Exodus, when
the call is made to Moses by Ihuh, “When thou hast brought forth the people out
of Egypt,
ye shall
serve God upon this mountain” (Ex. III. 12), which is here called Mount Horeb,
the mountain of
God. It is
also said of the chosen people, in this ancient fragment of the mythos, “Thou
shalt bring them
in, and plant
them in the mountain of their inheritance, the place, O Lord, which thou hast
made for them
to dwell in,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established”, where “the Lord shall
reign for ever
and ever”.
This was in the mount of Jerusalem on high, the celestial mount of the
gathering and
congregating
together in the Aarru-Salem = Aarru-Hetep in Jerusalem below by those who built
the city
as outcasts
or colonists from Egypt. The mountains are several. Elsewhere it is Mount Zion
or Sinai. But
the mountain
of God, the holy mountain, is one, because it was astronomical; therefore in
the
eschatology
it is the mount for which they were bound as spirits, and not as leprous and
abominated
mortals
fleeing from the land of the Pharaohs. In making the passage from Amenta, the
supreme object
of attainment
is the mount of peace and plenty, called Mount Hetep in Egyptian. Hetep is a
word of
various
meanings besides peace and plenty. It is the mount of the oblations, [Page 676]
one sign of which
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Ancient
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is a table
piled with provender. The mount itself presents the oblations to the gods and
the glorified upon
the summit,
on a scale that is worthy of the eternal feast. And this, we would suggest, is the
prototype of
the Oblation
described by Ezekiel (XLVIII), which is colossal in its magnitude. It is
commanded that a
huge oblation
shall be offered to the Lord, with the sanctuary in the midst thereof. It is to
be “an oblation
from the
oblation of the land”, just as Hetep was the oblation to the heaven from the
offerings made by
the
worshippers on earth as contributions to the table of the Lord. The
mound-builders raised their mount
or mound of
oblation in Britain the size of Silbury Hill. Here it is to be a city the size
of paradise, or the
New
Jerusalem, the eternal city built upon the square, and therefore a heaven of
the four quarters, raised
upon twelve
pillars erected round the mount. The difficulty of identifying Sinai as a
geographical mount,
according to
the book of Exodus, may be explained when we know that the beginnings were not
geographical,
and that the mount on which Shu-Anhur shared the throne of Ra his father was
the
mountain in
Amenta, not on earth. It was the stellar mount of glory in the eschatology
which had been the
mount of
sunrise in the mythology.
After the
passage of the Red Sea, in the exodus, the children of Israel arrive at “the
wilderness of Sin,
which is
between Elim and Sinai” (Ex. XVI. 1). This wilderness can be identified in the
Ritual with Anrutef,
the region of
sterility. After passing the red pool, lake, or sea, we come to the desert of
Anrutef, which is
said to be
near Sheni. Here there is some evidence to show that the Hebrew Sinai is derived
from the
Egyptian
Sheni. Ra, the solar god, is designated lord of Sheni in the Ritual. The
speaker in chapter 36
says, “I am
Khnum, the lord of Sheni”, or Shennu, equivalent to Sinai in Hebrew. When
Osiris becomes
the supreme
lord of the mountain in Amenta he is also described as the “commander in the
region of
Sheni.” He is
a form of that lord over all who gave the Commandments on Mount Sinai. Horus
also
issues from
the region of Sheni with the other divine chiefs who repulse the enemies of Osiris
in these
battles
against his enemies. He also is the lord who came from Sinai. The word Shennu
or Sheni in
Egyptian also
denotes an orbit, the circuit or circle, to turn and return. Hence the solar
god was
designated
lord of Sheni. Mount Sheni, as the place of turning and returning, is the mount
of the equinox.
This was the
mount of the two lions, and these also are the Sheni by name. Ra may be Khnum
or Amen
or Atum,
according to the cult. The Ra of Annu was Atum, otherwise Huhi, whom we also
identify as the
Hebrew god
Ihuh. In the vignettes to the Ritual, Atum-Ra, the one god living in truth, is
portrayed upon
the summit of
the mount of glory, with the seven spirits praising him upon the mount
(Naville,
Todtenbuch,
Kap. 16, A.), the mount of the circle of turning and returning and of the
lions, therefore
Mount
Sheni=Sinai. The mount of glory in the Ritual is represented in the book of
Exodus as a mount of
fire or the
mount on fire — that is, with the solar glory. The circuit of fire about the
mount is the “sheniu of
fire”. This
occurs as the title of a chapter in the Ritual. Thus the sun-god Ra or
Atum-Huhi=Ihuh was the
lord of
Sheni. His throne was on the [Page 677] mount of glory where he sat surrounded
by the Sheniu
who form the
divine circle of the celestial court. “The Sheniu of this chapter”, says
Renouf, “are living
personages
who attend upon the Osiris and greet him (on the mount of glory) with their
acclamations.
The word is
often translated ‘princes,’ ‘officers,’ but it signifies those who are in the
circle of a king or god,
hence
‘ministrants,’ ‘courtiers,’ as in the rubric to ch. CXXV”. (Renouf, Book of the
Dead, XXX. Note 1).
These Sheniu
constitute the upper circle round the throne of God upon Mount Sheni in
Egyptian, or Sinai
in Hebrew.
Here it may be noted that the Japanese call their divine Kami, the 7+1 primeval
powers, the
Shin, whence
came the Shintu gods, which as stellar correspond to the Egyptian Sheniu, who
are a
group of gods
in the upper celestial circle, and of whom it is said “the Sheniu marshal the
Osiris” on his
way to the
“mount of glory” (Rit., ch. 130).
The
descriptions of Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus show that it was the mount of
glory in the solar
mythos — that
is, the mount of sunrise in the daily course, and the mount of the equinox as
the horizon
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of the annual
sun. Various meanings of the word Sheni coincide in showing that the typical Mount
Sinai,
Sin, or
Ba-Shen was the Mount Sheni in the Egyptian astronomical mythology. We have to
remember
that as far
back as the time of the first dynasty Egypt included the mount and surrounding
region of Sinai
as a part of
the double kingdom. Thus the Sarabit el Khadem was considered very holy ground
by the
Egyptians
seven thousand years ago. It was the seat of Hathor there, whose sanctuary of
the mother
was a
primitive cavern in the rock. The turquoise mines of the Sinaitic peninsula
were also worked by the
Egyptians for
the gems of the goddess to whom they were consecrated. In fact, Mount Sinai was
Egyptian at
any time from seven thousand to thirteen thousand years ago, both as a
geographical locality
and as a
sacred site. The deities who were worshipped on it were likewise Egyptian. It
was the seat of
Hathor, of
Atum-Ra, and Horus the calf. There is a vignette to the Ritual in which this
dynasty of divinities
from On or
Heliopolis may be seen grouped together on the mount. The scene portrayed is on
Mount
Sheni, which
became the Hebrew Sinai. In this, as in the Osirian dynasty of deities, Atum
the father was
the bull,
Iusăas the mother was the cow or heifer; and the calf as a type of renewal for
either sex was an
image of all
three, as was the child-Horus in the anthropomorphic representation. The calf
is again
represented
in another vignette in presence of the god with the worshipper (Naville, Todt.,
Kap. 108 and
109) in the
attitude of adoration behind the calf. This is literally the worship of the
golden calf, which was
a dual image
of both Hathor the Egyptian Venus and of Horus as her calf (ch. 108). So
ancient is it, when
measured by
the mythos, that Horus is the crocodile-headed Sebek as the son of Hathor, who
was
represented
at Annu by the heifer-headed Iusăas. These three are designated the powers of
the east.
Horus of the
solar mount is represented by the calf in presence of the great god Atum-Ra and
the star of
dawn, or of
Hathor as the morning-star. Professor Petrie’s explorations show us that a
transformation of
this old
Egyptian religion into a Semitic or Syrian cult took place at [Page 678] Sinai
amongst the miners,
many of whom
were no doubt slaves who were sent to work the mines, according to the Egyptian
practice of
devoting captives to the service of the gods. But the goddess Hathor and her
child Horus, who
were the
objects of worship at Sarabit el Khadem in the Sinaitic peninsula, did not
originate as Syrian or
Semitic
deities. They were Egyptian from the first, and were continued wheresoever the
Egyptian miners
went, whether
as the diggers for the turquoise gems of Sinai, the tin of Cornwall, or the
gold of the
Zimbabwe in
Mashonaland.
The summit of
Amenta at the head of the valley was attained upon the horizon in the east. It
was the
mount of
glory in the solar mythos, which is Sinai, the mount of the glory of god and
the seat of judgment
in the book
of Exodus. “Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them”, Ex.
21. 1.) This
is the height
on which the kneeling Anhur, in the character of Shu-si-Ra, uplifts the solar
orb upon the
horizon,
called the mount, from the summit of which the hosts of darkness were hurled
down the steps
and for the
time being annihilated. Also from this Pisgah-height the promised land was
visible as the
paradise
across the firmamental waters, which are represented by the river Jordan in the
Hebrew
exodus. A
peak of Mount Sinai in Arabia Petrea is known by the name of Djebel Mousa, the
mount of
Moses, which
is traditionally identified as the scene of the events and occurrences on the
mount
described in
the book of Exodus. Taking Mousa or Mouishé to be the Hebrew equivalent for
Ma-Shu, the
lion-god Shu,
Mount Sinai is a localized form of the typical mount on which the lion-god
stood to uplift the
heaven or
sustain the solar disk with his two hands. This in the annual course was at the
equinox, and
therefore on
the mount at the point of turning and returning, or on Mount Sheni=Sinai.
From the peak
of Pisgah Moses is shown the land here called Canaan as the land flowing with
milk and
honey, oil,
corn, and wine, which was one and the same in all the legends of this paradise
of peace and
plenty at the
summit of the mount. Those who went up from the valley to the top of the
mountain neither
died there
nor were buried there. They were the glorified spirits of the dead, or the
leaders of the starry
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host, like
Shu upon the mount of Am-Khemen. Upon the solar mount of glory or Mount Sheni,
the mount
of the
Sheniu, was the Egyptian maat in which the law was given on the mount. This is
the hall of justice.
The maat was
a double law court, first erected for Anup at the pole; but in the solar myth
the place of
equipoise was
changed, and the maat was represented where the annual or periodical assize was
held.
This was at
the point of equinox, which was at one time imaged in the sign of the Scales. Maat
or mati in
Egyptian is
the law. The maat was the hall of justice or of law. The tablets of mati in the
maat were the
books of the
law. Ages before Osiris was enthroned as the great judge in the maat, Atum-Iu
the son of
Ptah was the
divine law-giver in the great hall of justice which was figured on the mount,
with Anhur as
the
intermediary. A divine law-giver was worshipped in Egypt as Atum-Iu, the
original giver of the law
which was
given first by him to Egypt, not to Israel. But when Atum-Huhi had become the
Hebrew Ihuh,
the law was
repeated at second-hand in Israel. The [Page 679] tables of the law are
identical by name with
the tablets
of mati, and the comparative process will show that the matter is the same so
far as the
Hebrew records
go; and if the law were divinely revealed and had any superhuman authority, it
would be
as the law of
mati, which was first inscribed in the papyrus of Ma-Shu or Anhur, and not as
the law of the
Hebrew Moses,
written in the later letters of the Pentateuch. Several meanings are connoted
by the word
maat or mati
in Egyptian, such as law and justice, truth and right. The equilibrium of the
universe was
expressed by
maat, which represented the natural immutable and eternal law. The balance is a
symbol of
maat and its
oneness in duality. It was erected as a figure of the equinox, or the two
halves of night and
day at equal
poise. Makha is a name for the scales and to weigh. The scales were erected at
the place of
poise and
weighing in the equinox. Har-Makhu was the deity of the double equinox, who
represented the
duality of
mati in the oneness of the equinox. The Sphinx was a figure of this duality in
oneness at the
equinox. The
feather of Shu (or Ma) was another type of the same duality, in this case the
duality of light
and shade
which meet and mingle in one at twilight. The Hebrew “two tables of the
testimony, the tables
of stone,
written by the finger of God” (Ex. XXXI. 18), are the equivalent of the laws,
or truths and
commandments that
were “consigned, performed, engraved in script, and placed beneath the feet of
RaHar-
Makhu in the
great temple at On to last for ever. The tables of the law and commandments
represent
the tablets
in the hall of maati. The tablets in the Ritual (ch. 28) are expressly assigned
to the god Atum-
Ra. “This
whole heart of mine is laid upon the tablets of Tum, who guideth me to the
caverns of Sut” or
through the
dark passages of Amenta. The tablets of Tum are records of the law or maat.
They are kept
by Taht the
divine scribe in the hall of judgment. We learn from the Ritual (ch. 28) that
the Egyptian tables
of the law
are the tablets or kanu of Atum-Iu; the same word denotes carving in ivory and
engraving on
stone, and
Atum-Huhi is the Kamite original of the Semitic Ihuh. The tables of Moses were
the tables of
the law, and
the law in Egyptian is ma (mati in the plural). The tables or tablets of the
law were produced
in the
judgment hall, and we know from the pleadings of the deceased in what is called
the negative
confession
that these tables of the law contained the commandments or prohibitions
concerning the
things which
the manes says he has not done because of the “thou shalt not” in which the law
originated.
The speaker,
addressing Taht-mati, the recorder in the great hall, says: “O thou bearer of
peace offerings,
who openest
thy mouth for the presentation of the tables (or tablets), for the acceptation
of the offerings
and for the
establishment of mati (law or justice) upon her throne; let the tables be
brought forward and
let the truth
be firmly established” (Rit., ch. 41). These tablets, we repeat, were the
tables of the law (ma,
maat, or
mati); they are produced at the trial before the judges when the heart
(character) of the
deceased is
weighed in the balance of Mati and the goddess (of law or justice) is
established on her
throne.
Otherwise stated, when the law was given in the judgment hall upon Mount Sheni
or the
mountain of
Amenta. The religion of Egypt was based on maat, that is, on law, or more
abstractly on
[Page 680]
truth and justice. And the law was impersonated in the goddess Mati, the Kamite
original of the
Greek Themis.
It is said in the Ritual, “The gods and their symbols come into existence by
virtue of law”
(ch. 50).
This in one sense was by means of Ma or Ma-Shu, the intermediary betwixt the
great god and
the people;
who is represented in Israel by Moses. It is said that the Ten Commandments
were given by
Ihuh, the
Egyptian Huhi, to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Jewish Commandments, however, are
not limited
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to ten in
number. The ten are followed by a series of judgments or laws (Ex. XXI, XXII,
and XXIII). And
here it may
be observed that the laws and judgments are identical in Hebrew, as in the
duality of maati
for law and
justice in Egyptian. Also in the book of Deuteronomy (XXVII) twelve statutes
are enacted
under the
form of commandments, enforced with twelve curses. And in the Papyrus of Ani
there is a
company of
twelve gods sitting on twelve thrones as judges in the maat or judgment hall
upon the mount
— a picture
that suggests “the House of the Lord” in the celestial Jerusalem, of which it
is said“ ; there
are set
thrones for judgments, the thrones of the House of David” (Ps. CXXII. 5).
These, as described in
Revelation,
were likewise twelve in number. The maat is identified with the mount of God by
Zechariah
when he says,
“Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth (maat) and the mountain of the
Lord of Hosts
the holy
mountain” (VIII. 3, 4). The law was given to Israel on Mount Sinai, where the
sanctuary or divine
dwelling
answers to the maat. Also when Ihuh comes “to judge the world with righteousness,
and the
peoples with
his truth” (Ps. XCVI. 13), that is according to maati in the maat. “Thou shalt
have no other
god but
Ihuh”, in the book assigned to Moses, was preceded ages earlier in the books of
Ma-Shu and
Taht at On by
“Thou shalt have no other god but Huhi the eternal one”, besides whom there was
none
other in the
cult of Atum-Ra. Thus the god Ihuh is one with Atum-Huhi the eternal. Mount
Sinai is one with
Mount Sheni,
whether as the mount of the lions or of turning in the solar orbit; and Moses
is one with
Anhur. The
tabernacle or sanctuary of Ihuh is one with that of Atum-Huhi. The tables of
the law that were
given to
Moses are identical with the tablets of the law in the hall of mati. This taps
once more the
sealed-up source
of “God’s Word”, which was derived from the Egyptian wisdom written in the
books of
Taht and Shu
that were preserved in the great library of On (Annu), where Atum-Huhi was god
the father,
and Iu was
the ever-coming son, the prince of peace in person, the Egyptian Jesus, Iusa,
or Iu-em-hetep.
Most of the
Hebrew commandments are acknowledged and fulfilled by the speaker, who protests
in the
judgment hall
that he has neither said nor done any evil thing against the gods, but the
following
quotations
will show that the Hebrew commandments were compiled directly from the
Egyptian. The
pleadings are
in reply to the commandments which the deceased declares he has kept. The
following
parallel will
briefly indicate how directly the Mosaic commandments were borrowed from the
wisdom of
Egypt:-[Page
681]
Egyptian.
Hebrew.
I have not
blasphemed a god Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in
vain
I have not
committed adultery Thou shalt not commit adultery
I have not
committed theft Thou shalt not steal
I have not
borne false witness (or told lies) in the
tribunal of
truth
Thou shalt
not bear false witness
against thy
neighbour
I am not a
murderer Thou shalt do no murder
Rit. of the
Resurrection, ch.125. Exodus, ch. xx.,
Shu-Anhur,
the prototype of Moses as giver of the law, has been somewhat overlooked as a
god of the
writings in
which the revelation of Ra was made known by him to men. When he is mentioned
in the
Ritual as the
author of writings called “his rules (or laws) and his papyrus”, Renouf
considers this to be an
error of the
scribes, and moots the opinion that the god Taht is meant (Book of the Dead,
ch. 110).
Nevertheless,
Renouf is wrong. Shu is said to work in the abode of the books of Seb, that is,
of earth
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Ancient
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(Rit., ch.
17). This we can identify with the great library at On or Annu. (See Records,
X. 138.) “The
papyrus or
writing, mahit, of Shu” are mentioned in the Ritual when the speaker says, “I
am in unison
with his
successive changes, and his laws (or rules) and his writings” (Rit., ch. 110).
The book of the laws
is the book
of ma or mati, which was presented by the duality of Shu-Anhur and represented
in that of
Moses and
Joshua. Shu is called “truth” (Magic Papyrus, p. 1, line 9). And as is shown by
“the hymn to
the god Shu”,
among the records that were kept in the great temple library or, as it is
called, “the royal
palace at
On”, there were writings ascribed to Shu-Anhur, the lord of truth or mati. It
is said of him, “He
made
hereditary titles” for Ra, “which are in the writings of the lord of Sesennu” —
that is, in the collection
of Taht, here
called “the scribe of the king Ra-Har-Makhu” and these titles were “consigned,
performed,
engraved in
script under the feet of Ra-Har-Makhu”, or beneath the feet of the statue of
the god. Moses
likewise is
the writer of “hereditary titles” for Ihuh. He also fulfils the same rôle as
transmitter of titles in
the book of
Exodus. When he asks for the name of the new divinity “God said to Moses, I am
that I am”.
And he added,
“Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel: I am (Eyeh) hath sent me unto
you. This
is my name
for ever, and this is my memorial for all generations” (Ex. III. 13-16). The
writings of Shu-
Anhur were
preserved at On among the 36,000 books that were traditionally ascribed to
Taht. He wrote
them as the
mouthpiece of Ra, or Atum-Huhi the father of Iu, who was carried into Judea as
Ihuh the god
of the Ius,
Aaiu, or Jews, who brought on the sacred writings that had been “consigned,
performed,
engraved in
script”, and memorized for ever in “the royal palace of On”, or Heliopolis
Magna. Now the
priest named
Osarsiph by Manetho, who was afterwards called Moses, is reputed to have been
born at
On (Annu),
and [Page 682] to have been a priest of the great temple there, the temple of
Atum-Ra-Har-
Makhu, where
the writings were kept, including those in which Ma-Shu had made hereditary
titles for RaHar-
Makhu to be
transmitted from generation to generation for time and eternity. The most
perfect
rendering of
the name “I am” would be “the self-existent”, and in the hymn to the god Shu
Atum-Ra is
designated
“the self-existent” (p. 1, l. 9). Also his other title of Kheper signified “he
who is” in the Egyptian
tongue.
Amongst the subject-matter of the exodus is the revelation of the one god that
was made to
Moses on the
mount, which revelation had previously been made to Anhur. It is to Anhur that
the one god
Ra who is to
supersede all other gods and elemental powers is revealed as Huhi the eternal.
Anhur is
represented
as being the medium of communication betwixt the god and mortals. “His
substance is
blended with
the substance of Ra” as intermediate power. He makes divine law known to men
(Magic
Papyrus). As
it is said, the people present their offerings to the god with Anhur’s own
hands. Moses is
represented
as being the same to Ihuh that Anhur was to Atum-Ra — his medium for
communication with
the people,
the medium that was the human mouthpiece for the god. So the ancestral spirit
that inspires
the Zulu
Inyanga says to the medium, “You will not speak with the people; they will be
told by us
everything
they come to inquire about” (Callaway).
We learn from
the very ancient magical texts that amongst the 36,000 books ascribed to Taht
by tradition
there was a
particular collection known as “The Four Books”. These had the titles of (1)
The Old Book,
(2) The Book
to Destroy Men, (3) The Great Book, (4) The Book to be as God. There was also a
group of
four books
that were astronomical and astrological. Whether these were the same or not,
the “Four
Books” were
in the temple of the sun at Annu or On, where Osarsiph is said to have been a
priest. The
number does
not coincide with that of the Pentateuch. But then the books originally
assigned to Moses
were only
four in number, not five. The wisdom of Egypt, in which Osarsiph was so
profoundly learned,
would
naturally be written upon rolls of papyrus in the library at On, from which it
was carried forth in one
of the exodes
from Egypt. The original nucleus of the Hebrew collection consisted of “the
precepts of the
Pentateuch”
(by which the law was given), “together with their traditional implications”
(Montefiore, C. G.,
Hib. Lect.,
p. 469). This, in a limited or possibly primitive sense, was the Jewish torah.
In Egyptian the
Teruu is a
roll of papyrus and the torah has the form of the papyrus-roll. Also torah,
denotes the
whole law,
and in Egyptian teruu signifies all, entire, the whole.
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There is a
tradition of the assumption of Moses in the so-called apocryphal “Assumptio
Moysis”
(Apocryphal
Literature, vol. II, p. 177). Such a mode of translation bodily does not apply
to any human
being, under
whatsoever name. But it was the way in which Anhur made his exit from the mount
or from
the mouth of
Ra. Anhur is an entirely mythical character, and if he be the prototype of
Moses, it would
seem to
follow that this is the origin of the legend concerning his disappearance on
the mount. The
present
writer does not attempt to fathom the meaning of the mythos in the form of
märchen to which the
[Page 683]
tradition belongs, but the disappearance of Moses from the mount may be taken
as identical
with that of
the god who represented wind and in the solar mythos was the breathing force of
the rising
sun
personified. With the cessation of the breeze, or, if very fierce, the tornado,
Shu-Anhur might be said
to pass away,
as a current saying has it, “like the devil in a high wind”. It is recorded
(Deut. XXXIV. 5) that
Moses died ,
literally “upon the mouth of the Lord” (Ihuh). And Shu-Anhur was the breath of
the Lord. He
was the spirit of Ra as the breathing solar force emaned from the very mouth of
the god, or,
as might be,
he was represented by the panting lion on the mount of dawn. At sunrise on the
mount the
all-embracing,
all-absorbing fires of Ra did veritably swallow up the force of Anhur, who
passed away as
breath from
the mouth of the solar god. The personality of Shu-Anhur is united with that of
Ra, the
supreme lord.
His very substance is blended with the substance of Ra (Magic Papyrus, I. 6),
and is
absorbed into
it as nutriment when he passes away upon the mount or makes his change in
character.
Also there is
a legend of Anhur’s final disappearance from the mount, an occurrence that took
place
during a nine
days’ tempest, and of which Maspero says, “We may here note the most ancient
known
reference to
the tempest whose tumult hid from men the disappearance or apotheosis of kings,
who
ascended
alive into heaven” (Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, Eng. tr., p. 178). Thus
Shu-Anhur as an
elemental
power had represented breathing force with lion-like capacity, the equinoctial
wind, the breeze
of dawn, but
in the solar myth the increase of the twilight current was attributed to the
sun; it was
considered to
be breath of Ra, the lord of all, which died upon the mount of sunrise. This
becomes the
vanishing of
Moses on Mount Pisgah, Alphi-Jehovah, in the Hebrew märchen. In rendering the
fact,
which was
scientific in relation to Ra and Shu at sunrise, without due knowledge, the
Hebrew writer has
apparently
made Jehovah swallow Moses bodily as a human being, although the statement is
somewhat
reticently
made, in causing him to die like breath upon the mouth of the lord. This was
the “burial of
Moses”, and
there need be no wonder that “no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day”.
When Moses
passed away or was dislimned upon that mountain of the Abarim, his rôle as army
leader of
the
Israelites was taken over by the young man Joshua, who answers perfectly to Shu
when the part of
Shu is
carefully discriminated from that of Anhur. Anhur was the uplifter of the
stellar heaven in various
forms — his
“upliftings” are mentioned in the texts — whereas Shu was the supporter of the
sun-god in
the solar
mythos. In the first character he pushes up the heaven with his rod, as
prototype of Moses with
his rod. In
the second he uplifts the solar disk upon the horizon as the servant and
supporter of the great
god Ra. Shu
had been all that Joshua is going to be when he tells the children of Israel to
“put away the
gods which
your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt. But as for me and my house,
we will serve
the Lord” —
the Lord being Ihuh, one with the Egyptian Huhi, the new god Atum-Ra. When Shu
becomes
the leader in
his name of Shu-si-Ra there is a river to be crossed. “I am Shu”, he says, “the
image of Ra”,
“sitting in
the inside of his father’s sacred eye”, or the solar disk. [Page 684]
“I am the
chosen of millions coming out of the lower heaven. When my name is spelt on the
bank of the
river, then
it is dried up”. This in the Hebrew account is Joshua coming to the river
Jordan. After the death
of Moses
“Ihuh spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’s minister, “ saying”, Arise; go
over this Jordan,
thou and all
this people, unto the land which I do give them, even to the children of
Israel” (Joshua. I. 2).
The white
bull was the bull of Shu, who was called the bull, the master of strength. And
according to one
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Ancient
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of the Jewish
märchen, at the conquest of Canaan Joshua rode upon a bull. When they came to
the river
“all Israel
passed over on dry ground”. It is the same with Joshua at the river as with
Shu, at whose name
“spelt on the
bank” the waters dried up for the passage. Shu is the opener of the gates for
egress from
Amenta on
behalf of Ra and the glorified elect who made their exodus from the lower Egypt
of Amenta
pursued by
the Apap-dragon and all the host of darkness. The Osiris thus addresses Shu: “O
thou who
leapest
forth, conductor of the manes and glorified ones from the earth, let the fair
path to the tuat (point
of egress) be
granted to me which is made on behalf of those who are in pain” (Rit., ch.
LXIV) — that is,
on behalf of
the sufferers in the Egypt of the lower world. The earth here mentioned is
Amenta, from
which the
manes and the glorified were conducted first by Anhur to the presence of the
solar god upon
the mount of
glory, and afterwards by Shu on board the solar bark.
Shu became
the harbinger of Ra and leader in the coming forth from lower Egypt considered
as an
astronomical
locality that was afterwards represented to be geographical in the Hebrew
exodus. Thus, in
the round of
night and day Shu-Anhur enters the Amenta at evening to conduct the children of
Ra up
from the
lower Egypt of the mythos. His alter ego, Shu, takes up the leadership upon the
horizon east at
dawn, to end
the journey in the promised land or upper paradise of plenty and perpetual
peace.
The land of
promise on the other side of Jordan is that paradise across the water which was
on the
summit of
Mount Hetep at the pole, hence the circumpolar paradise of the heptanomis, or
heaven in
seven
astronomes. Thus in the book of Joshua the promised land is mapped out and
measured in
accordance
with the astronomical mythology of the heptanomis. When the racial names are
added in
place of the
divine, the seven divisions are called the seven lands of “the Canaanite, the
Hittite, and the
Hivite, and
the Perizzite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Jebusite” (Joshua
III. 10). The final
heaven
attributed to Atum-Ra, as an astronomical formation, was in twelve divisions.
This formation had
been repeated
in the making of Amenta. The previous heaven, considered to be antediluvian,
was in ten
divisions.
These were represented by the ten circles of Ra in the Ritual (ch. 18) and by
the ten divine
domains of
the blessed in the paradise upon the summit of Mount Hetep (Rit. ch. 110). This
celestial
formation was
also represented by the ten tribes that were lost upon the other side of the
waters, and by
the ten sons
of Jacob who preceded the twelve sons of Israel. But the later formation was
repeated when
Moses set a
boundary to the mount and erected [Page 685] twelve pillars, “according to the
twelve tribes
of Israel”
(Ex. XXIV. 4). The same figure of formation is again repeated when Joshua is
commanded to
set up twelve
stones in the midst of the waters, and also in the Gilgal-circle which became
the lodging
place (Joshua
IV. 20) of the Israelites, who were continually on tramp in making the journey
of the manes
through the
subterranean world, which was in twelve sections of space, with the twelve
gates through
which Ra
passes with the blessed on his right hand and the damned upon his left, in
accordance with the
Egyptian rule
of perspective (Book of Hades). In one form of the mythos, then, the Israelites
divide the
promised land
into twelve lots among the twelve tribes. This is in accordance with the
ground-plan of
Amenta, in
which twelve sections of space are shown to be successively enclosed as the
possessions of
the glorified
elect, the chosen people who originate as the children of the sons of Ra,
headed by the
twelve who
reap the harvest-field with Horus in the lower Egypt of Amenta. The gods of
this nether earth
in twelve
divisions are twelve in number. The fields of divine harvest are twelve, the
harvesters are
twelve. The
bearers of the measuring cord are twelve. The lots are also twelve. All being
in accordance
with the
heaven that was mapped out in twelve domains. Thus the land of promise in the
solar mythos
was the
terrestrial paradise of legendary lore. This was the land mapped out in twelve
divisions where
the type of
plenty is the harvest-field of Amenta, and the cultivators are the twelve with
Horus as the
children of
Ra. They formed the twelve colonies altogether under the suzerainty of local
gods, and were
the
prototypes of the twelve tribes called the children of Israel. In the second
stage the promised land is
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Ancient
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that more
ancient circumpolar paradise upon Mount Hetep first mapped out in seven
divisions, where the
water-plants
(aarru) supplied a primeval natural type of plenty. Both forms of the double
paradise have
been
reproduced as Hebrew, one in the book of Exodus, the other in the book of
Joshua. The land that
was to be
inherited by the children of Israel is also described as a form of the
celestial heptanomis which
preceded the
heaven in twelve divisions. Mount Pisgah represents the mountain of Amenta, the
summit
of which
reached up to the sky (Rit., ch. CXLIX). This was the top of attainment for
Moses, whose journey
here comes to
an end midway. But from this point the second upper land of promise might be
seen. This
is the
circumpolar paradise or the celestial city in seven divisions, and in attaining
this upon the stellar
mount of
glory Joshua brings the mythical exodus to its own proper ending.
Hence the men
who were prospecting on behalf of Joshua “went and passed through the land, and
described it
by cities into seven portions in a book” (Joshua XVIII. 9).
The promise
made to Moses (Ex. III. 17) was that the Lord would lead the children of Israel
“up out of the
affliction of
Egypt unto the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the
Perizzite, and
the Hivite
and the Jebusite; unto a land flowing with milk and honey”. The Girgashite is
omitted from this
list of
names. But when Joshua had crossed the Jordan “he came unto Jericho”, and the
men of Jericho
who fought
against Israel are said to be the [Page 686] Amorite, the Perizzite, the
Canaanite, the Hittite,
the
Girgashite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Thus Jericho in itself becomes a form
of the heptanomis in
which the
tribes and totems are but seven in number, corresponding to “the seven portions
in a book”.
This may
account for seven priests encompassing the city seven times upon the seventh
day, blowing
seven times
on seven trumpets of rams-horns in order that the city walls might fall down
flat. Here let it
be remembered
that in the astronomical mythology the localities are primarily celestial
(Joshua XXIV. 11).
The
descriptions point to the heaven thus taken by storm as being a form of the
celestial heptanomis or
upper Egypt
of the seven astronomes — the upper paradise that was indefinitely more ancient
than the
twelve
divisions of the solar heaven established by Ra in his first sovereignty, who
is Atum-Huhi, the
Hebrew Ihuh.
In short, the siege of Jericho as a subject of the astronomical mythology is
identical with
the siege of
seven-circled Troy.
In various
survivals of the self-same mythos there is a Delilah who betrays the city when
it is besieged,
and who
becomes the consort or the ally of the captor. This in the Greek version is
Helen of Troy. We
learn from
Plutarch that in the wars of Sut and Horus, Ta-Urt (Greek Thauris), the
concubine of Sut,
deserted and
came over to the side of Horus, and was pursued by a serpent (of Isis and
Osiris, 19). Ta-
Urt was the
Great Mother in the constellation of the Great Bear, the old harlot of the
heptanomis who
deserted Sut
and joined herself to the solar Sebek-Horus as “the great mother of him who was
married to
his mother”.
Rahab the harlot, who dwelt on the top of the wall in Jericho, the city of the
seven tribes, is
another
survival of the pre-monogamous Great Mother, the whore of later language. Rahab
in the Psalms
and the book
of Job is the crocodile, a symbol, a nickname for Egypt. In Assyrian, rahâbu is
a monster of
the
waters=the crocodile. The crocodile was a type of the old Great Mother Apt or
Ta-Urt, not only in
lower Egypt
(Kheb), but in the upper Egypt where the waters were celestial; and Apt the
goddess passes
into Hathor
as the amorous queen (Ps. LXXXVII. 4, LXXXIX. 10; Job XXVI. 12). The scarlet
signal placed
in the window
by Rahab is of the true typhonian colour, the proper hue of the red dragon or
hippopotamus
— that is, of the old harlot sitting on the waters of heaven (Rev. XVII. 15).
In
conclusion, the children of Israel, under Moses, travel through Amenta. They
take possession of a
land divided
into twelve domains, which the Egyptian manes had already cultivated in the
nether earth as
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Ancient
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a map of
heaven in twelve divisions. Under Joshua they cross the water to take
possession of the
ancient
heptanomis which had been configurated by the Egyptians as the upper
circumpolar paradise.
They are led
to this land flowing with milk and honey by the hornet=the Kamite wasp or bee.
This was the
heaven mapped
out of old by the Egyptians as the pastures of the seven cows who provided
milky
abundance in
the Sekhet-Hetep, or the evergreen meadows of divine Aarru. And it is the Great
Mother,
whether in
her stellar or lunar character as Apt or Hathor in the mount, who plays the
part of traitress and
surrenders
the city to the solar god. [Page 687]
The paradise
looked up to by the most primitive races was a heaven of perpetual plenty. That
type was
preserved by
the Egyptians in the fields of celestial food upon Mount Hetep, but, as before
said, there
was no
unearned increment to be derived from these elysian fields. “I am master
there”, says the
beatified
spirit who has attained his allotment and built his homestead. “I am in glory
there; I eat there; I
plant and I
reap there; I plough there; I take my fill of love”. “I net the ducks and I eat
the dainties”. “I am
united there
to the god Hetep”, the good Osiris, as the deity of plenty and of peace (ch.
110, Renouf). The
Aarru was
their oasis in the desert, well watered, with the sand turned into soil for
seed by ceaseless
human labour,
and transferred into the nether earth or into the upper paradise. But in
transmogrifying
Kamite mythology
into the Semite history, a remarkable omission has been made by the inspired
writers
of God’s
Word. In the Egyptian original the elect people are chosen as the cultivators
of the Aarru fields,
which are
measured out and the allotments made for the express purpose of cultivation.
“Holiness to you,
cultivators”,
says the god Ra. The Egyptians in their lower paradise of plenty reaped the
produce of their
labours, but
they had to earn it individually first. In the Jewish version of the Aarru it
is a land flowing with
milk and
honey, corn, oil, and wine. But there is no demand for work, no thought of
cultivation, or of
earning an
eternal living. On attaining this land of promise they were to enter into an
inheritance prepared
by the
labours of others, with no need to become the cultivators on their own account;
and this position of
the chosen
people as non-cultivators of the soil has been religiously preserved by the
non-agricultural
Jews for this
world and by the Christians for the world to come. Also the Jews have been and
are to-day
the victims
of their misappropriated mythos. The mount was a stone of stumbling in their
path, the rock
on which they
split. Their racial and religious origins are still at war in every meeting of
the Zionists. The
Zion of the
visionaries is based on a celestial foundation. It is Jerusalem the golden;
Jerusalem above,
not to be
confounded with a sacred site in Palestine. In the remotest parts of Africa the
Jews would be
much nearer
“home” than in the Zion localized in Palestine which represented the eternal
city on high,
according to
the Egyptian eschatology. The ideal of the racial Jews is a paradise on earth,
whereas the
religious
ideal was the city in the heavens figured ages earlier on the summit of the
mount, which was
Hetep, the
mount of peace, in Egyptian, and in Hebrew it was Mount Salem, or the later
Jerusalem.
THE SEED OF
YSIRAAL
Only one
mention of the people of Israel occurs by name on all the monuments of Egypt.
This was
discovered a
few years since by Professor Petrie on a stele erected by the King Merenptah
II. Not that
there is any
possibility of identifying these with the Israelites of the biblical exodus.
The “people of
Ysiraal” on
the monument belong to those who were amongst the confederated Nine Bows, the
marauders,
North Africans, the Kheta, the Canaanites, the Northern Syrians, and others
with whom they
are classed.
“Every one that was a marauder hath been subdued by the King Merenptah, who
gives life
like the
sun-god every day”. This inscription gives an account of the Libyan campaign,
and concludes
with the
following description of the triumph of King Merenptah: “Chiefs bend down,
[Page 688] saying,
Peace to
thee; not one of the Nine Bows raises his head. Vanquished are the Tahennu
(North Africans);
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Ancient
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the Khita
(Hittites) are quieted; ravaged is Pa-kanana (Kanun) with all violence; taken
is Askadni
(Askelon?);
seized is Kazmel; Yenu (Yanoh) of the Syrians is made as though it had not
existed; the
people of
Ysiraal is spoiled — it hath no seed (left); Syria has become as widows of
Egypt; all lands
together are
in peace (Petrie, Contemp. Review, May, 1896). The people of Ysiraal (Israel)
are here
included,
together with the Syrians, and amongst the confederated ”Nine Bows” who made
continual
incursions
into Egypt as invaders and marauders, and who are spoken of as having been
exterminated.
Hence it is
said, “The people of Ysiraal is spoiled; it hath no seed”. But there is nothing
whatever in the
inscription
of King Merenptah corresponding to or corroborative of the biblical story of
the Israelites in the
land of Egypt
or their exodus into the land of Canaan. The campaign against the Libyan
confederacy had
been
undertaken by Merenptah, who, according to the inscription, was born as the
destined means of
revenging the
invasion of Egypt by the Nine Bow barbarians. In proclaiming the triumph of the
monarch
the inscription
says, “Every one that was a marauder hath been subdued by the King Merenptah”.
The
people of
Ysiraal in this inscription are identified by the Pharaoh with the nomads of
the Edomite Shasu
or shepherds,
and are classed by him with the confederate marauders who invaded Egypt with
the Libu,
and were
defeated with huge slaughter at the battle of Procepis (Pa-ar-shep, which is
also recorded on
the
monuments. They were a tribe or totemic community of cattle-keepers, one of
“the tribes of the
Shasu from
the land of Aduma” who went down into Egypt in search of grazing ground to find
sustenance
for their
herds in the eastern region of the Delta. At this very time, when the people of
Ysiraal and their
seed were
being “wiped out” or annihilated as the Israelites in Syria, there was an
exodus of the Edomite
Shasu which
has been pressed into the service of false theory on behalf of biblical
“history”. These tribes
had
considered the eastern region of the Delta, as far as Zoan, to be their own possession,
until they
were driven
out by Seti I. Now they bestirred themselves anew, under Meneptah II
(Merenptah), but “in a
manner alike
peaceful and loyal”. “As faithful subjects of Egypt, they asked for a passage
through the
border
fortress of Khetam in the land of Thuku (Heb. Succoth), in order that they
might find sustenance
for
themselves and their herds in the rich pasture-lands of the lake districts
about the city of Pa-Tum
(Pithom)”
(Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., one vol., p. 317). An Egyptian
official makes the
following
report on the subject. He says: “Another matter for the satisfaction of my
master’s heart: we
have carried
into effect the passage of the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma
(Edom) from the
fortress
(Khetam) of Merenptah-Hetephima, which is situated in Thuku (Succoth), to the
lakes of the city
Pa-Tum, of
Merenptah-Hetephima, which are situated in the land of Thuku, in order to feed
themselves
and to feed
their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who is there a beneficent sun for
all peoples. In
the year 8 .
. . Sut, I caused them to be conducted (according to the list of the days on
which the fortress
was opened
for their passage)”. (Brugsch, citing Pap. Anastasi; 6). Merenptah also had his
royal seat in
the city of
Ramses. Here we meet with the field of Zoan and the store-cities of Pithom and
Ramses which
have been
imported into the second book of Moses, and futile efforts have been made to
show that this
record
corroborated the biblical version of the exodus. But in this exodus we find the
Shasu or shepherds
are peaceful
and loyal people, faithful subjects of the Pharaoh, who are politely conducted
from the land
of Edom
through the fortress (Khetam) to the lake-country of Succoth (or Thuku), the
first encampment
assigned to
the Israelites, where they would find abundance of food and fodder for
themselves and their
flocks and
herds instead of wandering in the wilderness for forty years, according to the
other story. At
the same
time, or thereabouts, the people of Ysiraal in Syria were cut up root and
branch by Merenptah.
The passage
through the land of Thuku, Hebrew Succoth, here described is apparently the
route
adopted by
those who converted the “coming forth” from Amenta into the biblical exodus
from Egypt, and
it tends to
affiliate the cattle-keepers in the land of Goshen to the nomadic tribes of the
Edomite Shasu
(Gen. XLVI.
32). But we shall not overtake the children of Israel as an ethnological entity
on this line of
route, nor as
the people who perish by the million in the wilderness of sand that formed the
land of
graves in the
desert domain of Sekari. For that we shall have to “turn back” and encamp
before Pi-hahiroth,
and pass
through the mouth of the cleft into the wilderness of Amenta. But it is useless
trying any
further to
confuse the Jewish exodus with the [Page 689] mythical “coming forth” from the
lower Egypt of
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Amenta, with
intent to reestablish a falsely-bottomed history. The eruption of the Libyans
and their
confederated
invaders in the time of Merenptah is a matter of historic fact. That they were
vanquished
and driven
back by Merenptah is equally historical. They at least made no triumphant
exodus from Egypt
as 600,000
fighting men, for they never got there, but were fatally defeated on the
borders of the land.
The only
people, then, known by the name of Israel to the Egyptian monuments are the
people of Ysiraal
who had their
very seed destroyed, as claimed by the Pharaoh beloved of Ptah. These can be
identified
as a North
Syrian contingent of fighting men who had joined the Libyans, or the old
confederation of the
Nine Bows, in
their attacks on Egypt, and were hunted back in wreck and ruin, if not entirely
destroyed,
by Merenptah,
the so-called “Pharaoh of the exodus”. Thus, if these were the same people as
those of
the Hebrew
exodus, the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt would be turned into the
deliverance of
Egypt itself
from the Libyan confederacy of raiding barbarians amongst whom the Israelites
were a hardly
distinguishable
unit. What then was “the seed of Israel” as an ethnological entity in the eyes
of
Merenptah, or
the writer of his inscription? They fought as mercenaries and marauders for the
Libyan
king, who had
made war on Egypt collectively, and were driven backward all together in one
common,
overwhelming
rout. They came and went, and left no record of their past. Israel in Syria was
not Israel in
Egypt. Israel
in Egypt is not an ethnical entity, but the children of Ra in the lower Egypt
of Amenta, who
are entirely
mythical.
THE TITLE OF
PHARAOH
By the bye,
so far as hitherto known, the name of “Pharaoh” is only found in Hebrew. Some
Egyptologists
derive it
from Par-ao, the great house. The present writer is of opinion that this title
of the Ra was more
probably
derived from Paru the lion than from Para the house. The Pharaoh personated the
lion, or the
lion-god, and
sometimes wore the lion’s tail as the emblem of royalty. Then he was Paru as
the lion and
the hak as
ruler. Thus the king as lion-ruler would be the Paruhak=Pharaoh. Moreover, and
this seems
conclusive,
the lion-god is addressed as the god Paru (Rit., ch. 162), and the full
spelling of the name
(Paruhak) is
extant in the Ritual. In an address to Sekhet (ch. 164) the goddess is called
the divine
mother of
Parhakasa, who is the royal wife of Paruhak-Khepera, the king as lion-ruler or
Pharaoh.
Probably the
Paruhak originated with Kheper-Ptah and his consort Sekhet, who were the
parents of the
lion-god
Atum-Ra, and therefore of Ihuh in Israel. The chapter in which the lion-ruler
appears as the
Paruhak is
one of the most ancient in the Ritual. It is said to have been written partly
if not entirely in the
language of
the blacks (the Nahsi) and the Antiu of Nubia (ch. 164), which takes us beyond
Egypt as now
known to the
country of Sut-Nahsi, whence the Egyptians came in their course of descent from
the
equatorial
regions where they had dwelt in a land of equal day and night, the prototype of
their double
earth and of
time in Amenta. We find from chapter 162 that this lion of the double force,
the Paruhak, is
invoked as
the protector of his people. His whip is used against their enemies. He is
saluted as the lion of
the double
power who answers prayer and comes to those that call upon him and invoke him
as the
“protector of
the wretched against the oppressor” (Rit., 162). These were the manes in
Amenta. A
corroboration
of this origin of the Pharaonic name may be found in Ezekiel (XXXII. 2): “Son
of man, take
up a
lamentation for the Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou was likened
unto a young lion of
the nations”.
Which he was as the lion-ruler Paruhak.
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BOOK 11 of 12
EGYPTIAN
WISDOM IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN THE DIVINE
[Page 690]THE
process of making Scripture history from the Egypto-gnostic remains, without
the gnosis or
science of
the ancient wisdom, may be seen approaching its climax in the Book of
Revelation attributed
to John the
divine.
It has been
commonly assumed that this book constituted an historic link between the Old
Testament and
the New; but
the Sarkolatrae, or worshippers of the word made flesh in one historic form of
personality,
the
carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ, have never yet discovered what the
revelation was intended
to reveal. It
has been taken as a supplement to the Gospels as if the history of Jesus had
been continued
into the
wedded life after the marriage of the bride with the lamb, and that they dwelt
together ever after
in that new
Jerusalem which came “down out of heaven” “as a bride adorned for her husband,”
when the
tabernacle of
God which was to dwell with man took the place of the old Jerusalem that was
destroyed
by the
Romans. The present contention is that the book is and always has been
inexplicable because it
was based
upon the symbolism of the Egyptian astronomical mythology without the gnosis,
or “meaning
which hath
wisdom,” that is absolutely necessary for an explanation of its subject-matter;
and because
the débris of
the ancient wisdom has been turned to account as data for pre-Christian
prophecy that was
supposed to
have had its fulfilment in Christian history.
For example,
the lamb alone has power to open the book of seven seals. His power comprised
the
powers of the
“seven spirits of God”, the primordial seven. And, as represented
astronomically, when the
vernal
equinox passed from the sign of Taurus into the sign of Aries the son of God
was imaged as a
lamb, instead
of the earlier calf or still earlier lion; thenceforth his was the power and
the glory and the
majesty, and
his the book of life then newly-opened, in the cycle of precession for another
2,155 years.
But in the
Book of Revelation the drama of the mysteries has been mistaken for human
history, and a
mythical
catastrophe for the actual ending of the world. The book as it stands has no
intrinsic value and
very little
meaning until the fragments of ancient lore have been collated, correlated, and
compared with
the original
mythos and eschatology of Egypt.
To some extent
we are now able to identify the wisdom of Egypt [Page 691] in the Book of
Revelation and
to “make
sense” of the apocalyptic visions, so long and so erroneously assumed to have
been unveiled
to a
Christian named John in the isle of Patmos, for the first time since the
ancient astronomy was made
nonsense of
in the futile and fatuous attempt to turn the hidden wisdom into prophecy
intended to prove
the truth of
a spurious history.
The
apocalypse of John might be described as “scenes and characters from the
mysteries of Taht-Aan”,
who was
literally Aan=John, the divine penman. This was the sacred scribe to whom the
36,000 books or
papyrus-rolls
were attributed by tradition. In short, Taht-Aan was the pre-Christian John the
divine. His
typical bird,
the ibis, is still known in Egypt by the name of John. His other zootype, the
kaf-ape, is Aan by
name. The
name of Aani signifies the saluter. This is the character personalized in John.
Speaking of the
angel, he
says: “And when I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead”. “And when I heard
and saw, I fell
down to
worship before the feet of the angel”. To salute was a primitive mode of
worshipping; hence the
ape, Aan, was
an ideographic figure of the saluter. The object of the present section, then,
is to show that
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the matter of
“revelation” was derived from the Egyptian astronomical mythology and
eschatology, and
that the
Jesus of this book is one with Iu, the su or son of Atum-Ra, who was portrayed
as the divine man
and bringer
of peace to earth a many thousand years ago. The prototype of Patmos is to be
seen in the
Ritual (ch.
175). John is in the isle of Patmos, “for the Word of God and the testimony of
Jesus”. He
writes of the
god who died and is alive again, saying, “Behold he cometh with clouds; and
every eye shall
see him” “and
they which pierced him” are to mourn (I. 7). To see how ancient this is, let us
turn to the
175th chapter
of the Ritual of the Resurrection. It is “the chapter of not dying a second
death”. The divine
sufferer is
thus addressed: “Decree this, O Tum, that if I behold thy face I shall not be
pained by thy
sufferings”.
This Tum decrees. The great gods have given him the supremacy, and he will
reign “on his
throne in the
isle of flame for eternities of eternities” (Naville, Rit., ch. 175).
The mission
of Taht-Aan, the saluter of Horus, could not be better stated than in the words
of John the
divine
concerning the Christ of the gnosis called the Word. “That which was from the
beginning, that
which we have
heard, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life
(and the
life was
manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life
eternal which
was with the
Father, and was manifested unto us); yea, and our fellowship is with the
Father, and with his
Son Jesus
Christ: and these things we write that our joy may be fulfilled” (1st Ep. John
I. 1-4). Taht-Aan
had indeed
beheld and heard and handled “the Word of eternal life” manifested in Horus or
Jesus, the
ever-coming
son, for, as bearer of the symbolic Utat, he carried Horus in his hands and
held him aloft as
the true
light of the world, and the symbolic likeness of a soul in human nature that
was begotten by Ra,
the holy
spirit and the father in heaven. Such was the revelation of Tehuti-Aan or
Taht-Hermes. The
position of
Aan, the divine scribe, in relation to Horus, the only-begotten son of God, is
repeated on
behalf of
John in the Gospel. It is in the character of Taht-Aan that “there came a man,
sent from [Page
692]God,
whose name was John”. The same came for witness of the light. He was not the
light, but came
that he might
bear witness of the light (ch. I), as did Taht-Aan, who carries the Eye of
Horus in his hands
and testifies
that Horus is the true light of the world, as son of Ra the solar god, and of
the holy spirit in
the
eschatology. John likewise gives his personal testimony, not without hard
swearing, regarding “that
which was
from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our
eyes, and
our hands
handled, concerning the Word”. But the testimony of Taht-Aan concerning the
Word or logos
as Horus was
far anterior and just as personal. Moreover, he handled it by carrying in his
hands the eye
of light, the
talismanic maatkheru, and the papyrus-roll or book of life.
The Ritual is
the book which contains the divine words that bring about the resurrection to
the glory of
eternal life.
It is a book of the mysteries in which the revelation was dramatically enacted.
As before said,
the chief
revelation made by Aan, as we have it in the now recovered Book of the Dead, is
made by the
father in
heaven on behalf of Horus, the divine son on earth and in Amenta. Horus as the
Word gives
voice to the
decrees which Ra hath spoken in heaven. In his form of the divine son Horus
executes those
decrees, and
Taht-Aan, the giver of the written words (Rit., ch. 151A), is the recorder of
the decrees for
human use. It
is announced in the opening chapter of the Ritual that Ra, the holy spirit,
“issued the
mandate which
Taht-Aan hath executed” (ch. 1, Renouf). This was the revelation made by the
father in
heaven as
testifier to Horus the son who is the “word made truth” in the books of Aan. It
is the same
opening in
the Book of Revelation. The mandate is divinely given to John that he shall
write “the
revelation of
Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants”, and John, like
Aan, bears
“witness of
the word of God”, which was primarily personalized in Iu as the son of Ptah at
Memphis.
The
revelation of Taht-Aan in the Ritual begins with the resurrection or coming
forth in Amenta from the
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life on
earth. The opening chapters contain the words which bring about the
resurrection and the glory,
the recorder
of which is Taht-Aan. It is Aan, as writer, who effects the triumph of Osiris
over his
adversaries
on the day of weighing words, or on the judgment day. “Ra issued the command to
Aan that
he should
effect the triumph of Osiris against his adversaries, and the command is what
Aan hath
executed” in
writing the Ritual (ch. 1). The Revelation of John is termed “the Revelation of
Jesus Christ,
which God
gave him to show unto his servants; and he sent and signified it by his angel
unto his servant
John, who
bore witness of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, of all
things that he saw”
(Rev. I. 1,
2). Jesus is accompanied by the seven great spirits whose place is before the
throne of God.
As Egyptian
these were the seven servants or seshu of Horus. Thus “the Revelation of Jesus
Christ” was
given to John
by God the Father “to show unto his servants”, the first of whom are the seven
spirits which
are before
his throne. This is the same as the revelation of Horus that was given him by
Ra to be written
down by
Taht-Aan, the scribe of the gods. Therefore we hold that John the divine, as
seer in the isle of
Patmos, is a
form of Aan (or Taht) upon the Mount of Glory in the [Page 693] Isle of Flame.
Not only are
the seven
seshus of Horus given to Jesus as his servants in Revelation; they are also
grouped around
him in their
various characters by name, as (1) the seven spirits of God; (2) the seven as
spirits of fire; (3)
the seven as
stars; (4) the seven as eyes; (5) the seven as golden lampstands; (6) the seven
ruling
powers, as
heads of the dragon; (7) the seven as angels of the seven churches.
Thus the book
ascribed to John the divine purports to contain “the Revelation of Jesus
Christ”=Horus,
that was
given him by God the Father to show unto his “bond-servants”, and these
bond-servants answer
to the seshu
or servants of Horus in the original scripture. The subject-matter of this
revelation is sent by
Jesus to “his
servant John, who bore witness of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus
Christ” to
be set forth
as a prophecy of things about to happen that were seen by him in vision; but
which had been
unfolded by
the mystery-teachers of the heavens in an indefinitely earlier time, and in
accordance with
the gnosis by
means of which alone it could be understood.
For the
Hebrew versions of the astronomical mythology in Revelation and in the Book of
Enoch could not
have been
comprehended while the world lasts without the restitution of the Egyptian
original as gloss
and guide.
Enoch, like John, was in the spirit. His internal sight was opened, and he
beheld a vision
which was in
the heavens. But his vision was admittedly astronomical. In it he “beheld the
secrets of the
heavens and
of paradise according to its divisions” (ch. 41). The record of his visions is
called “the book
of the
revolutions of the luminaries of heaven”; and is said to contain “the entire
account of the world for
ever, until a
new work shall be effected, which will be eternal” (ch. 71). Enoch says, “I
beheld the ancient
of days,
whose head was like white wool, and with him another whose countenance
resembled that of
man”, and who
is called the “Son of Man” in contradistinction to the “son of the woman” (ch.
46). “I beheld
the ancient
of days, while he sat upon the throne of his glory, and the book of the living
was opened in his
presence, and
while all the powers which were above the heavens stood armed and before him”
(ch. 47,
3). Enoch was
“elevated aloft to heaven”. He saw the new Jerusalem. It was a spacious
habitation built
with stones
of crystal, with walls and pavement all of crystal. He saw that the new heaven
contained an
exalted
throne, the appearance of which was like that of frost. To look upon it was
impossible. One great
in glory sat
upon it, whose robe was brighter than the sun, and whiter than the snow. No
mortal could
behold him.
“Then the Lord with his mouth called me, saying, Approach hither, Enoch, at my
holy word”
(ch. 14) He
sees the giants who had been the watchers in heaven as rulers of the seven colossal
constellations
of the heptanomis in “their beginning and primary foundation” (ch. 15). Seven
watchers are
called up for
judgment, and when tried are found to have been unfaithful to their trust
because they came
not in their
proper season. They are judged, found guilty, and cast down into the flaming
abyss like the
seven
mountains overthrown in Revelation.
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There is also
another great judgment day commemorated in the [Page 694] Book of Enoch. This
is the
judgment of
the seventy. Enoch says, “I saw the throne erected in a delectable land. Upon
this sat the
Lord of the
sheep, who received all the sealed books, which were opened before Him. Then
the Lord
called the
first seven white ones, saying, Take those seventy shepherds; and behold, I saw
them all
bound, and
all standing before Him. First came on the trial of the stars. Then the seventy
shepherds were
judged, and,
being found guilty, were thrust into the flaming abyss into which the primary
seven had been
previously
plunged” (Enoch, ch. 89). The seventy were rulers, angels, princes, watchers,
timekeepers,
here called
shepherds in a heaven of ten divisions, which preceded the twelve and the
seventy-two. This
is the heaven
of the Ritual, attained by spirits perfected upon the mount of glory; the
paradise of peace
upon the
summit of Mount Hetep at the “Atlantean pole” consisting of ten divine domains
which answer in
the
eschatology to the ten islands or celestial nomes in the Astronomy. Thus, it is
apparent that a great
judgment of
Maat upon the mount, as represented in the Ritual, was uttered in or at the end
of the
heaven in ten
divisions. And this had previously taken place when the seven rulers were
overthrown, and
the heaven in
seven divisions passed away.
The day, or a
day of judgment, was periodic, like the deluge. It was the ending of a time, an
age or aeon,
sometimes
called “the ending of the world” by those who were ignorant of the
sign-language. It was but
an ending of
the world, according to the astronomical mythology, when the time had come for
“the dead
to be judged”
and for “them that destroy the earth” to be exterminated like the Sebau in the
Ritual. This
ending was
also announced by “a great earthquake, when a tenth part of the city fell” (ch.
11, 13). There
was a
judgment annually in the solar mythos. This is still celebrated yearly by the
Jews: the same
assizes that
were held each year or periodically in the Egyptian great hall of dual justice.
But the drama
appears so
tremendous in the Book of Revelation because the period ending is on the scale
of a great
year. It is
not the ending of the world, but of a great year of the world. It is the day of
doom, the “time for
the dead to
be judged”, upon the hugest scale (11, 18). The last great day of judgment is
known to all the
genuine books
of wisdom commonly called apocryphal, but the nature and mode of judgment were
only
made known to
the initiated in the mysteries. The great judgment of all, like the great
“deluge of all”, was
held at the
end of the great year of all, in the cycle of precession. At the termination of
this vast period it
was the
Judgment Day. Then followed the conflagration by fire or the catastrophe by
water, or the
subsidence of
the mountains, islands, nomes, provinces and other types of the Heptanomis; or
the
overwhelming
deluge of the pole. The Revelation of John and of Enoch both preserved a
fragmentary
version of
the drama ascribed to Taht-Aan as the mysteries of Amenta, such as: the mystery
of the Great
Mother who
sat on the celestial waters; the mystery of the dragon, with seven heads and
ten horns, upon
which the
woman rode; the mystery of the seven stars; the mystery of the first-born from
the dead who
rose again as
the faithful and true witness on behalf of God the Father. [Page 695]
In the first
place, the subject of Revelation was not derived from the canonical gospels.
The fundamental
matter
existed ages on ages earlier. The cult of the lamb and the bride is at least as
old in the
astronomical
mythology as the time when the vernal equinox entered the sign of Aries, and
the lamb of
Sebek
succeeded the calf of Horus on the mount as the type of sacrifice in the cult
of the Sebek-heteps
in Egypt
(Nat. Genesis). The doctrinal teaching of the mysteries is also partially
apparent in Revelation
and in the
other writings ascribed to “John”. A fragment of the genuine pre-Christian
gnosis previously
cited is
retained almost intact in the First Epistle of John, who says of Jesus the
Christ, “This is He that
came by water
and blood, not in the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it
is the Spirit
that beareth
witness, because the Spirit is the Truth, for there are Three who bear witness,
the Spirit, and
the Water and
the Blood; and the three agree in one” (1 John 5, 6, 7, 8). After the poor
pitiful apologetics
of the
Patristic obfuscators in this, as in a myriad instances, it is a comfort to touch
the truth upon
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Egyptian
ground. Horus came by water, as the child of the mother and bringer of food,
when he was
represented
by the papyrus-shoot, or by Ichthus, the fish of the inundation. He also came
by blood as the
incarnate
mortal child of Isis. Lastly, in his second advent, Horus or Iusa came in the
spirit as the only-
begotten son
of Atum-Ra, the holy spirit, who was the father of spirits in the Egyptian eschatology.
In Revelation
it is said, “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life”
(Rev. II. 10). The
crown of
Horus was the crown of life that was the gift of his father Tum. Horus was lord
of the diadem.
Through him
the deceased is made master of the double crown. The Son of Man has on his head
a
golden crown
(Rev. XIV. 14). The double crown worn by Horus of the kingly countenance is
magnified
into many
crowns upon the head of the Logos or “word of God” in Revelation (XIX. 12). It
was Atum who
conferred the
crown of triumph on the faithful followers of that example which was set before
them by his
son. “Thy
father Tum hath prepared for thee this beautiful crown of triumph, the living
diadem which the
gods love,
that thou mayst live for ever” (ch. 19, Renouf). Deceased, in presence of the
great cycle of the
gods, is the
“great one who seeketh the crown” (ch. 133). “He followeth Shu and calleth for
the crown”
(ch. 131).
“He arriveth at the Aged one, at the confines of the mount of glory, and the
crown awaiteth him.
The Osiris
raiseth it up” (ch. 131). This crown of life was always in view, not only to
the mind’s eye; it was
also figured
as an object-picture to the climbers up the mount of glory. Probably our Corona
Borealis is
an extant
representative of the ancient constellation that was imaged as the crown,
which, when figured
in the stars
that never set, was a likeness of the eternal diadem that was conferred on
those who had
attained the
mount of glory. It was an Egyptian practice to place a floral crown upon the
mummy in the
sheta or
coffin. The mummy of Aahmes I, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, was
found to have been
garlanded
with roses for its burial. The “chapter of the crown of triumph” (Rit., ch. 19)
shows the
continuity of
the custom in the nether-world, where the [Page 696] garland of earth becomes
the crown of
triumph for
eternal wear. In the Ritual the judgment is designated that of the clothed and
the naked. The
righteous are
clothed in the white robe of the worthy by the hands of Taht, and the wicked
are
synonymous
with the naked in antithesis to those who are the clothed. There is a comment
on this in
Revelation,
“Blessed is he who watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and
they see his
shame” (Rev.
XVI. 15). The ransomed spirits in the Ritual who are redeemed from the mummy
condition
and all the
ills of the corruptible flesh put on the pure white robe of righteousness,
called the vesture of
truth, which
is given to them by Taht for their entrance into and coming forth from the boat
of the sun. And
being
assimilated to Horus, who fought his battle against Sut with a branch of palm,
the symbol of
victorious
renewal of life, the righteous also have the branch of palm given to them as
typical of their
conquest over
death and Hades. The crown of triumph and eternal life, which is called the
crown of
Makheru as an
emblem of the word made truth, is placed by Atum on the brows of those who are
justified
because they
were faithful unto death and thus have won the crown of life, to live for ever
with their God
in heaven
since they lived for God, for truth, for right, for justice, and humanity, on
earth (Rit., ch. 19,
1-3). In one
chapter of the Ritual it is said of the deceased, “The mouth of N has been
thirsty; but he will
never hunger
nor thirst any more; for Osiris-Châs delivers him and does away with hunger”.
In Revelation
it is said
“they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for the lamb which is in
the midst of the
throne shall
be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of the waters of life”
(Rev. VII. 17).
These take
the place of the water-spring and the vases in the Ritual (ch. 178). A second
death is spoken
of several
times, called the “Extinction of the Adversaries of the Inviolate God”, “on the
night when
judgment was
passed on those who are no more” (ch. 18). Those who suffer the second death
are also
spoken of as
those who are buried for ever. That is, they have no part in the resurrection
from Amenta.
The deceased
says in ch. 42 “I am he who dieth not a second time”. In the rubric to ch. 135
it is said of
the defunct
“he dieth not a second time in the nether-world”. In Revelation (XX) it is
proclaimed that the
part of the
condemned guilty shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone;
which is the second
death. This,
in the Ritual, is the lake or tank of flame in which the evil Sebau and the
enemies of the good
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Ancient
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being are
annihilated or extinguished for ever.
On the
judgment day, in the Ritual, those that overcame are those who passed in
triumph through the
searching
examination of the judgment-hall. As we read in Revelation, “he that hath an
ear, let him hear
what the
spirit saith. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna,
and I will give him a
white stone,
and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that
receiveth it” (ch.
2,. 17). This
was given to the initiate both in the totemic ceremonies and religious
mysteries. In the
mysteries of
Amenta a white stone, or “a pillar of crystal” is given to the initiate. As he
comes forth in
triumph from
the examination he is asked what the judges have awarded him, and he replies “a
flame of
[Page 697]
fire and a pillar of crystal” (ch. 125). It is said of the Lord and his
servants “his name shall be
upon their
foreheads”. In the Ritual “the name of Ra is upon the Osiris (ch. 130), and his
token of honour
is on his
mouth”. This is said in the book of life, which is here called “the book by
which the soul is made
to live for
ever”. It is also said that the Osiris has been initiated in the mysteries, but
he “hath not
repeated what
he hath heard in the house of the God who hideth his face” (Rit., ch. 133). He
keeps the
secret
sacredly. But the original book of life was no mere volume in which a name
might be written. The
words of
power in the Ritual were derived from the Holy Spirit itself by Horus, and
inscribed by Taht for
human use.
These divine words were to be made truth in the life lived on earth, so that
the spirit, when it
entered the
hall of judgment, was, as it were, its own book of life, written for the
all-seeing eye. It did not
live because
Osiris died, but because the divine words or immortal seed had quickened and
taken root,
and been
fulfilled=made truth in the individual human life (Rit., ch. 94) as the gnosis
of Salvation. In
Revelation we
read of the voice which was heard from heaven, “I heard it again speaking with
me, and
saying, ‘Go!
take the book which is open in the hand of the angel that standeth upon the sea
and upon
the earth.’
And I went unto the angel, saying unto him that he should give me the little
book. And he saith
unto me,
‘Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth
it shall be sweet as
honey.’ And I
took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my
mouth sweet as
honey; and
when I had eaten it, my belly was made bitter” (Rev. X. 8-11). A mode of
obtaining knowledge
by swallowing
the book was also employed by Ptah-Nefer-Ka in the Egyptian “Tale of Setnau”.
“He
placed a new
piece of papyrus before him. He copied each word which was on the roll. He had
it
dissolved in
water. When he saw it dissolved he drank it. He (then) knew all that it
contained” (Records,
vol. IV, p.
138). In the original rendering the book of life was figuratively the food of
soul. In the Hebrew
version the
book of life is turned into an edible and eaten actually as a result of
literalising the ancient
gnosis. It
was not a man named Jesus who was crucified in Egypt as the Lord (Rev. XI. 8).
These are the
mysteries of
Amenta, and the Egypt signified is the Egypt of that nether-world. It is the
place of burial in
the sandy
realm of Sekari that will account for the streets that were choked with dead
bodies. The lord
who was
crucified in that Egypt was Ptah-Sekari, in the cult of Memphis, Osiris in the
religion of Abydos
and Iu at
Annu. The “crucified” belongs to a later terminology. The cross as Christian
was preceded by
the Tat; the
cross of Ptah or of Osiris-Tat — the god who was immanent in the wood or tree
of the cross,
and who gave
up his life periodically in or on the cross as the sustainer of the universe.
In the mysteries
of Amenta,
the Tat-cross was annually overthrown and re-erected as the symbol of
salvation; and it was
there the
Lord was crucified in Egypt. A brief synopsis will suffice to show that the
Book of Revelation
contains a
version of the astronomical mythology which was derived from the Egyptian
wisdom. The
vanishing
heaven is the celestial heptanomis that was formed in seven astronomes, on
seven hills, or
seven
islands, which [Page 698] sank and passed away like the lost Atlantis in the
last great deluge of all.
The most
ancient genetrix is reproduced as the great harlot. She is the beast that sat
upon the waters as
a pregnant
hippopotamus. Her seven “sons of the thigh” are here as the seven kings who
were made
drunken with
the cup of her fornication or promiscuous sexual intercourse. These, as powers,
are the
seven heads
of the scarlet-coloured beast or solar dragon upon which the woman rode. By a
change of
type, the
scarlet-coloured beast becomes the “Scarlet Lady” of later theology; the woman
in red being
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Ancient
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substituted
for the red water-cow. The Great Mother is now denounced as the great whore
living in
adultery with
her own children who originated in the seven elemental powers, to pass through
several
phases of
phenomena as the seven with Anup, with Ptah, with Horus, or with Jesus and with
Ra. In
Revelation
the mother of mystery is called “Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and
of abominations
of the
earth”, who has the name of mystery written on her forehead (XVII. 5). But
there was an earlier
Babylon in
Egypt, known to the secret wisdom, which is traditionally identified with the
locality of Coptos,
nominally the
seat of Kep, the Kamite mother of the mysteries. The mother of mystery did not
originate
with the
scarlet woman of Babylon (nor as the red rag of the Protestants), although the
title of the Great
Harlot was
applied to her also, who was the mother of harlots and to whom the
maiden-tributes were
religiously
furnished in that city. Hers is a figure of unknown antiquity in the
astronomical mythology,
which was
constellated as the red hippopotamus that preceded the Great Bear. The red
hippopotamus
(Apt) had
already become the scarlet lady in the Ritual. Hence the Great Mother, as
Sekhet-Bast, who is
higher than
all the gods, and is the only one who stands above her father, is called the
lady of the
scarlet-coloured
garment (Rit., ch. 164, Naville). The Kamite Constellation of the “birthplace”
may also
serve to show
cause why the “great harlot” should have been abused so badly in the Book of
Revelation.
The creatory
of the Great Mother was depicted in the sign of the meshken to indicate the
place of
bringing
forth by the cow of heaven whose “thigh” is the emblem of great magical power
in the
hieroglyphics.
The mother of mystery also carries “in her hand a golden cup full of
abominations, even
the unclean
things of her fornication” (XVII. 4), such as the mystery of fecundation by
water, which was
the primitive
mystery of Kep. This was symbolised in Egypt by the water-vase, and
constellated in the
sign of
Krater, the urn of the inundation. It has been shown that the gods of the
Egyptian mythology
originated in
seven elemental forces that were born of earth, the mother of life, and who
were then
continued in
a variety of characters as the primordial seven powers. These are reproduced as
the
progeny of
the mother-earth, where they are called “the kings of the earth” over whom “the
first-born of
the dead” is
to become the ruler (I. 5) as Jesus in the Book of Revelation, the same as
Horus (or Iu) in
the Ritual,
the god; “who giveth light by means of his own body” (ch. 83). The astronomical
mythology
was taught in
mysteries by the mystery teachers of the heavens. One of the chief of these was
“the
mystery of
the seven stars” ; the seven that are described in the Ritual as “the seven
glorious ones, [Page
699] “the
seven spirits of fire”, “the seven great spirits”, who are also termed “the
lords of eternity”. As
never-setting
stars the seven were beyond the bounds of time; hence they became the witnesses
for
eternal
continuity. Thus seven stars that never set were made a group of witnesses for
the eternal in the
eschatology.
These in the Book of Revelation are the seven spirits of God, the seven spirits
of fire, the
seven eyes,
the seven golden lamps, or lampstands; as variously typified “before the
throne” on the
celestial
summit.
Certain
deities in the Ritual are called the Khabsu gods of light, or of the lamp. When
the risen Osiris
passes over
heaven unto the west, it is said the Khabsu gods of the lamp rise up to greet
him with their
acclamations.
“Acclamation cometh from the mount of glory, and greeting from the lines of
measurement”
(Rit., ch.
130 and 133). This is when the light arises in Kher-Aba and the child, “he of the
strong cord”, is
re-born upon
the mount of resurrection (ch. 136A). The number is not directly given in the
“Book of the
Dead”. But
the gods of the lamp are obviously reproduced in “Revelation” as the spirits of
the golden
lampstands,
whether as the group of seven or as the “two witnesses”, which are “the two
olive trees and
the two
lampstands standing before the lord of the earth” (Rev. XI. 4). The word Khabsu
is the name for a
lamp, but, in
the present instance, the determinative shows that a heavenly body is meant.
Also, if a
plausible
correction, made by Renouf, be allowed, there were Khabsu trees upon the mount
of glory as
well as
deities of the lamp. Khabsu is the well-known name of a sacred tree (Renouf,
Rit., ch. 133, Note
4). This may
be compared with the two olive trees in Revelation, which were also two
lampstands, as the
two witnesses
whom we shall identify with Anup the stellar god upon his mountain, and
Taht-Aan as the
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lunar lamp of
Ra. Moreover, the word Khabsu signifies the soul or spirit as well as the star.
Hence it is
probable that
the seven stars called spirits, the spirits of God, and spirits of fire, were
represented by the
seven Khabsu
stars, or lamps, which were held in the hand of the young solar god as head of
the seven,
whether as
Jesus or as Horus. No matter how these things were shown, or are said to have
been shown,
to John in
Patmos, what we are concerned to know is their fundamental significance and to
identify them
with the
lesser or greater mysteries, which are the mysteries of Taht-Aan in the
Egyptian Book of the
Dead.
The writer
John, who follows afar off in the wake of Taht-Aan, makes an attempt at showing
some of the
mysteries in
his Book of Revelation. Amongst the more prominent are (1) the mystery of the
seven stars;
(2) the
mystery of the woman, and the beast with seven heads; (3) the mystery of the
two “witnesses”
and the four
“living creatures”; (4) the mystery of the war in heaven; (5) the mystery of
God (X. 7); (6) the
mystery of
renewal in the ancient heavens when every isle and mountain vanished and the
heptanomis
passed away.
In the mysteries of Amenta there is a resurrection of the body-soul, or manes,
and a
transformation
into spirit. This was on the day upon which the god in spirit, Ra, calls from
heaven to the
mummy-Osiris
in Amenta. This summons to the transformation of the mummy into spirit, “Come
thou
hither!” or
“Come thou to me!” (in “Pistis Sophia” it is “Come thou to us!” ), that was
[Page 700] uttered in
the mystery
of Tattu, is repeated and applied to John in Revelation as the mode of
resurrection into the
spirit. John
says: “I saw and beheld a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I
heard, a voice
as of a
trumpet, speaking with me, one saying, ‘Come up hither, and I will show thee
the things that must
come to pass
hereafter' “. Obviously this was the transformation into spirit that was
represented in the
mysteries.
Hence the saying of John, “Straightway I was in the spirit” (Rev. IV. 1, 2), as
was the Osiris at
the call of
Ra (Rit., ch. 17). This cry of “Come” is repeated by each of the four “living
creatures”, who are
the same in
the mount that the divine powers, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, were in
the
resurrection
from Amenta (Rit., ch. 1).
John says
“there came one of seven angels that had the seven bowls and spake with me
saying: ‘Come
hither, I
will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters;
with whom the
kings of the
earth committed fornication’ “ (ch.17). The kings of the earth were the seven
spirits of earth
who were at
once the children and the consorts of the mother in accordance with the primitive
polyandry.
“I will tell
thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carried her, which hath
the seven heads
and the ten
horns. The beast that thou sawest was and is not; and is about to come up out
of the abyss,
and to go
into perdition”. That is following the final judgment. It is explained that
“the woman whom thou
sawest is the
great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth”. This was the kingdom
of the seven
(Rit., ch.
17), who ruled with the Great Mother in the celestial heptanomis. Some light
may be shed on
the mystery
of the four-and-twenty elders, seated on their four-and-twenty thrones, by the
Egypto-gnostic
gospel,
“Pistis Sophia”. In this cryptic work the “mysteries” are said to be
four-and-twenty in number. The
mystery of
God the Father is the first, the mystery of God the Son is last. These two are
the first and the
last in
Revelation, the closer and opener of Amenta in the Ritual. And all the
twenty-four are included in
the one
great, unique, ineffable mystery of the Father, manifested by the Son, as the
dove, or the calf, or
the lamb,
upon the mount of sunrise in the mythos, and on the stellar mount of glory in
the eschatology.
In Revelation
the heaven in seven divisions comes to an end when the seven thunders have
uttered their
voices and
the seventh angel has sounded the trumpet of doom. Then was “finished the
mystery of God,
according to
the good tidings which he declared to his servants the prophets” (Ch. x., 7),
which shows
the interpretation
of the Kamite astronomical mythology by means of biblical prophecy concerning
the
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Ancient
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coming
Messiah. The heaven that “was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every
mountain and
island were
moved out of their places” (ch. vi. 14, 15), is also imaged as a book which had
been closed
and sealed
with seven seals. This was the book of doomsday; the record possibly kept for
six-andtwenty-
thousand
years. The book is seen in the right hand of him that sits upon the throne, “a
book
written
within, and on the back close-sealed with seven seals” (ch. v. 1, 2). We may
not have all the
necessary
details for perfecting the parallel and proving the prototype to have been
Egyptian, but we
observe that
in the end of the world or the [Page 701] “subsidence of a country”, described
in the “magic
papyrus”
(Records, vol. X, 151-2) as an overwhelming deluge, there is mention made of
“the seven great
dungeons that
were sealed at the time with an eternal seal”. It is also evident that these
seven dungeons
were sealed
singly one after the other, as it is said of the evil beings who are at the
time submerged:
“What is
immersed, do not let it pass out! Seal the mouths, choke up the mouths, as the
shrine is sealed
up for
centuries”. There is an echo of this in Revelation (Ch. x). “And when the seven
thunders uttered
(their
voices) I was about to write: And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up
the things which the
seven
thunders uttered, and write them not’ “. The record is to be sealed not only
for centuries, but with
the seal of
eternal silence, or, as it is imaged, with the sevenfold seal.
Seven times
over in the great year the typical catastrophe occurred. The station of the
pole was
changed. The
island was submerged, the mountain was dislimned. Then was the day of judgment
when
one of the
seven dungeons of eternal doom was sealed, and this was repeated until there
were seven
altogether.
It is in this papyrus that the ark or shrine of seven cubits is superseded by
the ark of eight
cubits, and
the heptanomis of Sut is to make way for the octonary of Taht. In Revelation
the heptanomis
of seven
astronomes is symboled by the book of judgment sealed with seven seals. Seven
seals are
broken for
the opening of the book. Seven angels sound upon seven trumpets. Seven thunders
utter their
voices. Seven
plagues are loosed by the seven angels from the seven bowls of the wrath of
God. Seven
kings are overthrown,
and seven mountains pass away, at this the final judgment of the great harlot
and
her seven
children of the thigh; her meskhen, or other “unclean things of her
fornication” that were set in
heaven as
primitive uranographic signs, by those whose learning came to be unintelligibly
interpreted
and
unintelligently abused by the ignorant fanatics of a later religious cult.
At the end of
each three thousand seven hundred years in the cycle of precession the
pole-star changed,
or, as
represented, a star fell from heaven. Thus, when the second angel sounded, a
mountain (one of
the seven)
sank down flaming to be quenched in the celestial sea. This was one of the
seven mountains
upon which
the ancient harlot sat. At the same time a great star fell from heaven, which
was one of the
seven
pole-stars. When the fifth angel sounded another pole-star fell. The fall of
the total seven has not
been followed
out one by one in stars. But the fall or wreck of the heptanomis piecemeal has
been
otherwise
described; Enoch saw it as seven blazing mountains overthrown. Seven types of
the
overtoppling
mount or station of the pole may be assigned approximately: (1) to the mount of
the
hippopotamus
(or northern crown); (2) to the mount of the dragon; (3) the mount of the ape;
(4) the
mount of the
jackal (or dog); (5) the mount of the bird (cygnus); (6) the mount of the
tortoise (or lyra); and
(7) the
mountain of mankind.
To revert for
a moment to the beginning of the Book, the drama opens in Revelation the same
as in “the
Book of the
Dead”, with “the resurrection and the glory” of the coming Son. “Behold He
cometh with the
clouds, and
every eye shall see Him”. It is the risen [Page 702] Lord of Resurrection who
says: “I was dead,
and behold I
am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of hades” (Ch. i. 18).
This is Horus
of the
resurrection risen from Amenta in his triumph over death and hell or Sut and
Akar. He proclaims
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Ancient
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himself to be
the all-one, Har-Sam-taui-Neb-Uâ. Jesus, like Horus, is the “faithful witness”
for the Father,
the
first-born of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth who were the
seven elemental powers
that were
born of the ancient mother, and afterwards elevated in another character to the
sphere, as
spirits in
glory, and lastly, as the seven lords of eternity. Risen Horus comes as the
anointed only-
begotten son
of God; His revelation is to make known the Father which is in heaven as the
God in Spirit.
We learn from
Irenaeus that the Egypto-gnostic Christ (or Horus) came to teach the seven
powers who
preceded him
and who had no knowledge of the Father, and to create in them the desire to
investigate
the divine
nature and to make that nature known. This was the revelation through the
Christ who is the
“faithful
witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth”,
who taught it as a
mystery of
revelation. The secret of the mysteries was with Aan. The mysteries of Amenta
in the Ritual
are chiefly
eschatological. But some of them are plainly astronomical. In one of the texts
it is said of Taht-
Aan, “And now
behold “ Taht in the secret of his mysteries. He is the maker of endless reckonings”
(ch.
130).
As Egyptian,
the day of judgment was the day of reckoning, and the books were kept by
Taht-Aan, who
was called
the reckoner of all things in earth and heaven. An item in precession is
likewise recognisable
in Revelation
in the statement concerning the seven rulers of the heptanomis. “They are seven
kings: the
five are
fallen, one is, the other is not yet come” (XVII. 10). There is a date in the
statement as it stands.
The time
indicated is that of the sixth pole-star, which as here reckoned out was the
pole-star Vega in the
constellation
of the lyre or tortoise some fourteen thousand years ago.
The “mount of
glory” has been well preserved in the “Revelation of John”. It is described as
a throne set
in heaven
with “one sitting on the throne, and round about the throne were
four-and-twenty thrones, and
upon the
thrones were four-and-twenty elders sitting arrayed in white garments; on their
heads were
crowns of
gold” (Ch. iv. 4). And in the midst of the elders was the lamb “standing on the
mount Zion”,
which shows
the identity of the throne and mount and astronomically with the zodiacal sign
of Aries. The
mount in
Revelation has been turned into the throne of the Father and the Son, but it is
the same throne
as that of
Osiris, from beneath which the water of life wells up, with the four genii
standing before the
shrine. These
become “the four living creatures full of eyes”, around the throne, in the four
corners of the
mount. The
probability is that the four-and-twenty elders had been objectified in the
astronomy by fourand-
twenty stars,
which represented twenty-four divine judges who appear in the Babylonian
calendar.
These were
twenty-four zodiacal stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the south (Diodorus,
II, 30;
Sayce,
Hibbert Lectures, p. 72). As characters in the Egyptian wisdom, the earliest
pre-solar powers
were [Page
703] called the old ones or the elders. As Egyptian, they are traceable to the
two different
groups of the
twelve described in “Pistis Sophia” as the subject of four-and-twenty
mysteries. These were
the twelve
who had their thrones as rulers (or aeons) in the zodiac and the twelve as
spirits with Horus-
Khuti, lord
of spirits, in the harvest-field or heaven of eternity.
The Mount is
indeed the place of congregation, not only for the spirits of the just made
perfect, but also
as the final
gathering-place for all the principal personages in the Pantheon of the Kamite
mythography.
The old great
mother and her seven sons are there; the seven great spirits or the glorious
ones, the Khus
with
Horus-Khuti; the four who kept the quarters as Egyptian gods or powers ages
before they were
christened
“angels” ; the twelve as rulers in the zodiac; the dragon, the woman with child,
and others,
which are
identifiably Egyptian, are all included in the astronomical imagery of the
Celestial Mount. The
seven Halls,
Arits or watch-towers assigned to the seven spirits in the Great House of
Osiris, are utilised
as the seven
churches which are assigned to the seven angels in the Book of Revelation. The
seat of
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justice in
the solar mythos was shifted to the point of equinox, and the balance was
erected on the later
mount of
glory in the zodiac. This is the mountain of Amenta in the eschatology. It is
described in the
Ritual (ch.
149) as the exceeding high mountain of the nether-world, the top of which
touches the sky.
Whether
stellar of solar, this was the mount as judgment-seat. “And I saw a great white
throne, and him
that sat upon
it. And I saw the dead standing before the throne, and the books were opened;
and the
dead were
judged out of the things which were written in the books, every man according
to their works”
(Rev. XX.
11-14). In the Ritual, it is said, the gods “fashion anew the heart of a person
(in spirit) according
to what he
hath done”, i.e., according to his works, in the body (ch. 27 and 75). There is
also a call to
judgment in
the Ritual (ch. 136B). “Come! come! for the Father is uttering the judgment of
Maat”, says
the speaker,
who is Horus in the Osirian myth and Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra.
There is a
description of the books being brought into the judgment-hall upon the Mount.
“Oh, thou who
callest out
at thine evening hours, grant that I may come and bring to him (the Father) the
two jaws of
Rusta, and
that I may bring to him the books which are in the celestial Annu, and add up
for him his
hosts”.
Bringing away the jaws of Rusta is equivalent to carrying off “the broken bonds
of Death and of
Hades” by him
who was dead and is alive for evermore (Rev. I. 18). He who has conquered death
and
hell and
carried away the gates of the prison-house has also vanquished the evil dragon.
He exclaims, “I
have repulsed
Apap and healed the wounds he made”. There was a great Egyptian library at On
or Annu,
the Greek
Heliopolis. Hence in heaven itself, or the Celestial City, the books of Taht
were kept in Annu.
Thus, speaking
of the judgment, the Osiris says: “Grant that I may bring to him, the Judge,
the books
which are in
Annu, and add up for him his heavenly hosts”. The deceased says: “I am come to
thee, O
my Lord, that
I may look upon thy glory. I know thee, and I know the names of the forty-two
gods who
make their
appearance with thee in the hall of righteousness”. But in the papyri [Page
704] of Ani and of
Nunefer, the
judges or assessors in the Maat appear as Twelve in number sitting on twelve
thrones
instead of
the forty-two, or the twenty-four, which offers a prototype for twelve judges
on the twelve
thrones in
Revelation and in the canonical gospels. In one of the pictures to the Ritual
Horus stands upon
the Mount in
presence of his father as the calf, which was a type of sacrifice in the
Osirian religion earlier
than the lamb
(Naville, Todt, Kap. 108). “I come”, says the speaker, “so that I may see the
process of
Maat, and the
lion-forms”. These are the Kherefu=Cherubs (ch. 136B) stationed at the seat of
judgment
on the Mount.
“Let the fathers and their apes (the spirits of fire) make way for me, that I
may enter the
Mount of
Glory and pass through where the great ones are”. “Here is the cycle of the
gods”. “I poise for
him”, the
Judge, “the balance, which is Maat”. “Come! come! for the Father is uttering
the judgment of
Maat”. This
was the final judgment on the Mount, where the spirits of the just were passed
as perfected.
The
invitation to “Come, come”, and hear the judgments delivered on the day of
doom, is equivalent to
the words in
Revelation, “Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to
pass
hereafter.
Straightway I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne set in heaven,
and one sitting
upon the
throne”. “And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book
written within and on
the back,
close-sealed with seven seals” (Rev. IV. 1, and V. 1). It is said in the Ritual
(ch. 133), “Ră
maketh his
appearance at the Mount of Glory with the cycle of his gods about him. The
strong one
issueth from
his hidden dwelling”. “Be thou lift up, O Ră, who art in thy shrine, on the day
when thou
discernest
the land of Maat” ; that is, where the hall of judgment stands upon the Mount
of Glory. The
ancient of
days in the Semitic version is Ra, the solar god, who typifies the eternal in
the Ritual. He is
called “the
aged one at the confines of the Mount of Glory” (ch. 131). He is the aged one
upon his throne,
as in the
books of Enoch, Daniel, and John the Divine. The ancient of days together with
the Son of Man
preparing for
the judgment is described by Enoch. “At that time I beheld the ancient of days,
while he sat
upon the
throne of his glory, while the book of the living was opened in his presence,
and while all the
powers which
were above the heavens stood around and before him” (ch. 47, 3). Another was
present
whose
countenance “resembled that of man”, and who accompanied the ancient of days.
This is the Son
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of Man to
whom Righteousness (or Maati) belongs. It is said of this great judgment in the
Ritual, “The
glorious ones
are rightly judged, and the evil dead are parted off” (ch. 18). In the mysteries
of the Ritual,
“He that
sitteth upon the throne”, as the great judge in Amenta is Osiris, with Horus as
the beloved only-
begotten Son.
But in the earlier cult at Annu, Atum-Ra was the judge, as God the Father, with
Iu-emhetep
as God the
Son, that is, as Iu the Su=Jesus the ever-coming Son. At the opening of the
book for
the Judgment
Day in Revelation we read, “I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great
voice, ‘ Who is
worthy to
open the book, and to close the seals thereof?’ “. ”And one of the elders said
unto me, ‘Behold,
the lion that
is of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath overcome to open the book and
the seven
seals
thereof’ “(Rev. V. 2, 5). This was the [Page 705] book containing “the things
which the seven thunders
uttered”
(Rev. X. 4). The book therefore of Seven Great Mysteries. Now, among the other
writings
ascribed to
Taht there was a book of the seven mysteries of Amenta, or of the seven
festivals with which
the seven
mysteries were celebrated. (1) The day of the Monthly festival of the
sixth-seventh; (2) The
festival of
the fifteenth; (3) The festival of Uaka; (4) The festival of Taht; (5) The
festival of the birth of
Osiris; (6)
The festival of Amsu; and (7) The festival of “Come thou hither”. Thus there
were seven great
mysteries
corresponding to the seven festivals for which the record was written. It is a
book by which is
revealed all
that has happened from the beginning, consequently it was a book of Revelation
that was
written by
Aan, the divine scribe. By means of this book the Manes for whom it was written
can enter
what John
calls “the spirit” by becoming a Spirit, so that the gods are able to come near
him and touch
him, “for he
has become as one of them”. It is this book of Revelation concerning the seven
mysteries
and their
celebration of which Aan is speaking when he declares it is to be copied in its
entireness and is
not to be
added to by commentaries. This we cannot but associate with the book of the
Seven Great
Mysteries
that is sealed with seven seals in Revelation. The book that was sealed with
seven seals is a
record of all
time, or of the seven ages in the cycle of precession, that was kept by Taht
the measurer,
reckoner and
divine recorder; the god who “rescued the Atu from his backward course”, and
who
“repeated the
ancient ordinances and words for the guidance of posterity” as teller of time
by means of
the moon
(Rit., ch. 128).
Seven stars
in a group were witnesses to the power that was permanent at the pole, the
power of
stability, of
equilibrium, and of the scales of justice which they served as “the seven arms
of the balance”
on the day of
judgment. But there are “two witnesses” particularly specialised in Revelation.
These are
said to be
“the two olive-trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord of the
earth” (Ch. xi. 4).
These two
witnesses are to be met with in the Egyptian judgment scenes. In the second
tale of
Khamuas, a
scene of the Osirian judgment is portrayed. The seven halls or mansions of
Osiris and the
lords of
eternity are here described as the seven “arits” or watch-towers, the same as
in the Ritual (ch.
144). The
seven are represented as a series, the seventh being the last. It is said that,
“They entered the
seventh Hall,
and behold! Setme saw the figure of Osiris the great god seated upon his throne
of fine
gold, and
crowned with his atef-crown”; “Anup the great god being on his left, and the
great god Taht on
his right,
with the gods of the council standing in their places: standing and making
proclamation”. The
Balance was
set in the midst before them, and they were weighing the evil deeds against the
good
deeds, the
great god Taht (Aan) recording, with Anup giving the word to his colleague
(Griffith, Second
Tale of
Khamuas, pp. 46, 48). These are the prototypal “two witnesses” stellar and
lunar for the Father
and son in
the solar mythos. Taht-Aan was the witness for Horus, the only-begotten son of
the father. In
the mythos,
which preceded the eschatology, Taht-Aan was the light of the world as the god
whose
luminary was
the moon. Read doctrinally, he was not the true light, but he came that he
[Page 706] might
bear witness
to the true light. The lunar god was one of the powers in nature that was born
of the
motherhood;
whereas Horus, of the resurrection, was begotten by the father, and Taht bore
witness that
Horus, not
Aan, was the true light of the world, and the one direct representative of the
father-god, who
was Ra the
holy spirit in the eschatology. Horus (or Iu) is the Word that was with God the
Father in the
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beginning. He
is the only Son who issued from the Father; the Son who converses with the
Father; the
Son who was
instructed of the Father to reflect and reveal the nature of the God in Spirit
as the One
Eternal
Power. Anup may be traced in Amenta as the witness for Horus the child, who was
the Word; Aan
is the
witness for Horus the adult who is the word made truth. Hence, he is the giver
of the talismanic
makheru; also
the divine scribe who avouches the truth of the Word in the writings. These, as
Egyptian,
are the “two
witnesses” who were present in the hall of judgment.
In the
astronomical mythology the earth was the coffin of Osiris; the coffin of Amenta
which Sut, the
power of
darkness, closed upon his brother when he betrayed him to his death. Then the
four “living
creatures” or
“four glorified ones” who rose again with Horus from the dead were stationed at
the four
corners of
the coffin of the earth, in which Osiris as the elemental god was buried. In
the Egyptian
drawings, the
earth is represented by the lotus or papyrus-plant on which the four attendant
spirits stand.
This is equivalent
to the four corners on which a new heaven had been based in the creation of
Atum-Ra.
These were
four of the primordial powers which had been the brothers of Horus in the
earlier mythos who
are now
called his children, when Horus is said to have “come to light in his own
children”. This is in the
resurrection
as it was rendered in the Osirian eschatology (Rit., ch. 112). Thus, when Horus
rose again
upon the
mount of resurrection in Amenta he was accompanied by the spirits of the four
corners with
whom his fold
was founded (Rit., ch. 97). The scene of the mystery on the mount is reproduced
in the
Gospels.
According to Matthew, when Jesus “opened his mouth” to deliver the Sermon on
the Mount,
only four of
the disciples accompanied him. These were Simon-Peter, Andrew, and the two
brothers John
and James
(Chs. iv,v and x). The Kamite four are also reproduced in Revelation as the
four living
creatures.
“The first creature like a lion, the second creature like a calf, and the third
had the face of a
man, and the
fourth creature like a flying eagle” (Ch. iv, vii). As Egyptian, they are also
four great spirits at
the four
corners of the mount; and in Revelation they are the “four angels standing at
the four corners of
the earth,
holding the four winds of the earth” (VII. 1). Also, their names under each
form of the four are
the same. In
their primary form they are the “four living creatures” with the eyes, which,
as Egyptian, are
ape-headed,
jackal-headed, bird-headed and human-headed. In a secondary phase they were
given the
human figure;
and both forms of the four are repeated in the Revelation of John. According to
Revelation,
the four
living creatures are full of eyes, round about and within, and they have no
rest day and night, as
they were
moving round for ever with the sphere. Being astronomical figures, the eyes of
these were
stars. And in
the Ritual, the four are eyes or stars to the four quarters. The vignettes to
ch. 148 show
them as the
[Page 707] four eyes, or guiding-stars, one to each quarter: north, south, east
and west.
When the
heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions, passed away, as rendered in the
mysteries of the
astronomical
mythology, the seven ruling powers were fabled to have fallen, as described by
Enoch in his
book of the
heavens. But in another representation the powers of the seven were unified in
one great
sovereign
power. This was assigned to Horus, the primordial solar god who was born of the
Old Mother
as one of the
seven that were unified in him, and re-born as Horus of the resurrection.
Horus, in his
earliest
image, was the crocodile-headed Sebek, as the fish of the inundation, and the
crocodile was the
Kamite
prototype of the solar dragon. The seven powers were variously portrayed as
seven stars, seven
eyes, seven
spirits, seven islands or mountains on which the “woman” sat; seven
uraeus-deities, seven
fins of a
fish. According to the ancient wisdom, or the gnosis, says the writer, the
seven heads of the
beast on
which the woman sitteth are seven mountains, and they are also seven kings,
elsewhere called
the kings of
the earth, the kings who committed fornication with the woman, and were made
drunken with
her wine. “I
will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carried her,
which hath the seven
heads and the
ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up
out of the
abyss, and go
into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, when they behold
the beast,
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Ancient
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how that he
was, and is not, and shall come!” The seven heads of the beast “are seven
kings”, that were
rulers in the
celestial heptanomis. “Five of these are fallen, the one is, the other is not
yet come. And
when he
cometh he must continue a little while”.
There would
have been no dragon with seven heads but for Sebek the crocodile-headed deity,
whom we
look upon as
the oldest type of the solar Horus in the Egyptian mythology. The seven powers
born of the
Old Mother as
the spirits of earth or gods of the elements, here called the kings of earth,
were
compounded
into one great power as the sun-god Horus who preceded Ra. This was the
crocodile-
headed Sebek
in relation to the ancient Mother, and thus the crocodile became the solar
dragon, upon
which the
woman rode; the seven powers being at the same time seven kings and also seven
mountains
“on which the
woman sitteth”, each type being a representative of the celestial pole. The
goddess Apt,
who is the
female dragon, inasmuch as the crocodile was one of her zootypes, is called
“the Great
Mother of him
who is married to his mother”, that is, to Sebek-Horus, the crocodile or dragon
as male.
He, as child
of the Great Mother, was made her consort in the mythos of the mother and
child. He
became the
husband of the mother as the divinised adult, and seven powers are equal to the
seven
heads of the
male dragon or crocodile. By the bye, there is an Egyptian talisman or fetish
in the Berlin
Museum
composed of a sevenfold figure of the crocodile. The crocodile was an image of
the god Sebek,
being the
prototypal dragon; and seven crocodiles are equivalent to the beast with seven
heads, on
which the
woman rode, in the Book of Revelation, as the great harlot of primitive
promiscuous
intercourse
(Erman’s Egypt, p. 149). During the changes that occurred in heaven, the [Page
708] seven-
headed beast
on which the woman rode is represented as losing one of its seven heads. Thus,
the
change of
type from an image of the beast to that of the human figure which occurred when
the
crocodile-head
of Sebek was replaced or added to by the head of the human Horus is plainly
indicated. It
was given to
the second beast, or to the first beast in a second character, that an image
should be made
to the beast
who had the stroke of the sword, and lived. “And it was given unto him to give
breath to it,
even to the
image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause
that as many as
should not
worship the beast should be killed”. Naturally, the image that could speak was
of the human
type, as is
Horus An-ar-ef when portrayed as the seventh of the group who were represented
in the
image of the
beast before the human figure was adopted for “the first beast whose
death-stroke was
healed”. Thus
the beast that came up out of the waters, called the sea, as a crocodile, or
dragon, having
ten horns and
seven heads, and upon his horns ten diadems, was smitten unto death, as it
seemed, in
one of its
heads: “And I saw one of its heads, as though it had been smitten unto death;
and his death-
stroke was
healed; and there was given to him a mouth speaking great things” (Ch. xiii,
5). The beast
that came up
out of the sea is the solar dragon under two different types, but in both
characters it is the
dragon or
crocodile. In the first, it has seven heads and ten horns, and is like unto a
leopard, and his feet
are as the
feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. In the second shape he
had two horns like
unto a lamb,
but he spake as a dragon (Ch. xiii, 11). This was Sebek, who, under one type,
was the
crocodile,
and under the other, a lamb. The dragons are somewhat mixed in Revelation. There
are five
altogether:
(1) the Apap-dragon (Ch. xii, 9); (2) the dragon that gave power and dominion
to the beast
(Ch. xiii,
2); (3) the dragon on which the woman rode; (4) the lamb that spake as a
dragon; (5) the dragon
constellated
in Draconis as a uranographic sign in heaven. There was at first no human type
in the
septenary of
powers. They were figured as seven serpents, seven hawks, seven apes, seven
crocodiles,
or other
forms of the typical seven, but with no human head amongst them; when there was
as yet no
Horus as the
human child, or Atum as the divine man, all seven had been imaged by zootypes.
But in the
later mythos
the human type was introduced, as that of Horus, the child of the Virgin
Mother. The seven-
headed beast
then lost one of its pre-human heads. Sebek-Horus, the crocodile or
dragon-headed, was
changed into
the human Horus. As crocodile, he was the child of Apt. As Har-si Hesi, he
became the
child of Isis
in a human guise. Thenceforth the human type was one amongst the seven, and the
beast,
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Ancient
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qua beast,
lost one of its original heads, which, as Egyptian, was seen to be replaced by
the human type
when the
wound was healed.
The
acclaiming of Horus or Jesus above the seven previous powers is a subject of
the first chapter in
Revelation.
He is exalted as “the first-born of the dead”. This is “the faithful One”, who
is the True
Witness for
the Father in Heaven as Horus or Iu in his resurrection. The other seven did
but represent a
soul in
matter. The soul that rose up from the dead was an immortal spirit, and as an
eighth one it was
added to the
seven. This was as the sun that rose again from the [Page 709] underworld in
the mythology,
and as the
Divine Enduring Spirit in the eschatology. In one cult, it was the
crocodile-headed Sebek-
Horus who is
the seven-headed dragon in Revelation. As it is stated clearly enough, “the
beast that was
and is not,
is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven” (Rev. XVII. 11). This, as
Egyptian, became
“the ruler of
the kings of the earth”, as did Horus in his resurrection from the dead at his
second coming,
which was
from the Father in Heaven. Time was when the eighth one was the highest power.
Sut-Anup
was the
highest as an eighth one to the seven great spirits in the stellar mythos. Taht
— following Sut —
was an eighth
one to the seven in the lunar mythos. Lastly, Horus was the highest in the
solar mythos as
the lord of
resurrections, and as eighth one to the seven, he whose symbol was the
eight-rayed star of
the
Egypto-gnostic Pleroma, which was first made historical when it was called the
star of Bethlehem. As
the
Egypto-gnostics said, “Seven powers glorify the Word”. These powers were the
contributions of the
seven spirits
which out of gratitude to the Propator had contributed whatsoever each one had
attained in
himself of
the greatest beauty and preciousness; they skilfully blended the whole in
producing a most
perfect
being, and the very star of the Pleroma (namely, the gnostic Jesus, the Christ,
the Saviour, Logos
—
everything), because he was formed from the contributions of all the powers
that preceded him who
was the Horus
or Jesus of the Resurrection, the outcome and first fruit of all (Iren., Bk. I,
ch. 2, 6).
The faithful
and true witness, as Egyptian, is Horus-Maat-Kheru, the word made truth; he who
made the
word truth by
his resurrection, in the likeness of the Living God. The first Horus, or Horus
in his first
advent, was
the Word; and the promise made by him as founder was fulfilled by Horus at his
second
coming as the
“faithful witness”, the first-born from the dead. In Revelation, this “faithful
and true witness”
is called
“the beginning of the creation of God” (Ch. iii, 14). That is as a creation of
the god in spirit, who,
as Atum-Ra at
Annu, was the Holy Spirit. Har-Ur, the elder Horus, was the child of the virgin
goddess;
Horus in
spirit was “the beginning of the creation of God”, the lord of resurrections
who had wrested “the
keys of death
and hades” from the grasp of their grim keepers for the deliverance of the
Manes from
Amenta (Rit.,
ch. 64). The scales or balance was erected in the Maat or Hall of Twofold
Justice for the
weighing of
hearts and also of words, and in Revelation one of the four living creatures is
portrayed with
the scales in
his hand. “I saw, and behold, a black horse, and he that sat thereon had a
balance in his
hand” (Ch.
vi, 5). The balance, as Egyptian, was the scales of justice. In Revelation, the
scales are
turned to
commercial account for the weighing out of grain by the pennyworth. “And I saw
the heaven
opened, and
behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in
righteousness
he doth judge and make war. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head
are
many diadems;
and he hath a name written, which no one knoweth but he himself. And he is
arrayed in a
garment
sprinkled with blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies
which are in
heaven
followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure. And out
of his mouth
proceedeth a
sharp sword, that [Page 710] with it he should smite the nations; and he shall
rule them with a
rod of iron;
and he treadeth a winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And
he hath on
his garment
and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Ch.,xix. 11,
16). The sign-
language of
Egypt will tell us why the name of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was
written on his
Thigh. The
thigh or khepsh was a type of power. In one shape it is called the Ur-heka, or
great magical
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power, which
was feminine at first. It is a thigh-shaped instrument made use of to open the
mouth of the
dead in the
resurrection (Rit., ch. 23). At the time of his re-arising the Osiris exclaims:
“Let me seize the
khepsh which
is under the place of Osiris, with which I may open the mouth of the gods” (ch.
69). In
another rôle
Horus is the divine husbandman, the sower and the reaper, as the power of
germination; of
harvest and
of vintage. In this character he is known as the god Amsu, who is portrayed in the
human
form like him
who is described in Revelation as the Son of man. “I saw, and behold, a white
cloud, and on
the cloud one
sitting like unto the Son of man, and wearing on his head a golden crown, and
in his hand
a sharp
sickle, and another angel came out from the temple crying with a great voice to
him that sat on
the cloud,
“Send forth thy sickle and reap, for the hour to reap is come, for the harvest
of the earth is over
ripe”. And he
that sat on the cloud cast his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reapt.
And another
angel came
out from the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle”, and it
was said to
him, “Send
forth thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for
her grapes are fully
ripe” (Ch.
xiv. 19). Horus usually carries the fan or flail as husbandman, but he is also
the reaper and the
vintager;
hence the fig-leaf was his emblem. Horus the reaper in Amenta has twelve
followers in two
groups of
seven and five. These are the reapers in the Aarru-fields, where the corn grows
seven cubits
high and the
harvest is reapt for eternity. The twelve are called the “blessed”, who reap
with Horus for his
father Ra,
and therefore are the blessed of his father. The harvest-field is in the earth
of eternity, where
Horus appears
in human form with the fan in his hand as the master of joy and lord of the
twelve, who
are likewise
portrayed in human form as the Manes. In the gospels Jesus is depicted in this
character of
the reaper.
As such he comes like Horus with the fan in his hand that shows him to be the
thresher and
winnower of
the corn. As lord of the harvest-field he calls to him the twelve and
constitutes them reapers
of the
harvest on earth which was reapt in Amenta, the other earth, by Horus and the
twelve. It is made
doubly
certain by the context that the twelve in the gospels were astronomical
characters. Their names
were written
in heaven like those of the twelve gods, the twelve kings, or the twelve
apostles that are
coeval with
the founding of the zodiac. The twelve in the gospels were followed by the
seventy and the
seventy-two
(cf. the two versions), which represent the two different divisions of the
planisphere into its
ancient
seventy, and later seventy-two parts that were assigned to those whose names
were written in
heaven and
had been read there for ages on ages of time by the astronomers and the men who
knew.
So ancient
was the matter as mythical representation in the Egyptian [Page 711] wisdom
that the reaper of
the harvest
in Amenta, who has twelve followers there, had been set aloft in the
planisphere as Horus the
reaper in the
fields of food, who is extant to-day as the husbandman and reaper on the
stellar map; but
as Boötes,
and not as the “historic” reaper of the harvest.
Horus appears
in the various characters of Har-Tema, the revealer of justice; Har-Makheru,
the word
made truth;
Har, the red god who orders the block of execution. These are phases of
Har-Makhu, the god
of both
horizons, all of which are reproduced in Revelation. Michael, the warrior angel
who overthrows
“the dragon
and his angels”, is the Hebrew form of Har-Makhu, who is Atum-Huhi in the
person of his
own son. This
is Har-Tema, he who makes justice visible, in the cult of Osiris. He is the
avenger of the
wrongs
inflicted on his father by the Apap-dragon and his dark host of the Sebau or
fiends by the evil Sut,
and also by
the criminals who on account of their own deeds are self-condemned to die the
second death
upon “the
highway of the damned” (Rit., ch. 18).
The mythology
of Egypt has preserved the prototypal uncorrupted version of what has been
termed the
“awful
tradition of a war in heaven”. This was made out magnificently at last in
Milton’s epic poem, but the
original war
in heaven was simply elemental and had no more awfulness or terror in it than a
thunderstorm.
We can trace this warfare of the elements from the beginning in chaos; the
terrors were
evoked from
the mind of man. A battle was fought each four-and-twenty hours betwixt
Har-Makhu, the
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Ancient
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sun-god of
both horizons, and the dragon of darkness, who is hurled down from the horizon
of the east
into the pit
with all his angels or fiends called the Sebau or Sami. This great battle,
fought in the Ritual
during the
last hours of the night, becomes a typical last great battle in a contention
that is fought out on
the scale of
the great year in the Book of Revelation called “the war of the great day of
God the
Almighty”,
when “the kings of the whole world”, or the seven kings who ruled in the
celestial heptanomis,
are to be
“gathered together into the place which is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon” (Ch.
xvi. 14, 16).
Now it is
feasible to infer that the name of this battle-ground was derived from that of
Har-Makhu as the
place where
the Makha, or scales of justice, was erected for the judgment on the night of
the great battle
when the
Sebau were defeated and the day when the adversaries of the good being were
finally
annihilated.
This was at the point of equinox (Rit., ch. 18). The battle of Har-Magedon is
preceded by the
pouring out
of the seventh bowl and the sound of the great voice from the throne that said:
“It is done!”.
“And every
island fled away, and the mountains were no longer found”, for this was the end
of the
heptanomis
and the substitution of the heaven in twelve divisions, which was the heaven of
Atum-Ra or
Atum-Iu, who
says: “I am he who closeth and he who openeth, and I am but one. I am Ra at his
first
appearance. I
am the great god self-produced”, and who became the Hebrew deity Ihuh (Rit.,
ch. 17,
Renouf). The
war in heaven, or in external nature, was first. Next it was made astronomical.
Lastly, it was
eschatological
or theological, as in Milton’s version of the Paradise Lost. In the Ritual the
evil Apap is
bound in
chains each morning. “Chains are flung upon thee [Page 7112 by the scorpion
goddess, and
slaughter is
dealt out to thee by Maati. Apap is fallen and is in bonds” (ch. 39). The same
drama was
represented
yearly in relation to the annual sun and the autumn gathering of All Souls. In
Revelation the
drama
represents a larger period of time. A thousand years intervene betwixt the
first and second
resurrection.
“I saw thrones, and they that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them”.
Those
who rise
again are said to “reign with Christ a thousand years”, or with Horus in the
house of a thousand
years, and
the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished.
This is the first
resurrection.
Then follows the last judgment, the second death, and the new Jerusalem built
for the
children of
Israel, whose thrones are twelve in number as foundations of the final heaven.
We read in
Revelation that the great dragon is that “old serpent” who is called the devil
and Satan (Ch.
xii. 9). And
again, it is said: “I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of
the abyss and
a great chain
in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent which is the devil
and Satan,
and bound him
for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it
over him” (Ch.
xx. 2, 3).
These are the two types of the Egyptian devil. The Apap-reptile was that old
serpent, the devil in
pre-anthropomorphic
guise. Sut was the anthropomorphic Satan or evil adversary in the later
theology.
Also the
dragon and Sut are treated as if identical in the Ritual (ch. 108). In the
chapter of chaining the
evil one,
this is the Apap in one aspect and Sut in the other. It is said: “Then Sut is
made to flee with a
chain of
steel upon him. Then Sut is put into his prison”. The evil one is said to be
“pierced with hooks, as
was decreed
against him of old”. Horus makes war upon the powers of evil on account of what
they have
done against
his father Osiris in Amenta. But especially on Sut the power of drought and
darkness now
represented
as the adversary Satan in an anthropomorphic shape, which brings us to the
latest stage of
the war in
heaven, earth, and Amenta. “Horus says to these gods, ‘Strike the enemies of my
father,
punish them
in your pits (in the bottom of hell) for the evil they have done to the great
one, my father.
Your
particular duties in Amenta are to keep the pits of fire in accordance with
Ra’s command, which I
make known to
you’. “To the condemned, he says: “You are bound for ever, you are tied by
strong cords.
I have
ordered your detention. My father prevails against you, your curses are judged
against you before
Ra. Your
contempt for justice comes back to you. Bad for you is the judgment of my
father. O Ra! praise
be to Ra! thy
enemies are in the place of destruction!” (Book of Hades, Second Division,
Legends.)
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Ancient
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The battle of
Har-Magedon was not a mortal conflict to be fought at some far-off indefinite
future time. It
had been
fought already in the Ritual, and was periodically repeated in the mysteries as
the final struggle
betwixt light
and darkness, or the solar god and apap-reptile. The great battle depicted in
the Ritual is
fought by
Har-Makhu (Gr. Har-Machis) and the evil dragon. Har-Makhu was the solar god of the
double
horizon or
equinox, and the nightly battle was ended on the horizon east. In the Ritual
the dragon of
darkness is
shown at night and morn in relation to the double horizon on two [Page 713]
sides of the mount.
At the close
of day, when the sun-god sinks into the water of the west as Ra or Horus, he is
confronted
by his
natural enemy, the evil serpent Apap, the destroyer or devourer that rises up
gigantic from the
bottomless
abyss. Daylight is described as coming to a stand (Hâu) like a tidal wave at
the poise. With
sunset the
Apap “turneth down his eyes to Ra; for there cometh a standing still in the
bark and a deep
slumber
within the ship. And now he (the dragon) swalloweth seven cubits (in some texts
three) of the
great water”
(Rit., ch. 108). This is the monster that drank up all the water in the world,
whether as
dragon, toad,
snake or other reptile, here caught, as Kamite, in the act, and the water that
it drinks is
daylight; the
great water flowing round the mount of earth by day. The war of light and
darkness goes on
through the
night down in Amenta, the lurking-place of the dragon who seeks to destroy the
tree of life at
its roots,
but is for ever foiled by the god who represents the nocturnal sun in the shape
of a great cat, as
seer in the
dark, and protector of the persea or ash, which is the Kamite Tree of Life by
name. All night
the war goes
on betwixt the solar god and his old adversary. At dawn the host of darkness is
repulsed
and beaten
for another day. The last great overwhelming wrecking, ruining charge is
described in the
Ritual (ch.
38). It is the prototype of the war in heaven described in Revelation, when
Michael and his
angels went
“forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred, and his angels; and they
prevailed not.
And the great
dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan,
the deceiver
of the whole
world. He was cast down to the earth” (Rev. XII. 7, 9), which in the Ritual is
the Nether Earth
of Amenta.
“The stormy voice of bellowings” is heard from the dying monster, and Ra the
conqueror
staggers
forth upon the horizon, fainting with his many bleeding wounds. But Apap has
fallen, and the
song of
triumph is raised, “Apap is fallen! fallen! fallen!” Apap, the enemy of Ra,
goeth down to be cut up
piecemeal and
drowned in the lake of heaven. The “gods who are on the roads” overthrow him.
There
are ten
groups of the Tata-gods of a heaven in ten divisions (Rit., ch. 18). The gods
of the four quarters
bind him. The
avenging goddesses fall on him furiously. Chains are flung upon him by
Isis-Serkh. Death
is dealt out
to him by Maftit, the lynx-goddess. Ra is satisfied; he makes his progress
peacefully. The
monster has
relinquished his hold on the Tree of Life and also disgorged the waters of
light, and the solar
bark is once
more sailing joyfully across the heaven of day. The Apap-dragon with the chains
upon him is
to be seen in
pictures to the Ritual, also on the sarcophagus of Seti (Bonomi, Pls. 10 and
11). In Pl. 11
the
scorpion-goddess Serkh is putting the chain upon the Apap-reptile in presence
of the executioners,
who include
the four children of Horus. The angel who comes down out of heaven, having the
key of the
abyss and a
great chain in his hand, who lays hold of the dragon and binds him for a
thousand years
(Rev. XX. 1,
2, 3) is “Akar” in the Ritual, the chief of the gate of the abyss, who has
overthrown and
bound the
dragon of the deep, so that Ra can navigate in peace. Such was the Egyptian
battle of Har-
Magedon as
fought by Har-Makhu against his old enemy, the Apap-dragon. [Page 714]
We find the
breaking loose from the pit, the recapturing and chaining down of the dragon or
serpent of
evil in the
abyss, is described in the magic papyrus as well as in the Ritual. It is
Amen-Ra, who is
addressed as
the Egyptian Apollo, piercing the python of the abyss when he rises in revolt.
“Thou
disposest of
the Abut-Unti. Nubi shoots his arrows against him. Akar springs forward and
watches over
him, and
restores him to his prison, devouring the two huge eyes by which he prevailed.
A fierce
devouring
flame consumes him, commencing from his head and wasting all his members with
its fire”.
From this
text we learn that one Egyptian name of the huge typhonian reptile in the abyss
is Abut-Unti,
from which we
may suppose the name of the Abaddon in Hebrew was derived; Abut or Abtu being a
form
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Ancient
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of the Apap
which typifies non-existence or Unti (Rit., 93). The beast that was taken and
cast alive into
the lake of
fire that burneth with brimstone is to be found, lake and all, in the
seventeenth chapter of the
Ritual (lines
67-68) in Baba, the eternal devourer, whose dwelling is in the lake of fire,
the red lake, the
pool of the
damned, in the fiery pit of the “recess” in Amenta. The banquet of Baba, lord
of gore, who
extracts the
heart and other viscera from the corpses doomed to be consumed at his feast,
and who eats
the livers of
princes, becomes the “great supper of God” in Revelation, at which is eaten the
flesh of
kings and
captains, and all kinds of men, great or small (XIX. 17, 18).
It is the
same war in the Book of Revelation betwixt the serpent and the seed of the
woman that it was in
the Book of
Genesis, without having any significance in the fulfilment of supposititious
prophecy as
human
history. After the great dragon the old serpent was cast down to the earth; he
continued the battle.
“The dragon
waxed wroth with the woman (the great mother in a later character) and went
away to make
war with the
rest of her seed” (Rev. XII. 17). The application to the seed has been
extended, but the
woman and her
child remain the same as when she was Isis and he was Horus, and both were
pursued
by the
dragon, or crocodile, in the marshes of lower Egypt, and the mother made her
escape with her
infant upon
the two wings of the Vulture or the Hawk. This war made by the evil dragon on
the Great
Mother is
reproduced directly from the Egyptian Mythos. When mortal Horus was brought
forth among
the reeds or
bushes of the marshes he and his mother were pursued by the Apap-dragon. Isis
tells Osiris
that a very
great crocodile was following after his son, and that she hid herself among the
bushes for the
purpose of
concealing the young child born to be a king or to become the Royal Horus,
whatsoever the
opposition.
In this text he is said to be born for repulsing Tebha, a form of the devourer
who seeks to
destroy the
divine heir, for answering on behalf of his father Osiris. (Budge, “The Book of
Overthrowing
Apap”, Proc.
Soc. Bib. Archy., 1886, p. 17).
In Revelation
a great sign is described in heaven; “a woman arrayed with the sun and the moon
under
her feet, and
upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried
out, travailing
in birth, and
in pain to be delivered. . . . And the dragon stood before the woman which was
about to be
delivered,
that when she was delivered he might devour her child; and she was delivered of
a son, [Page
715] a
man-child who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was
caught unto God and unto
his throne,
and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of
God”. (Ch. x.II).
This marks
the course of development and the change from the Great Mother in the stellar
to the bringer
forth of the
child in the lunar mythos. As Egyptian, the first Great Mother Apt was imaged
in the likeness
of the
water-cow, the cow of earth. In her later lunar character as Hathor, she was
imaged in the likeness
of the
milch-cow. And in the vignette to the last chapter of the Ritual this Great
Mother is portrayed in
these two of
her forms, as Apt the water-cow and Hathor the milch-cow, in which two forms
she receives
the Manes in
the mountain of Amenta as the mother in earth and in heaven, the mother in the
Great Bear
and the
mother in the Moon. Hathor has now the upper and Apt the lowermost place of
two, as it was
when the
stellar was succeeded and to some extent superseded by the soli-lunar Mythos.
But Apt was
never cast
out of heaven in the genuine version as the drama is represented in the Book of
Revelation,
although the
matriarchate was superseded by the fatherhood of Atum-Ra. Thus it is
demonstrated little
by little,
item by item, that the main subject-matter of the Book of Revelation is the
drama of the last
judgment, of
which we get great glimpses in the mysteries of Amenta. The judgment seat is
set upon the
highest hill
in heaven called “the mount of the resurrection and the glory” (Rit., ch. 1).
The one eternal
judge is
seated on the throne. He also appears in the two characters of God the Father
and God the Son;
the lion and
the lamb; the first and the last; he that was dead and is alive again for
evermore. The lords of
eternity are
round about him on their thrones; the shennin or officials of the celestial
court are present as
the seven
spirits of fire; the two witnesses, who are Taht-Aan and Anup in the Egyptian
judgment scenes;
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Ancient
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the keepers
of the four corners of the mount; the old, old ones, or four-and-twenty elders,
with various
other Kamite
prototypes, are all there. The old Great Mother and her seven earth-born
spirits are judged,
rejected and
cast out of heaven. Apt, so to say, is now succeeded by Hathor as the Great
Mother in the
later mythos,
and Sebek the dragon by Horus as the lamb of the goddess. In this new heaven it
is Horus,
or Jesus, of
the resurrection who was raised to the supremacy as lord over all. And in such
ways did the
Egyptian
wisdom supply the original data for the Christian Revelation. The heaven in seven
divisions is
not the only
celestial formation that declines and passes away as a mystery in Revelation.
When the
seventh bowl
was poured out and the heptanomis came to an end with a mighty earthquake the
celestial
city “was
divided into three parts”, or, as we read it, into the triangular heaven of
Sut, Horus, and Shu as
gods of the
south, north, and equinox. Also the ten horns or powers of the solar dragon
indicate a heaven
in ten
domains, ten islands, or ten circles of Ra, in the Ritual, which preceded the
ultimate heaven in
twelve
divisions. This is intimated when “the tenth part of the city fell” as one of
the ten divisions passing
away in the
course of precession.
The ancient
heaven passed away “as a scroll”, or as the book of the eternal sealed for the
great
judgment with
the seven seals. There is a new heaven built on twelve foundations in place of
the earlier
seven [Page
716] or ten. “He that sitteth on the throne said, ‘Behold I make all things
new!’ “ (Ch. xxx. 5).
This, in the
Ritual, is the son of God who is reborn upon the mount of glory as the lamb, or
the child that
was the
connecting link with the eternal parent in the sphere of time. The new heaven
in the Book of
Revelation is
based upon the twelve zodiacal signs for its twelve foundations. This was as
old as the
heaven of
Atum-Ra, in which the twelve kings rowed the solar bark around the ecliptic
thirteen thousand
years ago.
Following the making of Amenta by Ptah, the creation of a new heaven and earth
was
ascribed to
Atum-Ra, the highest deity developed in the Egyptian theology previous to
Osiris Neb-er-ter.
Hence the
creation, or a creation was proclaimed to be the work of Atum by the priests of
Heliopolis. In
the
eschatology it is said of the house on high, “Tum buildeth thy dwelling, the
Lion-faced God (Tum or
Atum) layeth
the foundation of thy house, as he goeth his round” in fulfilling the solar
circle, which was
completed
with the twelve thrones, twelve stars, twelve gates, or twelve foundations of
the final zodiac.
This
foundation, as the imagery shows, was extant at the time when the solar
lion-god first rose up in the
strength of
the double lions, and the mount of the vernal equinox was in the sign of Leo.
In Revelation the
equinox has travelled
to the sign of Aries, which will account for the lamb upon the mount in place
of
Horus the
calf. In this new rendering the earth was thought of as the lotus of the nun
from which the sun
of dawn
arose. This is shown by the four keepers of the cardinal points or corners of
the earth that stand
on the
papyrus-plant in the presence of the Lord of all things, who was Atum in the
earlier and Osiris in
the later
cult. These, in Revelation, are “the four living creatures full of eyes” that
were “in the midst of
and around
about the throne”. The throne was now upon the mount of glory in the equinox,
with the four
corner
keepers “round about the throne”; the solar heaven being founded on the four
quarters previously
established
by Kheper-Ptah. The opening day of this new creation in the cult of Atum-Ra, at
Annu, was
called the
day of “come thou to me”, or “come thou hither”. It is described in the Ritual
(ch. 17) as the day
on which
their places were fixed by Anup for the seven glorious ones who follow the
coffined one in the
Osirian
mystery of the resurrection, as previously set forth. These are the seven great
spirits who are
represented
by the seven never-setting stars in the right hand of him who moves in the
midst of the
seven golden
lampstands or khabsu lamps as the Supreme One, the only God-begotten Son, in
whom
the seven
powers in the mythology were unified to image an eighth one in the eschatology.
As the elder
Horus and
child of the Mother he had been one of the seven, and in Horus of the
resurrection he is now
the Son of
the Father, divinised in spirit as eighth one to the seven. This is the twofold
figure seen upon
the mount in
Patmos as “the Son of man”.
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Ancient
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In one phase,
Horus or Iu-em-hetep was the type of an eternal child, the raison d’ętre of
which was in the
human child
being an image of both sexes, or, as the Ritual expresses it, both souls of the
god and
goddess in
one figure. As it is said in the Ritual (ch. 115), Horus assumed the form of a
female with the
sidelock of
childhood. Horus was also portrayed as a male child with feminine mammae. It is
said in the
pyramid
texts, “Hail, Unas, the nipples of the bosom [Page 717] of Horus have been
given to thee, and thou
hast taken in
thy mouth the breast of thy sister Isis”. This was the mystical divine
male-female of the
gnosis; the
youth with female paps like Bacchus, or Serapis; Horus with the cteis; Venus
with the beard;
the Christ as
Charis or Jesus as Saint Sophia (Didron, fig. 50). The Son of man portrayed in
Revelation is
the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus. The garment worn by him is that “long garment in which
rests the whole world”
; the garment
that was worn by Iu-em-hetep, in the temple at Annu, as the son of Atum-Ra.
This long
garment was
the sign of both sexes, like the sidelock of the child in Egypt; and it is worn
by a figure that
is both male
and female as shown by the feminine paps and golden girdle, and was worn
originally on
account of
the female nature of the type.
This is the
very effigy of child-Horus or Iu-em-hetep, the son of Ptah, who was the dual
representative of
the biune
parent. But in no case could such a dual figure have become “historical” or
been “made flesh”
except in
some hermaphrodital shape of monstrous personality, whether in Egypt, Nazareth,
or Rome.
It is now
proposed to show that God the Father in Revelation was Atum-Huhi, the Eternal
Being in the
religion of
On, who had become the Jewish god Ihuh, and that the Jesus of this book was
Iusa, the
coming Son of
god and demonstrator of eternal life upon the mount of resurrection in the
Ritual and in
the Book of
Revelation. Atum-Huhi (Atum-Iu or Atum-Ra) was the only deity in all Egypt who
was
expressly
worshipped by the title of the “Ankhu”, or the ever-living one eternal god.
This is he who is
reproduced by
name in Revelation, saying, “I am the first and the last, and the living one”
(Rev. I. 17). In
the coming
forth to day from out the dark of death which is the resurrection in the
Ritual, Atum-Iu, the
closer and
the opener of Amenta, carries in his hands the keys that close and open the
underworld.
These are the
Ankh-key of life, and the Un-sceptre, with which Amenta is closed and opened.
These are
repeated in
the Book of Revelation as the keys of death and hell. The god in spirit was the
highest type of
deity
attained as the “holy spirit” in the cult of Atum-Ra. Now, there is a typical
character in Revelation
called “the
spirit”, but which is not otherwise identified. “Hear what the spirit saith:
‘To him that
overcometh,
to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’
“ (Rev. II. 7). It is
this god in
spirit who proclaims the blessedness of the dead “which die in the Lord” to
“rest from their
labours”
(XIV. 13). And calls on those who are athirst to come and take of the waters of
life freely (XXII.
17). He is
also the spirit with the bride, but distinguished from the lamb. “The spirit
and the bride say
‘Come’ “
(XXII. 17). As Egyptian, then, “the spirit” in the eschatology was Atum-Ra the
holy spirit, in the
cult of Annu;
Iusăas, a form of Hathor, was the bride, and Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with
peace, was
their son, whom
we identify as the Egyptian Jesus in the Book of Revelation, in Pistis Sophia,
in the
Apocrypha,
and in the Book of Taht-Aan.
The “entire
god” was a mystical title of Amen-Ra as the child and husband of the mother.
According to the
gnosis, there
was a triune being, distinct from the male trinity, consisting of the mother,
child, and adult
male, in one
person. The figure-head of this triad might be either the mother, the father,
or the child,
according to
the [Page 718] cult; and whereas the knowers worshipped the “entire god” who
was three in
one, one sect
would exalt the mother; on the other hand, the Jews became monotheists by
eliminating
both the
mother and the son from the godhead, and setting up the father by himself alone
as the “entire
god”, the
Kamite Neb-er-ter. Irenaeus cachinnates in a ghastly fashion at the gnostics
who assigned but
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Ancient
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one consort
to both the father and son. But, it is the same with the spirit (father) and
the lamb (son) in
connection
with the bride in Revelation, as it was in Egypt and as it still remains in
Rome. Fortunately, the
mystical
bride had two characters not to be easily taken away by the Bishop of Lyons.
She was the virgin
in one, the
gestator in the other. As virgin she was the bride of Horus, the lamb of god.
As gestator she
was the
consort of the lion-faced man or man-faced lion who was Atum as god the father.
According to
the Kabalists
these two were the macrocosm and microcosm. The two figures are said to
comprehend
three persons
— namely, the father, the son, and the mother, who was the bride of both. The
lesser man
or microcosm
was a figure of double sex, the feminine half being conjoined to his back as
the hinder
female part.
This is equivalent to the Horus of both sexes, and to Jesus as Saint Sophia.
This was he
whom the
gnostics called Pan and Totum, the all-one, who became the manifestor as the
ever-coming
son. This
all-oneness of the son is described in the Ritual and proclaimed by Atum the
father, when it is
said that
“Horus is the father! Horus is the mother! Horus is the brother! Horus is the
kinsman! Horus is
seated upon
the throne, and all that lives is subject to him. All the gods are in his
service. So saith Atum,
the sole
force of the gods, whose word is not to be altered” (Rit., ch. 78). Horus was
now the all-one as
manifestor in
physical and spiritual phenomena for all the powers which had been summed up in
Atum as
the one god
in spirit and in truth. This same triad of the mother, father, and son was
known to the
Sethians.
With them the father of all is styled the first man=Atum or Adam. “His Ennua,
going forth from
him, produced
a son, and this is the son of man — the second man”, or second Adam. “The
father and
son both had
intercourse with the woman, whom they call the mother of the living”, and the
triad
constituted
the “entire god”, in accordance with the Egyptian doctrine (Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, Bk. I,
ch. 30).
Atum, who was god the father in spirit, had assumed the sovereignty of Ra, the
creator as god
almighty, the
one true god, the only one, because he was the god in spirit, not merely in
physical
phenomena,
but in that new heaven which was opened on the day of “Come thou to me”. This
is the
position
acknowledged by the worshippers in the new temple of god (Rev. XI. 17). “We
give thee thanks,
O Lord God,
the Almighty, which art and which wast, because thou hast taken thy great power
and didst
reign”. That
is he who had assumed the sovereignty as sole ruler in the luni-solar heaven
that followed
the passing
away of the heptanomis and the heaven in ten divisions.
Atum Ra is
not only to be identified as the closer and opener of Amenta; the first and the
last, and the
“living one”
; the spirit with the bride; the god who sat upon the throne was also of a red
complexion. He
was like unto
“a sardius” to look upon, which is [Page 719] the especial colour of Atum in
the vignettes to
the Ritual.
In Revelation, when the “throne is set in heaven, and one sitting upon the
throne”, there was a
rainbow round
about the throne like emerald to look upon (Ch. iv. 3). Also in the original
mythos the
throne “like
emerald to look upon” was a figure of the Egyptian dawn that was imaged as a
great emerald
sycamore
tree, a lake of emerald, green fields, and other evergreen things upon the
mount of glory. Ra,
in the
Ritual, is said to be “encircled with emerald light”, which was the emerald
dawn surrounding him on
the solar
mount. As it is said, “thy body is of gold, thy head of azure, and emerald
light encircleth thee”
(ch. 15). The
gods who are in the green light of dawn are also called “the emerald ones”
(Rit., ch. 110).
When Horus at
his second coming rises from the dead it is as the son of God to whom was given
the
throne of the
eternal with power to share the sonship with his followers. He is received with
“a cry of
adoration to
him in Suten-Khen”. There is exultation in the place of Horus in his darkness,
previously
described as
a world “without water and without air; all abyss, utter darkness, sheer
bewilderment” (ch.
175), as the
condition of the soul in matter that was imaged by the mortal Horus without
sight. “He of the
strong cord
is born (ch. 136), his cable is completed”, and the ark of earth made fast to
heaven once
more for
another period in precession, or the shennu-circle of eternity. “Glory is given
to the inviolate
one”, “by
generations yet unborn”. “Ra exalteth him”. The gods of the lamps “rise up to
greet him with
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their
exclamations of great joy”; he who comes was the re-establisher of time ...for
millions of
years...
(Ch.130). He come in raiment like the dawn as the true light of the world newly
kindled for the
night of
death. “He putteth an end to the opposition of Sut”, the power of darkness (ch.
137 B, 2, 3). This,
then, is
Horus the son of God in the Osirian cult or Jesus in the religion of Atum-Ra,
with God the father
in the great
judgment scenes upon the mount. He comes “to witness the process of Maat (or
the
judgment) and
the lion-forms which belong to it”. He comes to erect the scales of justice for
his father,
who is
“uttering the judgment of Maat”. He now appears as Horus triumphant who has
torn out the jaws
of Rusta,
conquered the evil Apap, and brought the books which are kept in Annu to his
father in the hall
of judgment
called the Maat. Here, says the speaker, “here is the cycle of the gods, and
the kite of
Osiris”,
which represents his son Horus. “Grant ye that his father may judge in his
behalf; and so I poise
for him the
balance, which is Maat (that of law and justice) and I raise it that he may
live. Come! come!
for the
father is uttering the judgment of Maat. O thou who callest out at thine
evening hours, grant that I
may come and
bring to him the two jaws of Rusta, and that I may bring to him the books which
are in
Annu, and add
up for him his heavenly hosts”(ch. 136 B, Renouf). These are the books of
Taht-Aan that
were examined
on the great day of reckoning called the judgment day (Rev. IV). In the
parallel scene, the
father sits,
Osiris-like, upon his throne, with the four-and-twenty elders, the seven great
spirits, and the
four living
creatures round about.
A striking
picture of the god in his characters of the closer and the opener is presented
by John in the
Book of
Revelation. The [Page 720] father-god, he who closes, is seated on the throne.
In his right hand he
holds the
book that is closed with seven seals; the book which “no one in the heaven or
earth, or under
the earth” is
able to open. In his other character, that of the son, represented by the lamb,
“he taketh it
out of the
right hand of him that sat on the throne”. This is the opener of the book and
the breaker of the
seven seals
thereof. “And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the
four-and-twenty
elders fell
down before the lamb”, who alone has power to break the seals and open the
book. His taking
of the
seven-sealed book from the right hand of him that sat upon the throne is
followed by the “adding
up for him
his hosts”. In this reckoning it is declared that the number of angels round
the throne “was ten
thousand
times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” (Ch. v. 11). These in the
astronomical
mythology
would signify the souls that had attained eternal setting as the hosts of
heaven, represented
by the
Akhemu-Seku or stars which never set. The spirits in glory, called the Khus,
are numbered in the
Ritual as in
Revelation. In the Papyrus of Nebseni, the number of the Khus or spirits is
reckoned as “four
millions, six
hundred thousand, and two hundred” (Rit., ch. 64, Papyrus of Nebseni). It is
not said on what
grounds the
computation was made. In Revelation the number of the saved and sealed is
computed at
one hundred
and forty-four thousand.
The mysteries
of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, though the latest in evolution, have been given the
foremost
place in the
Ritual and have somewhat obscured the pre-Osirian mythology. But Atum was the
great
judge upon
the mount of Amenta at a far earlier period than Osiris. And one of the
judgments in the Ritual
is described
as that of Atum-Ra. This takes place “when the eye is full on the last day of
the month
Mechir”; on
the night wherein the eye is full and fixed for the judgment (Rit., ch. 71).
“Ra makes his
appearance on
the mount of glory with his cycle of gods about him”. “Atum rises pouring out
his dew”
“His majesty
gives orders to the cycle of his followers”. “They fall down before
Atum-Harmachis”, or
Atum-Horus.
“His majesty orders them to praise the eye”. “His glorious eye rests in its
place on his
majesty in this
hour of the night”. At the fourth hour of the night, on the last day of Mechir,
“the majesty of
the eye is in
the presence of the cycle of the gods, and his majesty rises, as in the
beginning, with the
eye upon his
head as Atum-Ra”. The Khabsu-gods lift up their lamps by night. When Ra passes
over
heaven unto
the west upon his daily round, these gods of the lamp rise up with exclamations
of delight to
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Ancient
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show the way.
They are stars upon the summit of the mount which are said “to receive the
cable of Ra
from his
rowers”. Twelve rowers rowed the bark by day around the zodiac. At night the
seven starry
powers at the
pole took the rope in hand to haul the vessel through the underworld. Thus a
mystery of
the seven
stars, as servants of the solar god, was interpreted in the astronomical mythos
before the law
of
gravitation could be known (Rit., ch. 130). As it is said, “Oh Ra, who smileth
cheerfully, as thou comest
forth in the
east, the ancients, and those who are gone before acclaim thee” (ch. 64). These
“ancients”,
who came from
the “primeval womb” as earlier powers than Ra (ch. 133), appear in Revelation
as “the
elders”. They
are also called “the fathers”. The [Page 721] Osiris in the character of Horus
risen on the
mount, says
“Let the fathers and their apes make way for me, that I may enter the mount of
glory, where
the great
ones are” (ch. 136 B). Naturally enough, “the apes” do not appear as apes in
Revelation. But
we may
discern them in “the seven spirits of fire”, or the seven lamps of fire,
burning before the throne,
which are the
seven spirits of God (Ch. iv. 5). As Egyptian, the apes are spirits of fire. In
sign-language
the
hot-natured or fiery-tempered Kaf-Ape was made the image of a spirit of fire.
Thus seven apes are
equivalent to
seven spirits of fire. They could “make way” for the Osiris in the mount, as
they were
keepers of
the way and openers of the gates of dawn for Ra in his rising. The numbers
vary. But there is
a picture to
the Ritual in which the seven spirits of fire around the throne of Ra are seven
apes around
the mount of
glory (Naville, Todt. Kap., 16 A). In Revelation, the son of God promises to
give the morning
star to him
that overcometh. “As I also have received of my father; I will give him the
morning star” (Rev.
II. 28). The
morning star was equally identified with Horus. “I know the powers of the east:
Horus of the
mount of
glory, the calf in presence of the god, and the star of dawn” (Rit., ch. 109).
The powers
represented
in the vignette are Atum-Ra, the father, with Horus (or Jesus) the son, as a
calf, the later
lamb. This is
Horus of the morning star. In the vignette to the previous chapter (108) the
powers are
Atum, the
father, Horus (as Sebek), the son, and Hathor as the bride (Naville, Todt.
Kap., 108, 109). Here
is an
application of the imagery to the deceased which is as old as the Pyramids. The
morning star was
given by
Horus to his followers who were reborn in Sothis. The rebirth of Pepi was in or
as the morning
star. And
“his guide the morning star leadeth him to paradise, where he seateth himself
upon his throne”
(Budge, Book
of the Dead, Introd., pp. 141, 143). When Pepi goeth forth into heaven he is
led by Septet,
the female
Sothis, and his guide is the morning star. She is the bride whom he calls his
sister. He seats
himself upon
his throne of ba-metal. This throne has lions’ heads, and feet in the form of
hoofs called the
hoofs of the
bull, Sema-Ur. Thus the lion and the bull, or bullock, meet in the throne of
Pepi, which is the
throne of god
upon the mount of glory (Pyramid Texts, 304), and the types are equivalent to
Atum the
man-faced
lion and Iu the son, as calf, later lamb, together with the bride in Sothis.
As Egyptian,
then, Atum-Huhi was the God in Spirit, who was adored at On, as God the Holy
Spirit, with
Hathor-Iusăas,
the bride, and Horus as the calf. And in one of the vignettes to the Ritual
(Naville, Todt.
Kap., 109)
these three are grouped together on the mount, the same as in the Book of
Revelation
(Naville,
Todt. Kap., 108).
About the
year 2410 B.C. the vernal equinox was moving out of Taurus into the sign of
Aries, and the
type of Horus
changed from the calf upon the horizon to the lamb upon the mount. Horus is
called “the
Lamb, Son of
a Sheep”. As a fact in the astronomical mythology the lamb was then exalted to
the highest
place, and
Hathor-Sothis became “the bride, as the wife of the lamb”. In the Book of
Esdras we come
very near to
the fulfillment of a Sothiac cycle. “These tokens shall come to pass, and the
bride shall
appear, [Page
722] and she coming forth shall be seen that now is withdrawn from the earth”,
and “my Son
Jesus shall
be revealed with those that be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice
within four hundred
years. And
the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in the
former Judgment: so
that no man
shall remain. And after seven days the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be
raised up, and
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Ancient
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that shall
die that is corrupt. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her,
and so shall the dust
those that
dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were
committed unto
them. And the
Most High shall appear upon the seat of Judgment”. In this reckoning “my son
Jesus” is no
more
historical or ethnical than the bride. The bride, who was now withdrawn from
the world in fulfilling
her period,
identifies Sothis and her cycle, which is to be completed in four hundred
years, when the
Coming One
will be reborn as the Bennu or Phoenix, the Messu or Messiah, whose rebirth was
reckoned
and redated
by that cycle. The bride or Shtar, the betrothed, as Egyptian, was
Hathor-Sothis, who was
“withdrawn”
from the world in completing the Sothiac cycle; and Iusăas-Neb-hetep, the
mother of Iusa,
was a form of
Hathor in the cult of Atum-Ra. Thus, Atum was the God in Spirit, Hathor-Iusaas
is the bride,
and Iusa is
the son who was imaged by the calf or lamb according to the time and position
on the ecliptic.
As Egyptian,
the mystical bride and child were astronomical. The prophecy of their return to
earth and
reappearance
within four hundred years, in the secret wisdom of Esdras, is astronomical.
Consequently,
the
fulfilment with the marriage of the bride and the lamb or Virgin Mother and
Child in Revelation was
likewise
astronomical, and Jesus was that character in the astronomical mythology which
was and is,
and is to
come for ever as the Son who is the manifester for the Father under whatsoever
type or name,
whether as
the lamb, calf, the crocodile, the beetle, the dove, the hawk, the fish, the
green corn, the
grapes, the
shoot of the papyrus-plant, or as Horus in the human image of the eternal
Child.
To all
appearance “John” has reproduced the astronomy in “Revelation” so as to agree
with the entrance
of the vernal
equinox into the sign of the Ram which occurred about the year 2410 B.C., when
the starry
dragon as
Draconis ceased to be the station of the pole star and so was fabled to have
fallen from
heaven; and
the lamb became the typical victim that suffered death and rose again in the
sign of the ram
at Easter, as
Horus in one cult, Sebek in the other, and as Jesus the “Lamb of God” in the
Book of John.
The drama
comes to an end with the marriage of the bride and the lamb. This is the same
in the
astronomical
reckoning as shifting the birthplace of the child in the circle of precession
from the sign of
the bull to
the sign of the ram, as it actually took place four thousand three hundred
years ago. The
natural
result of this change was that the lamb from that time became the type of Horus
instead of the
calf. And the
great change was marked in Egypt by the crocodile-headed Sebek being portrayed
by the
Sebek-heteps
with the head of the lamb now added to the form of the dragon (Book of
Beginnings, also
Nat.
Genesis).
The biblical
writings abound in phrases too indefinite for anything [Page 723] but the faith
that can supply its
own fulcrum.
One of these is the “foundation of the world”. Can any Christian explain this
“foundation of
the world”?
For them, this had to be historically laid or relaid some nineteen centuries
ago. But, according
to the Book
of Revelation, the sacrificial lamb was slain from the “foundation of the
world”. In the Gospel
of Matthew,
Jesus is made to say, “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you
from the
foundation of the world” (Matt. XXV. 34). Here the kingdom of the elect was
already prepared
and in no
wise dependent upon any slaying of the historic lamb. On the other hand, the
lamb (or calf, or
other animal)
had been slain for ages annually, as the type of the foundation laid in
blood-sacrifice; and
Sebek or
Jesus in Egypt had been the lamb that was slain as the foundation of the world.
He is
addressed as
the lamb, son of a sheep, and as such was the Lamb of God who did not take away
the
sins of the
world, and did not profess to have the power. It is in totemism that we find a
first foundation
laid in
sacrifice which is afterwards religiously described as the foundation of the
world. The lamb was
one of the
sacrificial types; Osiris, in the human form of his son Horus, is another; and
from the Osirian
mysteries we
may learn the meaning of this “foundation of the world” which, like so many
other
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Ancient
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mysteries,
has been imported into the Christian scheme, to be continued as one of the
mysteries of
ignorance and
wondering faith, and to be accepted on the condition that it was never to be
explained. In
the Book of
Revelation Jesus is “the lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the
world” . (XIII. 8).
But in the
Epistle to the Hebrews (IX. 26) this foundation is shifted. Here the lamb has
not “suffered since
the
foundation of the world”, but “now once at the end of the ages hath he been
manifested to put away
sin by the
sacrifice of himself”. In that way the astronomical was turned into the
supposed historical Lamb
of God. In
the new heaven that is finally established the mother and child are
re-enthroned in glory as the
lamb and the
bride who is the wife of the lamb, together with “the Lord God, the Almighty”
(Rev. Ch. XXI,
XXII; cf. ch.
I. 8). And these were the three persons who previously composed the “entire
god” in Amen,
the hidden
Ra, who was a form of Atum-Ra, or Huhi the Eternal.
The
prevalence and persistence of the lamb in the gnostic-Christian iconography
point to a starting-point
when the
vernal equinox occurred in the sign of Aries. In the early ages of what is
termed Christianity the
lamb, not the
man, upon the cross was the sacrificial type of the divine victim, as it had
been of Sebek-
Horus in
Egypt at the time of the Sebek-hetep dynasty. “And I saw in the midst of the
throne and of the
four living creatures,
and in the midst of the elders, a lamb standing as though it had been slain,
having
seven horns
and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth into all the
earth”. The lamb is
but a type
that is here employed at its current value in symbolism, like the calf, as a
sign of sacrifice,
which like
other types in Revelation has to be read by means of the mythology. As
Egyptian, the lamb,
“son of a
sheep”, had been a type of Horus who was called the child. This was Har-Ur, the
first or elder
Horus, who
was “born but not begotten” of the virgin [Page 724] mother. The seven powers,
or spirits, that
were unified
in Horus who became the all-one as “an eighth to the seven”, are now
represented by the
seven horns
and seven eyes of the lamb, which are correctly described as the seven powers
or “seven
spirits of
God”.
The new
Jerusalem was built upon the square. “The city lieth four-square, and the
length thereof is as
great as the
breadth; the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal”. This was
the heaven
of Atum based
upon the four quarters of the solstices and the equinoxes which followed the
making of
Amenta (Rev.
XXI. 16).
At first the
form impressed upon the universe, in the Kamite mythology, had been feminine.
It was the
womb, the
meskhen, or creatory of the Great Mother, as bringer-forth of life and the
elements of life.
Finally, this
was superseded by the image of the man; the divine man described by Plato, who
bicussated
and was
stamped upon the universe in the likeness of a cross. Now the new heaven in the
Book of
Revelation
was formed according to “the measure of a man” (Rev. XXI. 17). This was the
heaven
founded on
the four cardinal points, which were represented by the cross of the four
quarters. The cross
of the four
quarters, or the earlier Tat-pillar was a figure of the power that sustained
the universe as the
Osiris-Tat or
as the later man upon the cross. Thus the divine man, as the cruciform support
of all in
Ptah-Sekeri
or Osiris, was the prototype of the Crucified. This god of the four quarters is
portrayed as
Atum-Ra in
the Ritual (ch. 82). It is he who says (by proxy) “My head is that of Ra and I
am summed up
as Atum, four
times the arm’s length of Ra, four times the width of the world”. Thus Atum,
the divine man,
was a
quadrangular figure of the four quarters in the heaven founded according to
“the measure of a
man” which is
reproduced in Revelation. We learn from the Ritual that man became the measure
of the
universe in
consequence of the god being divinised in the human form, who in his coming to
earth as the
heir of Seb
says, “I come before you and make my appearance as the god in the form of a
man” (ch. 79);
he who is
identified in the same chapter as Atum-Ra. As Atum was the first god who
assumed the form of
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Ancient
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man, that may
account for the new heaven being designed according to “the measure of a man”,
as
described in
Revelation (XXI. 17, and Rit., ch. 82). This was what took place at Annu when
Iu, the son of
Atum-Ra,
designed the “temple”, as the new heaven was called. Moreover, as Atum-Ra was
the divine
man, this
tends to prove that “the son of man” who is Jesus in Revelation was one with
Iu, the Su or son
of Atum-Ra.
And here it is possible that we come upon the origin of the Swastika cross as a
typical figure
of the heaven
that was founded on the four corners according to the measure of a man. From
the most
primitive
forms of the Swastika known we learn that in its origin it was derived from the
human figure. The
Swastika
found in Egypt proves it to have been derived from the form of a man. The four
limbs, which
eventually
became four feet or four legs, were at first the two arms and two legs of the
human figure (Pro.
Bib. Arch.,
Nov.1900). This, then, is the divine man whose image was extended crosswise on
the
universe as a
type of creation, and who, as Atum in the character of Iu the son, was the
Egyptian Jesus.
A portrait of
the Good Shepherd has been discovered in an underground [Page 725] Roman
cemetery with
the Swastika
figured twice upon his tunic. He carries the pan-pipes in his right hand and
comes in the
attitude of
dancing (Lanciani, Rodolfo, New Tales of Old Rome, p. 117). This in the mythos
was the
youthful
solar god, and Horus of the resurrection in the eschatology. “The tabernacle of
God” is now “with
men, and he
shall dwell with them”. As it had been ever since the child, as Horus, was
incarnated in the
blood of
Isis, to assume the human figure when “the Word was made flesh” in the
beginning.
The mystery
of Messiahship, which had been rendered in the Kamite wisdom thousands of years
before,
was now
repeated as Hebrew prophecy in the Book of Revelation. In the sign of the bull,
the bride had
been
represented by the sacred heifer, and Horus the child was imaged as the calf
upon the horizon.
“The calf in
presence of the god” is as we have seen with Horus of the solar mount, in a
vignette to ch.
109 (Naville,
Todt. Kap.). The victim as the sacrificial calf is also spoken of in the Ritual
(ch. 84) when the
speaker says,
“I am the calf painted red on the tablets”. Again he speaks of being the calf
or the bull of
the sacrificial
herd with the mortuary gifts upon him (ch. 105). One sign later in precession,
there was a
change of
type. The vernal equinox now entered Aries and the lamb upon the mount was
substituted for
the calf as
the sacrificial victim, just as the fish was substituted 2,155 years later for
the lamb.
The new
heaven of Revelation is the “heaven of eternity” in the Ritual, at the summit
of Mount Hetep; the
mould of the
mythos being continued in the eschatology. For this reason there was no night
there, and no
more sea, and
“death shall be no more”. “Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor
pain any more;
the first
things are passed away”. And this is the vision of a spirit-life in the heaven
of eternity that is no
longer simply
astronomical.
The
astronomical enclosure of the non-setting stars; the tree of life, the water of
life, the sacrificial lamb,
remain as
types of salvation and eternal sustenance in what the “Revelation” terms “the
paradise of God”
(II. 7),
which is identical by name with the garden of the beginning in the Book of
Genesis
.
In some of
the Papyri, the dwelling-place upon the summit of eternal attainment, described
in the Book
of the Dead
(ch. 110), is called the City of the Two Eyes, or Merti the Double Eye, the two
eyes that we
hold to have
been the stars of the two poles seen in Equatoria. Merti was also a place-name
in Egypt.
Thus, the
stellar paradise upon the mount that was established in the region of the pole
before the time
of moon or
sun remained the type of a future heaven described in Revelation which had “no
need of the
sun, neither
of the moon to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it”, and the
light of it, or the
luminary,
“was like a stone most precious” — otherwise it was the star Polaris. The light
of the pole-star in
the primal
paradise is likewise referred to in the Talmudic Legends of the future heaven.
It is said, “There
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Ancient
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is a light which
is never eclipsed or obscured, derived from that upper light by which the first
men could
view the
world from one end to the other” (Avodath Hakodesh, f, XLVI, c, 1, 2; Stehelin,
Vol. II, pp.
20-24). Only
one pole-star is reproduced in Revelation, but in the elder legend, as we see,
the first [Page
726] men
could view the world from one end to the other, which included both poles (or
pole-stars) that
were seen at
first upon the level of the equatorial plain and are repeated in the latest
eschatology. Finally,
the
injunctions at the end of the book should be compared with the Rubrical
Instructions of the Ritual.
The writer of
Revelation says, “Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy in this
book. I testify
unto every
man that heareth the words of prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto
them, God
shall add
unto him the plagues which are written in this book; and if any man shall take
away from the
words of the
book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and
out of the holy
city, which
are written in this book” (XXII. 7, 18, 19). In the Ritual, at the end of the
book by which the soul
of the Osiris
is perfected in the bosom of Ra, it is said, “Let not this be seen by anyone
except the
minister of
the funeral and the king. By this book (or according to it) the soul of the
deceased shall make
its exodus
with the living and prevail amongst, or as, the gods. By this book he shall
know the secrets of
that which
happened in the beginning. No one else has ever known this mystical book or any
part of it. It
has not been
spoken by men. No eye hath deciphered it, no ear hath heard it. It must only be
seen by
thee and the
man who unfolded its secrets to thee. Do not add to its chapters or make
commentaries on
it from
imagination or from memory. Carry it out (or execute it) in the judgment hall.
This is a true Mystery,
unknown
anywhere to those who are uninitiated” (Rubrical Directions to Rit., ch. 149,
Birch; 148, Pierret).
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Ancient
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Book 12 of 12
THE
JESUS-LEGEND TRACED IN EGYPT FOR TEN THOUSAND YEARS
[Page 727]THE
Messianic mystery which has caused unparalleled mental trouble to the world did
not
originate
with, nor was the solution to be found in, the biblical collection of the
Hebrew writings. The
Egyptian
“mesu”, to anoint, and as a name for the Anointed, is earlier than the Jewish
Messiah. Nor
would there
have been any typical Christ the anointed but for the making of the
Karest-mummy. We have
to look a
long way beyond these books to learn how salvation came into the world by
water, or a saviour
could be
represented by the fish. It was thus salvation came to Egypt periodically in
the new life of the
Nile, and
thence the saviour, who was imaged in the likeness of a fish. According to the
mythical
rendering
Horus-Iu-em-hetep was a saviour because he came with plenty of food and water
in the
inundation,
as the shoot of, or as the child on the papyrus. In the eschatology he
represented the saviour
who showed
the way by which the Manes might attain eternal life, when immortality was held
to be
conditional
and dependent upon right conduct and true character. A doctrine of messiahship
was founded
on the
ever-coming Messu, or child of the inundation in the pre-anthropomorphic phase
of symbolism, in
which the
type might be the fish, the papyrus-shoot, the beetle, hawk or calf, each one
of which bears
witness that
when the infant-likeness was adopted as a figure of the ever-coming saviour or
messiah the
human type
was just as non-historical as any of its predecessors. The advent of the Messu
(the Hebrew
Messiah) was
periodic in accordance with the natural phenomena: not once for all. Once for
all could
have no
meaning in relation to that which was ever-coming from age to age, from
generation to
generation,
or for ever and ever. Eternity itself to the Egyptians of the Ritual was
aeonian, and
synonymous
with millions of repetitions, therefore ever-coming in the likeness of
perennial renewal,
whether in
the water-spring of earth or the day-spring on high, the papyrus-shoot, the
green branch, or as
Horus the
child in whom a saviour was at length embodied as a figure of eternal source. At
the
foundation of
all sacrifice we find the great Earth-mother, following the human mother,
giving herself for
food and
drink. Next the type of sacrifice was that of the ever-coming child. Ten
thousand years ago a
divine ideal
of matchless excellence had been portrayed in elder Horus as a voluntary [Page
728] sacrifice
of self, not
for the sins of the world, but for human sustenance. This voluntary victim took
the parent’s
place, and
suffered in the mother’s stead. Thenceforth the papyrus-plant was represented
by the shoot;
the tree by
the branch; the sheep by the lamb; the saviour by the infant as an image of
perpetual renewal
in life by
means of his own death and transformation in furnishing the elements of life.
Next Horus, as the
foremost of
the seven elemental powers, passed into the solar mythos, where the typical
virgin and child
were
reproduced and constellated as repeaters of periodic time and season in the
Zodiac.
The
Jesus-legend is Egyptian, but it was at first without the dogma of historic
personality. We have now
to follow it
in the circuit of precession, where it might be traced back to a beginning with
the sign of Virgo.
But for the
present purpose, the birthplace of the virgin’s child was in the sign of Leo
when the vernal
equinox was
resting in the lion constellation.
The Messu, or
the Messianic prince of peace, was born into the world at Memphis in the cult
of Ptah as
the Egyptian
Jesus, with the title of Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace or plenty and good
fortune as
the type of
an eternal youth. Here we may note in passing that this divine Child,
Iu-em-hetep, as the
image of
immortal youth, the little Hero of all later legend, the Kamite Herakles, had
been one of the eight
great gods of
Egypt who were in existence twenty thousand years ago (Herodotus, 2, 43). This
wondrous
child, who is
the figure of ever-coming and of perennial renewal in the elements of life, was
also known
by name as
Kheper, Horus, Aten, Tum or Nefer-Atum according to the cult. He was continued
at On or
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Annu. The
title likewise was repeated in the new religion, when Iu-em-hetep became the
representative
of Atum-Ra.
His mother’s name at On was Iusăas, she who was great (as) with Iusa or Iusu,
the ever-
coming child,
the Messiah of the inundation.
Such
doctrine, however, did not originate as uterine or come the human way, although
it might be
expressed in
human terminology.
We have now
to track the ever-coming child Iusa, Iusu or Jesus in the sphere of time as the
son of
Ius..as and
of Atum, who was Ra in his first sovereignty; not merely in the round of the
lesser year, but
in the
movement of precession as determined by the changing equinox or by the shifting
position of the
pole. As we
have shown, the Zodiacal signs were set in heaven according to the seasons of
the Egyptian
year and in
the annual circuit of the sun. The birthplace of the Inundation and the Grapes
was figured in
or near the
sign of Virgo or the Virgin, the mother of the child who brought the new life
to the land in
water as
Ichthus the fish and in food as Horus on his papyrus. But Horus the traveller
of eternity has to
be tracked
and followed in the movement of Precession. And thus the new beginning for the
present
quest is in
the sign of Leo.
The priests
of On attributed a new creation of the world, or the heavens, to Atum-Ra. This
was the
cultivated
enclosure or garden of a new beginning. And this garden of a new beginning or
creation was
visibly
featured in the southern heaven. There ran the river Nile as the one water from
its hidden source,
as it flowed
in the starry stream Eridanus, and meandered through the Aarru-garden that was
[Page 729]
made for
Atum, in the likeness of which the future paradise was represented in Amenta
(Rit., ch. 150,
Vignette).
According to the Osirian rendering, the later Aarru-field is the garden of the
grape (Rit.,
Vignettes).
The typical tree of life in an Egypto-Greek planisphere is the grape-vine. This
is the tree still
represented
by the female vine-dresser and the male grape-gatherer in the Decans of Virgo
(Higgins, W.
H., Arabic
Names of the Stars). Orion rose up when the grapes were ripe to represent the
Deliverer, who
was coming
“full of wine”. The goblet or “mixing-bowl” in which the drink was brewed to
hugely celebrate
the
Uaka-festival of the Inundation is constellated in the sign of “Krater”. The
ancient enemy of man, the
evil dragon
of Drought, is imaged in the form of “Hydra”, waiting to devour the Virgin’s
child the moment it
is born.
At one time
the birthplace in the stellar mythos was where Sothis rose as opener of the
year and herald
of the
Inundation. This was the star of Hathor and her Messu or Messianic babe who
came to make war
on the dragon
and to bruise the serpent’s head. And Ius..as was a form of Hathor. The
fulfilment of the
primitive
promises of the coming child as bringer of all good things was annual in the
astronomical
mythology.
The babe, the birth, the birthplace and the bringer to birth, were all
continued in the solar cult,
from this,
the starting-point, with Sothis now as the announcer of the Inundation, and the
life of vegetation
figured as
the young deliverer Horus on his papyrus, or the later Atum-Horus issuing from
the lotus on
the day of
“come thou to me”, the first day of the Egyptian year or new creation.
Time in the
old year of the Great Bear and the Inundation had not been subject to the
changes in
Precession.
In this year there was but one birthplace for the typical child who originated
in Horus of the
Inundation as
the figure of food and bringer of the water, and therefore of salvation. Also
there was but
one date for
the birthday of the child, namely, the first of the month Tekki (or Thoth)
which we equate with
July 25, when
the five dies non are also counted in the reckoning of the year. If Ra had not
discovered
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Ancient
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the
co-partnery of the Great Mother and Sebek-Horus the Fish of the Inundation, and
substituted the time
of the sun,
the birthplace of the babe might have remained for ever fixed in heaven. Time
in the ordinary
year was
always kept and reckoned by the recurring seasons; firstly by the Inundation.
In the great year
this time was
rectified by the retrocession of the equinoxes and the changing position of the
pole. Thus
time was kept
by double entry. And when the birthplace of the Messianic child was made
zodiacal it
travelled
round the backward circuit of precession to fulfil a course of six-and-twenty
thousand years. The
great year
might have gone its way unrecognized but for this change of pole-stars or the
backward
lapsing of the
equinoxes being observed and registered by the astronomers. It was solar time,
which had
to be
continually revised and readjusted by means of the stars. The Inundation was a
fixture in relation to
the earth,
and a primary factor in the year of the Great Bear, the end and re-beginning of
which were
memorized by
means of the “Sut-Heb” or “festival of the tail” — that is, the tail of the
Great Bear as
pointer at
its southernmost longitude, [Page 730] which was dependent on the revolution of
the sphere.
The Great
Bear, hippopotamus or crocodile, was then the Stellar bringer-forth to Horus of
the Inundation.
But with
Horus, born of Virgo in the Zodiac, the birthplace of the babe was figured in
the vernal equinox,
and thus
became subject to the changes in precession. It parted company with the lesser
year of the
Inundation to
travel from sign to sign around the circuit of the world’s great year.
Fourteen
thousand years ago the vernal equinox coincided with the sign of Virgo and the
autumn
equinox with
the sign of Pisces. And here the learned writer Eratosthenes has a word to say
upon this
point. He is
a most unimpeachable witness for the Egyptians; a better could not be
subpoenaed. He was
born in the
year 276 B.C. He was keeper of the great Alexandrian library and the most
learned Greek in
Egypt at the
time. Amongst other subjects he wrote on was astronomy, and he testifies to the
fact that the
festival of
Isis, which was celebrated in his time at the autumn equinox, had been
celebrated when the
Easter
equinox was in Virgo. This perfectly agrees with the position of Isis, the
Virgin Mother in the
Zodiac.
During those six months in the great year=six signs, the child as periodic
fulfiller of time and
season in the
Zodiac, together with the birth and birthplace, was receding through the six
signs in
precession,
from Virgo to Pisces. Thirteen thousand years later the autumn equinox
coincided once more
with the sign
of Virgo. Now there is no meeting-point of the mythology with the astronomy
more obvious
than in these
two signs of the Zodiac. But it is impossible that this imagery should have
been constellated
in the
planisphere the last time the equinoxes entered them, which was about the year
255 B.C., where
they still
linger at the present moment. And the time before that, in round numbers, was
26,000 years
previously.
It is a fixed
fundamental fact that the death and rebirth of the year were commemorated at
this time from
the 20th to
the 25th of July, when the birth of Horus was announced by the star Sothis or
the
Bennu=Phoenix.
It is equally a fact that when the solar Horus had entered the Zodiac the
birthplace was
shifted from
sign to sign, according to the movement in precession, from Virgo to Leo, from
Cancer to the
Gemini, from
Taurus to Aries, from Aries to Pisces. The pathway of eternity was now depicted
in the circle
of
precession. In this the sonship of Horus was continued after the fatherhood of
God had been
established,
and Horus became the manifestor for the eternal in the sphere of solar time.
Hence the
sayings of
Horus in the Ritual. “I am Horus, the prince of eternity”. “Witness of Eternity
is my name” (ch.
42). He calls
himself “the persistent traveller on the highways of heaven”, which he surveys
as “the
everlasting
one”. “I am Horus”, he says, “who steppeth onwards through eternity” — without
stopping or
ever standing
still. This was Horus, otherwise the Egyptian Jesus, as the ever-coming son
(Iu-sa) in all
the years of
time that culminated in the all-inclusive cycle of precession. Horus as the
shoot, or the later
wheat-ear
(spica), had been brought forth when the birthplace was in Virgo. If we look on
this as a sign in
precession,
the next birthplace in the backward course is in the sign of Leo, in which
Horus was the lion
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Ancient
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of the solar
power that was doubled in the vernal equinox. When the Osiris comes to witness
[Page 731]
the judgment
on the mount of glory (Rit., ch. 136 B), he sees “the lion forms” called the
Kherufu, which
are three in
number. Two of these are figures of the Double Force, as shown in the vignette
to ch. 18,
and the one
in the centre is the lion of the double lions=the double force, as the lion or
as the solar disk.
Now Atum is
this solar lion on the mount which is in the equinox, and which can be thus
identified with
the lion-sign
or sign of the lions in the Zodiac. Atum is the god with the lion’s face, who
is also called the
man-faced
lion. He is said to lay the foundations of the eternal house (Rit., ch. 17).
That is, in building the
new heaven
which was based upon the equinoxes in the circuit of precession, at a certain
starting-point,
including all
the previous foundations laid by Ptah and Taht, Shu and Sut, and by the first
great Mother in
the
Heptanomis.
It is a
tradition common to the Quichés, the Aztecs, the Bushmen, the Australian
aborigines and other
ancient races
that their ancestors existed before the creation of the sun. The Bushmen say
that the sun
did not shine
on their country in the beginning. It was only when the children of the first
Bushmen had
been sent up
to the summit of the Mount that the sun was launched to give light to the South
African
world (Bleek,
Bushmen Folk-Lore, p. 9). So in Egypt it might be said there was no sun before
the creation
of Ra, when
Atum issued from the lotus on the day of “Come thou to me”. It is stated in the
texts that light
began with
this new creation, when the sun-god rose up from the lotus; that is, the solar
light which
followed the
lunar and the starlight which preceded day in accordance with the mythical
representation.
Atum-Horus
sinks at evening in the waters as the closer of day, with the lotus on his
head. At dawn he
rises from
the lotus, the opening flower of dawn. But, instead of commencing with the sign
of Virgo, the
present
writer traces this new beginning in the solar mythos to the time when the
vernal equinox was in
the sign of Leo,
now some 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, according to the reckoning in the greater
year. By
this,
however, it is not meant that equal day and night were then coincident with the
birth of the
Inundation or
the heliacal rising of the dog-star on the 25th of July. The position of the
equinox has to be
made out
according to the precessional year, not by the lesser year. This difference
constitutes the
difficulty of
the reckoning. The time of equinox was determined in the lesser year by the
recurrence of
equal day and
night, but the position of the equinoxes in the annus magnus was determined by
the
risings of
the herald stars. Amongst other figures of the god Atum, he is portrayed
standing on a lion, in
others he is
accompanied by his mother the lioness, Sekhet or Bast. The annual resurrection
of the solar
god was
always in the Easter equinox, and when the funeral couch is figured in the
lion-form, and the
rising of the
dead is from the lion-bier, the fact is registered in the eschatological phase
of the
astronomical
mythology. It is said in the Ritual (ch. 64), “He who lulleth me to rest is the
god in lion-form”.
Another note
of this zodiacal beginning with the birthplace in the sign of the lion is
recognizable in the
arrangement
of the twelve signs as double houses for the seven planets. In ancient
astrology five of the
planets had
each one a house on either side of the Zodiac excepting the sun and moon; these
had but
one house
between the two — that is, in the [Page 732] lion-sign; or rather, the
lion-sign was the only
double house
of the Zodiac, and this was of necessity founded at the place of the equinox.
The double
house of the
astrologers is identical with the great hall of Mati, the place where the
balance was always
set up in
whichever sign the equinox occurred for the time being. The place of the
equinox was the hall of
Mati, or
rather the double equinoxes formed the double house of Mati.
The Egyptian
founders of astronomical science did not begin with mathematical calculations.
They had to
verify
everything by observation through all the range of periodic time, and this was
the only method that
was
fundamental or practical at first. It was by direct observation, not by
calculation, that the wise men of
Egypt and
Mero.« attained their knowledge of precession. By ages on ages of watching and
registering
they
perceived that the backward movement of the equinox, as immense in time as it
is slow in motion,
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Ancient
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had to be
reckoned with as a factor of vast magnitude; and that this long hand on the
face of the eternal
horologe was
a determinative of the hugest cycle of all, so far as they could measure
periodic time. By
imperceptible
degrees the movement itself had become apparent, and the point of equal day and
night
was observed
to be passing out of one group of stars upon the ecliptic into another; which
sometimes
coincided
with a change of polestars.
We have now
to trace the vernal equinox in precession, from the sign of the lion through
the signs of the
crab, the
twins, the bull, the ram, until it entered the sign of the fishes, about 255
B.C. For 2,155 years
Atum-Horus
manifested, as Iu-sa, the coming son in the vernal equinox, or as the lion of
the double
force, when
this was in the constellation Leo. The next sign in precession is the crab, the
Kamite original
of which was
the beetle, and the beetle was an emblem of Ptah and Atum as a type of the God
who
came into being
as his own son, that is Iu-sa, the child of Ius..as. When the equinox had
receded from
the lion-sign
to the house of the beetle — our crab — the young Jesus of the Zodiac was there
brought
forth as
Kheper the beetle, the “good scarabaeus”, which type and title he retained
until the Christian era.
In this sign
of the beetle we find the crib or manger of the infant figured in an early
form. The star called
“El Nethra”
by the Arabs, and “Proesepe” by the Greeks, which is in the eighth lunar
mansion, is the crib
or manger by
name. In Cancer, then, the Horus of the Zodiac was reborn in his solar
character as the
beetle of the
Nile, the reproducer of himself by transformation. Thus Horus had been born in
his solar
character as
a young lion in the sign of Leo, in the month of the lions; and reborn 2,155
years later as a
beetle, see
Hor-Apollo, I, 10). Also the ass, another zootype of Iu, is figured in this
sign of the beetle or
crab. Here,
then, we find the crib, or manger, of Iu, the ass, in the sign which was the
birthplace in the
vernal
equinox from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, and therefore the original birthplace
of the divine infant
that was born
in a manger or a stable, and was attended by the ass of Atum and the bullock of
Iu.
When the
equinox entered the sign of the Twins, it no longer coincided by a month in the
great year with
the
birthplace in the crab; and there was now a difference of two months betwixt
the day [Page 733] of the
equinox in
the twins and the opening day of the sacred year, on the 25th of July, at the
time when the
equinox was
in the sign of the lion. And two months in the great year are equivalent to
4,310 lesser
years. Next
Iusa, the coming son, the second Atum, was born of Hathor-Iusăas, the
cow-headed
goddess, in
the sign of the bull where the equinox rested from the year 6,465 to the year
4,310 B.C. In
this sign the
divine child was brought forth in the stable as a calf or a bullock. The lunar
cow was in the
stable of the
solar bull, where the young babe was born and laid in a manger now as Horus or
Iu, the
calf. Mother
and child might be and were portrayed in human form, but it is the cow that
gives the name
of “Meri”,
and but for the cow-headed Hathor-Meri there would have been no human Mary as a
virgin-
mother in the
Jesus-legend. Hathor-Meri was the mother of Horus, the Su in the “house of a
thousand
years”, born
in the stable or the manger of the bull. He had been brought forth as a young
lion in the
house of the
lions, as a scarabaeus in the sign of the beetles, and now was manifested as
the calf in the
sign of the
bull. And it was as the lunar cow in the “house of a thousand years” that the
mother brought
forth her
child as a calf in the stable which was rebuilt for the oxen, that is, for the
bull, the cow and calf,
when the
birthplace passed into the zodiacal house, stable, or byre of Taurus. In
re-erecting the house of
heaven on
earth when it was going to ruin, or, at the end of the period, King Har-si-Atef
says he has built
the stable
for oxen in the temple. (Stele of King Har-si-Atef, left side”.Records, v. 6,
p. 90.) In this stable
of the temple
the mystery of the birthplace was sacredly performed, and the child born in a
manger (the
Apt) was
exhibited to the worshippers every year. The ox and the ass that were present
at the birth of the
Divine child
in the stable at Bethlehem were extant in this sign. The ass had been present
without the ox
when the
birthplace was in the sign of the lion; and again when the birthplace was in
the sign of the crab.
The manger in
which the little Jesus lay is figured in the sign of cancer, and the birth of
the babe in that
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Ancient
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sign with the
manger for his cradle had occurred 8,875 years B.C. Also the ass on which the
child Iusa
rode is
standing by the manger in the stable. The ass in the birthplace is a
representative of the sun-god
Atum-Iu, and
when the ass and ox are found together in the stable the birthplace is in the
sign of the bull.
Horus or Iusa
in the “house of a thousand years” was the bringer of the millennium, which was
renewed
in the
following cycle. Sut or Satan was loosed for a little while, seven days at
most, during the
Saturnalia;
then he was bound in chains for another cycle of time, whilst Horus took
possession of the
house once
more on a lease of a thousand years to establish his reign of peace, plenty and
good luck in
the domain of
time and law, justice and right by the inauguration of another millennium. The
Divine
mother and
child had been humanized in the Egyptian religion when the stone monuments
begin for us,
at least ten
thousand years ago, but the zootypes were still continued as data in
sign-language. This was
the knowledge
that was in possession of the Wise Men, the Magi, the Zoroastrians, Jews,
Gnostics,
Essenes and
others who kept the reckoning, read the signs, and knew the time at which the
advent was
to occur,
once every fourteen lifetimes (14x71-2 years), in the “house of a thousand
[Page 734] years”, or
once every
2,155 years, when the prince of peace was to be reborn as the lamb in the sign
of the ram, or
as Ichthus
the fish in the sign of Pisces. He had been born as a calf in the sign of the bull;
as the beetle
in cancer; as
the lion in Leo; as the red shoot of the vine in Virgo; as lord of the balance
in the Scales.
And when the
Easter equinox had moved round slowly into the sign of the ram, the coming
fulfiller of the
cycle was
Jesus or Horus, that “Lamb of God”, who is supposed to have become historical
2,410 years
later to take
away the sins of the Christian world.
Before
passing on to follow the vernal equinox into the sign of the fishes (we may add
the corn, of which
this also was
the sign on account of the harvest in Egypt), we must glance back for a moment
to the
birthplace
and the beginning with the Inundation, which was the source of so much
astronomical
mythology
that necessitated continued readjustment of the reckoning in precession. The
fish, a figure of
plenty
brought by the Inundation, was continued as a symbol of Atum-Horus. The type
might be changed
from the
crocodile of Sebek to the silurus or electric eel of Atum, but the fish
remained as an emblem of
Ichthus, or
of Ichthon, that saviour of the world who came to it first in Africa by water
as the fish. We have
already seen
that the mystical emblem called the “Vesica Pisces”, as a frame and aureole for
the virgin
and her
child, is a living witness to the birth of Jesus from the fish’s mouth, as it
was in the beginning for
Iusa or Horus
of the Inundation. This will also explain why Ichthus, the fish, is a title of
Jesus in Rome;
why the
Christian religion was founded on the fish; why the primitive Christians were
called Pisciculi, and
why the fish
is still eaten as the sacrificial food on Friday and at Easter. There is
evidence to show the
impossibility
of this sign having been founded in the year 255 B.C. as the sign of the vernal
equinox,
either in
relation to Horus the fish or Horus the bread of life, or Iu the Su (son) of
Atum-Ra. For instance,
the
wheat-harvest in Egypt coincides with the Easter equinox, and always has done
so since wheat was
grown and
time correctly kept. In the Alexandrian year the month Parmuti, the month of
the mother of
corn, begins
on the 27th of March, or about the time of the equinox when this had entered
the sign of
Pisces.
According to the table of the months at Edfu and the Ramesseum, Parmuti was the
very ancient
goddess of
vegetation, Rannut. Rannut was the goddess of harvest and also of the eighth
month in the
year, which
opened with the month Tekki or Thoth. From Thoth, the first month, to
Rannut-Parmuti, the
eighth month,
is eight months of the Egyptian year, equivalent to two tetramenes in the year
of three
seasons.
When Horus
had fulfilled the period of 2,155 years with the Easter equinox in the sign of
Aries, the
birthplace
passed into the sign of Pisces, where the ever-coming one, the Renewer as the
eternal child
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who had been
brought forth as a lion in Leo, a beetle in cancer, as one of the twins in the
sign of the
Gemini, as a
calf in the sign of the bull, and as a lamb in the sign of the ram, was
destined to manifest as
the fish,
born of a fish-mother, in the zodiacal sign of the fishes. The rebirth of
Atum-Horus or Jesus as
the fish of
Ius..as and the bread of Nephthys was astronomically dated to occur and
appointed to take
place in
Bethlehem of the Zodiac about the year 255 B.C., at the time [Page 735] when
the Easter equinox
entered the
sign of Pisces, the house of corn and bread; the corn that was brought forth by
the gestator
Rannut in the
eighth month of the Egyptian year, and was reaped in the month named from
Parmuti the
Corn-Mother;
and the bread that was kneaded by Nephthys in the house of bread.
Horus, or
Jesus, the fulfiller of time and law, the saviour who came by water, by blood
and in the spirit,
Horus the
fish and the bread of life, was due according to precession in the sign of the
fishes about the
year 255 B.C.
A new point of departure for the religion of Ichthus in Rome is indicated
astronomically
when Jesus or
Horus was portrayed with the sign of the fish upon his head, and the crocodile
beneath
his feet
(fig. p. 343). This would be about the year 255 B.C. (so-called). But the
perverters of the Jesus-
legend, in
concocting the Christian “history”, had falsified the time in heaven that the
Egyptians kept so
sacredly on
earth during the ages on ages through which they zealously sought to discern
the true way to
the infinite
through every avenue of the finite, and to track the Eternal by following the
footprints of the
typical
fulfiller through all the cycles and epicycles of renewing time.
The type of
sacrifice once eaten in the totemic or mortuary meal, as the fish, is still
partaken of on Good
Friday as the
image of Ichthus; the same in Rome at present as in Heliopolis or Annu in the
past. The
type was
changed from sign to sign, from age to age in the course of precession. The
commemorative
customs light
us back as far at least as the sign of the Gemini, when twin turtle-doves, two
goats, or twin
children were
sacrificed. Indeed, there is some evidence extant to show that the ass, a
figure of Atum-Iu,
which may be
found constellated in the decans of cancer, was at one time the type of
sacrifice, and
which, to
judge from its position, was of course anterior to the “twins”. (Petrie,
Egyptian Tales, p. 90.) The
ass has been
obscured by the lion and other sacred animals, but it was at one time great in
glory,
particularly
in the cult of Atum-Iu, the ass-headed or ass-eared divinity. The ass has been
badly abused
and evilly
treated as a type of Sut-Typhon, whereas it was expressly a figure of the
solar-god, the swift
goer who was
Iu the Sa of Atum; and Iu-Sa is the coming son or the Egyptian Jesus on the
ass.
Mythically
rendered, he made his advent as a lion, or it might be said that he came riding
on an ass.
Horus, the
sacrificial victim, as the calf, was an especial type in the Osirian cult. The
lamb is heard of as
expressly
Jewish; the lamb that was roasted on the cruciform spit to image the Crucified
upon the cross
at Easter,
when the lamb was yet the typical victim. When the equinox passed into the
ram-sign Horus or
Iusa became
the lamb “son of a sheep”, who as son of the father was the son of God, an
especial type
with the
Sebek-heteps. When the vernal equinox entered once more into the sign of the
“fishes” the time
had come for
the type to change back again to the fish which had been eaten as a typical
sacrifice
thousands of
years before when the crocodile was eaten once a year as the zootype of
Sebek-Horus,
“the almighty
fish in Kamurit” (Rit., ch. 88), the bringer of plenty in the inundation of the
Nile.
The advent of
a Jewish Jesus, as the fish Ichthus, was dependent on the Messu or Messiah-son
being
incarnated
when the vernal equinox [Page 736] was entering Pisces in the circuit of
precession, where the
female
bringer-forth was figured as the mother-fish, instead of the sheep, the cow or
the lioness.
The
astronomers knew and foretold that the Divine babe was to be born in the sign
of the fishes, the sign
of the
Messiah Dag, of An, of Oan or Jonah. It is probable that the name of Rome was
derived from an
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Egyptian name
for the fish, and that Roma was the fish-goddess. Rem, Rum, or Rome signifies
the fish
in Egyptian.
Be this as it may, the fish-man (or woman?) rules in Rome. The ring with which
the Pope is
invested, his
seal-ring, has on it the sign of the fish, and Ichthon the Saviour was brought
on in Rome as
Ichthus the
fish, or otherwise personified as the “historical Jesus”. This is illustrated
in the Catacombs,
where the
fish emaning Jonah from its mouth has been supposed by Christians to represent
the
resurrection
of an historical Jew. The name of the Piscina given to the baptismal font
likewise shows the
cult of the
fish. Those who were baptized in the Piscina as primitive Christians were known
by name as
the
Pisciculi. “Ichthus” also was the secret password and sign of salutation
betwixt the Christian Pisciculi.
Bryant copied
from an ancient Maltese coin the figure of Horus, who carries the crook and fan
in his
hands and
wears a fish-mitre on his head. This was Horus of the Inundation, who was
emaned from the
water as a
fish and by the fish, but who is here portrayed in a human form with the fish’s
mouth for a
mitre on his
head. (Bryant, v. 5, p. 384.) The wearer of the os tincae on his head is not
only the fish-man
in survival,
the petticoated Pope is likewise a figure of the ancient fish-woman; she who
sat upon the
waters and on
the seven hills of the celestial Heptanomis as a water-cow, who brought forth
from the
mystical
mouth of the fish. The Pope is dressed in the likeness of both sexes. The “os
tincae’ of the papal
mitre,
equally with the star Fomalhaut in Piscis Australis of the planisphere, and the
mouthpiece of the
divine Word,
is still the same antique as when the ancient Wisdom was first figured as the
female fish,
the
crocodile, and the male fish was a likeness of the Saviour who came by water in
the Inundation
before Horus
could come by boat, or float on the papyrus-plant in human form; so long has
the fish been
a zootype of
emaning source in the Egyptian eschatology. The Pope impersonates the
mouthpiece, the
fish’s
mouthpiece of the Word, and, as the imagery shows, the Word, or Logos, is the
same that was
uttered of
old as a fish by the ancient mother-fish with the os tincae or mouth of
utterance from which a
child is
born; so that the mother-church in Rome, as represented by the Pope, is still
the living likeness of
the
fish-mother, who brought forth Horus of the Inundation as her fish in the
Zodiac, at least some 12,000
or 13,000
years ago, and had never ceased to do so annually up to the time of rebirth in
the sign of the
fishes, when
Papal Rome took up the parable but suppressed or omitted the explanation
concerning the
Christ now
apotheosized as Ichthus the fish. Thus, as previously demonstrated, the proper
date for the
commencement
of Christianity or equinoctial Christianity is somewhere about 255 B.C.
One of the
most perfect illustrations of fulfilment attained by the mythos may be studied
in a scene that
was copied
from the Roman [Page 737] Catacombs by De Rossi (Rom. Sott., 2, pl. 16). In
this the seven
great spirits
appear in human guise, who are elsewhere represented by the seven fishers or
the seven
lambs with
Horus, ignorantly supposed to be an historic personage. These seven are with
the fish in the
sign of the
two fishes, who are figured as the two fishes laid out on two dishes. Moreover,
lest there might
be any
mistake in reading the picture it is placed between two other illustrations. In
one of these the lamb
is portrayed
as the victim of sacrifice; in the other a fish is lying with the bread upon
the altar. So that the
central
picture shows the result of the transference from the sign of the ram to the
sign of the fishes. In
another scene
the seven who were followers of Horus are portrayed together with seven baskets
of
bread (Bosio,
pp. 216, 217). In relation to the group of seven spirits in the Roman Catacombs
it must be
noted that
the company of twelve, as followers of Horus, or disciples of Iusa, was not a
primary
formation. It
was preceded by the group of seven, the seven who were with Horus, the leader
of that
“glorious
company”, from the beginning; the same in the eschatology as in the
astronomical mythology.
They are the
seven with Horus in the bark of souls or Sahus that was constellated in Orion.
In the
creation
attributed to Atum-Ra, which opened on the day of “come thou hither”, otherwise
upon the
resurrection
day, the seven great spirits are assigned their place in this new heaven; they
are called the
seven
glorious ones “who are in the train of Horus” ; and who follow after the
coffined one, that is Osiris-
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Sekari, whose
bier or coffin was configurated in the greater bear. They who followed their
lord as his
attendants in
the resurrection were also grouped as seven khuti in the lesser bear.
In his
various advents Horus was attended by the seven great spirits termed his seshu,
or his servants.
So Jesus,
according to Hebrew prophecy, was to be attended by the seven spirits called
(1) the spirit of
the Lord; (2)
the spirit of wisdom; (3) the spirit of understanding; (4) the spirit of
counsel; (5) the spirit of
might; (6)
the spirit of knowledge; (7) the spirit of the fear of the Lord (Is. XI. 1, 2).
These, as Egyptian,
were they who
had originated as the seven elemental powers and who afterwards became the
Khuti as
the seven
great spirits. But in their Hebrew guise they are evaporized and attenuated
past all recognition
except as a
septenary of spirits. The seven with Jesus as a group of attendant powers or
followers may
be seen in
the seven doves that hover round the child in utero; the seven solar rays about
his head; the
seven lambs
or rams with Jesus on the mount; the seven as stars with Jesus in the midst;
the seven as
fishers in
the boat; and lastly, the seven as communicants who solemnize the Eucharist
with the loaves
and fishes in
the mortuary meal of the Roman Catacombs. There are various pictures in the
Catacombs
which can
only be explained by the pre-Christian gnosis. This alone can tell us why the
divine infant
should be
imaged as a little mummy with the solar halo round his head, or why the
so-called “Star of
Bethlehem”
should be figured with eight rays. Such things are Egypto-gnostic remains
belonging to the
Church in
Rome that was not founded on the Canonical Gospels, but was pre-extant as
gnostic; the
Church of
Marcion and of Marcelina. Several of these pictures contain the group of the
seven great
spirits who
were with [Page 738] Horus of the Resurrection at his advent in the sign of
Pisces, as they had
been with him
in the previous signs when he was the lamb, the calf, the beetle or the lion.
Two pictures
are copied by
Lundy, one from De Rossi’s Roma Sotteranea Christiana (vol. 1) and one from
Bosio
(Rom. Sott.).
In the one scene seven persons are seated at a semicircular table with two
fishes and eight
baskets of
bread before them. In the other scene, seven persons are kneeling with two
fishes, seven
cakes and
seven baskets of bread in front of them (Lundy, Monumental Christianity, figs.
169 and 171).
Now, there is
nothing whatsoever in the canonical Gospels to account for or suggest the eight
baskets-
full of cakes
which are somewhat common in the Catacombs. These we claim to be a direct
survival from
the Egyptian;
the eight loaves or cakes which are a sacred regulation number in the Ritual.
According to
the Rubrical
directions appended to chapter 144 it is commanded that eight Persen loaves,
eight Shenen
loaves, eight
Khenfer loaves, and eight Hebennu loaves are to be offered at each gate of the
seven arits
or mansions
of the celestial Heptanomis. These offerings were made for the feast of
illumining the earth,
or elsewhere
(ch. 18), the coffin of Osiris, and therefore for the festival of the
Resurrection and
solemnizing
of the Eucharist. The seven persons present with the Lord are identifiable with
the typical
seven
followers of Horus as the seven khuti or glorious ones. The speaker, who
personates the lord of
the seven,
says “I am the divine leader of the seven. I am a khu, the lord of the khus”.
The Osiris Nu thus
celebrates
the monthly festival by offering eight loaves or cakes at each of the seven halls.
The khus
were seven in
number or eight with Horus their lord, in whom Osiris rose again from the
condition of the
dead. The
chapter is to be repeated over a picture of the seven sovereign chiefs, which
we now claim to
be the
original of the seven personages that keep the sacramental ceremony in the
Catacombs when the
eight cakes
are figured on the table of the seven personages who have been termed the
“Septem Pii
Sacerdotes”
(Northcote and Brownlow, Rom. Sott., vol. 2, pl. 17, p. 68). But to return, our
starting-point
for tracking
the movement in precession was with the vernal equinox in the sign of Leo, on
the birthday of
the year that
was determined at the time by the heliacal rising of the star which announced
the birthplace
of Horus, now
figured in the solar zodiac, nigh where the evil dragon Hydra lay in wait to
devour the babe
as soon as it
was born. This was about 11,000 years B.C., or 13,000 years ago. During these
eleven
thousand
years, by the changes in precession and the continual rectification of the
calendar from old
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style to new,
July 25th at starting had receded to December 25th in the end. That is, the
birthday of the
coming child
Iusa or Horus in the Lion sign, celebrated on the 25th of July, came to be
commemorated
on the 25th
of December at the end of this period, by those who kept the reckoning, and
this, as will be
shown, is
precisely what did occur in the evolution of the Jesus-legend.
Two birthdays
had been assigned to Horus of the double horizon, one to child-Horus in the
autumn, the
other to
Horus the adult in the vernal equinox. These were the two times or teriu of the
year. But when
the solstices
were added to the equinoxes in the new creation of [Page 739] the four quarters
established
by Ptah for
his son Atum-Ra, there was a further change. The place of birth for the elder,
the mortal
Horus who was
born child of the Virgin Mother, now occurred in the winter solstice and the
place of
rebirth for
Horus the eternal Son was celebrated in the vernal equinox, with three months
between the
two positions
instead of six. If the birth occurred at Christmas with the winter solstice in
the sign of the
Archer, the
Resurrection at Easter would occur in the sign of the fishes as at present. The
equinoxes, of
course,
remained upon the double horizon, whereas the winter solstice took place in the
depths of
Amenta, and
this became the place of rebirth for the child-Horus as Iu-sa, the coming son
in the
astronomical
mythology. Horus in the autumnal equinox was now succeeded by Horus who
suffered in
the winter
solstice. The Jews still celebrate their mysteries annually as mysteries. And
it is instructive to
note that with
them the two times remain equinoctial, and have never been changed to the
winter solstice
and Easter
equinox. The Jews have subterranean reasons for not accepting the Messiah born
at
Christmas.
Theirs are the mysteries of the double horizon; or of Ra-Harmachis. The double
birth of Horus
at the two
times, or the birth of the babe in the winter solstice and the rebirth as the
adult in the Easter
equinox is
acknowledged in the Egyptian Book of the Divine Birth. The celebration of the
Nativity at the
solstice is
referred to in the calendar of Edfu, and it is said that “everything is
performed which is
ordained” in
the “Book of the Divine Birth”. Also, it was commanded in the calendar of Esné
that the
precepts of
the Book on the Second Divine Birth of the child Kahi “were to be performed on
the first of the
month Epiphi”
(cited by Lockyer, Dawn of Astronomy, pp. 284-6). The child Kahi is a pseudonym
for the
child-Horus.
He is the revealer, the logos or word, and the “Revelation of Kahi” is associated
with New
Year’s day,
when this occurred on the 26th of the month Payni. Now the first and second
“divine births”
(or the birth
and rebirth) of Horus were celebrated at the festivals of the winter solstice
and the Easter
equinox, and
these are the two times of the two Horuses identified by Plutarch, the first as
manifestor for
Isis, the
Virgin Mother, the second as Horus, the Son of God the Father, when he tells us
that
“Harpocrates
(Har the Khart, or child) is born about the winter solstice, immature and
infant-like in the
plants that
flower and spring up early, for which reason they offer to him the first-fruits
of growing lentils;
and they
celebrate her (Isis) being brought to bed after the vernal equinox” (Of Is. and
Os., ch. 65). Here
are the three
months between the two birthdays which were celebrated at the two festivals now
known as
Christmas and
Easter. Two different birthdays were likewise assigned to the Greek Apollo. One
of these
was
commemorated by the Delians at the time of the winter solstice; the other by
the Delphians in the
vernal
equinox.
According to
the decree of Canopus (B.C. 238) the date of Osiris’s entry into the moon at
the annual
resurrection
had then receded to the 29th of Choiak, equivalent to December 26th, in the
Alexandrian
year, which
was established in the reign of Augustus, B.C. 25. “The entry of Osiris into
the sacred bark
takes place
here annually at the [Page 739] defined time on the 29th day of the month
Choiak”. In this way
the Christmas
festival, by which the “Birth of Christ” is now celebrated, can be identified
with the yearly
celebration
of the rebirth of Osiris (or Horus) in the moon. Moreover, we can thus trace
it, following the
course of
precession, from the 17th of Athor (October 5th in the sacred year; November
14th in the
Alexandrian
year), mentioned by Plutarch, to the 29th of Choiak, our December 26th. The
next day,
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December
27th, was the first of Tybi, and this was the day on which the child-Horus was
crowned, and
the festival
of his coronation celebrated. If we reckon the 25th of December (28th Choiak)
to be the day
of birth, the
day of resurrection and of the crowning in Amenta is on the third day. In the
month-list of the
Ramesseum,
Tybi is the month dedicated to Amsu, the Horus who arose from the dead in
Amenta, and
who was
crowned as conqueror on the third day — that is, on December 27th=Tybi 1st.
There are
several
symbols of this resurrection on the third day. First, Osiris rises on that day
in the new moon. Next,
Amsu figures
as the Sahu-mummy risen to his feet, with right arm free, as ruler in Amenta,
the earth of
eternity.
Thirdly, Horus the child is ruler in Amenta, the earth of eternity. Thirdly,
Horus the child is
crowned in
the seat of Osiris for another year. Fourthly, the Tat was erected as a figure
of the god re-
risen, and a
type of eternal stability in the depths of the winter solstice. Thus the
resurrection on the third
day was in
Amenta and not upon this earth.
The Egyptians
celebrated their festival of the resurrection every year, called the feast of
Ptah-Sekari-
Osiris, in
the month Choiak (November 27th, December 26th, Alexandrian year). The rite is
otherwise
known as “the
erection of the Tat-pillar”. Erman recovered a description of the festival from
a Theban
tomb. Of this
he says: “The special festival was of all the greater importance because it was
solemnized
on the
morning of the royal jubilee. The festivities began with a sacrifice offered by
the king to Osiris, the
‘LORD of
Eternity,’ a mummied figure, wearing the Tat-pillar on his head”. It lasted for
ten days, from the
20th to the
30th of the month Choiak, the 26th being the great day of feasting. The royal
endowment of
the temple at
Medinet Habu for the sixth day of the festival included 3,694 loaves of bread,
600 cakes,
905 jugs of
beer and 33 jars of wine. This was the great day of eating and drinking,
corresponding to our
Christmas
gorging and guzzling, but on the 22nd December, instead of the 25th, of a
somewhat later
period. The
festival was devoted to the god Osiris-Ptah-Sekari, who had been dead and was
alive again;
cut in pieces
and reconstituted with his vertebrae sound and not a bone of his body found to
be broken or
missing. The
festival of the sixth day is clearly the Ha-k-er-a feast that was celebrated on
the sixth night
of the Ten
Mysteries. Moreover, the ten days of the festival that was sacred to the god
Osiris-Sekari are
also in
agreement with the ten nights of the mysteries (Rit., ch. 18). In the scene
copied from the Theban
tomb the
“Noble Pillar” of the Tat-cross is to be seen lying pronely on the ground where
it had been
overthrown by
Sut and the Sebau. The object of the festival was to celebrate the re-erection
of the Tat
and turn the
Cross of death once more into the Cross of life as the symbol of resurrection.
The king, as
representative
of Horus who reconstitutes [Page 741] his father, with the aid of the royal
relatives and a
priest, pulls
the pillar upright. Four priests bring in the usual table of offerings and
place them in front of
the Tat. So
far, says Erman, we can understand the festival. But the further ceremonies
refer to
mythological
events unknown to us. Four priests with their fists raised rush upon four
others, who appear
to give way;
two more strike each other, and one standing by says of them, “I seize Horus
shining in
truth”. Then
follows a great flogging scene, in which fifteen persons beat each other
mercilessly with their
sticks and
fists; they are divided into several groups, two of which, according to the
inscription, represent
the people of
the town Pa and of the town Tepu. This is evidently the representation of a
great
mythological
fight, in which were engaged the inhabitants of Pa and Tepu, i.e., of the
ancient city of Buto,
in the north
of the delta. “The ceremonies which close the sacred rite are also quite
problematic; four
herds of oxen
and asses are seen driven by their herdsmen, and we are told in the
accompanying text
four times
they circle round the walls on that day when the noble Tat-pillar is
re-erected”.
Raising the
Tat-pillar was typical of Horus in his second advent raising the dead Osiris
from his sepulchre
and calling
the mummy to come forth alive. The gods in Tattu on the night of the
resurrection, symbolized
by this
re-erection of the Tat, are Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Horus the avenger of
his father. Thus in re-
erecting the
Tat, Amenhetep III, with his queen Ti and one of the royal princesses were
personating
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Ancient
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Horus the
avenger and the two divine sisters in the resurrection of Osiris. (Rit., ch.
18.)
The
Christians celebrate the birth of the divine babe at Christmas and the death
and resurrection at
Easter;
whereas the birth and death were commemorated at the same season in the
Egyptian mysteries
of Ptah, and
later of Osiris — as it was in the beginning, when the death was that of the
old year and the
rebirth that
of the new year; otherwise, the death of Osiris and the birth of Horus, or the
death of Atum
and the
rebirth of Iusa. The new year came to be reckoned from the shortest day when
the sun had
reached its
lowest point and the shadow of darkness or the dragon its utmost length. The
sufferings of
the Sun-god
were naturally accredited to him at that time, and the death and resurrection
in Amenta were
both timed to
the solstice. The sun was lord of light as ruler of the lesser year. The
Apap-monster was the
reptile power
of darkness, and of desert drought. This dreaded adversary of the sun was now
the
uppermost,
Osiris in Amenta was the victim in the winter solstice. The suffering and death
of Osiris were
the cause of
the long period of mourning, of fasting and supplication that was memorized in
the
mysteries. In
the winter solstice the birth took place below, in Amenta, the earth of Sut,
and habitat of the
Apap-reptile.
In the equinox at Easter, Horus the fulfiller was transformed from the human
child to the
divine
hawk-headed Horus, who rose from the underworld as the spirit of life and light
and food, and who
was then
re-fleshed or re-incorporated anew on earth, conceived of the Virgin,
incarnated in her blood
once more, to
be brought forth in human shape again at Christmas; and by the gestator [Page
742] in the
divine form,
as Horus of the resurrection now reborn at Easter.
The last
night of the old year (July 24th), “the night of the child in the cradle”, had
been named from the
new birth as
the Mesiu; also the evening meal of the next day, the first of the new year,
was called the
“Mesiu”.
These were the exact equivalent of our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on
December 24th
and 25th,
after a lapse of 11,000 years in time according to the movement in precession.
The sacred old
Egyptian
year, which opened on the first of Tekki (or Thoth) as the year of the great
Bear and the
inundation,
began upon the 25th of July in the year of 365 days. Therefore July 24th was
the last night of
the old year
and the 25th (or the 20th in the year of 360 days) was New Year’s Day, the
birthday of Horus
the child, or
fish of the inundation. Time was sacredly kept by means of the festivals, and
these were
redated age
after age from old style to new. The decree of Canopus is both explicit and
emphatic on the
necessity of
correctly readjusting the calendar to the lapse of time, whether in the Sothiac
cycle or the
movement in
precession so that “the case shall not occur that the Egyptian festivals by
which time was
kept — now
celebrated in winter— should be celebrated some time or other in summer, as has
occasionally
occurred” in times past, in consequence of the calendar being incorrectly kept
(Records, vol.
8, p. 87).
For example,
a new year was introduced by the Egyptian priests B.C. 25, in the name of the
Roman
Emperor
Augustus, which is known as the Alexandrian year. When this new year was
established a
readjustment
was made to allow for the lapse in precession and to correct the calendar. At
this time the
so-called
“sacred year” was for the last time readjusted. This was that year of 360 days
which was based
on the twelve
moons or months of thirty days each and on the reckoning permanently figured in
the 360
degrees of
the ecliptic that was to be kept in endless sanctity howsoever supplemented by
other
reckonings in
the total combination to be united in the great precessional year of
360x71-2=26,000 years.
In this
corrected calendar the first of Choiak, which fell on October 18th in the
sacred year is shifted to
November 27th
in the Alexandrian year, and there is a rectification of time to the extent of
forty days.
These forty
days in the lesser year represent nearly 3,000 years in the cycle of
precession. In other
words stellar
time was corrected by the time of the sun and determined on the grand scale by
the
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Ancient
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position of
the vernal equinox. This had now receded to the sign of Pisces, when Horus or
Jesus, who
had been the
“Lamb of God” in the previous sign, and the calf in the sign of the bull, was
figured as the
fish by the
Egypto-gnostic artists (fig. on p. 343). Thus the cult was continued without a
break in Rome.
Augustus
personally posed himself in the character of the expected one, the Prince of
Peace, the
Messiah of
the astronomical mythology and thence in the eschatology.
At the time
when the change of equinox from Aries to Pisces occurred in the great year, or
in connection
with this
event, the birthplace was rebuilt as the crib or cradle, meskhen, or holy of
holies in the temple
for the
new-born babe. Now the temple of Hathor at Denderah was last rebuilt in the
time of the
Ptolemies, a
century or [Page 743] so B.C. The inscriptions show that this rebuilding of the
temple was
attributed to
Augustus. He never was at Denderah in person, but the ruler in Rome was assigned
the
place of the
king or Pharaoh in Egypt as rebuilder of the temple for Hathor and her babe,
and the king on
earth was the
royal representative, first as the Repa, then as the Ra, of the king, who was
divine or
astronomical.
Augustus was invested with this divinity, and thus the Egyptian doctrine was
continued in
the person of
the Emperor in Rome. Augustus proclaimed himself to be not merely a human
likeness, but
the very God
himself on earth. “The reverence due to the gods”, says Tacitus (Annals, I,
10), “was no
longer
peculiar; Augustus claimed equal worship. A mortal man was directly adored, and
priests and
pontiffs were
appointed to pay him impious homage”. Thus the apotheosis of a mortal had begun
and a
kind of
papacy was already established as a bridge betwixt Alexandria and Rome. The
vernal equinox
was now in
Pisces, and Horus, as type, was the fish instead of the lamb or ram. “Ichthus
the fish” had
been a title
self-conferred by Alexander in his apotheosis 300 years earlier. So Augustus,
in relation to
the same
fulfilment in astronomical time was Ichthus the fish in Rome before the title
was conferred upon
a supposed
historical Jesus of Nazareth. Thus the festival now dated Choiak 29th in the
Alexandrian year
had been celebrated
3,000 years earlier in the sacred year, and we behold it being readjusted
according
to the
reckoning in precession as it had been aforetime.
It has often
been a matter of wonderment why the birthday of the Son of God on earth should
be
celebrated as
a festival of unlimited gorging and guzzling. The explanation is that the feast
of Christmas
Day is a
survival of the ancient Uaka festival, with which the rebirth of the Nilotic
year was celebrated
with
uproarious revellings and rejoicings, as the festival of returning food and
drink. It was at once the
natal-day of
the Nile, and of the Messu or Messianic child under his various names. It is
called the
birthday of
Osiris in the Ritual (ch. 130). Osiris, or the young god Horus, came to earth
as lord of wine,
and is said
to be “full of wine” at the fair Uaka festival. The rubric to chapter 130
states that “bread, beer,
wine, and all
good things” are to be offered to the manes upon the birthday of Osiris, which,
in the course
of time,
became equivalent to our New Year’s festival, or Christmas Day. The grapes were
ripe in Egypt
at the time
the imagery was given its starry setting. This offers a datum as determinative
of time and
season. The
times might change in heaven’s “enormous year” ; other doctrines be developed
under other
names; the
grapes be turned to raisins. But the old Festival of Intoxication still lived
on when celebrated
in the name
of Christ. The babe that is born on Christmas Day in the morning is Horus of
the inundation
still.
The mythical
ideal of a saviour-child was Egyptian. But this ideal did not originate in the
human child. The
child was
preceded by other types of eternal, ever-coming youth. Each year salvation came
to Egypt with
the waters
just in time to save the land from drought and famine, and the power that saved
it was
represented
by the shoot of the papyrus, or the fish as the bringer of food and drink [Page
744] on which
the salvation
of the people depended; and the bringer of these was Horus the saviour, as the
Messu of
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Ancient
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the
inundation. Horus the jocund who rose up as Orion “full of wine”, with Krater
for his constellated “cup”
that held
7,000 gallons of intoxicating drink; Horus who brought the grapes to make the
wine; who
drowned the
fiery dragon Hydra, was he who came to Egypt as a veritable saviour once a
year. The
same mythical
character passed into Greece and is also repeated in the Canonical Gospels as
the winebibber
who comes
eating and drinking.
In this way
the birth of the child at Christmas and the rebirth at Easter came to represent
the keeping of
time in the
great year, which can be calculated by a twofold process of reckoning, from the
original
starting-point.
On the one hand, the lapse of time in the course of precession is five
months=the equinox
passing
through the five signs, that is, from July 25th (the first of Taht) to December
25th. On the other
hand, the
time taken for the equinox to travel through the five signs is the exact
equivalent in the great
year to the
five months’ lapse in the solar year of 365 days. The reckoning has to be made
one way by
the lesser
year, from July 25th to December 25th in accordance with the natural fact. The
other way it
has to be
computed on the scale of the great year in the cycle of precession. The total
result of this
twofold and
verifiable computation is that on the one side we are ultimately landed with a
birthday of Iusa
in the
solstice at Christmas, and on the other hand we are landed with the birthday or
day of rebirth for
Iusa at
Easter, when the equinox was entering the sign of the fishes, about 255 years
before the time that
has been
falsely dated “B.C.”.
One knows
well enough that Christian credulity is quite capable of still assuming that
this Jesus who
manifested
during 10,000 years in the astronomical mythology, and who was accreting the
typical
character of
the unique person all that time, is but the fore-shadow cast backwards by the
historical figure
in whom they
believe as the one reality of all realities. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that, such being the
character
pre-extant, there was nothing left to have any historical human origin at the
wrong end of
10,000 years.
This is a
strictly scientific and not-to-be-controverted demonstration of the indubitable
truth that the
birthday of
the Messiah now celebrated on the 25th of December had been celebrated for at
least 10,000
years on the
corresponding day as the birth of the Egyptian Messu at the feast of the Messiu
on the first
day of the
Egyptian year, which was the 25th of July, from the time when the Easter
equinox was in the
sign of the
lion. There is evidence also that the lapse of time was religiously rectified
in the readjusted
calendar
according to the course of precession from July 25th down to December 25th,
when the winter
solstice
coincided with the sign of Sagittarius and the vernal equinox first entered the
sign of Pisces, in
the year that
was erroneously dated. Through all the ten or eleven millenniums intervening
the Messu
had
periodically manifested in the annual inundation and as the fulfiller of time
in the house of a thousand
years, whilst
the Easter equinox kept travelling and the birthplace shifting, [Page 745] from
Virgo to the
lion, from
the lion to the crab, from the twins to the bull, from the ram to the fishes.
All that went to the
making of the
latest legendary saviour, barring the false belief, was pre-extant on entirely
other grounds
in the
Egyptian mythology and eschatology; and when the Easter equinox entered the
sign of the fishes,
about 255
B.C., the Jesus who is the one verifiable founder of so-called Christianity was
at least 10,000
years of age
and had been travelling hither as the Ever Coming One through all this period
of time.
During that
vast length of years the young Fulfiller was periodically mothered as mortal by
the Virgin with
Seb for his
reputed earthly father and with Anup the baptizer as his precursor and
announcer in the
wilderness.
All that time he had fought the battle with Satan in the desert during forty
days and nights
each year in
every one of those 10,000 years as a matter of fact in the natural phenomena of
time and
season in
Egypt. During those 10,000 years that ideal of the divine incarnated in Iusa
the Coming Son
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Ancient
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had gone on
growing in the mind of Egypt preparatory to its being rendered historically as
the divine man
of a later
cult by those deluded idiotai who dreamt the astronomical forecast had been
fulfilled in Hebrew
prophecy and
in veritable human fact, through their ignorance of sign-language and the
wisdom of the
past.
The two
birthdays at Christmas and Easter which were assigned to Iusa in his two
characters of child-
Horus and
Horus the adult, Horus the Earth-born and Horus the Heaven-born in the Osirian
mythos,
were brought
on as the two birthdays of Jesus. But there was a diversity of opinion amongst
the Christian
Fathers as to
whether Jesus the Christ was born in the winter solstice or in the vernal
equinox. It was
held by some
that the 25th of March was the natal day. Others maintained that this was the
day of the
incarnation.
According to Clement Alexander, the birth of Jesus took place upon the 25th of
March. But in
Rome the
festival of Lady-day was celebrated on the 25th of March in commemoration of
the miraculous
conception in
the womb of a virgin, which virgin gives birth to the child at Christmas, nine
months
afterwards.
According to the Gospel of James (ch. 18) it was in the equinox, and
consequently not at
Christmas,
that the virgin birth took place. At the moment of Mary’s delivery on what is
designated “the
day of the
Lord” the birth of the Babe in the cave is described. It occurs at Bethlehem.
Joseph went out
and sought a
midwife in the country of Bethlehem. “And I, Joseph, walked, and I walked not:
and I looked
up into the sky,
and saw the air violently agitated; and I looked up at the pole of heaven, and
saw it
stationary,
and the fowls of heaven were still; and I looked at the earth and saw a vessel
lying, and
workmen
reclining by it, with their hands in the vessel, and those who handled did not
handle it, and
those who
took hold did not lift, and those who presented it to their mouth did not
present, but the faces
of all were
looking up; and I saw the sheep scattered, and the sheep stood, and the
shepherd lifted up
his hand to
strike them, and his hand remained up; and I looked at the stream of the river,
and I saw that
the mouths of
the kids were down, and not drinking; and everything which was being impelled
forward
was
intercepted in its course”. There can be no doubt of this description being
equinoctial. It is a picture
of the [Page
746] perfect counterpoise between night and day which only occurs at the level
of the equinox
when the Lord
of the balance is reborn in the house of a thousand years, or at some other
fresh stage in
the circuit
of precession: and the Messiah Dag was now in the house of the fish and of
bread, with the
prophecy
fulfilled according to the astronomical reckoning.
This duality
of the divine birth at Christmas and Easter has been the cause of inextricable
confusion to
the
Christians, who never could adjust the falsehood to the fact; and now at last
we recover the fact itself
that will be
fatal to the falsehood.
It will be
elaborately demonstrated that the concocters of Christianity and its spurious
records had a
second-hand
acquaintanceship with the Egyptian Ritual, and that they wrought into their
counterfeit
Gospels all
that could be made to look more or less historical-like as a sacerdotal mode of
obtaining
mastery over
the minds of the utterly ignorant, who were held to be the “better believers”.
But they never
could
determine whether the divine child was born at Christmas or at Easter, which
was naturally
impossible to
the one-man scheme of supposed historic fulfilment. Again, in the Christian
version the
crucifixion=the
death of Osiris, has been postponed until Easter. This makes the period of
mourning
wrong. In
Egypt there was a time of fasting for forty days during the Egyptian Lent. The
mourning and the
fasting
naturally followed the suffering and the death of Osiris, which supplied the
raison d’ętre. But when
the death was
shifted to Easter, to be celebrated in accordance with the Jewish Passover, to
which it was
hitched on,
the long time of fasting remained as in Egypt, and for the first time in this
world the death was
preceded by
the mourning with which the murder is supposed to have been commiserated and
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Ancient
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solemnized.
The fourth Sunday in Lent is commonly observed in Europe by the name of “Dead
Sunday”.
But the death
then celebrated or “carried out” has no relation to a personal crucifixion that
is assumed to
have occurred
once upon a time at Easter. Such customs followed Christmas or the death in
winter with
a prehistoric
significance varying in accordance with the old style and new in the keeping of
the festivals;
whereas there
is no death at Christmas in the Christian scheme to be celebrated before Easter
or to
account for
the mourning-festival during Lent. The death and rebirth at Christmas, or New
Year, and the
resurrection
at Easter can only be explained by the Osirian mysteries, and these are still
celebrated
throughout
Europe, precisely the same as in Asia and in Africa. The Ritual also has a word
to say
concerning
the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, and the Christian Sabbath sacred to the sun.
The ancient
Egyptians
celebrated festivals on the first, the sixth, the seventh, and the fifteenth of
the month. The feast
of the first
and the fifteenth was a festival of Ra and the day was dedicated to Horus, who
represented
the earlier
sun, and whose Sabbath was the seventh day, or Saturday in the earlier cult. It
is said in the
Ritual, “I am
with Horus on the day when the Festivals of Osiris are celebrated, and when
offerings are
made on the
sixth day of the month, and on the Feast of the Tenait in Heliopolis” (Rit.,
ch. 1). This Tenait
was a feast
associated with the seventh day of the month. Here then is a feast of the sixth
and [Page 747]
seventh, or
night and day, corresponding to the Jewish Sabbath. Osiris entered the moon on
the sixth
day of the
month. The seventh was the feast-day, when “couplings and conceptions did
abound”. This
was
celebrated in Annu, the city of the sun, and thus far the day was a sun-day.
The word tenait denotes
a measure of
time, a division, a week or a fortnight. A feast-day on the seventh, dedicated
to the solar
god, would be
the sun’s day, or Sunday once a month. Now, two great festivals were dedicated
to Ra, the
solar god,
upon the seventh and fifteenth of the month. Here, then, is a fifteen-day
fortnight, or solar half-
month
(fifteen days), which was correlated with the half-month, or tenait, of
fourteen days in the lunar
reckoning.
The sixth of the month was a moon-day, on the night of which the love-feast of
Agapae began
with the
entrance of Osiris, earlier Horus, into the moon, or the conjunction, say, of
Horus or Hu with
Hathor. This
was on Friday night. The next day was a phallic festival in celebration of the
celestial
conjunction;
it was the day assigned to Sebek=Saturn in conjunction with his mother. The
festival was
luni-solar;
hence it was celebrated on the sixth and seventh of the month, like the Sabbath
of the Jews,
which is
repeated later on the sixth and seventh days of the week. Now, if we start with
Sunday as the
first of the
month, the tenait festival fell on Saturday as a Sabbath of the seventh day.
The second festival
of Ra, that
of Sunday, was on the fifteenth of the month, which would be eight days after
the Tenait-feast
upon the
seventh of the month. The tenait on the Saturday and a feast of the 15th on a
Sunday show the
existence of
a Sabbath celebrated on Saturday, the 7th, and another, eight days later, on
Sunday, the
15th of the
month. These, however, were monthly at first, as the festivals of Osiris or Ra,
and not weekly,
as they
afterwards became with the Jews and the Christians. The festival of Saturday as
the seventh day
of the month
is Jewish. The Sabbath of Sunday, the day of Ra, is a survival of the festival
celebrated on
the 15th of
the month in ancient Egypt as the sun’s day, or Sunday, once a month.
It was the
custom at one time in Rome for the mummy, or corpse of the dead Christ, to be
exhibited in
the churches
on Holy Thursday, the day before the Crucifixion, and if the symbolical corpse
is not now
exposed to
the public gaze, the Holy Sepulchre is still exhibited. This has the appearance
of
commemorating
two different deaths, the only explanation of which is to be found in the
Egyptian mythos.
Osiris was
the Corpus Christi at Christmas or in the solstice. He died to be reborn again
as Horus in
various
phenomena on the third day in the moon; also from the water in his baptism;
after forty days in
the buried
grain; and at the end of three months, in the Easter equinox. In the Kamite
original the night of
the Last
Supper, and of the death of Osiris, and the laying out of his body on the table
of offerings are
identical. It
is the “night of provisioning the altar” and the provender was the mummy of the
god provided
for the
mortuary meal. That was the dead Christ, or Corpus Christi (Rit., ch. 18).
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Ancient
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Holy Thursday
is especially consecrated by the Roman Catholic Church as a commemoration of
the Last
Supper and
the institution of the eucharistic meal, at which the corpus of the Christ
already dead was laid
out to be
eaten sacramentally. It is similar in the Gospels. [Page 748] The Last Supper
is there celebrated,
and the body
and blood of the Christ are there partaken of before the Crucifixion has
occurred. This, in
the Egyptian
original, would be the corpse of Osiris, the karest-mummy of him who died in
the winter
solstice
three months before the resurrection in the equinox occurred at Easter. Seven
days of mourning
for the
burial of Osiris were also celebrated at the end of the month Choiak. This was
known as the “fętes
des
ténčbres”, which, according to Brugsch, commemorated the “sept jours qu’il a
passé dans le ventre
de sa mčre,
Nűt” — equivalent to Jonah being in the belly of the fish, only the days of
darkness in this
phase are
seven instead of three. These seven days of mourning are the prototype of
Passion week in
the rubrical
usage of the Roman Church, during which the pictures of the cross (and
Crucifixion) are all
covered up
and veiled in darkness. Here the funeral ceremony followed the burial of
Osiris, whereas in
the Christian
version the fętes des ténčbres precede the death and burial of the supposed
historic victim.
According to
the synoptics, it was on the 15th of the month Nisan that the Crucifixion
occurred. But
according to
John, it was on the 14th. These two different reckonings are solar and lunar.
When time was
reckoned by
the lunar month of twenty-eight days, the 14th was the day of mid-month, or
full moon, the
day of the
equinox and of the Easter Pasch. In the luni-solar reckoning of thirty days to
the month, the
15th was the
day of full moon in the equinox. The two dates for the Crucifixion are
identical with these
two possible
dates for the equinox. There was a fortnight, or half-moon of fourteen days,
and a half-
month of
fifteen days. The French fortnight is quinze jours, or fifteen days, and this
is the fifteen-day
fortnight of
the Christian festivals, the Passion and the Resurrection. The 14th Nisan was
true to the lunar
calculation
of time, but the 15th was also needed for the solar reckoning, and, as usual,
the Christian
founders have
brought on both in aiming at the one supposed event. It has lately become
known, from a
lexicographical
tablet belonging to the library of Assurbanipal, that the Assyrians also kept a
Sabbath
(Shapatu) of
the 15th day of the month, or full moon in the luni-solar reckoning.
Thus the
crucifixion assigned by the synoptics to the 15th Nisan was according to the
solar month, and
the 14th
assigned by John was lunar, both being astronomical, and both impossible as
dates in human
history. The
festival of the seventh day is Jewish, and a festival of the eighth day was
continued by the
Christians.
Barnabas (Ep. 15) says, “We observe the eighth day with gladness, in which
Jesus rose from
the dead”.
This identifies the eighth day as a Sunday, and only in the Egyptian way of
celebrating the
15th
following the Tenait on the seventh can the eighth day be a Sabbath. The
seventh day was
Saturday, the
day of Sebek. The eighth day was Sunday, once a month, the day of Ra, and thus
the
eighth day
became the Lord’s day in the pre-Christian religion; and the origin of both
festivals or
Sabbaths of
the seventh day and of the 15th, eight days afterwards, can be traced to the
sun-god as
Horus and the
sun-god as Ra (Rit., ch. 113, 7). “The ancients speak of the Passion and
Resurrection
Pasch as a
fifteen days” solemnity. Fifteen days (the length of time) was enforced by law
of [Page 749] the
empire and
commanded to the universal Church” (Bingham, 9, p. 95; Gieseler, Catholic
Church, sect. 53,
p. 178).
Fifteen days include the week of seven days and the period of eight days. Both
days — Saturday
the day of
Horus and Sunday the day of Ra, as the seventh-day feast and the eighth-day
Sabbath —
were being
celebrated as their two feast-days by the Christians in the middle of the fifth
century, and
these were
known as the feasts of Saturday and of the Lord’s day, or Sunday (Socrates,
Hist. Eccles., lib.
V, cap. 22,
p. 234). When Dionysius the Areopagite arranged the dates for the Christian
celebration of the
festivals he
had only the pre-Christian data to go upon. Both the dates and data were
Egyptian, and
these had
been continued with the calendar and the festivals more or less correctly. But
the early
Christians
never really knew which was the true Sabbath, the seventh day or the eighth, so
they
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Ancient
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celebrated
both. As now demonstrated, according to the record of the mystery-teachers in
the
astronomical
mythology of Egypt the legend of a child that was born of a mother who was a
virgin at the
time is at
least as old as the constellation in the zodiac when the birthplace (in
precession) coincided with
the sign of
Virgo some 15,000 years ago. The virgin, in this category, was the goddess
Neith. The child
was
Horus-Sebek, the great fish of the inundation that typified the deliverer from
drought and hunger, and
was, in other
words, the saviour of the world. Thus, by aid of equinoctial precession, the
origin and
development
of the Christian legend and its festivals can be scientifically traced in the
pre-Christian past
from the time
when the virgin birth of the divine child and the house of birth were in the
sign of Virgo, or in
Leo for the
present purpose, reckoned by the movement in precession.
We shall find
the virgin motherhood of Jesus, the divine sonship of Jesus, the miracles of
Jesus, the self-
sacrifice of
Jesus, the humanity of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the Sayings of Jesus,
the
resurrection
of Jesus had all been ascribed in earlier ages to Iusa, or Iusu, the son of
Ius..as and of
Atum-Ra. Thus
Egypt was indeed the cradle of Christianity, but not of the current delusion
called “historic
Christianity”.
The saying attributed to the Hebrew deity “out of Egypt did I call my son” was
true, but in a
sense
undreamt of by the Christian world. Such was the foundation of the Jesus-legend
in the
astronomical
mythology with Horus of the inundation on his papyrus, or Iusa=Atum-Horus in
the zodiac.
As we shall
see, nothing was added to the Egypto-gnostic “wisdom” by the carnalizers of the
Christ in
Jerusalem or
Rome except the literalization of the mythos and perversion of the eschatology
in a fictitious
human
history.
A religion of
the cross was first of all established in the mysteries of Memphis as the cult
of Ptah and his
son
Iu-em-hetep, otherwise Atum-Horus, who passed at Annu into Atum-Ra, the father
in spirit, with Iusa,
son of
Ius..as, as the ever-coming Messianic son.
We have
evidence from the pyramid of Medum that from 6,000 to 7,000 years ago the dead
in Egypt
were buried
in a faith which was founded on the mystery of the cross, and rationally
founded too,
because that
cross was a figure of the fourfold foundation on which [Page 750] heaven itself
was built. The
Tat-cross is
a type of the eternal in Tattu. But whether as a fourfold, a fivefold, or a
twelvefold support it
was a figure
of an all-sustaining, all-renewing, all-revivifying power that was re-erected
and religiously
besought for
hope, encouragement, and succour, when the day was at the darkest and things
were at the
worst in
physical nature. The sun apparently was going out. The life of Egypt in the
Nile was running low
and lower
toward the desert drought. The spirit of vegetation died within itself. The
rebel powers of evil
gathered from
all quarters for the annual conflict, led by Apap and the Sebau in one domain,
and by Sut
and his
seventy-two conspirators in another. At this point began the ten mysteries
grouped together in the
Ritual (ch.
18). The Tat for the time being was overthrown. The deity suffered, as was
represented, unto
death. The
heart of life that bled in every wound was no longer felt to pulsate. The god
in matter was inert
and
breathless. Make ye the word of Osiris truth against his enemies! Raise up the
Tat, which portrayed
the
resurrection of the god; let the mummy-type of the eternal be once more erected
as the mainstay and
divine
support of all. It was thus that the power of salvation through Osiris-Tat was
represented in the
mysteries.
Fundamentally the cross was astronomical. It is a figure of time, as much so in
its way as is
the clock. It
is a measure of time made visible upon the scale and in the circle of the year
instead of the
hour. A cross
with equal arms .
denotes the
time of equal day and night. Hence it is a figure of the
equinox.
Another cross .
is a figure
of time in the winter solstice. It is a modified form of the Tat of Ptah
SYMBOL on
which the four quarters are more obviously portrayed in the four arms of the
pedestal.
This was
re-erected annually in the depths of the solstice where the darkness lasts some
sixteen hours
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Ancient
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and the
daylight only eight — the measure of time that is imaged by this Tat-figure of
the cross. These
two are now
known as the Greek and Roman crosses, and under those two names the fact has
been lost
sight of that
the first is a type of time in the equinox, the other a symbol of the winter
solstice. The two
crosses are
scientific figures in the astronomical mythology. They were symbols of mystical
significance
in the
Egyptian eschatology: and they formed the ground plan of the Ka-chambers of
King Rahetep and
his wife
Nefermat in the pyramid of Medum (Petrie, Medum).
The tree was
first of all a sign of sustenance when the sustainer was the Great Earth
Mother; Apt in the
Dom Palm,
Uati in the papyrus plant, Hathor in the sycamore, or Isis in the persea-tree.
On this the type
of Ptah was
based as the Tat-image of a power that sustained the universe. Osiris-Tat then
typified the
power that
sustained the human soul in death. This was buried with the mummy as a fetish
in the coffin,
where the
dead were seen to lie at rest in the eternal arms. And thus a cultus of the
cross was founded
many thousand
years ago. The Christian doctrine of the crucifixion, with the human victim
raised aloft as
the
sin-offering for all the world, is but a ghastly simulacrum of the primitive
meaning: a shadowy
phantom of
the original substance. The doctrine had its beginning with an idea of up-bearing,
but not in
the moral
domain. When the sky was suspended by [Page 751] Ptah in Amenta the act was
symbolized by
raising up
the Tat-type of stability and support. This not only sustained the sky of the
nether-world, it also
imaged the
divine backbone of the universe. The Tat, was a figure of the pole and the four
corners, which
united in one
the “five supports” or fivefold tree of the Egypto-gnostic mystery (Pistis
Sophia, B. 1, 1-3).
Otherwise
stated, it was a symbol of the power that sustained the heavens with the
supporting pole and
the arms of
the four quarters. This power was personified in Ptah as well as figured in the
Tat. Hence the
god is seen
within the type as Ptah-Sekari or the later Asar-Tat. Then the type of the
eternal is the
eternal’s own
self: the power that sustains the universe in very person who is Ptah in one
cult, Osiris in
the other.
The superincumbent weight and pressure on the sustaining power is probably
indicated by the
squelched
face and compressed features of the Osiris-Tat (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians,
vol. 3, pl. 25).
The
sustaining power within the Tat would make the god and the cross to be one as
they are in the Osiris
Tat. The
deceased arises from the tomb as the Tat. He says “I am Tat, the son of Tat”
(Rit., ch. 1), or of
the eternal
who establishes the soul for eternity in the mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch. 17).
Hence the figure of a
god extended
crosswise as the sustainer of the universe could be equivalent to the cross.
The Hindu
figure of
Witoba, for example, is portrayed in space as the Crucified without the cross
(Moor’s Hindu
Pantheon). On
the other hand, the Swastika is a form of the cross without the crucified. In
the Christian
Iconography,
as Didron shows, Christ and the cross are identical, as were Horus and the Tat.
The cross
takes the
place of the Tat as symbol of supporting power, and the god as the sustaining
force within the
Tat may
account for the legend of the gospel Jesus being the bearer of the cross on
which he was to
suffer death.
A resurrection of Osiris from death in the month Choiak is mentioned in several
texts (as in
the Pap.
Biling. Rhind., II, 4, line 8, ed. Birch, plate 8) without giving the day of
the month, but of course
rebirth and
resurrection in Amenta were identical, and the resurrection is also signified
there by the
raising of
the Tat-pillar or cross. When the Tat was annually overthrown it was raised
again by the
uplifting
power of the god represented by the Son as the sign of resurrection. Thus the
genesis of the
legend of the
cross, like to that of the Christ, can be traced in Egypt to the cult of Ptah
at Memphis, where
the religion
of the cross originated; and to Annu or On, where it was continued in the cult
of Atum-Ra with
Iu-em-hetep
as the Egyptian Jesus. This, as we show, was Iusa the Jew-God brought out of
Egypt by the
Ius or Aius,
or when the name is spelt with the letter J, by the Jews. For 13,000 years has
Iu the Egyptian
Jew been
coming astronomically as Iu the Su or Iu-sa, the son of Atum, or rather as Atum
manifesting in
the person of
the son. For 13,000 years he has been the bringer of good-will and peace and
plenty to the
world in
accordance with the meanings of his title, Iu-em-hetep. And as this Jesus is
the ever-coming-one
who is always
figured one foot before the other and best foot foremost in the act of coming,
never-hasting
never-halting,
and as Iu is the Jew we see in this wanderer of eternity with no rest for the
sole of his foot
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Ancient
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through all
the cycles of time, the original personification of him who lives in later
legend as the
“Wandering
Jew”. [Page 752]
How often has
it been confidently declared that the idea of a divine fatherhood was
introduced into the
world some
time after A.D. by an historical Jesus; whereas it is a matter of scientific
demonstration that
the doctrine
was established in the cult of Ptah, and perfected in the religion of Atum-Ra;
in both of which
Iusa or Jesus
was the ever-coming son as demonstrator for the eternal in the sphere of time.
The doctrine
of a future life, or in modern phrase, the immortality of the soul, was also
taught at Memphis
many thousand
years ago under at least four different figures of the re-arising human spirit.
One of these
was the Apis
called “the second life of Ptah”; one the Scarabaeus termed “the old one who
becomes
young” ; a
third was the Hawk of soul emerging from the mortal mummy; and a fourth Iu-em-hetep,
as the
type of an
eternal child.
Until the
time of Ptah, the Totemic types prevailed in the Egyptian astronomical
mythology. There was
only the
Great Mother, in several characters, with her children, the same as in
Totemism. But when the
fatherhood
was founded in Ptah his predecessors were designated his children. We learn
from a
hieroglyphic
inscription on the temple of Iu-em-hetep at Philae that he was called “the
great one, son of
Ptah, the
creative god, made by Tanen (a title of Ptah), begotten by him, the god of
divine forms, who
giveth life
to all men”. On one line of development he became the father-god as Atum-Ra at
Heliopolis;
on the other
he was God the son as Atum-Horus or Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace or
rest.
Christian
ignorance notwithstanding the Gnostic Jesus is the Egyptian Horus who was
continued by the
various sects
of gnostics under both the names of Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic
iconography of the
Roman
Catacombs child-Horus reappears as the mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The
royal
Horus is
represented in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there
witnesses to Jesus being
Horus of the
resurrection. The resurrection of Osiris, the mummy-god, is reproduced in the
Roman
Catacombs as
the raising of Lazarus. Amongst the numerous types of Horus repeated in Rome as
symbols of
the alleged “historic” Jesus are “Horus on his papyrus” as the Messianic shoot
or natzer;
Horus the
branch of endless ages as the vine; Horus as Ichthus, the fish; Horus as the
bennu or phoenix;
Horus as the
dove; Horus as the eight-rayed star of the Pleroma; Horus the Scarabaeus; Horus
as the
child-mummy
with the head of Ra; Horus as the black child, or Bambino; Horus, of the
triangle (reversed)
(Lapidarian
Gallery of the Vatican, Lundy, p. 92).
Horus in his
resurrection betwixt the two trees; Horus attended by the two divine sisters,
or two women;
Horus as the
lion of the double force; Horus as Serapis; these and others were reproduced as
Egyptognostic
by gnostic
artists in illustration of Egypto-gnostic tenets, doctrines, and dogmas. The
Catacombs
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Ancient
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of Rome are
crowded with the Egypto-gnostic types which had served to Roman, Persian,
Greek, and
Jew as
evidence for the non-historic origins of Christianity. To Marcion of Pontus,
for [Page 753] example,
the epicene
Serapis would represent the soul of both sexes which was the non-historical
Egypto-gnostic
Christ. Horus
of the inundation brings the fish and grapes for the Uaka festival “Called
Christ as a
Fisherman”,
Lundy, fig. 54). Horus still issues from the mummy as the young sun-god with
the head of
Ra, the same
as in the Ritual. The soul of Ra still issues from the sepulchre as the
phoenix=bennu; and
Osiris comes
forth at the call of Horus from the tomb. Amsu still rises from betwixt the
trees of Nut and
Hathor as the
good shepherd with the lamb upon his shoulder, wearing the cloak of royalty,
and carrying
the panpipes
in his hand as a figure of the All-one, that is, as Horus of the resurrection.
Double Horus, as
the child of
the virgin and the son of God the Father, is portrayed in both his characters
as the heir of
Seb, god of
earth, and the heir of Ra, the father in heaven. As the heir of Seb he is
seated on a throne
that is
supported on the head of an aged man, who represents the god of earth
(“Sarcophagus of Junius
Bassus”,
Lundy, fig. 41). As the heir of Ra he is enthroned in heaven, or on a figure of
heaven (Nut), as
Horus
divinized (Lundy, fig. 42; Didron, figs. 18 and 66). The ox and the ass which
appear in the Roman
Catacombs
with the worshippers of the new-born infant are witnesses for Iusa, and not for
an historical
Jesus. Iusa
in Egypt had been represented by both the ass and the ox, or the short-horned
bullock, in the
cult of
Atum-Ra at On. In a sculptured sarcophagus of the fourth century, the three
Magi are offering gifts
to the divine
infant, or mummy-child. These, according to their caps, are Zoroastrians. They
are
worshippers,
however, of the risen Christ. Only the risen one in this case is Mithra, son of
the sun, and
not the
Jewish Jesus. The story of Jesus riding on two asses, or on an ass and the foal
of an ass, in the
triumphal
procession to Jerusalem also shows that he was one with Iusa, the Egyptian
Jesus. It has been
suggested
that the Gospel narrative was derived from the Greek tradition of Dionysius
riding on two
asses. But it
is of incomparably greater likelihood that it was derived from the Hebrew
prophecy being
converted
into an historical event. Either way, there was one origin for both in the
Egyptian mythical
representation.
As already shown, Iu, the ass in ancient Egypt, was a type of Atum-Ra, and his
son Iusa
in the Kamite
mythos. It was a zootype of the swift-goer where there was no horse, and bearer
of the
solar god who
was Atum in the two characters of the father and the son, the old one and the
young one,
or, in sign-language,
the ass and the foal of the ass, upon which the Messu, or Messiah rode, in
coming
up to day
from Amenta. Iusa is portrayed with asses’ ears. Iu is both the ass and the god
under one
name, and if
not portrayed as riding on an ass, or, according to the Märchen, on two asses,
he is
represented
by the ass with the solar disc upon his head, at the sides of which are the two
ears of an
ass.
According to Lefébure “he seems to raise himself by means of a rope” (“Book of
Hades”, Records of
the Past, v.
10, 130). Thus, and in no other way, the youthful sun-god rode upon the ass as
Iusa or as
“Horus with
the royal countenance”, considered as the son of Ra (ib., p. 131). The
twin-lions form another
tell-tale
type. Ciampini says two lions used to be stationed at the doors of ancient
churches and basilicas
in Italy, not
as mere ornaments, but for some mystical signification (Vet. Mon. I. C., 3, p.
35). As Egyptian,
the type is
as old [Page 754] as the Kherefu, which were stationed in the sign of Leo at
our point of
beginning in
the Jesus-legend where Iusa was born as Atum-Horus, the lion-faced, supported
by the two
lions on the
ecliptic, which imaged the double force of the young sun-god coming in the
strength and
glory of the
father, Atum-Ra, whether supported by the two lions or riding on the ass. Thus
the two lions
supposed to
be guarding the doors of the church in Rome were at that time guarding the
double-doors of
the horizon,
through which the solar god came forth at Easter in the equinox.
Naturally it
was for mythical not for historical reasons that the child-Christ remained a
starrily-bejewelled
blackamoor as
the typical healer in Rome. Jesus, the divine healer, does not retain the black
complexion
of
Iu-em-hetep in the canonical Gospels, but he does in the Church of Rome when
represented by the
little black
bambino. A jewelled image of the child-Christ as a blackamoor is sacredly
preserved at the
headquarters
of the Franciscan order, and true to its typical character as a symbolical
likeness of Iusa the
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Ancient
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healer, the
little black figure is still taken out in state, with its regalia on, to visit
the sick, and demonstrate
the supposed
healing power of this Egyptian Aesculapius thus Christianized. The virgin
mother, who was
also black,
survived in Italy as in Egypt. At Oropa, near Bietta, the Madonna and her
child-Christ are not
white but
black, as they so often were in Italy of old, and as the child is yet
conditioned in the little black
Jesus of the
eternal city. According to local tradition the image of the black bambino was
carved at
Jerusalem out
of the root of a tree from the mount of Olives. This supplies another
illustration of Egyptian
origin. In
the solar mythos the divine babe rises from the emerald tree of dawn. In the
Ritual he issues
from the
Asru-tree (ch. 42). But under one Egyptian type the tree of dawn is the bakhu
or olive-tree, the
“son of oil”,
from which the solar light was born. Hence mount Bakhu, the solar birthplace,
is the mount of
Olives, and
the infant born from the tree of dawn was represented by the image carved out
of the tree
upon mount
Olivet. In this, as in unnumbered other instances, the mythos lives obscurely
in the legend
which is
still capable of reconversion. The cult of the child who was black is further
illustrated at the
festivals of
the Bambino in Rome, when sermons are preached from the pulpit by “the mouths
of babes
and
sucklings”. There is a little black doll in the hieroglyphics which is a
determinative of the word “men”
to be
concealed. This appears alongside of Atum as variant to the Ankh-symbol of
life, and is very
suggestive of
the little black bambino as a figure of child-Horus in his darkness, or
Iu-em-hetep in
Amenta. From
this standpoint it is possible to see how it came to pass that the Jew-God
could have a
son born to
him with a black complexion, and thus account for the black Jesus that is
worshipped in the
cult of papal
Rome. Surely the profoundest sigh of an ever-warring world went up to heaven in
the cult of
Iu-em-hetep,
who was worshipped as the giver of rest, the Kamite prince of peace. The
bringer of peace
was the giver
of rest to the weary; the word hetep having both meanings. From the time of the
fifth
dynasty the
Egyptian dead were buried “em-hetep” or “In pace” in the great resting-place of
Amenta. This
giver of rest
was the leader of his followers into the kingdom of rest, [Page 755] where they
reigned with
him in the
glory of the father. In one of the sayings of Jesus, or Iu-em-hetep, “Jesus
saith” of him who
seeks,
“Astonished he (the seeker) shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the
kingdom he shall
rest” (“New
Sayings of Jesus”). It is also said in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, “He
that wonders
shall reach
the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest”. “The promise of
Christ (or
Jesus) is
great and wonderful and rest in the kingdom to come and life eternal” (Clement
II, Epis. v. 5).
And in the
Acts of Thomas it is said that “they who worthily partake of the goods of this
world have rest,
and in rest
shall they reign”.
Iu-em-hetep
is portrayed as the youthful sage and precocious teacher. He is the “heir of
the temple”,
depicted as
the teacher in the temple; the boy of twelve years who wears the skull-cap of
wisdom, and
sits in the
seat of learning. He holds a papyrus on his knee and is in the act of unrolling
it for his
discourse.
This is he who personated the divine Word in human form as the wise and
wondrous child of
whom the
tales of the infancy were told. Hence he was the mythical teacher, and reputed
author of the
“Sayings” and
writer of the Books of Wisdom. But it cannot even be pretended that any
historic
personage
named Jesus, alleged to have been born into the world in the year one, or four,
of the present
era, could
have been the author of “the wisdom of Jesus” in the Apocrypha. But there is
the book, and
there is the
name to be accounted for. In the “New Sayings of Jesus”, found at Oxyrhynchus,
it is said in
the opening
paragraph, “These are the words (or logoi) which Jesus the living spake to . .
. and Thomas,
and he said
unto (them) ‘Every one that hearkens to these words shall never taste of
death.’ “ And this is
the common
formula in the rubrical directions of the Ritual. For example, the 64th chapter
is to be recited
in order that
“the soul of the person may not die a second time” or may not suffer the second
death. It is
also said of
ch. 20, “Let the person say this chapter and he will come forth by day after
death, and
escape from
the fire”. These are the words of life that deliver the soul from second death
in Amenta. Of
chapter 70 it
is said, “If this scripture is known upon earth he will come forth by day (from
the dead) and
walk among
the living. His name will be uninjured for ever”. Ch.130 is entitled ...A book
by which the
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Ancient
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soul is made
to live for ever". By means of ch. 180 the manes takes the form of a
living soul. In truth one
half of the
Ritual consists of the magical words of power that save a soul from the dreaded
second death;
the rest
describe the way of salvation together with the transformations and trials
which have to be
undergone in
the course of working it out. Iu-em-hetep was pre-eminently the divine healer,
the medicine-
man amongst
the Egyptian gods. He was the good physician of souls as well as the healer of
bodily
disease. He
was the caster-out of evil demons, the giver of sleep and rest to sufferers in
pain.
AEsculapius
was a Greek version of Iu-em-hetep, “the great son of Ptah”. The Greeks called
his temple
near the city
of Memphis “The Aesculapion”. “Under the Ptolemies a small temple was built in
honour of
Iu-em-hetep
on the island of Philae” ; and a Greek version of the hieroglyphic [Page 755]
inscription was
placed over
the door by the command of Ptolemy V (Budge, Gods of Eg., vol. I, p. 23).
Iu-em-hetep is not
mentioned by
name in the “Book of the Dead”, but it is said to the deceased in “the Ritual
of
Embalmment”
“thy soul uniteth itself to Iu-em-hetep, whilst thou art in the funeral
valley”, where he takes
the name of
Horus as lord of the resurrection.
The cult of
Iu-em-hetep was eclipsed or much obscured by the Osirian religion. In fact
Iu-em-hetep was
but a title
of him who was the bringer of peace and good luck, and who was Atum-Horus as
the son of
Ptah; hence
Iu-em-hetep is far better known as Horus the son of Osiris. Nevertheless, this
cult of Iusa the
child, the
little hero sayer and healer, had a remarkable recrudescence and a considerable
increase in
Saitic and
Greek times. We find that a temple was erected for his worship at Sakkara
between the
Serapeum and
the village of Abusir. This is near enough in time to help in establishing a
link betwixt the
Egyptian Iusa
and the Jesus of the Gospels, who was brought on from Memphis as Iu the Sa or
son of
Ptah, to Annu
as Iu the ever-coming sa or son of Atum-Ra, thence to Alexandria as
Iu-em-hetep, and to
Greece as
Imuthes, or AEsculapius, the god of healing there as he had been in Egypt, and
to Rome as
Jesus the
Egypto-gnostic Christ.
In the
transition from the old Egyptian religion to the new cult of Christianity there
was no factor of
profounder
importance than the worship of Serapis. As the Emperor Hadrian relates, in his
well-known
letter to
Servianus, “those who worship Serapis are likewise Christians; even those who
style themselves
the Bishops
of Christ are devoted to Serapis”. The very Patriarch himself (Tiberias, head
of the Jewish
religion),
when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to adore Serapis, by others to
worship Christ.
“There is but
one God for them all”. Clearly this was but a difference in type and title.
According to
inscriptions
at the Serapeum of Memphis, the ancient Egyptian Serapis was born of the Virgin
Mother,
when she was
represented by the sacred heifer — a far earlier type than the mystical human
Virgin.
Serapis was
“the second life of Ptah”. Hence, as Diodorus says (I. 25), Serapis was a name
given to all
persons after
their death or in their resurrection.
Prehistoric
Christianity was founded, as Egyptian, on the resurrection of the human soul
from the deaf
and dumb, the
blind and impotent inertia imaged in death, and its coming forth to day as
demonstrated
by the
reappearance of the eidolon or double of the dead. The Egypto-gnostic Christ
only existed in the
spirit as a
spirit or a god. Their Christ was represented by the superhuman types of the
risen mummy; the
eight-rayed
star of the pleroma; the divine hawk; the mystical dove; the sacred beetle; the
lion, fish or
lamb; not by
the man in an individual form of historic personality. That is why there is no
portrait of the
man
Christ-Jesus. There is no human portrait for the reason that there was no man.
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THE
JESUS-LEGEND IN ROME
Before it
could be for the first time understood, the story outlined so elusively in the
canonical Gospels
had to be
retold in accordance [Page 757] with the astronomical mythology, and more
especially in terms
of the
Osirian eschatology. The legend was so ancient in Egypt that in the time of
Amen-hetep, a
Pharaoh of
the 18th dynasty, it was humanly applied to his child and to his consort
Mut-em-Ua in the
character of
the divine woman, the mother who, like Neith, was ever-virgin. A passage and a
picture from
the “Natural
Genesis” (vol. II, p. 398) may be repeated here. The story of the Annunciation,
the
miraculous
conception (or incarnation), the birth and the adoration of the Messianic
infant had already
been engraved
in stone and represented in four consecutive scenes upon the innermost walls of
the holy
of holies
(the Meskhen) in the temple of Luxor (which was built by Amen-hetep III. about
1700 B.C., or
some
seventeen centuries before the events depicted are commonly supposed to have
taken place. In
these scenes
the maiden queen Mut-em-Ua, the mother of Amen-hetep, her future child,
impersonates
the
virgin-mother, who conceived and brought forth without the fatherhood.
The first
scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, as divine word or logos, in the act
of hailing the
virgin queen
and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming son. (That is, to
bring forth the
royal Repa in
the character of Horus or Aten, the divine heir.) In the second scene the
ram-headed god
Kneph, in
conjunction with Hathor, gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost or spirit
that causes
conception,
Neph being the spirit by nature and by name. Impregnation and conception are
apparent in
the virgin’s
fuller form. Next, the mother is seated on the midwife’s stool, and the child
is supported in the
hands of one
of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the infant is
enthroned,
receiving
homage from the gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity, who represents the
holy spirit, on
the right
three men are kneeling offering gifts with the right hand, and life with the
left. The child thus
announced,
incarnated, born and worshipped was the [Page 758] Pharaonic representative of
the Atensun
or child-Christ
of the Aten-cult, the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother imaged by
Mut-
em-Ua. (The
scenes were copied by Sharpe from the temple at Luxor.) Thus the divine drama
was
represented
humanly by the royal lady who personated the mother of God, with her child in
this particular
religion.
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Ancient
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And here a
dogma of “historic personality” may be seen in the germ. Indeed, when the
Pharaoh first
assumed the
vesture of divinity and a doctrine of historic personality for the Messiah
could be and was
established,
Ra was the representative of God the Father and the Repa was a type of God the
Son, as
heir-apparent
for the eternal. The father was the ever-living and the son the ever-coming
one. These, in
the cult of
Annu, were Atum-Ra the father, and Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus, the coming son.
The eternal
existence of
the father was thus demonstrated by the ever-coming of the son. These divine
characters of
the Ra and
Repa, so to say, had become historical in Usertsen First according to a record
of the twelfth
dynasty. In
this the king says of his God, the double Har-makhu, “I am a king of his own
making, a
monarch
long-living, not by the Father. He exalted me as lord of both parts; as an
infant not yet gone
forth; as a
youth not yet come from my mother’s womb”. This was in the character of the
unbegotten
Horus, the
Virgin’s child, who had no father (Records, vol. 12, pp. 53-4), and who as
Har-makhu was
earlier than
God the Father, Ra. We learn from a still older document that the Son of God
may be said to
have become
historical in Egypt early in the fifth dynasty; that is, as the Son of Ra. The
earlier Pharaohs
were not the
sons of Ra, they were Horus-kings. The “Son of Ra” then gave historic
personality to the
god who was
first imaged in the human form of Atum-Iu. Thenceforth the Repa, or
heir-apparent, was the
representative
of that ever-coming son who was the child of Ius..as in the cult of Annu, and
who was, in
fact, the
Egyptian Jesus or Iusa, the coming son in historic personality as the royal
representative of Ra.
Another
version of the ancient legend that was at length converted into Christian
history has recently
been
discovered in Egypt. This was written in Demotic, but however late the copy,
the internal evidence
shows that it
is an Egyptian folk-tale containing matter of the indefinitely more ancient
mythos. That is the
all-important
point. The story is told of one Si-Osiris, the son of Khamuas, a famous high
priest of Ptah at
Memphis who
was head of the hierarchy of his time, about 1250 B.C. The tale of Khamuas, so
far as it
goes, is a
perfect parallel to the story of the marvellous child that is told in the
Gospels, canonical or
apocryphal,
which contain some portions of the mythos reduced to the status of the Märchen.
There was
one origin
for all — that is, Egyptian. The mythos is the parent of the Märchen, and the
unity of the
Märchen is
traceable to the Egyptian mythology and eschatology — there, and nowhere else.
It is the
story that
had been dramatized and narrated by the Egyptians during many thousand years in
the cult of
Ptah-Sekari
at Memphis; of Aten and of Atum-Iu at Annu, and of Osiris in Egypt generally. Only
minds
completely
crazed or fatally confused [Page 759] by the current Christomania would suppose
that the
details of
the story, which is as old at least as the cult of Ptah in Memphis, were
derived from the
“historic”
version that was canonized at last as Christian. The Ritual is a permanent
reply to all such false
assumptions.
At least the “Book of the Dead” is not a forgery of post-Christian gnostics.
The folk-tale
here is told of Si-Osiris, son of Setme-Khamuas, who was incarnated as the human
representative
of Horus the divine. It is said of Horus, son of Pa-neshe, “he being in the
shape of Si-
Osiris made
an effort of written magic against the man of Ethiopia”. Moreover, this Horus
comes up from
Amenta on
purpose to contend against the black art of Hor, son of the negress, and in
doing this
assumes the
shape of the human Si-Osiris. As the translator remarks, “the end of the story
shows that Si-
Osiris is
really Horus, son of Pa-neshe, who had obtained leave from Osiris to revisit the
earth”.
Setme-Khamuas,
the son of Pharaoh Mer-ma-ra (King Rameses II) took to wife his sister
Meh-wesekht,
whom he loved
devoutly, but they had no child, and their hearts were grieved because of it.
The childless
wife is
spoken with one night, by superhuman visitants, in a dream. They tell her (or
words are spoken to
the effect)
that she shall conceive and bear a child. Khamuas, her husband, is also
informed in a dream
that his
consort, who is called his sister, just as Isis is the sister of Osiris, has
conceived and will bear a
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Ancient
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son. “The
child that will be born, he (shall be named) Si-Osiris (Osiris’ son); many are
the marvels that he
shall do in
the land of Egypt” (Griffith, Stories, p. 43). Meh-wesekht is told that she
will find a melon-vine,
which shall
be to her for medicine, and she is to give of it to Khamuas. Then “she lay down
by her
husband and
she conceived seed of him” (Stories, p. 43).
In this
account of conception the melon-plant, its gourd or its flower, takes the place
of the papyrus, lotus
or lily
presented to Isis the virgin and to Mary. This is referred to after his birth
by the child Si-Horus, who,
in speaking
of his coming forth, says, “I grew as that melon-vine, with the intent of
returning to the body
again that I
might be born into the world” for a purpose variously described in the
different texts. In this he
becomes
incarnate to combat the power and influence of evil in the form of black magic
(Stories, pp.
43-65).
Si-Osiris is really Horus, the son of Osiris in Amenta. This he leaves to visit
earth and become the
son of
Meh-wesekht, the sister and consort of Khamuas. He says, “I prayed before
Osiris in Amenta to let
me come forth
to the world again. It was commanded before to let me forth into the world. I
awoke; I flew
right up, to
find Setme, the son of Pharaoh, upon the Gebel of On and the Gebel of Memphis,
the place
of burial in
the desert”. Si-Osiris, like Jesus in the “history”, has the power of suddenly
becoming invisible;
as it is
said, “Si-Osiris passed away as a shade or spirit out from the land of Pharaoh
and Setme, his
father, nor
did they see him” (Stories, p. 65). Like the young Jesus in the Gospel (Luke
II. 40), the child
grew and
waxed strong. The exact words are, “The child grew big; he waxed strong; he was
sent to the
school. He
rivalled the scribe that had been appointed to teach him”. “The child, son
[Page 760] of Osiris,
began to
speak with the scribes of the House of Life (in the temple of Ptah); all who
heard him were lost
in wonder at
him” (Stories, p. 44). “Now when the royal Si-Osiris had attained the age of
twelve years it
came to pass
that there was no good scribe (or learned man) that rivalled him in Memphis in
reading or
in writing
that compels” ; that is, in uttering the Ur-hekau or mystical words of great
magical power. As the
translator
remarks, it is curious to find that linguistically the tale is somewhat closely
related to the new
Egyptian of
the twelfth century B.C.; that is, to the time of Khamuas, one of the chief
characters, as the
date of the
original document.
But not only
in Egypt was the divine hero, the Prince of Eternity, represented by the royal
child born heir-
apparent to
the throne. It was the same in Rome. For instance, the birthday of Augustus
Caesar was
hailed in
Rome as that of the Messianic Prince of Peace. In a well-preserved Greek
inscription of eighty-
four lines,
in which an ancient account is given of the introduction of the Julian calendar
on the birthday
of the
Emperor Caesar Augustus, September 23rd, it is written: —
“On this day
[i.e., the birthday of Augustus] the world has been given a different aspect.
It
would have been
doomed to destruction if a great good fortune common to all men had not
appeared in
him who was born on this day. He judges aright who sees in this birthday the
beginning of
life and of all living powers for himself. Now at last the times are passed
when
man must
regret that he has been born. From no other day does the individual and all
humanity
receive so much good as from this day, which has brought happiness to all. It
is
impossible to
find words of thanksgiving sufficient for the great blessings which this day
has
brought. That
Providence which presides over the destinies of all living creatures has fitted
this man for
the salvation of humanity with such gifts that he has been sent to us and to
coming
generations as a saviour. He will put an end to all strife and will restore all
things
gloriously.
In his appearance, all the hopes of the ancestors have been fulfilled. He has
not
only
surpassed all former benefactors of mankind, but it is impossible that a
greater than he
should ever
come. The birthday of this god [i.e., Augustus] has brought out the good news
of
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Ancient
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great joy
based upon him. From his birth a new era must begin.
The Egyptian
Repa or the Roman Caesar was enacting on this earth, approximately, the
character
assigned to
the son of God in the Egypto-gnostic mysteries. The world would have been
doomed to
destruction
but for the rebirth in time of the Messu or Messiah, the Repa or divine heir,
who represented
the eternal
as the child, the ever-coming prince of peace, who is also imaged as the living
link which
connects and
unites the past and future in the present, by means of him who became the
representative
of the deity
on earth, whether in Egypt or in Rome, in India or Japan (Rit., ch. 42, 4, 5).
But the man
whose coming
changed the world, and saved it by renewal, was mythical, and his advent was
aeonian
from age to
age, under whatsoever name. Thus, in Rome the Emperor Augustus personalized the
coming prince
of peace in an historical character.
The
repetition of this as Christian legend in the Gospels is no mere replica of
“heathen” sentiments,
images,
types, and phrases. It is a reproduction of the Egyptian astronomical mythology
and eschatology
in the
disguise of a pretended history.
In Egypt the
Pharaoh and his son for ages had represented Ra and [Page 761] the Repa, the
divine heir-
apparent or
the prince. As Egyptian the fatherhood and sonship of the one god were founded
on the
Pharaoh and
the heir-apparent, the Ra and Repa, who constituted the King that never died.
The son of
God was born
as manifestor for the eternal, and the ruler as Pharaoh, emperor or king, was
the earthly
representative
of the God with whose divinity the new historical ruler was invested as the
Anointed, the
Repa, the
Prince, the Caesar, the Mikado, the Cyrus, or the Christ. This birth of the
eternal in time was
astronomical.
But it was humanized for the birthday of Amen-hetep in Egypt, for Alexander in
Greece,
and for
Caesar-Augustus in Rome before the era that was designated Christian. The
virgin-mother in
mythology,
and there never was any other, is she who made her proclamation in the Temple
of Neith at
Sais that she
proceeded from herself and bore the child without her peplum being lifted by
the male. The
myth reflects
the matriarchate from a time when the fatherhood was not yet individualized.
The mother
with child,
the great or enceinte mother, is at the head of the Kamite Pantheon as the
mother of life and a
figure of
fecundity. This type of the mother and child retains its position in the
Christian iconography when
the child
Jesus, like Kheper, is exhibited in the Virgin’s womb surrounded by the seven
spirits as doves
(Didron). The
mother with her child in utero or in her arms was indefinitely earlier than the
typical father
and son whose
worshippers were opposed to the more primitive representation of nature. Horus,
at first,
is the child
of Isis only, with Seb as putative or foster-father, who was not the begetter.
Thus the
mother might remain a virgin. Horus, the child, was an image of the god, made
flesh in human
guise. He is
the mortal Horus, very imperfect, sometimes sightless, at others a cripple, but
divine; the
divine victim
in a human shape, which was now the manifesting mask of the deity or superhuman
power,
instead of
the totemic zootype. And naturally the divine child thus humanly featured
involved the mother
of the god in
a human effigy. The child assigned to the earth-father Seb=Joseph is Horus up
to twelve
years of age,
and then he passes from the mortal sphere.
A virgin
mother in the ancient wisdom is she who was fecundated by her own child as bull
of the mother
in the moon,
in the earth, or in other phenomena that were at first entirely non-human. But
the doctrine
survived when
the divinized mother and her child were rendered anthropomorphically. Thus the
gnostic
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Ancient
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Jesus in the
Pistis Sophia says, “I found Mary, who is called my mother, after the material
body; I
implanted in
her the first power which I had received from the hands of Barbęlô, and I
planted in her the
power which I
had received from the hands of the great, the good Sabaoth” (Mead, B. 1, 13).
That is in
the character
of the mythical child who fecundates his own mother. And here the overshadowing
of Mary
by “the power
of the Most High” (Luke I. 35) is suggestive of another overshadowing of the
Virgin who
conceives.
This is described in the magic papyrus (Records of the Past, vol. 10, p. 141)
as a
“concealment”
of the mother in the process of generation.
“On Horror’s
head horrors accumulate” in manufacturing history from the mythos. Horus, the
fatherless,
was the
fecundator of his own virgin mother, but neither as the human Horus nor the
divine [Page 762]
Horus was it
presented that he was other than the typical figure in a mystery, or that the
doctrine came
the human
way. Jesus in the same character, called the Mamzer
SANSKRIT by
the Jews, is
the same
fatherless fecundator of the virgin mother when the two are Jew and Jewess. To
the truly
religious
sense this is a most profane parody of the sacred Osirian drama. Thus the
fragments of a great
complex in
dogma and doctrine were collected together in relation to the conception of the
Messianic
child. First,
the virgin mother was the insufflator of a soul. Secondly, there is a begettal
in which the
offspring
fecundates the mother — this of course is in the mythical representation.
Thirdly, according to
Matthew, the
divine child was either conceived or begotten of the Holy Ghost.
It is the
type that tells so many secrets of the non-historical beginnings: and nothing
has been bottomed,
nothing could
be fundamentally explained with the Egypto-gnostic wisdom still unknown. The
dove that
laid the egg
is pre-eminent as a type in the conception and the birth of Jesus. At first the
insufflating spirit
of life,
whether called holy or not, was female. This was demonstrated by the
Mother-nature. In the
Gospels the
Holy Spirit as female suffices for the miraculous conception of the child-Jesus
who is
generated
without a father. But Pistis Sophia witnesses that the gnostic Jesus proceeded
from the father
in the
likeness of a dove. And that the mystery of all mysteries, the first and final
mystery, was this of the
dove,
considered to be the bird of God the Father. By this means the Holy Spirit is portrayed
as male,
whereas
according to the secret wisdom the dove had been a female type of spirit from
the first. The
gnosis was so
ancient as Egyptian that the dove had been succeeded by the hawk as the bird of
Ra, the
Holy Spirit
as male. The hawk was now the symbol of the father and the son, that is, of Ra
and Horus.
Whereas the
dove as mother-bird was primary. The female nature of the mystic dove is also
shown by its
co-type the
pigeon, still employed in modern slang as a survival of sign-language. Thus the
earliest
human soul
was insufflated by the mother, and the mother divinized was represented by the
Dove, the
bird of soul
when soul was first attributed to female source. Lastly, the same bird was
given to the Holy
Spirit as God
the Father, and as a type of the Trinity consisting of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, with the
mother veiled
and hidden by the dove. It may be noted in passing that the dove was not
necessarily a
type of
sensual desire although it became associated with Venus in Greece. There was
nothing licentious
in Hathor or
Ius..as. The earliest Venus was a personification of the enceinte mother, not a
goddess
Lubricity
provocative of lust, but in all simplicity and seriousness a type of tenderest
maternity. The dove
had been the
bird of Hathor as the insufflator of a soul of breath. In this character it is
portrayed with
brooding
wings extended on the bosom of the mummy as quickener of the spirit for a
future life. On the
tomb of
Rameses IX the dove appears in place of the hawk as a co-type of Horus at the
prow of the solar
boat. Also,
in a statuette of the 19th dynasty there is a human-headed dove which takes the
place of the
hawk as a
zootype of the soul. It is seen hovering over the bosom of a mummy. The divine
Horus rises
again in the
form of a dove, as well as in the shape of a hawk. “I am the [Page 763] Dove: I
am the Dove”,
exclaims the
risen spirit as he soars up from Amenta, where the egg of his future being was
hatched by
the divine
incubator (Rit., 86, 1). Here the bird of Hathor is also the bird of Ra, and
thus the dove became
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Ancient
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the bird of
the Holy Spirit, female in the mother, and male in the divine child Horus, and
finally in the
Father. In
the Councils of Nice and Constantinople, the fathers condemned Xenora, who
derided the
imaging of
the Holy Spirit by the dove. And to show how the type will persist, in The
Catholic Layman for
July 17th,
1856, there is a Papal picture of the Christian Godhead that was extant in that
same year, as
the trinity
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this, God the Father and God the Son are
represented as
a man with
two heads, one body and two arms. One of the heads is like the ordinary
pictures of Jesus, or
Serapis, the
other is the head of an old man surmounted by a triangle. Out of the middle of
this figure is
proceeding
the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove (Catholic Layman, July 17th, 1856).
The dove,
then, as an emblem of the Holy Spirit, also shows the gnostic nature of the
beginnings in the
Gospels
termed Canonical. “Now the birth of the Christ was on this wise. When his
Mother Mary had
been
betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the
Holy Ghost”, or, as
rendered in
sign-language, with the dove as emblem of the Holy Spirit. Hence, in the
Iconography, child-
Jesus is
represented in the Virgin’s arms or womb, surrounded by the seven doves as
symbols of the
Holy Spirit (Didron,
fig. 124).
We might say
that the dove of Hathor-Ius..as came to Rome on board the papyrus-boat, in
which the
mother Isis
crossed the swamps to save her little one from the pursuing dragon (Plutarch,
Of Isis and
Osiris, 18).
For the papyrus-boat is obviously the bark of Peter in the Roman Catacombs
(Lundy, Mont.
Christ, fig.
139). Ius..as, the mother of Iusa=Iusu, the Egyptian Jesus, was a form of
Hathor-Meri, and
was brought
on in the cult of Rome as Mary, the mystical dove and mother of Iusu, now
believed to have
become
historical. A dovecote was the dwelling where she brought him forth in Rome. As
Cyprien Robert
says, “The
first basilicas, placed generally upon eminences, were called domus columbae,
dwellings of
the dove,
that is, the Holy Ghost” (Didron, 1, 439, Eng. tr.).
Now Atum was
the holy spirit in the eschatology of Annu; the first who ever did attain that
status in
theology. His
consort was Ius..as, who, in the character of Hathor, was the female holy
spirit, as the
dove. Their
child was Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus. This was he who says, on rising from Amenta
as a spirit,
“I am the
dove, I am the dove” (The “Menat”. Rit., ch. 86). Thus, the gnostic mystery of
the dove is
traceable to
Atum as the holy spirit, and to Ius..as-Hathor as the Mother of the Coming Son
(Iusa), he
who emanated
from them as the dove. This mode of incarnation is followed by a second descent
of the
holy spirit
in the baptism of Jesus. “Lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the
Spirit of God
descending as
a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens saying, This is
my
beloved son
in whom I am well pleased”. Thus, the child that was conceived of the virgin in
the first
descent of
the spirit is authenticated as son of the father at the time of the second
[Page 764] descent of
the holy
spirit as the dove. And this, as Egyptian, is the doctrine of the dual Horus,
who was born of Isis,
the virgin,
and afterwards begotten in spirit as the beloved son of Ra, the holy spirit.
Jesus when
mothered by
the virgin-dove, whether at On or Bethlehem, is Iusa the coming child of
Hathor-Ius..as;
and Jesus
when authenticated by the bird from heaven is Iusa as the son of Atum-Ra, the
holy spirit who
is fathered
by the dove. This fatherhood of Jesus in his baptism is vouched for by the
writers of the
Canonical
Gospels. And in “the Gospel according to the Hebrews”, Jesus speaks of His
“Mother, the Holy
Ghost”. He
says, “the Holy Spirit, my mother, took me and bore me away to the great
mountain, called
Thabor”.
Which can be understood as a saying of Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus.
Iusa of Annu
went to Rome as Ichthon of Annu. Jesus went to Rome as Ichthus, the fish. The
black Iusa
went to Rome
as the Bambino. He went to Rome as the ass-headed Iu, and also is the dove as
bird of
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Ancient
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resurrection
in the Catacombs. He is found there in the several characters of Horus,
Serapis, Mithras,
and under
various types. But nowhere is the “historic” personage discoverable, living or
dead, in
subterranean
Rome.
According to
the Osirian eschatology in the Ritual, Horus, the son of God, was with his
father in heaven
before he
descended to our earth as the bringer of peace and goodwill (hetep) to men. In
coming forth
from heaven,
he is said to reveal himself by disrobing himself to present himself to the
earth. He issues
forth as
Horus, the son of Isis, the child of the Virgin Mother, saying, “I am Unbu”.
That is, “I am the
Branch”. He
also describes himself as the mortal Horus who was born blind and dumb in “the
abode of
occultation”,
En-arar-ef (Rit., ch. 71). Jesus is born at Bethlehem, in the house of bread.
Horus comes
forth in
Annu, the place of bread. The vesture of Horus is girt on him by Tait, the
goddess of food. This
answers to
the swaddling-clothes in which the child was wrapped when the mother laid him
in a manger.
Offerings
were made to the child who is received by the worshippers with “bendings of the
head in Annu”
(Rit., ch.
82). The reason why the divine child should be born in a manger is not because
there was lack
of room in
the inn, but because the child had been previously born as a lamb or a calf
before the type
was
humanized, and when the crib, or manger, was the earliest cradle of the little
one. The birth of the
babe in a
manger was anciently exhibited in Egypt, and the origin is traceable to-day.
The mother can be
identified
with the cattle-shed and the manger. For instance, Hathor was the hat or hut;
Nephthys is the
house; Isis,
the seat; the old first mother Apt was the crib; and Apt the crib is also the
manger which was
a type of the
cattle-shed when her offspring was a calf. The Apt was the birthplace when this
was the
womb of Apt,
the water-cow. The name was then applied to the manger, the crib, the hold of a
vessel,
and to the
city of Apt, or Thebes, in Egypt, which is the city of the manger by name. The
child born in a
manger or
Apt=crib is the wise way of showing a continuity of type which survived in
Egypt down to
Ptolemaic
times. The child was incarnated to live and eat the bread of Seb=Joseph beneath
the tree of
Hathor — one
of whose names is Meri. In various legends, the child was brought forth beneath
the tree,
and in our
ancient carols the tree, as a cherry-tree, [Page 765] bows down for Mary to eat
of its fruit at the
command of
the child, who is yet in the mother’s womb. The oblations offered in Tattu and
the adorations
made in Annu
are the same as in the story of the Magi, who bring their presents and bow down
before
the babe in
Bethlehem. This rebirth is referred to in the tale of Sanehat: “Thou shalt see
thyself come to
the blessed
state, they shall give thee the bandages from the hand of Tait, the night of
applying the oil of
embalming”
(Egyptian Tales, p. 114, Petrie); where the making of the Karast-mummy is a
type of the birth
of the Christ
or Anointed. Horus comes to record the words of God the father with his mouth;
the same
mouth that
draws to it the spouse of Seb as wet-nurse for the child. Like Jesus in the
Christology of John,
he is the
Word made flesh; and the spouse of Seb is the prototype of Mary, the spouse of
Joseph, who is
portrayed as
the suckler of Jesus in the Christian version of the legend. At his coming
there are cries of
adoration in
Suten-Khen, the royal birthplace, and of exultation in An-arar-ef, the city of
the blind. The
whole cycle
of the gods is filled with satisfaction at seeing Horus inherit his throne to
rule over the earth.
There are
bendings in Annu where the different generations of the Rekhet, the Pait, and
the Hamemmat
bow down
before him. The evil Sut is filled with consternation at what has taken place.
This reception of
the child in
Annu, the house of bread, as a celestial locality, is the prototype of the
jubilation heard in
Bethlehem
when, “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God”
(Luke II.
13). These are the acclamations uttered in Annu, on the divine babe making his
appearance
there (Rit.,
ch. 125), and being declared the heir of Seb, the god of earth, from whom he
issued in the
character of
Iusa, the child of Ius..as. At his advent Horus says the gods come to him with
their
acclamation,
and the female deities with jubilation, when they see him. Horus, in the litany
of Ra, is called
the son of
Ra, proceeding from Tum. “He has placed your offerings before you; he accords
you the
favour of
receiving your portion as his father Ra commanded. He is his darling. He is his
descendant
upon the
earth”. “ Show the way to his spirit. Show him his dwelling in the midst of the
earth”. What we
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may term the
human history of Horus is passed in the earth of Seb, his foster-father on
earth, whose
bread he
eats, and in whose house he dwells with Isis, the virgin mother. There is
neither date nor history
of Horus
betwixt the age of twelve and thirty years. The child-Horus quits the house of
Seb and the virgin
to reappear
in the house of his father Osiris in the earth of eternity. This will explain
why the youthful
Jesus leaves
his mother and his earthly father Joseph to be about his heavenly father’s
business when
he is twelve
years of age. Also, this fact in the mythical representation will account for
there being no
further
mention of Joseph in the Gospels after the journey to Jerusalem (Luke II. 43,
50). Seb ceases to
be the
foster-father and protector of Horus, who disappears from the earth of time (or
Seb) to reappear in
the earth of
eternity.
The infant
Horus was suckled by Isis in solitude. She is said to have nursed him in
secret. No one knew
the
hiding-place, but it was somewhere in the marshes of Amenta, the lower Egypt of
the mythos. As an
earthly
locality, the place where Isis hid herself to suckle her [Page 766] child was
identified in the marshes
of the Delta.
This part of the programme is fulfilled in the Gospel according to Matthew, and
there only, by
the flight
into Egypt. So soon as the babe was born, “an angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a
dream,
saying, Arise and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt”.
And the child was
there until
the death of Herod, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord,
through the
prophet,
saying, Out of Egypt did I call my son” (Matt. II. 13, 16). The child of the
mother had to be taken
down into
Egypt in order that the Son of God might be brought up out of it, and for the
mythos to be
fulfilled as
biblical history.
At the birth
of Horus the life of the young child was sought by the evil Sut. The mother was
warned of the
danger by
Taht, the lunar god, called the great one. He says to her, “Come, thou goddess
Isis, hide
thyself with
thy child” ; and he tells her it is well to be obedient. She is to take the
child down into the
marshes of
lower Egypt, called Kheb, or Khebt. There, says Taht, “these things will
happen: his limbs will
grow; he will
wax entirely strong; he will attain the dignity of prince of the double earth,
and sit (or rest)
upon the
throne of his father”. Then the child and mother make their way to the
papyrus-swamps. It is
said that the
plants were so secret that no enemy could enter there. “Sut could not penetrate
this region,
or go about
in Kheb”. Nevertheless the child was bitten by the reptile, as the story is
rendered in the
sorrows of
Isis, the pre-Christian mater dolorosa (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol.
II, ch. 14).
“Horus in
Kheb” (Egypt) was a title of the divine child. Kheb was in the north of Egypt,
and it was there
that Horus
passed his early days, and was reared in secret by his mother Isis. Horus lands
upon the
earth of Seb
at eventide. He sits upon the seat of Ra, which is on the western horizon, and
receives the
offerings
upon the altars. He says, “I drink the sacred liquor each evening, in the form
of the lord of all
creatures”
(Rit., ch. 79). The descent of Horus, as a child, to earth was daily or yearly
according to the
mythos. Every
night the sinking sun was received by the mother in the breeding-place, or
Meskhen, of
the western
mount, where she prepared him (or he her) for his new birth daily in the East.
The point at
which the god
descends to earth at evening is well portrayed in the oblong zodiac of
Denderah. In this
the
child-Horus is seated on the mount of the western equinox in the sign of the
Scales. The sign of the
Scales,
Makhu, was once the sign of the autumn equinox, and at that point child-Horus
touches earth for
his descent
from heaven. In this sign the child is portrayed sitting on the mount in the
disc of the full
moon. As seen
by night, the mount of earth, or the horizon, is the mount of the ecliptic, the
meeting-point
of earth and
heaven. The full moon is the mother who is Virgo in the previous sign, and in
the sign of the
Scales she
has brought forth the child.
In the Gospel
of pseudo-James (ch. 22) it is John, the child of Elizabeth, who is sought for
by Herod.
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“And
Elizabeth groaned and said with a loud voice, Mount of God, receive a mother
with her child. And
suddenly the
mountain was divided, and received them. And light shone through to them”. It
is the same
story of the
mother and child when applied to the infant John instead of Jesus. [Page 767]
The opening of
the mount is
in the equinox, and it is there the pursued ones attain safety by entering the
earth to escape
from Apap,
the devouring dragon. Seb is the Egyptian Joseph, as consort of Isis, the
earth-mother and
foster-father
of the child; and at this point in the western equinox where Horus enters the
earth or the
earth-life,
Seb, as god of earth, takes charge of the child and mother to convey them on
the way to the
lower Egypt
of Amenta.
Going down
into Kheb or lower Egypt, as rendered in the Ritual, is descending to the
secret earth of
Amenta, where
the mother hid her infant in the marshes, when they were pursued by Sut,
otherwise the
crocodile.
Now it is related in the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew (ch. 18), that when Joseph
and Mary were
on their way
to Egypt with the child-Jesus they came to a certain cave, and “Behold there
suddenly came
out of the
cave many dragons, seeing which the youths cried out with excessive fear. Then
Jesus
descending
from the mother’s lap stood on his feet before the dragons, and they adored
Jesus”. In this
scene, Jesus
saves his father and mother from the dragons, which obey him; and the dragons
we may
consider to
be crocodiles in accordance with Hebrew use and wont. In the Ritual, there is a
chapter on
repulsing the
crocodiles in which Horus saves his father from the four crocodiles (these are
eight in the
Turin text of
the Ritual). “I am the one”, he says, “who saves the great one from the four
crocodiles. ...I
am the one
who delivers his father from them”. ‘I am the one who cannot be overthrown by
the principles
and powers of
evil” (Rit., ch. 32), or, as it is otherwise rendered by Renouf: “O son who
conversest with
thy father,
do thou protect this great one from these four crocodiles. I know them by their
names and their
way of
living, and it is I who protect his own father from them”. He orders the
crocodiles to go back, one
by one, to
their quarters, and they obey him with docility. Ra has given him possession of
lower Egypt, in
which the
living are destroyed, and the crocodiles or dragons of the waters do not
triumph over him (ch.
32, 9).
Coming, as Horus, to make ready the horizon, he repulses the crocodiles of
darkness (ch. 136, 8,
9). The
dragons of a “certain cave” that is found upon the way to Egypt are an
Egypto-gnostic version of
the
crocodiles of Amenta in the Ritual. Thus, the animals in attendance on the
child-Jesus in the
apocryphal
Gospels are witnesses for the child-Horus. Horus, as the youthful sun-god on
the horizon, is
accompanied
by the two lions, Shu and Tefnut. He is attended by the two lions. He is
lighted in their
recesses by
the two lions (ch. 3, 1, 2). The power of two lions is represented by the
head-dress of Horus.
He is
strengthened by the double force of the two lions. He arrives each day in the
dwelling of the two
lions (ch.
78, 20-22), with the two lions who are his protectors. It is also said of the
Osiris, “He is
furnished
with two lions” (ch. 144).
The lions are
likewise in attendance upon Jesus in the Gospels of the Infancy. The lions
adored him, and
kept him
company in the desert. They walked along with the child; bowed their heads
before him, and
showed
subjection by wagging their tails (Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, chs. 19 and 35).
The
“apocryphal” Gospels are not a mere collection of “foolish traditions” or fables
forged or invented to
supply an
account of that [Page 768] period in “our Lord’s” history, respecting which the
accepted Gospels
are almost
silent. They are disjecta membra of the original matter; the mythos reduced to
the state of
Märchen; the
story of the miraculous child told as a folk-tale which was at last repeated as
a history in the
Gospels with
matter like the above omitted because it was too naturally incredible, and
could not be
utilized by
the most desperate expedient of miracle.
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Ancient
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When, or
where, the mythos was no longer interpreted astronomically, from lapse of the
necessary
knowledge,
the folk-tales and legendary lore began to take the place of the ancient wisdom
that was
scientifically
verifiable. Celestial localities were made geographical. The descent of the
little sun in the
lower
hemisphere is described as the journey of the child-Horus into lower Egypt,
accompanied by the
Virgin Mother
and Seb, or Joseph, the earthly father. It is observable that in an Egyptian
planisphere,
according to
Kircher, the god Seb is figured, on a large scale, in the Decans of Scorpio,
with the symbolic
goose of
earth upon his head. This, at one time, marked the western equinox; the point
at which the
earth of Seb,
or the mountain, opened to protect the mother and child, when they sought
refuge from the
dragon, the
scorpion, or serpent that stung the infant on the way to Egypt in the nether
earth, and where
“earth helped
the woman” (Rev. XII. 16) in her flight.
The origin of
the “Holy Family” can be traced to this initial point of the journey down to
Egypt. The moon
at full was
the mother with the child who rode upon the ass attended by the old man Seb.
This was the
“woman
clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
twelve stars”,
who was
persecuted by the crocodile of darkness. At the autumn equinox the Apap-reptile
reared its
loathly form
from out the abyss to pursue the mother and destroy her Babe. But the earth
opened and
helped the
woman, or Seb protected her as foster-father to the child of light. According
to the
astronomical
mythos, the Pool of Putrata, or lake of darkness, lay upon the western side of
the mount.
This was the
habitat and lair of the dragon, “eternal devourer is its name” (ch. 17, 40,
44). Here the
reptile lurks
and watches the “bight of Amenta” for its prey. With wide-open jaws of the
crocodile it
swallows the
sinking stars (in the mythos), and the souls that fall into darkness (in the
eschatology).
Above all,
the dragon of darkness lies in wait for the virgin mother and her forthcoming
child, who is the
saviour of
vegetation and preserver of the light. The journey into Egypt can be followed a
little further in
the Gospels
of the Infancy. The Arabic Gospel says the mother and child remained three
years in Egypt,
and the Lord
Jesus wrought very many miracles in Egypt, which are not found written either
in the
Gospel of the
Infancy or in the perfect Gospel (Cowper, H. B., The Apocryphal Gospels, p.
191). The
child-Jesus
in Egypt is the child-Horus in Egypt, and the traditions of Horus have been
assigned to an
“historic”
Jesus. “These”, as Wiedeman puts the cart before the horse, “have affected a
series of Coptic
texts which,
in making use of the well-known apocryphal account of Christ’s journey through
Egypt as a
child,
describe the triumphal march of the Saviour along the valley of the Nile, and
relate how he drove
his foes from
place to place, [Page 769] destroying them as he went” (Religion of the Ancient
Egyptians, p.
77, Eng.
tr.).
According to
the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, the Holy family, fleeing from the murderer Herod,
came into
the borders
of Hermopolis and “entered into a certain city of Egypt which is called
Sotinen”. Nothing has
been made of
this statement geographically. But Sotinen evidently represents the Sutenhen
(earlier
Suten-Khen)
of the “Book of the Dead” (ch. 17). This is a celestial locality of great
importance to the
legend of
Horus in Kheb. In “the childhood of Jesus, according to Thomas”, one year is
thus accounted
for. “Now
when they had come into Egypt they found a lodging in the house of a certain
widow, and they
lodged one
year in the same place” (ch. I). It may be remembered that in one of her
characters Isis is the
widow of the
dead Osiris. In a small papyrus now at the Louvre there is an incantation
against the evil
serpent that
stung the infant, in which the goddess Isis is the speaker. She says, “I am
Isis the widow,
broken with
sorrow” (Deveria, Catalogue des Manuscrits Eg. Du Louvre). Isis is the original
widow who
has an only
son, and it is she who seeks the lost Osiris, and brings him to rebirth as
Horus, her child, in
the house of
the widow. In the Kamite version of the journey into Egypt the Herrut-reptile
takes the place
of Herod, and
the child-Horus is bitten by the serpent, though not stung to death. This event
occurred
when Isis was
about to go down into Egypt for the safety of her child. M. Revillout (in 1881)
described a
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Ancient
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Demotic
papyrus at Leyden, which gives an account of the attack made on Horus by the
serpent. This
text
corroborates the statement of Plutarch and Aristides (Apology, par. 12) that
the scene of the
serpent’s
attack was in Syria. It occurred when Isis was about to go down into Egypt, for
Horus, the
divine heir,
to take possession of his father’s kingdom. When Isis and the child were
setting out, Horus
began to weep
and cry because the serpent had stung him (Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archy.,
May, 1892, p.
372). Isis protects her child and heals his wound. This is the journey of the
virgin mother
from Syria
down into Egypt, as represented in the mythos. The massacre of the Innocents is
a common
legend. In
the Jewish traditions there is a massacre of the little ones at the time of
Moses’ birth, in which
the Pharaoh
plays the part of the monster Herod. So universal was this murder that no
distinction was
made betwixt
the children of the Egyptians and the Jews. On the day that Moses was born the
astrologers
told Pharaoh they had seen in the stars that the deliverer of the Jews had been
born that day,
but they
could not tell whether his parents were Egyptian or Jewish. Therefore Pharaoh
kills not only all
the Jewish
boys born that day, but also all the Egyptians (for authorities see Proceedings
of the Society
of Biblical Archaeology,
December 4, 1888). It is the old, old story of the child that was born to be
king in
defiance of
all obstacles.
The origin of
the innocents that were massacred by the monster Herod can be traced in
accordance with
the ancient
wisdom. A primitive soul of life was derived from the elements; the soul of Shu
from wind or
air; the soul
of Seb from the earth; the soul of Horus, son of Ra, from the sun, which became
the
supreme
source of the [Page 770] elemental souls that preceded a human soul. When the
solar force was
looked upon
as the highest soul of life in nature, the souls of future beings were
considered to be
emanations
from the sun as a source of life in external nature that was superhuman. This
gave rise to the
class of beings
known as the Hamemmat, which originated as germs of soul that issued from the
sun.
They are
described as circling round the solar orb in glory. The word hamemmat signifies
that which is
unembodied or
not yet incorporated. We might say the hamemmat were pre-existing souls when
souls
were derived
from the elemental forces in the germ, and the highest of these was solar. They
are the
germ-souls of
future beings which originate as children of the sun portrayed in a human form.
As
offspring of
the sun, they are called the children of Horus, who, as the child-Horus, is one
with them; and
if they can
be destroyed in the germ, or, as the Ritual has it, in the egg, the devourer of
souls may
succeed in
slaying the divine heir himself, who is destined to bruise the serpent’s head
and win the
victory over
all the powers of evil as the lord of light and link of continuity of life.
Being at enmity with the
sun, the
reptile of darkness seeks to devour the new-born child of light. For that
purpose he lies in wait till
the woman
clothed with the sun shall bring forth. He seeks the life of the young
child-Horus, and other
lives are
involved in taking this. For Horus is the head of the solar race, the hamemmat
or future beings
that issue
from the Eye of the sun. These future souls are called the “issue of Horus”.
They are the
Innocents of
the legend that are supposed to suffer, whereas the child of light, the divine
offspring of the
solar god, is
sure to escape from the coils of the monster who has been rendered
anthropomorphically as
the ruling
tyrant — the monster Herod in a mortal guise. Thus, if any little children were
murdered by the
Apap-monster,
the dragon of darkness, these would be the offspring and issue of the solar
disk in the
domain of
physical phenomena — little ones that were neither human nor spiritual beings,
but the seed
or germs of
souls about to be. The parallel to the slaughter of the innocents can be traced
in what is
termed “the
slaughter which is wrought in Suten-Khen” ; that is, in the khen or birthplace
where the young
child-Horus
was reborn as the royal Horus. Each one of the manes or the “younglings of Shu”
had to
pass through
this place of rebirth where the Herrut-reptile lay in wait. Chapter 42 is the
one “by which one
hindereth the
slaughter which is wrought in Suten-Khen”. Here the manes speaks in the
character of
Horus the
babe. “I am the babe” is said four times. As human manes, he is one of those
who may be
destroyed,
but is safe so far as he has become assimilated to Horus. He tells the reptile,
the
herrut=Herod,
that he is not to be seized or grasped by him, and that neither men nor gods,
neither the
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Ancient
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glorified nor
the damned can inflict any injury on him who is Horus the divine child, born
and bound to
fulfil his
course as the ever-coming One, who “steppeth onward through eternity” (ch. 42).
Sotinen, “a
certain city
on the borders of Hermopolis”, is the dreaded place in Amenta, where the
slaughter of the
innocents was
periodically wrought. The would be destroyer of the child is addressed in one
of his reptile-
forms, “O
serpent Abur!” (the name rendered “great thirst” is [Page 771] equivalent to
that of the dragon of
drought),
thou sayest this day “the block of execution is furnished (Rit. ch. 42), and
thou art come to
contaminate
the Mighty One”. In another chapter Horus exults that in making his descent to
the earth of
Seb for
putting a stop to evil his nest is safe. ‘Not to be seen is my nest. Not to be
broken is my egg. I
have made my
nest on the confines of Heaven” (Rit., ch. 85). He rejoices on account of his
escape from
the slaughter
of the innocents which followed his descent into the earth of Seb. Thus in the
Osirian
mythos the
child-Horus was with the widow in Suten-Khen, and in the Gospel of the Infancy
it is the child-
Jesus with
the widow in Sotinen.
THE
EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS
On one line
of its descent the Jesus-legend was brought on to Rome from Egypt by the
mystery-teachers
whom we term
Egypto-gnostics, and whose Jesus was no Word-made-flesh in one historic form of
personality,
either at Nazareth or at Bethlehem, but was absolutely non-historical. One of
the most
important of
all the written gnostic remains is the Pistis Sophia. And whether we look on
this as the work
of Valentinus
or another, it continues the Jesus-legend from the Egyptian source, and
constitutes a
further link
betwixt the genuine mythos and the spurious history.
These books
of Ieou are the books of Jesus, like the “Wisdom of Jesus” in the Apocrypha and
the lately
discovered
“Sayings of Jesus”, that is, when the only real Jesus has been discovered in
Iusa the son of
Ius..as, he
whose Jewish name is Ieou, Iao or Iah, as derivatives from Iu, in Egyptian. The
two books of
Ieou are said
to contain the Mysteries, the first being the lesser, the second the greater
mysteries, as the
Pistis Sophia
carefully explains. Here we reach the Egyptian rootage of the Jewish Ieou, whom
the Pistis
Sophia calls
“Ieou the first man, the legate of the first order” (p. 333). Now as Atum was
the first man, the
created man,
who under one of his names was Iu, the Egyptian Jesus, this also tends to
identify the
Egypto-gnostic
Ieou with Iu-em-hetep, the author of the Sayings and the books of wisdom which
included
these books
of Ieou. One of the two books had the general title of The Book of the Great
Logos,
according to
the Mystery, an equivalent for the Logoi or Sayings of Jesus, which were
Christianized as
the Logia
Kuriaka or Sayings of the Lord, and on which the canonical Gospels were
eventually founded.
Pistis
Sophia, like the Ritual, is mainly post-resurrectional, with the briefest
allusion to the earth-life. It
begins with
the after-life in which Jesus has risen from the dead, like Amsu the good
shepherd. It opens
with the
resurrection on the Mount of Glory, the same as the Ritual. The localities,
like those in the
Egyptian
books, are not of this world. They are in the earth of eternity, not in the
earth of time. Pistis
Sophia begins
where the Gospel story comes to an end. Jesus rises in the Mount of Olives, but
not on
the mount
[Page 772] that was localized to the east of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives, as
Egyptian, was
the mountain
of Amenta. It is termed Mount Bakhu, the Mount of the Olive-tree, when the
green dawn
was
represented by this tree instead of by the sycamore. Mount Bakhu, the Mount of
the Olive-tree, was
the way of
ascent to the risen Saviour as he issued forth from Amenta to the land of
spirits in heaven
(Rit., ch.
17). So when the Egypto-gnostic Jesus takes his seat upon the Mount of Olives
or the Olive-
tree, he is
said to have “ascended into the heavens” (Pistis Sophia, Mead, G. R. S., whose
version is the
only one in
English: London, 1896). Jesus “descended into hell”, according to the Christian
creed. This
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Ancient
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forms no part
of the Gospel-legend, but we find it in the Book of the Dead; also in Pistis
Sophia. Hell or
Hades in
Greek is the Amenta, as Egyptian. Horus descends into Amenta, or rather rises
there from the
tomb, as the
teacher of the mysteries concerning the father, who is Ra the father in spirit
and in truth.
This descent
into the under-world is spoken of by Horus in the Ritual (ch. 38). He goes to
visit the spirits
in prison or
in their cells and sepulchres. Those “who are in their cells”, the manes,
“accompany him as
his guides”.
His object in making this descent is to utter the words of the father in heaven
to the
breathless
ones, or the spirits in prison. The passage shows the speaker as the divine
teacher in two
characters on
earth and in Amenta. Speaking of Ra, his father in the spirit, Horus says, “I
utter his words
to the Men of
the present generation”, or to the living. He also utters them to those who
have been
deprived of
breath, or the dead in Amenta. So in the Pistis Sophia the gnostic Jesus passes
into Amenta
as the
teacher of the greater mysteries. As it is said of his teaching in this
spirit-world, “Jesus spake
these words
unto his disciples in the midst of Amenta” (p. 394, Mead). Moreover, a special
title is
assigned to
Jesus in Amenta. He is called Aber-Amentho. “Jesus, that is to say
Aber-Amentho”, is a
formula
several times repeated in Pistis Sophia.
According to
the Ritual, a glorious “vesture” is put on in the place where the human soul
becomes
eternized or
is made immortal. This is represented in the mystery of Tattu, where the
body-soul in matter
(Osiris) is
blended with the holy spirit Ra; the female with the male (Tefnut with Shu), or
Horus the child of
twelve years
with Horus the adult of thirty years. The transaction occurs on the day that
was termed
“Come thou to
me” (Rit., ch. 17). This call is reproduced in the Pistis Sophia as “Come unto
us” on the
day of
Investiture, when Jesus puts on the divine vesture in his character of
Aber-Amentho, or Lord over
Amenta, a
title which identifies the Egypto-gnostic Jesus with Horus in Amenta. The call
is made to him
by the
attendant spirits, “Come unto us, who are thy fellow-members”; “Come unto us,
for we all stand
near to
clothe thee with the first mystery (that of the father) in all his glory” ;
“Come therefore quickly, that
thou mayst
receive the full glory, the glory of the first mystery”, the mystery of God the
father (P. S.,
16-19).
The Pistis
Sophia is a book of those Egypto-gnostics with whom the Father-God is
Ieou=Ihuh, and God
the son is
Iao=Iah (P. S., B. 2, 192, 193, Mead). It contains an Egypto-gnostic version of
the mysteries,
astronomical
and eschatological.[Page 773]
Relics of the
ancient wisdom have been piously preserved in this, the most important of all
the gnostic
remains,
i.e., for the purpose of establishing a link betwixt the Egyptian origins and
the canonical
Gospels, and
for showing how the “History” was concocted. The Jesus who is teacher of the
twelve in
Pistis Sophia
is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus who had been from of old the ever-coming son of the
eternal
father, whom
we trace by nature and by name as far back as the time of Ptah in Memphis. This
is the
Jesus, or the
Horus, of the Egyptian mysteries, and not of any Judean biography. In the
religion of Atum-
Ra the names
of Horus and of Iu or Jesus were employed to denote the same character, and
both names
were
continued for the one type by the Egypto-gnostics. The gnostic Jesus is the son
of God who had
been with the
father from eternity. Hence it is he alone who knows the father and is able to
expound the
mystery of
his nature to the Twelve. This is the first, great and only ineffable mystery,
which is before all
others and
embraces all the rest. Jesus proceeding from the father as a spirit, divine in
origin,
impersonates
the soul that became incarnate in the human form. The great primordial and
ineffable
mystery, from
which the others radiate, and in which the total twenty-four revolve as the
central source of
an eternal
evolution and involution, is the mystery of God the father becoming God the
son. God the
father is the
holy spirit represented by a bird. This bird in the Egyptian symbolism was the
hawk, or dove.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
In the
gnostic version it is the dove. One chief difference between the two birds is
in the dove being a
type of the
mother and child, whereas the hawk was the bird of the father, Ra, and the son;
the holy
Spirit, and Horus
the son of the father. In the Pistis Sophia the son proceeds from the father in
the
likeness of
the dove where Horus proceeded from the hawk-headed Ra in the likeness of a
hawk. Under
whichever
type the duality of the father and son was indicated by one bird as symbol of
the God in spirit,
who was over
all the powers which had been (elemental or astronomical) rulers in the realms
of matter
from the
beginning.
The gnostic
Jesus utters the Sayings or Logia Kuriaka on the mount, and is also the
revealer of the
greater
mysteries of Amenta. According to the Pistis Sophia, when Jesus expounded the
greater
mysteries to
the twelve it is said “Jesus spake these words to his disciples in Amenta”
(Books of the
Saviour, P.
S., 394, Mead). He had previously taught the lesser mysteries to the twelve
disciples in the
life on
earth. It is the same with Jesus as with Horus in Amenta. When Horus passes
from the life on
earth he
rises from the tomb wearing the double feather and wielding the whip as his
sign of sovereignty.
He is
Amsu-Horus, Lord of Amenta. This is the title of the gnostic Jesus, who is
designated “Jesus, that is
to say
Aber-Amentho” — which we take to be Jewish-gnostic for Jesus, the mighty or
great one, who in
his
resurrection is the Lord or Master over Amenta (Books of the Saviour, Pistis
Sophia, 358, Mead). And
Jesus
“Aber-Amentho” is an Egypto-gnostic equivalent for Osiris “Khent Amenta”.
The mysteries
of Amenta, as in the Book of Revelation, are more or less repeated in the
mysteries of
Pistis Sophia
which contains sufficient data to identify a gnostic version with the Kamite
original. [Page
774] There
are twelve divisions in Amenta corresponding to the twelve hours of darkness.
Twelve gates or
doors
successively enclose twelve sections of space, and the doors are guarded by
twelve serpents, one
serpent “to
each door”. These twelve divisions of the nether regions are repeated in Pistis
Sophia as
twelve
dungeons of infernal torment. The surrounding gloom is represented by the
Apap-dragon of
darkness. As
it is said, “the outer darkness is a huge dragon with its tail in its mouth”
(B. 2, 320). There
are twelve
rulers or guardians to the twelve dungeons who take the place of the Egyptian
twelve serpents
(Book of
Hades, Records, vol. 10). They have the faces of serpents, dragons, basilisks,
crocodiles, cats,
vultures,
bears and other beasts; for, as it is said of the rulers of “these twelve
dungeons which are inside
the dragon of
outer darkness”, “each hath a name for every hour, and each one of them
changeth its face
every hour”
(B. 2, 322). A dog-faced demon, called the eternal devourer, who lives upon the
damned, is
described in
the Ritual (ch. 17). The deceased prays to the great Osiris, “Deliver me from
that God who
liveth upon
the damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a man, at
the angle of
the pool of
fire”.This “dog-faced one” and his rivers of fire reappear in the Pistis
Sophia. Certain sins are
to be
renounced in order that the manes may escape from “the judgment of that
dog-faced one” and from
the
“judgments of Amenta”, “from the fires of Amenta”, and “from the torments which
are in Amenta” (B. 2,
255-256).
Knowing the magical names in Amenta has the same power, according to the Pistis
Sophia, as
with the Book
of the Dead. For instance, the dragon of outer darkness has twelve names
written on the
doors of its
dungeons, and, as it is said, whosoever shall understand the mystery of one of
the names, if
he is
abandoned in the outer darkness and he pronounceth the name of the dragon, he
shall be saved
and receive
the treasure of light (B. 2, 335, Mead). To know the name was to obtain
possession of the
magical word
of power which meant salvation.
In the
Egyptian hall of judgment there are forty-two assessors, and the deceased has
to plead in their
presence that
he has not broken any of the forty-two commandments (Rit., ch. 125). A version
of these is
retained in
the Pistis Sophia in the shape of forty-four renunciations, two having been
added to the
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
Egyptian
forty-two. By renouncing these forty-four sins the deceased is saved from the
dog-faced
devourer of
souls, from the dragon of outer darkness, from Ialdabaoth=Sut, prince of the
powers of
darkness, and
from the torments of the twelve dungeons of the outer darkness, all of which
are Egyptian.
The lesser
mysteries were astronomical; the greater mysteries are spiritual. The
astronomical nature of
the “lesser
mysteries” is convincingly shown in the Pistis Sophia; also the astronomical
origin of the
Twelve who
were taught those mysteries by the Egypto-gnostic Jesus sitting on the mount.
The mystery
of the five
supporters, the mystery of the seven amens or seven voices (in the heptanomis),
the mystery
of the nine
guardians of the three gates of the treasures of light (=the Put-circle of the
nine gods who
were in three
threes), the mystery of the great forefather, the mystery of the triple powers
or of the trinity,
and lastly
the mystery of the twelve saviours who preserve the treasure of light [Page
775] in heaven and
on earth, are
all identifiable as primary types in the astronomical mythology of Egypt.
The teacher
of the mysteries is an Egyptian type. He was the Her-Seshta. Brugsch enumerates
seven
classes of
such teachers: (1) the mystery-teachers of heaven; (2) the mystery-teachers of
all the lands,
which were
first of all celestial; (3) the mystery-teachers of the depth (Amenta); (4) the
mystery-teachers
of the secret
world; (5) the mystery-teachers of the sacred language; (6) the
mystery-teachers of
Pharaoh; (7)
the mystery-teachers who examine words. The divine child manifests to men as
expounder
of the
mysteries or revealer of the hidden wisdom of which he is the word, the sayer,
or the teacher. The
teacher of
the lesser mysteries was child-Horus or Iusa, the youth of twelve years. These
were the
mysteries of
matter and of mythology revealed by the child of the mother at his first
advent. The teacher
of the
greater mysteries was Horus the adult, who expounded the nature of the
fatherhood, the begettal
or
duplication of the divine soul, and all the other mysteries of the resurrection
in and from Amenta, as
the son of
God the father in heaven. But the Egypto-gnostic Jesus is the fulfiller of both
the first and the
second
advent; the first as the child of twelve years, the second as the Horus of
thirty years; the first in
the life on
earth, the second in Amenta; the first as solar in the astronomical mythology,
the second as
spiritual in
the eschatology; the first as the utterer of parables, the second as the
expounder of the
greater
mysteries.
In vain do we
try to make out the doctrinal mysteries of the eschatology, whether it is
called Egyptian,
Hebrew,
Coptic, Gnostic, or Christian, until we have mastered the mythology. Without
this foundation
there is no
foothold. Neither is there any help in an exoteric version of the esoteric
wisdom. The group of
powers was
seven or eight, nine or ten, before it included the twelve. And the character
is the same in
the mythos
when the group is twelve as when it was ten or nine, eight or seven or four —
that is, it was
astronomical.
Pistis Sophia
commences formally after the manner of an historic document, whilst being, from
beginning
to end,
entirely non-historical. It opens with a date that is astronomical, and also
with what the Ritual
terms “the
manifestation to light” at the time of full moon — that is, when the eye was
full or the circle
complete in
Annu, where the divine heir was born. “It came to pass, when Jesus had risen
from the dead
in the first
advent, that he passed eleven (should be twelve) years speaking with his
disciples and
instructing
them up to the regions of the first statutes only and up to the regions of the
first mystery — the
mystery
within the veil — the veil that was rent in death, which is before all
mysteries, because it is the
mystery of
the One Eternal God and the son who issues from the father in the likeness of a
dove, just as
Horus issued
from the father in the likeness of the hawk or dove, or the canonical Christ as
the dove. “It
came to pass,
therefore, that the disciples were sitting together on the Mount of Olives,
speaking of these
things,
rejoicing with great joy, and being exceedingly glad, and saying one to
another, ‘Blessed are we
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
before all
men who are on earth, for the Saviour hath revealed this unto us, and we have
received all
fulness and
all perfection’ “— [Page 776] as these were received upon Mount Bakhu, the
Mount of the
Olive-tree,
in the ascent of Horus from Amenta. “And while they were saying these things
the one to the
other Jesus
sat a little apart from them”. “It came to pass, therefore, on the fifteenth
day of the month,
Tybi (or
Tobe), the day of the full moon, on that day when the sun had risen in its
going, that there came
forth a great
stream of light shining exceedingly. It came forth from the light of lights.
And this stream of
light poured
over Jesus and surrounded him. He was seated apart from his disciples and was
shining
exceedingly.
But the disciples saw not Jesus because of the great light in which he sat, for
their eyes
were blinded
by the great light” on this, the Egypto-gnostic mount of the transfiguration
(pp. 4, 5, Mead).
(By the bye,
the fifteenth of the month Tybi in the esoteric Gospel sounds somewhat
suggestive of “the
fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius” in the exoteric Gospel according to Luke.) “And
Jesus said to his
disciples, I
am come from that first mystery which is also the last mystery” of the
four-and-twenty
mysteries which
he had now come to expound, because “his disciples did not know that mystery”.
In the
Egyptian tale of Khamuas, Si-Osiris, i.e. Horus the son of Osiris, comes forth
from Amenta to
spend twelve
years on the earth. This has an important bearing on the statement in the first
part of Pistis
Sophia. The
time spent by Horus the elder in the great hall of Seb, or on earth, in mortal
form, was
twelve years
in the original mythos, this being the Egyptian limit of child-life. It is
twelve years in the tale
of Khamuas.
But in the Pistis Sophia the time is given as eleven years, which has the
vagueness of the
märchen. This
tends to show the origin of the tradition reported by Irenaeus, that the
ministry and
teaching of
Jesus extended over a vague period of ten or more years, and that the Lord
lived on to be an
old man, the
old man being a literalized version of the old child, Har-Ur, the elder Horus
(Iren., B. 2, ch.
22, 5).
During those twelve years he was the child of the mother only, as in the
Gospels of the Infancy.
He is her
Word or logos, and the teacher of those lesser mysteries that led up to the one
great ineffable
mystery which
was now held to be the source of all the rest.
We hear
little of the wonderful child as divine teacher in the canonical Gospels, but
some of the excluded
matter
appears in the apocryphal Gospels. In the canonical Gospels the child-Jesus is
the teacher at
twelve years
of age. This corresponds to Horus as wearer of the lock, and to Iu-em-hetep,
the youthful
sage, each of
whom had been portrayed as the typical teacher twelve years old. It was during
those
years that
the child-Horus or child-Jesus taught. Something of this may be read in the
so-called
“apocryphal
Gospels”, ignorantly supposed to contain the lying inventions concocted by the
gnostic
heretics to
discredit and destroy a veritable human history. There is a very naďve
confession in the
“Arabic
Gospel” that, during the first three years of the infancy, the child-Jesus”
wrought very many
miracles in
Egypt which are not found written either in the Gospel of the Infancy or in the
Perfect Gospel”
(ch. 25).
Such stories had been told for ages of the child-Horus, who was a
miracle-worker in and from
the womb; and
also of the [Page 777] child as Iusa, son of Atum-Ra, and earlier still of
Iu-em-hetep, the
son of Ptah.
The miracles were a mode of demonstrating the divinity of the ever-coming
little one, Iu-Su.
At three
years of age he performs the miracle of making a dead fish live (Latin Gospel
of Thomas, B. 3,
ch. 1). At
five years of age he takes clay and models twelve sparrows, which he commanded
to fly,
whereupon
they lived and flew aloft (Latin Gospel of Thomas, B. 2, ch. 2). Horus or
Jesus, Egyptian,
Jewish, or
Gnostic, the little hero of the mythos, is one and the same divine son of the
Virgin in mortal
guise.
Horus, at his
coming-froth from Amenta, as the Word or Teacher, says: “I make my appearance
on the
seat of Ra,
and I sit upon my seat which is upon the horizon” (Rit., ch. 79). The horizon
and the mount
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Ancient
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are identical
in Egyptian, and this seat of Ra, the father in heaven, assumed by Horus in his
ascent from
Amenta, is
the mount of earth according to the solar mythos — that is, the mount of
sunrise, which is
Mount Bakhu
in Egyptian, the Mount of the Olive-tree, the prototypal Mount of Olives. In
the Pistis
Sophia Jesus
takes his seat upon the Mount of Olives as the divine teacher, word or logos,
who utters
the Sayings
to his disciples. This is the advent of Jesus which is dated the fifteenth day
of the Egyptian
month Tybi,
the day of full moon, by which the resurrection or new birth was always
reckoned. This
month in the
Alexandrian year (B.C. 25) began December 27th, which is near enough as a date
for the
nativity at
Christmas, when measured in the circle of precession. The “coming-forth to day”
is illustrated
by the great
flood of light that emanated from the light of lights and “enveloped him
entirely”. “The
multitude of
the heavenly host praising God” (Luke II. 13) is described. “And all the angels
with their
archangels,
and all the powers of the height, all sang from the interior of the interiors,
so that the whole
world heard
their voice”. “But the disciples sat together and were in the greatest possible
distress” (B. 1,
p. 6, Mead).
In the Ritual when Horus stands or is seated (on the Mount of the Olive-tree)
“in the (human)
form of that
god who is raised aloft upon his pedestal” or his papyrus, it is said “the gods
come to him
with
acclamation, and the female deities with jubilation”. “They rejoice at his
beautiful coming-forth from
the womb of
Nut”, or, as it might be rendered, the womb of Meri, for Meri=Mary is another
name for Nut
the
mother-heaven (Book of the Dead).
The gnostic
Jesus, on emerging from Amenta, takes his seat as teacher of the twelve
disciples on the
Mount of
Olives. The way up from Amenta for the sun-god in the solar mythos was on the
eastern side of
the
four-faced mount of earth which on that side was known as Bakhu, the Mount of
the Olive-tree. The
way of
ascent, worked out in the mythos, served for the manes in the eschatology. Thus
Jesus in the
ancient
character of sun-god, or as the divine child who taught, or who was the word in
mortal guise,
attains the
landing-stage upon the Mount of Olives or the olive-tree of dawn, when he
issues in or from
Amenta, like
Horus in the tamarisk, as Jesus of the resurrection. The divine child is not
merely born in
human guise,
but also as the youthful solar god. Hence in the beginning of the narrative the
disciples are
sitting round
him on the Mount of Olives [Page 778] with Jesus shining like the sun in glory
(P. S., B.1, 4).
The scene had
been already set in the astronomical mythos. He images the sun-god on the
mount; the
twelve are
round him in the zodiac. And, as it is noted, although Jesus is in their midst,
he is “a little apart
from his
disciples”.
Thus Pistis Sophia
shows the physical foundation of the mysteries. Astronomical science was taught
as
matter of the
mysteries, but the science being physical these were classified as the lesser
mysteries,
whereas the
greater mysteries were eschatological. The twelve on earth, or in matter, were
the
companions of
elder Horus, the son of Isis, the suffering saviour. The twelve in Amenta are
the
associates of
Horus, the triumphant saviour, the beloved only-begotten son of God the father.
The twelve
with Horus or
Jesus risen from Amenta are freed from the environment, the darkness, the
stains of
matter, as
pure spirits to be wholly perfected. They have attained the beatific vision, as
the children of
light. They
have passed through death and the purgation of matter to become clear spirit
when risen to
the status of
Horus the immortal. With Horus or Jesus, in the character of the young sun-god,
the twelve
were
astronomical powers, rulers, or saviours of the treasure (light) in the
physical domain. With Horus or
Jesus, the
saviour as son of God the father, they are the twelve glorious ones or gods of
Amenta, the
twelve who as
spirits are the children of Ra the holy spirit; in short, they are the twelve
in the eschatology
who were the
chosen twelve with Horus on earth as sowers of the seed, and the twelve with
Horus as
reapers of
the harvest in Amenta.
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Ancient
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Our
starting-point, then, is that Jesus or Horus in coming to earth and assuming
the vesture of mortality
issues forth
in Amenta; not the Greek Hades, nor the Hebrew Sheol, but the Egyptian Amenta,
that other
world in
which the dead as sleepers wake to life in spirit, and where the mortal Horus
makes his
transformation
and arises as the first-fruits of them that slept — a resurrection of Horus
that was
celebrated in
Egypt when the “first-fruits of the earth” were the shoots of the papyrus-plant
or sprouts of
the lentils,
as described by Plutarch. When Jesus, in his second advent, issues from Amenta
to become
the teacher
of the twelve upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples are already seated on the
mount. Jesus
suddenly
appears to them, a little apart from them, in such a dazzle of glory as to be
at first invisible to
them. This
glory of light was composed of various lights. “The light was of every kind,
and of every type,
from the
lower to the higher” (P. S., 1, 5). It was the glory of the youthful solar god
upon the mount of
sunrise, with
the lesser lights surrounding him. So in the Ritual it is said of the sun-god,
who was Horus
in his
beautiful coming-forth, “Ra maketh his appearance at the mount of glory, with
the cycle of gods
about him”
(Rit., ch. 133, Renouf). This was upon the Mount Bakhu or the olive-tree of
dawn, and the
cycle of gods
about the “golden form” of Horus are the astronomical originals of the
disciples with the
Egypto-gnostic
Jesus on the mount of sunrise called the mount of glory. The twelve disciples
of the Lord
are no more
human than was their teacher. But when the word was made flesh and Jesus
assumed the
human guise,
his followers likewise conformed to the anthropomorphic [Page 779] type of
Horus the mortal
in the life
that was lived, as mythically represented, for twelve years as the child of Seb
on earth. The
twelve with
Horus in the harvest-field are reapers, and reapers, mariners, fishers, or
teachers demanded
the
anthropomorphic type. The human type, however, does not necessarily imply the
human personage,
either in the
teacher or as the taught, any more than the zootypes imply that the god was a
crocodile, a
hawk, a lion,
or that the goddess was a water-cow, a serpent, a tree, or a cleft in the rock.
As the
gnostics truly declared, in reply to the pretended “History”, the twelve
apostles were a type of the
twelve aeons,
who were set in the zodiac as timekeepers and preservers of the light.
(Irenaeus, Bk. 2,
ch. 21, 1.)
That is, they who knew vouched for the apostles being the same as the aeons who
were the
twelve powers
of the twelve saviours of the twelve treasures of light with the gnostic Jesus
on the mount,
whose twelve
stations were figured in the zodiac; and who were the twelve powers in matter,
in physics,
or in the
astronomical mythology which preceded the twelve as great spirits with Jesus or
Horus in the
eschatology.
Even if there had been twelve men as a group of teachers, fishers, or
harvesters, in every
city, town,
or village of the earth who called themselves the disciples, or apostles, of
Jesus, Horus, or the
Lord, it
could not change one jot or tittle of the fact that the twelve were teachers of
astronomy, whose
names were
written in heaven as attendants on the youthful solar god; and who in the
second phase
became the
twelve great spirits in Amenta as reapers of the harvest for Har-khuti, the
Egyptian lord of
spirits. The
god at the head of a group or cycle of powers was a teacher from the first.
Sut, Anup, Taht
and Ptah were
typical teachers of astronomy in the stellar, lunar and solar mythos, when the
group was
seven, eight,
or nine in number. Jesus (or Horus) is the only teacher in the heaven of twelve
astronomes.
He was the
only-begotten son in spirit who was made flesh in his incarnation to enter the
human sphere
as child of
the mother, that is of matter as the matrix of spirit. He became the greatest
of all the teachers
in the
astronomical mythos, and “the twelve” who had been pre-solar teachers and
preservers of the
treasures of
light were now his servants (Seshu), his followers, his apostles. And being the
Only Son of
God it was
Jesus alone who knew the nature of the Father, which knowledge he now expounded
to the
twelve in the
higher mysteries of Amenta. Jesus describes the twelve in the two different
categories,
astronomical
and spiritual, and says, “When I first came into the world I brought with me
twelve powers. I
took them
from the hands of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light” : that is, from
the twelve who are
called the
aeons in the astronomy; the twelve who had been the powers in physical
phenomena. These
were unified
in him; he gathers their powers to himself in passing through the twelve signs
of the zodiac
as the
youthful solar god. At an earlier stage of the mythos the powers that were
gathered up in the one
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supreme power
were but seven in number, called the seven souls of Ra; in the final zodiac
they are
twelve. Jesus
also describes the founding of the twelve as his ministers on earth in matter,
or in the lower
range of the
mysteries. The first Horus imaged a soul in matter; the second was the likeness
of an
immortal
spirit. Jesus [Page 780] brought the primary soul to the twelve who are his
associates in the life
on earth. But
that was before he was invested as a Sahu or spiritual mummy to become the lord
of the
resurrection
as Jesus Aber-Amentho.
The typical
twelve, who latterly became the teachers of, and for, the Word, were as ancient
as the signs
of the
zodiac, or the twelve great gods of Egypt, which according to Herodotus were
extant some 20,000
years ago.
They were the twelve as kings, who rowed the solar-bark for Ra, with Horus on
the look-out at
the prow.
They were the twelve in various characters and in several countries into which
the gnosis of the
mysteries
passed from out the birthplace of the ancient wisdom; although the twelve have
no such
universal
radius as the seven, or the four, because of their comparative lateness in
Egypt. They were the
twelve
princes of Israel (Num. I. 44), the twelve sons of Israel; the twelve judges on
twelve thrones with
the Son of
man sitting on the throne of his glory (Matt. XIX. 28); also the twelve that
sit at the table with
the son in
the new kingdom founded by him for the father (Luke XXII. 14). They are the
twelve knights
that gathered
round the table of Arthur; the twelve gods with Odin in their midst, with
others that need not
be enumerated
now. At his second advent, which is in the spirit, the Egypto-gnostic Jesus
says to the
disciples, “I
am come now, and not (as) formerly before they had crucified me”. That is when
he was
represented
as the afflicted mortal suffering in the flesh. (P. S., 1, 10.) He has now come
in the spirit
which was
imaged by the dove, and not as formerly or aforetime when he was incarnated in
matter, for
the twelve
years on earth, as the lifetime of the child was reckoned. Becoming a spirit is
described as
putting on
the vesture of everlasting light. And the coming forth of Jesus as a spirit, or
the Christ, is
described as
his investiture, the same as with Horus in Amenta. He says, “The times are
fulfilled for me
to put on my
vesture. Lo, I have put on my vesture, and all power hath been given to me by
the first
mystery” — or
God as the one eternal source. He issues from this source as the light of all
the lights; a
light that is
infinitely beyond the star-fires, the moon-light, and the splendours of the
sun, in the mythical
representation.
All the previous powers of light had contributed to fulfil the glory of this
vesture. These
powers belong
mainly to the astronomical mythology as the lights that were revealed and set
forth in the
lesser
mysteries of the physical domain, which, according to gnostic terminology, were
designated the
rulers in
matter. Amongst these are “the seven amens which are the seven voices” ; the
five supports, the
nine
guardians, the three powers, the twelve saviours of light, all of whom are recognizably
astronomical.
(P. S., B. 1,
14, 18, 19.) He wears the glory now, “as of an only-begotten from the father”.
In making this
transformation
Jesus presents an outer view of God the father as the first ineffable mystery
of all the
mysteries. When
he came previously, in his first advent, it was from the mother as the mortal,
or the
mould of soul
in matter. Now he issues from the father in spirit as revealer of the mystery
of which he
alone has
ever had an inner view. He is now invested with the glory of the father. This
investiture of
Jesus in
spirit might be claimed as pre-eminently [Page 781] Egyptian if all the rest
were not pre-eminently
so. As a
mystery of Amenta this investiture took place when the deceased became a Sahu
and put on the
divine
vesture of a spiritual body, or the soul of Horus. The Sahu signifies the
invested, and it is identical
with the
Karest or the Christ.
There is one
datum which by itself alone might dispel any doubt respecting the Egyptian
origin of the
Pistis
Sophia. It is this: the day of investiture is the day of ...Come though to
us", or ...come unto
us"
(B.1, 17-19) this, is in the Kamite eschatology, was the day of “Come thou
hither”, on which Ra called
to Osiris in
Amenta, “Come thou hither”, or “Come thou to me”. (Rit., ch. 17.) In the Pistis
Sophia this is
the call, not
only of Ra but of all the powers of light who raise the cry of “Come unto us”
that Jesus may
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Ancient
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receive the
glory of the Father as his vesture for the resurrection. In the so-called
earth-life “Jesus had
not told his
disciples the whole distribution of all the regions of the great invisible, and
of the three triple
powers, and
of the four-and-twenty invisibles”. ‘’Nor had he told them of their saviours,
according to the
orders of
each (of the twelve) as they are; nor had he told them of the region of the
saviour of the twins;
nor the
region of the three amens; nor those of the seven amens, which are also the
seven voices. Nor
had Jesus
told his disciples of what type are the five supporters, or from what region
they had been
brought
forth. Nor had he told them how the great light had emanated, nor from what
region it had been
brought forth”.
(B. 1, 2, 3, Mead.) In brief, as the data when identified will show, he had not
instructed
them in the
spiritual nature of the mysteries, which is the object of the second coming.
But now the
teacher in
Amenta says to the twelve, “Rejoice and be glad from this hour. From this day
will I speak with
you freely,
from the beginning of the truth unto the completion thereof; and I will speak
to you face to face
without
parable. From this hour will I hide nothing from you of the things which
pertain to the height”. (B.
1, 3, 1, 8,
9, Mead.) This is said by Jesus Aber-Amentho, or Jesus in the spirit-world of
Amenta, who had
“Come forth
to day” at his second advent. When he is expounding the profounder mysteries,
Jesus says
to the
disciples, “As for the rest of the lower mysteries, we have no need thereof,
but ye shall find them in
the Two Books
of Ieou, which Enoch wrote when I spoke with him from the tree of knowledge,
and from
the tree of
life, which were in the paradise of Adam”. (B. 2, 246, Mead.) In this passage
Jesus identifies
himself with
Iao the son of Ieou=Ihuh — and also in the character of the solar god who spoke
with Moses
from the
midst of the burning bush.
It was shown
in the mysteries why and how the Twelve Immovables, or Unspeakables, “rent
themselves
asunder”, to
move, to manifest, to reveal, to find utterance by means of God the Son as
teacher of the
mysteries in
Amenta (B. 2, 219-226). Pistis Sophia marks the change of the twelve rulers
from one
category to
the other. These things, said Jesus, speaking of the change which he had come
on earth, or
entered the
lower domain of matter, to effect, “these things shall come to pass at the time
of the
completion of
the aeon (or cycle), and of the accession of the Pleroma. The twelve saviours
of the
treasure, and
the twelve orders of each of them, which are the emanations of the [Page 782]
seven voices
and of the
five trees (or supports) shall be with me in my kingdom”, which was in the
heaven of eternity.
Jesus speaks
of those “ who receive the mystery of light when they shall have quitted the
body of the
matter of the
rulers” (B. 2, 201), who were the rulers in matter versus the life in spirit,
or in Horus as the
lord of light
who was the witness to the light of life eternal.
Jesus is
described in Pistis Sophia as passing through the twelve signs of the zodiac.
The ram, bull,
twins, crab,
lion, balance, scorpion, bowman, goat, and waterer are all mentioned by name.
(B.of the S.
in Pistis
Sophia, 366-372, Mead.) He passes through the twelve signs in his character of
solar god. He
takes a
portion of their light from the twelve aeons who were the Kronian rulers. “And
the twelve powers
of the twelve
saviours of the treasure of light, which I had received from the twelve
ministers of the midst,
I cast into
the sphere of the rulers . . . and I bound them into the bodies of your
mothers”. The rulers of
the Decans
thought that these twelve were “the souls of the rulers”. But, when in the
fulness of time they
were brought
forth into the world, there was no soul of the rulers in them; they were
recognized as beings
of a superior
nature. Jesus is to reign as king over these twelve saviours, the twin-saviour,
the nine
guardians,
the three amens, the five supporters, and the seven amens and all the other
characters,
which had
been “light-emanations”, and which would have no meaning if Jesus had not
likewise had an
astronomical
character. (B. 2, 230, 231.) For these names connote the seven rulers of the
Heptanomis;
the five
supports of a heaven that was based upon a figure of the pole and the arms of
the four quarters;
the solar
trinity; the nine gods of the put-cycle, the Twin-Horus, and the heaven that
was perfected at last
as the heaven
of the twelve tribes, twelve sons, twelve brothers, twelve kings, twelve
reapers, twelve
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Ancient
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rowers,
twelve fishermen, twelve voices of the word, twelve teachers, who began as
saviours of the
treasure of
light in physical phenomena; and who were assigned a spiritual status with
Jesus in that
kingdom of
the Father which they had assisted in establishing for ever; and finally in the
heaven of
eternity.
These, however, are mysteries that never could be understood whilst a
fictitious history of Jesus
barred the
way. Horus or Jesus in Amenta is the founder of a kingdom for his Father in
heaven, and for
his followers
in spirit-world, at the head of whom are the typical twelve who now become the
children of
Horus. This
heaven for spirits made perfect is built upon foundations that were laid in the
mythology. The
Ritual shows
us how the four foundations of this new heaven were laid by Horus in
establishing the
kingdom of
God. First, he himself united the “double earth”, or the two worlds in one, by
his death, burial
and
resurrection. Then he prays to his Father in heaven that the “four brothers” of
“his own body” or flesh
and blood may
be given to him as protectors of his own person “in dutiful service”. (Rit.,
ch. 112, 11, 12;
and 13, 8.)
These four who were his brothers previously are the first of the twelve with
Horus “on his
papyrus”, or
monolith, or on the mount. The four brothers of Horus who were first chosen to
become his
children had
been astronomical as the ancient gods or divine supports of the four quarters,
Amsta, Hapi,
Tuamutef and
Kabhsenuf. With these four as supports the foundations of the kingdom of [Page
783]
heaven were
laid, and “the fold” of the good shepherd established in Amenta, the earth of
eternity. The
explanation
here is that Horus was born one of the twelve like Joseph, but as the young
solar god, and
beloved son
of the father Ra, he obtained his supremacy as the head over all the rest of the
brethren.
Then the
twelve became his founders, reapers, fishers, his disciples, pupil-teachers or
his children. As it
is said in
the Ritual (ch. 112, 9, 10), these are “the circle of gods who were with him
when Horus came to
light in his
own children” ; that is, when the twelve powers were assimilated to the son of
God, who was
in them as
they were in him at the second coming.
The gnostic
Jesus, the mystery-teacher of heaven, issues from the father in Amenta in the
likeness of the
dove as the
expounder of the greater mysteries to the twelve disciples. He now says to the
disciples, “I
will tell
unto you the mystery of the one and only ineffable, and all its types, all its
configurations, all its
regulations .
. . for this mystery is the support of them all” (B. 2, 226, Mead). This first
ineffable mystery —
looking
within, as Pistis Sophia phrases it — is the mystery of God the Father. The
first ineffable mystery
— looking
without — is the mystery of God the Son. It is the mystery of the one God in
the two aspects of
the Father
and Son; hence the mystery of the one and only ineffable, “looking
within", is also the mystery
of the one
and only word or logos “looking without” (B. 2). Jesus says, “I am come from
the first mystery
which is also
the last” (B. 1, 1). The power now given by the first mystery, within the veil,
to him who
personates
the mystery to men, looking without, is received by the Son from the Father,
from whom he
emanated in
the likeness of the dove, or the hawk and not as previously in the likeness of
a puny mortal,
the human
Horus — born of the virgin mother as her blind and deaf, her dumb and
impubescent child.
Pistis Sophia
shows the twofold character of the teaching on the earth and in Amenta. The
“wisdom of
Jesus” in the
Apocrypha was taught in parables. Jesus in the canonical Gospels speaks to the
multitude
in parables,
and “without a parable spake he nothing unto them” (Matt. XIII. 34). But he
says, “The hour
cometh when I
shall no more speak unto you in parables, but shall tell you plainly of the
Father” (John
XVI. 25).
This promise is fulfilled by the Egypto-gnostic Jesus after his return to the
regions from whence
he came into
the earth-life. He says to the disciples, “I have gone to the regions whence I
came forth.
From this day
I will speak to you face to face without parable” (B. 1, 8, 9). Henceforth he
speaks to them
plainly of
the Father, and, as it is frequently said, “without parable”. This is after
that second advent which
the Jesus in
the Gospels is not permitted to fulfil, but which is still expected by the
millenarians.
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Ancient
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Various
sayings that were uttered aforetime in the earth-life are now expounded by
Jesus in Amenta
“without
parable”. He says to the disciples, “When I shall be king over the seven amens,
the five supports
(or trees),
the three amens, and the nine guardians; king over the child of the child, that
is to say, over
the twin-saviours
(or the double Horus); king over the twelve saviours and the whole number of
perfect
souls — then
all those men who shall have received [Page 784] the mystery in (or of) that
ineffable, shall
be
fellow-kings with me. They shall sit on my right hand and on my left in my
kingdom; therefore I said
unto you
aforetime, ‘Ye shall sit on my right hand and on my left in my kingdom, and ye
shall reign with
me’ “ (B. 2,
230). Speaking of the greater mysteries, which are spiritual, Jesus says, “I
have brought the
mysteries
which break all the bonds of the counterfeit of the spirit (i.e., the bonds of
matter) and all the
seals which
are attached to the soul, the mysteries of which make the soul free, and ransom
it from the
hands of its
parents, the rulers, and transform it into the kingdom of the true Father, the
first Father, the
first One,
ineffable and everlasting mystery”. “For this cause have I said unto you
aforetime, ‘He who
shall not
leave father and mother to follow after me is not worthy of me.’ What I said
then was, ye shall
leave your
parents the rulers, that ye may all be children of the first, everlasting
mystery” (B. 2, 341). This
is the
esoteric true interpretation of a saying that has been used exoterically (Matt.
XIX. 29; Mark X. 29).
The parents
signified were not human, but those rulers in matter who preceded the one God,
the Holy
Spirit, whom
the Son made known in the mysteries of Amenta under his title of Jesus
Aber-Amentho.
Again, he
exclaims, “I said unto you aforetime, ‘Seek that ye may find.’ “ When he said
that it signified “Ye
shall seek
out the mysteries of light, which purify the body of matter. I say unto you,
the race of human
kind is
material. I tore myself asunder, I brought unto them the mysteries of light to
purify them . . .
otherwise, no
soul in the whole of human kind would have been saved” (B. 2, 249, Mead).
Salvation here
is brought by
means of the Son of God the Father becoming incarnate to redeem the human race
from
matter by
inculcating the virtues of purification which were taught by Horus or Jesus in
the mysteries of
Amenta.
The gnostic
Jesus also gives an esoteric rendering of the Resurrection when he says that
“All men who
shall achieve
the mystery of the resurrection of the dead which healeth from demoniac
possessions, and
sufferings,
and every disease, which also healeth the blind, the lame, the halt, the dumb,
and the deaf,
(the mystery)
which I gave you aforetime — whosoever shall receive of these mysteries and
achieve (or
master) when
if he asks for anything whatsoever . . . it shall at once be granted unto him”
(B. 2, 279). In
the
resurrection the deceased transforms into a spirit, and it was in the mysteries
of Amenta, and in the
spirit-life,
that these miracles were achieved, not in the life on earth. In the Ritual the
deceased goes
where he
pleases, does as he pleases, and assumes whatsoever form he pleases as he
masters
mystery after
mystery according to the gnosis. In the canonical Gospels we find an exoteric
rendering of
these
mysteries of Amenta, which the lie-enchanted Christian world believe in as
historical miracles
performed on
earth by an historical Saviour named Jesus. There were seven preservers of the
treasures
of light in
the celestial heptanomis, whether as rulers of constellations or as lords of
pole-stars, who first
upraised the
starry firesticks which were kindled on the seven hills of heaven. The Pistis
Sophia shows
the way in
which an additional five were added to the seven in completing the first twelve
saviours of the
treasure of
light. This is indicated when it is said (B. 2, 189), “The twelve saviours of
the treasure, and the
twelve [Page
785] orders of each of them, which are the emanations of the seven voices and
of the five
supports,
shall be with me in the region of the inheritance of light; they shall be kings
with me in my
kingdom”.
Which shows that the first twelve were combined as the 7+5 that were
pre-zodiacal, and that
they are to
become kings in the kingdom of eternal light; which twelve were stationed in
the solar zodiac,
or round the
mount of glory. There is frequent reference in Pistis Sophia to the mystery of
the five
supports.
These are also figured as five trees, one of which is said to be “in the midst”
(B. 1, 3 and 18, B.
2, 191, 196).
These five tree-supports, with the great one in their midst, are equivalent to
the tree-type of
eternal
stability imaged as the Tat of Ptah (or as Ptah himself), which is a figure of
support at the four
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Ancient
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corners with
the pole as the central great pillar of support. It is also equivalent, as a
symbol, to the group
of Horus and
his four children in the Osirian mysteries. The Kamite twelve, as reapers in
the harvest-field
with Horus in
Amenta, were also put together from two earlier groups of seven and five, the
same as in
the gnostic
mysteries of the twelve supports or the pole-tree of heaven with twelve
branches in the
zodiac. A
sketch, however tentative, may be drawn of the original characters in the
astronomical
mythology,
that were given the twelve thrones under one name or another in the final
zodiac. (1) Sut, (2)
Horus, (3)
Shu, (4) Hapi, (5) Ap-Uat, (6) Kabhsenuf, (7) Amsta, (8) Anup, (9) Ptah, (10)
Atum, (11) Sau,
(12) Hu, as
the Kamite originals of the twelve who rowed the solar bark for Ra.
We claim,
then, to show that the typical Twelve, who are called apostles or disciples in
later language,
originated in
twelve characters which had represented twelve stellar powers in the
astronomical
mythology,
and that these were afterwards given thrones or seats as rulers in the twelve
signs of the
zodiac or in
heaven. These, in the Pistis Sophia, are designated twelve preservers or
saviours of the
treasure of
light. They form the cycle of twelve lesser gods around the sun-god on the
summit of the
mount, and
are the same in signification, whether called gods in the Ritual or disciples
of the Egyptognostic
Jesus in the
Pistis Sophia. These are at first the twelve with Horus the mortal, Horus in
matter,
Horus in the
mythos, Horus the youthful solar god. But when he makes his transformation and
becomes
the Son of
God the Father, in the spirit life, they are his companions in Amenta; the
twelve great spirits to
whom he
expounds the mysteries of the fatherhood; in short, they become the typical
twelve as
characters in
the Kamite eschatology.
According to
Pistis Sophia the localities of the teachings, whether in the midst of Amenta,
or on the
Mount of
Olives, were celestial, and not mundane. As it is said, “Jesus and his
disciples remained in the
midst of an
aerial region, in the paths of the ways of the midst which is below the
sphere”. This is the
starting-point
from which the twelve accompany him, through the regions that are mapped out by
the
zodiacal
signs (Books of the Saviour in Pistis Sophia, 359-371), when they “go forth
three by three to the
four quarters
of heaven to preach the gospel of the kingdom” (390). It is also said that
“Jesus stood at the
altar, and
cried aloud, turning towards the four angles of the world” (358). Here the
“altar” is [Page 786]
urano-graphic.
It was figured in the constellation Ara as a co-type with the summit called the
Mount of
Hetep, or of
Heaven, in the astronomical mythology.
DOUBLE HORUS,
OR JESUS AND THE CHRIST
It was a
saying of Philo’s that “the logos is double”. This it is as the double Horus,
or as Jesus and the
Christ, who
was dual as manifestor for the Virgin Mother and afterwards for God the Father:
double by
nature, human
and divine; double in matter and in spirit; double as child and as adult,
double as the soul
of both
sexes. But when the word “logos” comes to be used for the divine Reason we are
in the midst of
Greek
metaphysic and doctrinal mystification. These two, blended in one person,
constituted the double
Horus who was
that double logos spoken of by Philo, the figure of which was founded, as
Egyptian, on
the two
halves of the soul, or pair of gods in the mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch. 17).
Horus in these two
characters
was Horus with the tress of infancy, and Horus who becomes bird-headed at the
transformation
in his baptism. In his first advent Horus is the sower in the seed-field of
time; in his second
he is the
lord of the reapers in the harvest of eternity. In the astronomical mythos
Horus was the king of
one year.
Naturally that was as ruler of the seasons in the annual circuit of the sun. As
the prince of
eternity he
was the typical adult of thirty years, and lord of the Sut-Heb festival, who is
called “the living
Horus, the
powerful bull, lord of the festivals of thirty years,” which are termed “the
years of Horus as
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Ancient
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King” (Rec.
of the Past, vol. 10, 34). This was the royal Horus in whom the child that was
destined to be a
king attained
his manhood and assumed his perfect sovereignty.
As already
shown, the genesis of the double Horus is portrayed in the Ritual (ch. 115). In
this description
”two brethren
come into being.” One of these was the wearer of the female lock, as the
child-Horus. His
birth was
mystical. He was both male and female in person, or, as it is said, “he assumed
the form of a
female with a
lock,” the sign of pre-pubescence in either sex, and hence a type of both. He
is also called
“the
Afflicted One,” which denotes the mystery of the Virgin’s child. The second is
“the active one of
Heliopolis.” He
is “the heir of the temple.” The first is also called the heir, and the second
the heir of the
heir. He has
the divine might of “the son whom the father hath begotten.” This was “the
only-begotten of
the father.”
Thus the “two brethren” were Horus the child who wears the long tress that is
the sign of
either sex,
and Horus the adult who images the power and glory of the father as the god in
spirit.
Iusa, the
Jesus of On, like Horus in the Osirian cult, was born bi-mater. His two mothers
were Ius..as
and
Neb-hetep, the two consorts of Atum-Ra. These two mothers were at first two
sisters in the mythos.
One of them
was the mother in the western mountain, or later in the winter solstice; the
other gave birth
to Horus on
the horizon in the eastern equinox. It follows inevitably that the Gospel-Jesus
has two
mothers who
were sisters, and two places of birth and rebirth. When [Page 787] the
mythology was
merged in the
eschatology, and Ra became the father in heaven, he is described as having two
companions
who are with him in the solar bark. In this text the two sister-mothers with
whom Ra consorts
in the
“divine ship” are Isis and Nut, who are the bringers-forth of Iusa or Jesus in
his twofold character:
child-Horus
at his first advent being the son of Isis (Har-si-Hesi) the earth-mother, and
in his second
advent, or
rebirth in spirit, the son of Nut, the heavenly mother. Such is the origin of
the two mothers who
were two
sisters, and two consorts in two places of birth and rebirth represented in the
“historic” narrative
by Nazareth
and Bethlehem as the birthplace of the shoot or natzer in Virgo, and the house
of bread in
Pisces, which
two places of birth corresponded to the two seasons of seedtime and of harvest
in the old
Egyptian
year.
Not only had
Horus two mothers, Isis the virgin who conceived him, and Nephthys who nursed
him. He
was brought
forth singly, and also as one of five brothers. Jesus has two mothers, Mary the
Virgin who
conceived
him, and Mary the wife of Cleopas, who brought him forth as one of her
children. He, likewise,
was brought
forth singly, and as one of five brethren. Horus was the son of Seb, his father
on earth.
Jesus is the
son of Joseph, the father on earth. Horus was with his mother the Virgin until
twelve years
old, when he
transformed into the beloved son of God as the only-begotten of the father in
heaven. Jesus
remained with
his mother the Virgin up to the age of twelve years, when he left her to be
about his
father’s
business. From twelve to thirty years of age there is no record in the life of
Jesus. Horus at thirty
years of age
became adult in his baptism by Anup. Jesus at thirty years of age was made a
man of in his
baptism by
John the Baptist. Horus in his baptism made his transformation into the beloved
son and only-
begotten of
the father, the holy spirit, represented by a bird. Jesus in his baptism is
hailed from heaven
as the
beloved son and only-begotten of the father God, the holy spirit that is
represented by a dove,
which denotes
the mystery of all mysteries concerning the origin of the Egypto-gnostic
Christ.
The elder
Horus came to earth in the body of his humility. The younger came from heaven
to wear the
vesture of
his father’s glory. The first was the child of a baptism by water. The second
is Horus the
anointed or
Christified; the oil upon whose face reflected the glory of the Father. This
was the double
baptism of
the mysteries which is referred to in the Ritual by the priest who says, “I
lustrate with water in
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Tattu and
with oil in Abydos” (ch. 1). The duality manifested in Horus is shown when he
is said to come
into being as
two brethren, the same that Pistis Sophia describes as “the Saviour-twins” ;
also when the
transformer
Kheper takes the form of two children - the elder and the younger (Litany of
Ra, 61). Again,
in the
seventy-first chapter of the Ritual, Horus divinized is called “ the owner of
twin souls, who lives in
two twin
souls,” now united in the eternal one. It is the potential duality of sex in
the child-Horus that will
account for
Queen Hatshepsu being designated Mat-Ka-Ra, the true likeness of the solar god,
called the
golden Horus.
She assumed the habiliments of both sexes in token that the divinity was [Page
788] dual,
and that this
duality was reproduced in the golden Horus whose various phases of twinship
included the
two souls of
sex. The golden Horus was a supreme type because of the twofold nature of the
soul. It was
this duality
of Horus that is referred to by Hatshepsu when she says “the two Horus-gods
have united the
two divisions
(south and north) for me.” “I rule over this land like the son of Isis” ; “I am
victorious like the
son of Nut” ;
which two likewise constitute the double Horus (Inscription: Records, vol. 12,
134). It is said
of the
Osirian Horus in his twofold genesis from matter and spirit, “Horus proceedeth
from the essence of
his father
and the corruption which befell him” (Rit., ch. 78). That is in the incarnation
or immergence in
matter as the
opposite of spirit, according to the later theology. Matter was at this time
considered to be
corrupt, and
matter was maternal, but spirit was paternal and held to be divine. This will
also explain the
language of
the Ritual applied to Osiris when he is spoken of as suffering decay and
corruption, although
inherently
inviolate and incorruptible. The Osiris is embalmed in the divine type of him
that never saw
corruption.
Yet Horus the child is born of Isis into the corruption of matter in his
incorporation, and all the
evil that was
derived from matter or the mother-nature has to be purged away in becoming pure
spirit like
Horus at the
second advent, when he has become the glorified, anointed, only-begotten son.
These were
the two
halves of a soul that was perfected in oneness, when Horus the child was
blended with Horus the
adult in the
marriage-mystery of Tattu, but not till then, and not otherwise. “The two
Horus-gods” is a title
of the dual
Horus in the Pyramid-texts of Teta. The Olive is there said to be “the tree of
the two Horusgods
who are in
the temples.” Horus proclaims himself to be the issue of Seb (or Earth) whose
spouse is
Isis, and
affirms that his mother is Nut (ch. 42). That is as the double Horus. Horus the
human soul on
earth, and
Horus as a spirit in Amenta; Horus born of two mothers who were two sisters,
and who in the
different
theologies may be Neith and Sekhet; Ius..as and Nebhetep; Isis and Nut; or two
Marys, the two
Meris who
were at first the cow of earth and the cow of heaven. The child of Isis, the
virgin heifer, was
imaged as the
calf, the red calf of sacrifice, also by the golden calf. After his death he
rose again as the
bull in the
likeness of his father, Osiris, the bull of eternity. In the solar mythos he
was born as a calf in
the autumn
equinox that became a bull in the Easter equinox when this occurred in Taurus.
The type was
repeated in
the eschatology, when the manes is baptized to become the anointed in the
character of
Horus, who
says, “I am the divine bull, son of the ancestress of Osiris” (Rit., ch. 147).
The story of
Jesus in the canonical Gospels follows the totemic and mythical representation.
Like Heitsi-
Eibib and the
human Horus he is the child of a virgin mother, the child of Mary only up to
twelve years of
age. Then the
same change occurs with him as with the totemic youth at puberty. He waxes in
force and
stature, and
is immediately “about thirty years of age.” This is the age of Amsu-Horus when
he has made
his
transformation from childhood into manhood as the khemt or typical adult of
thirty years, [Page 789] at
which time he
rises in Amenta as a sahu in the glorified body. The transformation of Horus
who was a
child of the
mother alone, the immaculate virgin Neith, she who came from herself, is
reproduced by
Luke. When
Horus the child transforms he is only twelve years of age. As a child with Mary
Jesus “waxed
strong and
was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke II. 40). The
“grace of God”
in Egyptian
is termed “khemt” for grace and favour, and it is as Amsu-Horus that the child
waxes strong
and is in
favour with, or endowed by, God the Father. The way in which he “waxed in
stature” can be
seen in the
effigy of Amsu-Horus, the divinized adult who is the fulfiller at puberty,
mythical in the vernal
equinox,
human in the harvest-field, and in the resurrection eschatological. But there
had been no
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fecundator of
a human mother by her own child since the days of utter and incestuous
promiscuity until
the time when
the mythical Horus (or Jesus) was made human in a personal and historical
character as
the
fertilizer of a Hebrew virgin.
The titles
given to two Egyptian priests who, in succession, present the deceased person
to the gods are
the An-mut-ef
and Si-meri-ef. These are two titles of Horus in his two characters, first as
the support of
his mother,
and secondly as the beloved son of his father. According to Egyptian doctrine,
the incarnation
of the elder
Horus was no isolated individual event. Nor was a soul made flesh in any single
form of
personality.
It was the soul of the totem, family, stock or tribe, and lastly of the
individual that was
represented
in the typical figure of Horus or Jesus, child of the virgin mother. The soul
of flesh that was
born of the
mother’s blood and made a type of in mythology could no more be limited to a
single person
than the soul
that was previously derived from air, earth, water or other element of life. It
was in keeping
with natural
law that, when the pubescent virgin had conceived, the incarnation of a human
soul
commenced.
The mother, as the insufflator of that soul, was the mode and means of the
incarnation
which was
effected in her blood, the flow of which was diverted to that end. The earliest
embodiment then
of a soul
that was derived from a human source, and not simply from the elements of
external nature,
was by
incarnation in the blood of the female who was mythically represented as the
virgin mother. Thus
the
embodiment of the human soul, when descent was traced from the mother only, was
by incarnation,
and not by
begettal. As it is said of the elder Horus, Har-si-Hesi, he was born but not
begotten. The
second Horus
is begotten of the father with a second mother Nut, who is added as the
bringer-forth
above. It was
comparatively late before the begettal of a human soul was ascribed to the
individual
progenitor.
As shown by Egypt in the mirror of the mythos, this was not earlier than the
time of Ptah when
the double
primitive essence was first recognized. A pair of souls were then derived, the
one from matter,
the other
from spirit; one from the motherhood, the other from the fatherhood, both of
which were
blended in
Ptah, the epicene parent. Child-Horus literally embodies the first half of a
soul that was human
primarily and
in a latter stage divine. In its first phase this soul was derived from the
mother’s blood and
quickening
breath as a body-soul. In its second, the source is spiritual, [Page 790] a
causative source from
the father in
heaven. For example, the Ka, or highest soul of seven, is thought of in the
Ritual as food or
sustenance
for the body and the means of duration. It is also looked upon as a typical
sacrifice to that
end. Hence
the speaker says, “Am I not the bull of the sacrificial herd: are not the
mortuary gifts upon
me, and the
powers above “ (ch. 105). Horus in the second phase says, “I am a soul and my
soul is
divine. I am
he who produceth food. I am the food which perisheth not — in my name of
self-originating
force,
together with Nu,” the mother heaven. (Rit., ch. 85). This is he who possessed
the “powers above
Nu” as
bringer of the bread of life from heaven. “The bread of God which cometh down
out of heaven and
giveth life
to the world” was this imperishable food of soul that gave eternal life to men:
and which when
personified
in Horus imaged a saviour from death in matter. When the Osiris deceased
attains the type of
the sacred
hawk he speaks of being invested with the soul of Horus. “Horus has invested
(him) with his
own soul for
the seizing of his inheritance from Osiris at the Tuat.” “It is I, even I, who
am Horus in glory”
(ch. 78).
Horus had come again in glory from the father as revealer of the bliss towards
which his
followers
were bound (ch. 30B). When Horus was invested with the soul that is to be
eternal, he
becomes
hawk-headed, in the likeness of the father, as Jesus was invested with that
other bird of soul,
the gnostic
dove, when he was proclaimed to be the beloved son of God the father in his
baptism.
Paul’s
doctrine of the resurrection is founded on this mystery of the double Horus. As
taught by the
Egyptian
wisdom, continuity was conditional, and the power of resurrection was
personally secured by
living the
life of human Horus in fellowship with his sufferings as the bearer of his
cross by which the
power of his
resurrection in the after-life was attained through becoming Horus the
divinized adult. Paul’s
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resurrection
is obtainable on the same conditions of becoming. As a struggling mortal he
hopes “by any
means” to
attain “unto the resurrection from the dead,” and says, “Not that I have
already attained or am
already made
perfect; but I press on.” In Paul’s Epistles, Christ takes the place of Horus
the anointed by
whom the
power of resurrection was made manifest in the mysteries, and the doctrine is
the same as in
the Ritual.
In his own body and sufferings Paul was living the life and trying to emulate
the character of
Horus the
mortal, whilst looking forward to the future fulfilment as it was portrayed in
Horus glorified,
whose second
coming in Tattu as representative of Ra the holy spirit and the power of
resurrection is
perfectly
described by Paul. The manes in the Ritual says, “My enclosure is in Heaven,”
as it was imaged
on the
mountain summit in the eternal city. Paul writes, “Our own citizenship is in
heaven: from whence
also we wait
for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our
humiliation
(which was
one with the maimed, deformed and suffering human Horus, changed and glorified
in the
resurrection)
that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” as it had been set forth
scene by scene in
the mysteries
of Amenta by the divine scribe Taht, and preserved sufficiently intact to make
it out as prehistorical
and
non-historical in the once-more living Egyptian Book of the Dead (Phil. III.
20-21). [Page 791]
The reason
why the Virgin’s child should make his change and pass away when twelve years
old, and
why the
divinized adult should not take up the story until thirty years of age, to
leave no record during
eighteen
years, is to be explicated by the Egyptian wisdom. It is because the two as
double Horus, or as
the dual
Jesus Christ, are no more than types, and have no relation to an individual
human history,
Kamite,
Hebrew, Persian, Gnostic, or Christian; and in this unity, as before said, the
different versions all
agree.
The Pistis
Sophia tells us more about the double Horus, the twofold Messiah, or twin
Saviour, than all the
records
outside the Ritual put together; more particularly in the astronomical phase of
the mythos, only in
this work the
double Horus is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, who does fulfil the second advent in
accordance
with the map
of mythology. In one representation of his nature Horus is portrayed as the
ruler, both in
time and
eternity. In time he is the foster-child of Seb, god of earth, brought forth by
the mother-moon or
Virgin in the
zodiac as the king of one year. This is Horus in the circle of the lesser year.
At his second
advent, as
fulfiller on the vastest scale, he is said to travel the everlasting road as
the ever-coming prince
of eternity.
It was thus the first Horus, or Jesus, represented the solar god that made the
circuit of the
signs in the
forward motion through the zodiac, whereas the second Horus, or Jesus, was the
“traveller of
the heavenly
road,” the backward way in the hugest all-embracing circle of precession.
The gnostic
Jesus represents the double Horus, human and divine, more fully and definitely
than does
the Jesus of
the canonical Gospels and independently of any personal history. The first and
second
advents are
both fulfilled by the Jesus of Pistis Sophia. As the youth of twelve years who
was Horus the
word, he
instructs the disciples “up to the regions of the first statutes only” and is
the teacher by means of
parables. In
his second advent he says, “I will speak with you face to face without
parable.” He then
unveils and
expounds the greater mysteries from centre to circumference; from the first to
the last. In the
same gnostic
scripture Mary, the mother of Jesus, describes her son in accordance with the
Egyptian
gnosis of the
double Horus, which was not derived from the canonical Gospels. She thus
addresses him:
“When thou
wert a child before the spirit had descended upon thee, when thou wert in the
vineyard with
Joseph, the
spirit descended from the height and came unto me in the house (so) like unto
thee I knew
him not, but
thought that it was thou. And he said unto me, “Where is Jesus, my brother,
that I may go to
meet him?”
And when he had said this unto me I was in doubt and thought it was a phantom
tempting
me. I seized
him and bound him to the foot of the bed which was in my house.” Jesus, the
mortal, is in
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the vineyard
with Joseph. He hears Mary tell her naďf story to Joseph, and exclaims, “Where
is he that I
may see him?
I am expecting him in this place.” Mary continues: “We went together; we
entered into the
house, we
found the spirit bound to the bed, and we gazed upon thee and him and found
that thou wert
like unto
him. And he that was bound to the bed was unloosed. He embraced thee and kissed
thee, and
thou also
didst kiss him; ye became one and the same being” (P. S., B. 1, 120, Mead).
[Page 792]
The two
Jesuses, one in matter and one in spirit, or Jesus and the Christ, are
identical with Horus, the
prince in the
city of the blind, and Horus who reconstitutes his father. The meeting and the
blending of the
two into one
being is a gnostic version of the mystery enacted in Tattu, where Horus in
spirit meets with
Horus the
mortal, or Ra, the holy spirit, embraces Osiris, the god in matter, and the
pair are united in the
one double
divine soul, which dwelleth in the place of establishing a soul that is to live
for ever (Rit., ch.
17, 16-18).
In the
opening chapter of Matthew’s Gospel the birth or generation of Jesus is called
“the birth of Jesus
Christ” (ch.
I, 18), a twofold character equivalent to that of the double Horus, who was
Horus in the flesh
until twelve
years of age, and Horus in the spirit from the age of thirty years. In other
versions it is
designated
“the birth of the Christ.” But in accordance with the genuine doctrine these
are two births
entirely
distinct from each other, one for Jesus the Virgin’s child and one for the Christ
as en effluence of
the Holy
Spirit emanating from the father in the form of a dove. Horus the Virgin’s
child was born but not
begotten. At
his second advent he became the divinized adult as the only son begotten of the
father. This
was the anointed
son, and the anointed is the Christ, or Christified. The Christ was constituted
by a
begettal in
spirit, when the spirit of God descended from heaven as the dove, or the hawk
of soul, and
the youth of
twelve years was transformed into the man of thirty years. There was no Christ
until this
change of
state and type took place, and could be none without the necessary
transformation by which it
was
accomplished. This was represented in the transformation and transubstantiation
of the mummy; in
the baptism,
circumcision, regeneration, resurrection, and other modes of the mystery, in
which the body-
soul was
converted into a likeness of the eternal spirit; child-Horus into Horus the
adult, or Jesus into the
Christ. But,
to compare as we proceed, the Word in the Kamite original was the first, or
elder Horus, the
child-Horus
born of the Virgin Mother, he who issued out of silence as the inarticulate
Logos (Rit., ch. 24).
He is called
the Kheru in Egyptian, which not only signifies the Word, but also denotes a
victim doomed
to be
sacrificed, whether as the sufferer in the Tat, on the cross, or as the victim
bound for slaughter. The
second Horus,
Horus in spirit, was the demonstrator of eternal life in his resurrection from
the sepulchre
who is thus
the word-made-truth that was personalized in Har-Ma-Kheru. This second Horus,
who is the
fulfiller
that follows the founder, is referred to in the Gospel, parenthetically, in a
way that blends or
confuses the
two in one as the word. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we
beheld
his glory,
glory as of the only-begotten from the father) full of grace and truth.” This
is the merest passing
allusion to
the second Horus who was the anointed, only-begotten Son of God the Father; that
is, to
Horus,
glorified, who followed human Horus in the flesh, but could not be so easily
made to look
historical.
The
difference betwixt “the Son of Man” and “the Son of the woman” may also be
explicated by the
doctrine of
the double Horus. The “Son of Man” is a title of Jesus in the Gospels, which
has been
supposed to
denote the Son of God in the body of his humanity. [Page 793] But there was a
“Son of Man”
with an
esoteric and mystical significance, who was known to the gnostic teachers as
Anthropos the son
of Anthropos;
also as Monogenes. Horus the Saviour in his first advent was the child of Isis;
that is, the
son of woman
when the woman is divine. In his second advent he is Iu, the Su or Son of God
the Father,
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who became
the Son of Man by title thus: Atum-Ra, son of Ptah, was the earliest god in the
likeness of
the perfect
man. He was the first man in the same sense that the Jew-god Ieou in the Pistis
Sophia is
called the
“First Man” (333) as the divine begetter in the human likeness. Ieou is the
first man, and Iao is
his son. Thus
Iao, or Jesus, is “the Son of Man.” He comes to earth as the one God in the
form of man.
This, in the
Ritual, is the Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-hetep, the Son as Revealer of the Father
Atum-Ra. The
Father gives
authority to the Son “to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (John
V. 27). That
is at the
second coming, when he is to appear in the power and the glory of the Father,
as did the second
Horus with
the oil upon his face which expressed the glory of his divinity. This is “the
Son of Man” who
was in heaven
whilst on the earth (John III. 13), and who was to “come in his glory, and all
the angels
with him”
(Matt. XXV. 31); and who did so come to judgment periodically as Horus in the
mysteries of
Amenta (Rit.,
ch. 125). But the title is applied to Jesus indiscriminately in the Gospels,
where the two
Horuses are
continually confused together by the concoctors of the human history, which was
limited in
locality as
much as possible to this earth, to make it the more convincing in its appeal.
In the Ritual
Horus says: “I am the heir, the primary power of motion and of rest.” He was
the heir in
several
characters. In the first he is the heir of Seb, the earth-father. In the second
he is the heir of Osiris.
When Osiris
and Ra are blended in one Horus becomes the heir of Ra, the father in heaven,
as the
inheritor and
the giver of eternal life to his followers. “The two earths have been decreed
to Horus
absolutely
and without condition” (ch. 19). Because it was he who joined the two Horuses
together, and
as Paul
phrases it, “made both one, and brake down the middle-wall of partition, that
he might create in
himself of
the twain one new man” (Eph. II. 14, 15). As son of Seb he is the Virgin’s
child on earth, or in
matter. As
son of Osiris he is Amsu the Divine Manes in Amenta, and as Har-Sam-Taui he is
the uniter of
the two
earths in one, the conqueror who makes the word of Osiris truth against his
enemies, and thus
becomes the
founder of the future kingdom of heaven for his father in the spirit as the
double Horus, he
who wins and
wears the double diadem.
The dual
Horus — Horus as mortal and Horus in spirit, Horus as child of the Virgin and
Horus begotten of
the Father,
Horus twelve years of age and Horus the adult of thirty years — is reproduced
in the Gospels,
however
briefly, although the object of the writers was not to distinguish between the
two natures, human
and divine,
whilst both were limited to the one life on this earth. Still, there is a dual
Jesus, or Jesus and
the Christ,
corresponding to the double Horus. Child-Horus is portrayed as the child-Jesus
up to twelve
years of age.
In his baptism by water it is prognosticated by John that Jesus is to come as
the Baptizer
with the Holy
Spirit and with [Page 794] fire. This is he “whose fan is in his hand,” and
this is the
transformation
that was made by Horus the mortal when he became Horus rising in spirit with
the fan, or
khu, in his
hand. Jesus in the same circumstances is the same character. The Spirit of God
the Father
descends upon
him in the likeness of a dove, which indicates that he is now the Christ in
Spirit. The
Virgin’s
child has changed into the Son of God the Father, and the change is
authenticated by the “Voice
out of the
heavens, saying, this is my beloved Son” (Matt. III. 16, 17). The transaction
is one of many that
could only
take place in the Earth of Amenta, but which are represented perforce in the
earth of time,
because the
matter of the pre-existent mythos was rendered as a human history in the
exoteric Gospels.
It has to be
repeated again and again that the primitive mysteries of totemism were
continued and
developed as
spiritual in the Egyptian eschatology. Child-Horus at twelve years of age
represents the
typical youth
that passed into the ranks of the adults at puberty, who was circumcised and
regenerated in
the rite of
Baptism, blood, water or oil being used for the purpose of lustration. This is
repeated in the
transformation
of child-Horus into Horus the adult, the child of twelve years into the sherau
of thirty years;
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otherwise the
child of the mother into the son of the father. Thus, the child-Horus becomes
the beloved
son of the
father in his baptism, as did Jesus. In the Ritual (chapter of the baptisms)
the speaker at the
fourth portal
says: “I have been baptized in the water with which the Good Being was washed
at the time
when he had
his contention with Sut (Satan), and when the victory was given to him.” In the
baptism at
the fifth
portal, he says he has washed himself, or has been baptized in the water that
Horus was
washed in
when he became the beloved son of his father, Osiris.“Su-meri-f” is the son
whom the father
loves, hence
the beloved son, the anointed, or the Christ when Christified. In one of these
baptisms
(eighth
portal) the baptizer is mentioned by name as Anup. He was the typical baptizer,
the embalmer
and anointer
of the dead from of old, before the time of the solar Horus, or Osiris. “I have
been washed in
the water
wherein the God Anup baptized when he performed the office of embalmer and
binder-up of
the Mummy.”
Or, as it is otherwise said, when he became the chief minister to Osiris in the
later cult.
Here we find
(1) that Anup was the baptizer in preparing Osiris (or the mortal Horus) to
become the
Horus in
spirit, the anointed and beloved son of the father in the rite of embalmment,
or baptism; that
Osiris, or
Horus, was baptized preparatory to or at the time of his contest with Sut
(Satan); and that the
baptism of
Horus took place when he became chief minister, the beloved son Su-meri-f of
his father, he
who had
previously been the pillar of support (An-mut-f) to his mother. (Naville,
Texts; Budge, Book of
the Dead, ch.
145.) There is a baptism in the Ritual which takes place at the time when Horus
makes his
transformation
into the menat, the bird of soul as a swallow, dove or pigeon. That is when
mortal Horus
has become a
spirit (ch. 85, 1), with the head of a bird, whether as the Divine hawk or the
dove, and the
same transformation
takes place in the baptism of Jesus, when the dove from heaven descended and
abode upon
him as the sign to show that he was now the Son of the Father in Spirit. [Page
795]
There was a
double baptism in the ancient mysteries: the baptism by water and the baptism
by spirit.
This may be
traced to the two lakes of heaven at the head of the celestial river in the
region of the
northern
pole, which were also repeated as the two lakes of purification in Amenta. The
manes says, “I
purify me in
the southern tank, and I rest me at the northern lake” (ch. 125). They will
account for the two
forms of
baptism mentioned in the Gospels. John baptizes with water, Jesus with the Holy
Spirit and with
fire. This
twofold baptism had been represented by the two celestial lakes or pools that
were configurated
in the
northern heaven which are to be read of in the Ritual (ch. 97) as the
baptistery of Anup. One of
these was the
lake of purification by water; the other by spirit. This latter was the lake of
Sa by name, in
which the
gods themselves were wont to be vitalized in their baptism. Sa signifies
spirit; the Sa was a
divine or
magical fluid which made immortal; and the baptism in this sacred lake of Sa
was literally a
baptism of
the holy spirit. The scene of the baptism by John can be paralleled in the
Ritual (ch. 97).
Horus claims
to be the master of all things, including the water of the Inundation. When he
comes to be
baptized, it
is “said at the boat,” called “the staff of Anup,” “Look upon me, oh ye great
and mighty Gods,
who are
foremost among the spirits of Annu; let me be exalted in your presence.” The
plea for baptism is
very express.
“Lo, I come, that I may purify this soul of mine in the most high degree: let
not that
impediment
which cometh from your mouth be issued against me, let me be purified in the
lake of
propitiation
and of equipoise: let me plunge into the divine pool beneath the two divine
sycamores of
heaven and
earth.” After the baptism, he says, “Now let my Fold be fitted for me as one
victorious
against all
adversaries who would not that right should be done to me. I am the only one
just and true
upon the
earth” (Rit., ch. 97, Renouf). In the Gospel, when Jesus cometh “unto
John”=Anup the baptizer,
“John would
have hindered him.” “But Jesus answering said unto him, suffer me now for thus
it becometh
us to fulfil
all righteousness” (Matt. III. 14, 15) — a probable rendering of the Egyptian
word Maat! In the
Egyptian
baptism three elements are involved: the elements of water, fire and spirit.
Osiris represented
water, Horus
the solar fire, and Ra the holy spirit. These elements agree with the three
persons in the
trinity that
were Osiris the father, Horus the son, Ra the holy spirit, in whose names as father,
son and
holy ghost
the rite of baptism still continues to be practised. The second character was
fulfilled by Horus
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when he
became bird-headed as a spirit in the resurrection. This fulfilment is obvious
if not perfectly
accomplished
on behalf of Jesus after his baptism. “And Jesus, full of the holy spirit,
returned from the
Jordan, and
was led in the Spirit” (Luke IV. 1, 2). He also returns “in the power of the Spirit”
(IV. 14). The
same change
has occurred with him as with Horus in the same circumstances. It is now that
he makes
the
announcement. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me
to preach good
tidings to
the poor: he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind,
to set at
liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
To-day hath the
scripture
been fulfilled in your ears.” This was the [Page 796] fulfilment, according to
Jewish prophecy, of
that second
advent which took place, and could only take place in spirit-world, and not in
the life on earth,
except as a
performance in the religious mysteries.
Another
episode in the canonical account of Jesus will serve to illustrate the
transformation from the child
of twelve
into the adult of thirty years. When Jesus was twelve years old, says Luke, his
parents went up
to Jerusalem
at the feast of the Passover. When they were returning to Nazareth they found
the boy had
tarried
behind in Jerusalem. After three days they discovered him in the temple sitting
in the midst of the
doctors, both
hearing them and asking them questions. They were astonished; and his mother
said unto
him, “Son,
why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I sought thee
sorrowing.” And he said
unto them,
“How is it ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be on my father’s business?” —
or must be
about the
things of my father. This, in the original, is a legend of the infancy and of
the time when the
child-Horus
made his transformation into Horus the adult, to become the fulfiller for his
father, “and,” as
he says, “to
take the lead.” Osiris in his maimed and mutilated state was represented by the
child of Isis,
the Horus of
twelve years, or the moon in the fourteen days of waning light, or the sun in
the winter
solstice.
Thus Isis in search of the scattered limbs and members of Osiris was in search
of her child (Rit.,
ch. 157). As
it is said in the “Hymn to Osiris,” “she went round the world lamenting him.
She stopped not
till she
found him. . . . She raised the remains of the god of the motionless heart. She
extracted his
essence. She
bore a child. She suckled her babe in secrecy. No one knew where it happened”
(Records,
vol. 4, pp.
101-2). In the text quoted from the Ritual the child of the papyrus-marshes has
changed and
come forth as
the ruler, he who fights the great battle against Sut. Horus was then about his
father’s
business. He
had now transformed from the child of Isis only, or Horus in the secret place,
into Horus the
begotten of
the father, the Horus of thirty years. This is the original of the story told
by Luke of the child-
Christ when
he was twelve years of age. Mary, like Isis, searches the districts for her
missing child, who
is found
after three days, which is the length of time assigned to the transformation of
Osiris for renewal
in the moon.
Meantime he, too, has “made a great battle,” asserted his supremacy, and
“ordered what
was to be
done,” although the nature and mode of the contest have been changed. He has
also given
terror and
caused his mother to fear. When reproached by his mother, who had sought him
sorrowing, he
asks his
mother and father if they did not know that he must be about his father’s
business, or attending
to the things
of his father.
There is a
chapter of Isis seeking for child-Horus at his going forth from the marshes in
which the
papyrus grew;
that is, when Horus is the child of twelve years who transforms into the living
likeness of
the father as
the man of thirty years. A vulture with outspread wings is the emblem of the
seeking mother,
who goes
about searching the “mysterious retreats” of Horus in which he hides himself
after leaving the
marshes. Her
son goes forth to face misfortune, to command the chiefs of the district. He
fights a great
battle. He
calls to [Page 797] remembrance what he has done, imposes fear on them,
establishes his
terror, his
mother Isis having made charms for the protection of her child (Rit., ch. 157;
Naville and
Renouf).
Horus in his two characters of the child and the adult is called the lad in the
country, and the
youth in the
city or in the town (Rit., ch. 85). As the lad in the country he is the child
with Isis the virgin
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mother, and
Seb the earth-god, who was his foster-father during his childhood. As the youth
in town he is
in his
father’s house, and is “the heir of the temple” in Heliopolis (ch. 115). When
Horus the child passes
into Horus
the adult he becomes the heir to the “things of his father.” The Egyptian word
“khetu” for
“things” is
most idiomatic, and “the things of my father” in the Greek is uniquely perfect
as a rendering of
the Egyptian
“khetu.”
It is as the
youth in town or in Heliopolis=Jerusalem, that Horus says, “I am a soul, and my
soul is divine”;
this was
derived from Ra, his father in heaven: “I take the lead. I put an end to darkness.
I put a stop to
evil.” And
when Horus goes to Abydos to see his father Osiris, all the great gods,
together with the
groups of the
gods, come forth to meet and greet him with their acclamations. He is hailed by
them as
“the king of
hosts” who cometh to unite and take possession of the two worlds. His father’s
house is
seized (in
the juridical sense of seizin or feudal possession) “in virtue of the writs,”
which have been
issued on
behalf of the divine heir, “the heir of the temple” (ch. 138), the “son whom
the father hath
begotten”
(ch. 115). Abydos is the mythical rebirth-place of Osiris, and it was there
that Horus took
possession of
his father’s house. In the Gospel it is Jerusalem. Twice over in one brief
chapter of the
Ritual (115th)
Horus is called “the heir of the temple.” He says, “It is with reference to me
that the gods
say, Lo, the
afflicted one is the heir of Annu.” This was as Horus the wise and wonderful
child. And again
it is said of
Horus the divine adult, “active and powerful is the heir of the temple; the
active one of Annu,
the son whom
the father hath begotten.” In the Ritual the temple is in Annu; it is otherwise
termed the
hat-saru, or
house of the prince. Horus enters this as the child of the mother, and he comes
forth as the
son of the
father, and the wielder of the whip as the symbol of his sovereignty. Here is
the parallel to the
child-Jesus
sitting in the temple as a teacher of the teachers, laying down the law to the
masters of the
law. As the
Word of truth, Horus “assembles the chiefs of truth” or law. These are the
acolytes who sit
with Osiris
in the great hall of Maat. The lords of truth (or the law) collected there to
watch over iniquity,
as they sit
in “Seb’s great dwelling,” recognize the lad as the lord of justice, and
delegate authority to him
as their
chief. The original of a scene in the temple is traceable in the “Hymn to
Osiris.” Horus has grown
strong in the
dwelling of Seb. “The divine company rejoices when the son of Osiris comes,
even Horus
steadfast of
heart, with (or as) the word made truth: the son of Isis, the flesh of Osiris.”
Horus in the hall
of Mati was
in the house of his father Osiris seated on the judgment-seat surrounded by the
chiefs of
truth as the
lad who is acknowledged now to be the universal master, and the lord of law and
of very truth
itself. The
father’s house in the Gospels becomes the temple at Jerusalem, the “chiefs of
truth” collected
there are the
doctors or Tannaim, and [Page 798] the divine child Horus, the royal Horus,
wearer of the
double crown,
has been converted into the child of Joseph the carpenter.
According to
John, the first thing that Jesus did after his baptism was to prove his power
by turning water
into wine.
This is immediately followed by his foray in the temple at Jerusalem. He makes
a scourge of
cords, where
Horus, as “heir of the temple,” wields the whip or flagellum and drives out
those who have
made the
Father’s house a house of merchandise or den of thieves. He thus proves himself
to be, like
Horus,
“active and powerful,” “the heir of the temple” who hath the might divine as
the only son, whom
“the Father
hath begotten,” in the one instance by vanquishing Sut on the pinnacle, and in
the other by
driving out
the evil-doers=the Sut-Typhonians from the temple (John II. 14-17), both of
which events are
stated in two
different Gospels to have followed immediately after the baptism, in which
occurred the
transformation
of Jesus into the dove-headed Son of God the Father.
In the Ritual
the subject of chapter 138 is the ...Entry into Abydos,” and it describes a
scene of triumph
for Horus
analogous to the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He is the lord of life in
Abydos. He exclaims, “O
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gods of
Abydos. Let us be joyful. Do not hinder me from seeing my father. I am the
Horus of Khem-Ka,
the red shoot
(or branch=natzer) which nothing can injure, whose hand is strong against his
enemies:
avenger of
his father, striking his enemies, repelling violence: governor of multitudes,
chief of the earth,
who takes
possession of his father’s dwelling with his arms.” The object of this
triumphant entry is for the
divine heir
to take possession of his father’s dwelling. This he effects by force of arms.
“And Jesus
entered into
the temple of God, and cast out all that bought and sold in the temple and
overthrew the
tables of the
money-changers.” And he saith unto them, “It is written my house shall be
called a house of
prayer: but
ye have made it a den of robbers” (Matt. XXI; Rit., 138).
Amsu-Horus
rises in Amenta with the signs of government upon his shoulder in the shape of
the crook
and the whip
(or khu). As bearer of the crook he is a form of the Good Shepherd who comes in
that
character to
look after his father’s flock or herd. As wielder of the whip he came to drive
out and scourge
the enemies
of his father. The Christ who is portrayed as the Good Shepherd in one
character is also
described as
making his advent with the fan in his hand, which in the hand of Amsu is the
flail or whip.
This, in
another scene, becomes the whip or scourge with which Jesus drives out the
illegal occupants of
the temple.
The Passover of the Jews being at hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and “he
found in the
temple those
that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting” together
in this
compound of
menagerie and mart, which is as if the Stock Exchange and Smithfield Market met
together
in St. Paul’s
Cathedral. “And he made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple,
both the sheep
and the oxen:
and he poured out the changers” money and overthrew the tables, and to them
that sold
the doves he
said, take these things hence; make not my father’s house a house of
merchandise (John
II. 13-17).
This portrait of the [Page 799] wielder of the whip driving out the sheep and
oxen is the reverse
to that of
the good shepherd with the crook, and this historic fulfilment of the mythos is
a very puerile
parody of
Amsu-Har-Tema, the doer of justice, scourging the foes of his father out of the
temple in his
consuming
fury of resentment, so soon as ever he had taken in hand the whip of his divine
authority.
Horus is not
mentioned as riding into Abydos on an ass, but in the cult of Atum-Ra the solar
disk was
hauled up
from Amenta by the ass-eared god Iusa, and Iusa was the original rider on the
ass or the foal
of the ass.
Immediately
following this clearing out of the temple it is said that Jesus hungered — and
seeing a fig-
tree by the
wayside he came to it and found nothing thereon. He is described as coming to
the fig-tree
hungry, when
figs were not in season, and because there was no fruit upon it he sterilized
it for ever, “and
immediately
the fig-tree withered away” (Matt. XXI. 19). This is in the character of Horus
the avenger,
who comes to
the fig-tree in the Aarru-garden and says, “I am Amsu-Horus, the avenger of his
father the
Good Being.I
carry out for my father the overthrowal of all his enemies,” including the
fig-tree, as it is
rendered in
the Gospels. In the Ritual the cedar is quoted in the place of the
sycamore-fig. The speaker,
in addressing
the keeper of the twenty-first gate, says, “Thou keepest the secrets of the
Avenging God
(Har-Tema)
who causes the Shennu-tree to bear no fruit” (Rit., ch. 145).
The
earth-life ceases for Horus at the age of twelve. Partly because he typified an
impotent or
impubescent
body-soul in matter, mere soul of the mother-blood, and the difference between
child-Horus
and Horus
divinized was expressed by the difference betwixt the child of twelve and the
perfect man of
thirty years.
It ceased by the transformation into that which was typical of another life.
Child-Horus
passed away
from earth to make his change or to be made “a man of” in the mysteries of
Amenta. He
rose again as
Amsu in ithyphallic form to show the potency of soul or spirit in the
after-life by means of
the nature
figure. Thus, according to the genuine mythos, at the time of the baptism in
the Jordan, when
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Jesus had
attained the age of twelve, the earthly life came to an end, the mother’s child
had for the first
time found
his father. But that was not in this world. The second Horus was begotten in
Amenta, not on
earth. Also
the baptism of regeneration, and other of the spiritual mysteries, occurred in
that earth of
eternity and
not upon the earth where mortal beings dwell. In the totemic mysteries
circumcision was a
rite of
puberty which marked the transformation of the youth into the man, and this,
like other typical
customs, was
continued in the religious mysteries. When Horus makes his change and rises in
Amenta
as Horus the
adult, it is in a figure that has suffered the rite of circumcision, as the
portraits of the risen
Amsu prove.
Thus, circumcision, like baptism, was a rite of regeneration and resurrection
or re-erection
from the
dead; that is, from the state of the inert Osiris, the impubescent Horus, or,
doctrinally, from the
status of the
uncircumcised, the unbaptized, who were “unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed,”
and who
might thus
remain in mummied immobility. The first Horus is impubescent; the second is
circumcised to
show that he
has risen in the likeness of the father, “full of [Page 800] grace and truth”,
“the image of the
invisible
god, the first-born of all creation.” Amsu-Horus, the risen Sahu, is identical
doctrinally with the
gnostic
Christ of Paul, who tells his hearers that they have been circumcised in him
who includes the
pleroma of
the godhead bodily, “with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting
off the body of
the flesh, in
the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye
were also
raised with
him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col.
II. 10-12). When
Horus rises
from the dead he wields the weapons and he bears the symbols of his
sovereignty. He has
been baptized
and circumcised, or lustrated with water, with oil, with the Holy Spirit, and
crowned with the
double
feather. The doctrine is the same whether the risen one be Horus or the Christ;
and there was
nothing
historical in the death, the baptism, the circumcision, the resurrection of
Amsu-Horus, either as
the Karast
mummy or the Christ.
A difficulty
all through with the concocters of the Gospel history was this dual character
of Horus in two
lives and two
worlds. They had only the one lifetime to go upon in one world. Jesus had to
become bird-
headed in the
human lifetime and on earth. Whereas the human Horus made his change into the
“second-born,
the golden hawk,” after he had passed into Amenta. It was as a spirit in the
earth of
eternity that
he became bird-headed in the likeness of his father Ra, not on the earth of
Seb, where he
was imaged in
the likeness of mortality, as the human Horus. Still, the risen Jesus acts the
part of Horus
in issuing
from the sepulchre as a spirit. After his death and burial, he appears to the
disciples in the rôle
of the second
Horus who represents the Father after the resurrection in spirit. He tells them
that the
Father hath
sent him. “And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them,
Receive ye
the Holy
Spirit” (John XX. 21, 22). This is in the character of the hawk-headed Horus
who, as the son of
Ra, is given
power from the Father to breathe the Holy Spirit. It is a mystery of Amenta,
with no meaning
elsewhere. In
this the Horus who had conquered death and risen again in triumph as the
Beloved Son of
God the
Father, became the representative of the Holy Spirit with power to impart it to
the breathless
ones, and
raise them from the dead; he who, as Horus or Jesus, in this character was “the
resurrection
and the
life.” But, in the gospels of the Sarkolatrae it had to be demonstrated that
the risen Christ was not
a spirit or
anything superhuman, if the history was to be accepted as simply human and
limited to the life
on earth.
Horus, in his
first advent, was the word-made-flesh in mortal guise, according to the Kamite
doctrine of
the
incarnation. In his second advent, he is the word-made-truth as Horus the
fulfiller in the spirit,
according to
the Kamite doctrine of the resurrection. In his baptism, Horus the
word-made-flesh
transformed
into the word-made-truth, according to the Kamite doctrine of baptismal
regeneration, each
of which
doctrines was of necessity perverted in the exoteric rendering. The scene of
this rebirth in
Amenta was
underneath the tree of dawn — the tamarisk, persea, olive, or
sycamore-fig-tree. The desire
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of the manes
is literally to be with Horus under the fig-tree at the time of his
resurrection from Amenta, a
figure that
was derived from the [Page 801] Horus-sun arising from under the tree of dawn
in the
mythology.
Horus reborn as the sun of morning, says, “I am the babe. I am the god within
the tamarisk-
tree” (ch.
42). The olive was another tree of dawn. The transformation of Osiris into
Horus, or of Amsu
into Horus
the bird-headed, was effected underneath this tree. One of the seven khus, or
great spirits
who are the
companions of Horus in his resurrection is named Kheri-bakhu-f or “he who is
under the
olive-tree,”
which is equated by the fig-tree in the Gospel of John for the green tree of
dawn. On a
papyrus at
Dublin the Osiris prays that he may be under the sycamore (fig-tree) of Hathor
at the rising of
Horus (Trans.
Soci. Bib., vol. VIII, p. 218). This, according to John, was the place where
Nathaniel had
been with
Jesus before the two had ever met on earth (John I. 48, 49). “Now,” says
Andrew, “we have
found the
Christ.” He calls upon Nathaniel to “come and see.” Jesus recognizes him.
Nathaniel says,
“whence
knowest thou me?” “Jesus answered and said unto him, before Phillip called
thee, when thou
wast under
the fig-tree, I saw thee” (John I. 41-49).
The two
characters of the double Horus, commonly ascribed to Jesus, are also portrayed
upon the
gnostic
monuments in the Roman catacombs. In one character he is the little old and
ugly Jesus. In the
other he
corresponds to Horus of the beautiful face. The first is the suffering Messiah,
the despised and
afflicted
one, who was considered to be of an ignoble origin compared with that of Horus
the younger. He
was the child
of the Mother only; the soul in matter; the heir of Seb, and therefore of the
earth earthy.
Horus the
younger is the man from heaven; the immortal Son of the Divine Man who is in
heaven, Horus
in his glory
and his majesty. These often occur together on the same monuments in their
irreconcilable
contradiction
of each other (Bosio, Rom. Sott.). But the “elder Horus” did not mean the aged
Horus, for
he was at the
same time the child-Horus. The title has been misinterpreted by the artists of
the
catacombs who
have represented “the afflicted one,” the Man of sorrows, as diminutive, and
pensive, old
and ugly,
whereas, according to the true type, he was never more than twelve years of
age, and always
wore the lock
of childhood. “Old Child” was his name.
Horus in his
childhood was the sower of the seed in the fields of his father. This Mystery
follows that of
the great
battle in which Osiris is avenged and the associates of Sut are slain in the
shape of goats, and
the fields
are prepared for the seed by being manured with their blood. The vignette is
given by Naville
from the
tracing taken by Lepsius of the now lost papyrus Busca. The picture represents
the great hoeing
in Tattu. The
long text at Denderah (Mariette, tom. 4, pl. 39) contains directions to be
observed on the
festival
commemorative of the ancient custom. Two black cows are put under a yoke of
am-wood, the
plough is of
tamarisk-wood, and the share of black bronze. The ploughman goes behind, with a
cow led
in a halter.
A little child with the side-lock attached to its head is to scatter the seed
in the field of Osiris.
Barley is
sown at one end, spelt at the other, and flax between the two. The Kher-heb in
chief recites the
office for
the sowing of the field (Renouf, Book of the Dead, ch. 18, note 9). The child
with the side-lock
represents
the Horus of twelve years who leaves his mother at that age and goes forth to
be [Page 802]
“about his
father’s business.” That business, as here shown, was the sowing of seed for
Osiris, the divine
husbandman.
Jesus at twelve years of age is said to leave the Virgin on his father’s
business for the
purpose of
sowing the seed of the word; the word that was to be made truth in the fields
of divine
harvest.
Osiris is the husbandman as God the father, and child-Horus the seed-sower as
the son, in
human form.
Sut, the anthropomorphic Satan, is the opponent of Horus in the harvest-field;
he undoes
what Horus
does. As the prince and power of drought and darkness, he is busy in the night.
He sows the
tares, the
thorns and thistles, the weeds or “devil’s-dung” amongst the good seed of
Osiris sown by
Horus. Horus
has his assistants in the seed-sowing and the reaping of the harvest. These are
grouped
as the two,
the four, the seven, and finally the typical twelve who are the reapers in the
Aarru-fields,
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which are in
the earth of eternity. There is no exact parallel scene in the canonical
gospels to this of the
seed-sowing
in the Ritual, but the child that sows the seed in his father’s field, survives
in the Gospels of
the Infancy.
As we read in the Gospel of Thomas (ch. 12) at the time for sowing the child
went out with
his father to
sow corn in their field, and when his father sowed, the child Jesus also sowed
one grain of
corn. And
having reaped and threshed it, he made “a hundred quarters of it,” and bestowed
the corn
upon the
poor. “Now Jesus was eight years old when he wrought this miracle,” during his
first advent. At
his second
coming, Horus is the reaper in the fields of harvest. This is he “whose fan (or
flail) is in his
hand” when he
rises from the sepulchre. The harvest at the end of the world was reaped by the
followers
of Horus at
the end of the age or cycle of time. It was periodic in the mythology, like the
harvests of the
earth, and
therefore periodic in the eschatology. He that sowed the good seed in the
Egyptian mysteries
was Horus the
son of Isis, or the human Horus, who reappears as Amsu the husbandman in the
fields of
divine
harvest, otherwise as Horus-Khuti the master of joy with his twelve followers
who are the reapers
of the
harvest in Amenta. This is portrayed both in the nether-world and in the upper
paradise of Hetep
on the summit
of the mount. The object of the beatified deceased is to attain the
harvest-field in Hetep,
that he may
take possession of his allotment there, and be in glory there, and plough and
sow and reap
the harvest
there for ever, “doing whatsoever things were done on earth,” but changed and
glorified. This
was to be
attained, not at the end of the world, but at the end of all the trials, the
purifications and
purgatorial
pains, the strenuous efforts made in climbing up the ascent to reach at last
the paradise of
rest upon the
summit; the place of re-union and reconciliation; the land of the tree of life
and the water of
life, of
perennial plenty and of everlasting peace. Here the reapers, called the
“angels’ in the Gospel,
show the
harvest-field is not upon the earth of time. They are the twelve with Horus in
the fields of divine
harvest.
Horus tells Osiris at the harvest-home that he has cultivated his corn for him
in the Aarru-fields
of peace; and
in the person of Har-khuti with the twelve as lord of spirits gathered in the
harvests of
eternity.
Two opposite
characters are assigned to Jesus in the Gospels, in one of which he comes with
peace, in
the other he
is the bringer of the [Page 803] sword. He is the bringer of peace on earth
(Luke II. 14; John
XVI. 27), who
says he has not come to bring peace on earth (Luke XII. 51). “I came not to
send peace
but a sword”
(Matt. X. 34). Horus had appeared previously in these two rôles. He is “Horus
the peaceful.”
As
Iu-em-hetep he comes to bring peace and good fortune on earth and make wars to
cease. Horus also
comes with
the sword as the avenger of his father when he pierces Sut to the heart, and
annihilates the
rebel powers.
Har-tema is a title of the second Horus. The word Ma for justice also signifies
the law. And
he who
reveals and makes justice visible is the Horus who not only fulfils the word by
making it truth, but
who also
comes to fulfil the law, or maat. This is the character assigned to the Jesus
of the Gospels, who
says, “Think
not I came to destroy the law. I came not to destroy but to fulfil. Verily I
say unto you, till
heaven and
earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law
till all things be
accomplished”
(Matt. V. 17, 18). This law is the maat of the Ritual. And in the Gospel the
speaker
assumes the
position of Har-tema, who was the fulfiller of justice or the law. In the
earth-life Jesus is the
word or
speaker in parables. In that way the “Inarticulate Discourse” of Horus is
assigned to Jesus, with
the usual
misrendering of the hidden meaning, as the matter of parables which no one but
the duly
initiated
could possibly understand. Indeed they were prepensely intended to be
non-intelligible to all
others. As it
is said to the disciples, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the
Kingdom of God,
but to the
rest in parables, that seeing they may see not and hearing they may not
understand (Luke VIII.
10).
Child-Horus opened his mouth in Sign-language only. Jesus only opens his in
parables. At his
second coming
he is to speak no more in parables but to tell the disciples plainly of the
father. That is
how the
twofold character of Horus was to be fulfilled by Jesus, and as it had been
already fulfilled by the
Egypto-gnostic
Jesus in “Pistis Sophia.” Also, however indirectly, Jesus is identified with
the child-Horus
as the
teacher who was a babe and suckling and who exclaims, “I am the babe” (repeated
four times) in
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the Ritual
(ch. 42). Jesus says, at the time when “he rejoiced in the holy spirit” (Luke
X. 21), “I thank thee,
O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things (the things which
had been given
him to teach)
from the wise and understanding and didst reveal them unto babes. (Such babes
as Horus
with the
side-lock.) All things have been delivered unto me of my father and no one
knoweth who the son
is save the
father.” But in the course of making out a human history from the mythos and
the eschatology
in the
Ritual, Jesus has been forced to remain on the earth not only after he was
twelve years of age but
after he was
thirty years, when he ought to have been a manes in Amenta. The “Pistis Sophia”
retains
the true version
of Horus, or Jesus, in Amenta, when it says, “Jesus spake these words unto his
disciples
in the midst
of Amenta” (390) and describes him in the character of Aber-Amentho, the lord
of Amenta, in
which he rose
again triumphant over death.
That which
was taught by Horus, or Jesus, the Word in the sayings and parables, was made
truth by
Horus-Makheru,
the fulfiller indeed. And this fulfilment at the second coming is imitated by
Jesus when
[Page 804] he
says, “These things have I spoken unto you in parables (or in proverbial
sayings). The hour
cometh when I
shall no more speak unto you in parables but shall tell you plainly of the
father” (John XVI.
25). The
teaching of child-Horus did not contain a revelation of the father in spirit.
This was the mission of
Har-Makheru,
the fulfiller of the word in truth, as it was acted in the mysteries to be
repeated in the mortal
life, for
human use. This second part is promised in the Gospels but remained a matter of
prophecy that
never was
fulfilled. Albeit the doctrine survives in the Christian “Word-of-truth” with
no foundation in the
historical
life of Jesus. The Christian advent of Horus-Makheru, the word-made-truth, the
beloved son
who
represents the father, from beginning to end of the Ritual, still awaits the
ending of the world or that
last day
which was annually solemnized in the Egyptian mysteries. As Paul the Christian
Gnostic puts it,
“the kingdom
of God is not in word, but in power.” That is in fulfilment as the
word-made-truth (1 Cor. IV.
20). The
first Horus was the word, the second is the power: the heir of glory who hath
the might-divine of
the
only-begotten Son of God the Father (Rit., ch. 115). This, wherever met with,
is Egyptian first of all as
Horus, who
was the word or logos in one phase of character, and in the other of two he was
the power.
As the word
he represented the virgin mother. As the power he imaged the glory of the
father. Horus was
the word in
the earth of Seb, and he is the power in the earth of Sut. In the canonical and
apocryphal
Gospels both
the word and power have been continued and fused into one, as there was but one
life to
be
represented, that on earth, in the “history.” It is said of the child-Jesus in
the Gospel of Thomas (chap.
4), “Every
word of his becometh at once a deed.” “Every word of his is at once a deed”
(ch. 17). “Every
word he
speaketh forthwith becometh a deed” (4). The sum and substance of the doctrine
of Maati is to
make the word
of Osiris truth against his enemies. Elder Horus was that word in person. The
word was
also uttered
in dark sayings which constituted the ancient wisdom. Then it became the
written word of
Taht Aan, the
scribe of the gods, and Horus at his second coming was the divine ensample of
the son
who made the
word of Osiris truth against all opposition as the fulfiller of the word and
the doer in truth.
The word of
the Christ, according to Paul, is identical with the Makheru, or
word-made-truth by Horus the
fulfiller. He
likewise speaks of “the word of the truth of the gospels” (Col. I. 6). The
power of his Christ is
that of the
risen Horus; it is the power of the resurrection to eternal life; and both are
the same, because
both
represented one meaning, namely the soul of man that rose again from death, and
was
personalized
in Horus or in Iusa.
Although the
second character of Horus is realized by Jesus in his baptism; in his becoming
the beloved
and anointed
son of God; in his contests with Satan as a spirit; in proving himself to be
the “heir of the
temple” in
his breathing the Holy Spirit into the breathless, raising of the dead, and in
various other ways,
such
fulfilment had to be repudiated on account of the alleged Judean history. Hence
he promises that if
he goes away from
the disciples he will send them the Comforter, the Paraclete, or advocate,
“even the
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Spirit of
Truth [Page 805] which proceedeth from the father .” “A little while, and ye
behold me no more;
and again a
little while and ye shall see me.” This was the short time betwixt the first
and second coming
of the Lord,
which was about three nights in the mysteries. “If I go not away the comforter
will not come
unto you.”
Whereas in the Egyptian judgment scenes the comforter has come already. Horus
in his
second
character is the paraclete or advocate with the father. One by one he
introduces the faithful to
Osiris (in
the vignettes to the Ritual), and is the intercessor and the mediator with the
father on behalf of
his children.
In the papyrus of Ani, for example, Horus the intercessor or advocate
introduces Ani to his
father,
saying, “I have come to thee, O Un-nefer, and I have brought unto thee the
Osiris-Ani. His heart is
right; it
hath come forth guiltless from the scales. It hath not sinned against any god
or goddess. Taht
hath weighed
it according to the decree pronounced unto him by the company of the gods; it
is most right
and true.
Grant that he may appear in the presence of Osiris; and let him be like unto
the followers of
Horus for
ever and ever.
The process
of converting parts of the Osirian drama into Gospel narratives and of making
the wisdom of
the
mystery-teachers portable for ordinary use, is obvious still in various of the
parables of the double-
Horus. For
instance, in his first estate child-Horus was the sower of the seed, and in his
second character
at the second
coming he is the reaper of the harvest. Thence comes the parable of the sower.
In the
pictures to
the Ritual Horus is the sower who goes forth to sow the seed in the field of
his father. And
when he sows
the wheat the enemy, that is Sut the power of darkness, comes by night and sows
the field
with tares
and thorns and thistles, it being his work to undo all the good that Horus
does. This is
represented
in a parable by means of which “the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man
that sowed
good seed in
his field; but while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares also among the
wheat and
went away.”
The disciples ask for an explanation and the answer is “he that soweth the good
seed is the
son of man;
and the field is the world, and the good seed, these are the sons of the
kingdom; and the
tares are the
sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; and the
harvest is the end
of the world;
and the reapers are the angels” (Matt. XIII). Thus the matter of the drama was
reproduced
piecemeal in
religious märchen and exoteric narratives.
THE MYSTERIES
AND THE MIRACLES
[Page 805]
The Mysteries were a dramatic mode of representing the gnosis or science of the
Egyptian
mythology and
eschatology. They are the mysteries of Amenta. It was in these the dead were
raised, the
blind were
made to see, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the manes
to become
bird-headed.
Hence the scenes of their occurrence were in spirit-world, where the manes made
their
transformation
visibly, and the mortal put on immortality. The greater mysteries were founded
on the
resurrection
from the dead [Page 806] with the Ka or the bird-headed Horus as the
representative of a
survival in
spirit. As we have seen in the “Pistis Sophia”, Jesus tells the disciples that
“the mystery of the
resurrection of
the dead healeth from demoniac possessions, from sufferings and all diseases.
It also
healeth the
blind, the dumb, the maimed, the halt” ; and he promises that whosoever shall
achieve the
gnosis of
this wisdom shall have the power of performing these mysteries of the
resurrection which only
become
miracles when exoterically rendered in the canonical Gospels (P. S., B. 2,
279). Amenta in the
mythos was
the secret earth of the nocturnal sun. In the eschatology it is the
spirit-world in which the
dead become
once more the living, and attained their continuity by being proved and passed
as true for
all eternity.
If they failed, it was here they died the second death, and never rose again.
Amenta was the
world of the
blind, the deaf and dumb, the maimed, the halt, and impotent because it was the
world of the
dead.
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Thus the
miracles of the canonical Gospels repeat the mysteries of the Ritual, and the
scene of these
was in the
earth of the manes, not in the earth of mortals. It was there the deliverer
wrought his
“miracles” in
the eschatological representation, whether as Horus, the son of Osiris, or as
Iusa, the son of
Atum-Ra. The
Egyptian religion had no need of miracles. It did not postulate the
supernatural. The
superhuman
and ideally divine were a part of and not apart from nature. The nether-earth
was the other
half of this
and the Gospel history has been based upon that other earth of the manes being
mistaken for
the earth of
mortals. In the Ritual, and in the gnostic writings, we find the mystery, the
events, the
characters,
the Christ, the Virgin-Mother, the miracles, replaced upon their own proper
footing and on the
only ground
of their existence which is eschatological and was a means of working out the
drama in
Amenta by
means of the mythology that was previously extant. The so-called miracles of
Jesus were not
only
impossible on human grounds; they are historically impossible because they were
pre-extant as
mythical
representations which were made on grounds that were entirely non-human in the
drama of the
mysteries
that was as non-historical as the Christmas pantomime. The miracles ascribed to
Jesus on
earth had
been previously assigned to Iusa the divine healer who was non-historical in
the pre-Christian
religion.
Horus, whose other name is Jesus, is the performer of “miracles” which are
repeated in the
Gospels, and
which were first performed as mysteries in the divine nether-world. But if
Horus or Iusa be
made human on
earth, as a Jew in Judea, we are suddenly hemmed in by the miraculous, at the
centre
of a maze
with nothing antecedent for a clue; no path that leads to the heart of the
mystery, and no
visible means
of exit therefrom. With the introduction of the human personage on mundane
ground, the
mythical
inevitably becomes the miraculous; you cannot have the history without it; thus
the history was
founded on
the miracles which are perversions of the mythology that was provably
pre-extant.
Not only is
it represented in the Gospels that Jesus raised the dead but that he also
conferred power on
the disciples
to do likewise. They are to preach and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is
at [Page 807]
hand, to “heal
the sick and raise the dead” (Matt. X. 5-8). So the followers, called the
“Children of Horus”,
had the power
given them previously by their Lord to raise the dead. In the Pyramid texts of
Teta (line
270) it is
said, “Horus hath given his children power that they may raise thee up” ; that
is, from the funeral
couch. But
this resurrection was in Amenta, the earth of eternity, not in the earth of
time, and those who
were raised
up for the second life are the manes, not mortal beings in the human world. It
was not
pretended
that they were Egyptians in the time of Teta, the first king of the sixth
dynasty. The Christians
babble about
the mysteries of revealed religion, which mysteries never were revealed except
to those
who had been
duly initiated. These were mysteries to the Christians simply because they had
not been
revealed to
them. They are the mysteries of ancient knowledge reproduced as miracles of
modern
ignorance.
Such mysteries of the Christian faith, as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the
Virgin Birth, the
Transfiguration
on the Mount, the Passion, Death, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension,
Transubstantiation
and Baptismal Regeneration, were all extant in the mysteries of Amenta with
Horus or
Iu-em-hetep
as the central figure of the pre-Christian Jesus.
This mode of
making miracles from the mysteries can be traced in the canonical Gospels. For
instance,
according to
John, when Jesus reappears to the seven fishers on board the boat to cause the
miraculous
draught of fishes
it is after his resurrection from the dead. Consequently, the transaction is in
a region
beyond the
tomb, therefore in spirit-world, not in the life on earth. Whereas in Luke’s
version, his
reappearance
was in the earth-life and is not a reappearance after death. Yet the miraculous
draught of
fishes is the
same in both books; and either the transaction is historical in Luke and has
been relegated
to the
after-life in another world by John, or else the mythical version was first and
has been converted
into an
historical event by Luke. But here, as in other cases, there is no
corroboration of the history to be
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adduced,
whereas the priority of John’s version is attested by the Ritual where the
fisher, the seven
fishers, the
fishing and the fish belong not to this earth but to that other world beyond
the tomb and to the
mysteries of
Amenta.
When Sebek in
the Ritual (ch. 113) catches the fish in his marvellous net this is proclaimed
by Ra to be
“a mystery”.
But when Simon Peter in the Gospel catches the great draught of fishes the
mystery
becomes a
miracle.
Mythology
knows nothing of miracle, nor the need of it. Miracle has no place in the
Egyptian Ritual. But
the Ritual
shows us how the necessity for it arose as a modus operandi when the gnosis had
to be
accounted for
by ignorance and the mythos was converted into human history. For example, the
sun or
the sun-god
Atum is described in the Ritual as going over the surface of the lake of Mati,
in Abydos, the
place of
rebirth, or of sunrise. That which is done mythically by the god is performed
by the manes on the
eschatological
plane, and as he is in the human likeness, it follows that he must walk the
water in the
sun-god’s
track. He says, “the great God who is there is Ra himself. I walk on his road;
I know the
surface of
the lake of Mati. The water of Mati is the road by which Atum-Ra [Page 808]
goes to traverse
the field of
divine harvest” (Rit., 17). In the first phase the sun (or solar god) traverses
the celestial water
at dawn. In
the eschatological continuation the human soul in Amenta does the same because
assimilated
to the character of the god. It is but a mode of representing phenomena in the
two worlds of
the double
earth, the imagery of upper earth being repeated in spirit-world. But if we
substitute a human
being for the
solar god or the manes in Amenta, and make him walk the water in our world on
the surface
of the sea or
lake of Galilee, instead of the lake of Mati in Amenta, the water-walking can
only be done by
miracle. Such
is the genesis of the Biblical miracles in both the Old Testament and the New.
This we are
now able to
prove twice over by means of the original matter and mode of the mythos in the
Egyptian
eschatology
that was humanized or literalized in legends and at last converted into
Christian history.
You cannot
rationalize the Bible miracles by reducing them to what may be thought
reasonable
dimensions.
As Matthew Arnold said, “this is as if we were startled by the extravagance of
supposing
Cinderella’s
fairy godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin into a coach-and-six, but
should
suggest that
she did really change it into a one-horse-cab”. It is not a matter of degree or
proportion, but
of a radical
difference in the fundamental nature of things. It is not the kind of
transformation that was
applied to
the primary facts, nor is this transformation the result of imagination. It was
not a result of the
faculty of
imagining that a man should be supposed to walk the water and not sink. Such an
imagining
was
controverted by all the past of human experience. When the Egyptians portrayed
a human
impossibility
— a miracle — they depicted a pair of feet walking on the water. This was a
mode of
superhuman
force first made manifest by the elemental powers such as light and darkness,
the wind, or
the spirit of
the storm. The water-walker was an old type of deity. The Christian miracles
are false modes
of explaining
that which was ignorantly misappropriated. The gnostic interpretation of the
Kamite
mysteries had
no need of miracles, no reversal or violation of natural law. The process by
which miracles,
or total
violations of natural law, arose, was through perversion of ancient knowledge
by later ignorance
— not in the
false or exaggerated reports of eye-witnesses. Nor could anything be settled by
a conflict of
opinions in
the domain of ideas. We must have some foothold and ground of fact to go upon
even to fight
the battle.
As it is in physical science, we have to ascertain the knowable. It avails
nothing to take refuge
in the
unknown or to enshroud ourselves in mystery. The legends of mythology were not
ideal, nor based
upon abstract
ideas. They were not first evolved from the inner consciousness, but from facts
in outward
nature that
are for ever verifiable. The mysteries that “historic Christianity” took over
without
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understanding,
and preserved as food for faith, or as problems for metaphysical speculation,
are
fathomable
and even simple when truly interpreted, but they have and can have no solution
on the
supposed
historic ground. And with its bogus miracles surreptitiously derived from the
ancient mysteries
by
falsification of the myths, it has destroyed or tended to destroy all
standing-ground [Page 809] of
common sense
in natural reality. With its “historical” virgin mother of a God who was her
“historical” child,
it has made a
double mockery of nature, human and divine. With its risen corpse for an
anointed Christ
the only Son
of God, it has deified an image of death itself and made a mortuary of the
human mind.
When it is
conclusively proved that the Christian miracles are nothing more than a pagan
mode of
symbolical
representation literalized, there is no longer any question of contravening, or
breaking, or
even
challenging any well-known laws of nature. The discussion as to the probability
or possibility of
miracle on
the old grounds of belief and doubt is closed for ever. A glance at the
Egyptian pictures will
show that the
Horus or Christ is the young sun-god who walks the waters in Amenta not on the
upper
earth, and
that the evil spirits who enter the swine and are driven down into the lake are
the souls of
those who
were condemned in the great judgment as typhonian, the black pig being a type
of Sut the evil
being. A
study of these miracles as they were originally rendered will lead to an
understanding of their
true
significance, and here as everywhere else the truth of the matter once attained
must ultimately put
an end to the
false belief:
Falsehood
hath nothing in the world to do,
But lie to
live and die to prove the true!
With what
facility the miracle could be manufactured for the exoteric Gospels, canonical
or apocryphal,
may be seen
from the legends in The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (ch. 37). In one character
the youthful
sun-god,
Horus or Jesus, was represented as a sort of divine dyer. He is called the
great one who
produces
colours. In a passage of the Ritual (ch. 153), as rendered by Birch, it is said
that “the great one
journeys to
the production of colours” These are the colours which are produced when the
sun, or the
child-Horus,
or Jesus, rises from the lotus to dye the blue heaven with the hues of dawn.
This is shown
by a
reference in the same passage to the sycamore tree of dawn. Now, in one of the
numerous folktales
that were
derived from the mythos, this is made a miracle of in a legend of the Infancy.
It was as the
child-Horus
that the sun arose to create the colours; and, as a child, it is said the Lord
Jesus entered the
shop of a
dyer where lay many cloths which were waiting to be dyed each of a different
colour. Taking
them all up
together he threw the whole lot into a vessel of Indian blue. The dyer cried
out and said the
boy had
ruined them all. But Jesus said he would cause each one to come forth of the
colour that was
desired, and
he took them out of the vessel one by one, each one being dyed of the very
colour that the
dyer wanted.
The story of
child-Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas who, when five years old, took clay and
formed the
images of
twelve sparrows, which turned the word into a deed when Jesus bade them fly, is
a miracle
manufactured
from a mystery of Amenta. When the manes were transformed from mummy to spirit
they
became
bird-headed in the likeness of Horus whose head was that of a sparrow-hawk.
This in the folktale
becomes a
sparrow, and twelve sparrows created by Jesus in the miracle are the
representatives of
the twelve
great spirits of [Page 810] Horus which have the head of the sparrow-hawk in
the mystery of
Amenta.
When evil
spirits enter swine and are driven down the mountainside to be drowned in the
lake of
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darkness the
representation is mythical, not miraculous. The mount is rooted in Amenta. The
scene is in
the earth of
eternity. The mount was called the mount of birth in heaven. This was ascended
by the
manes who had
passed through the judgment-hall and come forth as the good spirits, whereas
the
condemned
were driven back and literally sent to the devil by entering the pig of Sut,
which had become
a type of all
impurity. The miracle begins when the avenging Har-Tema is made historical, the
pig actual,
and the
transaction takes place on this our upper earth. We must go to the Egyptian
drawings in the
drama of the
mysteries for the verifiable fact; and once we are in presence of the real
truth we learn that
the argument
of Professor Huxley against the miracle is just as unprofitable as the
Christian belief in the
miracle.
Here, as everywhere, the miracle results from a misinterpretation of the mythos
out of which the
gospels were
ultimately evolved, piecemeal, and put together in a spurious history, with a
spurious
version of
Horus the mortal, and a spurious spectre of Horus in the spirit.
In performing
his miracles with a word, in being the word incarnated or made truth in person,
in wielding
a magical
power over the elements, in casting out devils, in causing the spirits of evil
to enter the swine,
in healing
the woman with the issue of blood, in giving sight to the blind, in
transforming and transfiguring
himself, in
suddenly concealing himself, in walking upon the sea, in his personal conflict
and battles with
Satan, in
raising the dead to life out of the earth, in resuscitating himself on the
third day; in all these and
other things
Jesus is accredited with doing exactly what was attributed to Horus in the
Ritual and in the
Egyptian
mysteries. But these miraculous things were never done by mortal or immortal on
the surface of
our earth.
They are other-world occurrences in the true rendering, and they can only be
re-related to
reality as a
mythical mode of representing the scenes in the drama of Amenta. The superhuman
attributes
are possessed, the transformation and transfiguration effected, the waters
walked, the evil
spirits cast
out to enter the typhonian swine; sight is restored to the blind, the dumb are
given a mouth,
the dead are
raised up out of the earth by Horus in this divine nether-world termed the
earth of eternity
and not on
the earth of Seb in the world of time.
The
historical character of the four Gospel narratives must stand or fall by the
historical facts of the
miracles.
From the birth derived from a virgin to the corporeal resurrection of the
Christ, the sole
standing-ground
is upon miracle. No amount of Jesuitical dialectic or logical argument based
upon false
premises, can
ever make right, as a trustworthy matter of faith, that which is verifiably wrong
as matterof-
fact. Yet the
faith was founded on the uttermost falsification of natural fact as the ground
of the history.
On the one
hand we find a belief that these miraculous transactions, these teachings of
the Christ and
the Christ
himself were historical. On the other, we have the proof that they were
unhistorical, a proof
upon evidence
that has [Page 811] never been tampered with, and that is directly derived from
witnesses
that do not,
cannot lie. The miracles of the virgin birth and physical resurrection of
Jesus; the miracles of
giving sight
to the blind and of raising the dead, the descent into Hades, and the
resurrection in three
days or on
the third day, are all Egyptian, all in the Ritual. They were previously
performed by the Christ
who was not
historical, the Christ of the Egypto-gnostics who is Horus or Jesus, identical
with the Osirian
Christ who
was Horus the lord by name, and who, as the records show, was also extant as a
divine type
or spiritual
impersonation as Iusa or Iu-em-hetep many thousand years ago.
A crucial
example of the mode in which the gospel history was manufactured from the
matter of the
mythos and
the eschatology is furnished by the miracle of miracles of the loaves and
fishes. In one
account the
multitude of men, women and children are fed on five loaves and two fishes, and
the remains
of the meal
were sufficient to fill twelve baskets (Matt. XVI. 17-21). In the other
miracle, or second version
of the same,
the multitude are fed on seven loaves and a few small fishes, and there were
seven baskets
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full of
broken pieces. But for the Ritual we might never have known the correct number
of loaves that did
suffice to
feed the vast multitude. They are seven in one place and five in another, and
both the seven
and five are
found in one and the same book. This difference, however, serves for Matthew to
make out a
second
miracle (XV. 36). The speaker in the Ritual says, “There are seven loaves on
earth with Seb;
there are
seven loaves with Osiris (in Amenta); there are seven loaves at Annu with Ra in
heaven” (ch.
53).
“Henceforth let me live upon corn in your presence, ye gods, and let there come
one who bringeth to
me that I may
feed from those seven loaves which he hath brought for Horus” (Renouf, Rit.,
ch. 52). “It is
the god of
the sektet boat and of the maatit boat who hath brought them (the loaves) to me
at Annu” (ch.
53). These
seven loaves constitute the celestial diet on which the multitude of souls are
fed in Annu,
called “the
place of multiplying bread”. But those who are fed upon the seven loaves in the
celestial
locality of
Annu are not human beings on earth; they are manes in Amenta where Horus is the
bread of
life as giver
of food to the quickened spirits of the dead; and as the transaction occurred
in the next life
there was no
need of a miracle in this life by asserting that about five thousand hungry
men, besides
women and
children, were fed upon five or seven loaves of bread and two fishes.
The synoptics
do not mention the incident, but according to John (VI. 9) who retains much
more of the
Egyptian
wisdom in his Gospel, there was a lad present in the scene who had with him “five
barley
loaves and
two fishes”. “Jesus therefore took the loaves from him and distributed them to
the people”.
We have
identified the feeding of the multitude of manes on the seven loaves that were
brought to Horus
as
distributor of the bread of life, and the lad who brings the bread to Jesus in
the Gospel with the one
who brings
the seven loaves to Horus, or, it may be, the five loaves to Taht, in the
Ritual, and who is
described as
“someone” who comes with the bread of Horus and Taht which is ritualistically
represented
by the seven
loaves. A primitive concept of the infinite had been expressed in terms of
[Page 812]
boundless
food and drink. Providence was the provider; and the power that provided the
fruits of the
earth or
water was Providence. When bread was made the providing power or godhead itself
was figured
by the
Egyptians as an illimitable loaf, the food of spirits or celestial diet for the
life to come. The one
great loaf
was equivalent to the one supreme source of soul. Seven loaves were numerically
equivalent
to the seven
souls of Ra. The human soul was fed from the bread of life as typical of divine
source. With
bread of that
kind one loaf might have sufficed without the pretence of a miracle, as it was
cut and come
again without
diminution. It was the kind of bread which keeps on rising and expanding for
ever as in the
German tale
of Jesus and the miserly woman with her dough.
Annu is the
place of bread in which the multitudes of manes are fed as men, women and
children also, if
the
younglings of Shu are included. It is called the place of multiplying bread.
There are seven loaves of
bread with Ra
in Annu (Rit., ch. 53 B) on which the manes are fed by Horus. They feed upon
the seven
loaves of
celestial bread which were brought for Horus to feed the manes with by a divine
messenger.
Seven loaves
were brought for Horus and there were also loaves for Taht (ch. 52), the two
which
correspond to
the seven loaves and the five in the “historical” miracles. The manes prays
that he may
feed on the
seven loaves that are brought for Horus, and the loaves that were brought for
Taht, which
shows at
least that there was more than one set of loaves, when the multitude were fed
on the divine diet
in the place
of multiplying bread. In the Gospel the multitude recline upon the grass. In
the Ritual they
rest upon the
grassy sward beneath the sycamore of Hathor (ch. 52, 4). But when the
multitudes were
fed in Annu
they were the souls of the departed, and the symbolical seven loaves on which
they fed was
Ka-bread that
was neither made nor eaten on earth, nor did it need a miracle to make the good
go far
enough. Annu
was a mythical locality which did not supply the conditions for a miracle. A
miracle had to
be performed
only when the eschatological representation was shifted from the mount of Annu
in Amenta
to a mountain
in Judea. One hieroglyphic sign of the mount hetep is a pile of food. The mount
was the
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Ancient
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place of
feasting for the followers of Horus, the beatified spirits of the departed.
“Every feast on earth and
on the
mountain” signifies the feasts of the living and the dead; the living upon
earth, the dead or the
departed on
the mountain. In the feasting on the mount “Jesus went up into the mountain and
sat there.
And there
came unto him great multitudes, having with them the lame, blind, dumb, maimed,
and many
others, and
they cast them down at his feet; and he healed them; insomuch that the
multitude wondered
when they saw
the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing;
and they
glorified the
God of Israel. And Jesus called his disciples and said, I have compassion on
the multitude,
because they
continue with me three days and have nothing to eat”. (Matt. XV. 29-32.) The
miracles of
healing,
including the casting out of evil spirits and the raising of the dead, as
portrayed in the Ritual and
corroborated
by the “Pistis Sophia”, occurred in the resurrection on the mount; and this
shows that those
who had been
with Jesus having nothing to eat for three days had been awaiting their [Page
813]
resurrection
on the third day, and that they were the manes and not mortals.
The only reason
why the blind and deaf and dumb, the palsied and the lame, including the dead,
assembled in
their multitudes upon the mount is because this was the mount of resurrection
and
regeneration,
thence of healing, for the manes who had waited in Amenta for the coming of the
Lord. The
resurrection
of Osiris was solemnized at the great Haker festival. This is one of the ten
mysteries
described in
the “Book of the Dead” (ch. 18) said to have been celebrated “before the great
circle of gods
in Abydos (the
place of Osiris’s rebirth and resurrections) on the night of “Haker” (or
Ha-k-er-a) when the
glorious ones
are rightly judged: when the evil dead are parted off, and joy goeth its round
in Thinis” (ch.
18, Renouf).
The name for this festival is rendered “Come thou hither or Come thou to me” :
as the call of
Ra upon the
mount addressed to Osiris in the valley on the day of resurrection, when the
soul of Horus
the mortal
was blended with Horus the immortal in the mystery of Tattu (ch. 17). The Haker
celebration
included both
fasting and feasting. The word haker signifies fasting, to be famished, as well
as denoting
the festival
of “Come thou to me” or the rite of resurrection. Now, as the comparative
process shows an
“historical”
version of the Haker festival is given in the Gospels where we find an exoteric
account of the
funeral fast
and resurrection feast, in the miracles of healing performed upon the mount and
feeding the
famished
multitude upon the seven loaves of bread. It should be premised that the
raising of Osiris, the
god in matter
was individual, but, at the same time, the resurrection of the dead in Osiris
who were the
“All Souls”
for the year or cycle was general. The supreme miracle of “raising the dead”
suffices of itself
to show that
it belonged to the mysteries of Amenta, as asserted in the “Pistis Sophia”,
where the dead
were raised;
evil spirits were cast out, the blind were made to see, the deaf to hear, the
lame to walk, the
bed-ridden to
get up and go, not by miracle but as a dramatic mode of illustrating the
mysteries of the
resurrection
in the Peri em hru or coming forth to day. It is noticeable that the miracles
of healing on the
mount
described in Matthew (XV. 29-31), are immediately followed by the miracle of
multiplying the
loaves and
fishes. There is no change of scene, the multitude upon the mount remain the
same. “And
Jesus called
unto Him His disciples, and said “I have compassion on the multitude, because
they
continue with
Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I would not send them away
fasting”. Thus
three days
are allotted to the work of healing in the mount, during which time the
multitude were fasting in
the company
of Jesus and his disciples. In the Ritual these are not only the fasting, they
are also
deprived of
breath. They are without a mouth. They are the blind, the dumb, the motionless,
in short, they
are the
deceased awaiting in their coffins and their cells for him who is the
resurrection and the life, as
the divine
healer and deliverer of the manes from Amenta; he is the “divine one who
dwelleth in heaven,
and who
sitteth on the eastern side of heaven” (Rit., ch. 25) that is on Mount Bakhu,
the mount of the
olive-tree,
the only mount on which the dead were ever raised (P. S., B. 2, 279). This
healing then was a
mystery of
the resurrection, the same in the canonical as [Page 814] in the Egypto-gnostic
Gospel; the
same in both
as in the Book of the Dead, or Ritual of the resurrection. Three days was the length
of time
allowed for
the burial in Amenta. This would constitute a three days’ fasting of the dead.
We must
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Ancient
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discriminate.
In the lunar reckoning the resurrection of Osiris in the moon was on the third
day, which
corresponded
to the actual appearance of the light in nature. This death, described by
Plutarch, occurred
on the
seventeenth of the month. In the solar reckoning three whole days and nights
were allowed for the
burial of the
sun or sun-god in the earth. Both are employed in the Gospels but not
scientifically. Neither
could the
complex of soli-lunar reckoning be explicated on the single line of a personal
human history.
Both solar
and lunar reckonings remain, but hugely gaping apart with a gulf for ever fixed
between the
two. The Son
of Man was to remain three nights as well as days in the “heart of the earth”.
That is in
keeping with
the solar reckoning, whereas the resurrection is on the third day, the same as
that of Osiris
in the moon.
We repeat, there was a two-fold computation of time, lunar and solar, both of
which are
given in the
gospels, but without the gnosis that explained the astronomical mythology.
Three days is the
full period,
and this is the length of time over which the miracles of healing were extended
and during
which the
multitude with Jesus had “nothing to eat”, because they were with him in the
Valley of Amenta;
the same that
were healed by him on the Mount of Resurrection. It was in the resurrection
that the dead
were raised
to life and became spirits. These were the good spirits which were parted from
the evil spirits
that were
then “cast out”. Sight was given to the blind, a mouth to the dumb, hearing was
restored to the
deaf. The
lame were enabled to rise and walk. Then the three days’ fast was ended by the
feeding of the
multitude on
what the Ritual terms celestial diet, i.e., the “seven loaves” of heaven that
were supplied as
sustenance
for the risen dead in Annu, the place of multiplying bread. In the Egyptian
mysteries, all who
enter the
nether world as manes to rise again as spirits are blind and deaf and dumb and
maimed and
impotent
because they are the dead. Their condition is typified by that of mortal Horus
who is portrayed
as blind and
maimed, deaf and dumb in An-arar-ef the abode of occultation, the house of
obscurity, the
“city of
dreadful night” where all the denizens were deaf and dumb and maimed and blind
awaiting the
cure that
only came with the divine healer who is Horus of the resurrection in the
Ritual, or Khunsu, the
caster out of
demons, or Iu-em-hetep the healer, or Jesus in the Gospels, gnostic or
agnostic. Thus the
restoring of
sight to the blind man, or the two blind men, was one of the mysteries of
Amenta that is
reproduced
amongst the miracles in the canonical gospels.
The speaker
in the Ritual often makes the merest allusion to some act of the drama that was
visibly
performed and
fully unfolded in the mysteries. For example, Horus the avenger is described as
blending
his being
with that of the Sightless One, who had been Horus in the flesh (Rit., 17). In
a previous allusion
(same
chapter) the coming of the soul of Ra to embrace and blend with the body-soul
of Osiris, to give
light and
life to the Mummy-God is also described as the act of Horus-Tema who is blended
with the
Sightless
God. In either [Page 815] representation there is a restoration of sight to the
blind; and this when
written out
and narrated as “History” becomes the miracle of Jesus curing the man and
giving sight to
him who was
blind; or to the two men as Osiris and the Osiris, N., or to any number of
those who were
sightless in
the city of the blind. When Horus the deliverer descends into Amenta he is
hailed as the
prince in the
city or the region of the blind. That is, of the dead who are sleeping in their
prison cells, and
who therefore
are the prototypal spirits in prison. He comes to shine into their sepulchres
and to restore
their sight
to the blind. “Hail to Thee, Lord of Light, who art prince of the house which
is encircled by
darkness and
obscurity”, in the city of the blind (Rit., ch. 21). This picture is repeated
in the Gospel of
Matthew (IV.
16). “The people which sat in darkness saw a great light: and to them which sat
in the
region and
shadow of death, to them did the light spring up”. This, as written in the
“Book of the Dead”
was in
Amenta.
The typical
blind man of Amenta, then, is Horus in the gloom of his sightless condition, as
the human soul
obscured in
matter or groping in the darkness of the grave. This is Horus An-arar-ef in the
city of the
blind. And
the Horus who comes to restore the lost sight, is he who had been divinized in
the likeness of
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Ancient
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Ra, the holy
spirit. It is said of this dual Horus in the Ritual (ch. 17), “The pair of gods
are Horus the
reconstituter
of his father and Horus the prince in the city of blindness”. The second Horus
is the spirit
perfected. He
descends from heaven to the darkness of Amenta as The Light of the World. He is
called
the one whose
head is clothed with a white radiance. His presence shines into the sepulchres
and cells
of the manes.
He comes to the blind in the city of the blind, the place in which blind Horus
was enveloped
in obscurity.
He shows as a great light in the darkness of the land of the dead, and is
described as
restoring
sight to those who are blind, that is to the manes who have not yet attained
the beatific or
spiritual
vision. This is represented as giving sight to the blind. Amenta was looked
upon as the earth of
the blind.
The manes were there as blind folk awaiting sight. The human Horus
Har-Khent-An-arar-ef in
Sekhem was
the prince of the blind, being chief amongst the manes who were sightless or
without the
means of
seeing in the dark. For this reason the mole or shrewmouse was his zootype. The
typical blind
man in Amenta
is the blind Horus who was deprived of sight by Sut, the Power of Darkness. But
every
manes that
entered Amenta was also blind in the darkness of death. Thus there are two
blind men, or
one as the
God and one as the manes; one in the soli-lunar mythos, and one in the eschatology;
Horus
in his
darkness of night or the eclipse; the mortal in the dark of death. Miracle for
mystery, this may
explain the
two different versions of healing the blind in the Gospels. Three of the
evangelists know of a
single blind
man only, who was cured by Jesus, where Matthew reports the healing of two
blind men in
which he
obviously gives two separate versions of one and the same miracle. In the
Ritual, then, we can
identify the
one blind man with Horus in the dark, or without sight (Rit., ch. 18, as
Har-Khent-an-maati);
the two blind
men with Horus and the manes (otherwise [Page 816] with Osiris and the Osiris);
and the
multitudes of
blind people above ground with the manes or the dead in Amenta. There is no
need of
limiting the
miracle of curing the blind to one or two men. Horus the light of the world in
the earth of
Amenta comes
to cure the blind in general who are dwelling in the darkness of the city of
the blind, in
which the
devil (Sut) was dominant previous to the second advent of Horus. The dead in
Osiris were as
blind mummies
awaiting the spiritual light which gave the beatific vision; and Horus comes to
unseal the
eyes of the
manes waking in their coffins.
The poor
blind Horus was given eyes at the time when he became the anointed son, and the
child of
twelve years
made his transformation into the adult of thirty years with the head and sight
of the hawk, or
the beatific
vision of Horus in the spirit. He was anointed with oil at the lustration in
Abydos, the place of
re-birth.
Hence one mode of making the anointed or the Christ whom Horus became in this
transformation
was by anointing with saliva. The lustration of children by spittle was an old
Papal rite, and
in the Gospel
the spittle used to open the eyes of the blind is equivalent to anointing the
sightless Horus
in Sekhem. In
acting the mystery of Amenta the “Eye of Horus”, the anointed son, the light of
the world,
was brought
to blind Horus lying in his darkness. This mystery is reproduced as miracle in
the healing of
the blind
man. “When I am in the world”, says Jesus, “I am the Light of the World”. This
is equivalent to
bringing the
eye of Horus to the benighted manes in Amenta. “When he had spoken, he spat on
the
ground, and
made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay”. And in this
unsightly way the
man is said
to have attained his sight in thus becoming the anointed. Such is the puerility
of the miracle-
mongers who
misrepresent the mystery-teachers in the Gospels. To preach the “recovery of
sight to the
blind” was to
teach a doctrine of the resurrection and the opening of the eyes in death, such
as was set
forth
dramatically in the mysteries of the Ritual (chs. 20-30). It was the same also
in giving a mouth to the
dumb; in
making the dead to rise and the lame to walk; likewise in casting out evil
spirits, and the powers
of darkness,
the associates of Sut, the Sami or the Sebau, which originated in physical
phenomena, and
were
afterwards mis-rendered as obsessing spirits that were primarily human. When
the divine healer
and
caster-out of demons, Khunsu-Horus, went to Bakhten to exorcise an evil spirit
from the possessed
Princess, the
god was carried there in effigy, as the “driver away of evil spirits that take
possession “ of
the human
body, not as a divinized medicine-man portrayed in human form. The effigy is an
image of the
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Ancient
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wonderful
healer who originated as a power of renewal in external nature, and not as a
mortal on this
earth. The
caster-out of demons is also portrayed as Khunsu offering up the abominable pig
in the lunar
disk as a
sacrifice to the Lord of Light (Planisphere of Denderah), the pig being a
zootype of Sut the evil
one. Thus we
reach a root-origin in the war of light and darkness, or Horus and Sut, that is
waged for
ever in the
Moon. The black boar, Sut, makes his attack upon the eye, which is healed by
Horus or
Khunsu, Taht
or Ra. The power of light was then the healer of the wound in nature that was
wrought by
the
representative of darkness as the pig, the Apap-dragon, or the adversary Sut.
Hence the eye of
Horus in
[Page 817] the moon is a symbol of healing, and of safety or salvation; an
amulet, therefore, or
fetish, good
against the powers of darkness. There was no miracle in the natural phenomena.
There was
no miracle
involved or taught in the original mode of representation. But when a “human
mortal” with the
name of Jesus
is put in place of Horus, Taht or Khunsu, he becomes the supposed to be, but
for ever
impossible,
miracle-monger; Jesus, the Jewish Saviour, who is described as coming into a
world of blind
people; some
of whom are blind figuratively, others actually. The Scribes and Pharisees are
denounced
as blind,
“blind guides”, “fools and blind”, “blind leaders of the blind”, Jesus restores
the sight of those
who are
physically blind, “to many blind he gave sight”. That is in fitting the
canonical Jesus to the rôle of
Horus. A form
of blind Horus described by Isaiah leaves no room for doubt that the Hebrew
Messiah was
the Egyptian
Horus. This is he who is blind; “my servant, who is blind as he that is made
perfect, and
blind as the
Lord’s servant” (chs. XLII, XLIII). This servant of the Lord is the suffering
Horus who was
portrayed as
the servant of Osiris the Lord, blind, dumb, and therefore deaf, but as being
perfected in
serving the
Lord, who “confirmed the word of His servant”. Being perfected marks the change
from the
servant, as
Horus who was born blind in matter to Horus in spirit, the restorer of sight to
the blind, that is,
to the dead.
Also the word of the servant was confirmed by the coming of Horus as the
word-made-truth
in
Har-Ma-Kheru. But it was in the earth of Amenta that Horus came to restore the
sight to the blind, and
in the
canonical Gospels Judea, full of blind folk being cured by miracle, is just
Amenta wrong-side
uppermost,
with the drama of the double-earth in a state of topsy-turvydom through the
conversion of the
ancient
mysteries into Gospel-miracles.
In arranging
for the resurrection of the dead, as performed in the mysteries of Osiris, the
funeral bed,
called the
Khenkhat, is prepared as the couch of the mummy. It is said to the deceased, “I
have fastened
thy bones
together for thee. I have given thy flesh to thee”. ...I have collected thy
members for
thee.... This
is in arranging the deceased upon the funeral couch, for his rising from, or
as, the dead
(ch. 170). “Hail
N”, it is said to the deceased upon the funeral couch, “Arise on thy bed and
come forth”
(Rit., chs.
169-170). Here is an instructive instance of the way in which the mysteries of
the Ritual have
been
converted into the miracles of the Gospels. There are two chapters concerning
the funeral bed. The
first is “on
making the Khenkhat to stand up”; the other is on “arranging the Khenkhat”. We
repeat, the
Khenkhat is
the funeral bed on which the dead were laid out in Amenta, waiting for the
coming of Horus,
lord of the
resurrection, to wake the sleepers who are in their coffins or lying breathless
on their couches
in the
likeness of inert Osiris. It is the couch of the dead that is set up on end
like the mummy-case with
the body
inside which is thus erected on its feet as a mode of rendering the mystery of
the resurrection or
re-erection
of the deceased (Rit., ch. 169). This becomes a miracle in the Gospel, when the
dead are
raised, and
those who were paralytic take up their bed and walk. In the next chapter (170)
on the
arrangement
of the funeral bed it is said to the risen one, “Thou settest forth on thy
[Page 818] way. Horus
causeth thee
to stand up at the risings”. Then the deceased, as the risen mummy, is seen to
be walking
off. That is
in the resurrection. Here, as elsewhere, the mystery of Amenta becomes a
miracle when
represented
on this earth. That change would of itself account for a huge falsification, to
say nothing of
the intent
and tendency of the writers, which follow and overshadow the truth of the
ancient wisdom all
through as
darkly as the night the day; for if ancient Egypt was the light of the world,
Christian theology
has assuredly
been its impenetrable shadow.
Page 622
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
As already
shown, a reduced form of the mysteries that were acted in the Osirian drama may
here and
there be
recognized in the form of parables and portable sayings. Take the mystery of
Tattu in the 17th
chapter of
the Ritual, by means of which the Sayings of the Lord, quoted from “the Gospel
of the
Egyptians” by
the two Clements, can be explicated. The Lord himself being asked by someone
when his
kingdom would
come, replied: “When two shall be one. When that which is without is as that
which is
within, and
the male with the female (shall be) neither male nor female” (Clem., Rom.).
When Salome
asked, when
those things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said:
“When you
tread under
foot the covering of shame, and when out of two is made one, and the male with
the female
is neither
male nor female” (Clem. Alex., Stromata). This is that blending of the two
souls or two sexes in
one which was
figured and effected in the mystery of Tattu. This blending of two halves in
one whole,
which is a
likeness of neither, but a new image of both, is exemplified thrice over in the
Ritual, when a
soul was
established that should live for ever. Ra is blended with Osiris; Shu with
Tefnut; child-Horus with
Horus the
adult. Ra represents the divine soul, and Osiris the body-soul in matter. Shu
represents the
male, and
Tefnut the female nature. Child-Horus is the mortal and Horus in spirit the
immortal. Thus the
divine soul
was blended with the soul of matter; female with male, and mortal with immortal
in the
mystery of
Tattu. The mystery was of course performed, and in the present instance, the
drama consists
of three acts
with six different characters which are Ra and Osiris, Shu and Tefnut, Horus the
sightless,
with Horus
the bringer of the beatific vision. In the saying quoted from “the Gospel
according to the
Egyptians”
the mystery has been reduced to the male and female becoming neither male nor
female in
the mystical
marriage, the other factors being omitted. This shows the process by which the
mysteries of
the Ritual
were reduced and made portable in the miracles, the parables and sayings, or
Logoi, whether
as separate
sayings or as miscellaneous collections. A distant echo of the doctrine is to
be heard in the
Gospel
according to Matthew (XXII. 30): “For in the resurrection they neither marry
nor are given in
marriage, but
are as angels in heaven”. So remote is this from the mystical marriage in Tattu
that the
mystery in
Amenta is limited to sexual conjunction. Now we learn from the Ritual that one
mode of
making the
change from matter to spirit and of being unified in the type beyond sex was by
discarding the
garb of the
female in the preparation of the manes for the funeral bed at the time of the
second birth (Rit.,
ch. 170). The
garment is again referred to in “the [Page 819] fragments of a lost Gospel”
when the speaker
says “he
himself will give you your garment”. “His disciples say unto him, when wilt
thou be manifest to
us, and when
shall we see thee? He saith, when ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed’
(Grenfell and
Hunt, New
Sayings of Jesus, p. 40), which is the same thing as being freed from the garb
of shame upon
the funeral
bed. This is no mystical reference to Genesis III. 7, but to the mystery of
Amenta and a
ceremony that
was performed in the nether-world, of which it is said, “Thou puttest on the
pure garment
and thou
divestest thyself of thy apron when thou stretchest thyself on the funeral bed’
(Rit., ch. 172).
“Thou
receivest a bandage of the finest linen”, in place of the old garb of shame, or
the apron which was
now a symbol
of the flesh. Lastly, amongst the mysteries of Amenta which were converted into
Gospel
miracles one
of the most arresting is that of the Widow and her only son whom Jesus raised
up from the
funeral bier
at Nain (Luke VII. 14), because Isis is the widow by name in the Ritual who was
represented
by the
disconsolate swallow as the widow who has lost her mate, and Horus was her only
son. The
connection of
the child with the widow in Egypt is already seen in the Gospel of Thomas or
Tum, which
goes far
towards identifying the child-Jesus with the child of Isis. Moreover, the
mystery shows us how
the mother as
Isis became a widow. When Osiris had been put to death, the birth of the
child-Horus
followed the
decease of his father, and his mother was consequently the widow who had an
only son in
Horus, the
only child of his mother. In the mystery of Tattu, child-Horus was raised up
from the dead
when Horus in
the spirit came to the funeral couch and the immortal was blended with the
mortal in the
mystery of
the resurrection. This is repeated in the Gospel as one of the most telling of
the mysteries that
were Christianized
in the miracles.
Page 623
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
JESUS IN THE
MOUNT
Ascending the
mountain of Amenta is a figure of the resurrection from the dead. When Jesus
Aber-
Amentho rises
after death it is to take his seat upon the mountain with the twelve preservers
of the light.
The group of
twelve followers was the latest to gather form upon the mount. This was
preceded by the
seven, the
four, and the two. The Ritual of the Resurrection opens with the coming forth
to day of Horus
or the
Osiris, who ascends the mount of glory, or Mount Bakhu, the mount of the green
olive-tree, which
afterwards
was represented in Judea by the local Mount of Olives. In the older manuscripts
of the Ritual
this ascent
is called “the coming forth to the divine powers attached to Osiris”, which are
the four with
Horus in the
mount, or on the Papyrus-column, the four that were his brethren first, and who
are
afterwards
portrayed as his children. But in both the Ritual and Pistis Sophia the mount,
the scenes upon
the mount,
the twelve with Jesus or the four with Horus on the mount, are all in
spirit-world. As we have
seen, Pistis
Sophia opens with the resurrection of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus. The life of
suffering
represented
on the earth was over, and the victor rose triumphant after death, to be
invested with the
glory of the
Father on the mount. [Page 820]
This is the
Peri-em-hru or coming forth to day with which the Egyptian Ritual of the
resurrection begins.
Jesus comes
forth from Amenta as the teacher of the greater mysteries to the twelve
disciples who are
gathered
together on the Mount Olivet, which is the mountain of Amenta in the Kamite
eschatology. Thus
the mount,
the scene upon the mount, the teaching and the twelve are all
post-resurrectional, and
therefore the
transactions are not upon our earth. There was a double resurrection in the
Osirian
mysteries,
just as there is a first and second death. The earliest is a resurrection of
the soul that passes
from the body
on earth and emerges as the Sahu in Amenta. This is Amsu-Horus, who is still a
mummy,
but who has
risen to his feet with one arm loosened from the bandages of burial. It has the
look of a
corporeal
resurrection, for the body is semi-corporeal. But Horus has not yet attained
the garment of his
glory.
The typical
mountain likewise had a twofold characters in the mythology and the
eschatology. As solar, it
was the mount
of sunrise or of the great green olive-tree of the Egyptian dawn. As
eschatological, it was
the mountain
of Amenta, up which the manes climbed — the mount of glory and the glorified.
It was the
mount on
which the human Horus was transfigured and regenerated to become pure spirit in
the likeness
of the
Father. Hence it is the mount of transfiguration, of regeneration, of healing,
and also the means of
ascent into
the land of spirits (Rit., ch. 17).
The second
resurrection is from Amenta. When Horus has transformed and made his change
into the
likeness of
his Father and become pure spirit he ascends from the mount and rises into
Heaven from
Bakhu, the
mount of the olive-tree, or the Mount of Olives in the later rendering. This
was the meeting-
place of
Horus and his heavenly Father Ra when they conversed together in the mount. It
is that Mount
of Olives on
which Horus, the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, met the twelve disciples after his
resurrection from
Amenta, which
meeting-place is repeated when the Gospel-Jesus makes the appointment for the
Eleven
to meet him
in the mountain after he has risen from the dead (Matthew XXVIII. 16). The
Kamite founders
of the
astronomical mythology had placed the equinoxes high up on the horizon, or the
summit of the
mount, as it
was figured, at the meeting-point of equal night and day. Thus the equinox or
level place was
one with the
top of the mount, and where one writer speaks of the equinoctial station as
being on the
mount another
might assign it to the “level place” or plain, when neither of them possessed
the proper
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
clue. In this
way one discrepancy may be explained concerning the delivery of the sermon on
the mount.
According to
Matthew, Jesus delivered it upon the mount. According to Luke, he came down
from the
mount and
“stood on a level place” (ch. VI. 17). Both places meet in one, but only on the
mountain of the
equinox, the
Egyptian mountain of Amenta. According to Matthew, the sermon was delivered to
the four
brethren in
the mount. This follows the Ritual. According to Luke, the sermon was delivered
to the twelve
on the mount
by Jesus standing on the level place.
No rational
explanation has ever been suggested why the divine healer on earth should have
compelled
the sick and
ailing, the obsessed, the halt and maimed, the deaf and dumb and blind who
[Page 821]
besought him
for a cure, to climb a lofty mountain with the cripples on crutches in order
that they might
come into his
presence and be healed. When Jesus was followed by the clamorous multitude he
went up
into the
mountain and sat there. “And there came unto him great multitudes, having with
them the lame,
blind, dumb,
maimed, and many others, and they cast them down at his feet, and he healed
them”. The
answer is
that the mount was mythical, not geographical; the divine healer was no human
thaumaturgist;
the
multitudes were manes, not mundane mortals.
The only
mountain mentioned by name in the Gospels as the scene of the miraculous
occurrences is
Mount Olivet.
There was such a mountain to the east of Jerusalem, but beyond that was the
mythical
Mount of
Olives, which was localized in many places under various names as the typical
mount of the
astronomical
mythos. At first the mount was a figure of the earth that rose up in the waters
of the Nun, or
space. Then
it was a type equivalent to the horizon. To be upon the horizon in the mythos
is to be upon
the mount —
the mount of the double equinox — the four quarters or the twelve divisions of
the ecliptic. It
is shown in
the Pistis Sophia that the twelve disciples, teachers, or supporters who sat
with Jesus on the
Mount of
Olives had originated as the twelve aeons or rulers in the zodiac. As such they
were the
teachers of
time and the preservers of the treasures of light. Their stations were in an
aërial region. This
is otherwise
called the sphere or circle of the zodiac, in which the twelve seats or thrones
were finally
established,
with the central throne of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus towering over all.
In the early
Christian iconography the cross of Christ is erected on a mount. This is shown
to be the
mount of the
four quarters, or the equinox, by means of the four rivers flowing from the
summit. The
Christ stands
on the top along with the cross. Sometimes the ram or lamb is portrayed on the
mount of
the four
quarters in place of the Christ; and Horus was likewise the lamb as well as the
calf upon the
mount. The
Christ is also accompanied by seven lambs=seven rams, supposed by Didron to
represent
the twelve
apostles! (Didron, Fig. 86). But the ram (Mithraic lamb) is the Egyptian
ideograph for the baspirit,
and seven
rams or lambs that accompany the Christ are equal to the seven spirits which
served
Horus in the
octonary of the mount. The ram also appears with seven eyes and seven horns,
which
identify it
with the seven rams as seven spirits, or the seven souls of Ra. This shows an
earlier stratum of
the
astronomical mythos in survival. It is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, who was Horus,
with the seven great
spirits that
were earlier than the twelve upon the mount. When Jesus has transformed, or
spiritualized in
his baptism,
he is “led up of the spirit to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. IV. 1). He is
then a spirit on the
mount that is
exceeding high, like the mountain of Amenta, which is said to reach the sky. To
meet upon
the mountain
after death could only be as spirits meet in spirit-world upon the mount of
re-union in the
mysteries of
Amenta. Thus it is obvious that the meeting-point of Sut and Horus, or of Satan
and the
Christ, was
no earthly hill; and that the teacher and the teaching on the mountain are the
same in the
canonical
Gospels as in Pistis Sophia and the Ritual, that is, they are in spirit-world,
and therefore the
total [Page
822] transactions on the typical mountain are post-resurrectional and not
humanly historical.
Page 625
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
According to
John, the earliest discourse of Jesus is not the sermon on the mount as given
by Matthew.
In place of
this, John presents the discourse upon regeneration which is the same subject
as that of the
sermon on the
mount in the Divine Pymander. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Verily, verily, I say
unto thee,
Except a man
be born anew (or from above) he cannot see the kingdom of God”. Nicodemus saith
unto
him, “How can
a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb
and
be born?”
Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water
and the spirit,
he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and
that which is born of
the spirit is
spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born from above. The wind
bloweth where
it listeth,
and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth: So
is everyone
that is born of the spirit”. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, “How can
these things
be?” Jesus
answered and said unto him, “Art thou a teacher in Israel and understandest not
these
things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and bear witness of
that we have seen:
and ye
receive not our witness. If I told you earthly things and ye believe them not,
how shall ye believe if
I tell you
heavenly things? And no man hath ascended into heaven but he that descended out
of heaven,
the Son of
Man, which is in heaven” (John III. 1-14). This is a sermon on regeneration.
The sermon of
Hermes is in
the mount of regeneration. The subject is the same in both. Previous to this
discourse
Hermes had
told Tat that “no man can be saved before regeneration”. At a previous ascent
into the
mount Hermes
had promised Tat that if he would estrange himself from the world and prepare
his mind
for this
mystery to be unfolded, he would then impart it to him. “Now”, says Tat,
“fulfil my defects and
instruct me
of regeneration either by word of mouth, or secretly; for I know not, O
Trismegistus, of what
substance or
what womb, or what seed a man is thus born”. That is, how he is to be reborn in
the
process of
regeneration? Hermes replies, “O son, this wisdom is to be understood in
silence, and the
seed is the
true good”. “Who soweth it, O father? for I am utterly ignorant and doubtful”.
“The will of God,
O son”. Now,
this is called “the secret sermon in the mount”, on the subject of
“regeneration and the
profession of
silence”. The subject is the same, the characters of teacher and doubtful
inquirer are
identical,
and the physical misinterpretation regarding the mode of rebirth is one and the
same in both
interviews.
Hermes describes a form of the Son of Man who is in heaven, otherwise the
heavenly man,
when he says,
“I see in myself an unfeigned sight or spectacle made by the mercy of God: and
I am gone
out of myself
into an immortal body, and am not now what I was before, but am begotten in
mind”. He
also says of
the physical and spiritual, “He that looketh only upon that which is carried
upward as fire,
that which is
carried downward as earth, that which is moist as water, and that which bloweth
or is
subject to
blast as air; how can he sensibly understand that which is neither hard nor
moist, nor tangible,
nor
perspicuous, seeing it is only understood in power and [Page 823] operation:
but I beseech and pray to
the mind,
which alone can understand the generation that is in God”. But Hermes, who
wrote the Ritual in
hieroglyphics
as the scribe of the Egyptian gods, did not derive his matter from the Gospels
collected by
Eusebius and
his co-conspirators in Rome (Divine Pymander, B. 7).
After the
prophecy of the immediate coming of the Son, who is supposed to be speaking of
himself, we
have the real
meaning of the manifestation identified in the very next verse, which contains
a
representation
of the entrance of Osiris and his transfiguration as Horus in the mount on the
sixth day of
the new moon.
We are told that “after six days” — it would have been more correct if “on the
sixth day”;
the
discrepancy, however, is but slight — “Jesus taketh with him Peter and James
and John his brother,
and bringeth
them up into a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them. And
his face did
shine as the
sun, and his garments became white as the light. And behold there appeared unto
them
Moses and
Elijah talking with him. And Peter answered and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is
good for us to be
here: if thou
wilt, I will make here three booths, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for
Elijah. While he
was yet
speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of
the cloud,
Page 626
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
saying, This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him” (Matt. XVII. 1-5).
Then Jesus
retires into
his secrecy, saying, “Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man has risen
from the dead”.
This
identifies the mount of resurrection, which is one with the mount of
regeneration, the sermon on
which is
obviously post-resurrectional. There is a scene of Transfiguration on the Mount
in the mysteries
of Amenta.
“Ra maketh his appearance at the mount of glory with the cycle of gods about
him”. The
Osiris
deceased acquireth might with Ra, and is made to possess power with the gods —
and when men
or the manes
see him they fall upon their faces. He is seen in the nether-world “as the
image of Ra.” So
in the
Gospel, the face of Jesus “did shine as the sun”. The disciples likewise fell
upon their faces, and
“were sore
afraid”. Not only is Jesus seen in the likeness of Ra, the father in heaven;
the voice from the
father
proclaims that this is the beloved son. In coming down from the mount the witnesses
are
commanded to
“tell the vision to no man”, and of the scene in the mysteries, it is said by
the speaker in
the Ritual,
“the Osiris N hath not told what he hath seen; he hath not repeated what he
hath heard in the
house of the
god who hideth his face” (ch. 133). The point here is the identity of the
mythical mount,
whether
astronomical or as the seat of the teacher; and the twelve; or as the mount of
the mysteries; the
mount of
resurrection, of regeneration and of transfiguration. It is the same mount when
those multitudes
that meet
upon the summit are described as the blind, the halt, and maimed. The mount on
which the
dead were
raised to life, the blind were made to see, the dumb to speak, the impotent to
become virile,
like the risen
ithyphallic Horus; the mount upon which the famished multitudes were fed from
the
illimitable
loaf, or loaves, was the mount of resurrection that rose up from the nether
earth for the
departed to
ascend as spirits. Hence it is the mount on which the miracles in the Gospels
are alleged to
have been
[Page 824] performed. The mount of glory in the Ritual becomes the mount of the
glorified in
the Gospels.
This, according to the gnosis, was the mount that has been localized in Judea,
to which the
people were
bidden to flee for refuge when the end of all things should come; not a
geographical mount,
but the mount
of the manes in Amenta; the mount of the resurrection, which only spirits could
ascend; the
mount from
which the swine obsessed by devils were driven down into the lake when the evil
Apap and
his host of
fiends is hurled back at dawn from the horizon to be drowned in the bottomless
pit of Putrata
(Rit., ch.
39).
Horus in the
solar mythos is the prototype of Jesus on the mount. He is described as the
sovereign lord
upon the
mount=horizon (ch. 40). Elsewhere he says, “I come before you and make my
appearance on
the seat of
Ra, and I sit upon my seat which is on the mount” (or on the horizon) (Rit.,
ch. 79). Horus has
alighted on
the mount or is lifted on his monolith, when he says, “I make my appearance as
that god in
the form of a
man that liveth like a god, and I stand out before you in the form of that god
who is raised
high upon his
pedestal (of the mount, or the papyrus-column) to whom the gods come with
acclamation”.
He maketh his
appearance on the mount of glory or upon his pedestal with the cycle of gods
about him
(ch. 133).
The papyrus being a figure of the earth, Horus, on his papyrus-column or
lotus-plant, is Horus
in the mount.
Also the four brethren, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, who stand upon
the
papyrus (or
column), are the gods of the four quarters with Horus in the mount. Now, when
the four
brothers,
Simon and Andrew with James and John, are called upon to leave their nets and
follow Jesus,
they became
straightway the four with Jesus in the mount. For, according to Matthew, the
disciples were
only four in
number when the sermon was delivered in the mount (Matt. IV. 5). Again, the
typical group of
four in the
mount are represented by Jesus, James, Peter and John at the time of the
transfiguration
(Matt. XVII.
1). Mount Bakhu having been named in Egyptian from the olive-tree of dawn as a
celestial
summit was
localized in Olivet, the mountain eastward. This, as solar, was the one sole
mount of the
mythos; and
in the Gospels, although the mount is mentioned several times, and apparently
in different
localities,
there is but one name given to it, that of Mount Olivet=Bakhu the solar mount,
the one typical
mount, the
Egyptian mount, equivalent to the horizon, as the summit of the earth and
figure of the ascent
into heaven.
Page 627
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
The canonical
Jesus is also shown to be a form of the son of Ra, the father in heaven, in his
retiring from
the world at
eventide and passing the night alone on the mount. It may be worth noting that
there was a
temple of the
solar Horus, as ancient as the time of Sebek, upon the eastward side of Mount
Bakhu. As it
is said in
the Ritual (ch. 108), “Sebek the Lord of Bakhu is at the East of the hill, and
his temple is upon
it”. And
Sebek was very possibly the most ancient form of Horus the young solar god.
Horus wars against
the serpent
of darkness on behalf of his father in the mount by night, and is the teacher
in the temple of
heaven by
day. Jesus obviously makes use of both the mount and the temple, for he went up
into [Page
825] the
mountain when “he opened his mouth and taught” the multitudes (Matt. V. 2). The
devil took him
up into an
exceeding high mountain when he was in the spirit. He was transfigured on a
“high mountain
apart” (Matt.
XVII. 1, 2). He sat upon the Mount of Olives when expounding the consummation of
the
cycle and the
gospel of the kingdom to the disciples privately (Matt. XXIV. 3). Many details
are of course
omitted from
the “history” and there is no guidance in the Gospels to the secret meaning of
the mysteries.
For that we
must “search the Scriptures” which are genuine and self-explanatory as
Egyptian; the
scriptures of
Maati and Taht-Aan. Of Jesus and his doings in the mount by night we are told
that he went
into the
mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God (Luke VI. 12).
“And when it was
day, he
called his disciples; and he chose from them twelve” (VI. 13). It is said in
the Ritual that “Horus is
united at
sunset with his Father Ra who goeth round the heaven.... So Jesus at sunset is
united with
his father in
prayer all night in the mount. The sun-god has to fight the adversary Sut for
his passage
through the
mount by night. Horus is said to come at evening and “seize upon the tunnels of
Ra” for
making his
passage through the mount. These are elsewhere called the tunnels of Sut; a
synonym for
darkness. The
sun-god entered the mountain each night for rebirth every morning. Horus came
forth from
the Mount of
Olives. He is portrayed in the Ritual walking over the waters. He ascends the
Mount Bakhu
to enter the
solar bark. It is said that his “sister goddesses stand in Bakhu” ; they
receive him there as the
two mothers,
they lift him up into his boat (Hymn to Harmachis). There is a curious
conjunction of the
Temple and
the Mount in Luke’s description of Jesus as the teacher. Like so many other
fragments it
stands by
itself in the Gospel. “Every day he was teaching in the Temple; and every night
he went out
and lodged in
the mount that is called of Olives. And all the people came early in the
morning to him, in
the Temple,
to hear him” (ch. XXI. 37, 38). This passage identifies the mount as being
named from the
olive-tree,
on which the temple of Sebek-Horus stood, and therefore with Mount Bakhu. On
coming forth
from the
mount of Amenta Horus entered the bark that was rowed or towed round by the
twelve who
were called
the twelve kings in the solar mythos, and afterwards twelve teachers or
apostles who were
servants to
Iu the son of Atum, the Egyptian Jesus in the eschatology.
It is Horus
in the mountain with his father who says — “I am the Lord on high. I make my
nest on the
confines of
heaven”, that is, aloft on the mount. “Invisible is my nest”. “From thence I
descend to the
earth of Seb”
his foster-father, “and put a stop to evil”. “I see my father, the lord of the
gloaming, and I
breathe” (ch.
85, Renouf). Horus in the mount is designated “lord of the Staircase” or steps
at the top of
which his
father sat enthroned. In this dual character the peripatetic Jesus is made to
journey, betwixt
plain and
mountain, town and country, in a vain endeavour to make the track of Horus
become historical.
Horus enters
the mountain by night and comes forth by day as the “lord of daylight”
divinized. On coming
forth he
says, “I have ascertained what there is in Sekhem”, the shrine in the mount,
where dead Osiris
lay. “I have
touched [Page 826] with my two hands the heart of Osiris, and that which I went
to ascertain I
have come to
tell. . . . Here am I, and I come that I may overthrow mine adversaries on the
earth (even)
though my
dead body be buried” as the Osiris (ch. 86, Renouf). In entering the mountain
at sunset he
has seen the
great mystery of Osiris, his death, his transformation, and his resurrection,
and he comes
forth as a spirit
divinized to make the experience known as a teacher of the mysteries to those
that
became his
followers, his children who were adopted by him as the four brethren two by
two, then the
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Ancient
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seven, and
finally the twelve who row the solar bark or reap the harvest of eternal plenty
in the Aarru
paradise of
the Amenta.
A specially
important feature in the “history” is this retirement of Jesus into a mountain
at sunset to
commune with
his Father. Jesus “when even was come went up into the mountain apart to pray,
and was
there alone”
(Matt. XIV. 23). “He went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all
night in prayer
to God” (Luke
VI. 12). It is noticeable that he goes into the mountain, and in the mythos the
sun at
evening
entered the mount which is a figure of the earth. The type was continued in the
eschatology. God
the Father as
Osiris had his dwelling-place and shrine in the mount of earth and it was there
that Horus
interviewed
the father. The speaker in the “Book of the Dead’ says, in the character of
Horus the son, “I
seek my
father at sunset, compressing my mouth”. This latter phrase is Renouf’s
rendering of the words
“hapet ru”,
the sense of which is determined by the ideograph of closing or enclosing.
Therefore the
meaning is “I
close my mouth” as the synonym for silence in the mount. He seeks his father in
the
character of
Horus with the silent mouth. “I seek my father at sunset in silence, and I feed
on life”, is the
complete
declaration made in this line. Horus feeds on life in silence when alone with
the father in the
mount of
earth where souls were fed on sustenance divine. This is the meat referred to
by Jesus when
he said, “I
have meat to eat that ye know not of”, “My meat is to do the will of him that
sent me, and to
accomplish
his work”. Horus says, “I live in Tattu, and I repeat daily my life after
death, like the sun”. For
he is Horus
risen in Amenta, where he is the instructor of the manes in the mysteries,
otherwise he
preaches to
the “spirits in prison”.
In building
the house of heaven, which was annually repeated in the mysteries, the fourfold
foundation,
the four
supports or cornerstones, were laid in the mount. These four supports were
personalized in the
four children
of Horus, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, who had already been four of
his brothers
in the
earlier mythos when they were the four sustainers of the heaven at the four
corners of the mount,
and also as
the four who stand upon the flower of the papyrus-plant. Now we have to bear in
mind that
the rock is
identical with the mount, and that the house or temple of Horus built upon the
mount was
founded on
the rock. In establishing his father’s kingdom of the beatified, Horus built
upon the typical
rock. In the
Gospel Simon is told by Jesus that he will build his church upon this rock, and
the gates of
Hades shall
not prevail against it. The gates of Hades or Amenta opened in the rock of the
Tser Hill to let
the dead come
forth in the glorified train of Horus the conqueror [Page 827] whose temple,
from the time of
Sebek, had
been built upon the rock with the four brethren as the pillars of support,
which were finally
extended to the
twelve in keeping with the complete number of zodiacal signs. Peter, in the
Gospels, has
been assigned
the place and position of the rock or mount (or Tat of stability) because in
the Greek the
word petra
signifies the rock. But the rock was the same as the mount; the mount was one
and the same
all through;
and it was the site of the building, whether this is called the Church of Rome,
the temple of
Sebek, or the
house of Tum, that was built by his son Jesus for the divine abode, at the
level of the
equinox.
Horus in the
character of Har-Makhu was the sun-god of the double horizon, who passed from
west to
east and
united the two in one. These two horizons of the double earth have been a
source of endless
perplexity to
the students of the history. The two horizons reappear in the Gospels as those
of the two
opposite
countries, Judea and Galilee. Both have been used independently; the result is
that one writer
localizes the
works of Jesus in the one region, whilst another places the scenes in the
country opposite,
as if they
did not know which leg to stand on, or on which horizon to take their stand.
Horus of the double
horizon is
reproduced in Jesus, who itinerated in two lands or two parts of the one land
which takes the
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place of the
Egyptian double earth. Horus passes from one horizon to the other by making his
passage
through the
mount. He makes the passage in the stellar Atit, or Maatet-boat, which he
enters with the
seven
glorious ones at sunset. Horus in the mount is one with Horus in the boat, and
thus as teacher of
the four, or
the seven, or the twelve, he is the teacher in the boat. In this character
Jesus likewise
teaches in
the boat. It is said that “he sat down and taught the multitudes out of the
boat” (Luke V. 3, 4).
Horus, with
the seven on board the boat, who were portrayed in heaven as the Sahus in
Orion, is usually
depicted
standing. The nearest likeness to the passage through the mountain in the
Maatet-boat by night
occurs when
Jesus “withdrew again into the mountain himself alone”. whereas the disciples
go by water.
“When evening
came, his disciples went down into the sea; and they entered into the boat and
were
going over
the sea unto Capernaum. And it was now dark”. The scribe hardly dared to send
them through
the mountain
by the boat of the mysteries, therefore Jesus comes to them by walking on the
water, “and
straightway
the boat was at the land whither they were going”, (John VI. 15-21) that is, by
magic or by
miracle.
At the summit
of the mount the glorified deceased who came up from Amenta were now given a
seat
upon the bark
of Ra. In one of his many characters Horus is the divine teacher called “the teller”,
on
board the
boat. He says, “I am the teller in the divine ship. I am the unresting
navigator in the bark of Ra”
(Rit., ch.
109). As the teacher in the boat he also says, “I utter the words of Ra (his
father) in heaven to
the men of
the present generation (or to the living on earth), and I repeat his words to
those who are
deprived of
breath (or to the manes in Amenta)” (Rit., ch. 38). This, then, is Horus as the
teacher in the
solar boat,
who utters the words or sayings of his father Ra, by day and night, to the
living on earth and
the manes in
Amenta. These are spoken of as those who are in their [Page 828] shrines, but
who are also
said to
accompany Horus as his guides. Horus further says, “I have made my way and gone
round the
celestial
ocean on the path of the bark of Ra, and standing on the deck (bekasu) of the
bark”. It is in this
position on
the boat that he utters the words of Ra — the word of God — to both the living
and the dead.
He says, “I
come forth from the cabin of the Sektit bark, and I raise myself up from the
eastern hill. I
stoop upon
the eastern hill. I stoop upon the Maatet (or Atet) bark that I may come and
raise to me those
who are in
their circles, and who bow down before me” (Renouf, ch. 77). The boat or bark
of the sun has
been made
historical in the Gospels. In the time of the celestial Heptanomis there were
seven on board
the bark with
Horus. And seven is the number on board the ship with Jesus after his
resurrection. In the
heaven of ten
nomes there were ten on board the solar bark with Horus, and there are ten on
board the
boat with
Jesus (not twelve) in a very early picture given by Bosio. In this scene, Jesus
with the ten in the
boat is the
child of twelve years, not the man of thirty years. Ten in the solar boat
preceded the twelve in
the heaven of
ten divisions, which were earlier than the seventy-two. (Lundy, Monumental
Christianity,
fig. 56.)
Horus in the
boat is another of the mythical characters assigned to Jesus by the “sacred
historian”. Jesus
likewise
plays the part of Horus in the boat as the teller of parables. “There were
gathered unto him great
multitudes so
that he entered into a boat and sat; and all the multitude stood on the beach.
And he spake
to them many
things in parables” (Matt. XIII. 2, 3). Four of the parables are then told to
the people by
Jesus, the
teller in the boat, which is a co-type with the sayer or logos in person. We
find that the
Teacher, now
become historic, also addresses two classes or kinds of people when he utters
the words
of his father
from the boat. One audience consists of the twelve disciples to whom he is
supposed to
communicate a
knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. These correspond to the
glorious
ones who are
enshrined, and who accompany Horus as his guides. The others are called the
multitude.
To these it
is not given to know the mysteries because “seeing they see not, and hearing
they hear not,
neither do
they understand” (Matt. XIII). If the thing were historic, the supposed great
democratic Teacher
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Ancient
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would be
excluding the “swinish multitude” from all knowledge of the kingdom of heaven.
They were not
to be
enlightened because they were too densely, darkly ignorant. They are to be put
off with parables,
according to
Luke (VIII. 10), “that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not
understand”
these
heavenly stories which had for them no earthly meaning. Thus, in this process
of transmogrifying
the Kamite
mythos into Christian history, the common people, the ignorant multitude, are
assigned the
status of the
Pait, the breathless, non-intelligent, unilluminated dead who were slumbering
darkly in the
coffins of
Amenta, and these are inevitably mixed up, in the teaching of Jesus, with the
deaf and blind
who do not
hear and cannot see, and may not perceive, as mortals on this earth.
Moreover the
bark in which the sun-god made his celestial voyage was double under two
different
names. “I am
the great one among [Page 829] the gods”, says the speaker in the Ritual (ch.
136B),
“coming in
the two barks of the lord of Sau”. In the morning it was the Sektit boat, in
the evening the
Maatet bark.
“Let the soul of the deceased come forth with thee (the god) into heaven; let
him journey in
the Maatet
boat till he reach the heaven of the setting stars” (Rit., ch. 15). Two boats
are also mentioned
by Luke where
Matthew only speaks of one —“ while the multitude pressed upon him and heard
the word
of God, Jesus
saw two boats standing by them”. He asks that one of these may put out from the
land in
order that he
may address the multitude from the shore. And he sat down and taught the
multitudes out
of the boat
(Luke V. 4). Again, we meet with Jesus on board the Maatet bark at evening. In
the Gospel
according to
Matthew there is a scene in which Jesus is asleep on board the boat. At sunset,
“when even
was come”, he
entered into a boat and his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a
great
tempest in
the sea, insomuch that the boat was covered with the waves, but he was asleep”.
Then “he
arose and
rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm” (Matt. VIII. 24).
The scene may
be paralleled
with that on board the bark of Ra at evening (Rit., ch 108). In this conflict
between Apap
and Ra the
evil is in the western mountain, and it is said of him, “Now at the close of
day he turneth down
his eyes to
Ra: for there cometh a standing still in the bark, and a deep slumber within
the ship”. Here the
solar god as
Ra, or Horus, when sinking to rest in the boat, is described as being asleep on
board when
the evil one
makes his attack. There is a contest. “Then Sut is made to flee with a chain of
steel upon
him, and he
is forced to vomit all that he hath swallowed. Then Sut is put into his prison”
(Rit., ch. 108).
The western
mountain overlooks the lake of Putrata. “I know the place”, says the speaker,
“where Ra
navigated
against adverse winds” (ch. 107). The lake that is crossed by night amidst the
terrors of the
tempest is a
replica of the dreadful lake of darkness which the followers of Horus have to
cross in
Amenta. It is
mentioned in the pyramid texts (Pepi I, 332, and Merira, 635) as a lake that is
traversed by
the glorified
personage. In the chapter by which “one dieth not a second time” (Rit., ch. 44,
Renouf) it is
spoken of as
the lake or chasm of Putrata, where the “dead fall into darkness”, if not
supported by the
eye of Horus,
their moon by night. Elsewhere it is described as the void of Apap over which
the bark of
heaven sails;
the void in which the Herrut-reptile lurks to prey on those who fall down
headlong in the
dark (ch.
99). In this place the deceased pleads that he may be brought into the bark “
as a distressed
mariner”, for
safety. After crossing the lake of darkness, the solar god is thus addressed —
“O thou who
art devoid of
moisture in coming forth from the stream, and who restest upon the deck of thy
bark, as
thou
proceedest in the direction of yesterday and restest upon the deck of thy bark,
let me join thy
boatmen”. “O
Ra, since thou passest through those who are perishing headlong, do thou keep
me
standing on
my feet”. That is, in crossing the water— but not walking on it. Some of the
matter may have
sunk down a
little too deep to dredge for, but as Herod the monster is the Herrut-reptile,
the dragon-
Apap, in an
anthropomorphic guise, we may complete the parallel by pointing out that the
murder of John
by Herod
[Page 830] immediately precedes the crossing of the stormy-lake=the lake of
darkness called the
void of Apap
in Amenta. John is slain, but Jesus escapes to cross over and to save those who
were
sinking in
the waters and who are described in the Ritual as “falling down headlong”, and
finding nothing
to lay hold
on by which they can be saved from the bottomless abyss, until Horus comes to
the rescue of
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Ancient
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the
“distressed mariners” in the “divine form which revealeth the solar orb”, and
with the eye that was an
emblem of the
moon; the sun by day and moon by night being called the two eyes of Horus.
In the
original mythos the boat is the solar bark; in the eschatological phase it is
the boat of souls. It is
steered by
Horus, who is called the oar that guides. It is rowed by his followers, who may
be the “four
paddles”, or
the seven great spirits, or the twelve mariners; and it is the ark of salvation
for souls when
Horus the
Saviour is at the look-out. This ark or bark has served for a model in the New
Testament as the
boat of souls
distressed that is nearly swamped, and only saved from sinking by the God who
is on
board. On
entering the bark the speaker pleads: “O Great One in thy bark, let me be
lifted up into thy
bark” (ch.
102). The data for comparison with the story in the Gospel are — the divine
bark, which is
solar in the
mythos, and the boat of salvation, or of safety, in the eschatology. In
crossing the terrible lake
from which
the Apap monster emerges, and the storms and tempests rise to overwhelm the
bark, the god
rises
unwetted from the water to rest upon the deck of the bark and insure the safety
of those on board.
This is
identical with Jesus, who comes on board by walking upon the water, whilst the
individual speaker
that makes
the appeal for safety in the place of perishing headlong is equivalent to
Peter, who calls for
help when
sinking in the lake, saying, “Lord save me”, and is “lifted into the bark”
(Matt. XIV. 22-33), like
the rescued
manes in the Ritual. Jesus on board the boat with his disciples in the storm
sustains the
character of
Horus in the boat, who is the oar, paddle, or rudder of Ra, and who exclaims,
“I am the kheru
(paddle or
rudder) of Ra who brings the boat to land” (Rit., ch. 63). In this passage
Horus is the oar or
rudder to the
boat of the sun, with the ancient ones on board, in the mythos, and to the boat
of salvation
for souls in
the eschatology. It is he who brings the boat to the shore.
The germ of
the Gospel story concerning Peter sinking in the waters may be detected in this
same
chapter. The
speaker is a “wretched one” in the water who was to be saved by him who is an
oar or a
boat to the
shipwrecked (cf. ch. 125, 38). In the Ritual it is hot water that the sinking
manes has got into,
the imagery
being solar, and he speaks of being helpless as a dead person. But Horus, the
oar of the
boat, the
rudder of Ra, is obviously his saviour, like Jesus with Peter in the Gospel. A
shipwrecked spirit
is the
inspiring thought, and Horus was the rescuer as the pilot, or figuratively the
paddle to the boat by
which the
sinking soul was saved from drowning in the overwhelming waters.
The Lord
appears on the water in the morning watch, the “fourth watch of the night”,
that is, the p...
or
dawning (cf.
Mark XIII. 35), at which time the Sun-God begins his march or his “walking”, as
it is termed,
upon the
waters of the Nun. It is said to the God who walks [Page 831] this water at
sunrise, “Thou art the
only one
since thy coming forth upon the Nun”. And here we may discover the prototype of
the Gospel
version. The
deceased addresses Ra at his coming forth to walk the water and pleads, like
Peter, that he
may do so
likewise. “Gran”, he says, “that I too may be able to walk (the water) as thou
walkest (on the
Nun) without
making any halt”. The sun was seen to rise on the blue above, which was imaged
as the
water of
heaven. His follower prays that he also may walk the water and make the passage
successfully
and without
sinking, like the solar God. In another chapter the deceased exclaims, “I fail,
I sink into the
abyss of the
flowing that issues from Osiris”, that is, the water of which Osiris is the
source; and in these
we find the
parallel and prototypes of Jesus walking on the water and Peter sinking into
its engulfing
depths.
Horus
commands in the boat. Ra annihilates his enemies from the boat. It is in the
boat of the Sun that
Ra puts a
limit to the power of his enemies when they pursue him to the water’s edge;
that is, to the
horizon of
day. So Jesus takes refuge in the boat and finds protection when he perceives
that he is about
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Ancient
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to be taken
by force; he likewise walks upon the water to the boat. Death by drowning in
the lake was the
mode of
execution appointed for the evil Apap and his host of darkness who attacked the
solar bark by
night. The
fiends of Sut are also included in this sentence of death by drowning in the
emerald lake of
heaven, or of
dawn. Now the fiends of the evil Sut were represented as swine. And immediately
after the
great tempest
in the sea which Jesus stills, the devils are made to enter the swine, and,
like the
emissaries of
Apap and of Sut who “causes storms and tempests”, they are driven down the
mountainside
to suffer
death by drowning in the lake. It was on the mount that Jesus met with the man
obsessed
with a legion
of devils who “entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the
abyss”.
“Now there
was a herd of swine feeding on the mountain”, “and the devils came out from the
man and
entered into
the swine”, and the herd rushed down the “steep into the lake and were choked”
(Luke VIII.
33). It was
by Sut, in the shape of a great black boar, that Horus was gored in the eye. It
was also the Pig
of Sut that
devoured the arm of Osiris in the burial-place. And when the evil spirits are
cast out, as
represented
in the judgment-scenes, they enter the swine of Typhon and are driven down the
side of the
mount to be
submerged in the Lake of Putrata or the fathomless abyss of outer darkness.
SUT AND HORUS
AS HISTORIC CHARACTERS IN THE CANONICAL GOSPELS
The Gospel
story of the devil taking Jesus, or the Christ, up into an exceeding high
mountain from which
all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them could be seen, and of the
contention on the summit,
is originally
a legend of the astronomical mythos which, in common with so many others, has
been
converted
into “history”. As legend it can be explained by means of the Egyptian wisdom.
[Page 832] As
“history” it
is, of course, miraculous, if nothing else. Satan and Jesus are the
representatives of Sut and
Horus, the
contending twins of darkness and light, of drought and fertility, who strove
for supremacy in
the various
phenomena of external nature, and in several celestial localities belonging to
the mythology.
In the Ritual
(ch. 110) the struggle is described as taking place upon the mount, that is,
“the mountain in
the midst of
the earth”, or the mountain of Amenta, which “reaches up to the sky”, and which
in the solar
mythos stood
at the point of equinox where the conflict was continued and the twins were
reconciled year
after year.
The equinox was figured at the summit of the mount on the ecliptic, and the
scene of strife
was finally
configurated as a fixture in the constellation of the Gemini, the sign of the
twin-brothers who
for ever
fought and wrestled “up and down the garden”, first one, then the other being
uppermost during
the two
halves of the year, or of night and day. The mountain of the equinox “in the
midst of the earth”
joined the
portion of Sut to the portion of Horus at this the point midway betwixt the
south and north. It
was on the
mountain of the equinox and only there the twins were reconciled for the time
being by the
star-god Shu
(Rit., ch. 110) or by the earth-god Seb (text from Memphis). Sut the Satanic is
described as
seizing the
good Horus in the desert of Amenta and carrying him to the top of the mount
here called
Mount Hetep,
the place of peace, where the two contending powers are reconciled by Shu,
according to
the treaty
made by Seb. Thus, episode after episode, the Gospel history can and will be
traced to the
original
documents as matter of the Egyptian mysteries and astronomical mythology.
The battles
of Sut and Horus are represented in both the apocryphal and canonical Gospels.
In the
Gospels of
the Infancy there are two boys — the bad boy and the good boy. In this form the
two born
antagonists
continue their altercation with a root-relationship to the Osirian mythos. Sut
is the
representative
of evil, of darkness, drought, sterility, negation, and non-existence. It is
his devilry to undo
the good work
that Horus does, like Satan sowing tares amongst the wheat. It was Sut who
paralyzed the
left arm of
Osiris and held it bound in Sekhem (Rit., ch. 1). It is the express delight of
the bad boy, the
child of
Satan, to destroy the works of Jesus, the child of light. There is one
particularly enlightening
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Ancient
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illustration
of the mythos reproduced as Märchen. The power of resurrection was imaged by
the lifting of
the arm from
the mummy-bandages; Horus in Sekhem is the lifter of the arm. Whilst the arm is
fettered in
death, Sut is
triumphant over Horus in the dark. When Horus frees his arm, he raises the hand
that was
motionless
(Rit., ch. 5). He strikes down Sut, or stabs him to the heart. The power of
darkness, one form
of which was
Sut, is designated the “eater of the arm” (ch. 11). This act of the Osirian
drama is rendered
in the
apocryphal Gospels by the bad boy persistently aiming at injuring the good
boy’s arm or shoulder.
In the Gospel
of pseudo-Matthew (29) the bad boy, who is called a son of Satan and the worker
of
iniquity,
runs at Jesus and thrusts himself bodily against his shoulder with the
intention of breaking or
paralyzing
his arm In the Gospel of Thomas the boy ran and thrust against the shoulder of
Jesus [Page
833] (ch. 4).
Again, the bad boy threw a stone and hit him on the shoulder (Gospel of Thomas,
B. 2, ch.
4). Several
times when this occurs the bad boy is smitten dead by Jesus, just as Sut is
pierced to the
heart by
Horus. Other evidence might be cited from these Gospels to show that the bad
boy who tries to
destroy the
arm of Jesus is one with Sut who renders the arm of Horus (or Osiris) powerless
in Amenta.
This being
established, we are enabled to identify Judas the betrayer of Jesus, his
brother, with Sut the
enemy of
Horus. According to “the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy”, “In the same place”
(with Lady Mary
and her child
Jesus), “there dwelt another woman whose son was vexed by Satan. He, Judas by
name,
whenever
Satan obsessed him, bit all who approached him. He sought to bite the Lord
Jesus, but he
could not,
yet he struck the right side of Jesus”. “Now this boy who struck Jesus and from
whom Satan
went out in
the form of a dog, was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him to the Jews” (ch. 35).
We now have
the original matter with which to compare the remains, and the comparative
process will
prove that
these “apocrypha” are not perversions of the canonical Gospels, but that they
preserve
traditions
derived from the Kamite mythology and eschatology. This can be determined once
for all by the
contests of
Horus with Sut, and by his warfare with the Apap-serpent or dragon, which are
assigned to
the
child-Jesus, as they were previously ascribed to the child-Horus.
There are two
types of evil, or, according to modern terminology, the devil, in the Kamite
mysteries. One
is
zoomorphic, as the Apap-reptile, the other anthropomorphic, as Sut, the
personal adversary of Osiris.
Apap is the
Evil One in the mythology; Sut is Satan the adversary in the eschatology. In
the 108th
chapter of
the Ritual there is a curious fusion of Apap with Sut, the anthropomorphic type
of Satan. The
serpent of
darkness, the old enemy of Osiris-Ra, is portrayed in the vignette as Apap, and
spoken of in
the text as
Sut. After the battle “Sut is made to flee with a chain of steel upon him, and
he is forced to
disgorge all
that he hath swallowed. Then Sut is made fast in his prison”. At the same time
the serpent is
described as
“the bright one who cometh on his belly, his hind parts, and on the joints of
his back”. To him
it is said,
“Thou art pierced with hooks, as it was decreed against thee of old” (ch. 108).
The battle here,
betwixt Ra
and Apap, or Sut, is finished on the horizon, that is, on the mount, from which
the devil is
hurled down
defeated into the abyss. In the canonical Gospels, Jesus and Satan occupy the
place of the
two opponents
Horus and the Apap, or Horus and Sut. The Herrut-reptile has been paralleled
with the
monster
Herod; Satan is now to be compared with Sut. Sat=Satan in Egyptian is a name of
the Evil One
(Budge,
Vocabulary, p. 268).
In Africa the
primal curse was drought. Drought was a form of evil straight from nature. This
was figured
as the fiery
dragon, “hellish Apap”, that was drowned by Horus in the inundation when he came
as
saviour to
the land of Egypt in his little ark of the papyrus plant. Sut warred with Horus
in the wilderness
as
representative of drought, when the “father of the inundation was athirst”
(Rit., ch. 97), a cry of Horus
that was
echoed on the Cross (John. XIX. 28). Drought, [Page 834] as we have said, was
the earliest
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Ancient
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devil. In the
Osirian cult the whole of nature was expressed in a twofold totality according
to the doctrine
of Maati.
Night and day, body and soul, water and drought, life and death, health and
disease, were
modes of the
duality manifested in phenomena. Sut and Horus were the representatives of this
alternation
and opposition personified as a pair of twins, now called the children of
Osiris. Osiris Un-nefer
is the Good
Being, but as with nature he includes both the good and the evil in the
totality. In the mythos,
however,
Horus represents the good and Sut the bad. Sut is said to undo the good that
Horus does.
Hence he is
the adversary or Satan when personified. As Prince of Darkness he puts out the
eye of
Horus, or the
light by night. He sows the tares amidst the grain. He is the “eater of the
arm”. He dries up
the water of
life with the desert-drought. He lets loose the locusts, the scorpions and
other plagues. He
represents
negation and non-being in opposition to being, and to the Good Being who is
divinized in
Osiris and
manifested by Horus. The triumph of Horus over Sut is frequently referred to in
the Ritual. In
one of his
battles Horus destroyed the virile member of Sut, as the symbol of his power.
(Ch.17,68,69). In
another Sut
and his associates were overthrown and pierced by Horus so long as blood would
flow. In his
resurrection
Horus comes to put an end to the opposition of Sut, and to the troubles he had
raised
against
Osiris his father (Rit., 137 B). He says: I am the beloved son. I am come to
see my father Osiris,
and to pierce
the heart of Sut (Rit., ch. 9). He is armed with horns against Sut (ch. 78,
42). Horus, “who
giveth light
by means of his own body”, is the God who is against Sut when Taht is between
them as
adjudicator
in their dispute (Rit., ch. 83, 4). In the discourse of Horus to his father he
says to Osiris, “I
have brought
thee the associates of Sut in chains”.
In the
Gospels of the Infancy, which contain some remains of the more ancient
legendary lore, the
grapple of
child-Horus with the deadly Apap-reptile is frequently portrayed, as in the
Arabic Gospel of the
Infancy, when
the boy has been bitten by the serpent, and the Lord Jesus says to his
playmates, “Boys,
let us go and
kill the serpent”. He proves his power over the reptile by making it suck the
venom from the
wound. Then
the Lord Jesus curses the serpent, “whereupon the reptile was instantly rent
asunder” (ch.
42). But the
war of Horus with the Apap-dragon, or serpent of evil, is not fought out
directly by Jesus in
the canonical
Gospels. Sut as the power of darkness and as the opponent in the moral domain
had taken
the place of
the old first adversary of man in the phenomena of external nature. Jesus
promises to give
his followers
power over the serpent and the scorpion, but there is no personal conflict with
the pre-
anthropomorphic
Satan recognized in the four Gospels. Sut, as Satan in a human form, was a
somewhat
less
unhistoric-looking type of the devil than the Apap-reptile. Satan, however,
retains his old primitive
form of the
dragon in “the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy”. In this it is related that a
damsel was afflicted by
Satan, the
cursed one, in the form of a huge dragon, which from time to time appeared to
her and
prepared to
swallow her up. He also sucked out all her blood, so that she remained like a corpse.
She is
cured by a
strip of the clothing that had been worn by the child, Lord Jesus (ch. 33).
[Page 835] This is a
form of the
woman with an issue of blood. Her persecutor is the dragon of darkness who is
the eternal
devourer of
the light in the Egyptian mythology, and of condemned souls in the eschatology.
In the
gnostic
version it is Sophia who suffers from the issue of blood and who is restrained
and supported by
Horus when
her life is flowing away into immensity. The woman suffering from the
swallowing dragon of
darkness was
the mother of the child of light in the moon. Expressed in human terms, Horus
the bull, or
fecundator of
the mother, stopped her female flow and filled her with the glory of the light,
and thus he
overthrew the
monster that assailed her in the dark, which was figured as the wide-mouthed
crocodile or
devouring
dragon (Rit., ch. 80, 10). Horus puts a boundary round about Sophia. The
child-Jesus cures
the damsel
with a strip of his raiment; and in the Gospel according to Matthew the woman
who is flowing
away like
Sophia with her issue of blood is healed by touching the border of the garment
worn by Jesus
(Matt. IX.
20, 21). Here the dragon is omitted. The suffering lunar lady has been
humanized, together
with the
Divine Healer; the cure is wrought; the modern miracle remains in place of the
mystery
according to
the ancient wisdom.
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Ancient
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The conflict
between Sut and Horus (or Osiris), who are represented by Satan and Jesus in
the Gospels,
commences
immediately after the baptism in the river Jordan. One form of baptism in the
solar mythos
was derived
from the setting of the sun-god in the waters of the west, the waters in which
Un-nefer
washes when
he has his dispute with Sut — either in the character of Horus or Osiris. Asar
in his baptism
is said to
plunge into the waters with “Isis and Nephthys looking on”. Apuat (Anup) is
present apparently
conducting
the submersion of the god (Inscrip. Of Shabaka from Memphis, line 42). In his
baptism the
god Un-nefer
was prepared for his struggle with Sut, the power of drought in the desert of
Anrutef. So, in
the Gospels,
Jesus is prepared by John in his baptism for the conflict with Satan in the
wilderness, on the
pinnacle, and
upon the exceeding high mountain. It was only after he had entered spirit-life
that Horus
could grapple
with Sut, or Jesus with Satan, in the desert, on the pinnacle of the temple, or
on the
summit of the
mount; consequently the earth-life had ended when the contest betwixt Satan and
Jesus
first began,
in the phase of eschatology. The wilderness of Satan in the Gospel represents
the desert of
Sut in
Amenta. When Satan seized on Jesus and bore him bodily up into the mountain
Jesus had just
risen from
his baptism and was led up “of the Spirit”. Otherwise he had made his
transformation from the
state of
manes to the status of a spirit. This was in the phase of eschatology and the
transaction is in
spirit-world.
When Jesus
was “led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” he is
said to have
“fasted forty
days and forty nights”, and, afterwards, to “have hungered”, whatsoever that
may mean.
This
contention in the wilderness was one of the great battles of Sut and Horus, or,
in the other version of
the mythos,
of Sut and Osiris. As Egyptian, the wilderness is the desert of Anrutef, a
desolate, stony
place where
nothing grew. It was here that Horus was made blind by Sut, and was a sufferer
from hunger
and thirst in
this region of stony sterility, and rootless, waterless sand. Horus in [Page
836] Amenta had to
make way
through the barren desert, in the domain of Sut, as sower of the seed from
which the bread of
life was
made, much of which must have fallen on stony ground in the region of Anrutef.
Forty days was
the length of
time in Egypt that was reckoned for the grain in the earth before it sprouted
visibly from the
ground. It
was a time of scarcity and fasting in Egypt, which gave a very natural
significance to the
season of
Lent, with its mourning for the dead Osiris, and its rejoicing over the child
of promise, the
germinating
green shoot springing from the earth. This is represented in the Gospel as a fast
of forty
days and
forty nights, during which Jesus wrestled with the devil and was hungry. The
struggle then of
Jesus with
the devil in the wilderness is a repetition of the conflict between Horus and
Sut in the desert of
Amenta; on
the mount and on the pinnacle of the ben-ben or temple in Annu. During the
forty days that
Osiris was
typically buried in the nether-earth as seed, from which the bread of heaven
was made, the
struggle was
continued by Sut and Horus in the mountain. This is repeated in the Gospels as
the contest
of Christ and
Satan for the mastery in the mount. The conflict is between the powers of light
and
darkness, of
fertility and sterility, betwixt Osiris (or Horus) the giver of bread, and Sut,
whose symbol of
the desert was
a stone. The fasting of Jesus in the desert represents the absence of food that
is caused
by Sut in the
wilderness during forty days of burial for the corn, and Satan asking Jesus to
turn the
stones into
bread is playing with the sign of Sut. Satan’s jape about converting stones
into loaves of
bread is
likewise reminiscent of the mythos. The stone was an especial symbol of the
adversary Sut. Also
the place of
the temple in Annu, and the pinnacle, or Ha-ben-ben, was the place of the
stones by name.
Moreover,
Annu was the place of bread, or the loaves. As it is said, “there are seven
loaves in Annu with
Ra”, the
Father in heaven (Rit., ch. 53B).
As
represented in the Ritual, Sut and Horus are more upon a footing of equality,
whether in the
wilderness or
on the summit of the mount of glory. Their triumph is alternate, though that of
Sut is much
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Ancient
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the more
limited. As the power of drought and darkness he is master in the desert, and
chief of the
powers called
the “tesheru deities”, or gods of the desert. The speaker in chapter 96
exclaims, “I have
come to
propitiate Sut and to make offerings to the God Akar and to the deities of the
desert”, where Sut
attained
supremacy over Horus for a time. The desert was the natural domain of Sut the
adversary of
Horus. Hence
Horus at his second coming exclaims, “I am Horus, the Lord of Kamit and the
heir of
tesherit”
(Rit., ch. 138, lines 3 and 4), which he has also seized. Kamit is Egypt as a
mythical locality: the
dark and
moist, fat and fertile land. Tesherit, the red land, is the desert. So that in
taking possession of
the “two
worlds”, or the double earth, Horus has also seized the domain of Sut, the
wilderness, which
was a subject
of contention in Amenta. Hence he says, “I have also seized the desert — I, the
invincible
one, who
avengeth his father and is fierce at the drowning of his mother” (ch. 138).
In his
resurrection Horus cometh forth as “the heir of the temple” in Annu. He is
called “the active and
powerful heir
of the temple, [Page 837] whose arm resteth not” in the mummy bandages (ch.
115). That is,
as the
avenger of his father Osiris in Annu, where he rises with the whip or flail in
his hand to drive the
adversaries
from the temple. Now Annu, the station of the temple, was the place of the
pillar. The temple
itself in
Annu, or Heliopolis, was known by the name of Ha-ben-ben, the house of the
pyramidion or
temple of the
pinnacle, and the struggle of Satan with Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple
may be traced
to that of
Sut and Horus the heir of the temple or the Ha-ben-ben of Annu, following the
contention of the
twin powers
of darkness and light, or of food and famine in the wilderness. “All the
kingdoms of the world”
are more
definitely presented to view as celestial localities upon Mount Hetep. There
are ten divisions of
this divine
domain. The three scenes of struggle betwixt Jesus and Satan are (1) in the
wilderness, (2) on
the pinnacle,
and (3) on an exceeding high mountain; and these can be paralleled in the
conflicts
between Horus
and Sut. The forty days’ struggle in the wilderness was in Amenta. Next, there
was a
struggle on
the ben-ben or pinnacle in Annu. And thirdly, Horus was carried off by Sut to
the summit of
Mount Hetep,
where the two combatants were reconciled by Shu. The mount was a figure of the
horizon
in the solar
mythos. On this the warring twins were constellated as the Gemini, and may be
seen
continuing
their old conflict still, as Sut and Horus in the mythos, or as Satan and Jesus
in the Christian
eschatology.
The earth, or heaven, that was first divided in two halves between Sut and
Horus in the
mythology is
finally claimed to be the sole possession of Horus, the conqueror and the
legitimate heir of
God the
father in the eschatology. The triumph of Horus over Sut is denoted by his
kindling a light in the
dark of death
for the Ka or spiritual image in Amenta (Rit., ch. 137A). He was not only the
light of the
world in the
mortal sphere. As it is said in the Ritual, “O light! Let the light be kindled
for the ka!”. “Let the
light be
kindled for the night which followeth the day”. The light is called the eye of
Horus, the glorious
one, shining
like Ra from the mount of glory, putting an end to the opposition of the
dark-hearted Sut
(Rit., ch.
137B).
The question
of an historic Jesus is by no means so simple as the grossly simple early
Christians
thought. It
is equally a question of the historic devil. From first to last the Lord and
Satan are twin, and
without Satan
there is no Christ-Jesus nor any need of a redeemer. In the mythology Horus was
the lord
of light and
Sut the adversary, or the Satan of drought and darkness, from the time when the
two
contended as
the black bird and the white (or the golden hawk), or as the two lions (our
lion and unicorn
a-fighting in
the moonlight for the crown), as the Rehus are described in the 80th chapter of
the Ritual. As
there was no Horus
without Sut in the mythos, so there is no Jesus without Satan in the history.
The
brotherhood
or twinship of Horus and Sut the betrayer is repeated in the canonical Gospels.
Sut was the
brother of
Horus, born twin with him in one phase of the mythos, or with Osiris in
another. In like manner
Judas is a
brother of Jesus. Now, when Horus the youth of twelve years makes his
transformation into
Horus the
adult, the man of thirty years, it is as the enemy and eternal conqueror of Sut
who in the earth-
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Ancient
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life often
had the upper hand. But the contest [Page 838] of the personal Christ with a
personal Satan in
the New
Testament is no more historical fact than the contest between the seed of the
woman and the
serpent of
evil in the Old. Both are mythical; both are Egyptian mysteries. In the earlier
narrative we have
the struggle
between Horus and the Apap-serpent of evil reproduced as Gospel truth by a
writer in
Aramaic. In
the later the conflict between Horus and Sut (or Satan in his anthropomorphic
guise) has
been repeated
as Christian history. As mythos the Ritual explains both, and for ever
disproves their right
to be
considered historical. In one of the sayings assigned to Jesus it is promised
that “in the
regeneration
when the son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, the disciples also
shall sit upon
twelve
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. XIX. 28). Now, when this
was said according to
Matthew,
Judas the traitor was one of the twelve. Moreover, as reported by Luke, the
same thing is
uttered by
Jesus after “Satan entered into Judas who was called Iscariot, being of the
number of the
twelve”, and
therefore one of those who are to sit on the twelve thrones in the future
kingdom, and judge
the twelve
tribes of Israel. No defection of the son of perdition is foreseen, no
treachery allowed for.
Judas is
reckoned as one of the twelve who are to sit at the table of the Lord and eat
and drink in the
kingdom that
is yet to come (Luke XXII. 4-30). There is but one way in which the traitor
could remain one
of the twelve
in heaven. This belongs to the astronomical mythology, not to any human
history, as when
the sign of
the scorpion is given to Sut-typhon. In the newly-recovered Gospel of Peter
there is no sign of
Judas the
betrayer having been one of the twelve. Immediately after the resurrection, it
is said, the feast
of the
Passover being ended, “We the twelve disciples of the Lord wept and grieved,
and each of us in
grief at what
had happened withdrew to his house” (Harris, page 56). At the same time, in
Matthew, the
disciples are
but eleven in number when they go to meet Jesus by appointment on the mount,
with Judas
no longer one
of them. Sut is as inseparable from Jesus in the Gospels as from Horus in the
dual figure
of the
Egyptian twins. The name alone is changed; otherwise it is Sut the devil who is
the tempter of
Jesus during
forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. It is Sut who carries Jesus to
the summit of an
exceeding
high mountain. It is Sut who, as personal opponent, is seen to fall as
lightning from heaven. It
is Sut the
betrayer who enters Judas to become the betrayer of Jesus. Also an historical
Christ implies,
involves,
necessitates an historical devil. According to the canonical record the two
must stand or fall
together as
realities. Both are personal or neither. And both were pre-extant as Horus and
Sut, who were
neither
personal nor historical. Indeed, it is asserted by Lactantius (Inst. Div., B.
2, ch. 8), that the Word
of God, the
logos of John, is the first-born brother of Satan. That is honestly spoken and
true, if we reidentify
the word with
the Horus who was born twin with Sut. He is wrong in making Horus the logos the
first-born,
but that is of little importance. Otherwise, he has got the twins all right.
Sut was the first-born,
but the
birthright belonged to Horus who was the real heir. Now the “word of God” is
made flesh in Jesus,
and the
contention of the twin-powers of darkness and light is rendered [Page 839]
historically in the
conflicts
between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness, upon the pinnacle, or the mount, or
in the harvest-
field. The
contest is also illustrated by Luke (VIII. 12): “Then cometh the devil and
taketh away the word
from their
heart that they may not believe and be saved”. This is one with Sut in undoing
what Horus the
Word had
done, especially in sowing the seed of the logos. The contention of Sut and
Horus is carried
out betwixt
Satan and Jesus to the last. Sut, the king in his turn, was triumphant over
Horus in his
suffering and
death. “I go away”, says Jesus, “for the prince of this world cometh, and he
hath nothing in
me” (John
XIV. 30).
Beelzebub,
God of flies, is the particular name assigned to Satan in the Gospels as the
prince of devils.
And as Sut
was Prince of the Sebau, it seems probable that the “zebub”, or infernal flies,
may have been
identical
with and therefore derived by name from that spawn of Satan the Sebau, the
associates of Sut
on the night
of the great battle in the Ritual. In the parable of the sower it is said,
“When anyone heareth
the word of
the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one (the adversary
Sut or Satan)
and snatcheth
away that which hath been sown in his heart” (Matt. XIII. 19). And in “the
parable of the
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Ancient
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tares” it is
said, “He that soweth the good seed is the son of man”; and of the good seed,
“these are the
sons of the
kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed
them is the
devil” (Matt.
XIII. 36-39). This is the contention of Horus and Sut in the harvest-field of
Osiris represented
in parables
instead of in the mysteries. Horus sows the good seed and Sut the tares. When
Horus rises
in Amenta
after death it is as the husbandman or harvester who comes to gather in the
harvest
previously
sown for the father by Horus in the earth of Seb, and to vanquish Sut, the
sower of the tares,
the thorns,
and thistles in Anrutef.
The judgment
of the world by Horus and the casting out of Sut is spoken of as a present
fulfilment. “Now
is the (or a)
judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John
XII. 31, 32). This
judgment was
annual in the mysteries of Amenta. Sut as prince of this world and the son of
perdition was
cast out and
judgment passed on those who were to be no more. This was at the time when
Horus as the
son of man
was glorified, and Sut with his associates were once more overthrown by him on
the
highways of
the damned. In John’s account of the betrayal and arrest, when Jesus declares
himself, the
soldiers and
officers who are with Judas are “struck to the ground”, or “they went backwards
and fell to
the ground”
(John XVIII. 6, 7). So when “Horus repulses the associates of Sut”, they see
the diadem
upon his head
and “fall upon their faces in presence of his Majesty” (Rit., 134, 11). Sut put
out the eye of
Horus. This
is parodied in the Gospels when Jesus is blindfolded and then asked to tell who
struck him in
the dark?.
We get one
other passing glimpse of Sut and Horus the contending twins in the parable of
the marriage
feast (Matt.
XXII). The wisdom of the Kamite mysteries was memorized in the sayings, and
made
portable in
the parables. And in this the parable represents the marriage in the mystery of
Tattu (Rit., ch.
17). Horus
was the king’s son for whom the feast was made. He is Horus of the royal
countenance in the
mythos; the
wearer of the Greek cloak of [Page 840] royalty in the Roman catacombs. The
king is Ra who
issues the
invitation to the festival of “Come thou hithe”, which is represented by the
Gospel marriage
feast, to
which those invited would not come. Sut as the adversary of Horus is the
unbidden marriage
guest who had
no wedding garment on. The murderers who slay the servants of the king are the
Sebau
and co-conspirators
of Sut, and the vindictive treatment that followed becomes intelligible only by
means
of the
mythos.
The conflict
betwixt Satan and Jesus attains a culmination astronomically. In the betrayal
of Osiris the
Good Being by
the evil Sut there are seventy-two conspirators associated with the adversary.
Seventy-
two on the
one hand as the powers of darkness imply the same number of opponent powers
fighting on
behalf of
Horus or, it may be, Jesus on the other, the battle being in the seventy-two
duodecans of the
zodiac. This
war of Sut and Horus is repeated once more in the Gospel when the seventy-two
or the
seventy
“returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us in thy
name”. And he said
unto them, “I
beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven”. “Behold, I have given you
authority to tread
upon serpents
and scorpions and over all the powers of the enemy”. The enemy was Sut, and as
a
symbol in the
zodiac Sut was at one time figured in the scorpion-sign. Thus, the betrayal of
Osiris
happened when
the sun or the bull of eternity, as the divinity is also called, was in the
sign of Scorpio.
The sign of
the bull being secretly assaulted by the scorpion is well known from the
Mithraic monuments
according to
Hyde (Drummond, Aedipus Judaicus , Plate 13). In some of the Greco-Egyptian
planispheres,
given by Kircher, Sut is also identified as the scorpion which slew Osiris
(Drummond, Plate
13). In the
Gospel, power is given for the seventy-two to tread on the scorpion and to
triumph over all the
powers of the
enemy (Luke X. 17-20). The two different numbers of seventy and seventy-two for
those
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Ancient
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whose names
were written in heaven show that both belong to the planisphere which had been
divided
at two
different periods into the heaven of seventy and the heaven of seventy-two
divisions. We can now
see how and
why the betrayer keeps his place as one of the twelve in the Gospel of Peter,
and why he
has been cast
out in the Gospel according to Matthew. The Gospel of Peter was not historical,
which
means that it
was astronomically based; and according to the gnosis the twelve whose thrones
were set
in heaven are
zodiacal, not ethnical characters. Sut the betrayer was assigned the scorpion
as a type of
evil. And as
the scorpion he keeps his place, like Judas in the Petrine Gospel, as one of
the twelve who
were to sit
on twelve celestial thrones in spite of his defection, because the twelve
originated as
astronomical
and not as historical realities.
The Gnostics
maintained that Jesus was the Lord for one year only, and that he suffered in
the twelfth
month, as did
Osiris with the sun in the sign of Scorpio. Thus, the Egypto-gnostic Jesus
throned upon
Mount Olivet
with the twelve around him — he being a “little apart” — is a figure of the
solar god with the
twelve who
row the bark of Ra around the zodiac.
One result of
turning the Egyptian mythos into Christian history has been to inflict the most
nefarious
injustice on
the Jews. By [Page 841] shifting the scene of the Mysteries from the
nether-earth of Amenta to
the land of
Judea the ethnical Jews have been thrust into the position of the Typhonian
enemies of the
Good Being,
the Sebau and the Sami, the powers of evil in the mythos and the condemned
manes in the
eschatology.
The Jews have been transmogrified into the associates of Sut and the spawn of
Satan. That
is why the
father of the Jews is called the devil, and a murderer from the beginning; the
liar and the father
of all lying.
That is why Judas is a devil; and the Jews as a people figure in the same
category with
Herod, slayer
of the innocents, with Judas the betrayer of Jesus, and with the fiends of Sut,
because they
were charged
with doing those things on earth which had only been and could only be enacted
according
to the
mysteries in Amenta. For this perversion of the mythos the Jews have been
hunted over the earth
and
persecuted ever since. They have suffered precisely in the same way as the
red-haired Typhonian
animals
suffered in ancient Egypt (Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris, 30, 31), which were
dedicated and
doomed to be
slain in an avenging sacrifice because they represented the associates of the
wicked Sut,
the liar, the
betrayer, the murderer, who put to death and mutilated the body of the good
Osiris. The
sufferers on
account of the mythos were the Typhonian ass, the pig, and the goat. The
sufferers on
account of
the “history” have been and still are the children of Israel. Whereas the Jews
were no more
racial in the
Gospels than the accursed Sebau are Egyptians in the Ritual. That they should
be made to
appear so is
but a result of literalizing and localizing the Osirian drama in a spurious
Judean history.
And here the
present writer would remark that, in his view, the Jewish rejection of
Christianity constitutes
one of the
sanest and the bravest intellectual triumphs of all time. It is worth all that
the race has suffered
from the
persecution of the Christian world. The Jews, like the Gnostics, knew well
enough that the
Christian
schema was a “fake”, and, although they were unable to explain how it had been
manufactured
from the
leavings of the past, they knew that it was false, non-natural and unnecessary.
Up to the present
time their
victory may have been comparatively negative, in consequence of their failure
to retell the story
in the only
one authentic way, that is, with a sufficient grasp of the data. They have not
been able to
reinstate the
truth once confounded and overthrown, but they have borne witness dumbly,
doggedly,
unceasingly,
with faces set like flint unflinchingly against the lie. They would not believe
that their God,
though imaged
anthropomorphically, had become a man, and so they have remained non-Christian
to
this day,
never to be converted now. For at last the long infernal Juden-Hetze nears its
end; the time of
their
justification and triumph is at hand, when the persecutor with the stone in his
grasp will drop it
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
suddenly and
flee helter-skelter for his life.
THE GROUP IN
BETHANY
The canonical
Gospels may be described as different collections of “episodes” and “sayings”,
and one of
the most
disconnected of these episodes is to be found in the raising of Lazarus from
the tomb that [Page
842] “was a
cave” (John XI. 38), which contains a version of the resurrection of Osiris
from the cave. The
subject of
all subjects in the religious mysteries of the Egyptians was the resurgence of
the human soul
from death
and its transformation into an eternal spirit. This is the foundation of the
Book of the Dead or
Ritual of the
resurrection. So far as we know, this resurrection was originally represented
in the mysteries
of Memphis,
where Kheper-Ptah was the divinity that rose again in mummy-form from which the
soul was
seen to issue
forth as a divine hawk. On entering Amenta as a still living being, though but
a soul in
matter, the
Osiris, late deceased, addresses the god in the character of those powers who
effect the
triumph of
Osiris over all his adversaries, the chief of whom is Horus, in whose name he
is magically
assimilated
to the Son of God, and thus is one with Horus in his resurrection from the
dead.
It has now
been shown that the resurrection of Osiris in Annu has been partially
reproduced as the
raising of
Lazarus in Bethany. Osiris reposing in Annu is an image of the soul inert in
matter or in decay
and death.
Hence he was portrayed in the likeness of the mummy called “the breathless
one”, also the
god with the
non-beating heart, who is laid out in the burial-place as a corpse-like form
lying extended at
full length,
awaiting his resurrection from the funeral couch, or the transfiguration into
the risen sahu of
the
glorified. In his first advent Horus is the son of Seb, God of earth. In his
second, he is the son of Ra,
the Holy
Spirit. It is in this latter character that he enters Amenta to represent the
resurrection of the
Osiris in the
earth of eternity.
The
resurrection of the sun from out the grave of night; the re-arising of
vegetation from the grip of winter;
and of the
waters returning periodically from their source; that is the resurrection in
external nature; it
was, in
short, the resurrection of new life from the old, in a variety of phenomena,
mystically imaged by
zootypes like
the serpent of Rannut; the frog or beetle of Ptah; the shoot of papyrus, or the
green branch
of endless
years. The doctrine culminated in a resurrection of the soul of human life from
the body of
death that
was imaged by the mummy-Osiris, the god who in his rising again united all
phases of the
doctrine
under one type of the resurrection, viz., that of the risen mummy defecated to
the consistency of
a sahu, or a
spiritual body. It is as the reconstituter of his father in Amenta that Horus
raises Osiris from
the tomb. He
calls the mummy to come forth and assume the likeness of Ra the later god.
Osiris is now
glorified by
Ra the Holy Spirit. The mummy being an image of the earlier body-soul that was
transubstantialized
into spirit. As it is said, Osiris is “renewed in an instant”, and it is his
son Horus who
thus
establishes him upon “the pedestal of Tum” (Atum Ra) the god in spirit (Rit.,
ch. 182).
The
resurrection of the human soul in the after-life was the central fact of the
Egyptian religion, and the
transfigured,
re-erected mummy, otherwise called the Karast, was a supreme symbol. The
opening day
of New Year,
the day of “Come thou to me”, was named from the resurrection, which was solar
in the
mythos and
spiritual in the eschatology. The mummy-type was divinized to preserve intact
that bodily
form which
suffered dissolution after death. This, as mummy [Page 843] of the god in
matter, was a type
inviolate and
imperishable. Osiris in his coffin does not see corruption. In him was life for
evermore. And
as with the
divine exemplar, so was it postulated for all who died in Osiris. He was
terribly mutilated by
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
the evil Sut,
and his mummy had to be joined together again piecemeal, for as it is said to
Osiris, “I come
to embalm
thee”, thou hast existence “with thy members” when these were put together. And
again, “I
have come
myself and delivered the god from that pain and suffering that were in trunk,
in shoulder and
in leg”. “I
have come and healed the trunk, and fastened the shoulder and made firm the
leg” (ch. 102,
Renouf). This
was in reconstituting the personality, which was performed in a mystery when
the different
parts of
Osiris, the head, the vertebrae, the thigh, the leg, the heel were collected at
the coffin (Rit., ch.
18). But the
god in matter was also the god in spirit according to the mystery or modus
operandi of the
Resurrection;
or he became so by being blended with Ra in his resurrection.
In the Kamite
mythos as in the totemic sociology, the son (of the mother) was earlier than
the father.
When it is
said in the texts, “I am a son begotten of his father; I am a father begotten
of his son”, the
sense of the
expression turns on the son of the mother having been earlier than the father
of the son.
Child-Horus,
Har-si-Hesi, is the mother’s son. Mother and son, as As-Ar; Isis and child,
passed into the
complex of
Asar or Osiris, the one great god in whom all previous powers were merged and
unified at
last. Isis
had embodied a soul in matter or flesh, as her child, when there was as yet no
God the Father,
no God the
Son, no Horus in spirit. This fatherhood of the spirit was founded in Atum-Ra
the father of
spirits.
Thence followed the sonship in spirit of Horus in his second character as
divine adult. Ra in spirit
represented
the supreme type of deity whose symbol is the sun or solar hawk. Osiris
remained the god in
matter as the
mummy in Amenta; Ra is described as calling on Osiris in the resurrection and
is also said
to bid the
mummy “come forth”, when the deity in matter was to be united with the god in
spirit. But
Horus, the
Son of God, the beloved only begotten son, is now the representative of Ra and
the chief
agent in the
raising of the mummy-Osiris from the dead. He is the son who comes to the
assistance, not
only of the
father, for the mummy-Asar is both Isis and Osiris in one body. Hence it is
said in the chapter
by which the
tomb is opened for the Osiris to come forth, “I am Horus the reconstituter of
his father, who
lifteth up
his father, and who lifteth up his mother with his wand (rod or staff)” (Rit.,
ch. 92, Renouf). As it
is said in
the Ritual (ch. 78), “it is Horus who hath reconstituted his father and
restored him — “after the
mutilation of
his body by the murderer Sut. He descends into the funeral land of darkness and
the
shadow of
death. He opens the Tuat to drive away the darkness so that he may look upon
his father’s
face. He says
pathetically, “I am his beloved son. I have come to pierce the heart of Sut and
to perform
all duties to
my father” (ch. 9, Renouf). Horus the prince in Sekhem also uplifts his father
as Osiris-Tat
with his two
arms clasped behind him for support (ch. 18). In this mythical character of the
son who gives
life,
reconstitutes, restores and re-establishes his father, the Egyptians continued
an inner African type of
the “Son who
makes [Page 844] his Father”. Miss Kingsley called attention to a function of
the Oil-river-
Chief who has
to observe the custom of “making his father” once every year. The custom is
sacred and
symbolical,
as the deceased chief need not be his own real father, but must be his
predecessor in the
headmanship
(Kingsley, M., West African Studies, p. 146). This custom of “making his father”
by the son
survived and
was perpetuated in the mythology of Egypt, in which Horus is the son who makes,
or
“reconstitutes”,
his father once a year, and describes it as one of his duties in the Book of
the Dead. This
resurrection
of the father as the soul of life in matter, i.e., the mummy-soul, by Horus the
son, is the great
mystery of
the ten mysteries which are briefly described in the 18th chapter of the
Ritual.
In a later
scene there is another description of the resurrection of Osiris, in which the
mummy-god is
raised by his
son Horus from the tomb. As it is said, “Horus exalteth his father Osiris in
every place,
associating
Isis the Great with her sister Nephthys” as the two women at the tomb. “Rise
up, Horus, son
of Isis, and restore
thy father Osiris” — that was Osiris in the inert and breathless condition of
the
mummy. “Ha,
Osiris, I have come to thee. I am Horus, and I restore thee unto life upon this
day with the
funeral
offerings and all good things for Osiris”. “Rise up, then, Osiris. I have
stricken down thine enemies
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
for thee; I
have delivered thee from them”. “I am Horus on this fair day at the beautiful
coming forth of thy
powers (in
his resurrection), who lifteth thee up with himself on this fair day as thine
associate God”. “Ha,
Osiris, thou
hast received thy sceptre, thy pedestal, and thy flight of stairs beneath
thee”. On the coffin of
Nes-Shu-Tefnut,
at Vienna, it is said: “Horus openeth for thee thy two eyes that thou mayest
see with
them in thy
name of Ap-Uat”. (Renouf, Book of the Dead, ch. 128, note 8.) Horus as son of
Ra the Holy
Spirit in the
eschatology is now higher in status than the mummy-god, the father and mother
in matter.
Hence he
rises in Amenta as the resurrection and the life to his own father Osiris.
Horus as the
divine heir had now been furnished with the double force. The gods rejoice to
meet him
walking on
the way to Annu, and the hall of the horizon or house in Annu where divine
perfumes are
awaiting him
and mourning does not reach him, and where the guardians of the hall do not
overthrow the
mysterious of
face who is in the sanctuary of Sekhem. That is Osiris, who is not dead but
sleeping in
Annu, the
place of his repose, awaiting the call that bids the mummy to “come forth to
day”. Horus, the
deliverer of
his father, reaches him in the train of Hathor, who is Meri, the beloved by
name in the Ritual.
Thus Horus
follows Meri to the place where Asar lies buried in the sepulchre, as Jesus
follows Mary, who
had come
forth to meet him on the way to Bethany (John XI. 29, 33). Jesus reaches the
tomb of Lazarus
in the train
of Mary and Martha. Horus makes the way for Osiris. He repulses the attack of
Apap, who
represents
negation or non-being=death. The portrait of Horus in this scene is very grand.
His face is
glorified and
greatened by the diadem which he wears as the lord of strength. His double
force is imaged
by two lions.
A loud voice is heard upon the horizon as Horus lifts the truth to Ra, and the
way is made for
Osiris to
come [Page 845] forth at his rising from the cave. So Jesus “cried with a loud
voice, Lazarus,
come forth!”
and “he that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with grave-bands”. In the
original the
mummy-Osiris
comes forth as Amsu, with one arm only released from the bandages. In the
“discourse of
Horus” to his
Father at his coming forth from the sanctuary in Sekhem to see Ra, Horus says,
“I have
given thee
thy soul, I have given thee thy strength, I have given thee thy victory, I have
given thee thy two
eyes
(mertae), I have given thee Isis and Nephthys”, who are the two divine sisters,
the Mary and Martha
of Beth-Annu
(Records, vol. 10, p. 163). In showing that “mourning does not reach him”,
Jesus “abode at
that time two
days in the place where he was”. After the sisters had sent to say that Lazarus
was sick he
waited until
he was dead on purpose to perform the more effective miracle. He was in
Bethany, “the place
where John
was at the first baptizing” (cf. John I. 28 with John X. 40, 41), but it took
him two more days
to get there
at this particular time. So that Lazarus had been buried four days when Jesus
arrived in the
village. The tomb
of Osiris was localized in Annu, the solar birthplace. Osiris, under one of his
titles, is the
great one in
Annu. Annu is the place of his repose. “I go to rest in Annu, my dwelling”,
says Osiris. The
deceased also
goes to rest in Annu because it was the place of repose for Osiris the god (ch.
57, 4, 5).
Jesus goes to
rest in Bethany. The place of repose for Osiris was his sepulchre in Annu. The
place of
repose for
Lazarus is the cave in Bethany. It was in Annu that the soul was united to its
spiritual body.
Annu is
termed the place “where thousands reunite themselves” soul and body. The
speaker says, “Let
my soul see
her body. Let her unite herself to her sahu” —that is, to the glorified body
which can neither
be destroyed
nor injured; the future body in which the soul would be incorporated to pass
from out the
tomb. Annu is
called the abode of “those who have found their faces”. These are the
mummy-forms, from
whose faces
the napkin had been removed. The house or beth of Osiris, then, was in Annu.
“He rests in
Annu, which
is his dwelling”. The names of its builders are recorded. Num raised it on its
foundation.
Seshet (or
Sefekh) built it for him as his house of refuge and of rest (Rit., 57, 4, 5).
The house of Osiris in
Annu was
called Hat-Saru, the house of the Prince — that is, the abode of Horus when he
came to raise
Osiris from
the tomb. It was the sanctuary of Osiris who was attended by the two Mertae or
Merti, the pair
of divine
sisters better known by the names of Isis and Nephthys. The household proper
consists of
Osiris and
those two sisters who watch over him. Mer denotes the eye, ti is two, and these
are the two
eyes or two
watchers over Osiris in the abode that is the place of his burial and rebirth.
The two sisters
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Ancient
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as watchers
are the two Mer, one of whom becomes Mary, the other Martha, as the two merti
in
Bethany=Beth-Annu.
The triumph of Osiris was effected over his adversaries by Horus in the house
of
the Prince in
Annu or Heliopolis, and his supreme triumph was in his resurrection when he was
recalled
to life and
raised up from the sepulchre by Horus (Rit., ch. 1). The raising up of Osiris
the father by Horus
the son is doctrinally
based upon the father living over again in the son. Under the beetle-type
Kheper
[Page 846] as
father transformed into the son. It was the same with Atum-Iu, in whom the
father became
the son and
then the son transformed into the father. The mystery was deepened in the
Osirian drama by
super adding
a more spiritual form of the fatherhood in Ra the Holy Spirit. The deceased
Osiris is in
possession of
the funeral meals in Annu. He sits beneath the trees of Annu in the train of
Hathor-Meri
(Rit., ch.
68, 10). Annu is the place of provisions for the manes. Thousands are nourished
or fed in Annu
(89).
Deceased in Annu (82) receives his vesture or Taau-garment from the goddess
Tait, who is over
him. This is
an illusion to the mummy-case from which the left arm was not yet freed when
Amsu-Horus
rose up in
the sepulchre. The goddess Tait is a form of one of the two divine sisters. She
cooks the food
and brings it
to the deceased, who is either Osiris, or the Osiris, the God or the manes.
Annu was also
the place of
the festivals of Osiris. One of these was kept on the sixth day of the month.
“I am with
Horus”, says
the speaker on the day when the festivals of Osiris are celebrated, “on the
feast of the sixth
day of the
month” (ch. 1, lines 23, 24). With this we may compare the following statement:
“Jesus
therefore six
days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised
from
the dead. So
they made him a supper there” (John xii.) The two sisters were present. “Martha
served,
and Mary
anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair”.
Annu is
described as a green and pleasant place, an oasis in the desert of Amenta
created for the
suffering
Osiris, and the two divine sisters were given him there for his comfort and
delight (ch. 17, 138,
139). The
tree of life stood in Annu, as the sycamore, tamarisk, or persea tree, which
was personified in
Hathor-Meri
or Isis. The manes were feasted “under the foliage of the tamarisk” (ch. 124,
6), the
branches of
which are described as the beautiful arms of the goddess, and the foliage as
her hair, when
she herself
was the tree beneath which the Osiris found refreshing shade. It seems that not
only the
clouds of
dawn, but also the foliage of the tamarisk tree may have imaged the hair of the
goddess. Osiris-
Ani is found
in Annu with the hair of Isis spread over him (Rit., ch. 17). In another text
the hair is assigned
to Hathor —
one of whose names is Meri (ch. 35, 1). And this is probably related to the
story of Mary
wiping the
feet of Jesus with the hair of her head. Isis is frequently portrayed kneeling
at the feet of Osiris
in Annu. It
is she who says: “I who drop the hair which hath loosely fallen upon my brow —
I am Isis,
when she
concealeth herself” (ch. 17, 135). Osiris in Annu, like Lazarus in Bethany, was
not dead but
sleeping. In
the text of Har-hetep (Rit., ch. 99) the speaker who personates Horus is he who
comes to
awaken Asar
out of his sleep. Also, in one of the early funeral texts it is said of the
sleeping Asar: “The
Great One
waketh, the Great One riseth; Horus raises Osiris upon his feet”. Jesus denies
that Lazarus is
dead. “Our
friend Lazarus is fallen asleep. I go that I may awake him out of his sleep”
(ch. XI, 11), which
is genuine
Egyptian doctrine. The manes in Amenta were not looked upon as dead, but
sleeping,
breathless of
body, motionless of heart. The deity Osiris was not dead. And in his likeness
the Osiris
lived. Hence
Horus comes to wake the sleepers in their coffins, or Osiris in his cave. [Page
847]
It was in
Bethany that “Jesus wept”. It is the place of weeping for the dead Lazarus.
Mary wept, the Jews
wept, and
“Jesus wept”. No wonder. This is the place of weeping by name in the Ritual,
where the Osiris
lay in his
burial. It was here he was inert and motionless. The Osiris says: “I am
motionless in the fields of
those who are
dumb in death. But I shall wake, and my soul will speak in the dwelling of Tum,
the Lord of
Annu”. The
abode of Tum in Annu being=Bethany. Then he rises from the tomb and appears at
the door,
and says, “I
arrive at the confines of earth. I tread the dwelling of the god Rem-Rem”. Rem
signifies
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
weeping: and
in the Litany of Ra this god is designated “Remi the Weeper”. Thus Jesus is
portrayed in
the character
of “Remi the Weeper” in the place of weeping for the dead Osiris in Beth-Annu,
who is here
represented
as the dead Lazarus in Bethany (Rit., 75, Renouf). Jesus comes as “Remi the
Weeper” to
weep for the
inert Osiris, that is, as Horus who comes to the motionless Osiris on the day
which is called
“Come thou to
me”. Ra is said to make the mummy “come forth” (The Litany of Ra, 68; Rit.,
17). Jesus
cries with a
loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” and “he that was dead came forth, bound hand
and foot
with
grave-bands: and his face was bound about with a napkin” (John XI. 43, 44). The
picture is
completed in
the Roman catacombs, where the risen Lazarus is an Egyptian mummy: the likeness
of the
mummy-Osiris,
who is beckoned forth by Horus with his staff.
According to
the dramatic representation in the Mysteries, Osiris is slain by the adversary
Sut, and is
imaged in
Amenta as a mummy. The father lives again in the son; hence his son Horus
descends into the
nether-world
to avenge, reconstitute and raise Osiris from his corpse-like state. He comes
as a living soul
from Ra the
Holy Spirit, who is the Father in heaven, “to raise up the hand which is
motionless” (Rit., ch.
5). “He lifts
inert Osiris with his two arms” (ch. 18). He exclaims, “Ha! Osiris, I am come
to thee: I am
Horus, and I
restore thee to life upon this day, with the funerary offerings and all good
things for Osiris.
Rise up,
then, Osiris (ch. 128). Horus hath raised thee”. It is said, “Hail, Osiris,
thou art born twice” (Rit.,
ch. 170). In
some texts it is Ra who bids the mummy come forth on the day of “Come thou to
me” (Rit.,
ch. 17). Taht
says: “I give Ra to enter the mysterious cave in order that he may revive the
heart of him
whose heart
is motionless” (ch. 182). After the raising of Osiris, Taht says, “I have
celebrated the festival
of Eve’s
provender”, or supper, which came to be called the Last Supper. The raising of
Lazarus is
likewise
commemorated by a supper. “So they made him a supper there” (John XII. 2).
When Osiris,
or the Osiris, “takes the form of a living soul” (Rit., ch. 181), it is said,
“thy son Horus
reconstitutes
thee. Arise, Osiris, thy hands have been given to thee” — he is freed from the
mummy-
bandages —
“stand up living for ever”.“The two sisters Isis and Nephthys come to thee;
they will fill thee
with life,
health, and strength, and all the joy that they possess. They gather for thee
all kinds of good
things within
thy reach” (ch. 181). Amongst other ceremonies performed in the Amenta at the
raising of
the mummy who
is “called aloud” from the sepulchre the Osiris is freed from the bandages with
which the
corpse was
bound. So when Lazarus [Page 848] was called in a loud voice to come forth, “He
that was
dead came
forth bound hand and foot with grave-bands, and his face was bound about”. In
the
resurrection
ceremony of Osiris he is divested of his funerary garment and receives a
bandage of the
finest linen
from the hands of the attendant of Ra, the Father in heaven (Rit., ch. 172). He
eats of “the
meat which
has been prepared by Ra in his holy place”; he washes his feet in silver
basins, which have
been
sculptured by the divine architect Ptah-Sekari (ch. 172). In the Gospel, Jesus,
“knowing that the
Father had
given all things into his hands, and that he came forth from God and goeth unto
God, riseth
from supper,
and layeth aside his garments; and he took a towel and girded himself. Then he
poureth
water into a
basin and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel
wherewith he
was girded”
(ch. XIII. 4-6).
Taking
Lazarus, then, to represent the mummy-Osiris, we find the “raising of Lazarus”
celebrated in a
hymn
expressly devoted to the subject. It is one of the ceremonies that were
performed in the
underworld.
The Osiris is designated him “who is called aloud”. “O thou who art called
aloud, thou who
art called
aloud, thou the lamented, thou art glorified. O thou who art raised up, thou
art raised up. N. has
been raised
up by means of all the manifold ceremonies performed for him”. The mummy-Osiris
lay upon
the funeral
couch in the mysterious cave with the two sisters in attendance. Horus enters
this cave as
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Ancient
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representative
of Ra, to revive the heart of him whose heart is motionless. He says, “Hail,
Osiris, thou art
born twice!
Arise on thy bed and come forth! Come! Come forth”. Osiris or the Osiris is
called with a loud
voice. In the
hymn of the resurrection, he is addressed nine times over in the words “O Thou
who art
called
aloud!” (chs. 170-2). They call him to come forth “like a god” from the
mysterious cave “to meet the
powers of
Annu”. The resurrection is celebrated with rejoicings, “thou hearest how thou
art glorified
through all
thy house!” There are nine verses in the hymn and each one opens with the
address, “O thou
who art
called aloud!” That is for his rising up and coming forth from the cave in Annu
(ch. 172). The
words “O thou
who art called aloud” had become the title of the hymn, as we say “the
Magnificat”, or “the
Te Deum”
(Naville, Rit., ch. 172).
The latest
dynasty of Egyptian deities were born of Seb the earth-father and Nut the
mother-heaven. This
was the
Osirian group, consisting of five persons, viz., (1) Asar, (2) the elder Horus,
(3) Sut, (4) Isis, (5)
Nephthys,
which may be called the family in Annu and shown to be the originals of the
group in Bethany.
Sut, the
betrayer, is the only one omitted from the Gospel. The remaining four —
Lazarus=Asar;
Jesus=Horus;
Mary=Isis; Martha=Nephthys — are also represented sometimes in the Ritual
without Sut
(ch. 128).
When it is said that Horus exalteth his father Osiris in every place he
associates Isis the Great
with her
sister Nephthys. Sut is not included in the group at Annu. On the other hand,
Sut, in the person
of the
betrayer, is present at the mortuary meal in the canonical Gospels. At present
we only need to
identify
Lazarus with Osiris, Jesus with Horus, and the two sisters of Lazarus with the
two sisters of
Osiris.
Osiris lying as a breathless mummy in the cave, [Page 849] when Horus comes to
raise him from
the dead, is
watched over and protected by the two Mertae-sisters, one at the head and one
at the feet
as keepers of
the body, and watchers in the burial-place. The two mertae are mentioned in
chapter 58. In
this the
Osiris cries, “Let the door be opened to me” as the Osiris buried in Amenta.
“Who is with thee?” is
asked. The
reply is, “It is the mertae”, the two watchers over Osiris in the sepulchre.
The deceased then
asks that he
may have milk, cakes and meat given to him at the house which is in Annu, the
Kamite
prototype of
Bethany. On the way to the sepulchre in Annu Horus meets the two
sister-goddesses, saying
to them
“Hail, ye pair of goddesses Mertae, sister pair, Mertae! I inform you of my
words of power. I am
Horus, the
son of Isis, and I am come to see my father Osiris”, and to raise him up from
the sepulchre.
Jesus on his
way to the cave of Lazarus likewise informs Martha of his words of power,
saying “thy
brother shall
rise again”. “I am the resurrection and the life”. “He that believeth on me
shall never die”
(John XI. 25,
26). “Now as they went on their way a certain woman named Martha received him
(Jesus)
into her
house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at the Lord’s feet
(like Isis) and heard his
word”. And
because Mary took her place at the feet of Jesus it is said that she had
“chosen the good
part” (Luke
X. 38, 42). The two sisters in Bethany are the Aramaic or Hebrew replica of
Isis and
Nephthys, who
are the attendants upon Osiris; the two divine sisters of Osiris in Annu. Mary
and Martha
are the two
sisters of Lazarus in Bethany. Horus loved the two dear sisters Isis and
Nephthys, and is
especially
denominated the son who loves his father, i.e., Asar, whom he raises from the
tomb according
to the
dramatic representation. Jesus is said to have “loved Martha and her sister,
and Lazarus” (John XI.
5).
Jesus saith,
“Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may awake him out of
sleep” (John XI. 4,
11). So is it
in the Ritual. Horus says, “I go to give movement to the manes. I go to comfort
him who is in
a swoon”,
which is equivalent to Lazarus who sleeps (ch. 64). He goes to give life at
some particular spot
and in doing
this he comes from Sekhem to Annu where the mummy of Osiris rested in the house
there=Beth-Annu
or Bethany. The Osiris does not die. The Ritual has no recognition of death,
save as
final
extinction when death and evil die together. Osiris sleeps, he is breathless or
in a swoon. He lies
inert, his
heart is motionless pro tem. Osiris thus awaits his change and resurrection;
but he cannot die
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Ancient
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who is the
conqueror of death and the bondage of the grave. The resurrection of Osiris at
the coming of
Horus is
glanced at when the speaker personates him and says, “I am the great first heir
(or inheritor)
taking
possession of Urt-hat” — otherwise the inert, sleeping, motionless Osiris.
“Strength of Osiris is my
name. I save
him” from the impurities of matter. “He lives by me”. The speaker is Horus with
his father
Ra, just as
Jesus is with his father in the scene of raising Lazarus (John 11, 45). The
resurrection applies
to Osiris in
matter whom Horus comes to quicken and raise up from the dead or, as it is
rendered, “from
the
impurities of Osiris” in matter. The “corruption which befell Osiris” in [Page
850] his mummy-condition
is mentioned
in the Ritual more than once. This also befalls the corpse of Lazarus, but is
more grossly
stated in the
Gospel. Jesus comes to raise up Lazarus when he has been in the tomb four days,
and
Martha saith,
“Lord, by this time he stinketh” (John XI. 39). In the Ritual, when Horus comes
to those who
are in their
cells he utters the words of Ra to raise the dead, and says, as the passage is
rendered by
Budge, “I am
the herald of his words (his father’s) to him whose throat stinketh”; that is,
to the sufferer
from
corruption in the tomb (Book of the Dead, ch. 38B, line 4).
Isis not only
stands or sits at the feet of Osiris, she is the Seat personified. She carries
the sign of the
seat upon her
head. Her name of Hes signifies the seat. And Mary, who takes the place of
Isis, is
described as
sitting at the feet of Jesus, whilst Martha is busy working about the house and
left serving
alone. A
further allusion to the Lady of the Seat may be found when Martha heard that
Jesus was
coming, and
went forth to meet him, whilst “Mary still sat in the house” (John XI. 20, 21),
thus fulfilling the
character of
Isis, the seat, or the sitter. There is more than meets the eye in the sign of
the seat which is
borne by
Isis. To sit is also to brood as a bird. Isis as sitter is the brood-hen, the
incubator in Annu. Under
this type of
the sitting-hen she sits at the feet of Osiris to bring him to rebirth. Mary
also sat in the house,
and kept her
seat at the feet of Jesus. Nephthys, the other divine sister in Annu, carries
the sign of a
house on her
head. She is called mistress of the house. She is the benevolent, saving
sister. This in the
“history” is
rendered by Martha being the housekeeper and by Mary sitting in the house while
her sister
goes forth to
meet the Lord (John XI. 21). In Aramaic, Martha denotes the mistress of the
house, and
Nephthys, one
of the two mertae, is the mistress of the house, who carries the house as a
symbol in her
head-dress.
The name of Nephthys in Greek represents nebt-hat, the mistress of the house in
Egyptian.
The two sisters
are the merti or mertae, who were the keepers of the double house in attendance
upon
Horus, or
Jesus. They receive the Sun-God at his entrance to the mountain in the West,
and stand
together by
him when he issues forth at dawn from Beth-Annu, or Bethany, in the East. The
name of the
secret shrine
in which the mummy-Osiris was upraised by “the two arms of Horus, Prince of
Sekhem”, is
“the witness
of that which is raised”, or the witness to the Resurrection (ch. 17). Those
who are present in
this scene
are “Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Horus the reconstituter of his Father”, and
these, as we
maintain, are
the prototypes or original characters of Lazarus, Mary, Martha and Jesus in the
scene of
the
Resurrection in Bethany.
Osiris rose
from the dead to enter the little golden ark of the moon on the third day. He
was buried on the
17th of
Hathor and the resurrection in the lunar ark was on the 19th; that is, on the
third day. In the solar
mythos he
rises again the day after the burial, and as the grain he rose again in forty
days. But there is
another
mystery of Osiris, an account of which is given by Plutarch, probably from the
writings of
Manetho. This
he calls the “Mourning of the Goddess”, which began on the 17th of Hathor, the
day on
which Osiris
was betrayed at the last supper and mutilated by the adversary Sut. He says the
“Mourning
of the
Goddess” lasted [Page 851] “four” days altogether, beginning on the 17th, the
day of betrayal and
death of
Osiris; and on the 19th it was proclaimed by the priests that the lost Osiris
was found because
he had then
entered into the ark of the moon where the light was once more safe. He tells
us that
amongst other
melancholy things that were acted on this occasion, as the mourning of the cow
for Osiris
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Ancient
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the bull of
Amenta, a gilded cow, the golden Hathor, was covered with a black linen pall
and exposed to
public view
for four days at the mourning of the goddess, or of the cow, for the lost
Osiris. Here, then, are
the four days
of mourning which are repeated in the one Gospel that chronicles the raising of
Lazarus
from the dead
after “he had been in the tomb four days already”. Plutarch calls this mystery
the mourning
of the
goddess. But there are always two mourners for Osiris, Isis and Nephthys, who
are his sisters.
The process
of reducing the fairy-godmother’s coach-and-six to the status of a one-horse
cab may be
seen in the
Gospel according to Luke in getting rid of Osiris. The pair of sisters, Martha
and Mary, appear
in this
Gospel, but without their brother Lazarus, and also without the resurrection.
After all that has now
been done
towards identifying Bethany with the house in Annu and the nest of the two
sisters, the two
sisters with
Isis and Nephthys, and the Christ with Horus, it cannot be considered
far-fetched if we look
upon Lazarus
as a form of the Osiris that was dead and buried and raised to life again. As
to the name,
the Egyptian
name of the Greek Osiris is Hesar, or Asar. And when we take into consideration
that some
of the matter
came from its Egyptian source through the Aramaic and Arabic languages (witness
the
Arabic Gospel
of the Infancy) there is little difficulty, if any, in supposing that the Al
(article the) has been
adopted
through the medium of the Arabic, or derived from the Hebrew prenominal stem
, to
emphasize a
thing, as in the Osiris, which passed into the article Al for “the” in Arabic,
and was prefixed
to the name
of Osiris as Al-Asar, which, with the Greek “s” for suffix becomes L-azarus.
The connecting
link whereby
Al-Asar was turned into Lazarus, the Osiris, was in all likelihood made in the
Aramaic
language,
which had its root-relations with the Egyptian. Hieroglyphic papyri are among
its monumental
remains, as
well as the inscription of Carpentras.
Various
representations of the raising of Lazarus in the Roman catacombs show the mummy
risen and
standing in
the doorway of the tomb. The figure of the supposed Jesus Christ is in front of
the
sarcophagus
calling upon Lazarus to come forth, whilst touching the mummy with a wand or
rod which
he holds in
his hand. In the chapter “by which the tomb is opened to the soul and to the
shade of the
person that
he may come forth to day and have the mastery of his feet” (Rit., ch. 92) the
deliverer Horus
says, “I am
Horus who lifteth up his father with his staff”. This mode of raising Osiris by
Horus with his
staff or rod
completes the picture of the resurrection of Lazarus. The rod that is waved by
Jesus at the
raising of
Lazarus is the symbolic sceptre in the hand of Horus when he raises the Osiris.
In every
instance
Lazarus is a mummy made after the Egyptian fashion. It is a bandaged body that
had been
soaked in
salt and pitch which was at times so hot that it charred the bones [Page 852]
(Budge, “The
Mummy”,
pp.153-155). Seventy days was the proper length of time required for embalming
the dead
body in
making an Egyptian mummy. Lazarus when portrayed in the Roman catacombs comes
forth from
the tomb as
an eviscerated, embalmed and bandaged mummy, warranted to have been made in
Egypt.
Now,
according to the Gospel narrative, there was no time for this, as Lazarus had
only been dead four
days. The
mummy, anyway, is non-historical; and it is the typical mummy called the
Osiris, Asar in
Egyptian,
El-Asar in Aramaic, and Lazarus with the Greek terminal in the Gospel assigned
to John. The
coffin of
Osiris, constellated in the Greater Bear, was known to the Arab astronomers as
the Bier of
Lazarus.
Asar, or the Osiris, is the mummy in the coffin, and with the coffin of Osiris
identified as the bier
of Lazarus it
follows perforce that the mummy-Osiris in the coffin is one with Lazarus on the
bier. The
gnostic
pictures in the Roman catacombs suffice to prove the identity. They show that
Lazarus was
buried as a
mummy, and that he rose again in mummy-form. Thus the dead Osiris of Egypt,
El-Asar or
Lazarus, as
portrayed in Rome, and the story of the death, burial, and resurrection are the
same
wheresoever
and howsoever that story may be told. The bier of Lazarus, followed by the
mourning
sisters, was
only known by that name because it had been constellated in the starry vault of
the heavens
ages earlier
than the present era as the coffin of Osiris.
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Ancient
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It is
satisfactory to find that both forms of Asar are preserved in the Gospels, one
of which was the god
Osiris, the
other the Osiris as manes. Lazarus in his resurrection represents the God;
Lazarus the poor
man of the
parable represents the manes in Amenta who is designated the Osiris.
The story of
the rich man and the beggar Lazarus related in the Gospel of Luke (ch. XVI. 19)
is told at
length in the
second tale of Khamuas as Egyptian. This contains a scene from the Judgment in
Amenta
which is
represented in the vignettes to the Ritual. Setme and his son Si-Osiris enter
the Tuat as manes.
They pass
through the seven halls (Rit., ch. 144) into the great judgment hall. They see
the figure of
Osiris seated
on his throne of gold, “Anup the great god being on his left hand, the great
god Taht upon
his right,
the balance being set in the midst before them”. Anup gives the word, Taht
writes it down. The
rich man and
the poor man enter to be judged. “And behold Setme saw a great man clothed in
garment
of byssus
(fine white linen), he being near to the place in which Osiris was”, in which
position he is great
exceedingly.
Si-Osiris says, “My father Setme, dost thou not see this great man who is
clothed in
garment of
byssus, he being near to the place in which Osiris is? That poor man whom thou
sawest, he
being carried
out from Memphis, there not being a man walking after him, he being wrapped in
a mat,
this is he”.
This refers to the funerals of the rich man and the poor man on earth
previously described
(lines
15-21). When the rich man was judged it was found that his evil deeds were more
numerous than
his good
deeds; therefore they outweighed them in the scales of justice; consequently he
was cast to the
devourer of
souls who did not allow him to breathe again for ever. “It was commanded before
Osiris to
cause to be
thrown the burial outfit [Page 853] of that rich man whom thou sawest, he being
carried out
from Memphis,
the praise that was made of him being great, unto this poor man named, and that
they
should take
him (the poor man) amongst the noble spirits as a man of God that follows
Osiris-Sekari (the
god in his
resurrection), he being near to the place in which Osiris is” (Griffith, second
tale of Khamuas,
pp. 149,
158). Thus the parable of the rich man and Lazarus found in a folk-tale of the
first century written
in Demotic is
provably Egyptian and demonstrably ancient by application of the comparative
process to
the language.
Neither the name of Lazarus nor Osiris appears in the tale of Khamuas, which is
good
evidence that
the story was not derived from the Gospels. Thus we identify Lazarus with
Osiris the
mummy-god and
Lazarus the poor man with Alasar as the Osiris.
THE FOUNDERS
OF THE KINGDOM
The elder
Horus represented the wisdom of the Mother as her word or logos in the earth of
Seb until he
reached the
age of twelve years. Then, according to the drama of the Osirian mysteries, he
passed into
Amenta, where
he rose again as Horus in spirit. It was in this, the earth of eternity, that
he made his
second advent
when he came again to establish the kingdom of the father. In his death and
resurrection
or
transformation from the body-soul to an eternal spirit, he had found the father
in heaven, who is Ra the
holy spirit.
And at his second advent Horus came to tell the joyful tidings to the manes and
to found the
kingdom in
Amenta for the father who is now Osiris-Ra instead of the mummy-Osiris. Thus
the kingdom
of the Christ
was founded for the father by Horus and his followers at his second coming to
be
represented
in the mysteries of Amenta and the drama of Egyptian eschatology as the second
advent
which was in
the spirit, now set forth by Horus the immortal Son of God.
The universe
of Ptah, the supreme architect, had been divided into the three regions of
Amenta, earth
and heaven.
In these there were three successive forms of a god the father – Seb was the
god of earth,
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Ancient
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as father of
physical sustenance; Osiris was the father in Amenta, where the dead were
reconstituted and
made to live
again, and Ra the holy spirit was the father of spirits in heaven. Thus the
typical seven
loaves of
plenty were called the bread of Seb on earth, the bread of Osiris in Amenta,
and the bread of
Ra in heaven.
Human Horus was the heir of Seb, his foster-father, in the life on earth. At
his resurrection
in Amenta,
Horus, as half-human, half-divine, is the heir of Osiris. In the resurrection
from Amenta when
he had become
pure spirit he was Horus divinized as heir of Ra, the father on high. And on
behalf of this,
the
newly-found father, now the supreme god, he returns to found the kingdom as the
teacher of the
mysteries in
Amenta, and the saviour of the manes from the second death. Seb the father on
earth was
of the earth
earthy. Osiris in Amenta was a god in matter; hence his mummy-form. The nature
of these
had been
expounded in the lesser mysteries. Ra as father in heaven, or Huhi the eternal,
is the god in
spirit now,
and Horus manifesting in the spirit comes to elucidate the greater mysteries to
the twelve who,
as the gnosis
shows, had previously [Page 854] been the teachers of the lesser mysteries, and
who now
become the
twelve with Horus, or Jesus, on the mountain in the phase of eschatology. Horus
as the son
of Ra was the
representative of power superior to that of Osiris in Amenta, the god in
matter, who was
annually
overthrown by Sut in physical phenomena, and in this character he came to the
assistance of
Osiris in the
sepulchre. Hence he disperses the darkness from his face. He reconstitutes the
body that
Sut
dismembered. He raises the arm that was paralyzed in death. He lifts the mummy
to its feet. He is
the link
which unites matter with spirit, or Osiris with Ra. He brings the gnosis or
word of life from the
father in
heaven to the previous ruling powers which include the earlier father on earth
and in the nether-
earth, and
therefore to the men on earth and manes in Amenta. Thus, at his second coming,
Horus had
found his
father, the father in heaven. He rises as a spirit in Amenta from the dead to
tell them of his
father. He
repeats his father’s words to those who are “deprived of breath” (Rit., ch.
38). These are the
words of
salvation that “bring about the resurrection and the glory to the manes” (ch.
1) by means of the
gnosis.
We have now
to follow Horus in his second Advent. He passed from the life on earth into the
dark of
death as
Horus-Anaref, the sightless Horus. Death was imaged as the putting out of sight
by Sut the
power of
darkness, the manes being the blind. At his second coming Horus is the giver of
sight, or the
beatific
vision, to the blind. He shines into the tombs of those who are slumbering
darkly in their cells and
wakes them
from the trance of death. At this advent of Horus “the people which sat in
darkness saw a
great light,
and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death did light spring up”
(Matt. IV. 16; also
the Gospel of
Nicodemus II. 2). But this, according to the Ritual and the “Pistis Sophia”,
was in Amenta,
the hidden
earth, where the blind are made to see; a mouth is given to the dumb; the lame
are enabled to
walk; and the
dead to rise again. Amenta, as he comes, is all in motion with dead matter
turning into
spirit-life;
and when he rises from the sepulchre we are in the midst of those mysteries
which have been
rendered as
Christian miracles in the Gospels.
“I am come”,
says Horus, “as a sahu in the spiritual body, glorious and well equipped; and
that is given to
me which
lives on amidst all overthrow”. This, we repeat, is the second coming of Horus
at the new birth
in spirit
which followed the old death in matter, or on earth, when Har-Ur, the child of
Isis, was reborn,
and this time
begotten as the anointed and beloved son of God the father. This time he who
was the
Word is the
doer, the word-made-truth. He comes to found the kingdom for the father in the
earth of
eternity or
in spirit-world, not in Judea or Palestine. The work of Horus in his resurrection
from the dead
was to fulfil
the kingdom of heaven on this foundation of the nether-earth, as foothold for
eternity, the
kingdom of
heaven being spirit-world made palpable in the mythical representation of the
mysteries.
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All along the
line of descent the astronomy supplied the mould of the eschatology. There was
a heaven
astronomically
raised upon the two pillars of Sut and Horus south and north. Also on the two [Page
855]
horizons of
Harmachis, the double Horus. The Heptanomis had its sevenfold foundation. The
heaven
built upon a
fourfold basis was the heaven founded on the four cardinal points, in the
solstices and
equinoxes.
Lastly, the zodiac with twelve signs is the figure of heaven raised upon a
foundation that is
twelve fold.
The mythical rulers corresponded numerically to the signs: the two, the four,
the seven, the
nine, and
finally the twelve, at first as astronomical types, the gnostic Aeons, and
afterwards as spirits or
gods in the
phase of eschatology. Thus there are two categories in phenomenal
manifestation, one being
astronomical,
the other spiritual or eschatological, as shown and explained in “Pistis
Sophia”. It now
became the
mission of Horus to make known the newly-found father in heaven to those who
had not so
much as heard
of the holy spirit. It was the work of the anointed and beloved son to found
the kingdom of
heaven for
the father in the father’s name. He became the teacher of the coming kingdom,
previously
proclaimed by
Anup the herald and forerunner who was his John the Baptist crying in the
wilderness of
the
underworld.
When Horus in
his second advent comes to establish the kingdom for his father, who is Ra in the
solar
mythos and
the holy spirit in the eschatology, he has Two Witnesses who testify that he is
verily the son
of God the
father in heaven and the true light of the world. These are the two Osirian
Johns, Anup and
Aan, or
rather they are the originals of the two Johns in the canonical Gospels. They
are portrayed as the
two witnesses
to the bird-headed Horus in his resurrection at the vernal equinox. The
planisphere of
Denderah
shows the jackal of Anup and the cynocephalus of Taht-Aan figured back to back
upon the
equinoctial
colure as the two principal witnesses for Horus, who are thus portrayed as
supporters of the
Eye which was
renewed in Annu once every year (Planisphere in a Book of the Beginnings). As
Egyptian,
these two
witnesses for Horus are Anup the baptizer and Aan the divine scribe who is the
penman of the
gods in the
Ritual. We have seen them acting as the two witnesses for Horus in the Osirian
judgment hall
(see p. 705).
They are also described as the two magi, or magicians.
Where John
begins his preaching in the canonical Gospel Anup is the typical opener of the
way (Rit., ch.
26). He is
the forerunner who announces the day of reckoning; he makes the call to
judgment; he judges
the world,
just as John is the judge of the world who calls men and baptizes them to
repentance (Rit., 31,
Birch). Anup
is also the educator preparatory to the advent of Horus who comes after him
although he
was before
him in status and authority (Rit., ch. 44). Anup abode darkling in the desert
of Amenta until
the day of
his manifestation in the heliacal rising of Sothis, the morning star of the
Egyptian year, which
heralded the
birth of Horus. John dwelt in the wilderness till the day of his theophany or
“shewing unto
Israel” (Luke
I. 80). The solar god was superior to either the lunar or stellar deity. As
star-god, Anup had
been the
precursor. The moon-god, Aan, was the witness for Horus by night as reflector
of the hidden
sun. This,
however, was but the mythical mould for the eschatology, in which Horus was no
longer merely
the “little
sun” of winter, but the son of Ra in spirit and the typical demonstrator of
[Page 856] immortality to
the manes in
Amenta and to men upon the earth. The two Johns might be distinguished from each
other
in the
Gospels; John the Baptist from John the Divine, by means of Anup, the baptizer,
and Aan, the
writer of the
record in the Ritual. The baptism does not actually take place in the Gospel
according to
John. In this
there is only a description of the scene. And, although one John is present as
the baptizer,
there is no
attempt made to distinguish John the baptizer from John the scribe. But John
the speaker is
John the
scribe, and therefore to be discriminated from John the Baptist, who is not
named as the baptist
by John the
writer. John the scribe is, of course, the writer, and he likewise bears
witness as well as John
the Baptist.
For it is he who says, “and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten
from the
Father”. This
was manifested in the baptism when the heavens were opened and Jesus “saw the
spirit of
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Ancient
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God
descending as a dove and coming upon him; and lo! a voice out of the heavens saying,
“This is my
beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. III. 16, 17). Consequently John the scribe
was present at
the baptism
to have beheld the glory of the only begotten of the Father which was
manifested in the one
particular
way at one particular time, but he was not John the Baptist. Anup, like
child-Horus, was born of
the
motherhood but not of the fatherhood, whereas the Horus of thirty years was the
only begotten Son
of God the
Father. So, in the Gospel, John the Baptist is among the greatest of those who
were born of
woman (minus
the fatherhood, in accordance with the primitive status), whereas Jesus, the
Christ, was
begotten of
God. The first Horus was born, the second Horus is begotten. Such is the status
of John and
Jesus. Hence
the saying “among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater
than John
the Baptist;
yet he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt. XI.
11). The characters
all through
are to be determined and differentiated by the doctrines. John the Baptist does
not enter the
kingdom of
heaven, which he helps to found as preparer of the way. So Anup is the guide of
ways in the
wilderness of
the under-world; he makes straight the path for the future life, but he does not
enter the
coming
kingdom of the Son of God when the double earth is unified in the future
heaven. His place is
with the dead
awaiting their resurrection. He watches, he bends over the mummy; he embraces
and
supports it
with tenderest solicitude; he is master in the mountain of rebirth for heaven,
but he himself
remains in
the lower earth. His rôle and his domain come to an end where those of the
divine heir of
Osiris as the
son of Ra begin. When Horus rises again to take possession of his kingdom, Anup
is
portrayed as
crouching in the tomb. He gives Horus his shoulder. He raises him up, but does
not pass
from out
Amenta. Therefore the least in the kingdom of Horus, which is a spiritual
kingdom, is greater
than the
highest in the kingdom of Anup or John the Baptist, who was only the precursor
and proclaimer
of the Christ
or the Horus of the resurrection.
A glimpse of
the cyclical and non-human nature of the witness, John, may be inadvertently
given in the
words
attributed to Jesus, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what (is that) to
thee?” “Yet, Jesus said not
unto him that
he should not die”. The ending here [Page 857] predicated was not in the
category of human
phenomena,
and may therefore be claimed as pertaining to the astronomical mythos, which
was at the
root of all
the mysteries of Amenta. Once a month the lord of light, as Horus, was reborn
in the moon,
and Aan=John
was his attendant. “Let him stand unchanged for a month” is equivalent to his
tarrying until
Horus came
again.
It is said of
John, “this is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote
these things”. Aan,
in Egyptian,
is the scribe by name, and he was the divine scribe as Taht-Aan, the lunar
deity and registrar
of time. Aan
was the witness to Horus; his writings are the Ritual, and “we know that his
witness is true”.
It was
Taht-Aan=John who had power to confer the Ma-Kheru on the solar god himself,
that is, the gift of
making truth
by means of the word, because he told time for the sun and was his true witness
in the
moon. “Let
him stand unchanged for a month”, may be read by the legend which tells us that
Ra created
Taht-Aan to
be his lamp by night and his witness in heaven, and whether we reckon nightly
or monthly,
Taht-Aan=John
was the witness until Horus came again at the end of the period. Anup the
baptizer and
Aan the
saluter are the first two witnesses for the risen Horus as his helpers in
establishing the kingdom
for the
father in heaven. Next there is a group of four, as followers of Horus and
founders of his fold (Rit.,
ch. 97).
These four were born brothers with Har-Ur, the elder Horus, in the company of
the seven powers
that were
from the beginning in relation to certain phenomena of external nature. They
are now called
upon to
become foundational pillars of support to the new heaven in the eschatology. In
this phase the
group
commences as four and terminates as twelve, who reap the harvest in the fields
of Amenta, for
Horus-Khuti,
the master of joy and lord of the spirits, who are called the glorified elect,
the heirs to the
kingdom of
heaven, which, as Osirian always was but which as Christian is always coming.
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Ancient
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The change
from Horus the mortal to Horus divinized in spirit, as the son of Ra, is
indicated as occurring
at the time
when the four brethren became the four children of Horus, and, as it is said,
when his name
became that
of Horus upon his column (Rit., ch. 112, Renouf). Now Horus on his column,
pedestal, or
monolith is
equivalent to the Egypto-gnostic Jesus with the disciples on the mount. In this
position the
four brethren
are his four arms of support, the same as the four brothers with Jesus in the
mount. In their
several
characters they are the servants of Horus, whether as four supports, four
fishers, four shepherds,
or other
forms of the primordial four who are characterized as the foremost of the final
twelve.
The issuing
forth from Amenta on the day of the resurrection is described in the opening
chapter of the
Ritual as the
coming to the divine powers attached to Osiris. These divine powers are Amsta,
Hapi,
Tuamutef and
Kabhsenuf, the four children of Horus who stand upon the papyrus-symbol of the
earth
amidst the
waters of the Nun, otherwise rendered on the mount or on the monolith. The
pyramid text of
Teta (270)
refers to this raising of the dead. It is said that Horus hath given his
children power that they
may raise
thee up. These children are the four who were foremost of the seven (or later,
twelve) great
spirits in
Annu. This did not mean that four [Page 858] human followers of Horus on earth
had the power to
raise the
dead on earth. But so mis-rendered has the teaching been in the Gospels when
Jesus bids his
disciples to
go forth on earth and raise the dead (Matt. X. 8). In the chapter of the
baptism (Rit., ch. 97)
the speaker
“propitiates” “those four glorified ones who follow after the master of all
things”. They are the
four
supporters on whom Horus relies in founding the kingdom for his father.
Speaking, as it may be, of
his
sheep-fold in the character of the good shepherd, Horus says, “Now let my fold
be fitted for me, as
one
victorious against all adversaries who would not that right should be done to
me — I (who) am the
only one,
just and true”, or faithful and true (Rit., ch. 97). These four, then, are
founders of the fold that is
to be fitted
for the good shepherd with the crook upon his shoulder as Amsu-Horus in the
resurrection
scenes. They
are the four brethren who, in the later phase, are called his children. Hence
Horus is
described as
coming to light in his own children and in his name of Horus (Rit. ch. 112) on
his column=on
the mount. To
found the fold was to establish the kingdom. That was founded on the four
supporters at
the four
corners of the mount.
There is a
rebirth of Horus at his second coming. It is the same with his train of
companion-powers, the
four of the
seven who had been with him as his brothers in the astronomical mythos. These
in the rebirth
become his
four children, who, at the same time, are designated by him “brothers of this
my own body”
(Rit., ch.
112). Whether called the brothers or the children of Horus they are the same
four in the two
characters.
These four reappear in the Gospels also in both characters. The four as
brothers are the
fishers,
Peter, Andrew, James and John. The other four, called James, Joseph, Simon and
Judas, are
represented
as brothers of his own flesh and blood. At their birth Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef
and Kabhsenuf
were the
brothers of Horus Anaref. These had no father. In the rebirth Horus has himself
attained the
status of a
father or begetter in spirit. Hence it is said, “As for Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef
and Kabhsenuf,
Horus is
their father and Isis is their mother”, in this new setting of the four. In the
Gospel Cleopas and
Mary take the
place of Horus and Isis as the actual father and mother in the flesh. When
Horus rises in
Amenta he is
the active and powerful one of Annu filled with might divine as the son whom
the father
hath begotten
(Rit., ch. 115), whereas in his previous advent he was the child of the Virgin
Mother as the
puny
impubescent impotent weakling who was born but not begotten. Horus now
beseeches Ra to grant
that he may
have his four brothers or his children for his assistants. He says, “Give me my
brother in the
region of Pa;
give me my brother in Nekhen — my brother for my tender affection”, or give me
my
brothers to
love. Only two brethren of the four are mentioned here, and for these Horus
asks of his father
that his
brothers may sit with him in his kingdom as eternal judges, as benefactors of
the world, as
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Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
extinguishers
of the Typhonian plagues and as the bringers of peace (Rit., ch. 112). The
prayer of Horus
is followed
by the Osiris deceased, who identifies the two brethren as Amsta and Hapi, and
he exclaims:
“Rise up,
gods, who are in the lower heaven, rise up for the Osiris, make him (also) to
[Page 859] become
a great god”.
The deceased continues: “I know the mystery of Nekhen”. The mystery is that
which the
mother of
Horus (who was also the mother of the two brethren) had done for him when she
said “let him
live” (ch.
113), in which we have the mother making her request on behalf of her son.
This new
foundation for the kingdom of heaven was made on the night of erecting the
flagstaffs (or
pillars) of
Horus, and of establishing him as heir to his father’s property. The pillars
were erected when
Horus said to
the four who followed him, “Let the flagstaffs be erected there”, on the night
of one of the
ten great
mysteries of Amenta (Rit., ch. 18). The two brothers first given to Horus in Pa
were Amsta and
Hapi (ch.
112). The other two that were given to Horus in Nekhen are Tuamutef and
Kabhsenuf, the
adorer of the
mother and the refresher of his brethren. Thus, the kingdom announced by Anup
the
baptizer, and
founded by Horus for his father, was established upon the four supports. These
in one
shape were
four brothers, only one of whom, Amsta, wears the human form. They are adopted
by him as
his Shus, his
servants or fishers, two by two — two in Pa and two in Nekhen, the region where
Sebek
was the great
fisher in the marshes. The four are given by Ra to Horus as his children who
are brothers
of his own
body, to be with him in token of everlasting renewal and of peace on earth, and
these are the
four pillars,
flagstaffs, fishermen, or supports, on which the kingdom of heaven was to be
founded in
Amenta, as a
spirit-world by Horus, who was the fulfiller for the father at his second
coming.
We repeat
that Horus had four brothers with him in the mythos who had been with him from
the
beginning,
just as Jesus has his four brothers on earth; and when Horus makes his change
and rises in
Amenta from
the dead the four brothers become his children as the four supports of the future
kingdom
(Rit., ch.
112), the “four glorified ones” who are foremost among the seven great spirits
of Annu (Rit., ch.
97). They who
were the brothers of Horus when he was the son of Seb, or, as we say, on the
earth, are,
after his
resurrection, called his children. Coincident with this change the risen Lord,
in the Gospels,
addresses his
disciples as his children when he has risen from the tomb. He comes to the
seven fishers
in the boat,
and says to them, “Children, have ye aught to eat?” (John XXI. 5). This being
after the
resurrection.
It is the only time that the disciples are addressed as the children of Jesus,
and the
conditions
are identical with those in the Ritual where the brethren of Horus in the
earth-life become his
children in the
spirit-life beyond the tomb. Thus, to recapitulate, Horus of the resurrection
at his second
coming was
accompanied by Anup, the baptizer, Aan, the divine scribe, as lunar god, and
the four
brethren
Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf, one of which four was Amsta, the only
brother in the
human form.
These four are the divine powers who were with Horus in the mount when he rose
from the
dead and came
forth to day. They can be paralleled thus with characters in the canonical
Gospels as:
Horus, or the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus=Jesus; Anup, the baptizer=John the Baptist; John, the
divine
scribe=Aan,
the divine scribe; Amsta, the one human brother of the Lord=James, the one
human brother
of Jesus;
Hapi=Andrew; Tuamutef=John; Kabhsenuf=Peter. [Page 860] Simon Peter is the one
who
perceives and
proclaims that Jesus is the Christ. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God” (Matt.
XVI. 16). The
name of Peter is here identified with the Greek Petra for a rock. But if the
other characters,
Jesus=Horus;
John=Aan; James=Amsta, are Egyptian, it follows that Peter is Egyptian also.
The word
Petra or
Petar is Egyptian; it signifies to see, look at, to perceive, to show forth, to
reveal. Moreover,
Petar is the
name or title of an Egyptian god who had been already divinized as the one who
discovered
and made
known the only begotten son of that living god, who was Atum-Ankhu, the father
of Iusa, the
Egyptian
Jesus (Budge, Vocabulary, p. 122). Probably the deified perceiver, or Petar,
was the hawk-
sighted
Kabhsenuf, the refresher of his brethren, one of the four children of Horus,
who had previously
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Ancient
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been his
brothers from the beginning in the astronomical mythology.
Horus in one
character is the Fisher. “Know ye what I know”, saith the manes, “the name of
him who
fishes there,
the great prince who sits at the east of the sky?” (Naville, Rit., 153B). “I
know the name of
the table on
which he lays them (the fishes);
it is the
table of Horus”. In this character the Osiris saith, “I shine like Horus. I
govern the land, and I go
down to the
land in the two great boats. I have come as a fisher” (Naville, ch. 153A).
Horus or Jesus in
the Roman
catacombs also comes as the fisher who at the same time is portrayed as the
bringer of the
grapes for
the Uaka festival (Lundy, Monumental Christianity, fig. 54). The four as
fishers for Horus are
depicted as
the fishers in the Ritual. They are spoken of as having been amongst the
earlier elemental
powers called
“the ancestors of Ra”. Otherwise stated, they are four of the seven souls of
Ra. In fact,
they are
Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf and Amsta, now to be identified as the four children
who became
the four
fishers for Horus, and who are one with the four fishers for Jesus in the
canonical Gospels. A
vignette to
the Book of the Dead (ch. 153A, pl. 55, Naville and Renouf) shows the four
fishers as four
men pulling
the drag-net through the water in the act of fishing for Horus. These are they
who are
described as
fishers for the great prince who sits at the east of the sky (ch. 153B), and
who is said to
mark them as
his own property.
Horus was the
prototypal fish, the same type of sacrifice that is still eaten in the
penitential meal to-day
as it was in
On when Sebek-Horus was the Saviour as the fish that brought the food and water
of [Page
861] the
inundation. Horus as the fish preceded Horus as the fisher when Sebek, the
crocodile-headed
god, was the
typical great fisher. It is said of the first two fishers, “These are the two
hands of Horus
which had
become fishes”, that is as types of Horus the fisher according to the mystery
of Nekhen (Rit.,
ch. 113). The
followers of Horus as fishers (ch. 153A) are called “the fishermen who are
fishing”. Thus
the total
group who were the twelve as reapers in the harvest-field of Amenta are also
the twelve as the
fishers.
Hence the twelve fishermen of the later legend. The two first fishes caught for
Horus are then
eaten at the
sacramental meal. As it is said (Rit., ch. 153A), the fishes are laid on the
table of Horus.
They had been
brought to him when the festival was founded by Ra; “they were brought to Horus
and
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Ancient
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displayed
before his face at the feast of the 15th day of the month, when the fishes were
produced” (Rit.,
ch. 113).
In the Ritual
(ch. 97) there is a scene of the Seven Fishers at the boat with Horus, which can
be
paralleled in
the Gospel of John. The scene in John’s Gospel is post-resurrectional,
therefore not in the
earth of
time. As it is said, “This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to
the disciples after that
he was risen
from the dead” (John XXI. 14). And that which follows the resurrection is in
spirit-world.
Therefore
Jesus and the seven disciples in this scene are spirits like the seven with
Horus, which were
the seven
great spirits of Annu, four of whom became the first fishers for Horus (Rit.,
chs. 97 and 153A).
This view is
corroborated by the appearance of Peter, “for he was naked”, and a naked man in
Sign-
language
means a spirit. Thus the seven with Jesus at the boat are a form of the seven
great spirits with
Horus at the
bark in Annu, four of whom — the foremost four — become the founders of the
fold for the
Good
Shepherd, in the same chapter of the Ritual but in another character. In this
character Horus had
shepherded
the flocks of Ra, his heavenly father, in the deserts of Amenta (Book of
Hades). In this
character of
the shepherd Horus of the resurrection rose up from the sepulchre with a crook
instead of
the later
lamb or kid upon his shoulder. And it is in this character Horus chooses the
first four of the seven
great spirits
of Annu to become the founders of his fold as well as his first four fishers.
In the Gospel
Jesus
likewise assumes the character of the so-called good shepherd. Hence the
injunctions to Peter,
and the
sayings, “Feed my lambs”, “Tend my sheep”, “Feed my sheep” (John XXI. 16-18).
According to
Matthew, the four brethren first chosen by Jesus are Simon, Andrew, James and
John. It is
noteworthy,
however, that in the Johannine account the first four followers of Jesus are
Andrew and
Peter,
Phillip and Nathaniel. Moreover, Nathaniel was one of those who were under the
fig-tree aforetime
with Jesus.
There is no Zebedee, father of the fishers, and there is no fishing in the
opening chapter of
John; that
is, as supposed in the life on earth. The fishers only appear in this Gospel
after the
resurrection
of Jesus, which takes us, as does the baptism, into the spirit-world of the
mythos, where the
seven fishers
answer to the other group of the seven in the boat with Horus.
The mysteries
of Amenta show us Anup calling the world to judgment in the character of the
judge. He is
the precursor
of [Page 862] Horus in the wilderness, and the announcer of the kingdom that
follows at the
second
coming. Under the title of Ap-Uat he is the opener or guide of roads who “makes
ready the way of
the Lord”,
and levels the path in the equinox. In the Gospels the proclamation that the
kingdom of heaven
is at hand
was first made by John the baptizer and precursor of Jesus. The cry of the coming
kingdom
immediately
at hand is then taken up by Jesus after the baptism in which he has become the
adult of
thirty years,
and the co-type of Horus the anointed son of God the second born who was Horus
in the
spirit. Also
in the Gospel of Nicodemus, John the Baptist is the teacher in the earth of
eternity. The
baptism and
transformation of Jesus into the spirit symbolled by the dove was in the earth
of eternity. The
descent of
the holy spirit, as God the father, in authentication of the anointed son was
enacted in the
earth of
eternity, not in the world of time. According to the genuine mythos or gnosis
which is Egyptian,
and we have
no other criterion, the double advent of Horus depended on his birth and
rebirth, in the two
earths; the
birth of a human soul in matter and the rebirth of an immortal in Amenta. The
second coming
of Horus is
the mystery of that second birth in which the human soul is divinized from its
two halves as an
enduring
spirit or eternal entity. This transformation follows death and burial, and
therefore can only take
place in
spirit-world. When it does take place the second advent is accomplished as
represented both in
the Ritual
and the Egypto-gnostic writings. But it is otherwise in the canonical Gospels, because
in
making out a
history solely human the concocters were limited to the human life in the earth
of time. For
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Ancient
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example, in
the Gospel according to John, when Jesus is about to leave the disciples and is
telling them
of the second
advent, he says, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
them now”
(ch. XVI.
12). These things that are to come, in some indefinite future (which has not
come yet), relate to
the nature of
God the father. They constitute the mysteries which are to be unfolded in the
future at the
second coming
of the son in the person of the judge, the avenger, the harvester, the
spirit-of-truth, the
comforter,
the fulfiller who fulfils both in the Ritual and in the gnostic Gospel. Jesus
had hitherto taught in
parables. Now
he says the hour cometh when he will tell them “plainly of the father” and
speak to them
no more in
parables (XVI. 25). This is at the second coming which had been already
fulfilled in the
Gospel of
“Pistis Sophia” and in the Ritual of the Resurrection. The Egypto-gnostic Jesus
who, as the
“little Iao”
of “Pistis Sophia”, only spoke in parables, and was not empowered to expound
the profounder
mysteries of
the fatherhood, is a form of the child-Horus whom Plutarch called the
“inarticulate
discourse”.
At his second coming he unfolded the spiritual mysteries. The chief of these
was the mystery
of mysteries,
namely, the mystery of “the father in the likeness of a dove” (B. 1, 1).
Nevertheless, the
second
advent, and the mysteries pertaining thereto (according to the genuine gnosis),
do leak out in the
canonical
Gospels, however carefully disguised or surreptitiously inserted. The gnostic
manifestation of
the first
mystery, namely, that of the father as a dove, is made to the Gospel-Jesus at
the time of his
baptism, in
the life on earth. The second [Page 863] coming is also illustrated in the
scene of
transfiguration
on the mount. Likewise in the resurrection when the risen Christ has
transformed into a
spirit, Luke
notwithstanding, with power to impart the holy spirit and share it with his
followers (John XX.
22). Each of
these manifestations, with others belonging to the second advent of Horus in
Amenta, are
assigned to
Jesus in the human life in fulfilment of the history. In the Ritual the father,
as the holy spirit,
calls from
heaven to Horus (or Osiris) the anointed son, “Come thou to me”. This is Ra the
bird-headed,
whose
likeness is then assumed by Horus the beloved son. In the Gospel, the Father,
as the holy spirit,
descended on
Jesus in the form of a dove, and in that guise “abode upon him”. The exigency
of a human
history with
only a single advent did not permit of the death and resurrection of Jesus
occurring at the
time when the
youth of twelve years made his change into the adult of thirty years. Yet the
baptism and
ascension of
Jesus from the water into the opening heavens are identical with the
Egypto-gnostic
resurrection.
The Horus or Jesus of twelve years is the mortal on this side of death. The
Horus or Jesus
of thirty
years is a spirit on the other side, in spirit-world. The baptism of Jesus
represents the
resurrection
of Horus from the water. Hence Jesus in his baptism becomes a spirit. He is led
up from the
water “of the
spirit”, “in the spirit”, or as a spirit into which he had made his
transformation. When Sut put
out the eye
of Horus, the darkness represented death. But, in the Gospel, death, or the
transformation, is
only
represented at this point by the baptism. If it had been actualized the history
must have ended there
and then,
which was not in accordance with the Gospel schema. Still, the “history”
notwithstanding,
Jesus does
become a spirit in this scene of transformation which belongs to the mysteries
of Amenta.
Bird-headed
beings are spirits, not historical Jews. Only as a spirit could the
foster-child of Seb, or
Joseph,
transform into the son of Ra the holy spirit; and only in the earth of eternity
could the change
occur in
which the Virgin’s child became the father’s son by being born again of Nut the
heavenly mother,
one of whose
names was Meri. According to the gnosis, the following are a few of the events
that occur
after the resurrection:
the transformation of Jesus, the Virgin’s child, into the beloved son of the
father
with the
spirit of God descending on him as a dove; the contests with Satan in the
spirit; the adoption of
the four
disciples in the mount; Jesus with the seven on board the bark; the founding of
the fold; the
miracles of
healing; giving sight to the blind; raising the dead; casting out the devils;
causing evil spirits to
enter the
swine; walking upon the water; founding the kingdom of heaven on the four
fishers, or disciples,
and
conferring the holy spirit, after death, upon the twelve.
The Gospel
doctrine of the Holy Spirit is true enough, according to the Egyptian wisdom,
when properly
applied, but
only as Egyptian is it to be understood. Certain manifestations of the holy
spirit in the
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Gospels are
strictly in keeping with the mysteries of the Ritual or Book of the Dead. In
the words of John
“the holy
spirit was not given” at the time when Jesus “was not yet glorified” (ch. VII.
39). The glorifying
was by
descent of the holy spirit; the spirit that was given to Horus and by him to
the disciples in the
mystery [Page
864] of Tattu upon the resurrection-day when the God in heaven called to the
mummy-
Osiris in
Amenta “Come thou to me”, when the two halves of the soul were blended in the
eternal
oneness, and
human Horus, the soul in matter, was transformed to rise again as Horus
divinized. This
was in the
resurrection after death, in baptismal regeneration, or in the Christifying of
the Osiris-mummy.
The Ritual
shows us how the apostles were established on the same foundation, beginning
with the two
brothers, who
were followed by the four brethren, the cycle being completed by the twelve in
the fields of
divine
harvest. The four as brothers of Horus had been figures in the astronomy. The
four as his children
are figures
in the eschatology; the four who are “foremost among the spirits of Annu” with
the aid of
whom “the
fold” was constructed for him, as for one victorious against all “adversaries”
(Rit., ch. 97). The
two fours are
thus equated in the Gospels. The four brothers of Horus=the four brothers of
Jesus. Amsta,
Hapi,
Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf=James, Joseph, Simon, Judas. The same four in the character
of his
children with
Horus=the four brethren, Simon, Andrews, James and John, whom Jesus addresses
as his
children
(John XXXI. 5). At a later stage the followers in the train of Horus are the twelve
who are his
harvesters in
the cornfields of Amenta. “Pistis Sophia” in agreement with the “Book of Hades”
shows us
how the
twelve as followers of Horus were constituted a company that consisted at first
of seven to which
the five were
added in forming the group of twelve. The disciples of Jesus likewise become
the twelve
who reap the
harvest. “Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous but
the labourers
are few. Pray
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he send forth labourers into his
harvest. And he
called unto
him his twelve disciples” — who were previously but four (Matt. IV. 18, 21) —
“and gave them
authority
over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and
all manner of
sickness”. At
this point the names of the twelve are for the first time given (Matt. X. 1-5).
The same words
are uttered
in Luke concerning the harvest and its reapers, but now the number of disciples
appointed
and sent
forth for the ingathering of harvest-home is seventy or seventy-and-two — one
for each
subdivision
of the decans in the twelve signs, both the seventy and seventy-two being
identifiable
astronomical
numbers.
The twelve
with Horus in Amenta are they who labour at the harvest and collect the corn
(otherwise the
souls) for
Horus. When the harvest is ready “the bearers of sickles reap the grain in
their fields. Ra says
to them, on
earth as bearers of sickles in the fields of Amenta”, “Take your sickles, reap
your grain” “Book
of Hades”,
Records, vol. 10, 119). Here the labourers who reap the harvest in Amenta are
the object of
propitiatory
offerings and of adoration on the earth, as the twelve disciples of Horus, son
of Ra, the
heavenly
father. And this was ages before the story was told of the twelve fictitious
harvesters in Galilee.
Moreover, the
Harvest is identical with the Last Judgment. Atum-Ra says at the same time,
“Guard the
enemies,
punish the wicked. Let them not escape from your hands. Watch over the
executions,
according to
the orders you have received from the Founder, who has marked you out to
strike” — as
executioners.
So is it in the Gospels, where the harvest is one [Page 865] with the judgment
at the end of
the world, or
consummation of the age.
As before
said, when the narratives in the canonical scriptures had taken the place of
the primitive
drama,
certain mysteries of Amenta were made portable in parables, and thenceforth the
Gospels repeat
the same
things in parables and logoi that were represented dramatically in the
mysteries. The harvest-
home and
judgment-day, described in the Gospels, which are to occur at some indefinite
time in the
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future on
this earth, belong to the Osirian mysteries of Amenta. The great judgment at
the last day
supplies an
illustration of the mystery extant in parable. A first and second death occur,
likewise a first
and second
resurrection in the mysteries of Amenta. The first is the death which takes
place on earth,
and the
apparition of the manes in the nether-world constitutes the first resurrection
from the dead. Then
follows the
great judgment of the righteous and the wicked. Those found guilty are doomed
to suffer the
second death.
There is for them no other resurrection. Those who escape from the dread
tribunal
uncondemned
pass on to the second resurrection as the spirits of the just made perfect,
called the
glorified.
These are the inheritors of eternal life. Jesus says, “This is the will of my
Father, that every one
that
beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have eternal life, that I
should raise him up at the
last day”,
“and I will raise him up at the last day” (John VI. 40, 44). The pitiful
pretence of an historical
Jew being the
raiser up of the dead at the last day is a miserable mockery of the actual
transaction in the
mysteries of
Amenta with Horus as the resurrection and the life. In these, the deceased is
shown as Ani
in the hall
of judgment. He has emerged from the earth-life and risen in Amenta, but not
yet from it. He
must be
judged in the Maat or great hall before he rises from the dead as one of the
just made perfect for
the life to
come. If he passes, sound of heart and pure in spirit, he will enter the
presence of the great
god. Ani
succeeds and passes pure. His resurrection from the dead and from Amenta, the
world of the
dead, is
assured. Horus the Son of God, the Intercessor, the paraclete, now takes him by
the hand as the
raiser of the
dead to life and introducer of the risen Ani to his father. In one scene the
hair of Ani is black.
The next
shows him kneeling in presence of Osiris with his hair turned white. He has
passed in purity. He
has been
raised by Horus at the “last day” or at the end of the cycle when the dead were
judged, once
every year or
other period at the great gathering of “all souls”. This took place “in
presence of the gods”,
as one of the
ten great mysteries described in the Ritual (ch. 18) when “the glorious ones
were rightly
judged, and
joy went its round in Thinis”; when judgment was passed upon those who were to
be
annihilated
“on the highway of the damned” ; when “the evil dead were cast out”, and the
goats divided
from the
sheep. As it is said —”when the associates of Sut arrive, and take the form of
goats, they are
slain in
presence of the gods so long as their blood runneth down, and this is done
according to the
judgment of
those gods who are in Tattu”, the place of establishing the soul for ever, from
its two halves,
as the double
Horus, the divine avenger of the suffering Osiris, who at his second coming was
the
revealer of
[Page 866] eternal justice. This culminating event, which was the subject of so
much Old
Testament
prophecy that is reproduced in the New, is here fulfilled, according to the
knowledge of the
wise men
“which knew the times” and who also “knew the law and the judgment” (Esther I.
13). The
advent might
be on the millennial scale of Horus in the house of a thousand years according
to the cycle,
but there was
a Coming once a year and an ending of the cycle, the age, or the world as it
was called by
the
Christians every year. And it is on this one-year period derived from the solar
mythos that the second
advent and
the immediate ending of the world were ignorantly based. The end of the world
or the cycle of
the annual
sun came once a year in the Egyptian mythos. The second advent of Horus, like
the first, was
also annual.
He came in the terror of his glory as avenger of his father; as the great
judge, as lord of the
harvest with
the glorious ones for reapers who were the typical twelve in number, and as the
fulfiller of
the heavenly
kingdom in which he reigned according to the mythos for one year, whether as
Horus the
shoot, the
fish, the fisherman, or the harvester. The gnostic Christ was likewise known to
be the ruler for
one year.
At the
festival of Ha-ka-er-a, or “Come thou to me”, the blessed ones were welcomed by
Horus to the
kingdom which
had been prepared from the foundation of the world, or the earlier cycle of
time, in the
Kamite
astro-mythology, if anywhere on earth, but which preparation and founding were
repeated every
year as a
mode of the mysteries in Amenta. These mysteries were extant, and periodically
performed
some
thousands of years ago. So ancient is some of the imagery in the Maat, that
when Ani passes pure,
the crown of
glory placed upon his head to be worn in heaven is a form of the top-knot,
which is still
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assumed at
puberty by the Kaffirs and other African black races. But this great judgment,
in common with
the other
events that were fulfilled at the second advent, still remains the subject of
prophecy in the
Hebrew and
Christian scriptures. In the Gospel according to Matthew the last judgment is
to take place at
the veritable
ending of the world (Matt. XXV. 31-46). “When the Son of Man shall come in his
glory, and
all the
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory, and before him
shall be gathered all
the nations,
and he shall separate them, as the shepherd parteth the sheep from the goats;
and he shall
set the sheep
on the right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them
on his right
hand, Come ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the
world: for I
was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was
a stranger
and ye took
me in: naked and ye clothed me, sick and ye visited me. Then shall he say unto
them on the
left hand,
Depart from me ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil
and his angels”.
In the
original, the devil and his angels are Sut and his Sami, and the goats on the
left hand are also the
representatives
of Sut. Nevertheless, the two judgments of the Ritual and in the gospel are
fundamentally
the same;
there was but one origin and one meaning for both. The great judgment in the
hall of
righteousness
which remained the subject of Hebrew prophecy gone dateless was an annual
occurrence
in the [Page
867] Kamite mysteries. In this the Osiris pleads: “I have done that which man
prescribeth and
that which pleaseth
the gods. I have propitiated the god with that which he loveth. I have given
bread to
the hungry,
water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, a boat to the shipwrecked. I have
made oblations to
the gods and
funeral offerings to the departed: deliver me therefore; protect me therefore:
and report not
against me in
presence of the great God. I am one whose mouth is pure, and whose hands are
pure, to
whom it is
said by those who look upon him, Come, come in peace” (Ritual, ch. 125,
Renouf).
The great
judgment was periodic in Amenta at the end of a cycle, which might be a year, a
generation, or,
as it was
also exoterically figured, at the end of the world. The uninitiated, who had
but an outside view,
mistook it
for the actual and immediate ending of the world. “The harvest is the end of
the world” (Matt.
XIII. 39).
“The end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter IV. 7). “It is the last hour” (1
John II. 18). “The kingdom
of heaven is
at hand” (Matt. III. 2; IV. 17; X. 7). This was according to the literalization
of the Illiterate.
Paul is the
only writer or speaker in the New Testament who knew better. He warns his
followers amongst
the
Thessalonians against believing this teaching of the uninitiated. He says: “We
beseech you, brethren,
touching the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him; to the
end that ye be
not quickly
shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit or by word, or by
Epistle as from
us (i.e., by
a forged “Epistle of Paul”;), as that the day of the Lord is (now) present: let
no man beguile
you in any
wise” (2 Thess. II. 1, 3). He was the only one who knew the esoteric nature of
this end of the
aeon, and the
coming of Christ or Horus, the anointed, the Messiah in Israel, or the Jesus
who was Iu the
Su of Atum,
whom he calls the second Adam=Atum, and who had been to him the pre-Christian
Christ,
the spiritual
rock, from which the people drank the water of life whilst in the wilderness.
When Tertullian
denounced Paul
as “The Apostle of the Heretics” he meant the Egypto-gnostics. Paul was epopt
and
perfect
amongst those who knew that the historic version was a lying delusion. This we
hold to have
been aimed at
in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians”, when he says of his opponents, the
fleshifiers
of the
Christ, “for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should
believe a lie”.
The mould of
the mythos being solar, once every year the heir of Ra assumed his sovereignty
as Horus
of the kingly
countenance, whose rule was for one year. Every year Osiris, the great green
one in
vegetation,
died to rise again in the fruits of the earth. Every year in the solar drama he
was buried in
Amenta to
make the road that united the two earths in one, for establishing the coming
kingdom on earth
as it was in
heaven. Every year the prophecy was fulfilled in natural phenomena, and every
year the
coming
kingdom came. Every year was celebrated this foundation of the world that was
laid and relaid by
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the buried
body of the god; this union of the double earth in Tanen, at the equinox, this
resurrection of the
soul that
supplied the bread of life, this completion of the cycle by the sun that rose
and travelled on the
eternal round
as representative of the author of eternity. A glimpse of this annual coming is
permitted
when the
Christ is made to say, “Ye shall not have gone through the cities of [Page 868]
Israel till the son
of man be
come” (Matt. X. 23). “There be some of them that stand here which shall in no
wise taste of
death till
they see the son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. XVI. 28). Such prophecy
is in
accordance
with the true mythos, but for ever fatal to the falsely-founded history.
THE LAST
SUPPER: THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE RESURRECTION
As the legend
is related by Plutarch, the death of Osiris was preceded by his betrayal, and
the betrayal,
which was the
work of his twin brother, Sut, took place in the banqueting-room. Sut, having
framed a
curious ark
just the size of Osiris’s body, brought it to a certain banquet. As this was on
the last night of
Osiris’s life
or reign, and on the last night of the year, the meal may fairly be called the
Last Supper (Of
Isis and
Osiris, 13). Now this mystery of the Last Supper can be traced in the Ritual as
the first of a
series acted
in Amenta. Sut and his associates had renewed the assault upon Osiris on the
night of
laying the
evening provisions upon the altar, called the night of the battle in which the
powers of drought
and darkness
were defeated and extinguished. The coffin of Osiris is the earth of Amenta.
Dawn upon
the coffin
was the resurrection; and this provender is imaged as “the dawn upon the coffin
of Osiris”,
which shows
that the evening meal, or eucharist, was eaten in celebration of the
resurrection and the
transubstantiation
of the body into spirit. The night of laying provisions on the altar is
mentioned twice:
once when
Osiris is in the coffin, provided by Sut and his associates, the Sebau, who
entrapped him in
the ark. The
second mention follows the erection of the Tat-sign which denoted the
resurrection; hence
the “dawn
upon the coffin of Osiris”, which is equivalent to the resurrection morn. The
resurrection on the
third day
originated in lunar phenomena. Twenty-eight days was the length of a moon, and
this is no
doubt the
source of the statement that Osiris was in his eight-and-twentieth year at the
time of his
betrayal. The
moon is invisible during two nights, which completed the luni-solar month of
thirty days.
The assault
upon Osiris the Good Being made by Sut was periodically renewed. This has just
occurred
when the
first of the ten mysteries is enacted (Rit., ch. 18). The scene is in the house
of Annu
(Heliopolis),
where Osiris lay buried and Horus was reborn. The triumph of Osiris over his
adversaries is
in the
resurrection following the dramatized death of the inviolate god. This is
called the night of the
battle, when
there befell the defeat of the Sebau and the extinction of the adversaries of
Osiris. It is also
described as
“the night of provisioning the altar”, otherwise stated “the night of the Last
Supper”, when
“the calf of
the sacrificial herd” was eaten at “the mortuary meal”, which represented the
body and blood
of Osiris,
“the bull of eternity” (Rit., ch. 1).
The second
mystery of the ten is solemnized upon the night when the Tat-pillar was set up
in Tattu, or
when Osiris
in his resurrection [Page 869] was raised up again as a type of the eternal.
The third mystery
is on the
night of the things that were laid upon the altar in Sekhem which imaged the
altar and the
offering in
one. This was the circle of Horus in the dark, the sufferer made blind by Sut,
the victim in the
Tat who was
the prototype of Jesus on the cross, and representative of the god in matter.
As we have
seen, a great Memphian festival, answering to the Christmas-tide of later
times, was
periodically
solemnized at the temple of Medinet Habu in the last decade of the month Choiak
(from
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Ancient
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December 20th
to 30th), which lasted for ten days. One day, the 26th of the month=December
24th, was
kept as the
feast of Sekari, the god who rose again from the mummy, and this was the
principal feast-day
of the ten.
In all likelihood the whole ten mysteries were performed during the ten days of
the festival that
was
celebrated at Memphis (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. translation, pp.
277-9). Prominent among
these was the
feast of the erection or re-erection of the Tat-pillar of stability, which was
an image of Ptah-
Sekari, the
coffined one who rose again, and who in the later religion becomes
Osiris-Sekari, “Lord of
resurrections,
whose birth is from the house of death”. The resurrection of Osiris, which,
like other
doctrines,
was based on the realities of nature, would be appropriately celebrated in the
winter solstice.
At that time
the powers of darkness, drought, decay and death, now personalized in Sut, were
dominant,
as was shown
in the lessening water and the waning light of the enfeebled sun. The tat-type
of stability
was
temporarily overthrown, by the adversary of Osiris and his co-conspirators, the
Sebau. Here begins
the great
drama of the Osirian mysteries, in ten acts, which is outlined in the Ritual.
The putting of Osiris
to death — so
far as a god could suffer — was followed by the funeral, and the burial by the
resurrection.
The opening
chapters of the Ritual, called the Coming forth to day, are said to contain
“the words which
bring about
the resurrection and the glory”, also the words to be recited on the day of
burial that confer
the power of
coming forth from the death on earth, and of entering into the new life of the
manes in
Amenta. Horus
is described as covering Tesh-Tesh (a title of the mutilated Osiris); as
opening the life-
fountains of
the god whose heart is motionless, and as closing the entrance to the hidden
things in Rusta
(ch. 1,
18-20). The two divine sisters are present as mourners over their brother in
the tomb. They are
called the
mourners who weep for Osiris in Rekhet (line 15, 16). The mysteries thus
commence with the
burial of
Osiris in Amenta — as a mummy. The mummy-making that was first applied to
preserving the
bones and
body of the human being had been afterwards applied to the god or sun of life
in matter,
imaged as the
typical mummy of Osiris that was buried to await the resurrection in and
afterwards from
Amenta. In
both phases it is Osiris, as the god in matter, who is represented in the
nether-earth. And the
re-arising of
the human soul and its blending with the eternal spirit were dramatically
rendered in the
mysteries as
the resurrection of the Osiris or the soul of mortal Horus re-arisen in Amenta
as the son of
Ra.
In the
Gospels, Judas the brother of Jesus in one character, elsewhere called the
familiar friend, is the
betrayer on the
night of the last [Page 870] supper, and Judas “the son of perdition” answers
to Sut the
twin-brother
of Osiris (in the later Egyptian mythos), who was his betrayer at the last
supper called the
messiu or
evening meal that was eaten on the last night of the Old Year, or the reign of
Osiris. The twelve
disciples
only are present at the last supper in the Gospels. In the betrayal of Osiris
by Sut the number
present in
the banqueting-hall is seventy-two. These were officers who had been appointed
by Osiris.
The number
shows they represent the seventy-two duo-decans as rulers in the planisphere,
but the
twelve have
been chosen to sit at supper with the doomed victim in the Gospels instead of
the seventy-
two who were
also appointed by the Lord, and are dimly apparent in their astronomical guise,
as the
seventy-two
(or seventy) who are present in the scene where Jesus triumphs over Satan as he
falls like
lightning
from his place in heaven (Luke X. 17).
One of the
most striking of the various episodes in the Gospel narrative is that scene at
the Last Supper
in which
Jesus washes the feet of the disciples, compared with “the washing” that is
performed by the
Great One in
the Ritual. In the Gospel Judas is waiting to betray his master. Jesus says to
the betrayer,
“That thou
doest, do quickly”. Now it should be borne in mind that the Ritual, as it comes
to us, consists
to a large
extent of allusions to the matter that was made out more fully in performing
the drama of the
mysteries.
Washing the feet was one of the mysteries pertaining to the funeral of Osiris,
when the feet of
the disciples
or followers of Horus were washed. It was one of the funeral ceremonies. As it
is said in the
Ritual (ch.
172), “Thou washest thy feet in silver basins made by the skilful artificer
Ptah-Sekari”. This
was
preparatory to the funeral feast, as is shown by the context (ch. 172). In the
Gospel (John XIII.) the
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funeral feast
becomes the “Last Supper” when Jesus “riseth from supper and layeth aside his
garments;
and he took a
towel and girded himself. Then he poureth water into a basin and began to wash
the
disciples
feet”. And here is a passage of three lines, called the chapter by which the
person is not
devoured by
the serpent in Amenta. “O Shu, here is Tattu, and conversely, under the hair of
Hathor. They
scent Osiris.
Here is the one who is to devour me. They wait apart. The serpent Seksek
passeth over me.
Here are
wormwood bruised and reeds. Osiris is he who prayeth that he may be buried. The
eyes of the
great one are
bent down, and he doeth for thee the work of washing, marking out what is
conformable to
law and
balancing the issues” (Rit., ch. 35, Renouf). This brief excerpt contains the
situation and
character of
the great one, who with eyes bent down in his humility does “the work of
washing”, and
explains why
this ceremony has to be performed by him in person. The “washer” is he who is
in presence
of the one
who waits to betray him, devour him, or compass his destruction, and he
beseeches a speedy
burial.
Osiris in this scene is a form of the typical “lowly one” who had been in type
as such for ages
previously.
But the most arresting fact of all is hidden in the words “O Shu, here is Tattu
(the place of reestablishing)
under the wig
(or hair) of Hatho”, the goddess of dawn, one of whose names is Meri. And it
is here,
beneath the hair of Hathor-Meri, they perfume and anoint Osiris for his burial.
This when written
out as
“history” [Page 871] contains the anointing and perfuming of the feet of Jesus
by Mary, who wiped
them with her
hair (Luke VII. 38). The two bathings of the feet are separate items in the
Gospels,
whereas both
occur in this one short chapter of the Ritual in which Osiris is anointed for
his burial, and at
the same time
he does for others the work of washing and purifying, “marking out what is
conformable to
law and
balancing the issues”.
Osiris also
is “he who prayeth that he may be buried”, and Jesus, “knowing that his hour
has come”, says
to Judas the
betrayer, “That thou doest, do quickly”. And later, “Friend, do that for which
thou art come”
(Matt. XXVI.
50), which is the equivalent of Osiris praying that he may be buried. The
wormwood bruised,
or crushed,
and the reeds are utilized in the crucifixion for furnishing the bitter drink,
which was offered to
the victim
with a sponge placed upon a reed. A reed was also put in his right hand. These
things were
portrayed in
the drama of Amenta. They were acted in the mysteries and explained by the
mystery-
teachers. The
Osiris passes through the same scenes and makes continual allusion to the
sufferings of
Osiris (or
Horus) his great forerunner, and finally the drama was staged on earth and
reproduced as
history in
the Gospels. That is the one final and sufficient explanation of episode after
episode belonging
to the
mysteries of Amenta reproduced according to the canon as veritable Gospel
history.
The scene in
Gethsemane may be compared with the scene in Pa, where Horus suffered his agony
and
bloody sweat
when wounded by the black boar Sut. Pa was an ancient name of Sesennu, a
locality in the
lunar mythos,
which was also called Khemen, later Smen, a word signifying number eight,
applied to the
enclosure of
the eight; and the suffering of the wounded Horus in Am-Smen is, as now
suggested, the
Osirian
original of Jesus bleeding in Gethsemane. Pa is not called “a garden”, but it
is described as a
“place of
repose” for Horus that was given to him by his father for his place of rest. Ra
says, “I have given
Pa to Horus
as the place of his repose. Let him prosper”. The story is told in “the chapter
of knowing the
powers of Pa”
(Rit., ch. 112). The question is asked, “Know ye why Pa hath been given to
Horus?” The
answer is, It
was Ra who gave it to him in amends of the blindness in his eye, in consequence
of what
Ra said to
Horus: “Let me look at what is happening in thine eye to-day”, and he looked at
it. Ra said to
Horus, “Pray,
look at that black swine”. He looked, and a grievous mishap befell his eye.
Horus said to
Ra, “Lo, mine
eye is as though Sut had made a wound in it”. And wrath devoured his heart.
Then Ra said
to the gods,
“Let him be laid upon his bed that he may recover”. “It was Sut who had taken
the form of a
black swine,
and he wrought the wound which was made in the eye of Horus. And Ra said to the
gods,
“The swine is
an abomination to Horus; may he get well” And the swine became an abomination
to
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Horus. (Rit.,
ch. 112, Renouf.) It was in Pa that Horus was keeping his watch for Ra by night
when the
grievous
mishap befell his eye. He was watching by command of Ra, who had said to Horus,
“Keep your
eye on the
black pig”. The eye was lunar, with which Horus kept the watch for Ra; and Sut
in the form of
the black
boar of darkness pierced [Page 872] the eye of Horus with his tusk, the moon
being the eye of
Horus as the
watcher by night for Ra. Sut on whom he kept the watch transformed himself into
a black
boar, and
wounded Horus in the eye whilst he was watching on behalf of Ra as his
nocturnal eye in the
darkness.
Jesus in the Gospels keeps the watch by night in Gethsemane, as is shown by the
disciples
failing to
keep it. The watch by Horus was necessitated on account of Sut, who is the
typical betrayer in
the Kamite
mythos, as Judas is in the Christian version. Sut knew the place in the
original rendering and
sought out
Horus there when he caused the agony and bloody sweat by mutilating him. “Now
Judas also
which
betrayed him knew the place” (to which Jesus “often restored’‘ with his
disciples) and there the
betrayer
seeks him out to betray him, not in the form of a black boar that put out the
eye which was the
light of the
world, but as a dark-hearted person befitting the supposed historical nature of
the narrative.
The scene of
the drowsy watchers in Gethsemane is apparently derived from a scene in the
mysteries.
There is a
reference in the Ritual (ch. 89) to “those undrowsy watchers who keep watch in
Annu”. In the
Gospels Jesus
asks his followers to watch with him in the garden, and on both occasions he
found them
sleeping. The
moral is pointed by the “undrowsy watchers in Annu” being turned into the
drowsy
watchers who
slept in Gethsemane, and who failed to keep the watch. “I know the powers in
Pa”, says
the speaker;
“they are Horus, Amsta and Hapi”. That is, Horus and the “two brothers”, who
correspond to
the two
brethren James and John, the sons of Zebedee, in the Gospels, and who are here
the two with
Jesus in the
garden. The conversation betwixt Horus the son and Ra the father, the watching
by night,
and the
bloody sweat are followed by the glorification of Horus. Ra gives back the eye,
the sight of which
was restored
in the new moon. In the Gospel (John XVII.) this glorification of Horus as the
son of the
father —
Horus, who had previously been the son of the mother, Har-si-Hesi only — is
anticipated and
described as
about to occur when the torment and the trial are over. “These things spake
Jesus; and
lifting up
his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy son, that
thy son may glorify
thee; even as
thou gavest him authority over all flesh” — that was in the character of Horus
the mortal —
“Now, O
Father, glorify me with thine own self” — in the character of Horus divinized
or glorified. The
temporary
triumph of the treacherous Sut (the power of darkness) is acknowledged by Jesus
when Judas
betrays him
with a kiss and he succumbs. “This”, he says to his captors, “this is your
hour, and the power
of darkness
(Sut). And they seized him” (Luke XXII. 53, 54). But when the associates of Sut
saw the
double-crown
of Horus on his forehead they fell to the ground upon their faces (Rit., ch.
134, 11). And
when the
associates of Judas=Sut the betrayer, came to take “Jesus of Nazareth”, and he
said “I am!”
(not I am he!)
“They went backward and fell to the ground”. Scene for scene, they are the
same. One of
the titles of
Horus is “Lord of the Crown” (ch. 141, 9), which possibly led to Jesus being
crowned “King of
the Jews”. In
this scene the title of “Jesus of Nazareth” has the same effect on the
associates of Judas
that the
[Page 873] assuming of his crown by Horus had upon the associates of Sut when
it caused them
to fall on
their faces before him. The crowning of Jesus on the cross is as Jesus of
Nazareth, King of the
Jews. The
crown of triumph is assigned to Horus by his father Atum, and all the
adversaries of the Good
Being fall on
their faces at the sight of it (Rit., ch. 19).
The scene in
the garden of Gethsemane, and the cry to the father from the sufferer on the
cross are very
pitiful — the
essence of the tragedy working most subtly on account of the supplication that
was all in
vain, which
makes all the more profound appeal to human sympathy. In the Egyptian
representation
there is no
such cruel desertion by the father of his suffering son in his agony of great
darkness. It is far
otherwise in
the Ritual. When Horus suffers his agony in the darkness, after being pierced
and made
blind by Sut,
Ra, the father-God, is with him to comfort and sustain him. He tenderly
examines the
bleeding
wound and soothes him in his great affliction. Ra charges his angels concerning
Horus, or bids
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the gods to
look to his safety and see to his welfare. Ra said to the gods, “Let him be
laid upon his couch
that he may
recover”. He also gives the eye of Horus fire to protect him, and consume the
black boar of
darkness.
There is no sightless sufferer groping helplessly with empty hands outstretched
and left
unclasped in
the dark void of death; no vain and unavailing cry of the forsaken son that
stuns the brain
and scars the
human conscience, and is of itself sufficient to empty the Christian heaven of
all
fatherhood,
and ought to be sufficient to empty earth of all faith in such a father.
According to
the synoptists, Jesus did not carry his own cross to the place of execution; it
was borne
thither by
one Simon of Cyrene. This is denied in the Gospel attributed to John, who
declares that Jesus
went out from
the Judgment Hall “bearing the cross for himself”. John is generally truest to
the Egyptian
original, and
here the figure of Jesus bearing his own cross is equivalent to the figure of
Ptah-Sekari or
Osiris-Tat.
The Tat of a fourfold foundation was the prototype of the cross, and the victim
extended or
standing with
arms akimbo is equivalent to the victim stretched upon the cross of suffering.
Sekari was
the sufferer
in, or on, or as the Tat, and Osiris was raised in, or as the Tat where Jesus
carries the cross.
The scourging
of Jesus previous to his being crucified has never been explained. According to
the record
he was not
condemned to both modes of punishment. It is probably a detail derived from the
mysteries of
Osiris-Sekari,
Jesus scourged at the pillar being an image of Osiris or Ptah as the suffering
Sekari in or
on the Tat,
the pillar with arms, that was superseded by the cross in the Christian
iconography. In the
Egyptian
drama of the passion Horus was blinded by Sut and his accomplices, in suffering
his change
from being
the human Horus to becoming Horus in spirit. The incident that is almost
omitted from the
Gospel
account was preserved in the mysteries. It is a common subject in the passion-play
and in
religious
pictures for the Christ to be blindfolded and brutally buffeted by the soldiers
before he is
crucified.
This occurs in the Townley mysteries and in the Coventry mysteries, and is
referred to in the
“Legends of
the holy rood” (pp. 178, 179, E. E. Text Society). [Page 874] Christ
blindfolded to be made a
mockery of
suggests a likeness of Horus without sight in An-arar-ef, the region of the
blind. In one
representation
Horus has a bandage over his eyes, and the grotesque image of the humorous Bes
appears to
introduce a comic element into the tragedy of the blind sufferer. The blinding,
buffeting and
scourging,
practiced in the mysteries, as in passing through fire and water, was evidently
continued and
extended in
the sports and pastimes. Still, the blindfolding of the victim for the
buffeting is implied in the
Gospel
according to Matthew. “Then did they spit in his face and buffet him; and some
smote him with
the palms of
their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ: who is he that struck
thee?” (Matt. XXVI.
68).
It was a
common popular tradition that the Christ was of a red complexion, like the
child or calf which
represented
the little red sun of winter and also the Virgin’s infant in its more mystical
character.
Moreover,
there is a tradition of a crucified child-Christ who was coloured red like “the
calf in the
paintings”.
Among “the portraits of God the son” Didron cites one in a manuscript of the
fourteenth
century which
answers to the red Christ as a co-type of the red calf. The manuscript
“contains a
miniature of
the priest Eleazar sacrificing a red cow”, and “opposite to this miniature is
one of Christ on
the cross”.
“Jesus is entirely naked, and the colour of his skin is red; he is human, poor
and ugly”. The
red Christ,
equivalent to the red Horus, is here identified with the red cow and therefore
with the red calf
of the
Ritual, which was a symbol of the little red sufferer, the “afflicted one” in
the winter solstice. In
some of the
mystery-plays the Christ wore a close-fitting, flesh-coloured garment, through
which the nails
were driven
into the wood of the cross. The resurrection robe was always red. Satan wants
to know who
this man in
the “red coat” may be. And when Horus rises again, in the character of the
avenger, it is as
the “red
god”. The manes thus addresses him, “O fearsome one, who art over the two
earths; Red God,
who orderest
the block of execution!” (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf). Jesus likewise appears to have
been
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represented
as the red God, or the god in red. For “they stripped him and put on him a
scarlet robe”
(Matt. XXVII.
28). A papyrus reed was the throne and sceptre of Horus, the sign of his
sovereignty. In the
pictures he
is supported by the reed, and one of his titles is “Horus on his papyrus”
(Rit., ch. 112,
Renouf). The
reed also has been turned to historic account in making a mockery-king of
Jesus. “And they
plaited a
crown of thorns and put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand; and
they kneeled down
before him,
and mocked him, saying, Hail, king of the Jews! and they spat upon him, and
took the reed
and smote him
on the head” (Matt. XXVII. 27, 29, 30). Jesus is posed in another form of the
Osirian
sacrificial
victim. One meaning of the word “sekari” is the silent. This is the typical
victim that opened not
his mouth, as
the inarticulate Horus. So, having been assigned the character of the silent
one before
Pilate,
“Jesus no more answered anything”.
It is
possible that the crown of thorns placed upon the head of the crucified was
derived from the thorn-
bush of Unbu,
the solar god, especially if we take it in connection with the papyrus reed, another
[Page
875] type of
Horus, And they plaited a crown of thorns and put it upon his head, and a reed
in his right
hand” (Matt.
XXVII. 29). The god and the branch, which is a bush of flowering thorn, are
identified, the
one with the
other, under the name of Unbu, and the god in the Unbu-thorn is equivalent to
the crucified
in the crown
of thorn. Moreover, Unbu, the branch, was a title of the Egyptian Jesus. “I am
Unbu of Anarar-
ef, the
flower in the abode of occultation” or eclipse (Rit., ch. 71). And if Horus was
not figured on a
cross with
the Unbu-thorn upon his head, as the crown was afterwards made out, he is the
sacrificial
victim in the
place of utter darkness or sightlessness. Horus in An-arar-ef is Horus, Lord of
Sekhem —
Horus in the
dark. He is also “Unbu”, that is, Horus in the thorn-bush. Thus the Unbu-thorn
was typical of
the god, who
was personified as Unbu by name, and who is Unbu as Horus the sufferer in the
dark,
equivalent to
and the prototype of the victim on the cross as wearer of the crown of thorn.
It is also
possible that
Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” may now be answered for the first time.
Jesus says, “I
come into the
world that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth
heareth my
voice” (John
XVIII. 37, 38). And, in his second character, Horus the king, Horus the
anointed and beloved
son, not only
came into the world as testifier to the truth, he was also given the title of
Har-Makheru, the
name of the
Word that was made truth by the doing of it in his death and resurrection, and
the
demonstration
of a life hereafter at his second coming.
The typical
darkness at the time of the crucifixion might be nocturnal, or annual,
according to the mythos.
When Atum,
god of the evening sun, is setting from the land of life, at the point of
equinox, with his hands
drooping,
which is equivalent to the victim who was extended on the cross, a great
darkness overspread
the earth,
and Nut, the mother, is said to be obscured as she receives the dying deity in
her supporting
arms. The
figure is the same, whether the scene be on the cross or at the crossing (Rit.,
ch. 15). Still
more express
is the darkness spoken of in the Egyptian faith, or gospel (ch. 17), which
contains the
kernel of the
credo. Here we learn that “the darkness is of Sekari”. Sekari is a title of
Osiris as the
mutilated and
dismembered god. It is explained that this darkness of Sekari, the god who is
pierced,
wounded, cut
in pieces, is caused by Sut “the slayer”, who has “terrified by prostrating”.
Sekari is Osiris in
the sekru, or
coffin; and to be in the coffin, or in the cruciform figure of the mummy, has
the same
meaning (with
a change of type) as if the divine victim might be embodied in the Tat, or
extended on the
cross. The
darkness of sekari was in the coffin; the darkness of Jesus is on the cross.
It is
observable that the sixth division of the Tuat in Amenta, corresponding to the
sixth hour of the night,
has no
representation of Ra the solar god, and in his absence naturally there was
darkness. But the
three hours’
darkness that was over all the earth at the time of the crucifixion has no
witness in the world
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Ancient
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to its being
an historic event. In the mythical representation it was natural enough. As the
night began at
six o’clock,
the sixth hour according to that reckoning was midnight, and from twelve to
three there was
dense
darkness. This was then applied to the dying sufferer in the eschatology, and
[Page 876] there was
darkness for
three hours in the mysteries. The great darkness is described in the Ritual as
the shutting
up of Seb and
Nut, or heaven and earth, and the Resurrection as the rending asunder. The
manes saith,
“I am Osiris,
who shut up his father and his mother when (or whilst) the great slaughter took
place. I am
Horus, the
eldest of Ra, as he riseth. I am Anup on the day of rending asunder” (Rit., ch.
69, Renouf).
In the coming
forth from the cavern the risen one exclaims, “Let the two doors of earth be
opened to me:
let the bolts
of Seb open to me: and let the first mansion be opened to me, that he may
behold me who
hath kept
guard over me, and let him enclose me who hath wound his arms about me, and
hath fastened
his arms
around me in the earth” (ch. 68). The one who had held him fast with his arms
about him in the
earth, and
who was the keeper of the dead on earth, is Seb; hence it is he who kept guard
over the body
that was
buried in the earth. The part of Seb is also assigned to Joseph of Arimathea,
who took the body
when it was
embalmed with a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, and made a mummy of, and
laid it in
his own tomb.
The tomb of Seb, the earth (John XIX. 38-41), becomes the garden of Joseph; the
“bolts of
Seb” are
replaced by the great stone that Joseph rolls against the door of the sepulchre
(Matt. XXVII.
60), and he
who kept guard over the mummy-Osiris in the sepulchre is represented by the
guard who
watches over
the tomb in the history. “Pilate said unto them, Ye have a guard, go your way,
make it sure
as ye can. So
they went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard being with
them”
(Matt. XXVII.
66). The guard that is set to keep watch and ward at the sepulchre may be
compared with
the “wardens
of the passages”, who are “attendant upon Osiris” in the tomb. These are the
powers that
safeguard the
body or mummy of Osiris and keep off the forces of his adversaries. The Passages
are
those which
lead to the outlet of Rusta in the resurrection (Rit., ch. 17). In the chapter
by which one
arriveth at
Rusta, the deceased has risen again. He says, “I am he who is born in Rusta.
Glory is given to
me by those
who are in their mummied forms in Pa, at the sanctuary of Osiris, whom the
guards receive
at Rusta when
they conduct (the) Osiris through the demesnes of Osiris”. In this scene of the
resurrection
the deceased
comes forth triumphant as Osiris risen (ch. 117). The dead are there in mummied
forms,
and these are
received by the guards as they rise and reach the place of egress in Rusta. In
the Gospel
according to
Matthew a watch was set upon the sepulchre; the guard is spoken of as “the
centurion, and
they that
were with him watching Jesus” (Matt. XXVII. 54). These were watching when the
graves were
opened and
the dead “in their mummied forms” were raised to come forth from the tomb. As
nothing
occurs in the
Gospel except by miracle, the graves are opened by an earthquake for the
passages to be
made, which
passages were very ancient in the geography and pictures of the Egyptian
nether-world.
The guards,
or soldiers, in attendance on Jesus are four in number. At least it is said
that they took the
garments of
the dead body and “made four parts, to every soldier a part” (John XIX. 23).
These guards
correspond to
the four guardians of the coffin Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf and Amsu, who watch
by the
sarcophagus
[Page 877] of the dead Osiris, one at each of its four corners. In a German
passion-play the
four are
invincible knights named Dietrich, Hildebrant, Isengrim, and Laurein.
At the time
of the death upon the cross there is a resurrection which is not the
resurrection. This is a
general
rising of the Manes, not the resurrection of the Christ. “And behold the veil
of the sanctuary was
rent in twain
from the top to the bottom: and the rocks were rent and the tombs were opened:
and many
bodies of the
saints that had fallen asleep were raised”.In short, a general rising must have
preceded the
personal
resurrection of Jesus on the third day after the crucifixion. It is added,
however, that the manes
who had
already risen came forth “out of the tombs after his resurrection and” appeared
unto many”.
Therefore
they stayed in the open tombs a day or two longer in order that he might have
the precedence.
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When Horus
rises as a spirit, the Lord of Mehurit, the risen one, is represented by a
hawk, and he says,
“I am the
hawk in the tabernacle, and I pierce through the veil”, or, in another lection,
through that which
is upon the
veil. To pierce through the veil of the sanctuary is equivalent to rending the
veil of the temple.
The hawk is a
type of the sun-god in the solar mythos and of the spirit in the eschatology.
Thus the veil
was pierced
or rent asunder when Horus rose in the shape of a divine hawk to become the
Lord of
heaven. In
the Gospel (Matt. XXVII. 51), at the moment when Jesus “yielded up his spirit”,
it is said, “and
behold the
veil of the sanctuary was rent in twain from top to bottom: and the earth did
quake: and the
rocks were
rent: and the tombs were opened”, and, in brief, this was what the Ritual terms
“the day of
rending
asunder”. when the rocks of the Tser hill were opened, which is the day of
resurrection in the
mysteries of
Amenta. The death of Osiris was followed by the saturnalia of Sut, in a reign
of misrule and
lawlessness
which lasted during the five black days or dies non of the Egyptian calendar
when
everything
was turned topsy-turvy — a saturnalia, which to all appearance, is yet
celebrated in Upper
Egypt
(Frazer, Golden Bough, I, p. 231). The mutilation of Osiris in his coffin, the
stripping of his corpse
and tearing
it asunder by Sut, who scattered it piecemeal, is represented by the stripping
of the dead
body of Jesus
whilst it still hung upon the cross, and parting the garments amongst the
spoilers. In John’s
account the
crucifixion takes place at the time of the Passover, and the victim of
sacrifice in human form
is
substituted for, and identified with, the Paschal lamb. But, as this version
further shows, the death
assigned is
in keeping with that of the non-human victim. Not a bone of the sufferer was to
be broken.
This is
supposed to be in fulfilment of prophecy. It is said by the Psalmist (XXXIV.
20), “He keepeth all his
bones; not
one of them is broken”. But this was in strict accordance with the law of totemic
tabu. No
matter what
the type, from bear to lamb, no bone of the sacrificial victim was ever
permitted to be broken;
and the only
change was in the substitution of the human type for the animal, which had been
made
already when
human Horus became the type of sacrifice instead of the calf or lamb. When the
Australian
natives
sacrificed their little bear, not a bone of it was ever broken; when the
Iroquois sacrificed the white
dog, not a
bone was broken. This was a common [Page 878] custom, on account of the
resurrection, as
conceived by
the primitive races, and the same is applied to Osiris. Every bone of the
skeleton was to
remain intact
as a basis for the future building. After the murder and mutilation of Osiris
in Sekhem, the
judgment is
executed on the conspirators in the mystery of ploughing the earth on the night
of fertilizing
the soil with
the blood of the betrayer Sut and his associates. This is done before the great
divine chiefs
in Tattu! In
the Gospels (Matt. XXVII. 6) the chief priests take the place of the divine
chiefs in the mystery
of ploughing
the earth and fertilizing or manuring it with the blood of the wicked: they buy
the potter’s
field, and
this was called Aceldama, the field of blood. The field of blood here bought
with the price paid
for the
betrayal takes the place of the field that is fertilized with blood in the
Ritual. In the Acts it is Judas
himself, not
the “chief priests”, who “purchased a field with the reward of his iniquity”.
According to this
version,
Judas fertilizes or manures the field with his own blood, as does the betrayer
Sut, on the night of
fertilizing
the field in Tattu. When, in his resurrection, Jesus reappeared to the
disciples, they thought it an
apparition.
This it should have been if the life had been human, the death actual, the
story true. In the
Egyptian,
however, the day of reappearance is termed the “day of apparition” ; but
reappearing=apparition
is not necessarily manifesting as the human ghost. The Christ as Horus was not
a human ghost
reappearing on the earth; and Horus the pure spirit, the typical divine son of
god, the
reappearing
one, might have denied being a phantom or a ghost, for he would not be
manifesting to men,
but to other
characters in the religious drama. This being denied on behalf of the divinity,
the carnalizers
then had
recourse to their human physics to illustrate the denial by making the risen
Christ corporeal. In
John’s
account, which is always the nearest to the Egyptian original, there is no
denial of the ghost
theory, no
declaration that the risen one is not a spirit but a veritable human body of
flesh and bone. He
merely
“showed unto them his hands and side”, as Horus might have shown his wounds,
and no doubt
did show them,
in the mysteries — the wounds that were inflicted by Sut. In fact, when Sut has
wounded
Horus in the
eye, he shows the wound to Ra, his father (Rit., ch. 112).
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When Horus,
or the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, rises in the sepulchre on coming forth to day it
is in the semi-
corporeal
form of the Karest-mummy that is not yet become pure spirit and therefore has
not yet
ascended to
his father in the hawk-headed likeness of Ra. This figure can be studied in the
tomb as that
of Amsu. The
scene of the resurrection is in Amenta, the earth of eternity, the earth of the
manes, not on
the earth of
mortals. It is here the risen Horus breathes the breath of his new life into
the sleeping dead to
raise them
from their coffins, sepulchres and cells. When the Egyptian Christ, or Karest,
rose up from the
tomb as
Amsu-Horus it was in a likeness of the buried mummy, as regards the shape, with
one arm
loosened from
the swathes or bandages. But this resurrection was not corporeal on earth.
Osiris had
been
transformed into Horus, and although the mummy-shape was still retained, the
texture had been
transubstantiated;
the corpus was transfigured into the glorious body of the Sahu or divine mummy.
The
mystery of
transubstantiation [Page 879] was not understood by the writers of the Gospels,
who did not
know whether
Jesus reappeared in the body or in spirit, as a man or as a god. They carried
off all they
could, but
were not in possession of the secret wisdom which survived amongst the
Egypto-gnostics.
They wrote as
carnalizers of the Christ. It follows that the risen Jesus of the canonical
Gospels is not a
reality in
either world; neither in the sphere of time, nor as divine Horus transfigured
into spirit. “Tis but a
misappropriated
type; the spurious spectre of an impossible Christ; a picture of nobody. The
Christian
history fails
in rendering Horus as an apparition of Osiris. When Horus came from Sekhem he
had left the
earthly body
behind him in the sepulchre, and was greeted as pure spirit by the glorified
ones who
rejoiced to
see how he continued walking as the risen Horus, he who “steppeth onward
through eternity”
(Rit., ch.
42). Jesus in this character comes forth from the tomb in the same body that
was buried and still
is human,
flesh and bones and all. Thus, as a phantom, he is a counterfeit; a carnalized
ghost, upon the
resurrection
of which no real future for the human spirit ever could or ever will be
permanently based. A
corpse that
has not made the transformation from the human Horus into Horus the pure spirit
offers no
foundation
for belief in any known natural fact. Horus in his resurrection is described as
being once more
set in
motion. At this point he says, “I am not known, but I am one who knoweth thee.
I am not to be
grasped, but
I am one who graspeth thee. I am Horus, prince of eternity, a fire before your
faces, which
inflameth
your hearts towards me. I am master of my throne, and I pass onwards”. “The
path I have
opened is the
present time, and I have set myself free from all evil” (ch. 42, Renouf). But
when he is
transubstantialized,
it is said of the deceased in his resurrection: “The gods shall come in touch
with him,
for he shall
have become as one of them”. Now let us see how this was converted into
history. Jesus is
the prince of
eternity in opposition to Satan, Sut, or Judas, the prince of this world. In
his resurrection he
is supposed
to have opened the pathway from the tomb historically and for the first time
some 1800 or
1900 years
ago. When he rises from the dead he is unknown to the watchers, but he knows
them. Mary
knew not that
the risen form was Jesus. He is not to be grasped, saying, “Touch me not”, or
do not grasp
me, “for I am
not yet ascended unto my Father” (John XX. 14, 17). On the way to Emmaus Jesus
appears and
inflames the hearts of the disciples towards him, after calling them “slow of
heart”, and “they
said one to
another, Was not our heart burning within us?” (Luke XXIV. 13, 32). Horus had
opened a path
from the tomb
as the sun-god in the mythos, the divine son of God in the eschatology, and he
ascended
to his father
and took his seat upon the throne of which he had become the lord and master.
So Jesus
goes on his
way “unto the mountain”, where he had appointed to meet his followers (Matt.
XXVIII. 16).
The mountain
in the Ritual is the mount of rebirth in heaven, whether of the sun-god or of
the enduring
spirit.
The change
from bodily death to future life in spirit was acted as a transformation-scene
in the mysteries
of the
resurrection. The mummy-Osiris was an effigy of death. The Sahu-mummy [Page
880] Amsu-Horus
is an image
of the glorious body into which Osiris transubstantiated to go forth from
Sekhem as pure
spirit. It is
the mummy in this second stage that is of primary import. First of all the dead
body was
smeared over
with unguents and thus glorified. During the process of anointing it was said,
“O Asar (the
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Ancient
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deceased) the
thick oil which is poured upon thee furnishes thy mouth with life” (Budge, “The
Mummy”, p.
163). It is
also said that the anointing is done to give sight to the eyes, hearing to the
ears, sense of smell
to the
nostrils and utterance to the mouth. To embalm the body thus was to karas it
and the embalmment
was a mode of
making the typical Christ as the Anointed. Thus the mortal Horus was invested
with the
glory of the
only God-begotten Son. Now this making of the Krst, or mummy-Christ, after the
Egyptian
fashion is
apparent in the Gospels. When the woman brings the alabaster cruse of precious
ointment to
the house of
Simon and pours it on the head of Jesus he says, “In that she poured this
ointment upon my
body, she did
it to prepare me for my burial” (Matt. XXVI. 12). She was making the Christ as
the
anointed-mummy
previous to interment. After the description of the crucifixion it is said that
Nicodemus
came and brought
a “mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound” and “they took the body
of
Jesus and
bound it in linen cloths with the spices as the custom of the Jews is to bury”
(John XIX. 39,
40). This
again denotes the making of the Karest-mummy=the Christ. Moreover, it is the
dead mummy in
one version
and it is the living body in the other which is anointed, just as Horus was
anointed with the
exceedingly
precious Antu ointment, or oil, that was poured upon his head and face to
represent his
glory.
The two
Mertae-sisters are the watchers over the dead Osiris. They are also the
mourners who weep
over him when
he is anointed and prepared for his burial. It is said of Osiris that he was
triumphant over
his
adversaries on the night when Isis lay watching in tears over her brother
Osiris (ch. 18). But the
Mertae-sisters
both watch and both weep over the dead body. In the vignettes to the Ritual one
of the
two stands at
the head and one at the feet of the body on the bier. These two mourners,
weepers,
anointers, or
embalmers, appear in the Gospels as two different women. According to John it
was Mary
the sister of
Martha who anointed Jesus for his burial. And as these are the two divine
sisters in historic
guise we
ought to find one at the head of the victim and one at the feet, as, in fact,
we do so find them. In
the account
furnished by Luke it is said that the woman who stood behind at the feet of
Jesus weeping
“began to wet
his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head” (Luke VII.
38). No name
is given for
the woman who was “a sinner”, which seems to denote the other Mary called
Magdalene.
Matthew also
omits the name of the woman with an alabaster cruse or flask. In keeping with
the mythos
this other
one of the two Mertae-sisters should be Martha, but the point is that the woman
with the cruse
does not
anoint the feet of Jesus. She poured the ointment “upon his head as he sat at
meat” (Matt.
XXVI. 7).
Thus we see there are two different women who anoint Jesus, one at the head,
one at the feet,
even as the
two divine sisters of Osiris called the Mertae, or watchers, stand at the head
and feet of
Osiris, when
preparing him for his burial, or watching in [Page 881] tears, like Isis, the
prototype of the
woman who
never ceased to kiss the feet of Jesus since the time when he had come into the
house
(Luke VII.
45-6). We have identified the other sister Nephthys, the mistress of the house,
with the
housekeeper
Martha, and as Nephthys also carries the bowl or vase upon her head, this may
account for
the vessel of
alabaster that was carried by the “woman” who poured the ointment on the head
of Jesus,
whereas Mary
the sister of Martha poured it on his feet. Martha is one of the two Mertae by
name. In the
Egyptian
mythos the two Mertae are Isis, the dear lover of Horus the Lord, bowed at his
feet, and
Nephthys
mourning at his head (Naville, Todtenbuch, v. 1, kap. 17, A. g. and B. b.).
The
Karast-mummy was the body of the dead in Osiris who were prepared by human
hands to meet their
Lord in
spirit when wrapt in the seamless vesture of a thousand folds, which was
typically the robe of
immortality,
when they were baptized and purified and anointed with the unction of Horus
taken from the
tree of life.
The process of preparing, embalming and Christifying the mummy obviously
survives in the
Chrisome or
krisum of the Roman Catholic Church. The chrisome itself is properly a white
cloth which the
“minister of
baptism places on the head of the newly-anointed child”.The chrisom as ointment
is made of
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Ancient
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oil and balm.
In the instructions for private baptism it is charged that the minister shall
put the white
vesture, commonly
called a chrisome, upon the child. The chrism-cloth is still the vesture of
immortality,
for if the
infant dies within a month after birth, the chrisome is its shroud and the
chrisom-child becomes
an image in
survival of the Karast-mummy in Amenta.
Let it be
assumed that to all appearance the resurrection in Amenta is corporeal. The
human Horus, or
the Osiris,
who had passed through death, and been laid out as the mummy in the Tuat, still
retains the
form of the
mummy that was made on earth. The difference is in Horus having risen to his
feet and freed
his right arm
from the burial bandages. Indeed, the dead were reincorporated in Amenta as the
Sahumummy.
The Egyptian
word Sahu signifies to incorporate, and in this physical-looking form they were
reincorporated
for the resurrection in the earth of eternity. Amsu had made a change in rising
to his feet,
but was not
yet the Horus glorified with the soul of Ra; therefore he has not yet ascended
to the father. To
the sense of
sight he is corporeal still, and has not transubstantiated into spirit. When he
does, the hawk
or Menat will
alight to abide upon him and he will assume the likeness of his father Ra, the
bird-headed
holy spirit.
It is the body-soul that rises in Amenta which has to suffer purgatorial
rebirth before it can
become “pure
spirit” as the Ritual of the resurrection has it, to attain eternal life. So
far as reincorporation
of the soul
in Sahu-shape could go, the resurrection is corporeal. Yet this was only a dramatic
mode of
representation
in the mystery of transubstantiation, which included several acts. It is in
this character of
Amsu-Horus
reincorporated as the Sahu-mummy issuing from the tomb that Jesus is described
by Luke:
“See my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself” (ch. XXIV. 39). In the absence of the gnosis
the
reincorporation
in Amenta led to the doctrine of a physical resurrection at the last day on
this earth. The
power of
resurrection was imparted by [Page 882] Ra, the father in spirit, to the
anointed and beloved son.
And Horus is
said to be the “bringer of the breaths” to his “followers” (Rit., chapters on
breathing 54, 55,
56, 57, 58,
59). Horus as he issues forth to day, in his resurrection, comes to give the
breath of life to the
manes in
Amenta, saying, “I give the breezes to the faithful dead amid those who eat
bread”. This
chapter of
the Ritual follows the decease of Horus, which is equivalent to the crucifixion
of Jesus. In this
the speaker
says, “I have come to an end on behalf of the Lord of heaven. I am written down
sound of
heart, and I
rest at the table of my father Osiris” (ch. 70). It is also said in the Rubric,
“if this scripture is
known upon
earth he (the Osiris) will come forth to day; he will have power to walk on the
earth amid the
living”.
Jesus in the Gospel has “come to an end for the Lord of heaven”. He likewise
manifests on earth
“amid the
living”. He gives “the breezes to the faithful dead” when he breathes on them,
saying, “Receive
ye of the holy
spirit”.
It is “the
women” in the Gospels who announce the resurrection and proclaim that Jesus has
left the
tomb.
According to Matthew “the woman” are “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary”, who
“ran to bring
the disciples
word” (XXVIII. 1, 8). According to Mark (XVI. 1) the women were Mary Magdalene
and Mary
(the mother)
of James, and Salome, who discovered that Jesus had arisen but were afraid to
make it
known. Here
it is Mary Magdalene, who proclaims the resurrection. It is Mary Magdalene in
John (XX. 1,
2) who first
announces that the Lord has arisen. Luke XXIV. 10 has it that “Mary Magdalene
and Joanna,
and Mary
(mother) of James and other women” first found the sepulchre empty and “told
these things
unto the
apostles”. These conflicting accounts agree in the one essential point, that it
was the woman or
the women who
proclaimed the resurrection, and this is as it should be according to the data
in the
Ritual. When
the deceased comes forth from the tomb and reaches the horizon of the
resurrection he
exclaims, “I
rise as a god amongst men. The goddesses and the women proclaim me when they
see
me!” It is
the goddesses and the women who see the risen Horus first and proclaim him to
the others.
Usually the
women and the female deities are identical as the two divine sisters who are
represented in
the Gospels
by the two Marys, but in some of the scenes there are other women in attendance
as well as
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Ancient
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the two
sisters-Mertae. Now, as the two Marys are originally goddesses we have the same
group of
goddesses and
“the women” (in Luke XXIV. 10) as in the Ritual (79, 11) and both agree in
proclaiming
the
resurrection and hailing the risen Lord with jubilation. This chapter contains
all the data necessary to
construct the
story of the “historic... resurrection in which the Christ arises as a god
amongst men, and
is proclaimed
by the women. The allusions in the Ritual are very brief. The style of the writing
is
economical as
that of the lapidary. The Egyptians neither used nor tolerated many words;
verbosity was
prohibited by
one of their commandments. But these allusions refer to a drama that was
represented in
the
mysteries, the characters and scenes of which were all as well known as are
those in the Christian
Gospels when
the play is performed at Ammergau. And this statement, made at the moment of
his
resurrection
—“ I rise as a god [Page 883] amongst men. The goddesses and the women proclaim
me
when they see
me” — contained a germ that was pregnant with a whole chapter of the future
Gospel
“history”.
In the Gospel
according to John there is but one woman weeping at the tomb. This was Mary
Magdalene,
who corresponds to the first great mother Apt, she who bore the seven sons that
preceded
the solar
Horus of the pre-Osirian cult. She, like Anup, lived on in the burial-place
with those that waited
for the
resurrection. She is called Apt, the “mistress of divine protections”. Apt is portrayed
as kindler of
the light for
the deceased in the dark of death (ch. 137, Vig. Papyrus of Nebseni). Thus the
old bringer to
rebirth is
the kindler of a light in the sepulchre. Mary Magdalene who takes her place
comes to the tomb,
“early, while
it was yet dark”, and finds the stone moved away and light enough to see by
kindled in the
tomb. Isis
also was a form of the great mother alone. She is mentioned singly as watching
in tears over
her brother
Osiris by night in Rekhet (Rit., ch. 18). So Mary Magdalene is described as
“standing without
at the tomb
weeping” alone as the one woman. But, according to Matthew, there were two
women at the
tomb. “Mary
Magdalene was there and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre (ch.
XXVII. 61).
And in the
Osirian representation Isis and Nephthys are the two women called the “two
mourners who
weep and wail
over Osiris in Rekhet” (ch. 1). Isis and Nephthys, the two divine sisters, are
the two
women at the
sepulchre of Osiris. They are portrayed, one at the head the other at the feet
of the
mummy. They
sing the song of the resurrection as a magical means of raising their dear one
from the
dead. A form
of this is to be found in the evocations addressed to the dead Osiris by the
two sisters, who
say: “Thy two
sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed, calling thee in weeping,
thou who art
prostrate on
thy funeral bed” (Records of the Past, vol. 2, pp. 121-126). Horus rises in his
Ithyphallic form
with the sign
of virility erect; the member that was restored by Isis when the body had been
torn in pieces
by Sut. This
may account for the Phallus found in the Roman Catacombs as a figure of the
resurrection,
which, if the
Gospel story had been true, would denote the phallus of an historic Jew,
instead of the
typical
member of Horus whose word was thus manifested with pubescent power in the
person of the
risen Amsu.
In the
Osirian legend there are three women, or goddesses, who especially attend upon
Osiris to prepare
him for his
burial. These are the great mother, Neith, and the two divine sisters, Isis and
Nephthys. It was
related in
the ancient version that Neith arrayed the mummy in his grave-clothes for the
funerary
chamber
called “the good house”, the house in which the dead were embalmed and swathed
in pure
white linen.
This is described in the Book of the Dead (ch. 172) when it is said to the
Osiris N, “Thou
receivest a
bandage of the finest linen from the hands of the attendant of Ra”. The raiment
put on Osiris
by Neith was
said to be woven by the two watchers in the tomb. In the preparation of Osiris
for his burial,
the ointment
or unguents were compounded and applied by Neith. It was these that were to
preserve the
mummy from
decay and [Page 884] dissolution. These three may be compared with the three
Marys in the
Gospels,
thus: Neith, the great mother=Mary Magdalene, the great mother; Isis=Mary;
Nephthys=Martha.
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Ancient
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There was
also a group of seven ministrants in attendance at the birth of Horus or
rebirth of Osiris.
These, in the
astronomical mythology, were constellated in the female hippopotamus — our
Great Bear
— as those
who ministered “of their substance” to the young “bull of the seven cows”
(Rit., ch. 141-3),
which were
seven forms of the great mother, seven Fates or Hathors in the birthplace, from
the time
when this was
in the year of the Great Bear, with the seven in attendance on the child. In
the legend
related by
Luke, the whole of the seven women who ministered of their substance to Jesus
(or the
sacrificial
victim), appear to have been grouped together with the dead body in the
sepulchre. “Now they
were Mary
Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with
them”
(Luke XXIV.
10). These are called “the women which had come with them out of Galilee”. They
are also
termed
“certain women of our company” (ch. XXIV. 22). The number is not specified;
this being one of
those
sundries that were safest if left vague. Thus we find the foremost Great Mother
at the tomb; the two
divine
sisters; the three women with Neith included, and as we suggest, the company of
ministrants, who
were the
seven mothers, seven Hathors, seven Meri, or seven women in three different
versions of the
historic
resurrection.
In the
version given by Matthew there is but one divine visitant at the tomb, in
addition to the two women
here called
the two Marys. As the Sabbath day began to dawn “came Mary Magdalene and the
other
Mary to see
the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the
Lord descended
from heaven
and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. His appearance was as
lightning, and
his raiment
was as white as snow” (Matt. XXVIII. 2, 3). The angel that rolls the stone away
from the tomb
in the Gospel
for the buried Christ to rise corresponds to the god Shu in the Ritual, who is
described as
uplifting the
heaven when the god Atum or Horus comes forth from the sarcophagus and passes
through
the gate of
the rock to approach the land of spirits. It is said the gate of Tser is where
Shu stands when
he lifts up
the heaven (Rit., 17, 56-7). The Tser was the rock of the horizon in which the
dead body of
Osiris was
laid for its repose when it was buried in Annu. Shu is not only the uplifter of
heaven or raiser of
the
gravestone, he is also the opener of the sepulchre as the bringer of breath to
the newly awakened
soul.
The Egyptian
knew well enough that his body would remain where it was left when buried. For
that it had
been
mummified. His difficulty was concerning his soul, and how to get this freed
from its surroundings in
the speediest
fashion and the most enduring form. The Ritual speaks of the “shade”, the
“soul” and
“spirit” as
being in the tomb with the mummy-Osiris who rises from stage to stage according
to the
evolution of
his spirit from the bonds of matter. Chief of these are the body-soul and
spirit-Ka. The
deceased,
when in the tomb, is thus addressed, “Let the way be opened to thy Ka and to
thy Soul, O
glorified
one; thou shalt not be imprisoned by [Page 885] those who have the custody of
souls and spirits
and who shut
up the shades of the dead” (Rit., ch. 92). Thus the body-soul and Ka made their
appearance in
the tomb previously to being blended in the manifesting soul, called the double
of the
dead which
constituted the risen Horus, and which was the only one of the seven souls that
bore the
human
lineaments (Rit., ch. 178. The god who rises again is described in the Egyptian
litany of Ra (58)
as “he who
raises his soul and conceals his body”. His name is that of Herba, he who
raises the soul.
The body
being hidden as Osiris, the soul was raised as Horus. Hence, as it is said, the
mummy of Osiris
was not found
in the sepulchre. In one sense the body vanished by transubstantiation into
spirit. The
night of the
evening meal on which the body was eaten sacramentally is called “the night of
hiding him
who is
supreme of attributes” (Rit., ch. 18). The body was eaten typically as a mode
of converting matter
into spirit;
this was the motive of the eucharist from the beginning when the mother was the
victim eaten.
In one of the
texts cited by Birch concerning the burial of the god Osiris at Abydos, it is
said the
sepulchral
chamber was searched but the body was not found. The “Shade, it was found”
(Proceedings
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Ancient
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Bib. Archy.,
Dec. 2, 1884, p. 45). The shade was a primitive type of the soul; it is the
shadow of an earthly
body
projected as it were into Amenta, and was portrayed in some of the vignettes
lying black upon the
ground of
that earth, like the shadow of the human body on this earth. In Marcion’s
account of the
resurrection
there is no body to be found in the tomb; only the phantom, or the shade, was
visible there.
So in the
Johannine version (ch. XX. 17) the buried body of Jesus is missing; the Shade
is present in the
tomb; but
this is of a texture that must not be touched. Like Amsu it neither represents
the dead corpus
nor the
spirit perfected. It is quite possible that we get a glimpse of the “Ka” as
that personage in the
sepulchre
described by Mark, who relates that when the women entered the tomb they “saw a
young
man sitting
on the right side, arrayed in a white robe and they were amazed” (ch. XVI. 5).
According to
the gnosis,
the Ka had here taken the place of the missing mummy which had risen, or as the
Egyptians
said, Osiris
had made his transformation into Amsu-Horus. According to Luke, when the women
came to
the tomb with
their spices and ointments they “found not the body of the Lord Jesus”. But,
“behold, two
men stood by
them in dazzling apparel”, who said to them “why seek ye the Living (One) among
the
dead?” (Luke
XXIV. 5). These, in the Johannine Gospel, are “two angels in white, sitting one
at the head
and one at
the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain” (John XX. 12). Now, if the “young
man”
represented
the Ka-image in the human form we may suppose the “two men” to have been the
soul and
spirit called
the Ka and the soul of the glorified, that were portrayed in the Egyptian
sepulchre and which
are to be
read of in the Ritual. One of the numerous Egypto-gnostic scriptures which at
one time were
extant has
lately been discovered in the fragment of a gospel assigned to Peter. This from
the orthodox
point of view
is considered to be “docetic” — which is another name for non-historical. From
this we learn
that in the
[Page 886] resurrection “the heavens opened and two men descended thence with
great
radiance”
“and both the young men entered” the tomb. Two men entered and three figures
issued forth.
“They behold
three men coming out of the tomb, and two of them were supporting a third, and
a cross
was following
them; and the heads of the two men reached to the heaven, but the head of him
who was
being led
along by them was higher than the heavens”. And they heard a voice from heaven
which said,
“Hast thou
preached to them that are asleep?” And a response of “Yea” was heard from the
cross. This
has no
parallel in the canonical Gospels, but, as Egyptian, it is the scene of Atum
(Ptah or Osiris) rising
again in or
with the two sons Hu and Sau. Also, in the pre-Osirian mythos, Hu and Sau, the
two sons of
Atum-Ra,
support their father when he issues from the tomb and makes his exit from
Amenta. These are
two young men
who are in the retinue of Ra, and who accompany their father in his
resurrection daily
(Rit., ch.
17).
To a
spiritualist the doctrines of the fleshly faith are ghastly in their grossness.
The foundation of the
creed was
laid in a physical resurrection of the body; and the flesh and blood of that body
were to be
eaten in the
eucharistic rite as a physical mode of incorporating the divine. It is true the
doctrine of
transubstantiation
was added to gild the dead body for eating. But the historical rendering of the
matter
necessitated
the substitution of the physical for the spiritual interpretation. The founders
only carried off
the
carnalized Horus, the Karast-mummy, for their Christ. They raised him from the
grave corporeally;
whereas the
Egyptians left that type of Osiris in matter, that image of Horus on earth in
the tomb. Horus
did rise
again, but not in matter. He spiritualized to become the superhuman or divine
Horus. The
Egyptians did
not exhume the fleshly body, living nor dead, to eat it with the expectation of
assimilating
Horus to
themselves or becoming Horus by assimilating the blood and body of his physical
substance.
This was what
was done by the Christian Sarkolatrae. Hooker asks: “Doth any man doubt that
even from
the flesh of
Christ (eaten sacramentally) our very bodies do receive that life which shall
make them
glorious at
the latter day?” This was an inevitable result of making the Christ historical,
and of continuing
the
carnalized Horus in a region beyond the tomb by means of a physical
resurrection of the dead. The
Christians
having carried off the Corpus Christi, which the Egyptians transubstantiated in
the sepulchre,
have never
since known what to do with it. But as the Christ rose again in the material
body and
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Ancient
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ascended with
it into heaven, leaving no mummy in the tomb, they can but nurse the delusive
hope that a
physical
saviour may redeem the physical corpse, so that those who believe may be raised
by him at the
last day and
follow him bodily into paradise. In this way the foundations of the faith were
corporeally laid.
Also in this
way the pre-extant “types” of the Christ are supposed to have been realized:
the foreshadows
substantialized,
and Horus the Lord who had been the anointed Christ, the immortal Son of
God in the
Egyptian religion for at least ten thousand years, was at last converted into a
Judean peasant
as [Page 887]
the unique personage of the Gospels, and the veritable saviour of the world.
It is not
alleged in the Gospel history that the victim was torn piecemeal as well as
crucified. And yet the
bread which
represents his body in the eucharistic meal is religiously torn to pieces in
commemoration of
the event
that does not occur in the Gospels; a performance that is suggestive of those
poor Norway rats
which lose
their lives in trying to cross the waters where there was a passage once by
land. Jesus is not
torn in
pieces, but Osiris was. When Sut did battle with Un-Nefer, the Good Being, he
tore the body into
fragments,
and that is the sacrifice still commemorated in the Christian eucharist. Under
one of his many
titles in the
Ritual Osiris is “the Lord of resurrections”. But this does not merely denote
the periodicity of
the resurrection.
There were several resurrections of the god in matter and in spirit. Osiris
rose again to
life in the
returning waters of the Nile. He rose again in the renewal of vegetation
represented by Horus
the branch of
endless years; and as the papyrus shoot. He rose again upon the third day, in
the moon; or
as the sun,
the supreme soul of life in physical nature. These were followed in the
eschatology by the
god who rose
again from Amenta as Horus in spirit; as the Bennu-Osiris, or as Ra the holy
spirit. Jesus is
likewise
portrayed as the Lord of resurrections. He is said to have risen on the third
day; also on the
fourth day,
after being three nights in the earth; also after forty days, when he ascended
into heaven from
the mount;
and when he rose up from the dead with power to pass where doors were shut, and
to impart
the Holy
Spirit (John XX. 19) to his followers, the same as Horus in the Ritual (ch. 1).
The first act of
Horus in his
resurrection is to free his right arm from the bandage of the mummy. The next
is to cast
aside the
seamless swathe in which the body had been wrapped for burial. Now, after so
much of the
mythos has
been established in place of the “history”, it will not be so very incredible
if we suggest a
mythical and
recognizably Kamite origin for an episode in the Gospel according to Mark which
has no
record
elsewhere. When Jesus is arrested in the garden or enclosure of Gethsemane
preparatory to his
death and
resurrection it is said that: “A certain young man followed him having a linen
cloth cast about
him over his
naked body; and they laid hold on him; but he left the linen cloth and fled
naked” (Mark XIV.
51). Such a
statement standing alone, purposeless and unexplained, is perfectly maniacal as
history;
clearly it is
a fragment of something that is otherwise out of sight. The Greek word sindon
represents the
Egyptian
shenti, a linen garment which is derived from shena, a name for the flax from
which the fine
linen of the
mummy was made. The shenti is a linen tunic. The mummy-swathe was also made
from
shena, and
this was the garment woven without a seam. Therefore we infer that the “young
man” was a
form of the
manes risen with the bandages about him, and that when he “left the linen-cloth
and fled
naked” he had
made his transformation into spirit like any other of the mummies.
So soon as
the risen Lord had ascended into heaven from the summit of Mount Olivet, after
the space of
forty days,
the disciples [Page 888] are described as meeting in the “upper chamber” with
Mary, the
mother of
Jesus, and his brethren who were gathered together for the purpose of prayer
(Acts I. 13, 14).
Now, “the
upper chamber” was the cubiculum attached to the sepulchre, both in Rome and
Egypt, for the
meeting of
the bereaved relatives and the solemnizing of the mourning for the dead. One of
the
inscriptions
in the catacombs calls it “the upper chamber to celebrate the memory of the
dead”
(“Cubiculum
superius ad confrequentandum memoriam quiescentium”. De Rossi, Roma Sotteranea,
3,
474.) There
were two funerary chambers in the Egyptian sepulchre; one was for the mummy and
one for
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Ancient
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the Ka. Also
the Ka-chamber was without a door, it being held that the risen spirit could
pass through
matter
without a doorway. This is repeated in the Gospel according to John. When Jesus
came into the
room, “the
doors being shut”, and stood in the midst of the disciples, it was in the character
of the Ka or
double of the
dead endowed with power to rise again, to pass through matter, and reappear to
the living.
The same dual
figure is to be found in the pre-Christian catacombs with the subterranean
sepulchre for
the mummy or
corpse beneath, and the chamber above which was known as the cubiculum or
cubiculum
memoriae. It
was the pre-Christian custom for the relatives and friends of the deceased to
meet together
in this upper
chamber at the funeral feast, or eucharistic meal, for the purpose of
celebrating the
resurrection
from the dead, and of making their offerings and oblations to the ancestral
spirits in the
mortuary
sacrament.
The last
scene in the personal “history” coincides with the ascent of Atum-Horus from
Amenta, and the
soul
ascending into paradise, called the Aarru-fields. Jesus, in his final
disappearance from the earth,
ascends the
typical mount, called Olivet, at the end of forty days. “And when he had said
these things as
they were
looking, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And
while they were
looking
steadfastly into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white
apparel which also
said, Ye men
of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven?” (Acts I. 9-11). The ascent of
Jesus from the
mount into
the clouds of heaven can be traced twice over, in the two different categories,
mythical and
eschatological.
It was made “from the mount called Olivet”. This, we repeat, was Mount Bakhu,
the
mount of the
olive-tree of dawn. The ascent at the tree was made each day, and also yearly
in the annual
round, by the
god in his resurrection from Amenta. Thus the sun-god in the mythos makes his
ascent by
the Mount of
Olives, or the olive-tree of dawn, when “approaching to the land of spirits in
heaven” (Rit.,
ch. 17). In
this character Nefer-Tum the young sun-god is the Egyptian Jesus risen from the
northern
door of the
tomb, or the northern gate of the Tuat. In the phase of eschatology it is the
risen soul upon its
upward
journey to the circumpolar paradise “north of the olive-tree” where the eternal
city was eventually
attained. The
olive (Bakhu) also figures in the eschatology as well as in the astronomical
mythology. “He
who dwelleth
in the olive-tree” is a name of Horus in the burial-place; and in his
resurrection the Osiris
says, when
coming forth from the [Page 889] judgment-hall, “I pass on to a place that is
north of the olive-
tree”. Or it
might be the fig-tree at the meeting-place of Jesus with Nathanael. It was no
earthly mount on
which the
typical teacher gave instruction to the four called fishermen or to the twelve
as reapers of the
harvest. It
was the mountain of Amenta and the double earth that we have traced all through
the Ritual
called the mount
of resurrection and of glory. This, in the mythos, was the mount of the green
olive-tree of
the Egyptian
dawn and a figure of the ascent to heaven in the eschatology. Up this mount the
risen
manes
attained the circle of the divine powers attached to Osiris (Rit., ch. 1 in the
older MSS.). And up
this mount
the solar god, as Atum-Horus, makes his ascent to heaven, termed the land of
spirits; that is,
from the
Mount of Olives, the track which is here followed by the canonical Jesus (Rit.,
ch. 17). Moreover,
in his coming
forth to day and making the ascent to heaven, Atum was attended by his two
sons, Hu and
Sau, who are
said to accompany their father daily. The copy, in this instance, is so close
to the original
that it may
be possible to identify the “two men in white apparel” who say to the
disciples, “Ye men of
Galilee, why
stand ye gazing into heaven?” (Acts I. 10, 11). Those two men in white apparel
correspond
to Hu and Sau
in the Ritual (ch. 17, 60-64) who accompany the sun-god in his resurrection
from the
place of
burial in Amenta. In the vague phase, Jesus disappears into a cloud and passes
out of sight. In
the Ritual of
the resurrection the departed spirit is received with greetings by the lords of
eternity, who
open their arms
to embrace and bid him welcome to the table of his father at the festival that
is to be
eternal in
the heavens.
THE
RESURRECTION FROM AMENTA, OR COMING FORTH TODAY
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Ancient
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In Annu
shines the ray
Of
resurrection on the judgment-day.
The dark
Amenta quakes
As with
diviner dawn Osiris wakes
And with his
key[The Ankh-key of life.] hath risen
To free the
arm of Amsu from its prison.
Out of our
mortal night
He suddenly
flashed and fleshed his lance of light.
Jaw-broken
lies the black
Grim Boar,
mouth open, with its fangs turned back.
Egypt the
living Word
Of the
eternal truth once more is heard;
Nor shall her
reign be o’er
While language
lasts till time shall be no more.
THE SAYINGS
OF JESUS
[Page 890] Of
late years certain Sayings of Jesus or I., as the name is abbreviated, written
in Greek on
the leaf of a
papyrus-book, have been discovered in the rubbish-heaps of Oxyrhynchus. These
were at
once assumed
to be the sayings of Jesus, an historic Jew. The present object is to prove
that all such
Logia were
the sayings of him who is here set forth as the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, who had
many types
and names but
no individual form of historic personality.
The Book of
the Dead, or Ritual of the resurrection, chiefly represents the mysteries of
Amenta in the
Osirian phase
of the religious drama. But there is an older stratum than that of the Osirian
eschatology.
The Sayer of
the Kamite Logia Kuriaka is identifiable in at least three different Egyptian
religions; in one
as the
Osirian Horus who predominates by name in the Ritual; in another as Iu, the Sa
or son of Iusăas
and Atum-Ra;
and a third as Iu-em-hetep, the son of Ptah. Two of these titles of the typical
Egyptian
“sayer” are
cited in the “Festal dirge” when it is said, “I have heard the words of
Iu-em-hetep and
Hartatef. It
is said in their sayings”, some of which sayings are then quoted. These two
answer to the
Horus and
Jesus of the Egypto-gnostics, which are two names of the same original
character that was
Egyptian from
the root. The so-called “Christian eschatology” may be said to have had its
origin in the
mysteries of
Ptah at Memphis. So far as known, it was there the doctrine of immortality was
first taught;
there that
the Son of God was figured in the act of issuing from the mortal mummy as a
living spirit. It
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Ancient
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was likewise
there the teacher of the religious mysteries was first impersonated as the
sayer, Iu-emhetep,
who, as Iu
the coming Su, was the son of Ptah.
Iu as a form
of Tum, proclaims himself to be the Sayer in the Ritual (ch. 82). He says: “I
have come forth
with the
tongue of Ptah and the throat of Hathor that I may record the words of my
father, Tum, with my
mouth which
draweth to itself the spouse of Seb”. That is the mother on earth who was Isis
in the Osirian
mythos, and
Hathor-Ius..as in the cult of Tum or Atum-Ra. The speaker here is Horus as Iu
the coming
Su, or son,
who in Egyptian is Iu-su, or Iusa, the child of Ius..as, the consort of
Atum-Ra. This sayer as
Iu, the Su or
son in one character, is Tum himself as father in the other. As Ra the father
he is the author
of the
sayings; as Iu the son (Iusu) he is the utterer of the sayings “with his mouth”
or in person on the
earth as the
heir of Seb. To the Egyptians “the words of Tum” were the teachings of an
everlasting gospel
of truth,
law, justice and right, “not to be altered is that which Tum hath uttered”
(Rit., ch. 78) by the mouth
of the sayer,
Iu-em-hetep, or by the pen of the writer, Taht-Aan. Thus we can identify Tum or
Atum-Ra as
the author of
the sayings which are to be spoken on earth by God the Son. Tum was the earlier
name of
Atum-Ra, when
the character was that of child-Horus, or the infant Tum, and the sayings
together with
the sayer
were pre-Osirian. In other words the “sayer” is Iu-em-hetep, the prince of peace
in the [Page
891] cult of
Annu, whom we trace back to the time of Ptah as the Egyptian Jesus. Hence this
82nd
chapter is
the one by which the manes is said to “assume the form of Ptah” in the course
of becoming a
pure and
perfect spirit.
Upon this
line of descent, distinguished from the Osirian, Ptah represented the
grandfather of the gods;
Atum the
father, and Iu the Su, the ever-coming son of Atum at Annu. It was Ptah, the
opener of the
nether-earth,
who made the resurrection of the manes possible that was acted in the mysteries
of
Amenta. And
Iu the Su came to say what he had seen and had to tell as witness for the
father (Rit., ch.
86), that is,
as the “sayer” to whom the sayings were attributed. Hence the speaker tells us
that he comes
with “the
tongue of Ptah” “and the throat of Hathor” to record the words of his father
Tum with his own
mouth, or as
the sayer who was reborn at Annu as Iusu, or Iusa of Hathor-Ius..as, she who
was great
with Iusa,
the son of Atum-Ra, and grandson of Ptah.
The “sayings”
may be divided and differentiated in two categories corresponding to the two
characters of
the
double-Horus, the child of twelve years, and Horus the adult of thirty years;
Horus the afflicted one
who suffered
and died and was buried, and Horus who rose again as the demonstrator of
eternal life in
his
resurrection from the dead. At first child-Horus was the word-made-flesh as
Logos of the mother. This
was
Hathor-Ius..as in relation to Atum-Ra (Rit., ch. 82). Next he was the
word-made-truth as sayer for
the father
and teacher of the greater mysteries. Thus there are two classes of the sayings
— those of the
childhood and
those of the adultship; those that pertain to the earth of Seb and those that
are uttered in
Amenta the
earth of eternity. It is said in the Ritual that the words of Taht are “written
in the two earths”,
the earth of
Seb or time, and the earth of eternity or Amenta (Renouf and Naville, ch. 183).
So the
sayings were
uttered by Horus, Tum, Iu, or Jesus, in the double earth of time, and of
eternity. It is also
said of
certain sayings in “Pistis Sophia” (or Books of the Saviour, 390, Mead), “Jesus
spake these words
unto his
disciples in the midst of Amenta”, whence they went forth three by three to the
four points of
heaven to
preach the gospel of the kingdom. This likewise was in the earth of eternity,
versus the earth of
time. But,
whether the god be represented as the heavenly father by Ptah at Memphis, by
Atum-Ra at
Annu, or by
Osiris at Abydos, the infant was Horus or Heru the lord by name, who was the
only lord as a
little child.
Iu, Iusu, Iusa, Tum, Aten, Sekari, Iu-em-hetep, are but titles of Horus the
lord of the Logia
Kuriaka who
became the “Sayer” as the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, Iu-Su, the ever-coming
Messianic son.
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Ancient
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Now, amongst
the gods of Egypt that were canonized as Christian saints the deity Tum has
been
converted
into the Apostle Thomas. The Gospel according to Thomas is also known to have
existed in
several
forms, some of which are yet extant in the Gospels of the Infancy, assumed to
be the childhood
of an
historic Christ. Hippolytus cites one of these as a Gospel of the Nasseni. He
says they hand down
an explicit
passage occurring in the Gospel inscribed “according to Thomas”, expressing
themselves
thus: “He who
seeks [Page 892] me (the higher soul) will find me in children from seven years
old; for there
concealed I
shall, in the fourteenth year (or aeon), be made manifest” (Refut. V. 7). This
passage
contains the
doctrine of the double-Horus, the Horus of the incarnation and Horus of the
resurrection, or
the
child-Horus and Horus the adult. The duality of Horus as the word made flesh
and the word made
truth is also
exemplified in the Gospel of Thomas by the boy whose every word at once became
a deed
(ch. 4).
In the
introductory word to the “New Sayings of Jesus”, found on the site of
Oxyrhynchus by Messrs.
Grenfell and
Hunt, it is said: “These are the (wonderful) words which Jesus the living
(Lord) spake to . . .
and Thomas,
and he said unto (them) everyone that hearkens to these words shall never taste
of death”
(p. 11). The
wonderful words, the words of power in the Ritual, are the words of Atum-Ra the
holy spirit.
The speaker
is Horus or Iu the living, he who rises from the grave and does not die a
second time, or
who is the
resurrection and the life, that was represented as the first fruit or type of
them that slept. He is
one of those
to whom Nut, the mother heaven, has given birth or rebirth (Rit., ch. 1), and
this power he
afterwards
confers on his four brethren or children that they likewise may raise up the
dead (Pyramid
Texts, Teta,
270). It is in this character he says, “I am the living soul” (Rit., ch. 5).
That is, as Horus the
lord of the
resurrection from the land of death. “I am he that cometh forth”. “I open all
the paths in heaven
and on earth”
(ch. 9). “That has been given to me which endureth amidst all overthrow” (ch.
10). Thus
Horus is the
demonstrator of a resurrection for the human soul in a mystery of Amenta. He
says, “I am he
who
establishes you for eternity”. “I am he who dieth not a second time” (ch. 42).
“I am he whose orbits
are of old;
my soul is divine, it is the eternal Force” (ch. 85). “It is I who proceed from
Tum” — the father
of a soul
that is immortal.
An original
Egyptian source for the Gospels of the Infancy is recognizable in the Ritual.
In his incarnation
Horus, or Iu
the Su, indicates that he “disrobes himself” to “reveal himself” when he
“presents himself to
the earth”
(ch. 71). In his birth he says, “I am the babe” born as the connecting link
betwixt earth and
heaven, and
as the one who does not die the second death (ch. 42). He issues from the disc
or from the
egg. He is
pursued by the Herrut-reptile, but, as he says, his egg remains unpierced by
the destroyer. He
escapes from
the slaughter of the innocents or the Hamemmat in Suten-Khen. On entering the
earth-life
Horus knows
it to be in accordance with his lot that he should suffer death or come to an
end and be no
more (Rit.,
ch. 8). He also knows that he is a living soul. As such he has that within
which surviveth all
overthrow;
even though he may be buried in the deep, dark grave, he will not be
annihilated there. He will
rise again
(ch. 10 and ch. 30A). But before quoting further what Horus says, we cite a few
more of the
Logoi which
tell us what Horus is. And what Horus is in the Osirian religion the same was
the Egyptian
Jesus in the
cult of Atum-Ra, and Iu-em-hetep still earlier in the mysteries of Memphis and
the cult of
Ptah.
Apart from
the Osirian dynasty of deities, the two chief divine [Page 893] personages in
the Ritual are
Atum-Ra and
Atum-Horus, as Huhi the eternal father, and Iu the ever-coming Messianic son,
who as the
Su is Iusu,
the Egyptian Jesus. Now Tum, or Atum-Ra the inspiring spirit, was the author of
the sayings in
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Ancient
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the Ritual
which he gave to Horus the Iu-su or coming son, as Sayer, for him to utter to
men and manes
in the two
characters of the infant Horus and Horus the adult. Tum as Egyptian, is the
earlier form of
Atum’s name;
and in the Greek inscriptions Tum (or Atum) is called Tomos. We also find that
the twin-
totality of
Tum is registered in the name of “Thomas called Didymus”; Thomas the twin being
equivalent
in name to
the character of the twofold Tum. From this we infer that the apocryphal Gospel
of the Infancy
assigned to
Thomas is, or was, based upon the Egyptian Gospel of Tum. This duality may also
explain
the
relationship of Jesus to Thomas in the “sayings” or Logoi, recently recovered
from the mounds of
Oxyrhynchus,
which are called “the sayings of Jesus”, who is described as the Lord, and the
living one.
Now Tum, in
the Ritual, is pre-eminently “the lord”. In one chapter (79) he is addressed as
“the lord of
heaven”, “the
lord of life”, “the lord of all creatures”, “the lord of all”. Thus the Ritual
contains “the sayings
of the lord”.
The Hebrew formula “thus saith the lord” had been anticipated in the Ritual by
the “so saith
Tum” whose
word is “not to be altered” (Ritual, ch. 78). As Egyptian, Tum is the one god
called “the
living”. And
the sayings are the words which Jesus “the living” is said to have spoken to
Thomas, the son
Iu here being
given the foremost position of the two. The sayings of the lord, in the Ritual,
then, are the
sayings
spoken by Tum the father to Iusa the son, who utters them to men on earth and
to the manes in
Amenta. It is
as Atum-Horus that the son says, “I am the bright one in glory whom Tum himself
brought
into being,
who hath made and glorified and honoured those who are to be with him”, as his
followers or
his children
(Rit., ch. 78). It is the same speaker who says, “I have come upon this earth
and I take
possession of
it with my two feet. I am Tum, and I come from my own place”. That is as Iusa the
manifesting
son. Thus the sayings of Horus Iu-em-hetep can be traced to Tum as Ra the
inspiring spirit
and to Horus
as the sayer in the Ritual.
“Tum” in
Egyptian was also a name for the mythical child as the inarticulate one, the
little Tum, who
survives in
various countries. For the child Tum passed out of Egypt into Europe to become
the Tom
Thumb and
little Thumbkin of our nursery tales. We also consider that this was the Tum
who passed into
India as the
“historic” Thomas and who is claimed by Christians to have been the Apostle of
that name.
The god Tum
is there identifiable in half-a-dozen features assigned to the Apostle or Saint
Thomas. For
one thing he
is the patron of builders and architects, and his symbol is the mason’s square.
He is reputed
to have built
a superb palace in heaven for the poor of earth. Tum survives by name as the
Thoma of the
Indian
Christians on a peninsula of the Indus this side of the gulf: also in Cochin
and beyond. The so-
called
Christians of India who are frequently supposed to have been the followers of
an historic Thomas
have their
own tradition which is [Page 894] both congruous and explicable. They say that
“a certain holy
man called
Mar-Thome, a Syrian, first came to them with a number of beasts from Syria and
Egypt”
(Calmet,
Thomas). That is with the hieroglyphic signs. Thome we take to be the Egyptian
god, Tum. The
Mar or Mer,
as the surname of the holy man, is an Egyptian title for a superintendent. The
“Mer-Tetu” was
the
superintendent of books, and also the royal mage in one person. Thus read
“Mar-Thome” was one of
the Egyptian
Magi or Rekhi as the superintendent of a college or body of priests who went to
India from
Syria as
missionaries and who promulgated the worship of Tum as God the Father, and Iusa
as the son
in the
religion of Annu.
This dual
character of Tum as the father and Iu the Su or son, equal to Jesus, will
enable us to identify
the
child-Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas and that Gospel itself as a form of the
Egyptian Gospel. This is
one of the
most ancient of the Gospels of the Infancy called Apocryphal, the origin and
true significance
of which are
hitherto unknown. These have been denounced as idle tales, foolish traditions:
pious frauds,
disguised heresy,
anti-evangelical representations and fables forged to supply an account of “Our
Lord’s
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History”, in
that infancy which the evangelists have perforce omitted. The representations,
however, are
anti-evangelical;
hence they are supposed to favour Docetism: in other words, they are
non-historical. As
already
demonstrated, the great god Tum was the father in one character, and Iu or
Horus in the other;
he is the
divine son who is Iu-em-hetep the Egyptian Jesus. Tum is Tomas or Thomas in
Greek, and the
Gospel of
Tomas in Greek is the Gospel of Tum as Egyptian. Also Tum the father and Iu the
son will
show why the
history of the infancy should be related of a mythical Jesus in the Gospel of
Tum or
Thomas, and
in relation to Thomas. Thus we can identify Tum as the author of the sayings
which are to
be spoken by
Iu-em-hetep, in the person of God the Son. Tum was the earlier name of Atum-Ra,
when
the character
was that of child-Horus, or the infant Tum, and the sayings together with the
sayer were
pre-Osirian.
In other words, the “sayer” is Iu-em-hetep, the prince of peace in the cult of
On, whom we
trace back to
the time of Ptah as the Egyptian Jesus. Hence this chapter is the one by which
the manes
is said to
“assume the form of Ptah” in the course of being spiritualized. In one of the
sayings ascribed to
Jesus he
says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest” (Matt. XI.
28). This had
then become “one of the sayings”. But the sayer himself had been personalized
or typified
in earlier
ages as Iu-em-hetep at Memphis, and again at On, and later still at Alexandria.
And Iu-emhetep
the bringer
of peace by name was the giver of rest by nature as the Egyptian Jesus; he who
settled
the matter of
immortality in his resurrection from the tomb. As we have already seen, a
tap-root of the
Jesus legend
in the eschatological phase can be traced in the Egyptian Ritual to the time
and to the cult
of Ptah at
Memphis (Rit., ch. 82). Ptah was the earliest form of an eternal father
manifesting in the
person of an
ever-coming son, who, as the coming one, was Iu, or Iu-em-hetep, he who comes
with
peace. Hence
we derive the name or title of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus from Iu-Su, or Iusa,
the coming
son. Indeed,
the question asked by the messengers of John in the Gospel, [Page 895] art thou
he that
should come,
or must we look for another? is equivalent to asking “art thou Iu-em-hetep, he
who comes
with peace as
manifestor for the father?”
It is also
said of Jesus that he had compassion on the people “because they were as sheep
without a
shepherd”.
And this has been looked upon as one of the foundational pillars of the history,
and proof
positive that
he was the original Good Shepherd. But Horus had long been extant as the good
shepherd
in the
mythos, the eschatology, and the iconography of Egypt. Again, it is said of
Jesus (Matt. VII. 29),
that he
taught the multitude as one having authority, and not as their scribes. So was
it with Horus, who
claims that
authority to teach had been divinely delegated to him as the beloved son of God
the Father.
Hence the
sayings, “I have come forth with the tongue of Ptah and the throat of Hathor
that I may record
the words of
my father Tum with my mouth” (Rit., ch. 82). “I am arrayed and equipped with
thy words of
power, O Ra”
(ch. 32). “I utter his words to the men of the present generation, and I repeat
his words to
him who is
deprived of breath” as the manes in Amenta (ch. 38).
It was the
work of Horus to exalt the father at all times and in every place. He is
exalted as Un-Nefer, the
good being
who is the one alone that is good, perfect and unique. The same mission is
assigned to the
Gospel-Jesus.
Hence the saying, “Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, even God
alone .. .
the Father alone” (Mark X. 18), who represents the same Good Being Un-Nefer as
did Osiris.
This duality
of the Deity as father and son is also manifest in the saying, “Whosoever shall
speak a word
against the
Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit it shall
not be
forgiven him” (Matt. XII. 32). That is said in exaltation of the father in
heaven who was the holy
spirit
represented by the son on earth or in Amenta. The Ritual likewise proves that
Seb, the god of earth
and
foster-father of Horus, when he was the child of the virgin mother only, is the
prototype or original of
Joseph. Horus
says that as the heir of Seb, from whom he issued, he was suckled at the breast
of Isis,
the spouse of
Seb, who gave him his theophanies (Rit., ch. 82). Horus on earth lies down to
embrace the
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old man who
keeps the light of earth, and who is Seb the earth-father (Rit., ch. 84). Horus
is lord of the
staircase or
mount of rebirth in heaven. In his first advent as the heir of Seb Horus says,
“I am come as a
mummied one”
(that is, in his embodiment when made flesh, the Hamemmat being the unmummied
ones) (Rit.,
ch. 9). “I come before you and make my appearance as that god in the form of a
man who
liveth as a
god” — otherwise stated, as Iusu the son of Atum-Ra (ch. 79). “I repeat the
acclamations at
my success on
being declared the heir of Seb” (Seb was the father on earth (ch. 82), Osiris
in Amenta,
Ra in
heaven). “I descend to the earth of Seb and put a stop to evil” as the bringer
of peace, plenty, and
good will on
earth. “I shine forth from the egg which is in the unseen world” (ch. 22). “Lo,
I bring this my
word of
power” from out the silence in which the gods originated. “I am arrayed and
equipped with thy
words of
power, O Ra” (ch. 24, 32). “I utter his words to the living and to those who
are deprived of
breath. I am
Horus, prince of eternity” (ch. 42). “I am yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow”
[Page 896] (ch.
64). “I am”
(or, am I not) “the bull of the sacrificial herd. Are not the mortuary gifts upon
me, and the
supernal
powers?” (ch. 105). “Witness of Eternity is my name, the persistent traveller
on the highways of
heaven. I am
the everlasting one, I am Horus, who steppeth onwards through eternity”. But
Horus in the
Ritual is
chiefly the son of God the Father in heaven, and the subject-matter is mainly
post-resurrectional.
After the
life with Seb on earth, Horus is reborn in the earth of eternity for the heaven
of eternity (78, 25).
He is
divinized with the flesh or substance of god (ch. 78). By means of Horus, his
manifestor, Osiris is
said to
re-live. Horus is Osiris in his rebirth. Horus rises as a god and is visible to
the gods (or divine
spirits) (79)
in his resurrection. Horus rises as the living soul of Ra in heaven (127). Horus
strikes the
wakers in
their cells or coffins for the resurrection of the manes in Amenta (ch. 84). “I
raise myself up, I
renew myself,
I grow young again” (ch. 43). “Not men or gods; or the glorified ones, or the
damned, can
inflict any
injury on me” (ch. 42). “I do not die a second time in the nether-world” (ch.
44). “I am the
victorious
one” (ch. 47). “I am seized (in possession) of the two earths” (ch. 50). “There
hath been
assigned to
me eternity without end. Lo, I am the heir of endless time and my attribute is
eternity” (ch.
62). “I, even
I, am he who knoweth the paths of heaven. Its breezes blow upon me. I advance
whithersoever
there lieth a wreck in the field of eternity, and I pilot myself towards the
darkness and the
sufferings of
the deceased ones of Osiris” (ch. 78), as the deliverer or saviour of souls
whose supreme
concern and
object is to be saved from the second death in Amenta by earning and attaining
the life of
the soul that
is eternal. “It is I, even I, who am Horus in glory. I am the lord of light and
I advance to the
goal of
heaven”. Jesus says, “I go unto him that sent me” (John VII. 33). “I know
whence I came and
whither I go”
(John VIII. 14). “I go to prepare a place for you”. ‘I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No one
cometh to the
Father but through me” (John XIV. 6). “I go unto the Father” (XIV. 12). But
there is nothing
so striking
in the Gospel as this image of Horus the saviour in the boat of souls who
steers his own bark
that tosses
in distressful agitation over the water, whilst he carries rescue wheresoever
there has been a
wreck amongst
the suffering and deceased ones of his father Osiris.
Horus was the
sole one of the seven great spirits born of the mother who was chosen to become
the
only-begotten
son of God the Father when he rose up from the dead. This is he who says in the
Ritual, “I
am the bright
one in glory, whom Atum-Ra hath called into being, and my origin is from the
apple of his
eye. Verily
before Isis was, I grew up and waxed old, and was honoured beyond those who
were with me
in glory”
(Rit., ch. 78, Renouf). Those who were with him in glory were the seven great
spirits, the Khuti or
glorious
ones. Amongst these, Horus became the divine heir of all things, the son of God
who claims to
have existed
before Isis his mother, when speaking as manifestor for the holy spirit. This
is the son and
heir of God
who is described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the “appointed heir of all
things, through
whom also he
made the worlds”. [Page 897] He was thus exalted above the angels or great
spirits through
“having
become by so much better than the angels” and by inheriting a more excellent
name than they.
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“For unto
which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son?” Horus exalts his
father in every
place;
“associating himself with the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys”, as his
two mothers. It is Taht-
Ani who
speaks by him the favourable incantations which issue from his heart through
his mouth. Horus
overthrows
the serpent Apap daily for Ra. Horus unites both Osiris and Ra in one triune
personality, or
trinity in
unity.
The sayer
personalized as son of God and utterer of the logia in the Ritual says: “I am
the one
proceeding
from the one, the son from a father, the father from the son” (Sarcophagus of
Seti I). Jesus is
credited with
having the magical power of being known or unknown, seen or unseen at will.
When the
Jews took up
stones to cast at him he was suddenly invisible, even in their midst (John
VIII. 59). Again,
whilst
uttering the sayings to the multitude, he was hidden from them (John XII. 36).
When risen bodily,
he is the
unknown one to Mary at the sepulchre. He is also the unknown one to the
disciples on the way
to Emmaus
(Luke XXIV). This character, like all the rest, is according to copy supplied
by the Ritual. “I
am he”, says
Horus, “who cometh forth and proceedeth, and whose name is unknown to men” (ch.
42).
The Osiris
has a word of power by means of which he can conceal or manifest himself. He
says: “I am in
possession of
that word of power which is the most potent one in my body here; and by means
of it I
make myself
either known or unknown” (Renouf, ch. 110), which is equivalent to becoming
visible or
invisible at
will.
“Before the
feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour was come that he should
depart out of
this world
unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them
unto the end”
(John XIII.
1). The end is here indicated by the feast of the Passover and the last supper.
In the parallel
scene Horus
says: “I have come to an end for the lord of heaven, I rest at the table of my
father Osiris”
(Rit., ch.
70). This immediately precedes his piercing the veil of the tabernacle and
coming forth as the
divine hawk
of soul (Rit., 70-71, Renouf). Horus when addressing Ra the father on behalf of
the four
brethren, his
followers, says, “Be they with thee so that they may be with me” (Rit., ch.
113). Jesus says
of his
followers, “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me that
they may be one
even as we
are”. “I will that where I am they also may be with me” (John XVII. 11, 12,
24). In the same
passage of
the Ritual Sut is referred to as invoking the powers of Nekhen. In the same
passage of the
Gospel it is
“the son of perdition”.
In this way
the canonical Gospels can be shown to be a collection of sayings from the Egyptian
mythos
and
eschatology. The original likeness is somewhat defeatured at times in the
process, but sufficient
remains in
the Ritual for the purpose of comparison and reclamation. When Horus returns to
his father
with his work
accomplished on earth and in Amenta he greets Osiris in a “discourse to his
father”. In forty
addresses he
enumerates what he has done for the support and assistance of Osiris in the
earth of Seb.
Each line
commences with [Page 898] the formula, “Hail, Osiris, I am thy son Horus. I
have come!”
Amongst other
of the assistances he says, “I have supported thee. I have struck thine enemies
dead. I
have brought
the companions of Sut to thee in chains. I have cultivated thy fields. I have
watered thy
grounds. I
have strengthened thine existence upon the earth. I have given thee thy soul,
thy strength, thy
power. I have
given thee thy victory. I have anointed thee with the offerings of holy oil”.
This last in sign-
language is,
I have given thee the glory (Renouf and Naville, Rit., ch. 173). This we
parallel with the
sixteenth
chapter of John, in which the position and character of Jesus are the same with
those of Horus,
and in which
Jesus addresses the father at the end of his career. “I have come to thee”,
says Horus to
Osiris. “Now
I come to thee”, says Jesus to the Father. “Father, the hour is come; glorify
thy son that the
son may
glorify thee”. “I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which
thou hast given me
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to do. And
now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had
with thee before
the world
was. I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. I
am no more
in the world.
But now I come to thee. I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me. I
guarded them,
and not one
of them perished, but the son of perdition” (XVII. 5-12). The glory of God the
father was
reflected by
the sacred oil upon the face of Horus the anointed son, which was a sign of his
divinity. This
was “the
glory as of the only-begotten from the father” who was Horus in spirit, Horus
the adult, the
anointed one
with the father, and thus the representative type of a soul of life that is
eternal and
attainable by
all as in the only-beloved son.
It is an
utterance of the truth that is eternal to say that Horus as the son of God had
previously been all
the Gospel
Jesus is made to say he is, or is to become. Horus and the father were one.
Jesus says, “I
and my Father
are one”. “He that seeth me, seeth him that sent me” (John XII. 45). Horus is
the father
seen in the
son (Rit., 115). Jesus claims to be the son in whom the father is revealed.
Horus was the light
of the world,
the light that is represented by the symbolical eye, the sign of salvation.
Jesus is made to
declare that
he is the light of the world. Horus was the way, the truth, the life, by name
and in person.
Jesus is made
to assert that he is the way, the truth, and the life. Horus was the plant, the
shoot, the
natzer. Jesus
is made to say, “I am the true vine”. The deceased says, “I spring up as a
plant” (Rit., 83,
1). The
deceased, in the character of Horus, or one with him by assimilation, also
makes these claims for
himself.
Hence the sayings — the sayings which are repeated in the Gospels, more
especially in the
Gospel
according to John=Aan. To parallel a few of the sayings in the Gospels with
those of the Ritual: In
the Gospel
according to John, Jesus says of himself, “I am the bread of life” (VI. 35), “I
am the light of the
world” (VIII.
12), “I am the door of the sheep” (X. 7), “I am the good shepherd” (X. 11), “I
am the
resurrection
and the life” (XI. 25), “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (XIV. 6), “I am
the true vine” (XV.
1). And Horus
was the original in all seven characters. Horus was the bread of life, also the
divine corn
from which
the bread of life was made (Rit., ch. 83). Horus was the good shepherd who
carries the crook
upon his
shoulder. [Page 899] Horus was the door of entrance into Amenta, which none but
he could open.
Horus was the
resurrection and the life. He carries the two symbols of resurrection and of
life eternal, the
hare-headed
sceptre, and the Ankh-key in his hands. Horus was the way. His name is written
with the
sign of the
road (Heru). Horus was the true vine, as the branch of Osiris, who is himself
the vine in
person. Now
the original of all these identifiable characters could occur but once, and that
prototype was
Horus, or
Jesus in the cult of Atum-Ra. Horus says, “It is I who traverse the heaven. I
go round the
Sekhet-Aarru
(the Elysian fields). Eternity has been assigned to me without end. Lo! I am
the heir of
endless time,
and my attribute is eternity” (Ritual, ch. 62). Jesus says, “I am come down
from heaven.
For this is
the will of the Father that every one who beholdeth the son and believeth in
him should have
eternal life,
and I will raise him up at the last day”. He, too, claims to be the lord of
eternity. When Horus
is “lifted
up” to become glorified and is “Horus in his glory” (ch. 78), “master of his
diadem”, he says, “I
raise myself
up”. Then he adds, “I stoop upon the Atit-bark that I may reach and raise to me
those who
are in their
circles, and who bow down before me” as his worshippers (ch. 77). “And I”, says
Jesus, “if I
be lifted up
out of the earth (as Horus was lifted up from out the nether-world), will draw
all men after me”
(John XII.
32, 33). Horus says, “I open the Tuat that may drive away the darkness”. Jesus
says, “I am
come a light
into the world”. Horus says, “I am equipped with thy words of power, O Ra” (the
father in
heaven) (ch.
32), “and repeat them to those who are deprived of breath” (ch. 38). These were
the words
of the father
in heaven. Jesus says, “The Father which sent me, he hath given me a
commandment, what
I should say
and what I should speak. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father
hath said
unto me, so I
speak” (John XII. 49, 50). “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the
Father’s who sent
me “(John
XIV. 24). Horus repeated to his followers that which his father Osiris had said
to him in the
early time
(Rit., 78). Jesus says, “As the Father taught me, I speak these things” (John
VIII. 28). “All
things that I
heard from my Father I have made known unto you” (John XV. 15). Horus comes on
earth to
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report what
he has known and heard and seen and handled with the father. “I have touched
with my two
hands the
heart of Osiris”. “That which I went to ascertain I have come to tell”. “I know
the mysterious
paths and the
gates of Aarru (or Paradise) from whence I come. Here am I, and I come that I
may
overthrow
mine adversaries on earth, though my dead body be buried” (Renouf, ch. 86).
Horus eats
the bread of Seb on earth, but he teaches the manes in Amenta to pray for the
bread of
heaven. Let
him ask for food from the Lord, who is over all (ch. 78). In this we have the
germ of the
Lord’s Prayer
addressed to “our Father in heaven” for “our daily bread”: Ra being the
heavenly father of
Horus and the
supplier of food to souls; the daily giver of eternal life, that was
represented by the typical
seven loaves
of plenty. There is a prayer in the Ritual (ch. 71) which opens with an address
to the Lord of
Heaven who
“reveals himself, who derobes himself, and presents himself to the earth” in
the person of
Horus his
son, the divine hawk or soul that [Page 900] pierces through the veil of the
tabernacle. It is here
referred to
for the refrain which occurs seven times over “May his will toward me be done
by the Lord of
the one
face”, that is, by the one and only God who is the father in heaven, he who
“revealed himself,
who disrobed
himself, and presented himself to the earth” (Renouf, ch. 71) in the person of
his beloved
son.
Horus who
comes from heaven says, “I am the food which perisheth not, in my name of the
self-
originating
force” (Rit., ch. 85). Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. This is the bread
which cometh down
out of heaven
that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down
out of
heaven” (John
VI. 48-51). Horus was not only the bread of life derived from heaven and the
producer of
bread in the
character of Amsu the husbandman; he also gave his flesh for food and his blood
for drink.
This,
however, was not in the cannibal form of human flesh and blood, but as the
typical calf or the lamb.
Jesus says,
“The bread which I will give is my flesh”. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son
of man and drink
his blood ye
have not life in yourselves”, that is, in the human form, which is proclaimed
to be the bread
which came
down out of heaven (John VI. 53, 58). Horus says, “I am the possessor of bread
in Annu. I
have bread in
heaven with Ra” (ch. 53A). “There are seven loaves in heaven at Annu with Ra”
(ch. 53B).
Ra is the
father in heaven. He is the provider of the bread of life that is given by the
son, and by Jesus in
the Gospel.
Jesus says, “My Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread
of God is that
which cometh
down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world”, that is, in the person of
Jesus or of
Horus. “Jesus
said unto them, I am the bread of life” (John VI. 32-35). Jesus, like Horus, is
the giver of
the water of
life which likewise cometh from the Father (John IV. 10 and VII. 37). “Now on
the last day,
the great day
of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come
unto me and
drink. He
that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow
rivers of living water”
(John VII.
37, 38). In passing, we may notice that the great feast corresponds to the Uaka
festival by
which the
return of the water of life in the inundation was celebrated; and that Osiris
was the lord of the
water as well
as of the wine. Moreover, the miracle of converting water into wine is very
simply illustrated
by the picture
of Osiris as the vine and also as the water of renewal in which the vine
springs out of the
water of life
that issues from beneath his throne. On the ground of natural fact, Osiris was
the water of life
to the land
of Egypt in the inundation of the Nile. He was adored in the temple of Isis at
Philae as “Osiris
of the
mysteries, who springs from the returning waters”. He was the water of life to
the souls in Amenta;
and in the
eschatology Osiris is the water of life in Hetep, the paradise of peace, to
spirits perfected. In
the Ritual,
Horus is the son of God through whom is given the water that cometh from the
father, which is
called the Ru
of Osiris, the divine liquid that flows from him as the ichor of life. Horus
speaks of
quenching his
thirst with the drops (the Ru) of his father Osiris. So Jesus draws and drinks
and gives
drink from
the well of living water which is the father’s; not the well of Jacob (John IV.
10, 15), but a well
of water
springing up unto eternal life. [Page 901]
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Again and
again, the status and character of Jesus as the Sayer in the Gospels are only
to be
determined by
the mythical or mystical relationship. “Before Abraham was, I am”, is one of
the sayings
ascribed to
the supposed historical Christ. Abraham is of course referred to as the typical
progenitor of
the Jews. So
in the Gospel of Thomas, or Tum, the child-Jesus says to his earth-father
Joseph, “It is
enough for
thee to see me, not to touch me. For thou knowest not who I am. If thou knewest
thou wouldst
not grieve
me. And although I am now with thee I was made before thee” (ch. 5). The son
who existed
before the
father claims an immense antiquity, as a character entirely mythical, but if
the statement were
made a
hundred times over in the märchen the meaning would be the same. It is a saying
of the Divine
Child who
came into being earlier than God the Father as the offspring of the Virgin
Mother who is Jesus
the
fatherless Child of Mary in the Gospels, and of Neith or Ius..as in the Ritual.
Joseph also plays the
part of Seb,
the father, to Horus on earth. “Seb giveth me his theophanies”, says Horus, but
“more
powerful am I
than the lord of time (Seb), I am the author and the master of endless years”
(Rit., ch. 82)
as an image
of the Eternal.
In the
inscription of Hatshepsu, the child-Horus is called “the elder of his mother’s
husband”. That is, he
was older
than Osiris, who became the father according to the later sociology (Obelisk of
Karnak, l. 4).
Such is the
sole ground of origin upon which the father can be later than the son whether
his name is
Atum, Osiris
or Abraham.
The sayings
involve a sayer who became the typical teacher in person as Horus in the
Osirian cult and
Iu-em-hetep
in the religion of Atum-Ra, or Iao of the Egypto-gnostics in the Pistis Sophia.
These are
mentioned in
the texts as the divine enunciators of the “sayings”. Each of them is a form of
the sayer,
word, logos,
announcer, or revealer in person, precisely the same as the Jesus of the
gospels, whether
Apocryphal,
Egypto-gnostic or Canonical. The elder Horus was the virgin’s child; he imaged
the soul in
matter, or,
the body-soul in the life on earth. He was the teacher of the lesser mysteries
in the mythology.
He was solar;
hence the leader of that glorious company of the twelve now stationed in the
zodiac as
rowers of the
bark for millions of years. The primary twelve were the great gods of Egypt
twenty thousand
years ago as
the twelve powers that rowed the solar bark for Ra around the circle of the
zodiacal signs.
They became
the Aeons of the gnostics, twelve in number. As preservers of the light, they
were twelve
teachers in
mythology, twelve followers of Horus who are the twelve apostles or disciples
of the Egyptognostic
Christ; the
seven and five being grouped together to constitute the twelve.
At his second
coming when Horus of the resurrection rose again as a spirit in the image of
the holy ghost
— he became
the teacher of the greater mysteries to the twelve who likewise had attained
the status of
spirits in
the eschatology, and who were now the twelve to whom twelve thrones were
promised in the
heaven of
eternity.
Horus the
word in person was the sayer to whom the sayings were assigned. Hence the
“sayings”,
attributed to
Iu-em-hetep and Hartatef in Egypt: the one as child of the mother; the other as
son [Page 902]
of the father
who wore the Atef-crown of Atum-Ra. Now this mystical “word” of the mother, and
the word-
made-truth in
Har-Mat-Kheru are both apparent in the opening chapter of the Gospel according
to John.
“In the
beginning was the word”, he says; as it had been in Iu-em-hetep, or
child-Horus. “And the word
became flesh”,
which it did in the virgin-blood of the immaculate Isis or of Hathor-Ius..as.
The doctrine of
the second
Horus follows, but is inserted parenthetically. “And we beheld his glory; glory
as of the only
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begotten from
the father”. But the Jesus of the genuine legend was not yet begotten by or
from the father.
He was
begotten or christified in his baptism. Matthew has it that when Jesus was
baptized he went up
straightway
from the water; and lo the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit
of God.
Descending as
a dove and coming upon him; and lo a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is
my
beloved son
(ch. III. 16, 17). In the original transformation scene this occurred when the
child of the
mother made
his change into the beloved son of God the father at the time of the baptism in
the Osirian
mystery of
Tattu (Rit., ch. 17). It was in his resurrection from the dead, here
represented by the rising
from the
water, and becoming bird-headed as a spirit, that Horus became the beloved son
of the father
(Rit., ch.
9). John then proceeds to describe the transformation of Jesus in his baptism
when “the spirit
descended as
a dove out of heaven, and it abode upon him”, which change had already taken
place
before the
glory of the father could have been visible in the person of the son. Now, this
word that was in
the beginning
had already manifested as the “sayer” of the sayings in the Ritual. This is he who
says, “I
have come
forth with the tongue of Ptah and the throat of Hathor (Ius..as) that I may
record the words of
my father
Atum with my mouth”. That is, as the utterer of the “sayings” which were
ascribed to the
Egyptian
Jesus as Iu-em-hetep, the son of Hathor-Ius..as and Atum-Ra. We have no need to
go further
back for the
beginning of the Word, as utterer of the sayings. The canonical Gospels are
based upon the
“sayings” of
Jesus; the Jesus that we claim to have been the son of Atum at On; genealogically,
the
grandson of
Ptah at Memphis, and the author of the books of wisdom attributed to him as the
Jesus of
the
Apocrypha, and Gospels of the Infancy.
Enough has
been cited to show that the revelation ascribed to Jesus, the Christ of the
canonical
Gospels, had
been previously published in the Ritual of the resurrection and uttered by Iu
the Su of
Atum-Ra
(Iusa=Jesus or Tum=Thomas), who was and is and ever will be the Egyptian Jesus
independently
of any personal historical character.
The Egyptian
Ritual contains the “sayings” or the words of wisdom that were attributed to Ra
the inspiring
holy spirit.
As god the father this was Tum (or Thomas). The utterer of the “sayings” “with
his mouth” was
god the son,
Iu (or Iu-em-hetep) the Su (son) who was Iu-Su, the ever-coming son in the
religion of Annu,
and Iusu when
rendered through the Greek is ..s... or Jesus.
A large part
of the Egyptian Book of the Dead consists of “sayings”. The forty-second
chapter contains at
least fifty
sayings uttered by Horus in person respecting himself, his father and his work
[Page 903] of
salvation.
These are the sayings of Horus, or of the Osiris by whom they are repeated in
character. And
as Horus the
divine word in person is the Lord whose name of Heru signifies the Lord, these
sayings of
Horus are the
Logia Kuriaka; assuredly the oldest in the world, which we have now traced to
Iu-emhetep,
the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus as the sayer for Atum-Ra. These might be called the
sayings of Ra or
Horus, of Tum
or Thomas, of Iu or Iu-em-hetep, of Aan, Taht or Hermes. But above all other
names or
titles they
were known as the words of Mati.
Also, the
Gospel of the Egyptians, represented by the Ritual, was the Gospel according to
Mati (or Matiu,
with the U,
inherent). And as Mati was inculcated by means of the sayings, the sayings in
the Ritual are
the sayings
of Mati as the words of truth, justice, law, and rightfulness, and the
revelation of the
resurrection.
In Dr. Birch’s translation of “the funeral Ritual” he has given the word “Mati”
as a title of Taht-
Aan the
divine scribe; and from this title the present writer deduced the names of
Matthias and Matthew,
as the true
reckoner, the just reckoner, and keeper of the tablets for Maati in the hall of
Maat. Taht-Aan
might be
designated Mati. But, whether we take the word Mati as a proper name or title
of the scribe Taht
(whether
called Hermes, Aan or Mati), he was the recorder of the sayings or Logia
Kuriaka in the Ritual.
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But even if
we do not take the name of Mati to be a title of Tehuti, whence the names of
Matthias and
Matthew, the
character remains. Taht was the scribe in the Maat or judgment-hall, also the
recorder of
the sayings
that were given by the Father in Heaven to be uttered by Horus, and written
down by the
fingers of
Taht. Now, according to the often-quoted testimony of Papias, recorded in his
last
“commentary”
on the “sayings of the Lord”, the basis of the canonical Gospels was laid in a
collection of
sayings that
were attributed to “The Lord”. He tells us that Matthew wrote the sayings in
the Hebrew
dialect, and
every one interpreted them as best he was able. This was the current hearsay on
the subject
as reported
by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis. And here we might repeat, in passing, that the
sayings of
Horus the
lord in the Ritual were collected and written down by Taht-Mati the scribe, and
that Matthew, or
Matthias, corresponds
to Mati both in character and by name. We have no further use for the statement
beyond noting
that the extant Gospel of Matthew was evidently founded on a collection of
those “wise
sayings, dark
sentences and parables” that constituted the wisdom of the Egypto-gnostic
Jesus, one late
version of
which has been preserved in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, entitled “the wisdom of
Jesus”. The
present
writer has previously suggested that the “sayings” collected by Matthew, which
Papias had heard
of as the
source of the Christian Gospels, were a form of the sayings of Mati collected
from the papyri of
the Ritual.
The Catholic Christians were sorely troubled about the Egypto-gnostic Gospels
in possession
of the
“heretics” when they came to hear of them. These are especially associated with
the name of
Valentinus,
an Egyptian gnostic, who came with these Egypto-gnostic Gospels from
Alexandria, and to
whom Pistis
Sophia and the “Gospel of Truth” have been attributed. The “Gospel of Truth”,
known to the
Valentinian
gnostics as Egyptian, is [Page 904] the Gospel of Mati, or a collection of the
sayings of
Mati=Matthew.
The Logia of Matthias was the authentic gospel of the Carpocratean gnostics.
Clement of
Alexandria
quotes from the “Traditions of Matthias” two sayings which are not to be found
in the
canonical
Matthew. This proves the existence of other sayings, oracles and divine words
than the
canonical in
the time of Clement, which were assigned to Matthias=Mati. These sayings and
traditions
were
acknowledged as genuine by the gnostic followers of Carpocrates, Valentinus and
Basilides, who
never did
acknowledge any historical founder, and whose Christ was the Egypto-gnostic
Jesus — he who
was the
utterer of the sayings and traditions first written down by the divine scribe
Taht-Aan=John; or
Taht-Mati=Matthew.
In writing
his Gospel, Basilides appealed to a secret tradition which he had received from
Matthias; and
Hippolytus
reports that this secret tradition was derived by Matthias during his private
intercourse with the
Saviour. But
the gnostics never did acknowledge any historic saviour. Their Christ was
Horus, or the non-
historical
Jesus, and therefore the private intercourse of Matthias with the Saviour was
that of Mati with
Horus the
Christ of the Ritual which contains the history of that intercourse.
We are told
that it was after his Resurrection that Christ revealed the true gnosis to
Peter, John and
James. (Clem.
Alex. Eusebius, H. E. 2, 1). But it was only the spiritual Horus or Christ that
could reveal
the true
gnosis, which is here admitted versus the historic personage. This revelation
is post-
resurrectional,
the same as with the gnostic Jesus in the Pistis Sophia who expounds the
mysteries to his
twelve
apostles on Mount Olivet after he has risen from the dead. The “Manifestation
of Truth” is the title
of the great
work of Marcus the gnostic in the third century. The lost work of Celsus was
the Word of
Truth or
Logos Alethea. In these instances the gospel is that of truth, the word of
truth; the true gospel.
And the
gospel of Mati, we repeat, is equivalent to the gospel or the sayings according
to Matthew which
had been
heard of by Papias as the nuclei of the canonical Gospels. Epiphanius, in speaking
of the
“Sabelian
Heretics”, says, “The whole of their errors and the main strength of their
heterodoxy they derive
from some
apocryphal books, but principally from that which is called the Gospel of the
Egyptians (which
is a name
some have given to it) for in that many things are proposed in a hidden,
mysterious manner as
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by our
Saviour” (Ad. Haeres, 26, 2), just as they are in the sayings of the Ritual,
the sayings of Hartatef,
Iu-em-hetep
or the sayings of Jesus. In his tirade against gnosticism Augustine echoes the
name of Mati
(for truth)
and shows its twofold nature in a peculiar way as “The Truth and Truth”. He
says of the
gnostics:
“They used to repeat ‘Truth and Truth,’ for thus did they repeat her name to
me, but she was
nowhere
amongst them; for they spoke false things, not only concerning thee who art the
Truth in Truth,
but even
concerning the elements of this world of ours, thy creation; concerning which
even the
philosophers,
who declared what is true, I ought to have slighted for love of thee, O my
father, the
supreme God,
the beauty of all things beautiful. O truth! truth! how inwardly did the marrow
of my soul
sigh after
thee even then, whilst they were perpetually dinning thy name into my ears, and
[Page 905] after
various
fashions with the mere voice, and with many and huge books of theirs”. (The
Gnostics and their
Remains,
King, p. 157.)
The Book of
the Dead or Ritual of the resurrection virtually contains the Gospel of the
Egyptians which
was assumed
to have been lost. This is the Gospel according to Mati or Matiu, the original,
as we
maintain, of
that which Papias attributes to one “Matthew”, and which was a collection of
the sayings
assigned to
the Jesus whom the non-gnostic Christians always assumed to be historical. The
Ritual
preserves the
sayings of the Egyptian Jesus who was Iu the Su, or Sa of Atum-Ra and Ius..as
at On,
and who was
otherwise known as the Lord in different Egyptian religions. This was the sayer
to whom the
sayings are
attributed in the “Festal Dirge” (Records, vol. IV, p. 115), and also in the
Ritual and other
Hermetic
Scriptures. And now we have a form of the genuine Gospel of the Egyptians in
the Ritual itself.
This is the
original Evangelium Veritas: The Gospel according to Mati=Matthew; to Aan=John;
or
Tum=Thomas.
From this we learn, by means of the comparative process, that the literalizers
of the
legend and
the carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ have but gathered up the empty
husks of Pagan
tradition,
minus the kernel of the Gnosis; so that when we have taken away all which
pertains to Horus,
the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus, all that remains to base a Judean history upon is nothing
more than an
accretion of
blindly ignorant belief; and that of all the Gospels and collections of
“Sayings” derived from
the Ritual of
the resurrection in the name of Mati or Matthew, Aan or John, Thomas or Tum,
Hermes, Iuem-
hetep or
Jesus, those that were canonized at last as Christian are the most exoteric,
and therefore
the farthest
away from the underlying, hidden, buried, but imperishable truth.
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APPENDIX
[Page 907]
A comparative
list of some pre-existing and pre-Christian data which were christianized in
the Canonical
Gospels and
the Book of Revelation.
Egyptian
Christian
The Mysteries
The miracles
The Sem, or
mythical representations The parables
The Ritual as
the book of resurrection The Book of Revelation
The sayings
of Iu or Iu-em-hetep The Sayings of Jesus
Huhi the
father in heaven as the eternal, a title of Atum-Ra Ihuh, the father in heaven
as the eternal.
Ra, the holy
spirit God the Holy Ghost.
Ra the father
of Iu the Su, or son of God, with the hawk or dove as the
bird of the
holy spirit
God, the
Father of Jesus, with the dove as
the bird of
the Holy Spirit.
Iu or Horus,
the manifesting son of God Jesus the manifesting Son of God.
The trinity
of Atum (or Osiris) the father, Horus (or Iu) the son, and Ra
the holy
spirit
The Trinity
of the Father, Son and HolySpirit.
Iu-Su or
Iusa, the coming son of Iusaas, who was great with Iusa orIusu
Jesus.
The ever-coming
Messu or Child as Egyptian The Hebrew Messianic Child.
Horus (or
Heru), the Lord by name, as a child Child-Jesus as the Lord by name (Gospelsof
the Infancy).
Isis, the
virgin mother of Iu, her Su or son Mary the virgin mother of Jesus.
The first
Horus as Child of the Virgin, the second as son of Ra, thefather
Jesus the
Virgin’s child, the Christ as son ofthe father
The first
Horus as the founder, the second as fulfiller for the father Jesus as the
founder, and the Christ as
fulfiller for
the father.
The two
mothers of Child-Horus, Isis and Nephthys, who were twosisters
The two
mothers of Child-Jesus, who were
sisters.
Meri or Nut,
the mother-heaven Mary as Regina Coeli.
The outcast
great mother with her seven sons Mary Magdalene, with her seven devils.
Isis taken by
Horus in adultery with Sut The woman taken in adultery.
Apt, the crib
or manger, by name as the birthplace and mother in one The manger as cradle of
the Child-Christ.
Seb, the
earth-father, as consort to the virgin Isis Joseph, the father on earth, as
putativehusband to the Virgin Mary.
Seb, the
foster-father to Child-Horus Joseph, as foster-father to the Child-Jesus.
Seb, Isis and
Horus, the Kamite holy trinity Joseph, Mary and Jesus, a Christian holytrinity.
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[Page 908]
Egyptian
Christian
Seb, the
builder of the house, the carpenter Joseph, the carpenter.
Seb, the
custodian of the mummied dead Joseph of Arimathea, the keeper of theCorpus
Christi.
Sut and
Horus, the twin opponents Satan and Jesus, the twin opponents.
Horus, the
sower, and Sut, the destroyer, in the harvest-field Jesus, the sower of the
good seed, and Satan, thesower of tares.
Sut and Horus
contending in the desert Satan and Jesus contending in the wilderness.
Sut and Horus
contending on the Ben-Ben or Pyramidion Satan and Jesus contending on the
pinnacle.
Horus carried
off by Sut to the summit of Mount Hetep Jesus spirited away by Satan into an
exceedinghigh mountain.
Sut and Horus
contending on the mount Satan and Jesus contending on the mount.
Sut undoing
the good that Horus does Satan sowing tares by night.
S’men, for
Khemen, a title of Taht Simeon.
S’men, who
held Child-Horus in his arms as the young solargod
Simeon, who
took the Child-Jesus in his arms.
Anna or Annit
(a title of Hathor), with Taht-S’men Anna, the prophetess, with Simeon.
The Petar or
Petra by name in Egyptian as Revealer to Horus Peter, the revealer to the
Christ.
The house of
Annu Bethany.
The group in
the house at Annu The group in the house at Bethany.
Horus in Annu
Jesus in Bethany.
Asar or
Osiris Lazarus.
The two
sisters Mertae The two sisters Mary and Martha.
Osiris, whom
Horus loved Lazarus, whom Jesus loved.
Osiris
perfumed for his burial Jesus anointed, when the odour fills the house.
Osiris prays
that he may be buried speedily Jesus begs that his death may be effected
quickly.
Osiris
prepared for burial under the hair of Hathor-Meri Jesus prepared for his burial
beneath the hair ofMary
Osiris, who
slept in the tomb at Annu Lazarus, who slept in the tomb at Bethany.
Osiris raised
from the tomb by Horus in Annu Lazarus raised from the tomb at Bethany.
The mummy
Osiris bidden to come forth by Horus The mummy Lazarus bidden to come forth by
Jesus
The Great One
who does the work of washing Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
The star, as
announcer for the Child-Horus The Star in the East that indicated the
birthplace ofJesus.
The seven
Hathors (or cows) who minister to Horus The seven women who minister to Jesus.
Anup, the
Precursor of Horus John, the forerunner of Jesus the Christ.
Anup, the
Baptizer John the Baptist.
Aan, the
saluter of Horus John, the saluter of the Christ.
Aan, a name
of the divine scribe John, the divine scribe.
Hermes, the
scribe Hermas, the scribe.
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Mati, the
registrar Matthew, the clerk.
Taht, Shu,
and black Sut The three kings, or Magi.
Nut at the
pool of the Persea, or sycamore-tree, as giver of
divine drink
The woman at
the well as giver of the water.
Horus born in
Annu, the place of bread Jesus born in Bethlehem, the house of bread.
The vesture
put on Horus by the Goddess Tait The swaddling clothes put on the infant Jesus.
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[Page 909]
Egyptian
Christian
Offerings
made to the child by the worshippers in Annu Offerings and worship of the Magi.
Child-Horus
with the head of Ra Child-Jesus with the solar glory round his head.
The Bull of
Amenta in the place of birth The ox in the birthplace of the Child.
The ass, Iu,
in the birthplace The ass in the birthplace (catacombs).
The lions of
the horizon attending upon Horus The lions attending the Child-Christ (pseudo-
Matthew).
Child-Horus
emerging from the Papyrus-reed The Child-Jesus in the catacombs issuing from
thePapyrus.
Horus, the
ancient child The little old Jesus in the catacombs.
Horus, the
gracious child Jesus, the child full of grace.
Horus, one of
five brethren Jesus, one of five brothers.
Horus, the
brother of Sut the betrayer Jesus, the brother of Judas the betrayer.
Amsta, the
one brother of Horus in the human form James, the human brother of Jesus.
The two
sisters of Horus The sisters of Jesus.
Horus the lad
in the country and youth in town Jesus as the child in the country and youth in
town.
Jesus
baptized with water by John. Horus baptized with water by Anup
Horus in the
tank of flame Jesus the baptizer with fire.
Horus in his
baptism becoming the beloved Son of God theFather
Jesus
becoming the Son of God the Father in hisbaptism.
Horus the
husbandman with the fan in his hand Christ coming with the fan in his hand.
Horus the
Good Shepherd, with the crook upon his shoulder Jesus the Good Shepherd, with
the lamb or kid uponhis shoulder.
Horus with
the four followers in the Mount Jesus with the four disciples in the Mount.
Horus with
the seven great spirits in the Mount Jesus with the seven spirits in the Mount
(Rev.).
Herrut the
Apap-reptile, slayer of the younglings in the egg
Isis
commanded to take her child down into Egypt for safety
Herod, the
murderer of the innocents.
Mary warned
to take her Child down into Egypt forsafety.
Horus as the
typical fish Jesus as Ichthus the fish.
Horus as the
fisher Jesus as the fisher.
The four
fishers with Horus as founders of the kingdom The four fishers with Jesus as
founders of the
kingdom.
Sebek, the
father of the fishers Zebedee, the father of the fishers.
Two
fisher-brethren, Kabhsenuf and Hapi Two fisher-brethren, Simon and Andrew.
Two other
fisher-brethren, Amsta and Tuamutef Two other fisher-brethren, James and John.
The seven on
board the bark with Horus The seven fishers on board the bark with Jesus.
The wonderful
net of the fishers The miraculous draught of fishes in the net.
Horus as the
lamb Jesus as the lamb.
Horus as the
lion Jesus as a lion.
Horus (Iu) as
the black child Jesus as the little black bambino.
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Horus as Ahi,
the striker with the flabellum Jesus wielding the scourge of cords as the
striker.
Horus identified
with the Tat or Cross Jesus identified with the Cross.
The blind
Horus, in two characters, as the God and Manes The two blind men of the
Gospels.
Horus of
twelve years Jesus of twelve years.
Horus made a
man of thirty years in his baptism Jesus, the man of thirty years in his
baptism.
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[Page 910]
EgyptianChristianHorus
(Iu), the son of a beetle Jesus, the good Scarabaeus.
Horus (or Ra)
as the great cat Jesus as the cat.
Horus as the
shrewmouse The mouse of Jesus dedicated to “Our Lady.”
Horus, the
healer in the mountain Jesus, the healer in the mountain.
Horus as
Iusa, the exorcizer of evil spirits as the Word Jesus, the caster out of demons
with a word.
Horus, born
as the shoot, branch, or plant from the Nun Jesus born as the Natzer of
Nazareth, so rendered in the
course of
localizing the legend.
Osiris as the
vine-plant, Aarru Jesus as the vine.
Horus, the
bringer of the fish and the grapes in Egypt Jesus as bringer of the fish and
the grapes (catacombs).
Horus, the
child standing on two crocodiles which adorehim
The
Christ-Child adored by dragons=crocodiles.
Horus, the
child of a widow The Child-Christ who lodges with a widow in Egypt.
Horus, the
child of the widow in Sutenkhen The Child-Christ with the widow in Sotenin
(pseudo-
Matthew).
The golden
Horus The corn-complexioned Jesus.
Horus full of
wine Jesus the wine-bibber.
Horus, who
gives the water of life Jesus as giver of the water of life.
Horus in the
lentils and the grain Jesus the bread of life.
Horus as Unbu
in the bush of thorn Jesus in the crown of thorn.
Horus the
just and true Jesus the faithful and true.
Horus-Mat-Kheru,
the Word made truth at the second
coming
Jesus the
spirit of truth at the Second Advent.
The human
Horus glorified in becoming a (Khu) spirit The spirit not given until Jesus is
glorified.
The world
made through Horus The world made through Jesus.
Horus the
bridegroom with the bride in Sothis Jesus the bridegroom with the bride.
Horus of both
sexes Jesus as the bearded Sophia; Charis, the female Christ.
Horus who
exalteth his father in every sacred place Jesus who exalteth his father in
every place.
Horus as Remi
the weeper Jesus as the weeper.
Dumb Horus,
or the silent Sekari Jesus silent before his accusers.
Horus
behaving badly to Isis Jesus speaking brutally to his mother.
Horus the
gladsome Jesus the jocund.
Horus as
prince of the divine powers Jesus the prince.
Horus the
uplifted serpent Jesus uplifted as the serpent.
Horus as the
Bennu Jesus as the phoenix.
Horus who
giveth light by means of his own body Jesus the light of the world.
Horus the
hider of himself as Har-Sheta Jesus the concealer of himself.
Horus the
word-made-flesh Jesus the word-made-flesh.
Horus the
word-made-truth Jesus the doer of the word.
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Horus in the
bosom of Ra Jesus in the bosom of the Father.
Horus the Krst
Jesus the Christ.
Horus the
avenger Jesus who brings the sword.
Iu-em-hetep
who comes with peace Jesus the bringer of peace.
Horus called
the illegitimate child Jesus called the Mamzer.
Horus the
afflicted one Jesus the afflicted one.
Horus the
unique one Jesus the unique one.
Horus the
lord of resurrections from the house of death Jesus the resurrection and the
life.
Horus as the
type of life eternal Jesus the type of eternal life.
Iu (em-hetep)
the child-teacher in the temple The Child-Jesus as teacher in the Temple.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
[Page 911]
Egyptian
Christian
Child-Horus
as sower of the seed Child-Jesus as sower of the seed.
Har-Khuti,
lord of the harvest Jesus, lord of the harvest.
Horus the
founder Jesus the founder.
Horus the
fulfiller Jesus the fulfiller.
Horus as
master of the words of power Jesus whose word was with power.
Horus
Ma-kheru Jesus, “the witness unto the truth.”
Horus as the
lily Jesus typified by the lily.
Horus the
link Jesus the bond of union.
Horus who
came to fulfil the law Jesus who comes to fulfil the law.
Horus as
bearer of the Ankh-symbol of life and the Un-sceptre ofresurrection
Jesus as the
resurrection and the life
personified.
Horus (or
Khunsu) the chaser of boastfulness Jesus the humbler of the proud.
Horus of the
Second Advent The coming Christ.
Horus the
hidden force Jesus the concealed.
Horus as
Kam-Ura, the overflower, and extender of the water
illimitably
Jesus, giver
of the water of life without limit.
Horus, who
came by the water, the blood and the spirit Jesus, who came by the water, the
blood andthe spirit.
Horus the
opener as Unen Jesus the opener with the keys.
Horus of the
two horizons Jesus of the two lands.
Horus as
teacher of the living generation Jesus as teacher on the earth.
Horus as
teacher of the spirits in Amenta Jesus as preacher to the spirits in prison.
Horus as
teacher on the Atit-bark, with the seven glorious ones onboard
Jesus the
teacher on the boat, also with the
seven fishers
on board.
Horus
uttering the words of Ra in the solar bark Jesus uttering the parables on board
the boat.
Horus walking
the water Jesus walking the water.
The blind
mummy made to see by Horus The blind man given sight by Jesus.
Horus and the
Hamemmet or younglings of Shu Jesus and the little ones.
The children
of Horus The children of Jesus.
Horus the
raiser of the dead Jesus the raiser of the dead.
Horus the
raiser up of Asar Jesus the raiser up of Lazarus.
Horus, who
imparts the power of the resurrection to his children Jesus who confers the
same power on hisfollowers.
Horus
entering the mount at sunset to hold converse with his father Jesus entering
the mount at sunset to holdconverse with his father.
Horus one
with the father Jesus one with his father.
Horus
transfigured on the mount Jesus transfigured on the mount.
Amsu-Horus in
his resurrection as a Sahu-mummy Jesus rising again corporeally or
incorporated.
The blood of
Isis The issue of blood suffered by the woman.
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Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
The field
manured with blood in Tattu Aceldama.
The
mummy-bandage that was woven without seam The vesture of the Christ without a
seam.
Seven souls
of Ra the Holy Spirit Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Seven hawks
of Ra the Holy Spirit Seven doves of the Holy Spirit.
Seven loaves
of Horus for feeding the multitude reposing in thegreen fields of Annu
Seven loaves
of Jesus for feeding the multitudereclining on the grass.
Twelve
followers of Har-Khuti Twelve followers of Jesus, as the twelve
disciples.
Page 698
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
[Page 912]
Egyptian
Horus with
the twelve in the field of divine harvest
The twelve
who reap for Horus
Horus as the
intercessor
Horus as the
great judge
The judgment
of the righteous, who are the sheep of Horus, thegood shepherd
The judgment
of the guilty, who are the goats of Sut
Horus parting
off the evil dead
The condemned
spirits entering the swine
The glorious
ones that wait on Horus
Horus
ascending to heaven from Bakhu, the Mount of the olive
tree
Christian
Jesus with the
twelve in the harvest-field.
The twelve
who reap for Jesus.
Jesus as the
paraclete.
Jesus as the
great judge.
Judgment of
the righteous, who are the sheep of
Jesus the
Good Shepherd.
Judgment of
the wicked, who are the goats of
Satan.
Jesus parting
off the accursed.
The evil
spirits entering the swine.
The angels
that minister unto Jesus.
Jesus
ascending to heaven from Mount Olivet.
The
revelation of Horus, given by Ra, his father, to makeknown the mysteries of divine
things to his followers
The
revelation written down by Aan (Tehuti), the scribe ofdivine words
The saluter
Aani, who bears witness to the word of Ra and
to the
testimony of Horus
The secret of
the Mysteries revealed by Taht-Aan
The books in
Annu
The books and
their bringer
Seven
dungeon-seals
The great
mother Apt, the pregnant water-cow
The crocodile
as great mother
The great
mother as Hathor, the abode
The great or
enceinte
mother in her
lunar character
Isis, who
brought forth Horus in the marshes
Isis pursued
by the great crocodile
Isis,
hawk-winged
The bride as
Hathor-Isis, with the calf or lamb upon themount of glory
Atum-Huhi,
the closer and the opener of Amenta
Atum-Ra, the
holy spirit
Hathor-Iusaas
the bride, with Horus the lamb (or earlier
The
revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to
show unto his
servants.
The
Revelation written by John the divine.
John, who
bears witness to the Word of God and the
testimony of
Jesus Christ.
The secret of
the Mysteries made known by John.
The book of
doom and the book of life in Patmos.
The book and
its opener.
The book with
seven seals.
The woman
sitting on the waters.
The dragon as
great mother.
The woman
that was the great city personalized.
The woman
arrayed with the sun about to bring forth the
child
The woman who
brought forth in the wilderness.
The woman
persecuted by the dragon.
The woman
with eagle’s wings.
The bride as
the lamb’s wife upon the mount.
Ihuh, who
carries the keys of death and Hades as closer
and opener.
The spirit.
The bride
with the lamb upon the mount.
Page 699
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
calf) upon
the mount
Anup and Aan,
the two witnesses for Horus The two Johns as witnesses for Jesus.
The seven
Khuti or glorious ones The seven spirits of God.
Horus, with
the seven Khabsu stars, or gods of the lamp Jesus in the midst of the seven
golden lamp-stands.
Sebek-Horus
the lamb on the mount Jesus the lamb on the mount.
Horus the
morning star Jesus the morning star.
Page 700
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
[Page 913]
Egyptian
Christian
Horus, who
gives the morning star to his followers Jesus, who gives the morning star to
his followers.
The
Har-Seshu, or servants of Horus The servants of Jesus Christ.
The seven
spirits of fire around the throne of Ra The seven spirits of fire before the
throne.
The fathers,
or the ancient ones The four-and-twenty elders.
The four
corner-keepers The four living creatures at the four corners.
The solar god
of golden form The form with feet like unto burnished brass, and
countenance
as of the sun.
Iu the son of
man (or Atum) Jesus the son of man.
Horus as the
first-born from the dead Jesus the Christ as first-born of those that slept.
The
Millennial reign of Jesus. Horus in the house of a thousand years
Sebek the
solar dragon The scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads.
Seven souls
or powers of Ra Seven heads of the solar dragon.
The eighth to
the seven The eighth to the seven.
Ten Tata-gods
or powers The ten horns or kings.
The war in
heaven The war in heaven.
Har-Tema as
the avenger, the red god who orders the block ofexecution
The word of
God, faithful and true, with raiment
dipped in
blood.
Har-Makhu
Michael the Archangel.
Sut the
accuser Satan the accuser.
Sut and Horus
Christ and the Anti-Christ.
The celestial
Heptanomis The seven mountains of earth or islands in the sea.
The seven
children of the old earth-mother The seven kings of the earth.
Horus at the
head of the seven Jesus at the head of the seven.
The last
judgment The last judgment.
The mount of
glory The throne set in heaven on the mount.
The mount as
judgment-seat The mount as throne of the Great Judge.
The
lion-faced throne of steel The great white throne.
The great
judge seated on his throne The Great Judge on the judgment-seat.
The god in
lion form The god who is the lion of the Tribe of Judah.
The god in
the solar disc The god with the sun-like countenance.
The god whose
dazzling mouth sends forth breezes of flame The god from whose mouth proceeded
the two-
edged sword.
Osiris-Tat,
the sufferer in the Lower Egypt of Amenta The Lord who was crucified in Egypt.
The
Apap-reptile, the serpent of evil Abaddon, Apollyon, or Satan, that old
serpent.
Apap, the
power of evil in the Abyss Abaddon or Apollyon, the angel of the Abyss.
The binding
of Apap in chains and casting the beast into theAbyss
The binding
of the dragon, that old serpent, andcasting him into the Pit.
Apap and Sut
bound in chains and cast into the Abyss The Devil and Satan bound in a great
chain and
Page 701
Ancient Egypt:
The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
cast into the
Pit.
The Ankh-key
of life and the Un-symbol of the resurrection The keys of death and Hades in
the hands of the
opener.
The first
resurrection and the second death in Amenta The first resurrection and the
second death.
Page 702
Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World by Gerald Massey
[Page 914]
Egyptian
Christian
The Lake of
Putrata where the lost souls fall headlong intoeverlasting night
The lake of
the second death.
The beatified
in their white garments of glory The beatified spirits arrayed in white.
The name of
Ra on the head of the deceased The name of the Father written on the forehead.
The little
column of white stone given as a talisman to the initiates The white stone
given to the initiated.
The mount of
the double earth in Hetep The mountain great and high.
The eternal
city at the summit The
The water of
life as lake or river The river of the water of life.
The two
divine sycamores over the water of life The tree of life on either side of the
water of life.
The water of
life proceeding from the throne of Osiris. The water of life proceeding from
the throne ofGod.
The great
lake in Hetep upon which the gods and glorified alight The glassy sea on which
the victors standtriumphant.
The great
white
The calf
(later lamb) of Horus standing on the mount with Hathorbearing the bride
The lamb
standing on
The lunar
goddess Hathor bearing the solar orb The woman arrayed with the sun, and the
moonat her feet.
The glorified
in Hetep stoled and girdled and crowned The angels girt about the breasts with
goldengirdles.
The emerald
dawn around the mount or throne of Ra The rainbow like an emerald round the
throne.
The Ba
enclosure of Aarru, in twelve measures The walled enclosure of the New
Jerusalem, in
twelve
measures.
Heaven
according to the measure of a man Heaven according to the measure of a man.
The paradise
of the pole-star The
The ark of
Osiris-Ra The
Page 703
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Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
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Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
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A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
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The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s
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Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
The Early Teachings of The Masters
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Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy
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In the Twilight”
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Letters and
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Obras
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Theosophische
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An Outstanding
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Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
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