Apech

No I wasn't - but I did read the book she wrote - what else can I do?

I've read the book @Bindi and it is 75% trash. People like to make money from gossip.

Jan 6th? Please keep your political conspiracy theories out of my Castaneda thread. As to all the other cults - well I agree that that group around Transegrity or whatever it is called is cultic - but as for Castaneda himself he died of liver cancer and his most immediate group disappeared (one committed suicide by driving into death valley) but I suspect the others just took on aliases and went underground. It's caveat emptor that is the rule. People are fooled all the time by different things - some spiritual (of all types) and some socio-political. If you don't take whatever you study as knowledge for yourself, that is understand, assimilate and apply - then you too are being conned. This is my attitude to the Castaneda books - I read them in this way - just as I read or practice any other system. It is, in the final analysis the only way. The way is hard and long - but in the end the only worthwhile thing - it is oh so tempting to put yourself in the hands of others - a guru or whatever - for some ease. It may be that fortune will provide to you a good shepherd - but it is better to be your own shepherd and make knowledge your own.

Could be your diet.

What you see reading left to right is Thoth presenting Osiris as judge of the dead with the results of the weighing of the heart. What the Egyptians called 'calculating the difference' - that is the difference in weight between the persons heart (representing their character and volition) and ma'at. Oh ! I never heard of that step in the process , I always though the weight thing was just 'less than or equal too . is there a different result depending on the difference calculated ? Its like an assay test (is that the right term?) weighing against a standard ounce, lb, gram or whatever - it is meant to be an exact match. The result of not weighing equal is being fed to Ammit ... ooops! Then the weighing scales, then the deceased and his ka. So here a state of harmony with ma'at is achieved. This is followed by the square 'lake of flames' - which is a pool surrounded by torches - which I would take to be a state of balanced energy - then by the four steering oars of heaven - which are related to the four directions, four sons of Horus and are about the ability to orientate yourself in spiritual space also representing the Sun's path from east/birth to west/death and intersected by the north south axis of the country / Nile .... or would it be the axis of the Sun 'beneath' at night ( south underworld ) and its path, north south , seasonal inclination ? Yes, the Egyptians were a bit odd about directions, they tended to pair North with West and South with East. There are a whole number of correspondences - organs in the body, the Sons of Horus, the pillars of Shu (which support the sky) and here the rudders of heaven. This four foldness was recapitulated at every level - earthly, heavenly and in between! They tended to put South at the top (like the Chinese) but in terms of the body the head was the North and the feet the South. The sun's journey (on the ecliptic) would cross the Milky Way (the heavenly Nile) just as the dead had to cross the nile to get to the necropolis. So the Nile defined the North South axis. - then the Bull of Heaven with the seven Hathors or seven skies - which represent I think seven increasingly subtle views of reality. Some people associate them with the Pleiades stars (7) with the bull as Taurus. But I favour the idea of seven levels in the sky - as one form of the sky goddess was a cow. The Book of the Dead suggests two cycles - in the first you witness many things but especially the sun rising and in doing so you are able to identify with the creator - this is outlined in Chapter 17 of the Book of Dead. So the first cycle is one of seeing - seeing reality. The second is one of transformation where you become an immortal being. More on this later.

This is a line drawing of another part of the papyrus which shows the progress of the sun through the day. In front of the sun is ma'at.

Where are you getting the better pics?

Something that might interest you from the same papyrus is these scenes: Sorry it's a bit blurred. What you see reading left to right is Thoth presenting Osiris as judge of the dead with the results of the weighing of the heart. What the Egyptians called 'calculating the difference' - that is the difference in weight between the persons heart (representing their character and volition) and ma'at. Then the weighing scales, then the deceased and his ka. So here a state of harmony with ma'at is achieved. This is followed by the square 'lake of flames' - which is a pool surrounded by torches - which I would take to be a state of balanced energy - then by the four steering oars of heaven - which are related to the four directions, four sons of Horus and are about the ability to orientate yourself in spiritual space - then the Bull of Heaven with the seven Hathors or seven skies - which represent I think seven increasingly subtle views of reality. This is the point at which the deceased's soul has reached the East and is ascending into the sky to witness the sunrise.

Has everyone fallen asleep or shall I continue?

The Egyptian view of the cosmos was that it is composed of the souls of Gods. So for instance, the sky is the soul of Nut and the sun is called the Great Eastern Soul. It is not that the world is inhabited by gods but that it is made of them. The word for soul is 'ba' which can be used interchangably with the word for god 'neter'. A ba is a luminous energy capable of manifesting form. So again for instance the sun might manifest his ba as a sacred bull, and so on. The same word 'neter' was used for everything from a cosmological god, like Ra, to a demon in the underworld. Everything was divine. As the universe is made of these divine essences, or bas, there is a structure to the cosmos which is called 'ma'at'. This is not a static order but a kind of living dynamic equilibrium between the numerous divine forces/entities which make up creation. One of the key jobs of the king and his priests was to preserve ma'at. So it was understood that negative and chaotic forces could interfere with the balance and harmony in the world. One of the symbolic ways of showing things had gone wrong was to reverse the order of something. So in the underworld judgement scene there is a goddess Ammit who consumes the souls of the unjustified (i.e. bad people), she has the head of a crocodile, the body of the leopard and the hind quarters of a hippo. This is the exact reverse order of the great mother goddess Ta Urt who has the head of a hippo, body of the leopard and tail of a crocodile. Also the Book of the Dead has many chapters about not going upside down, not eating faeces and so on which are about this same loss of ma'at. This idea of a dynamic universe composed of living forces was transmitted through Western Hermetic Alchemy, the four elements, seven planets, heavenly spheres, the earth as a being and the world soul. In the same way as the king in ancient times was required to establish and uphold ma'at, we too in our own ways, as co-creators in the dynamic field of life have the same responsibility of working for harmony, expelling negative entities, and understanding good order. We each have as a component of our being a 'ba' or if you like divine essence - and in this sense we are gods ourselves.

Most Egyptologists are pretendy scientists and not Hermticists at all

Well I'm back from Bussaco and what is more lovely than to write about Egypt? The Book of the Dead has an odd history which unlike modern books begins with less structure and becomes more and more consolidated over time. The version which the pic is from is from quite a late version. The earliest from the late 17th and early 18th dynasties were little more than collections of certain chapters (sometimes called spells) with associated vignettes (pictures). At the time of Khonsu - mes they were producing versions with almost no writing and entirely made of pictures. They are called 'mythological papyri by Egyptologists for no more reason than they like to give things good sounding names. The Egyptians called the Book of the dead - the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day (and living after death). The theme was a very special one - which will go some way to explaining the pic. Some of the Chapters of the BoD as well as other New Kingdom underworld texts say that they were 'good on earth' as well as for the death. So there was clearly some use for the living in them. My thesis ( which most Egyptologists would not accept) is that they describe a form of what we might call energy work - something like neidan perhaps, thoughh of course quite different in some ways. At the basis of the BoD is two themes - one is the cycle of the sun and the other is the god of the dead Osiris. The sun was understood as being born anew each morning, growing old in the evening and then descending into the underworld which was the realm ruled and judged by Osiris. At the sixth hour of the night the soul of the Sun and the soul of Osiris 'embraced' - the effect of which was to waken up Osiris from his deep sleep and also to refresh and re-nergise the sun in preparation for the new day. This cycle was seen as eternal. An eternal cosmological cycle. On dying a person became an Osiris and would be called Osiris N (where N was their name) - so the dead person also had an opportunity of uniting with the cycling solar energy and renewing himself - although there was a lot more to this than that one event. The journey through the underworld - which was called the Duat (a name which means star-realm) - was fraught with dangers and pitfalls and so a guide was needed. This is why the Egyptians mapped the underworld in texts like the AmDuat and gave people the Book of the Dead as a collections of protective spells and guidance on how to traverse this difficult journey. The Duat was not only accessible on death but also through dreams, in shamanic trans states and so on - we would also say in meditation. So in effect the Duat was the inner world which we can travel through in life as well as after death. You can see a pic of the whole papyrus here: https://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=4574 a downloadable book about the whole collection of texts from this period can be found here: https://archive.org/details/PiankoffRambovaMythologicalPapyriTexts but beware many 'mistakes' therein. Khonsu-mes is described on pgs 143 and 147 - however oddly for them (because they are otherwise quite good) they read it in reverse order making the overall meaning totally obscured. If anyone is still interested I will post more

This is quite an interesting thread although a little confused perhaps.

So sorry I wasn’t thinking.

well spotted - the enxada/ hoe that they are using to ‘hack up the earth’ has in hieroglyphs the meaning ‘love’ - !

They are using 'enxadas'(?) to dig the ground. Sorry I was bit drunk last night - when I get a chance I'll post some more on this.

I’m not little - I’m a medium sized patronizing squirt.

If I told you the great pyramid was a giant vacuum cleaner would you believe me?

My source is Piankoff and Romanov.

You have to understand Oak that I spent decades on this stuff until I was exhausted by the effort and took refuge in Buddhism - but my first love are the Egyptian mysteries. Going back to them is a huge effort which drags at my soul and reminds me how much energy I expended trying to understand the subject.. I am very tentative about going back to it.

If anyone is seriously interested in this subject - but in the past there was little interaction so I took it down.

Tomorrow or later when I have more time time I will give more detail.

Well done TT - however your source is bit inaccurate. Khonsu Mes was a priest in Thebes and not a king. The disk on the right represents the horizon (akhet) not the universe. The papyrus dates from the 21 st dynasty and so quite late and is one of the so called mythological papyri which are in effect short summaries of the Book of the Dead.

I’m expecting a bit more effort!