Apech

So the issue remains as to how we are supposed to regard these gods. One problem being that the same term Neter was applied to everything from a creator god who gave rise to whole cosmos and a squinty eyed demon who bites your leg as you pass in the underworld. So for the Egyptians calling something a Neter did not necessarily mean something august though often it did. There are also god who represent particular functions ... they would not have a temple or cult of their own ... for instance there is a god called Sia who is 'Perception' and another called 'Hu' which means 'command'. They are used what I call technically to illustrate the powers they represent. To make it more confusing some major gods are used in this way to. For instance Isis when paired with Nephthys specifically means upward growth towards light (half of a cycle) ... but on her own she may take on a much broader significance. Some gods and goddesses rise to such significance that they may almost be regarded as the sole creator. Among these could be Ra, Atum, Amen, Neith. So we also have to get our heads around the idea that more than one god can be the sole creator. This is an example of Egyptian pluralist thought and is termed today 'henotheism', 'monolatry' and sometimes polycentric polytheism. But all these rather grand terms cannot hide the fact that the Egyptians thought very differently from us about the divine. The key stone of all Egyptian religion is the resolution or union of opposites. Even the country itself was the 'Two Lands' of Upper and Lower Egypt ... they were in short non-dualists to the very core. In the religious and funerary texts the gods are mostly used in this technical way to describe movements or functions of energy. So it is possible to compare some of the texts with works of Taoist internal alchemy. So that is one way to understand the gods as functions of energy or one could say one's mind or being. But also since the Egyptians regarded the gods as the very fabric of their world, the gods are entities in their own right, although quite different to us as entities for instance. The gods 'lived' in the sky, where the subtle energy of pure form exists. But they also power the world and become manifest in objects (like statues) animals and indeed people. One of the titles of priests was hm-neter which is often translated as god's servant but actually means god's incarnation or avatar. the king of course was conceived of as a god.

This is what I bought http://www.amazon.co.uk/Packard-Bell-EasyNote-15-6-inch-Laptop/dp/B009R1537S but only cos I can't afford a MacBook pro which is what i really want .. but I resent the fact that it is 3 or even 4 times the price ...

Sorry I don't understand the question.

Nice using it now ... thanks I may use this as default if it works out ... !!!!!

Does it work ok - forum indicates probs with mac version.

Well anyway ... just to prove to everyone how thick I am ... I researched dual booting Ubuntu 12.4/12.10 and Windows very carefully ... including Windows 8. Didn't seem difficult so I boldly went forth and bought the cheapest Laptop I could find ... I wanted one with Windoze 7 (didn't like the look of those tiles) but more or less every model in the shop had pre-installed Windows 8 so ... I bought one. Got home to find that pre-installed Windows * has a different BIOS ... forgotten what its called and the dual boot which seemed semi automatic easy wouldn't work. Googled around and found that people were having same problem ... there was a solution but it seemed hellishly complicated for the likes of me ... so I gave up and just been using Win 8 but just in the desktop and to back up files into hard drive, openoffice and vlc media player. Now thinking of buying a mac mini ... cos my original back up hard-drive using time machine cannot be read by the Windows machine. damn. tried really hard but ... well damn those Microsofties they got me again ....

I would go back to Firefox is they sorted that memory thing ... I don't want to be a google robot but what choice ... I don't like Safari much either ... I tried Opera but Chrome is just better right now ... see you made me feel guilty ... *sulk*

OK. So in the first two images I have counted about 15 gods and goddesses so I don't think any prizes would be awarded for guessing that the Egyptians were not mono-theists. In fact they have several hundred gods. the word for god in Egyptian is Neter (sometimes Netcher or Netjer). Some think it was pronounced more like Natur ... making it sound a bit like our word Nature ... which is actually quite useful when we think about this word. This is how the word 'god' might be written. The first sign is the neter sign and the second is a sign called a determinative which just indicates what the thing is and has no phonetic value. The first sign was wrongly identified by some Egyptologists including Wallis Budge as an axe. It isn't. There is a separate sign for an axe and detailed versions of this sign show that the bit at the top is a cloth and so the sign is rather like a flag. In fact the Egyptians used to put flags outside the temple gateways. When asked what it meant by a Greek writer an Egyptian priest said it means 'wrapped'. Which apart, from having connections to mummification, seems a bit odd for a word meaning god. However if understood properly it does make sense. The image is a pole or staff wrapped in cloth for its whole length with the top bit hanging free. The pole or staff means power or energy and the cloth means form. So a god is power wrapped or cloaked in form. The end hanging free has this significance ... it is like a flag. So the presence of power or energy is advertised, or made apparent by the form which cloaks it. So for instance we know that it is windy ... not because we can see wind directly ... but because we see its effects ... things being blown about ...flags waving ... in the same way we know power or energy is there because we see the form in which it cloaks itself but we don't see the power itself. To the Egyptians the whole manifest world was composed of divine powers hidden in form. Everything, trees, mountains, birds, animals, people were all this. The world was made of divine powers.

That deserves a special TBs star ... if only there were such a thing. Very well said.

The 19th and 20th centuries 'experimented' with various kinds of governmental regimes. Communism actually stems from an economic theory of collective ownership of land and means of production. Soviet style socialism was not actually full communism but intended as a means to achieve that. It involved central control of the economy and the Soviet assembly which set economic and social programs. This style of socialism is almost defunct unless you count Cuba and North Korea (which is actually more like a god-king oligarchy). Fascism is also central control but by the 'few' ... that is the elite who hold the society and economy together hence the fascist symbol which is an axe with a bundle of wood around it. The axe is the elite and the wood the people. In an ideal fascist state (if such a thing were possible) the few, the elite would through their greater intelligence and far sightedness act for the benefit of the many. However this is actually given human nature an impossible ideal as the elite will always act in their own interest. The experiments failed. The soviet union collapsed, Fascism through the excesses of the Nazis became unacceptable and recognisably flawed. So that left the liberal democracies. Liberal because of the focus on individual rights and democracy because of the election of the government ... different models exist of course because of the historical differences in various countries and cultures ... the main three being American style Presidential democracy, British Parliamentary democracy and the republics of Europe. It is one of these models which we export into iraq and other countries - a mistake in my view because democracy and the exact model used has to be grown from the base up and not imposed from above to work properly. Nothing that you will see in the US is or will ever be anything approaching communism since collective ownership is an impossible idea. However because of the Cold War the word communism is sued as a kind of insult/monster in the dark to scare people and this only works if they have no idea what it really is. Fascism of a kind probably does exist because those who hold all the cash and power exert massive influence and try to control everyone's lives. However even this is not real fascism as a principle because the elite are hidden behind and rely on the front of the elected officials.

Glad to see this thread is staying on topic ... which is ... er summer sausages I think ... not sure ... actually spectacles, squirrels, summer, sausages ... I'm beginning to see the pattern! the letter s.

yes, Nun (or Nu) is the void. The sky is the void with a 't' added Nut ... which signifies female ... as in the word for king is nesu and queen nesut ... so adding a 't' makes it female. Both Geb (the earth) and Nut (the sky) are form by Shu the air from their 'mother' called Tefnut. The word (i)tef means father and Nut can mean mother. So the origin of the sky and earth is the Father-mother ... which is the void seen as a primordial substance. As the created world is like a bubble within the infinite Nun there is a surface or skin between this bubble of air and the waters of the void. This skin is the sky. If you imagine that the world as we know it, the known, is within this bubble, then the known has an outermost limit. Again this is the sky. It becomes then a bit like a projection screen on which images can appear in their most insubstantial from. Like a movie images are nothing but projected light ... it looks like there are people, cars and so on but it is just pure forms with no substance. So Nut is like this, the limit of perception which shows us pure forms. If you think about the sky that we perceive you can see how literal this explanation is. The blue sky does not exist as a substantial thing, you can't fly up in a space shuttle and touch it, there is nothing there. All it is, is the blue light from the sun scattered and refracted down to us, in the early morning or evening the angles are such that we see not blue but red or orange .... but its all just a light effect. At night it looks like a black surface with lights (stars) upon it. So we have at the outermost edge of our perception as kind of surface or mirror perhaps which reflects pure form back to us. In our own minds we can perceive also a kind of surface at the outermost limit of our perception, a boundary which has no substance but allows us to think, have ideas, see images that have no actual substantial counterpart. Nowadays we are told that these things, images, dreams, pure ideas, are not 'real', that the only thing that is real is the gross material world of compacted form i.e. Geb the earth. But to the Egyptians what is real is the world created by the separation of subtle from gross by the intelligent power (Shu), they are all real Nut, Shu,Geb, they depend on each other to exist and arise through each other. You can't choose to just have Geb and be a materialist, and you can't chose to just live in your dreams and imagination and be a Nutist. All three = the real. If this distinction between them fails, then Nut merges with Geb and the Nun dissolves everything back into the void.

Hi vortex, breath of life is a reasonable meaning ... or just life ... the symbol is composed of a female part (the circle bit) and male part (line) and therefore 'life' is sexual energy. sexual interfunction but not necessarily actual sex implied but more this energy of excitement which is universal. We can discuss how this works later perhaps.

any questions? ... like why? what? and so on?

Why don't they fix it?is it difficult?

There may be a significant number who think this but there's also a vocal minority (?) who want more or less no moderation. When I used to do it I tried my best to moderate as little as I could ... to let things flow ...

... what's a memory leak? (In idiot proof language if possible)

I'd rather use Firefox but it makes the processor on my 6 year old macbook go to max temp and the fan buzzes like its going to burst ... so I switched to chrome which seems quicker and uses much less processing power.

Cocky comedy ... that's about right.

Well human figures with animal heads are common in the ancient world ... look at Egypt. They are also common feature of shamanic visions as are serpents ... so I would guess that is where all this is coming from ...

How would we ever get to squirrels in spectacles if this rule was in force? I don't see the problem to be honest ... if people want to get back on topic all they have to do is start posting on topic and ignore the others ... these little detours don't always last that long. the problem only is serious if someone deliberately and repeatedly derails the topic for no purpose other than to distract and make mayhem ... then a potentially interesting subject gets' swamped ... in this case the mods can split and pit of whatever ...

Didn't realise they had topless bathing in old Iraq.

This is the Twelfth Hour of the Book of Gates, one of the Egyptian New Kingdom books of the Duat. It illustrates the sun rise. You can see the waters of Nun (the abyss) as the wavy lines that cover the background. This is the Egyptian letter 'n' - which means water. But they were not talking about physical water, but of Nun. Nun is said to have four qualities, two of which we have already mentioned, hidden-ness and water. Water is best understood as meaning fluidity. We can add to these infinity and darkness. The Nun is infinite, it has no limits or boundaries. It is also dark, it has no light. But this is not the darkness of obscuration but rather the darkness of complete transparency, like outer space because there is nothing to scatter the light it appears dark. These four qualities were personified as eight male and female deities called the Ogdoad. That is male and female water, male and female darkness and so on. Although the Nun is non-being, it is not part of existence as such, it is potentially seething with life like a great ocean. It is the power-source of everything that is to be, without partaking of that existence. This is why it is the background to creation. Tot eh Egyptians every sun rise was a recapitulation of the the First Time act of creation of the universe. So as well as illustrating the sun rise this picture illustrates that creation too. The Nun is personified as the large figure at the bottom which is holding up the sun boat. This is the boat of the sun god, a boat being the vehicle of choice in Ancient Egypt. Today we might give hm a Rolls Royce or a millionaire's yacht. In the sun boat is the crew of the sun god, a group of gods who are assisting him in his journey. On either side of the large scarab beetle, Khepera, are the two sister goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Although Isis herself in late periods developed into a kind of universal mother goddess here she is paired with her 'sister' and represent two phases of the cycling of energy. Isis, up ward movement, light and growth and Nephthys downward movement, darkness and death. The sun disk itself is shown above being pushed along by the beetle Khepera, the motive transformative energy, so this is really a way fo saying that the sun drives itself and does not rely on an external power. Above the sun disk is another circle formed by the body of the god of the dead Osiris. The circle of his body forms the limits of the Duat, or underworld from which the sun has just emerged. This re-enforces the idea of the innerness of the Duat. The sky goddess Nut is lifting up the sun disk from out of the Duat.

This is the next image I want to discuss:

To link this Egyptian image to Hermetic alchemy here is a quote from the Emerald Tablet: This introduces the next important idea which is the circulation of energy within this system of the causal, subtle and gross. The sun, moon, stars and planets all rotate around the earth (from our perspective). So the known, the created world in which we live, driven by the power of transformation (kheper) rotates constantly. The most visible evidence of this is the daily cycle of the sun. The Egyptians and particularly the Heliopolitan Egyptians thought that understanding this cycle properly was the key to understanding the power that had manifest the world. So they studied this cycle in great detail which they understood in a way which today we would call an alchemical process. Birth, life, death and renewal. In particular in the New Kingdom they set out to map the sun's journey through the night, which they understood as its journey through the hidden realm of the Duat. They produced numerous maps of this nightly journey.