Apech

I have posted an article in the articles section on my understanding of the ka. Yoda, I don't know of any book which do justice to the spiritual interpretation of Egyptian Mysticism - but I haven't read everything

Artform, thanks for the info - the book (or parts of it) is available online at googlebooks. I was going to buy it till I saw the price on Amazon $153 !!!! they don't matter now all those frequent sleepless nights I'll just read this book.

Thanks for the thanks! really, I am restraining myself from writing 320 page essays because I know I am a little obsessive about this subject. It all started for me when I was student and interested in meditation, the Dao etc. I had a conversation with someone saying I wanted to find a system that really worked and they said "oh well its all in the Book of the Dead you know." So I got a copy and understood exactly nothing but got completely hooked on trying to work out what exactly they (the Egyptians) were on about. The Brit Mus I am no great fan and I go there like a military operation, work out what I want to see, go and see it and extract myself like special forces as quickly as possible. But in the defense of it and any other museum + Egyptology - what would we know without it? Also tomb robbing started in the ancient world and most tombs were robbed by Egyptians themselves in antiquity - with a couple of notable exceptions e.g King Tut. So you can't blame the modern world for that! Human beings have always been the same! As to the big statues - also they are not my things - you can keep Rameses 2 and all his ego mania and empire building and his overblown temples. My heart is with the genuine practitioners (similar to us) who worked quietly on understanding the way. So I rarely look at the big stone stuff! Also the mummies - I admit to some qualms cos it could be my great- great-great ...great granddad's skinny bones everyone is gawping at! But I reassure myself by going back to the idea that all this stuff was meant to be found. We are meant to recover this ancient knowledge - just in the same way as the knowledge of the east is meant to come west, Buddhism leave the land of snows etc. So I hope there is no great resentment in the minds of the AEs cos I believe its all in a good cause. Thanks for the Robert Masters link I will ahve a good read of that. As regards Eric Hornung he is a bit of hero to me, but only as an Egyptologist - I have two indispensable books by him - "The one and the many - concepts of god in Ancient Egypt" and "The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife". However I am told he does not beleive in any spiritual matters which makes it rather strange that he should collaborate with Abt on the Am Dwat, as Abt is a Jungian and is into psycho-spiritual interpretations. That's a good book too but the English translation reads in places like a quick Google job!

robbing us of sleep I'm up at five this morning! those thieving bastards!!!!!! (could do with some hynowotsit and I'm an Aquarian too)

Yoda, As to 3 and 5 ... three is most significantly the deities of the third phase of creation - i.e. Nut (sky), Geb (earth) and Shu (air) - Shu holds the sky up from the earth thus keeping the world in existence. If the sky and earth come together then the world sinks back into the primordial abyss of the Nun. This also relates to the three 'dimensions' of the created world i.e. sky and earth again + the Dwat or netherworld which is conceived as being inside both the earth and sky. The Dwat is the space into which one goes at death and also where one goes in dreams and so on - so its the land of the shamanistic journey. Five relates to the five senses. The High Priest of Thoth was called the 'great one of the five' meaning he was a master of perception and had command over Sia (perception). But, Thoth is also called 'thrice great' in temple inscriptions which relates to Hermes Trismegistos of Emerald Tablet fame for anyone into western Alchemy. I was conscious when I came back to this thread that I haven't really talked at all about Egyptian Mysticism but just about Egyptology. Because it is not an extant system the way I work is this. I use the discipline of Egyptology to study intellectually the ideas and concepts and what is known about their religion and also to help read texts. Then I use meditation to unlock the power of those ideas into direct realisations about the nature of reality. In this way you can build a kind of map of the mind/reality which discloses deeper and deeper insights into the nature of things. Although as I say it is not an extant system I find that when I work on it, it guides me, points out to me various things, and I see this as being particularly the influence of Thoth. I have also studied Tai Chi and Qi Gong under Master To and Grace Chen as well as Tibetan Buddhism - all of which have benefited me greatly and are systems for which I have the greatest respect.

You have to remember the Egyptian culture spanned an extremely long period of time and that there were three main periods of development Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom - as well as the Late Period. During these times some of the ways in which ideas were expressed changed slightly. So in some ways you could say Anubis and Apuat became to be seen as more or less the same at some time, even though they originally had their own function, history and centres of worship. Egypt can be very confusing because of this - and the fact that the Egyptians were the masters of holding multiple (sometimes contradictory) ideas/images together at one time. Yes, numbers were hugely significant. Eight in this case refers to four male and four female deities which emerged from the void. This represents a 'state' before the creation in which the emerging forms were still interpenetrating - (you might think of something like a quantum field for a modern equivalent). After eight comes nine, or the Ennead which is the number of the creation, the structure of the universe.

It seems to me that if this man used to be an acupuncturist and was interested in eastern philosophy and now completely rejected it, then he had a massive conflict in himself. In fact on the basis that energy 'cannot be created or destroyed' then he must have labeled part of himself as evil and so on. People like this will emanate quite disturbing 'vibrations' I feel and should be handled with great care. Personally since I think every being has a point of view of some sort, I would have asked him what exactly he meant by the Devil and evil but only because I would have been interested enough to remind myself not ever to fall into this way of thinking myself. I would have said clearly to myself that this was his issue and not mine and closed down the conversation as quickly as possible. If the experience left me with an after taste then I would have worked on that in myself to see what inconsistency or conflict his behaviour had resonated within me. Or if I had a life to live, just waited for the natural process of assimilation to complete - life has its knocks I'm afraid they just have to be suffered sometimes.

Yes, thank you for this - very well expressed.

no one comes near him ... that's ok for a hermit, who has no real friends.

The names Anubis and Thoth are actually Greek version of Anpu and Djehuty. Anpu is a dog or jackal, black in colour and is the deity associated with embalming and cemeteries. He is in charge of the seven sacred oils which are used to purify and embalm the mummy and it is thought that the priests that carried out this task wore an Anubis mask at certain points in the process. He is shown as reclining on the tomb and was in part a guardian of the necropolis. His black colour was not the natural colour of these desert dogs but was symbolic of death and more importantly the regenerative powers of the waters of the Nun (void). He had various titles and was an ancient god in his own right - but because of a late tendency to put the gods in family groups was sometimes thought of as the son of Set and Nephthys, although rather confusingly he was regarded as the son of Isis in very late times when the Isis cult grew to prominence. He is sometimes linked to and confused with another jackal god called Apuat (or Wepwawet) whose name means "Opener of the ways" which refers to the function of acting in vanguard to the god Osiris in the rites of Abydos. Djehuty (Thoth) is the god of wisdom. One of the greatest gods of Egypt, worshiped in the form of an Ibis or sometimes a baboon. He was linked (but not exclusively) to the moon - but was chiefly regarded as the inventor of writing, mathematics and medicine. Although not 'related' to Anubis in the sense of family, they are often shown together because they are the chief guides to the dead in the underworld. Thoth supplies the knowledge of the underworld, what to do and how to do it. He also supplies the magical words (heka) by which the dead person is able to open the doors and gateways in the underworld and overcome guardian demons and so on. Thoth's main place of worship was Hermopolis (Khemennu) which in Egyptian means City of Eight - a name which refers to the Ogdoad of primeval deities which emerged from the void in the form of frogs and serpents. In his own city Thoth is regarded as the creator which he effected by flying as an Ibis through the primeval waters calling forth the creatures. Not sure about 'scapegoating' - if you mean sacrificed animals which take away the sins of others, maybe, but its not mainstream as far as I know.

I found the original paper interesting but that the author was writing from a pre-defined point of view. He is clearly in favour of orthodoxy and against individual freedom of expression, pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant and this rather obvious stance obscured his otherwise valid points. He is right of course that some people's take on the Tao Te Ching is a million miles from a traditional Chinese view. That people have taken from the text what they want and been highly selective in what they accept and what they don't. I suppose it is a danger of being outside the orthodox that we are vulnerable to our own delusions and fantasies in a way that the obedient members of a church are not. That we become self indulgent and confuse this confused freedom with strength. However what the writer overlooks I think is that modern takes on 'spirituality' are a new emergent and despite the amount of nonsense this might produce, this has to be balanced against those who gain a genuine revelatory experience and that those who do are almost always anti or at least outside of the established churches or schools of discipline.

jewel of the deep like an ocean in a drop within an ocean.

I called myself but it was engaged.

Yoda, 1) Reincarnation, heavenly realms and what happens after being eaten by Ammit? There is no teaching on reincarnation in Egypt that I'm aware of but there was definitely a future after death. In principle this relied on becoming an 'akh' or effective spirit, aligning with the Northern circumpolar stars (known as the imperishible spirits) and therefore becoming indestructible = immortal. It is possible that reincarnation was a secret doctrine in Egypt but this is impossible to prove. As to heavenly realms the blissful after-life was called the sekhet-hetep or sekhet-arru (meaning fields of peace/offerings + fields of reeds) in these realm the deceased is shown enjoying a kind of perfect form of life on earth. Sometimes the sky goddess 'Nut' is translated as 'heaven' but a better translation is just sky. In typical Egyptian fashion there were many images of how the blessed dead spent their existence - e.g. riding in the sun's boat, living as a star, living in the fields of peace with Osiris. Ammit is interesting. She is shown as a composite 'monster' with the head of a crocodile, body of a lion and hindquarters of a hippo. The reason this is interesting is because a form of the mother goddess "Ta-urt" (meaning the great-one) is composed of the same three animals but in the reverse order. The head of a hippo, the body of a lion and the tail of a crocodile. Ta-urt is like the cosmic womb from which all beings, indeed all forms emerge. She gives birth to everything that exists. Ammit as the reverse of this makes things 'un-born', that is she sucks them out of existence. This is an anathema to the Egyptians and to us to ... i.e. to die and be completely forgotten. This is what is called the second death. the first death is when the spirit leaves the body. At this point, although the body has ceased to function the person still exists as a ka, ba, shade and so on. There is still a chance for re-integration, but the second death is a real end to the possibility for the being to exist. This is why the Book of the Dead has chapters called "Not dying a second time." 2) Guardian angel - well possibly but not expressed in that way. The ba is sometimes seen a bit this way - indeed there is a famous text called "A discourse of a man with his soul" - sometimes called "The man who is tired of life." 3) Persian/Indian/Tibetan and so on. I have read about this idea but I don't know if there is enough evidence to say it is so. What I absolutely believe is that mankind is far older than scientists suppose in terms of culture, belief systems and understanding of the world. So I think that the ancient wisdom which is enshrined in all these cultures goes way back - probably to a common source (not necessarily Atlantis but as the origin of this myth.) 4) Omm Sety is actually quite highly regarded in Egyptological circles (despite her strange beliefs). Witch, 1) E.A. Wallis Budge - he is quite a controversial figure in Egyptology. Even at the time that he wrote (late 19 century) he was not at the leading edge of Egyptian studies and he has some very strange views about certain things e.g. sexual imagery. This is a drawback for Egyptian studies because they believed that Atum the creator brought the world into being by masturbating (or in some versions by auto-fellatio !) amongst much else!!! So most Egyptologists would tell you to throw his books away. But that's what they think. The good thing about Budge is that he published so much and that now because of copyright expiry its available really cheap! Which I think is a good thing - I have several of his books. He is most famous for publishing the Papyrus of Ani - a version of the Book of the Dead from the British Museum. 2) The 'ka' is very interesting... but I've run out of time.

Yoda, Thanks for your continuing interest - I thought maybe I was boring everyone to death with my long explanations . There is a concept of sin in Egypt as can be seen in the famous Judgment Scene (Ch. 125 Book of the Dead) where the heart of the deceased is weighed on the scales against the feather of maat (truth). This illustration is accompanied by what is known as the 'negative confession'. Basically the deceased in the underworld has to say that he/she has not done certain 'bad' deeds. These include moral, social and religious transgressions. The weighing of the heart is carried out by Thoth and Anubis but the judge is Osiris, who after his death became the king of the dead or "Foremost of the Westerners." Westerners being a term for the dead because the necropolis was on the west bank of the Nile. So if the heart of the deceased (and heart stands for mind here) balances with truth he is ok, if not he is fed to a monster called Ammit (!) So better to be good! Every person who died also became an 'Osiris N', where N was their name. So for instance you would become the Osiris Yoda ( ). In Ch. 17 of the Book of the Dead it is described, amongst a whole lot else, how the 'evil' (Egyptian word Dw) is removed from the Osiris N. The text explains that this 'Dw' has arisen because of what the Osiris N has done since he came from his mothers womb. Also the 'Dw' is described through a particular grammatical form as being 'of', 'on' or 'attached to' the Osiris. So the idea is that since being born through our actions we accumulate this Dw which then has to be removed in the Netherworld. This Dw is not ours exactly, but something that we have accumulated. The removal is through a dual process - firstly the gods who make up the cosmos (long detailed explanation needed for who they are which I can't put in here) judge between what is 'pure' in the Osiris N and what is 'Dw' - secondly the Eye of Horus (a goddess) named in this case as Hetep-se-Khus ('she who brings fulfillment/peace and protection') then burns out the impurities like a flame passing through the deceased. So what is being described is a dual process of 1) settling out impurities from the mind, allowing us to distinguish between 'pure' being and contamination 2) burning the contamination out using psychic energy. So although the Egyptians had concepts for sin - it was something that could be removed, in fact had to be removed and was to do with human interaction in life, human entanglements and was not an essential constituent of the being. Osiris himself is like the forerunner for everyone else. He makes it possible for the rest of us because we can ask - let what was done for Osiris be done for me. So in a way Osiris could be seen as having gone through this 'for' us. Lot more to say about this but not enough time now. Hope this helps. Apepch7

world and grain of sand - one is my oyster, and one will become my pearl.

I would suggest that devotion in say, Tibetan Buddhism, in other words guru-yoga is more a method than an absolute - or in other words a skillful means of attaining enlightenment. You take the view that your teacher is a buddha so that you may get the benefits of a buddha rather than of a being with an ordinary mind. However in terms of ultimate truth there is no difference between pupil and teacher. Devotion in theistic religions is different because of the belief in an external existent deity which one has to surrender to. Both have their dangers and many teachers have abused the relationship and their students (literally) by manipulating people. Surrender then ultimately must be about surrendering to the process of one's own enlightenment. That is opening to either the lessons in our experience or to the immediate energy of the situation. Surely.

Yes, yes, triple yes. In a way he is doing what he accuses them (the reptiles and their minions) of doing.

ground in Hamlet's Mill or 'prisoned in a nutshell to be or be not.

I used to think David Icke was crazy - but he stood for election here in the UK when another MP resigned over the issue of 'big brother' + identity cards and all that. I watched a video of David Icke's speech and he made 90% sense. I agree the reptile thing is a bit much and I do believe he thinks that they are shape shifting reptiles from another dimension (or something). But he was dead right that all the information we get is heavily controlled and 'used' to make us neurotic and frightened and thus easily controlled. I recently returned from Europe to the UK and the atmosphere at the UK airport was palpably tense and paranoid (as distinct to the rest of Europe). Also the Labour Party (Government Party in Britain was Blair now Brown) held its annual conference in Manchester - I walked up to have a look and you couldn't get anywhere near it. Road blocks an armed police everywhere. Politics in this country used to be quite close to the people but now it just a pantomime. I think that all end of the world theories are useful in that they point to the impermanence of things. But even if they are right we need to focus on our own spiritual development and not be swayed by what we are told. Anyway the UFOs are coming on 14th October apparently - maybe.

Totally agree about zoos. PS. Sharp was good. PPS. Surrender is the meaning of Islam by the way.

Wow does "S" stand for sharp?

'Gleaming multitides!' 'Come again?' she said, reaching for a clean tissue.

Jelly fish glow green!!! Self luminous in the deep Salted by wide seas.

celebrate instead of watching the stock exchange the future's coming!