Ancient Egyptian symbols

[Apech]

Along similar lines of the last question, I was curious as to what ancient Egyptian symbols point to which internal states generated by cultivation. Or if any of the hieroglyphics also show process of breathing, chi cultivation and nei and chi kung.

 

 

that's a massive question to which the answer is all of them if properly understood. I know that sounds like dodging giving an answer but what I think I need to do is build up to those kinds of questions as we go so to speak

... perhaps if I talk about the various entities of a person and how they interact ... also the relation of parts of the body it might start to make sense.

[Apech]

Certain of the gods made their way into the magical system of the Golden Dawn, and other later systems to represent the forces that they were responsible for in Egyptian culture. Most recently I have seen offshoots of Chaos magick working with Maat. Has it been your observation that the gods that were of primary import within Egyptian society continued to be the ones that were focused on in occult systems, or did some of those that were of primary import drop by the wayside as society changed, with others coming more into focus?

 

 

For a long time the knowledge of Egyptian gods was limited to the Greek writers like Plutarch who recorded their myths. This is where for instance Mozart got Isis and Osiris from for the Magic Flute (he was a Freemason). Then after Champollion decifered the hieroglyphs a lot was published and it opened up a lot of knowledge. One Egyptologist called Wallis Budge was curator of the British Museum and published a lot of texts ... his stuff is still available in books and on the internet as it is out of copyright. Occult groups picked up on this newly discovered knowledge and used his books to recreate rituals and so on. Unfortunately Budge was not a very good Egyptologist and made a lot of mistakes. If you mention his name to a modern Egyptologist they usually sneer or laugh .. but one of the reasons Egypt is so popular is because of him, something those others forget. You will, however still find a lot of his mistranslations in use ... for instance he called Atum - Tmu for some reason.

 

More importantly there are certain groups of gods (called Enneads - which means group of nine - even though sometimes there are more than this number) the main one being the Heliopolitan Ennead. These are the gods feature in the creation myth focused round Atum-Ra. Shu, Nut and Geb and three of them. These together with certain key deities such as Horus, Anubis, Maat, Thoth and so on form perhaps the main gods. But you must remember Egyptian culture lasted intact for 3000 years and although the central themes remained the same the style and emphasis changed. Also each major centre had its own version of the creation and the Ennead or in the case of Hermopolis the Ogdoad (group of eight).

[Apech]

I know that Greece and Egypt had cultures that mingled since around 330 BCE until fairly modern times. It seems in the case of Thoth (Egyptian) and Hermes (Greek) that these were essentially the same god. Was this a cultural handoff from Egypt to Greece, or simply a matching up of existing archetypes? Were there other gods that got handed off from one culture to another, and if so was most of it Egyptian export, or did they also import ideas from other cultures over the course of their 3000 year cultural period?

 

 

yes the Ptolemys ruled Egypt in the late period and the most famous was Cleopatra. Also they were invaded by the Persians and Assyrians and of course the Romans.

 

The idea of making god equivalences was Greek - they liked to do this so the Hermes=Thoth thing is theirs and not the Egyptians idea. However I don't suppose they had a problem with it. they did import some gods again int he late period but mostly it was export ... particularly Isis who became a universal mother goddess through the Roman world and together with Serapis was the last of a pagan gods before the onset of Christianity.

 

During the first few centuries AD there was a kind of multi-cultural melting pot in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in northern Egypt. It had a famous library which was later bruned down by the Christian mob. here is where the Egyptian priest, Greek neo-platonists and jewish Kabbalists intermingled and this is where Hermeticism and the writings of Hermes Tresmegistus first appeared.

[Tom Lin]

This is really awesome. I have been getting into symbols and ancient civilization such as the egyptian kemites, i'm still very new to all of this but this thread seems like a relatively good starting point on my journey of research and findings =]

[Apech]

“Along similar lines of the last question, I was curious as to what ancient Egyptian symbols point to which internal states generated by cultivation. Or if any of the hieroglyphics also show process of breathing, chi cultivation and nei and chi kung.”

 

 

The problem of studying Ancient Egyptian symbols or texts, without modern interpretation that is, is that the Egyptians themselves supplied no commentary or narrative explaining what exactly it was that they were talking about. In fact it is this lack of any description of practices or states of mind or being which caused many egyptologists to claim that there was no spirituality in Egypt at all! This despite the Greek writers saying the Egyptians were the most religious and spiritual people they encountered.

 

The reason the Egyptians didn't explain themselves or spell it out for us is simple, it was embedded cultural knowledge. In other words they just assumed that everyone would basically understand what was behind their symbols and writing. It has to be remembered that although the Egyptians were among the first to use writing and were prolific recorders of everything, the concept of 'you only know it if it is written down' comes from later times. If they thought that 'everyone knows this' they would not bother spelling it out. This leaves a big gap to be filled, the need to provide a modern narrative or commentary.

 

It is possible to demonstrate that the Egyptians only began to record what they were doing when this embedded cultural knowledge was beginning to be lost. This is the reason that the Pyramid Texts only appear in the small pyramids at the end of the Fifth Dynasty and Sixth Dynasty which led up to the cultural and social collapse of the the First Intermediate Period (brought on probably by climate change). Similarly the Book of the Dead was only codified and put in a definite order and number of Chapters in the 26^th dynasty (about 600-500 BC) (what is called the Saite Recension) – and this is almost a 1000 years after the book first appeared! And indeed some of the chapters relate back to parts of the Pyramid Texts which first appeared 2350 BC making them then about 1700 years old. What is amazing is that these same texts were still in use throughout this period of time.

 

So you will not find any genuine ancient texts or symbols which show directly what practice to do or how to understand the principles of what they were doing.

 

However there is a lot of compelling evidence to show that what they were describing is shamanic in origin and also that certain key texts describe what we would call energy work or cultivation. Another writer Jeremy Naydler in his book “Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts” has demonstrated how applying phenomenological processes to understanding the Pyramid Texts shows that what was being practiced were shamanic 'arts'. So I won't go further than to say this is fairly self evident.

 

There are a number of other clues to interpreting these texts and symbols which I will attempt to describe.

 

The Egyptians had a good understanding of anatomy and physiology. Their medical payrii include the description of a system of vessels or channels in the body called metu. There were 22 metu which connected the heart (considered as a kind of command and control centre) to various parts of the body. These channels were not veins, arteries, ligaments or nervous system – although some of them seem to run along the same pathways. They are variously described as carrying blood, air, mucus, urine, semen, disease bearing entities and benign or malign spirits. Obviously this confuses the Egyptologists somewhat because they are unfamiliar with the idea of chi and meridians. But it is clear that they were talking about energy channels in the body ... and where blood or mucus is mentioned this is the improved flow or circulation arising from the flow of energy in the metu.

 

Then we come to the texts themselves. Most are obscure funerary texts. Sometimes this gives the impression that the Egyptians were obsessed with death but of course it is partly due to archeology. The best preserved monuments and artifacts come from the necropolis because although there has been desecration since the oldest times the tombs have escaped centuries of building and rebuilding which has left the towns and palaces hidden under modern cities. What some of the text do say though, is that they are 'useful on earth' in other words they are to be used by the living as well as for funerals.

 

The other problem with translations of texts is that Egyptologists put their own interpretation on the original words. To give an example here is a short section from the Pyramid Texts:

 

“...You have not gone away dead: you have gone away alive.

Sit on Osiris's chair, with your baton in your arm, and govern the living;

With your water lily scepter in your arm, and govern those of the inaccessible places.

Your lower arms are of Atum,

Your upper arms are of Atum,

Your belly of Atum,

Your back of Atum,

Your rear of Atum,

Your legs of Atum,

Your face of Anubis.

Horus's mounds shall serve you, Set's mounds shall serve you.”

 

(Spell 213 trans. Allen.)

 

The traditional way of understanding this is that it is part of a funeral of a dead king who is being addressed as he becomes god-like. However the first line “you have gone away living” suggests otherwise. Egyptologists explain this away by saying its aspirational ... about living after death.

 

So if we look at it as being about energy working with a living subject we can understand the text as follows.

 

Osiris is the ruler and judge in the underworld. The underworld or Duat is an inner realm or dimension and by sitting in Osiris's chair you place yourself in the centre, in the heart, in the middle.

 

'in your arm' is the Egyptian way of saying 'in your hand'. So you sit on Osiris chair with a baton in your left hand and a lily scepter on your right. The inaccessible places means the Duat or realm of the dead. So you are in the centre with a left and right hand channel.

 

Then you identify your body (part by part ) with Atum. Atum means 'complete or undivided' and refers to the creative power in the void. So the parts of the body are being filled with this voidic power. The face of Anubis means that your attention is focused into the dark energy of the Duat and not into the light.

 

The mounds of Horus and Set are seen as like burial mounds or tumuli ... where the Egyptologists have translated 'serve' the actual word pXr means to turn, perambulate or surround. However they have a problem with this because it is supposed to be about a dead king in his sarcophagus ... or at least sitting on a chair. How can he go round or circulate? They understand the mounds to be physical places possibly settlements or towns. So they have changed it to serve to make it make sense (to them).

 

The god Horus, the falcon is to do with his eye, and therefore awareness or perception. Set is about will or drive. So the 'mounds' are actually centers or places of focus for awareness or will. If this is about energy work then it is ok to say ... something like the centers of awareness and will, will circulate for you. An image very like the idea of chakras in the energy body.

 

So my interpretation actually makes the more sense of the text. It is a set of instructions or perhaps a visualisation technique for controlling and moving energy in the body. Its main method is identification with various deities in a similar way to which tantric yoga might work.

 

Because the deities and images were culturally familiar to Egyptians the technique would work easily for them. While for us we have to do some preliminary work to make it accessible.

 

The other related subject area to the idea of energy work (neigong or similar) is the parts of being. The Egyptians did not see a person as being composed of a single entity but more as a collection of several entities. One of these being the body. As you can see in the previous example the body (or parts of it) could be identified with deities. In another example parts of the body are identified with star-gods. The 'imperishable stars' were those which circulated around the north point in the sky and did not set below the horizon. Because they did not set (i.e. Die) they were thought to link to immortality. The chief constellation of these stars was Ursa Major the Plough or Big Dipper.

 

“Your head as Horus of the Duat – an imperishable star,

Your face as “Eyes Forward” - an imperishable star,

Your ears as Atum's twins - an imperishable star,

Your eyes as Atum's twins - an imperishable star,

Your nose as the Jackal - an imperishable star,

Your teeth as Sopdu - an imperishable star,

Your arms Hapi and Duamutaf – when you demand to go up to the sky, you go up,

Your legs Imset and Qebehsenuef – when you demand to go down to the undersky, you go down,

Your limbs Atum's twins - an imperishable star.

You will not perish, your ka will not perish: you are ka.”

 

This text comes later in the same sequence started in the one I quoted above. So we have a series of identifications of parts of the body with gods and stars. The last line giving a clue to the goal, the ka that does not perish.

 

The body then is a kind of vehicle for carrying out the energy work and is seen often as being many parts joined together. The key to this process is identification with various deities and then circulation (going up in the sky and then down). Certain parts of the body were seen as being particularly important. The heart, the lungs, the liver, the stomach and the intestines. These were vessels for the individuals consciousness and the primary forms of energy which make up life (precursors to the four elements or humors).

 

Next we need to look at the 'ka'.

 

The ka is both part of a person (often translated as a 'double') and a form of energy. Actually it is the bio-field or etheric body which surrounds the body. But it should not be seen as a kind neutral energy like electricity rather each person has their own signature or characteristic energy. So the ka energy has a kind of formed nature. At birth we receive the ka from our parents, then it is during life in three ways. By affection (or sex), by food and by status. The symbol of the ka is a pair of arms raised in embrace ... which is to do with the transmission of ka by affection ... hugging perhaps. The food offerings made in Egyptian tombs were called ka ... and so the energy absorbed through food was said to feed the ka. The effect of status on a persons ka may not at first seem obvious. But if you look at the affect on people such as movie stars and politicians of being in the limelight ... you will see how attention feeds people's charisma, their ka. Even the most unprepossessing grey haired politician gets a certain sparkle when they become president or prime-minister.

 

Normally we are focussed on our bodies but it is possible to refocus on the energy-body of the ka. The Egyptians held that on death the first stage is to 'go to your ka' which means your consciousness is refocused on the ka and leaves the body. But the ka needs energy input to sustain it and so it is thought necessary to sustain it. Hence “You will not perish, your ka will not perish: you are ka.”

 

The body and the ka are not the complete being. The next significant part of a person is the 'ba'. The ba is often translated as 'soul' but this is a vague translation. The word ba is also used to mean god or power. It is especially used of a god's power to project and embody themselves as a form. The word ba is also related to words that mean brilliant or bright. So the ba is a luminous entity which is capable of projecting form. This includes the power to transform into different forms and an ability to do this was seen as key in the Book of the Dead. As part of an individual being the ba manifests as a life-force or virility, that is a creative power. As such it can be understood as the spark of divine power within us, or perhaps that is us.

 

Because the ba can travel independently to the body, unlike the ka which is linked to the body it is shown as a bird with a human head. After death it tends to leave the tomb and has to be coaxed back to reunite with the body. It is the ba which leaves the tomb to fly to the sky to witness the first sunrise.

 

Together with the luminous power of the ba there is another entity called the 'shade'. Shown as a silhouette it accompanies the ba when it leaves the tomb to see the sun. The shade is the essential form of the being. If you like a conceptual level of existence.

 

The purpose of Egyptian practices was to bring these different parts of being together to form a single entity called an akh. The chapters of their texts were called se-akh ... or akhifiers in English. The akh can be translated as 'effective spirit' and was an eternal spritualized self.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Apech

[Seth Ananda]

Fantastic thread Apech!

 

Outside of these articles, do you recommend any particular books/links/teachers on the subject?

[Birch]

Really great post on the practices Apech.

[Cookie Monster]

.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Ocean Form

[Apech]

Can you talk more about the duat? Is this a realm only for the dead, or are the living able to interact with it as well? Is it actually a realm/plane of existence at all, or is it more of an energy? Can you relate it to any concepts from other traditions?

Although I think I described the created world of 3 dimension + time as being like a bubble in the infinite waters of the Nun, more correctly I should have pointed out that even this world is permeated by those waters. If you tear aside the veil of appearance, of perceived form beyond this you will see voidity (= Nun). Just as if you dig in ground you will find water so the Egyptians understood that existence was permeated by non-existence. The Duat is like a way into, through and back from the waters which are inside normally perceived reality. It is like a hidden dimension inside everything. Nowadays we are taught to dismiss inner experience (like a dream or vision) as 'subjective' somehow not real. But to the Egyptians dreams , visions and so on were access to the hidden realm. So not just on death but in dreams and so on this was access to the Duat in varying degrees. For instance you could say a dream is uncontrolled access, lucid dreaming more controlled access, shamanic ecstatic states would be a kind of bodily access, after death the same, even meditation is like a very small and very controlled movement into the duat dimension if you like.

 

To the Egyptians just as the earth (gross level) is real, the sky (subtle level) is real so to is the Duat. Different rules may apply but they are all real.

 

In any tradition which talks of an underworld or other world ... this is the same thing as the Duat.

 

The ka seems like what one might think of now as the astral body that is sometimes shown as being attached to the physical body by a silver cord. Is this a close approximation to how you understand it?

 

The ba seems more like pure consciousness. Is that a fair approximation, or is the ba more complex than that?

 

Can you talk more about the role of the shade?

Actually if I had to make an equation it would be more like astral body (literally star body) = ba, etheric body = ka. However I don't like doing this because I find the terms like astral body to be inexact and not properly defined. The ba is a specific term which can be properly defined and used ... with a bit of work you can say exactly what it is. While the astral body is not as far as I am aware and is just a loose functional term which means different things to different people.

 

I think it may have been Crowley who deliberately cut the silver chord to show that it was just a mental projection ... it was there because people believed it should be, or had been told it was there ... it wasn't essential or 'real'in that sense.

 

If you want a proper explanation of the shade I have to do it in context of the body, ba, ka and so on so I'll try to write a bit more. By the way there are also a few more parts of being like the name "Ren" which I haven't mentioned yet.

 

I was reading recently about Set. In the text I was reading it indicated that one of his influences in the physical realm could be to induce confusion or illusion. The text also indicated that in the duat his influence was to destroy confusion or illusion. Is this consistent with your understanding, and if so is it common for the functions that the gods served to be opposite in the physical realm and the duat?

 

Thanks for all of this information. I'm really enjoying this thread.

 

 

Set is an interesting god. In early times he was seen as an equal but opposite equivalent to Horus .. rather yin/yang int heir duality. But in later times because of his role in the murder of Osiris he became vilified as a kind of politically correct thinking crept into Egyptian ideas. So he became kind of unmentionable ... almost like a Satan. This is unfortunate because the earlier understanding is 'better'.

 

Set performed an essential role in the overthrow of Apep. This is because his attribute is the 'blind' application of power or energy. Like when you stop worrying about the do's and don'ts and niceties and think I'm just going to do this thing. Pushing through obstacles to get where you need to go. Horus on the other hand, like an overseeing eye sees all the aspects of situation holistically, all the pro and cons of action, the possible results and so on ... you can see that this might be inhibiting to spontaneous action sometimes. So sometimes you have to just say damn the consequences I'm going to do it. Close your eyes and pray I'm not saying this is what those gods are in the sense of a definition I am just pointing to the worldly consequences of their 'existence'.

 

Set is an advantage at certain times. So when faced with overwhelming odds for instance, Set is your man (god).

 

But the by-product of the application fo Setian power is ... random ... is unpredictable ... confusion ... like a storm. Thus Set is the god of desert storms. So a lot of the time you would favour Horus which allows you to see each situation holistically but then at other times Set is needed. An example would be a situation which is dominated by an established hierarchy ... one which worked in the past but is now defunct. It would be appropriate in this circumstance to be iconoclastically Setian tearing down the old order .. but there would be a need to recognise that the resulting chaos would have to be addressed.

[Apech]

Fantastic thread Apech!

 

Outside of these articles, do you recommend any particular books/links/teachers on the subject?

 

 

Not really.. there are a lot of books on Egypt of course, academic, popular and mystical. I have never found one book which hits the spot so to speak ... which is why I am trying to write one

[RongzomFan]

The Greek magical papyri have Egyptian magic. There are a couple of books on this.

[Mokona]

 

 

 

The problem of studying Ancient Egyptian symbols or texts, without modern interpretation that is, is that the Egyptians themselves supplied no commentary or narrative explaining what exactly it was that they were talking about. In fact it is this lack of any description of practices or states of mind or being which caused many egyptologists to claim that there was no spirituality in Egypt at all! This despite the Greek writers saying the Egyptians were the most religious and spiritual people they encountered.

 

The reason the Egyptians didn't explain themselves or spell it out for us is simple, it was embedded cultural knowledge. In other words they just assumed that everyone would basically understand what was behind their symbols and writing. It has to be remembered that although the Egyptians were among the first to use writing and were prolific recorders of everything, the concept of 'you only know it if it is written down' comes from later times. If they thought that 'everyone knows this' they would not bother spelling it out. This leaves a big gap to be filled, the need to provide a modern narrative or commentary.

 

It is possible to demonstrate that the Egyptians only began to record what they were doing when this embedded cultural knowledge was beginning to be lost. This is the reason that the Pyramid Texts only appear in the small pyramids at the end of the Fifth Dynasty and Sixth Dynasty which led up to the cultural and social collapse of the the First Intermediate Period (brought on probably by climate change). Similarly the Book of the Dead was only codified and put in a definite order and number of Chapters in the 26^th dynasty (about 600-500 BC) (what is called the Saite Recension) – and this is almost a 1000 years after the book first appeared! And indeed some of the chapters relate back to parts of the Pyramid Texts which first appeared 2350 BC making them then about 1700 years old. What is amazing is that these same texts were still in use throughout this period of time.

 

So you will not find any genuine ancient texts or symbols which show directly what practice to do or how to understand the principles of what they were doing.

 

However there is a lot of compelling evidence to show that what they were describing is shamanic in origin and also that certain key texts describe what we would call energy work or cultivation. Another writer Jeremy Naydler in his book “Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts” has demonstrated how applying phenomenological processes to understanding the Pyramid Texts shows that what was being practiced were shamanic 'arts'. So I won't go further than to say this is fairly self evident.

 

There are a number of other clues to interpreting these texts and symbols which I will attempt to describe.

 

The Egyptians had a good understanding of anatomy and physiology. Their medical payrii include the description of a system of vessels or channels in the body called metu. There were 22 metu which connected the heart (considered as a kind of command and control centre) to various parts of the body. These channels were not veins, arteries, ligaments or nervous system – although some of them seem to run along the same pathways. They are variously described as carrying blood, air, mucus, urine, semen, disease bearing entities and benign or malign spirits. Obviously this confuses the Egyptologists somewhat because they are unfamiliar with the idea of chi and meridians. But it is clear that they were talking about energy channels in the body ... and where blood or mucus is mentioned this is the improved flow or circulation arising from the flow of energy in the metu.

 

Then we come to the texts themselves. Most are obscure funerary texts. Sometimes this gives the impression that the Egyptians were obsessed with death but of course it is partly due to archeology. The best preserved monuments and artifacts come from the necropolis because although there has been desecration since the oldest times the tombs have escaped centuries of building and rebuilding which has left the towns and palaces hidden under modern cities. What some of the text do say though, is that they are 'useful on earth' in other words they are to be used by the living as well as for funerals.

 

The other problem with translations of texts is that Egyptologists put their own interpretation on the original words. To give an example here is a short section from the Pyramid Texts:

 

“...You have not gone away dead: you have gone away alive.

Sit on Osiris's chair, with your baton in your arm, and govern the living;

With your water lily scepter in your arm, and govern those of the inaccessible places.

Your lower arms are of Atum,

Your upper arms are of Atum,

Your belly of Atum,

Your back of Atum,

Your rear of Atum,

Your legs of Atum,

Your face of Anubis.

Horus's mounds shall serve you, Set's mounds shall serve you.”

 

(Spell 213 trans. Allen.)

 

The traditional way of understanding this is that it is part of a funeral of a dead king who is being addressed as he becomes god-like. However the first line “you have gone away living” suggests otherwise. Egyptologists explain this away by saying its aspirational ... about living after death.

 

So if we look at it as being about energy working with a living subject we can understand the text as follows.

 

Osiris is the ruler and judge in the underworld. The underworld or Duat is an inner realm or dimension and by sitting in Osiris's chair you place yourself in the centre, in the heart, in the middle.

 

'in your arm' is the Egyptian way of saying 'in your hand'. So you sit on Osiris chair with a baton in your left hand and a lily scepter on your right. The inaccessible places means the Duat or realm of the dead. So you are in the centre with a left and right hand channel.

 

Then you identify your body (part by part ) with Atum. Atum means 'complete or undivided' and refers to the creative power in the void. So the parts of the body are being filled with this voidic power. The face of Anubis means that your attention is focused into the dark energy of the Duat and not into the light.

 

The mounds of Horus and Set are seen as like burial mounds or tumuli ... where the Egyptologists have translated 'serve' the actual word pXr means to turn, perambulate or surround. However they have a problem with this because it is supposed to be about a dead king in his sarcophagus ... or at least sitting on a chair. How can he go round or circulate? They understand the mounds to be physical places possibly settlements or towns. So they have changed it to serve to make it make sense (to them).

 

The god Horus, the falcon is to do with his eye, and therefore awareness or perception. Set is about will or drive. So the 'mounds' are actually centers or places of focus for awareness or will. If this is about energy work then it is ok to say ... something like the centers of awareness and will, will circulate for you. An image very like the idea of chakras in the energy body.

 

So my interpretation actually makes the more sense of the text. It is a set of instructions or perhaps a visualisation technique for controlling and moving energy in the body. Its main method is identification with various deities in a similar way to which tantric yoga might work.

 

Because the deities and images were culturally familiar to Egyptians the technique would work easily for them. While for us we have to do some preliminary work to make it accessible.

 

The other related subject area to the idea of energy work (neigong or similar) is the parts of being. The Egyptians did not see a person as being composed of a single entity but more as a collection of several entities. One of these being the body. As you can see in the previous example the body (or parts of it) could be identified with deities. In another example parts of the body are identified with star-gods. The 'imperishable stars' were those which circulated around the north point in the sky and did not set below the horizon. Because they did not set (i.e. Die) they were thought to link to immortality. The chief constellation of these stars was Ursa Major the Plough or Big Dipper.

 

“Your head as Horus of the Duat – an imperishable star,

Your face as “Eyes Forward” - an imperishable star,

Your ears as Atum's twins - an imperishable star,

Your eyes as Atum's twins - an imperishable star,

Your nose as the Jackal - an imperishable star,

Your teeth as Sopdu - an imperishable star,

Your arms Hapi and Duamutaf – when you demand to go up to the sky, you go up,

Your legs Imset and Qebehsenuef – when you demand to go down to the undersky, you go down,

Your limbs Atum's twins - an imperishable star.

You will not perish, your ka will not perish: you are ka.”

 

This text comes later in the same sequence started in the one I quoted above. So we have a series of identifications of parts of the body with gods and stars. The last line giving a clue to the goal, the ka that does not perish.

 

The body then is a kind of vehicle for carrying out the energy work and is seen often as being many parts joined together. The key to this process is identification with various deities and then circulation (going up in the sky and then down). Certain parts of the body were seen as being particularly important. The heart, the lungs, the liver, the stomach and the intestines. These were vessels for the individuals consciousness and the primary forms of energy which make up life (precursors to the four elements or humors).

 

Next we need to look at the 'ka'.

 

The ka is both part of a person (often translated as a 'double') and a form of energy. Actually it is the bio-field or etheric body which surrounds the body. But it should not be seen as a kind neutral energy like electricity rather each person has their own signature or characteristic energy. So the ka energy has a kind of formed nature. At birth we receive the ka from our parents, then it is during life in three ways. By affection (or sex), by food and by status. The symbol of the ka is a pair of arms raised in embrace ... which is to do with the transmission of ka by affection ... hugging perhaps. The food offerings made in Egyptian tombs were called ka ... and so the energy absorbed through food was said to feed the ka. The effect of status on a persons ka may not at first seem obvious. But if you look at the affect on people such as movie stars and politicians of being in the limelight ... you will see how attention feeds people's charisma, their ka. Even the most unprepossessing grey haired politician gets a certain sparkle when they become president or prime-minister.

 

Normally we are focussed on our bodies but it is possible to refocus on the energy-body of the ka. The Egyptians held that on death the first stage is to 'go to your ka' which means your consciousness is refocused on the ka and leaves the body. But the ka needs energy input to sustain it and so it is thought necessary to sustain it. Hence “You will not perish, your ka will not perish: you are ka.”

 

The body and the ka are not the complete being. The next significant part of a person is the 'ba'. The ba is often translated as 'soul' but this is a vague translation. The word ba is also used to mean god or power. It is especially used of a god's power to project and embody themselves as a form. The word ba is also related to words that mean brilliant or bright. So the ba is a luminous entity which is capable of projecting form. This includes the power to transform into different forms and an ability to do this was seen as key in the Book of the Dead. As part of an individual being the ba manifests as a life-force or virility, that is a creative power. As such it can be understood as the spark of divine power within us, or perhaps that is us.

 

Because the ba can travel independently to the body, unlike the ka which is linked to the body it is shown as a bird with a human head. After death it tends to leave the tomb and has to be coaxed back to reunite with the body. It is the ba which leaves the tomb to fly to the sky to witness the first sunrise.

 

Together with the luminous power of the ba there is another entity called the 'shade'. Shown as a silhouette it accompanies the ba when it leaves the tomb to see the sun. The shade is the essential form of the being. If you like a conceptual level of existence.

 

The purpose of Egyptian practices was to bring these different parts of being together to form a single entity called an akh. The chapters of their texts were called se-akh ... or akhifiers in English. The akh can be translated as 'effective spirit' and was an eternal spritualized self.

Thanks !!!

 

I've always thought that the symbols hav meaning in breath, kundalini, higher energy.. Read about it in other sources, too. Maybe one day will know by experience. Great info Apech

[Apech]

The Greek magical papyri have Egyptian magic. There are a couple of books on this.

 

 

Sure I've read some but I don't like that period much. I prefer the older stuff.

[Apech]

I want to try to explain the entities or parts of a person so they can be understood as aspects of your self. This is not to say they are really all the same thing but to say they come into existence as a consequence of each other, or as a direct consequence of the presence of a person if you like. To exist means to 'stand out' (ex=out, ist = to be or stand). If we imagine the background as a field of consciousness then to exist means to appear as a separate thing from out of this 'background'. Just as an image appears in your mind when you think of something, a car, a tree and so forth.

 

Actually you can't exist in relation to nothing. You cannot exist totally in isolation and in relation to no other thing because then there would be nothing to stand out from. Your 'appearance' is always in relation to 'something' or in relation to the no-thing of consciousness/energy itself as the background.

 

In this case we are going to examine our relation to our environment as if we are standing facing south. This is the Egyptian convention that all spatial orientation is viewed from standing facing south, or sometimes (as with the sarcophagus) lying with the head in the north. If you wish to look for correspondences between Egyptian symbolism and other systems then you have to be mindful of these conventions, since they change from culture to culture. In fact even within Egyptian symbolism this convention was adapted in the New Kingdom when the orientation was changed to facing East even though they kept the language of the previous convention – which is sometimes confusing.

 

If you stand facing south then of course your back is to the north. On your left hand is the east and on your right the west. This was so culturally embedded as a view that the Egyptian word for left is the same as that for east and right is the same as west.

 

If you stand like this you will, like a tree for instance, have a sunny side, the south, and a side which is in shade the north. Your left side will be sunny in the morning and in shade at night, and the other way round for your right side. Assuming that is you have the patience to stand for 12 hours!

 

The Egyptians took the four directions as epitomising four forms of energy, the young or rising sun in the east, associated with Khepera the power of transformation, the sun at midday in the south as a the radiant being Ra, the old sun in the west as Atum or the ram and the north as the hidden sun at night. They also tended to group these four into two pairs. So the east and south went together as did the north and west. This because they understood the solar cycle to have two phases. One upward, growing into the light, called the day or morning boat and associated with the goddess Isis and the other dying away, downward into the dark and associated with her sister Nephthys. So the east and south were of the upward Isis phase and the west and north part of the downward phase.

 

The four mid points of this cycle are the cardinal points. The east is the sun first appearing in new form, the south is the sun at maximum strength at midday, the west is the sun sinking into the horizon and hiding itself in form and the north is the sun dissolving into the void (to renew itself). These four points are identified with four gods called the Sons of Horus which in turn relate to organs in the body. So there was a link between the cycling of the sun and organic function in the body.

 

The being standing facing south, you or me, can align or harmonise with the solar cycle by energy movements in the being. In fact all biological rhythms are this. But it should remembered that the day cycle is just one example of this rhythms which echos at all levels, for instance the heart beat, the breath, these are all cycles in which energy goes through four phases like this. And on a larger scale the year cycle and so on.

 

On the good Hermetic principle of 'as above so below' to which can be added 'as without so within' it follows that just as the sun has four distinct manifestations, as just as we have four points in the internal energy circulation in our bodies, then so also we have four significant entities which make up ourselves. These are the ba, the ka, the shade and the body.

 

The ba is our power to manifest form. It is of the east. In fact the sun is called the 'great eastern ba'. In our everyday lives this manifests as imaginative power, creative thought and also dreaming. The ka is our radiant energy being, our bio-field or what might be called our chi – body. This is of the south. Our shade is our form as a conceptual essence, in the west, and our body and most significantly our heart as the centre of our mind, will, and character is in the north, because this is our 'coldest' most condensed aspect.

[Apech]

Better version with pics:

tbs 3.pdf

 

Text only:

There are the four Sons of Horus. If you read up about them you will mostly find references to the so called Canopic Jars which held organs removed from the body during mummification. However this is only one instance of their 'use'. If you recall the threefold division of the knowable universe ... the subtle (the sky), the causal (the air) and the gross (earth) ... you can find the Sons of Horus on all three levels.

In the sky they are the Four Rudders of Heaven which define what the Egyptians saw as the four quarters of the sky. They are the four pillars or supports of Shu which assist in holding the sky away from the ground. In the body they are the four protectors of vital organs. So they are everywhere defining the structure of the knowable world, they are the precursors of the four elements of Greek and Hermetic tradition.

The Egyptian coffin is a model of the cosmos. The lid is Nut the sky, and the base is the earth and the sides Shu and the four Sons of Horus. This is the way in which the Egyptians saw all their structures, tombs, temples and so on as models of the cosmos. Also in the hidden realm of the Duat the four Sons of Horus have their place.

As protectors of the organs removed from the body during mummification they in their turn are 'protected' by four goddesses which represent four phases in the cycling of energy. I have talked before about how Isis is used to represent energy in a rising, growing towards light phase and Nephthys as the descending into dark phase. But the Egyptians made a further division between the day sky and the so called 'under-sky' in the Duat. So the cycling energy could be said to be in both

the day sky and the under-sky. The rising energy is now attributed to Isis in the day sky and the goddess Neith (or Nit) in the under-sky. And the setting energy to the goddess Serket (the scorpion goddess in the day sky) and Nephthys in the under-sky.

If you imagine then that you are standing facing south. The sun will rise on your left and go up in the sky in an arc described by the 'plane of the ecliptic' – this varies according to the season of the year in a band of about 12 degrees. But by midday the sun should be at the top of this arc and in front of you ... at the height of summer nearly over head but the rest of the year at a varying angle. So the south is a point of maximum brightness of the sun in the sky and also at night the direction of the brightest star Sirius and the constellation Orion. Opposite behind you is the astronomical north, a point around which the northern constellations appear to revolve. Because of the precessional movement of the earth the exact position of the north point varies against the star background over long periods of time, so that different stars take up the role of north star and sometimes there is no star at this point, just empty space. Sometimes mummies were inclined backwards on a mound of sand so that the top of their head would be pointing towards the astronomical north and the sun at midday would be directly ahead in their field of vision at midday.

This gives two polarities of maximum light and total dark. The maximum light is associated with the sun Ra and the dark with the void or abyss of Nun. On your left is the eastern horizon and your right is the west. Classically the Egyptians associated east with the living and west with the dead.

The sun moves from east to west in the day and from west (via the Duat) to east during the night to complete a whole cycle.

If we start from midnight when the sun is hidden and call this the north point where we are most attuned to the void (Nun), then the pathway from here to the eastern horizon is identified with the goddess Neith (or Nit). Neith is the personification of the red crown of Lower Egypt which is also used sometimes as the letter 'n' which means water. Although she is associated with the red crown of the northern kingdom she is also most usually placed in the East, the town of her cult centre is Sais and here there was a sacred centre called the eastern gate. She is a huntress and sometimes a jackal but also a creatrix in her own right. So this pathway from north to east is about the creative potential of the void, the bubbling up of form from nothingness, the tension on the water, the intent which causes form to emerge. Protected by her, in fact said to be 'within her' is the Son of Horus of the East the jackal headed Duamutef, guardian of the stomach. The stomach is essentially an acid bath which breaks down food to make it assimilable to the body.

Duamutef whose name means 'Praiser of his mother' is said the 'overcome the foe', that is defeat all the forces which line up against the sun, personified in the serpent Apep.

From the east the sun arcs across the sky toward the midheaven. This pathway is sacred to Isis. Isis is the queen, the throne, the great mother and this pathway is a way of growth towards maximum brilliance. She envelops and protects the man headed Imsety, who is guardian of the liver. The liver is like a chemical factory for the body. Imsety is aid to rise up, give commands and make the 'house' (i.e. Body) flourish.

From the height of heaven the sun moves on towards the west where it will set below the horizon. This pathway is sacred to the scorpion goddess Serket. She was companion to Isis who healed the sick child Horus when stung by a scorpion. One of the effects of a scorpion sting is constriction of the throat, and a title of Serket is 'she who relieves the windpipe.' So the sense of this pathway is, having built up to the zenith of the midday, of release. If the first half of the cycle is like an in- breath this is the beginning of the our breath. The Egyptians signposted this change by saying that the sun god changed from his day boat to his night or evening boat at the height of heaven. The

release of the Serket pathway is accompanied by a feeling of pushing away. In the morning the sun is moving towards us and in the afternoon away. It is diminishing in luminescence. It was was said the sun became like an old man at sunset. Serket holds within her the son of Horus of the West, the falcon headed Quebehsenuef, who's name means 'he who refreshes his siblings'. He is said to join together the parts of the body. This deity guards the intestines. The intestines extract nutrients and water from food and excrete what is unwanted.

From the west to the north, the last part of cycle is sacred to Nephthys. In Egyptian this name is Neb.t-hwt which means Lady of the Temple Enclosure. Her name is often translated as Lady of the House which has led to some seeing her as a kind of housewife. This is completely wrong. Nephthys is the High Priestess of the temple and holder of the mystery. The mystery being the void itself. If you like she opens the doorway to the void and guides to the deepest darkness of the night. This is why she is often counterpoised to Isis as the way to maximum light. Nepthys is said to 'hide the secret thing' that is the mystery. She holds within her the ape headed Hapi who in turn guards the lungs. He is said specifically to join the head to the body and here the 'head' is used as a term for what we would call mind.

Just to add a further layer to this mandala, the Egyptians tended to group things by polar pairs of 'opposites'. This is based on the fundamental theme of Egyptian mystical thought which is the union or embrace of Ra and Osiris in the Duat. This idea of resolution of opposites runs through the whole the Egyptian culture and is actually the foundation of their thinking which is pluralistic and non-dualistic. That is they could hold any number of representations of the ultimate deity and they could understand that opposites can be resolved without the need for one of the polarities to overcome the other.

For this reason they would pair up north with south and east with west. So we get Isis and Nephthys as a pair and Neith and Serket as a pair. The canopic jars holding the organs would be placed in a chest like this as two pairs facing each other.

Here is the canopic jar chest from Tutankhamun. The sons of Horus here have human faces rather than the faces of animals.

The goddesses were depicted on the four corners of the chest. In this way the energies of deities, organs and their functions were joined and integrated into a finely balance unit representing innner harmony.

Edited February 17, 2013 by Apech

[RongzomFan]

It is said you can summon some Egyptian deities to physical appearance, as they have been subjugated as some of the Goetia.

 

http://imperialarts.livejournal.com/?skip=20

Edited February 18, 2013 by alwayson

[Zhongyongdaoist]

It is said you can summon some Egyptian deities to physical appearance, as they have been subjugated as some of the Goetia.

 

 

The Gods as the Gods cannot be summoned by Goetia, they can only be invoked by the art of Theurgy which through refining our awareness reveals our fundamental kinship with the Gods and allows us to enter into communion with them. What is evoked by Goetia is a dim and distant reflection, powerful perhaps to achieve certain effects, but dangerous as a ravenous tiger. It is only profound achievement in the art of Theurgy which can allow one to successfully and and safely perform Goetic rites, anything else is “playing with fire”, hellfire.

 

Shortly after I joined Tao Bums I started a series of posts on “Demons” which if reviewed should help to clarify this. I have been experimenting with a way to rescue posts like this so that the most useful material will be available. Here is my guide to these posts.

 

The first post introduces a distinction between Gods and daimones, the conceptual ancestor of demon.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=98480

 

The core of the above discussion is this:

 

 

 

So what is the relationship between these daimones, good or evil and the Gods, conceived as wholly good? In Plato's Phaidrus Plato describes the Gods as being leaders of a great train of beings ranging down from them to human beings and perhaps lower. The daimones were seen as being follows in the chain of a particular God, just as people were. Philosophers were followers of Zeus, military men of Ares, etc., and so these daimones were also followers of the Gods and partook of their nature just as people did. Thus the ancient myths came to be seen largely as stories of the doings of the daimomes and their interactions with human beings, cacodaimones sending evil dreams and agagthodaimones being the sources of uplifting inspiration and saviors in cases distress.

 

 

The next section introduces a cross cultural discussion comparing shen and gui with agagthodaimones and cacodaimones.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=98573

 

This post expands the distinction between good and evil and even provides a working definition for the notion of “black magic” and by implication of “white”.

 

The next section examines how this conceptual framework is developed during the Hellenistic period culminating in the full classification that Iamblichuse provides in his work on Theurgy, On the Mysteries, and also introduces the mythology of the “fallen” angels, more properly fallen daimones, because angels cannot fall.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=98799

 

The most important part of the above post is here:

 

 

 

It may come as a surprise to some readers that in my previous post I was referring to Plato at all. At this time Plato is one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time, and a lot of people who might benefit from studying him don't because they think he is some sort of 4th century BC Immanuel Kant. Well, he's not. John Rist (Eros and Psyche, Toronto University Press 1962) says Plato believed, '(people)...have the potentiality of divinity." and that Plato believed that '(people) can raise themselves to the level of divinity, or rather can "know themselves" to be in a sense already divine" and finally that "Plato's notion of theology is not so much anthropomorhic as his notion of mankind is theomorphic" If you went to a platonic philosopher during the Hellenistic period, it was not to learn to prattle on about this that and the other thing, it was to achieve liberation from the delusion that you were a mere mortal, a humanoid animal and to realize that you were a real partaker in divine nature and in some powerful and profound sense a god. This is what constitutes self-knowledge in real Platonism and was the explicitly stated goal of Platonic study from the First Century BCE to the end of the Hellenistic age, around 500 AD

 

 

The part that I have emphasized being the whole rationale of Theurgy.

 

The next post is something of an introduction to the post that follows it, the really important discussion being there, but it makes more sense if one reads this one first:

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=98949

 

The next section is extremely important for understanding the demonization of the the daimones. Among other things it points out the importance of the Gnostic sects in the process of demonization.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=99106

 

The next section is very important. It is a cross cultural comparison of Plato's Hades as portrayed in the Gorgias, its descendant in the Roman Catholic conception of Purgatory and the Chinese concept of hell.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=101119

 

Unfortunately at this time the posts move off in other directions, interesting in themselves perhaps, but not the type of exposition that characterizes the above. Also, I became too busy to finish the exposition as I intended to finish it, but the following does introduce a comparison between “Hell” and Tartarus which is useful, since according to the conjurations of Goetia, it is from Tartarus that the Goetic spirits are summoned.

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/8438-demons/?p=112448

 

The discussion about light is interesting in itself and is part of the reason that “the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not.” (John 1:5)

 

I hope that the above material is both interesting and helpful.

 

Finally, thank you Apech for introducing and maintaining such an interesting and stimulating topic. I respect your opinions and find your discussions very suggestive.

[Apech]

Donald aka Z,

 

Thank you for this post it is certainly a worthy method of collating useful information here on TBs ... of which I would like to see more. With your permission I am going to suggest to the august and magnificent beings who are the mod team that your post be copied to form the opening post of a new thread.

 

I attempted to start a discussion on theurgy some time back but it stimulated a zero response (probably a record for TBs) ... so maybe with your help we could get some productive debate on the subject in the Hermetic sub forum.

 

A.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Thank you for this post it is certainly a worthy method of collating useful information here on TBs ... of which I would like to see more. With your permission I am going to suggest to the august and magnificent beings who are the mod team that your post be copied to form the opening post of a new thread.

 

Thank you Apech. It is certainly not my wish to see your interesting thread cluttered with extraneous material and I had thought while preparing the post that I would suggest that a specific thread be started for replies, if there were any. That said, I do like the idea of leaving the above where it is with a reference to its continuation elsewhere. That way someone going through your material may "stumble" onto something interesting to them, which is part of the fun of forums like this.

 

 

Edit: you to your

Edited February 18, 2013 by Zhongyongdaoist

[三江源]

.

Edited March 14, 2015 by 三江源

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I have opened a new thread which can be found here: http://thetaobums.com/topic/27141-theurgia-goetia-on-gods-and-demons/?p=405616

[Apech]

another ....

 

 

tbs 4 head of mystery.pdf

 

 

[SonOfTheGods]

This thread should be on the first page- so abracadabra