The
chief object of the deceased on entering Amenta is
the mode and means of getting out again as soon as
possible upon the other side. His one all-absorbing
interest is the resurrection to
eternal life. He says, “Let me reach the land of ages,
let me gain the land of eternity, for thou, my Lord, hast
destined them for me” (ch.
13).Osiris or the Osiris passed into Amenta as the lord of transformations.
Various changes of shape were necessitated by the various
modes of
progression. As a beetle or a serpent he passed through
solid earth, as a crocodile through the water,
as a hawk through the air. As a
jackal or a cat he saw in the dark; as an ibis he was
the knowing one, or “he of the nose”. Thus he was the master of transformations, the magician
of the later folk-tales, who could change his shape
at will. Taht is termed the great magician as the
lord of transformations in the moon. Thus the deceased
in assuming the type of Taht becomes a master of transformation
or the magician whose transformations
had also been made on earth by the transformers in
trance who pointed the way to transformation in death.
When Teta comes to consciousness on rising again
in Amenta he is said to have broken his sleep for ever
which was in the dwelling of Seb - that is, on the earth.
He has now received his Sahu or investiture
of the glorious body.
Before the mortal Manes could attain
the ultimate state of spirit in the image of Horus the immortal, he must be put
together part by part as was
Osiris, the dismembered god.He is divinized in the
likeness of various divinities, all of whom had been included as powers in
the person of the one true god, Neb-er-ter, the lord entire. Every member and
part of the Manes in Amenta has to be fashioned afresh in a new creation. The
new heart is said to be shaped by certain gods in the nether world, according
to the deeds done in the body whilst the person was living on the earth. He
assumes the [Page
199] glorified
body that is formed feature by feature and limb after
limb in the likeness of the gods until there is no
part of the
Manes
that remains undivinized. He is given the hair of
Nu, or heaven, the eyes of Hathor, ears of Apuat,
nose of
Khenti-Kâs, lips of Anup, teeth of Serk, neck of Isis, hands of the mighty lord of Tat
tu, shoulders of Neith, back of Sut, phallus of Osiris, legs and thighs of Nut,
feet of
Ptah, with nails and bones of the living Uraei, until there is not a limb of
him that is without a god. There is no possibility of coming back to earth for
a new body
or for a re-entry into the old mummy. As the Manes says, his “soul is not bound
to his old
body at the gates of Amenta” ( ch. 26, 6). Chapter 89 is designated the chapter
by which the soul is united to the body. This, however,
does not mean
the dead body on earth, but the format or bodily type of the mummy in Amenta. “Here I come”, says the speaker,
that “I may overthrow mine adversaries upon the earth, though my dead body be
buried” (ch. 86, Renouf). “Let me come forth to day, and walk upon my own legs.
Let me have the feet of the glorified” ( ch. 86). At this stage he exclaims, “I am a
soul, and my soul is divine. It is the eternal force”. In chapters 21 and 22 the Manes
asks for his mouth, that he may speak with it. Having his mouth restored,
he asks that it may be opened by Ptah, and that Taht may loosen the fetters
or muzzles of Sut, the power of darkness (ch. 23). In short,'
that he may recover the faculty of speech. In the process
of transforming and being renewed as the new man, the second Atum, he says, “I am Khepera, the
self-produced upon his mother's thigh”. Khepera is the beetle-type of the sun that is portrayed
in pictures of the goddess Nut proceeding from
the mother's khepsh. The name of the beetle signifies
becoming and evolving, hence it
is a type of the becomer in making his transformation.
The mouth being given, words of
power are brought to him, he also gathers
them from every quarter. Then he
remembers his name. Next the new heart is given
to him. His jaws are parted, his eyes are opened.
Power is given
to his arms and vigour to his legs.
He is in possession of his heart, his mouth, his
eyes, his limbs, and his speech. He is now a new
man reincorporated
in the body of a Sahu, with a soul
that is no longer bound to the Khat or dead
mummy at the gates of Amenta (
ch. 26). He looks forward to being fed upon the
food of Osiris in Aarru, on the eastern side of
the
mead of amaranthine flowers.
In
one phase of the drama the deceased
is put together bone by bone in
correspondence to the backbone of Osiris. The backbone
was an emblem of sustaining power, and this reconstruction
of deceased is in the
likeness of the mutilated god. The speaker at this
point says, “The
four fastenings of the hinder part of my head are made firm”. He
does not fall at the block. There are of course seven cervical
vertebrae in the backbone altogether,
but three of these are peculiar, “ the atlas which supports
the head, the axis upon which the head turns,
and the vertebrae prominens, with its long spiral process” ( ch. 30, Renouf).No doubt the Osiris
was rebuilt upon this model, and the four joints were fundamental, they constituted
a four-fold foundation. In another passage the Osiris
is apparently perfected “upon the square”, as in the Masonic mysteries. It is the [Page 200] chapter by which one assumes the form of
Ptah, the great architect of
the universe. The speaker says, “He is four times the arm's
length of Ra, four times the width of the world” ( Rit., ch. 82, Renouf), which is a mode of describing the four quarters or
four sides of the earth, as represented by the Egyptians.
There were seven primary powers in the mythical and astronomical
phases, six of whom are
represented by zootypes, and the seventh is imaged in the
likeness of a man. This is repeated in the eschatology, where
the highest soul of seven
is the Ka-eidolon with a human face and figure as the final
type of spirit which was human on the earth and is to be
eternal in the heavens. The Manes
who is being reconstituted says, “The [seven] Uraeus divinities are my body. ...My image is eternal” (ch. 85), as it would be when the seven souls were amalgamated into one that
was imaged by the divine Ka. The seven Uraeus divinities
represented the seven souls of life that were anterior to
the one enduring soul. In the
chapter of propitiating one's own Ka the Manes says, “Hail
to thee, my Ka! May I come to thee and be glorified and made
manifest and ensouled ?” ( ch. I03)-that is, in attaining the highest of the souls, the
unifying one. These souls may be conceived as seven ascending
types of
personality. The first is figured
as the shade, the dark soul or shade of the Inoits, the Greenlanders, and other
aboriginal races, which is portrayed personally in the Ritual
lying darkly on the ground. The shade was primary, because
of its being, as it were, a shadow of the old
body projected on the ground in
the new life. It is portrayed as
a black figure stretched out in Amenta. In this
way the earth shadow of
the body in life served as the type of a soul that passed out of the body in death.
This may explain the intimate relationship of the shade
to the physical mummy, which it is sometimes said
to cling to and remain with in
the tomb, and to draw sustenance
from the corpse so long as it exists. Thus the
shade that draws life from
the dead body becomes the mythical
prototype of the vampire and the legendary ghoul.
It may be difficult to
determine exactly what the Egyptians
understood by the khabit or shade in its genesis
as a soul, but the Inoit or Aleutians
describe it as “a vapour emanating from
the blood” and here is wisdom for those who comprehend it. The earliest human soul, derived
from the mother when the blood was looked upon as the life,
was a soul of blood, and the Inoit description answers perfectly
to the shade in the Egyptian
Amenta. Amongst the most primitive races the typical basis
of a future personality is the shade. The Aleutians say the
soul at its departure divides into the
shade and the spirit. The first dwells in the tomb, the other
ascends to the firmament. These, wherever met with, are equivalent
to the twin-souls
of Sut the dark
one, and Horus the soul of light. For we reckon the Egyptian
seven to be earliest and old enough to account for and explain
the rest which are to be found dispersed
about the world. The soul as shade or
shadow is known to the Macusi Indians as the “man in the
eyes” who “does not die”. This is another form of the shadow that was not cast
upon the ground. Dr. Birch drew attention to the
fact that whilst
the deceased has but one Ba, one
Sahu, and one Ka, he has two shades, his Khabti
being in the plural (Trans.
Society of Bib. Arch.,
volume viii., page 391). These two correspond to the dark
and light shades [Page 201] of the aborigines. They also conform to the two souls
of darkness and light that were imaged
by the black vulture and the golden
hawk of Sut and Horus, the first two of the total
septenary of powers or
souls. The shade, however, is but
one-seventh of the series. The
other self when perfected consists
of seven amalgamated souls. Some of
the Manes in Amenta do not
get beyond the state of
the shade or Khabit; they are arrested in this condition
of mummied immobility. They do not
acquire the new heart or soul of breath; they remain in the
egg unhatched, and
do not become the Ba-soul or the
glorified Khu. These are the souls
that are said to be eaten by certain
of the gods or infernal
powers. “Eater of the shades” is the title
of the fourth of the forty-two executioners (ch. 125). The
tenth of the mystical abodes in Amenta is the place of the monstrous arms
that capture and carry away the
Manes who have not attained a condition beyond that of the
shade or empty shell. The “shells” of the theosophists may be met with in the Ritual. The Manes who is
fortified with his divine soul can pass this place in safety. He says, “Let no
one take possession of my shade [ let no one take possession of my shell
or envelope ]. I am the divine hawk”. He has issued from the shell of the egg and been established beyond the status
of the shade as a Ba-soul. With this may be compared the
superstition that in eating eggs one should always break
up the empty shell, lest it should
be made evil use of by the witches. There are wretched shades
condemned to immobility in the fifth of the mystical abodes.
They suffer their final
arrest in that place and position, and are then devoured
by the giants who live as eaters of the shades. These monsters
are described as having thigh-bones
seven cubits long (ch. 149,18,19). No mere shade has power
enough to pass by these personifications of devouring might;
they are the ogres of legendary lore. who may be found
at home with the ghoul and the vampire in the dark caverns
of the Egyptian under world. These were the dead whose development
in spirit world was arrested at the status of the shade,
and who were supposed to seek the life they
lacked by haunting and preying upon human souls, particularly on the soul of blood.
In its next stage the soul is called a Ba, and is represented
as a hawk with a human head, to show that the nature of the
soul is human still. This is more than a soul of
shade, but it was not imagined nor believed that the human
soul as such inhabited the body of a bird. In one of the
hells the shades are seen burning, but these were
able to resist the fire, and it is consequently said, “The
shades live; they have raised
their powers”.They are raised in status
by assimilating higher powers.
Following his taking possession of the soul
of shade and the soul of light the Osiris is given
a new heart, his whole or two-fold heart. With some
of the primitive folk, as with the Basutos, it is
the heart that goes out in death as the soul that
never dies. Bobadilla a learned
from the Indians of Nicaragua that there are two
different hearts; that one of these went away with
the deceased in death, and that it was the heart
that
went away which “made
them live” hereafter.
This other breathing heart, the basis of the future
being, is one with the Egyptian heart by which the
reconstituted person lives again. The
heart that was weighed in the Hall of Judgment could
not have been [Page 202] the organ of life on earth. This was a second heart,
the heart of another life. The Manes makes appeal
for this heart not to bear evidence against him in
presence
of the god who is at the balance (chs. 30A and 30B).
The second is the heart that was fashioned anew according
to the life lived in the body. It is said
to be the heart of the
great god Tehuti, who personated intelligence. Therefore
it would seem to typify the soul of intelligence.
Hence it is said to be young and keen of insight
among the gods,
or among the seven souls. The physical representation
comes first, but it is said in the text of Panchemisis, “The conscience
or heart (Ab) of a man is his own god” or divine
judge. The new heart represents
rebirth, and is therefore called the mother (ch.
30A); and when the deceased recovers the basis of
future
being in his whole heart he
says, although he is buried in
the deep, deep grave, and bowed down to the region
of annihilation, he is glorified (even) there (ch.
30A, Renouf).
Now if we take the shade
to image a soul of blood, the Ba-hawk to image a soul of light, and the hati-heart
to represent a soul of breath, we can perceive a raison d’
être for the offering of blood, of lights, and of incense
as sacrifices to the Manes in three different phases or states. Blood was generally
offered to the shades, as we see in survival among the Greeks and Romans. The
shade was in the first stage of the past existence, and most needing in Amenta
the blood which was the life on earth and
held to be of first necessity for the revivifying of the
dead as Manes or shades. The Sekhem was one of the souls or powers. It is difficult
to identify this with a type and
place in the seven. Pro tem we call it fourth of the series. It is more important to
know what force it represents. The name is derived from the
word khem, for potency. Khem in physics signifies erectile
power. The man of thirty years as typical adult is
khemt. Sekhem denotes having the power or potency of the
erectile force. In the eschatological phase it is the reproducing,
formative power of Khem, or Amsu, to
re-erect, the power of erection being applied to the spirit
in fashioning and vitalizing the new and glorious body
for the future resurrection from Amenta. The Khu is a soul
in which the person has attained the status of the pure in
spirit called the glorified, represented in the likeness
of a beautiful white bird; the Ka is a type of eternal
duration in which the seven-fold personality is unified at
last for permanent or everlasting life.
It is the Khu that
is thus addressed in the tomb
as the glorified one: “Thou
shalt not be imprisoned by those who are attached to the
person of Osiris [that is, the mummy], and who have custody
of souls and spirits,
and who shut up
the shades of the dead. It is heaven only that shall hold thee”. (Rit.
ch., 92.) The shade of itself could never leave the tomb. For this reason it
was commonly held that the shade
remained with the corpse or mummy on the earth. But here the tomb, the mummy,
and the shade are not on earth; they are in Amenta. Without the
Ba-soul, the shade remains unvivified. Without the Sekhem,
it lacks essential form or power of re-arising. Without the Khu-spirit the
person does not ascend from the
sepulchre or prison-house of the nether world. But when this
has been attained the deceased is glorified. If chapter 91 is known, “he taketh
the form of a fully-equipped Khu [spirit ] in the nether [Page 203] world, and does
not suffer imprisonment at any door
in Amenta, either in coming in or going out” (Renouf, ch. 91). It is only when the Manes is
invested as a Khu that he ascends to the father as a son
of god. So we gather from the following words addressed to Horus by the person
who is now a Khu: “O mighty
one, who seest thy father, and who hast charge of the books
of Taht, here am I. I come, and am glorified and filled with soul and power,
and am provided with the
scriptures of Taht”, his copy of the book of life, his light in the darkness of Amenta.
He now ascends to Ra his father, who is in the bark, and
exclaims again and again, “I am a powerful Khu; let thy soundness
be my soundness” (Renouf, ch. 105).
When the deceased has been made perfect as a Khu, he is free
to enter the great
house of seven halls (ch. 145). Likewise the “house
of him who is upon the hill”, and who is “ruler in the divine hall”.
The great house is the heaven of Osiris based upon the thirty-six
gates or duo-decans of the zodiac. The other is the house of Anup at the summit
of the mount
in Annu. “Behold me”, he exclaims; “behold me, I am come to you, and have carried off and put together my forms”, or constituent parts of the permanent soul, which
were seven altogether. These are: (1) The Khabit or
dark shade; (2) the Ba or light shade; (3) the breathing
heart; (4) the Sekhem; (5) the Sahu; (6) the Khu;
(7) the Ka. When the Manes
has become a Khu, the Ka is still a typical ideal ahead
of him; so far ahead or aloof that he propitiates it
with offerings. In fact, he presents himself
as the sacrificial victim that would die to attain
conjunction with his Ka, his image of eternal duration,
his type of totality, in which the seven souls were
permanently
unified in one at last. The Ka has been called the
double of the dead, as if
it simply
represented the Doppel-ganger. But it is not merely a phantom of the living or
personal image of the departed. It serves also for the apparition or revenant ; it is a
type rather than a portrait. It is a type that was
pre-natal. It images a soul which came into existence
with the child, a soul which is food and sustenance
to the body
all through life, a soul of existence here and of duration
for the life hereafter.
Hence it is absorbed at last in the perfected personality.
It is depicted in the Temple of
Luxor, where the birth of Amen-hetep III. is portrayed
as coming from the hand of
god. The Ka of the royal
infant is shown in the pictures being formed by Khnum
the moulder on the potter's wheel. It is in attendance
on the person all life through, as the genius or
guardian angel, and the fulfilment of the personality
is effected by a final reunion with the Ka. As already
shown, when divine honours were paid to the
Pharaoh the offerings were made to his Ka, not to
his mortal self. Thus the Manes in Amenta makes an
offering of incense to purify himself in propitiation
of his Ka ( ch.
105). There is a chapter of “providing food for the Ka”. Also the mortuary meal was
eaten in the chamber of the Ka, the resurrection chamber
of the sepulchre. Food was offered to the Ka-eidôlon
as the representative of the departed, instead
of directly to the spirits of the ancestors. It was
set up there as receiver-general of the offerings.
Also the food was presented to it as a type of the
divine food
which sustained the human soul. Thus, when the divine
sustenance is offered by the god or goddess to the
soul of the mortal on the [Page 204] earth, or
to
the Manes in Amenta, it is presented by the giver to the Ka. Certain priests
were
appointed
to be ministers to the Ka, and these made the offerings to the Ka of the deceased
on behalf of the living relatives. This is
because the Ka was the type of personality, seventh of the seven souls attained
as
the highest in which the others were to be included and absorbed. In the vignettes
to chapter 25 of the Ritual (Naville, Todt., Kap., 25, vol. i., p. 36) the deceased is
shown his Ka, which is with him in the passage of Amenta, not left behind him
in the tomb, that he may not forget himself (as we might say), or, as he says,
that he may
not suffer loss of identity by forgetting his name. Showing the Ka to him
enables the Manes to recall his name in the great
house, and especially in the crucible of the house
of flame. When the deceased is far advanced
on his journey through Amenta,
his Ka is still accompanying him, and it is described
as being the food of his life in spirit world, even
as it had been his spiritual food in the
human life. “Thou art come, Osiris; thy Ka is with thee.
Thou feedest thyself under
thy name of Ka” (128,6). When the Osiris has passed from the state of a shade to the stage of
the Ka, he will become what the Ritual designates a fully equipped Manes who
has completed his investiture. As a Sahu he was reincorporated in a
spiritual body. As a Khu he was invested with a robe of glory.
As a sacred hawk with the head of a Bennu he was endowed with the soul of Horus
(ch. 78). It was here he
exclaimed “Behold me; I am come to you [the gods and the
glorified], and have carried off my forms and united them”. But in chapter 92 he was anxiously looking
forward to the day of reckoning, when he said, “Let the way be open to my soul and
my shade, that I may see the great god within his sanctuary
on the day of the soul's reckoning”,
“when all hearts and words are weighed”. He
is not yet one of the spirits made perfect, being neither judged nor justified.
He has to pass his last examination,
and is now approaching the great hall of judgment for his
trial. He says, “I am come
that I may secure my suit in Abydos”, the mythical re:-birthplace of Osiris. This is the
final trial of the long series
through which he has hitherto. successfully passed
(Rit, ch. II 7, Renouf). He has now arrived
at the judgment
hall. It has been asserted
that the deeds which the deceased had done here on earth in no wise influenced
the fate that awaited the man after death (Maspero, Egyptian
Archaeology. Eng. tr., p. 149). But
how so, when the new heart which was given to the deceased in Amenta, where
he or she was reconstituted, is said to be fashioned
in
accordance
with what he has done in his human life ?
And the speaker pleads that his new heart may not be fashioned according to all the evil things that may be said
against him (Rit., ch. 27). He is
anxious that the ministrants of Osiris in the Neter-Kar, “who deal with a man according to the course of his life”, may not give
a bad odour to his name (ch. 3OB). And again he pleads,“Let me be glorified
through my attributes; let me be estimated according to my
merits” (ch.72). It is plainly apparent that the future fate
of the soul was dependent on the deeds that were
done in the body, and the character
of the deceased was accreted according
to his conduct in the life on earth.
The jury sitting
in the judgment hall consisted of forty-two masters of truth.
Their duty was to discover the truth with fierce interrogation
[Page
205] and the instinct
of sleuth-hounds on their track.
Was this Manes a true man ? Had he lived a true
life? Was he true at heart when this
was tested in the scales ? His
viscera were present for inspection,
and these keen scrutinizers in their animal-headed
forms were very terrible, not only
in visage, for they had a vested
interest in securing a verdict of guilty against
the Manes, inasmuch as the
viscera of the condemned were flung
to them as perquisites and prey, therefore they
searched with the zeal of hunger
for the evidence of evil living
that might be found written on this record of
the inner man. Piecemeal the Manes were examined,
to
be passed if true, to be sent back
if not, in the shape of swine or goats or other
typhonian animals, and driven down
into the fiery lake of outer
darkness where Baba the devourer of hearts, the
Egyptian “raw-head-and-bloody-bones”, was lying in wait for them. The highest verdict
rendered by the great judge in
this most awful Judgment Hall was a testimony
to the truth and purity of character established
for the Manes on evidence that
was
unimpeachable. At this post-mortem the sins done in the body through violating the law of nature were probed for
most profoundly. Not only was the deceased present in spirit
to be judged at the dread tribunal, the book of the body
was opened and its record read.
The vital organs, such as the heart, liver, and lungs, were
brought into judgment as witnesses to the life lived on earth.
Any part too vitiated
for the rottenness to be cut off or scraped away was condemned
and flung as offal to the powers who are called the eaters
of filth, the devourers
of hearts, and drinkers of the
blood of the wicked. And if the heart, for example, should
be condemned to be devoured because very bad, the individual
could not be reconstructed for a future
life.
In order that the Osiris may pass
the Great Assize as one of the justified, he must
have made the word of Osiris
truth on earth against his enemies.
He must have lived a righteous life and been just,
truthful, merciful,
charitable, humane. In coming
to the Hall of Judgment or Justice to look on
the divine countenance and be cleansed
from all the sins he may have
committed he says, “I
have come to thee, O my Lord. I know thee. Lord of Righteousness
is thy name.
I bring to thee right. I
have put a stop to wrong”. His
plea is that he has done his best to fulfil the character of Horus-Makheru. Some
of his pleas
are very touching. “He has not exacted from the labourer, as the first-fruits
of each day, more work than was justly due to him. He has not snatched the milk
from the mouths
of babes and sucklings. He has not been a land-grabber. He has not dammed the
running water. He has caused no famine, no weeping, no suffering to men, and
has not been a robber of food. He has not tampered with the tongue of the balance,
nor been fraudulent, mean, or sordid of soul. There is a goodly list of pre-Christian
virtues besides all the theoretical Christian ones. Amongst others, he says,
“I have propitiated the god with that which he'loveth”. This was
especially by the offering of Maat, viz., justice, truth, and righteousness. “I have
given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes
to the naked, and a boat to the shipwrecked” (ch. 125). Yet we have been told that charity and
mercy were totally unknown to the pagan world.
He asks the forty-two
assessors for the great [Page 206] judge not to go
against him, for he did the right
thing in Tamerit, the land of
Egypt. His heart is weighed in the scales of justice.He
passes pure, as one of those who are welcomed
by Horus for his own faithful followers,
the blessed of his father, to whom
it is said, “Come, come in peace”. Horus the intercessor, advocate, or paraclete, now takes him by the hand and
leads him into the presence of Osiris in the sanctuary. The
Manes in the Judgment Hall is
black-haired, as seen in the pictures of Ani (Papyrus of
Ani, pI. 4). But when he kneels before Osiris on the throne
his hair is white. He has passed as one of the
purified and is on his way to join the ranks of the just
spirits made perfect, who are called the glorified. The attendants
say to him, “We put an end to thy ills and we
remove that which is disorderly in thee through thy being
smitten to the earth” in
death. These were the ills of mortality from which he has
now been freed in spirit. Here occurs the resurrection of
the Osiris in the person of Horus, and it is said, “Ha,
Osiris ! thou hast come, and thy Ka with thee, which uniteth
with thee in thy name of Ka-hetep” ( ch. 128). An ordinary rendering of “Ka-hetep” would be “image of
peace” = type of attainment; but as the word hetep or hepti
also means number seven, that coincides with the
Ka being an image of the septenary
of souls, complete at last to be
unified in the hawk-headed Horus.
In the
book or papyrus-roll for
invoking the gods of the Kerti,
or boundaries, we find the speaker has now reached
the limit of Amenta. He says, “I
am the soul of Osiris, and rest in him” (ch. 127). He
is hailed as one who has attained his Ka and received his
insignia of the resurrection. It is now said to the Osiris, “Ha, Osiris! thou hast received thy sceptre,
thy pedestal, and the flight of stairs beneath thee” (Rit., ch. 128). The sceptre was
the hare-headed symbol of the resurrection
first carried by Ptah the opener. The pedestal
is the papyrus of Horus,
and the stairs denote the means
of ascent from Amenta to the summit of the Mount
of Glory.He is now prepared and empowered to
enter the bark of Ra which voyages
from east to west by day and from west to east
by night. Before entering the bark the Osiris
has attained to everyone
of his stations in Amenta previously
to sailing for the circumpolar paradise upon the
stellar Mount of Glory.
Chapter 130 is the book by which
the soul is made to live for ever on the day of
entering the bark
of Ra, which means that it contains the gnosis of
the subject. It was made for the birthday
or
re-birthday of Osiris. Osiris is re-born in Horus as
the type of an eternal soul. Hence
the speaker says, in this character, “I
am coffined in an ark like Horus, to whom his
cradle [or nest of reeds] is brought”. He
is reborn as Horus on his papyrus, an earlier figure on the water than the bark
of Ra. He prays, “Let not the Osiris be
shipwrecked on the great voyage; keep the steering tackle free from misadventure”. When he entered Amenta the deceased in Osiris bore the likeness of the god in
mummy form. Before he comes forth from the lower Aarru garden he can say, at
the
end of certain transformations in type and personality, “I am the soul of Osiris, and
I rest in him” (ch. 127). This is in the character of Horus. “I am Horus on this
auspicious day” at the “beautiful coming forth from Amenta”. He [Page
207] has reached the boundary, and now invokes the god
who is in his solar disk, otherwise
in
the bark of Ra. He died in Osiris to live again in
Horus, son of god, or in his likeness. Chapters
141 and 142 begin the book of
making the Osiris perfect. And this, as the Ritual
shows, was in the likeness of Horus the beloved
sole-begotten son of Ra, the god in spirit. Now, when
the Manes had included
his Ka in the name of Ka-hetep (Rit., ch. 128)
it is said to the deceased (in the Pyramid texts,
Teta, 284,
Pepi 1.,34), “Horus hath brought to pass that his ka, which is in thee, should unite
with thee in thy name of Ka-hetep”, which shows the Ka within him was the image of Horus
divinized. This corroborates the suggestion that
the ka-type was derived from Ka (later Sa) the
son of Atum-Ra, who was earlier than Horus as
the son of Osiris. Thus the divine sonship of
humanity which was personified in Horus, or Iu,
or Sa, was also typified in the ka-image of a
higher spiritual self; and when the Manes had
attained the status of a spirit perfected it was
in the form of the divine son who was the express
image of the father god. He was Horus the beloved,
in all reality, through perfecting the ideal type
in his own personality.
He now enters the
divine presence of Osiris-Ra to
relate what he has done in the characters of human
Horus, Har-Tema, and Har-Makheru
on behalf of his father which constitutes him
the veritable son of god. When the Manes had attained
the solar bark he has put on “the
divine body of Ra” and is hailed by the ministrants with cries of welcome and
acclamations from the Mount of Glory ( ch. 133). In travelling
through the under-world he had passed from the western horizon
of earth to the east of heaven,
where he joins the solar boat to voyage the celestial waters. There is a change
of boat for the night. Hence the speaker says he is “coming
in the two barks of the lord of Sau” (ch. 136B, Renouf). There may be some difficulty
about the exact position of the chapter numbered 110
in the Ritual, but there is no difficulty in identifying
the fields of peace upon
the summit of Mount Hetep as the
lower paradise of two, which was the land of promise
attainable
in Amenta. This was the sub-terrestrial
or earthly paradise of the legends. When the Manes
comes to these elysian fields
he is still in the earth of
eternity, and has to prove himself
an equal as a worker with the mighty Khus (Khuti),
who are nine cubits high, in cultivating
his allotment of
arable land. The arrival at
Mount Hetep in this lower paradise or heaven of
the solar mythos precedes the entrance
to the Judgment Hall which is in
the domain of the Osiris below, and the voyage
from east to west in the Matit and
the Sektit bark of the sun, therefore
it is not in the ultimate heaven or the upper
paradise of eternity upon Mount Hetep. We see from the
Pyramid texts (Pepi I.,
lines 192, 169, 182, Maspero, Les Inscripions. des Pyramides de Sakkarah) that there were two stages of
ascent to the upper paradise, that
were represented by two ladders : one is the ladder
of Sut, as the ascent from the
land of darkness, the other is
the ladder of Horus, reaching to the land of light.
King Pepi salutes the
two: “Homage to thee, O
ladder of Sut. Set thyself up, O ladder of God. Set thyself up, O ladder of Sut.
Set thyself up, O ladder of Horus, whereby Osiris appeared
in heaven when he wrought protection
for
Ra. “Pepi likewise enters heaven [Page 208] in his name of the ladder (Budge, Book of
the Dead, Intro.,
pp. 117, 118). The Manes also says,
in ch. 149, “I raise my ladder
up to the sky, that I may behold
the gods”.
But, having traced the reconstruction of
the deceased for a future life, we now return, to follow
him once more from the entrance to Amenta on his journey
through the under-world. His mortal personality
having been made a permanent as possible in the mummy left
on earth, the Manes rising in Amenta now sets out to attain
the personality that is to last for ever. He
pleads with all his dumbness that his mouth may be opened,
or, in other words, that
his memory, which he has lost awhile, may be given back to him, so that he may
utter the words of power (chs. 21-23) with which he is equipped. The ceremony
of opening
the
mouth after the silence of death was one of the profoundest
secrets. The great type of power by means of which the mouth is opened was
the leg of the hippopotamus
goddess, the symbol of her mightiness as primum
mobile in
the Great Bear having been adopted for this purpose
in the eschatology. The ceremony was performed
at the tomb as well as in Amenta by the opener Ptah
as a mystery of the resurrection. And amongst
the many other survivals this rite
of “opening the mouth” is still performed in Rome.
It was announced in a daily paper
not long since (the Mail, August 8th, 1903) that
after the death of Pope Leo XIII.
and the coronation of Pius X. “a Consistory would
be held to close and open the lips of the cardinals newly
created”, or newly born into
the purple. The Osiris also prays that when his mouth is opened Taht may come
to him equipped with the words of power. So soon as the mouth
of the Manes is freed from the fetters of dumbness and darkness
(or muzzles of Sut) and
restored to him, he collects the words of power from all
quarters more persistently than any sleuth-hound and more
swiftly than the flash of light (chs. 23,
24, Renouf). These words of power are magical in their effect.
They paralyze all opposition. They open every door. The power
is at once applied. The
speaker says, “Back, in retreat !
Back, crocodile Sui! Come not against me, who live by the words of power! ” ( ch.
31). This is spoken to the crocodiles or dragons who
come to rob the Manes and carry off the words of power
that protect the deceased in death. The magical
mode of employing the words of power in the mysteries
of Taht is by the deceased being
assimilated to the character and assuming the superhuman
type as a means of protection against the powers of
evil. The speaker in the Ritual does not mistake
himself for the deity. He is the deity pro tem. in acted Sign-Ianguage, and by such
means is master of the magical power. It is the god
who is the power, and the magician employs the words
and signs which express that power; but instead of
praying to the god he makes use of the divine words
attributed to the god, and personates the god as Horus
or Ra, Taht or Osiris, in character. He puts on the
mask of a crocodile, an ibis, a lion, or other zootype
of the primary powers,
and
says to his adversaries: I am the crocodile (= Sebek),
or, I am the lion (= Atum), or, I am Ra, the sun, protecting
himself with the
Uraeus serpent, and
consequently no evil thing can
overthrow me (ch. 32). Repeating ch. 42 was a magical
way of escaping from the slaughter which was wrought
in
Suten-Khen, and
the mode of magic was for the deceased
in his [Page 209] re-birth to become or to be assimilated to the divine
child in his rebirth. He
tells the serpent Abur that he is the
divine babe, the mighty one. Not
a limb of him is without a god. He is not to be
grasped by arms or seized by hands. “Not men or gods, the glorified ones or the
damned; not generations past, present, or to come, can inflict any injury
on him who cometh forth and proceedeth as the eternal child, the everlasting
one” (Rit., ch. 42), or as Horus,
the son of Isis. These divine characters
are assumed by the Manes when he commands his enemies
to do his bidding. According
to the magical prescriptions, in
fighting the devil, or the evil
Apap, a figure of the monster was to be moulded in
wax with the name inscribed upon
it in green (Budge, Proceedings Soc. of Arch., 1866,
po 21). This was to be spat upon
many times, spurned with the foot, and then flung
into the fire, as a magical mode of casting out the
devil. When the Apap reptile is first encountered and
addressed in the Ritual it is said, “O one of wax! who takest
captive and seizest with violence and livest upon those who
are motionless, let me not become motionless before thee” (Rit., ch. 7). This is because the presence of
the devouring monster is made tangible by the image of wax
which represents the
power addressed, that is otherwise invisible. The ideal becomes concrete
in the figure that is thus magically employed. It is in this magical sense
that the opening chapters of the Ritual are declared to contain the “words
of power” that bring about the resurrection and the glory of the Manes in
Amenta. This mode of magic is likewise a mode of hypnotism
or human magnetism which was universally common with the primitive races, especially
the African, but
which is only now being timidly touched by modern science.
The power of paralyzing and of arresting motion was looked upon as magical
potency indeed. Hypnotic power
is magical power. This is described as being taken from the
serpent as its strength. In one passage (Rit., ch. 149) the serpent is described
as he “who paralyzes with his eyes”. And previously, in the same chapter, the speaker says to the serpent, “I am
the man who covers thy head with darkness, and I am the great
magician. Thine eyes have been given to me, and I am glorified through them.
Thy strength [ or
power] is in my grasp”. This might be termed a lesson in hypnotism. The speaker
becomes a great magician by taking possession of the paralyzing
power in the eyes of the serpent. The description seems to
imply that there had been a contest betwixt
the serpent-charmer and the serpent, and that the man had
conquered by wresting
the magical power from the reptile. The Manes has much to say about the adversary
of souls whom he meets in Amenta. This is the Apap of darkness,
of drought and dearth, disease and
death. It is the
representative of evil in physical phenomena which was translated as a figure
from the mythology into the domain of eschatology. In (chapter 32) the “Osiris
standeth up upon his feet” to face and defy the crocodiles of darkness who devour
the dead and carry off the words of power from the glorified
in the under-world. They are stopped and turned back when
the speaker says: “I am Atum. All things which
exist are in my grasp, and those
depend on me which are not yet in being. I have
received increase of length and depth
and fulness of breathing within
the domain of my father the great one. He hath
given me the [Page 210] beautiful Amenta through which the living pass from
death to life” (ch.32). Thus the Osiris appears, speaks,
and acts in the characters of a drama previously extant in
the mythology. He comes forth: As the bull of Osiris (ch.
53A); as the god in lion form, Atum (ch. 54); as the
jackal Ap-uat, of Sothis or Polaris; as the divine hawk,
Horus (ch. 71); as the sacred hawk (ch. 78); as the lotus
of earth (ch. 81); as the bennu-bird or phoenix-soul of
Ra (ch. 83); as the shen-shen
or hernshaw (ch. 84); as the soul that is an
image of the eternal (ch. 85) as the
dove or swallow ( ch. 86); as
the crocodile Sebek ( ch. 88); as the khu, or
glorified spirit ( ch. 91); and many
more. But the individual is shown
to persist in a human form. He comes forth by
day and is living after death in
the figure, but not as the mummy,
that he wore on earth. He is portrayed staff in
hand, prepared for his journey through
the under-world (Naville, Todt., Kap 2,
vignette). Also the ka-image of man the immortal is portrayed
in the likeness of man the mortal. The human figure is never
lost to view through all the phantasmagoria
of transformation (Naville, Todt., vignettes to Kap 2 and 186). From beginning to end
of the Ritual we see it is a being once human, man Or woman, who is the traveller
through the nether-world up the mount of rebirth in heaven, at the summit of
the stellar paradise, where the effigy of the earthly personality was ultimately
merged in the divine image of the ka, and the mortal puts on immortality in
the likeness of the dear old humanity, changed and glorified. This shows the
ghost was founded on a human basis, and that it continued the human likeness
in proof of its human origin.
Resurrection in the Ritual is the coming forth
to day (Peri-em-hru), whether FROM the
life on earth or to the life attainable in the heaven of eternity. The first
resurrection is, as it were, an ascension
from the tomb in the nether earth
by means of the secret doorway. But this coming forth is in, not from,
Amenta, after burial in the upper earth. The deceased
had passed through the sepulchre, emerging in
the lower earth. He issues from the
valley of darkness and the shadow
of death. Osiris had been cut to pieces in the
lunar and
other phenomena by the evil Sut,
and the limbs were gathered up and put together
by his son and by the mother in Amenta,
where he rose again as
Horus from the dead. And whatsoever
had been postulated of Osiris the mummy in the
mythology was repeated on behalf
of the Osiris in the eschatology.
Osiris had originated as a god
in matter when the powers were elemental, but
in the later theology the supreme soul
in nature was
configurated in a human form. Matter as human was
then considered higher than matter unhumanized, and
the body as human mummy was superior to matter
in external nature. Also the spirit in human form
was
something beyond an elemental spirit; hence the god
as supreme
spirit was based, as already shown, upon the human ghost,
with matter as the mummy. Osiris
as a mummy in Amenta is what we might call the
dead body of matter invested with
the limbs and features of the human form, as the
type to which the elemental powers had attained
in Ptah, in Atum, and in the human featured
Horus, which succeeded the earlier representation by
means of zootypes. Osiris is a figure of inanimate
nature, personalized as the mummy with a human
form
and
face, whilst being also an image [Page
211] of matter as the physical body
of the god. The process applied to the human body first in death was afterwards
applied
to the god in matter, in the elements, or in the inert condition at the time
of the winter solstice, awaiting corpse-like for his transformation or transubstantiation
into the young and glorious body of the sun, or spirit of vegetation in the
spring. The solar god as the sun of evening or of autumn was the suffering,
dying sun, or the dead sun buried in the nether earth. To show this, it was
made a mummy of, bound up in the linen vesture without a seam, and
thus imaged in a likeness of the dead who bore the mummy form on earth, the
unknown being represented by the known. The sun god when descending to Amenta
may be said to mummify or karas his own body in becoming earthed or, as it were,
fleshed in the earth of Ptah. Hence the mummy-type of Ptah, of Atum, and Osiris,
each of whom at different stages was the solar god in mummied form when buried
in Amenta. It has now to be shown
how it was brought about that the final and supreme one god of the Egyptian
religion was represented as a mummy in the earth of eternity, and
why the mystery of the mummy is the profoundest of all the
mysteries of Amenta. An essential element in Egyptian religion was human sympathy
with the suffering god,
or the power in nature which gave itself, whether as herself or himself, as a
living sacrifice, to bring the elements of life to men in light, in water,
air, vegetation, fruit,
roots, grain, and all things edible. Whence the type was
eaten sacramentally at the thanksgiving meal. This feeling was pathetically expressed at “the festival of the
staves”, when crutches were offered as supports for the suffering autumn sun,
otherwise the cripple deity Horus, dying down into Amenta
and pitifully needing help which the human sympathizers tried
to give. Can anything be more pathetic than this
address to the sufferer as the sun god in Amenta: “Decree this, O Atum, that if I see
thy face [in glory] I shall not be pained by the signs of
thy sufferings”. Atum decrees.
He also decrees that the god will
look on the suppliant as his second self (Rit.,
ch. 173; Naville).
The legend of the
voluntary victim who in a passion
of divinest pity became incarnate, and was clothed
in human form and feature
for the salvation of the world,
did not originate in a belief that God had manifested
once for all as an
historic personage.It has its roots in
the remotest part. The same legend was repeated in
many lands with a change of name, and at times
of sex, for the sufferer, but none of the initiated
in
the esoteric wisdom ever looked upon the Kamite Iusa,
or gnostic Horus, Jesus, Tammuz, Krishna, Buddha,
Witoba, or any other of the many saviours as historic
in personality, for the simple reason that they had
been more truly taught.
Mythology was earlier than eschatology, and the human
victim was preceded by the zootype; the phenomena
first rendered mythically were not manifested
in
the human sphere. The natural genesis was in another
category altogether. The earliest Horus was not
incorporated
in a human form. He represented that soul
of life which
came by water to a dried-up, withering world upon
the verge of perishing with hunger and with thirst.
Here the fish or the first-fruit of
the earth was the sign of his incorporation in matter;
hence the typical shoot, the green ear, or the branch
that
were imaged [Page
212] in
Child-Horus. The saviour who came
by water was Ichthys the fish. The saviour who
came in fruit as product of the tree was the Natzer.
The
saviour who came by spirit was
the soul of the sun. This
was the earliest rendering of the
incorporation of Horus as the primary
life and light of the world made manifest in external
nature, before the doctrine
was applied to biology in the human
domain, where Horus came by blood,
as the mode of incarnation in the human form.
In the later myth Osiris is the deity
who suffered as the winter sun,
assailed by all the powers
of darkness. He also suffered from the drought as imaged
in the fire-breathing Apap-reptile, and in other
ways as lord of life in water, vegetation, and
in various forms of food. This
suffering deity or provider was the god in
matter. Ra is the god in spirit,
Osiris in matter. Not only in the matter of earth,
but also in the human form - the form assumed by
Horus as the child of earth, or Seb. Osiris,
the great sufferer in the dead of winter, was not simply
the sun, nor was Osiris dead, however inert in matter, lying
dumb in darkness, with non-beating heart. He was the buried
life of earth, and hence the god in matter imaged in the
likeness of a mummy waiting for
the resurrection in Amenta. Such was the physical basis in
the mythos of the mystery that is spiritual in the eschatology.
Mummy-making in Egypt
was far older than the Osirian cult. It was at least as old
as Anup the divine embalmer of the dead. Preserving the human
mummy perfectly intact
was a mode of holding on to the individual
form and features as a means of preserving the earthly
likeness for identifying the personality hereafter in spirit.
The mummy was made on purpose to preserve the physical
likeness of the mortal. The risen dead are spoken of in the
Ritual as “those who have found their faces”. The mummy Was a primitive form of the African effigy in which the body was
preserved as its own portrait, whereas the ka Was intended
for a likeness of the spirit or immortal - the likeness in
which the just spirit made perfect was to see Osiris in
his glory. Both the mummy and the ka were represented in
the Egyptian tomb, each with
a chamber to itself. From the beginning there
had been a visible endeavour to preserve some likeness or memento of the earthly
body even when the bones alone could be preserved. Mummy-making in the Ritual
begins with collecting the bones and piecing them together, if only in a likeness
of the skeleton. It is at this stage that Horus is said to collect the bones
of his father Osiris for the resurrection in a future life by means of transubstantiation.
The same primitive mode of preparing the mummy is implied
when it is said to the solar god on entering the under-world, “Reckon thou
thy
bones, and set thy limbs, and turn thy face to the beautiful Amenta” (ch. 133,
Renouf). Teta, deceased, is thus addressed, “O Teta, thou hast raised up thy
head
for thy bones, and thou hast raised up thy bones for thy head”. Also the hand of Teta
is said to be like a wall as support of Horus in giving
stability to his bones. Thus the foundation was laid
for building the mummy-type as a present image of
the person
who had passed.
Amongst other types, the Yucatanese made little statues of their
fathers. The head was left hollow, so that the ashes of the cremated [Page
213] body might be placed in the skull, as in an urn; this,
says Landa, was then
covered “with
the skin of the occiput taken from the corpse”.The custom is akin to that which has
been unearthed in the European bone caves, where the skulls of the adult dead
are found to have been trepanned, and the bones of little children inserted instead
of human ashes. In Sign-Ianguage the bones of the child were typical of rebirth
in a future life. The desire to live and the longing for a life after death,
in earlier times,
are inexpressible and the efforts made to give some kind of expression to the
feeling are ineffably pathetic.D' Acugna relates that it was a custom with the
South American Indians to preserve and keep the dead bodies of relatives in their
homes as long as was possible, so as to have their friends continually before
their eyes. For these they made feasts and set out viands before the dead bodies.
Here, in passing, we would suggest that in the Egyptian custom as described by
both Herodotus and Plutarch it was not the dead mummy that was brought to table
as a type of immortality, but the image of the ka, which denoted what the guests
would be like after death, and was therefore a cause for rejoicing. Carrying
the ka image round the festive board was just a Kamite
prototype of the elevation and carrying round of the
host for adoration in the Church of Rome. Indeed, the
total paraphernalia of the Christian mysteries had
been made use of in Egyptian
temples. For instance, in one of the many titles of
Osiris in all his
forms and places he is called “Osiris in the monstrance” (Rit.,
ch. 141, Naville). In the Roman ritual the monstrance
is a transparent vessel in
which the host or victim
is exhibited. In the Egyptian cult Osiris was the victim.
The elevation of the host signifies the resurrection
of the crucified god, who rose again in spirit
from the corpus of the victim, now represented by the host. Osiris
in the monstrance should of itself suffice to show
that the Egyptian Karast (Krst) is the original Christ,
and that the Egyptian mysteries were continued by the
gnostics and Christianized
in Rome.The mode of conveying
the oral wisdom to the initiate in the mysteries
of young man making was continued in the mystery of
mummy making. Whilst the mummy was being prepared for
burial,
chapters of the Ritual were read to it, or to the
conscious ka, by an official who was known as the man
of the roll. Every Egyptian was supposed to be acquainted
with the formula, from having learned them during
his lifetime, by which he
was to have the use of his limbs and possession of
his soul restored to him in death, and to be protected
from the dangers of the nether-world.
These were repeated to the dead person, however, for
greater security, during the
process of embalming, and the son of the deceased,
or the master of the ceremonies, took care to whisper
to the mummy the most mysterious parts, which
no living ear might hear with impunity. (Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, Eng.
trans., pp. 510, 5 I I.)
But it is an error to suppose with some Egyptologists,
like M. de Horrack, that the new existence of the deceased was begun in the old
earthly
body (Proceed.
Society of Bib. Archaeology, vol. vi., March 4, 1884, p. 126). The resurrection of the dead in mummy form
may look at first sight as if the old dead corpse had [Page 214] risen
from
the
sepulchre.
But
the risen is not the dead mummy,
it is a type of personality in the shape of the mummy.
It is what the Ritual describes as the mummy-form
of a god. The Manes
prays, “May I too arise and assume the mummied form as a
god”, that is, as the
mummy of Osiris, the form in which Amsu-Horus rose, a type
of permanent preservation, but not yet one of the spirits
made perfect by possession of the ka. It
was this mistake which led to a false idea that the Egyptians held the dogma
of a corporeal resurrection of the dead which became one
of the doctrines that were fostered into fixity by the
A-Gnostic
Christians. The Osiris as mortal
Manes, or Amsu-Horus as divinity, does rise in the mummy form, but this is
in another life and in another world, not as a human being on our
earth. It has the look of a physical resurrection in the
old body, and so the ignorant
misinterpreters mistook it and
founded on it a corporeal basis for the future life.
In the Christian scheme the buried dead were to
rise again in the old physical corpus for the last judgment in time at the literal ending of the world. This was another
delusion based on the misrendering of the Egyptian wisdom. The dead who rose
again in Amenta, which was the ground floor of a future state of existence,
also rose again for the judgment; but this took place in the earth of eternity
which was mistaken by the Christians for the earth of time, just as they had
mistaken the form of the risen sahu for the old body of matter that never was
supposed to rise again by those who knew. The earthly mummy of the deceased
does not go to heaven, nor
does it enter the solar boat, yet the Osiris is told to enter
the boat, his reward being the seat which receives
his sahu or spirit mummy (Rit.,
ch. 130). Clearly this can only refer to the spiritual
body, as the earthly
mummy was left on the earth outside the
gates of Amenta. Not only is the
corporeal mummy not placed on board the boat of souls,
the deceased was to be represented by a statue
of cedar wood anointed with
oil, or, as we might say, Christified (134,9, 10).There
is no possible question of a corporeal resurrection.
The object, aim, and end of all the spiritualizing
processes is to become non-corporeal in the
earthly sense - that is, as the Ritual represents it,
to defecate into pure spirit.
The word sahu (or the mummy) is employed to express
the future form as well as the old. But it is a spiritual
sahu, the divine mummy. Even the bones and
flesh of souls are mentioned but these are the bones
of Osiris, the backbone of the universal frame, and
the flesh of Ra. The terms used for the purpose
of divinizing are antipodal to any idea of return
to corporeality as a material mummy. The mummy of the Manes is a
sahu of the glorified spirit. This state of being is attained by the deceased
in chapter 73: “I am
the beloved son of his father. I come to the state of a sahu of the
well-furnished
Manes”. He is said to be mummified in the shape of a divine
hawk when he takes the form of Horus (78, 15, 16),
not as the earthly mummy in a resurrection on our
earth. The resurrection of Osiris was not corporeal.
The mummy of the god in matter or
mortality rises from the tomb transubstantiated into
spirit. So complete is the transformation that he is
Osiris bodily changed into Horus as a sahu or spirit.
The Egyptians had no doctrine of a physical resurrection [Page 215] 1of
the
dead.
Though
they retained the mummy as a type of personality, it was a changed and glorified form of the earthly body, the mummy that had attained its feet in the resurrection.
It was the Karast mummy, or, word for word and thing for thing, Amsu-Horus was
the
Kamite Christ who rose up from the mummy as a spirit.
Also it is entirely false
to represent the Egyptians as making the mummy and
preserving it for the return of the
soul into the old earthly body.That is but a shadow
of the true idea cast backwards by Christianity.
Millions of cats were made into mummies and sacredly
preserved around the city of Bubastes, but
not with the notion of a bodily
resurrection. They were the totems of the great cat
clan or its metropolis, the Egyptian “Clan
Chattan”, which
had become symbols or fetishes of religious significance
to later times when the totemic mother as the cat,
the seer by night, was divinized in the
lunar goddess Pasht, and the worshippers embalmed
her zootype, not because they adored the cat, but because
the deess herself was the Great Mother typified
by the cat. Both the mother and the moon were recognized
beyond the cat, which was their totemic zootype and
venerated symbol. Osiris was the mummy of Amenta
in two characters; in one he is the khat-mummy lying
laid out with corpse-like face upon the funeral couch,
in the other he is the
mummy risen to his feet and reincorporated
in the glorious body. These two characters were continued
as the Corpus Christi and the risen Christ in Rome. Hence in the iconography
of the catacombs the Egyptian mummy as Osiris-sahu,
and as Horus the new-born solar child, are the
demonstrators of the resurrection for the Christian
faith, where there is no testimony whatever to an historical
event. Any time during the last 10,000
years the mummy made for burial in the tomb was imaged
in the likeness of Osiris in Amenta, who, though periodically
buried, rose again for ever as the type
of life eternal. In making the mummy of Osiris the
Egyptians were also making an image of the god who
rose again in spirit as Osiris-sahu
or as Horus divinized, the risen Christ of the Osirian
cult. When the lustrations were performed with water
in Tattu and the anointings with oil in Abydos,
it was what may be termed a mode
of Christifying or making Horus the child of earth
into Horus the son of god who became so in his baptism
and anointing that were
represented in the mysteries. The
first Horus was born of
the virgin, not begotten.
The second Horus was begotten of
the father, and the child was made a man of in his
baptismal regeneration with the water and with unction,
with the oil of a tree or
the fat of a bull.
We have now to show that in making the
mummy the Egyptians were also making the typical Christ, which is the anointed.
The word karas, kares,
or karis in Egyptian signifies embalmment, to embalm, to
anoint, to
make the mummy. Kreas, creas, or chros, in Greek denotes the human body, a person or
carcase, more expressly the flesh of it; cras, Gaelic and Irish, the body; Latin, corpus, for a dead body; these are all preceded by the word karas or karast, in Egyptian,
with the risen mummy for determinative of the meaning. Each
body that had been embalmed was karast, so to say, and made
into a type of immortality
in the likeness of Osiris-sahu or Horus, the prototypal [Page
216] Christ. It will be made apparent by degrees that
the religion of the Chrestoi
first began at Memphis with the cultus of the
mummy in its two
characters, which represented body
and spirit, or Ptah in matter and Kheper(Iu-em-hetep)
in
spirit. Hence the hawk as bird
of spirit issuing from the karast-mummy was an
image of the resurrection. The origin of
the Christ as the anointed or “karast“ will explain the connection of the Christ name and
that of the Christiani with unction and anointing.
Horus the Kamite Christ was the anointed son.
The oil
upon his face was the sign of his divinity. This
supplied a figure of the Christ to Paul when he
says that for those who “put on
Christ” “there can be no male and female, for ye are one [man or mummy] in Christ Jesus“ (Gal., iii. 28). The Christ was “put on” metaphorically in the process of anointing which originated with the making
of the mummy. Whether the dead were represented by the bones invested with a
coating of blood, of flesh-coloured earth, or by the eviscerated and desiccated
body that was bandaged in the cloth of a thousand folds, the object was to preserve
and perpetuate the deceased in some permanent form of personality. The Egyptians
aimed at making the mummy imperishable and incorruptible, as an image of durability
and continuity, a type of the eternal, or of Osiris-karast in the likeness of
a mummy. Hence the swathe without
a seam and of incredible length in which the mummy was enfolded to represent
unending duration. Some of these have been unwound to the extent of seven or
eight hundred yards,
and one of them is described as being a thousand yards in
length. But, however long, it was made without a seam. This vesture is alluded
to in the chapter of the
golden vulture. The chapter is to be inscribed for the protection of the deceased
on “the day of his burial in the cloth of a thousand folds” (Rit., ch. 157 1 3).
This cloth was the seamless
swathe of the Egyptian karast, which became the
vesture or “coat without a seam woven from the top throughout “( John, xix. 23) for
the Christ. Even the poorest Egyptian, whose body was steeped
in salt and natron and anointed with a little cedar oil,
was wrapped in a single piece of linen equally
with the mummy whose swathe was hundreds of yards in length,
because the funeral vesture of Osiris, his body of matter,
was without a seam. The dead are often
called “the bandaged ones”. On rising from the tomb the deceased exclaims
triumphantly, “O my father! my sister! my mother Isis! I
am freed from my bandages ! I can see ! I am one of those
who are freed from their
bandages to see Seb” (158, I). Seb denotes the earth, and the Manes is
free to visit the earth again, this time as the
ghost or double of his former self. Covering
the corpse with the transparent
tahn, or golden gum, was one way of turning the
dead
body into a type of the spiritual
body which was imaged as the glorified. One cannot
doubt that this was a mode of showing
the transformation of the
Osirian dead mummy into the luminous
body called the sahu of Osiris when he was transfigured
but still retained the
mummy form in Amsu-Horus at his
rising from the sepulchre. Mummies
buried in the tomb at Medum had been thus enveloped.
This was one form of investiture
alluded to in the Ritual as distinguished
from the mummy bandages. One of these mummies
is now
to be seen in the Royal College of Surgeons.[Page 217] “The mode
of embalming”, says Prof. Petrie, “was very singular. The body was shrunk, wrapped up in
linen cloth, then modelled all over with resin ( or tahn) into the natural
shape and plumpness of the
living figure, completely restoring all the fullness of the form, and this
was wrapped
round with a few turns of the finest
gauze”. (Petrie, Medum, Introduction, chapter 2, pages 17 and 18.) There was no coffin present in
the
tomb. The mummy thus invested with the tahn had been buried in this primitive
kind
of glass
case, in which the form and features could be seen either directly or by means
of the modelling. The tahn, gum or resin, as a natural product from the tree,
preceded glass, and would be fashioned for the earlier monstrance. Remodelling
the dead in the likeness of the living form by means of the pellucid tahn is
a mode of making the glorified body on earth that was imaged by the sahu in Amenta,
and thus
the mummy here attains the two-fold type of the Osiris Khat, or corpse, and the
Osiris-sahu, or the glorified in spirit. In the Christian agglomerate of Egyptian
doctrines and dogmas, rites and symbols, the pellucid tahn may, we think, be
recognized in the sacred monstrance of the Roman ritual. This is a show-case
in
which the host or Corpus Christi is placed to be uplifted and exhibited. The eye of
Horus is yet visible in the lanula or crescent-shaped crystal of the monstrance which
holds the consecrated bread. The name of this show-case is derived from the Latin monstrare, “to show”, and this had been the object of the mummy makers in
employing the transparent tahn.
In
the eschatological or final phase of the doctrine,
to make the mummy was to make the typical anointed,
also called the Messu, the Messiah, and the Christ.
Mes or mas, in the hieroglyphics,
signifies to anoint and to steep, as in making the
mummy, and messu in Egyptian means the anointed;
whence lah the Messu becomes Messiah in Hebrew. There
was
a previous form of the anointed in the totemic mysteries
of young man making. When the boy attained the age
of puberty he was made into the
anointed one at the time of his initiation into the
way of a man with a woman. It was a custom with certain
Inner African tribes to slit the urethra of the
boy and lubricate
the member with palm oil. This was a primitive way
of making the anointed at puberty. Australian aborigines
are also known to slit the prepuce cover for the
same purpose. At this stage of the mystery the anointed
one is the adult youth who has attained the rank
of begetter full of grace and favour,
or is khemt, as it was rendered in Egyptian. Tertullian claims that the name of the Christians
came from the unction received by
Jesus Christ. This is in perfect keeping with the derivation
of the typical Christ from the mummy which was anointed so abundantly with
oil in its embalmment. It is said
of the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany,“ in that she poured the ointment upon
my body, she did it to prepare me for my burial ” (Matt. xxvi. 12). She was preparing
the mummy after the manner of Anup
the embalmer, who prepared Osiris for his burial
and resurrection. But it was only as a dead mummy
and not a living man that
the gnostic Jesus could have been embalmed for burial.
We now proceed to show
that Christ the anointed is none. other than [Page 218] the Osiris-karast,
and that the karast mummy risen to its feet as Osiris-sahu was the prototypal
Christ.
Unhappily , these demonstrations cannot be made without a wearisome mass of
detail. And we are bound for the bottom this time. Dr. Budge, in his book on
the mummy, tells his readers that the Egyptian word for mummy is ges,
which signifies to wrap up in bandages. But he does not point
out that ges or kes, to embalm the corpse or make the mummy, is a reduced or
abraded form of an
earlier word, karas (whence krst for the mummy). The original word written in
hieroglyphics is ,
.krst, whence kas, to embalm, to bandage, to knot, to
make the
mummy or karast (Birch, Dictionary of the Hieroglyphics, pp. 415-416; Champollion, Gram. Egyptienne, 86). The word krs denotes the embalmment of the mummy,
and the krst, as the mummy, was made in the process
of preparation by purifying,
anointing, and embalming. To karas the dead body was
to embalm it, to bandage it, to make the mummy. The
mummy was the Osirian Corpus Christi, prepared for
burial as the laid-out dead, the karast by name. When
raised to its feet, it was the
risen mummy, or sahu. The place of embalmment was likewise
the krs. Thus the process of making the mummy was to
karas, the place in which it was laid is the
karas, and the product was the krst, whose image is
the upright mummy = the risen Christ. Hence the name
of the Christ, Christos in Greek,
Chrestus in Latin, for
the anointed, was derived, as the present writer previously
suggested, from the Egyptian word krst. Karas also
signifies the burial-place, and the word modifies
into Kâs or Châs. Kâsu
the burial place “was a name of the 14th Nome in Upper Egypt.
A god Kâs is mentioned three or four times in the Book of the Dead, the god Kâs
who is in
the Tuat” ( ch. 40). This was a title of the mummy Osiris in the funerary dwelling. In
one passage Kâs is described as the deliverer or saviour from all mortal needs. In “the
chapter of raising the body” (178) it is said of the deceased that he had been hungry
and thirsty (on earth), but he will (never hunger or thirst
any more, “for Kâs delivers
him” and does away with wants like these. That is, in the resurrection. Here the
name of the god Osiris-Kâs written at full is Osiris the Karast - the Egyptian
Christ. Not only is the risen mummy or sahu called
the karast, Osiris as lord of the bier
is the Neb-karast equivalent to the later Christ
the Lord, and the lord of the bier is god
of the resurrection from the house of death. The karast is
literally the god or person who has been mummified, embalmed,
and anointed or christified.
Anup the baptizer and embalmer of the dead for the new life
was the preparer of the karast-mummy. As John the Baptist
is the founder of the Christ in
baptism, so Anup was the christifier of the mortal Horus, he on whom the holy ghost descended as a bird when
the Osiris made his transformation in the marriage mystery
of Tat tu (Rit., ch. 17). We read in the funeral texts of
Anup- being “Suten tu hetep, Anup, neb tser khent
neter ta krast-ef em set” (Birch, Funereal
Text 4th
Dynasty). “Suten
hept tu Anup tep-tuf khent neter
ha am ut neb tser krast ef em as-ef en kar [Page 219] neter em set
Amenta” (Birch, Funereal Stele of Ra-Khepr-Ka, 12th Dynasty). Anup gives embalmment, krast; he is lord over the place of embalmment, the kras
; the lord of embalming (krast), who, so to say, makes the
“krast”. The process of
embalmment is to make the mummy. This was a type of immortality or rising again.Osiris
is krast, or embalmed and mummified for the resurrection.
Passage into life and light is made for the karast-dead through
the embalmment of the good
Osiris (Rit., ch. 162)-that is, through his being karast as the mummy type.
Thus the Egyptian krast was the pre-Christian Christ, and the pictures in the
Roman Catacombs preserve the proof. The passing of the karast into the Christ
is depicted in the gnostic iconography. It is in the form of a child bound
up in the swathings of a diminutive Egyptian mummy, with the halo and cross
of the four quarters round its
head, which show its solar origin. It is the divine infant which has the head
of Ra in
the Ritual who says, “I am the babe; I renew myself, and I grow young
again” (chs.
42 and 43). The karast mummy is the type of resurrection
in the Roman Catacombs because the karast was the
prototypal Christ. It is the Egyptian karast as thing
and word that supplied and will explain the
Greek Christ, Christos, Krstos,
or Latin Chrestus and account
for the Corpus Christi,
the anointed, the Saviour, doctrinally,
typically, actually in every way except historically,
and of that the karast, Krstos, or Christ
is entirely independent. “Henceforth”, said a dignitary of the Church of England the other day, “Christianity
has done with the metaphysical Christ”. But there is no physical Christ except the karast
mummy, which was Osiris when laid out and lying down
in death, and Horus of the resurrection standing
up as
Amsu risen from the sepulchre, having the whip hand
over all the powers of darkness and the adversaries
of his father.
Say what you will or believe what you may,
there is no other origin for Christ the anointed than for Horus the karast or
anointed son of god the father. There is no other origin for a Messiah as the
anointed than for the Masu or anointed. Finally, then, the mystery of the mummy
is the mystery of the Christ. As Christian, it is allowed to be for ever inexplicable.
As Osirian, the mystery can be explained. It is one of the mysteries of Amenta,
with a more primitive origin in the rites of totemism.
We now claim sufficient
warrant for affirming that Christ the anointed is a
mystical figure which originated as the Egyptian mummy
in the twofold
character of Osiris in his death and in his resurrection;
as Osiris, or mortal Horus, the
karast; and Osiris-sahu, or Horus divinized as the anointed
son. The Christ or karast still continues to be made
when the sacrament of extreme unction is administered
to the dying as a Roman Catholic rite. Though but a
shadow of the primitive reality,
it perpetuates the “sacred
mystery” of
converting the corpse into the sahu, the
transubstantiation of the
inert Osiris by descent of Ra; the mortal Horus, child
of the mother, [Page
220]into
Horus the anointed son of god the father. “Extreme unction”, the seventh of the holy sacraments, is indeed a Christian
rite.
It will now be necessary to give an account of certain
other mysteries of Amenta and doctrines of the Ritual.
The Egyptians celebrated ten great mysteries on ten
different nights of the year. The first was the night
of the evening meal (literally the last supper), and
the laying of offerings on the altar. It is the night
of provisioning the Lord's table. Osiris had been overcome
by Sut and the Sebau, who had once
more renewed their assault upon Un-nefer when they
were defeated and exterminated by his faithful followers.
Therefore this was also the night of the great battle
when the moon god Taht and the children of light annihilated
the rebellious powers of darkness. On the second night
the overthrown Tat-Cross, with Osiris in it, or on
it, was again erected by Horus, Prince of Sekhem, in
the region of Tat tu, where the holy spirit Ra descends
upon the mummy and the twain become united for the
resurrection. On the third night the scene is in “Sekhem;
the mystery is that of the blind Horus or of Horus in the dark, who here receives
his sight. It is also the mystery of dawn upon the coffin of Osiris. We might
call it the mystery of Horus the mortal transfiguring into Horus the immortal.
On the fourth night the four pillars are erected with which the future kingdom
of god the father is to be founded. It is called “the night of erecting the flag-staffs
of Horus, and of establishing him as the
heir of
his father's property”. The fifth scene is in the region of Rekhet, and the
mystery is that of the two sisters with Isis watching
in tears over her brother Osiris,
and brooding above the dead body to give it the warmth
of new life. On the sixth night the
glorious ones are judged, the evil dead are parted
off, and joy goeth its round
in
Thinnis. This is the night of
the great festival named Ha-k-er-a, or “Come thou to me”, in which the blending of the two souls was solemnized as a glorious mystery
by a festival at which there was much eating and drinking. The mystery of the
seventh night was that of the great judgment on the highway of the damned,
when the suit was closed against the rebels who had failed once more and were
ignominiously
defeated. After the verdict comes the avengement. The eighth is the night of
the great hoeing in Tat tu, when the associates of Sut are massacred and the
fields are
manured with their blood. The ninth is called “the night of hiding the body of him
who is supreme in attributes”. The mystery is that of collecting the remains of Osiris,
whose body was mutilated and scattered piecemeal by
Sut, and of hiding it. The mystery on the tenth night presents a picture of Anup, the embalmer,
the anointer, or christifier of the mummy. This is in Rusta, the place of resurrection
from Amenta. It may be the series is not in exact order, but that does not interfere
with the nature of the mysteries. In each of the ten acts of the drama the suffering
Osiris and the triumph over all his adversaries are portrayed as mysteries in
a prototypal miracle-play or drama that was held to be divine. The chapter of
these ten mysteries was recited penitentially for the purification of the Manes
and the coming forth after
death (Rit., ch. 18, rubric). With this we may compare the fact that the Jewish
new year is ushered in with ten days of penitence. [Page 221]
The altar
or
communion-table thus provisioned was the coffin lid. This also was continued
in the ritual of
Rome, for
it is a fact that the earliest Christian altar was a coffin. According to Blunt's Dictionary
of Doctrinal and Historical Theology (p. 16), this was
a hollow chest, on the lid or mensa of which the eucharist was celebrated. This, as
Egyptian, was the coffin of Osiris
that constituted the altar on which the provisions
were laid in Sekhem for the eucharistic
meal. Hence the resurrection is
described as “dawn upon the coffin of Osiris”. Therefore
he rose in spirit from the mummy in the coffin, beneath the lid which constituted
the table. This was the body supposed to be eaten
as the eucharist, which was represented by the provisions
that were laid upon the altar for
the sacramental meal. The first of the ten great mysteries
is the mystery of the eucharist, and we find that the primitive
Christian liturgies are
all and wholly restricted to the eucharist as the one primordial
sacrament of the Christian Church. The first of the Osirian
mysteries is the primary
Christian sacrament. “Provisioning the altar” was continued
by the Church of Rome.“The mysteries laid upon the altar “which preceded” the communion of the body and blood of Christ “were then eaten in the eucharistic
meal”. (Neale, Rev. J. M., The Liturgies, Introd., p.
33). Thus we see in the camera obscura that the provisions laid on the altar or table
represented the flesh and blood
of the victim about to be eaten sacramentally.
The
night of the things that were laid upon the altar is
the night of the great sacrifice, with Osiris
as the victim. The things laid on the altar for
the evening meal represented the
body and
blood of the Lord.These, as the bread
and wine, or flesh and beer, were trans-elemented
or transub-stantiated by the descent of Ra the
holy spirit, which quickened and transformed the
mummy Osiris into the risen sahu,
the unleavened bread into
the leavened, the water into wine. Osiris, the sacrifice,
was the giver of himself as “the food which
never perishes”. (Rit., ch. 89).
The Christian liturgies are reckoned
to be the “most
pure sources of eucharistical doctrine”. And
liturgy appears to have been the groundwork of the Egyptian
ritual. It is said by one of
the priests (Rit., ch. I ), “I am
he who reciteth the liturgies of the soul who is lord of
Tattu” - that is, of Osiris who establishes a soul for ever in conjunction with Ra the
holy spirit in the mysteries of Amenta. In one character
Osiris was eaten as the Bull of Eternity, who gave his flesh
and blood as sustenance for
humanity, and who was the divine providence as the provider
of food. The eating of the mother was also continued in the
eucharist, Osiris being of
both sexes. This was typically fulfilled in one way by converting
the bull into an ox. The duality was also imaged in the bread
and beer or wine, which
is the mother blood in a commuted guise. It is said of the
body that was eaten in “the
Roman mysteries” that it is “the body which bestows on us, out of its wounds,
immortality and life, and the beatific
vision with the angels, and food and drink, and
life and light, the very bread of
life, the true light, eternal
life, Christ. Jesus”.
“Wherefore this entrance symbolizes at the same
time both the second advent of Christ and His sepulture,
for it is He who will [Page
222] be our beatific
vision
in the life
to come”, as Horus of the second sight, all of which was portrayed
of Osiris and
fulfilled. (Neale, The Liturgies, Introd., p. 30.) Blood sacrifice from
the beginning was an offering of life, hence the
life offering. When the mother was the victim her blood
was offered as life to the ancestral spirits.
It was also life to the brotherhood, and partaking
of it in communion constituted the sacrament. So in
the Christian eucharist the blood is taken to be the
life,
and is
partaken of as the life, the “life of the world” (Neale, Liturgy of Basil the Great), “the
divine life that is the life everlasting, the new life that
is for ever” (Neale, Liturgy of
St. Chrysostom,
ii.). The bread broken in the Christian
sacrament represents a body that
was “broken, immolated, and divided”. This
does not apply to the body of Jesus, according to the “history”. But it does apply to the body of Osiris, which was “broken, immolated, and divided” by Sut, who tore it into fourteen fragments. The
altar table, or coffin lid, was provisioned with these parts
of the broken body to be typically eaten as the eucharist
on the night “when there are at the coffin the thigh,
the head, the heel, and the leg of Un-nefer”. Moreover, when the mother was eaten
as the sacrifice, the flesh and blood were warm with life.
She was not eaten in cold blood. It was the same with the
Meriah of the Kolarians, and also with the totemic
animal. The efficacy lay in the flesh being eaten alive,
and the blood being drunk whilst it was warm with life which
constituted the “living sacrifice”. This type of
sacrifice was also continued in
the Christian eucharist. Hot water was at one time
poured into the
chalice with the
wine at the consecration of the
elements, to give it
the warmth of life (Neale, Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, p. 120.) Even the act of tearing
the flesh of the victim's body piecemeal is piously perpetuated by the breaking
instead of cutting the bread for the Christian sacrament.
The lights upon the coffin of Osiris are represented in the
Roman ritual by a double taper, the dikerion, reputed to signify “the advent of the Holy Spirit”, which
corresponds to the descent of Ra
the holy spirit on the inert body of Osiris in Tattu,
where the two souls are blended to become one in
Horus of the resurrection.
The
flabellum or fan is a mystical emblem in the Egyptian mysteries.
For one thing, it signified the shade or spirit. Fans are frequently portrayed
for souls of a primitive
type. (Birch, Trans.
Soc. Bib. Arch., vol. viii., p. 386.) Souls burning in the hells
are imaged by flabella. These fans were brought
on in the Oriental
Church. In the Clementine liturgy
they are ordered to be made of peacocks' feathers
(Neale, p. 76,
Introd., pp. 29, 30). They are
called fans of the Holy Spirit, and were carried
in procession with the “veil that was wrapped about the
body of the Lord Jesus” like
the folds of gauze that were wrapped
round the mummy at Medum. But the fan or shade
= spirit had been reduced in status,
and was then used as a flapper
for whisking the flies away from the sacrifice
(Durandus, iv,
33-8; Neale, Introduction, page 29). It
is not pretended that the second advent is historical,
nevertheless it is portrayed
in the mystery of the eucharist
by the descent of the Holy Spirit. The second
advent is the coming forth of Horus in
spirit from the [Page 223] mummy or corpse which was
his image in the human form.The first is in being
made flesh and putting on the likeness of mortality,
the second is in making his transformation into
a spirit, as the type of immortality. The marriage
of Cupid and Psyche is a fable that was founded on
this union of the two souls
which we have traced in the Ritual as the soul in
matter, or the human soul, and the soul in spirit.
Cupid, under another name, is Eros, whilst Eros
and
Anteros are a form of the double Horus, Eros in spirit,
Anteros in matter, and the blending of the two
in the
mysteries was the marriage of Cupid and Psyche in the
mystery of Tattu. Now here
is another of those many mysteries which have no origin
in historic Christianity. The agape was celebrated
in connection with the eucharist. This was not
founded
at the time of the Last Supper, nevertheless it was
held to be a Christian sacrament. Paul in speaking
of the love-feast at Corinth as a scene of drunken
revelry (1. Cor. ii. 20-22), recognizes the celebration of two suppers, which
he is desirous of having kept apart, one for the church, and one for the house.
These two are the eucharist and the agape. Ecclesiastical writers differ as
to which of the two ought to be solemnized
first, but there is no question that two were celebrated in connection with each
other. In his attack on the licentiousness of the Christian agape Tertullian
asks the wives, “Will not your husbands know what it is you secretly take before other food?” and
again, “Who will without anxiety endure her absence all night long at the Pascal
solemnities?”.
“Who will without some suspicion of his own let her go to attend that
Lord's banquet which they defame?” (Keating, Y. F., The Agape and the Eucharist,
p. 70.) As Egyptian, we can identify the two, and thus
infer the order in which they
stood to each other. Whether both were called suppers
or not, the Egyptians celebrated the last supper of
Osiris on the last night of the old year, and the mesiu,
or
the evening
meal, on the first night of the new year. And this
duality was maintained by the gnostics and continued
by the Christians. These are two of the Osirian
mysteries, and in the list of the ten great mysteries
there are two nights of provisioning the altar - that
is, two nights of a feast or memorial supper.
One is held in Annu, the other in Sekhem, with the
resurrection in Tattu coming between the two. In Sekhem
the blind Horus
receives his sight, or his beatific
vision of the divine glory, which was seen when he
had pierced the veil hawk-headed in the image
of Ra. Provisioning the altar in
Sekhem is designated “dawn upon
the coffin of Osiris” (Rit., ch. 18). The eucharist was a form of the mortuary
meal in which the death of Osiris was commemorated
by the eating of the body and
the drinking of the blood. The
agape, or phallic feast, was a mode of celebrating
the re-arising
of Horus, Prince of Sekhem, as
portrayed by the re-erection of the Tat. This accounts
for the sexual orgie of the agape,
a primitive form of which
was acted by the Eskimo in the
festival of reproduction. In their mysteries this was
the reproduction of food. In
the Egyptian it was the regeneration
and resurrection of the soul that
was celebrated at the agape. The death, of course,
came first. This was on the night of
the great sacrifice, and the
eucharist was [Page 224] eaten in commemoration. Then followed the triumph in Tattu and the regenesis of the soul,
which was acted by the “holy kiss” or blending of the sexes in the feast of love, as
a dramatic rendering of this union betwixt the human
nature and divine,
or of the brother and sister, Shu
and Tefnut. In the totemic mysteries of young man making
begettal was
included in the modus operandi, and in this the women invoked the spirit of the male
for the new birth. The phallic festival of promiscuous
intercourse still survived when the mysteries
became religious, whether in Egypt, Greece,
or Rome. In these Osiris was
resuscitated as Horus the only
begotten son, the women being the begetters or
regenerators. In the evocations of Isis
and Nephthys we hear them calling
on the lost Osiris to come back to them in the
person of the son. They
plead that the lamp of life may
be relighted, or more literally that the womb
may be replenished”. Come to
thine abode, god An”, they cry. “Beloved of the Adytum! Come to Kha” (a name of
phallic significance), “oh, fructifying Bull”. This is in the beneficent formulae that were
made by the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys, to effect
the resurrection of Osiris, which are said to have been composed
by them on the twenty-fifth day of the month
Koiak, December 22nd. They are magical evocations of the
god addressed to the inert Osiris, who is caused to rise
again by Isis in
his ithyphallic form.Most pathetic in its
primitiveness is the picture of the two divine sisters, or mothers, Isis and
Nephthys, watching by the dead or inert brother who is Osiris in death and
Horus in his resurrection, crooning their incantations, brooding bird-like
over the germ of life in the egg, and breathing out the very soul of their
own life in yearning for him, until the first token of returning consciousness
is given, the earliest sign of the resurrection is made in response to the
vitalizing warmth of their affection. These
evocations follow the night of “the last supper” and the battle with Sut and the
Sebau. “Oh, come to thine abode!” the two dear sisters cry. “Come to thy sister! Come to
thy wife! Come to thy spouse!” they plead whilst stretching out their longing arms for
his embrace. “Oh, excellent Sovereign, come to thine abode. Rejoice; all thine
enemies are annihilated. Thy two sisters are near to thee,
protecting thy funeral couch, calling thee in weeping, thou
who art prostrate on thy funeral bed. Thou seest
our tender solicitude. Speak to us, Supreme Ruler, our Lord.
Chase away all the anguish which is in our hearts”. These in the funeral scenes are the two women
watching in the tomb (Records, vol. ii.,119). Then was the only son of god begotten
of the holy spirit Ra. The “pair of souls” were blended in the Horus of a soul that was
to live for ever, or to taste eternal life. The marriage
rite was acted, and the marriage feast was celebrated
in this prototypal ceremony that
was continued in the Agape of the Osirian and the
Christian cult.
The Christian
dogma of a physical resurrection founded on the historic fact of a dead corpse
rising from the grave can be explained as one of the Kamite mysteries which
were reproduced as miracles in the Gospels. If we take the original representation
in the solar mythos, the sun in the under-world, the diminished, unvirile,
impotent [Page
225] or
suffering sun was imaged as Ans-Ra, the solar god bound up in linen, as the
mummified Osiris. The type remained for permanent
use,
but when the transformation had been effected the mummy vanished. The sepulchre
was empty. The sun of winter or of night did not remain in Hades. Neither did
it come forth as the dead body or unbreathing mummy of Osiris. Osiris, the
hidden god in the earth of Amenta, does not come forth at all except in the
person of the risen Horus, who
is the manifestor for the ever-hidden father. To issue thus he makes his transfiguration
which constitutes the mystery, not the miracle, of the resurrection. Osiris
defecates and spiritualizes. The mummy as corpus is transubstantiated into the sahu, the mortal Horus
into the immortal, and the physical mummy disappears.
But it did not disappear because the living
Horus rose
up and walked off with the dead
body of Osiris. When the transformation took place
the type was changed in a moment, in the “twinkling of an eye”. The mummy Osiris
transubstantiates, and makes his transformation into Osiris-sahu.
As the Ritual expresses it, “he is renewed in an instant” in this second birth ( ch. 182 ). The place
was empty where the mummy had lain upon the bier, and the
body was not found. This change is described when it is said in the litany
of Ra, he “raises his soul and
hides his body”. Thus the body was hidden in the resurrection of the soul. “Hiding
his body” is consequently a name of Horus, “emanating from Hes” as a babe in the
renewal of Osiris. Concealing the
body of dead matter was one way of describing
the transubstantiation in texture and the transfiguration
in form. This was one of the
greater mysteries.
When Horus rent the veil of the
tabernacle he had become hawk-headed, and consequently
was a spirit in the divine likeness of Ra the
holy
ghost. Therefore the tabernacle
was the body or mummy, “the
veil of flesh” (Neale, Liturgy
of St. James,
pp. 46-7) from which he had emerged. The speaker
in the Ritual says, “I am the hawk in the tabernacle, and
I pierce through the veil” - that is,
when he is invested with the soul of Horus and disrobes himself
of the mummy (Rit., ch. 71, Renouf) or the veil which represented
the flesh, as did the veil of gauze when
folded round the mummy in the pyramid at Medum. The “holy veil” was
carried in the Christian mysteries, together with the “holy gifts” and “fans of the spirit”, and this is said to represent “the veil that was wrapped
about the body of the Lord Jesus” (Neale, The Liturgies, Introduction, page 30, “Prayer of
the Veil”.) This (in the Liturgy of St. James, Neale, page 46) is “the veil of the flesh of
Christ”, therefore the veil of the body or temple of the spirit that was rent in the
resurrection by Horus when he “pierced through the veil”. He rends or pierces
through the veil, saying, “I am the hawk in the tabernacle,
and I pierce through the veil. Here is Horus!” who comes forth to the day as a hawk ( ch. 71 ). In the form
of a divine hawk the risen one is revealed and goes forth
as a spirit. In the Gospel the loud cry is immediately followed
by the going forth as a spirit. “And behold, the veil
of the sanctuary was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And the earth
did quake, and the rocks were rent
and the tombs were opened, and
many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep
were raised
(Matt. xxvii. 45-53). Horus now
takes his seat at the table of his father Osiris,
with those who eat bread in Annu. He
gives breath to [Page 226] the
faithful dead who are raised by
him, he who is the resurrection and the life.
The same scene is apparently reproduced by
John. Jesus makes his apparition
to the disciples at what looks
like the evening meal, although the meal is
not mentioned. Jesus is the breather. “He breathed on them and said, Receive ye
the Holy Spirit” - which in the Ritual is the breath of Atum-Ra, the father, imparted by
lu the son, or by Horus to the faithful dead.The scene has now been changed from
Amenta to the earth of Seb by those who made “historic” mockery of the Egyptian Ritual, and sank the meaning
out of sight where it has been so long submerged.
More of this hereafter. Enough at present to indicate
the way that things are tending. In this divine
drama natural realities are represented with no
perniciously destructive attempt to conceal the
characters under a mask of history. Majestically
moving in their own might of pathetic appeal to
human sympathy, they are simply represented for
what they may be worth when rightly apprehended.
But so tremendous was this tragedy in the Osirian
mysteries, so
heart-melting the legend of divinest
pity that lived on with its rootage in Amenta
and its flowerage in the human mind, that an historic
travesty has kept the stage and held
the tearful gaze of generation
after generation for nineteen hundred years.
Amenta,
the earth of eternity, is the land
of the mysteries where Taht, the moon god, in
the nether night was the great teacher of the
sacred
secrets together with the seven
wise masters.
The passage through Amenta is a
series of initiations for the Osiris deceased.
He is inducted into the mysteries of Rusta (I,
7, 9),
the mysteries of the
Tuat (130, 27), the mysteries of
Akar (148, 2, 3). He knows the mysteries of Nekhen
(I 13, I). Deceased invokes the
god who dwells in all mysteries
(14, I); deceased learns the mystery
of the father god Atum, who becomes his own son
(15,46); he
is the mysterious of form (17,
91) and the mysterious of face, like Osiris (133,9). “I
shine in the egg”, says
the deceased, “in the land of the mysteries”. Chapter 162
contains the most secret, most sacred, the greatest of all mysteries. Its name
is the book of the hidden dwelling-that is, the book of Amenta
or the ritual of the resurrection.
Obscure as these mysteries may seem, on account of the
form-that of dramatic monologue and soliloquy-and the brevity
of statement, we can recognize enough to know that these are the originals
of all the other “mysteries”, Gnostic, Kabalistic, Masonic, or Christian. The dogma
of the incarnation was an Egyptian mystery. Baptismal
regeneration, transfiguration, transubstantiation,
the resurrection and ascension, were all Egyptian
mysteries. The mystery of
an ever-virgin mother; the mystery of a boy at twelve
years of age transforming suddenly into an adult
of thirty years, and then becoming one with the father,
as it had been earlier in the mysteries of totemism;
the mystery in which
the dead body of Osiris is transubstantiated into
the living Horus by descent of the bird-headed holy
spirit; the mystery of a divine being
in three persons, one of which takes flesh on earth
as the human Horus, to become a mummy as Osiris in
Amenta, and to rise up from the dead in spirit
as Ra in heaven. These and other miracles of the
Christian faith were already extant among the mysteries
of Amenta. But the meaning of the
mysteries could only be known [Page 227] whilst the
genuine gnosis was authentically taught. This had
ceased when the Christian Sarcolatræ took possession of the “Word-made- flesh”, and literalized the mystical drama as a more tangible-looking
human history, that was set forth in the very latest of the
Gospels as a brand-new revelation sent from God, and personally conducted in
Palestine by the “historic
Jesus”.
When
Bendigo, the pugilist, became converted he proposed
to take up preaching as his new profession. And when
it was objected that he didn't know anything and
couldn't read or write, he replied
that he “expected to pick up a good deal by
listening round”. So was it with the early Christians. They could neither read nor write
the ancient language, but they picked up a good deal by listening
round. “You have
your man upon the cross”, said one of them to the Romans; “why do you object to
ours?” Their man upon the cross being identical with Osiris- Tat or the ass-headed
lu. It is said of Taht as a teacher of the mysteries, “And
now behold Taht in the secret of his mysteries. He maketh
purifications and endless reckonings, piercing the firmament and dissipating
the storms around him and so it cometh to pass that
the Osiris hath reached every station”, and, we may add, attained his immortality
through the teachings communicated in the mysteries of Taht
(Rit., ch. 130, Renouf). The 148th chapter of the Ritual
recounts some of the most secret mysteries. It was
written to furnish the gnosis or knowledge necessary for
the Manes to get rid of his impurities and acquire perfection
in the “bosom of Ra” the holy spirit.
At the entrance to the mysterious
valley of the Tuat there is a walled-up doorway,
the first door of twelve in the passage of Amenta.
These twelve are described in the Book of Hades
as twelve divisions corresponding to the twelve
hours
of darkness during the nocturnal journey of the sun.
The first division has no visible door of entrance.
The rest have open doors, and the twelfth has
double doors. It is hard to enter, but made easy
for the exit into the land of eternal life. Here
is the mystery: how to enter where there is no
door and
the way is all unknown ? I t is explained to the
Manes how divine assistance is to be obtained.
When the stains
of life on earth are effaced the strength is given
for forcing the entrance where there is no door,
and in that
power the Manes penetrates with
(or as) the god (Rit., ch. 148, 2, 3). Thus Horus
was the door in the darkness, the way where no
entrance
was seen, the life
portrayed
for the Manes in death. The secret entrance was one of the
mysteries of
Amenta. It was known as “the
door of the stone”, which name was given to their Necropolis
by the people at Siut, the stone that revolved when the magical
word or “open
sesame” was spoken. The entrance to the Great Pyramid was
concealed by means of a movable flagstone that
turned on a pivot which none but the initiated
could detect. This, when tilted
up, revealed a passage four
feet in breadth and three
and a half feet in height into
the interior of the building. This was a mode
of entrance applied to Amenta as the blind
doorway that was represented
by the secret portal and movable
stone of later legends. The means of entrance
through what appeared to be a blank
wall was by knowing the secret
of the nicely-adjusted stone, and this secret
was communicated to
the initiates with the pass-word
in the mysteries. [Page
228] Horus begins his work by carrying out the divine
plans of his father Osiris on
earth. He makes firm the battlements to protect
Osiris against the assaults of all
the powers of darkness. He makes
the word of Osiris truth against his enemies.
He opposes
Sut, his father's adversary, to the death. He makes
war upon the evil Apap, that old serpent, and
overthrows the powers that rise up in rebellion,
which are called the rebels in
the
Ritual, who are ever doomed to
failure in the fight betwixt them and the father,
who is now represented by Horus his
beloved son, Horus of the resurrection,
who is himself the door in death as the means
of entrance to Amenta. He covers the naked
body of the breathless one. He opens the fountains
of refreshment for the god of the non-beating
heart ( ch. I ). He wages battle on the “eater of the arm” ( ch. II) and the black boar Sut, two types of the power of dearth,
death, and darkness. He protects his father from the devouring
crocodiles (ch. 32), from the serpents Rerek, Seksek, and Haiu, also from the
apshait, an insect that
preys upon the buried mummy (chs. 33, 34, 36). He says, “I
have come myself and delivered the god in his dismembered
condition. I have healed
the trunk and fastened the shoulder and made firm the leg” (ch. 102), t..e., in reconstructing the
mummy. He restores to Osiris his sceptre, his pedestal, and
his staircase from the tomb (ch. 128). He says, “I have
done according to the command that I should come forth in
Tattu, to see Osiris” ( ch. 78). He has kept the commandment that w as
given him by the father. The Manes in Amenta tell of “the fortunes of that great son
whom the father loveth”, and how he had “pierced Sut to the heart”, and how they had “seen the
death”. They also tell of the “divine plans which were carried out by Horus, in the
absence of his father”, when he represented Osiris on the earth (ch. 78). With his
work accomplished, both on earth and in Amenta, Horus of
the resurrection goes to see his father, and they embrace
each other. Horus addresses his father, here called
Ra-Unnefer-Osiris-Ra. He exclaims: “Hail, Osiris ! I am thy son Horus; I have come.
I have avenged thee. I have struck down thy enemies. I have
destroyed all that was
wrong in thee. I have killed him who
assailed thee. I stretched forth my hand for thee against thy adversaries.
I have brought thee the companions of Sut with chains upon them. I
have ploughed for thee the fields. I have irrigated for thee
thy land. I have hoed for
thee the ground. I have built for thee the lakes of water. I have turned up the
soil of thy possessions. I have made for thee sacrifices of thy adversaries.
I have made
sacrifices for thee of thy cattle and thy victims. I have
bound thy enemies in their chains. I have sowed for thee wheat and barley in
the field of Aarru. I have mowed
them there for thee. I have glorified thee. I have anointed
thee with the offering of holy oil. I have established for thee thy offerings
of food on the earth for ever”. (Rit.,
ch. 173, excerpt from Naville's rendering in Renouf’s Book of the Dead.) All this and
more he claims to have done. “I have given thee Isis and
Nephthys”. The twO divine sisters, the consorts of Osiris, the
mothers and protectors of Horus, are thus brought
back by him to the father. They
have been with him from the beginning
on earth in the hall of Seb; with him in his
conception
and incarnation [Page 229] by Isis and his nursing
by Nephthys. They were his ministering
angels, in attendance on him as protectors from
the cut-throat
Sut, or the monster Apap, who sought
to slay the child or destroy it in the egg; with
him in the agony of his blindness
when torn and bleeding in
the garden of Pa; with him as watchers
in the tomb until he wakes; with him in his resurrection
from Amenta. They
are with him when he ascends
to the father as conqueror of death, as ruler
of the double earth and lord of the
kingdom
which he and his disciples or children have established
for ever.The work attributed to Horus the divine
exemplar, was to be fulfilled by his followers
in the
double earth of time and eternity.
That was the object of the mysteries. It is in
the character of the divine Horus
that the human Nebseni
says to Osiris, “Thou one
God, behold me. I am Horus thy son. I have fought for thee.
I have fought on thy behalf for justice, truth, and righteousness.
I have overcome thine adversaries”. He also claims to have done the things that Horus
did as set forth in the writings or represented
in the drama, and thus fulfilled the ideal of
self-sacrificing
sonship in very reality. making
-the word of Osiris truth against his enemies.
And it was but the word even when
personified. which to be of any actual efficacy
must be made truth in human life, in conduct.
and in character
(Pap. of Nebseni. Rit., ch. 173,
Budge).
If there be any revelation or inspiration
in a great ideal dramatically portrayed. the Egyptians found it in their
divine model set forth in Horus :
Horus
the saviour, who was brought to birth
As
light in heaven and sustenance on earth.
Horus
in spirit, verily divine,
Who
came to turn the water into wine.
Horus,
who gave his life, and sowed the seed
For
men to make the bread of life indeed.
Horus
the comforter, who did descend
In human fashion as the heavenly friend.
Horus
the word, the founder in his youth.
Horus,
fulfiller as the word made truth.
Horus
the lord and leader in the fight
Against
the dark powers of the ancient night.
Horus
the sufferer with his cross bowed down,
Who
rose at Easter with his double crown.
Horus
the pioneer, who paved the way
Of
resurrection to eternal day.
Horus
triumphant with the battle done,
Lord
of two worlds, united and made one.
It was the object of
their loftiest desires to grow in his likeness whilst looking lovingly upon
his features, listening to his word. and fulfilling his character in their
own
personal lives. A mythical model may be no more than an air-blown
bladder for learning to swim by. The reality lies in learning to swim. This
was how the ideal
Horus served the Egyptians. They did not expect him to swim for them and carry
them and their belongings as well but learned to swim for themselves.
There
is nothing in all
poetry considered as the flower of human reality more pathetic
than the figure of
Horus in Sekhem.He has grappled with
the Apap of evil and wrestled with Sut-the de-vil or .Satan-and been overthrown
in the passage of absolute darkne.s5. Blind and bleeding from many wounds.
he continues to fight with [Page 230] death
itself; he conquers, rises from the grave like a warrior with one arm! Not
that he has lost an arm; he
has
only
got one arm free from the bonds of death, the bandages of the mummy made for
the burial. But he lives, he rises again triumphant, lifting the sign of the
Dominator aloft; and in the next stage of transformation he will be altogether
freed from the trammels of the mummy to become pure spirit, in the likeness
of the father as the express image of his person.
It is a common Christian
belief, continually iterated, that life and immortality
were brought to light, and death, the last enemy,
was destroyed, by a personal Jesus only nineteen
centuries ago, whereas the same revelation had been
accredited to Horus the anointed and to Iu-su the coming
son for thousands of years before, with Horus or
Iu-su as the impersonal and ideal revealer who
was the Messiah in the astronomical mythology and
the Son of God in the eschatology. The doctrine
of immortality is so
ancient in Egypt that the “Book
of Vivifying the Soul for Ever”,“
said over a figure
of the enlightened dead” , was not only extant
some 6,000 years ago in the time of Husapti, fifth king of the first
dynasty, it was then so
old that the true tradition of
interpretation was at that time already lost.The Egyptian
Christ- Jesus or Horus, as revealer of immortality,
was the ideal figure of a fact
known to the ancient spiritualists, that the soul
of man or the Manes persisted beyond death and
the dissolution of the present
body, and the drama of the mysteries was their modus
operandi for teaching the fact, with Horus (or Iu-su) as typical manifestor. In this
character he was set forth as the first fruits of them that slept, the only
one that came forth from the mummy on earth, as the sahu mummy in Amenta;
the only one, however, as a type that prefigured potential continuity for
all,
the doctrine being founded on the ghost as the phenome9al apparition of an
eternal reality.
The Egyptians, who were the authors of the mysteries
and mythical representation., did not pervert the
meaning by an ignorant literalization
of mystical
matters, and had no fall of man
to encounter in the fallacious Christian sense.
Consequently they had no need of a redeemer from the
effects of that which had never occurred. They did
not rejoice over the death of their suffering saviour
because his agony and shame and bloody sweat were
falsely supposed to rescue
them from the consequences of broken laws; on the
contrary, they taught that everyone created his own
karma here, and that the past deeds made the future
fate. The morality was a thousandfold loftier and
nobler than that of Christianity,
with its delusive doctrine of vicarious atonement
and propitiation by proxy. Horus did such or such
things for the glory of his father, but not
to save the souls of men from having to do them. There
was no vicarious salvation or imputed righteousness.
Horus was the justifier
of the righteous, not of the wicked.
He did not come to save sinners from taking the trouble
to save themselves. He was an exemplar, a model of
the divine sonship; but his followers must conform
to his example,
and do in life as he had done before they could claim
any fellowship
with him in death. Except ye do
these things yourselves, there is no passage, no
opening of the gate, to the land of life everlasting. [Page 231]
The Christian cult is often
said to be founded on the “mysteries
of the incarnation”. But
what teacher of the spurious mysteries has ever
been able to tell us anything of their natural
genesis ? What has any bibliolator ever
known about the word that was in
the beginning ? The word which issued out of Silence
?
The word of life that came by water,
by blood, and in the Spirit? For him such language
has never been related to any
phenomena extant in nature.
The wisdom of old Egypt only can
explain the typical word and its relationship
to a so-called revelation. The doctrine
of the incarnation is Egyptian,
and to the Egyptian wisdom we must
appeal if we would understand it. No other word
was ever made flesh in any other
way than in Horus, who was
the logos of the Mother Nature
as the Child-Horus, the khart, or inarticulate
logos, and the word that
was made truth in the adult phase
of his character
as Horus Mat-Kheru, the second
Horus, the
paraclete and direct representative of the father in heaven. The incarnation,
which is looked upon as a central mystery of the Christian cult, had no origin
and can have
no adequate or proper explanation in Christianity. Its real origin, like
those of the other Egyptian dogmas and doctrines, was purely natural; it was
prehistorical and non-personal, and as the mystery of Horus and his virgin
mother, who were equally prehistorical and non-historical, it had been the
central mystery of the Egyptian faith for ages, utilized by the ancient teachers
for all it ever was or could be worth, and was continued by the teachers of
historic Christianity in ignorance of its origin and only true significance,
or with a criminally
culpable suppression of the gnosis by which alone the inexplicable latter-day
mysteries could have been explained.
The primitive mysteries were founded on
the facts in nature which are verifiable today as from the first, whereas
the mysteries
of the Christian theology have been manufactured, shoddy-Iike, from the leavings
of the past by the modus
operandi of
miracle. These remain today unverified because they
are for ever unverifiable; We know how Horus came by
water on his
papyrus; how then did he come by blood ? The child
had been incorporated in the fish, the shoot, the branch,
the beetle, calf, or Iamb, as the representative
type; and in his incarnation, Horus came by blood,
but not by the blood shed on a tree, or the
tat-cross. He came to earth by blood as representative
of the human soul that came
by blood. The Ritual tells us that the gods issued
out of silence (ch. 24): This was portrayed in the
Osirian system when the infant Horus is depicted pointing
with his finger to his mouth,
making the sign of silence as it
was understood in all the
mysteries. Horus is not the
ordinary child or khart of the hieroglyphics. He images
the logos, the word of silence, the virgin's word,
that gave a dumb or inarticulate utterance to the
mystery of the
incarnation. The doctrine of the
incarnation had been evolved and established in the
Osirian religion at least
4,000 and possibly 10,000 years before it was purloined
and perverted in Christianity. It was so ancient that
the source and origin had been forgotten and the direct
means of proof lost sight of or obliterated except
amongst the gnostics, who
sacredly preserved their fragments of the ancient
wisdom, their types and symbols and no doubt, with [Page 232] here and there a copy of some chapters
of the Book of the Dead done into Greek or Aramaic by Alexandrian
scribes. The doctrine of salvation by the blood of Isis connoted the idea of
coming into existence by means of the mother's blood, or mystically the blood
of the virgin
mother. In primitive biology all birth and production of human life was first
derived
from the mother's blood, which was
afterwards informed by the soul of the fatherhood. The lesson first taught by
nature was that life came by blood. Procreation could not occur until the female
was
pubescent. Therefore blood was the sign of source as the
primary creative human element. Child-Horus came by the blood of the virgin
Isis, in that and no other way. Jesus, the gnostic Christ, also came by blood
that way, not only according to the
secret doctrine of John, for the Musselmans have preserved
a fragment of the true gnosis. In the notes to ch. 96 of the Koran, Sale quotes
the Arabic tradition that
Jesus was not born like any other men from blood concreted
into flesh, but came in
the flow, or in the
flowing blood-that
was, in the virgin's blood first
personalized in Horus, who was made
flesh as the virgin.'s child. The
doctrine of the incarnation
was dependent on the soul of life
originating in the mother blood, the
first that was held specifically and
exclusively
human on account of its incarnation.
This was the soul derived from a mother
who was the mystical virgin in biology,
and who
was afterwards mystified by theology
as the mother of god, the eternal
virgin typified in the likeness of
the totemic. The
blood mother had been cognized
sociologically the virgin. Thence
came the doctrine
of a virgin mother as
a type. Blood was the mother of a soul now differentiated
from the external souls as human.
First the white vulture of the virgin
Neith, next
the red heifer of the virgin Isis,
then the human virginity, supplied the type of an eternal virgin, she in whom
the mystery of maternal source
was divinized as the virgin mother in the eschatology.
Thus “incarnation” proper
begins with the soul that came
into being by means of the virgin
blood. This was the child of the
mother
only, the unbegotten Horus, w ho was an imperfect
first sketch of the soul in matter that assumed the
form of human personality as Horus
the mortal, who as blind and maimed,
deaf and dumb and impotent, because
it was a birth of matter or the mother only, according
to the mythical representation.
The mother being the source and sustenance of life
with her own blood, this led
to a doctrine of salvation by the blood of Isis the
divinized virgin.
Thus the mystical blood mother was the earliest saviour,
not the male. The elder Horus was
her child who came by blood. He
was her blood child in the eschatology;
hence the calf, as his type, was painted red upon the
tablets. As the Child-Horus
he was an image of her suffering in the human form;
thence Horus the child of
blood became a saviour through suffering, in a mystery
which had a natural origin. This
origin can be followed in the Christian iconography when,
as Didron shows, a figure of Jesus was portrayed upon the
cross,
as a little child of two years,
naked, and with its body painted
red all over, as was the Horus-calf
upon the tablets. A curious instance of salvation
by the blood of Isis is given
in the Ritual. In
a vignette to ch. 93, the saving and protecting power
of the red tet-buckle, which [Page 233] is an image of the blood of Isis, is shown. A pair
of human hands are outstretched
from this amulet to grasp the arms
of the Manes and prevent him
from going toward
the east, as that way lies the
tank of flame, or hell in modern
phrase. In the Gospel
account of the incarnation the “word” was “made flesh”, but the blood basis of the doctrine has been omitted.
Salvation through the blood of Isis was imaged by the
red tet-amulet that was put on by her when she
had conceived her blood child. This salvation was effected
when the child was brought into existence. According
to the Ritual, the salvation of the Manes is
in living- on hereafter. He pleads that he may live
and be saved after death ( ch. 41 ), and he wore the
tet-buckle in his coffin as the sign of his salvation
by the blood of Isis.
Further, how did a purificatory power come to be associated
with blood so that one of the horrible dogmas of later
theology could be expressed in lines like these :—
“There
is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn
from Immanuel's veins,
And
sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains” ?
The
natural genesis of such a monstrous doctrine can
be traced on two lines of descent. One of
these has its starting-point in the theological victim
being slain as a scapegoat in a sacrifice that was
held to be piacular.
The blood of the sin offering thus acquired the character
of the atoning blood. According to the Christian
doctrine, “All things are cleansed with blood, and apart
from the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. ix., 22). On the other line
of descent, the idea of purification
by blood was derived from a human origin, and
not merely from the blood of the
animal that was slain as a sacrifice
for sin. This is one of the origins that were
unfolded to the initiated by
the teachers of the secret wisdom
in the mysteries. The earliest form of the purifying
blood was female. It was
first the blood of the virgin mother, the blood of
Isis, the blood of the incarnation, the flowing
blood, the element in which Horus manifested
when he came by blood, the blood
on which the rite of purification was founded
as a natural
mode of cleansing. This is the
one sole origin in the whole realm of nature for
the blood which cleanseth, and it was
in this feminine phase that a
doctrine of purification by blood
was established for the use of later theology
when the sacrificial victim had been
made a male who was held to have
shed the atoning, purifying, saving blood upon a tree. There was
no other way by which a soul was
ever saved by blood than this act of salvation
effected
by the virgin mother. There never
was any other incarnation than this of Horus in
the
blood of Isis, and no other saviour by blood was possible
in the whole domain of unperverted nature. Neither
could the transaction be made
historical, nor the saviour
personal, not if every tree on earth were cut into
the figure of across with the effigy of a bleeding
human body hung on every bough. Purification by
means of blood
then originated in the blood of Isis, the virgin mother
of the human Horus, who, as the red
child, calf or Iamb, personated that purification by
blood which became doctrinal in the eschatology.
To substitute the blood of a Jew shed on a cross
as a [Page
234] means of making the purification for sins and the
mode of cleansing
souls
in
the “blood of the Iamb” for the natural purification of the mother was the grossest form
of profanity, inconceivably impious to those who knew the mystical nature of
the doctrine and its origin in human phenomena continued as a typical purification
by
blood that was practised in the mysteries, either by baptism or sprinkling with
blood,
or drinking blood, or eating the “bloody wafer” of the Roman eucharist.The natural blood sacrifice
was feminine. The typical blood sacrifice was that
of the red calf, the Iamb, or the child. The Iamb on
the cross was the Christian victim until the eighth
century A.D., at which time
the man was permanently substituted for the Iamb, and
the blood sacrifice was thenceforth portrayed as human
and historical. A doctrine of voluntary sacrifice
was founded from the time when the human mother gave
herself to be eaten with honour by her children in
the most primitive form of the mortuary meal. She offered
her flesh to be eaten and her blood to be drunk; she
gave herself as a natural
blood sacrifice on which the typical was founded when
the female totem as a cow, a bear, or other animal
was made a substitute for the human mother. Also, when
the earth was looked upon as the mythical mother of
food and drink who was a
wet-nurse in the water, and who gave herself bodily
to her children for food, the sacrifice was typically
continued if! totem ism
when the animal supplied the sacramental food. As before shown, the
earliest form of voluntary sacrifice was female.
The human mother as victim was repeated in the
mythology as divine,
the mother in elemental nature;
she who gave her flesh and blood as life to her
children
was then continued as a type in
.the more mystical phase. Hence came salvation
by the blood of Isis-that is, by the virgin blood
in
which Horus was incarnated and
made
flesh, as the saviour who thus came by blood.
A Spaniard, who was paying expensively to regain the lost favour of the Holy Virgin, on being told by his priest that Mary had not yet forgiven him, is said to have shaken his fist in the face of his fetish and to have reminded her that she need not be so proud in her present position, as he had known her ever since she was only a bit of green plum tree. The ancient Egyptians knew the natural origins of their symbols and dogmas. Christians have mistaken the bit of green plum
tree for an historical virgin.
The earliest form of god the father who became a voluntary sacrifice in Egypt
was Ptah in the character of Sekari, the silent sufferer, the coffined one,
the deity that opened up the nether-world for the resurrection in the solar
mythos. As solar god he went down into Amenta. There he died and rose again,
and thus became the resurrection and the way into a future lire as founder
of Egyptian eschatology. Atum the son of Ptah likewise became the voluntary
sacrifice as the source of life, but in another way and more apparent form.
The mother human and divine had given life
with her blood, and now the father, who was blended with the mother in Atum,
is portrayed as creator of mankind by the shedding of his own blood.
In the
cult of Ptah
at Memphis and Atum at On there was a strenuous endeavour made to set creative
source as male above the female. Hence it was said of the symbolic beetles that
there was [Page
235] “no female race among them” (Hor-Apollo, B. I., 10). In cutting the member, Atum
showed that he was the creator by the blood shed in
a voluntary sacrifice. Male source is recognized,
but according to what had preceded as the mother element,
blood still remained a typical essence of creative
life. And this is apparently illustrated by the
rite of circumcision. The custom pertains, world over,
to the swearing-in of the youths when they join the
ranks of the fathers or begetters and follow the
example of Atum as the father Ra, who was previously
Horus the son. Atum, like Ptah, was also the typical
sacrifice in the earth of eternity, who gave his
life as sun god and as the master of food that sprang
up for the Manes in Amenta. Osiris follows. In him
the human mother who first gave herself to be eaten,
and
the great mother Isis, who was the saviour by blood,
were combined with god the father in a
more complete and perfect sacrifice
as mother and father of the race in one. Lastly, the
son as Horus or as Iusa is made a vicarious sacrifice,
not, however, as an
atonement for sin, but as voluntary
sufferer instead of his mother or his father. For
in the Kamite scheme the mother never is omitted. Hence,
when Horus comes in the character of the red god who
orders the block of execution with the
terrifying face of Har-Shefi. as the avenger of the
afflictions suffered by his father ( or by himself
in his first advent),
it is he “ who lifteth up his
father and who lifteth up his mother with his staff” (Rit., ch. 92, Renouf). Egypt,
however, had anticipated Rome in attaining the “unbloody sacrifice” that was represented by the
wafer, or loaf, of Horus as the
bread of heaven, which took the place of flesh meat
in the eucharistic meal, whilst retaining the beer
or
wine, as substitute for blood, in
representing the female element. Thus Horus was eaten
as the bread of life, and his blood was drunk in the
red ale, or wine, as the final form in Egypt of the
sacrificial, voluntary, living victim that had been
the human mother, the typical
mother, the totemic anima!, the cow of Hathor, the
fish, the goose, the calf, the lamb, the victim in
various forms, each one of which, down to the lentils
and the corn, was figurative of the beneficent sacrifice
that from the first
was typical of a power in nature, call it mother or
son, father, goddess or god, that provided food and
drink, accompanied with an idea of sacrifice in the
giving
of life when blood was looked on as the life.
“How many sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?” is
asked in the
Prayer-book, and the answer is, “Two only as generally necessary to salvation-that
is to say, baptism and the supper of the Lord”.And both of these were
Egyptian thousands of years earlier. The proof is preserved in that treasury
of truth, the Ritual of the resurrection. In the first chapter of the Ritual
(Turin Papyrus) it is said by the priest, “I lustrate with
water in Tat tu and anoint with oil, in Abydos”. We might call the Egyptians very particular Baptists
for in the first ten gates of Elysium -or entrances
to the great dwelling of Osiris
the deceased is purified at least
ten times over in ten separate baptisms, and ten
different
waters in which the gods and goddesses
had been washed to make the water holy (Ritual,
ch. 145). The inundation was
the water of renewal to the life
of Egypt, and this natural fact
was the source and origin of a doctrine of baptismal
regeneration. The salvation that
came to Egypt in the [Page 236] Nile was continued in the Egyptian eschatology as
salvation by water. ..I. give thee the liquid
or humidity which ensures
salvation”, is said to the
soul of the deceased (Rit., 155, I ). They did not think
that souls were saved from perdition by a wash of water or
a bath of blood, but bodily baptism was continued as
a symbol of purification for the spirit. The deceased explains
that he had been
steeped in the waters of natron and nitre, or salt, and made pure-pure in heart,
pure in his forepart, his posterior part, his middle, and
pure all over, so that there is no part of him
remaining soiled or stained. The pool of baptism is dual
in Amenta. In one part it is the pool of natron, in the other
the pool of
salt.Both natron and silt were used in preparing the mummy of the deceased, and
the same process is repeated in the purification of the soul
to make it also permanent,
which was a mode of salvation. The deceased says, “May I
be fortified or protected by seventy purifications“ (Mariette, Mon. divers, pl. 63, I), just as Christians at the
present time speak of being “fortified by the sacraments
of the Church”.
“I purify
myself at the great stream (the galaxy), where all my ills
are made to cease; that which is wrong in me is pardoned, and the spots which
were upon my body upon
earth are washed away l' (Rit., ch. 86). “Lo, I come, that
I may purify this soul of mine in the most high degree. Let me be purified in
the lake
of propitiation and of equipoise. Let me plunge into the
divine pool beneath the two divine sycamores of
heaven and earth” (
ch. 97, Renouf). The pool of purification and healing that was figured in
the northern heaven at the pole, and also reproduced in the
paradise of Amenta, has been repeated in the Gospel according
to John (ch. 5) as the
Pool of Bethesda. In the Ritual (ch. 124, part 3) one of
two waters is called the pool or tank of righteousness. In
this pool the glorified elect receive
their final purification and are healed. They are thus made
pure for the presence of Osiris. The healing process was
timed to take place at certain
hours of the night or day. The Turin text gives the
fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day.
But there are other readings. The Manes, as usual in the
gospels, are represented by the “multitude of them that
were sick, blind, halt, and withered”, waiting to be healed. The elect or chosen ones
are those who are first at the pool when the waters
are troubled. Hence the story of the man who was
non-elect.
It was a postulate of the Christians, maintained
by
Augustine and others, that infants who died unbaptized were damned eternally.
This doctrine also had its rootage in the mysteries of Amenta. The roots have
hitherto been hidden in the earth of eternity which has been mistaken for our
earth of time. We are now enabled to exhibit them above ground and hold both
root and product up to the light like the bulb of a hyacinth suspended in a
glass water-bottle, These can now be studied, roots and all. The flesh that
is formed of the mother's blood was held to share in the impurity of the female
nature. It was in this sense solely that woman was the author of evil. The
Child-Horus born of flesh and blood was the prototype of the unbaptized child-that
is, the child unpurified by baptism. Without baptismal regeneration in Tattu
there was no blending of the elder Horus with the soul or spirit of Horus divinized.
According [Page
237] to
the Egyptian doctrine, the development would be arrested
and the soul from the earthly body
might remain a wretched shade that was doomed to extinction,
or, in the Christian perversion, was damned eternally.
It was in Amenta that the dead were raised
to inherit the second life. The resurrection had no
other meaning for the Egyptians.
And
in the resurrection the Osiris is thus greeted: “ Hail, Osiris ! thou art born twice! The
gods say to thee: ' Come ! come forth; come see what belongs to thee in thy house
of eternity' ”(ch. 170). It is then
that he is changed and renewed in an instant.
In blending the two halves of
a soul that was dual in sex, dual also in matter
and spirit, into one, according to
the mystery of Tat tu, there was
a return to the type beyond sex from which the two
had bifurcated in the human creation. This one enduring
soul was typical of the
eternal soul which included motherhood and father-hood
in one personality like that of the multi mammalian
Osiris which the Child-Horus could only represent
in some form of duality that imaged both sexes in
one, as do the deities who
are figured with one female bosom as a mode of en-onement.
Female mummies have been exhumed that were made up
wearing the beard of a male. This was another
figure of the soul completed by uniting the two halves
of sex in one figure, the type affected by the Queen
Hatshepsu when she clothed herself in masculine
attire and reigned as Mistress Aten. It was the same
with the Pharaohs who wore the tail of the cow or
lioness. They also included both
halves of the perfect
soul, as a likeness of the biune being divinized in heaven which they represented
on the earth. The doctrine was
brought on in the iconography of the gnostic artists when
Jesus is figured as a woman with a beard, who is designated
the Christ as Saint Sophia ( or Charis ) (Didron, fig. 50), and also when Jesus
is depicted in the Book of Revelation as a
being of both sexes, a youth with female paps; in the likeness
of Osiris, whose male body is half covered with female mammæ, and who is Osiris in the upper and Isis
in the lower part of the same mummy. Not only was it necessary to be regenerated
and reborn in the likeness of god the father; the Manes could
only enter the kingdom of heaven as a being of both sexes or of neither. The
two halves
of the soul that was established for ever in Tattu were male
and female; the soul of Shu was male, the soul of Tefnut female. When these
were united
in one to form a completed Manes and a perfect spirit the
result was a typical creation from both sexes in which there was neither male
nor female. This
oneness, in the Horus who was divinized, is the oneness in Christ described by
Paul “As many of you as were baptized into Christ, did put
on Christ. There can be no
male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”. One of the fragments preserved
by Clement Alexander and Clement of Rome from the lost gospel of the Egyptians,
which is more than fully recoverable in the Ritual, will show the continuity
of the
doctrine as Egyptian in a gospel that was designated “Egyptian”. The Lord having
been asked by Salome when his kingdom would come, replied, “when you shall
have trampled under foot the garment of shame; When two shall be one, when that
which is without shall be like that which is within, and when the male with the
female
shall be neither male nor female”. The “garment of [Page 238] shame” was feminine, being as it was of the flesh. On this
the Ritual has a word to say. The impurity of matter which came to be ascribed
to the mother of all flesh, or female nature, is symbolically shown in the
chapters for
arranging the funeral bed (Rit., chs. 170-171). This is exemplified
by means of the feminine garment-the apron-which is here considered to be a
sign of all that was
wrong in the deceased; the wrong that was derived from the
mother, as elsewhere described in the Ritual, because it is the garb of impurity
called “the garment of
shame” in the Egyptian gospel, which was to be trampled under
foot when the male and female were to be made one in spirit, or as spirit.
In
the ceremony of “wrapping
up the deceased in a pure garment”, the impure one being now discarded is alluded
to in ch. 172. When the deceased
was stretched upon the funeral bed the body was divested of the apron and clothed in the pure garment of the khus or spirits, “ the
pure garment allotted to him for ever” (Rit., ch. 171). But
the feminine garment is still worn without shame by the masquerading male
as the
bishop's apron, which can be traced back as feminine
to the loin-cloth and apron first
worn by the sex for the most primitive
and pitiful of human needs at the time of puberty.
The bishop in his apron, like the
priest in his petticoat
and the clergyman in his surplice,
is alikeness of the biune being who united both
sexes in
one; the modern Protestant equivalent
for the Pharaoh with the cow's tail, and Venus
with a beard, the mutilated eunuch, or any
other dual type
of hermaphrodital deity. Men who masquerade in
women's clothing are commonly prosecuted, but the bishop carries on his mummery
without even being suspected. He walks about as ignorant of his vestmental
origins as any of the passers by. Usually the custom of men dressing in women's
clothing is limited to our Easter pastimes, but the bishops still carry it
on all through the year.
The Christians prattle about the divine “sonship
of
humanity”, manifested in the historical Jesus. But they have no divine daughtership,
no origin for the soul as female and no female soul. The Jews did all they could
to
get rid of the female part of the divine nature, and the exigency of the Christian
history has suppressed the feminine element altogether in the human type that
represented both sexes in humanity as it was set forth by the Egyptians in the
mysteries. Finally, it has been frequently asserted that only through the Gospel
Jesus has a god of the poor
man ever been revealed- a statement most profoundly false.
A god of the poor and suffering was personified in Horus the elder. But there
is a corollary to the character.
He is likewise an avenger of the sufferings. Horus at Edfu
is said to protect the needy against the powerful. Also, in the great Judgment
Hall the Osiris deceased
upon his trial says, “I have not been a land-grabber. I have not exacted more than
should be done for me as the first fruits of each day's work”
(Rit. ch. 125). Various other statements tend to show that
the unjust capitalists of those times had a mortal dread of facing Osiris
the divinized
judge, who was likewise god of the poor and
needy. In an Egyptian hymn
the one god, Atum the maker of men, is described as “lying
awake while all men lie asleep,
to seek out the good of his. [Page 239] creatures” (line
12), “listening to the poor in their distress, gentle of heart when one cries to him.
Deliverer of the timid man from the violent, lord of mercy
most loving, judging the poor, the poor and the oppressed” (Hymn to Amen-Ra, Records, vol. ii., p. 129). Taht was the recorder in the Judgment Hall. At the weighing
of hearts he portrayed the character of the deceased, and
in one of the texts it is said that when he placed the heart
in the scales against Maati,
the goddess of justice, he leaned to the side of mercy, that
the judgment might be favourably inclined, as though he exerted
a little pressure on
the human side of the balance.
It has also been said that
the historic Jesus came to glorify
the lot of labour, which antiquity despised, whereas
the
Egyptian paradise was the reward
of labour, and Horus the husbandman in the
harvest-field of the Aarru is the
worker, personified. No one attained the Egyptian
heaven but the worker, who reaped solely in proportion
as he had sown. The portion
of land allotted to the Manes for
cultivation in Amenta was
enlarged only for those who had
been good labourers on earth. The Shebti figures
in the tombs are
equipped for labour with the plough
or hoe in their hands. As agriculturists they
put
their hands to the plough. There
was no unearned increment for loafers in the earth
of eternity. A flash of revelation
lightens from the cloud of Egypt's
past when we learn from the Ritual that a part
of the work to be performed
in the Aarru paradise or
field of harvest in Amenta was to clear away
the life-choking sand. These fighters
and conquerors of the much. detested desert still retain
that image of the earliest cultivators, the makers of the soil which they enclosed
and first
protected from the drifting, sterilizing sand. The Manes,
addressing the Shebti
figures, says to them, “O typical ones! If I should be judged worthy of doing the work
that has to be done in Amenta, bear witness for me that I
am worthy to fertilize the fields, to flush the streams,
and transport the sand from west to east” (Rit., ch. 6).
He became one of the glorified elect
in being judged worthy of the work. This will show that in
making the primeval paradise they were still the cultivators
who had conquered on earth by their
long wrestle with the powers of dearth in the desert when
they made their passage through the wilderness of sand and
held on to the skirts of Mother
Nile, who led them to a land which she herself had made for
them to turn into an oasis and a paradise of plenty with
her waters for assistance in
the war against Apap, or Sut, the Sebau,
and the burning Sahara. It may also explain
why the Pharaohs from the time of the eleventh dynasty were
officially entitled “Masters of the Oasis”, the oasis, that is, which had been created in Egypt
by human labour to be localized in Amenta as the
promised land that
was to be attained at last among
the never-setting stars in the oasis of eternity.
The prototypes of hell and
purgatory and the earthly paradise are all to be found in
the Egyptian Amenta. There
is, says the Christian rhymer, Dr. Watts
“There
is a dreadful hell
And
everlasting pains,
Where
sinners must with devils dwell
In
darkness, fire, and chains”.