Post by Mysti on Jul 6, 2007 7:03:56 GMT -5
Concepts of
Egyptian Spirituality
There are certain terms and concepts employed by the ancient
Egyptians which cannot be accurately translated because
there is no modern English equivalent. Some attempts to
translate them have actually obscured the true meaning by imposing
a different idea altogether. The Egyptian words usually translated as
'underworld', 'soul' and 'spirit' are particularly problematical, and different
commentators have provided different explanations.
The Egyptian words Amentet (or Amentl), Neterkhert, and Tuat are
often translated as 'underworld', though this is highly misleading.
" Amentet, meaning 'the hidden place', is the realm of the dead,
presided over by Osiris, and though it is sometimes identified with
the underground regions through which the sun passes at night, it
may also be simply 'the West' or the place of the setting sun. It was
identified with the goddess of love, Hathor, and far from being a
place of darkness, was considered to be of great beauty.
CONCEPTS OF EGYPTIAN SPIRITUALITY 27
Osiris's reahn was alSo.thaught to. be in the night sky (and as such
was identified with Nut), far the canstellatian af Orian was the saul
af Osiris, and Sirius was his wife Isis, faithfully fallowing behind. It
was haped that the deceased might became an akh, a shining spirit, or
literally, a star in the canstellatian af Orian ar amang the circumpalar
stars which never set and were therefare 'imperishable stars'.
The afterlife, even when imagined as being under the earth, was by
no. means a shadawy ar dark experience, and it cauld very well be a
shining reahn, quite literally in heaven.
The Tuat seems to. be a regian af the sky near to. the harizan,
assaciated with the marning twilight. Hawever, there are variaus
apinians abaut precisely what this term means. It may be regarded as
the part af the sky where the gads are 'barn' - that is, the eastern
harizan where the sun and stars rise. This, thaugh, may be anly an
entrance to. the Tuat, alang with the western harizan. The Tuat itself
may be conceived af as an inner reahn, inside the bady af the night
sky persanified as the gaddess Nut, who. gives birth to. the sun each
marning and swallaws him each night. It is like the wamb af the
gaddess, filled with the divine, creative patential af things nat yet
made manifest.
The Neterkhert, meaning 'the divine under place', is anather inner
spiritual realm, but its lacatian as 'under' samething is nat clear: perhaps
it is nat so. much a place as a perception ar way af seeing the
warld, as the shaman sees beneath the surface appearance af things to.
the spiritual, psychic reahn which lies behind all material phenamena
- the reahn af spirits and the neteru, and the intercannecting web af
magical farces and energies which give rise to. all that happens.
In any case it is clear that the Greek notion of a murky underworld
and Christian ideas of an underworld Hell as a place of torture
do not apply to the Egyptian concepts signified by the words translated
as 'underworld'. Although Christians derived some ideas about
Hell from depictions of the punishment of the followers of Apep, the
chaos demons, this is largely due to a misunderstanding; for the souls
of the dead were not thought to suffer such a fate in the Egyptian
scheme of things.
The human being is spiritually and psychically complex in the
Egyptian view. The terms khat, khaibit, ka, ba, ab, akh and sahu, identifying
aspects of a soul and body, cause many problems for accurate
translation. Though most of these need not concern us for the purpose
of performing the rites in this book, for a proper understanding
of Egyptian religious thought it is important to have some grasp of
their meaning.
The khat is the physical body, but is really a term used only of
a corpse.
The khaibit is a person's shadow, or ghost: it is a vehicle for negative
aspects of the personality, the lower nature, and was thought to
linger around the tomb after death.
The ka, or 'double' as it tends to be translated, is a sort of spirit
guide, or possibly an equivalent to the esoteric concept of the Higher
"" Self, which, in the case of the common people, was closely associated
with the spirits of the ancestors, although the pharaoh had his own
individual ka. The ka is also spoken of as a general spiritual energy
which may be possessed by an individual, a group of people, or
a neter.
The ba is what we might call the astral body - the body in which
the soul moves after death or during an out-of-body experience.
Because an out-of-body experience is often one of floating or flying,
the ba is conceptualized in the form of a bird with a human head.
The ab is the heart or essential essence of a person. It is not exacdy
the equivalent of the soul, since when it was weighed in the scales of
the goddess Maat after death, it might testifY against its owner, so it is
more akin to the modern concept of the conscience.
The akh, as already mentioned, is a shining spirit: it is, however, the
perfected ba, after all worldly desires and failings have been shed. It
was thought that the akh would germinate out of the ba, like a plant
growing from seed. 'Osiris beds' - planted seed-trays in the shape of
Osiris - were placed in tombs to represent this spiritual resurrection.
The sahu or sah is the divine body which the akh occupies when
it has attained the purely spiritual, perfected state in the realm of the
afterlife.
The concept of the Ten,the name of a person, was also extremely
important, for the nameless person could not exist in the afterlife.
Those guilty of particularly execrable crimes had their names
removed or altered to become curses ('the god hates him'), or excised
from monuments in the case of kings and officials. Without a name,
the person's spirit was consigned to oblivion.
It is clear from all this that the ancient Egyptian~had a very complex,
sophisticated understanding of the psychic and spiritual realms
and of the postmortem condition. One has the strong impression,
however, that this view was not' otherworldly' in any real sense, for
the otherworld interacted with this world in so many ways. The
spirits of the dead were not remote, any more than the gods were
remote, for, like the neteru, they could' come forth by day' in myriad
shapes and forms and were never far away from their living descendants
who tended the tomb, made regular food offerings and kept
alive the yen or name of the deceased person.
Morality and correct living were also of the highest importance to
the ancient Egyptians. There is a modern conceit that ancient
Paganism was a morally lax religion, and modern Pagans still suffer
prejudice from people who believe this about Paganism. The ancient
Egyptians were in no doubt that the way in which one lived in this
life would determine the conditions in which one lived in the next.
Only the morally upright person could hope to enjoy an afterlife
with the gods in the Field of Rushes - that most pleasant part of the
heavenly realm. There, the blessed dead were reunited with their
deceased relatives (funerary papyri depict these happy scenes!) and
enjoyed an idyllic rural existence in which all the hard work was
done by shabtis - spirit androids provided in the afterlife by virtue of
little statuettes of slaves placed for this purpose in tombs.
For the morally lax person, the postmortem experience was likely
to be very different. If he lied to the Forty-Two Assessors in the Hall
of the Double Maati and his heart testified against him, weighing
.down the scales of Maat when put in the balance against the goddess's feather of truth, then a fearful monster called Ammut, having
the body of a hippopotamus and the jaws of a crocodile, would
devour the heart, and therefore the soul, of the miscreant. It is possible,
however, that all was not lost, for this goddess may be a form
of the hippopotamus goddess Tauret, who was the patroness of
childbirth: in which case, the soul that suffered this fate may simply
have been destined to reincarnate.
To qualifY as one of the justified dead, one had to make the socalled
Negative Confession in the presence of Osiris's Forty-Two
Assessors, denying that one was guilty of a range of crimes and misdemeanours,
including murder, blasphemy, desecration of a temple,
contamination of a water supply, adultery, causing someone to weep,
and eating one's heart out (envy).
It is plain that the ancient Egyptians had very stringent moral
standards. Egyptian books of proverbs and advice about how to live
wisely advocate a quiet, moderate way of life. The prudent person
is to avoid heavy drinking, brawling and engaging in conflict, and is
instead to behave courteously and considerately towards others,
especially the frail, poor and elderly, and always to honour the gods.
Only a person of integrity can hope for a blessed afterlife in the
company of the neteru.
Finally in this chapter, we shill mention another concept which
was very important to the ancient Egyptians - the Zep Tepi, the First
Time or Primeval Time. If we were to think of this simply as a time
long, long ago, again we should be distorting a concept which had
quite a different significance to the ancient Egyptians. The Zep Tepi
was certainly a time long ago, a Golden Age when the neteru were , ".
living on earth and Maat prevailed eve~here; but the Zep Tepi is "
also mythological time, and therefore can be seen as almost a separate
dimension in which the exploits of the gods take place and which
may be accessible to people at any time. Being able to evoke, as it
were, a Zep Tepi event, was essential for the working of magic.
A typical example of this is the Legend of Ra and Isis, which was
originally a spell to cure a snake bite. In the story, Isis, plotting to
obtain magical powers £rom Ra, makes a snake £rom mud mixed with
Ra's saliva. The snake bites Ra, who is obliged to reveal to Isis his
secret name, the source of all his power, so that she may use it to
banish the poison £rom his body. The magician-healer would identify
with Isis while telling this story to the patient, who would identify
with Ra. At the end, the magician would assume the godform of Isis
and command the poison to leave the patient's body: because in the
story Ra had been healed, so would the patient be healed, according
to the theory of sympathetic magic. By assuming the godform, the
magician would actually be' channelling the power of Isis through to
the patient to effect a cure. The Zep Yepi event thus became potent in
the present. Healing spells often took this form, with Isis as the healer
and Horus or Ra as the patient. A similar spell could be used for
malign purposes. An enemy could be identified with the Apep serpent
which is defeated by Ra: as Ra triumphs over Apep each day, so
will the magician triumph over his enemy.
The Zep Yepi was therefore a constantly accessible divine realm
where the acts of the gods could become operative in the here and
now. Though it was the Golden Age long ago, between the time
when the Creator rose on the primeval mound at the first dawn and
~the time when Set murdered his brother, the good king Osiris, the
Zep Yepi could return at any time. Horus, Osiris's rightful heir, reestablished
the First Time when he defeated his wicked uncle Set and
ascended to the throne of his father. So did each pharaoh, the incarnation
of Horus, make things as they were in the First Time, and
commemorative stelae attest to this fact. Nowadays we value the pioneering
and innovative; but the pharaohs of ancient Egypt would
achieve all that could possibly be desired by making things as they
were in the First Time, for no condition could be more perfect.
In their book Keeper of Genesis, Robert Bauval and Graham
Hancock have put forward the haunting idea that the Zep Tepi,when
Osiris reigned on earth, was in the Age of Leo, when the constel-
lation of Orion (Osiris) was at his lowest point in the sky: this was the
First Time of Osiris. Over the centuries, the stars gradually change
their position in the sky in relation to the earth, because of the slight
'wobble' as the earth turns on its axis; so Orion is now; at the dawning
of the Age of Aquarius, at his highest point in the sky. According
to this view, we are now living in the Last Time of Osiris -
a time, perhaps of apocalyptic happenings, or even a Second Coming!
Nevertheless, Second Coming or not, we who live in the Last
Time will find that Osiris and the other neteru are alive for us today if
we employ the methods of the ancient magicians. The Egyptian texts
still speak to us, and by performing the rites contained in the following
pages, perhaps we too may experience things as they were in the
First Time, in the Zep Tepi.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon
Egyptian Spirituality
There are certain terms and concepts employed by the ancient
Egyptians which cannot be accurately translated because
there is no modern English equivalent. Some attempts to
translate them have actually obscured the true meaning by imposing
a different idea altogether. The Egyptian words usually translated as
'underworld', 'soul' and 'spirit' are particularly problematical, and different
commentators have provided different explanations.
The Egyptian words Amentet (or Amentl), Neterkhert, and Tuat are
often translated as 'underworld', though this is highly misleading.
" Amentet, meaning 'the hidden place', is the realm of the dead,
presided over by Osiris, and though it is sometimes identified with
the underground regions through which the sun passes at night, it
may also be simply 'the West' or the place of the setting sun. It was
identified with the goddess of love, Hathor, and far from being a
place of darkness, was considered to be of great beauty.
CONCEPTS OF EGYPTIAN SPIRITUALITY 27
Osiris's reahn was alSo.thaught to. be in the night sky (and as such
was identified with Nut), far the canstellatian af Orian was the saul
af Osiris, and Sirius was his wife Isis, faithfully fallowing behind. It
was haped that the deceased might became an akh, a shining spirit, or
literally, a star in the canstellatian af Orian ar amang the circumpalar
stars which never set and were therefare 'imperishable stars'.
The afterlife, even when imagined as being under the earth, was by
no. means a shadawy ar dark experience, and it cauld very well be a
shining reahn, quite literally in heaven.
The Tuat seems to. be a regian af the sky near to. the harizan,
assaciated with the marning twilight. Hawever, there are variaus
apinians abaut precisely what this term means. It may be regarded as
the part af the sky where the gads are 'barn' - that is, the eastern
harizan where the sun and stars rise. This, thaugh, may be anly an
entrance to. the Tuat, alang with the western harizan. The Tuat itself
may be conceived af as an inner reahn, inside the bady af the night
sky persanified as the gaddess Nut, who. gives birth to. the sun each
marning and swallaws him each night. It is like the wamb af the
gaddess, filled with the divine, creative patential af things nat yet
made manifest.
The Neterkhert, meaning 'the divine under place', is anather inner
spiritual realm, but its lacatian as 'under' samething is nat clear: perhaps
it is nat so. much a place as a perception ar way af seeing the
warld, as the shaman sees beneath the surface appearance af things to.
the spiritual, psychic reahn which lies behind all material phenamena
- the reahn af spirits and the neteru, and the intercannecting web af
magical farces and energies which give rise to. all that happens.
In any case it is clear that the Greek notion of a murky underworld
and Christian ideas of an underworld Hell as a place of torture
do not apply to the Egyptian concepts signified by the words translated
as 'underworld'. Although Christians derived some ideas about
Hell from depictions of the punishment of the followers of Apep, the
chaos demons, this is largely due to a misunderstanding; for the souls
of the dead were not thought to suffer such a fate in the Egyptian
scheme of things.
The human being is spiritually and psychically complex in the
Egyptian view. The terms khat, khaibit, ka, ba, ab, akh and sahu, identifying
aspects of a soul and body, cause many problems for accurate
translation. Though most of these need not concern us for the purpose
of performing the rites in this book, for a proper understanding
of Egyptian religious thought it is important to have some grasp of
their meaning.
The khat is the physical body, but is really a term used only of
a corpse.
The khaibit is a person's shadow, or ghost: it is a vehicle for negative
aspects of the personality, the lower nature, and was thought to
linger around the tomb after death.
The ka, or 'double' as it tends to be translated, is a sort of spirit
guide, or possibly an equivalent to the esoteric concept of the Higher
"" Self, which, in the case of the common people, was closely associated
with the spirits of the ancestors, although the pharaoh had his own
individual ka. The ka is also spoken of as a general spiritual energy
which may be possessed by an individual, a group of people, or
a neter.
The ba is what we might call the astral body - the body in which
the soul moves after death or during an out-of-body experience.
Because an out-of-body experience is often one of floating or flying,
the ba is conceptualized in the form of a bird with a human head.
The ab is the heart or essential essence of a person. It is not exacdy
the equivalent of the soul, since when it was weighed in the scales of
the goddess Maat after death, it might testifY against its owner, so it is
more akin to the modern concept of the conscience.
The akh, as already mentioned, is a shining spirit: it is, however, the
perfected ba, after all worldly desires and failings have been shed. It
was thought that the akh would germinate out of the ba, like a plant
growing from seed. 'Osiris beds' - planted seed-trays in the shape of
Osiris - were placed in tombs to represent this spiritual resurrection.
The sahu or sah is the divine body which the akh occupies when
it has attained the purely spiritual, perfected state in the realm of the
afterlife.
The concept of the Ten,the name of a person, was also extremely
important, for the nameless person could not exist in the afterlife.
Those guilty of particularly execrable crimes had their names
removed or altered to become curses ('the god hates him'), or excised
from monuments in the case of kings and officials. Without a name,
the person's spirit was consigned to oblivion.
It is clear from all this that the ancient Egyptian~had a very complex,
sophisticated understanding of the psychic and spiritual realms
and of the postmortem condition. One has the strong impression,
however, that this view was not' otherworldly' in any real sense, for
the otherworld interacted with this world in so many ways. The
spirits of the dead were not remote, any more than the gods were
remote, for, like the neteru, they could' come forth by day' in myriad
shapes and forms and were never far away from their living descendants
who tended the tomb, made regular food offerings and kept
alive the yen or name of the deceased person.
Morality and correct living were also of the highest importance to
the ancient Egyptians. There is a modern conceit that ancient
Paganism was a morally lax religion, and modern Pagans still suffer
prejudice from people who believe this about Paganism. The ancient
Egyptians were in no doubt that the way in which one lived in this
life would determine the conditions in which one lived in the next.
Only the morally upright person could hope to enjoy an afterlife
with the gods in the Field of Rushes - that most pleasant part of the
heavenly realm. There, the blessed dead were reunited with their
deceased relatives (funerary papyri depict these happy scenes!) and
enjoyed an idyllic rural existence in which all the hard work was
done by shabtis - spirit androids provided in the afterlife by virtue of
little statuettes of slaves placed for this purpose in tombs.
For the morally lax person, the postmortem experience was likely
to be very different. If he lied to the Forty-Two Assessors in the Hall
of the Double Maati and his heart testified against him, weighing
.down the scales of Maat when put in the balance against the goddess's feather of truth, then a fearful monster called Ammut, having
the body of a hippopotamus and the jaws of a crocodile, would
devour the heart, and therefore the soul, of the miscreant. It is possible,
however, that all was not lost, for this goddess may be a form
of the hippopotamus goddess Tauret, who was the patroness of
childbirth: in which case, the soul that suffered this fate may simply
have been destined to reincarnate.
To qualifY as one of the justified dead, one had to make the socalled
Negative Confession in the presence of Osiris's Forty-Two
Assessors, denying that one was guilty of a range of crimes and misdemeanours,
including murder, blasphemy, desecration of a temple,
contamination of a water supply, adultery, causing someone to weep,
and eating one's heart out (envy).
It is plain that the ancient Egyptians had very stringent moral
standards. Egyptian books of proverbs and advice about how to live
wisely advocate a quiet, moderate way of life. The prudent person
is to avoid heavy drinking, brawling and engaging in conflict, and is
instead to behave courteously and considerately towards others,
especially the frail, poor and elderly, and always to honour the gods.
Only a person of integrity can hope for a blessed afterlife in the
company of the neteru.
Finally in this chapter, we shill mention another concept which
was very important to the ancient Egyptians - the Zep Tepi, the First
Time or Primeval Time. If we were to think of this simply as a time
long, long ago, again we should be distorting a concept which had
quite a different significance to the ancient Egyptians. The Zep Tepi
was certainly a time long ago, a Golden Age when the neteru were , ".
living on earth and Maat prevailed eve~here; but the Zep Tepi is "
also mythological time, and therefore can be seen as almost a separate
dimension in which the exploits of the gods take place and which
may be accessible to people at any time. Being able to evoke, as it
were, a Zep Tepi event, was essential for the working of magic.
A typical example of this is the Legend of Ra and Isis, which was
originally a spell to cure a snake bite. In the story, Isis, plotting to
obtain magical powers £rom Ra, makes a snake £rom mud mixed with
Ra's saliva. The snake bites Ra, who is obliged to reveal to Isis his
secret name, the source of all his power, so that she may use it to
banish the poison £rom his body. The magician-healer would identify
with Isis while telling this story to the patient, who would identify
with Ra. At the end, the magician would assume the godform of Isis
and command the poison to leave the patient's body: because in the
story Ra had been healed, so would the patient be healed, according
to the theory of sympathetic magic. By assuming the godform, the
magician would actually be' channelling the power of Isis through to
the patient to effect a cure. The Zep Yepi event thus became potent in
the present. Healing spells often took this form, with Isis as the healer
and Horus or Ra as the patient. A similar spell could be used for
malign purposes. An enemy could be identified with the Apep serpent
which is defeated by Ra: as Ra triumphs over Apep each day, so
will the magician triumph over his enemy.
The Zep Yepi was therefore a constantly accessible divine realm
where the acts of the gods could become operative in the here and
now. Though it was the Golden Age long ago, between the time
when the Creator rose on the primeval mound at the first dawn and
~the time when Set murdered his brother, the good king Osiris, the
Zep Yepi could return at any time. Horus, Osiris's rightful heir, reestablished
the First Time when he defeated his wicked uncle Set and
ascended to the throne of his father. So did each pharaoh, the incarnation
of Horus, make things as they were in the First Time, and
commemorative stelae attest to this fact. Nowadays we value the pioneering
and innovative; but the pharaohs of ancient Egypt would
achieve all that could possibly be desired by making things as they
were in the First Time, for no condition could be more perfect.
In their book Keeper of Genesis, Robert Bauval and Graham
Hancock have put forward the haunting idea that the Zep Tepi,when
Osiris reigned on earth, was in the Age of Leo, when the constel-
lation of Orion (Osiris) was at his lowest point in the sky: this was the
First Time of Osiris. Over the centuries, the stars gradually change
their position in the sky in relation to the earth, because of the slight
'wobble' as the earth turns on its axis; so Orion is now; at the dawning
of the Age of Aquarius, at his highest point in the sky. According
to this view, we are now living in the Last Time of Osiris -
a time, perhaps of apocalyptic happenings, or even a Second Coming!
Nevertheless, Second Coming or not, we who live in the Last
Time will find that Osiris and the other neteru are alive for us today if
we employ the methods of the ancient magicians. The Egyptian texts
still speak to us, and by performing the rites contained in the following
pages, perhaps we too may experience things as they were in the
First Time, in the Zep Tepi.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon