Post by Mysti on Jul 6, 2007 7:04:45 GMT -5
The Neter.u:
Egyptian Deities
T- he Egyptian word neter (plural neteru) is translated as 'god',
but this is not a particularly accurate translation: 'divine
principle' might be better. If we try to understand Egyptian
:rreteruin terms of concepts derived from, say, a Greek view of the
gods, then we shall very quickly become confused. When Pagan
deities are mentioned, very often people ask, 'And what is that the
god of?' It is common to think of Pagan deities along the lines, of the
god of wisdom, the goddess of love, and so on; but this approach to
me Egyptian neteru is likely to raise as many questions as it answers.
For a start, the Egyptians had literally hundreds of neteru, and they
ClDIlot be converiiently cattgor~ed in terms of their functions or areas
of expertise. While some of the neteru resemble Greek deities, in that
dIey are anthropomorphic beings with distinct personalities, others are
more like personifications - abstract concepts described in anthropomorphic
terms, The goddess Isis is an example of the former, whereas
Maat, Heka and Sia are more like the latter. Some neteru are best
described as indwelling spirits in material phenomena: for example,
Nut (pronounced 'Nooe), the sky, and Geb (pronounced 'Geeb' with a
hard G), the earth, are conceived of as divine beings.
This approach reveals that Egyptian Paganism was originally an
animistic religiOl,!: spirit was seen to be everywhere - even in what
we would think of as inanimate objects - and the entire cosmos was
numinous with the divine. This also explains why some neteru have
animal forms, for if Deity was everywhere and in everything, then an
animal could be a manifestation of a god. Some neteru had their own
sacred animals which were kept in temples and treated like the gods
themselves: for example, the Apis Bull, which was a manifestation of
Ptah, lived like a god-king, the pharaoh himself, and would be
afforded a royal funeral and burial when he died.
It is a strange characteristic of the neteru, which is at first
extremely confusing, that one neter may become another neter, be
part of another netds body, or be the same neter under a different
name. For example, the Eye of Ra, the sun god, is that god's eye, the
serpent (uraeus) on his brow, and the physical sun itself. It is also a
separate goddess, Hathor. Sometimes, however, Hathor, the gende
cow, becomes Sekhmet, the raging lioness. The goddess Bast, or
Bastet, the cat, may also be seen as a docile form of Sekhmet, and
"
therefore analogous to Hathor. Quit~,?ften, Hathor is assimilated to
Isis, and these two goddesses are represented with almost identica;.
appearance and insignia. In one sense it would be completely
wrong to say that all these goddesses are the same goddess, but :ic.
another sense, which is explained below, it would be quite true to
say that all deities are one and the same, for they all emanate from
the same Divine Source.
A similar confusion may arise with regard to the male gods. Iri
Heliopolis, the Creator was called Ra; in Hermopolis, he was Thoth;
in Memphis, he was Ptah; in Thebes, he was Amun; and he was also
known as Atum. It would be quite wrong to regard all these neteru as
one and the same neter, for each has his individual myth and iconography.
Yet, there is a sense in which the Creation stories may be taken
as variations of the same story, compatible with one another in many
respects, if one takes a poetical, metaphorical approach to understanding
them. Ra is the Creator as the sun, the physical source of
life, who creates the world by generating it from his own substance.
Thoth, or Tehuti, is the Divine Mind, who creates intellectually,
uttering a Word of Power. Ptah is the craftsman, the architect of the
universe, the sculptor who moulds human beings, rather like Khnum,
another Creator deity, who forms them on his potter's wheel. The
name Amun means 'hidden'; Atum means 'whole', 'entirety' and
'complete'. Ifwe believe in a Creator deity, then surely all these ideas
of such a Being must apply. The Egyptians did not see these concepts
as mutually exclusive, for each view contributes to a more complete
picture and a better understanding of Deity. In difficult areas of theology,
where we confront the profound ~d ineffable, there is room for
more than one dogmatic 'truth'; for ~derstanding in religious terms
is more of an art than a science. The ancient Egyptians recognized
this and therefore were much more happy to accept what, to our
modern, scientifically-oriented minds, often seem like contradictions
and incoherent notions.
~
20 THE BOOK OF EGYPTIAN RITUAL
Now, to return to the point raised earlier, about the sense inwhich
all the neteru may be regarded as manifestations of a single
deity, we shall explain the concept of the ennead. In Egyptian theology,
an ennead is a group of nine neteru, though in some instances
the group may contain more than nine. The term is usually translated
as 'company of the gods'. In the various cult centres, depending on
the major deity who was venerated there, the deities comprising the
ennead could vary. (Sometimes there was a secondary ennead, in which
case the groups would be termed 'greater' and 'lesser'.) The nine
deities plus the main god therefore made up a group of ten, and it is
~possible to regard these ten deities as aspects of one deity.
For those familiar with the Cabala, the Jewish system of mysticism,
the idea of the ennead is interesting: for in Cabala too, there is
the theory that Creation was formed through ten emanations (called
Sephiroth) from an ineffable Source, the lowest being the material
world and the highest being the most sublime concept of godhead,
Kether, the Crown. The Hebrews lived for generations in Egypt, and
Moses was brought up as an Egyptian prince; and it seems likely that
the Cabala developed in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria in the
early centuries AD,where Egyptian, Greek and Jewish theological and
philosophical ideas were widely discussed among the intellectual
populace. It therefore seems possible, or even likely, that there is a
direct connection here between Egyptian and Jewish theologies.
In Heliopolis, where the 'official' form of Egyptian religion (that
most closely associated with the pharaonic cult) was practised, the
chief deity was Ra-Atum, as already mentioned, and the other members
of the ennead were as follows: Shu, the god of the atmosphere;
Temut, the goddess of
sky; Geb. the god of the
growth, death and
goddess of magic, wite of
wife of Set. (Though rigidly.) Horus, not a
included as the fifi:h
fire neteru.These nine
mav also be conceived 3'rwho,
according to the H
;asthe one who 'comes .
which came into being'. ,\;
cons are described rhus:
Egyptians, Dover. 1969.,
This description of
inccmtation, is based or:. ..
one who comes into
me sun god Ra as
Tefuut, the goddess of moisture, wife of Shu; Nut, the goddess of the
sky; Geb, the god of the earth, husband of Nut; Osiris, god of plant
growth, death and resurrection; Set, god of chaos and passion; Isis,
goddess of magic, wife of Osiris; and Nephthys, twin sister of Isis and
wife of Set. (Though we have briefly described them with these
attributes, to provide a general picture, as already explained, with
Egyptian deities this can be misleading, so should not be applied too
rigidly.) Horus, not a member of the standard ennead, could be
included as the fifth child of Nut and Geb. These nine neteru comprise
three divine generations, for Shu and Tefnut, the offspring of
Ra, are the parents of Nut and Geb, who are the parents of the other
five neteru.These nine neteru, therefore, are the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of the supreme deity, Ra-Atum; but they
may also be conceived of as emanations of one divine, ineffable Being
who, according to the Heliopolitan Creation myth, came into being
as the one who' comes into being, coming into being as all the things
which came into being'. In the ancient Egyptian language, his evolutions
are described thus: Nuk pu kheper em Khepera. Kheper-na kheper
kheperu; kheper kheperu neb... Kheper asht kheperu nu kheperu em kheperu
nu mesu, em kheperu nu mesu sen. (EA Wallis Budge, The Gods of the
Egyptians, Dover, 1969.)
This description of the Creation, which sounds like a magical
incantation, is based on a pun on the divine n~e of Khepera ('the
one who comes into being'), the scarab beetle who is a form of
the sun god Ra as Creator. In Egyptian thought; it was entirely
acceptable, without contradiction, that the sun could be a ball rolled
across the sky by the beetle god Khepera, the golden falcon Horus,
the Eye of Ra, the serpent of power on the brow of the Supreme
Being, a boat (the solar bark), the docile cow goddess Hathor, the
fierce lioness Sekhmet, the sofdy sensuous cat goddess Bast, and Ra
himself. Ra, as Khepera, comes into being not only as the sun, but as
all life generated by the sun, the offspring of his children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren, while human beings are the tears
shed from his eye - another pun, based on the similarity of the
ancient Egyptian words for 'tears' and 'humans' (the Egyptians were
fond of puns).
An enneadwas not venerated at all cult centres: at Hermopolis, there
was an ogdoad,which was a similar concept to the ennead,being a group
of eight (rather than nine) deities.
Nowadays, people tend to think of God as a remote Being - so
remote, in fact, that his existence is eveh in doubt. To the modern
mind, the world appears to be a spiritually dead place, with human
beings the only intelligent form of life. To the ancient Egyptians, on
the other hand, Deity was close and intimate, manifesting in a myriad
forms and in all aspects of human experience. The domestic cat was a
manifestation of Bast, goddess of joy and fertility; the wild dog, or
jackal, was a manifestation of Anubis, the guide of souls, helper of the
dead; the ram was a manifestation of Amun; the cow was Hathor,
goddess of love; the bull was Osiris; the lion was Sekhmet. The neteru
were also present in situations and human emotions: so making love ~
was a manifestation of Hathor, and fighting was a manifestation of
Set. Under these influences, humans as well as animals became
--. literally possessed by the gods, so there was no question of doubting
their existence.
This direct experience of the gods is absolutely crucial to
Egyptian Paganism. Central to the practice of the religion, and the
magic which is inseparable from it, is the technique known to
occultists as Assumption of the Godform. A more modern, popular
term for this is 'channelling'. In the Bible, a similar technique is called
'prophesying', meaning not just telling the future, but being
the mouthpiece of God, allowing Deity to speak direcdy through the
human agent. To assume the godform, one speaks and acts as
the deity or neter for the duration of the rite or for the relevant part
of the rite. To do this, it is helpful-tO~~isualize the neter as dearly as
possible and to see, in one's mind's eye, the form of this deity merging
with one's own body. It is customary to imagine the neter entering
from behind, the focus for the entry being the nape of the neck.
Modern Pagans often stand with their backs to the altar to allow this
process to take place at the start of the rite. At the end, they face the
the midriff which is supposed to be a point of psychic energy.
The Egyptian priests actually 'saw' the wall paintings of the deities
in their temples come to life through invocations, step down from
the walls and enter their own bodies when they assumed the godform.
(An image could therefore be very dangerous; so to protect
against the hieroglyphic forms of snakes, lions and other harmful animals,
these would be painted in two sections with a division through
the middle, or with a knife through them, to render them harmless.)
To help them to assume the forms of the deities, members of the
Egyptian priesthood would dress up as the deities. The priest of
Anubis would wear a dog's-head mask during the rites of embalming
bodies, in which he played a key role, and it is likely that the priests
and priestesses of other neteru would also have worn masks of their
deities' totem animals. This may be why some deities are represented
with animal heads on human bodies, for this was how they manifested
through their masked priests. At the rites concerning the death
and resurrection of Osiris, two priestesses, ritually purified by having
their body hair removed, wearing woollen headbands, and each with
the name of Isis or Nephthys written on her arm to identifY her
magically with the goddess she was representing, would sing hymns
of mourning as the goddesses the~ves. In this way, members of the
priesthood actually became the deities whom they served, and this
identification with the Divine was far deeper than merely symbolic.
In Christianity today, with its emphasis on sin and humility, it
seems to be all too often forgotten that Jesus himself taught that the
kingdom of heaven is within each person. Turning to Paganism,
some people have tried to recover this sense of potential divinity
within each of us, recognizing the mystical, alchemical undertaking
of transmuting lead into gold, the human into the divine. This
is nowhere more evident than in Egyptian Paganism (for Egypt, the
land of Khem, was the place where alchemy originated and after
which it is named). The Egyptians truly aspired to become neteru in
the afterlife, and it is no mere idle boasting (as some egyptologists
have unfortunately construed) when~he deceased in the funerary
texts speak of being the gods themselves. What we call the Book <if
the Dead was originally called the Chapters -of Coming Forth by Day,
this title referring to the divine magical power of shapeshifting, by
which a spirit might manifest as, for example, a bird or animal. The
justified dead, who were skilled magicians, attained this god-like
power to change their shape and return to earth - not as reincarnations,
but as spirit beings in animal form.
This was not just an idle hope for the afterlife, however; a sympathetic
interpretation of ancient Egyptian beliefS as compared to those
of shamanistic religions strongly suggests that accomplished magicians
possessed the ability to shapeshift, explore the Neterkhert, encounter
the gods, and indeed become the gods, while still alive, by using techniques
for entering altered states of consciousness. Modern Pagans
can learn to do this too, for the rites in this book are composed from
actual texts which the Egyptians themselves would have used for
precisely this purpose.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon
Egyptian Deities
T- he Egyptian word neter (plural neteru) is translated as 'god',
but this is not a particularly accurate translation: 'divine
principle' might be better. If we try to understand Egyptian
:rreteruin terms of concepts derived from, say, a Greek view of the
gods, then we shall very quickly become confused. When Pagan
deities are mentioned, very often people ask, 'And what is that the
god of?' It is common to think of Pagan deities along the lines, of the
god of wisdom, the goddess of love, and so on; but this approach to
me Egyptian neteru is likely to raise as many questions as it answers.
For a start, the Egyptians had literally hundreds of neteru, and they
ClDIlot be converiiently cattgor~ed in terms of their functions or areas
of expertise. While some of the neteru resemble Greek deities, in that
dIey are anthropomorphic beings with distinct personalities, others are
more like personifications - abstract concepts described in anthropomorphic
terms, The goddess Isis is an example of the former, whereas
Maat, Heka and Sia are more like the latter. Some neteru are best
described as indwelling spirits in material phenomena: for example,
Nut (pronounced 'Nooe), the sky, and Geb (pronounced 'Geeb' with a
hard G), the earth, are conceived of as divine beings.
This approach reveals that Egyptian Paganism was originally an
animistic religiOl,!: spirit was seen to be everywhere - even in what
we would think of as inanimate objects - and the entire cosmos was
numinous with the divine. This also explains why some neteru have
animal forms, for if Deity was everywhere and in everything, then an
animal could be a manifestation of a god. Some neteru had their own
sacred animals which were kept in temples and treated like the gods
themselves: for example, the Apis Bull, which was a manifestation of
Ptah, lived like a god-king, the pharaoh himself, and would be
afforded a royal funeral and burial when he died.
It is a strange characteristic of the neteru, which is at first
extremely confusing, that one neter may become another neter, be
part of another netds body, or be the same neter under a different
name. For example, the Eye of Ra, the sun god, is that god's eye, the
serpent (uraeus) on his brow, and the physical sun itself. It is also a
separate goddess, Hathor. Sometimes, however, Hathor, the gende
cow, becomes Sekhmet, the raging lioness. The goddess Bast, or
Bastet, the cat, may also be seen as a docile form of Sekhmet, and
"
therefore analogous to Hathor. Quit~,?ften, Hathor is assimilated to
Isis, and these two goddesses are represented with almost identica;.
appearance and insignia. In one sense it would be completely
wrong to say that all these goddesses are the same goddess, but :ic.
another sense, which is explained below, it would be quite true to
say that all deities are one and the same, for they all emanate from
the same Divine Source.
A similar confusion may arise with regard to the male gods. Iri
Heliopolis, the Creator was called Ra; in Hermopolis, he was Thoth;
in Memphis, he was Ptah; in Thebes, he was Amun; and he was also
known as Atum. It would be quite wrong to regard all these neteru as
one and the same neter, for each has his individual myth and iconography.
Yet, there is a sense in which the Creation stories may be taken
as variations of the same story, compatible with one another in many
respects, if one takes a poetical, metaphorical approach to understanding
them. Ra is the Creator as the sun, the physical source of
life, who creates the world by generating it from his own substance.
Thoth, or Tehuti, is the Divine Mind, who creates intellectually,
uttering a Word of Power. Ptah is the craftsman, the architect of the
universe, the sculptor who moulds human beings, rather like Khnum,
another Creator deity, who forms them on his potter's wheel. The
name Amun means 'hidden'; Atum means 'whole', 'entirety' and
'complete'. Ifwe believe in a Creator deity, then surely all these ideas
of such a Being must apply. The Egyptians did not see these concepts
as mutually exclusive, for each view contributes to a more complete
picture and a better understanding of Deity. In difficult areas of theology,
where we confront the profound ~d ineffable, there is room for
more than one dogmatic 'truth'; for ~derstanding in religious terms
is more of an art than a science. The ancient Egyptians recognized
this and therefore were much more happy to accept what, to our
modern, scientifically-oriented minds, often seem like contradictions
and incoherent notions.
~
20 THE BOOK OF EGYPTIAN RITUAL
Now, to return to the point raised earlier, about the sense inwhich
all the neteru may be regarded as manifestations of a single
deity, we shall explain the concept of the ennead. In Egyptian theology,
an ennead is a group of nine neteru, though in some instances
the group may contain more than nine. The term is usually translated
as 'company of the gods'. In the various cult centres, depending on
the major deity who was venerated there, the deities comprising the
ennead could vary. (Sometimes there was a secondary ennead, in which
case the groups would be termed 'greater' and 'lesser'.) The nine
deities plus the main god therefore made up a group of ten, and it is
~possible to regard these ten deities as aspects of one deity.
For those familiar with the Cabala, the Jewish system of mysticism,
the idea of the ennead is interesting: for in Cabala too, there is
the theory that Creation was formed through ten emanations (called
Sephiroth) from an ineffable Source, the lowest being the material
world and the highest being the most sublime concept of godhead,
Kether, the Crown. The Hebrews lived for generations in Egypt, and
Moses was brought up as an Egyptian prince; and it seems likely that
the Cabala developed in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria in the
early centuries AD,where Egyptian, Greek and Jewish theological and
philosophical ideas were widely discussed among the intellectual
populace. It therefore seems possible, or even likely, that there is a
direct connection here between Egyptian and Jewish theologies.
In Heliopolis, where the 'official' form of Egyptian religion (that
most closely associated with the pharaonic cult) was practised, the
chief deity was Ra-Atum, as already mentioned, and the other members
of the ennead were as follows: Shu, the god of the atmosphere;
Temut, the goddess of
sky; Geb. the god of the
growth, death and
goddess of magic, wite of
wife of Set. (Though rigidly.) Horus, not a
included as the fifi:h
fire neteru.These nine
mav also be conceived 3'rwho,
according to the H
;asthe one who 'comes .
which came into being'. ,\;
cons are described rhus:
Egyptians, Dover. 1969.,
This description of
inccmtation, is based or:. ..
one who comes into
me sun god Ra as
Tefuut, the goddess of moisture, wife of Shu; Nut, the goddess of the
sky; Geb, the god of the earth, husband of Nut; Osiris, god of plant
growth, death and resurrection; Set, god of chaos and passion; Isis,
goddess of magic, wife of Osiris; and Nephthys, twin sister of Isis and
wife of Set. (Though we have briefly described them with these
attributes, to provide a general picture, as already explained, with
Egyptian deities this can be misleading, so should not be applied too
rigidly.) Horus, not a member of the standard ennead, could be
included as the fifth child of Nut and Geb. These nine neteru comprise
three divine generations, for Shu and Tefnut, the offspring of
Ra, are the parents of Nut and Geb, who are the parents of the other
five neteru.These nine neteru, therefore, are the children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren of the supreme deity, Ra-Atum; but they
may also be conceived of as emanations of one divine, ineffable Being
who, according to the Heliopolitan Creation myth, came into being
as the one who' comes into being, coming into being as all the things
which came into being'. In the ancient Egyptian language, his evolutions
are described thus: Nuk pu kheper em Khepera. Kheper-na kheper
kheperu; kheper kheperu neb... Kheper asht kheperu nu kheperu em kheperu
nu mesu, em kheperu nu mesu sen. (EA Wallis Budge, The Gods of the
Egyptians, Dover, 1969.)
This description of the Creation, which sounds like a magical
incantation, is based on a pun on the divine n~e of Khepera ('the
one who comes into being'), the scarab beetle who is a form of
the sun god Ra as Creator. In Egyptian thought; it was entirely
acceptable, without contradiction, that the sun could be a ball rolled
across the sky by the beetle god Khepera, the golden falcon Horus,
the Eye of Ra, the serpent of power on the brow of the Supreme
Being, a boat (the solar bark), the docile cow goddess Hathor, the
fierce lioness Sekhmet, the sofdy sensuous cat goddess Bast, and Ra
himself. Ra, as Khepera, comes into being not only as the sun, but as
all life generated by the sun, the offspring of his children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren, while human beings are the tears
shed from his eye - another pun, based on the similarity of the
ancient Egyptian words for 'tears' and 'humans' (the Egyptians were
fond of puns).
An enneadwas not venerated at all cult centres: at Hermopolis, there
was an ogdoad,which was a similar concept to the ennead,being a group
of eight (rather than nine) deities.
Nowadays, people tend to think of God as a remote Being - so
remote, in fact, that his existence is eveh in doubt. To the modern
mind, the world appears to be a spiritually dead place, with human
beings the only intelligent form of life. To the ancient Egyptians, on
the other hand, Deity was close and intimate, manifesting in a myriad
forms and in all aspects of human experience. The domestic cat was a
manifestation of Bast, goddess of joy and fertility; the wild dog, or
jackal, was a manifestation of Anubis, the guide of souls, helper of the
dead; the ram was a manifestation of Amun; the cow was Hathor,
goddess of love; the bull was Osiris; the lion was Sekhmet. The neteru
were also present in situations and human emotions: so making love ~
was a manifestation of Hathor, and fighting was a manifestation of
Set. Under these influences, humans as well as animals became
--. literally possessed by the gods, so there was no question of doubting
their existence.
This direct experience of the gods is absolutely crucial to
Egyptian Paganism. Central to the practice of the religion, and the
magic which is inseparable from it, is the technique known to
occultists as Assumption of the Godform. A more modern, popular
term for this is 'channelling'. In the Bible, a similar technique is called
'prophesying', meaning not just telling the future, but being
the mouthpiece of God, allowing Deity to speak direcdy through the
human agent. To assume the godform, one speaks and acts as
the deity or neter for the duration of the rite or for the relevant part
of the rite. To do this, it is helpful-tO~~isualize the neter as dearly as
possible and to see, in one's mind's eye, the form of this deity merging
with one's own body. It is customary to imagine the neter entering
from behind, the focus for the entry being the nape of the neck.
Modern Pagans often stand with their backs to the altar to allow this
process to take place at the start of the rite. At the end, they face the
the midriff which is supposed to be a point of psychic energy.
The Egyptian priests actually 'saw' the wall paintings of the deities
in their temples come to life through invocations, step down from
the walls and enter their own bodies when they assumed the godform.
(An image could therefore be very dangerous; so to protect
against the hieroglyphic forms of snakes, lions and other harmful animals,
these would be painted in two sections with a division through
the middle, or with a knife through them, to render them harmless.)
To help them to assume the forms of the deities, members of the
Egyptian priesthood would dress up as the deities. The priest of
Anubis would wear a dog's-head mask during the rites of embalming
bodies, in which he played a key role, and it is likely that the priests
and priestesses of other neteru would also have worn masks of their
deities' totem animals. This may be why some deities are represented
with animal heads on human bodies, for this was how they manifested
through their masked priests. At the rites concerning the death
and resurrection of Osiris, two priestesses, ritually purified by having
their body hair removed, wearing woollen headbands, and each with
the name of Isis or Nephthys written on her arm to identifY her
magically with the goddess she was representing, would sing hymns
of mourning as the goddesses the~ves. In this way, members of the
priesthood actually became the deities whom they served, and this
identification with the Divine was far deeper than merely symbolic.
In Christianity today, with its emphasis on sin and humility, it
seems to be all too often forgotten that Jesus himself taught that the
kingdom of heaven is within each person. Turning to Paganism,
some people have tried to recover this sense of potential divinity
within each of us, recognizing the mystical, alchemical undertaking
of transmuting lead into gold, the human into the divine. This
is nowhere more evident than in Egyptian Paganism (for Egypt, the
land of Khem, was the place where alchemy originated and after
which it is named). The Egyptians truly aspired to become neteru in
the afterlife, and it is no mere idle boasting (as some egyptologists
have unfortunately construed) when~he deceased in the funerary
texts speak of being the gods themselves. What we call the Book <if
the Dead was originally called the Chapters -of Coming Forth by Day,
this title referring to the divine magical power of shapeshifting, by
which a spirit might manifest as, for example, a bird or animal. The
justified dead, who were skilled magicians, attained this god-like
power to change their shape and return to earth - not as reincarnations,
but as spirit beings in animal form.
This was not just an idle hope for the afterlife, however; a sympathetic
interpretation of ancient Egyptian beliefS as compared to those
of shamanistic religions strongly suggests that accomplished magicians
possessed the ability to shapeshift, explore the Neterkhert, encounter
the gods, and indeed become the gods, while still alive, by using techniques
for entering altered states of consciousness. Modern Pagans
can learn to do this too, for the rites in this book are composed from
actual texts which the Egyptians themselves would have used for
precisely this purpose.
The Book of Egyptian Ritual Jocelyn Almond and Keith Seddon