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Egyptian Mysteries - Arthur Versluis

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣛⡻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⠘⢿⣦⠹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⣿⣷⠰⣽⣶⣮⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢟⣥⣴⣶⣶⣦⣍⢿⣿ ⣿⣿⣏⠉⢷⣌⢿⣷⡌⢿⡿⣗⡹⣿⣿⣿⢛⣭⣩⣽⢦⡚⣭⡹⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⢿ ⣿⣿⣿⣦⠨⣫⣮⣝⢿⣌⢿⣿⣿⡝⣿⣿⢸⡿⡝⢇⠿⡇⣿⣷⣭⣛⠻⠇⠇⣾ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣝⢿⣿⣃⣻⢧⠹⣿⣿⡘⡇⡇⠂⣠⣶⣤⣦⡁⠻⣿⣿⡇⠄⢠⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡡⣿⣿⣷⡀⠘⠿⣿⠖⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢰⣤⣴⣧⢠⣿⣿ ⡿⣛⣛⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮⡻⣿⡟⠄⠈⢁⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠄⡻⣿⣿⡆⣿⣿ ⣇⣋⠙⢿⣶⣮⣝⡛⠿⢿⡀⠇⠄⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠁⢠⣴⣾⣾⣿⡇⣼⣿ ⣿⣿⣷⣬⣋⣙⠻⣵⣿⣿⡶⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠄⠠⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠃⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮⣙⠙⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠋⠂⠄⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁⢰⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠃⠄⢀⢲⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠄⣾⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢋⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠁⠁⢠⣿⣮⣻⣿⣿⣿⣵⡜⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠐⠄⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⡹⢿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠐⣀⠐⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮

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100% found this document useful (7 votes)
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Egyptian Mysteries - Arthur Versluis

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣛⡻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⠘⢿⣦⠹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⣿⣷⠰⣽⣶⣮⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢟⣥⣴⣶⣶⣦⣍⢿⣿ ⣿⣿⣏⠉⢷⣌⢿⣷⡌⢿⡿⣗⡹⣿⣿⣿⢛⣭⣩⣽⢦⡚⣭⡹⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⢿ ⣿⣿⣿⣦⠨⣫⣮⣝⢿⣌⢿⣿⣿⡝⣿⣿⢸⡿⡝⢇⠿⡇⣿⣷⣭⣛⠻⠇⠇⣾ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣝⢿⣿⣃⣻⢧⠹⣿⣿⡘⡇⡇⠂⣠⣶⣤⣦⡁⠻⣿⣿⡇⠄⢠⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡡⣿⣿⣷⡀⠘⠿⣿⠖⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢰⣤⣴⣧⢠⣿⣿ ⡿⣛⣛⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮⡻⣿⡟⠄⠈⢁⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠄⡻⣿⣿⡆⣿⣿ ⣇⣋⠙⢿⣶⣮⣝⡛⠿⢿⡀⠇⠄⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠁⢠⣴⣾⣾⣿⡇⣼⣿ ⣿⣿⣷⣬⣋⣙⠻⣵⣿⣿⡶⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠄⠠⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠃⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮⣙⠙⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠋⠂⠄⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁⢰⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠃⠄⢀⢲⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠄⣾⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢋⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠁⠁⢠⣿⣮⣻⣿⣿⣿⣵⡜⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠐⠄⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⡹⢿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠐⣀⠐⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮

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/1RKANK

THE
EGYPTIAN
MYSTERIES

Arthur Versluis, editor of Avaloka:AJournal o f Traditional Religion and


Culture, and author of The Philosophy o f Magic and , has studied
Hermetic, Buddhist and Vedantic traditions for many years. Translator
of Pollen and Fragments: Poetry and Prose o f Novalis, he teaches
literature at the University of Michigan, and lives on the family farm.
ARTHUR VERSLUIS

THE
EGYPTIAN
MYSTERIES

-4RKANR

LONDON AND NEW YORK


First published in 1988 by ARKANA Paperbac
ARK AN A Paperbacks is an imprint o f
Rout ledge
11 N ew Fetter L a n e ,L on don EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by R outledge


inassociation w ith RoutledC haptian &
29 West 3 5 th Street, N ew York, N Y 10001

Set in 1 0 /1 1 poin t Sabon


by W itw ell Ltd, L iv erp ool
an d prin ted in G reat Britain
by T he Guernsey Press Co. L td
Guernsey, C hann el Islands

© A rthur Versluis 1988

N o part o f this b o o k m ay b e rep rod u ced in


any fo r m w ith o u t perm ission fr o m th e p u b lish er
ex cep t f o r th e q u o ta tio n o f b r ie f passages
in criticism

L ib ra ry o f C on gress C a ta lo g in g in P u b lic a tio n D a ta


Versluis, A rthur, 1959 -

T h e Egyptian M ysteries.

Bibliography: P.
1. Occultism. 2. Egypt— R elig io n — M iscellanea.
3. Mysteries, R e lig io u s-M isc e lla n e a . I. T it le .
B F 1 9 9 9 .V 4 3 1988 133 8 7 - 1 9 5 0 5
ISBN 1 - 8 5 0 6 3 - 0 8 7 - 9 (PBK .)

British Library CIP D ata also available


ISBN 1 - 8 5 0 6 3 - 0 8 7 - 9 (pbk)
CONTENTS

Part I

1 Introduction
k/
2 M aat
13
3 The Prim al Ennead
23
4 Isis
31
5 Osiris
40
6 On the Second D eath
50
7 Typhon
54
8 Hermanubis 60
9 Ra: the Sun King 66
10 The Tw o Lands 73
11 On Sacred Language and the Hieroglyph 81
12 On the M ysteries 89
13 A p ocatastasis: Som e Im plications 94

Part II On Initiation
1 T h eo ria : T h e N ature of Initiation 101
2 T h eo ria : Initiation and the Sym bolic 115
3 Praxis: Initiation and W ork 125
4 Praxis: T he Flam e and the Flower 137

5 Conclusion: Initiation and the Present Era 144

V
C O N TEN TS

Notes
Select Bibliography I 49

Index *65
16?
CHAPTER 1
Introduction

There can be little doubt that whatever traditional symbology and


metaphysics remain in the West today can be traced back to ancient
Egypt, that land whose people, said Herodotus, were ‘scrupulous
beyond all measure in matters of religion’. Indeed, though the ancient
Mysteries have, it seems, long since waned - or perhaps better, been
eclipsed - their influence is still felt even today, whether we know it or
not. Even so, some might question whether it is worth studying the
nature of the Egyptian Mysteries in present tim es1— after all, the
Mysteries belonged to the very farthest reaches of our recorded history,
to a twilit realm upon the horizon.2 Why then should we seek there, in
antiquity, for the truth? Are we not better off ignoring the ancients, the
origins of Western culture, such as it now is, and concentrating upon the
future? Perhaps so - perhaps ignorance does bestow a kind of security.
Yet, like a man trapped in a cave and beset by strange noises, it is
better to see one’s true position, however unpleasant it might appear;
one would undoubtedly be in a better position to act with knowledge of
who we really are, of what our true situation is. And there can be no
doubt that, while we cannot return to life in a traditional culture like
that of Egypt, neither can we create such a world of primordial meaning
out of our nightmarish future, as certain ‘new age’ fantasies might
suggest, none the less awareness of how things actually are, of the
origins of that which remains of traditional Western culture
(transmitted through N eoplatonism and Hermeticism) can be of
inestimable value in orienting our lives, in finding meaning and purpose,
despite the abnormality of our present circumstances. It is towards this
end that this present study is dedicated.
For both of these goals - individual awareness of metaphysical truth,
and understanding of the origins of the Western tradition - an
understanding of the Egyptian M ysteries and tradition is virtually
indispensable. This is particularly so in light of the fact that the present
state of confusion - the modern world - arose from the West, suggesting
that our present anom alous and fragmented state, with its relentless

3
4 INTRODUCTION

drive toward flic quantitative, toward solipsism, and toward destructi0


of our natural world, derives from an eclipse, an occultati0n ^
traditional metaphysics and symbology, of the metaphysical under
standing upon which the Egyptian tradition was founded. Indeed
virtually every chapter of the New Testament is replete with Egyptj^
symbology, albeit in an attenuated, diluted form. The Blessed Virgjn
Mary, we might recall, has often been seen to be a reiteration of Isjs.
Christ of Her Divine Son Horus, emanation of Her consort Osiris; one
might consider, too, the words in R ev elation that these are ‘the words of
the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s
creation’. 3 In fact, had we but the time to delve into them, the parallels
could be shown to run much closer even than this, for the later faith is
‘illumined from behind’ by the former. At any rate, it is clear that to
understand our present we must understand the past.
We have reason to believe that the culture of ancient Egypt from, say,
9000 BC onwards was itself derived from an earlier, purer culture, out
of which both Oriental and Occidental traditions arose, and out of
which came, finally, the present Iron Age, the K ali Yuga. Some evidence
of this yet earlier and purer culture can be seen in the historical remnants
of the Chaldean culture, which flourished prior even to that of Egypt,
and which was devoted to the celestial harm onies. Indeed, according to
some reports, the Chaldean civilisation flourished for some 473,000
years - from the time of their first astrological observations and
calculations to the time of Alexander.4 W hether or not this is so - and
we have more reasons to concur w ith the Chaldeans than to criticise
them - there can be no doubt that a prim ord ial m an, being but newly
upon this earth, had a stronger relationship w ith the stars and planets
because of their celestial longevity. In this lies the key to the longevity of
the gods that preceded men upon earth, as also their reflection in the
Old Testament figures of M ethuselah and others.
While Egypt still retained the in itial unity o f celestial and terrestrial
earth, the primordial divinity o f the king - in sh o rt, m any o f the signs of
a primordial, Golden Age culture - she was still ‘after the flo o d ’, that is,
the flood of ignorance of which M a n e th o spoke in his S o th is . Hence,
despite her exceedingly conservative tendency, despite her reverence for
the past, she was none the less preserving the residue o f a still purer,
more divine culture, a relationship to the past in w hich Egypt stood as
we now stand to the splendour th at was once E gypt: a m ere shadow , a
shade, pale reflection upon the w aters. T h ere has been since the tim e of
Egypt, yet another flood o f course, an u np aralleled catastro p h e, in
IN TR O D U C TIO N 5

which a translucent world - a marto the celes


dissolved, earth sundered from the heavens, in which the sacred symbols
and Mysteries o f the ancients were condemned and ignored; in which
Nature came to be seen merely as a concatenation of matter; in which
gnosis was replaced by mere reason, by mere dogmatic externalism. T his
process is rapidly reaching its nadir in the present era, a nadir in which
pure Chaos reigns once again and in which, as in the aeons preceding
Creation, the alone is delivered unto the Alone, resting self-sufficient,
radiant, w ithin itself.
Hence the underlying - indeed, the central - purpose of this study is
to remember, in the P lato n ic sense, that which has slipped away into
oblivion, been lost, obscured by our forgetfulness, our ignorance of the
Divine. For because the course of our present era lies toward virtually
absolute ignorance o f the traditional world, of metaphysics and
symbology, we must all the more look to the ancients for guidance and
wisdom, in order th at we m ight not lose what little remains for us, and
slip away into absolute oblivion and its corollaries of dissolution and
solipsism.
The chief obstacle to our understanding the Egyptian tradition
specifically, and tra d itio n a l metaphysics in general, is the current
modern incapacity to think analogically. T he modern mind has, for
some centuries, been ever m ore conditioned to think only in
evolutionary, m aterialistic term s, so much so that the visionary
symbological th in k in g w hich traditional metaphysics demands is
virtually incom prehensible for m ost people today. Indeed, it is so alien
to us that, b affled , m odern com m entators literalise and trivialise the
most profound o f m yths, rendering them as mere children’s tales rather
than as profound m an ifestatio n s o f visionary understanding revealing
the supra-tem poral, celestial realm s. T h is is all the more true in regard
to Egyptian thou gh t, since all that remains to us are the intricate
carvings upon steles and tem ple w alls, and certain papyri - the efflux of
the civilisation and religion - w hile its m etaphysics, being transmitted
from master to disciple in the M ysteries, remain closed to us. It is
necessary, then, to enter in to the study o f Egyptian mysteries forearmed
from other sources co n tain in g th at sacred knowledge which in Egypt
was transm itted only verbally. For this purpose it is necessary that we
turn to the V ed anta, n o t only because the U pan isads provide the purest
metaphysics available to us from the prim ordial past, but also because
they reflect the sam e U r-cu ltu re th at the Egyptian tradition did, the
culture ‘prior to the F lo o d ’ w hich we m entioned earlier. For this reason,
6 INTRODUCTION

to approach the study of Egyptian culture with Vedantic teachings jn


mind is not a violation of the original - as is so much literalist and
profane interpretation of the Egyptian m ythos (for example, the
‘vegetation gods’ theory5) - hut rather complements and infills such
study, reinvesting it with the metaphysical power and meaning w hich it
once had.
Indeed, it would not be inaccurate to say that the Oriental teachings
reflect a time which in Dynastic Egypt had already been eclipsed - a
time after the primordial era, the Golden Age, in which (as in the Rg
Veda) men required only the briefest of mythological references and
symbols to remind them of their Origin and of their responsibilities.
Only later came the descent into mere ‘mythology’ divested of its
metaphysical meaning, and finally into the modern ignorance even of
mere ‘mythology’. In Oriental teachings the metaphysical explication of
Divine Truth was manifested by means of the writers of and
commentators upon the JJpanisads and, later, the Buddhist Sutras.
But whereas the Oriental teachings to which we refer were
comparatively recent, in Egypt the explicit revelation of metaphysical
truth took place far earlier, before the Flood, and in any case was
attenuated by comparison with the Orient. There is, as Guenon6 has
pointed out, a fundamental divergence between Orient and Occident
which is perhaps glimpsed here at its best, in which the Orient turned
inward, toward metaphysical understanding, while the forte of the
Occident lay in symbological manifestation, mythological profusion.
This latter tendency is reflected in the very hieroglyphic and sacred
images themselves: the Occident tended always toward a more exterior
manifestation of Reality.
But here we approach the nethermost horizons of our own era.
In any event, it is very difficult for modern people to conceive of an
era in which Earth was not severed from Sky, in which there was no
duality between humanity and nature, sacred and profane - but such
was, in ancient Egypt, most manifestly the case. For as we shall see, even
in ancient Egypt the world itself was a glyph of Divine Reality, which
was everywhere manifest: as the Hermetic dictum (which itself comes to
us from Egypt) has it, ‘as above, so below.’ It could well be said that the
central aim of Egyptian culture was to prolong, to extend those aspects
of the primordial unity of man and nature, of the physical world and
the celestial realm, which remained to them. To this end, they went so
far as to embalm their dead - so that the influences of their reverence for
the past might continue to emanate over the land, as well as to remind
INTRODUCTION 7

of the nature of m ortal life, the body beinn a shroud, a tom b. T h e


were well aw are of their m ediate place in histo ry, m idw ay
CaVplI*" . i > t i .1 i • t . « .

i n*11 * i
the tex* continues, saying that
The time will come when Egypt will appear to have in vain served
rhe Divinity with pious mind and constant worship, and all its
|l0ly cult will fall to nothingness and be in vain . . . words only
wili be left cut on thy stones, thy pious deeds recounting (O
EgypO- ••• This, when it comes, shall be the W orld’s old age,
impiety - irregularity and lack of rationality in all good things.
And when these things come to pass, Asclepius, then He, (our)
Lord and Sire, God first in power . . . (shall end) all ill, by either
washing it away with w ater-flood, or burning it away with
fire . . . (so that) god shall recall the Cosm os to its ancient
form . . . most good.7

Alas, all that prophesied w ith in this transm ission of the C orp u s
Hermeticutn did indeed com e to pass - the im piety, the proscription of
the ancient true religion, the m ass ignorance - a ll, th at is, save the
purging of the Cosm os and the G reat R e sto ra tio n , w hich is, no doubt,
imminent.
The Egyptian, then, lived in a w orld illu m in ed over his shoulder by
the brilliance of the G old en A ge, bu t con sciou s all the w hile th a t if he
did not perform his resp o n sib ilities the breach betw een H eaven and
Earth would becom e u n b rid g e a b le . In f a c t , co n scio u sn ess o f th is
responsibility lay inherent w ith in th e E g y p tia n cu ltu re and relig io n , one
instance of which was the tea ch in g th a t w here each tem p le of O siris
stood, there arose a la d d e r8 fro m E a rth to H eav en fo r, w h ile once
Heaven and E arth w ere o n e , in la te r tim e s m an required a ‘bridge'
between the tw o b u ilt upon re lig io u s o b se rv a n ce , in th e absence of
which the tw o w ould b e co m e d iv o rce d c o m p le te ly , m a n k in d sin k in g
into the darkness o f ig n o ra n ce . T he other ‘Divine cord' b in d in g E a rth
was that of the Divine King, whose function was to restore and to
continue the Divine Order.
Thus the great Egyptian king A m aris, according to H erodotus, was
one of a long lineage of restorer-kings, notable perhaps m ost of all for
his unique means of achieving this m ost trad itio n al of all functions. For
8 INTRODUCTION

instance, before he assumed his role as king, Amaris was said to he


thief who went before the various oracles to be tried, and when he laic^.
became king he supported only those who had condemned him as
thief, and ignored the others which he had thereby exposed as false. It
was also said of him that when he first became king, he broke up a
golden receptacle that stood at the palace entrance, in which guests
would wash their feet, or urinate, and made an icon out of it to which
all paid due homage. Revealing it to have been a mere lavatory
receptacle, he added that so too he, though king, was but a commoner
save for the title. The material was the same in commoner and king
receptacle and icon; only the form and function changed.
The historical veracity of the tale is im m aterial; symbologically it js
unimpeachable, for in it we can see reflected both the divine function of
the king as restorer of order, uniter of the highest and lowest realms,
and, at the same time, the transm utative, alchem ical nature of his reign.
By having himself been a thief, Amaris revealed which of the oracles
were accurate, which of the temples were still pure, and in so doing he at
once - as when he used the laver for an icon - conjoined the lowest and
the highest. Indeed, is that not the essence of the alchemical
transformation, bringing gold from the dross, the Divine from the
phenomenal? And in fact, according to the ancient Greeks, this was
precisely the function of the Egyptian king, as it was of the gods: to
restore order. The king was the Divine Viceroy upon earth, divine not by
birthright so much as by virtue of the office which he held, by it being
made worthy of respect and veneration.
The Egyptians were highly conscious of this role, well aware of the
tenuous grip that they had upon the past, the prim ordial era. Hence, as
Herodotus relates, their priests retained a wooden statue of each of the
kings for 341 generations, from the first in their history to the last,
visible reminders of the sacred trust which they held from the past, by
virtue of which alone they m aintained peace and harmony in the realm.
Thus it has been said that the final era of Egypt (to the time of the
ancient Greeks, that is) lasted 1 1 ,0 0 0 years,9 prior to which the Gods
ruled the earth directly, the last of w hom was H orus, or Apollo, the
Divine son of Isis and Osiris. According to D iodorus,10 on the other
hand, the gods ruled Egypt for some 1 8 ,0 0 0 years, after which the
Divine kings ruled. Regardless of the dates, which in any case have a
more esoteric than literal interpretation, the fact remains that each
succeeding king, though not a god, bore w ithin his veins the blood of Ra,
the Divine Sun, of whom he was the living representative upon Earth.11
INTRODUCTION 9

Hence it was not the king who fathered his son, hut the Sun, the
pivine Sun. This divine impregnation is directly paralleled in the
immaculate conception of the Christ in the Virgin Mary of the New
Testament; it is paralleled also in the , where it is written that
the Sun is life, the Moon is matter, and from the mingling of the two
arises Creation.12 As the M aitri V pant sad has it, the Sun is the
(5 avitr); Brahman is the Self of the Sun; therefore one should reverence
the Sun, the Lord, the W itness.11 Likewise, it is said, ‘when the human
father emits . . . seed into the womb . . . it is really the Sun that emits
him as seed.’14 Then, too, there is Aristotle’s remark that ‘Man and the
Sun generate man’.15
Indeed, the subtle relation between the visible Sun and the Divine Sun
cannot be exhausted: for just as the former reflects the brilliance of the
latter, so the King reflects the Divine origin of his office, and so too the
father of every child reflects his own Origin, being but a carrier of the
Light, the seed of life which he emits. Each is the centre of the world
within a given sphere by virtue of the office which he holds, the function
he serves, not to dominate - for that is tyranny, egoism, the epitome of
sin - but to nourish, to uphold order and justice, the foundation of a
stable realm. The family, the clan, the land are all oriented around the
Sun.
Yet the meaning of this order was not merely temporal stability -
although that was achieved in ancient Egypt to an extraordinary degree,
bestowing many thousands of years of peace - but rather fulfilment of
man’s celestial destiny. In later Egypt, when the worship of Osiris grew
strong, this meant, for many, ascent to the Western Paradise, the subtle
realm of spiritual delights which in many ways parallels the Pure Land
(Sukhavati) of spiritual delights manifested in later Buddhism in the
worship of Amitabha. And for the worshippers of R a, the Divine Sun, it
meant ‘conditional liberation’ - those who were so liberated awakened
to their true nature in Ra ascending to the realm of pure Light, to the
‘barque of millions of years’ upon which they rode until the end of the
aeon16 when all things return to the Divine and final liberation is
attained. This latter teaching is, we might here add, paralleled in the
Vedanta, in which those beings who have realised the nature of Iswara
are also said to have attained a ‘conditional liberation’, a freedom from
rebirth lasting through the end of a world-cycle, when all is restored,17
the tares and chaff separated from the wheat. In other words, the entire
mesocosm that was Egypt served for the fulfilment of all men within her
sphere, providing each with the means toward the attainment of
10 INTRODUCTION

whatever degree of liberation might be their immediate destiny, f0


although today ‘strait is the way and narrow the gate’, this is less trUe
the closer one moves to primordiality. In a traditional culture the way js
wider indeed, the mesocosm ‘drawing all inward’ towards the celestial
destinies, the outer simply a reflection of the inner; and in primordiality
humankind fulfilled its destiny within ordinary life, spontaneously
awakened in the natural world.
The story of King Amaris highlights the nature of the Divine King,
the sage-king, and therefore of the place of humanity itself as viceroy of
creation,18 for the place of the true king is not to rule but to sustain, not
to control but to order, to harmonise. Now in the most distant
primordial era - in the Golden Age - wherein each human is a god, the
mediate office of Divine King need not exist yet; just as conversely, jn
the modern era, the office of Divine King can likewise not exist, the
essence of this era consisting in the severing of all human relations to the
Divine, and therefore being ‘below’ having such a government.19 The
office of the Divine King, then, can only exist in the traditional culture,
being as it is a cord connecting Heaven to Earth, primordiality to the
present, giving order and meaning to human life.
It is paradoxically true that in the traditional culture - of which
ancient Egypt was surely (in furthest antiquity) one of the purest known
- he who is humbled shall be exalted. As it is written in that ancient
Chinese work, the Tao Te Ching:

Why is the sea king of a hundred streams? Because it is below


them. Therefore it is king of a hundred streams. If the sage would
lead the people, he must serve with humility. If he would lead, he
must follow behind. (66)

That is, the King must ever remember that he is not of himself king,
but only the means by which the land is Divinely ruled; he must rule not
with abasement, nor with arrogance, but with the courage and self
assurance that only knowledge of one’s true nature can afford. And
what is true of the king must also be true of the individual within his
sphere: for all are kings, the difference being essentially in the present
extent of their realm, and little else. This is why in the traditional
culture so much attention is devoted to the nature of true kingship - for,
ultimately, such observations apply to everyone. People cannot be
divorced from their culture and world: microcosmic harmony is
mesocosmic harmony is macrocosmic harmony.
Nowhere is this natural unity between the king and the state more
INTRODUCTION 11

cVplicit than in the accounts we possess of ancient Egypt, and in


particular those of Diodorus, in whose universal history we read that the
Icings, far from possessing unlim ited and tyrannical authority, were in
fact the most regulated of all the people, even their daily fare being
decided upon by the priests, prescribed by antiquity. Every action of the
Icing, every decision, was regulated by tradition and

far from being indignant, the kings held that they led a most
happy and contented life; for they believed that all other men, in
thoughtlessly following their natural passions, com m it many acts
which bring them injuries and perils, while they, on the other
hand, by virtue of . . . their manner of life . . . fell into the fewest
mistakes.20

Consequently, said Diodorus, the goodwill of the people toward their


king was unsurpassed, and the order and felicity of ancient Egypt was
beyond compare, lasting for many thousands of years.
As a result, although in our present era we cannot expect a restitu tio
divinis, at least upon a large scale, the course toward dissolution being
inevitable, none the less, to the extent that one participates in and
contributes to the world in which the ancient Egyptians lived, the
timeless realms, to that extent are we freed from the constraints of our
era. For while ours is an era, as we have noted, in which error reigns
supreme and confusion holds sway, this does not condemn every
individual to sink beneath its waves, to be swept into its whirlpools and
lost - far from it. For as it is written in the , that
upon which man concentrates, that he becomes. If one desires the world
of the fathers, one is born into the world of the fathers; if one
concentrates upon the Highest, on ‘rising out of the body’ (sarirat
samutthaya), then one realises Brahman and is liberated.21
Or, as was written in the Tao Te C hing:

Being openhearted, you will act royally. Being royal, you will
attain the Divine. Being Divine, you will be at one with the
Tao . . . Though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away. (16)

This, then, is at once the goal and the mark of the traditional culture:
that all people act royally, that all attain the Divine, each according to
their due. It was said of Sri Lanka, before colonisation, that the only
difference between the peasant in the field and the king himself were
their respective accoutrements; their bearing and speech were the same.
Surely something of the same was true also with ancient Egypt: the
12 INTRODUCTION

strength of a traditional culture lies in its irradiative power, involving


anil unifying all people toward the realisation of their true nature, of the
Divine. Only when this power is thwarted, when disorder and the
anti traditional behaviours begin to gain sway, ignoring and defiling the
teachings of anitquity, does such a culture break down, fragment, and
disappear. And such was precisely the case when Judaism and
Christianity began to gain ground over the ancient traditions handed
down from Egypt: family members turned upon one another, friend
upon friend, the wisdom of antiquity was derided - indeed, the prelude
to the modern era.22
In what, then, did the prisca th eo lo g ia consist? It consisted, above all,
in Divine Order and harmony: at.And it is to
m
perhaps central characteristic of ancient Egyptian culture, that we now
turn.
CHAPTER 2
M aat

It is virtually inconceivable that one might understand ancient Egyptian


culture and religion without an understanding of the word m aat, for in
it can he found the very essence of traditional culture and Divine order.
On one level, of course, m a at was manifested as a goddess, consort of
Hermes, and at other times, as the ‘Lords of M a a t’, who are the
assessors of man in his judgment after death,1 a function also of Osiris -
but regardless of the specific manifestation, m a a t was always identified
with order and harmony. In the ‘Praise of R a ’, it is said,

Praise be to thee, O Ra, exalted Sekhem (power), M ighty one of


the journeyings; thou orderest thy steps by M aat, thou art the
soul that doeth good to the body; thou art Senk-hra (The Divine
Face of Light) and thou art indeed the bodies of Senk-hra.2

M aat is here associated with the relation of soul to body, w ith the
celestial harm onisation of the realm of generation, which is quite
proper, the essence of the soul consisting in harm onisation, the ‘ordering
of thy steps’. In the soul or psyche, this ordering implies the
harmonisation of the planetary spheres and celestial powers. W hat then
is Maat? M a a t is essentially a term describing those actions and
thoughts which act tow ard that harm onisation, tow ard a balancing
which must take place both upon the subtle order and in the tem poral
world, for the tw o are not by any means in opposition, divorced, but
rather are reflections, aspects o f one another. In b rief, the central
principle of m a a t is th at o f reciprocity betw een the gods - the principial
Divine realms - and hum ankind: the G ods serve hum anity as hum anity
serves the Gods. M a a t is D ivine reciprocity and harm ony.
M a a t is therefore built upon, and a reflectio n o f, understanding of
the Celestial realms; it exists within the reco gn itio n th at there are
multiple states of being, and that there is a kind of reciprocity betw een
them. And the central mode by which this D iv in e reciprocity is
manifested is through the sacred rites which, though n o t in them selves
sufficient for liberation,3 are none the less, in a tra d itio n a l era in

13
14 MAAT

particular, the means by which the Gods and the myriad forces of the
cosmos arc manifested and balanced. The sacred rites, therefore,
resemble a pillar which rises from the base upward, through all levels or
realms, and were enjoined upon humanity not to placate some external
power, but to harmonise people’s spirituality, to conjoin the spiritual
and the temporal realms, so that through the rites Heaven might
manifest upon Earth, and so that Earth and Sky might be reunited as
they were in the primordial era.
This is why the Egyptians, when speaking of the resurrection of
Osiris’ body, said that where every piece of the body was found, after it
had been scattered by the evil Typhon, there was raised a temple, a holy
site where a Divine ladder extending upward between Heaven and Earth
could be found. In the most ancient of days, Heaven and Earth were
conjoined, translucent, and people were gods, but in the days of ancient
Egypt, Heaven and Earth were becoming separate, and so the rites were
necessary in order to reunite them, if not everywhere then at least in
those places where the ladders - the temples - were situated, thereby
retaining some of the primordial spiritual unity of temporal and Divine.
And, in this vein, there can be little doubt that to this day certain areas
resonate with primordial power - sometimes for good and sometimes
not.
Now, as is reiterated in both the Buddhist Sutras and in the
Upanisads, the performance of ritual without knowledge is fruitless -
the degree of knowledge determines the efficacy or power of a given rite.
As the Chandogya JJpanisad has it, those who practise a life of sacrifice,
performing works of public good and almsgiving, ‘pass to the dark half
of the month (the moon) but do not reach the year (the sun)’.4 ‘Rising
to the moon’, there they dwell (in the subtle sphere of manifestation)
for a period in accordance with their works, after which they return to
the world of birth and death. This is the middle path, the , or
more literally ‘the way of the fathers’, and it, in Egypt as elsewhere, is
followed by the majority of humankind, winning them not complete
release, but merely better rebirth - in Egypt manifested in the worship
of Isis and Osiris. Those, on the other hand, who follow the path of
enlightenment, the deva-yana, the path of the Gods, do not return to
temporal life, but win release: these, however, are few.
Those who perform no sacrifices or austerities, much less follow the
way of the few, fall into the hands of Yama, of the King of the Dead,
and even into Hell, where for the specified time they face the
consequences of their ignorance (avidya).s The sphere of the moon
M A AJ- IS

ninrks the ‘Gateway to Heaven’ (Yni Hebrew); t


|>cyond it enter into the realms of the Gods. The purpose of ritual is to
maintain connection with the celestial realms, to keep people from
falling into the paths of blinding darkness, of brute secular materialism
and ignorance, to remind them of their Origin and responsibility.
Now atsi a kind of axis, passing through the various levels or
m
realms of knowledge, below being the infernal sea of chaos, above being
rhe supernal ocean of bliss. Those who do not perform their
responsibilities, who ignore ritual, fall into the hands of Yama, of the
King of Death; they are lost, fragmented, disordered. Those who
perform their responsibilities, but do no more, rise to the realm of
pitr-yana, the land of the fathers, but do not win liberation. Those who
meditate upon the true nature of existence, however, and who further
see their true nature, win liberation and pass beyond the moon. Hence
maat - order and harmony - is the principle behind all of the realms. To
follow m aat is insufficient for release from temporal bondage, being the
path of the fathers - but it cannot be dispensed with. Those who follow
this, the path of works, seek to conform themselves to the divine order,
to maat, whereas those who have won liberation, through devayana,
irradiate m a a t spontaneously. Those, on the other hand, who ignore
maat fall into dissolution, disorder, and ultimately are destroyed. ,
then, is the em anation of Divine order ‘downwards’: the ‘higher’ one
ascends, the more proxim ate it is, until ultim ately it is recognised as the
irradiation of the centrum of being, and of oneself.
Thus the ancient Egyptian symbol for was the feather,
symbolising the wing of the Angel, the traditional symbol for spiritual
knowledge and realisation: the Angel, aloft upon gossamer wings, is
freed, independent of tem poral concerns. The plea to Ra to ‘make me
light’ inherently implies that he who wishes to rise must have attained
ethical maturity and purity, an ordering in the soul; the ancient image of
the ‘Lords of M a at\ and of T h o th , or Osiris, weighing the scales is
clarified by the recognition that acting in accordance with m a a t confers
a ‘lightness’, whereas acting against burdens one with karmic
accretions.
M aat, then, as the ordering or harmonising principle, exists in three
aspects: for the individual, for the com m unity as a whole, and for the
cosmos, each reinforcing the other. In the individual sphere is
manifested through ethical acts, but also through abstinence - fasting,
primarily from food and from sexual desire. Both of these imply
purification from the realm of generation, from birth and death.
16 MAAT

Abstinence from animal flesh implies, likewise - as Porphyry noted jn


his treatise on the matter - the purification of desire, of the passions. All
of these, for the individual, imply a ‘setting in order’: they are not
sufficient in themselves for any lasting attainment, but are often
indispensable for it, inasmuch as harmony must precede and accompany
transcendence.
In the greater sphere of the community, implies the fulfilment
of one’s responsibilities, one’s appointed function within the culture; it
implies cultural harmonisation in the community just as it does upon an
individual basis. And the central vehicle for the transmission of maat
throughout the culture as a whole is the Divine King. As noted earlier,
the king is recognised in the traditional culture to b e an incarnation or
manifestation of Ra, of the Divine Sun, of Atum, and so on a cultural
level drives out evil much as the conscientious individual purifies
himself: the three worlds are, ultimately, one - microcosm, mesocosm
and macrocosm.
Maat, then, is the essential means of preserving the state (in every
sense of the word) of humanity and of nature: human responsibility is
essentially conservative, preserving the traditions which bind person
to person, humanity to nature, and all to the Divine - and m aat is the
means, the manifestation of sustaining this relationship. In one ancient
text people are explicitly exhorted to ‘Speak ; do m aatV 6 but this
command is implicit within virtually all ancient Egyptian writings. ‘He
who reveres m aat is long-lived;7 he who is covetous has no tomb,’8 as
the vizier Ptah-hotep said. There is, in other words, a direct correlation
between spiritual longevity and the practice of ; both the individual
and the society which properly fulfils its respective function lives long -
whereas those who fall into disorder soon fall, fragment and dissolve.
Temporal stability, then, is simultaneously a prerequisite for, and an
irradiation from, spiritual ascent, spiritual illumination.
As time went on in ancient Egypt, the wise came to realise more and
more that survival depended upon reinstitution of maat> of the Divine
harmony at every level: the wisest kings, therefore, as Herodotus noted,
were those who restored the true temples and reinstituted the religious
rites; while the worst kings were those bent upon self-aggrandisement at
the expense of religion, ignoring the temples. The primal order of the
cosmos had been established at Creation, but slowly, as time went on,
Heaven and Earth began to separate, and so m aat came into being
explicitly rather than implicitly, as the cord which bound the Higher to
the Lower, the irradiation of the former into the latter.
MAAT 17

- then, is the principal union betw een the celestial and the
oi il in the cosmos, as in the m csocosm and the m icrocosm . In the
toiordial world, therefore, the tw o were perceived as they truly are -
|MQnc a Celestial harm ony - and only later did people, confused and
deluded, begin to d ifferentiate betw een the tw o. Consequently, even
though m aat is in essence the harm ony o f the cosm os, it is there
implicit, becoming explicitly enjoined upon hum anity only in so far as
thcy conceive of themselves as separate beings.
As the sage Ptah-hotep said,

Maat is great and its effectiveness lasting; it has not been


disturbed since the tim e of O siris. T h ere is punishm ent for those
who pass over its law s, but this is u n fam iliar to the covetous
one___ When the end is nigh, m a a t lasts.9

In addition, said the vizier K agem ni,

Do m aat for the K ing, for m a a t is th at w hich God loves! Speak


maat to the King for that w hich the King loves is

It is revealing that here God and the K ing are virtually interchangeable.
But such an injunction could only com e in a tim e in which m a a t was no
longer spontaneous for hum ankind - in w hich a person was no longer a
god, able to irradiate m a a t spontaneously, but rather must endeavour to
realise it, in itself a sign o f how far even Egypt was from the prim ordial
unity, the Golden Age. As was w ritten in the T ao Te ,

Teaching without words and w ork w ith ou t doing are understood


by very few. (43)

When words come into play, the reality is obscured.


From the saying of P tah -h otep , quoted above, we can see the central
means by which Heaven and E arth grew ever farther apart: that is,
‘There is punishment for the evildoer, b u t th is is u n fa m ilia r to the
covetous one’ (italics added). In other w ords, ignorance is the essence of
evil, and evil is none other than disorder, the absence of m a a t. Ignorance
is the wedge that separates hum anity from nature, person from person,
and people from the D ivine; this is so in the V edanta, in Buddhism, in
ancient Egypt, as in all trad ition al w isdom . A v id y a is always necessarily
opposed to vidya, and the trium ph of knowledge always implies the
vanquishing of ignorance. C onsequently, the irradiation of m a a t in a
land implies knowledge: one w ho does evil is ‘one who knoweth not
18 MAAT

himself’, ‘He whom God loves, hears; hut he whom God hates, hears
not.*n In brief, the manifestation of arises directly from spiritual
knowledge or inspiration originally, and from emulation of those with
that knowledge (gnosis) secondarily. The former is the deva-yana, the
way of the Gods; the latter is the pi, the way
between which there is therefore no opposition, but only a difference of
degree of insight or illumination.
This hierarchic arrangement suggests that although is
implacable in its operation, evil action cannot block ascent
permanently, hut only temporarily: in other words, although the action
of m aat is relentless in the temporal w orld, those w ho realise spiritual
knowledge (gnosis) can ‘pass judgm ent’ after death, resolving the evil
they have committed into themselves, purifying themselves in the
‘sphere of the m oon’ until they pass on into celestiality. Hence in the
Egyptian B o o k o f th e ,D
ead humankind seek vindication, a
their past sins by means of gnosis - know ing the D ivine names and
aspects which hold the passkey to beyond the sphere of the moon, by
means of Osiris.
This is not to say, however, that the rites leading to the
foreknowledge of death, any more than the names o f power - as in
Chapter 125 of the B o o k o f th e D e a d - or even the w orship of Osiris
allowed circumvention of the im placable pow er o f . R ather, they
established an affinity, a knowledge and therefore a propensity which
transcended the temporal realm , and so ‘co n cen trated ’ the attention of
the deceased. As Petosiris of H erm opolis said,

N o one reaches the beneficent W est unless his heart w as righteous


by doing m a a t. There no d istinction is m ade betw een the inferior
and the superior person; it only m atters th at one is found faultless
when the balances and the tw o w eights stand b efore the Lord of
Eternity. N o man is free from the reckoning. T h o th , a baboon,
holds the balances to count each m an accord ing to w hat he has
done upon earth .12

However, we must keep in m ind th a t m an does not consist in any


single entity, but rather in a num ber o f p o te n tia litie s or states of being,
to which the Egyptians appended a num ber o f te rm s.13 N o w one who
has realised that his being is not merely in the b od y, nor in the k a , nor in
the a h , u ltim ately, that is - but rather co n sists in the S elf o f the self, in
the illim itable, the L ight, does in one sense co n tin u e to live out the
accumulated tendencies and karm ic accretion s o f his past lives, but at
MAAT 19

the same time is freed from them, having realised their Origin through
spiritual gnosis or insight. Although we represent this journey
outwardly, as one through the spheres, it is in truth inward, into the
very Heart (ab) of the microcosm, seen finally to be the Heart of all.
As a result, we can say that while the practice and the awareness of
maat is indispensable for the individual and for the kingdom - since
without it all will fall into decay and destruction - alone leads
only to the realm of the fathers, to the moon, and not beyond. One
must have Divine harmony - speaking ; doing m aat - and pass
beyond, into osi, the insight from which m aat derives.
gn
Mesocosmically, this function of transmission of the Divine is served by
the temples, the priestly lineages - the path of liberation which is in fact
the axis ,m
di not only for the individual, but for the culture and the
n
u
cosmos. Just as the priestly lineage passes through history ‘horizontally’,
as the centre of the culture, so the ‘vertical’ transmission of the Divine
stands at the centre of the priestly transmission, the transmission of the
Mysteries. at,or cultural and individual order and purity - harmony
M
- is the manifestation of this transmission, the outermost sign of it.
Transposed to ancient Chinese culture, m aat corresponds to the
Confucian ideal of filial piety, respect for the gods, and absolute ethical
purity.
The Confucian ideal, needless to say, only came into being when the
primordial unity with the Origin which Taoism represented was
beginning to fray, to dissolve. As is said in the Tao Ching:

When the great Tao is forgotten, kindness and morality arise.


When there is no peace within the family, filial piety and
devotion arise. (18)

The ancient Chinese, like the ancient Egyptians, venerated their Divine
Emperor and recognised that their land was, for them, the centre of the
cosmos, pivot of the world - and like them realised the tenuous hold
that they had upon the balance which was their world, a balance
manifested in m aat. This relationship between the King and his
function as the means of divine restitution of the Golden Age is made
explicit in numerous texts. Note the following quotation, from the
Pyramid Texts:
The sky is at peace, the earth is in joy, for they have heard that the
King will set right the place of disorder. Tutankhamon drove out
disorder from the Two Lands,14 and m aat is firmly established in
20 MAAT

its place; lie made lying an abomination, and the land is as it was
at the first time.15
If the people grew lax, if they ignored the ceremonies, if the King did
not perform his Divine function as viceroy upon earth, if the temples
were left to decay, both knew that the world would collapse into
confusion, fragmentation and destruction.
As a result, both - the king and his people - enjoined upon themselves
adherence to and observance of at, the Divine principl
m
so seeking to preserve the sanctity of their culture and the path of
liberation which lay at its centre. However, the cycles of time cannot be
swayed or, finally, forestalled, and so the modern era, inevitable as an
avalanche, came into being none the less, with all its attendant Furies:
noise, smoke, confusion, destruction.
It is easy for the modern to scoff at the concept of , even to
assume, somehow, that he is ‘fit for the highest Mysteries’ while
ignoring the most fundamental laws of the cosmos, thinking himself
‘above’ ethics and morality when, in truth, he is ‘below’ them, unable
even to set his own house in order. For m aat - Divine reciprocity - is the
cornerstone of the traditional state (again in every sense of the word), to
which nothing is more antithetical than the sheer licence, the unleashed
egotism, avarice and solipsism which lie at the heart of our present era.
Before any ascent can take place, any deeper mysteries be witnessed,
obedience to the tradition, to the Divine harmony, must take root. Yet
today all this is virtually moot - indeed, we see its satanic inversion, in
which the obedience demanded is not to a traditional transmission of
Divine harmony, but to an ant-like and properly speaking subhuman
law, to a totalitarian state in which individuality does not flower but
rather is crushed, in which the harmony of m aat is inversely mirrored by
the mechanised chaos of the modern world.
The correspondence of the ancient Chinese and the ancient Egyptian
respect for and understanding of ritual, of , is illuminated by the
following words of Hsun Tsu:

Through rites Heaven and Earth join in harmony, the Sun and
Moon shine, the four seasons proceed in order, the stars and
constellations march, the rivers flow: and all things flourish;
men’s likes and dislikes are regulated and their joys and hates
made appropriate. Those below are obedient; those above are
enlightened; all things change but do not become disordered; only
he who turns his back upon the rites will be destroyed.16
MAAT 21

fhis then, is the state o f the m ed iate, trad ition al w orld, in which
Mile must strive to con tinu e the w isdom o f the past through
observance of ritual and fo rm a lity - it is the state o f a w orld m idway
between primordial unity and ch aos, betw een harm ony and dissolution.
As to the nature of the prim ordial state, it can be glimpsed in
CbuangTsu’s description o f ‘the true m an o f o ld ’ . According to Chuang
Tsu,
The true man of old slept w ith o u t dream ing and w oke w ithout
anxiety. His food was plain and his breath was deep. For the
breath of the true man rose up from his heels w hile the breath of
common men rises from their th ro a ts. W hen they are overcom e,
their words catch in their th ro ats like v o m it. As their lusts and
desires deepen, their heavenly nature grows shallow .
The true man o f old knew nothing abou t loving life or hating
d e a th ----- Carefree he cam e and carefree he w ent. T h a t was
a l l ----- He accepted w hat he was given w ith delight and when it
was gone, he gave it no m ore t h o u g h t ___ Such was the true
man.17

When such a state prevails, there is no need to talk o f virtue or o f


maat, of right and o f w rong, o f order and disorder: things take the
proper course of their ow n accord , spontaneously. It is later, when right
and wrong com e into being in m an ’s m ind, when ritual must com bat
disorder, when the G olden Age gives way to later confusion, that one
must use ritual to o ffset hum an im balance. T h en , through ritual
observance veneration for the K in g, ‘bright and enlightened are those
below; bright and glorious the one ab o v e.’ 18
The antithesis of at, o f harm ony, is sensual pleasure, egotis
m
materialistic acquisition and covetousness, solipsism - the very basis of
the modern era, upon w hich b o th cap italism and com m unism are
based. Little wonder th at tod ay, in such a system , disorder everywhere
prevails, anxiety, fear and con fu sion flourishing! As is said in the Isa
Upanisad: ‘D em onaic, verily, are those w orlds enveloped in blinding
darkness, and to them go after d eath, those w ho are slayers of the
self.’19 These are the asu ras - the sunless ones w ho live in the joyless
dark worlds, giving credence only to asu (physical life), and who forget
their true self (a n d h en a t a m a s a ) . C learly, those who have forgo
ritual remembrance o f the Self have forgotten all vestiges of
primordiality, of the L ig h t, and fo llo w a path of mere acquisition of
wealth and power, or w orse, a path o f satanic attem pts to dom inate the
22 MAAT

physicalworld through technology. O r through the psychic w orld, by


means of ‘v isu a lisa tio n ’a n d sorcery, they are d oom ed to sink ever deep
into d iso rd er and frag m en tation , fo r all o f these are based upon
assertion o f the self, o f the ego, in p lace o f the D iv in e - the very
antithesis o f m aat.
However, to take this discussion fu rth er is beyond th e scope o f the
present w ork. So we pass now fro m the D iv in e h a rm o n y to its D ivine
Origin: the Prim al Ennead.
CHAPTER 3
The Primal Ennead

One of the central misconceptions moderns tend to have of the prisca


tbeologia is that of attributing to it a false solidity, a false and rigid
order, as if each of the Gods were a specific, external being. This is of
course a reflection of the present era, in which the world itself has
‘solidified’ for us, having lost its earlier, fluid quality, becoming for us
merely a concatenation of quantitative sections, objects subject to
‘scientific laws’. Consequently, both religion and magic have become
virtually inconceivable for modern man: he has lost the capacity to
think symbolically, to understand analogically, and so he sees the Gods
as the later Greeks appear to have - as sem i-hum an, almost historical
personas. However, this perception is quite m istaken, as we shall see, for
in Egypt as in any traditional culture, the Gods were recognised to
belong to the principal realm; their order was fluid, not fixed, and one’s
perception of them changed in accordance w ith the particular realm to
which one was addressing oneself, of which one had experience.
The Gods, then, were not mere external players in the drama of
history - as might be assumed from the works of H om er, say - but
rather are the principal Essences of which the tem poral world is a
reflection; they are at once Celestial realities seen ‘outw ardly’ , and
subtle realities seen ‘inw ardly’ . T h e journey inwards, in other words,
mirrors the outward Creation. Creation is an em anation from the
Divine; the journey inward is a return to the Divine. And surrounding
the centre of both, of Mystery itself, is the Prim al Ennead.
The same principal Essences which form the cosmos ‘outwardly’,
from the Origin of being, through the Celestial realm, through the
spheres of the planets and of the M o o n , through to the sphere of Earth,
also form the m icrocosmos of man ‘ inw ardly’ , so that one who passes
through the inward journey of c o n te m p la t io divin is ‘mirrors’ this
transcendent vertical order by which the m acrocosm os was created,
reversed’ as it were. T he mediate Essences, of which the temporal world
1S a reflection, an em anation, are that which we here term ‘Gods’ . The
Eiods are not eternal, strictly speaking. They have their lifetimes,
24 THE PRIMAL ENNEAD

incomparably greater than that of man as temporal being, but they


cannot be forever; they too pass away, for only Brahman remains.
As it is said in the C orpus H erm eticu m : ‘a man (might) dare say that
man upon earth is God subject to death, while God in heaven is man
from death immune’. 1 This is only another way of saying that man as
microcosmos mirrors the macrocosm, that all is within as without,
above as below, that, ultimately, the Essences of humankind and the
Essences of the cosmos are One.
Now of all the primal groupings of the Gods in ancient Egypt, the
most ancient known is that of the Ennead, the Ogdoad and One, and of
the Egyptian sacred cities, the Ennead of Hermopolis is the most ancient
- in fact, the very name K hem ennu means ‘city of the Eight Gods’. The
names of the Gods of Hermopolis were Nu and N ut, Hehu and Hehut,
Kekui and Kekuit, Kereh and Kerehet, the highest being Tehuti, or
Thoth.2 Thus we see the four pairs or emanations into syzygies - or God
and Consort - descending from the Origin. The parallels between this
and the Tibetan and Hindu Gods and their Consorts cannot be ignored;
indeed, the various theogonies of Orient and Occident no doubt derived
from a common, prehistoric source, a pure primordial culture at the very
dawn of humankind, when in truth as the Egyptians said, the Gods
walked upon Earth. But this, too, is outside our present compass.
Why, to return to our subject, did the most primal Gods appear in the
form of the Ennead, the group of nine? The answer is tw o-fold. First, of
course, there is the primacy of the triadic form to contend with: the
Trinity of Gods is unavoidable throughout traditional culture in general,
and in Egyptian culture in particular, in which the three dots
immediately signified divinity. But this universal trinitarianism is in fact
a reflection of the deeper teaching out of which it arose: the teaching of
the three worlds. In consideration of these two aspects of ancient
religion we shall find our answer.
In ancient Egypt, the Divine Trinity takes the form of Osiris, Isis and
Horus, or Set, Nephthys and Anubis, or Khepera, Shu and Tefnut, the
former corresponding to the subtle world, the latter to the Celestial, and
the middle triad to the underworld. In the first two triads there is an
older male God - the Father - a Goddess, His Consort - and a Son, who
partakes of both their natures. The last, highest relationship can be
clarified by reference to one of the most ancient of Egyptian myths,
according to which, in the primal Beginning, only Ra existed, Khepera,
the Sun, from Whom emanated the two later Gods - male and female,
Light and Darkness, Essence and M atter, Shu (Seb) and Tefnut. These
THE PRIMAL ENNEAD 25

Two arose out of Himself, spontaneously, and from Them arose the
others, by turns. Now what can we conclude from this myth?
Above all, we can see that the Gods arc not fixed, hut fluid, each of
the succeeding syzygies being the same Essence manifested upon a
different, ‘lower’ or more concrete level of being. Shu and Tefnut are
emanations of Khepera, Who is in turn an emanation from the Supreme
One. From Shu and Tefnut arose Hehu and Hehut, Kekui and Kekuit -
or Isis and Osiris, Set and Nephthys - at first glance a daunting
theogony. And in fact, the more we penetrate into Egyptian studies, the
more superficially confusing they become: the manifold Gods are so
intricately related as finally to leave one reeling. Yet underlying them,
none the less, is a visionary triadic relationship which does not change,
whatever the particular manifestations in question, a relationship which
can be illuminated, first, by reference to the Qabalistic Sephiroth, the
Tree of Life, which arose from and mirrors the Egyptian cosmology and
theogony just referred to, as can be seen by reference to the following
image.
At top is the first triad, apex upward, consisting of Kether, Binah and
Chokhmah; in the centre is the second triad, apex downward, consisting
of Geburah, Chesed above, and Tiphareth below: below is the third
triad, apex also downwards, consisting in Hod, Netzach, and Yesod (the
Lunar Sephira), while at the base of both the Egyptian and Qabalistic
metaphysical visions lies Earth (Malkuth). The correspondence between
the Egyptian and the Qabalistic hierophanies is not coincidental - being,
even to the ‘direction’ of the three triangles, exactly alike - but rather
arises because the latter is a reflection of the former, and because both
are reflections of primordial Reality.
And if we take into consideration the Hermetic three worlds - the
Celestial, the subtle, and the phenomenal - each being a reflection of its
superior, we can see that the Divine trinities must then be manifested
not upon only one, but in three different worlds, which in the
Upanisads are termed bhu h, bhu vab and svah, or Earth, Atmosp
and Sky. In the terrestrial world - that most distant as it were from the
Origin - one finds Nephthys and Typhon,the mirror syzygy of Isis and
Osiris but, as Plutarch notes,3 the name Nephthys implies ‘at the land’s
end’ - that is, the densest matter, farthest from the Celestial realm, and
abutting upon the Ocean of Chaos below. Initially, in the Golden Age,
Typhon and Nephthys were beneficent, but as time went on, as Heaven
and Earth began to separate, they - and Typhon in particular - came to
be malevolent, bent upon chaos and destruction; they exist, therefore, as
28 THE PRIMAL ENNEAD

and air and upon land, whose ‘names are manifold and unknown
Gods even know them not’. But to understand the tradit'
metaphysical understanding of Creation, we must jettison the moT*3'
preconceptions of either evolutionism or of a single Creation at
beginning of time - for both are preconceptions of only limited vah/
and considerable detriment. The former - evolutionism - is exceedin \ '

destructive when wrongly applied to social and historical spheres, wher


it represents the very antithesis of the truth, whereas the latter - a single
Creation - although not inaccurate, excludes the very heart 0f
transcendent, emanatory Creation, which in reality occurs each instant
not in the distant past only.
For both of these imply that Creation is only upon a linear, historical
scale, when in fact Creation takes place every instant, every day. As is
written in the Praises o f Ra:

Praise be to Thee, O R a, exalted Sekhem; thou makest new the


Earth, and openest a way for that which is therein.9

Each day, the ancient Egyptians sought to help the Sun arise anew, to
purify the Earth - not naively, as some have misguidedly alleged,
because they feared that the visible sun might not rise anew, but because
they recognised that the Celestial Sun might not rise fo r , that they
might grow ignorant of the Celestial Reality and give credence only to
the material, temporal world. For if such an eventuality came to pass,
the Egyptian priests were well aware, their cherished connections with
the ancient primordial Golden Age would be severed, humankind would
be bereft of the Divine Presence, and would wander downward into
darkness, fragmentation and infernality.
Although it is inevitable that there should be a dawn, a midday, and
an evening for man and his world as for the day itself - in other words,
even though evil must needs come - woe unto him through whom the
darkness cometh. The ancient Egyptians were well aware of man’s
divine responsibilities upon Earth. And throughout the cycle the Sun
remains - even in the darkness the Sun remains, travelling upon the
‘barque of millions of years’, carrying with it the spirits of those who
have ‘passed beyond the sphere of the m oon’, who have obtained not
‘complete liberation’ but ‘conditional liberation’. This process of
emanatory Creation, then, takes place not just once, in the far dim
reaches of the past, but now each instant, if we are but aware of it. In
the Creation, Ra says:
THE PRIMAL ENNEAD 29

Give birth Seb and Nut to O siris, H om s, Set, Isis, Nephthys from
the womb, one after the other of them ; they give birth and they
multiply in this earth .10

Note, then, the tense: they give birth. Likewise it was said by the ancient
Egyptians that R a , in order to rise e a c h m o rn in g must first defeat in
battle the primal serpent Apep, and all the allied dark powers who seek
to prevent His rising.11
From these instances, we can see that the Divine Creation, and the
Gods within it, belong not to tem porality but to the principial realm, to
the supratemporal Origin of existence ‘vertically’ rather than
‘horizontally’. This vertical dim ension of existence is precisely that
which gave such metaphysical depth and spiritual power to the Egyptian
world, for by means of it every single object in Creation was invested
with a Celestial significance: the entire Egyptian world was translucent,
a transmission of the Divine. Each anim al, each plant, each site bore a
sacred meaning, was a revelation in itself, a theophany. Indeed, it is
related that when a R om an soldier once killed a cat, sacred to Isis, the
Egyptians demanded his death, so serious were they as to sym bological
power.12 The significance of the cat lay not only in the fact that it was a
living being, but also in that of which it was a m anifestation - just as
was the asp, the fish, the ow l, the haw k, the ibis, the ass: each bore with
it a constellation of meanings, as do each of the Gods.
It is this vertical dim ension of C reation which has given rise to so
much modern confusion over traditional symbology in general, and
Egyptian metaphysics in particular, as can be witnessed in the strange
argument over whether the Egyptians were polytheist, m onotheist, or
henotheist, as various scholars have at times alleged. T h e answer to this
dilemma lies in the intricate and unfathom able interrelationship
between the One and the M any, as Plotinus in his E n n ead s (significantly
so titled) put it. Polytheism and m onotheism are not, seen aright, in
opposition to one another: the form er is an aspect of the latter.
In truth, the Gods of ancient Greece and Egypt bear a relationship to
the Creator similar to that which the Angels of Judeo-Christian and
Islamic traditions bear to God: an interrelationship infinitely mysterious
and profound. Here we can begin to see the essence of the Mystery
which the primal Ennead of H erm opolis, and Creation itself,
perennially presents for man - and even more so for modern man,
blinkered and confused as he now stands. Here, in what might aptly be
termed the Tree of L ife, lies the M ystery of M ysteries, the hidden
30 THE PRIMAL ENNEAD

relations and meaning of existence itself, veiled from us not by any


external prohibition, but only through our own blindness. Although we
cannot even attempt, in the present work, to re-illumine, or even to
suggest the myriad and profound ramifications of the Primal Ennead,
we can at least point toward its power and meaning, as its true
elucidation can only come through Divine revelation, which no words
can provide.
And so we shift, from a consideration of the nature of the Gods and
of Divine emanation, to the consideration of the Gods themselves, and
the Mysteries contained within their names, beginning, first, with the
Queen: Isis.
CHAPTER 4
Isis

Perhaps no God or Goddess has ever enjoyed the worship and celebra­
tion of so many throughout the ancient w orld, from the earliest times
up to and through the tim e of C hristianity, as did Isis. Indeed, even after
Isis herslef had ‘vanished’ under that nam e, ‘She of the M any Nam es’
continued under the guise o f the V irgin M ary, W ho in turn assumed
many of the functions th at Isis had served in earlier epochs. Both, like
Kanzeon Bodhisattva in M ahayana Buddhism , ‘hear the cries of the
world’ - both are the ‘com passionate deliverers of the w orld’s suffering’.
But who is Isis, the reg in a coeli, Queen of Heaven,
Egyptian was ^ ?
V4

For an answer we turn, first, to the m yth of Isis and R a , found in the
Turin Papyrus,1 in w hich Isis is seen as blackm ailing the poisoned Sun
God Ra into revealing his m ost secret, sacred N am es of Power in return
for an antidote. For in this tale we can see the principial Essence of Isis:
she is M ediatrix between the Celestial and the terrestrial.
In the text in question, Isis is defined as ‘She W ho loved the Gods;
She Who was wearied o f m en; She W h o loved best the realm of the
spirits’.2 In other words, Isis, though necessarily partaking of the highest
realms - those of the Gods and o f R a - was none the less most closely
affiliated with the m ediate subtle realm , the world of spirits ( ),
the Atmosphere, the Vast Sea in w hich the tem poral world was
precipitated like a tiny island. Isis is the Queen of the subtle realm , and
therefore in her own way ‘m istress o f the E arth . . . like R a . . . (and) of
like rank and power in H eaven’, 3 for she rules the essences of herbs and
animals and all sentient things. According to the myth under
consideration, Isis hid a dart in R a ’s p ath, and when he encountered it
he fell mortally poisoned, and was revitalised only by divulging to Isis,
the Great Sorceress, his True N am es. W ith in this tale we begin to
glimpse the nature of Isis, elucidated by the Q abalistic teaching that
each of the Sephiroth, when em anated, ‘spilled over’ into
disequilibrium, and were later returned to Divine O rder, and that each
of the Sephira corresponded to aspects of the D ivine N am es. For both

31
the Qabalaand the talcs o f Isis refer to the emanatio
from the l, to the essential superstructure o f Creation, mediat^
ea
R
between ‘above’ and ‘below’.
That Isis, then, should have a mediate place in the Egyptian theog0n
is only proper,for she, like Egypt herself at that tim e, lay mediae
between rhe primordial past and the secular, m aterialist future, between
the sacred and the e.Although in the myth under consideration
profan
Ra' is depicted as being senile and decrepit, obviously, since Ra cannot in
his nature change, it must be something else which is being suggested. In
fact, it is not Ra Who becomes senile, but rather man who becomes
blind to Ra. In this tale, in other words, we see not the senescence of
Ra, hut the senescence of Egypt herself, and her blindness to Ra, a
blindness remedied by Isis, who acts as interm ediary or bridge between
man and the Sun to which he is ever m ore b lin d . Isis, in sum, not
fundamentally different from the Sun, is rather a m an ifestatio n of the
Divine Compassion accessible to man in an age o f w aning faith and
wisdom.
Hence Isis said: T have revealed to mankind m ystic initiations. I have
taught reverence for the Gods; I have established the tem p les.’ Now
needless to say these are ultimately the action s of the Divine Sun
inherent within Creation and within hum anity, fro m w h o m Isis cannot
be separate. However, within a given h istorical period certain
incarnations or manifestations of the Divine are of far m ore aid than
others. They speak to a given age and need, and so it w as - and perhaps
is - for Isis. As is said in the litany Praises , ‘T h o u a rt indeed Isis’ .5
When Isis - or any - bestows blessings upon m a n , it is R a w h o bestows
them.6
From this we can begin, to o , to see the re la tio n o f Isis to Nephthys,
her sister and consort of Typhon, the latter being a re fle ctio n and aspect
of Isis, just as Isis is an aspect o f R a . A cco rd in g to P lu ta r c h , Isis is that
which is manifest; Nephthys is, or rules, th a t w h ich is unm anifest .7
Nephthys, then, is that of the subtle realm w h ich is u n m a n ife st, which
is outside the pale of the temporal realm , w hereas Isis is ‘ she of the green
wings and the crescent m oon ’ and, while including Nephthys as one
aspect of her, nevertheless pertains more the ‘ w orld below the moon ,
the world of generation and of living beings. N ephthys, on the other
hand, is the ‘shade’ of Isis; she manifests the residues or traces of the
living world, representing decay, dissolution.
Isis’s sign was Sothis, the dog-star, which signified her power, for
that star was associated with the rising of the N ile , and the coming of
ISIS 33

new each year. This association was reinforced by her companion


u nubis, the Divine Messenger, who lives between the Divine and
fhe earthly realms, whose dog-head is half black and half gold,8 and
whose barking separates stranger from friend.9 The name ‘Sothis’
derives from a trinity of Gods: Seth, or Typhon, the principial power of
darkness, ignorance, anger and destruction; Osiris; and his consort, Is/s
herself. In this one star is, then, an intricate glyph of Osiris being
overcome by Seth, found by Hermanubis, rescued and restored by Isis,
all condensed into its cyclical pattern, marking the heat of summer and
the cold depths of winter, the rising and the falling of the Nile: all life.
An even clearer indication of Isis’s nature can be glimpsed from two
tales related by Pausanias of men who had dared to profane her temples.
In both tales, a profane man, who had no right to enter, burst into the
temple out of curiosity: one on his own account, the other on behalf of
a Roman governor. Both entered during festival time; both found the
shrine filled with spectres. The first returned to Tithorea, where he died;
the other returned to the Roman governor, told his tale, and then
immediately expired as well. Pausanias thereby concludes that ‘it is ill
for mankind to see the Gods in bodily shape’, echoing Homer.10 While
the tales do not divulge anything of the Mysteries themselves, they do
corroborate our observation that Isis’s domain was essentially the subtle
realm, the realm of ‘spectres’, and that sacred Knowledge is
self-protecting.
The only remaining account, in ,to of that which cou
revealed of the Mysteries, and the Mysteries of Isis in particular, is that
of Apuleius in his novel T he G olden Although, clearly, we cannot
reproduce that tale in its entirety here, despite its worthiness, we can at
least distil from it the general characteristics of an initiation, as well as
of Isis herself. For from this account we can see quite clearly that even at
that late date - even in the second-century-AD Rome of Apuleius - the
power of Isis was unabated, immense, able to inspire her worshippers
with visions of her splendour, with the inexpressible plenitude and
gratitude of reception into the Divine.
Apuleius’ account of the Mysteries is to be found in Book X I,
beginning when, having been exhausted by his miseries, driven to the
very edge of the sea by his troubles and enchantments, ‘at land’s end’,
the hero Lucius immerses himself seven times in the ocean and with
tear-stained face turns to the orb of the Full Moon as it emerged from
the waves of the sea. In dire straits, bereft of all hope, he addresses Isis,
She of the Moon, Queen of Heaven:
34 ISIS

whether you he Ceres, motherly nurse of all growth . . . or celestial


Venus, who in the first moment of Creation mingled the sexes in
the generation of mutual desires . . . or the sister of Phoebus . . 0r
Proserpine . . . whose triple face has the power to ward off the
assaults of ghosts and to close the cracks in the Earth
dispensing your radiance w hen th e Sun has a b a n d
mine)

Then from the ocean she rises, such beauty as words fail to approach-
upon her head is a chaplet of flowers in the midst of which is a circlet -
a softly glowing moon supported by two vipers that rise from the Earth
near blades of corn. Her garments are many-hued: yellow, white, red
while around them falls a softly shining black cape, passing over her left
shoulder, a cape spangled with stars, a crescent moon breathing forth
from the centre. In her right hand is the triple chord of the sistrum;11 jn
her left hand a golden boat, above which rises the head of an asp from
its sacred coils.
To poor Lucius (whose true nature, by virtue of his name, is light),
still entrapped in the body of an ass, she speaks:

Behold, Lucius - moved by your prayer I come to you - I, the


natural mother of all life, mistress of the elements, first child of
time, Supreme Divinity, Queen of those in H ell, First of those in
Heaven, the manifestation of all the Gods and Goddesses - I, who
govern by my nod the crests of light in the sky, the purifying wafts
of the ocean, and the lamentable silences of Hell - I, whose single
Godhead is venerated over all the Earth under m anifold forms,
varying rites, and changing names.

She admonishes Lucius to ‘only remember Her’, for by keeping the


remembrance ‘fast in his heart’s deep core’ he should, if he remains
faithful, after death live on praising Her in the Elysian fields, for

if you are found to merit My love by your dedicated obedience,


religious devotion, and constant chastity, you will discover that it
is within My power to prolong your life beyond the limits set to it
by Fate.12

It is quite certain that we have here not simply a literary account of


the Mysteries nor, as with Firmicus Maternus, a bitter diatribe by a
Christian against the ‘pagans’, nor the distanced, impersonal account of
Plutarch, but the words of an eyewitness, sympathetic of Isis as She
ISIS 35

rcnlly was, seen through the eyes of Her worshippers. And though Her
worshippers were drawn from every class, we have here an account by
one of the literati, a scholar, who had found serenity not in the ‘bitter
cross of anxiety’, as the Rom an phrase had it, but in the folds of the
Great Goddesses’ robes. Here, unm istakably, we have a true religious
experience, one which speaks to , gives solace to, the troubled soul of
man, for whom neither scholarship nor earthly delights offer any lasting
comfort. It is for this reason that Apuleius’ account is so moving.
The account of his initation builds to a kind of universal clim ax: the
populace throngs into the city as the sun rises - all are ju bilant, buoyant
as Lucius himself, who knows that his deliverance is im m inent. The
colourful pageant goes on, women dressed in the w hite vestures of
spring, scattering balm and flow ers, while others bear mirrors upon
their backs, walking before the Goddess so that all approach her Image.
Musicians play upon their pipes; poets recite; the shaven initiates walk
behind in a great band, dressed in purest w hite, shaking sistra of brass,
silver and gold, w ith the priests in the rear, carrying the Great Lamp and
the altars. Behind all fo llo w the Gods themselves: the Messenger of
Heaven and H ell, Anubis, face half black and half gold, bearing his rod
in his left hand, follow ed by a C ow , emblem of the M other of all, and
last of all one bearing the sacred symbol of the Supreme D eity,
inexpressible, veiled in the Deep Silence of true religion.
Throughout Apuleius’ account we find a wealth of descriptions of the
Mysteries and of sacred symbology: the sistrum w ith its three chords,
for the three w orlds; the sacred uraeus, the asps which symbolise the
coiled serpent of Sakti entw ined around Siva (or of Isis coiled round
Osiris); Isis arising from the G reat O cean; the golden barque of R a , the
Sun, in which the dead find life eternal, a kind of im m ortality; the
gooseneck prow of the sacred barque, signifying the unerring homeward
path which Isis and R a represented. Indeed, the list is long, the
symbolism intricate.
But what of the initiation itself? O f th at, Lucius can say little: not
because he would not, but because he can not, not least because the
power of the Goddess is to bestow death as well as life, punishment as
well as weal - and yet from his tale the essence of the event, the turning,
can be inferred; we can see there the immense gratitude and serenity, the
joy and universal harmony which it bestows, not only upon him alone,
but upon all in the populace, to each according to his need. As Apuleius
says: ‘At midnight the Sun shone in all his full splendour. I could tell
you more, but you would not understand.’
The Sun shines at midnight: in this we see the essence of the ‘ft|
Rite’13 of the ancient Egyptians, of the entry into death itself whichT*
at the heart of the Mysteries - for ‘initiation is a kind of volum'^
death with but the slightest chance of redemption’. Initiation bestows^
redemption in the Sun, the Divine Sun which appears in the very dept^
of human despair, when egoism is transcended, when the world of f0rrt1S
subtle and dense, drops away - then, at midnight, comes that of which
nothing more can be said: Divine Plenitude overwhelming.
Isis, then, is the principal generative force, associated with the healing
herbs and the powers of medicine, with the growth of wheat and corn
(the domestication of which marked the inception of Egypt herself, and
delineated the entrance into the present historical epoch), being
mediatrix, meeting point as it were of the Gods and the temporal world.
Hers is the self-motive power of generation,14 of which agriculture is the
outward manifestation, and of which the green wings and crescent
moon are symbol.15 The root of Her name is closely affiliated with the
Egyptian root pr,which implies house, or home, suggesting that She is
Mistress within the Houses of the Gods. As Cassiopeia, she reclines head
downwards upon the night horizon. One of her names, too, was Isis
Pelagia: she of the waves. Hence as Venus she was envisioned as riding
above the ocean of temporality. Yet she was also Ge-Meter, or Earth-
Mother, which in Greek became Demeter.16
One of the most suggestive characteristics of Isis, however, is her rela­
tion to the coiled serpents or asps with which she is always associated, for
the serpent is almost universally a symbol of the vital force, the coiled
essence of life itself, rising up the spine to the crown of the head. This
attribution of the life-force to the serpentine form is particularly true
within Tantric tradition, in which k,the Serpent
slumbers at the base of the spine, in the realm of generation, is awakened
as it rises up the susumna, the sacred channel, axis of the body, through
the aperture of Brahma’, conferring liberation upon the adept.
Although we cannot of course say that Isis Sakti, nor that Osiris is
Siva, the central pole around which the coiled serpent, Sakti, is
slumbering, yet none the less the two pairs are incontrovertibly inter­
related: it is not, after all, insignificant that the constellation Cassiopeia
- She of the Throne, Mulier Sedis - should circle round the Pole with
the passage of the year, just as Isis, with whom she is associated, hovered
over the slain Osiris to reinvigorate him after his death and
dismemberment.
What, then, is the relationship between Siva and Sakti? Essentially, it
ISIS 37

. t|iat between power (S a k ti) and pow er-holder (Siv a), betw een activity
m \tbc quiescent centre. Siva is the pow er-holder ( ), and Sakti
is the power, the G reat M o th er of the Universe. Siva is pure
consciousness; Sakti is M in d , life, m atter. N eith er can exist w ithout the
other: like Osiris and Isis, they were ‘ joined together in the W o m b ’ as
One; they are Divine R e a lity , from w h ich , when we overlay nam e and
form (nam
aand pa,) mind and m atter, the cosm os arises. Hence Isis is
ru
‘She of Many N am es’ , and so, according to the it is not
Brahma, Visnu and Rudra w ho create, but their A ctivity is the
nature of p r a k r it i,n for w hich reason the fem ale is depicted above the
male in Tantric representations, just as Isis, in Egyptian iconography,
hovered above the prone O siris.
To continue the T a n tric im agery, in the E arth-centre called the
M uladbara-cakra,K undalini Sak ti m anifests as a serpent coiled round a
self-produced phallus ( g:) indeed, the word ‘kundali’
lin
bhu
vaym
S
means ‘coiled’ or inpotentia, and she is said to produce the phenome
world by the ‘veiling’ ( m a y a )o f pure consciousness of
Consciousness - ‘spiralling fo rth ’ spontaneously, thereby creating the
‘Eggs of Brahm a’ (B ra h m a n d a ) by turning back upon Hersel
forming a coil or loop. In Greek sym bolism , w hich derived from the
Egyptian, this form was termed the ‘Orphic Egg’ . W hen she turns back
upon herself for a third tim e, the pyramid shape is said to be formed
(Srngataka). Like Isis, She is a ‘receptacle of that continuous stream of
ambrosia which flows from Eternal Bliss’ 19 (from Brahman through
Siva). She, the ‘world-bew ilderer’ , is ‘bright as m illions of m oons’ and
‘by her in this world-egg (B rahm an da) illum ined’ . 20 Like Isis, her
symbol is the white lotus which floats upon and arises out of the mire of
dense m atter, and yet is pure and unsullied.
In brief, we can see from this discussion that there is indeed a direct
correspondence between the metaphysics of Tantrism and the symbology
of ancient Egypt, and that the former can shed a great deal of light upon
the latter, of which is left, as prophesied, ‘only carvings in stone', the
merest outward signs. But no doubt the two traditions descended from a
common source, in the indefinitely ancient past, perhaps through the
Chaldees; certainly in the Near East. Regardless of their apparent
differences, the two traditions are virtually identical in symbology,
correspondences which, though arising out of universal truth,
nevertheless point to a temporal unity as well. Essentially the Egyptian
Mysteries, like the yoga of Tantrism, consisted in the ‘return’ or
‘retracing’ of the creation of the cosmos inwardly, so that just as in the
38 ISIS

Beginning (which always is, being supratemporal) there was only BljSs
pure Consciousness - so too the mortal who ‘sheds this mortal coil’ (
perhaps more accurately, releases it) recapitulates inwardly and inverse^
the Creation, attaining through her, the Creative Power, union with th
Primordial.21
It is interesting, while considering this parallelism between thc
Tantric tradition and the ancient Egyptian, to note that a predominant
symbol of Isis was the Cow (Nut), not only because she is a
manifestation of the abundance of the Earth, and because she js
emblematic of the shift from the primordial Golden Age to the
traditional agriculture of ancient Egypt (based upon wheat, barley and
cattle) - being therefore symbols of Isis and of traditional civilisation,
both of which lie mediate between the ‘above’ and the ‘below’ but also
because the two horns of the cow suggests the horns of the waxing
moon, the duality of the world of generation as well. And the symbol of
the sacred cow reappears in the is,where speech is li
pan
U
celestial cow, of which the first two udders are of the Gods (
vasat), the third is that of man ( han,) and the four
fathers ( pitr,) and termed svaddha.11 The vital breath is her bull; Mind
is her calf. And so once again we see the perennial Trinity: Osiris, the
bull; Isis, the cow; and Horus, the calf.
Now we must, throughout consideration of these matters, keep in
mind that although we speak in dualistic terms of Siva and Sakti, of
Osiris and Isis, these are not separate entities but rather aspects or
emanations of one another, and of the Supreme Lord, Isvara, himself an
emanation of the Divine Sun. Indeed, this is perhaps the central error of
the modern in turning to ancient metaphysics: the false attribution of
literalism and dualism to the traditional - like the Chinese Taoist
teaching of yin and yang, for which mere dualism would be anathema,
unthinkable, such teaching belonging as it does to the world of
primordial unity. As a result, the various traditions can illumine one
another, in so far as each is a reflection of the same principial unity -
and this illumination is especially necessary today, due to modern
fragmentation and incomprehension.
In any event, having examined Isis’s significance in terms of
cosmology, and in terms of the initiation of Lucius, it is apparent that,
however magnificent the metaphysical implications of her as Creator, it
is evident that her power and historical longevity (in the fourth century
AD when Christianity was finally able to destroy the remnants of the
religions of antiquity, Hers was still the predominant sect) was due to
ISIS 39

her answering a p rim ord ial need w ith in m a n , an answ er to individual


longing- She, the Magna ,M
ater th e H o ly O n e , w as the healer
She Who Resurrects, She W h o C o m e s to the Aid of the Suffering, and
who with them suffered, sittin g ‘ low ly and te a rfu l’ by the well of
Byblos, She, h u m an ity's n ever-ab sen t , from W h o m even the
Gates of Hell were opened to th o se w h o w ere truly penitent.
And it was here th a t her tru e and u n assailable religious pow er lay, not
in her cosm ological m ean in g , b u t in th e rev elatio n of her Divine M ercy,
her love, in her role as h ealer and c o m fo rte r. In fa c t, it w as com m on
practice in ancient E gy p t to sleep in her tem p les an d , by virtue of the
influences therein, to be h ealed , o r to o b ta in a vision of her (aspects of
the same M ercy). E ssen tial to her w o rk in g , th o u g h , w as the elem ent of
surprise, of Divine L ig h tn in g . L ik e K an zeon B o d h isattv a her healings
appeared when least e x p e cte d , and w hen the fu ture looked m ost dim ;
for then the O pening w as th ere, so th a t the D ivine m igh t ‘burst fo rth ’,
illuminating and resu rrectin g life even as th rou gh the lam enting Isis
Osiris could be resurrected fro m fra g m e n ta tio n and death.
And it is here, in ind ivid ual re v e la tio n , in the d yn am ism of her
infinite pow er, in the b esto w in g o f peace and h arm on y upon those in
distress, that Isis’s p o w er still resides, still m an ifests, if one only has
unswerving faith , d ed icatio n and d e v o tio n . T h e G reat M o th e r of all ten
thousand things ca n n o t v an ish ; it is only w e w h o b ecom e blind to her
wisdom and solace. Y et w hen w e turn back she is still there, as she was
for Lucius, beckoning, allu rin g, w elco m in g .
CHAPTER 5
Osiris

Although we have necessarily devoted some atten tio n , in passing, to the


nature of Osiris during our discussion of Isis, it is nevertheless essential
to focus upon Osiris, for in doing so we not only understand Isis better
from whom he is inseparable, but also begin to glimpse the nature of the
Mysteries themselves, from which both are o f course indivisible. Isis and
Osiris cannot be understood apart from one another.
None the less, we can centre upon certain aspects o f Osiris - and first
of all those to which attention was drawn by Plutarch. According to
Plutarch, some said that Osiris was only another nam e for Pluto, just as
Proserpine was another name for Isis, and th at ‘P luto is the body’,
whilst ‘Bacchus is the soul intoxicated w ithin i t ’. 1 B ut in addition, said
Plutarch, Osiris meant, originally at least, ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ - in
Heaven and on Earth.2 For Plato Osiris signified the ‘holy Logos’ or
Divine Reason.3
Now as we have seen, Isis is ‘She of M any N am es’, by definition
m ultifold, and so the same must be said also o f her divine tw in, Osiris:
each of their names veils a multitude of aspects. In the meanings of
‘Osiris’ suggested above, we can see at once the celestial and the
terrestrial nature of the God and the Goddess. B oth have a ‘buried’ or
‘subterranean’ nature as the divine veiled w ithin the Earth, in the
underworld - this world, in which they are latent just as Pluto and
Proserpine are hidden in the underworld. Bacchus, or Dionysius, with
whom Osiris has also been identified, signifies the ‘soul reeling as if
drunken’ in the influx of temporal current accompanying incarnation,
as Plato said.4 In brief, we can see that the M ysteries o f Isis and Osiris
are bound up with the inception of tem poral existence or, perhaps more
accurately, with the return ,hom
e with the ascent, birth be
of the descen
t, the Mysteries then consisting in the recapitulation of this
‘journey’. Isis, then, signifies the dynamic, motive aspect of this ascent;
Osiris the Intelligible Centre, the initiate ‘drawing upon’ the former in
order to realise the latter, in a polarised alternation.
Consequently, in Apuleius’ novel we find that Lucius (light)

40
OSIRIS 41

ndergocs three initiations: that of Isis, that of Osiris, and, later,


i nother of Isis. This alternation between polarities is revealing when
^nipared, once again, with the worship of Sakti and Siva in Tantrism:
the awakening of the dalenergy has to come before the glimpse of
kiw
Reality, the Bliss (Knowledge) of Siva, after which the energy must he
reawakened, in an ascent between polarities which are emanations of
one another upon the vertical axis. In the same way, by awakening Isis
the worshipper rouses Her power, glimpsing Divine Reality (Osiris
resurrected), and later again awakening to Her power in an even greater
degree, each being a step in an ascent between two poles which are in
reality one. This unity is symbolised, for both Isis and Osiris, by the
pouring of water from two urns: the water pours from them both, yet is
water: one in two. And the Two are absolutely One in the most ancient
of words: 10.
In the process of ascent, the initiate undergoes a change, not in any
physical way, but in vision, becoming ep o p tic (second-sighted), a change
which is marked by the name Sarapis, the ‘common name of those who
have changed their nature’, and ‘the union of Osiris and Apis in one
word’.5 Apis the bull of course signifies the nature of Osiris as the
Intelligible World which ‘impregnates’ N ut, or Isis, the Divine Cow -
phenomenality. He is Sun and She M oon or reflection, receptacle, the
essence of which is in movement. Osiris, then, like Siva, is essentially a
‘power-holder’ - the radiant centre, the Divine Knowledge - and so his
symbols, in ancient Egypt, were the Eye and the Royal Sceptre, as well
as the Hawk. The holding of the sceptre signifies His phallic nature as
the axial centre of the m anifold world, the axis of which the Eye is the
centre and through which the H aw k can dart, swift as light.
Who then is Osiris? In the H y m n O siris he is described variously as
‘the substance of which the Tw o Lands were m ade’, as ‘Tern, Divine
Food of doubles’, as the ‘beneficent Spirit am ong Spirits’ who ‘judges
Heaven and E arth’, gives ‘green herbs and abundance’, ‘brings joy and
gladness everywhere’, under ‘m anifold nam es’, whose ‘word is
and who ‘has given His m ight to all the G od s’.6
Many of these are names and attributes of Isis as well - and with
good reason, as we have seen, the tw o being aspects of one another. But
the central theme, none the less, remains: that Osiris is the , the
Spirit among Spirits, the Essence of which Isis is motive force. It is for
this reason that Osiris is seen as a judge, for after death man is not so
much judged as he is judge o f himself. It is we w ho, after death,
condemn ourselves; it is humans w ho, because of their own ignorance
1

44 OSIRIS

Egyptians regarding their dead become clear: for the preservation of the
bodies of the dead took place not only to provoke remembrance 0f
them, but to prolong certain aspects of individuality in order that the
deceased might purify themselves in the Celestial realms ruled by Osiris
thereby avoiding rebirth in tem porality, as well as irradiating their
beneficent influence over the lands. Destruction of the body releases or
obliterates certain aspects of the individuality w hich, by virtue of bodily
preservation and the accompanying ritual, are indefinitely prolonged, in
order that the deceased might after death attain at least ‘provisional
liberation' in Ra.
The formulas, the rituals, the visualisations, the accoutrements of the
funereal rites, then, were not auxiliary to the physical preservation, but
rather were the essence of the rites, of which the latter was but sign and
seal. The same prolongation of individuality was in Taoism termed the
‘longevity of the immortals’, who were depicted as sailing into the
Empyrean on the backs of a Celestial Dragon or a Celestial Tiger. This
immortality, however, cannot be considered com plete liberation, which
can be realised only when the nature of one’s being as the Divine is truly
seen, when the Two are re-cognised as One.
In the kundalini ,yoga with which we must here necessarily be
concerned, this is realised when, m icrocosm ically, She ( ) is seen to
be roused within and ‘travels’ up the axis o f the body
through the cakrs, or centres - these being the different degrees of
incarnation itself, from gross to subtle - until She is seen to be united
with, indivisible from, iva,the Lord of the W orld, Pure Consci
S
Now macrocosmically, She is Herself veiled from herself, maya> but
microcosmically, She is the central creative power com e to rest within
the individual, which, when aroused, joins ultim ately with Siva, at
which point, after death ( praly:dissolution) liberation is obtain
that individual, just as by means of the M a b a -p r a la y a or final
dissolution, liberation is obtained for those in the ‘realm of provisional
liberation’, in the Heavens.12 Consequently if, as most moderns do, we
view Isis and Osiris only macrocosmically, we thereby block ourselves
from the most profound interpretation of their meaning, and indeed
from our own true nature, which is indivisible from them. It is not
insignificant that Xenophon, in his novel , has his hero and
heroine, after a long separation, reunite in a temple of Isis, she pressing
her lips against his and breathing into him the life again: this is the
reunion of Osiris and Isis, of Siva and Sakti, the re-cognition of who
they, who we truly are, the consummation of existence itself.
OSIRIS 45

Osiris, or Siva, exists on the form less level as pure bliss, as liberation
( mukti), becom ing on the form al or manifested level enjoyment
(bhukti). Osiris as transcendent being never changes, but his manifested
or immanent aspect as Isis does change; indeed, change. In his highest
degree he is P
arm
a-Siva, the Lord (Isvara) who is worshipped by all the
devatas, the Divine M an ifestatio n s. C osm ologically, he is affiliated
with Purusa, she with ti; he is Source, she is Divine M anifestation
rakn
P
and this is also true w ithin the individual, below as above.
It is for this reason th at O siris was known as the ‘Great B lack’13 and
as the ‘Great Green ; 14 the Black because he was unknown to
humankind, hidden, the im m anent Centre, ‘Father and M other of all
men’ who ‘live from his breath and eat from his body’, and the Green
because he is the Source and Lord of all beings and all lands, the centre
also of Isis herself, and therefore of all growth and creation, just as the
Sun is ultim ately the source of the M o o n ’s light. Indeed, just as one
must pass the sphere of the M oon to move toward the sphere of the Sun,
so one must first, as Apuleius has it, pass through the initiation of Isis
before receiving that of O siris; just as one must arouse Sakti before
realising Siva. Before one knows the Great Black one must first know
the Great Green (Isis).
But what was the essence of Osiris for the greater body of the
faithful, those who had not yet received the Mysteries? In the answer to
this question we begin to see the way in which the Mysteries functioned
within the traditional cultures, for the distinction which many now
make between exoteric and esotoric, between sacred and profane, is
purely a reflection of the modern dualistic mindset, bearing no relation
to the seamless unity and harmony of the traditional cultures - of which
ancient Egypt, certainly, was once a remarkable instance. For in
Egyptian culture we can see how the worship of the greater body
reflected, reinforced and merged with the more direct sacred Knowledge
of those initiated into the Mysteries themselves, which formed the pole
Arabic: tb,) the axis around which the culture revolved, just as the
qu
constellations circle round the North Pole. The lamentations of the
populace in concert with Isis, in search of her lost consort Osiris,
wailing and mourning during certain festivals, mirrors humanity's
longing for sacred Knowledge, without which they live in fragmentation
and ignorance.
I The lamentations of the ancient Egyptian populace at large - tens of
thousands of women identified with Isis, along with many other
ordinary men and women - beating their breasts and mourning must
46 OSIRIS

have formed an awe-inspiring din and spectacle, being a manifestation


en m asse of the Mysteries which are, w ithin the san ctu m sanctorum 0f
the temple, resolved. T h e very act of C reation, as we have seen, is tk
‘separation’ of Isis from Osiris, veiling herself from herself, and so th
initiatory resolution of this separation is a restoration to the primordial
unity of Knowledge and becoming. Everyone in the culture participated
in this restoration, regardless of their degree of insight, if for no other
reason than this: that the attention is, by means of the mass festival
turned inward, their longing turned toward the sacred pole of existence
which Osiris, lost and mourned, represented. In this way, not only were
the needs of the populace for ‘external’ worship satisfied, but an intent,
a direction was set towards the Inner Sanctum of the Mysteries which
they would, one day, in a future life if not in this, enter. At the same
time, the fervour and pageantry of the worshipping populace provided a
magnificent ambience for the celebration of the M ysteries themselves:
here, in ancient Egypt, the inner was indeed the outer, and the outer
revealed the inner, if only one had eyes to see.
It is for this reason that despite the ever greater particularisations of
modern Egyptology, our reliance is still upon the observations of the
ancient Greeks and Romans - for what m atters, u ltim ately, is not the
particular names and manifestations of the G ods, but the Mysteries by
which they are revealed, to which the ancient Greek and Rom an writers
still had access, and to which we, whatever our ‘discoveries’, do not. In
reality, the wholesale disclosing of the artifacts o f the ancient past, still
charged as they are with subtle power, may well have a more malefic
than beneficent result, loosing forces which are not ‘bound’ any longer
by their Divine grounding.
In any event, Apuleius’ chronicle of his initiation is evidence enough
of the power Osiris still held, Isis still radiated, even in the second
century AD in Rome. And this direct contact w ith the Mysteries, which
travel like a stream through ancient history, is far more crucial to true
understanding than any wealth of mere ‘in form ation ’. It is this contact,
either direct - through initiation - or indirectly through cultural
irradiation, which still affected and inspired the writers of that time,
including Plutarch, Xenophon and Apuleius directly, and Herodotus
and Diodorus Siculus at least indirectly. W hat did this initiation confer?
Knowledge of death itself, of the discarnate state.
According to the priesthood of H eliopolis, O siris, as head of the
Tuat, or Underworld, and Lord of the Dead, reigned beneath Ra the
Divine Sun as head of his paut or Ennead, and this is depicted as a figure
OSIRIS 47

^ B bent forward, form ing a kind of ‘squared circle' with his body, for one
I who remains in t he realm of O siris and Isis remains within the circle of
^ B birth and death, being am ong the G ods, am ong men, or in the subtle
^ B realm. To understand this, however, to understand the nature of Osiris
^ B Himself in this aspect, we must turn to a discussion of the Egyptian
H Tuat or ‘in-between lan d '. T h e Tuat is in fact very much akin to the
Tibetan Buddhist term 'bardo\edlineated in the Tibetan of
f Dead. It is in either case the m ediate w orld, ‘between death and rebirth’,
■ the realm governed by o n e ’s co n d itio n in g and o n e’s previous life and
■ actions. To say that this realm is ruled by O siris is, in part, to say that it
H is also ruled by sacred K now ledge, to which the Egyptian and T ibetan
■ Books of the Dead both give access, in terms o f visualisations and of
■ sacred names.
I A person in the Tuat is in a discarnate state, and therefore open to a
multiplicity of states o f being, according to his Know ledge ( ) and
I his previous carnate con d itioning. N ow to speak of this is to speak of an
B exceedingly delicate m atter, w hich we can hardly consider in this short
B space - however, we can say that the postulation of a ‘being’ which
B ‘transmigrates’ is according to both Buddhist and Vedantic traditions in
■ particular, and to trad itio n al m etaphysics in general, very much a false
I attribution. In Vedanta there is said to be the ‘O ne and O nly
Transmigrant’; 15 in Buddhism , even this attribu tion o f prim al unity is
I denied, in order to avoid conceptual fix a tio n .16 But both these traditions
are referring to absolu te R e a lity , whereas we here are discussing the
I conditional realms o f being over w hich in the Egyptian tradition Osiris
I held sway.
This difference - betw een the highest realms and the subtle realms -
is delineated in Egyptian religion m ost clearly by tw o docum ents: the
Shat A m at,and the S h a t En
u
T S ba T h e
ruled by Osiris - the m ediate or psychic spheres signified by the numbers
seven and twelve, corresponding no doubt to the seven planets and the
twelve Z odiacal sym bols, these being also the num bers of the T u at,
underscoring the correspondence o f the Tuat to tem poral reality (it is,
after all, described in m aterialistic term s), whereas the form er
document, the Shat A m ,T
at related to the realm of R a , of p
u
Both documents referred to the same ‘p o st-tem p o ral’ reality, the
difference between them lying in the degree o f purity and transcendence
of the deceased. A ccording to Budge, therefore, the Tuat has many
divisions, but only one is ruled by O siris; in the others O siris figures, but
Ra rules.18 As a result, the p o st-m o rtem state is governed in accordance
r
48 OSIRIS

with one’s knowledge of Osiris and Ra; the purer one’s knowledge 0f
the true nature o f the former, the closer one is to the latter, to Ra.
Osiris is ruler o f the Night - that is, of the subtle realms - but
being the source o f being itself, is His Overlord, and so according to the
profundity of one’s initiatory insight does not pass from the former intf)
the latter, from the Shat En Shau to the Shat Am Those wh
initiated into the nature of the supernal realms of existence are therefore
abc to pass by the roarings of the demons, and do not fall into their
cauldrons.
Whosoever knoweth these things, being attached to his place,
shall have his bread with Ra. Whosoever knoweth these things,
being a soul and spirit . . . shall never enter into the place of
destruction.19
In other words, by virtue of their direct Knowledge of Osiris, by
virtue of their posthumous recognition of the visionary realms of the
Tuat with which they were acquainted during life, they ‘rose up’ with
Osiris, who is said also to ‘rise up the ladder’ from Earth to Heaven.20
By this was meant that in gnosis - insight into one’s own principial
nature or essence - one ‘recognises’ that degree or emanatory aspect of
the Divine into which one had been initiated. T h e various hells, or
posthumous torments, exist also in so far as the individualities hold
together as separate entities, as residual coagulations. In brief, the
Heavens and the Hells both presuppose the prolongation of
individuality; the former, however, are ‘higher’ , in that individuality is
transcended. Now all of these shall be resolved again into the primal
unity at the tim e of the pocatsi , or G reat R esto ratio n , in which
A
the ‘opposing power’ of Typhon is vanquished, order returns to all
things, Osiris returns to His throne, united again w ith Isis in actuality as
now in p o t e n t i a l
There is here, then, in the worship of Osiris a very direct correlation
with the Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, in w hich the devout, by virtue of
their recitation of the ts ,or Divine N a m e , attain rebirth in
bu
em
n
Western Land of A m itabha b od h isattva, in Celestial Earth. It is
concentration, the direction of consciousness which affects the celestial
rebirth - an ascent up the axis of being by m eans of one’s concentrative
power or ‘remem brance’ , and a consequent restoration of the principial
order of the soul. The higher one ascends, the m ore fragm entation,
dissolution, confusion vanishes, and the more one approaches the Light
Supernal, the harm ony of the Divine. This is the message of the Pure
O SIRIS 49

. inj and it is the message o f O siris as w ell. Yet this ascent is not merely
one of intellect, nor is it accom p lished through any vicarious atonem ent,
hut rather it is accessible to everyon e, regardless o f ca ste , class or sex. It
arises only out o f sim p le fa ith , unsw erving d ev o tio n , and unceasing
concentration upon the D iv in e , a c o n c e n tra tio n w hich in reality
recapitulates the very ax is o f b ein g , fo rm in g a kind o f ‘axis o f grace’ , a
‘channel' through w hich - in th e least e x p e cted m o m e n t, perhaps the
moment of one's g reatest d esp air - th e L ig h t S u p ern a l m ig h t burst in ,
illuminating one's true n a tu re, and th e true n a tu re o f all C re a tio n .
It was once said by D . T . Suzuki th a t th e ad h eren ts of the Pure Land
sect saw more instances o f satori - aw ak en in g to the D ivine - than did
those of Zen Buddhism , fo r they h arb o u red few er p reco n cep tio n s of its
true nature, but ra th e r sim p ly recited th e N a m e . A n d , no d o u b t,
something of the sam e is tru e fo r th e ad h eren ts o f the w o rsh ip of O siris,
the worship of w h o m w as th e w o rsh ip also o f R a , H e o f th e K in g d om
of Light.
In any event, a lth o u g h w e n o w ch a n g e o u r fo cu s, w e re m a in o rien ted
toward the discussion o f O siris ; w e sim p ly tu rn to a p a rtic u la r asp ect of
his worship: th at o f the secon d d e a th .
CHAPTER 6
On the Second Death

In order to com plem ent and complete our discussion of Osiris, it is of


value to note a phrase which recurs a number of times in conjunction
with Osiris’s name, and in particular with the posthumous condition of
humanity, namely the ‘second death’. The nature of this must be
illumined if we are finally to grasp the meaning of Osirian initiation,
for in fact the ‘second death’ is the transcendence of the realm of Osiris.
This ‘second death’ was referred to in a portion of the P yram id ,
where the saying is found: ‘M y father has not died the second death, for
my father possesses a spirit in th e
say, refers directly to the subtle realm , the realm o f the psyche over
which Osiris has sway, as is made clear in another passage in which the
sky goddess Nut addresses the dead K ing, saying:

Open up your place in the sky am ong the stars o f the sky, for you
are the Lone Star . . . look down upon O siris, w hen H e governs
the spirits, for you stand far from H im ; you are n o t am ong them
and shall not be among them .2

In addition, it is said there, ‘the double d oors o f H eaven are open tor
you’. 3 T h e first door of Heaven is the door o f O siris; the second is that
of Ra him self, opening into the C elestial spheres. T h e ‘second death’,
then, refers to the transcendence o f the realm o f O siris, and the deceased
passing on to the realm of the stars, the C elestials - w hereas those who
have not been so in itiated m erely pass on to th e realm o f O siris in the
horizon, the subtle realm , a w a itin g eith er a new incarnation, or
purification sufficient to allow passage throu gh the ‘second door’ .
N ow to avoid co n fu sio n , we m ust here interject th at there are two
ways of lookin g at the term ‘second d e a th 1, each of w hich occur when
one leaves the su btle realm : the one occu rs by descending into
in carn ation ; the other transpires by ascending above it into celestiality.
e irst death takes p lace if on e - o u t of fear - seeks the solidity and
reassurance o f E a rth , and so is reborn into in ca rn a tio n ; the other, the
!g er second death , th a t w hich w e are here in the m ain discussing, is

50
ON THE SECOND DEATH 51

really the transcendence o f the subtle realm, the sheddin


body and the leaving of the lunar sphere.
This latter ‘second death’ is clarified in Plutarch’s brief treatise
entitled On the Pace W hich Appears in the O rb the M oon, in whic
he, in the person of one Sylla, notes that man is a being existing in
multiple states simultaneously, these consisting in those of body, soul
and o,correlating to Earth, Moon and Sun. Now the first death,
dian
said Sylla, is that of the body, in which it dissolves into Earth again; the
second death occurs - generally after a period of some duration (of
purgatory) in which the passions of the soul are resolved, brought into
equilibrium, and thereby shed - when the soul is resolved into the sphere
of the moon, and the spirit passes on into celestiality, freeing the most
Divine aspect of man, the image of which is, ‘in the Sun’. It is towards
this Divine Image in the Sun, says Sylla, that all nature yearns in
different ways. And, Sylla continues:

The death which we die is of two kinds: the one makes man two
out of three; the other makes him one out of two; the one takes
place in the Earth which is the realm of Demeter, and is initiation
unto her; . . . the other is in the M oon and is of Persephone;
Hermes of the lower Earth is the associate of the one, heavenly
Hermes of the other. Demeter parts soul from body quickly and
with force; Persephone parts mind from soul gently and very
slowly, and therefore has been called ‘O f the Birth to U nity’ , for
the best part of man is left in Oneness, when separated by H er.4

For, Sylla continues, those who die wander for a tim e in a region
between the Earth and the M o o n , a region where their sins and
ignorance, according as they lived, are washed away, after which
purgation they pass beyond the M o o n - that is, realise their Celestial
nature:

returning as from a long and distant exile back to their own


country, tasting such joy as men feel here who are initiated, joy
mixed with much amazement . . . and h op e.s

Here - just as a side-note - we can see the meaning of the three Fates of
ancient Greece: for A tropos governed people’s destinies near the Sun;
Clotho wove them in the realm of the M o o n , com m ingling; and
Lachesis, the throw er of dice, represented the haphazard power of
fortune and worldly im perm anence.
52 ON THE SECOND DEATH

In any event, from this intriguing narration transmitted by Plutarch


we can begin to glimpse the meaning of that ‘second death’ w itho u t
which the person wanders as a discarnate soul, sometimes disordered
and confused, sometimes in increasing harmony, until in the latter state
he ‘passes on to ’, or realises, his Divine nature, ascending from the
sublunary sphere to that of the Sun. It is for this reason that Osiris was
seen to be ‘Lord of the Spirits’: initiation into his realm offered the
initiate a ‘second death’ upon Earth, as it were, so that upon physical
death he was indeed, at least provisionally, set free, able to traverse the
sublunary realm, and to enter into the supercelestial joy of his return
home. In this, too, we can understand why Petharkoprates, the Egyptian
priest, said: ‘I was one who foresaw (swn) at the time when he was
strong, who kept in mind ( rdim
strong.’6 For to be ‘strong’ here meant to have attained a high degree of
spiritual power and insight - one who ‘saw into’ the nature of death, of
discarnate existence, of the supralunary sphere of the being, was thus
prepared for death, death as apothesi,as return to the Divine S
The Egyptians, as transmitters of the primordial tradition, necessarily
maintained the recognition that the human being consisted, not in
merely a body, nor even in a soul, or in mind, but in a simultaneous
multiplicity of levels of being which, naturally, they represented in
triadic form, so therefore also manifesting as an Ennead - an Ennead
consisting after all in three aspects of being manifesting on the three
levels of being. Consequently, the Egyptians held that there were nine
aspects to the human being, aspects the names of which - but not the
precise order - are known. What follows is therefore somewhat tentative,
seeming to us to be the most congruent with traditional metaphysics.
First among the aspects of the being one finds the , or body,
along with the intelligence ( k u )and the , or shadow
the heart ( ab,) the soul ( ba,) and the double Finally one
spiritual body ( sab,) the name ( ren,) and the
and power. The khaibt, one must presume, is the shade, the psychic
residue of a human being; the sekhem is the generative power which
brings him into being, and the kh a t is his body itself. The intelligence
(khu) is aligned then with the temporal sphere, implying as it does the
power of discrimination. The spiritual body ( is Celestial being, the
first impulse of which is the Divine Name, or ren. K hat is a reflection of
ba, which in turn reflects sab:and so we see the Divine Tr
which, in each sphere, we see the emanation of the lower from the
higher.7
ON T H E SEC O N D DEATH 53

The k a y or double, w as, as Henry C orbin pointed o u t,H the Angelic


counterpart and indeed Essence of m an, which when he approached, was
seen to be he him self, his Divine Essence, more He than he. R ealisation
of its sidereal presence was in truth realisation of on e’s spiritual body,
one’s Angelic Form , a state beyond d iscrim in ation and d uality, a state
which in tow as termed - life in Heaven.
sahu
Now Divine R eality in Itself can n o t be conceptualised, for
conceptualisation is, fin ally , fa lsifica tio n . T h e Real is beyond nam e,
form, or formlessness. But we are here concerned after all w ith
metaphysics, with the interrelation of the D ivine and C reatio n , and so
may perhaps, for this reason, be excused w ith the observation that this
must be kept firmly in m ind, else one m ight be led astray by the errant
belief that the human mind m ight com prehend R eality - a supposition
one might well term ‘satan ic’ . In any event, from this discussion of the
ancient Egyptian trad itio n , and its intricately interrelated sym bology o f
the triadic nature of the being, we can begin to glim pse som e o f the
implications of the w orship of Isis, O siris, and R a - for th at w hich is
below always, after all, resolves into its Essence above. T h is is true for
the microcosm - and for the m acrocosm as w ell. As it is for the
individual, who dies the first and then the second death, each tim e
resolving into his higher Essential Form ; so it is also for the cosm os, in
the eternal cycle of return and restoration represented sym bolically by
the Uroboros, the snake w ith its tail in its m ou th, form ing a circle - for
though this symbolises the circle of generation, it also suggests the
ultimate return of all things to their true O rder: it suggests the
A pocatastasis. Just as the individual u ltim ately returns to his true
nature, so too the cosm os is u ltim ately restored to its prim al unity, only
to begin the cycle anew.
But before we speak of this, we must first turn to that which appears
to be anything but Divine in origin - and yet w hich none the less finally
works, as do all things, tow ard that reunion w ith R eality for which all
beings in their various ways are yearning - we turn to a discussion of
evil, or perhaps better, of opposition: we turn to Typhon.
r

CHAPTER 7
Typhon

We noted, when beginning this discussion, the manifold debt that all
Western symbology and religion owes to ancient Egypt. Indeed, to a far
greater degree than any today seem to realise, that which remains of
primordial tradition today in the West flows directly from ancient
Egypt, having been indelibly woven into the warp and woof of our
Graeco-Christian tradition. In few places is this more evident than in
the figure of Typhon or Typhos, the ancient Egyptian serpentine
incarnation of evil, prominent today in more ways than as the figure of
Lucifuge or Satan.
Almost inextricable from any discussion of Typhon, however, are
Osiris and Isis, for Typhon, their archnemesis as it were, is an intricate
part of the metaphysical drama of the death, fragmentation and
resurrection of Osiris. For after all, it was Typhon who, in the ancient
mythos, killed Osiris and strewed the fragments of the body over all
Egypt, pieces which the mourning Isis then gathered and restored to life
by beating her Divine Wings, hovering over the prone form, and
breathing into it. Each site where the fragments had been thus became a
temple, a sacred site. According to Synesius, Typhos obtained the
kingship of ancient Egypt through deceit and then exiled Osiris, the
rightful king, instituting a tyrannical and depraved government, in
which the ‘nails of the wild beasts were raised, and the heads of the
sacred birds oppressed’.1 This, said Taylor in his commentary upon the
text, signified that men’s passions were aroused, while their receptivity
to the Divine influences was dulled. In any event, these, then, are the
two central representations of Typhon in mythic form : one associated
with kingship, the other the primal mythos itself. But what is their
metaphysical significance, the meaning they carried implicit within
them? For that we must turn, first, to etymologies.
The word ‘Typhon’ is in Greek directly related to , meaning
delusion, madness, raging fever; it implies a condition of both bodily
and mental disorder and fever, whence our word ‘typhoid’ derives. It
connotes, in other words, a state of physical and m en tal fragmentation

54
typh on 55

nnd dissolution - and the slight change of the name ‘Typhon’ to


‘Typhos’ by Synesius was intended to underscore this implication by the
inclusion of the word lp h o s \meaning ‘light’ and ‘man’.
‘Typhos’, then, implies the obscuration o f light, within the cosmos and
within the individual m an, and suggests therefore that the tales of
Typhon refer not to some ancient history, long since forgotten, but to
wc ourselves, in so far as the Light w ithin us is rendered occult. The
celestial drama represented by the triumph of Typhon over Osiris is
recapitulated, then, in ev ery in d iv id u a l. In this lies the true me
the ancient myths, which cannot be understood aright unless seen within
as without, below as above, in the present and future as in the past. Our
lives are each reflections of the ancient m yths, if only we could see them
so. But more of this later.
According to Plutarch, the word ‘Typhon’ or ‘ Set’ signifies a ‘forcible
check or reversal’, as well as ‘violence’, both of which refer to the
cosmological significance of Typhon as the principle of disharmony, of
violent opposition, destruction, as that which opposes and blots out the
Light.2 Consequently, Typhon is seen to be the nemesis of Osiris,
bringing corruption, ignorance and violent destruction in his wake just
as Osiris brings harm ony and life in his train. O siris, as we have seen,
was associated w ith the N ile, w ith its extraordinary fecundity; the
Great Green arises out o f the G reat Black soil like a lotus from the mire
beneath the waters o f the N ile. Typhon, on the other hand, was
affiliated with the G reat Sea o f Ignorance, the salt of which is called
‘Typhon’s foam ’, and the fish w ithin which are said to symbolise
hatred.3 By ‘sea’, we are to read pre-eminently the ‘dense sea of m atter’
(;pontos )pelat, for which reason Typhon is also associated with the
colours red and yellow , w ith fiery heat and dryness, implying ‘distance
from the water o f the sp irit’. As a result, the ‘dryness and heat’ of
Typhon is withering, destructive - indeed, a kind of mockery of the
Divine Heat of the Sun. And, significantly, the one element which
simulates these qualities o f the Sun, but destructively, is Sulphur, with
which Typhon is also associated.4
But perhaps most revealing o f his nature is the ‘Typhonian anim al’,
an utterly unnatural creature w ith a forked, serpentine tail (the arrow of
Horus, signifying duality), its boar-like muzzle and its horns - the horns
of generation, signifying its sublunary nature, a mockery of the Divine
horns of Apis and of Isis. There can be no doubt that, in popular
symbology at least, this creature has continued to exist even to the
present day as Lucifuge or Satan in Christian tradition, testament to the
56 T Y PH O N

perennial nature of the symbolism it embodies. Other anim


associated with Typhon were the crocodile, the boar or pig? ai^ s
especially, the red ass5 - to be contrasted with the celestial animals: th'
hawk of Osiris, the dogs of Anubis and Hermes, the ibis of Thoth, tf^
cat of Isis, all of which are hunting creatures. Typhon’s anim als
conversely, arc the hunted - but are characterised by the qualities of
rebellion and violence (the crocodile), with the passions (the pig), an(j
with intractability and ignorance (the ass).6 The relation of Typhon to
the serpent is also revealing - for as we have seen, the positive power of
the serpent is dali, symbolised by the sacred asp of Isis. Yet in
n
ku
relation to Typhon the serpent signifies deception: the inverted image of
the Divine Serpent of Celestial Creation, representing instead cold, dark,
dampness - distance from the Divine Sun.
And so we begin to see, by such brief glimpses, the nature of Typhon
both in the individual and in the cosmos. This nature Plutarch made
explicit, saying:

Typhon is the passionate, titan ic,7 reasonless and impulsive aspect


of the soul, while of the corporeal side he is the death-dealing,
pestilent and disturbing, with unseasonable times, intemperate
atmosphere, and concealments of Sun and M o o n .. . .’8

Seth or Typhon not only signifies constraint by force, but also ‘turning
upside down’ and ‘overleaping’. Typhon, then, indicates disorder in the
sublunary sphere - the very antithesis of , the Divine principle of
harmony and order. Perhaps most significant is the word ‘overleaping’,
which implies the egotistic attempt to control, to dominate, to rebel,
the seek to usurp the place of God. It is not w ithout reason that Satan is
termed ‘the ape of God’.
The triumph of Typhon, in other words, is the triumph of the
rebellious, disordering element of the cosmos and of man himself: the
two are directly affiliated, ‘feeding’ one another, so that the more the
individual allows Typhon free rein, the more disorder reigns in the
culture and in the cosmos itself. The function of ancient Egyptian
tradition was to keep Typhon in check, both in the individual and in the
state. Thus Horus is represented as struggling with the serpent Typhon,
grasping his v irilia in his hand, implying that the power of disorder is
thereby temporarily arrested, controlled,9 so that Egypt might live on
harmoniously, free of war and cultural fragmentation, for at least a
time longer. The same idea - the controlling of Typhon -recurs in the
legend that Hermes once cut the tendons of Typhon’s leg and made of
TYPHON 57

them a triple-stringed ly re,10 again im plying the controlling of evil, and


the turning of the serpentine power to good, to harmonious order.
Clearly, after all, the true cannot exist w ithout the false, the good
without the evil - it is simply a question of proportion. To what d ecree
does Typhon rule? Horus and Hermes could lame evil; they could not
destroy it. The difference in the various ages lies chiefly in this: that in
the primordial past Typhon was w eak, harnessed to the good; while as
time went on, he gained power to wreak havoc. We can see, then, that
logically Typhon must gain an apparent com plete ascendency before he
is overthrown, seen to be illusion - this the Egyptians knew, and sought,
through the practice of at, to forestall, prolonging orde
m
harmony.
Synesius, relating an ancient Egyptian oracular prophecy, said:

When those who are now in power shall endeavour to make an


innovation in our religion, then in a short time after expect that
the Titans shall be expelled, being agitated, destroyed, by their
own avenging furies.11

How did the T itan s arise? According to Synesius, in the distant past,

a certain depraved fragm ent of religion, and an adulteration of


divine worship, like that of money as it were, prevailed, which the
ancient law exterm inated from cities, shutting the doors against
impiety, and expelling it a great distance from the w alls.12

Now before we continu e, this oracle deserves a moment of attention,


for we see here a direct reflection upon the nature of our present era, the
very time of im piety, lawlessness, and confusion of which the ancients
had prophesied: indeed, we here glimpse something of the very origins of
our present anom alous age, the kaliyuga. T he destruc
Egypt, and of the traditional worlds in general, is here related directly to
an ‘innovation in our religion’ in which an ‘adulteration of divine
worship’ shall prevail, an adulteration closely related to that of the
currency.13 M oreover, those w ho so availed themselves of the false
religion were, it is said, driven forth from the holy cities, forced to
‘wander in the land of N o d ’ . Is this not a direct reference to the
‘wandering tribes’ , w ho, rootless and divorced from the primordial
tradition and the holy cities, despised the Divine images and who
introduced the destructive m ercantile element into the traditional order
time and again throughout history? Does it not suggest the origins, and
the historical course, of our present disorder and confusion? More than
58 TYPHON

this, however, we cannot say, for to do so is to penetrate into the ve


heart of our present era; indeed, into the very nature of the end of a
world, an enquiry for which this is neither the time nor the place.14
It is instructive, in any event, to pursue not only the origin, but the
results of the provisional triumph of Typhon over Osiris, to which our
attention is drawn by recourse to the ancient prophecies, for these do
indeed shed light upon our present age (which we have treated in some
depth elsewhere).15 To continue our examination of the prophecy
transmitted by Synesius, we must note that after the aforementioned
triumph of false religion, evil and dissolution, the oracle continues,
saying that:
We shall [then] purify the air which surrounds the Earth [the
psychic sphere] and which is defiled by the breath of the impious,
with fire and water; then the punishment of the rest shall also
follow, and then immediately expect a better order of things,
Typhon being removed . . . by devastation of fire and thunder.16

The restoration of Divine Harmony here prophesied is reiterated in a


passage from the Corpus H erm eticum :17 in both, after a brief reign,
Typhon is seen to be vanquished, and the Divine Order restored once
again - as it no doubt shall be.
There remains, after this lengthy and, one might hope, revealing
digression, but one essential characteristic of Typhon yet to be noted -
a characteristic directly related to the Divine Restoration: that is,
Typhon’s relation to metal, and in particular to iron.18 According to
Plutarch, the lodestone, or magnet, is the ‘bone of Horus’ (or of Osiris);
but iron is the metal of Typhon. And from this distinction we can see
not only the significance of our own ‘iron age’ - from which religion has
been exiled and in which people give credence only to ‘that which they
can grasp with their hands’, as Plato said - but the relation of Typhon
to this final Restoration or A pocatastasis as well - for the magnet deals
with iron in only two ways: attraction and repulsion. Horus and Osiris,
like the lodestone, draw one inward toward the Divine, while iron, if
inversely magnetised, ‘reverses course’ and is repelled by the Divine. Yet
in an instant, repulsion can become attraction.
Although we are now in the very final stage of the kali yuga, at the
greatest possible distance from the Divine, and signified by cold, hard,
rigid, mechanical iron,19 yet in an instant things must reverse: iron again
becomes attracted to the lodestone, and all reverts to the pristine^
primordial order and harmony of m aat. It was said in ancient Egypt
TYPH O N 59

Srth or Typhon was once not O siris’s enem y, but his com panion,
i that only in later ages did the tw o becom e enem ies. As it once was,
o slvtll it be again - as it alw ays is, if we only have eyes to see it.
CHAPTER 8
Hermanubis

Upon a rock near Ptolomais is scratched the following inscription,


written by an unknown worshipper, no doubt after an incommunicable
revelation:
Zeus, Sarapis and Helios-Hermanubis are One.

But that revelation seems inaccessible to us now: we possess only the


inscription, just as we possess only the carvings and hieroglyphs of
ancient Egypt, as indeed had been prophesied; the Mysteries are scorned,
true religion mocked or ignored. Yet despite the time in which we live,
and our distance from the era in which the revelation inspiring that
fevered inscription took place, it is still possible for us to glimpse some
of the meaning of that cryptic message, and thereby to recover some of
the meaning which the Herald of the Gods, Anubis, presaged. For to
understand this inscription is to stand before that num ens tremendum
which Hermes manifested, and of which he was the emissary: it signifies
the entry into the Mysteries themselves.
First, however, we must recall the fluid nature of the Gods, and
remember that although the principial realm does not change, yet its
manifestations change according to the perceiver and the given culture,
so that Hermes, Anubis and Thoth, the Divine Recorder, could all
intertwine as the ages passed, and yet still retain something of a separate
identity, each being an aspect of the same prin cipia divinis. The
inscription implies this fluid nature, including within it the three realms
as One. Zeus, a word which derives from the earlier Sanskrit word
Dhyeus, is related to the words dhyana (Sanskrit: meditative
absorption), deus (Latin: god) and the Sanskrit word deva (meaning
Celestial being) as well. Zeus, then, implies the Empyrean realm of the
Sun, whence emanates Sarapis, signifying the subtle or psychic realm.
The word ‘Sarapis’, according to Plutarch, was the union of Apis,the
Divine Bull, and Osiris into one designation. ‘Apis’, said Plutarch,
‘signifies a fair and beautiful reflection of Osiris’ soul’. 1 Hermanubis,
on the other hand, suggests the individual initiation into the Mysteries

60
HERMANUBIS 61

themselves, Hermanubis in himself spanning the three realms, from the


Chthonian darkness to the Olympian Light. As a result, we see here in
one inscription the triune unity of the three realms, underscored by the
union of Helios with Hermanubis in the inscription - for it is the latter
who reveals to us, is revealed within us, and announces to us the former:
the first glimmerings of our true nature as Helios.
It is for this reason - because H erm es-Thoth-A nubis is ‘closest’ to
man in the temporal realm - that He partakes of a dual quality, at once
being revealer and scribe of that which is revealed, at once Chthonian
and O lym pian, at once G old and Black, above and below. The
kyrekeion, or H erald ’s sta ff, which Hermes holds in His hand, round
which were entw ined the tw in serpents of Isis, signifies precisely this
dual quality, for H erm es, w ith his mercurial nature, was

He W ho travelled betw een the realm s, able to lead Osiris from


the Gods W h o belong to Earth to Those W ho are in Heaven, able
to live upon the H o rizo n , and before W hom even the Gods of the
Ennead trem b le.2

M ythologically, H erm anubis was said to be the Son of Nephthys


(consort of Seth or Typhon) who lay, illegitimately, with Osiris. Indeed,
according to P lu tarch ,

When N ephthys conceives Anubis, Isis adopts H im . For Nephthys


is that w hich is below the E arth and non-m anifest, whereas Isis is
that w hich is above the E arth and m anifest. And the circle just
touching them and called ‘H o rizo n ’ as being com m on to them
both, has been called A nubis and is likened to a dog for this
ch aracteristic: the dog has the use of its sight by day and by
night . 3

Now we must here draw attention to the use of the w ords in present
tense - that is, ‘when Nephthys conceives Anubis, Isis adopts H im ' - for
the importance of this is that the m yth refers not to som e event in the
distant past, but to this very instant. It is difficult for the modern person
to remember that m ythological symbolism refers not to any historical
past, so much as to vertical, supratem poral, an alogical R eality, and that
therefore the attribution of tem porality to a m yth os is a gross distortion
- but nevertheless, this is in fact the case.
And Anubis, by being as Plutarch says ‘ a M ystery not to be spoken
of’, represents the entrance to , the Herald of the realm of the Gods
themselves, and therefore cannot be spoken of, for T h a t of w hich H e is
62 HERMANUBIS

Herald is ‘above’ the realm of historicity, of words, of time itself. For


this reason Anubis is, said Plutarch, known as Kronos,

for he breeds all things out of himself and conceives (Greek:


ktion)all in Himself, thereby being called Dog (Greek: ),
being at once Chthonian and Olympian.4

Hcrmes-Anubis, then, is messenger of the gods, harbinger of the gods,


representing the first glimmerings of the Divine to man trapped in the
darkness and ignorance of Nephthys and Typhon, of materiality.
Hermanubis implies - even to man in the most infernal mental states, in
the realms of insufferable dualism, dissatisfaction and torment - that
the faithful messenger of the Gods is still accessible, that He Whose face
is half black and half gold can lead one upward, much as he led Osiris
upward from the realm of man to the realms of the Gods, much as he
led Isis to her consort’s fragmented remains, so that she might revive
him.
As Plutarch rightly has it in his advice to Klea, a contemporary
priestess,

When, therefore, thou hearest the myths of the Egyptians


concerning the Gods - wanderings and dismemberings and many
such passions, thou shouldst remember what has been said above,
and think none of these things spoken as they really are in state
and action. For they do not call Hermes ‘Dog’ as a proper name,
but they associate the watching and waking from sleep of the
animal who by knowing and not knowing determines friend from
foe (as Plato says) with the most Logos-like of the Gods.5

It is significant that when advising Klea on the transcendent nature of


the myths that the first to be mentioned is Hermes as the Divine Dog -
for these both signify precisely man at the very entranceway toward the
Divine ascent, implying the first awakening of wisdom during which
man must, like the faithful dog, welcome the Good and bark at his foes
(ignorance and passion). It is for this reason that Hermanubis was said
to be conceived when Osiris in ignorance lay with Nephthys, with
M atter at its ‘lowest point’ , furthest vertically from the Divine.
Hermanubis represents Divine Knowledge ‘raised by Isis to adulthood’;
as Intellect he acts as guide to the True W isdom of Osiris. Hermanubis,
therefore, implies man’s Intellect, which is able to discern between
friend and foe, and is able to lead him to the initiation into the
Knowledge of Osiris ( osi) who himself is an emanation of Ra
gn
H E R M A N tJB lS 63

pivine Sun. T hrou gh H erm an u b is one gains the ‘scent of the Divine’;
one learns how to live and , in tellectu a lly at least, the true nature of
existence, and so one is able to know the direction of ascent.
Consequently, just as dogs guard people and are faithful to them, so
Hermanubis is fa ith fu l to and guards the Gods. As Intellect, He
discriminates betw een illu sio n and reality , driving o ff the former, and
following inward tow ard the la tte r. In tellect alone, however, is not
sufficient to w isd om , b u t ra th e r, properly em ployed, leads to it, to its
own transcendence in the D iv in e W isd om of contem plation. Falsely
employed, of course, the m erely hu m an in tellect becom es, not a faithful
consort and guide, b u t a fearso m e enem y (Cerberus, the hound of Hell),
devouring man just as A ctaeo n w as devoured by his own coursers when
hunting D iana.
Hence Hermes is said to be the co n so rt of M of Divine Harmony:
the two are a ffilia te d w ith the tem p o ral sphere; both are reflections of
that which in the higher realm s goes w ith o u t saying. There cannot, after
all, be disorder and stu p id ity (ignorance) in the realm of the Gods by
their very nature, or else they w ou ld n o t be G ods, and could not exist in
the principial realm . It is only here b elo w , in tem porality, that human
Intellect (Hermes) and D iv in e H arm ony (M are necessary, for
without tem p o rality , w h a t is there to distract and confuse a being? The
Celestial realm s, u n tain ted by tem p o rality , are incomparably lucid, the
harmony of the spheres and freedom from passion being there natural,
rather than aim s tow ard s w hich one strives. (T his does not refer only to
the subtle sphere, w here there are indeed forces inim ical to man’s insight
and w isdom ). H ere b e lo w , it is In tellect w hich must first show the
glimmerings of the p ath to w ard the D iv in e, just as one’s actions must
reflect the D ivine H arm on y and Order: w ithout these two, what
possibility is there for ascent?
The nature of H erm es Trism egistus can be glimpsed, too, in this
passage from Cyril o f A lexand ria:

In order that we m ay com e to (accom plish) things of a like nature


- have you not heard th a t our H erm es divided the whole of Egypt
into allotm ents and p o rtio n s, measuring off the acres with the
chain . . . and drew up a list of the risings of the stars, and of the
proper tim es to gather p lan ts; and beyond all this he discovered
and bequeathed to posterity num bers, and calculations, and
geometry, and astro n o m y , and astrology, and music, and the
whole of gram m ar?6
64 HERMANUBIS

As wc can sec, then, it not insignificant that those w


the Egyptian tradition which have rem ained most influential f0
W esterners are those o f the C o rp u s H erm eticu m - revelations
attributable to H erm es Trism egistus - fo r the ascent o f the intellect, the
first g lim m erin g s o f D ivine K n o w led g e, the last shards and remnants of
the traditional cultures (them selves rem nants o f the primordial age), are
allthat has been left to m o d ern p eo p le o f their ow n traditions.
As a result, even though we cannot recover the experience of that
unknown hierophant who scrawled those fervent words upon the rock
in ancient times, yet we can, and must rediscover their meaning for us.
For Hermes, revealerand. scribe, initiator and initiate, revea
revealed, mercurial power of the Gods, is and must be our first glimpse
o f the Divine: further, higher than Intellectual knowledge we can and
must go, it is true - but that can only be done through praxis, through
the following o f one o f the remaining traditions still intact, be it
Islamic, Buddhist, or perhaps another. T h e following of such a path
does not, o f course, require intellectual virtuosity - far from it. In fact,
faith, humility and compassion are much superior to mere mental
agility. But none the less, the harbinger, the messenger of the principial
realm o f the Gods, is and must always be the Intellect, Hermes, winged,
caduceus in hand.
It is significant that the sym bol fo r Mercury - V together with
the sym bols o f the Sun - -Q and o f the Moon - O
plan etary sym bols w hich can be traced to antiquity, and which bear
w ithin them such p ro fo u n d meanings. In the symbol of Mercurius we
see the three w orlds reflected : w e see the crescent moon (the subtle
world) b eh in d the Sun (the C elestial realm) below which is the cross of
E arth, th e h o riz o n ta l lin e m arkin g th e horizon of the time above and
b e lo w w h ich H erm es, m essen ger o f th e G o d s, is free to travel. Indeed, as
we h a v e seen , H erm a n u b is is pre-eminently of the horizon, being the
s y m b o l o f th e first g lim p se o f th e Divine, the Intellect reflectively
illu m in e d b y th e lig h t o f Sun an d M oon.
But the symbol of Mercury can be traced back, also, to the staff
which Hermes bears in his right hand: the kyrekeion, the sacred staff
ntwined the ,u
ei the Divine serpents which form an
ra
O in the centre, their heads forming a U above, and their tails providing
a pair of wings, or the arms of a cross, below. The Divine Wings, of
course, are those of the soul, associated with Hermes’ consort Maat (the
symbol for whom is a feather, without which one cannot ascend, the
indispensible constituent of ascent being ethical order and harmony).
I N R M A N im iS 65

The Sun in the centre, o f course, is affilia ted w ith O siris and R a ; to the
Moon is assigned O siris and Isis.The Divine
associated, as we have seen, w ith Isis and w ith prim ordial energy, w hile
the Staff itself is none other than the Divine Pole or A xis o f the W orlds.
Consequently, in this single glyph we can sec condensed the very essence
of traditional m etaphysics, a sym bol exq u isitely sim ple and in fin itely
profound.
Anubis, the Dog of the Gods, is a significant figure not least because
he guards the graves of m en, being responsible for cleaning and
preparing the bodies o f the dead, for em balm ing and preserving them -
by which is m eant, an alogically, th at through H erm an u b is hum ankind
first glimpses the nature o f the D ivine, and so is gran ted a kind o f
longevity (in the Taoist sense o f ‘im m o rta lity ’) as w ell as a reflective
glimpse into one's True N a tu re . By the ‘p re p a ra tio n o f the b o d y ’ is
meant, analogically, ‘shedding the earth ly g a rm e n ts’ and ‘d on n ing th e
raiment of H eaven’. H erm an u b is can n o t offer m an a seat in the barque
of Ra for m illions o f years, n or can he p ro ffer en try in to th e realm s o f
Osiris - no, as H erald o f th e G od s he can o ffe r o n ly a re fle cte d g lim p se
of the true nature o f things, condensed in to his sign, th e sign o f D ivin e
Mercurial Intellect.
But in an age in w h ich even in te lle ctu a l u n d e rsta n d in g is in cre a sin g ly
unknown, obscu red , H e rm s rem ain s as a re m in d e r o f w h o w e really
are, of the true n atu re o f th e a rts an d scien ces, of th e tru e m e a n in g a n d
purpose of m an , w ith o u t w h ich w e are lo st ind eed .
CHAPTER 9
Ra: the Sun King

The Sun, as centre of the cosmos, and source of light and warmth, is the
natural manifestation of the Divine Source of Being Itself; and is
therefore so recognised in every culture, not only for its physical power
but because the physical manifestation is but a gloss of the True Sun, the
Sun of Being. As is written in the C han dogya , ‘Verily, the Sun
is the honey of the Gods. The hidden teachings are the honey producers.
Brahman is the flower.’ 1 In addition, ‘the Gods, verily, neither eat nor
drink. They are satisfied with merely seeing that nectar. They retire
from this form (rupam) and come forth from this form .’2 In oth
words, according to the Vedanta, the Gods exist upon the nectar of the
Sun, the Divine Sun which ‘neither rises nor sets’. For those who know
the Truth ‘it is day forever’. In sum, the Divine Sun, which the ancient
Egyptians characterised as R a, was the C entrum not only of the
manifested cosmos, but of all the realms of existence, from which all
emanated, and into which all shall again be resolved.
What does this imply for man? According to Samcaracarya, ‘The
movements of the Sun are intended to help the creatures experience the
results of their actions, and when these experiences have ended the Sun
takes the creatures into Him self.’3 And, again, in the Chandogya
Upanisad, we find that the Sun is seen to be the Eye of the Self, just as
Horus is said to be the eye of Ra. In the M aitri , it is written that
Incarnate time is the great ocean of creatures. In it abides He who
is called Savitr (the Sun as begetter), from W hom , indeed, are
begotten the Moon, stars, planets, the year and the rest, and from
them comes this whole world here, and whatever of good or of
evil seen in this world comes from them. Therefore Brahman is
the Self of the Sun. Therefore one should reverence the Sun under
the name of time.4

Moreover, ‘He who is in the fire, and He who is here in the heart, and
He who is yonder in the Sun - He is One. He who knows this goes to
the Oneness of the One’.5

66
RA: T H E SUN KING 67

From these q u o tatio n s, we can begin to sec something of the meaning


of the traditional m etaphysical understanding of the Sun. The chief
difference between the Egyptian and Vcdantic perspectives as regards the
Sun is that the form er transm itted the means toward realisation of the
Mysteries, and therefore o f the true nature of the Divine Sun, only from
initiate to initiate: the yog#, or path itself remained oral in Egypt.
Conversely, in the V edanta it becam e an explicit part of the doctrines,
and to a degree at least accessible in w riting, though as the admonition
in the C h a n d o g y a U p a n isa d has it, this teaching should be given only to
an eldest son or a m ost w orthy pupil, and to no one else. ‘Even if one
should offer him the w hole o f this earth encompassed by water and
filled with treasure, he should say “ T h is, truly, is greater than that -
yea, greater than th a t.” ’6 C learly, o f course, only the shell of the yogas
can be transm itted in w riting in any trad ition : the chief difference, then,
between these tw o is sim ply th a t the Egyptians left little indication
indeed of the nature o f and the path tow ard the M ysteries, whereas in
the Upanisads we are given clear indication at least of their import and
meaning.
But despite this relatively m inor difference in approach - conditioned
by cultural and historical necessity above all - essentially the
metaphysical understanding w ithin the various traditions is one, and
cannot in truth be otherw ise, inasmuch as there cannot be two truths, or
two Realities, but only O ne, of which different cultures focus upon
different aspects. And consequently the import of the Vedantic and the
Egyptian worship of the Sun is the same.
We noted earlier the Egyptian affirm ation of the traditional teaching
of the Divine King, and its parallel affirm ation in the Vedanta: in the
traditional culture the King is the incarnation of the Divine Sun, just as
man himself within his own sphere is also King and emanation of the
Divine Sun, a relationship w hich, as noted before, is most clearly
delineated in the passages, in both traditions, upon the father of a
Divine Son.
As one passage has it: ‘R a , thou who art Heru-khuti, the divine
man-child, the heir of eternity, self-begotten and self born, king of
earth, Prince of the T u a t.’
In the Brhad-aranyaka isd, instructions are given fo
pan
U
conception of a true, learned, and w orthy son, the first step of which is
an offering to ‘the radiant Sun, the Creator of Truth - hail’ . 8 Then,
with the act of intercourse itself the father says, ‘I am Heaven and you
are the Earth. C om e, let us strive together . ’ 9 M oreover, more explicitly,
68 R A : T H E S U N K IN G

‘When the human father thus em its him as seed into the w om b, jt •
really the Sun that emits him as seed into the w om b . . . thence is ^
born, after that seed, that breath.’ 10
Likewise, every King of Egypt was said to be born of a virgin mother
in that, as is written upon the tem ples at Luxor and at Der al-B ah arj'
the Sun, through the offices of the King, impregnated the Queen in her
chamber, and was thus the actual father of the next King. The
ramifications of this are manifold of course, not least in relation to the
true origin and meaning of the Christian Virgin Birth, but also jn
relation to the conduct and the perspective of the ‘ordinary m an’ jn
ancient Egypt, who also in turn was King w ithin his sphere, an
understanding which needless to say nurtured hum ility and ethical
purity at the very least. Imagine, after all, the gravity, the ramifications
of the realisation that one was the viceroy of the Divine Sun upon Earth
- as was every man: would that not im port a grave responsibility and
purpose for one’s life? As one who realised fully the import of that
responsibility once said, ‘N ot I, but my Father in m e.’
It was Aristotle who wrote, follow ing this ancient tradition, that
‘Man and the Sun generate m an’, 11 but the same meaning is implied in
the verse in the New Testament which reads ‘ C all no man your father
upon Earth, for One is your Father, W hich is in Heaven’. 12
All of these signify precisely the same m etaphysical understanding as
that behind the Egyptian worship of R a , and in particular behind the
Egyptian observation that ‘in every King flow s the blood of R a ’. This is
true, as we have seen, of every man, as of every created being, for Ra is
the Divine Sun within and of all beings, but it is especially true in the
case of the Divine King, who is by virtue of his office the very axis, the
Pole of the lands, uniting above and below in his very person.
The nature and gravity of that responsibility we can see in the
approach the ancient Egyptians took to the Kingship. According to
Diodorus, the King was regulated in every aspect of his conduct, so as to
avoid any display of passion or error, being as a result absolutely pure as
a manifestation of the Divine Sun, and consequently more beloved by
his people than their own fam ilies.13 ‘Every hour of the day and night
was stipulated for him by the laws, and not by what he thought best.’
This is of course but a m anifestation of the same perspective which
motivated the spirit of the B rh a d -a ra n y a k a , wherein it is said,

‘What light does a man here have?’


‘He has the Light of the Sun, Your M ajesty, for with the Sun
HA: T H E SUN KING 69

indeed as \\ ith the l ight, one sits, moves about, does one’s work,
and returns.’
‘Just so, Y ajn avalk ya.’ 15

In other words, as noted by Sam karacarya in relation to the


Upanisadyall beings have their origin in the Sun, live within the Sun’s
light, follow ing the results o f their various actions and, when these are
exhausted, all return to their O rigin, the Sun. When in the realm of
experience, one acts w isely exactly in proportion as one realises one’s
true nature as th a t o f the D ivine Sun, the realisation of which
constitutes provisional lib eration in Vedantic terms, or ‘a seat in the
barque of Ra for m illio n s o f years’ in the Egyptian.
One related illu m in atio n o f the ancient Egyptian teachings by means
of the Vedanta can be found in the ancient symbol for the Sun - the
hawk. In the daw n o f tim e R a is represented as a haw k, or as a
hawk-headed m an, upon the M a tet boat of the risin
which M a a t has established D ivine H arm ony so that Apep has been
vanquished, and the Sun m ight rise). But at the end of tim e, in the West,
when Ra is w eakened, H e is represented upon the boat of Sektet as a
man-headed fig u re .16 In fa c t, the figure o f the hawk-god Herus is the
‘oldest in all E g y p t’ , strictly speaking preceding even R a H im self. W hat
then is signified by th is, the m ost venerable of symbols for the Divine
Sun? For our answ er w e can turn to the T aittiriy a , wherein the
various sheaths are conceived in the form o f birds.
According to Su resvara, in his com m entaries, ‘T h e sacrificial fire
[Agni) arranged in th e fo rm o f a haw k or a heron . . . has a head, two
wings, a trunk and a ta il. So here also every sheath is represented as
17
having five p a rts.’ In the V edanta the human body is but the gross
outward sheath, w ith in w h ich , as the em anatory source of the being, is
the pran, or life -b re a th , the , or instinctive perceptual
consciousness, the v ijn a n a yor intelligen ce, and or bliss body
Anna, or fo o d , is the ra d ia n t, tem p o ral w orld transm uted, while life,
consciousness and in tellig en ce co n stitu te the subtle self, and , or
bliss, the causal body. E ach o f these is therefore a grosser reflection of its
subtle cou nterpart, w hich ‘hovers’ w ith in it much as Isis hovered’ above
Osiris when reviving H im . E ach o f the realm s successively emanates or
descends from (S a n sk rit: Sambhutah) the form er, higher constituent of
the self, w hence arose th e fig u re o f the haw k. T h e hawk is, of course,
the sharpest sighted o f the a n im a ls, and soars the highest, whilst being
also the fastest, best a b le to sw o o p dow n upon prey - all of which are
70 RA: THE SUN KING

characteristics of Intellect as opposed to mere temporal rationality, as


Divine Insight as opposed to Intellect. Throughout this discussion,
see reiterated the three realms: temporality, reflecting the subtle, whi^
in turn reflects the Celestial. But all arises from and in the One, as
can sec in the isd:
lpan

Seeing this, the seer said: ‘He made bodies with two feet and
bodies with four feet. Having first become a bird ( , or subtle
body) he entered the bodies. This, verily, is the person dwelling in
all bodies. There is . . . nothing that is not pervaded by Him.’18
Here, then, we can begin to see the actual relation of man to Ra, not
only in a macrocosmic sense, but microcosmically, internally as well
For here we can see the emanatory origins of Creation, and of its reverse
- the ascent of man ‘up the axis of being itself’, an ascent represented by
the ascent of the hawk ‘to the eye of the Sun’. In every order the lower is
enlivened by union with the higher; and thus we can see the hierarchic
levels of matter, life, animal intelligence, human mind, and Divine Bliss,
or, in terms of the five sheaths of the being in Sanskrit),
these being the material, the vital, the mental, the intellectual, and the
spiritual. The first is the temporal sphere, the second three the psychic
realm, and the last the Celestial or Solar sphere. When Teascending’ to
the last (from which strictly speaking we never descended) man is
reunited with the Supreme, the Divine Sun realised as , or Bliss.
The intellect when severed from its higher origin becomes ‘darkened’ or
infernal, divisive, seeking to usurp the position of the Sun itself. When
the intellect lives in the Divine Breath of the Sun, on the other hand, it
unifies, and in an an d a or Bliss is itself unified and transcended. In sum,
‘in an ad a Earth touches heaven and is sanctified’. 19 And this is, after
all, the Divine function of the King: sanctification, not only of the
individual (microcosm) and the land (mesocosm) but of the cosmos
(macrocosm) as well. As we have seen, the King in Egypt was indeed a
saint - by virtue of his adherence to his position as viceroy of the Divine,
as Pole or Axis of the lands - who sanctified the Earth below just as the
Divine Bliss sanctifies the intellect.
We can see then the ‘translucence’ of ancient Egypt in so far as the
Divine King existed within her, for by virtue of his existence was order
and harmony maintained; by virtue of his existence the individual as
in the land and in the cosmos, was wisdom and justice continued; in
brief, by virtue of his existence as and fulfilm ent of his position as
viceroy was man’s purpose upon Earth fulfilled. This is true for the
RA: THE SUN KING 71

individual, for every individual - not merely for the King, who simply
symbolised and manifested that which every man in truth is. In such a
V state (we use the word in every sense) the Earth is in truth translucent,
m for when Man is a Sun, Earth itself is indivisible from Heaven.
m The ‘closer’ one approaches primordiality - the farther back in
m history one goes - the more translucent was the Earth, by which
I observation we can see the significance of that virtually universal
teaching that the Gods themselves once walked upon the Earth, the
if most ancient of Whom lived for ‘twelve hundred years’.20 We must keep
ff in mind, however, that no matter how ‘far back’ in history one travels,
f one never reaches the ‘other shore’ of m anifestation. That is, the Golden
Age is none other than man basking in the Divine Light of the Sun, but
the Golden Age is still part of the cyclical, phenomenal world, just as
the Divine Sun itself, Ra - like Isw in Vedanta
manifested world, whereas Absolute Reality is utterly beyond m ani­
festation or non -m anifestation , beyond form ulation or conceptu­
alisation of any sort. It is for this reason that we speak of ‘provisional
liberation’ in Ra, as in Iswara in the Vedanta - for absolute liberation
only arises from the com plete transcendence of phenom enality, including
even the unimaginable lum inosity o f the sun.
In any case, in Egypt the Golden Age, the most ancient of times
(Sanskrit: g,) was the era of R a, golden because the Divine Sun
krita-yu
then manifested naturally in every individual. Only in later ages, when
the Sun was eclipsed - that is, when man was no longer aware of Divine
Reality directly, but rather only reflectively were the auspices of Osiris
and Isis, both affiliated with the M o on , become necessary. There was
not, and could not be, a con flict between the worship of Osiris and the
worship of Ra - as some have alleged - but rather, the Sun belongs to a
primordial era, the M o on to a later era (the silver age), Fire to a later era
yet (the bronze age) and iron (Sanskrit: kali-yuga) to the last of all. Each
represents a weakening, diffusing, a fragm enting and reflecting of the
former, a kind of solid ification . It is only n atu ral, then, th at as tim e
went on, the worship of the Divine Sun should fade and that of Osiris,
the Moon, with its celestial paradises, take its place.
In the Golden Age it was, for man, relatively easy to pass on to
provisional liberation in the ‘barque of the Sun’, but as tim e went on,
and his confusion and karmic accretions increased, m an w as in general
able only to ascend to the Celestial realms of Osiris, the subtle paradises
~ and in time even these were lost to man, as the Mysteries w aned, until
finally only the written records of Hermes remained - tiny fires in the
72 RA: T H E SU N KING

darkness - in the near-absolute Stygean black o f the present era, truly


the age o f iron.
Yet we must rem em ber th at R a -w o rsh ip continued in Egypt
rendering the Tw o Lands translucent - fo r m any aeons, longer than any
other culture save perhaps th at o f C h in a , a virtu ally unbroken reign of
m aat, o f peace and harm ony. And even though the ceremonies, the
M ysteries, do not con tinu e in a m anifested fo rm , th at which they
conveyed can never vanish; they can only be eclip sed , to shine forth in
full splendour when the o ccu lta tio n has passed, the Earth once again
bathed in golden light, translucent.
It is to th at translucence - and to the natu re o f th e T w o Lands - that
we now turn.
CHAPTER 10
The Two Lands

Surely one of the most difficult aspects of a traditional culture like that
of ancient Egypt for the modern to understand is the transcendent
nature of temporal reality, which to the extent that tradition prevailed
was a direct reflection of Divine Reality. That tradition - which Egypt
sought to preserve with a singular intensity - was the cord binding past
to future, above to below; it was the very axis of the culture, and the
Egyptians were well aware that when it was severed, the two lands
would drift far apart, the world taking its due course into disorder and
fragmentation. This was in fact no doubt the import of the treatise of
Manetho - the priest of Ra at Heliopolis near the end of Egypt’s long
reign - entitled S othis, now almost completely lost, but which referred
to making ‘calculations’ as to ‘what will happen in the world’. In any
event, what were the Two Lands?
Although the matter demands an intricate treatment, none the less
ultimately one can say this: the Two Lands refers not only to two
temporal places, but also to Celestial and temporal Earth, to the
Hermetic above and below. In brief, the Two Lands are the principial
realm of the Gods, and the realm of man, respectively. And the Sun -
Amen-Ra - on the H orizon, is the source of and primordial unity
within them reflected in tradition, in the King, and in the individual:
He is the axis of the worlds.
Indeed, one can hardly read any of the ancient papyri or carvings
without finding constant reference to the Two Lands, and to their
inter-relationship with the Great Sun, A m en-R a.1 Witness the papyrus
of Hu-nefer, wherein it is said:

Homage to Thee, O A m en-Ra, W ho rests upon M a a t-----


Millions of years have passed in the world, and I cannot tell the
number through which Thou hast passed. . . . Thou passest
through them in Peace . . . this Thou does in an instant of time,
and then Thou dost sink down and make an end of the hours.2

Here, then, we see the absolute unity and transcendence of R a, the

I 73
74 THE TWO LANDS

Divine Sun, Who exists for millions and millions of years in an instant
Ho is, like Brahman, absolute unknowable Reality.
In the passage immediately following, however, we find homage
to the manifest face of Ra. The first passage could be said to belong tr
the primordial era, while the latter refers to a later time, when the Or/
has become manifest in the Two, when Egypt was no longer unified, in a
Golden Age, but was Two Lands: above and below.
The passage reads, in part:

Praise be to Amen-Ra, the Bull in Annu, chief of all the Gods, the
beloved One . . . Lord of the thrones of the Two Lands, Governor
of the Apts (North and South Thebes), Bull of Thy
M o th e r,__King of Heaven and first-born God of Earth, and
Lord of things which exist. . . . Thou art the maker of things
below and of things above. Thou illuminest the Two Lands and
sailest over the sky in peace, O King of North and South, Ra,
Whose word hath unfailing effect, Who art over the Two Lands,
Thou mighty One of Twofold strength, Thou Lord of terror . . .
Thou eldest born of the dew . . . Thou Beautiful Face Who comes
from the Divine Land (Neter-ta). Thou hast two horns which
endure. . . . Hail, Prince, life, health, strength, Lord of all the
Gods, Whose appearance art in the Horizon. . . . Thy Name is
hidden from Name Thy children in Thy name ‘Amen’. . . . Thou
shinest in the Eastern and Western Horizons, and overthrowest
Thy enemies at Thy birth daily. . . . Thou art the great Hawk
which gladdens the body, and the Beautiful Face which gladdens
the breast. . . . The heart of the dead go out to meet you, and the
denizens of Heaven turn to You; Your appearances rejoice the Two
Lands. Homage to Thee, Amen-Ra, Lord of the Throne of the
Two Lands; Thy City loveth Thy radiant Light.3

Underlying this passage, implicit in it, is the fear that Ra should, for
man, cease to exist, cease to perform His Celestial harmonisation and
enlightenment, that man should fail to perform his responsibilities and
so lose sight of the Divine Sun, an eventuality implicit already in the
Creation of the Two Lands, for the descent from unity to multiplicity,
once begun, must continue to its very nadir, the Two Lands become
more and more separate, Heaven inaccessible from Earth - and the
Hymn to Ra was intended to forestall that eventuality, to preserve the
unity of Heaven and Earth through the invocation of His power. For to
speak of strength is to imply the possibility of weakness; to speak of a
T H E T W O LA N D S 7.5

word of unfailing effect' is to imply that His word will not always, for
men, have unfailing effect. This is not to say, of course, that Ra ever
changes or diminishes in any way, hut that man, in his increasing
blindness, grows heedless of His unfailing word, of , of His
strength and primordial unity. In this passage, therefore, we see precisely
this unifying of the Two Realms in Him W ho is above and below and
upon the Horizon, W ho governs all the spheres. As Celestial Bull, He
bears the two horns which endure - Heaven and Earth - and embodies
the world-soul, the principial Origin of all beings in the Receptacle of
the Great Mother (N ut). Here also lies the significance of the ‘Divine
Phallus', which is in reality the w orld-axis, the Celestial Pole through
which emanates the Creative Word (Greek: L o g o s), and by which
Creation exists.
Finally, in regards to the passage, we must ask: who are the dead,
those who in the darkness of the Tuat turn toward the Celestial Sun?
They are we ourselves - for every aspect of Creation is reflected in man -
and consequently we must recognise that it is we, here, now, upon this
earth, who are the dead in the underworld to the extent that we are
blind to the Divine M ajesty of the Sun. W ho, then, are those in Heaven?
They are those who are able to drink the Celestial Waters and who are
‘like unto stars in Heaven’.4 They live upon, emanate from, and exist
within the Light of the Divine Sun.5
But most im portant to understanding, not only this passage, but
ancient Egyptian culture in general, was the teaching of the Two Lands.
In what did the Two Lands consist? To this question we can find several
simultaneous answers, each illum inating the com plexity of this ancient
tradition. For it appears that not only was Egypt as a whole a reflection
of Celestial Reality, but Egypt herself was divided into two lands -
North and South - which in turn reflected this greater relation to
Celestiality. Thus the city H erm onthis was known as the ‘Heliopolis of
the South’, and it appears that there was a similar mysterious
correlation between the other cities of Upper and Lower Egypt. The
cities of the Upper Land which were centres of the Sun included Thebes,
Hermonthis, Coptos, Panopolis, Cusae, and Hermopolis M agna; in the
Lower Land they included M em phis, Sais, X o is, Babylon, Mendes,
Diospolis and Khemm is, the island.6 T h e district of An formed the
border between the N orth and the South; and according to one ancient
text, ‘when Horus and Set were dividing the country, they took up their
places one on one side of the boundary, and the other on the other . . .
and agreed that An should form the frontier’. 7
76 THE TW O LANDS

As a result, we can see in the ancient Egyptian cosmography the three


worlds, including that above, the horizon, and that below. As W
Marsham Adams notes, the sacred geography of ancient Egypt
corresponded precisely with the realms of the dead, so that the forty-
two provinces of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms mirrored the forty-
two provinces of the Judges of the Dead, the Upper Gods of the Orbit
and the Lower Gods of the Horizon.8 And all of these were mirrored in
the Great Pyramid, the ‘House of the Hidden Places’, so that when the
initiate completed his journey through the labyrinths of the Pyramid of
Light, and had emerged above, illumined, he had therefore
simultaneously mastered and transcended all the worlds, which were
mirrored within the Pyramid itself. The key to this transcendence lay,
says Adams, in the junction of the upper and lower chambers of the
Pyramid, which corresponds to the city of Memphis within Egypt
herself, central to the Greater Two Kingdoms as well as to the Lesser.9
Regardless, however, of the precise nature of the Great Pyramid - and
strictly speaking it need not necessarily enter into the present discussion,
but is only an interesting sidelight - the fact remains that ancient Egypt
was to an extraordinary degree an intricate reflection of the Celestial
realm, an interrelationship between the Two Lands which was reflected
itself in the lofty observations of the Neoplatonists, the inheritors of the
Hermetic tradition, one of whom wrote in a treatise on the hieratic art:

Just as in the dialectic of love we start from the sensuous beauties


to rise until we encounter the unique principle of all beauty and
all ideas, so the adepts of hieratic science take as their starting
point the things of appearance . . . admiring in heaven, terrestrial
things according both to a causal and a celestial mode, and on
earth heavenly things in a terrestrial state.10

Moreover,

The hieratic art makes use of the filiation which attaches beings
here below to those on high, so bringing it about that the Gods
come down toward us and illumine us, or rather that we approach
them, discovering them in theopties and theophanies capable of
uniting our thought to theirs in the silent hymns of m editation.11

Proclus’ beautiful passage on the hymn that the lotus sings as it follows
the Sun suggests the nature of the interrelationship between the Two
Lands: that which is below follows, mirrors, and in its very nature
praises its Divine Source above. But this spontaneous praise was, even by
THE TW O LANDS 77

the time of ancient Egypt, no longer ordinary for man - he had become
alienated from, blinded to his Angelic origin, his and had to
reawaken under the auspices of the Mysteries, which functioned as an
umbilicus to the primordial Unity from which he had divorced himself.
The Mysteries, therefore, bestowed three grades of initiation which
were, significantly enough, indicated by reference to regions or lands,
these including Rust a , the realm of initiation; , the realm of
illumination; and Amentia the realm of Union with the Unseen God.
These three realms, of course, correspond exactly with the Hermetic
teaching of the three worlds - terrestrial, subtle and Celestial - as with
the Vedantic teaching of bu, va,and
bhu
and Sky. sta,or initiation, refers primarily to the illumination of the
u
R
intellect, the first glimpse of the Divine; , or illumination, refers
to the initiation into the Mysteries of Osiris, of transcendence of
temporality; A m etiti refers to Celestiality, to re-cognition of one’s
Angel, one’s true nature in R a, and to the provisional liberation such
realisation entails. But this triadic hierarchy is of course vertical, not
horizontal in nature; it refers to the ascent from the world below to the
world above, to the purification of the passions of the self, to freedom
from attachment, birth, and death, and it is here that the true meaning
of the Two Lands is to be found.
However, we must here emphasise that this ‘ascent’ is but a
provisional term, and that indeed there is no ascent from ‘here’ to
‘there’, that the Celestial realm is not ‘other’, but rather is the very
Angelic Essence of one’s being, and of beings. To interpret the teaching
of the Two Lands as dualism or docetism is to distort it; for that which
is ‘above’ is not really ‘above’ but w ithin; to see it is revelation, not
observation. As a result, realisation of the Celestial realm by means of
initiation into the Mysteries implies not realisation of something ‘out
there’, but realisation of one’s own true nature, a realisation which in
turn manifested in recognition of the True Nature of Creation itself as
Divine. Transmutation of oneself, recognition of oneself, is
transmutation and recognition of the world. This interdependent
realisation is in Vedanta expressed, somewhat deceptively in English
because of a fortuitous play on words, as realisation that the essence of
the self is the Self - but even this is inadequate. Something of the nature
of realising the simultaneous reciprocal interpenetration of the Two
Realms can be grasped by consideration of the Egyptian teaching of the
animals as Divine symbols: when seeing a cat, for instance, one was
seeing also a m anifestation of the Divine Isis; to see a jackal was to see
78 TH E TW O I.ANDS

Hermanubis in one aspect - and all the world was likewise illumined by
virtue of the Celestial cosmogony which the Two Lands symbolised for
the ancient Egyptians: truly, it was a translucent world.
And so we return to the sacred geography of Egypt, of which we
instance two manifestations: the famed temple planisphere upon the
ceiling in the temple at Dendera, and the attribution to Egypt of a
position as the ‘pupil in the eye of the world’.
In regards to the former - the famed temple at Dendera - we can in
this planisphere, painted upon the ceiling, and later moved wholesale to
Paris, see the Celestial realms, including scenes from the life of Osiris. In
its initiatory centre are a series of fourteen steps culminating in a
fifteenth which is Thoth. The various parts of the planisphere
correspond to the various sections of the temple itself, including such
sections as the Chamber of the Golden One, the Chamber of Flames,
and the Chamber of Birth, each of which corresponded, on a North-
South axis, to sacred geography and to the outlines of the temple: each
was a mirror of the other, of the cosmos, of the principial order.12 By
learning the visualised aspects of Reality manifested sym bolically in the
Temples, the initiates walked for a time in the very H alls of Light,
which is to say in the Celestial realm, of which Egypt herself was seen to
be a reflection. The B o o k o f the ,D
ead then (or perhaps be
o f M astery o f the H idden P laces),13 instructed one on the nature of
Reality as a theophany, a theophany which was m anifested first in the
sacred Centrum of the temple, as in the planisphere, as in the temple as a
whole, as in the Egyptian landscape, and finally in the order of the
cosmos.
Each city, or nome, was for itself the centre of the cosm os, and posed
thereby no contradiction to the sacred centre which was in the next
nome; all reflected the same principial reality in accordance with their
given landscape and purpose - just as each culture in the world, each
religion must be for its worshippers the only religion, an assertion which
in no way excludes the validity of the other religions as the only revealed
truth fo r th em . We are, after all, here speaking of an ordering and a
vertical dimension to existence of which today man has virtually no
recollection, and so the simultaneous validity of all forms for their
adherents, each being mutually respected, is for us an alien idea. But for
the ancient Chinese, say, it was quite customary for Islam ic, Taoist,
Buddhist and Hindu travellers cordially to ask one another to which
faith they belonged, not out of sectarian rivalry, but out of the
acceptance which only serenity with oneself as part of a tradition can
T H E T W O LANDS 79

bring* Paradoxically, as Frithjof Schuon has observed, only the


acceptance of and adherence to one of the traditional religions reveals
their unity.
It is in this light that wc can see the true significance of that at first
curious term given to ancient Egypt as the ‘pupil of the world’, or
al-chem ia (Arabic). According to Plutarch, ‘The Egyptians call Egypt,
inasmuch as its soil is particularly black, as though it were the black of
the eye, Chemia, and compare it with the H eart.’ 14 Egypt, then, was the
Eve of the World much as the stars were the Eyes of the Celestial realm;
through her pulsed the flow of the N ile, that river at once Celestial and
terrestrial; from her black and fertile soil rose the lotus, heliotrope,
reflection of the Sun. As is w ritten in the papyri of Edfu, she is ‘Egypt
^the Black), called after the Eye of Osiris, for Egypt is His Pupil’.15 In
addition, the Great Sun, as Amen-Kneph, is known as ‘He Who holds
Himself hidden in His Eye’, and as ‘He W ho veils Himself in His
Pupil’.16 Isis, too, was known as the ‘pupil of the world’s Eye’; all the
Gods were conjoined by means of this intriguing expression, with the
sacredness of Egypt, the mysterious Black Land: why?
The answer can only lie hidden, veiled within the Mysteries
themselves, and w ithin the meaning of the , or second sight,
which the Mysteries bestowed. T h a t is, the Mysteries bestowed
Celestial Vision, revealing the Divine Translucence of Egypt, within
which alone that mysterious transm utation of the self and of the world
might take place.
From this perspective life upon earth is no bondage, as the later
Gnostics were alleged to have portrayed it, but rather is an opportunity,
a cherished chance to live w ithin the realm of the ‘perfecting black’ over
which Osiris (Knowledge), Ra (the Sun) and Isis (Creative Power) each
held sway, and in which they were revealed.17 Seen in this way, ancient
Egypt was at once seer and seen, revealer and revelation - true
theophany - in which m an’s true eye was opened, and which in turn
reflected him in her own Pupil. As is written in the ,

This Sun is like honey for all beings, and all beings are like honey
for the Sun. This shining, im m ortal person W ho is in this Sun and
with reference to oneself, this shining, im m ortal person who is in
the Eye, He is just this Self; T h is is im m ortal, This is Brahman,
This is A ll.18

And what was the result of this translucence for the individual, the
initiate? Some indication o f that can be found in Apuleius’ novel, in
80 THE TW O LANDS

which the protagonist, Lucius, although living relatively late in the


modern era, was still able to be initiated into the Mysteries. Here is his
description of the immediate consequences.

It seemed to me that the whole world, independent of my own


high spirits, was happy. Cattle of every kind, the houses, the very
day, all seemed to lift serene faces brimful with jo llity .. . . (I was)
shaken by up-welling joy, wonderstruck, filled with grati­
tude . . . thrice blessed . . . and so with tonsured crown I set about
joyfully executing my duties in that most ancient culture (which
had been founded in the era of Sylla) not hiding my baldness but
freely exposing it wherever I w ent.19

Indeed, this is a result to be pondered, this serenity and joy and gratitude
- for it is this, the efflux of the Mysteries, which lies at the very centre
of the teaching of the Two Lands. For to realise one’s true nature,
indivisible from that of the Divine Sun at midnight, is to illumine one’s
world as well, an illum ination which renders it a magical, Celestia;
realm, a place of exultation and sorrow, a revelation of what it truly
means to be human, to be alive.
For only when we live, not in Two Lands, nor in One, but in the Sun,
can the Two Lands come alive for us. And w ith that we leave this most
intriguing and suggestive of topics, turning to a related one: that of
sacred language.
CHAPTER 11
On Sacred Language and
the Hieroglyph
It was assumed by the Greeks that the fragments of ancient wisdom
which remained to them from the prisca th eo lo g ia were limited,
denatured from the direct Egyptian tradition, evidence of which can be
seen in numerous places, not least of which is Plato’s , in which
he spoke of the dangers inherent in the written word, and to which we
shall turn in a moment. Similar observations were made in the Corpus
Hermeticum - but in both of these we find, not only condemnation of
reliance upon the written word, but also justification for it under certain
circumstances, those being the advent of the ‘forgetfulness of old age’. In
other words, even though writing is inherently dangerous - for it implies
a loss of memory, ignorance, and reliance upon written, external
characters - yet in a degenerate age, the written word is at times the only
means by which man’s eyes can be reopened to the sacred once again.
Consequently we can see that writing has a mercurial, dual quality - for
even though the com m itm ent of the Mysteries to writing implies their
gradual fading away in reality, nevertheless the written word itself serves
as a reminder of Reality. And if the written character is a hieroglyph,
then it serves directly as an opening into the symbolic, into Divine
Reality.
The dual quality of writing becomes quite evident in P lato’s
observations upon writing in haedru, in which, by mean
P
admonishment of Theuth by King Ammon upon the invention of
writing, he argues that

this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’


souls, because they w ill not use their memories; they will trust to
the external, written characters and not remember of
themselves . . . your disciples (will be given) not truth but the
semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things, and will
have learned nothing.1
In addition,

When they (the M ysteries) have been written down, they are

81
82 ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND THE HIEROGLYPH

tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not


understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to
whom not; and if they are maltreated or abused, they have no
parent to defend them, and they cannot protect or defend
themselves. 2

Essentially, then, we find here a condemnation not of the written word


per se, but only in so far as it deceives the reader, causing him to rely
upon it, rather than upon actual reminiscence of the Divine. This is
underscored in the passage immediately following, in which Socrates
observes that the written word is but a bastard son of the lawfully
engendered ‘intelligible Word’ (Greek: Logos) ‘graven in the soul of the
learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and to be
silent’. No, Socrates continues, the wise will no more commit his sacred
truth to writing than a husbandman would commit his seeds to grow in
eight days in the heat of the summer, rather than throughout the eight
months of the year; the wise will not write words ‘in water’, in pen and
ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor
adequately teach.
Yet the question immediately arises: why then did Plato commit
him self to words? The answer, said Plato, is simply that, for the sake of
amusement, an old man might sow in the ‘garden of letters’ his
memorials against the forgetfulness of old age. And ignorance -
forgetfulness of the Divine - is after all the primal source of sin, not
only for the Greeks, but for the Egyptians, as for the Buddhists and for
all traditional religion. Plato knew, then, that in the ‘old age’ of
mankind some memorials shall have to remain of the wisdom of the
past, the wisdom of Egypt, and to this necessity he refers, more or less
explicitly, in Phaedrus. We have here, in other words, in this brief
passage condensed virtually all of the arguments regarding writing and
sacred language.
The first of these - in opposition to writing, and in addition to the
objection that writing increases forgetfulness - is that sowing words
brings forth the sacred truths too quickly, in too facile a manner; like a
plant that grows in eight days, words are but shallowly rooted in the
mind. The Mysteries involved a transformation of the entire being;
hearing of them through writing only feeds the intellect.3 This latter is
signified, too, by the phrase ‘written in water’, water being a symbol for
the ignorance ‘beneath the waves of the Flood’, into which the
Mysteries had begun to sink even in the time of Plato. This was in fact a
ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND THE HIEROGLYPH 83

central concern for the writers of the Corpus consider, for


instance, the Third on
erm
S
, in which Hermes says, ‘It is not possible
that such Mysteries should be conveyed to those without sacred
initiation into the rites/' In addition, ‘It is the mark of an impious mind
to publish to the profanum vulgis a treatise brimming with the grandeur
of Divinity.’5
Why is this so - why should the Mysteries not be disclosed to the
Many? In the Hermetic fragment entitled ‘Of Piety and True
Philosophy’, the author notes that

Such words as these have very few to give them ear; nay, probably
they will not even have the few. They have, moreover, some
strange force peculiar unto themselves; for they provoke the evil
unto even more evil.6

One should therefore, the treatise continues, protect the many from
themselves, that they might ignore what has been said until they are
prepared - for else they might think themselves ‘superior to Fate’,
becoming ever more arrogant, whereas if ignorant they will at least
refrain from sin out of fear of the unknown. In brief, those who receive
the teachings only intellectually, without the transformative power of
the initiatory tradition to guide them, may well - like Nietzsche - sink
into an amoral, egotistic morass, worse even than those who knew
nothing. This would not have been a problem in the seamless unity of a
traditional culture like that of Egypt, but as the Mysteries began to
wane, and the modern era to arise, the possibility of such errors
increased exponentially.
But there is another aspect to the disclosure of the ancient wisdom in
writing to which the Hermetics gave objection - as we can see in the
dialogue ‘The Definitions of Aesclepius to King Ammon’, in which
Aesclepius warns the King not to allow the sacred sermons of Hermes to
be translated from the sacred Egyptian into the lower Greek tongue,
saying

Keep this our sermon from translation; in order that such mighty
Mysteries might not come to the Greeks, and to the disdainful
speech of Greece, with all its looseness and its surface beauty,
taking all the strength out of the solemn and the strong - the
energetic speech of Names.7
The Greek tongue is merely a ‘noise of words’, novel and argumentative,
whilst the Egyptian is a language of Power, not of words, being ‘sounds
84 ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND TH E HIEROGLYPH

fulfilled with deeds’. ‘For that its very quality of sound, the (very)
Power of the F’gyptian Names, have in themselves the Power of bringing
into act what is said.’8 Likewise, it is said in the C haldean Oracles:

Never change barbarous names


For there are names in every nation given from God
Having unspeakable efficacy in the Mysteries.9

There is here an objection more profound even than those against the
disclosure of the Mysteries to the p op u lis : it has to do with the
denaturing of the Mysteries, with the ‘dragging down’, the diluting of
the Celestial. We assume, today, in our modern arrogance, that Greece
was the height of ancient culture, but it was not so. Rather, the Greeks
were, as evidenced by Homer, with his rudimentary, vestigial ideas of
shades and of the Gods, a rather backward people, whose culture was
revived by the influx of Egyptian and Chaldean Mysteries. But that
influx, though it reinvigorated the culture, was yet nonetheless a
descent, a translation downwards which, as our author above noted,
represented a decline, a decline of the Mysteries manifested also in the
sectarianism and fragmentation of Greek philosophy into the various
schools, rather than remaining all the votaries of the Mysteries. All of
this was, in any event, contemporaneous with and a result of a
fundamental loss: the loss of the primordial, hierophanic language of
ancient Egypt. That is to say: the waning of the Mysteries was signalled,
in part at least, by the loss of the primal language of Egypt, which was a
manifestation of the unity, the totality that was Egyptian culture, and
which could not be transmitted in to to to the Greeks, or to the West.
The hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, then, must have had some sacred
characteristics which later languages did not - on this point the Greeks,
in the persons of Plato, Iamblichus, Porphyry, and the writers of the
Corpus H erm eticum (who if they were not Greek, certainly had a Greek
audience), agree. But why? W hat fundamental difference is there,
between the hieroglyphs and later, written languages? The answer lies in
Plato’s objection to the invention of writing: it causes a loss of memory
- not ordinary memory, but Celestial memory, memory of the Celestial
realm and of Divine Reality. The merely written tongue is ‘horizontal;
it is not comprised of images, which directly reflect their Intelligible
Essence, or archetypos,but rather is only linear, temporal. Hieroglyphs,
on the other hand, have a ‘vertical’ quality in that they are indivisible
from, a direct reflection of the Essence of that which they represent.
Although we have not the time to consider here the subject in depth, it is
ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND THE HIEROGLYPH 85

worthwhile to note that in all sacred traditions, sounds are recognised to


have a celestial significance in themselves, a mantric resonance, a divine
correspondence so that in its most primordial form, language is
completely transcendent, religious in nature: purely sacred, being at once
a reflection of and an invocation of Divine Reality.
In any event, in the hieroglyphs we have yet another manifestation of
the ‘translucence' of ancient Egypt to which we earlier referred: to
speak, to write in that tongue was to invoke the Gods themselves. It was
not for nothing that the vowels, for instance, according to the ancient
Hermetic tradition, were attributed to the various planets; no doubt the
songs which Pythagoras sang to soothe the fiery temper of a peasant
drew upon precisely such subtle influences. As Schwaller de Lubicz once
wrote,

Hieroglyphic writing is the ultimate esoteric symbolic writing, in


the figuration of its signs as well as their colour and
placement. . . . The esoteric symbolic is different (from ordinary
language); it is of a magical nature. . . . It (partakes of) the ‘magic
of analogues’.10

The clearest evidence of the true nature and origin of hieroglyphs is to


be found in the Phoenician H istory of Philo of Byblos, wherein he
observes that the most ancient Chaldean tradition has it that the various
letters were formed of the ‘nature of the divine serpent’ which produces
shapes as it twists and turns, and which is reverenced by the Egyptians
and Phoenicians, as by those before them, because it sloughs off its skin
and is reborn like the initiate. When it has reached its limit, it resolves
back into itself. According to the ancient Egyptian tradition there
recounted, the ancients recognised the cosmos to be a sphere, misty and
fiery, in the centre of which was a serpent with a hawk’s head which,
according to Zoroaster, signifies the First God, ‘imperishable,
unbegotten, undivided, incomparable . . . perfect and wise’.11 In sum,
said Philo, the disciples of Tauutos (Thoth) built temples, in the
innermost shrines of which they placed the ‘first letters’ created by
serpents, and for them they celebrated ‘feasts, sacrifices, and rites'. The
serpents were considered the Greatest Gods, and the founders (or
foundation) of the universe.12
In order to clarify this matter, we must turn back to the Vedantic
teachings to which we have referred throughout our discussion of
ancient Egyptian tradition, for in them we find elucidation of this
relationship between the serpent and the first letters. The serpent power,
86 ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND TH E HIEROGLYPH

as wc have seen, is that of dali, the emanation into manif


n
ku
Sakti, Who like Isis ‘veiled Herself from Herself’ in order that the world
might come to he, and who exists in a state of potentiality, coiled, at
the base of Creation. We have here, then, in the ancient Egyptian
tradition, a direct reflection of that which was transmitted whole in the
Vedanta: the serpent as the primal force within the temporal world and
which, when reinvigorated, enlivened, ‘rises up’, causing the realisation
of Divine Reality (Siva), or gnosis. In other words, in both of these
ancient traditions, to speak and to write is to invoke the primal serpent
power at the base of Creation. This is why part of the transmutation
implied in the Tantric path is the acquisition of , or certain
psychic powers - which are controlled or realised through mantram -
just as the Master of the Word in Egyptian tradition implies that ‘he
who knows the Name has the Power’. In both cases the ‘mastery’
involved is that of the serpent power, which in reality is not mastered -
for that would imply a false dualism - but rather is awakened, allowed
to manifest. We can see here, too, something of the significance of the
Greek term logs, or Divine Word, which according to the New
Testament descended into Creation, in-forming it, and which, when
‘awakened’ once again, ascends to, or perhaps better manifests, its
Divine Origin.
Now but one aspect of sacred language remains to be discussed in
relation to ancient Egypt, that being the interrelationship of the Divine
Names and symbols of the hieroglyphs with Sacred Reality. For if, as we
have seen, the primal letters were manifestations of the serpentine
power, then they were emanations of the Divine, indivisible from it, and
so to invoke them was to invoke the Divine Reality of which they are
manifestations. The Egyptian hieroglyphs reflected the symbolic images
of Reality; the serpentine letters reflected the powers within those
images.
Consequently, as Iamblichus put it:

The whole dialect of sacred nations, such as those of the Egyptians


and Assyrians, is adapted to sacred concerns; on this account, we
ought to think it necessary that our conference with the Gods
should be in a language allied to them. Because, likewise, such a
mode of speech is the first and most ancient. And especially
because those who first learned the names of the Gods, having
mingled them with their own tongue, delivered them to us so that
we might always preserve immovable the sacred law of tradition,
in a language peculiar to and adapted to them.1’
ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND THE HIEROGLYPH 87

In brief, just as the Gods are immutable, so too is their language, which
is ‘suspended from the very nature of things’, and so it is that ‘the
language of sacred nations is very reasonably preferred to that of other
men’. And of these sacred nations, the Egyptians were foremost.
Moreover, Iamblichus continues, ‘it is necessary that the sacred prayers
be preserved invariably the same’, for it is ‘nearly the case at present
that both names and prayers have lost their efficacy’, because they are
‘continually changed through the innovation and illegality of the
Greeks’, being therefore unstable, volatile and weak.14
The Egyptian hieroglyphs, being the most purely symbolic of all
languages, were the least able to lose their sacred quality - and so were
simply lost, ignored - whereas those languages formed out of the
convolutions of serpents into letters, like the serpents themselves,
became cold, rigid and dead when not exposed to the Divine Sun.
As a result, we can see how it is that the shift from ancient language
to a modern implies a very real loss, a severing of an ancient and
venerable transmission. It has been said that the efficacy of a given
invocation depends not so much upon the things said as upon the
intention with which it is said - yet none the less antiquity alone, with
its uncountable prior repetitions, and the consequent investiture of
power, imparts to words and phrases and even letters a force of tradition
unavailable to one speaking in a comparatively modern language like
that of Greek - to say nothing of one speaking in English, that motley
child. The power of an ancient language, like that of Egypt, lies in the
fact that to speak it, to write it, was itself a form of communion with
the Divine. And in such a world, pristine and primordial, there was no
such thing as ‘sacred’ as opposed to ‘profane’ - all was a , the
below reflecting the above.
This of course is not the case today - far from it - for the modern era
consists in nothing if not in a divergence between the sacred and the
profane, between that below and that above - and, it would seem, the
lower, the quantitative, has very nearly triumphed. In such a situation,
the ancient warnings against disclosure of the Mysteries no longer hold
quite so true, not only because there is a kind of natural selection still
(few even bothering to listen, being too intent upon accumulation and
power) but also because, as the writer of one portion of the Corpus
Ciermeticum put it, one would have no inclination to study the
Mysteries if one had no ears to hear them . And though ‘many are called
but few are chosen’, yet it must needs be that the many at least know of
the direction in which they are travelling, know of their Divine Origin -
88 ON SACRED LANGUAGE AND THE HIEROGLYPH

for all walk the same Path, ultimately, being in different degrees only
ignorant and wise.
Then, too, the Mysteries, as Plato said, cannot - cannot - be revealed
solely in writing, that is, in writing as it is today, an intellectual exercise
rather than an invocation. For after all, the Mysteries are inherently
experiential, being a transmutation of the self and a realisation of who
we really are, of the Divine Origin of all Creation - and to this writing
can only point the way. And so, if we reverence the ancient tongues, if
we follow the path of the prisca ,theolgia the gate can nev
against us: reality shall be revealed as it was and is and ever shall be, in
proportion as we are able to perceive it.
Now we turn our discussion from the various aspects of the Mysteries
and of the Gods to the Mysteries themselves, so that we might conclude
by reminding ourselves of their meaning , of their place for the
individual, for the culture, and for the cosmos itself, in order that we
might remember, however briefly, who we truly are.
CHAPTER 12
On the Mysteries

We have, throughout this discussion o f ancient Egypt, assumed the


Mysteries to be the central them e, woven into our observations on the
Gods and on the essence of Egyptian metaphysics and religion; indeed,
without keeping the M ystery trad ition , and all it implied, closely in
mind, virtually nothing of w orth or interest could be said of Egypt.
Truly, there lies the key to that m ost ancient and venerable of cultures.
Yet we have not addressed the M ysteries directly thus far, having rather
approached them tangentially, providing the metaphysical under­
standing which was im plicit for the Egyptians, but which must be made
explicit for us today, thereby offering an indication at least of w hat the
Egyptian initiatory trad ition truly signified - and signifies. It is now
necessary, then, before we end our discussion, to focus upon the
Mysteries directly, to recognise that they were the very cen tru m of the
ancient Egyptian culture - as of the Chaldean, the Assyrian, and other
cultures so ancient they are no longer named or known - in order that
we can recognise precisely w hat is missing from our modern era, an
absence which is indeed the true cause of the unutterable, aching sense of
loss and anxiety inherent in m odernity, and so can orient ourselves
towards it, towards the truth which can never vanish but can only be
obscured.
Perhaps the best place to begin our observations on the ancient
Mysteries is with that most venerable of sources, P lato, who in P haedrus
has this to say about initiation and the Mysteries:

For, as has already been said, every soul of man has in the way of
nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing
into the form of m an. But all souls do not easily recall the things
of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only,
or (being) . . . unrighteous, they may have lost the memory of the
holy things which once they saw . . . .
There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they
saw beauty shining in brightness - we philosophers following in

89
90 ON THE MYSTERIES

the train of Zeus, others in company with other Gods; and then
we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery
which may truly be called most blessed, celebrated by us in our
state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come,
when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and
simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure
light, pure ourselves, and not yet enshrined in that living tomb
which we carry about now that we are imprisoned in the body,
like an oyster in its shell. Let me linger over the beauty of scenes
which have passed away.
But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in
company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth, we find
her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of
sense ___
Now he who is not newly initiated, or who has become
corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the sight of
true beauty in the other; he looks only at her earthly
namesake . . . like a brutish b e a st___
But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the
spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he
sees anyone having a Godlike face or form , which is the
expression of divine beauty.1

We have quoted this passage at length for obvious reasons; in it the


true nature of initiation and therefore of the Mysteries is writ clear as
day, for those who have eyes to see. In it we can glimpse at least some of
the beauty, power, and transformative meaning which lay at the heart
of the Mysteries: we can glimpse the ascent from the veiled darkness of
temporality into the supernal Light of Divine Reality, the sheer
transport and rapture of beholding the transcendent, Celestial realm,
and in so doing can begin to realise how it was that the Mysteries stood
as the very Pole, the Axis of the ancient cultures, a stream passing
through time and, while not partaking of it, none the less transmuting
it. Through the Mysteries people glimpsed the true nature of the cosmos
and of themselves - indeed, in a very real way, the Mysteries were the
Sun round which the entire culture, pivoted, spiralling ever inward; in
fact, it was for the Mysteries that the culture itself existed.
There is, by the way, much of significance in a modern
metaphysician’s observation that an Axis exists in an undefinable,
exoterically incomprehensible manner, ‘having a mystical character’,
ON TH E MYSTERIES 91

and when there is rotation, the Axial Pole moves in the direction
opposite of the rotation, creating the precessional m otion.2
In any event, by ascending the Axis of the culture - by means of the
flight of the alone to the Alone, to use Plotinus’ apt phrase - the
individual, the culture, and the cosmos itself were sanctified, rectified,
and justified. Through this ascent, through the awakening and
restoration which the Mysteries entailed, the cosmos was set in order
once again - indeed, in the most profound sense, all was right with the
world.
An equally clear perception of the nature of initiation can be attained
from Iamblichus’ treatise O n th e M ysteries o f the , in which
the theurgic science of the Egyptians and Chaldeans is, albeit somewhat
tangentially at times, outlined. There, perhaps the clearest reference to
precisely what the Mysteries signified is found in Chapter IX , where
Iamblichus writes that when daemons are seen, the dispositions of those
that invoke them receive ‘the appetite of generation and a desire of
nature’, together with a wish to accomplish the works of Fate, and a
power effective of things of this kind. When Angels appear, those who
invoke participate of intellectual wisdom and truth, pure virtue, stable
knowledge, and a commensurate order. And when Archangels appear,
these dispositions receive a pure condition of being, intellectual
contemplation, and an immutable power. And in the last place, those
who invoke the Gods receive, ‘when they become visible, a liberation
from the passions’, a transcendent perfection, and an energy ‘entirely
more excellent and participate of Divine Love and an immense joy’.3
In addition to these things, also, the m anifestation of the Gods
imparts truth and power, rectitude of works, and gifts of the greatest
good; but ‘the m anifestation of other powers is appropriately
accompanied by such things as are commensurate to their several
orders.’4
The soul of man, when seen in this perspective, is recognised to be the
last of more excellent natures, subject to the winds and passions of
temporality and incarnation, bonded and heavy with materiality. In
terms of fire, the genera manifest each according to its given order:
terrestrial fire is black and smouldering; aerial fire is brighter and purer;
and Celestial fire is magnificent, brillian t.5 In other words, although the
visions of the Mysteries are not temporal in nature, yet they can
analogically be so understood, by means of image and symbol, the first
or most immediate of which are those of fire and air.
Hence the man who so witnesses, or more accurately, realises, the
92 ON THE MYSTERIES

Divine Fire is unable to breathe, through the subtlety of it, and becomes
languid, having shed the lowest, connascent spirit. Those who enter into
the presence of the Archangels, though they experience a divine
breathlessness, are not wholely overwhelmed, and those who are in the
presence of daemons find the air unaffected. The heroes, on the other
hand, move the earth, causing certain sounds, while the archons, last of
all, bear about them an assemblage of luminous appearances, being
suspended as it were below the air.6
Here, then, in the last passage, we see the descent from indescribable
unity to multiplicity, the recapitulation of which ‘journey’ in fact
constituted the essence of the Mysteries, to which Iamblichus’
observation that one rapt in the Divine Fire no longer , and
furthermore has shed the lowest, dualistic aspect of consciousness, is a
most important clue. Creation, as we have seen, proceeds in an emanatory
fashion from absolute self-sufficient Bliss ‘down’ into temporality; the
Mysteries, on the other hand, ‘reverse’ this ‘movement’, ‘travelling’
instead ‘upwards’ into the Divine and breathless Fire of pure Bliss.
And this rapture, or absorption, is none other than that which in
Buddhism is termed sam adhi - or
a term which refers to a form of yoga in which ‘the mind overcomes the
mind’ - in which respiratory functions virtually cease while,
simultaneously, one enters into an ever purer and more transcendent
aspect of consciousness. This form of , which is more intellectual,
at least in a sense, is closely affiliated with Zen Buddhism, in that it
does not involve arousing the kundali energy, nor mastery of the various
‘centres’ and acquisition of sidh, or powers, but rather
concentrative mental power or energy. Indeed, one must suspect that the
Mysteries with which Porphyry, Plotinus, Iamblichus and the other
Neoplatonists were familiar were, in the very nethermost reaches of
antiquity, connected with precisely this dhyana , while the
Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, on the other hand, were aligned with those
of Siva and Sakti, with kundalini yoga. However, such an historical con­
junction presupposes a central culture so ancient as to be far, far beyond
our reach, our vision - and in any case, is not necessary for the understand­
ing of that which remained yet at the onset of our present historical era.
The religion of Ra, in brief - whatever its historical conjunction with
Vedanta and the dhyana path to Brahman - was that with which the
Neoplatonists, Iamblichus perhaps as much as any among them, had
affiliation; while the religion of Isis and Osiris, bearing an undeniable
affiliation with Sakti and. Siva, with kundalini , continued for
ON THE MYSTERIES 93

those who were more suited to that path. One must not thereby assume,
however, that there was ultimately any fundamental difference between
these two paths - that is, that they refer to two different Divine
Realities, for indeed, how could there be two? - but ratber that they
refer to two aspects of the same Reality, the former being the
negativaythe latter being the via affirm ativ a, the former being world-
transcending, the latter being world-affirming. Even these distinctions,
however, are ultimately distortions - for both are aspects, appearances,
manifestations of the same Path, the same Reality. Both the via negativa
and the via affirm ativ a lead toward the same joy, the same transcendent
serenity, the same freedom from delusion and ignorance - and indeed, it
could not be otherwise; to the extent that it appears to be so, is one or
another aspect being exaggerated, distorted.
And in fact this may well have happened, at the end of that long and
venerable Egyptian transmission, the one path being resolved into mere
libertinism, revelry; the other into mere Hermetic intellectualism. Yet,
none the less, the central Path must needs remain ever the same, the
sanctum sanctorum ever inviolate, for despite historical eventuality, that
which is timeless and Divine in its very nature does not change, but
remains ever the same, awaiting still the humble petitioner, entrant to
the Mysteries, one who recognises the very essence of human meaning
and responsibility and who wishes to fulfil it, to be fulfilled.
The Mysteries, properly speaking, belong to the realm of Knowledge,
it is true - but it is a Knowledge that, in so far as it is pure, approaches,
realises its own transcendence. As Proclus once said, knowledge implies
duality - a knower and a thing known - whereas the knowledge (gnosis)
imparted, awakened by the Mysteries consisted in precisely the
resolution of the realm of dualistic knowledge into the Unity of which
it is a reflection, just as the Angelic is purer than the Daimonic, and the
Divine purer than the Angelic: the lower always depends upon, and is
subsumed into, the Higher. And if any remedy were possible for our
present deluded m aterialistic obsessions, for our infernal desire for
technical mastery of the world to the exclusion of Divine Wisdom, it
would necessarily lie here, in the ancient Mysteries.
But regardless of our own delusion and blindness, despite our
incapacity to se, the Mysteries and the metaphysical truth, the
transcendent insight which they manifested, remain as they have been
since the very dawn of time itself, open to us inasmuch as we are open to
them. So it was, is, and will be.
More than this we cannot say.
CHAPTER 13
Apocatastasis: Some Implications

Wc have already made references elsewhere to the , the


Great Catastrophe, or perhaps better, the Great Restoration, but
nevertheless, because of the nature of our present era, it is necessary to
devote some time to consideration of it, not least because in it we see
the aim and culmination of our own age.
We have, throughout this discussion of ancient Egypt, been focussing
upon the profundity and power of the Egyptian religious tradition,
which itself has been the source for virtually all of that which has
remained for modernity of the primordial past: our debt to Egypt is
incalculable. Consider, for instance, that virtually every great Greek
philosopher was said to have travelled to Egypt, or to have been
Egyptian himself. Pythagoras was said to have been taught by Oenuphis
of On; Plato by Sechnuphis of On; others of note connected with Egypt
include Alcques, Archimedes, Apuleius, Anaxagoras, Diodorus Siculus,
Euripides, Herodotus, Lycurgus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pausanius, Solon,
Strabo, Thales and Xenophanes - not to mention Plotinus and
Porphyry, who were Egyptian by birth.1 From this list alone - not to
mention the innumerable hidden references to the Mysteries in the New
Testament - we can see our inestimable, unseen debt to ancient Egypt,
so little recognised today, and from it we can begin to understand how
it was that our present era arose.
For our present era consists in nothing if not in an ignorance of all
which ancient Egypt embodied - nothing if not an eclipse of ancient
wisdom in favour of quantitative power, the spiritual poverty of which
cannot be grasped save by recognition of what a normal or traditional
culture like that of ancient Egypt implied. In brief: in ancient Egypt we
can see the profundity of a culture aware of its place mediate between
the richness of the primordial Golden Age and the poverty of the
approaching modern Dark Age. We can see, too, the waning of the
spiritual Sun and Moon, the narrowing and weakening of the Celestial
river which flowed yet strongly then, but slowed and narrowed until
today we see but the barest trickle: in sum, we have today nearly

94
APOCATASTAS1S: SOME IMPLICATIONS 95

reached the very nadir of the descent from primordiality and from
tradition, and in fact stand upon the very verge of the -
the clearing away of modern confusion and distortion, the restoration
of the Golden Age.
However, this clearing away must take place first upon an individual
level, for each of us - we can look neither to the past (as Egypt, say) nor
to the future Restoration, hut only to the Present Instant, to the Eternal
Now. The resolution of our dilemm a lies not in the past, nor in the
future, but in timelessness.
One of the clearest signs of our present state is the modern tendency
either to ignore or to drag down the teachings of antiquity: in the
former case, the danger is not so great, since the teachings themselves are
merely left to languish, there still for those who seek, but in the latter
case the danger is great indeed, for the force involved is anti-traditional,
engaged in usurping the wisdom of the past for manipulative ends.2 One
instance of this is modern psychology, which, whether Jungian or
Freudian,3 is essentially reductionist, making transcendent truth serve as
mere ‘psychic elements’; other examples include the attempts of
sociologists to reduce all human activity to quantitative ‘social
movements’; but worst of all are the attempts of modern counter-
traditional cults to appropriate ancient symbology and metaphysics
only to lure in devotees to be exploited and, often enough, destroyed.
These latter - the false prophets who ‘shall be many’ and who would
‘deceive even the Elect, if such were possible’ - present the outward
facade of traditional initiatory religion, but have no historical
continuity; they arise, in the form of ‘shamanism ’ or of a group around
a given ‘master’, from a kind of vacuum, and lead their followers into
the very abyss of chaos, fear, confusion and dissolution, under the very
guise of religion!
What do these have to do with ancient Egypt, and with the
Apocatastasis? The answer is simply this - and in it lies the essence of
our need to examine the culture of ancient Egypt: ancient Egypt was
based upon, consisted in, at, order, the order which arises
M
conformity to and understanding of Divine Reality, and only by
comparison with it, with traditional, normal culture, can the
abnormality of our present tim e be rightly understood. For our present
time consists in the abrogation of the Divine Order in favour of the
human - a motivation which is, strictly speaking, satanic, but which
nonetheless must precede the dissolution of this state of abnormality
and the Great Restoration (A p ocatastasis). T hat which is evil can, after
96 APOCATASTASIS: S O M E I M P L I C A T IO N S

all, only he known by reference to that which is good, and indeed


abrogation of one state can only mean the institution of the other***
this can be glimpsed the real reason that we must study ancient F * *n
for there we find a reflection, not only of who we are, but of that wh^
we arc no longer (yet which, no doubt, we shall one day be again)
Consider, after all, the disorder now rampant in what we now
callously call our ‘environment’, and the vast abyss between th°
perspective that that bland word implies and the translucent world r^f
the Egyptians, in which every animal and tree and plant bore a sacred
significance, simultaneously seen to be temporal and Celestial. Is jt
merely coincidence that the Egyptian culture lasted for many thousands
of years, in harmony with its world and with itself, while the modern
era lurches from ‘crisis’ to ‘crisis’ in every field, from education t0
‘environmentalism’ to family unity to agricultural stability? Surely it js
not: surely there is a direct connection - a blindness to tradition, and to
the sacred, endemic to our own era. This blindness, however, cannot be
cured by recourse to the wisdom of Egypt - though through it can be
better recognised and understood - but can only be cured by the
restoration of sight (Greek: ep op teia), a sight which can only come with
the following of a traditional spiritual path.
According to Synesius, in a treatise entitled ‘On Providence’ the
origins of our present era lie within Egypt herself, arising when (said an
oracle)

a certain depraved fragment of religion, and an adulteration of


Divine Worship like that of money as it were, prevailed, which
the ancient law exterminated from the cities, shutting the doors
against impiety, and expelling it to a great distance from the
walls.4

In spite of this, however, the Typhonic power eventually prevailed, the


oracle said, but shall be expelled

when we purify the air which surrounds the earth, and which is
defiled with the breath of the impious, with fire and water . . .
(Then) immediately expect a better order of things, Typhos being
removed. For we expel suchlike prodigies by the devastation of
fire and thunder.5

What could give clearer indication of our present situation than this?
We might note, too, that it is also said that the final conflagration shall
be self-inflicted, the Giants or Titans being ‘expelled by their own
APO CATASTAS IS:SOME IMPLICATIONS 97

avenging furies'. Yet all of this can - and indeed must he read not only
cosmologically, but individually, referring ourselves. It is we who
must expel Typhon through fire and thunder, through the following of
a traditional spiritual path.
Hence we must not despair - despite the course of our present era
downward into the abyss of the quantitative, of ‘behaviourism’ and of
purely manipulative, infernal thought, of absolute ignorance of the
Divine - for the mere fact that we can still contemplate the splendour
of ancient Egypt underscores her perennial nature, and the perennial
nature of that which she reflected. Even though it is quite clear that our
own era can only end in the complete destruction of our world, in
fragmentation and self-inflicted catastrophe, yet our studies of ancient
Egypt point to the fleeting nature of this modern era, point to that
which is true and eternal and Divine in any time - highlighting that
which is indeed timeless, transcendent.
Apocatastasis - return to the Divine Harmony - can only occur when
the present aberrance has exhausted itself, much as an avalanche cannot
pause in transit but must, once begun, complete its course. In our
present time, as Proclus said in his commentary upon Plato’s
Parmenides, the sacred institutions and ceremonies, the sacred order
manifested in ancient Egypt, have passed away, to be slowly replaced by
a society ever more based upon the quantitative, upon manipulation of
the environment and of others, so that philosophy alone of the Western
tradition stands as a reminder of how man can and ought to live, as a
reminder of who he truly is - philosophy stands like Hermes, guardian
of the Celestial Entrance. Granted, the glimpse, which philosophy and
metaphysics offers is not in itself transformative - yet it does
nevertheless show the way, light the path toward its own transcendence.
More than that it cannot do. For that we must turn, not to Egypt -
a tradition and culture long since gone - but to one of the remaining
traditional religious paths themselves. For despite the beauty, the
undeniable profundity of the Egyptian tradition, some glimmers of
which we have tried to illumine here, yet finally all this is past, and we
must live owas
n , b est w e c a n .

I
And indeed, if w e s u c ce e d , if w e tre a d th a t ancient path primordial,
regardless o f th e b lin d n ess o f o u r tim e , regard less of our distance from
ancient E g y p t, o u r lives c a n still re fle c t th e Divine Sun, our world can
still be tra n s lu ce n t a n d a liv e - fo r th a t a n cie n t path can never vanish,
though it ca n fo r us be o b sc u re d . Y e t if w e e n ter upon it, it shall ever be
the sam e, as it w a s , an d is, a n d ever shall be.
98 A
P
O
C
AT
ASIS:S O M E IM PLICATIONS
ST
A

And when it is so for us, each , as individu als: th at is the


R esto ratio n , the true Apocatastasis.All else is a n ticlim actic.
W ith th at we turn to w h at can be done - w e turn to initiation.
PART II
On Initiation
CHAPTER 1
T b e o ria : The Nature of Initiation

It is, one m ig h t suppose, somewhat ironic to consider that we are here


focussing upon the initiatory tradition of a culture which is
indisputably extinct, and of which we possess only fragments. Egypt is
dead, one might well say: in w hat sense can we even speak of the nature
of her initiatory transm ission, the continuity of which has in fact been
severed for several thousands of years? N ow strictly speaking, of course,
this objection is invalid upon several points, not least of which is that in
so far as it participates in and reflects the Transcendent, nothing can
ever die; from an absolute perspective everything in past, present and
future is here before us now , in this instant, alive in so far as we are
alive to it.
But therein lies the rub: as more than one observer has pointed o u t,1
the gulf between modernity and antiquity is not tem poral, but m en ta l.
We cannot comprehend the ancients because we are no longer able to
think, to perceive, to understand in the same way: the modern mind is
too overlaid w ith its preconceptualisations, w ith its grid of
‘rationality’. Thus even though the cultures o f antiquity are present all
around us, even though the M ysteries still persist in the C hristian,
Islamic and Q abalistic traditions, we are increasingly unable to grasp
them, to realise their transcendent nature. T h e M ysteries, and the
initiations they proffer, are not strictly speaking dead, it is true - but we
are dead to them.
Yet it is for this very reason that we must focus upon the nature of
the initiatory traditions: for it is precisely here that we may com e to
understand not only the essence of traditional culture, but indeed who
we really are, and w hat our purpose is in our present world. T h e word
‘initiation’, after all, means ‘entry’ or ‘beginning’; and just so, even the
mere intellectual perception o f the M ysteries is itself a form of
initiation - for intellectual know ledge leads to experiential knowledge;
it sets up resonances w hich, later, when the tim e is ripe, com e to
fruition. All that is needful is con cen tration . In this, the broadest
regard, even the present w ork can be considered initiatory - for it

101
102 THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

initiates a resonance with and receptivity for the ancient Myst


tradition, for its universal symbology and meaning.
And it is in this way that one must view the present era, for in a ve
real sense our modern age represents an anom aly, a discontinuity, and a
time of dissolution, in which by making contact with the ancient past
we also contact the future, serving very much thereby as a means of
continuity for the perennial truth, the realisation of the transcendent
Whether we know it or not, this is the single most important function
one could perform in this, or any other age. For indeed, contact with
the primordial is that for which one exists, and initiation is the ‘turning
about in the consciousness’ which signifies this very change in the
direction of one’s life, turning from the differentiated to the unitary,
from the dispersed to the concentred, from the irreal to the Primordial.
It is upon the nature of this ‘turning abou t’ which is initiation that
we shall now dwell.
We begin, appropriately enough, with a poem of that Renaissance
philotheist, Giordano Bruno who, like many others schooled in
Hermeticism, recognised in ancient Egypt the origin of those traditional
truths which remain as traces in Western thought. Said Bruno:

Passing alone to those realms


The object erst of thine exalted thought
I would rise to infinity; then would I compass the skill
Of crafts and arts equal to the objects.
There would I be reborn . . .
Escaped from the narrow murky prison
Where for so long error held me fast.
Here I leave the chain that bound me
And the shadow of the fiercely malevolent foe . . .
Henceforth I spread confident wings to space;
I fear no barrier of crystal or of glass;
I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite.
And while I rise from my own sphere to others
Penetrating even further through realms transcendent
That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.2

Bruno lived in the sixteenth century, long after the cessation of the
Egyptian Mysteries - but even so, in his poem can be seen many of the
themes which will occupy us for the remainder of this work, and hence
we employ it as the keynote to our ensuing discussions.
Bruno’s poem begins with the phrase ‘passing alone to those realm s,
THEOR1A: THE NAT URE OF INITIATION 103

and it is in fact the ease that initiation takes place individually, which is
to say that, regardless of how many are involved in any given ceremony,
strictly speaking the ‘con frontation or ‘passage' takes place for each
person alone. In itiation is not a m atter of ‘transferring’ a capacity, but
of revealing that w hich is already there itr passing through
suffering - and every being must face the nature of suffering for himself,
coming to realise that it is a universal state. T h e most another can do,
by means o f cerem ony and traditional symbology, is provide a
‘framework’ or ‘opening’ for the work of transm utation.

I would com pass the skill


O f crafts and arts equal to the objects.
There would I be r e b o r n ___

So says Bruno, in a direct reference to the ‘Lesser M ysteries’ which,


by means of the arts and crafts, serve as a ‘foundation’ for the complete
transcendence w hich is the ‘G reater M ystery’, leading naturally to it.
The arts provide a natural ‘support’ or focus for the initiate, leading
him to that A dam ic, or prim ord ial state from which he may pass to
complete transcendence o f the m anifested realms. But of this we shall
say more later; for now , let us observe th at, as in Bruno’s poem, so it is
also traditionally. T h e arc o f in itiatio n is never to a ‘static’ ‘position’,
but always passing on, alw ays transcending itself, leaving ‘far behind’
that which once was ‘far ahead’.
At all events, w ith this brief digression dem onstrating, at the very
least, that som ething o f the Egyptian M ysteries persisted even into the
sixteenth century o f this era, let us move on to consider a number of
ancient Egyptian in itia to ry invocations themselves, in the light of
Buddhist and V edantic ram ificatio n s - for the latter may do much to
illuminate the form er.
As we suggested earlier, in itia tio n is by definition inherently an
individual step, or co n fro n ta tio n , for which tradition may provide an
‘entry-point’ and ‘supports’ through the arts, or various symbols, but
which is finally alw ays dependent upon individual initiative. It is for
this reason that the ancient Egyptian invocations which have come
down to us are invariably w ritten in the first person, and their focus is
one of ‘w idening’, or perhaps better, heightening the amplitude of
consciousness, in one sense expanding the T , and in another virtually
eliminating it. T h a t is: the ‘personality’, that contingent cluster of
forces, is seen through, seen to merge w ith the state of the God, and the
contingent self ‘drops aw ay’.
104 THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

Hence, in one of the many chants on ‘preserving the heart’, we read-

O my heart! O my mother! O my heart! O my mother! O heart of


my existence! May naught stand against me in judgement in the
presence of the Lords of the Trial; let it not be said of me ‘He
hath done deeds against m aat\ Homage to thee,
Homage to thee, O my heart! Homage to thee, O reins! Homage
to ye, O G od s.. . . Speak ye fair of me to Ra . . . and behold me,
even though I be in the innermost depths of the earth - let me
not die in Amentet, but become a Khu therein.3

Now according to the Vedanta, the heart is indeed the centre of a


being, physically being aether, or akaspsychically be
or individual soul; and metaphysically being the point of the Self
( .Atma). The jivatm a is an illusory state of separation, in which the
focus is turned outward, toward differentiation, is the primordial
state of unconditioned unity, and thus:

This a,which dwells in the heart, is smaller than a grain of


tm
A
rice, smaller . . . than the germ which is in a grain of millet . . .
this a, which dwells in the heart, is also greater than the
tm
A
earth, than the atmosphere, than the sky, greater than all the
worlds together.4

The sequence here is exactly the inverse of Creation, passing from


Earth to Atmosphere, to Sky, to complete transcendence, corresponding
to the various ‘densities’ or ‘levels’ of traditional cosmology, these being
the temporal, subtle, principial or, in Buddhist terms, to the formal,
formless, and nonformal realms. One cannot, in this regard, help but
think of the Gospel reference to the mustard seed,5 which parable is in
fact reflective of the Egyptian Mysteries, and is a condensed version of
the same understanding expressed above: to wit, the essential ,
which is smaller than a mustard seed (not subject to manifestation) is in
fact that from which the entire Tree of cosmic manifestation appears.
Transcendent Reality can be expressed as being in one’s heart (the centre
of every being) and yet all the same encompasses all possibilities of
manifestation.6
The heart as jivatm, then, is that upon which the deeds of the
individual are karmically ‘inscribed’; the heart as A tm a is the revelation
of the being as essentially unconditional, transcendent, and indeed,
strictly speaking, not a being at all. At this point one enters into the
Buddhist understanding.7
THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION 105

The ancient Egyptian chant transcribed in part above, then, given


these implications from Vedanta and from Buddhism, is intended for
one precisely at that ‘turning p oint’; it refers to the individual passing
from the illusory realm of jiv a tm a toward the uncondition
heart which speaks against one in the Trial which is each person’s
judgment; but it is the heart which hears within it the transcendence of
the self ‘greater than all the worlds together’. The chant quoted above is
not one focussed upon absolute transcendence, however; it is rather an
invocation to the Gods that the one in question become a kh u , which is
to say, one in the company of the Gods or, to use Christian terms not
precisely analogous, to become an Angel in the constant presence of the
Lord.8 Thus in another invocation we read:

I have entered as a man of no understanding, and I shall come


forth in the form of a strong hu,and I shall look upon
K
which shall be that of men and women forever and ever.9

Moreover, ‘Thou art in me, and I am in Thee; and Thy attributes are
my attributes’. 10 This refers to the u n io m ystica of the initiate and the
Divine focus of his praxis;the two become realised as a single state. And
therefore, reads the ensuing ascription, if this be known by a man,

HE SHALL C O M E F O R T H B Y DAY AND H E SH A LL N O T


BE REPULSED AT A N Y GA TE O F T H E TU A T, E IT H E R
CO M IN G O R G O IN G . H E SH A LL P E R F O R M ALL T H E
TR A N SM U TA TIO N S W H IC H H IS H E A R T BEARS W IT H IN
IT AND HE SH A LL N O T D IE . . . N O W T H IS IS A G R EA T
P R O T E C T IO N W H IC H H A TH BEEN G R A N T E D BY T H E
GOD . . . T H IS C H A P T E R SH A LL BE R E C IT E D BY A M A N
WHO IS C E R E M O N IA L L Y P U R E , W H O HAS N O T EATEN
THE FLESH OF A N IM A L S O R F ISH , AN D H A TH N O T
HAD IN T E R C O U R SE W IT H W O M E N .11

‘Performing all the transm utations which his heart bears within it’
refers to the initiatic realisation of higher degrees, or states, potential
within his heart - for the higher state naturally encompasses within it
all the plenipotentialities of the low er.12 Now the ‘passage’ in question
is from nescience to realisation, from the ‘waters below ’ (ignorance,
which is to say, m anifestation) to the ‘waters above’, from the darkness
of the Tuat (the realms of sa m saric entrapment, the W hirlpool of
suffering in which M atsy a N y ay a (the Law of the Fishes) rules, into the
serene Light of the G ods.13 It is to be sure a pivotal point, this entry into
106 THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

the realm of the C.ods - hut it is not by any means ‘passage’ to comply
transcendence, to Liberation, at least in the Buddhist sense. Though
Formless, and immeasurably freer and more serene than the human
state, the Gods are still subject to causality, still are in the ‘two worlds’
of the manifest and the unmanifest.
And so, to return to that invocation with which we began this
discussion, the one which asks, or commands, that the initiate ‘not die
in Amentet’. ‘Not dying in Amentet’ means, not that the initiate wishes
to not enter Amentet, but rather that the initiate wishes to maintain
and intensify consciousness of that transcendent state which is Amentet.
‘Not dying in Amentet’ refers to the inverse complementarity of
initiatory ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’: for death to ‘the world’ (which is to say,
to our conceptualisations of ‘self and other’) is precisely rebirth in the
Transcendent.14
‘Amentet’ is linguistically close to the Sanskrit A m rita (immortality)
and to the Buddhist itabh,Buddha of the West. Indeed, the Pure
m
A
Land (Sukhavati) of Amitabha is, like that Osirian situated in
the West, thereby ‘intersecting’ the arc of the setting sun, and conferring
liberation at the conclusion of the present cycle. A m entet,
A m itabha, and the English word ‘im m ortality’ are all part of the same
mrt Indo-European root relating to death;15 one dies to one’s present
state, attaining in the process a higher state, and thus it ought not be
surprising that the m rd Indo-European root means ‘grace’, or ‘mercy’.
Says Plutarch on the matter: ‘And . . . Egyptians . . . call subterrene
space, to which they think souls depart after death, Amenthe, the name
signifying “ the space which takes and gives” ’, to which observation
E. A. Wallis Budge noted that ‘The Egyptian form of the word is
Amentet, and the name means “ hidden place” ’. 16
Now the word ‘subterrene’ carries with it the Greek connotations of
the Underworld, not strictly speaking applicable to Am entet, which is
not ‘space’ at all, but supra-temporal and spatial; it is indeed a ‘hidden
place’. But its complete meaning can be better gathered from its root
meanings: that is, the word ‘man’, or m an as, meaning simultaneously
‘human’, and ‘thinking being’, is countered by the privative ‘a’, so that
linguistically ‘Amentet’ implies ‘a state not subject to thought-
discrimination’. A m entet is, strictly speaking, a non-human,
transcendent Reality, ‘mediate’ between temporality and complete
liberation. ‘Death in t’ thus means dying to, or becomin
en
m
A
ignorant of, one’s transcendent Origin which, from the limited human
perspective, appears as one’s Celestial or Angelic Form , toward which
THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION 107

one 'moves* until re a lisin g th a t th e F o r m is in tru th m o re on eself th an


oneself.17 T o ‘ihe in Amentet' m e a n s , in P la to n ic te rm s , losing o n
Memory of th e D iv in e , an d b e lie v in g (if su ch a th in g w ere possible to
believe) that th e p h ysical re a lm is a ll.
Thus we are in a p o s itio n t o g ra s p th e im p lic a tio n s o f th e F.gyptian
teaching th at w h e n , a t th e en d o f a given c o s m ic c y c le , R a passes
through the Tt4dt (th ro u g h th e m a n if o ld p o s th u m o u s s ta te s ), th ose w h o
arc in the W estern re a lm o f t, u n d er th e a u sp ices o f O siris, are in
en
m
A
.1 state of F o rm lessn ess c o n j u n c t w ith th e R e a lity o f R a , the S o la r
centrum, and they 'p a s s i n t o ’ th a t R e a li ty , b ein g a lre a d y v irtu a lly
identical w ith it. In G o sp e l te r m s , th is has n o d o u b t m u ch to d o w ith
the parable o f th e seed w h ich is u n fru itfu l b e in g c a s t in to th e f ir e ,18 as
with the ‘s e p a ra tio n ’ in clu d ed in th e A p o c a ly p tic L a s t Ju d g m e n t.
A l-chem ia, o r a lc h e m y , is th a t i n itia t o r y scie n ce by w h ich o n e is ab le
to transm ute th e self fro m its p re s e n t, d iss o c ia te d an d is o la te d ,
fragmented self, in to its C e le s tia l o r A n g e lic O r ig in , th e a tta in m e n t o f
which tran scen d en ce is re p re se n te d by a tta in in g th e lapis philoso-
phicum, w h ich is s u b je ct n e ith e r t o a n y o f th e f o u r e le m e n ts, n o r to an y
temporal p o w e r w h a te v e r ; a lc h e m y is th e scie n ce by w h ich o n e is
restored to the ‘p r im o r d ia l s e lf ’ , th e c o n c lu s io n o f th e G r e a t W o r k . It is
not coincidence th a t s o m e o f th e e a rlie s t a lc h e m ic a l te x t s are a ttrib u te d
to Egyptian a d e p ts , f o r th is in i t i a t o r y s cie n ce o f th e re m e m b ra n c e o f
one’s A ngelic O rig in is in d eed f u n d a m e n ta l to u n d e rsta n d in g th e
Egyptian in itia to ry t r a d i t i o n ; it is th e E g y p tia n scie n ce par ,
and to it they d e v o te d all th e ir en erg ies.
V irtually all o f th e E g y p tia n r ite s b e a r s o m e r e la tio n t o th is ce n tra l
aim, for w h ich p u rp o s e in f a c t p ro v is io n s a re p la ce d in th e fu n ereal
chamber, e la b o ra te p r e p a r a tio n s a n d c e re m o n ie s h eld f o r th e d eceased -
all in order, by m e a n s o f t r a d i t i o n im p e c c a b ly p e r f o r m e d , t o a llo w an
‘opening’ th ro u g h w h ic h th e d e c e a s e d m a y be re b o rn in a ce le stia l
paradise. T h e fu n e re a l p ro v is io n s a n d o t h e r a c c o u tr e m e n ts o f th e dead
are not m a n ife s ta tio n s o f E g y p t ia n ‘ m a t e r i a l i s m ’ (a n in te rp re ta tio n
which reveals th e l i m it a tio n s o f th o s e w h o a p p ly su ch te r m s ), bu t
rather, being ritu a lly e m p o w e r e d , ‘ in v o k e ’ th e p a ra d is a l presen ce fo r th e
deceased.19
The nature o f th e p a ra d is a l s t a t e c a n be u n d e rs to o d by referen ce to
Vedantic m e ta p h y sics, in w h ic h it is h eld t h a t o n e w h o a tta in e d v irtu a l
liberation is ‘ in c o r p o r a te d ’ by H iranyagarbha (th e p rin cip le o f su b tle
manifestation) in w h ich s ta te t h a t b e in g re m a in s u n til th e end o f a given
cycle of m a n ife s ta tio n , a t w h ic h p o i n t p r in c ip ia l re a b s o rp tio n takes
108 THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

place. This mediate position, between the state of manifested


individuality, and complete transcendence, in which the individual is
realised to be identical to the ‘womb of the cosmos’, and to its ruler
Ishwara, is termed the lok; and something quite pa
rahm
B
appears in Buddhism with the doctrine of , or Buddha-
fields, most well-known of which is , or the Western Land of
Amitabha.20 The initiatory nature of this ‘paradisal state’ in fact
consists in the successive revelation of the unitary nature of hierarchic
states of being, so that the individual is realised not to be a separate
entity at all, but identical with that given state, which transmutation is
often represented in Egyptian tradition by the dropping of veils, as in
the Buddhist by the gestation and opening of the celestial Lotuses in the
Lake of Paradise.21
This attribution of temporality to the transcendent - in the opening
of the Lotuses of rebirth, or the passage of the barque of Ra - is
precisely the sign of the ‘mediate’ or Celestial realm, which is to say, the
Transcendent seen from the temporal perspective. Now Ra, as solar
centrum of the cosmos, must not be seen as Absolute transcendence; Ra
is by definition possessed of various characteristics, and exists within
temporality, albeit at the ‘conjunction’ of the manifest ( and
the unmanifest ( krt,) which is to say ‘on the horizon’, to use the
asm
most common Egyptian phrase.
Entry into the paradisal state is characterised, in ancient Egyptian
religion, as the entry into the ‘barque of m illions of years’ of Ra. ‘I am
seer of millions of years’, says the Papyrus of N u; ‘I am Horus, and
traverse millions of years’. ‘I am in the ; my seat is upon my
throne, and I sit in the seat of splendour.’ ‘I am the only One, who
proceedeth from an only One who goeth around in his course.’ ‘I am the
unveiled One.’" And again, elsewhere in the same papyrus:

Ra sitteth in his barque of millions of years, and he hath gathered


together the company of the Gods, with those Divine belongs
whose faces are hidden . . . and who drink the offerings which
enter the celestial regions of Light . . . Grant that I may sit upon
the throne of R a.23

The ‘regions of Light’ refers to passage beyond the formal realm of


manifestation; and those whose ‘faces are hidden’ refers to the
unmanifest Divine beings, Who are beyond formless or subtle existence,
but who still, like the ygbh,possess a certain connection with
iran
H
existential reality, by virtue of the ‘navel of the world’, which is to say,
THEORIA: TH E NATURE OF INITIATION 109

through the interpenetration of the Real through the centre of the real.24
The petitioner in this invocation asks leave to ‘sit in the throne of Ra’;
that is, to realise virtual unity with Ra, to participate in that state of
consciousness and through that participation, to pass by means of the
‘barque of millions of years’ beyond formal and formless realms of
manifestation - precisely what is meant by Ra ‘passing through’ that
part of the Tuat called ‘Amentet’, at which point Ra and Osiris are
conjunct, much as in Buddhism the bodhisattvic revelation is ultimately
conjunct with the Buddhic, though of course whereas the former is
cosmological, the latter is by definition indefinable, suprascosmic.25 It
is the degree of transcendence, of non-referentiality, which marks the
initiatic ‘height’.
Now initiation as we have considered it thus far is the inception of
this arc of the being toward its own transcendence. But there are several
aspects of initiation, and of initiatory symbolism in particular, upon
which we must remark, for they have received considerable treatment
elsewhere, a fact which causes many modern readers to bring with them
a number of preconceptualisations regarding initiation. No doubt the
first of these is the imagined split between ‘esoteric’ and ‘exoteric’, as
though in the traditional culture the initiate ‘stood apart’ from society,
as though the very nature of initiation were separation. This is,
however, false, as is the distinction between ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’
itself. In the traditional culture there is no such division: the form of the
religious praxis is indivisible from its meaning, in which everyone - and
we mean everyone - participates in accord with their own capacity and
destiny. Some are destined to know the meaning of a given ritual more
fully at one point than another, no doubt - but the whole forms a
continuity, not a false division in society.
Initiation takes place in secret - though there are of course instances
of initiation en masse26 - not to exclude anyone, but because initiation
is by definition the individual facing his own Origin in solitude. Every
individual must face his own Death and Rebirth alone, and this cannot
be done en masse; numbers reduce the efficacy of an initiation
proportionately, and in any case, regardless of the number involved, the
relation is always individual and vertical, never horizontal and
multiple. This is the nature of things - as is the hierarchic nature of
humanity - and involves laws which cannot be flaunted without serious
confusion manifesting.
This constitutes, then, the destruction of the first pre­
conceptualisation regarding the nature of initiation, for initiation is not
110 THEORIA: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

exclusionary, but rather inclusionary, being open to all in proportion as


they are open to it. At the same time, there is a natural hierarchy
involved, and for some, the value of the initiation - as in Christian
Mass, say - is almost wholly in the form of ‘germinating seeds’. In any
event, the second preconceptualisation is closely related to the first, the
second being the erroneous modern belief that the initiate passes
through suffering, death and rebirth in order to ‘gain’ some sort of
superiority, be it ‘immortality’ or some one or another siddhis (powers).
According to this interpretation, initiation is not only exclusionary, but
it strengthens the illusion of a permanent being. But once again, this is a
profound misunderstanding of the entire nature of traditional religious
discipline, which after all exists in order to liberate all beings.
This aim must be understood in all its ramifications, for to the
degree that it is not, is all that we have said and will say subject to grave
misapprehension.
Consider, for instance, the suffering of the initiate in, let us say, trial
in a querert (Egyptian: cavern), in which he is subject to the very terrors
of hell in the labyrinth. This terror is exactly homologous with the
confusion and suffering of all beings, lost as they are in the samsaric
labyrinth of birth and death, of nescience. Through it, the initiate ‘takes
on’ the suffering of all beings, and for them, with them, attains
liberation, only to enter again into life, save with widened awareness,
heightened compassion, greater wisdom and serenity. In this, the
initiate suffering for and with all beings, we can see how Christianity is
essentially the Mysteries laid bare. The Trial is followed not by ‘pride of
attainment’ but by compassion.
It is true that certain tribal initiations bear the mark of ‘proud
superiority’, and there are two possibilities in this regard which we
might note: first, that the given culture represents a debasing of the
original, and second, that this interpretation of tribal initiation may
well be a modern misperception, subject, as so much of ‘scientific
investigation’ of traditional cultures is, to the prejudices of modernity,
and to its relentless tendency to see all in its own image. At all events,
this does not represent initiation proper.
For initiation - in so far as passage through suffering is concerned - is
in essence the voluntary undergoing of samsaric pain and confusion, in
order that one may not only be liberated from suffering, but also that
one may liberate. In Buddhism it is said that the words of the Buddha
upon birth were: ‘In heaven and on earth, I am the Only One.’ And in
just the same way, in very much the same words, the ancient Egyptian
T M 'X m i A : T i l l N A T U R E O F IN ITIA TIO N 111

invocations recognise th at, in a very mysterious way, the liberation of


one is simultaneous with the liberation of a ll.27 T h e initiate suffers for
;l|| and his liberation is the liberation of all. T h is must be understood,
for it is mystery of the unitary nature of all things.
Essentially» initiation consists in death-experience upon one plane, in
order that rebirth may occur in the higher, nonconditional (relatively
speaking) realm, according as the H erm etic m axim ‘As below, so above
- save inversely'. That is: as many have already pointed o u t,28 yogic
discipline consists in the recapitu lation o f the experience of dying - the
cessation of the breath and of the pulse, as well as the ‘reversal’ of the
seminal fluid, correlative to all of which is the ‘rebirth’ in
transcendence. Said the Buddha, in one of the very oldest Buddhist
texts,

I have shown my disciples the way whereby they call into being
out of this body (of the four elements) another body of the
mind’s creation (ru p a m m a n o m a y a m ) com plete in all its limbs
and members, and w ith transcendent faculties
It is just like one who would draw a reed from its sheath, or a
snake from its slough, or a sword from its scabbard - recognising
that the reed, the snake, and the sword are each one thing, and the
sheath, slough and scabbard another.29

Now it must be noted that this is an analogical statem ent and,


moreover, that it refers to a contingent or interm ediate state in which
one may still speak of a duality o f sword and scabbard - whilst from an
ultimate perspective, there is neither sword nor scabbard, and this
understanding is at the centre o f Buddhism. At all events, in statements
like this we can see how it is that Buddhism continued the initiatory
tradition glimpsed also in Vedanta, the chief difference between the two
being the refusal of Buddhism to define the transcendental rebirth in
any way whatsoever, in order to avoid the destructive preconceptualis­
ation which would disallow true understanding. It is for this reason, in
fact, that Buddhism has continued into the present day as a true
initiatory tradition - it is so profoundly counter to the very basis of
human delusion and confusion, so relentlessly non-dualistic.
But this rebirth suggested by Sakyamuni Buddha - in which ‘another
body of mental configuration’, ‘com plete in all its limbs and members’,
and with ‘transcendent faculties’ - is none the less virtually identical
with the ancient Egyptian form ulations, which call again and again for
the creation, or rather, revelation, of a new body ‘complete in all thy
112 THEORIA: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

limbs; able to walk in paradisal fields, and having the divine ear an(j
eyes’. Thus we read in the ‘Chapter of Coming Forth from R e-Stau ’
which ‘The Chancellor in Chief, Nu, the triumphant’, says: T was born
in Re-Stau, and splendour hath been given unto me by those who dwell
in their spiritual bodies [sahu) in the habitation where liberations are
made unto Osiris.’30 And again, in ‘On Entering the Presence (of the
Sovereign Princes of Osiris)’, ‘My soul hath built for me an habitation
in the city of Tattu; I sow seed in the city of Pe, and I plough my field
with my dominions, and my palm trees are like Asmu’.31 The latter
quotation includes a number of references to celestial geography, about
which we only have space here to say a little, simply to note that
celestial rebirth of an individual necessarily implies rebirth in the realm
of celestial archetypes.32
At all events, this ‘rebirth’ is signified, in Buddhist ordination
ceremonies dating back into remote antiquity, by the initiate being
cermeonially bound hand and foot in a foetal position before the
upadhydya (preceptor) and the witnesses; later, the initiate is adorned
with the very sash which had bound him .33 This, and the assignation of
a new name, amongst other ceremonial actions, including the divesture
and investiture of clothing (one is not born with clothing),34 make it
clear once again that initiation consists, strictly speaking, not in
‘creation of a new identity’, but rather in the revelation of one’s true
identity in one’s transcendent Origin.
Now because this last point can perhaps cause some confusion,
particularly for those unfamiliar with traditional metaphysics and
cosmology, we might do well to elaborate upon it briefly, noting that
even though from a temporal perspective it might appear that initiation
is the ‘creation’ of a new being, in truth there is no creation, but only
the revelation of that which is, the ‘unveiling’ alone giving the
appearance of ‘progressive revelation’. In truth there is no ‘progress’ in
the Divine, modern pseudo-scientific suppositions to the contrary;
rather, the only ‘progress’ possible is the progressive removal of human
delusions.35 What is more - and this is also not devoid of significance -
we might observe that even the ‘virtual liberation’ bestowed by ancient
Egyptian initiation ritual and praxis, giving one a ‘seat in the barque of
Ra for millions of years’, is not absolute liberation, bestowing complete
freedom from conditionality, that primordial aim (artha) which
continued through pre-Vedic India, through experimental yoga,
through Buddhism, and into the present.
Indeed, one would well say, at the risk of overgeneralisation perhaps,
T H E O R IA : t h e n a t u r e o f in it ia t io n 113

that the Eastern path remained complete, encompassing individualistic


a, S° , Ca ex°terism both, whereas the Western tradition, passing
t roug a ea, Egypt, Greece and Rome, focussed more upon the
sheer transmissive power of ritual to confer, not so much liberation as
the o rien ta tio n toward liberation. This ceremonial transmissive power,
seen in ancient Egypt in the constant reiteration of invocative chants, as
in Rg Vedic verses and, to a degree, in the Catholic Christian Eucharist,
serves to ritually identify the initiate with the God, to confer that
virtual liberation which entails the point of realisation.
Such reliance upon the transmissive power of ritual has the advantage
of encompassing virtually an entire kingdom, which indeed transpired
in ancient Egypt, where every child spent an initiatory period in the
temple, and throughout life bore a direct relation to it. The entire
population can com e under its liberatory sphere. Yet at the same time,
there is a negative effect to such reliance, in that this irradiation, by
focussing upon ‘virtual liberation by means of identification with the
Gods’, tends to ‘decapitate’ the primordial tradition, and to ignore
absolute liberation, so that as tim e goes on, the tradition breaks down,
becoming either mere form alism on the one hand, or forays into
‘mercenary’ magic or sorcery on the other.
The Eastern traditions have, conversely, tended to survive -
Buddhism through the present day - because they embrace the entire
spectrum from experiential yogic discipline to ritual efficacy,
m etap h ysically correlating to the spectrum from through the
revelation of the three k a y a s : D b a r m a k a y a , and
Nirmanakaya, which in turn correlate to the ‘three w orlds’ of earth,
atmosphere and sky, or terrestrial, subtle, and principial Reality. The
Eastern tr a d itio n s , while affirm ing the possibility of ‘virtual liberation’ ,
maintained their focus, in varying degrees, upon absolute liberation -
the com p lete transcendence o f Buddhist , or Vedantic Brahm a -
and in p ro p o rtio n as they did so have they survived into the modern era,
with all its c o rro s iv e power.
Initiatory revelation consists in the transcendence of the illusory
personality, in the dropping o f all bondage to tem porality - and the
height or ‘degree’ of the revelation can be ascertained by the degree of
reedom from even residual consideration for the individual self. It is
^ which occasioned the initiatory ‘trials’, including, in some cases,
deer ~ not to mer»tion trial by elem ent - in order to discern the
‘dentil etac^ ment ^rom the se lf.36 ‘V irtual lib eratio n ’ - arising from
ation with the God - none the less is still by definition virtual,
114 THEOR1A: THE NATURE OF INITIATION

which is to say, there is a residuum s e lf- t r a c e s , as it were, whereas of


absolute liberation one can say absolutely nothing: the latter is the
accomplishment of the Greater M ysteries, and th e return, not only to
primordiality, but to the very Prim ordial O rig in , to the Source o f all
existences.
This distinction is, of course, a m atter o f ‘degree’ upon an arc, or
continuum; but is of the greatest im p ortance if we are to truly
understand the nature of initiatory rev elation , the nature o f the various
traditions, and most of all, the nature o f our ow n era and of we
ourselves. For if the ancient Egyptian in itia to ry tra d itio n , for all its
splendour, represents a dim inution o f th at p rim ord ial revelation of the
Divine Origin which continued in Eastern tra d itio n s, seen first in the Rg
Veda, and carried through Buddhism to the p re sen t,37 then does not the
history of the West consist, finally, in the successive dim inution and
obliteration of the remaining fragm ents o f th a t in titia to ry tradition?
This loss is the hidden history of our era, indeed the era under the sign
of the Fish, the Law of the Fishes.38
But enough on that for the m om ent. W h a t o f the nature of that
which has been lost? How is it that the in itia to ry tra d itio n is able to
encompass an entire culture, speaking to each in accord w ith his
capacity, simultaneously, like the Sun rising over the h o rizo n , touching
all?
The answers to such questions lie in the very nature o f religious
symbology, and it is to this that we now turn.
CHAPTER 2
T b e o ria : Initiation and the
Symbolic
There can be no question that the m ed iatrix, the means of transmission
• any religious tradition, is sym bolic, and that an understanding of
symbology is indispensable to the understanding of that tradition. No
tradition is devoid of sym bolism , nor could it be: for this is the mode of
revelation, by means of w hich that which is ‘below 1 can be seen to
express that which is ‘above1. But at the same time, it must be
understood that the sym bolic is precisely m ediatrix; it is a , and
we must fully recognise t o w h a t e n d if we are to truly appreciate its
significance. For the en d of sym bolic means is always the transcendence
of the symbol; the m om ent a symbol becomes ‘fixed1 does it become,
not liberating, but stultifying, deceptive, a blind alley. And since no
people known to us is more reliant upon the symbolical than the ancient
Egyptian, it is only natural that both ‘dynamic1 and ‘fixed1 aspects of
the symbolic should m anifest in that land .1 And thus it is that we now
focus upon the functions, and the inherent dangers, of such a reliance
upon symbolisation - for the sym bolic, after all, is the form through
which the initiatory tradition is realised.
The symbolic must necessarily be at the centre of an initiatory path
precisely because, as the word suggests, an initiatory path is the
inception of an arc, and at the inception-point, as at each successive
stage, language cannot fully convey the next ‘higher1 point, or
perspective; it can only suggest its nature by means of ‘encoded1
statements, relevant only w ithin a traditional context, though expressive
of universal truth.2 As one initiates ‘m ovem ent1 toward encompassing a
higher perspective, each stage em bracing all those previous to it, that
which is next ‘higher1 can only be hinted at. The symbolic allows us to
gain an intuitive apprehension o f things celestial, of the transcendent
Order.
In this regard, it is o f especial interest to note the words of Dionysius
the Areopagite who in fact aided the transmission of the ancient
Egyptian, and the N eoplatonic stream which followed upon the former,
into Christianity. Said Dionysius:

115
116 THEORIA: INITIATION AND THE SYMBOLIC

If anyone . . . (suggests) that it is disgraceful to fashion base


images of the Divine and most Holy orders, it is sufficient to
answer that the most holy Mysteries are set forth in two modes:
one by means of similar and sacred representations akin to their
nature, and the other to unlike forms designed with every possible
discordance.3

In fact, says Dionysius, discordant symbols - unlike that which they


represent - are more appropriate to Divine things. Why is this so?
Because, says Dionysius, the human mind tends to cling to the form of
representations, and thus, for instance, conceptualises that ‘the Celestial
Intelligences are some kind of golden beings, or shining men flashing
like lightning’. ‘But lest this error befall us, the wisdom of the venerable
sages leads us through inharmonious dissimilitudes, not allowing our
irrational nature to become attached to those unseemly images. The
Divine is likened to wild animals, like the lion, or the panther, or the
raging bear deprived of its young, or to fragrant ointm ent, or even to a
cornerstone or to a worm, in order that ‘Divine things may not be easily
accessible to the unworthy, nor may those who earnestly contemplate
the Divine symbols dwell upon the forms themselves as final truth’ , and
this because these symbols themselves form a kind of Celestial negation,
which is the truest form of representation.
All this is of course directly related to the most profound reason for
employing discordant symbols for the Divine: that is, not only do such
symbols manifest the coin cid en tia o p p o sito ru m which marks the
transcendent, but what is more, they fo r c e one to disregard the material
representation, to transmute it into a higher, celestial form . D iscordant
sym bology dem ands that on e n ot cling to th e p h y sical.
We can of course immediately see the im plications that this
observation has for ancient Egyptian and even ancient Greek mythology:
for this insight allows us to see that it is precisely those images which to
a modern eye appear so incongruous - such as the dismembering of
Osiris, or incest amongst the various Gods, or emasculation - are
precisely those which convey in disparate terms the highest truths,
inaccessible so long as one clings to m aterialistic preconceptions. The
dismemberment of Osiris, for instance, refers to the irradiation of the
Divine throughout phenomenality; the incest of the Gods refers to their
self-generating power, and so forth. M aterialistic preconceptions were
not, by and large, a difficulty for the ancient Egyptians, however; rather,
the tendency of the previous era, to which ancient Egyptian culture
belongs, was to cling to subtle relationships, and to ignore the
THEOR1A:INITIATION AND TH E SYMBOLIC 117

mplctcly transcendent - whereas the chief tendency of modernity is to


be blind to all but the most gross aspects of things.4
Now there can he no question that irradiative symbolism was quite
pitural to the ancient Egyptians, as indeed to all traditional cultures; it
is in fact a mark of the falling away’ from symbolical understanding
that one has to be told of its meaning, as Dionysius felt compelled to
j 0 gut to an ancient Egyptian, to explain such a thing would be most
odd, rather like placing another head upon one’s own, a fact which itself
suggests something of the gulf between modernity and antiquity, and
which lends an indication as to why an initiatory tradition that was
almost completely based upon the initiatory nature of the symbolic
should have difficulty in surviving.
This aside for the moment, though, let us continue our consideration
of what Dionysius calls ‘similar dissimilitude’, for, says Dionysius: the
lion typifies the Celestial Intelligence’s power of sovereignty, strength,
and indomitability, and the ardent striving upward toward the most
hidden, ineffable, mysterious Divine Unity, and the lion’s covering of
his footprints with his tail signifies the mystically modest concealment
of the way leading to Divine unity through Divine Illumination. The
footprint is a particularly apt symbol for the Divine inasmuch as it so
perfectly symbolises the interpenetration of the seen and the unseen, the
Real and the irreal.5 Correlatively, the fury of a beast signifies an echo of
the Divine Rigour; the desire of a beast is an echo of the Divine Mercy
irradiating outward. Even anger and desire are themselves, in an
attenuated and reflective way, manifestations of the Divine: through
‘similar dissimilitude’ one is able to see how even the ‘lowest’ reflects
the highest, the universal love of the Divine. Essentially, nothing is
without Divine symbolism.
In fact, to the ancient Egyptian, who lived in a world in which
everything reflects the Divine, in which the very land around him is seen
to be an image of the Paradisal realms, and for whom every animal,
every plant, every stone and gem bore its sacred significance - to such a
one it would not be difficult to understand the statement that
everything has a sacred meaning. Indeed, in such a culture, daily life
itself is quite literally initiatory, a constant reinforcement and
reiteration of sacred meanings and ramifications. Bringing water from a
well mirrors the Divine bringing forth of the Celestial Waters; the
coming of Dawn mirrors the inception of a new cycle in and by Ra;
following the path of a God is to be that God.
And in fact, to be the God, to not only mirror, but to attain complete
118 THEORIA: INITIATION AND TH E SYMBOLIC

identification with the God, with that state of consciousness, was the
aim of initiatory ritual as such. The ‘degree’ of initiation varies
according to the ‘completeness’ or ‘height’ of this identification. The
most exoteric or outward realisation - remembering where the God was
dismembered, say - is not divorced from this aim of ultimate union; it
simply lies nearer the beginning of that arc or transit of the being which
culminates in its own transcendence.
To more fully understand this arc in initiatory ritual terms, we turn
again to the Orient, in which the process of ritualised initiatory
deification (union with the state of the God) was preserved, not only in
invocatory chants, as in Egypt, but in explicated stages. We turn, in this
case, to that profound mystical union called the , a practice
found both in Buddhism and Hinduism alike. In S a h a jiy a the initiate
approaches and unites with a ‘holy w om an’ by degrees, the
aim being k, or ‘the great bliss’, this being in fact the very
ahsu
m
state of a God. Even though the ‘conclusion’ of the initiatory ritual is
ritualised sexual union, it has nothing to do with sexuality as generation
- indeed, quite the antithesis, since emission is not its end, for in truth
the maithuna, or sacred marriage (G k .: h ieros g a m o s)6 has no
conclusion, being itself entirely initiatory or inceptive.
In the Nayika-sadhana-tika(Commentary upon Spiritual Discipline
with Women) the ritual is described as consisting in eight parts, the first
of which is sadhana (the development of concentrative power and
liturgical irradiation) after which follows sm aran a (permeation of
consciousness; literally, ‘Remembrance’, from , to remember,
instinct with ‘tradition’, in Sanskrit);7 then comes d ro p a (etymolo­
gically p, or formlessness, implying the transcendence of the
aru
material realm; ‘externalised’, it signifies the realisation of qualities in
the contemplative subject); after which follows the offering of flowers
and incense to the ayik,who is being realised as the Goddess; ,
n
which consists in the extension of concentration on the woman as
Goddess through the day and night; then , or absorption; ,
or worship, in which the n ay ik a is bathed (signifying ritual purity, and,
metaphysically, the entry into the Tipper waters’) .8 She then receives
offering as the Goddess Herself. Finally, one has the culminative stages
in which the yogi is completely absorbed in invocation, and in which the
yogi and the yogini unite as Gods, embodying the unconditioned state
of the Gods themselves, ‘conceiving’ (in the reproductive, not mental
sense) a transcendent union which has no , precisely in that act
which, when not ritualised in this way over the period of even a number
THEORIA:INITIATION AND TH E SYMBOLIC 119

of years, is the act of primal ignorance, desire, and enslavement to the


temporal par excellence.
One can in fact think of no other ritual initiatory act which more
clearly illustrates the unity of sam sara and , of the irr
Real, for here, now, in the very mire of the realm of desire, appears the
Divine Flower.
Now the Mysteries have, in relatively recent times (dating, that is,
from the Graeco-Roman period), been affiliated with orgies, in part
because of their relation to the cyclic observances of spring and
autumnal equinoctial points, and to the relation of these to fertility, and
also of course because observance of the Mysteries took place at night
and, when the culture was no longer able to remain completely
unalloyed, to some degree in secret. However, we must stress here that
the ‘hidden’ nature of an initiatory tradition is not exclusionary, but
rather necessary in the nature of things, since the religious path must
always be trodden by each for himself; though there is a public
manifestation of the Mysteries, the gradation is always pyramidal,
culminating in the solitary flight of the alone to the Alone.
But the affiliation with the orgiastic, while no doubt arising from
ancient festivals which served to enhance the natural currents of fertility
through the land,9 without question masks the more transcendent path
toward the complete union with the state of the God or the Goddess.
The orgiastic festivities acted toward the preservation and enhancement
of the land and the culture, furthering the lung , or ‘dragon
currents’; the sexual yoga described earlier, on the other hand, arising in
a land thus harmonised, seeks to attain transcendence of the realm of
generation itself. Aberrant modern notions of ‘prudery’ and ‘licence’
have little place in the traditional culture, in which sexuality is not
‘repressed’, but channelled toward the prosperity of the land and the
people, and ultimately toward its own transcendence.
This breadth of ritual embrace extends also to the nature of the
ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, W ho are so m ultifold as to defy
even the most dogged of modern commentators. Isis, regina , as we
have seen, has so many forms and meanings as to be indefinable - which
is after all exactly the point: She is, like all Gods, dynamic, not a single
static form, images and symbols only suggesting different aspects of
Her. No - to understand the nature of the symbolic one must recognise
that it can only suggest an aspect of the dynamic, fluid powers of life;
the symbol is inevitably a means toward its own transcendence, an
opening into a ‘wider’ state of understanding.
120 THEOR1A: INITIATION AND THE SYMBOLIC

That of which the symbolic is an expression cannot be fixed, and


therefore any symbol must always be an ‘entry point’, never an
absolute. Hathor, Bast, Isis, Neith and Ament are all credited
individual characteristics and symbols, but all merge into one another;
each is at different times affiliated with the Divine Cow, with the
Origin of all things. And so, before examining the relation of the
symbolic to the various Divinities, which is to say, to the Divine, we
shall first make some observations upon the nature of one of these -
Net, or Neith - in order to suggest something of the nature and meaning
of all the myriad Gods. One can, after all, only reach the universal by
passing through particularities.
It was, as many will remember, Plutarch who ascribed to Isis the
famous inscription ‘I am everything which hath been, and which is, and
which shall be, and there hath never been any who hath uncovered my
veil’.10 To this inscription Proclus added the words ‘Net, mighty
mother, Who gave Birth to Ra (Net urt mut m es Ra)\ a phrase which
is, as Budge and others have noted, very close indeed to the original
Egyptian invocational inscriptions.11
In any case, Net, or Neith, like Hathor, with Whom She is
indivisible, is said to be simultaneously mother and daughter of Ra, by
which symbolism her transcendence of all sexuality is emphasised. Net,
or Neith, is only Goddess of ancient Egypt Who is neither male nor
female, but self-produced, and her giving birth to Ra is itself a
metaphysical symbol, a mystery of great subtlety and power. By being
at once Mother and Daughter, the breadth of that state which is Neith
is indicated, beyond and yet within temporality, a state which is yet
further clarified by the implications of the word ‘N et’ itself, which is a
play upon the word for ‘being’, or ‘existence’, in Egyptian ent> or entet
( or ), showing the crescent moon beneath the waters
(the former signifying the sublunary realm; the latter signifying the
plenipotentiary of temporal existence). Net, or Neith, is thus quite
properly attributed the words ‘I am all which hath been, and which is,
and which shall be’ - for She is in fact the plenipotentiary of existence
itself.
Yet more: the name ‘Net’ is without doubt connected to the word
‘ netet’ ( ^ ^ ^ n ), meaning ‘to knit’ or ‘to weave’, and
simultaneously ‘neter’ which means not only ‘star’ or ‘constellation’ but
implies all the subtle resonances of what one might well call
‘Pythagorean harmonies’, irradiating through being. As Schwaller de
Lubicz says:
THEOR1A: INITIATION AND TH E SYMBOLIC 121

The aim of the superior m an, the desired goal, is to enter


consciously into . . . (Divine) harmony . . . The Neters are the
expression of this harmony. They order affinities, command
concordances, give rise to forms and signatures, and exercise
authority over the phases of becoming and of the return to the
Source. They manifest life.12

We can sec, then, how it is that the sign of Net is that of the weaver’s
shuttle upon her head-dress ( X I X ), for Net is the totality of the
Neters, and transcending them ; She is T h at of which they weave, and
She is the weaver; She is ‘Father of Fathers and M other of M others’.
She is the very Origin of being, and being itself; Her powers extend
through the formal and subtle realms, and hence She is said to pass
morning and night ‘making protection’ (sa) for ‘that which is in M e ’.
Now sa is in hieroglyphics an octifold knot ( ♦ ), signifying the
power over death, and ‘trying’ the individual to his Origin - which is
in fact precisely one ‘function’ of the Neters.
In this last regard, we must note that even though A m en-Ra is
termed the ‘highest’ of the Gods, none the less He is the son of A m ent,
the most ancient Goddess. As Am ent, She bestows ‘virtual liberation’;
as Persephone, she proffers fertility and prosperity.13 N ow another
name for Net is R a t (Ra with the feminine determinative ‘t ’), She W ho
wears the ‘Crown of the N o rth ’14 and bears in each hand the symbols of
water, signifying power over the watery ignorance of the sublunary
sphere. The water-symbols also signify, though, the prim ordiality of
Net; She is the Originary source, and bears in herself all possibilities o f
existence. Hers is the weaving o f the Fates, true - yet she contains not
only past, present and future, but the p le n ip o te n tia ry of all possible
other existences as well. It is this, in part, which is signified by that
ceremony alluded to by H erodotus, in which, at the city Sais, after the
rites of the day, all do

giue due honour to the N ight, placing in euery corner of theyr


house an infinite number of tapers and candles, the custom e not
being only kept at Sais, but spread and scattered throughout the
whole region. But for what ende this N ight is helde solemne by
lighting of lampes, a certayne mysticall and religious reason is
yeelded which we must keepe secret.15

Without perhaps completely divulging that ‘certayne mysticall


secret’, we may observe that the lighting of the lamp sim ultaneously
symbolises the penetration of the primal Light through the darkness of
122 THEOR1A: INITIATION AND THE SYMBOLIC

nescience; and the appearance of the manifest realms from the


Unmanifest. It signifies, then, our ‘appearance’ in or ‘from’ the Light,
and, simultaneously, our ‘return’ to it. The primordial Light is always
there; it is simply a matter of our degree of perception or realisation.
There is also, in the lighting of the lamps, a close parallel with the
Japanese O-Bon festival, which is to say, with the recognition and
‘channelling’ of the forces of the dead, of the fathers (pitr).16
The symbolic is, as we can see from these instances, not something
which can happily be discussed in the abstract, save in establishing
general rules; rather, it is intuited from one’s inherent understand­
ing ‘leading’ one ever higher by means of specificity, to its own
transcendence, which ‘breaking through’ is always the lightning of
delight. We have had to pursue the symbolism of Neith, and of the
subordinate Neters, however briefly, not only because of Her
primordiality, but because in discussing the symbolic one must have
something upon which to focus, and Neith, as Mother of the Gods, is
the most irradiative of foci, being in her very nature , embracing
the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries, Persephone, Diana, and the
Mother of the Sun.
But each form of initiation has its requisite symbology, from the
‘cold and clayey path of Persephone’ to the ‘glad groves of Aphrodite’,1'
and the aim of each is the ‘return to the Origin’. Indeed, this is the very
meaning of the word ‘Eleusinian’. Says Hippolytus, the Mystery is
called Eleusis and A naktoreion because we - the spiritual - come
from Above, streaming down from Adamas, for is ‘to
come’, and A naktoreion [from ; leading back] is to
‘return above’. This [Return] is that of which those initiated into
the Great Mysteries of Eleusis speak. The Law is that those who
have been initiated into the Lesser Mysteries, should then be
further initiated into the Great. ‘For greater deaths do greater lots
obtain.’18
Now the function of the Lesser Mysteries is the restoration of
stability, of fertility, virility and strength to one’s life, in order that one
may be a fit vehicle to receive initiation into the Greater, about which it
is said that the hierophant
in the Night, at Eleusis, solemnising the Great Ineffable
Mysteries, when the bright Light streams forth, cries aloud,
saying that ‘Our Lady hath brought forth a Holy Son; Brimo
THEORIA: INITIATION AND T H E SYM BOLIC 123

hath given birth to Brimos - that is, the Strong to the Strong, the
self-horn (Athene) to the Self-horn.19

The Lesser Mysteries imply the preparation of the vehicle, and the
Greater are its employment in the ‘giving birth 1 to the new Self, which
is to say, in the progressive ‘deaths1 which manifest in ‘greater lots’, as
Heraclitus had it in the fragment quoted earlier. As we observed before,
one’s lot in the ‘other world’ proceeds inversely to one’s attachm ent to
the present realm.20
All of the symbolism of the initiatory mysteries - from the sceptre to
rhe Epoptic ear of wheat, to the bestial sigils - not as preludium to this
rebirth, for which in fact they exist, for this ‘breaking through into the
Celestial Light’. The sceptre signifies power; the ear of wheat signifies
celestial nourishment; and the ‘lower waters’ imply the ignorance from
which ‘upper waters’, being celestial bliss, are free. All symbols, in the
initiatory tradition, exist in order to further the passage from the lower
to the higher waters.
It will by now have been noted that we have drawn freely upon that
which remains of the Greek Mysteries, the reason for which is simply
that the Greek were a continuation of the Egyptian, as indeed
Christianity was an attenuated reflection of both these. In each case,
though, there was an exfoliation of the initiatory symbols, phrases and
rites ‘outward’ into society, in compensation as the Spirit left. O f the
Egyptian Mysteries we know little because nothing needed to be written
down as to meaning, all being implicit in the hieroglyphs, or in oral
transmission; of the Greek we know more, and of the Christian all is in
writing - but in the same proportion the Mysteries themselves vanished,
bitterly opposed by men like Iraneus, Tertullian.
In brief: we see in this ‘arc’ downwards, the result of ever-greater
attachment to the form, to the literalisation of the symbolic. In the
ancient Egyptian, and even in the Greek Mysteries, initiation consisted
in the worship, which is to say the realisation of the Great M other; and,
through her, birth into that state of transcendence termed R a . But as
time went on, this Great Birth became fixed, delimited into single
incarnation of Christ, thereby externalised. Yet the Christian revelation
carried within it much of the symbology of the initiatory Mysteries -
and it is only the profanations of the modern era, with the advent of
behaviouralism’, ‘psychologism’, and all the myriad other mechanistic
manifestations of the present time, that the understanding and
transmission of the symbolic is wholly lost. The ancient Egyptian could
124 THEORIA: IN IT IA T IO N A N D T H E S Y M B O L IC

think and understand through revelatory hieroglyphs; modern man


tends to think, by and large, through binary codes.
Yet the latter is implicit in the former; for this is the fundamental
weakness of the ‘Western tradition’, this tendency toward attachment
to, fixation of the symbolic. The Egyptian tradition relied altogether
too much upon ritual transmission, instead of on yogic experientiality,
the individual path. The reliance upon symbology allowed the entire
culture to participate, allowed the irradiation of the Mysteries - but at
the same time, it paved the way for the literalisation of those symbols,
and finally for the blindness and confusion of the present era.
But all the while the symbolic remains as it is, shimmering,
irradiative, universal, beckoning us toward our own transcendence.
CHAPTER 3
P ra x is: Initiation and Work

Ancient Egypt was, as wc discussed earlier, without question a


traditional culture, with all that such a designation entails. Indeed, one
can with justification say that she was enveloped in the swathe of
tradition, in its irradiative Light, to a degree little realised during the
present cycle, for her continu ation consisted in the transmission of
ritual symbology and ceremony on the order of the Vedic, with both the
benefits - a wider em brace - and the dangers (fixation of ritual and
symbol) that such a transm ission implies. As a result, ancient Egypt was
specially suited for the continu ation of an initiatory tradition based
upon one’s given w ork, be it a craft or otherw ise. In fact, it is not only
natural, but necessary that this be so, not only because one’s calling
provides the perfect ‘fo o th o ld ’ or ‘entry-point’ for the realisation and
transcendence of the self, but because this perfecting of oneself through
one’s calling simultaneously unites and perfects the culture as a whole;
the perfection of oneself is the perfecting of the culture as a whole, and
vice versa. It is upon how this is so that we shall now focus.
Without needing to dwell on the point, we can begin by observing
that the traditional culture is always and everywhere that culture which
allows each individual to follow that path into which he was born to its
fruition. There is in that culture no sense of false liberty, in which one’s
work is treated as a com m od ity, o f merely quantitative valuation, as
though the labour of one’s hands were a mere external object, and not a
qualitative creation, an expression of oneself - as though one’s calling
could be changed as easily as one changes one’s clothes. No - rather,
one’s lifework is in the trad ition al culture recognised to be sacred; it is
one’s svadharm a,o r sacred ‘startin g-p oint’ , and must be fully realised in
order to be transcended. L ib eratio n com es not through evasion of one’s
central function in life, but in bringing it to realisation, and passing
beyond it.
It is this which accounts for the regality, the unutterable dignity
possessed by the statues of kings and queens of both ancient India and
ancient Egypt alike: these are beings who have fully realised their

125
126 PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK

potentialities, and who gaze out upon the centuries with a power and
nobility virtually beyond the pale of the insecure, confused modern
This nobility, this ability to bear one’s condign suffering with infinite
strength, is the direct concomitant of knowing, truly knowing who and
where one truly is, to have realised one’s purpose, one’s function. No
one who looks upon the faces of the lineage of Kings, or upon the faces
of the Amerindian ‘noble savages’ preserved to the present, can deny
this.1
Now it may be objected, by those unfamiliar with the nature of a
traditional culture, that the King might well have realised this state -
but what of the man in the field? W hat of the labourer, the craftsman?
Such an objection, however, belies a gross misunderstanding of
tradition, for as a Ceylonese proverb has it, ‘Take a ploughman from
the plough, and wash off his dirt, and he is fit to rule a kingdom’. Of
the Ceylonese Knox said ‘Their ordinary Plowmen and Husbandmen do
speak elegantly, and are full of compliment. And there is no difference
between the ability of speech of a Country-man and a Courtier. ' And
the same is true of any traditional culture: that is, everyone in that
culture turns inward toward the common centrum, as all things orient
toward the Pole of existence, toward the Sun and, upon whatever strata
of society, realises simultaneously his own function, and the perfection
of that culture, so that everyone is possessed of that serenity and dignity
which can only come from self-realisation.
Where better to begin the perfection of one’s own state, and the
perfecting of the world round one, than with that craft into which one
was born, after all? It is only natural that the initiatory paths should
begin with the crafts of the people - for what better opportunity is there
for that constant attentive concentration which is the mark of religious
praxis than one’s daily work? Every figure carved is become a holy
figure; every field ploughed recapitulates the primal ‘breaking of the
earth’;3 every work of art (every craft) recapitulates creation itself, the
ordering of the cosmos.
These are the Lesser Mysteries, those initiatory paths which begin in
the various crafts; they culminate in a state of primordiality, in which
the individual has reached the fullness of his potential upon this earth,
in terms of formal manifestation. Now by ‘fullness’ we mean of course
not only the perfection of the craft - it goes without saying that the
work is revelatory of the Divine - but the workers’ life is ethically pure
as well.4 This is the Osirian path, which is to say, that of karmic
perfecting; and thus we read in the B o o k o f Respirations
PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK 127

Come Osiris! Thou dost enter the Hall of the Two Goddesses of
Truth.
Thou art purified of all sin, of all crime.
Stone of Truth is thy name.
Hail to the Osiris N - ! (N - name of the deceased)
Thou, being very pure, dost enter the Lower Heaven.
The Two Goddesses have purified Thee in the Great Hall.
Purification has been made to Thee in the Hall of Seb.
Thy members have been purified in the Hall of Shu.
Thou seest the Ra in his setting___
Thou dost enter the Horizon with the Sun.5

We may first of all note that the emphasis here is upon ritual
purification of the deceased, Osiris N - , and it is to this that the
references to the various ‘H alls’ refers; each of the Halls, in ancient
Egyptian architecture, recapitulates a fu nction in g of the cosmos, of the
subtile reality, and through ceremonies held within them, accomplished
with the same ritual perfection a craftsman applies to his work, the
initiate would reach a state of fullness. This fulfilling of potentiality is
not of course, as certain Gnostic sects are reputed to have thought, the
actual living out of all potentiality,6 but rather the realisation of a
primordial state which encompasses all possibilities.
The two names - Osiris and N - (that of the initiate) - are merged
because through the fruition of his initiation the disciple becomes
identified with the God, and this purification takes place thus in the
three worlds, those being that of the ‘Two Goddesses’ (earth), of the
Hall of Seb (subtle realm) and of the Hall of Shu (Sky, or the principal
realm). Through this purification, one is able to enter the Lower
Heaven, which is to say, as we observed earlier, Amentet, at that point
of the arc of Ra which intersects with the realm of Osiris in the West.
‘Thou dost enter the Horizon with the Sun.’
It ought not be thought, incidentally, that the ‘creation’ of an
‘eternal self’ in the Lower Heaven, a self which is in fact the
resurrection, the revelation of one’s true Self, is in fact the ‘creation’ of
some being. It is, rather, the revelation of a vehicle more durable as it
were than the fleeting temporal self, but still none the less to be finally
revealed as identical in its essence with the Origin, into which not only
all beings, but all the Gods including Ra ultimately ‘return’. The point
of ‘merger’ of this ‘eternal self’ is the point of Osirian identification
with Ra in the West, which is to say, at the end of a given ,
or cycle.
128 PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK

At all events, this vehicle, the so-called ‘eternal self’, is revealed


through ritual praxis extended throughout one’s life; for to walk upon
earth with absolute concentrative power is to walk thus in the Osirian
heaven; to eat thus here is to eat there; the point of ceremonial praxis
extended through one’s life is not only to perfect one’s life upon earth,
but in truth to ‘reveal’ one’s transcendent, or Angelic counterpart,
which is ultimately more oneself than oneself, more real than that
contingent passional being we call ‘I’.
The initiation into the Lesser Mysteries, then, is possessed of a
twofold nature - which is to say that it is at once ‘negative’ and
‘positive’. On the negative side is of course ethical purity, which
consists in the moral perfection of the individual, including the
abstention from lying, stealing, cheating, killing, or otherwise
committing acts disharmonious to the self, the culture, and the cosmos:
It is this to which the B o o k o f the D ea d refers in the ‘Introduction to
M aati’, which reads, in an exhaustive list,

I have not caused pain. I have made no man to suffer hunger. I


have made no one to weep. I have done no murder . . . I have not
added to the weights of the scales (to cheat the seller) . . . I have
not repulsed the Divine in His manifestations. I am pure. I am
pure. I am pure.7

The triune repetition of ‘I am pure’ refers to purity in the three worlds,


which is to say, in the realms of formal and nonform al manifestation
over which Osiris has sway especially. That last line - ‘I have not
repulsed the Divine in His m anifestations’ - is the key to the passage,
for what are those m anifestations of the Divine, but everything in the
cosmoi? To ‘repulse’ the Divine is to view It as separate from oneself;
and this it is which causes one to steal, to lie, to destroy. And it is this
which is one’s Last Judgm ent. W ho would do these things if they truly
recognised the non-dual nature of Reality? In this regard, we might
recall the Gospel saying of Christ that ‘that which ye do to the least of
these, ye do to M e’,8 for it refers to this same unitary Reality.
This, then, is the ‘negative’ side of initiation - the avoidance of
unethical thought and action, to com m it which is indeed to separate
oneself from the Divine. Ethical behaviour is foundational to the
‘positive’ aspects of initiation, which without the former cannot exist.
But what of the ‘positive’ side?
O f that we have already seen some reference, but it is necessary here
to focus upon it: for as is written in the B o o k o f , by virtue
PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK 129

of affiliation with Osiris,


Thy soul doth breathe forever and ever . . .
Thou art divinised with the souls of the Gods.
Thy heart is the heart of Ra
Thy members are the members of the Great God Osiris.9

Moreover,

Thou seest with thine eyes;


Thou hearest with thine ears;
Thou speakest with thy mouth;
Thou walkest with thy legs . . .
Thou seest the rays of R a .10

First of all we must note the pre-eminence of breath, both in this


quotation, and in the work as a whole, the significance of breath being
exactly parallel to that of prana in the Taoist and yogic sense - that is, it
is the vital force, the c h ’i of the individual and of the cosmoi. It is
through this, through breath, that the alchemical transmutation of the
being is effected, the culmination of that transmutation being the
ability to see, to hear, to speak and to walk (the order of the acquisition
of faculties not without meaning here) in the celestial realm, which is to
say, in the Western paradise of Osiris. It is this which is in Taoist
alchemy called the ‘creation of the celestial foetus’, and is therefore a
state of virtual liberation, since even in this very life, one realises
existence in the celestial realm virtually.11
This is of course not complete transcendence, but rather an
intermediary state, one which is indeed strictly speaking paradisal,12 in
which realm ‘spirits are embodied, and bodies spiritualised’. It is
instructive to here observe the words of Ibn Arabi:

On that Earth there exist Forms of a marvellous race, Who stand


at the entrances to the avenues, and dominate this world in which
we are, its earth, its heaven, its paradise, and its hell. When one
of us wishes to penetrate this (other) E a rth ,. . . one must practise
gnosis and solitude outside one’s fleshly temple. He encounters
the Forms that by Divine Order stand watch at the entrances.. . .
One of them comes to the new arrival, clothing him in
appropriate dress, taking him by the hand, and walking with him
through his Earth, and they make of it what they will (that is, see
according to the degree of initiatory gnosis). He passes by no
130 PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK

stone, no tree, no village, nothing whatsoever, without talking to


it as he wishes, as with a companion. They have different
languages, but this Earth gives all who enter it the understanding
of all languages spoken on it. When he wishes to return, his
companion accompanies him to the place he entered; he removes
his dress, and departs from him .13

This state of unity with Osiris is of course a limited one - though far
less so than the corporeal state - but it bears within it the ‘heart of Ra’
which is to say, the potentiality for its own transcendence in the
m ysterium magnum. But indeed, strictly speaking even the state of Ra is
limited in so far as one can give name and delimitation to it. The path
of Osiris is that of -g,of works; the path of Ra, which is to
karm
say the Horian path, is equivalent to , or effective
realisation of supraformal states. At all events, we can see that the lesser
Mysteries, which involve the preparation of the being in formal states
of manifestation, are a preparation for the transcendence of those states,
in an arc which passes beyond the celestial, or paradisal existence as
well.
Now just as the crafts, through concentrative power, act as a focal
point and entry into the Mysteries, so also may the arts also act; indeed,
the words ‘arts’ and ‘crafts’ are from a traditional perspective
interchangeable, and it is only the modern wish to valorise the former at
the expense of the latter which distinguishes them. For instance, to
demonstrate the futility of a distinction: Is a stonecarver, from whose
tools manifest the magnificent carvings at Denderah, replete with
religious significance, an artist, or a craftsman? Every craft is, in its own
transcendence, an art. This is true of every path, of every kind of work,
but is especially so of those which depict transcendent Reality in either
images or words, for these act as meditative ‘supports’; they allow one
to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ of the transcendent states of being, thus orienting one
toward their realisation. And this is, after all, the aim of all the arts; to
allow one to glimpse the nature of a celestial state of being which, later,
one can experientially realise through the Mysteries, or through yogi
praxis.u
We can thus see why it is that the various arts are given an exalted
place within the traditional culture - for they represent the
establishment of os, of sacred space, upon the earth. But
n
tem
simultaneously, we can see that ultimate aim of the arts is not this
delineation, but an expansion of this celestial vision everywhere, a
PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK 131

return to the primordial state - the fruition of the being. The arts as a
means of establishing tem enos, or sacred space, is the understanding of a
‘fallen’ culture - for in the most ancient and pristine cultures, there is
no arbitrary delineation of ‘art’ and ‘daily life’; rather, the latter is itself
exalted, as much a manifestation of ‘art’ as the carving upon the temple
wall. The function of the carving is after all to reflect the nature of life
lived simultaneously upon terrestrial and celestial earth; it is to ‘remind’
one of that which one has, through the Fall, forgotten, which is to say,
to remind one of one’s celestial Origin, which has never vanished, but
only remained ‘dormant’ as one ‘sleeps’ in ignorance. In the traditional
culture, daily life is itself an art form, of which the various ‘arts’ are
simply intensifications, be it the art of the tea ceremony, of the sword,
or of weaving.
Now one must not conceptualise the ‘celestial Earth’, thinking that it
is elsewhere, when in fact the celestial Earth is always here, now, in this
very instant. Everything, in all instants, is engaged in a state of
continuous ‘ascension’, in the return to the Source. Simply because, due
to the nature of temporal cycles, our senses have hardened, does not
mean that even so, every realm does not interpenetrate with every other,
and what is more, that influences of a supratemporal or ‘eternal’ order
cannot - as in the case of bidr,the ‘hidden initiator’ of Islam, to na
K
one example - penetrate and affect temporal beings through a kind of
‘vertical axis’ cutting through horizontal existence. Strictly speaking, no
initiation can take place without this ‘penetration’ of the
supratemporal into phenomenality, which is to say without the ‘laying
bare’ of that which is latent within, but ‘encased’ within existence.
Says Heidegger, who near the end of his life said many things which
bore witness to his proximity to traditional teachings, not least of
which is the striking parallel between his thought and Hua Yen
Buddhist teaching:15

Earth and sky, divinities and mortals - being at one with one
another of their own accord - belong together by way of the
simpleness of the united fourfold. Each of the four mirrors in its
own way the presence of the o th ers. . . This appropriative mirror-
play of the simple onefold . . . we call the world.16

What is more,

In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities,


in initiating mortals, dwelling occurs as the fourfold preservation
132 PRAXIS: IN IT IA T IO N A N D W O R K

of the fo u rfo ld .. . . W hat we take under our care must be kept


safe.17

M ortals dwell, he says, ‘in that they initiate their own nature . . . jnt0
the use and practise of this capacity, so that there may be a good death’.
Saving the earth means in fact ‘liberating’ the earth in order that it may
be as it is in Reality: is this not the essence of the Lesser Mysteries?
This is in fact the nature of all the arts and crafts, which are termed
the ‘Lesser Mysteries’ not in a pejorative, but in a preparatory sense,
being the revelation of the celestial in the terrestrial, and a necessary
foundation so to speak for the realisation of yet more transcendent
states. Says Guenon: ‘There is no true initiation, even in the most
inferior and elementary degree, without the intervention of a “non­
human” element, which is the ‘‘spiritual influence” regularly
communicated by the initiatory rite.’ 18 But we may here go further than
this and say that the initiatory rite nurtures and guides the individual,
through the praxis of his given craft or art, the mastery of which is
transmitted from master to disciple since time immemorial, to the
‘expansion’ of that art into the realisation of the full potentiality of
being in its primordial plenitude ‘prior to ’ differentiation into societal
fragmentation.
This latter state is one of complete, spontaneous freedom. To cite a
modern instance, it appears in the ‘tea ceremony for the Buddha’ which
is performed only by the most experienced of tea-masters, and indeed,
even to their students the freedom may appear as ‘mistakes’, when it is
really the play of a being fully realising the plenipotentiary inherent
within not only that form, but existence itself. The Gods and other
beings also attend that ceremony, in countless numbers - and so it was,
also, in ancient Egypt.
This accounts for the fascinating power of the traditional arts, which
invoke our attention by their concentrating power, beauty, and serenity:
they are the transmutation of this earth into its celestial, which is to
say, its truer Reality. We have on other occasions made reference to the
power of this transmutation, and will here only allude to the Chinese
tale of the painter whose painting was so magnificent that he entered it,
never to be seen again, testimony to the truth that the creation of a
work of art is the revelation, not of merely temporal human existence,
or of fantasies woven from it, but indeed, of transcendent possibilities
of virtually limitless scope.19 T here is a profound correspondence
between this understanding, and the Buddhist term dharmadhatu,
which implies entry into a transcendent ‘field of knowledge’.
PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK 133

Any work of art is ultimately an entry-point into the transcendent,


revelatory of not only subtle, but celestial beauty and power; and if the
given work is not so, it cannot properly be called art at all, but only
masquerades as such. All works of art, in other words, are religious,
sacred, or nothing. It is this which the statues, friezes and hieroglyphs of
ancient Egypt have to tell us; it is here, and nowhere else, that their
secret lies.
We might here observe, by the way, that no art opens merely into an
‘imaginative’ realm which isolates the individual in his own fantasies;
this is a Romantic fallacy, a tendency of thought inherited from the
nineteenth century, and from the dissolution of the traditional
understanding in the West. Rather, art opens one’s eyes to a ‘wider’
vision, a vision which reveals the celestial magnificence and unitary
nature of all beings. Every work of art involves the transmutation of the
artist, of the audience, and of the entire ambient environs - a grove
becomes a different place when it holds a temple, say. Every work of art
is, therefore, an existential transm utation and, simultaneously, the
result of such a transm utation: that is, it is accomplished under the
guidance, visible or otherwise, of one’s teacher, and beyond that, of
one’s lineage of teachers, and its irradiative power is thus a direct
function of the degree of the initiatory understanding which created it,
born of power stretching back into primordial antiquity.
All this leads us, then, quite naturally to the nature of the ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs, and to the creation of the manifold statues,
amulets, and friezes which are to be found now throughout the world
due to the dispersion of the Egyptian treasures atten d an t upon
modernity. The hieroglyph is the most direct means by which the art of
language is manifested; an hieroglyph is a direct revelation of
archetypal Reality, of the ‘seed-realm’ (Sanskrit: or the
realm of Form, as Plato called it. To inscribe an hieroglyph is indeed to
manifest celestial Reality itself - and the same is true, though in a
slightly different medium, of creating a statue, or a temple frieze. In all
of these can be seen, not temporal fact, but celestial meaning.
When, for instance, in the ‘Chaplet of V ictory’ in the Book o f the
Dead, we read that ‘ O siris-khent-A m entet hath made thee to trium ph
over all thine enemies’; when we read of the ‘ night Osiris was made to
triumph over his enemies in the presence of the great sovereign princes
who are in the horizon of A m en tet’ ; when we read ‘H orus repeated
these words four times, and all his enemies fell headlong and were
overthrown and cut to pieces’ , and m oreover th at this is celebrated in
134 PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK

‘millions of festivals’,20 surely only the most obtuse of modern observers


could think that historical events were being referred to. Yet even so
many still look for ‘real’ battles, and ‘real’ slave-sacrifices, not
recognising that the confusion of celestial meaning with temporal ‘fact’
has plagued moderns for some time, especially with regard to the
Mayan, the Aztec, and the ancient Egyptian cultures, these being the
most s y m b o lic a lly oriented, and therefore most foreign to the profane
modern mentality.21
The inscription of an hieroglyph, the creation of a scene, with all its
geometric irradiative implications22 is not - we cannot emphasise this
enough - simply an act which exists in and irradiates through time, but
a transcendent manifestation, which is to say, an act which irradiates in
countless ways, throughout time and space, with effects of which the
profane mind has no understanding whatever. It is the understanding
that the subtle and celestial resonances are invocations which in fact
constitutes mastery, in the technical sense, of an art.
It is, in this respect, of some interest to consider the changes in
ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Old Kingdom to the Middle and
New Kingdoms - since the earlier the work under consideration,
generally speaking, the less human figures are to be seen, whereas the
later the glyph or frieze in question, the more likely it is to be
dominated by human figures, a fact which suggests the increasing self-
consciousness of man, and the multiplication of God-figures in human
form as a kind of balance. This latter tendency is of course to be seen
also in Buddhism, in which the earliest art works are indubitably
aniconic; and only later, in concord with the needs of a later era, did
anthropomorphic figures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas appear.23
At all events, to return to the arts as the Lesser Mysteries: the natural
correspondence is always between the artist, as Creator of his Work,
and the Divine, as Creatrix of this present realm. Says Proclus, in this
regard,

As of statues established by the telestic art, some things


pertaining to them are manifest, but others are inwardly
concealed, being symbolical of the presence of the Gods, and
which are known only to the mystic artists themselves; after the
same manner, the world being a statue (image) of the Intelligible
(realm) and perfected by the Father, has indeed some things which
are visible indications of its Divinty; but others, which are the
invisible impressions of the participation with the Father who
PRAXIS: INITIATION AND WORK 135

gave it perfection, in order that through these it may he eternally


rooted in real being.24

The relation of artist to his work is precisely that of the Creative


power to Creation.2' Everything in spatiality and temporality yearns for
its liberation from that conditionality; and the artist, by invoking and
manifesting the Divine, acts to bring about that resurrection, which is
to say, the ‘opening into' freedom. In other words, not only does the
artist mirror the manifestation of the cosmos - he shows forth the
transcendence of the cosmos as well.
The ars ,m
agn of course, is the Great Work, the consummate
transmutation of ‘dark matter' into shimmering, complete Trans­
cendence.
Now this liberatory work of art is attained through purification of
the self, of the artist, first of all, so that the being can reflect its
transcendent Origin; and hence we read, in the ‘Chapter of Knowledge’
in the Book o f the d,
ea
D

THIS CHAPTER SHALL BE R EC IT E D BY A MAN WHO IS


CEREMONIALLY CLEAN AND PU RE, W H O HATH N O T
EATEN THE FLESH OF AN IM ALS O R FISH, AND W HO
HATH N O T HAD IN T E R C O U R SE W ITH W O M EN .26

And what is the virtue of the initiatory knowledge realised by the


artist?

IF THIS CH APTER BE K N O W N BY T H E BEING, HE


SHALL BE V IC T O R IO U S B O T H U PO N T H E EA RTH AND
IN POSTH UM OUS STATES, AND HE SHALL FULFIL ALL
HUMAN P O T E N T IA L IT IE S. T H IS IS A GREAT P R O T E C ­
TION GRANTED BY T H E G O D .27

The artist, through his work, is victorious in life - having realised the
potentiality of being - and is victorious after death, for certain
posthumous states are already his by right. He lives in the ‘dark earth’,
in Malkuth, and yet continuously through his existence as an artist
transmutes it into its Celestial Origin - to use Egyptian symbolism,
writing even upon iron, with lapis lazuli letters, the scripture of life.
To invoke a God through a given art work, after all, requires
identification with that God; it requires sanctification and, indeed,
umty. This is the secret of all the ancient rites, from ‘theatre’, which is
136 PRAXIS: I N I T I A T I O N AND W ORK

to say Osirian rites manifesting the very Gods themselves, to the songs
of the poet, to the temple-friezes of the painter engraver.
Truly, this is the secret, not only of the arts, but of life itself. It is
only through union with anything that it can be truly possessed, be this
union through long assimilation (as in living in a given area or
ambience) or through the more ‘condensed’ power of the rite, or
through other means. All involve concentrative power; all involve the
transmission through tradition of a given mode which ‘channels’ the
power, or one’s capacity to receive it.
There is one power which circulates throughout the traditional
civilisation, causing all the works of its citizens to glow with the degree
of their realisation of it. Initiation is the means by which, through
which, it continues to manifest. W ithout it, society becomes chaos,
fixated upon the merely physical; men retreat into solipsism. Egypt was
a culture able to maintain the manifestation of this power through the
symbolic, and the consequence of its fragmentation, its loss, was the
birth of the modern era.
CHAPTER 4
Praxis: The Flame and the Flower

Flames, flames, flames.


What is the true nature of suffering? What is it that we must pass
through in order to truly live? What is living?
Throughout antiquity one finds reference to the , or fire-
worshippers, and interestingly, the fire-worshippers were the only
ancient sect to be immediately admitted to the Buddhist Order without
any preliminary period. Why is this so, and what has it to do with our
central focus - Egyptian initiation? Let us first look at a mythologem
told of Mahakasyapa, the first of the Buddha’s disciples, and of the
Buddha himself - for from it *ve shall be able to penetrate yet more
deeply into the nature of initiation in ancient Egypt. For in it we see the
keynote of initiation itself: that within the very flames of existence is
the flower of transcendence found.
Now it is said that Mahakasyapa had warned the Buddha that his
brother, a naga, or serpent-being, and also a fire-worshipper, was
extremely dangerous - but taking no heed, the Buddha entered the naga’s
cave and, seating himself, entered into a state of sam adhi. The naga
filled the air with a dense smoke, but the Buddha, deep in meditation,
emitted a thicker fog. The naga began to emit flames, but the Buddha
emitted yet greater flames, until the entire cavern was engulfed and,
outside, Mahakasyapa began to lament the Buddha’s death. To his
immense astonishment, however, the next morning appeared the
Buddha at the cave-entrance, with the naga coiled in his alms-bowl.
Significantly, the conclusion to this chapter of the manifestation of
Buddhadharma is the so-called ‘Fire Sermon’, in which from a
mountain (simultaneously Meru, the cosmic mountain, and all sacred
mountains) he demonstrates that the entire Universe, all possible
cosmoi, are nothing but flames, and that this is because the eyes, the
ears, and all manner of perception are themselves flames, transitory.1
Now all of this is especially meaningful if we consider that Buddhism
ls very much an initiatory religion, and that throughout its history there
runs r^e fiery apotheosis, be it in cremation-ritual, in the self-sacrificial

137
1

138 PRAXIS: THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER

death by fire,2 or for that matter, to enter into ‘celestial history’, in the
dissolution of Gavampati, and later Ananda himself, into flames upon
their entry into nirvana.3 W hat is the nature of fire, and particularly of
death by fire?
Fire signifies the transmutation from one state to another; it signifies
purification. Now we can observe here that there are two meanings to
fire: on the one hand, there is the ‘fire’ of samsaric existence, which
consists in being ‘split asunder’ in the constant neurotic attempt to
situate oneself securely, in the attempt to maintain the irreal ‘self’. The
nature of existence as desire is existence in fire; it is the constant pain of
burning. But the other meaning of fire is that of the ascetic , of
initiatory purification which, within existence itself, consumes one’s
conceptualisations and illusions; it is this which is meant by the
alchemical ‘fire in the belly’ or a; it is the S
irradiating through the individual, through the hara (which strictly
speaking is not the solar plexus below the chest, but that below the
navel).
The heart is the centre of the being, the heart being solar, and the
brain lunar, it is true - but the umbilicus is that from which we become
manifest; and it is here that initiatory rebirth, which is to say, the
‘dropping away’ of ‘eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind’, begins also, in a
natural parallelism.4 It is through fire that the other elements are
conjoined to create light and heat - illumination of the heart and the
mind. Fire is, in other words, the means of return to the Source; it is
sign of that transmutation of which the seal is the transmutation itself.
All depends, in other words, upon one’s orientation - for if one is
turned ‘downward’ to use Platonic terms, one is ‘caught’ in indefinite
suffering, in the fire of desire; whereas if one is turned ‘upward’ then by
passing through the fire of initiatory suffering one recaptures that
serenity and bliss which was once natural to man. All is fire, whether
one likes it or not.5
This unity is suggested also in the Buddhist mythologem with which
we began; for the naga is an extremely important being in Buddhist
cosmology, with meanings beyond those we can point to here;6 suffice
it to say that the naga is serpentine, cold and wet, manifesting matter at
its ‘darkest’ or most ‘obscure’ pole, and that the inclusion of fire with
the naga signifies its transmutation into celestial light and heat.
Moreover, in the naga's being coiled in the Buddha’s bowl the next
morning we see the cosmic krater of Creation itself ‘in the Buddha’s
hands’.
PRAXIS: THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER 139

Now it is at this juncture that we begin to enter into the ancient


Egyptian teachings regarding the Great Fire. In the chapter of the B oo k
o f the D ead entitled ‘Sailing in the Great Boat of Ra to Pass over the
Circle of Bright Flame’, we read:
The Osiris Nu, overseer of the Palace, chancellor in chief,
triumphant, saith: Hail, ye bright and shining flames that keep
your place behind R a, and which slay behind Him; the boat of
Ra is endangered by the whirlwind and storm; shine ye forth,
then, and make yourselves visible.7
Later, Osiris Nu continues:
I have gathered together for Him His manifold parts; I have
driven back for Him the serpent fiend Apep; I have healed his
gashes for him (with my saliva); I have made my road and passed
among ye. . . . I have gone forward over the circle of bright flame
which is behind the Lord . . . Behold, ye who cry out over
yourselves, ye worms in hidden places, grant ye that I pass
onward, for I am the mighty one, Lord of Divine Strength, and I
am the spiritual body (sah) of the Lord of Divine Right and Truth
made by the God as Uatchit. His strength which protecteth is my
strength; it is the strength which protecteth R a .8
We may first of all point out here the conjunction of serpent, or
worms - the latter being fragments, so to speak, of the cosmic serpent
Apep - and fire, so parallel to the Buddhist conjunction of the ,
and initiatory flame in the Buddhist mythologem related earlier.9
Although there are of course differences between Apep, and the ,
none the less there is here a clear parallel, both reflecting the same
fundamental tendency. N ote, too, that in the Egyptian text as in the
Buddhist, the flames have the function of ‘slaying’, and yet to pass
through them, in both cases, is to be granted life anew, transmuted. In
the Buddhist instance, of course, the Buddha remains the same
completely realised being; by passing through the fire he is simply
showing the way for less realised beings, showing the way to their
liberation. This is the alitvsr ,the ‘play of the Buddha in existence
L
for the sake of all beings’. At all events, let us observe that the Flames
are said to exist ‘without fire’ for the initiate, which is to say, they have
been realised as part of the being him self, this being the means through
which all enemies, or destructive powers, are overcome.10 By becoming
identical with that Flame which consumes the cosmoi continually, we
transcend it; it is without fire.
140 PRAXIS: T H E FLA M E AND T H E FLO W ER

T h is is demonstrated all the more clearly in the chapter entitled ‘Of


the Four Flames of the Khu1, in which we read that

The Fire com eth to the Ka, O Osiris, governor of Amenti; the
Fire com eth to thy Ka, O Osiris N u, overseer of the palace,
chancellor in chief, triumphant. He that ordereth the night
com eth after the d a y .. . . It is set in order upon thy brow, 0
O siris, governor of Amenti; fixed within thy shrine, it riseth on
thy b row .11

T h e K a is the subtle m anifestation of the being; and in the final Fire,


the corporeal and subtle realms are consumed, in order that
A p ocatastasis, return to the primal perfection, might come to pass. It is
to this that the verse ‘He that ordereth the night cometh after the day’
refers, for ‘the night’ means the , or ‘dark1 ‘sleep' of
existence, after the cosmic cycle of Day, or R a. Says the verse following:

H ail Osiris, governor of Amenti: Grant thou light and fire to the
blissful being which is in Sutenthene (Heracleopolis) and (ye
children of Horus) grant power unto the living soul of Osiris Nu
within his flame. Let Him not be driven back from the doors of
Am entet.12
In the ‘fire at the end of tim e’ all beings are consumed, returning to
their primal, germinal Forms, which is to say, to the bliss of non-
m anifestational realms, to right and Truth; and it is this Fire which is
said to encircle R a , and through which one must pass in order to enter
the ‘barque of R a ’. Now this passage ought not be conceived as ‘at the
end of history’, though such an interpretation is not without some
qualified truth - but rather as the Fire in this very instant, for this is the
initiatory truth. One must, as we observed before, perforce ‘pass
through the Fire’; it is up to us merely whether we do it voluntarily,
being transmuted in this very life, or involuntarily, and, in the extreme
case, being dissolved by it because so little in our being conforms to that
which is to be preserved - though of course the heart of the being,
which is Real, identical to Reality, is not consumed, nor can it be.
The fire is upon the brow of Osiris (one cannot help but think of the
mark of Cain) and indeed, Osiris is later said to be in His flame; it is
this flam e, or Light and H eat, which He grants the initiate, whose
flame is simultaneously then his own, and Osiris’. It is this which
allows ‘entry’ into Amentet, the state of virtual liberation. As
Iamblichus has it, in his D e ysteri, a purified soul exhibi
M
PRAXIS: T H E FLAME AND TH E FLOWER 141

form, and a pure and unmingled fire’. But the soul which ‘verges
downward draws along with it the signs of bonds and punishments,
heavy with material spirits'. Every genera in the celestial hierarchy
manifest their own flam e: ‘the aerial genera exhibit aerial fire, the
terrestrial a blacker fire; and the celestial a more splendid fire'. And the
Gods, indeed, exhibit the supreme and most pure causes of the triple
order.13
The flame in question is of an incorporeal light, which is more subtle
and more perfect as one ‘ascends’, each ‘degree’ in the hierarchy
containing in itself all the aspects of the lower, save intensified. The
intensity and subtlety of the Light determine the degree; those beings
‘near earth', which is to say, attached to conceptualisations, ‘blacken’
the fire; whilst those purified of dross irradiate it with greater and
greater force. N ow this fire is also at the heart, naturally enough, of
theurgy and m agic; and hence in a rare treatise by Psellus we read that
‘Often celestial fire is made to appear through magic; and then statues
laugh, and lamps are spontaneously enkindled’.14 The Fire in question is
the very Fire of life; it is the point at which the incorporeal fire becomes
the corporeal, and vice versa, which is to say, it is the means through
which m anifestation takes place, and through which its transcendence,
and return to the source, comes to pass.
We can therefore see why the ancient Egyptians, conformably with
the most universal of sy m b o lism ,15 held R a , the Divine Sun, to be the
most transcendent m anifestation o f, the most perfect symbol for the
Real. For the physical sun is but an echo, a reflection of the Divine Sun
which, passing through the cycle of day and night, yet never changes,
nor diminishes, but is only visible or not visible according to temporal
perspective. Just so, to o , is the Divine Sun always constant; it is only we
who are either aware or unaw are of the Source of being. The Sun is
source of all light and life in this realm ; and it is only natural to
recognise that u ltim ately everything, all beings, must return into this
Source, which is to say, into pure Light and life, or, if one chooses
moral terms, into right and truth.
Now the aim of the Lesser M ysteries is to ‘divinise’ the initiate, to
extend the individuality indefinitely, and to reveal the subtle body with
some degree of ‘d u rability’, in order that ‘Thy face is illuminated near
the Sun’ and ‘Thy body is rejuvenated near to O siris’. 16 But the Great
Mysteries allow one to realise identicality with the Sun, with R a; which
is to realise the inherent and com plete, plenary, self-sufficient, self­
motive power of the Source. Identicality with the Source is marked by
142 PRAXIS: T H E FLA M E AND T H E FLO W ER

absolute independence of temporal contingencies; the King is Ra, and


Ra the King, so that ‘He moves by himself, he moves by himself’.17
In other words, the arc ‘upwards’ is the arc through greater and
greater independence from the winds and tempests of temporality, of
attachm ent and aversion. It is not coincidence that the name Athene
was said to mean ‘self-generated’, and as such She was venerated,
parallel with Amentet and, for that m atter, Isis, as Mother of the
G od s.18 For he who is born anew of the M other of the Gods is identical
with the Gods, is he not? This transcendence, however, takes place
upon earth; earth is the determinative point in the initiation of the arc.
Hence it is written, at the inception of the ‘Litany of R a ’, that:

The beginning of the book of the worship of Ra in the Ament, of


the worship of Temt in the Ament (universal being). Whosoever
comprehends this work, grounded upon the earth, like porcelain
figures, at the hour of sunset, tha is the trium
over his enemies. F o r w h o so ev er has k n o w le d g e upon earth, has
kn o w led g e a fter d e a th .19

T h at which a man realises upon this earth, that he is in posthumous


states. osi,or experiential knowledge of the transcendent, is in fact
n
G
realisation of that being’s potentiality, of those states which are more
oneself than oneself. The degree of given knowledge can be ascertained
by its freedom from sequentiality, which is to say, from any
referentiality whatever.
Now it is at this point that we may begin to draw some distinctions,
however brief, between the Eastern and the Egyptian traditions. Both
are - as are all traditions - descended from an antediluvian era, which
is to say, one in which sacred knowledge was manifest to a degree
inconceivable now, for us, we who cannot even comprehend the power
and meaning of those fragments which remain to us of our own
traditions.20 It has been said that the Egyptian and Western traditions
generally have always tended more toward the symbolic; whereas the
Eastern tends more toward inward experientiality. Like all
generalisations, this has it faults, but if we were to say that the Western
traditions tended more toward the ‘exoteric’ and the Eastern toward the
‘esoteric’; the East more toward individual realisation, and the West
more toward exoteric rites, one would not be far wrong. The Catholic
emphasis upon the Mass, as we have seen, has its origin in the
irradiation of the Mysteries to as many as possible.21
It is no doubt because of this difference that the Egyptian tradition
rRAX IS: T H E FLA M E AND T H E FLO W ER 143

itself finally ceased to exist, save through its reflections in Platonism , in


Hermeticism, and, of course, and perhaps above all, in Qabalism and in
Christianity. In the East alone did the Magnum remain
alive, the centrum of entire cultures, and only today, when the world
itself is fragmenting, coalescing in chaos, has it become known again in
the Occident, part no doubt of that final ‘seeding’ before the Great
Renewal.
And what is the nature of that renewal? W h at is the sign of the
Mysterium m?Is it not flames? Fire, the great apocalypse,
u
agn
M
reflected even now in our consuming desire? Om mani padme bum: O
She of the Lotus-Jew el - the Flow er of which and to which the Flames
give birth. Enter into them joyously, for they portend the loss only of
that which besets; portend only the freedom of perfection, of absolute
bliss and transcendence which is not any mere ‘im m ortality’, but is the
immortal, not solitary, but solitude, not fullness, but the Fullness.
The greatest, the supreme mystery is that which surpasses all states of
being entirely, including that of R a , of the Sun, of all. It is not jivan-
mukta, or para-mukta, 12 but yat,that plerom atic Darkness
n
su
is the source of all light, and all plenitude, and all knowledge.
May all beings flower within it, within its Flam e.

I
I

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion: Initiation and the


Present Era
We have, by now, covered a fairly extensive amount of ground; and ir
time that we assess the implications of our discussion. Surely the
fundamental question to be asked in this regard is: of what value $
knowledge of all that we have discussed, given the abyss between
modernity and antiquity? How does initiation, how do the Mysteries
relate to modern life, to the present? However, the form of such
question ought properly speaking be reversed to say: how ma
modernity relate to the initiatory Mysteries? For truly, it is bv :ne
latter, which is a constant, that the former ought to be judged. For
although modernity consists in the forgetting of the nature or the
Mysteries, none the less it is in them that the centrum of life is ever ro
be found, in them that our meaning consists; initiation is a universal,
ever the path to true knowledge, and the distance of the present era
from that path is but a measure of the anomalous nature of modemir
itself. It is initiation which is central to life; modernity which is but
superfluity, an error in perception.
But before we consider how this is so - and how one may enter into
the initiatory arc even now - we must briefly note how the permeation
of the Mysteries through the West took place, and how its loss came to
pass.
The modern era indisputably has its roots in the Judeo-Christian
tradition, which is to say, finally, in that time long ago when a small
tribe broke away from the unitary ancient Egyptian culture, that
m onolithic unity, with all its generosity of symbolism; and we may
well say that the history of the West consists in the continuation of that
break throughout history.1 Modernity is an arc ‘downward’ and away
from traditional culture, of which a signal, and profoundly saddening
point was the Christian destruction of the library at Alexandria, Egypt,
in which sacking so very much of the ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, not
to mention M ithraic, Buddhist and Hindu influence into the West was
obscured, so many invaluable works lost. Yet they were written works,
sign in itself that the living transmission of the Mysteries into the

144
CONCLUSION: INITIATION AND THK PRESENT ERA 145

Occident had been if not completely then at least functionally severed


long before.2
But at the same time, the Egyptian Mystery tradition has continued
to influence Western culture profoundly, albeit in an ‘underground’
manner, not least through the Qabala and the Hermetic teachings, both
of which directly reflect the Egyptian cosmology. Hermeticism has
supposedly of course been ‘disproven’ to be of Egyptian origin, but
whatever its historical relation, its intellectual or spiritual nature is
indisputably Egyptian, by virtue of its own self-attribution, and much
other internal evidence. Yet the Hermetic literature is not metaphysical
but cosmological; it refers to the Transcendent almost exclusively in
terms of manifestation, which focus is very much in common with the
ancient Egyptian tendency toward the symbolic, rather than toward
absolute transcendence.
And it is of course no coincidence that the early Christian eremites
were known as the ‘Desert Fathers’, living as they did in relative
solitude in the Egyptian desert, hence recapitulating at the beginning of
this, the era of the Fish, the solitude of primordial man in communion
with nature and with the Real. The beginning of each era or cycle
always recapitulates the primal beginning, only to fall further in
‘descent’ than the previous cycle, which observation has more than a
little applicability to our own time when, as in Alexandria, all the
truths of antiquity are, for now, at our disposal.3
The Christian tradition itself continued the Mystery tradition, not
only through the works of Dionysius the Areopagite and others, whose
influence permeated through medieval thought also, and who along
with Platonism helped shape medieval Christendom into a
comparatively stable traditional culture; but also through the Gospels
themselves, which are replete with Mystery aphorisms and symbology,
from the ‘mustard seed’ through the ‘fish and the net’, through the
supreme Christie or Osirian sacrifice, to the worship of the Mother of
the Gods, the Virgin Mary, She who is so akin to Isis.
Yet at the same time, each of these continuations represented an
attenuation, a narrowing of access. In ancient Egypt, the Mysteries were
open to all, in proportion as they were able to receive; there was no
exclusion, only different degrees upon the same arc. When the Greeks,
however, transmitted the Mysteries they were by every account
exclusionary; from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus to Plutarch, the
testimony is the same - ‘O f this I am not permitted to speak’. And the
Hermetic and the Christian revelations each represent permutations
146 C O N C L U S IO N : IN IT IA T IO N A N D T H E P R E S E N T ERA

upon this theme, Hermeticism being ‘exclusive’ and esoteric-


Christianity being open to all, and therefore seldom if ever realising the
full potential of the Mystery tradition latent within it.
Esoterism, Hermeticism, exclusivity on the one hand; Exoterism,
Christianity, and little or no spiritual realisation on the other hand -
neither represents the traditional initiatory path, which is open to all, in
proportion as they are open to it, and is neither ‘esoteric’ nor ‘exoteric’,
neither exclusive nor a profanation and debasing, but speaks to each at
his own level.
Essentially, in the foregoing few words, we have sketched the
permeation of ancient Egyptian teachings through the West, having
pointed out those ‘channels’ through which it passed. But by definition,
this transmission is one of continuous attenuation, from living tradition
to mere discursive understanding, to the near-blindness of modernity.
Yet none the less, as Kathleen Raine has pointed out, the continuation
of traditional symbology and understanding through Christianity and
Hermeticism allows us, even in the present time, to re-link with, to
realise anew the so p h ia perennis. And in fact, if the modern world is to
recover from the delirium of scientism and technologism, from the
accelerating confusion of her own inventions, it is necessary first of all
that one return to that universal wisdom which lies at the heart of all
traditions. If we are to govern our world rightly, we must first enter
into the wisdom which allows us to do so. It is this wisdom which once
governed an entire Ur-culture, from which the Egyptian, the Indian, and
the New World cultures sprang, and, whatever the appearance of things,
it is toward such a unity that we again move, with greater speed and
power than any might anticipate, for attendant upon the dissolution of
one world is the creation of another.
Our study of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries ultimately - as must
study of any culture - brings us to the penetration of its form into the
Reality which is simultaneous amongst all cultures, recognition of
which may indifferently be called precognition or remembrance, as one
wishes.
Entry into the primordial wisdom cannot be accomplished through
mere ‘visualisation’, mere fantasy, for it is not ‘psychological’; still less
can it be attained through the practice of that ‘magic’ which draws only
upon the residual fragments of Egypt for its own ends. There was, after
all, as more than one observer has noted, something fatally flawed in
Egyptian culture, in its focus upon the merely cosmological; and what is
more, once a transmission has been severed, as that of Egypt has, it
CONCLUSION: INITIATION AND THE PRESENT ERA 147

cannot He icsurrcctcd save under circumstances which today are


anything but likely.4
Initiation depends upon the continuity of tradition, without which
transmitted form the latent esoteric content is only recognis having
lost its vehicle of sacred transmission. The power of the Catholic or
Greek O rthodox Eucharist is a result of just such a continuity, without
which there is no manifested ‘entry-way’, or ‘gate’ into the
transmission. It is for this reason that, in both the Corpus Hermeticum
and in Iam blichus’ D e M ysteriis one finds warnings against changing
the sacred fo r m / particularly the linguistic form - for form and
function, exoteric and esoteric are, in , indivisible. Any who
claims otherwise is merely divorcing them for the purpose of denaturing
them, whatever his protests to the contrary.
It is of course possible - in the sense that anything is possible - for
one to attain initiatory ‘degrees’ without formal initiation, but the
nature of our present era tends to preclude this, relying as it does so
heavily upon sensory foci. People, especially modern people, need
dharmic ‘supports’ for initiatory entry. W hat is more, tradition and the
master-disciple relationship provide ‘guards’ against error or mis-steps
which can have vast consequences.
There must, then, be a form to transcend, a statement true even of
Ch’an Buddhism.6
No - the Egyptian Mysteries are of value in understanding the nature
of primordial wisdom , and in understanding the roots of Western
civilisation, but they no longer exist as a living transmission. In order
truly to understand them , one must enter into one of the remaining
spiritual paths, the continuity of which has been preserved through the
present day, allow ing one to appreciate that which lies inherent in
Egyptian and in the Western tradition (to the degree that one can speak
of the latter).
Far from ‘ luring aw ay’, Eastern religion, possessing the primordial
wisdom in its intrinsic purity, allows one to see that which lies implicit
in other traditions as well. It is for this reason that we have in this study
drawn so extensively upon Buddhist, Vedantic and Taoist sources. All
true paths lead back to the same primordial source; it is simply a matter
of degree of realisation, and orientation. Yet one must choose one’s path
and, that path chosen, fo llo w it to the end, which is to say, to the true
beginning. Talk of a ‘universal religion’ is fine enough - but one enters
the path through specific symbology and tradition, and there is no other
way.
148 C O N CLU SIO N : IN ITIA TIO N AND T H E PR ESEN T ERA

All initiation transmutes as one passes through its transmission;


tradition is a m ed ia trix . Initiate and symbol converge to reveal the
im m utable O rigin, and every m om ent is in itiatory, for those with eyes
to see.
Let us begin.
NOTES

PART I

l .l Introduction

1 On the one hand, som e m ight ob ject to the value of such study on the basis
of deluded ‘ev o lu tio n a ry ’ grounds, the im plication being that our society is
‘above’ the tra d itio n a l cu ltu res, a supposition which is easily refuted by a
com parison o f the present chaos and confusion with the harmony and
serenity o f, say, an cien t E g y p t. O n the other, some might object that one
might b etter ‘ let sleeping dogs lie’ - to w hich we reply that these pages are
intended, n o t to rein force the G reat F all, but to anticipate the Great
R estoration.
2 Our history is but a p altry th in g, our m odern m emory stretching only back
as far as w ritten record s, so ignoring the vast bulk and past cycles of human
history and civilisation s.
3 Revelation 3 :1 4 , the nam e Am en being, of course, a name of R a, the
Divine Sun.
4 H erodotus II. 3 1 . 9 - 3 2 . 3 .
5 Cf. P lu ta rch ’s D e Isis et sirde,L X V - L X X I .5 , wherein he heaps de
O
upon those w h o m a in ta in this literalist ‘dragging dow n’ of Divine truths, a
tendency w hich has by no m eans w aned.
6 Cf. Rene G u en on , The Crisis of the Modern World (London, 19 4 5 ).
7 Corpus Hermeticum (Mead translation), The Perfect , X X IV -
XXVI. Though some have alleged that the Corpus Hermeticum is of
relatively recent date, being of the first or second centuries AD, there can be
no doubt that that which it transmits does indeed find its origin in ancient
Egypt, the latter itself being a reflection of primordial truth.
8 See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (London, 1904), 1.167;
11.241.
9 According to Herodotus (11.142).
10 Diodorus Siculus, 1.43.5-44.3.
11 Budge, op. cit.y 1.332.
12 Prasna Upanisad 1.7.
13 Maitri Upanisad V1 .1 7 .
14 Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana III. 1 0 .4 .
15 Physics II.2 .
16 Budge, op. cit., 1.333.

149
150 NOTES TO PAGES 9-21

17 C f. Rene G uenon, Manand


(London, 1 9 4 1 ), on the Vedantic teaching of ‘conditional liberation’.
18 C f. Gai Eaton , The King in the Castle (London, 1 9 7 6 ), ‘M an as Viceroy’
19 Cf. A. Versluis, Primordiality and the Present (forthcom ing).
20 Diodorus Siculus, 1 .7 2 .1 - 5 .
21 Chdndogya Upanisad, V III.4 .3 .
22 See for instance R obert W ilson, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them
(N ew Haven, 1 9 8 4 ).

1.2 Maat

1 E. A. W allis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (L on d on , 1 9 0 4 ).


2 Budge, op. c i t .,1 .3 4 6 .
3 Cf. Paingala ,U
isd IV. 1 8 , w here it is w ritten ‘It is only so long as the
pan
seeker does not attain knowledge of the R eal th a t endless ceremonies,
observances of purity, prayers . . . (and) sacrifices (and) pilgrimages (are
prescribed by scriptures)’ .
4 Chdndogya Upanisad, V. 1 0 . 1 - 8 .
5 Kausitaki-Brahmana Upanisad, 1 .2 ; also Chdndogya Upanisad, V .1 0 .5 .
6 ‘Tale of the Eloquent P easan t’, in S. M o re n z , Egyptian Religion (Ithaca,
1 9 7 3 ), p. 1 1 5 .
7 ‘Long-lived’ , here, refers no t so m uch to a te m p o ra l longevity as to an
indefinite p rolon g ation of individuality in the subtle and celestial spheres,
in so far as order and harm ony ou tlasts disorder.
8 M orenz, op. cit., p. 1 1 5 .
9 M oren z, op. cit., pp. 1 1 4 - 1 5 .
10 Ibid.
11 Morenz, op. cit., p. 122.
12 Ibid.,p . 1 3 3 .
13 See C h ap ter 1 .6 ‘ O n the Second D e a th ’ in this v o lu m e.
14 Cf. ‘The Two Lands’ in this volume, p. 73.
15 Pyramid Texts, 1775b, Sethe.
16 Hsun Tsu, trans. B. Watson (New York, 1963), p. 94.
17 Chuang Tsu, trans. Gia Fu Feng (New York, 1974), p. 114.
18 Watson trans., op. cit., p. 138.
19 Isa Upanisad, Stanza 3. See also Stanzas 9 and 12 in the same ,
and Brihad-Aranyaka Upanisad 4.4.10 and 4.4.11. The stanzas observe the
inadequacy of any antithetical framework, saying those who worship non­
becoming (a-sambhuti) and those who worship becoming ( all
enter into blind darkness.
NOTES TO PAGES 2 4 -3 4
151

1.3 The Primal Ennead

1 The K e y ,in Thrice-Greatest tH


srans. G .R .S . Mead (I ondon
erm
II. 1 5 8 . ’ U
2 E. A. W allis B u dge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1 9 0 4 ), 1.296 ff.
3 De Isis et Osiride, L 1X .4.
4 Budge, op. cit., 11 .1 1 2 .
5 T h is, the ‘ fo u rth p a ir' o f G o d s in no w ay contrad icts the correspondence of
the em a n a to ry tria d s to the th ree w o rld s: they are, like yin and yang, the
principal Essences inherent w ithin the oth er syzygies.
6 Budge, op. cit., 1 .3 6 3 .
7 C f. Rene G u en o n , The Reign o f Quantity and the Signs of the Times
(London, 1 9 5 3 ) .
8 Brhad-aranyakaUpanisad, II.I.2.
9 Budge, op. cit., 1 .3 4 7 .
10 Budge, op. cit., 1 .3 2 0 .
11 Ibid., I. 3 2 4 .
12 Diodorus Siculus, 1 .8 3 .

1.4 Isis

1 Le Papyrus de Turin, P ley te, R o ssi, 1 8 6 9 ; pp. 31 ff. in E. A. Wallis Budge,


The Gods o f the Egyptians (L o n d o n , 1 9 0 4 ) , 1 .3 6 0 .
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., pp. 1 3 1 f f ., in Budge, op. cit., 1.361 ff.
4 R. E. W itt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (Ithaca, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 5 9 .
5 Inscribed on the w alls of the royal to m b s, X I X th Dynasty; Thebes. Budge,
op. cit., I. 3 2 9 .
6 We speak in th e present tense because the sam e principial relation between
man and G o d , revealer and revelation, obtains now as in the ancient past:
it is only ou r present in cap acity to see w hich separates us from that ancient
and purer unity w hich R a represented.
7 Thrice-Greatest Hermes, trans. G .R .S . M ead (London, 1 9 0 6 ), 1.284.
See Apuleius, The Golden Ass, B ook X I .
8
9 Plutarch, De Isis et Osiride, X I V .7 , X L I V .4 .
10 Pausanias, Description o f Greece, B ook X , C hapter X X X I I .9.
11 The sistrum of Isis, a sacred ra ttle w hich traditionally was said to contain
four rattles, fo r the fou r elem en ts, also contained three rods which ‘sang’
the triple chords when the sistrum was m oved. Hence the sistrum partook
of the fourfold elem en tarities and of the ‘ three worlds’ of Hermetic
cosmology. N o d o u b t the three chords possessed harmonic and hence
simultaneously sym bolic significance o f a Pythagorean kind. See Plutarch,
De Isis et Osiride, L X III ff. on the sistrum and its symbolism.
152 NOTES TO PAGES 34-48

12 Aptileius, TheGolden ,A
s Book X I.
13 M ead, trans., op. cit., III. 14 9 ff.
14 Plutarch, De Isis et Osiride, L X I I .l .
15 See Tran Tam T in h , Le culte d ’IsisPompeii (Paris,
16 Diodorus Siculus, 1 .1 2 .3 - 7 .
17 Kubrika-tantra, 1.1.
18 Samkhya-Pravacana Sutra,I II. 6 6 .
19 A. Avalon, The Serpent Power (London, 1 9 1 9 ), p. 3 4 6 .
20 Ibid., p. 3 5 1 .
21 T he path of dali,of
n
ku sakti-yog,is traditionally differ
of dhyana-yoga, from which the m odern Zen Buddhism is derived,
principally because in the form er siddhi or powers are accumulated, the
path being m ore gradual, whereas in the latter Liberation ‘takes place’ in a
flash (though not thereby denying the necessity of years of training and
discipline).
22 Brhad-aranyaka Upanisad, V .9 .1 .

1.5 Osiris

1 P lutarch, De Isis et Osiride, L X V I I I .l.


2. Ibid., L X I .l . N o te the terms inheaven and on e
being (m ultiplicity and unity).
3 Ibid.,LX X I I I .5 .
4 P la to , T im aeus, 9 .4 2 - 4 3 .
5 P lutarch , De Isis et Osiride, X X V I I I . 6 ; X X I X .5 .
6 E. A . W allis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (London, 1 9 0 4 ), 11.148 ff.
7 Ibid., 11.159 ff.
8 Ibid., 11.161.
9 Ibid.,11.116 ff.
10 M a rco Pallis, A Buddhist Spectrum (N ew York, 1 9 8 1 ).
11 Budge, op. cit., 11.141 also C hap ter C L X X V of The Egyptian Book of the
Dead.
12 See Cintamani-satva of Sri Sam karacarya in A. Avalon, The Serpent
Power (L ond on, 1 9 1 9 ).
13 Pyramid Texts, 6 2 8 b .
14 Ibid., 6 2 8 c .
15 C f. A nanda K. C o o m arasw am y , ‘O n the O ne and Only Transmigrant’, in
The Collected Works o f A.K.Coomaraswamy (Princeton, 1 9 7
16 See The Diamond Sutra, trans. A .F . Price and W ang M ou -L an (Berkeley,
1 9 6 7 ).
17 Budge, op. cit., 1 .1 7 8 .
18 Budge, op. cit., 1 .1 8 0 .
19 Budge, op. cit., 1 .2 1 4 .
NOTES TO PAGES 48-57 153

20 Budge, op.cit.,1.167.
21 Cf. Ocellus Lacanus,trans. Thom as Taylor (London, 1 8 4 1 ), p. 69, on the
nature of the Divine Restoration according to Synesius. See also pp. 5 4 - 5 9
of this volume on Typhon.

1.6 On the Second Death

1Pyramid ,T
exts 1385 b and c, italics added.
2 Ibid., 251 a -d .
3 Ibid., 251 d.
4 Plutarch, On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the , trans. A. O.
Prickard (London, 1 9 1 1 ), pp. 4 4 ff.
5 Ibid., p. 45.
6 See S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithaca, 1 9 7 3 ), p. 193.
7 See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (London, 1 9 0 4 ), pp.
2 9 9 -3 0 0 ; also Thrice-Greatest Hermes, trans. G. R. S. Mead (London,
1906), 1.89. Cf. also the Chaldea Oracles, ed I.P. Cory (London, 18 3 2 ),
C L X X X V I: ‘The number nine is divine, receiving its completion from
three triads, and preserving the summits of theology according to the
Chaldeans, as Porphyry informs us.’
8 Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body, Celestial Earth (Princeton, 1972).

1.7 Typhon

1 Ocellus Lacanus, trans. Thom as Taylor (London, 1 8 4 1 ), pp. 67 ff.


2 Plutarch, De Isis et ,O
sirde X L I .3 .
3 Ibid.,X X X I I .7 .
4 It is significant that Sulphur is still associated with Hell and with the
infernal - and not w ithout reason, for fire is none other than purification,
and, ultimately, it is towards this end that Hell itself exists.
5 It is of value to note the main character of Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass
was by enchantment made an ass - a condition for which Isis and Osiris
provided the remedy.
6 Plutarch, De Isis et Osiride, X L I X .4 - 5 .
7 The place and meaning of the Titans in ancient mythology is deserving of a
study of its ow n; we have delved into the subject in an essay entitled On
Giants, Asuras, Faery, Pretas and Other Beings now Unknown’, to be
published in Avaloka: A Journal o f Traditional Religion and Culture.
8 De Isis et Osiride, X L I X . 4 - 5 .
Plutarch,
9 Plutarch, op. cit., L V .l.
10 Ibid.,L V.2.
11 Synesius, On ,d
roceviP
nin Taylor, trans., op. cit., pp. 67 ff.
154 NOTES TO PAGES 57-68

12 Ibid.
13 For an exam in ation of the relation of the debasing of currency to the
present era, see Rene G uenon, The Quantity and the of the
Times (London, 1 9 5 3 ).
14 See my Primordiality and the Present Era (forthcom ing).
15 Sec ‘A pocatastasis’ , in this volum e, pp. 9 4 ff.
16 Taylor, tran s., op. cit.
17 Ihid. See also, on this subject, M an eth o ‘On the Israelites’ in Ancient
Fragments by Isaac Preston C ory (L on d on , 1 8 3 2 ) , and on the ‘Typhonian
city ’ in particular.
18 C f. Rene G uenon’s discussion of the antip ath y of the saints to metal, op.
cit. It was said of Sri R a m a n a , as o f R am an a M ah arsk i, that metal burned
his skin.
19 Surely the an ti-trad itio n al virulence of our present era could be compared
to nothing so well as to the ‘reverse m ag n etisatio n ’ of iron ‘against’ the
Divine current.

1.8 H erm anubis

1 P lu tarch ,De Isis et sirde, X L I I .3 .


O
2 Pyramid Texts, 469a .
3 P lu tarch , op. cit., X L I V .3 - 5 .
4 P lu tarch , op. cit., X L I V .5 .
5 Ibid., X I . 1 - 3 . C f. also P la to ’s bl1, 1 .3 7 5 .
epu
R
6 Q u oted in Thrice-Greatest Hermes, tran s. G .R .S . M ead (London, 1906k
I I I .2 5 2

S
1.9 R a: the Sun King

1 I I I .2 .1 .
2 I I I .5 .2 .
3 S. R ad h ak rish n an , e d ., The Principal Upanisads
co m m e n ta ry upon the Chandogya I I I .3 .1 , ‘ Verily yonder sun is
the honey o f the G o d s’.
4 VI. 1 6 .
5 Ibid.,V I. 1 7 .
6 Chandogya Upanisad, III. 1 2 .6 .
7 E . A . W allis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (L o n d o n , 1 9 0 4 ) , 1 .3 3 8 .
8 VI. 4 .2 4 .
9 Ibid.
10 Jaim iniya Upanisad Brahmana, III. 1 0 .4 .
11 Physics, I I .2.
NOTES TO PAGES 68-82
155

\2 John, VI.6 .3.


j3 Diodorus Siculus, 1.71, 1 - 7 2 .1 .
14 Ibid.
\S IV .3.6.
Budge, op. c i t .,1.332.
j7 Quoted in Radhakrishnan, op. cit., p. 5 9 3 .
18 Brhad-aranyaka Upanisad, I I .5 .1 8 .
19 Radhakrishnan, op. cit., p. 5 4 7 .
20 Diodorus Siculus, 1 .2 5 .6 - 2 6 .5 ; also H erodotus, 11.142 ff.

1. 10 The Two Lands

1 The name ‘A m e n -R a ’ is itself illum inating: Am en, as W . M arsham Adams


noted, in The House o f the Hidden Places (London, 1 8 9 5 ), means the
‘Hidden G od ’, while R a is the m anifested G od, the Divine Sun. R a
Himself, therefore, is tw o -fo ld - m anifested and non-m anifest - the latter
being beyond human com prehension.
2 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians, II.5.
3 Ibid.,I .7 - 1 1 .
4 Ibid.,11.21.
5 Ibid., 11. 2 2 .
6 Ibid., 11.24.
7 Brugsch, Diet. Geog. (1 8 8 8 ) , p. 1 1 8 .
8 W. M arsham A dam s, The House o f the Hidden Places (London, 1 8 9 5 ) ,
pp .63 ff.
9 Ibid., p. 6 5 .
10 Proclus, On the Hieratic Art, trs. M arsilio Ficino (Paris, 1 6 4 1 ), 11.868 ff.
11 Ibid.
12 Thrice-Greatest H e r m e s ,trans. G .R .S . M ead (London, 1 9 0 6 ), 1
13 Ibid.,III. 1 8 6 .
14 Plutarch, De Isis et Osiride, X X X I I I .
15 Mead, trans., op. cit., III. 1 5 8 ff.
16 Ibid.
17 Cf. M ead, op. cit., III. 1 5 6 .
18 Brhad-aranyaka Upanisad, II.5 .5 .
19 Apuleius, The Golden Ass, B o ok X I .

E l l On Sacred Language and the H ieroglyph

1 Phoedrus, 17 S
f f.
2 Ibid.
3 See, for a discussion o f the M ysteries as a transmutation of the entire
156 NOTES TO PAGES 83-96

being, my introduction to Porphyry’s Letter Marcella (Grand Rapids


1 9 8 5 ).
4 Thrice-Greatest H e r m e s ,trans. G .R .S . M ead (Londo
being Fragm ent X V I of Cyril of Alexandria.
5 M ead , trans., op. .c
it, ‘Third Serm on’, P .S . A. i,2; III.259.
6 Ibid., I I I .1 2
7 Ibid., 11.267
8 Ibid., 11.266 ff.
9 Chaldean Oracles, in Ancient Fragments, ed. I .P . Cory (London, 1832),
C L V , p. 2 7 9 .
10 R . A . Schw aller de Lubicz, Symbol and the Symbolic (New York, 1978),
pp. 4 5 - 7 .
11 Philo of Byblos, ThePhoenician History, trans. H . Attridge (W
1 9 8 1 ), Frg. 4 4 5 - 4 5 5 (P E 1 .1 0 .4 5 - 5 3 ) . See also Chaldean Oracles, I.
12 Ibid.
13 Iam blichus, On the Mysteries o f the Egyptians, Chaldeans and ,
trans. T . Taylor (London, 1 8 2 1 ), pp. 2 9 5 - 6 .
14 Ibid.

1 .1 2 O n the M ysteries

P la to , Phaedrus, 2 4 8 ff.
R . A. Schw aller de Lubicz, Symbol and the Symbolic (New York, 1978),
pp. 7 6 ff.
Iam blichus, On the Mysteries o f the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians,
trans. T . Taylor (London, 1 8 2 1 ), C hapter L X .
Ibid., C hapter VII.
Ibid., C hapter V III.
Ibid., C hapter VIII.

1.13 Apocatastasis:Som e Im plications

1 See Thrice-Greatest Hermes, trans, G .R .S . M ead (London, 1906),


III.2 8 6 ff.
2 M u ch as the dogs w ho lie in the m anger and neither feed, nor allow others
to feed.
3 C f ., in regard to the a n ti-tra d itio n a l nature of psychology in particular,
and to this entire discussion in general, Rene Guenon, The Reign of
Quantity and the Signs o f the Times (London, 1 9 5 3 ).
4 Found in T h o m as T aylor, Ocellus Lacanus (London, 1 8 4 1 ), pp. 6 6 ff.
5 Ibid.
NOTES TO PAGES 101-7 157
i
*i

P A R T II
\

II. 1 Thccyria: The N ature of Initiation

1 Cf. R .A . Schw allcr de Lubicz, Symbol the Symbolic (New York,


1978), pp. 2 9 ff., ‘N otes on M odern T h o u g h t’.
2 From De ,Im
so Introduc tory
en Epistle: see also G iordano Bruno’s De
beroici furori.
3 Papyrus of N u, Brit. M us. 1 0 4 7 7 .5 .
4 ChandogyaUpanisad, III. 1 4 .3 .
5 Cf. Matthew 1 3 :3 1 .
6 This was a central focus of Dogen Z enji, w ho, as M asao Abe pointed out
in Zen and Western Thought (N ew York, 1 9 8 5 ), reiterated that Buddha
nature is not only at the heart of all beings, but surrounds them as well.
7 Cf. A. Versluis’ Ekayana dhism
u
B
, forthcom ing, Ch. 1 , First G
8 To use the phrase of Dionysius the A reopagite, Celestial , Cap.
XV.
9 Papyrus of N u, B rit. M us. 1 0 4 7 7 .1 3 .
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 No doubt this is the origin of the C hristian caricatu re of the Gnostics as
believing that m an m ust pass through all form s of life, when in fact the
truth is that m an m ust reach a state which encompasses all lesser states.
The same confusion was attrib u ted to M a n i; it is difficult to say whether
the confusion was actu ally th a t of the G nostics and of M ani, or whether it
was only attributed to them .
13 The ‘Law of the Fishes’ is pure barbarism ; th at is to say, it is the ‘ Law of
the Jungle’. C f. the discussion of H . Z im m e r, Philosophies o f India

I
(Princeton, 1 9 6 9 ).

14 As the H erm etic m a x im has it, ‘as above, so below , but inversely’ . This is
manifested also in the ‘seal of S o lo m o n ’, which consists in tw o
superimposed triangles, one ap ex up, one apex dow n, the form er signifying
celestial, the latter terrestrial reality.
15 We are aw are th at poin tin g ou t the etym o logical consanguinity of certain
words and linguistic p attern s is no longer academ ically fashionable; to
those who cavil we recom m end the Cratylus of P lato.
16 In the shift from A m en tet to A m en th e we can see how linguistic
permutation involves the debasing o f the original m eaning, and a
correlative loss of pow er to invoke, a loss noted by both Iambiichus in De
ysteri, and the authors o f the Corpus
M See 11.5, note 5
below. Cf. P lu ta rch , De Isis et s, X X I X . 7 , and L.
O
The Gods o f the Egyptians (L o n d o n , 1904), 11.200.
17 Cf. Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body, Celestial Earth (P rin ceton, 1 9 7 2 ), in
158 NOTES TO PAGES 1 0 7 -1 2

p articu la r, for a detailed discussion of the relatio n of the individual and the
daen
a, a Persian w ord directly related to the P la to n ic daimon.
18 C f. Luke 1 3 :9 ; Matthew4 :3 ff.
19 C f. C o rb in , op. cit.
20 C f. R ene G u en on , ‘T h e D ivine J o u rn e y ’ , in and Becoming
According to the t, C h . x x i (N e w D elh i, 1 9 8 1 ) .
edan
V
21 Som e of the lotuses ‘rip en ’ and open quickly in the paradisal Lake; some do
so slo w ly , the difference dep end ent upon th e ‘ th ick n ess’ of the karmic
ob stru ction s under co n sid eratio n . B u t all u ltim a te ly reveal the Buddha they
co n tain .
22 Papyrus of N u , B rit. M u s. 1 0 4 7 7 .6 . C o m p a re the sta te m e n t of the Buddha
upon ‘In H eaven and on E a rth , I alone a m the on ly H onou red O n e.’
23 Ibid. 1 0 4 7 7 .1 5 .
24 T h is is one m eaning of th e ‘sacred m o u n ta in s ’ , each o f w h ich is in its own
w ay a recap itu latio n of the cen tral M o u n ta in , Su m eru, representing
therefore also the P ole of the w o rld . F o r a series o f references to such sacred
places, see the Avatamsaka ,S
tra C h . 1 8 , w h ich p o in ts to
u
Asia and elsewhere.
25 H en ce, as G uenon says, H erm eticism is n o t m etap h y sical but cosmological,
an o rien tatio n w hich derives d irectly fro m an cien t E g yp tian influence. Cf.
‘H erm es’ in The Sword o f Gnosis (L o n d o n , 1 9 8 6 ) .
26 O ne such instance of in itiatio n en masse w as m en tio n ed by M a rco Pallis in
the essay ‘T h e Veil of the T em p le’ in cluded in The Sword o f Gnosis, op.
cit. T h e in itiation in question to o k p lace in n o rth ern India in 1 9 5 0 , and
was conferred by the D alai L a m a .
27 T h e universal id entification o f self and o th e r is to be seen in the Litany of
d,C h . I V .1 , w here w e read th a t ‘ th e b irth o f O siris is the birth of Ra,
R
and recip ro cally .’ In ‘ O siris’ w e see sim u ltan eo u sly every in itiate, and more
generally, all of existen tial o r m an ifested re a lity , th e ‘dism em bered God’.
T h e m eaning here is very m uch th e sam e as th e B u d d h ist form u lation that
the klesas (a tta ch m e n ts, ignorance) are in th em selves , th at nirvana is
sim ultaneous w ith samsara.
28 C f ., for in stan ce, M . E lia d e , Yoga: Freedom and Immortality (Princeton,
1 9 6 9 ).
29 Majjhima Nikaya 11.17.
30 C f. Papyrus of N u , B rit. M u s. 1 0 4 7 7 .9 .
31 Ibid.
32 T h e arch etyp al realm o f w h ich w e here speak has n o th in g to do with the
supposed ‘u n co n sciou s’ of Ju n g , o r o f p sychologism in general; it refers
rather to the P la to n ic realm of F o rm , in B uddhism parallel to the alaya-
vijnana, th ou g h of cou rse the fo rm e r tends to be m ore s ta tic , the latter
m ore d yn am ic. C f. also H . C o rb in , Spiritual Body, Celestial , op. cit.
33 O ne is adorned w ith the sash th a t had bound on e just as, after awakening,
one realises th a t in samsara itself is nirvana to be foun d; all that once
NOTES TO PAGES 112 18 159

bound, now frees and ad o rn s; and ‘this earth where we stand is the Pure
Lotus Land’. C f. H akuin Z en ji’s Zaz
Cf. E. Levy, Buddhism: AMystery (L on d on , 1 9 5 7 ), pp. 4 2 ff.
Cf. also the G nostic Hymn o f the , and other G nostic works which
employ the investiture of clo th in g as significations of the qualitative
revelation of the R eal. Investiture requires prior divestiture, however.
35 The ‘omega p o in t’ of de C hardin is just such a vain conceptualisation, a
postulation which valorises evolution and even nuclear w arfare,
attempting to merge science and religion in an am using but unproductive
and even dangerous w ay. C f. S .H . N a s r’s discussion of de Chardin in
Knowledge and the Sacred (N ew Y ork , 1 9 8 1 ) .
36 Cf., for instance, the Shonankattoroku, translated by Trevor Leggett as The
Warrior Koans (L o n d o n , 1 9 8 6 ) , in w hich one finds the tale of a Zen
Master who strikes a w ounded w a rrio r during an interview and, when he
cries out, observes, ‘You have n o t yet realised’ . T here are numerous other
instances, both in this c o lle ctio n , and elsewhere, dem onstrating the
correlation between co m p lete transcenden ce, and im passivity to pain or
trauma.
37 We might note, for instance, the parallels betw een the ‘O xherding Pictures’
of Zen Buddhism , and section s o f the Rg Veda - the enigm atic in
particular, w hich refer to the ‘ fo o tp rin ts o f the O x ’ or Bull. O ne m ight
note, too, in passing, the epithet applied to R a - Divine Bull.
38 Cf. Eliade’s discussion of the M atsa , o r L a w of the Fishes, in Yoga:
Immortality and redom
F
, op. cit. It is interesting th at the C hristian sign is
that of the Fish, and th a t, m o re o v e r, in the precession of the equinoxes the
present time is th a t o f Pisces.

II.2 Theoria: Initiation and the Symbolic

1 It is interesting to consid er th a t like the ancien t Eg yp tian , the M ayan and


Aztecan cultures w ere also hiero glyp h ic; and th a t all three have virtually
vanished in the modern age.
2 Although truth is u n iversal, it m u st needs be approached through the
particularities o f tra d itio n , n o t because o f the nature of tru th , but because
of the nature of hum an beings.
3 Cf. Dionysius the A reo p ag ite, Celestial , I.ii.
4 This blindness is sim ply an aspect o r ch a ra cte ristic of the present cycle, into
which beings are born - as in to every cycle - in order to fulfil certain
potentialities. T h ere is in fa ct a science o f such astrolog ical cycles, the
numbers of w hich vary in a cco rd w ith the given focus. O ne number which
recurs in both Eastern and W estern sources, th ou g h , is 4 3 2 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 .
^ Cf. A. Versluis, ‘ O n the S y m b olism o f the B u d d h a -p a d ’, in 1986,
I.ii.
6 On sacred m arriage in the W est c f . P o rp h y ry ’s Letter to His Wife ,
1
160 NOTES TO PAGES 118-26

trails, A. Zim mern (Grand Rapids, 1 9 8 6 ); as also Goethe on the eternal


feminine, and O . V. Milosz most recently, in Noble Traveller (New
York, 1 9 8 4 ).
7 W hat is ‘tradition’ but Platonic m em ory, the stream of the timeless passing
through time?
8 On the ‘upper and lower w aters’ cf. Rene Guenon, Multiple States of the
Being (N ew York, 1 9 8 2 ).
9 This enhancement of natural currents became, in China, a science called
feng shui; but no doubt, as John M ichell has observed, every ancient
culture employed a sim ilar science.
10 T . Taylor, trans., De Isis et sI X .
O
11 C f. E. A. W allis Budge, The Gods o f the Egyptians (London, 1904), 11.459;
see also Proclus’ treatise ‘ On the M o th er of the G ods’ .
12 R . A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science: The Pharaonic Theocracy (New
York, 1 9 8 2 ), p. 1 8 7 . C f. also A . Versluis, The Philosophy of Magic
(London, 1 9 8 6 ) on the nature of sigils in relation to constellations and to
natural harm onics.
13 These aspects are reflected again in the cycles of the m oon, one of which is
of D iana, the other of H e ca te , w hich becom e the tw o faces of Janus, a
w ord closely related to ‘gen etrix’ .
14 T he N o rth , or P o lar direction sym bolises m ovem ent tow ard the Pole of
L ife; the South sym bolises m ovem ent aw ay fro m the Pole, which is to say,

15 H erodotus 11.59 ff.


16 As in the science of feng shui, so also in the dead are recognised
to have a certain function in re la tio n to the living, which they fulfil
w hether they like it or n o t.
17 From a verse attrib u ted to Parm enides of A thens.
18 Cf. Hippolytus, aARefutation o f All Heresies V. 27-8; a
en
m
hilospu
P
also Heracleitus, Fr. 25, Diels, Hippolytus transmitted the text of a
Mystery ritual, but interpolated some Christian overlay, as G.R.S. iVlead
has pointed out in Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. Ill (London, 1906).
19 Ibid.
20 Cf. the Gospel saying ‘The first shall be last, and the last first’.

II.3 Praxis: Initiation and Work

1 Cf. Herodotus’ tale of the Egyptian preservation of the visages of the


lineage of kings; and one is referred to the photographs of American
Indians in the nineteenth century, the dignity of whom is undeniable.
2 Quoted by A. K. Coomaraswamy, Essays in National Idealism (New
Delhi, 1981), p. 105.
3 Cf. Lepsius, Todtenbuch B113, ‘Chaplet of Victory’, on the ‘ triumph of
NOTES TO PAGES 126-32 161

Horus over his enemies on the night o f his inheritance in the presence of the
great sovereign princes at the G re a t Festival o f the ploughing of the earth in
Tattu’ . One is rem inded also o f the C h ris tia n ‘ h arro w in g of H e ll’ , and of
the importance in Bu d d hism o f the first ploughing, p a rticu la rly observed in
Ceylon. A ll relate to the p rim a l ‘ seeding’ o f the e a rth , and to p rim o rd ial
male-female sym b o lism .
4 Th is is in fact the d e riv a tio n o f the w o rd ‘ S u f i’ , fro m the A rab ic , or
‘pure’ . It is also , in c id e n ta lly , the m eaning o f the w o rd ‘ C a th a ri’ , referring
to the medieval C h ris tia n sect.
5 Book o f Respirations, Sect. I I I .
6 Because of the C h ris tia n d estru ctio n o f the ancient lib rarie s, it is im possible
to know the actual G n o s tic teach ing s, b u t, as the N ag H a m m a d i findings
suggest, it is u n lik e ly th a t they w ere as a n a rch istic as some modern
commentators w o u ld have it ; there is a real tendency to m irro r oneself in
the past. A t a ll events, G n o s tic is m , in so fa r as it w as indeed d u a listic ,
poses not a s a lv a tio n , but a p ro fo u n d danger.
7 Papyrus of N u , B r it . M u s . 1 0 4 7 7 .2 2 ; c f. also P ap yrus of N ebseni, B rit.
Mus. 9 90 0.3 0.
8 Suicide is, in th is respect, a m o st ra d ic a l fo rm o f d u a lism , of the m ind
turning against the b o d y; and su re ly those G n o stic sects w h o practised
self-m utilation are fla g ra n tly g u ilty o f rad ical d u alism . T h e most radical
dualism is of course th a t o f S atan in H e ll.
9 Louvre, P aris, no. 3 2 8 4 , catalogue des M S . Egypt.
10 Ibid.
11 ‘Virtue’ is here used in the an cien t sense - as in the ‘ virtu e of a thing ’ . C f .
Lu K ’uan Y u , Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality (Lo n d o n , 196 5 ).
12 ‘Paradise’ derives fro m the S a n s k rit c f. in regard to paradise
Rene Guenon, The Lord of the World (N o rth Y o rk sh ire , 1 9 8 3 ), on
Agarttha - though the d iscussio n is lim ite d by v irtu e o f the exclusion of
Buddhist teachings, the o m issio n o f Ja m b h a la fro m the discussion being
especially odd.
13 Futuhat 1.127. C f . also H . C o r b in , Terre celeste et Corps de resurrection
(Paris, 1961) as also Stephen B e rn b a u m , The Way to Shambhala (Berkeley,
1972) and the d escrip tio n o f Ja m b h a la as a v a lle y seen in proportion to
one’s gnosis.
14 Generally speaking, w e m ay say th a t the M yste rie s a llo w of access to subtle
and celestial re a lity ; yo gic praxis gives access to com plete transcendence of
being as w e ll.
15 Though not B u d d h ist, H eideg g er’s thoug ht often show s strikin g parallels
to Buddhist, and e sp e cia lly to Hua Yen, teaching. Heidegger’s
‘a p p ro p ria te m irro r- p la y ’ is very m uch p a ra lle l to the Buddhist
understanding of m u tu a l interdependent rela tio n sh ip s.
^ Heidegger, Poetry, L a n g u a g e, T h o u g h t (N e w Y o rk , 1 9 7 1 ), p. 178.
17 Ibid.,p. 151.
162 NOTES TO PAGES 132-8

18 Rene Guenon, Initiation and the Crafts (London, 1 9 8 3 ), p. 6 .


19 The modern restriction to a single cosmos is in fact somewhat
unnecessarily restrictive, as can be seen from the Avatamsaka Sutra, f0r
example.
20 Lepsi us, Todtenbuch,B 1 13.
21 This is especially true of the M ayan and the ancient Egyptian cultures,
which really are manifestations of a previous epoch, in which light the
sacrificial offerings of the period must be understood. That is, under
certain circumstances, sacrifice is a means of transmutation to a higher
state of being.
22 Cf. R . A . Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple in Man (New York, 1983) for a
discussion of geom etric harm onics in relation to hieroglyphs and temple
structures.
23 Cf. A . K. C oom arasw am y, Elements of Buddhist Iconography (New Delhi,
1 9 8 0 ), as also valok,I.ii, on the symbolism of the Buddha-pada.
A
24 Cf. Proclus, Commentary on s,trans., T . Taylor (
aeu
im
T
1.228.
25 Cf. the Avatamsaka artu
S, Ch. 2 7 : ‘It is as when a magi
repeating a spell, he can become able to cause various forms to appear’.
26 Papyrus of N u, Brit. M us. 1 0 4 7 7 .1 3 .
27 Ibid.

II.4 Praxis: T h e Flam e and the F lo w e r

1. E . L e vy , Buddhism: A Mystery nf(Lo n d o n , 1 9 5 7 ),


eligo
R
2 T h e self-sacrifice perform ed by the Vietnam ese m o n k during the recent war
in that country is not uncom m on, being as it is the ta kin g o f suffering upon
oneself, a trad itio n al exp iatio n .
3 It is said that w hen the F irs t C o u n c il w as convened, P u m a was sent to
bring G a v a m p a ti, w h o handed over his b o w l and robe and disappeared
into self-created flam es, saying that w ith o u t the B u d d ha, there is no reason
to live. A n a n d a, in the dram a o f the F irs t C o u n c il, is the prototype of the
in itia tio n candidate w h o is first h u m ilia te d , then exalted , as his merely
in tellectu al know ledge is supplanted by his sam adhic pow er, so that
u ltim ately he is able to re-enter the assem bly through the keyhole.
4 C f . the Prajnaparamita Sura:. ‘ N o eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no
body, no m in d ’ .
5 H e ll is the m aintenance o f the illu s io n o f self in so lip sistic separation; it is
the u ltim ate a ffirm a tio n of egoism.
6 C f . the discussion o f nagas in T . C lif f o r d , Tibetan Buddhist Medicine
(N e w Y o rk , 1 9 8 5 ), as also in A . V e rslu is, The Way o f Healing
(fo rth co m in g ). T h e naga is in tra d itio n a l m edicine closely aligned with
leprosy and other skin diseases, as w e ll as w ith cancer, a ll of w hich signify
NOTES TO PAGES 139-42 163

distortions of the physical being. are, because they can assume


human form , specifically excluded from the Buddhist order proper.
7 Papyrus of N u , B rit. M us. 10477.28
8 Ibid.
9 Apep, the serpent of m a n ife sta tio n , of nescience, occupies a place in the
Egyptian cosmology not altogether d issim ila r from that of the in
Buddhism; we m ight add, though, that there is a , or Rajanaga
who rules that re alm , and w h o w as in fact appointed treasurer of certain
scriptures to be revealed at a later date by N a g a rju n a , the ‘ second Buddha’ .
10 It is the case also in regards to the T ib e ta n ‘ d ark d eities’ , lik e
that they must be ‘ id e n tifie d ’ w ith the in itia te in order that the negative
aspects w hich they m an ifest be ‘ n e u tra lise d ’ , realised as as part of
the plerom atic Fullness.
11 Papyrus of N u , B rit. M u s . 1 0 4 7 7 .2 6 .
12 Ibid.
13 Cf. Iam blichus, De M y s t e r i i s ,V I I . ii.
14 Psellus, ‘ O n D a im o n s’ ; see also Ia m b lic h u s , I V . v ii.
15 Cf. Vairocana in the Avatamsaka SuBk 3 7 : ‘ W h e n the S
the land, it co m p letely rem oves d arkn ess. M o u n ta in s , trees, la ke s, flo w e rs ,
earth and all beings, a ll species receive b en efits. T h e Sun of Bu d d ha
emerging is th u s____ F irs t illu m in a tin g en lig h ten ing beings, then the self-
enlightened, then at last the heavens and a ll b ein g s.’
16 Book of Respirations, I I I , I V .
17 Litany o f Ra, 1.78; La litanie d u lei, L e ip z ig , 1 8
So
18 One is rem inded th a t P ro c lu s w ro te a tre a tise on p re cise ly th is - the
M other of the G o d s.
19 Litany o f R a ,\ .\ .
20 Cf., in this regard, P l a t o ’s o b serv atio n s on the F lo o d of Ig n o ran ce w hich
obliterates A tlantis in ritas; see also A . Versluis, Primordiality and th
C
Present (forth com in g), 1.1 f., w h ich focuses on the nature of the F lo o d , and
on its continuing nature.
21 It is interesting to consid er th a t in C a th o licism the sacram en ts w ere seen to
be efficacious regardless o f the ca p a b ility o r rectitu d e of the priest; w hereas
in, say, T ib et, the effectiveness o f a given in itia tio n is recognised to be
directly dependent upon the sa m a d h ic p o w e r o f the p riest, o r la m a .
Georges N agel, in his essay ‘T h e “ M y ste rie s” o f O siris in A n cien t E g y p t’ ,
in The Mysteries, ed. J . C am p b ell (P rin c e to n , 1 9 5 5 ) , observes, as w e n o ted
earlier in this w o rk , th a t the G reeks w ere responsible for cre a tin g the idea
of the M ysteries as secret, as e x clu siv e , and offers an am u sin g p ictu re of a
Greek asking an E g y p tian b y stan d er of th e sig n ifican ce of the cerem o n ies,
this constituting his secret in itia tio n . IT ow ever, N a g e l, and o th er
academics so inclined, are q u ite m ista k e n to th in k th a t because in E g yp t
the M ysteries w ere op en to a ll, th a t th ey did n o t include h ierarch ic
gradations corresponding to in itia to ry degrees.
I

164 NOTES TO PAGES 143-4

22 C f. Natha Siddha Yoga, especially suddha or the ‘pure way’, jn


which there are tw o aspects, jivanm and para
‘concluding’ in divyaeh, the ‘ body of pure light’ , the latter in the
transcendence of jivanmukta. In Tantrism these are termed baindava and
sakta respectively. C f. Elia d e , Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton
1969), V II. 283 ff.

I I . 5 Conclusion: In itia tio n and the Present Era

1 C f ., in this regard, the w orks of Berossus, and of Josephus et al.y in Ancient


Fragments, ed. I. P . C o ry (Lo n d o n , 1 8 7 0 ). See also Rene Guenon, The
Reign o f Quantity and the Signs o f the Times (London, 1953), p. 355,
n. 138; as also A . Versluis, Primordiality and the Present (forthcoming).
2 T h is is in fact the purpose of the P la to n ic w ritin g s, which continue the
M ysteries in some degree in w ritte n form (though even so, written in the
form of oral dialogues), in order that in itia to ry truth might continue
through an era increasingly m aterialistic, increasingly ‘ solidified’ .
3 W here, though, one must ask, sh all be the m onastic centre for the new
D a rk Age? Perhaps sacred knowledge sh all o nly be stored in the ‘ Pillars of
H erm es’ , w h ich is to say, in other realm s - fo r it cannot truly disappear,
but only be obscured.
4 There is alw ays the p o ssib ility of a direct connection w ith the primordial
trad itio n through the intervention o f one lik e Khidr in Islam - but one
must take into account the in se n sib ility to receive such supratemporal
revelations characteristic of an era in w h ich ‘ o nly that exists which one can
grasp w ith the hands’ , as P la to put it. But nothing is impossible.
5 C f . Corpus Hermeticum, X V I . 1: ‘T h e G reeks use w ords - mere noise but
we (Egyptians) use w ords fu lfille d w ith R e a lit y ’ . See also Iamblichus, De
Mysteriis, V I I .i v : ‘T h e G ods have sho w n that the w hole dialect of sacred
nations, such as the Egyp tians and the A ssyrian s, are adapted to sacred
concerns’ . W hen the Greeks translate into their ow n tongue, he continues,
prayer loses its efficacy.
6 Zen Buddhism is nothing if not ico n o cla stic. Yet observe the scrupulosity
w ith w h ich Zen Buddhist ritu a l is perform ed: now here is ritual more
m eticulously observed, and this despite the modern conceptualisation that
Zen Buddhism is ‘ above ritu a l’ . So it is - but one must have mastered
som ething to transcend it.
Select Bibliography

The following works, it is hoped, will prove of use in further study.

Adams, W. M arsham, T h e H ou se o f the H idden Places (Londo


Adams, W. M arsham , T h e B o o k o f the M aster, or T he Egyptian
Doctrine o f l he Light Born o f the Virgin M other (London, 1985).
Angus, S., T he M ystery-R eligion s an d Christianity (New York, 1925).
Apuleius, T he G old en Ass, trans. J . Lindsay (London, 1932).
Avalon, Arthur, T h e Serpen t P ow er (London, 1919).
Breasted, J .H ., A ncient R eco rd s o f Egypt (Chicago, 1906).
Breasted, J .H ., T h e D ev e lo p m e n t o f R eligion and Thought in Ancient
Egypt (New York, 1 9 1 2 ).
Budge, E. A. W allis, T h e G o d s o f th e Egyptians (London, 1904).
Budge, E. A. W allis, O siris, th e E gyptian G o d o f Resurrection (New
Hyde Park, 1 9 6 1 ).
Budge, E. A. W allis, E g y p tian M a g ic (New Hyde Park, 1958).
Cory, Isaac Preston, A n cien t F ragm en ts (London, 1832).
Diodorus Siculus, vols I and II.
Faulkner, R .O ., T h e A n cien t E gyptian C o ffin Texts (Warminister,
1978).
Firmicus M aternus, M a th e s e o s lib ri.
Guenon, Rene, T h e R eig n o f Q u a n tity an d th e Signs o f the Times
(London, 1 9 5 3 ).
Herodotus, vols. I and II, trans. J . Powell (Oxford, 1949).
Iamblichus, O n th e M y steries o f th e Egyptians, Chaldeans and
Assyrians, trans. T . Taylor (London, 182 1 ).
Lamy, Lucie, E g y p tian M y steries (New York, 1981).
Maspero, G ., T h e D a w n o f C iv ilis a tio n (London, 1894).
Mead, G .R .S ., T h r ic e -G r e a te s t H erm es (London, 1906).
Montet, P ., E tern a l E g y p t (N ew York, 1 9 6 9 ).
Morenz, S., E g y p tian R e lig io n (Ithaca, 1 9 7 3 ).
Muller, W .M ., E g y p tia n M y t h o lo g y (New York, 1964).
Plotinus, T h e eads, trans. S. M acK enna (New York, 1957).
n
E

165
I

166 S E L E C T B IB L IO G R A P H Y

Radhakrishnan, S., T h e P rin cipal U panisads (New York, 1953).


Schwaller de Lubicz, R .A ., S y m b o l an d th e S y m bolic (New York
1978).
Schw aller de Lubicz, R . A ., L e R o i d e la pharaon iqu e (Paris
1958).
Sethe, K ., U bersetzung u n d K o m m en ta r zu den altagyptischen
P yram id en tex ten (Hamburg, 1 9 6 2 ).
Te Velde, H ., Set, G o d o f C o n fu sio n (Leiden, 1967).
van der Leeuw, G .,E g y p tian R elig ion (1 9 3 3 ).
Van R ijckenbrogh, Ja n , T h e A n cien t E gyptian G n osis an d its Call in the
E tern al N o w (Haarlem, 1 962).
W itt, R .E ., Isis in th e G ra eco -R o m a n W o rld (Ithaca, 1971).
Index

Actaeon and D ia n a , 63 Dionysius the Areopagite, 115-16


Am aris, 7-8 Egyptian Book of the Dead, 18, 43,
Amentet, 1 0 6 -7 , 142 128, 1 3 3 ,1 3 5 ,1 3 9
Amitabha B o d h isattva, 4 8 , 106 Eleusinian M ysteries, 122-3
Anubis, 24, 3 5 , 60 ff. Ennead, P rim a l, 23 f f ., 52
Apis, 41, 60
Apocatastasis, 4 8 , 5 3 , 5 8 , 94 f f ., 140 Fates (Atropos, C lo tho , and Lachesis),
Apuleius, The Golden A ss, 33 f f ., 51
4 0-1 , 45, 4 6 , 7 9 - 8 0 Firm icu s M aternus, 34
Aristotle, 68
Ars m
agna, 135 Golden Age, 38
G reater M ysteries, 141-3
Bacchus, 40 G uen o n, Rene, 6 ,1 4 9 , 1 5 4 ,1 5 8 ,1 6 0 ,
Book o f Respirations, 1 2 6 - 7 1 6 1 , 162
Brbad-aranyaka Upanisad, 6 7 - 8
Bruno, G io rd a n o , 1 0 2 - 4 H a th o r, 120
Buddhism , 1 0 4 - 5 , 1 0 7 - 8 , 1 0 9 , 111 Heidegger, M a rtin , 131-2
f f .; 118, 1 3 4 , 1 3 7 f f . see also Z e n H e rm an u b is, 60 ff.
Buddhism H erm es, 13, 26, 60 ff.
Buddhist Sutras,6 , 139 H e rm e ticism , 3, 6, 7 6 , 145-6
H e rm o p o lis, 24
Chaldea, 4 , 8 9 , 144 H ero d o tu s, 3, 7 - 8 , 94, 145
Chaldean cles, 84
ra
O H ie ro g lyp h s and Sacred Language, 81
Chandogya U p a n isa d , 1 4 , 66 ff.
C h ristia n ity, 1 2 2 , 1 2 3 , 1 4 4 - 5 , 147 H ip p o ly tu s , 122
Chuang T s u , 21 Hiranyagarbha, 105, 108
C ities, U pper and L o w e r E g y p t, 75 f f . H o m e r, 33
C o o m arasw am y, A . K . , 1 5 2 , 1 60 H o ru s , 4 , 3 8 , 5 6 , 130
Corbin, H e n ry , 1 5 7 , 1 5 8 , 161 H su n T s u , 20
Corpus Hermeticum, 7 , 2 4 , 5 8 , 8 1 ,
83, 84, 147 Iamblichus, 84, 86, 87, 91, ff., 140,
C yril of A le x a n d ria , 6 3 147
Ib n A ra b i, 1 2 9 -3 0
Deva-yana, 14 Ira n e u s, 123
Diodorus S ic u lu s, 1 1 , 9 4 , 145 Isa U p a n isa d , 21

167
168 IN D EX

Isis, 4, 14, 24, 26, 31 ff ., 65, 119, 120 Plutarch, 25, 32, 40, 51, 52 Ss ,
Iswara, 9, 38 4 , 7 9 , 1 2 0 , 145 ,6 °-
Porphyry, 16, 94
Kali Yuga, 4, 57, 71 Prisca theologia, 12, 23, 81, 88
Kanzeon Bodhisattva, 39 Proclus, 7 6 - 7 , 97, 120, 134-5
Khepera, 24, 26 Psellus, 141
KritaYuga, 71 Ptah-hotep, 16-17
Ksatriya, 27 Pure Lan d , 9, 48
K undalini, 37, 41, 56, 86, 92-3 Pyram id Texts 19, 50

Lalitavistara Sutra, 139 Q ab ala, 25, 31, 101


Lesser M ysteries, 126 f f ., 141-2
R a , 8 - 9 , 13, 2 8 , 3 1 ff., 66 ff., 73-4
M aat, 13 ff, 57 1 2 0 -1 , 130, 141, 142-3
Mahabharata , 27 R a in e , Kathleen, 146
M ahakasyapa, 137-8 Revelation , 4
M aha-pralaya, 4 4 , 140 R g V eda, 114
M aitri Upanisad,9, 66
M anetho, 4 , 73 S a kti and S iv a , 35 , 36 , 41, 44-5, 86,
M atsya Nyaya (La w of Fishes), 105, 9 2 -3
114 Sakyam u ni Buddha, 111
M ercury, 64-5 Sam caracarya, 66
Mysteries, Egyptian, 89 ff. Sarap is, 4 1 , 60
Satan , 55
Nagas, 138 Sephira, 2 5 , 31
Neoplatonism , 3 Seth, 2 4 , 3 3 , 56
Nephthys, 24, 32 S o th is, see M anetho
N et, or N eith , 120- 1 S ym b o lism , 115 ff.
N ew Testam ent, 4 , 94 Synesius, 5 4 , 5 5 , 5 7 , 5 8 , 96
N u t, 24
Taittiriya ,U
isd 6 9
pan
T a n trism , 37
O -Bon festival, 122
Too Te C h in g , 10, 1 1 , 17
O siris , 15, 18, 2 6 , 40 f f ., 5 0 , 5 5 , 6 5 ,
Tao ist alchem y, 129
1 2 6 -7 , 140 ff.
T a y lo r, T h o m a s, 54
T e fn u t, 24
P a llis, M arco , 43 T e rtu llia n , 123
Pausanius, 33 T h o th , 2 4 , 4 2 , 56
Phaedrus 81 ff. 89 T h re e kayos, 113
P h ilo of By bios, Phoenician , T h re e w o rld s, 25
85 T ib e ta n Book of the Dead, 4/
Pitr-yana , 14 T it a n s , 57
P lato , 2 7 , 4 0 , 8 1 - 2 , 8 8 , 8 9 , 1 3 3 T r in it y , 2 4 -5
P lo tin u s, 2 9 , 9 1 , 94 Tuat,7 5 , 109
I N D F .X
169

X e n o p h o n , Ephesiaca, 44

Upanisads, 4 Y a m a , 1 4 -1 5
Yo^a, 9 2
Vedanta, 104, 105, 113
V e n u s, 3 4 , 36
Z e n B u d d h is m , 4 9 , 9 2 , 147
V irg in Mary, 4 , 9 , 14.1
/1RKANK

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JH E EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
T h e time will come when Egypt will appear to have in vain served the Divine
with pious mind and constant worship, and all its holy religion will fall to
nothingness. For that Divinity shall hasten back from Earth to H e a v e n a n d
Earth shall be bereft of the presence of the Gods. O Egypt, E g yp t...."
(From The Perfect Sermon)
So we find Hermetic texts lamenting at the beginning of the present era. But
what was lost? What was the destiny of the individual being, what is the nature
of existence according to the ancient Egyptian tradition? What were the
Mysteries of Isis and Osiris? These are just some of the questions answered
here.
Drawing upon Vedantic, Buddhist and Platonic sources, as well as upon the
extant Greek, Roman and Hermetic texts, this book examines the ancient
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not as an isolated phenomenon, but in the light of the great traditions still in
existence. By setting the Mystery tradition in the context of the perennial
philosophy, its relation to our present era begins to emerge. For to understand
modernity, to understand our place in the cosmos, it is necessary to
understand the Mysteries.

C o v e r illustration: R e p r o d u c e d from
The Book of the Dead of Userhetmos.
19th d y n a sty - 1 3 2 0 -1 2 0 0 BC.
R e p r o d u c e d b y k in d p e rm is s io n of
W ern er F o rm a n A rchive. C airo M u s e u m .
E gy p t.

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