A creation of the universe using Egyptian symbolism

Someone asked for a magical worldview which did not incorporate re-incarnation, or Karma and yet did the same sorts of things.   Here is a basic Egyptian one which can be used to find answers to many different questions and also slots in nicely to the Golden Dawn.

There was never a beginning or an end, just darkness.  Well, when I say darkness I mean everything and nothing.  The Ancient Egyptians called it Nun.  Then this being, which until then could only be described by what it was not, decided to be something. It created an idea of a universe. That idea was called by the Ancient Egyptians Thoth – the Mind of the One Thing and he created more ideas, or words.  And the words formed Stories.

The first he created was the world of spirit, which was centred on the idea of light.  That light was called Ra and his light was divided into seven primal energies.  From were formed the Gods, Angels, and spirits.  These forces interacted and reacted within stories and above all they learned and remembered these experiences and thus was the great memory of God created.  And this memory was within and like a kingdom and is remembered as being the Underworld.

Gods were Ideas and were too perfect, too close to Thoth and Nun for either to understand much about itself. And so a new realm was created which was ruled by Osiris and Isis and was born within the underworld.  Ideas from Thoth past through the realms of spirit, into the realm of the otherworld and while this realm was not as perfect, it still did not provide an objective clarity to Nun and Thoth.  

So a final realm was created, that of matter and this was built from the images that were found within the memory of god.  And thus was creation made. Matter crystalised from the underworld to the outer world.  And reflections of the underworld were made solid in creation.

Then Thoth had an idea.  One of the images found within creation would have the ability to understand all the levels.  But for the idea to work, the image would have to learn and study the levels around it and awaken them.  Thus this image would mimic the powers of Thoth himself.

Humanity is Thoth's Baboon.

This idea was called by the Ancient Egyptians, ank, or the spirit of God and it past into the world of spirit where it slept.  But so holy was this sleeping ank, it awoke as a new being, the Ba or soul, which existed in the realm of spirit.  But it was not aware of the ank within. This spirit then moved into the realm of memory, or the underworld where it slept and dreamed itself part of a race of Apes which lived in creation.

Thoth did this countless times until each human had the potential to begin the awakening.  But because each ank passed through each of the levels of creation before they were born, they had dim memories of what they were capable of doing.  Each ank inside them dreamed of a destiny.

Most people experience creation through the realm of the underworld and when they die, they return to the memory of God where they are one with their ancestors.  Others however become aware of their soul and seek the spiritual path of Ra and awaken to that state and live in that God’s kingdom.  Far few realise that that too is only part of the journey.  They must awaken the ank within them and return to Thoth and the borders of Nun and be aware of all things.

All these levels are the same God, all experiences are valid and important.  Then ask why do people suffer?  Why are some lives short and others long?  Why do wicked people succeed?   They are all the One Thing acting out countless stories written by Thoth to give an understanding to itself. 

Suffering is caused when we mistake our masks for the actor behind them. At each level, we have a role, even if that role is to sleep.  But if we chose to awake, then we gradually become aware of our powers to shape our story. A person who is awake in the underworld has mastery over the earth.  A person who dwells in the realm of Ra is a God and he who awakens with Thoth is a God above all.  These are people of whom Thoth has written great stories only when the story began, no one but Thoth was aware of it. Everyone is equal because they are all the one thing. it is just that people have different jobs to do and have different roles in the bigger story.

    

Temple of the Cosmos

I have been reading Templeof the Cosmos by Jeremy Naydler and he hits some rather important points which some neo-pagans might not like much.

The book looks at what the Ancient Egyptian worldview would have actually been and how this could have led to many of religious ideas.  What Naydler accidently does is put a spanner in the works of would be neo-pagans who wished to create a modern form of Egyptian worship with their worldview.

If Temple of the Cosmos is to be believed to get a real Egyptian religion you would have to short circuit many of the modes of thinking of modern life.  Naydler believes that the world that the Ancient Egyptians had was one where their myth, time and material universe were intertwined.  All actions around you were your interaction with the divine myth.

For example when the Ancient Egyptians built a statue to the gods they were not worshiping an idol that they had made.  Their mind-set was such that the statue really was the God or Goddess.     When they looked up at the sky they saw the eye of Horus looking down on them. Nature mimicked the myth of transmutation and initiation.

This is great stuff.  Sometimes the book gets a bit lost in academic verbiage and its point gets missed because Naydler has fallen into saying something that actually sounds more complex than it actually is.   Practically we see that there are huge problems for people who want to adopt a way of life or magic which mimics the Ancient Egyptian mind-set.  It cannot just be that you like cats and wear tons of Egyptian-style jewellery.  You have to be able to apply Egyptian myth to every aspect of your life and not just that which is fluffy.  It is one thing to look into the night’s sky and see Nut stretched over you, it is quite another to see your boss as Set.

Naydler also makes it clear that much of the real spirituality behind the Ancient Egyptian mind-set was down to the actual movements of nature.  The colours of Osiris, for example, become more meaningful when you know the colours of the Nile when it floods.

Where is your Pharaoh now? 

The Ancient Egyptians regarded their Kings as important parts of their religion.  How can you equate your modern politicians with an incarnate God?  It would be difficult to fit David Cameron or Silvio Berlusconi into any scenario where they would be worthwhile let alone divine.

The problem that modern people have is that they have become disconnected from all forms of myth or any gods.  In the West, we can blame science for this, but we can also see that the Ancient Greeks had a role in rationalising away much of this mind-set.  The Ancient Greeks at the time of Homer certainly still had it.  The odyssey is packed full of myth woven into “fact”.

There are some important points to note for magicians too.  In magic there are a lot of references to the Secret Tradition.  What if this tradition was never really secret at all, but a mind-set which was forgotten. 

Reading through this book you can see that magical technology reflects some of these ideas.  The idea that a priest was not just wearing the mask of a God, but really was that God, is something that many Golden Dawn magicians need to understand.  It might be that we can only duplicate the Ancient Egyptian mind-set within our ritual space, but it is there that we should be doing it.

We should be striving to make sure that whatever we are doing in our ritual space is real, we should not just believe it to be true, but know that myth has overcome any form of “reality” as we know it.  This is closer to the Ancient Egyptian way and could be one of the forgotten secrets.

Anyway I recommend this book for those who, like me, like to root their magic in Ancient Traditions. But it is also useful for those who want to understand the core of magical methods.  Those who think that they have past lives with their cats in Ancient Egypt and put their religion as Ancient Egyptian on the census form might be a little disappointed.