Egyptian Religion and Mysteries

By Earle de Motte

Subjects covered in these pages include:

Egyptian Spirituality

The Akhenaten Heresy and Its Impact on Religion and Mystical Thought

Creation Mythology of the Four Centres

The Soul and Its Journey in Egyptian Metaphysical Thought

Secrets of the Book of the Dead

The Nature of the Human Being

Ra's Journey through the Underworld and Its Initiatory Significance

Egyptian Mysteries as the Prototype of Ancient Mystery Schools

Shamans, Hierophants, and the Initiatory Process

Wisdom of the Egyptian Sages, from Ancient Egypt to the Hermetic Mystics of Alexandria

The Heart as the Spiritual Self and Monitor of Morality in Human Behaviour

KIRKUS REVIEW:

A collection of insights into the esoteric meanings of ancient Egyptian religious and spiritual practices.

This extraordinary book, the product of extensive research by author and Rosicrucian lecturer de Motte (The Grail Quest, 2003), is ideal for readers who want to go beyond ancient Egypt's pyramids, artifacts and mummies. Here, in highly readable form, the author presents the broad outlines of the ancient Egyptian spiritual belief system-from the founding cosmology of a watery, amorphous pre-creation mass to the rise of Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus and Seth, and on to the highly developed use of symbols as keys to mystic truths, comprehended only by a chosen few. Why do ancient Egyptian renderings of human figures have bird heads? The book gives the answer: They depict, among other things, the soul in flight, freed from an earthly cage and able to access other realms of reality. The book also explains how the scarab, an insect that stores balls of dung to feed its offspring, is intimately linked to the mighty sun god Ra, who must successfully pass through the underworld each night. One of the book's main themes is the notion that, in every age, there's a body of secret knowledge about life, death and the afterlife known only to initiates and never preached or recorded. That knowledge is passed on exclusively by word of mouth over the millennia, lest it fall into the hands of those who would abuse it. In the Egyptian model, the priestly class served this function in so-called "mystery schools" with elaborate pageantry. Although de Motte's prose is highly readable, some readers may find this a difficult book to absorb. The author presents a very large amount of information here, and readers not well-acquainted with his topic may find it necessary to re-read it to keep from getting lost. Only bona fide Egyptologists can render scholarly judgment on de Motte's dazzling pages, but neophytes will appreciate the author's liberal citation of experts, even when he doesn't agree with them.

An impressive work that brings light to a mysterious ancient culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479761852

Earle de Motte

Earle de Motte was a tutor in Method of History and is the author of Japan and India and The Grail Quest. He has been a college principal and a Grand Councillor of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, and is currently a lecturer of the Rosicrucian Academy of the Australasian Grand Lodge. His main research area in this capacity is Grail history, symbology, and literature in the Western Mystery Tradition as well as the place of Egypt in the Mystery School Tradition. He has travelled through Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, visiting many historical sites relevant to his interests. As a Rose-Croix University instructor, Earle has led tours to various mythological and mystic sites in the British Isles and Europe.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Earle de Motte. 502091-DEMO

Library of Congress Control Number:    2012923044

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4797-6183-8

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4797-6184-5

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4797-6185-2

Photo credit for cover design : Bob Kogel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. Date: 03/06/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-800-618-969

www.xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

Egyptian Religion and Mysteries

Earle de Motte

July 2012

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1 Egyptian Spirituality and the Akhenaten ‘Heresy’

2 Creation Mythology and Social Stability

3 Ra, Osiris, and Humanity

4 Symbolism in the Mysteries

5 Symbols of the Soul’s Journey

6 The Soul in Egyptian Metaphysics

7 The Resurrection/Reincarnation Debate

8 The Testimony of Witnesses

9 Secrets of the Book of the Dead

10 The Nature of the Human Being

11 Ra’s Journey through the Underworld

12 Shamans, Hierophants, and Near-Death Experiences

13 The Roots of Hermetic Tradition

14 Egyptian Mysteries as the Mediterranean Prototype

15 Tarot and the Egyptian Mysteries

16 My Heart! My Mother!

Appendix 1: Approximate Dates of the Appearance of Texts

Appendix 2: Wisdom of Egyptian Sages – A Selection

Bibliography

To Ailsa

PREFACE

Egyptian Religion and Mysteries

        The prevailing or dominant religious culture in any civilisation tends to perpetuate itself by state sanction of a single religious institution and an ideological concurrence of the state with its doctrines. The firmer the union of state and the established religion, and where lines of demarcation are virtually non-existent as in a theocracy, the more enhanced the effectiveness of government and the acceptability of its religious culture. Relatively longer periods of social stability and peace are a by-product unless disturbed by threats on the frontiers of the state. The weaker the link between state and cult, the more likely the chance of dissentient religious ideas developing within the established cult or outside it as subterranean movements. The Empire of Ancient Egypt is illustrative of a firm theocracy, made secure by its ideology of regarding all Egypt, after the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, as one political union of a number of nomes.

        Unlike the other empires of Greece and Rome in classical times, and Christendom in the Middle Ages, the Egyptian state had fewer tribes within its imperial boundaries, tribes who resisted oppression and whose inclination was to retain something of their previous religious beliefs. When Persians, Assyrians, and Babylonians moved into the Nile Valley in the first millennium BC, followed by Greek and Roman occupations before and after the time of Christ’s mission, as events moved relatively quickly, the whole Middle-Eastern Mediterranean became a melting pot of cultures, and with it, there was the emergence of a plethora of cults. These groups, some of them having developed from the Egyptian and the later Hellenistic Mysteries, Gnostic Christianity, and Jewish influences, became the forerunners of what subsequently became an underground movement in Europe, an esoteric stream that pursued other doctrines and practices that ran parallel to mainstream Christianity of the Middle Ages. Try as they would, both national political units in Europe and the established Church, from the Treaty of Constantinople to our day and age, failed to arrest the movement. The esoteric stream is with us today.

        Ancient Egypt was unique in the sense that Egypt was relatively free of these underground movements. This was due to four main factors: the ability of the state to keep its ‘Egyptian’ character free from ‘contamination’ from abroad; following this, it did not seem to have outstretched its boundaries and was able to limit threats from abroad; its ability to keep its religio-political-social culture firmly rooted in heaven both in doctrine and in religious rites; and finally, possibly the most important, the establishment of Mystery Schools as part of the religious and educational ethos. These schools could not, therefore, be the seedbed of dissent or reform. Instead, they subsequently became the model of similar Mystery School movements elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East. It is to the highly developed spiritual consciousness of the Egyptians that we attribute the evolution of a religion of state ensuring maximum and loyal participation by the people in general, alongside a system of gnosis by initiation and the raising of consciousness among the few who were ready for such instruction and experience. In this book, I hope to explore aspects of Egypt’s religion and mysteries in some detail.

Earle de Motte

October, 2012

INTRODUCTION

Great Concepts of Mankind

        As we look back over the centuries, there appears to have been a rise and fall of knowledge. At times, the great concepts of mankind have suddenly shone forth like a nova in the heavens. Then, like a falling nova, knowledge has seemed to gradually fade away.

        But at no time in history has great knowledge ever been lost. What went before is eventually revived. It either attains permanency or becomes a stimulus for new and advanced knowledge. Consequently, the great concepts of mankind have constituted a ladder of learning. The centuries have been rungs on this ladder, providing an ascent to human enlightenment.

        What is this fundamental knowledge? What are some of these basic concepts which we have inherited? Most of them continue to influence our lives. Let us journey back five thousand years to when the pyramids were built in ancient Egypt. In mythology and legend, Osiris is said to have been a god-king. His sister-wife was Isis; his son was Horus. They comprise the first so-called Divine Trinity. The eminence of Osiris aroused the envy of his brother, Seth, who, using deception, had his brother slain.

        Osiris’s body was dismembered and scattered through the marshes. Isis, his wife, appealed to the god Thoth. Horus avenged his father by slaying Seth, and Thoth resurrected Osiris, who then became the Eternal God of the Dead. The event became the fundamental teaching of the Osirian Mystery School. This Mystery School taught the first doctrine of the resurrection, and it also showed in its rituals the weighing of the soul, that is, a judgment after death … Since Osiris was the judge of the dead who came before him, the plays of the Mystery Schools (for their truths were revealed in the form of mystical dramas) attempted as well to define what moral conduct is essential for the greater life after death. The priests and preceptors sought to teach lessons in each act of the mystery dramas.

        In the various temples of Egypt, some of the ceremonies were enacted by persons who were carefully selected and intensively trained for the roles. Those who were to be initiated, or inducted into these mysteries – in other words, those who were the tyros or candidates – were brought to the temple to witness the plays after assuming certain extremely strict obligations. Frequently, the rites were performed on a great, highly ornamental barge on a sacred lake, usually in moonlight. Herodotus tells us: ‘On this lake it is that the Egyptians represent by night his suffering, whose name I refrain from mentioning (Osiris), and this representation they call their mysteries. I know well the whole course of the proceedings in these ceremonies, but they shall not pass my lips’. These ideas have influenced theology, mysticism, and philosophy for centuries.

        It is extremely difficult to determine when the ancient Mystery Schools began. The search for knowledge among the ancient Egyptians was undoubtedly coeval with their conscious observation and analysis of the current happenings of their lives and times. The cyclical repetitions of certain phenomena in nature and in their own beings were the first mysteries of early man. In fact, these things, to a great extent, still remain mysteries today. The personal mysteries – or rather the intimate ones – were those of birth and death, and that strange resurrection that occurred periodically in nature – the rejuvenation of plant life in the spring.

        At first, the term mysteries must have been synonymous with the unknown. Later, it came to represent to the Egyptian neophyte and priest alike an uncommon or esoteric knowledge of the laws and purposes of life and being. Thus came about the appellation of Mystery School or a place for imparting knowledge of the mysteries. These first mysteries consisted of a matrix of mythology, founded on facts of observation and figments of imagination. From them evolved the indisputable truths of the inner comprehension of cosmic law, just as there emerges from modern theories and hypotheses the eventual light of truth … We might say that religion and learning formed the basic pattern on the instruction of the early Mystery Schools. However, within its general ceremonies and rituals was the nebulous formation of a vast philosophy of immortality, for it sought to embrace the welfare and future of the dead.

        That portion of the vast knowledge of the ancient mystery schools, which has been transmitted to us as inscriptions in stone or on parchment, is a negligible part of the whole. There was a wealth of knowledge, an accumulation of perhaps centuries, the result of numerous investigations and tedious, heart-rending probing into nature’s secrets, the significance of which the kheri-heb (the high priest or temple master) alone knew. The fear of entrusting this knowledge to any kind of tangible form that could be abused by wrongdoers, into whose possession it might fall, was the most logical motive for imparting it only by word of mouth to those deemed worthy.

        Those who doubt that such a knowledge ever existed – and was transmitted by mouth to ear – because there is no original manuscript, papyrus, or stele to substantiate it, are themselves ignorant of the mundane, historic evidence which gives weight to this belief. No less an authority than Sir E. A. Wallis Budge states: ‘It is impossible to doubt that there were mysteries in the Egyptian religion, and this being so, it is impossible to think that the highest order of the priests did not possess esoteric knowledge, which they guarded with the greatest care. Each priesthood, if I read the evidence correctly, possessed a Gnosis, a superiority of knowledge which they never put into writing and so were enabled to enlarge or diminish its scope, as circumstances made necessary …’ If the secret wisdom was imparted in any tangible form, it may be found to exist in the symbolism of the Egyptians, namely in such devices as were not an integral part of their language or common writings. In this manner, a symbol would exoterically depict one particular meaning to one mind, and to another, it would have a far different significance …

        Those who possessed such knowledge were under great oath not to reveal it wrongly and would suffer dire consequences if they misused the secret wisdom. In a translation from the original hieroglyphic inscription of Chapter 139 of the Book of the Dead, by Sir Wallis Budge, we find this admonishment: ‘allows no one to see it’. Nor was it to be recited to even a close friend, for further we find: ‘never let the ignorant person, or anyone whatever look upon it’; also, ‘the things which are done secretly in the hall of the tomb are the mysteries …’

Abstracted from the Archive of H. Spencer Lewis, Ph.D., Past Imperator of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC.

MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT

map.tif

George H.Michaels, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara.

stone%20fragment.tif

STONE FRAGMENT DEPICTING AKHENATEN MAKING AN OFFERING

akenaten%20ring.tif

AKHENATEN RING

funerary%20boat.TIF

A FUNERARY BOAT

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose, California

CHAPTER 1

Egyptian Spirituality and the Akhenaten ‘Heresy’

26500.jpg

Egyptian Spirituality

        There is no account in Egyptian records of an earth-born founder, a great exemplar or master teacher who introduced Egyptian religion. Nor was there a sacred book purporting to contain all the truths and commandments of divinity to a messenger. The attempt of Akhenaten to found a new religion in the eighteenth dynasty was short-lived. The Great Empire that was Egypt, organised and maintained according to principles of truth and justice (Maat) from the moment of the Creation, guided social and individual life. Moral maxims, such as those uttered by Hardedet, Ptahhotep, Amenemope, Ani, and others, were available to set the straight and narrow case of social and personal responsibility. There were rewards in the afterlife for good performance of these. On the consequences of failure to follow these maxims, there is no clear interpretation of what was really in the Egyptian consciousness. The most one could say is that failure was undesirable or irrelevant.

        We cannot even talk of Egyptian religion without some qualification since the word used to identify religious activity was Heka or ‘magic’ (Naydler, 124), and the superior ‘gods’ respected were, in fact, principles, powers, or functions. So Egyptian ‘religion’ was a form of spirituality and magic commingled; the devotee’s intention was not only to recognise a particular power, etc., but also to influence it by the use of spells and offerings. The practice of magic was intended to influence these powers in the universe and may be described as ancient science. It is as much applied science as that of the modern attempt to arrest climate change by controlling carbon emissions or, in the area of clinical psychology, bringing about behaviour modification through psychoanalysis. The difference is that in our age, we may detail and justify the processes of our actions on a rational, scientific basis, whereas, we cannot be sure, or are totally ignorant, of the nature and efficacy of the practice of magic, and this may tempt us to regard it as superstition rather than science.

        A classic reference to magic in action which everyone understands can be observed in the effect of works of art on the human observer. In this case, the inspiration of the artist is combined with materials put together into some form with some skill so as to cause a transformation of energy in us. The result of the experience induced in the observer may be transient or long-lasting, but the ‘magic’ has worked, and any attempt to explain it by analysis is always inadequate. So it was with Egyptian magic used in sacred settings: ‘In temples, magic was public, designed to work its transformations upon the individuals who participated in the temple rituals. In the tombs, the magic was directed at the disembodied souls of the deceased’. This statement by John Anthony West, the symbolist Egyptologist, is followed by the question: ‘Who are we to say it was superstition, that it was misguided, that it did not work?’ (II, 84). Indeed, against the background of a civilisation marked by huge advances in mathematics and science, architecture, engineering, and an efficient social and administrative structure, lasting over four millennia, one wonders why the Egyptians would not have abandoned the use of ‘magic’ (as a vestige of a more primitive period of development), unless they felt that it did work for them.

        Apart from its basically magical character, what we tend to refer to as Egyptian religion was imbued with a religious spirit that was an important part of daily life, and ‘religious rituals were regarded as having practical and immediate effects, such as maintaining the cycle of the seasons, making the sun shine, avoiding the collapse of order, curing illness and ensuring life after death’ (Adkins, 135). Ramses Saleem, translator of the Egyptian Book of Life, assures us that a study of the funerary records and rituals of the ancient Egyptians would lead one to declare that Egyptian ‘religion’ was ‘the most advanced spiritual system in the history of humanity’ (11).

The Nature of Egyptian ‘Gods’

        Egyptologists vary considerably in their views on the true nature of Egyptian gods and the status accorded to them by the Egyptians. Most share the opinion that the Egyptians believed in a supreme cosmic power and other powers. The importance of each depended on their regional or national character. A debate raged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as to whether The Egyptians were polytheistic or monotheistic, and if one or the other, the issue was which belief came first, if we think of the progress of human ideas in the evolutionary scale. The arena of dispute may be highlighted here by mentioning the views of a few scholars who have addressed the topic.

        Jean Champollion (1820s) opted for the existence of pure monotheism in Egypt, with a symbolic polytheism in external manifestation. Emanuel De Rougé (1869) attributed self-existence to this one god. Tiele (1890s) saw a movement from polytheism to monotheism. He would be contradicted by some theologists today who represent the opposite view. Gaston Maspero (1880s–1890s) focused on the term ‘sole’ god (suggesting monotheism for all Egyptians). The term really designated the status enjoyed by a regional, rather than national, god. Heinrich Brugsch (1884) detected in Egyptian belief the existence of an eternal god, having indefinable attributes, thus coming close to the modern acceptance of the term the Great Neter, that is, the Great Power among the other powers (neteru, plural). A primary Egyptian source, that of the Papyrus of Hunefer (c.1400 BC) exemplifies this view, in which a hymn to the rising sun accords several attributes to a high god among nine other deities: ‘You are lord of heaven and lord