World's Geography of Love: Twelve Hours in the Egyptian Duat

By Geraldine PC Matus

World's Geography of Love weaves an imagination of a conscious and meaningful transformation of the neurotic, inflated, and unmediated heroic ego and recovery of its soul, an alignment with love. The author illustrates this recovery of soul through psycho-spiritual transformation using contemporary dreams, visions, and ancient Egyptian funerary texts. Like the ancient Egyptian Sungod, the human ego eventually reaches its noontide zenith of expressive strength before its splendor declines. Yet there is hope for the ego that falls into obscurity, for regeneration and rebirth. Indeed, the corporeal body dies and returns to dust. Yet, many times during life there is an experience of recursive renewal of imagination and creativity for those willing to endure the disintegration of unsustainable attitudes and behaviors, and who are to reconcile their psycho-spiritual shadow—sins and virtues—and become reborn in ethics and feeling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228849186

Geraldine PC Matus

Since 1977, Dr. Geraldine Matus has practiced various healing arts from a psychophysiological perspective. Her professional training includes modalities grounded in functional medicine and depth psychology. The intention of her work is to support the development of the wholeness of human physiology and personality, through diet, lifestyle, ritual, celebration, dreamwork, and creativity. Her approach is contemplative and justice-oriented. Her lifepath continues to be guided by dreams and synchronicity.

Book preview

World’s Geography of Love: Twelve Hours in the Egyptian Duat

Copyright © 2022 by Geraldine PC Matus

Copyright for Illustrations:

Images 1 and 2 © 2022 Yvonne Trethart

Images 3 to29 and 31 to 35 © 2022 Ankur Majumder

Cover Art and Images 30, 36 and 37 Geraldine Matus and Ankur Majumder © 2022.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-22884-920-9 (Hardcover)

978-0-22884-919-3 (Paperback)

978-0-22884-918-6 (eBook)

Everyone to love will come, but like a refugee.

(Cohen, 1992a)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Prologue (1)

Key points

Grudges

Refugees

Love: Eternally Evolving

Contemplations

The Dream (2)

Key Points

Mortificato

World’s Geography of Love

The Stench of Death

Psycho-Spiritual Death

Timelessness and liminality

Who is the Fallen Hero?

A Swell of Compassion

Convoluted Shit

Four Archetypes

Contemplations

Sky-Goddess Nut (3)

Key points

Evolution of Nut

Her Body

Great Mother

Nut as the Self

Her Numinosity

Self-Organizing Quanta

Dreambody

Three Realms

Duat

Earth

Heaven

Three Seasons

Contemplations

Sungod Re-Osiris (4)

Key Points

Ever Becoming and Evolving I-am

Re-Osiris

Re as Creator

New Hero—New Ethic

Battlefield

Ego–Self Axis

Initiation

Contemplations

12 Hours of Duat (5)

Entering Duat

First hour of Duat (6:00 pm)

Key Points: ¹st Hour

She Who Deepens the Heart’s Perception

Her Embracing Arms

Inundation: Thuthi

Second hour of Duat (7:00 pm)

Key Points: ²nd Hour

Mehet-Weret Carries Me

Her Lips and Mouth

Inundation: Paopi

Third hour of Duat (8:00 pm)

Key Points: ³rd Hour

Wasteland

Her Teeth

Inundation Hethara

Fourth hour of Duat (9:00 pm)

Key Points: ⁴th Hour

Devourer of Evil Ones

Her Throat

Inundation: Koiak

Fifth hour of Duat (10:00 pm)

Key Points: ⁵th Hour

Benevolent Guardians.

Her Trachea, Breasts, and Heart

Coming Forth: Tybi

Sixth hour of Duat (11:00 pm)

Key Points: ⁶th Hour

Benevolent Lady of Heat and Flame.

Her Lungs

Coming Forth: Mechir

Seventh hour of Duat (midnight)

Key Points: ⁷th Hour

Lady of the Holy and Mysterious

Her Liver

Dance as the Glutinum Mundi

Coming Forth: Pamenot

Eighth hour of Duat (1:00 am)

Key Points: ⁸th Hour

Sarcophagus of the Gods

Her Gall Bladder

Anointing

Coming Forth: Parmuti

Ninth hour of Duat (2:00 am)

Key Points: ⁹th Hour

Processions of Images

Her Intestines

Double Hall of Ma’at

Ma’at: Three-legged Milking Stool

Harvest: Pachons

Tenth hour of Duat (3:00 am)

Key Points: 1⁰th Hour

The One Who Causes Breath

Her Vulva

Birth of the Solar Eyes

She Who Rears Up

Harvest: Payni

Eleventh hour of Duat (4:00 am)

Key Points: 1¹th Hour

Mouth of the Cavern

Her Perineum and Thighs

Harvest: Epiphi

Twelfth hour of Duat (5:00 am)

Key Points: 1²th Hour

She Who Sees and the Beauty of Re

Her Lower Legs and Feet

Harvest: Mesore

Love as the Glutinum Mundi (6)

Keypoints

No Small Designation

Eros—Dissolver of Flesh

Dante and Beatrice

Moisten this Dry Earth

An Attitude of Love

Love Loves Wisdom

Living into Dying

A Cure through Love

Love: DNA Unwinder

Love and The Other

Love and Invalidism

Contemplations

Lapis Blue Rose (7)

Hope, Faith, Love

A Saving Vision

A Fallen Hero (8)

Ways Have Been Arranged

Becoming the Hawk Divine

After Dawn (9)

Squaring the Circle

The Self

Quintessence

Eternal Evolution and Revolution

References

Endnotes

Images

Image 1: Disintegration

Image 2: Embraced in Death

Image 3: Nut on the interior of a coffin lid.

Image 4: Nut, Geb, Shu

Image 5: Coagulation of Cosmic Substance (Book of Aker)

Image 6: Star-bodied Mehet-Weret

Image 7: Three Realms—Nut, Geb, and Shu

Image 8: Seba, symbol of Duat

Image 9: Duat

Image 10: Khepri (life cycle of the scarab beetle)

Image 11: Uroboros

Image 12: Feather of Truth—symbol Ma'at

Image 13: Hair and Mourning

Image 14: Mynt Necklace

Image 15: Scarab Amulet

Image 16: Raising of the Djed Pillar

Image 17: Ancient Egyptian World Tree

Image 18: Boat of Ma'at

Image 19: Saving the Sungod from Apophis

Image 20: Iba Dancers

Image 21: Mynt Necklace

Image 22: Detail of Amemt the Devourer

Image 23: Double Hall of Ma'at

Image 24: Canopic Jars – 4 Sons of Horus

Image 25: Ma'at Seated

Image 26: Isis Begets Horus

Image 27: Sma Symbol

Image 28: Birth of the Udjat Eyes

Image 29: Lunar and Solar Eyes

Image 30: She Who Rears Up

Image 31: Meretseger

Image 32: Sistrum, cobra, papyrus

Image 33: Uraeus-Solar Disk

Image 34: Shu Separates Heaven and Earth

Image 35: Putrefactio

Image 36: Lapis Blue Rose

Image 37: Quintessence

Glossary

Glossary 1: Archetype

Glossary 2: Psyche

Glossary 3: Self Archetype

Glossary 4: Individuation, Shadow, Projection

Glossary 5: Psychological Complex

Glossary 6: Numinous/Numen

Glossary 7: Feminine/Masculine Principles

Glossary 8: Ancient Egyptian Syncretism

Glossary 9: Embodied Cognition

Glossary 10: Seven Deadly Sins &Seven Virtues

Glossary 11: Active Imagination

Glossary 12: Magical

Glossary 13: Osirian Mysteries / Abydos

Glossary 14: Benben Hill

Psyche Speaks

Psyche Speaks 1: He Came to Her Corrupt

Psyche Speaks 2: Dreaming Mehet-Weret

Psyche Speaks 3: Cow Sanctuary

Psyche Speaks 4: Tears of Isis

Introduction

This text represents a therapeutic depth psychological approach to overcoming the Western and patriarchal mindset. It weaves an imagination about conscious and meaningful transformation of the neurotic, inflated, and unmediated heroic masculine ego and recovery of its soul through symbol, myth, and alignment with love and the feminine. Depth psychology values the reality of the unconscious and its influence on the intrigues of the conscious mind. It values dream, myth, symbol, archetype, synchronicity, projection, and image as really-real and meaningfully contributors to the complexity of a developing human personality. The unconscious autonomously informs the ego when it needs modification of its perspective through rupturing ego-consciousness with images, dreams, and other symbolic experiences such as how we think or feel about something other than ourselves. Often the unconscious presents us with shadow elements of our personality, toward which our ego may be hostile or avoidant.

When our egoic hostility or avoidance perseveres against the unconscious, perhaps to preserve our perceived right to arrogance, greed, and lust for power, the outcome manifests as violence, patriarchism and other offences against the feminine. Thus, our ego becomes separated from the meaningfulness and soulfulness of living. We find ourselves in those ineffable, chaotic, shadowy, and emotionally confounding places of being where we feel that our whole life is falling apart and that we are dying or dead, either literally or figuratively. If we are fortunate, we can come back to life if we learn to surrender our egoic perspective to love as the glue of the world (glutinum mundi).

We are born corporeal beings and yet, paradoxically, can transcend our corporeality through imagination. Through the power of our imagination, we can welcome and generate creative thoughts and deeds as if they are the morning sun glorying the eastern horizon. Like the Sungod, we eventually reach the noontide zenith of our expressive strength before our splendor declines. We fall below the western horizon into obscurity, wherein hope mysteriously arises for our regeneration and rebirth. Indeed, our corporeal body dies and returns to dust. Yet, many times during our living we experience a recursive renewal of our imaginative and creative self if we become willing to endure the disintegration of our unsustainable attitudes and behaviors and reconcile our psycho-spiritual shadow—our sins and virtues—and become reborn in our ethic and feeling.

Prologue (1)

Some grudge of old disease, Which will enforce us fortifie our townes (1623).i

Key points

•We may experience positive personal change when we find the courage to explore and imagine the nature of the resentments that we hold against people, places, or things.

•Self-centeredness and willfulness deny us the gift of learning about ourselves through relationship to that which is other than us.

•Without the modifying effect of the feminine archetypal energy, the ego-driven heroic masculine mentality constructs materia that thrills and distracts us from the truth of how materialism inhibits all from thriving.

•Everyone to love will come, but like a refugee (Cohen, 1992a).

•Transformative love is the glue of the world (glutinum mundi). It occupies the interstitial spaces of our being and inscribes our wholeness.

•Imagining love as the glutinum mundi assists functional participation and contribution to planetary harmony and euphony.

•Imaging love as the glutinum mundi heals our bodies and being and makes us whole.

•Love as the glutinum mundi is coherent with ideas of Self, God, holy or numinous, energy that unwinds DNA, and energy that reconciles chaos or catalyzes wisdom and compassion.

•We are all, in a myriad of ways, preoccupied by love both perverse and holy.

•Love is the most ineffable and eternally evolving archetype.

•Unbidden, the archetype of love actualizes through us, influencing our personal and collective engagement with it.

•Soul-death is a major factor in all physical and mental ailments.

•Restoration of the soul requires love.

Grudges

Faust: A Tragedy (von Goethe, c1827/1976)¹ seeded this book. After reading Faust, I experienced an irreversible ontological crisis1

²

. I completely lost faith in the viability of our patriarchal inheritance. Like an itch caused by poison oak, Goethe’s portrayal of Faust’s failed psycho-spiritual transformation because of his patriarchally informed dismissal of the inherent value of Nature, of women, and the feminine archetype profoundly disturbed my peace for weeks. The small resentment I had against patriarchal systems became a deep-seated grudge. I became determined to double my feminist efforts toward developing a conscious valuing of and love for the feminine, both personally and professionally.

In Goethe’s tragedy, the egotistical Faust, contemptuous of everything and everyone, desires to be reconciled with his discontent. His discontent stems from an overidentification with his prodigious intellect and rationality that alienated him from Nature and the feminine. In a bargain with the devil, Faust offers his soul in exchange for a moment of ease from his restless striving:

Faust: Should ever I take ease upon a bed of leisure, / May that same moment mark my end! / When first you lull me by flattery you lull me / Into smug complacency, / When with indulgence you can gull me, / Let that day be the last day for me! / This is my wager! (von Goethe, c1827/1976, Lines 1692-1698)

To keep his end of the bargain, the devil, Mephistopheles, offers Faust opportunities to transform his perspective and find ease. Critically, Mephistopheles arranges encounters with love and the feminine archetype. Stubbornly, Faust neither surrenders his power stance nor his embittered opinions to a transformational experience of the feminine. Ironically, his choice to remain in control denies him the ease he seeks.

Faust defends against and destroys all that Mephistopheles offers. As is typical for those suffering from narcissism

³

, Faust repeatedly demonstrates how little he cares for anything other than his will be done. In the wake of Faust’s self-centeredness, the physical world and those he encounters suffer irreparably. Prior to Faust meeting the devil, God and Mephistopheles have made a gamble for his soul.

The Lord: Though now he serves me but in clouded ways, Soon I shall guide him so his spirit clears. / … Mephistopheles: You’ll lose him yet! I offer bet and tally, / Provided that your Honor gives / Me leave to lead him gently up my alley! (von Goethe, c1827/1976, Lines 308-314)

God insists that Faust will find his way to do ‘God’s will’. Mephistopheles believes that Faust’s soul is unredeemable and successfully proves it. Yet, in the end, God reneges on his bet with Mephistopheles, and grants the undeserving Faust salvation for his soul.

The outcome of Faust: A Tragedy enraged me! God’s decision to save Faust’s soul seemed unjustifiable. Then I remembered that the God of the story is a narcissistic patriarchal god devoid of any meaningful relationship to the feminine. Of course, he would align with Faust.

My grudge against the character of Faust was founded on his unapologetic contempt of the feminine and the destruction of nature. By proxy, my grudge extended to the patriarchal God in the drama, to Goethe for writing what he did, and even more broadly to all those who identify with and applaud the Faustian mindset. My grudge was not so strong towards Mephistopheles because by accident of his role, he was on the right track, just unconsciously so. He took Faust down a path of carnal delights and rendezvouses in the realm of the archetypal feminine, intending to spoil Faust’s soul. The devil’s patriarchal bias made him believe engagement with women and the feminine was the best way to ruin a man. Unwittingly, however, the devil was giving Faust a chance at transformational relatedness to love and the feminine. So, the devil was a little more forgivable to me than God, who I judged should have been more whole – more attuned to the role of women and the feminine with respect to the soul. I was wrong.

Ultimately, my grudge had a good effect. It permanently excised from me any lingering alignment with collective ideations about an overly rational and heroic ego devoid of conscious and meaningful relatedness to the feminine. Grudge anger fed an inundation of journaling to articulate the problem and seek a remedy. Some of that work is contained in an as of yet unpublished poetic dramatic narrative response to Goethe’s Faust (Matus, 2008) and now further in this book. While pondering the problem, I encountered the Tale of the Heavenly Cow (Wente, 2003a) and other ancient Egyptianii funerary texts that became helpful in shaping my understanding that recovery from the Faustian mentality requires receptivity to and influence from the archetypal feminine.

The redemption of soul is not an idea unique to the story of Faust. Soul redemption is a long-standing human preoccupation. Witness daily how our world as affected by human endeavor underscores a need for dramatic transformation. Our Faustian like ego-driven heroic masculine mentality constructs materia that thrills and distracts us from the truth of how materialism subverts structures that undercut sustainable living and undermines care of the soul and nature that would allow all to thrive.⁴ Faustian machinations destroy body, mind, and soul health. The planet, its flora and fauna, its oceans and waterways, and its human inhabitants are sicker than ever in history. Transformation of our relationship to the feminine is critical for mutually beneficial continuance. Perhaps our Faustian sickness is functional in that it has reached an intensity sufficient enough to agitate for a new perspective. After all, we are commonly open to change when there is a perturbance strong enough to disturb our individual or collective psycho-spiritual status quo—make us fear for our lives. There is hope for a renewed perspective if we wisely and consciously sacrifice unsustainable attitudes to a disintegrative and chaotic process for the sake of renewal.

Refugees

Everyone to love will come, but like a refugee (Cohen, 1992a).

When the ego-driven heroic masculine or heroic feminine fails, the common narrative is heroic quest. During the quest, the hero overcomes the demons that thwart his will, saves the status quo, and gains more wealth and power. The desired outcome of such a quest is a world again ordered according to the hero’s will. Collateral damage on account of his effort is justified for the sake of the goal — ‘the ends justify the means’, ‘the buck stops here’. Yet often, the nature of the demons the heroic ego fights is nothing but fear-based projections founded on historical traumas rather than reality. Those traumas may be personal or collective and cultural. As described above, the heroic ego’s energetic response is the response of our modern times, a response that is both intrapsychic⁵ and intersubjective⁶. Popular media iterates that response, thereby reinforcing it and normalizing it in our psyches.

Yet, once there was a different imagination of how the heroic ego managed the reality of his failure. Once, the narrative spoke about how the heroic-ego surrendered its arms and defenses and submitted to the disintegration of its will-to-power. He did this for the chance of a healing realignment with reality through the influence of feminine wisdom and love. That hero is the ancient Egyptian Sungod, who we will get to know soon. In his story, love encompasses his heroic failure—not sentimental or romantic love—not love of country or ideologies—but love as the glutinum mundi— the glue of the world

⁷ (Edinger, 1985, p. 223). That love is Nut as the ancient Egyptian Duat. She facilitates a harmoniously interdependent and transformative relationship between the heroic-ego and the feminine.

Love as the glutinum mundi is the cohering energy occupying the interstitial spaces of our being and which inscribes our wholeness. It was the transformative energy that Mephistopheles unwittingly offered Faust and which Faust willfully rejected in favor of maintaining his lust for power. Faust’s response need not be ours. Dwelling deeply with an imagination of love as the glutinum mundi assists a functional participation and contribution to the harmony and euphony of the planet as well as that of our being and bodies. Everyone to love will come, but like a refugee (Cohen, 1992a), fleeing from the machinations of an extravagantly narcissistic ego.

Love: Eternally Evolving

Dance me to the end of love (Cohen, 1984).

If we could view the interstitial spaces between the molecules of our human being, we would see the energy of love as the glutinum mundi. Yet, getting a grasp of love as the glutinum mundi is like holding mercury, which unpredictably fragments and coalesces when handled. Love as the glutinum mundi is coherent with our ideas of that which reconciles chaos and catalyzes wisdom and compassion, such as the Self, God, the Holy (numinous), or the energy that unwinds DNA. There are as many imaginations of love as there are stars in the Milky Way⁸. Whether or not we ponder love as a topic, we cannot live well without it. Love’s geography is mysteriously vast, varied, and complex. Paradoxically, it is simply that which glues our individual and collective bones together.

We are all, to some degree, preoccupied with love in a myriad of ways, both holy and perverse. Love is the most ineffable and eternally evolving archetype. Our emotional and physical necessity to experience the loving presence of another begins at birth and ends with death. Many spiritual traditions assure us we will be loved in the afterlife, and this helps us be less afraid of dying. Easily half of all songs, stories and other creative works are about love. Even denying that we need love speaks to a defensive and wounded preoccupation with it. Unbidden, the archetype of love actualizes through us, influencing our personal and collective engagement with it. Love may summon forth unsuspected powers in the soul for which we had better be prepared (Jung, 1966a, p. 101, para. 164). But our expressions regarding love remain woefully insufficient to articulate its mercurial, powerful, and transformative nature. I tried to write a poem about our love, but my words only fell from the page back to god. (Author’s journal).

Given the power of the love, prudence prevails in the presentation of this drama about love and transformation. It is a drama in the classical sense of drama—a portrayal of the spectacle between archetypal figures in such a way as to evoke a feeling response and catharsis. In this case, the drama is between love as the glutinum mundi and the heroic-ego in all of us who cries:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin / Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in / Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove / Dance me to the end of love / Dance me to the end of love (Cohen, 1984)

A dance of the ultimate expression of love is this drama’s intrigue. It unfolds during the twelve hours from sunset to sunrise, in the realm of the dark and voluptuous unknowing, where rational perceptions and egoic machinations have no importance or influence. It happens in the realm of the archetypal feminine, where her wisdom, love, and power reanimate the souls of those who are soul dead.

Soul-death is a foremost factor in all physical and mental ailments (Bellamy, 2015; Robbins, 2011). Symbolically soul death may be understood as the spoiled materia of life manifesting as 1) uncurable or chronic physical illness, 2) events leading to the disintegration of our biases and beliefs without hope for a new and healing perspective, and 3) unexpressed and repressed personal potential. Soul death includes bitterness, hopelessness, despair, unmediatable fear, and other states associated with dis-ease. Soul death is an epidemic in our human society, evidenced by the ubiquity of neuroses, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, cardiovascular disease, obesity-related diabetes, cancer, and infertility. Even our domestic animals suffer soul-death because of how we make them live in ways counter to their natural inclinations. Healing and wholeness are insupportable when the soul is dead. Yet, there is hope for soul renewal and rebirth if we become like the alchemists who looked upon the ruined matter of human living and searched for the secrets to soul transformation through love and truth:

The alchemist ‘must realise [sic] the unity of man and nature - not as a general idea, but by a concentration of his entire mind, body, and spirit on the work he is doing, so that he truly feels himself disintegrating, torn apart, and put together, reborn in a new form. This identification of the scientist-artisan with the processes he is producing is perhaps the hardest aspect of alchemyiii for anyone nowadays to understand or enter into. To men in whom the alienation of the intellect from the world of nature has been carried very much further than among classical Greek thinkers, the whole thing seems fantastic and overstressed, unreal. But in fact, it was passionately real, and in my opinion, it held an element of truth which we must strive to grasp and recapture if our science is to measure up to the full demands of reality. (Lindsay, 1970, p. 151)

For example, Faust suffered from the alienation of his intellect from the world of nature, which led to the ruin of his soul. Essentially, the drama I present here is a modern alchemical, hermeneutical, curious, naïve, and Psyche guided look at love and how love connects us to eternal being and cosmic wholeness. It is a look at how the Faustian mind may find rest.

Contemplations

Using ways that are best for you, respond to the following suggestions for contemplation. You may want to respond by journaling, writing prose or poetry, expressing your reflections in a poem, song, dance or movement, painting, etc.

•How do you understand your engagement with the Faustian mindset?

•Contemplate the value you place on intellect and rationality and on feeling and ethic? If so, how, and why does doing so make sense to you?

•How might you have learned to devalue Nature, the feminine, and women?

•Define the feminine as you understand it.

•To what aspects of the feminine archetype do you most relate?

•Define the masculine as you understand it.

•To what aspects of the masculine archetype do you most relate?

•How might you justify your efforts to make sure your will is done? What are the ‘ends that justify the means’ for you?

•Our accepted collective narrative encourages defending against change that we perceive would thwart our will. What other options do you perceive?

•What has been your experience of being a refugee from