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Demoniacal Possession, Dreams, Ghosts, Lucky and Unlucky Days, Horoscopes, Prognostications, Transformations, and the Worship of Animals

The Egyptians, in common with many other Eastern nations, believed that certain sicknesses and diseases might be cured by certain medicaments pure and simple, but that others needed not only drugs but the recital of words of power to effect their cure. There is good reason for thinking that some diseases were attributed to the action of evil spirits or demons, which had the power of entering into human bodies and of vexing them in proportion to their malignant nature and influence, but the texts do not afford much information on the matter. Incidentally, however, we have one interesting proof that foreign peoples believed that the Egyptians were able to cure the diseases caused by demoniacal possession, and the exercise of their power on the occasion described was considered to be so noteworthy that the narrative of it was inscribed upon a stele and setup in the temple of the god Khonsu at Thebes, so that all men might read and know what a marvellous cure his priests had effected. It appears that king Rameses II. was in Mesopotamia "according to his wont, year by year," and all the chiefs of the countries round about came to pay their respects to him, and they sought to obtain his goodwill and protection, probably even an alliance, by bringing to him gifts of gold, and lapis-lazuli, and turquoise, and of every kind of valuable thing which the land produced, and every man sought to outdo his neighbour by the lavishness of his gifts. Among others there came the Prince of Bekhten, and at the head of all the offerings which he presented to His Majesty he placed his eldest daughter, who was very beautiful. When the king saw her he thought her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and he bestowed upon her the title of "Royal spouse, chief lady, Râ-neferu" (i.e., "the beauties of Râ," the Sun-god), and took her to Egypt; and when they arrived in that country the king married her. One day during the fifteenth year of the king's reign, when His Majesty was in Thebes celebrating the festival of Amen-Râ, a messenger came to the king and reported the arrival of an ambassador from the Prince of Bekhten who had brought rich gifts for the royal lady Râ-neferu. When he had been led into the king's presence, he did homage before him, saying, "Glory and praise be unto thee, O thou Sun of the nations; grant that we may live before thee!" Having said these words be bowed down and touched the ground with his head three times, and said, "I have come unto thee, O my sovereign Lord, on behalf of the lady Bent-ent-resht, the younger sister of the royal spouse Râ-neferu, for, behold, an evil disease hath laid hold upon her body; I beseech thy Majesty to send a physician to see her." Then the king straightway ordered the books of the "double house

Stele recording the casting out of the devil from the Princess of Bekhten. On the right the king is offering Incense to Khonsu Nefer-hetep, and on the left a priest is offering incense to Khonsu, "the great god who driveth away devils." of life" to be brought and the learned men to appear, and when they had come into his presence he ordered them to choose from among their number a man "wise of heart and cunning of finger," that he might send him to Bekhten; they did so, and their choice fell upon one Tehuti-em-heb. This sage having come before the king was ordered to set out for Bekhten in company with the ambassador, and he departed; and when they had arrived there the Egyptian priest found the lady Bent-ent-resht to be possessed of a demon or spirit over which he was powerless. The Prince of Bekhten, seeing that the priest was unable to afford relief to his daughter, sent once again to the king, and entreated him to send a god to his help.

When the ambassador from Bekhten arrived in Egypt the king was in Thebes, and on hearing what was asked he went into the temple of Khonsu Nefer-hetep, and besought that god to allow his counterpart Khonsu to depart to Bekhten and to deliver the daughter of the prince of that country from the power of the demon that possessed her. It seems as if the sage Tehuti-em-heb had been sent to Bekhten by the advice of the god, for the king says, in addressing, the god, "I have come once again into thy presence"; but in any case Khonsu Nefer-hetep agreed to his request, and a fourfold measure of magical power was imparted to the statue of the god which was to go to Bekhten. The god, seated in his boat, and five other boats with figures of gods in them, accompanied by chariots and horses on the right hand and on the left, set out from Egypt, and after travelling for seventeen months arrived in Bekhten, where they were received with great honour. The god Khonsu went to the place where Bent-ent-resht was, and, having performed a magical ceremony over her, the demon departed from her and she was cured straightway. Then the demon addressed the Egyptian god, saying, "Grateful and welcome is thy coming unto us, O great god, thou vanquisher of the hosts of darkness! Bekhten is thy city, the inhabitants thereof are thy slaves, and I am thy servant; and I will depart unto the place whence I came that I may gratify thee, for unto this end hast thou come thither. And I beseech thy Majesty to command that the Prince of Bekhten and I may hold a festival together." To the demon's request Khonsu agreed, and he commanded his priest to tell the Prince of Bekhten to make a great festival in honour of the demon; this having been done by the command of Khonsu the demon departed to his own place.

When the Prince of Bekhten saw that Khonsu was thus powerful, he and all his people rejoiced exceedingly, and he determined that the god should not be allowed to return to Egypt, and as a result Khonsu remained in Bekhten for three years, four months, and five days. On a certain day, however, the Prince was sleeping., and he dreamed a dream in which he saw the god Khonsu come forth from his shrine in the form of a hawk of gold, and having mounted into the air he flew away to Egypt. The Prince woke up in a state of great perturbation, and having inquired of the Egyptian priest was told by him that the god had departed to Egypt, and that his chariot must now be sent back. Then the Prince gave to Khonsu great gifts, and they were taken to Egypt and laid before the god Khonsu Nefer-hetep in his temple at Thebes. In early Christian literatures we find a number of examples of demoniacal possession in which the demon who has entered the body yields it up before a demon of greater power than himself, but the demon who is expelled is invariably hostile to him that expels him, and he departs from before him with every sign of wrath and shame. The fact that it was believed possible for the demon of Bekhten and the god Khonsu to fraternize, and to be present together at a festival made by the Prince of the country, shews that the people of Bekhten ascribed the same attributes to spirits or demons as they did to men. The demon who possessed the princess recognized in Khonsu a being who was mightier than himself, and, like a vanquished king, he wished to make the best terms he could with his conqueror, and to be on good terms with him.

The Egyptians believed that the divine powers frequently made known their will to them by means of dreams, and they attached considerable importance to them; the figures of the gods and the scenes which they saw when dreaming seemed to them to prove the existence of another world which was not greatly unlike that already known to them. The knowledge of the art of procuring dreams and the skill to interpret them were greatly prized in Egypt as elsewhere in the East, and the priest or official who possessed such gifts sometimes rose to places of high. honour in the state, as we may see from the example of Joseph, for it was universally believed that glimpses of the future were revealed to man in dreams. As instances of dreams recorded in the Egyptian texts may be quoted those of Thothmes IV., king of Egypt about B.C. 1450, and Nut-Amen, king of the Eastern Sûdân and Egypt, about B.C. 670. A prince, according to the stele which he set up before the breast of the Sphinx at Gizeh, was one day hunting near this emblem of Râ-Harmachis, and he sat down to rest under its shadow and fell asleep and dreamed a dream. In it the god appeared to him, and, having declared that he was the god Harmachis-Khepera-Râ-Temu, promised him that if he would clear away from the Sphinx, his own image, the drift sand in which it was becoming buried, he would give to him the sovereignty of the lands of the South and of the North, i.e., of all Egypt. In due course the prince became king of Egypt under the title of Thothmes IV., and the stele which is dated on the 19th day of the month Hathor of the first year of Thothmes IV. proves that the royal dreamer carried out the wishes of the god. Of Nut-Amen, the successor of the great Piânkhi who came down from Gebel Barkal and conquered all Egypt from Syene to the sea, we read that in the first year of his reign he one night dreamed a dream wherein he saw two serpents, one on his right hand and the other on his left; when he awoke they had disappeared. Having asked for an interpretation of the dream he was told:--"The land of the South is thine, and thou shalt have dominion over the land of the North: the White Crown and the Red Crown shall adorn thy head. The length and the breadth of the land shall be given unto thee, and the god Amen, the only god, shall be with thee." The two serpents were the symbols of the goddesses Nekhebet and Uatchet, the mistresses of the South and North respectively. As the result of his dream Nut-Amen invaded Egypt successfully and brought back much spoil, a portion of which he dedicated to the service of his god Amen.

Since dreams and visions in which the future might be revealed to the sleeper were greatly desired, the Egyptian magician set himself to procure such for his clients by various devices, such as drawing magical pictures and reciting magical words. The following are examples of spells for procuring a vision and dreams, taken from British Museum Papyrus, No. 122, lines 64 ff. and 359 ff. "To obtain a vision from [the god] Bes. Make a drawing of Besa, as shewn below, on your left hand, and envelope your hand in a strip of black cloth that has been consecrated to Isis (?) and lie down to sleep without speaking a word, even in answer to a question. Wind the remainder of the cloth round your neck. The ink with which you write must be composed of the blood of a cow, the blood of a white dove, fresh (?) frankincense, myrrh, black writing-ink, cinnabar, mulberry juice, rain-water, and the juice of wormwood and vetch. With this write your petition before the setting sun, [saying], c Send the truthful seer out of the holy shrine, I beseech thee, Lampsuer, Sumarta, Baribas, Dardalam, Iorlex: O Lord send the sacred deity Anuth, Anuth, Salbana, Chambré, Breïth, now, now, quickly, quickly. Come in this very night.'"

"To procure dreams: Take a clean linen bag and write upon it the names given below. Fold it up and make it into a lamp-wick, and set it alight, pouring pure oil over it. The word to be written is this: 'Armiuth, Lailamchoüch, Arsenophrephren, Phtha, Archentechtha.' Then in the evening, when you are going to bed, which you must do without touching food [or, pure from all defilement], do thus. Approach the lamp and repeat seven times the formula given below: then extinguish it and lie down to sleep. The formula is this: 'Sachmu . . . epaëma Ligotereënch: the Aeon, the Thunderer, Thou that hast swallowed the snake and dost exhaust the moon, and dost raise up the orb of the sun in his season, Chthetho is thy name; I require, O lords of the gods, Seth, Chreps, give me the information that I desire.'"

The peculiar ideas which the Egyptians held about the composition of man greatly favoured the belief in apparitions and ghosts. According to them a man consisted of a physical body, a shadow, a double, a soul, a heart, a spirit called the khu, a power, a name, and a spiritual body. When the body died the shadow departed from it, and could only be brought back to it by the performance of a mystical ceremony; the double lived in the tomb with the body, and was there visited by the soul whose habitation was in heaven. The soul was, from one aspect, a material thing, and like the ka, or double, was believed to partake of the funeral offerings which were brought to the tomb; one of the chief objects of sepulchral offerings of meat and drink was to keep the double in the tomb and to do away with the necessity of its wandering about outside the tomb in search of food. It is clear from many texts that, unless the double was supplied with sufficient food, it would wander forth from the tomb and eat any kind of offal and drink any kind of dirty water which it might find in its path. But besides the shadow, and the double, and the soul, the spirit of the deceased, which usually had its abode in heaven, was sometimes to be found in the tomb. There is, however, good reason for stating that the immortal part of man which lived in the tomb and had its special abode in the statue of the deceased was the "double." This is proved by the fact that a special part of the tomb was reserved for the ka, or double, which was called the "house of the ka," and that a priest, called the "priest of the ka," was specially appointed to minister therein. The double enjoyed the smell of the incense which was offered at certain times each year in the tomb, as well as the flowers, and herbs, and meat, and drink; and the statue of the deceased in which the double dwelt took pleasure in all the various scenes which were painted or sculptured on the walls of the various chambers of the tomb, and enjoyed again all the delights which his body had enjoyed upon earth. The ka, or double, then, in very early times was, to all intents and purposes, the ghost of the Egyptians. In later times the khu, or "spirit," seems to have been identified with it, and there are frequent allusions in the texts to the sanctity of the offerings made to the khu, and to their territories, i.e., the districts in which their mummified bodies lie.

Whether there was any general belief that the ka or khu could or did hold intercourse with his relatives or friends whom he left alive upon earth cannot be said, but an instance is known in which a husband complains to his wife, who has been dead for three years, of the troubles which she has brought upon him since her death. He describes his own merits and the good treatment which he had vouchsafed to her when she was alive, and declares that the evil with which she is requiting him is not to be endured. To make his complaint to reach her he first reduced it to writing upon papyrus, then went to her tomb and read it there, and finally tied the papyrus to a statue or figure of his wife which was therein; since her double or spirit lived in the tomb she would, of course, read the writing and understand it. It is a pity that we have no means of knowing what was the result of the husband's complaint. Elsewhere we have a fragment of a conversation which a priest of Amen called Khonsu-em-heb, who was searching for a suitable place in which to build his tomb, holds with the. double or spirit of some person whom he has disturbed, and the spirit of the dead tells some details of his life to the living man. The cemeteries were regarded with awe by the ancient Egyptians because of the spirits of the dead who dwelt in them, and even the Arabic-speaking peoples of Egypt and the Sûdân, if we exclude the "antiquity grubber," have them in great respect for the same reason. The modern peoples of the Sûdân firmly believe that the spirits of those slain in battle dwell on the field where they fell, or where their bodies are buried, and the soldiers in the tenth battalion of Lord Kitchener's army declare that the grave of the gallant Major Sidney, who was shot while charging at the head of his regiment, in the battle of Abû Hamed, August 7th, 1897, "is watched regularly every night by the ghosts of the native soldiers who were killed at Abû Hamed, and who mount guard over their dead commander's tomb, challenging, with every military detail, all passers-by. So implicitly is this legend credited by the blacks that none of them will, after dusk, approach the grave. Any one doing so is believed to be promptly halted by a phantom sentry, and even the words (in Arabic), 'Guard, turn out!' are often (so the story goes) plainly heard repeated at some distance off across the desert."

The Egyptians believed that a man's fate or destiny was decided before he was born, and that he had no power whatever to alter it. Their sages, however, professed to be able to declare what the fate might be, provided that they were given certain data, that is to say, if they were told the date of his birth, and if they were able to ascertain the position of the planets and stars at that time. The goddess of fate or destiny was called "Shai," and she is usually accompanied by another goddess called "Renenet," who is commonly regarded as the lady of fortune; they both appear in the Judgment Scene, where they seem to watch the weighing of the heart on behalf of the deceased. But another goddess, Meskhenet, is sometimes present, and she also seems to have had influence over a man's future; in any case she was able to predict what that future was to be. Thus we read that she and Isis, and Nephthys, and Heqet, disguised as women, went to the house of Râ-user, whose wife Râ-Tettet was in travail; when they had been taken into her room they assisted her in giving birth to triplets, and as each child was born Meskhenet declared, "He shall be a king who shall have dominion over the whole land."

And this prophecy was fulfilled, for the three boys became three of the kings of the Vth dynasty. The Seven Hathor goddesses also could predict the future of a human being, for in the well-known "Tale of Two Brothers" it is related that, when the god Khnemu, at the request of Râ-Harmachis, had created for Bata a wife "who was more beautiful in her person than any other woman in all the earth, for the essence of every god was contained in her," they came to see her, and that they spake with one voice, saying, "Her death will be caused by the knife." And this came to pass, for, according to the story, when the king whose wife she became heard from her first husband that she had left him and had wrought evil against him, he entered into judgment with her in the presence of his chiefs and nobles, and "one carried out their decree," i.e., they sentenced her to death and she was executed. Similarly, in another story, the Seven Hathors came to see the son who had been born to a certain king in answer to his prayers to the gods, and when they had seen him they said, "He shall die by means of a crocodile, or a serpent, or a dog." The story goes on to say how be escaped from the crocodile and the serpent, and though the end is wanting, it is quite clear that he was wounded by an accidental bite of his dog and so died. The moral of all such stories is that there is no possibility of avoiding fate, and it is most probable that the modern Egyptian has only inherited his ancestors' views as to its immutability. A man's life might, however, be happy or unhappy according as the hour of the day or the day itself was lucky or unlucky, and every day of the Egyptian year was divided into three parts, each of which was lucky or unlucky. When Olympias was about to give birth to Alexander the Great, Nectanebus stood by her making observations of the heavenly bodies, and from time to time he besought her to restrain herself until the auspicious hour had arrived; and it was not until he saw a certain splendour in the sky and knew that all the heavenly bodies were in a favourable position that he permitted her to brine, forth her child. And when he had said, "O queen, now thou wilt give birth to a governor of the world," the child fell upon the ground while the earth quaked, and the lightnings flashed, and the thunder roared. Thus it is quite evident that the future of a child depended even upon the hour in which he was born.

In magical papyri we are often told not to perform certain magical ceremonies on such and such days, the idea being that on these days hostile powers will make them to be powerless, and that gods mightier than those to which the petitioner would appeal will be in the ascendant. There have come down to us, fortunately, papyri containing copies of the Egyptian calendar, in which each third of every day for three hundred and sixty days of the year is marked lucky or unlucky, and we know from other papyri why certain days were lucky or unlucky, and why others were only partly so. Taking the month Thoth, which was the first month of the Egyptian year, and began, according to the Gregorian Calendar, on August 29th, we find that the days are marked as follows:--

Now the sign means "lucky," and means "unlucky"; thus at a glance it could be seen which third of the day is lucky or unlucky, and the man who consulted the calendar would, of course, act accordingly. It must be noted that the priests or magicians who drew up the calendar had good reasons for their classification of the days, as we may see from the following example. The 19th day of Thoth is, in the above list, marked wholly lucky, i.e., each third of it is lucky, and the papyrus Sallier IV. also marks it wholly lucky, and adds the reason:--"It is a day of festival in heaven and upon earth in the presence of Râ. It is the day when flame was hurled upon those who followed the boat containing the shrine of the gods; and on this day the gods gave praises being content," etc. But in both lists the 26th day is marked wholly unlucky, the reason being, "This was the day of the fight between Horus and Set." They first fought in the form of men, then they took the form of bears, and in this state did battle with each other for three days and three nights. Isis aided Set when he was getting the worst in the fight, and Horus thereupon cut off his mother's head, which Thoth transformed by his words of power into that of a cow and put on her body. On this day offerings are to be made to Osiris and Thoth, but work of any kind is absolutely forbidden. The calendars of lucky and unlucky days do not, however, always agree as to a given day. Thus in the list given above the 20th day of Thoth is marked wholly unlucky, but in the papyrus Sallier IV. it is wholly lucky, but the reader is told not to do any work in it, nor to slay oxen, nor to receive a stranger; on this day the gods who are in the following of Râ slew the rebels. Concerning the fourth day of the next month, Paophi, the papyrus Sallier IV. says, "Go not forth from thy house from any side of it; whosoever is born on this day shall die of the disease aat." Concerning the fifth day it says, "Go not forth from thy house from any side of it, and hold no intercourse with women. This is the day wherein all things were performed in the divine presence, and the majesty of the god Menthu was satisfied therein. Whosoever is born on this day shall die of excessive venery." Concerning the ninth day it says, "Whosoever is born on this day shall die of old age," and concerning the fifteenth, "Go not forth from thy dwelling at eventide, for the serpent Uatch, the son of the god, goeth forth at this time, and misfortunes follow him; whosoever shall see him shall lose his eye straightway." Again, the twenty-sixth day of Paophi was a lucky day for making the plan of a house; on the fifth day of Hathor no fire was to be kindled in the house; on the sixteenth day it was forbidden to listen to songs of joy because on this day Isis and Nephthys wept for Osiris at Abydos; a man born on the twenty-third day would die by drowning; and so on. But to the three hundred and sixty days given in the calendars of lucky and unlucky days must be added the five epagomenal days which were considered to be of great importance and had each its peculiar name. On the first Osiris was born, on the second Heru-ur (Aroueris), on the third Set, on the fourth Isis, and on the fifth Nephthys; the first, third, and fifth of these days were unlucky, and no work of any kind was to be undertaken on them. The rubric which refers to these days states that whosoever knoweth their names shall never suffer from thirst, that he shall never be smitten down by disease, and that the goddess Sekhet shall never take possession of him; it also directs that figures of the five gods mentioned above shall be drawn with unguent and ânti scent upon a piece of fine linen, evidently to serve as an amulet.

From the life of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes we learn that the Egyptians were skilled in the art of casting nativities, and that knowing the exact moment of the birth of a man they proceeded to construct his horoscope. Nectanebus employed for the purpose a tablet made of gold and silver and acacia wood, to which were fitted three belts. Upon the outer belt was Zeus with the thirty-six decani surrounding him; upon the second the twelve signs of the Zodiac were represented; and upon the third the sun and moon. He set the tablet upon a tripod, and then emptied out of a small box upon it models of the seven stars that were in the belts, and put into the middle belt eight precious stones; these he arranged in the places wherein he supposed the planets which they represented would be at the time of the birth of Olympias, and then told her fortune from them. But the use of the horoscope is much older than the time of Alexander the Great, for to a Greek horoscope in the British Museum is attached "an introductory letter from some master of the art of astrology to his pupil, named Hermon, urging him to be very exact and careful in his application of the laws which he ancient Egyptians, with their laborious devotion to the art, had discovered and handed down to posterity." Thus we have good reason for assigning the birthplace of the horoscope to Egypt. In connexion with the horoscope must be mentioned the "sphere" or "table" of Democritus as a means of making predictions as to life and death. In a magical papyrus I we are told to "ascertain in what month the sick man took to his bed, and the name he received at his birth. Calculate the [course of] the moon, and see how many periods of thirty days have elapsed; then note in the table the number of days left over, and if the number comes in the upper part of the table, he will live, but if in the lower part, he will die."

Both from the religious and profane literature of Egypt we learn that the gods and man in the future life were able at will to assume the form of any animal, or bird, or plant, or living thing, which they pleased, and one of the greatest delights to which a man looked forward was the possession of that power. This is proved by the fact that no less than twelve of the chapters of the Book of the Dead are devoted to providing the deceased with the words of power, the recital of which was necessary to enable him to transform himself into a "hawk of gold," a "divine hawk," "the governor of the sovereign princes," "the god who giveth light in the darkness," a lotus, the god Ptah, a bennu bird (i.e., phoenix), a heron, a "living soul," a swallow, the serpent Sata, and a crocodile; and another chapter enabled him to transform himself into "whatever form he pleaseth." Armed with this power he could live in the water in the form of a crocodile, in the form of a serpent he could glide over the rocks and ground, in the form of the birds mentioned above he could fly through the air, and soar up and perch himself upon the bow of the boat of Râ, in the form of the lotus he had mastery over the plants of the field, and in the form of Ptah he became "more powerful than the lord of time, and shall gain the mastery over millions of years." The bennu bird, it will be remembered, was said to be the "soul of Râ," and by assuming this form the deceased identified himself with Khepera, the great god of creation, and thus acquired the attributes of the soul of the Sun-god. In the Elysian Fields he was able to assume any form and to swim and fly to any distance in any direction. It is noteworthy that no beast of the field or wild animal is mentioned as a type of his possible transformations into animals.

Now the Egyptians believed that as the souls of the departed could assume the form of any living thing or plant, so the "gods," who in many respects closely resembled them, could and did take upon themselves the forms of birds and beasts; this was the fundamental idea of the so-called "Egyptian animal worship," which provoked the merriment of the cultured Greek, and drew down upon the Egyptians the ridicule and abuse of the early Christian writers. But if the matter be examined closely its apparent stupidity disappears. The Egyptians paid honour to certain birds, and animals, and reptiles, because they considered that they possessed certain of the characteristics of the gods to whom they made them sacred. The bull was a type of the strength and procreative power of the god of reproduction in nature, and the cow was the type of his female counterpart; every sacred animal and living thing possessed some quality or attribute which was ascribed to some god, and as each god was only a form of Râ, the quality or attribute ascribed to him was that of the Sun-god himself. The educated Egyptian never worshipped an animal as an animal, but only as an incarnation of a god, and the reverence paid to animals in Egypt was in no way different from that paid to the king, who was regarded as "divine" and as an incarnation of Râ the Sun-god, who was the visible symbol of the Creator. The relation of the king to Râ was identical with that of Râ to God. The Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans never understood the logical conception which underlay the reverence with which the Egyptians regarded certain animals, and as a result they grossly misrepresented their religion. The ignorant people, no doubt, often mistook the symbol for what it symbolized, but it is wrong to say that the Egyptians worshipped animals in the ordinary sense of the word, and this fact cannot be too strongly insisted on. Holding the views he did about transformations there was nothing absurd in the reverence which the Egyptian paid to animals. When a sacred animal died the god whom it represented sought out another animal of the same species in which to renew his incarnation, and the dead body of the animal, inasmuch as it had once been the dwelling-place of a god, was mummified and treated in much the same way as a human body after death, in order that it might enjoy immortality. These views seem strange, no doubt, to us when judged by modern ideas, but they formed an integral part of the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, from the earliest to the latest times. What is remarkable, however, is the fact that, in spite of invasions, and foreign wars, and internal dissensions, and external influences of all kinds, the Egyptians clung to their gods and the sometimes childish and illogical methods which they adopted in serving them with a conservatism and zeal which have earned for them the reputation of being at once the most religious and most superstitious nation of antiquity. Whatever literary treasures may be brought to light in the future as the result of excavations in Egypt, it is most improbable that we shall ever receive from that country any ancient Egyptian work which can properly be classed among the literature of atheism or freethought; the Egyptian might be more or less religious according to his nature and temperament, but, judging, from the writings of his priests and teachers which are now in our hands, the man who was without religion and God in some form or other was most rare, if not unknown.

Egyptian Astrology

by Isadora Rayshell

Find your birthday and read then sign below.

January 1 - January 7 - The Nile

January 8 - January 21 - Amon-Ra

January 22 - January 31 - Mout

February 1 - February 11 - Amon-Ra

February 12 - February 29 - Geb

March 1 - March 10 - Osiris

March 11 - March 31 - Isis

April 1 - April 19 - Thoth

April 20 - May 7 - Horus

May 8 - May 27 - Anubis

May 28 - June 18 - Seth

June 19 - June 28 - The Nile

June 29 - July 13 - Anubis

July 14 - July 28 - Bastet

July 29 - August 11 - Sekhmet

August 12 - August 19 - Horus

August 20 - August 31 - Geb

September 1 - September 7 - The Nile

September 8 - September 22 - Mout

September 23 - September 27 - Bastet

September 28 - October 2 - Set

October 3 - October 17 - Bastet

October 18 - October 29 - Isis

October 30 - November 7 - Sekhmet

November 8 - November 17 - Thoth

November 18 - November 26 - The Nile

November 27 - December 18 - Osiris

December 19 - December 31 - Isis

THE SIGNS

The Nile

Pacifist and devoted to refinement, receptive to wealth, scientific,tolerating, tender towards those who are not ignorant, subject toanger.

Colors: Men (deep red), Women (deep blue)

Compatible Signs: Amon-Ra, Set

Amon-Ra

Very generous, fruitful, people feel reassured around you, and willing to give their best.

Colors: Men (yellow), Women (orange)

Compatible Signs: The Nile, Horus

Mout

Ironic, tremendous internal wealth, know how to rapidly connect with others, looks for paternal authority.

Colors: Men (brown), Women (red carmine)

Compatible Signs: Amon-Ra, Thoth

Geb

Engaging personality, sensitive, modest, occasionally narcissistic,but can rise above vanity.

Colors: Men (violet), Women (rose)

Compatible Signs: Set, Horus

Osiris

Two sides to your personality, fiery but fragile, indecisive.

Colors: Men (yellow), Women (green)

Compatible Signs: Isis, Thoth

Isis

Solidarity, cultivates nobility.

Colors: Men (white), Women (blue)

Compatible Signs: Osiris, Thoth

Thoth

Enthusiastic, enterprising, courageous, likes to take risks.

Colors: Men (rose), Women (white)

Compatible Signs: Bastet, Isis

Horus

Sparkling personality, intense will, intelligent, understanding,

impatient to exert influence.

Colors: Men (red carmine), Women (gold)

Compatible Signs: Bastet, Geb

Anubis

Clever, full of compassion , fatalist, ambivalent, inhibited, deep.

Colors: Men (sienna), Women (crimson)

Compatible Signs: Bastet, Isis

Set

Perfectionist, prone to anger.

Colors: Men (turquoise), Women (black)

Compatible Signs: Geb, The Nile

Bastet

You look for balance and harmony, anxious, devoted.

Colors: Men (yellow ochre), Women (grey)

Compatible Signs: Sehkmet, Horus

Sekhmet

Telepathic, observant, authoritative, indulgent, moral.

Colors: Men (green), Women (turquoise)

Compatible Signs: Bastet, Geb

Egyptian Magick

In ancient Egypt, special knowledge of the properties of powerful elements--
the sun,
the earth,
water
and fearsome animals--
the snake,
the crocodile,
the scorpion,
and therapeutic essences--

the poppy,
the acacia,
and honey,
was the province of magicians.

Magic was part and parcel of the ancient religion. Egyptian magic was not to display psychic powers or perform fantastic feats, but rather, it had a practical purpose in the civilization. Magic was the way by which one extended and eased life, relieved physical and emotional pain and, generally, advanced individual well-being and benefitted society.

Egyptologists have unearthed thousands of scrolls and texts, documenting innumerable, healing prayers and spells against evil. The ancients saw magic as a creative force that bound spirit and matter together. Magicians sought the thread of spirit, that connected to any actual object (or in the case of illness, a condition), then addressed intervening energies to that connection.

PRINCIPALS OF THE ANCIENT MAGICK

Magicians

Purification

From the Book of the Heavenly Cow
To pronounce this spell in the right way (one) must be drenched in oil and ointments, with a censer filed with incense in hand; he must have natron of one quality behind his ears,and natron of another quality in his mouth; he must be clothed in two new vestments, having washed in flood water, be shod in white sandals and have a picture of the goddess Ma'at painted in fresh ink on his tongue.
This spell must be read when one is in a state of purity and without blemish and has not eaten small animals or fish and has not had carnal relations.

THE TOOLS OF MAGICK

Amulets
An item, worn, hung from a chain or cord or bound to the body, thought to enhance positive forces and ward off evil influences. (the djed pillar (Osiris), scarab (Khephre), Isis knot, see the pectoral, left)

Gold and Precious stones
Gold was thought to be the skin of the gods, silver represented the bones of the gods and precious stones, such as lapis lazuli, was the hair of the gods. In general, things of beauty, were considered to be pleasing to the gods.

Knots and Numbers
A magic knot is the convergence of the forces of the earth and the divine. A number is considered to be an abstraction of a knot. In the Leyden Magical Papyrus seven is the number that has a particularly compelling power.

The Substitute Body
Wooden models of humans, who would be entombed with royalty and nobles to perform duties for the dead in the next t world. These are shabtis or those who answers.
Waxen figures would be used as the objects of hatred and anger.

Letters to the Dead
These are communications from the living to their deceased relatives, asking them for forgiveness, help and assistance and guidance.

The Lamp
A special light used to divine the existence of good or evil forces.

Addressing supernatural powers
Prayers and offerings
     In dealing with the gods care was required. They were powerful and highly respected: Mut carried the epithet Great in Magic, the vulture-headed Heknet was Mistress of Spirits, the hippo goddess Taweret was called Great of Sorcery and Sekhmet was the Powerful One. Their nature was often dual: Taweret was a protectress against Typhonic powers, carrying an ankh or a burning torch, but she had the form of an extremely dangerous animal; Sekhmet, a ferocious lion goddess, brought death and destruction when she accompanied the pharaoh on his campaigns of war, but was the main support of the healers in their fight against disease. It was best to treat them with reverence.
    Many people today may see practices such as prayers and offerings to gods as distinct from magic, it was not to the Egyptians. Both the living and the dead went to great lengths to receive the blessing of the gods. Hymns of praise were composed and recited, written down on papyrus and put in the tombs. Offerings of food, real or carved on walls, were supposed to satiate the god's hunger and thirst.
    Just as the statue of the god Amen for instance was the god himself, a magician, by identifying himself with a god, was transformed into him
'I will say: "Come to me Montu, lord of the day! Come, that you may put N born of N into my hand like an insect in the mouth of a bird". I am Montu whom the gods adore. I will sever your bones and eat your flesh.'

prayer of protection

I call on the Light of Isis and the Power of Isis to protect me and mine; From all things of darkness, From all manner of unjust attack. Those that mean me harm, You shall not pass this barrier! Those that cause me pain, You cannot pass this barrier! The Light of Isis stops you! The Power of Isis stops you! I Glow with the Light of Isis! I speak with the Power of Isis! No evil shall pass, no evil shall enter! Isis stands by me,She raises the copper harpoon! She is my protector! She battles for me! Isis the ever victorious, She battles for me! Horus stands by me, he raises the copper harpoon! He is my protector! He battles for me! Horus the Great Warrior, he battles for me! You shall halt, you shall cease your attacks, You shall lose this unjust battle against me! Your weapons shall fail you,your weapons will turn against you! Isis is my protector, She battles for me! She of the Ten Thousand Names Protects me in Ten Thousand Ways! Isis is my protector and She shall overcome you! Horus is my protector and he shall overcome you! Be gone! Be Away!

ISIS PROTECTION OIL
4 drops Black Pepper
4 drops Ginger
6 drops Musk oil
1 drop Pine
4 drops Lime
Added to 2 Tblsp. of Jojoba oil.

RECIPE FOR HOLY ANOINTING OIL:
4Drops Essential oil of Benzoin
4Drops Essential oil of Cederwood
4Drops Essential oil of Frankincense
2Drops Essential oil of Hyssop
Mix these into 2Tblsp. Jojoba oil.

KYPHI INCENSE

Red Sandalwood 1 part
Frankincense 1/2 part
Myrrh 1/4 part
Galangal 1 part
Juniper Berries 1/4 part
Dragon's Blood 1/4 part
Calamus Root 1 part
Bay Laurel 1 part
Orris Root 1/4 part
Henna Powder 1/4 part
Cinnamon 1/4 part
Balm of Gilead 1/4 part
Styrax Bark 1/4 part

Add oils of Amber, Honey, Acacia, Orris, Styrax, Lotus and Musk to personal preference.

Astrology goes back to the times of the Sumerians, who settled in Mesopotamia around 4000 BC. This marks the first example of a people who worshipped the sun, moon, and Venus. They considered these heavenly bodies gods, or the homes of gods. The priests of the time who communicated with the gods were the first rulers. There were High Priests and lesser priests - much like the way things were in Atlantis. They carried the teachings with them from one civilization to another.

The Time of Ptolemy

Ptolemy worked from the data of past astrologers to map over one thousand stars. He compiled a list of 48 constellations, and, for the most part, described the longitude and latitude lines of the earth. He was a believer that the earth was the center of the universe and worked to advance this theory. His effort in this area was in his thirteen volume work called the Almagest.

The Ptolemaic system is explained why some planets seemed to move backwards for periods of time in their orbit around earth. He theorized that each planet also revolved in a smaller circle as well as a larger one. This was called the "epicycle." This theory would survive for 1400 years, until it was finally accepted that the earth was itself another planet in orbit around the sun.

The first book defined Ptolemy's reasoning for practicing astrology as well as astronomy, for by this time, there were many who opposed astrology. He said that it should not be abandoned merely because there are a few people who abuse it. This book also deals with the various alignments of planets, the moon, and the sun. Ptolemy describes in detail which positions are favorable and which are not. He also explained the signs, when they begin, and why they begin there.

The second book of the Tetrabiblos describes astrology as it relates to countries. Ptolemy makes the point that astrological events of countries and race supersede those of the individual. He details which planets rule over which country, and makes the distinction between human signs and animal signs. He notes that human signs cause things to happen to humans and animal signs affect animals. Finally, Ptolemy explains how the planets affect earth. For example, Saturn was thought to cause cold, floods, poverty, and death. Mars caused war and drought. Comets and shooting stars were thought to also affect the weather.

The third book dealt with the individual. The Tetrabiblos examined conception and birth, saying that it was better to work with the conception date and that this date should be known by observation. Several key factors were involved with this aspect of astrology. The sign that was rising at the time of conception, the moon's phase, and the movements of the planets were all taken into consideration. The father's influence was shown through the sun and Saturn, while the mother's was shown through the moon and Venus.

Finally, the forth book of the Tetrabiblos handled matters of occupation, marriage, children, travel, and 'houses' of the zodiac. The particular angles of various planets were used to calculate these things.

The Tetrabiblos compiled almost all of the astrological works up to that point. Only very few modifications have been made since then, and most of what we know as astrology comes from this work. Critics claim that it is "tedious and dry" to read, and that there are some contradictions in Ptolemy's ideas.

Furthermore, he did not take into account the precession of the equinoxes. He undoubtedly knew about this phenomenon, an overlapping between signs and constellations that gets larger over time (about 5 degrees per three hundred years), but why he did not examine or explain this is a mystery and one of the biggest flaws of his work.

There were also problems with his correlation between astrology and the seasons. His belief that the conception time was preferable to birth time is a misguided one, as conception time for an individual is actually rather difficult to calculate. There were other errors in his work, mostly dealing with beliefs of the time and misinformation about astronomy; however, for the most part, the Tetrabiblos has proved invaluable to this day.

Ptolemy may never have actually practiced astrology, as there has not been a single horoscope found that was created by him. Some say that his writing almost reflects an embarrassment about astrology, and suggest that perhaps he might not have been a scholar of the art, but more a reporter of it.

Probably the most disturbing accusation against Ptolemy is that his figures were intentionally skewed and doctored to fit his hypotheses. A study of Ptolemy's figures was done in 1977, and the findings were that most of his data was fraudulent. For more on this subject, one should refer to the book by R. Newton, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy. It is hard to hold this against Ptolemy; he was, of course, working in ancient times. However, had he used correct numbers in his work, it might not have taken future scholars 1400 more years to correct wrong ideas concerning the universe.

In his defense, he was living during a time when 'politically incorrect' beliefs could be grounds for punishment. It actually may not have been safe for him to expose the truth; instead he may have been forced to make his numbers fit into incorrect theories. He knew enough about the truth...the precession of the equinoxes and the theories that postulated that the earth, in fact, revolved around the sun. Apparently, fear for his own life is the reason why he did not act on his knowledge.

After Ptolemy, many astrologers followed. Some notable Egyptians in the field were Paul of Alexandria, Hephaestion of Thebes, and Palchus, though little other than their names are known about these people. Ptolemy's work was continued and commented on by the Alexandrian mathematician Pappus, the mathematician/astronomer Theon of Alexandria, and the Greek mathematician Proclus, who wrote a paraphrase of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos.

Most of our understanding of Egyptian astrology is contained within the Cairo Calendar, which consists of a listing of all the days of an Egyptian year. The listings within the calendar all take the same form and can be broken up into three parts:

the type of day (favorable, unfavorable etc)

a mythological event which may make a particular day more favorable or unfavorable

a prescribed behavior associated with that day.
Unlike modern astrology as found within newspapers, where one can choose whether to follow the advice there in or not, the Egyptians strictly adhered to what an astrologer would advise. As is evidenced by the papyrus of the Cairo Calendar, on days where there were adverse or favorable conditions, if the astrologers told a person not to go outside, not to bathe, or to eat fish on a particular day, such advice was taken very literally and seriously.

The pyramids have long fascinated Robert Bauval. He is Egyptian, born in Al-Iskandariyya (Alexandria) to Belgian parents, and has spent most of his life living and working in the Middle East. For many years he had pondered over the significance of Sah, the constellation of Orion, and its link to the pyramids. One night, while working in Saudi Arabia, he took his family and a friend's family up into the sand dunes of the Arabian desert for a camping expedition.

Bauval knew that the seemingly inconsistent layout of the three Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza was no accident, and had applied his own engineer's mind, and those of many friends to the problem. Most agreed that the alignment, though unusual, was no accident, given the precise mathematical knowledge that the Egyptians had.

His friend, a keen amateur astronomer, pointed out Orion, and mentioned, in passing, that Mintaka, the smaller more easterly of the stars making up Orion's belt was offset slightly from the others. Immediately Bauval saw the answer -- the three Belt Stars were aligned in exactly the same way as the three pyramids. Bauval checked the alignment in 2450 BCE by precessing the three Belt Stars back, and found that, due to their close proximity in space, great distance from Earth, and negligible proper motion, they looked exactly the same then as they do today. Of course, they had changed in declination -- then they were just below the celestial equator, at about -1 degree declination.

The pyramids were a mirror image, the Earthly representation of the Belt of Orion, the destination of the dead King! The Egyptians were dualists -- everything they thought and believed was a duality. Everything had its counterpart, cause and effect, left and right, East and West, death and rebirth -- nothing was ever seen in isolation. They had constructed at Giza an exact replica of the Duat destination of the King. Far from being a tomb, the pyramid was the starting point of the King's journey back to the stars from whence he came, back to the First Time. Bauval initially made use of the astronomy program Skyglobe 3,5 for the PC. Though too inaccurate for serious work -- it does not take proper motion, rotation, refraction, for example, into account -- it was sufficient to clarify Bauval's mind as to the value of his discovery. Skyglobe 3,5 will plot the Milky Way on its charts if requested, and doing so added further proof to Bauval's theory. Giza is West of the Nile -- putting the plane of our galaxy into the equation showed that Orion is "West" of the Milky Way, in proportion to Giza and the Nile.

Robert Temple wrote a book called The Sirius Mystery - which deals with Earth's connection to the Sirius star system.

"To Egypt, the 23rd of July, when Sirius starts to rise the waters of the Nile begin to flood. Then it meant fertility, that is one reason, for she was Isis. Sirius, Isis, the great mother of the gods. Even the Swiss celebration day, is the 1st of August. This is a Sirius relative.

"Our solar system is born in from the womb of Isis. Sirius B, which is Isis , is made of iron (radio astronomy has shown). The iron of Sirius b, is the same as the iron in our blood and the iron of Earth and of our solar system. Sirius is our blood. We resonate to her. She is older than our solar system, which is a combination of interstellar debris, including the gas clouds, our sperm of Osiris/Orion. The iron in our blood comes from Sirius, its position in the sky, could thus be considered to resonate to Sirius's position of influence. Iron is the only true magnetic element.

Sirius has a unique relationship to us. The difference between the mass of our sun and the mass of Sirius is a harmonic and universal miracle. Sirius B has a ratio mass difference to our sun of 1.053. This becomes significant when we look at the Giza plateau. When comparing the mean base side of the Cheops Great Pyramid to the Mean base side of the Khephren pyramid, the larger Cheops measurement is 1.067 that of the Khephren's.

When this is then compared to the equation of Sirius B and our sun, the Great Pyramid being Sirius, and the Khephren pyramid our sun, as the Egyptian Book Of The Dead indicates (in fact the hieroglyph for Sirius is the Hieroglyph of the pyramid) they share a difference 0,01, which is very precise, scientifically. However, there is an extra digit 0.014, that doesn't sound so perfect anymore).

But this turns out to be an essential key in harmonic theory, the phenomenon of resonance itself. For 0.014 is actually the Pythagorean comma. The Pythagoreans were those 'mystic' mathematicians, who loved mathematics as the mystery of the ages. But what is the Pythagorean comma?

It is the difference between the mathematics of the octave and the 5th. 0.0136 is that precise discrepancy between the mathematics of the fifth and the octave, and it is rounded off as 0.014, and as Sir Arthur Eddington relates: there is 136° of freedom of the electron. theory is 0,.036. And furthermore 136 + 1 equals the Fine structure Constant of physics, the universal natural constant. Fractal harmonics, in the resonance of the Sun Sirius Pyramids equation, or interstellar neuron holography.

This is also evidenced, historically as having been implicated in the ancient "Mystery Schools" within the Archaic Esoteric Arkana of the Arcane Wisdom, as a precise wisdom, or the Isis Mysteries, and her mathematics. The astronomer and mathematician Macrobius, at the end of the fourth century mentioned the sacred fraction 256/243 which is 0.053 (Sirius b mass to Sun), and describes its use in harmonic theory by peoples which already to him were "ancients".

This harmony of the Sphere is accurate within 3 decimals of each other, and it is also the difference between perfect mathematics (the ones that work theoretically) and the actual mathematics of the universe, 0,014. What that means is that Sirius is no coincidence. It is really resonating to our sun. It is connected to our sun like a neuron, because they have this major mathematical relation in size to each other, harmonic resonance, that is likened to holography, a kind of Virtual Neuron Internal Net, as we may call it, or as Astronomer Royal, Robert Temple, has dubbed it: "The Anubis Cell".

Since such a long distance resonance is now demonstrated to occur between Sirius B and our sun 8.7 light years from each other, these are two solar systems whom are inhabiting the same cell of space, which enacts the "Complexity theorem" which has "instantaneous communication" occurs in such cells as a form of ordered self regulation. Instant communication harbored in this macro region of space, which acts as if the elements are not separated by any temporal distance. It is a macro region cell that turns disorder into order, called a "dissipative structure". Such an onset of "complexity", according to Nobel prize winner Professor Ilya Prigogine, can result in the instantaneous extension of long-range order by a magnitude of more than 10 million. That is like a fifth of the people of France speak the same sentence at the same time.

So Sirius is Sirius business in terms of resonance. No wonder the Egyptians placed so much significance on it. It is the iron in the blood, it is the Earth's iron, it is in the same holographic virtual neuron of order. What happens there, instantly is mirrored in equivalence, here, by harmonic resonance, that utilizes "complexity theory", yielding "instantaneous communication", without subscribing to a speed of light limit. Do you imagine that the alignment of our solar system at 90° to the galactic plane is not noticed in the resonance of Time and Space of Sirius. This is a cross to a cross.

Furthermore, Sirius C, has now been detected, as relate by astronomers Daniel Benese and J.L. Duvent in Astronomy and Astrophysics magazine in 1995. When Sirius C is mapped by the pyramid capstone, and its mass is 0.005 of our sun, the capstone was 0.00643 of the Great pyramid. Hence 0.001° of accuracy.

August the 11th, 12th and 13th are the Isis days, that are very important to us. Isis sings in our blood at a high point then. That is why it has been so much used by Napoleon, the magicians and the "time travelers".

August the 13th is also the day when Quetzelcoatl was born, ruling the serpent of illumination, the fusion of bird with serpent, Horus with Set's Sata snake, Gurudas with Nagas. It is also the higher Venus cycles, the top of the pentagrams cycle of the order of Venus in our skies during one year. So August the 13th has a Venus-Sirius connection. The cycle of Sirius B is exactly 49 years cycle, alternating to 50 years. That is the Jubilee, so there is a Sirius/Isis Jubilee now.

The alignment of the Holy Cross happens every 12,901 years. The whole zodiac, from Aquarius to Aquarius, Ptah to Ptah (the Water Bearer and Phoenix) - it just happens two times. Only at one time it happens in-between Zodiacal Alpha and Omega.

For the Egyptians Aquarius was the water bearer Ptah, the first man. So we are coming in the age of the first man, NeferAtum, again, the water bearer. The interesting thing is, that it is always before the water bearer, that we have this alignment of the Holy Cross. In between the age of Leo (the Sphinx) has that alignment, about 12,901 years ago.

The Egyptians, like the Greeks and Vedic astrologers, had Aquarius apart from being Ptah (the water bearer), as the Phoenix. And the Phoenix has the same hieroglyph as the Pyramid, and Sirius. In that sense we could say that this cross is doubled up as a double cross, in that we are entering the age of the Phoenix, which is Sirius, by a 90° cross.

The same Hieroglyph is also used for the Pyramidion, the capstone, and the vehicle of ascensions. The first sperm of Atum Ra, of the NTR gods. This sperm of the gods, was also eaten as the Spirit and the Bread Of Light. Made from super conducting elements, found in meteorites, which are rich in Iridium and Rhodium, and which were processed at Mount Serabit, Sinai, where the White Powder, the Sperm of the Gods, was discovered. The Stone from the stars, Bija, was also a meteorite to the ancient Egyptians: Sperm = Bijah; Meteorite; Bread; Pyramidion. Which in turn equals: Sirius, Pyramid, Phoenix from the Iridium Ashes, and Water Bearer of the Aqua Vitae, the Arcanum of Immortality.

This alignment is important and does not happen very often. We have this massive, enormous rotation. When one spins a bicycle wheel and holds it, the faster it spins the heavier it gets and the more it pulls you.

When you have a solar system, it is like an enormous gyroscope of inertia. That is an enormous rotation that affects everything, and you have a galaxy. Imagine a gyroscope galactic wide, making a cross to one that is solar system wide. A 90 degree angle is an ortho plane, that is a way that information exchange and translation, and compression of one holographic continuum into another, galaxy into solar system, into Earth, and solar system into galaxy.

But what this also means is that the two planes in their middle, have a still point. From June/July to May 2000 there is this stillpoint of focus, gravitational vortex compression, with potential magnetic coherent implosion. That is why our colleague Daniel Winter dubbed it a burp: the compression of planes, and then the expression of the digested gravitational bubble into a new creation, in anticipation of the 2012 galactic full conjunction and maximum concrescence of novelty.

The "Anubis Cell" (which Emmanuel called Oversoul Sun), as Dr Robert Temple has suggested, is stating that there is such a major resonance relative of Sirius and our sun, that perhaps what ever happens on Sirius effects us in a mathematical sense. So that we are maybe even a part of a holographic show designed at Sirius. Horus is shown pictographically as a crocodile with a falcon head and a dog on its tale, illustrating the knowledge of coherent holography between the two systems.

Sirius rises just before the Sun once a year. In fact, it was the herald of the new year for the early Egyptians and also marked the time of the annual flooding of the Nile.

Sirius has an "invisible twin" which is a highly compacted "white dwarf" with an unimaginable density. An African myth (The Dogon) holds that there is a third partner, however, no third body has yet to be discovered. I suspect that the "third component" is what we call a "black hole" because the Orion Constellation is a virtual nursery when it comes to producing stars.

The Great Pyramid (like Sirius) too has an "invisible twin"! The height of the Great Pyramid is exactly one half pi (22/7) in relationship to the sum of the sides of its base! The 1/2 pi gives "the big clue" regarding the pyramid's "other half".

The Great Pyramid is the bottom pyramid representing "dense earth" (the lower portion of Orion) and its "etheric twin" is the inverted pyramid on top. Together they represent Pi. This juxtaposition is also a "representation" of Orion with Orion's Belt at the exact spot where the two pyramids meet. The place where the physical meets the spiritual is at the "capstone" of The Great Pyramid or at Orion's Belt which divides his upper nature and lower nature.

The Jupiter Project

Horus is associated to Sirius. Heru Ami Sebtep, which means Horus of Sirius and Heru Sept means Horus of the Dog Star (Sirius is in Canis Major, the major dog). Since Neb Heru is Nebiru, the sign of Sirius is the cross as well.

The creative aspect of Egyptian magic

The Egyptian term for magic, Heka (HkA), was used throughout the Pharaonic period until Roman times. It was succeeded by the Coptic word Hik (xik), which was equated with the Greek word magia. The best definition of Heka in Egyptian terms comes from funerary spell 261 that was inscribed on a Middle Kingdom sarcophagus. The spell is entitled “To become the god Heka�?

“I am he whom the Lord of all made before duality had yet come into being �?I am the son of him who gave birth to the universe �?I am the protection of that which the Lord of all has ordained �?I am he who gave life to the Ennead of gods �?I have come to take my position that I may receive my dignity. Because to me belonged the universe before you gods had come into being. You have come afterwards because I am Heka.�?/FONT>

So, the notion of Heka existed before the creation of divine and mundane world and it was the cause for the emanation of cosmos. It was the “life-giving energy�?which was conceived in the mind of the creator god and expressed as “divine logos�? According to the Memphite theology, as expressed in the inscriptions on a late period monument the Shabako Stone, the creation of each human or divine being and, in general, of everything that exists in the universe, by the creator god Ptah, was achieved through the verbal manifestation of the divine thought and its correct pronunciation as “logos,�?(Hw), or “word, command�?(mdt). The divine “logos�?had as encrypted point of reference the abstract, symbolic notion of “name.�?By “proclaiming the name of everything�?Ptah gave birth, initially, to Shu and Tefnut and consequently to the whole Ennead) (group of nine gods). Without the notion of Heka creation was not possible. All the gods and human beings came afterwards as a result of this divine creativity caused by Heka, made manifest by the spoken words of Ptah.

Another epithet for Heka was “the one who consecrates imagery�?(HkA-kA). It refers exactly to the primeval generative attribute of Heka to empower the creator’s divine thoughts and actions and translate them into their substantial equivalent in the visual and material world. Heka was the animation force behind every ritual act, state or private, beneficent or hostile. Since the creation of the “first time�?was re-enacted in the daily temple ritual, “the ritual of the opening of the mouth,�?every morning, the power of Heka was present in every ritual activity.

Heka visualised

The creative act of Heka is personified and depicted on the solar bark of the creator god Re. In company with Su (“creative logos�? and Sia (“perception�?, Heka re-enacts the creation of the first time and the separation of heaven and earth. The theological manifestation of Heka is also present in tomb and temple representations as early as the Old Kingdom. In the Fifth Dynasty funerary temple of the king Sahure, Heka heads a procession of nome (regional) deities bearing offerings to the king. In late period documents and on the walls of the Ptolemaic temples of Dendera, Edfu, Kom Ombos and Philae, Heka appears as one of the fourteen kas of the sun-god Re, an idea that was already present in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts. For example, in Coffin spell 261 Heka styles himself as “Lord of kas.�?/FONT>

In the so-called underworld books, the corpus of texts and scenes inscribed on the walls of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the god Heka protects the sun god Re during his night journey in the Netherworld (Amduat). Heka appears among the crew of the solar bark exorcising Apophis, the eternal serpentine demonic enemy of the sun god. The fight usually takes place in the seventh hour of the night when the evil serpent tries to stop the movement of the solar bark by hypnotising the crew. Apophis is defeated by virtue of the magic (Heka) of the goddess Isis and the “eldest magician�?(Heka Semeshw). The qualification of Heka as “elder�?should be seen as a reference to his primordial status as first-born son of Re.

Magic and Temple ritual

A re-enactment of Apophis’s defeat takes place daily in cultic ceremonies in all the major temples. The ritualist, magician/priest, plays the role of the god Heka and executes the serpent of chaos by smiting, breaking or burning his wax image. In the Late Period document, the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, there are magical instructions of how to make wax figurines of the serpentine demon or other divine or human enemies:

“This spell is to be recited over (an image of) Apophis drawn on a new sheet of papyrus in green ink, and (over a figure of) Apophis in red wax. See his name is inscribed on it in green ink. To be spat upon, smitten with a knife. To be put on the fire. It is a burning in a fire of bryony.�?/FONT>

This magical procedure “was performed daily in the temple of Amun-Re, Lord of the thrones of the Two Lands, who dwells in Karnak.�?So, in ancient Egypt magic was closely interconnected with the religious activities and form of the state and it was not only the concern of individuals performing rituals for their own benefit.

Magical rituals were performed as part of religious festivals. That is best illustrated in the Ptolemaic festival in favour of Horus of Edfu (the Behdetite), celebrated over a fourteen day period at Edfu, where images of the serpent Apophis, together with those of hippopotami and crocodiles, symbolic of the god Seth, are used in execration rituals against the enemies of Horus. The rituals were completed with the “striking of the eye�?(of Apophis), the offering of the hippopotamus cake, the “trampling of fishes�?and “destruction of all the enemies of the king.�?/FONT>

At the temple of Esna, the ritual against Apophis was developed within the proper cultic liturgy in favour of the goddess Sekhmet on the first day of the year. It was performed by the same Sekhmet-priest, for there was not a caste of professional magicians in Ancient Egypt. This magical work was considered as just one of many priestly duties and the literate lector-priest (khary-hebet) was at the same time a public servant of the cult and a private practitioner of magic. Also, the spells and techniques of Heka, about which we shall talk in detail in a future article, are those of temple ceremony: invocation of gods as assistants in the magical operation (divine speech), erasure of names and mutilation of images (damnatio memoriae), threats, enumeration of the human bodily parts that are ascribed to particular deities (lists), just to mention a few.

The Pharaoh was responsible for defeating chaos (isefet) and maintaining order (maat). This antithesis between order and chaos is not regarded as an exclusive subject of the magical rituals, but it permeates almost every cultic activity. Order versus chaos provides a crucial theme of reference in Egyptian ritual. Ritual is central to both religion and magic. It consists of the main point of reference, composed of a sequence of actions that express and fulfil certain purposes through the mobilising of specific mythological or “theological�?events. So Heka, as a mobilised force within a certain performative environment, could be considered as a personification of the power of ritual. In the Middle Kingdom teaching of Amenemhat I, there is a definition of Heka that clearly shows its protective and apotropaic / ritualistic nature: “He ( the sun god) gave to them (mankind) magic (Heka) as weapon in order to repel the strokes of bad events.�?These beliefs were not only held as intellectual ideas, but acted out in the daily ritual in temples.

For the Ancient Egyptians magic as Heka is a neutral, amoral creative force that is not opposed to religion but which animates it. This approach to Egyptian magic helps us to study the anthropology and sacred praxis (work) of Heka rather than to see it as a compilation of superstitions and popular beliefs.

Homework Exercises

Lesson 12 Egyptology

1) The Egyptians believed that the divine powers frequently made known their will to them by means of what?

2) Why did Egyptians believe in ghosts?

3) Who are Renenet and Shai?

4) What is Egyptian animal worship?

5) Why did Egyptians worship animals?

6) What is khu?

7) What happened when the body dies...according to ancient Egyptians?

8) Explain briefly afterlife.

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