12
Egyptian Initiation
Writing in the fourth century, the Roman historian Marcellinus remarks on the wealth of secret knowledge stored in the library of Alexandria: “If anyone in the earnestness of his intellect wishes to apply himself to the various branches of divine knowledge, or to the examination of metaphysics, he will find that the whole world owes this kind of learning to Egypt.”1
The original Egyptian Mysteries were a closely guarded secret, rarely written down and mostly committed to memory by priests of the temple. And yet despite its firm grasp of the laws of the universe, even Egyptian culture slowly but inexorably fell into decline. Following its resurrection by Alexander the Great, the Ptolemaic era that ensued witnessed the rebuilding of many temples made derelict by invading Persian hordes, and in exact accordance to their original state. By the time Hellenistic scholars streamed into Alexandria, the knowledge finally began to be committed to parchment or temple wall, translated, and made available to a wider audience, the only fly in the ointment of this noble plan being the wholesale destruction of the material by a mob of Christian fundamentalists.
For centuries the only known surviving source of information on Egyptian Mysteries rites came from Lucius Apuleius, based on his personal initiation experience of the resurrection cult of Osiris, whose focal point—or at least the temple with which it is most synonymous—is the Osirion at Abydos. Lucius writes how he underwent a period of observation within the inner temple community, leading to a kind of monastic experience within the priesthood. Preparations began with the purging of base emotions of the physical body or lower vibrations; asceticism was essential throughout the teachings, while a ten-day fast prepared the body for the final stage. At sunset on the tenth day, the priest took the candidates by the hand and led them “to the most secret and most sacred place of the inner temple.” From this point Lucius kept his vow of silence and wrote about what he saw no more. However, he offers a hint: “I at length returned, borne along through all the elements. I beheld the sun shining in the dead of night; I saw both the infernal and celestial gods. I approached and adored them.”2
The Osirion at Abydos, focal point of the resurrection cult of Osiris.
Some late Egyptian texts add further details: how the priest or initiate would enter a special place in the temple and immerse themselves in qed, a state of meditation that paved the way for individual access into the Otherworld. The priests expected every individual to return albeit sometimes stunned by what they’d seen, describing it as “a voluntary death and a difficult recovery of health.”3
THE BOOK OF THE NOT-SO-DEAD
The greatest obstacle to understanding the true nature of Egyptian resurrection texts lies with interpretations by Victorian historians who treated the material within a Judeo-Christian framework, in other words, as literal funerary rites and not as they were intended to be read, as allegories. With few notable exceptions,4 intellectuals of the period were in total denial that primitive Egyptians could have possibly understood a mystical science superseding that of evolved Europeans, much less described experiences taking place in a dimension beyond ours. This literal funerary interpretation clouded, distorted, and de-potentized the true understanding of Egyptian mystical sensitivity, and yet their works clearly show they underwent significant spiritual transformations, and did so while still alive. Shamanism, after all, needs to be directly experienced rather than philosophically rationalized. It is a participation in the interdimensional plane beyond the conscious senses. Classic Greek and Roman philosophers claimed as much, and two thousand years ago they were far closer to the truth than we are today.
Chaeremon, a first-century Egyptian priest who went to great pains to make abstract Egyptian concepts fathomable to non-Egyptians, gave an insight into the depth of knowledge possessed by the old priesthood who, through “constant contact with divine knowledge and inspiration” pursued a “life of wisdom. . . . The priests dedicated their entire lives to the thought and contemplation of God. . . . The fruit of their contemplation was knowledge, and through contemplation and knowledge they attained a way of life at once esoteric and old-fashioned.”5 Judging by their titles—Master of Secrets of Heaven, Earth, and the Amdwat, and even more explicitly, Master of Secrets Concerning the Unique Seeing-Vision—high officials in the temple certainly gained direct and profound understanding of spiritual realities. One such vizier was Rekhmire, a man cognizant of the mechanics of the resurrection initiation, of whom it was claimed, “There is nothing on earth, in heaven, or in any part of the Amdwat in which he does not have knowledge.”6
For the Egyptians, the Amdwat—the Otherworld—is an integral component of birth, death, and rebirth; it is the source of energy and an astral reference library. And because it was seen as the source of matter, the incarnate human being was not considered truly alive but quite the opposite, whereas the soul is perpetually alive and lives in the eternal. Initiates even had this credo carved in their tombs when they finally, physically died: “A lifetime in this world is merely a trifle, and eternity lies in the realm of the dead.”7
According to Egyptian belief the purpose of the Amdwat is to awaken “the inner great human” by reuniting the soul with its dormant purpose during its entrapment in a physical body. The same understanding of the workings of the soul is indoctrinated in a Chinese Taoist work, The Secret of the Golden Flower, which asserts that contact with multiple sacred places “awakens the Great Man within.”
If independent academic thinkers had not gone out of their way to question the literal interpretation of Egyptian mysticism8 we today would be none the wiser regarding one of its greatest secrets—that the resurrection practices of the Egyptians were not meant specifically for the dead. The Book of What Lies in the Amdwat, written on the walls of the tomb of Rameses IV (ca. 1155 BC), offers a lucid description of the nighttime journey of the soul from material to ethereal and back, proof that someone reached this land of paradise and returned to tell about it. Moreover, it recommends, “It is good for the dead to have this knowledge, but also for the person on Earth.” The text concludes with a startling promise: “Whoever understands these mysterious images is a well-provided light being. Always this person can enter and leave the netherworld. Always speaking to the living ones. Proven to be true a million times.”9
At its core lies a symbolic representation of the transformation and renewal of the individual following a figurative but not literal death. It describes the regenerative qualities of the night world, where answers to basic human questions are provided. In symbolic terms, if a person is able to plot the same course as the sun god on his journey through the Otherworld, he or she will learn about the forces that shape the causal world, thus gaining insights into the cycle of life and its eternal renewal.
From 1470 BC, the original text, Treatise of the Hidden Chamber, appears along the passages and chambers of Thutmosis III’s anomalous tomb, describing in vivid detail mystical experiences by the living that parallel those a person undergoes at death.10 The tomb is anomalous because the king’s mummy was not found inside but on the other side of the mountain at Deir-el-Bahri—ironically in the same tomb as Seqnenre Taa, the pharaoh to whom the ritual of resurrection within Freemasonry is traced.11 Also, the text’s graphic style is in sharp contrast to others in the Valley of the Kings; the chamber containing the red quartzite sarcophagus is oriented northeast, the traditional alignment synonymous with the acquisition of ancient wisdom; and there is a well inside a tomb supposedly meant to offer drinking water to a dead person. We are therefore open to entertain the likelihood that the original function of this chamber was for temporary rather than permanent interment.
The pharaoh lying on his bier, presided by Isis and Seker. With his arm raised he is clearly alive and pointing to his brow, the symbolic seat of the all-seeing eye. Abydos.
A section of the text in Thutmosis III’s tomb.
The name Thutmosis means ‘Djehuti is born.’ Djehuti, the god of wisdom, is one of two figures that feature prominently in the resurrection texts, and of whom was said he “knew the secrets of the night” and could initiate them to the living by the use of correct techniques so they might visit the Amdwat and return.12 His doctrines describe how “the human being can become established on high without ever leaving the earth.”13
It is well worth making a further point about Djehuti, whose name was later transliterated by the Greeks as Thoth. He wasn’t perceived by early Egyptians merely as a god in spirit form but as a real man who attained divine status through revelations gained from his interaction with a divine source, receiving his immortal status through self-purification, yet choosing to remain among the people to reveal to them the knowledge he gained by accessing the Otherworld.14 Even in his later incarnation as Hermes Trismegistus in the eighteenth century he was still believed among philosophical circles to have been a real person.
Djehuti was associated with the number 8, representing as it does the four material elements balanced with the four mutables. He is a balanced being, the one who’s harmonized the male with the female, the physical with the spiritual, and become a “single one,” to quote Jesus; his physical abode and temple was the town of Khmun, literally Eight Town. Since Djehuti is the one who professes advice on living resurrection, it is worth pointing out a fascinating parallel with Jesus the god-man. In the art of gematria—a cypher assigning numerical values to letters and words—as Thoth, his name carries a value of 88, just as Jesus is 888.15
The other figure who comes to preside over the entrance into the Amdwat is Osiris, and in a chapel dedicated exclusively to him in the temple of Abydos there are texts describing how the soul ascends to the sky to become an akh, a being of light; such instructions were given the title transfigurations. The candidate—in this case the pharaoh Seti I—is shown being led by Osiris to emerge at the end of the ceremony with his body spiritualized in the form of Horus.
Adjacent to this above-ground temple is one of the most formidable underground chambers ever built, the Osirion, a temple made from cyclopean rectangular blocks of red granite and, judging from the buildup of mud outside its walls, believed to be at least 12,000 years old. The name speaks for itself, it is the House of Osiris, the place where the god-man was slain by Set to remanifest as the falcon-god Seker, leaving little doubt that the mystery play of the birth and rebirth of this god-man were taught and conducted here. Its central atrium even features a pool with stairs at either end and was most likely used for ritual baptism.
But yet again there are no signs of burial. Seti I’s mummy and tomb were found deep below the Valley of the Kings, precisely 52 miles away, a number practically identical to the slope angle of that other House of Osiris, the Great Pyramid.
Virtually equidistant and following the same compass direction lies another chapel dedicated to Osiris, this time at Edfu, where a doorway leads to a passage within the hollow wall and down into two underground chambers adorned with hieroglyphs of an instructional nature.
Preparations in these temples for an initiate’s journey into the Otherworld were complex and lengthy affairs, suggesting the practitioners were well aware of the dangers inherent in out-of-body excursions. In the temple of Dendera, a secret door on the floor leads down into a hole only a contortionist can appreciate. Following the awkward entry, two claustrophobic passageways each lead to respective narrow chambers officially described as storage rooms for religious objects, so why their walls should be covered with unusual and elaborate ritual scenes is illogical to say the least. However, the rooms are suited to a person undergoing incubation, with the presiding murals depicting one-of-a-kind reliefs of what appears to be a rebirthing ceremony featuring lotus buds—the plant consistently associated with spiritual enlightenment—filled with serpents and made to resemble what can only be described as huge incandescent light bulbs. The scene is highly suggestive of a regeneration ritual in its most symbolic form.
When the candidates reemerged at dawn they did so as adepts, risen from the dead in time to greet Sirius, and looking at the world through very different eyes. As always, what initiates had seen was not shared; they remained close-lipped concerning the information received, and lest they forgot, a kind injunction carved on a wall at Edfu was there to remind them: “Do not reveal what you have seen in the Mysteries of the temple.”
Mural inside the hidden chamber at Dendera.
Murals from Luxor and Dendera. Left: Pharaoh in a state of motion presided by Isis, and her sister Nephtys, Lady of the Temple Enclosure, a priestess who oversaw private rituals. Right: The living pharaoh rises as Osiris. Bottom: Pharaoh animated on his bier, his spirit floats as a bird while an attendant stands by with a libation. Why would a dead person require a refreshment? In each case Pharaoh is depicted in a manner inconsistent with a dead person.
OSIRIS IN THE EAST
The living resurrection traditions of the Egyptians are mirrored in India and the East. “God dwells within everyone, but few know how to find him. And this is The Way to salvation,” says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu narrative dialogue between this creator god and prince Arjuna. In the same breath, Krishna advises on a great secret of the pure Mystery: “In order to reach perfection it is necessary to acquire knowledge of oneness, which is above wisdom.” With these words of counsel Krishna lets the cat out of the bag and reveals he’s an initiate familiar with the Mysteries of the Otherworld. But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. For one thing the Gita is a morality play in the best Gnostic tradition: Krishna is the prince’s charioteer, so the implication is that Arjuna belongs to that selective group of spiritual seekers who follow The Way of the Chariot.
Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cultures are not short on exquisite temples and hidden chambers where one can pursue The Way. They also developed physical yogic techniques to help candidates raise their corporeal energy or shakti so as to enter a state of bliss and penetrate the Otherworld in a self-controlled manner. The ancient rishi and yogi of India discovered that by controlling and revolving energy continuously up and down the spine to the brain it is possible to accelerate one’s state of awareness.
One such method is kriya, whose origin belongs to the remote past. Krishna extols its virtues in the Bhagavad Gita, the sage Patanjali speaks of it in the Yoga Sutras. It then goes underground for centuries until it is reintroduced in the nineteenth century and, as with so many other sacred practices, it was available only to a faithful few following a period of preparation lasting one year, and then only to those who led an ascetic life.
Like The Way, the advanced techniques of kriya yoga’s sacred science are said to liberate the soul from the physical world toward a realization of the Source, the difference being that in using your own body you become the bridal chamber, you become your own private, sacred cave. Much of this philosophy came under the umbrella of kundalini (derived from Maha Kundali, literally Mother of Space and Time), with the aim of achieving a holotropic transformation of consciousness.
Under correct conditions, raising the body’s innate electrical energy goes hand in hand with supernatural power and spiritual grace, and it is these qualities that alter the ordinary person into an extraordinary magician, in the original sense of the word—a magus, one who learns to harness the laws of nature.
This spiritual technology exists within the framework of the Gospel of John so cherished by the Mandeans, just as it is displayed all over the temple walls of Egypt. Initiatory environments such as Abydos depict mural after mural of implements being attached along the pharaoh’s spine and third eye, physically and symbolically, with noticeable differences in the posture of the king, who when standing is depicted as moving, and when lying flat like a corpse is animated with his arm and leg raised, demonstrating the pharaoh is not dead but taking instruction while living. He is being prepared for a journey and is expected to return.
And the description of that journey is found in the most complete ancient work, the Pyramid Texts.
The Pyramid Texts. Saqqara.